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Akira isn't sure whether he's awake or asleep, at first. His limbs feel heavy, and kind of fuzzy. His eyes don't want to open. His head hurts, bad, and there's an empty hollow in his chest that feels like it should have a name.
Akira barely remembers his own name, he realizes. It takes him a long, long time to notice, though. He can't think right. He hurts. He's so--alone? Is that what this hurt is? He misses people whose faces he can't force himself to remember, even when he tries. He misses the thing that's supposed to fill the empty void inside him.
He's still not sure if he's awake. If he was awake, shouldn't he be able to open his eyes?
(...)
(They are open, he decides eventually. It’s just dark)
He closes them again. He's tired. His head hurts. He doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't... like being alone. Akira shivers, or maybe shakes. He can't stop, but he's not cold. He just can't control what his body's doing.
Eventually, after a stuttering skip of time that might have been long or short, Akira slips into either sleep or just--more darkness.
He feels so, so empty.
(Why isn't anyone here with him?)
(Why did they leave him by himself, why--)
(Darkness)
-//-
Akira shivers in and out of that dark, cloying sleep a few more times. He loses count of exactly how many times he wakes and falls asleep, long before he feels like he should. The numbers dance out of his grasp and he can’t keep up with them, and so he has to give up keeping track of how long it’s been, how many times he’s woken up.
He doesn't know when or where he is, and the really scary thing about it is that he can't even wrap his mind around that missing information. It's not that he just doesn't know where he is, it's that he doesn’t know what it would mean if he did . He’s so lost, so confused. He can't figure out what he's seeing, even when he can open his eyes without immediate, skull splitting pain. There are people around him sometimes, Akira knows because he can hear their voices, but it feels like everyone's just talking so fast. He can't follow it, can't catch more than a stray word or two, can’t understand the meaning behind the sound.
And none of the voices belong to anyone that makes the empty places feel any more full . He tries to think what those missing voices are supposed to sound like. It's the same as anything else he tries to focus on for too long. If he's lucky, his head just starts to hurt. If he's not lucky, the thing he's trying to grasp just... melts away.
Akira cries a lot. Sometimes it's because of pain. Sometimes it's because of the cave inside him where something important is supposed to live. And sometimes, he cries because he's hungry and tired and cold and scared , and he can't do anything about any of it, he can't force his limbs to listen and do what he wants them to. He can't even explain to anyone around him what he wants or needs.
And then one day--the same day maybe, or many days later, he has no idea how long he's been wherever he is--he hears a voice that he actually does know. It stretches back through foggy memories to the very beginning of his life, to Dad.
Dad is a solid pillar in his memory, safe if not kind, and Akira sobs for him, reaching for him with desperation. He sobs, screams , because he needs help, he needs someone to make everything okay.
“Shh…” Dad’s arms lift him up and Akira presses himself up close to safety and warmth. One arm curls up against his chest without him really trying to move it, hand spasming into a shape that’s supposed to get him help--
(He’s hurt , his hand says, he’s hurt, hurt, hurt )
--but Dad just wraps his fingers around Akira’s twitching hand, rubbing the back of it, over and over again until Akira’s feeble strength gives under the gesture, and his palm lies flat and limp.
Dad leans down and whispers at him, but the words are a buzz in Akira’s ears, too fast to understand through the fog in his head. He cries louder and harder because he can’t , he doesn’t know … what is he supposed to do? This is Dad, he’s supposed to--he can help.
Instead, as Dad croons words into Akira’s ears that don’t make sense, something sharp suddenly digs its way into Akira’s spine.
And he stops crying.
(That means be quiet , it means danger , he doesn’t need to be able to think or understand to know what he’s supposed to do)
(That sharp pain spurs well practiced instinct, replaces comfort with fear)
His face twists up, not crying anymore but smiling. He doesn’t know why. It just feels like something he’s already done a hundred times, so it cuts through the confusion about everything else that’s going on, and forces him to smile.
( Happy baby )
(Is… is that what Dad wants?)
(Why isn’t he helping? Why is he making him hurt more?)
Akira’s hand tries to twist up again, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt but it doesn’t do anything, just like last time, and dad holds his heavy hand over Akira’s small one until his fingers go still.
