Chapter 4: Accept

==o==

Notes:

SPOILER (so you don't get squicked and run away): Yes, Amane looks like an eight-year-old in this chapter. Yes, this story will eventually be romance. But Amane will definitely NOT look like an eight-year-old in later chapters. And ESPECIALLY not when the romance rolls around. Also, mentally, Amane is the same age as Shizuka. Hopefully that saves some of you from squick. On with the show.

==o==

The house was silent.

Amane didn't speak again once she'd set her demands, nor did Shizuka make a single move away from her spot at the door. Frozen in place, she stared down at nothing in particular, contemplating what she'd just agreed to do.

The 'nightmare' was real. But it wasn't a nightmare at all, it was a sort of … crisscross in time, she supposed, a moment of the past floating up into the present and then sinking back again, like a drowning man struggling to surface.

Shizuka couldn't help but feel like she was drowning a bit herself.

The overwhelming magnitude of what Amane had asked of her was just starting to sink in. Shizuka would have to manipulate the time-slips, to learn to move as she inhabited—no, possessed—Amane's body. She would have to change the past.

She wasn't sure if she could do it.

No, that wasn't right—she doubted that she could do it.

She shook herself mentally. She could just imagine what her brother would say about that kind of defeatist thinking. But then, her brother wouldn't just stand there, uselessly doubting himself. Her brother would know that he could save the ghost; he'd jump headlong into the time-slips with neither a plan nor a single moment of worry. And he'd save Amane, because that's what he did. He'd save Amane because he was Jounouchi Katsuya, and he was too brave and too proud and too pigheaded to fail.

But she wasn't Jounouchi Katsuya, Shizuka thought to herself. And she wasn't brave or proud. She was Kawai Shizuka, and right now, she was overwhelmed and terrified.

Helpless as usual, she thought ruefully, and remained frozen against the wall.

The silence and the doubt stretched on and on. Shizuka didn't realize how much time had passed until she noticed the first light of dawn filtering through the living room windows. All the while, she felt Amane's presence shifting impatiently through the walls. Absently, Shizuka wondered why she knew that.

Come up to my room.

Amane spoke so suddenly that Shizuka almost mistook it for one of her own thoughts. But no, her thoughts didn't have that harsh undercurrent, those bitter overtones.

Not most of the time, anyway.

It will be easier to talk up there, Amane continued. And we have business to attend to.

Shizuka pushed herself away from the wall at last. Her legs were stiff from sitting too long, and they shook beneath her like a fawn's as she took her first steps. She walked slowly and stiffly to the staircase.

Kh, hurry up, muttered the voice in the wall.

Shizuka glared at nothing in particular, and proceeded up the stairs with greater ease. Before she cleared the top step, she began to feel a familiar tugging in her chest and kneecaps, the same feeling she'd had the previous night, pulling her across the floor, toward the third bedroom.

The door swung open without her ever touching it.

Even having seen it the previous night, Shizuka still gaped at the sight of Amane's bedroom: the way that one side of the floor was barren, the other full of discarded toys; the way that the pillows, bed sheets and covers only existed on half the bed, the other half stripped to the plastic mattress; the way that Shizuka could draw a line through the middle of the room, dividing the 'then' from the 'now.'

But that wasn't even the most unnerving thing about the room, Shizuka realized suddenly. It wasn't terrifying in how the two halves differed—it was terrifying in how the two halves were alike.

Both sides were utterly dead.

The 'now' side was as sterile as an operating room, stripped of all color, all sign that anyone had ever called it home. But the 'then' side was just as unsettling. It was simply … frozen. Toys forever lying where they'd last been dropped—dropped by a hand now long dead. Unmoved for thirteen years. A moment preserved in time. It was like Pompeii, Shizuka reflected, except the person who had lived here hadn't been lost to history; she was still loved, still missed, still mourned.

It was … disturbing.

Shizuka heard a rustle from behind her, and turned to see the cat, Tama, walk through the open door. Tama strode lazily across the floor and jumped up onto the bed, curling up on its center, where the comforters ended, exactly on the dividing line between 'then' and 'now.' She purred softly and rubbed her face against something that Shizuka couldn't see. The cat's fur began to move ever-so-slightly, in waves, as if she was being petted by an invisible hand.

Shizuka steeled herself for this very real possibility.

