flooded {part two || kirito & oasis}

You were made to make it hurt,
Disappear into the dirt,
Carry me to heaven's arms,
Light the way and let me go.

Low light, soft sounds. A cage of mortality molded into being by the fragility of existence. A world churns somewhere within the mists beyond the pulled blinds and locked doors. A mother with a ring of gold holds her smallest daughter while watching her other's bundles of blonde unfurl between the fresh flowers of their District. Her voice is sweet sewn by a heart of honey and her touch tender born from the broken bonds of her painful past. She is the fiance of a victor, a healer, and the father of her children. She is everything where wonder can meet a life of blood and battle.

She is everything, except informed.

Kirito is alone, far from them all. He is entirely secluded by the silence of his own voice. For a year now, he's stayed within the shadowed shroud he created. Kept quiet the events that escalated to a stay in a Capitol hospital and an era underneath medical examinations. In the fog of fear and the disarray of disbelief, he swore secrecy to any one who could say the few words which would set him free. He entered this new yet old arena in solitude, and he knows now that he's losing the war.

<><><>

"Mr. Miristioma, I mean Doctor, I..."

His hand had stopped her, cut of the cadence of her voice that carried the tone of tragedy. It was one he was familiar with. The dip of decibel which can only indicate a sentence of sorrow from the one who has promised to perish all such suffering. The sound of a voice who's hope is heavy, weighed down by the chains of despair. The sound of the voice of a dying tribute and a disheartened doctor in anguished unison. He spared her the sword that such sounds drive like a dagger into the speaker.  He already had plenty of swords through his soul, he could handle another.

"Here, let me see the charts."

<><><>

Kirito's eyes blink away the water welled in the corners of their creases. Rough fingers of a man who has buried friends, family, and sanity rub the near-fallen tears into nothingness. They are not the servants of sadness summoned by the pictures of his past, but the price of prescription pills. The evidence of the only deterrent to his delirium that he holds tightly in the folds of his pockets. The cost of keeping spasms at bay and hallucinations in the singing shadows. The only signal to his secret of sickness. He rolls through the torrent of his sweat stained sheets spewing nothing but bile from the empty banks of him stomach into a nearby trash can. His era of avoidance is eroding.

A knock comes from the hall. Finter's voice follows.

Kirito sits with his head heavy in silence.

Another knock. No voice.

Further silence.

The knocking stops.

Taking hold of the nightstand by his bed, Kirito creeps slowly to his feet. A slim band of light breaks from between the blinds and Kirito stumbles for a second in shock. Anger ignites the surface of his skin in a fire of fury. Hands heave a lamp from its place on the stand and knees buckle beneath the sudden burst of movement. A scream splits the air, the product of not physical, but emotional pain. Frustration, coating every cell and every atom.

How could he live over all of them, just to die?

<><><>

The charts were clear, the numbers and scans as lethal as the knives of Wyatt. In the moment his eyes ran over the diagnosis, they fell closed. It was nearly a decade earlier and all that he could hear was the sound of the methodical heart monitor connected to his chest. Back then, he believed he was walking into a new world that would be hard and littered with reminders of darkness. But he believed he would walk with Katelyn to support him and a head clear of the psychotic sentence he served in the arena. Yet years later, he was back in the same bed imprisoned by his psychological past, only now with more information. It wasn't just the trauma, it was physical.

Grade II : Atypical Meningioma.

A brain tumor.

<><><>

Slowly calming himself, Kirito rises again to his feet. His hands almost work without his mind in procuring several pills to pop into his mouth. They go down hard but with familiarity. Kirito moves away from his bed spread of squalor and into the steam of a shower. Only after an hour of adjusting himself and allowing the medicine to kick in, is Kirito able to walk out of his room and down the hall. Normally he would head to the living room to join Katelyn and Harbinger, but today he turns towards another room.

The video phone.

He closes the door with a soft shut behind him. An instinct he has picked up in order to not awaken Sonja from sleep.

A lone desk sits neatly organized facing a large screened wall. From what Kirito can tell, not a single soul has been inside the room since the last games. He knows that this time of morning Oasis is usually with the the girls visiting Ikaia on the farm, but he just needs to see her. If he sees her, it will be real this time. His fingers dial and he watches the screen lighten as it calls to his home in District Eleven. He waits for a minute, and then the screen changes.

<><><>

She was nice, the neurosurgeon he met, the best in her field. Apparently the tumor had been growing since he was young, since before the games. It's symptoms, the hallucinations, the spasms, and the seizures have slowly been evolving with its progression. He could hear her voice, but he was beyond what she was saying. His mind was holding Ana's hand as he told her that Daddy was sick. His thoughts were in the moment his sword stole the last life of the 70th Games. A sick boy stole the lives of twenty three others. He heard her voice, but all he could feel wasn't fear. It was guilt. The guilt of a Father and of a Victor.

He only had one question for her.

"Can you remove it?"

She didn't waver, an impressive stance of confidence.

"Any brain surgery is dangerous, but we have the finest technology and the top skill. I believe I can."

He looked out past the city that crowned him a child king of killers, and sighed.

"Alright, next Games I'll be back. We can do it then."

She was clearly not satisfied with waiting due to his condition, but he stopped her with a voice warmer than the ice shaking his heart.

"Please give me something to manage the symptoms for now. I need to tell my family first."

<><><>

Oasis' face fills the screen, a beautiful dress adorned by the shine of summer wrapping her figure. Kirito can't help but smile.

"I'm glad I could catch you."

Her eyes already seem to shred through the time after time he failed to say the sentence he needs to speak.

"Kirito, what's wrong?" 

He stares at her, ashamed of the worry he's let build up within her. She is his fiance, his best friend. He knows that she has sensed something and he has kept her cruelly waiting. She deserves better. He should have brought her from the beginning.

He finally releases the beginning of the flood.

"I need you to come to the Capitol," his voice falters, "I'm sick and I need help."

Dear Agony,
Just let go of me,
Suffer slowly,
Is this the way its got to be?

Lyrics : Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin