Shattered: Chapter Thirteen

“No.”

“Why the fucking hell not?”

“We’ve already been through this.  I don’t want to risk it.”

“Risk it?!”  He slammed his fist, knuckles first, into the table before the other man, rattling the glasses there.  “You haven’t wanted to ‘risk it’ for three years!  Three years!”

“You don’t even know if he would want to leave…”

Cha was quiet for a moment, silently raging at the man before him.  Then softly, he said, “I’ve waited long enough.  He’s alive.  I’m alive.  I’m going to go get him back.  You can either help me, which would be much appreciated since I only have one hand to hold a gun, or you could sit here and know you’ve sent me to my certain death and sentenced another man to suffer for the rest of his life.”  He turned on his heel and strode to the door.

“Take whoever will go.”

He smiled and walked out.

*****

Gackt blinked and rubbed at his eyes with his one hand while the other clung desperately to the sheets.  “Cha…?”  His voice was soft, hesitant. 

It was painful to see such raw disbelief in those eyes.  Cha reached out and touched the other man’s arm and caressed his cheek.  “We have to go, Gaku.”

“I’m going with you this time?”

He blinked at the ‘this time’ bit.  How many times have we done this, Gaku?  “Yes.  You’re coming with me.  But we have to go now.  We can’t stay.”

“Why are you scared?” Gackt asked.  “I’m the only one who can see you.”

Cha took a deep breath, searching for something that would make sense to the other man.  “We have to hurry because…because it would look strange if they saw you wandering off on your own.  If we hurry, they won’t stop you, and you can come with me.”

That seemed to work because the other man threw off the sheets and stood up, stumbling a bit when his full weight rested on his feet.  Wrapping his arm around the taller man’s waist, Cha asked, “What’s wrong?”

“My feet hurt.”

“Why do your feet hurt?”

Gackt sighed and rolled his eyes.  “I told you before – the beat them till they bleed, so they hurt too much to run off.”

Cha heard someone in the party curse while the others shifted around the two of them, suddenly anxious over this new development that significantly hindered their escape.  He turned to them and said, “Stick to the original plan.  Watch your backs.  I’ve got him, so someone cover our backs.  Be fast.  Be silent.  Let’s go.”

*****

He awoke slowly, as out of a fog.  There was no sudden awareness, no burning sensation when the sun hit his eyelids, no red glare behind them.  This didn’t frighten him right away – perhaps he’d awoken in the night.  He still had some time before they came to fetch him for whatever he was to be used for that day.

But as he lay there, he heard men talking around him.  There was a cool hand on his forehead and he sighed.  But cool hands were out of place.  He blinked his eyes open and looked around.  He lay on a cot in a dark room, surrounded by people he didn’t recognize.  Or at least didn’t think he recognized.

“Gacchan?”

He hadn’t been called that since… Looking up, he found himself staring up into the smiling face of a man he should have recognized, knew he should have known.  The memory was floating somewhere in the ether of his mind, desperately clawing at stable ground.

“What…?”

“We rescued you,” the man answered, “Well…I didn’t rescue you, the others rescued you.  Including—”

“Hyde…”

The man above him glanced over his shoulder.  “Oh right,” he murmured.  Glancing back down at Gackt, he smiled.  “That part’s still a secret for some reason.”  He shrugged.

“Hyde?” Gackt asked, rolling the name over his tongue.  It tasted familiar.  Old, but familiar.  The man smiled down at him.  “Where am I?” Gackt asked, his throat going dry as he sat up.

“We’re…” Hyde paused and seemed to ponder the question.  “I’m not really sure.  I wasn’t the one with the map when we came.”

“I’m cold,” Gackt observed, wrapping his arms around himself.  His teeth chattered behind his lips.

“You should probably get another blanket,” Hyde observed.  “I’ll go get you another blanket.”  With a nod more to himself than the other man, he stood and left Gackt staring after him.

He left him.  He left him alone.  Gackt sniffed and rubbed at his eyes.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” 

Startled at the new voice, Gackt jumped away and pressed his back up against the wall he hadn’t noticed his cot rested against.  If your back was against the wall, they couldn’t hurt you there.  His fingers clawed at the wood paneling.  An older man smiled down at him.  He had glasses and a black bag.  Gackt eyed the black bag with growing suspicion.  “Where’d Hyde go?”

“To get you another blanket, I think.”

“He left.”

“Yes.”

“Is he coming back?  Who are you?”

