I missed the previous Chapter It's Part of You[click here]
Disclaimer: While I am obsessed with the powers of the Whispered, obsession does not ownership... in 54 of the 50 United States. That shall be the first thing to go when I rule the world *strikes wide cheesy grin*
"I'm glad to have met you, Sousuke. You're a really great guy." Full Metal Panic Episode 24
Simply Whisper
Chapter 6: Save Me from Myself
By: Miz~Lou
Darkness.
Please! Her heart beat violently in her ears. A hysterical pitch frantic in her mind loosened from her throat burning with hoarseness.
Please no, Sousuke!
o.o.o.o.o.
"You can not leave me by myself." Chidori clutched her own shoulders against the pressured invisible shackles on her wrists. "I... I can't do this without you."
The words left her broken, shaking, her voice faltering to carry any volume.
Come home.
She heard the words pull her out of her state of turmoil and reached a hand out to Sousuke, a desparate invitation to save him. Those words had saved her, surely they could save him to!
"Come home!" She nearly screamed against the void.
The image of Sousuke's vacant body materialized into the figure standing in front of her just moments ago on the beach. Chidori timidly placed her hand on his forearm as if relishing the gift of his life back in front of her, he grabbed her hand and she felt the reality of it - but instead of Chidori pulling him to her confirming the truth while pulling him to safety, he in fact pulled her to him. No longer a whisper of a shadow in her Whispered world, he had stepped into it and now held her close in his arms.
The cold sweat she had felt watching his image on the ground just a minute ago fled her body with his warmness so close. Chidori felt him stroking her hair ever so softly, a rigid but well-meaning intention to comfort her as best the soldier could. She smiled against Sousuke's shoulder she had found herself having come to rest her head on, and although she did not remember when that had happened it felt so comfortable. Enough to indulge in the comfort she had suddenly found in his arms without a hint of akwardness. It was a welcome feeling knowing he was alive, that the vision was a lie in front of her. And while it took a lie, she had finally discovered the power she had in telling him the truth.
It made sense now. It was part of her. He was part of her.
I love him.
Why couldn't the voice just have told her all along?
There was no forest, no giving of one's life, no threats. There were just two people. In love.
If you are strong, you will speak.
I'm glad to have met you, Sousuke.
Suddenly her earlier conversation with Mao made sense. She knew fully what it meant to be strong.
Coarsened fingers softly cupped her chin, she found herself gently led to look into his eyes. Sousuke was saying something and it looked as if he were examing her, his fingers moved up to her temples and swept under her eye. But she couldn't make out his words - whether her feelings were overriding her thought process to hear, or the turmoil she had felt deep inside her from the invading visions, or the reality of the fact that she could loose him were responsible she did not know. And if any of them were responsible for her intentions to let him know her feelings she didn't pay much attention to it. She had always shared herself with no one, her thoughts her feelings were truely her own. She made herself alone in this way.
You're a really great guy Sousuke.
She didn't have to scream the words, simply whisper the words to him. But slight hesitation pulled her back.
But I don't even know you.
"Then... get to know me." The words were gentle and full of understanding, he knew what she meant completely.
She was ready.
The ocean lapped at her feet admist the hovering silver clouds on the horizon. She embraced the image of the wicked blue saturations whirling into thin streams of coolness beneath naked feet. The air bubbles flew to the surface of the liquid fabric, misting her heated skin exposed to the elements.
Chidori's eyes absorbed the azure reflection and frail long fingers pulled the threads up from the body of water. Her expert hands smoothed shavings from the forming ribbons and began to weave them interlocking with one another. The touching surfaces melding into a glittering meshwork around her slender waist and the shards exploded hanging loosely off her form. A slender train pooled behind her and the newly born Whisper took her first step onto the warm golden beach.
The most brilliant marine blue dress hugged slender curves and elongated sleeves ringed around her middle finger. The fabric hung mesmerizing on the wind gracefully behind her, billowing her presense in a brilliant dance of faint hinting rainbows.
Wisdom eminated from her form as she approached Sousuke. She again placed a hand on his forearm, sliding it down his arm cautious to an illusion before her... walking slim fingers across his palm intertwining their fingers. Chidori leaned in, ever so slightly. She pushed a single foot off mosaic ground to better match his height and found his lips with her own. The action was rushed and anxious at first, and as soon as she felt the softness against her mouth she pulled away just as quickly so that they were a breath apart before a fleeting hesitation, then kissed him assuredly inhaling deeply with relief and desire. His heart beat quickly against her hand resting on his chest, serving as her anchor to balance the weakness of her legs. His hands had moved from her hair to hold firmly at her waist.
Sousuke did not pull away, surprised, as she had thought he would. While he looked wild-eyed and unsure of what to do, he had come to relax in the feeling slowly melting, lightly allowing himself to touch her face. It was amazing how much he allowed himself these denied actions... allowed her to gently suckle his bottom lip. He tried to continue the kiss in an innocent emergent fashion. It felt so strange and he felt so inept.
