Upon A Time (JoongNine AU)

Upon A Couple Of Hearts

Joong

I tried to move my fingers by clenching and unclenching them. Then pulled my knees up and stretched both legs again. After a week of close monitoring, my vital were getting stronger but still not at full capacity of moving freely. I could walk myself to the toilet, taking slow steps and also walk around the room to stimulate better blood flow to my weak muscles. As I stopped in front of the mirror, I could see my stubbles was growing and my hair curled at my nape, a bit longer than my usual.

Serena came every day with Aria after picking her up from the kindergarten. She said she took the week off, from her job that she had started a couple of months into my coma, after my overall condition was more stable. The hospice provided around the clock care and that allowed her to be more at ease, than leaving me at a busy hospital where there were other critical patients who needed to be tended as well.

There were too many questions running into my head. But, Serena wanted me to focus on recovering first, rather than be stressed about anything else. So, with the determination to be discharged as soon as I could, I started to do my own routine everyday aside from the therapy sessions, to gain back energy, health and fitness. After three weeks, I could finally go home.

When the person who introduced himself as my assigned assistant for the time being, and as a manager once I'd make a come back into the industry, came to pick me up from the hospice, I tried to ask, but he just said sorry that for the time being, the Company Director asked that no one shall put pressure or talk about work with me. The way home was both familiar and also felt foreign. Some of the surrounding changed due to development that happened within the year. I opened the window purposely, wanted to taste the remaining heat of the evening sun on my skin and the gushing wind that felt cooling, fresh and also real.

Aria ran as soon as I entered from the door, and I embraced her tight and gave a smile at Serena from where I stood. The first family dinner after so long, was noisy but joyous, as I listened to a six years old who had so much to tell, about school and her friends. When she was tired of talking, she complained that daddy slept too much, so, there're too much that she had forgotten by now, but would tell me again later. I laughed, rumpled her hair, and kissed her forehead. I told her, that she could tell me everything little by little too, liked a bedtime stories, so that she wouldn't be too tired. That made her smiled again, gave me a kiss on the cheek, and left to play in her play room.

As soon as she was gone, Serena knew that I wanted to ask a lot, and promised me that we would talk, after Aria was put to sleep. She asked that I rested first in my room, as she cleared the table. As I lay on my bed, my mind was in jumble. My phone was not with me, ah, must be lost during whatever emergency situation that happened after my faint.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember anything, but there's nothing from the unfortunate day, yet, everything that I did with Nine in my dream world that I lived in for a year, was so vivid liked it just happened yesterday. His face, his smile, the misunderstanding and make up, the kisses, the tears, the night that we made love and definitely the feeling of falling again and again in love with the same person. I could feel the dampness under my eyelids, as I know, forever, that fantasy would be kept as my ultimate reality, where no one other than myself, who would know about it. I want to keep them as exclusively mine, forever. I fell asleep unconsciously, and only woke up when Serena came in and gently stroked my hair that had fallen in disarray on my face. Immediately I sat up facing her, trying to stay calm but, couldn't, as my heart was beating crazily in anxiousness.

"Your hair needed a cut, it already reached your nape. Your beard too", she started as her fingertips ran to feel my whole face. She must still be in shock too, that she wanted to ensure that this was real.