Flight Through Darkness

Warded

Pain.

It's the first thing I feel.

Then the bitter tang of sterile alcohol and anesthetic assaults my senses.

Memories of Hojo's laboratory rush back to my brain. For a moment, I panic, thinking I am still in it, and that Hojo has me at his mercy. Then common sense kicks in. I can't be there. That was so long ago. With a different girl and her different friends before everything turned upside down.

"Come now, don't bother pretending with me. I know you're awake."

Whose voice is that? I haven't heard it anywhere before. Where are my friends? My mother? Shouldn't they be with me?

What happened?

"I said drop the act, kid." The voice is rougher this time, more menacing.

With a reluctant sigh, I open my eyes, taking in the bright fluorescent lights, polished tiles, metal sink in the corner. All typical of a normal hospital ward, with one exception.

Normal hospital wards don't have straps across the beds, do they?

My whole body is strapped down to the bed, even my neck. It's exceedingly uncomfortable, but not as bad as the pain that throbs from my wrist, prompting my gaze towards it.

"You were thrashing around so badly earlier that you held to be restrained." The man explains coolly. I accept the brief explanation, attention on my left wrist, which is swathed in white cotton bandages, attached to an IV and a bag of...blood?

Then I remember.

Fleeing into the bathroom, sitting on the toilet lid for a long while before getting up and heading for the sink to wash my face. Something glints in the light. I tentatively pick it up, wincing as a droplet of blood runs down my finger. A razor. Sharp and light. Toying with it, I glance up, startled as voices sound outside the door. Tifa's last few words float back into my memory.

"Lilly? Come out, you can't possibly coop yourself up in there till the day you die."

Die? That's an interesting thought. It's not fair that Aerith died and I'm alive. Even the bear died, shot and left to die after it fled from the people. What was that saying? An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.

A life for a life.

"Watch me."

"What?!"

"Goodbye."

Then the world had spun from beneath me as I drew the edge of the razor against my wrist.

"Do you remember what happened?"

The gruff voice snaps me out of my reverie. I look up at the man standing in front of me, observing everything and missing nothing, from the way he's standing, the plain wedding band on his ring finger, to the angle of his narrowed dark eyes. He doesn't seem the sort to be a nurse, or even a doctor. He looks more like the kind of guy you'd find in a bar, playing poker and smoking cigarettes while petting the girl beside him. I don't trust him. Especially not with practically my entire form pinned down and useless.

"Patient has previous records of withdrawing from people, but not suicide or self-harm. From what your little pals have told me, you also tend to blame yourself a lot for things that usually happen out of your control in your presence. This is your first attempted suicide, during which you tried to slash your wrist in an attempt to bleed yourself out. Before that you were reported to be muttering to yourself and appeared to be speaking to someone not physically present. My guess is you were hearing voice of your own conscience in your head and you were arguing against yourself about whether you were at fault for your late friend's death." He states matter-of-factly, as if he's talking about the weather to a friend and not psychoanalyzing someone strapped to a bed in a hospital.

It's hard to get the words out through my dry throat, but I try anyway.

"Who...who the hell are you?" I rasp.

The man smiles dryly.

"Your counsellor for the next month here. Welcome to the suicide center."