She didn't even jump when the hand appeared.

It started with the fingertips and spread outward, like a vessel gradually filling with water. The color gradually spread from fingernail to palm as the hand continued to stroke the cat. It spread further, from hand to arm, from arm to torso, and finally from torso to legs and head.

And there she sat, cross-legged on the divide between past and present, still petting that cat.

Amane.

She smiled up at Shizuka. "It's good to finally meet you in person," she said. The smile didn't quite reach her newly-formed eyes.

Shizuka just gaped for a moment, trying to recover from the shock of seeing a person form as if poured out of a Kool-Aid pitcher, attempting to get her thoughts in order. She looked down at Amane.

Well, this form was certainly less intimidating than the disembodied voice in the wall.

Amane was tiny, Shizuka noticed. Her face suggested that she was about eight years old, but she was short and skinny for her age, maybe even a little scrawny. She had her brother's white hair, but her eyes were blue.

And she was semi-translucent.

Amane raised a slightly see-through hand and snapped her fingers.

"Pay attention," she said, and her tone was clipped and businesslike, no longer as raw as it had been downstairs. She sounded almost … restrained, as if she was trying to compensate for the way her emotions had run away with her earlier.

Shizuka met Amane's eyes. There was something distinctly unnerving about simultaneously staring into someone's eyes and staring through them, but Shizuka managed to hold her gaze.

"I called you up here to discuss the finer details of our arrangement," said Amane.

At this point, the cat, who had not been terribly impressed by Amane's apparition in the first place, yawned as if bored by the conversation, jumped off the bed, and trotted out of the room.

Amane dropped the hand that had been petting it back to the comforter and began drumming her fingers impatiently. She went on. "As you can see, in this room I can manifest in a passably physical body. And as much as I love being the big, scary voice in the wall, reducing you to a terrified sort of catatonia really isn't conducive to a successful partnership."

Shizuka bit her lip. 'Terrified' was right, she thought to herself, ashamed. She'd just frozen, uselessly; Amane probably thought she was completely helpless, and … wait.

Shizuka paused in her self-defamation and considered Amane's words for a moment. As forceful as the other girl was, as uneasy as she was about Amane's spectral appearance, Shizuka couldn't help but find Amane's speech a bit … affected? With the down-to-business tone and the collegiate vocabulary, Amane's words seemed quite out of place coming from what appeared to be an eight-year-old mouth. It was almost as if she was trying to seem older. Trying to impress her.

But Amane was still talking. "This room will be the base for our operations," she said, tilting her head to the side, gauging Shizuka's reaction. "We will meet here; we will speak here" —she patted the bed next to her— "and you will sleep here." She smiled that same smile, the one that stretched her mouth but left her eyes cold. "From here, I'll teach you to start and stop the echoes, to gain control when you possess the echo of my body. You will leave this room only to start the echoes, to use the bathroom, and to eat. I believe there's enough food in the pantry to last you the rest of the month if you ration yourself appropriately, so I don't anticipate any complaints in that department. In fact," she said, and here there was a bit of a glint in her eye, a bit of that same forceful anger she'd used downstairs, "I don't anticipate any complaints at all. You will do as I say. Any questions?"

Shizuka paused a moment, processing Amane's demands and her own reactions to them. It was a lot to take in. "Just…" she said, and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, flexing her hand at the wrist as if to ask a question, but dropping it quickly. She didn't know where to start. Amane was … confusing. Downstairs, she'd been threatening and imposing. Here, she was still … forceful, still unnerving in her transparent, childish form, in the incongruity of her speech with her appearance. It was just … something was … strange.

Amane sighed impatiently, waiting for Shizuka to continue, and rested her semi-translucent chin in her hand. She looked … petulant.

Amane was trying too hard, Shizuka realized suddenly. All the bossiness, all the commands—they only served to show Shizuka how badly Amane needed her, how desperate she was. Perhaps Shizuka wasn't the only terrified party in this situation.

Perhaps Shizuka wasn't the only one who felt helpless.

With this newfound understanding, Shizuka finally worked up the courage to speak. "I need to know…" she began, and her voice was softer, less strained than it had been. "I—I will help you. I will do as you say. But…" She trailed off again; she wasn't used to making demands of people. A flurry of questions jumped to her mind, but foremost of them was, Why me? Why did you choose someone you so obviously see as weak? Am I really the best you can do?