“Yes, I’m sure he’ll come back, so long as someone doesn’t distract him.  My name’s Nakamura.  I’m the group’s doctor.  I want to give you a quick examination to make sure you’re not hurt.”

“But I am hurt.  Why’s it cold?  Where am I?”

“I noticed your feet,” the doctor said, ignoring the other two questions.  He bent and opened the black bag.

Gackt pressed himself tighter against the wall, trying to push himself deeper into the paneling, into the grooves and the deep places.  Maybe he could hide in there with the dust.  “I’m cold,” he said again.  “Who are you?  Where’s Hana?”

“Who?” the doctor asked and looked up.

“Hana.  The nurse who brings the medicine every day.”

“What medicine?”

“The medicine for my head.”

The doctor paused and looked closer at him, leaning forward.  Gackt pulled his face away.  He was too close to his eyes.  “What does this medicine do?” the man asked.

“Makes me do whatever they want me to do.”

The older man pulled away and sighed.  Glancing over his shoulder, he said to the other men in the room, “They’ve been drugging him.  I don’t know for how long.”  Turning back to Gackt, he reached out to touch him.  Gackt flinched and pulled away.  With another sigh, he told him, “Whatever they gave you, you don’t need it anymore.  You’re all better.  It’ll be hard without it for awhile, but you don’t need to take it—”

“Yes I do.”

“No you—”

“Yes.”

The doctor paused.  “Why do you need it?”

His body shaking from head to toe, his muscles suddenly taut and burning, Gackt leaned in, nearly brushing his nose against the other man’s.  “Because you don’t know what’s in my head.”

*****

He was screaming.

Hyde hid under the blanket he had brought earlier and covered his ears with his hands, trying desperately to block out the noise coming from down the hall.

“God!” shouted Tetsu, slamming his fists on the table.  “What’s wrong with him?”

Cha paced back and forth across the small room, his one good arm wrapped around his thin waist.  “You have to let me see him,” he pleaded with the group’s doctor.

“In the state he’s in right now?” Nakamura asked, shaking his head.  “He could very well rip you apart.  That wouldn’t help anybody.”

The older man gritted his teeth and grinned.  “I was a rockstar in a previous lifetime.  I’ve dealt with my fair share of drug overdoses and withdrawals.  You have to let me see him,” he said again.  “He could kick the shit out of me, I know…but it could also help.  Hell,” he added, laughing bitterly, “at least he’d stop screaming for a little while.”

Hyde grinned at this.  Popping his head out from under the blanket, he looked up at them from his place on the floor.  “Screaming is bad.  Thus, no screaming is good.  Q.E.D., bitches.  I vote that we send Cha in to deal with doped-up Gaku.”

Without further comment from the other men in the room, Cha stepped into the room and quickly shut the door behind him.  Gackt sat in a corner, his body curled in on itself.  His face was buried in his hands and his shoulders shook, but for the moment, his screams had ebbed.  With a shuddering breath, he crossed the room and rested a hand on the other’s shoulder.  Gackt jumped and stared up into the other’s eyes.  He blinked several times as recognition dawned in his dark eyes, silent tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I dreamt about you a lot, during my…hallucinations and nightmares.  You always came to me at night, and…I rarely understood why you weren’t there in the morning.”

“You thought I was dead,” Cha whispered, taking a seat beside the other man.  He pulled gently at Gackt’s shoulder.  With a groan, the other man pitched forward, burying his face in Cha’s neck and wrapping his shaking arms around his ribs.  Cha winced at the force there, the withdrawal-induced power.  Running his fingers through the other’s hair he asked, “Why did you believe them?”

“They showed me your ring,” Gackt answered, sniffing and rubbing at his eyes.  “I remembered talking with you about it.  You said you couldn’t get it off…” 

Cha shifted his weight and slipped his robe from his shoulder to reveal what was left of his shoulder.  He watched Gackt’s eyes drift from his face to the stump then back.  “It was the only way I could get out,” he told him with a shrug.  “They would have burned me alive otherwise.”

“They were after me,” Gackt whispered.  “They were always after me.  From the beginning…”

The older man shrugged again and ran his hand through his dark hair, no woven with silver.  Gackt closed his eyes and pressed his body close.  Suddenly trapped against the wall, Cha shuddered.  It had been so long since he had been here.  His arm shook as he returned the embrace and burying his face in the other man’s neck, he sighed as tears welled in his eyes.  Gackt stretched his legs out on the floor and pressed his face against the elder man’s neck.  “You’re warm Cha…” The other let his head fall back against the wall as tears glided down his face.  “Thank God you’re warm…”