The Innocent (A 'Finder' Fanfiction)

Gemini - Chapter 5

The hard, cold floor was the only comfort in his new world.

It would catch him, whenever he fell. It would always be there, when he woke up...

'Woke?', he wondered, not sure if it was his own thought or somebody else's.

Didn't he have to sleep to awaken?

And did he ever sleep? Or was he asleep all the time?

Was it just a dream?

He could not tell anymore what was real and what was not.

Voices would ring somewhere near, yet he did not know if they were in his head or on the other side of the steel door.

Words were spoken, and he heard them and was certain that he understood, but he still didn't. They drained away like water from hands. He could not grasp them.

His own language might have gotten lost just like his ability to know and to think and to realize ...

In his new world it was always dark. This way, it had been for an eternity. Like someone had eclipsed all brightness from the universe. Would he never see any daylight again? Had it been lost?

And if it was not blackness engulfing him, it was a storm of flashes and noise, but not of light. They were pure hurt and pain. They tore him open and cut like a knife, until he wanted to claw his eyes out.

He curled up in on himself, just like he could shrink away like that. Become invisible. Just fade. He did not want to feel anymore, or to see or hear ... or be.

He did not know when he was asleep because when he was, there was nothing but nightmares, and when he awoke, he was still in them.

So very often he had the iron taste of blood in his mouth, it seemed there was no other taste left in the world.

... if only the world still existed. For all he could conceive, it might as well end at that steel door.

Someone had spoken his name ... maybe a century ago. After that, there had been nothing but a burning red in his head, that had lasted for days. His voice had called out, but no one had answered. No one had come. Then he had been here, yet since when? For how long?

And before all of that? What had been there? Then?

He lay on the hard, cold floor, pressing one palm onto the concrete to make certain he was still alive. But maybe he wasn't ...

And even if he was, did it matter?

Did anybody care?

There were pictures around sometimes, and he could not tell anymore if they were memories or just imagination. They wanted to convince him that he had been loved once. That once someone had always come for him. But right now, he was not sure, if that was true.

He wanted to believe, but he did not know how.

It felt like ... it had just been a tale. Or somebody else's memory ...

'Akihito', he thought and tried that name on his lips: "Takaba Akihito."

Still, there was so much warmth in that idea. It made him close his eyes to keep in the tears because they never gave him much water. He could not spare any to cry over fragments of what might once have been.

In the darkness, however, he felt he wanted to tell himself: He is still out there! He will come for you. He was real!

If the world still existed on the other side of that steel door, then he was in it! He – whoever he was – had to be there. Because if he wasn't, then why did time and space even go on?

He could not tell. He pressed his palm onto the floor and felt how it pushed back against him, cold and hard, like he was the only being for which the concrete had been built.

Maybe he was indeed alone in the universe and everything had just been his mind playing tricks on him. But didn't that mean that perhaps he did not even have a mind?

Shouts again. Hands. Words. Kicks. His head hurt. Someone strangled him and the world faded. But if it was not real anymore, then that did not seem too bad. How could something, that did not exist, even fade?

The idea was a paradox. He wanted to laugh about it, but he had forgotten how to do that. It had been too long ago. It had been at some point before he had been brought here, before he had been locked into his nightmare.

Back then ... he had loved. And he had wanted to protect. And he knew that he had managed to do that.

But it had not helped in the end. Why ... and how ... and when ..., that was what he had forgotten.

"Asami", he whispered into the darkness, unsure if his eyes were open or shut because there was no light.

That name was on his lips now and then. It felt like a promise, like a prayer. But it wasn't answered.

Only they came to him. Only they opened the door, and then they ripped him open, tore him apart. He would just let them. If he – Asami – was not out there anymore, if he was not looking for him, then it was all meaningless anyway, wasn't it? Then he could just lie here dead ... like he did so often, waiting for another eternity to pass. And another. Until he had vanished. Waiting to see if, at some point, warmth and light and love would find their way back to him.

He did not believe it anymore ...

He did not know how to believe anymore.

That verb had become foreign to him.

Like so many other words ...

And "Asami" on his lips again, like it wanted to slip from them.

He had believed in someone named "Asami". But if he could not believe in him anymore ... then maybe that was because there was no Asami anymore?

If he was not loved anymore ... then perhaps Asami was gone.

Or he had let him go ...

Or it ... he had been a lie.

A lie ...

And all the hurt and fear and darkness was his reality now.

Or was it his way back to the truth?

"Akihito", he whispered.

"Arata", he whispered.

Just consonants and vowels put together, forming a sound that someone had thought should be a name.

Did it even matter, how he called himself? How someone else called him?

When he became one with the bleakness and the cold, did the name even hold any meaning?

If it wasn't Asami speaking it, did he then need the name 'Akihito' anymore?

Or had he never had that name before Asami had called him that?

He let his hand wander over the floor, but it felt the same everywhere. The name did not matter. And if Asami was not out there anymore, if he had forgotten him, than he did no need it anymore ...

Then he could just take any other.

A name someone had called him by, who had been kind to him for some seconds of the dark eternity.