Sky-Scar/Echoing

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Robin blinked his eyes open, staring. He was in... an orphanage, but for some reason it looked familiar. And why did he wake up standing? He glanced down as soon as his eyes were open enough to see, staring at the wooden floorboards and then glancing up and across the way.

There was a woman in a red dress before him. A small, pale young woman, her long, dark hair coiled over either shoulder and down her back and front as Robin stared. "Y--"

"Shh." She spoke in her typical soft, young voice, her Italian accent not yet seeping into her words. And then it did. "I am 'ere to tell you something very important."

"...What is it?" Robin simply stared at her with wide eyes. His first real words to the woman he hadn't seen in years were, 'What is it?' in response to what he presumed was a warning. There was so much he wanted to say, but couldn't. He felt compelled to listen to her, as if she had some magical control over him once again... much as she did so many years ago.

"I am gone from 'ere, and I will never return. For your own sake, you must forget me. What we 'ad can never be again... You must be strong. You must be great. ...I remember when I first met you, Robin, and you were pure... You were innocent... You 'ad a love in your 'eart for all the world and its people. But now, that has diluted, and you only 'old 'atred for your friends and loved ones for doing what you perceived as driving me away. I left for a purpose."

Why was she saying such things? Well, Robin, perhaps it's best to ask. "...why are you saying all of this? Mi amore, you've been gone for so long...Why come back just to tell me? I've looked for you... High and low, in every corner of the world, in other dimensions entirely and-- I can't FIND you... I'm lost without your guidance... I'm blind without your sight... And all I can feel is pain every time I wake up because I don't have your blood in my veins.. Wh...why--wh-why would you leave me? F-for what... purpose?" He could hear the stutter in his own voice, as if he were sixteen again.

"Because I only ever 'urt you... Only ever damaged you... You 'ad dreams and aspirations of becoming a savior of the world, and I ruined that. Now you fill your time with failed relationships and one-night stands, 'oping to fill the void in your life that I created." The pale young woman locked onto Robin's vividly green eyes (which were beginning to gloss with tears) with her own brown eyes. "I want you to forget that you ever met me. Stop looking for me. Stop trying to contact me... Stop 'urting yourself over me..."

Robin winced, wounded. He could only stare at the woman through eyes that continually grew more damp with tears he tried to fight back.

"...mi amore.. Mi amore, don't... say such things. Why won't you stay?"

"Because I am poison to you, my love." Robin tried to formulate a response. He'd heard her say this before... the recurring theme of poison rang through his mind, bringing him back to a time not too terribly long ago; Kinneas had trapped the woman with a collar that marked her as its property. Robin nearly got himself killed retrieving an artifact that could have lent the creature such power to damage or destroy the world, but he retrieved it without a second thought, Kinneas carrying through with its promise to release her. It was when she told Robin that she was 'poison' and had left until... this meeting again, but...

...Something was wrong. He could feel something pulling on him. But it wasn't the small woman's hands; no, it was more akin to the sensation that a black hole had formed behind him and was slowly prying him away from the scene. But he wouldn't go. He stood in place, even as the vacuum of what felt like the time and space continuum itself continually tugged at his form--the ground starting to crack and give way beneath his feet, even if the man wouldn't budge. His eyes widened, refusing to ever move away from the little woman in the red dress. He opened his mouth to protest, but no sound came out. No words would form. No air escaped as gravity continued to pull on him, the cracked floor finally shattering beneath him as it opened into a massive hole beneath him. The girl in the red dressed continued to give him a blank stare, until she faded in the glow of the stars and the black of space.

He glanced down, hovering. He could see Earth below him. The clouds, the blue of the ocean, the green and every color of the continents beneath... And yet, as lovely as the view as, he realized that he was hovering around outer space and that this black hole behind him was only growing bigger--growing stronger. He tried to scream; tried to resist, but the pull was too strong. He could feel it growing more intense, until he could only feel pain. The skin peeled from his body, flesh and muscles tearing away as the only sound Robin could begin to form was the scream of agony as he felt every single layer of skin, every muscle, every nerve, every bone and every molecule in his body tearing away from him... Until he began to break down to nothing at all. But yet he could still scream.

He didn't stop screaming out in agony until he realized that he was sitting up in bed, several medical and assistant droids stopping to stare at him. He was sticky with the kind of sweat that one might expect from a feverish man, and wracked with pain--as though he could genuinely feel what it was like to be ripped apart and to be pieced back together over the course of a few moments. After all, that was what it felt like, with vampiric blood gone from his veins. He shuddered, gasped in and panted out several shallow breaths, lifting a hand to clamp it over his sternum. His heart was pounding. He had no idea what his blood pressure was like right now, and he began to think he might need to invest in a rebreather for as weak as his lungs felt.

No one really understood why he needed so much vicodin through all the day.

No one ever would.

"I'm.. I'm fine, guys," Robin began. "Leave me alone for a bit... Okay? I need to be by myself."

The droids beeped and whistled, before hesitantly hovering out of the room. Robin stared at his own hand as he removed it from his chest, before running his palm up over his face and through his own hair. Every night, he was reminded of the absence of the Italian vampire by the stinging fire that coursed through his veins where her blood should have been.

He knew that it was all just a dream. He hadn't really met a final ending after seeing the woman he loved one last time.

It was all a dream...

Sometimes, he wished it really would happen.

This time, he couldn't stop the tears.