They gently pulled apart from one another, standing softly in each other's love. Sousuke watched her light eyes flutter softly and a small smile curve her lips.
"Baka."
This time the word was light and this time, this time there was love behind the light word. She watched Sousuke smile. But the aftermath of a Whispered episode had never been kind to her and they were becoming more and more intense as of late. Chidori felt the effects coming down on her faster than she could stabilize herself.
"Sousuke, I don't..." She tried to tell him she wasn't feeling well when he felt her suddenly go limp in his arms.
The color drained immediately from Sousuke's face, "Chidori?"
Leading her gently to the ground he scrambled on the sand murmuring through clenched teeth both to her and himself in a low, deathly urgent tone. "Chidori, no no no no. Please. Come on! No, no."
He could see she was reacting still as if she were physically struggling and checked her vitals right away, a finger would twitch indicating life but not enough to indicate a seizure. It almost looked like shock, yet was indicative of what many of the soldiers experienced after a life altering event such as war. Not shell shock but antagonized post-tramatic stress disorder... But what was antagonizing it? Himself?
This doesn't make sense! his mind searched; as much military combat training he had had, the signs and symptoms were contradictory to one another. Sousuke could not figure out what was going on with her enough to know what to do for her.
o.o.o.o.o.
"She thinks I'm nosey and a snoop."
"Wow! That doesn't sound like Tessa! Unless you really ticked her off... seriously, were those her exact words?" Mao snickered slurping slowly at her beer.
Kurz lengthened his eyes in a devious fashion. "That's what she said in her diary."
"WHAT!?" The masculine glass slammed against the bar and Mao smacked him with the emptied vessel. "You read her personal diary!?"
The half-bruised blonde looked up at her, "She hides it in such an obvious place."
"Heh... you want to see an obvious place?" Mao's eye twitched ever so slightly. "On your feet, soldier."
A slight crowd had started to gather outside the Mess Hall located adjacent to the flightline. Mao and Kurz had come outside after a carrier boy had run to get the instructed materials from a very fiesty Melissa Mao.
"Do it Weber."
"You can NOT be serious!"
Raven eyes flashed, "Don't push me."
Kurz clenched the sheet in his hand murmering something about burning in Hell in a voice just low enough as not to fully enrage the ex-Marine. He spread the sheet out and looked over at her surveying the rather large crowd now gathering.
"Snipers never were good a close-range combat." He heard two guys high-five one another in a jeering tone.
"Watch me." Kurz lay down on the far end of the sheet and took the end in both hands keeping the sheet straightened the length of his body. Rolling on the ground he wrapped himself inside the sheet.
Mao stomped the ground with a hardened weathered boot alongside her demand. "Start over. The song."
Kurz obediantly unrolled himself and started over.
"I'm a-"
"LOUDER SERGEANT!"
"I'M A BEAN BURRITO, THE KIND YOU LIKE TO EAT-O!"
Waves of laughter issued from the body and hands pointed at that spectical on the ground. Mao bit a lit satisfied.
The crowd went back to duty when Tessa scolded the soldiers for playing fun and games, completely unaware of the reason being to protect her integrity. Mao and Weber were instructed to come to her quarters that afternoon for reprimand.
Kurz watched her walk away for a long time and Mao smacked him. "Ugh, don't you learn? Get over it pervert!"
"Heh! Wasn't worth getting in trouble was it?" Kurz rubbed the back of his head soothingly.
"Totally!" Mao laughed at Kurz, "You act like I haven't been in trouble before or something."
They continued their banter, until they were interrupted by Sousuke carrying a feeble Chidori in his arms. Sousuke was heaving for breath, unable to speak. For the first time their comrade looks like he was at wits end, scared as a child would be of an oncoming thunderstorm.
"What the...?" Kurz managed at the site.
Mao's eyes went wide. "Sousuke, what's going on?"
"I don't know." They both could see he was physically distracted and uncharacteristically able to keep his cool. The wild hatred in his eyes was all too clear. "Help her! Please," his voice cracked.
.o.o.o.o.o.
Kalinin moved around the table, administering another shot to the girl on the table.
Sousuke sat a shell of a man, after completing his pacing around the room. There were so many thoughts, feelings, emotions swimming inside him. So many unanswered feelings, he didn't understand what had happened. Had he compromised her health? Surely this was his fault, he had done something wrong.
"What happened Sousuke?" Kurz had asked while they were alone in the hallway allowing Kalinin to work on Chidori.
"I... I kissed her." His jaw locked stiff. "I allowed myself to kiss her and this happened."
Kurz pressed his eyebrows together, "You didn't do anything wrong Sousuke."
"What do you know?" Accusing eyes swung met him, "None of you understand."
At first Chidori had rushed into his arms as if weak, but he trained himself remembering she had hugged him before in a rushed fashion after he visited her in the hospital room. Perhaps this was the same as that time. She really likes to do that, he remembered thinking. Taking advantage of the closeness he pressed a hand against her hair and tried to place a hand on her back to measure her heartbeat just to be sure. He was just checking her vitals as she looked rather pale and sick. When they separated he continued his body scan, checking her eyes and continuing with more urgency when she didn't pull away, hesitate or insist everything was alright in her usual fashion. He checked her temperature and had just swept a tear away from under her eye when she was suddenly leaning in and kissing him.
What had happened? What was going on? And why didn't he try to fight it?
Their conversation and Sousuke's thoughts had ended heated and abruptly when Kalinin motioned them to come back into the room.
Kalinin had warned that her condition was dangerous. She had mounting levels of plasma infiltration, rapid heartrate and he had never been up against something like this before making things even more dangerous. The disposition Sousuke held scared even the Veteraned Soldier, but he had no kind words to boost moral this time. The subject of the Whispered was still too new, too unstudied due to ethical issues and his ability to save the girl was faint.
Several hours dragged on. Tessa stopped to visit Chidori and said in a light voice to Kalinin, "At least she isn't convulsing and seems to have a calm peace come over her body now that the drugs had come to work after several administrations. That's very good."
"Yes ma'am." Kalinin appreciated the encouraging words.
Tessa looked sternly at him, "We can not put it off much longer, I'm afraid."
The severe instability of the situation made it extremely difficult to conduct the resonance with an endangered Whispered, and even though Kalinin had asked her not to resonate with Chidori for that simple fact Tessa had tried anyway. And Tessa felt strained to report to him in private she had and had been unsuccessful. She was unable to even resonate with the girl.
Sousuke refused to leave her side. Even after Kalinin encouraged him to leave just to take a shower the boy would not budge. When Sousuke spoke to her and held her hand she would weakly squeeze it back. Her heartrate would flutter when he stroked her hair. Brushing her forehead with his thumb he thought it a dream when she finally opened her eyes. Even though it had only been hours it seemed like days.
"Chidori?" He questioned the vision before his eyes. "Chidori?"
Her eyes looked glassed over and stared as if looking far off before they closed again. Kalinin nearly physically saw a part of Sousuke die.
Tumbling visions of the girl he had saved in the arctic tundra ...that was the same look, Sousuke feared.
"You may not want to see this." Kalinin warned him.
Unwilling to be driven off by a single statement, "What are you going to do?"
Chidori was moved to the large glass encasement and laid down within the metallic bed. The machine hummed loudly to life, glowing lights flickered iridescent, dangerously to life. Sousuke looked cautiously around the room, concentrating most of his energy on Chidori while the bed righted itself up on air powered hinges and the bar begin moving up and down the length of the body bed as if scanning her form.
"What is this?" Sousuke's anger began to boil inside him. Kalinin had been careful to watch his reaction. He looked increasingly like he was being backed into a corner but was doing his best to physically restrain himself. Kalinin's silence angered him. "What kind of experiment is this!?"
There were very few times Sousuke had felt like he was on the wrong side of the battle, stranded and betrayed by his own comrades but this was the first time he had felt so with Mithril. "Kalinin, what are you doing to her!?"
"I can't be completely certain," he admitted honestly at last. "But this is the last option that I have, Sousuke."
"You're experimenting on her!?" His body language exuded the action of lunging for him, "First unexplainable technology and now this!? What are you doing with equiptment like the enemy? Who the Hell's side are you on!"
"Do not let your feelings cloud your thinking, Sergeant. I am not your enemy." Kalinin returned in a strong voice not to be trifled with.
Deep tension penetrated the room, interrupted by an ear-splitting scream.
"CHIDORI!" Sousuke gritted his teeth. Not wasting a second he attacked the glass with the butt of his gun. When the glass wouldn't give he shot at the power cord for it. Kalinin worked frantically at the keys and was able to kill the power before Sousuke was successful. The glass was frozen in position encasing her.
"NO!" Chidori hugged her shoulders and fell into an infantile position. "Leave me alone! Let go of me! Please!"
Sousuke worked frantically at the glass. Kalinin had not taken measures against this and ran into the hallway to get a fire extinguisher to join Sousuke in cracking the glass.
"Get away from me!" Wild hands pounded against the encasing frame. "Never! I'll never!"
"Be careful of injuring her," Kalinin warned. After much heated labor the two men broke the glass, the raining shards scratching her skin with slender trails of blood.
She fell into Sousuke's arms before hitting the ground and he ripped the blinders off of her eyes. Sousuke watched the streams of green swirling within her eyes leave in a feathered fashion from deep inside her in iris, searching her frantically with his own and holding her face in his hands. Why couldn't he understand any of this?
Murmuring, tears filled her eyes immediately and streamed down her cheeks and along his hands, "You... saved me. Again."
Arms went around his waist and she pressed her face hard into his chest, nearly knocking him over on the ground.
"Don't leave me!" Sousuke's arms protectively went around her pulling her close. Her shaking and strained voice concerned him.
He hushed her and stared menacingly up at Kalinin, "Never."
