You turn your head to the side and stare out the window while the doctor tells your parents the news. You are young, so although the path to recovery will not be an easy one, there is a good chance you can regain total motor function of your legs. Your mother sobs in relief at this, while your father follows up with further enquiries into your condition.

You tune out as they begin to discuss the details of what they have planned for you. Their words flitter in and out like the stutter of static from a lost radio station. Sometimes, they talk about you as if you are not there. Sometimes, you really aren't.

It gets harder these days to stay tethered to the present. Often, your mind wanders, whisked off and away by stray thoughts like a bottle carried off by the tide...

Your body has taken you prisoner and nothing feels right. You cannot teleport. You cannot walk. You can barely wiggle your toes without passing out from exhaustion. The pathways in your mind still linger, but the links between them have been all but severed. It is almost as if you are reaching out to grasp at the world with a phantom limb.

Doctors and scientists flit in and out, their white coats trailing behind them like the cruel white wings of a bird of prey. They have you under twenty-four hour surveillance and guard you like a monarch. The ward feels more a prison than a fortress, sequestered as you are in a private room with no company but the humming machines upon which they run their tests. They run brain scans and draw vial upon vial of blood. They keep you under lock and key, exhausting psychometric tests trying to discover a breakthrough or come up with an explanation for your condition.

You did not get to give or deny your consent. It is irrelevant. You are thirteen years old and your parents have already signed the papers, won over by lofty promises of a means to an easy solution. The end result remains the same though. By all yardsticks of measurement, you are now a level zero. Trauma and pain can warp one's personal reality is the reason the scientists come up with.

You have made the news as the first level zero of Tokiwadai. The rumours abound as nurses scuttle about making their rounds. You scoff at the whispers and with your chopsticks, turn your scorn to the hospital food. On the television monitor overhead half the day later at night, an anchorwoman says the same thing while she shuffles papers about. When she moves on to the weather forecast for tomorrow, you press your face deep into the pillow and let loose an aggravated scream.

They keep your identity confidential, and the circumstances deliberately vague, but are just specific enough about your powers and work at Judgement that it is plain to anyone with half a brain and a modicum of awareness about who you are to connect the dots.

The children at your ward erupt into a frenzy of excitement the next day. A level 4! A member of Judgement! Up close! Well... She was, anyway. What is she now? A level downer? The children chitter like sparrows, and flitter about.

They peer at you from the door, or through gaps in the privacy curtain when the nurses bring in a tray of food. When the guard outside sneaks off for a smoking break (the smell of tobacco always wafts in) they crowd around the entrance to your room and dare each other to enter. You are a strange, exotic creature they can gawk and prod at, from a safe distance, with a stick.

It becomes a game to them. Everything is a game to them. Children these days. When you were younger, you were occupied with far more fulfilling matters. You sigh at thought. Part of you wants to shoo them away, or get them to shush. It is a hospital after all, but their antics give you a small reprieve from thinking too much about things.

Today, you spot a familiar face among the gaggle of chubby faces - the little girl laying across from you the night you woke up. Through the glass pane of the door, you deliberately meet her gaze and glare, taking - perhaps too much - satisfaction in her little gasp of surprise as she ducks her head and scurries away.

It goes on like this for a time, and on the seventh day, as abrupt as the tests begin, they stop. When a new anomaly comes, they begin the chase anew and you are simply forgotten by all parties involved.

It has been eight days since you woke up. You would have noted it down on the walls as prisoners are wont to do, but no nurse has had the gall to offer you any colour pencils as of yet. There is still time though. It seems that time is all you have on hand these days.

Outside the window, the sun shines as it always has, and sparrows flit about and perch on old, gnarled branches of cherry blossom trees. Your world has shrunk to four walls and a bed, but outside, the world still turns, same as ever before. You find the thought both comforting and disconcerting.

In the span of the three weeks you had spent in repose, it appears that Mikoto Misaka has become a taboo word. Whenever you bring up her name in mixed company, they brush it aside, eager to change the topic.

Why hasn't she visited even once? She wouldn't have... She wouldn't have just left without saying goodbye, not after everything you have been through together. Surely you mean more to her than that. Tears prick at the corner of your eyes like the sting from an injection. You would be lying to yourself if you said you did not still love her. You would be lying to yourself if you said you are not still angry.