"Please, I—I need to know … why." Shizuka winced inwardly at the tremor still present in her voice, but pressed on. "Why did you choose me? A-and why you didn't ask your brother, or Otogi-san, or even my brother?"

There was a pause, and for the first time since the conversation began, Amane broke eye contact with Shizuka. She looked down at the bed.

"You weren't my first choice," Amane said lowly. Grabbing a handful of duvet, she drew her hand into a fist. "You weren't my… I didn't have a choice."

Amane sighed and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as she spoke. There was a long silence before she spoke again. When she did, her voice was quiet.

"How old are you, Shizuka?" she asked.

"Twenty-two." Shizuka wondered why that was relevant to her purpose in the house.

Amane let out a dry one-note laugh that seemed to catch in her throat a little. "So am I," she said. All the business was gone from her voice, but it hadn't been replaced by her previous rage. She just sounded … hollow. Bitter. And then she was quiet again, as if thinking. "Except I'm not. I'm eight years old. Forever."

Shizuka looked at her questioningly.

"I don't know why you're here, Shizuka. I don't know why the echoes have decided to work through you. The echoes didn't start until you arrived, and believe me, I would have known if they'd started before then. I was … paying attention."

She sighed and sat back up again. "At first it was just in here, just my bedroom that flickered between past and present. The echoes spread later, of course; you were there for that, but at first..." She ran a hand down the comforter on the 'past' side of the bed, slowly, almost lovingly. "At first this was all I had." She looked down. "And then the flickering stopped and the room just … just … stuck. That's when I knew I had to reach out to whoever was in the house. That's when I knew my waiting had finally paid off."

Hm. Well that was promising, Shizuka thought. If the echoes had just happened to start while she was staying at the house, then there was no reason that Amane couldn't wait for more competent help to arrive. She wondered why Amane hadn't thought of that.

"Well…" Shizuka began tentatively, trying to meet Amane's eyes again, "why not just wait a little longer then? Your brother and Otogi-san will be back in three weeks and—"

"No,"said Amane, sitting up, looking alarmed. "It has to be now." Her voice was suddenly filled with the barest hint of panic. She grew suddenly silent and pulled her legs toward her. For the first time since Shizuka had met her, she really did look as young as her body suggested.

Shizuka walked up to the defensive ball that was Amane and put a comforting hand on her knee. She was … oddly solid-feeling, Shizuka noticed … Warm? But her hand was quickly swatted away. Amane did uncurl a bit, though.

"You're really going to make me explain it all, aren't you," said Amane, sounding hollow again. She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. Shizuka nodded.

"Echoes … fade," Amane said quietly, haltingly. "This room … the first time it echoed … it … wasn't divided. It was all in the past." She looked around the room briefly, but then quickly cast her eyes down again, drawing her hand around the comforter as if to hold it with her. "And every day, the echo … recedes a bit."

She met Shizuka's eyes again. Behind one translucent eye, Shizuka could see a little girl's headboard. On the other side, she saw through to the blank wall. Both eyes were large and frightened.

"If the room fades…" said Amane, "…then I might fade too."

Shizuka didn't know what to say to that. A million questions came to mind: Would you cease to exist, or would you move on, or would you remain in the wall, and what if I can't save you, and what if I fail and you fade, and does it matter, and would it be better, and why am I so scared and why are you so scared?

She voiced none of them. Amane didn't look like she needed more questions. Still sitting curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed, she looked like she just needed a friend.

Shizuka sat down at the foot of the bed, her legs hanging over the side. Amane scooted to the side, seemingly to allow her more room, but she also moved forward, so that they two sat alongside each other.

They sat like that for a long time, close but not touching, both staring straight ahead at nothing. A few inches, and the divide between past and present, lay between them.

The house was silent again.

==o==

A/N: I'm sure most of you know what Pompeii is, but in case you don't : Pompeii was a Roman city that was completely buried in over 20 feet of ash after the eruption of a nearby volcano, Mount Vesuvius. The ash preserved the ruin, making casts of bodies where they fell, and encasing the artifacts where they were dropped. In some cases, entire rooms are preserved, full of dead people and their belongings.

Shizuka's such a history/anthropology nerd.