If he didn’t feel so empty--if he wasn’t missing… what is he missing ? Who is he missing?
(Ar… arse--)
Why can’t he remember?
(why did you leave?)
The sharpness at his back digs deeper. Akira smiles at Dad through the fear and confusion and lonely, empty loss. He doesn’t know what to do. Cringe away? Lean closer? Dad’s hurting him, but Dad’s supposed to help. Maybe this is just what’s supposed to happen. Maybe it’s his fault for wanting Dad to make everything better. Maybe things aren’t supposed to be better, maybe it’s his fault, maybe--maybe--
Dad puts him back down again, and Akira flops down like a forgotten doll. Helpless.
After that, Dad’s there almost every time Akira wakes up. Always asking for happy baby , that sharp prick at the back of Akira’s neck demanding it now. And Akira isn’t happy, but he smiles anyway, and it makes everything hurt more. Soon, he’s not hoping Dad will be there when he wakes up anymore. Soon, he’s not even hoping for the missing someones he can’t remember. His jumbled brain is slowly, slowly starting to put things together, and he’s still too slow, too foggy, too hazy, too hurt , but he’s starting to figure things out. Sometimes, when people talk at him and around him, he even catches a fragment of what they’re saying, a word or a phrase he can grab onto and understand before it rushes past.
He’s getting…
Better feels like a stretch.
But he’s pulling his shattered pieces together, gathering broken shards of Akira into a neat little pile inside him, into that hollow where… where something important used to live.
(Sometimes, he curls up with his hands over his eyes, pressed against the flat, naked skin, useless baby fingernails digging into his forehead until it starts to hurt like Dad hurts him when he forgets to be Happy Baby, wishing he could just dig… it out of him)
(But he doesn’t know what it is, and when Dad sees, he makes worried sounds at the other people, the Nurse People that are there sometimes to feed him and change him and wrangle his body that won’t listen to him, and they cut his nails down to nothing so he can’t do that anymore)
Akira is starting to feel like Akira again. Limp and broken and useless, his brain too fogged to remember what Akira meant before, struggling sometimes to even hold onto new memories. Has he been here for days? Weeks? Forever? He doesn’t know, he can’t remember it all, and when he tries to focus and figure it out, he starts to get more confused and lost and afraid. Maybe he’ll always be here, lost in this fog, disconnected and drifting away from his past and his present, unable to imagine any future.
But--
But he can start to figure out that Dad isn’t safe. He can stop crying for him, and smile instead, smile until his face hurts, hoping it will keep Dad and that pain away. Fog and confusion blur it down, sanding away the rough edges until it’s nothing but safe hurts and smile for Dad , vague rules but important ones.
Safe hurts, so when the Nurse People hold him, be afraid.
When they clean him and feed him, don’t trust them. Stay still and small and quiet.
Don’t want them.
Don’t want to be held.
Don’t forget it’s not comfort , it’s pain .
Don’t--
Don’t wish for the people he can’t remember.
Don’t miss whatever used to be in the hollow place inside him.
They feel safe.
They would hurt him too.
There is only one thing, in the whole of Akira’s small world, that breaks this pattern. When he’s been there for… a while, for some time that feels long only because it’s everything he knows, a Nurse Person brings him a blanket. He’s shivering, body shaking from cold, it gets cold at night and he can’t sleep, misses--doesn’t miss, don’t miss it, hurts--a weight curled up on top of him, a voice telling him to go to sleep. And the nurse brings him a blanket, lets it drift down around him instead of tucking it in over him, and it’s warm enough to stop the shivers almost at once. The nurse puts a hand on his forehead, checking something (Akira flinches and squeezes his eyes closed, bracing), then moves away.
Akira blinks his eyes open again, and stares at the blanket. It’s nice. There’s pictures on it, the same ones repeating over and over in a pattern, a little soft black cat in a bow. It almost, almost reminds him of something he’s missing. But it doesn’t hurt, the way it should. It’s just a picture, and this cat won’t hurt him.
(Would the cat he doesn’t remember hurt him?)
( Is there a cat?)
( Go to sleep! )
He sleeps, and misses the weight on top of him a little less. And in his sleep he grips the blanket tight, twisting his tiny, clumsy hand into a fist around the fabric, pulling it tight next to his chest.
(Hurts)