You try not to think of her at all, less out of spite and more because you are tired, so impossibly tired by the events that transpired. It is difficult not to, you discover. She has become such an embedded part of your life in Academy City that to weed her out entirely seems impossible.

Your subconscious fills the gaps left by her absence, and unfortunately for you, they are a far cry from the rosy and embarrassingly romantic dreams your mind used to entertain. In your dreams, her bangs shadow her face so you can never truly see into her eyes. In your dreams, she stands in the centre of a great storm. You are a gnat sucked into the vortex and buffeted by debris. When you reach out to touch her, she falls through your fingers.

Or maybe you fall through hers. You never remember ever hitting the ground. The last thing you feel is the shock of blue lightning running through your veins before you wake up gasping for air.

What has become of her? What has she done in your absence? If you could only get to a phone, you could at least try to contact here. But no. There are no cellphones allowed on this floor. They say it would damage the sensitive electrical equipment. You think they are full of it. You know they are hiding something, and that only infuriates you more.

Rest, they say. Rest and focus on recovering. Technology offers only distractions. Well, maybe a distraction is what you need right now. Have they ever considered that?

They. They. They. Who are they? Three weeks and nine days ago, they were your friends, family and the trusted medical and scientific staff of Academy City. Now your world has shifted and they are all that is standing in the way of the answers you seek.

You can tell your parents apart from your friends and the hospital staff by the sound of their footfalls. They pace like their aim is to wear a hole underfoot. Your recognise your mother from the rhythmic click-clack her high heels make on the floor. You wonder how much worrying has worn thin her mind and body. She does well to fill the cracks on the most part. Her hair and make up remain done up and immaculate as ever, though she came to visit once wearing a pair of mismatched shoes...

Their presence is... Infuriating. Before, you held in your hands the power to traverse dimensions with nought but a thought, apprehending criminals, and enforcing justice. Now, you are a crippled, broken girl of thirteen. You love them with all your heart, but how could they possibly understand what you are going though?

Lines of scars criss-cross the length of your body, marking you, marring you. The wound at your side is still heavily bandaged up, and it itches like nothing ever before. You peeled back the bandages two nights ago in morbid curiosity and saw the scabs shrink around your red and raw skin, like the tide nibbling at the shores of an island.

"I hate what this city has done to you." Your mother says wearily while she draws the blinds for the day-curtain to block off the harsh midday heat, before turning her gaze out the window. From your place upon the bed, your view is blocked by her back. "We need to get you far away from here."

You bite your tongue and swallow blood rather than spit venom. You have seen the red rimmed circles around your mother's eyes and the lines drawn gaunt upon your father's face. You do not want to start a war. You do not think any one of you could survive.

You do not want to start a war, but you want them to understand. You suck in a breath and stare evenly at the back of her head, at where her eyes would be if only she turned around to look at you. Communicating with your parents has always been challenging. You say more to each other in the empty spaces in-between words, in subtle, delicate gestures you lack the vocabulary to articulate. But her eyes are turned away from you now, and words, brittle and fallible though they may be, are your only means of getting your point across to your mother, another world away.

"This city has given me the chance for all I ever wanted. It has taken many things away... But it is still my home. " You lay your hand over the wound at your side instead of the wound at your heart, gathering courage, gathering strength. "I belong here, in this city, with my job and my friends."

"I belong here, where I am needed, where I can make a difference. Please, I need you to understand." You catch her gaze when she turns around in surprise and you hold it deliberately, with clear, open eyes. Your make sure your voice is steady, you make sure the hand over your wound does not tremble. "The world is a cruel place, but a city is just a city. Please do not think any worse of it because of me."

"Darling, you do not know what you are saying! You break your mother's heart." Your mother scurries to your side and envelops you in her embrace, while she sobs into your hair.

You groan in exasperation against the crook of her neck, choking slightly on her perfume as it wafts into your nose. Your mother was always a little melodramatic. Affectation or not, it seems like you will always be her little girl. You resent her for it, but you are grateful for her concern all the same. You remember the child errors, how you despise that term, and you are thankful your parents have not simply written you out of their lives for convenience's sake.

As a gesture of goodwill for your service as a member of Judgement, they offered to remove your mess of scars when the wounds are fully healed. You politely refused. You need your scars now more than ever to drawn upon as strength.

In the golden pocket of time when no nurses are making their rounds and no one is snoring, you trace fingers across your scars like a blind man reading a book. In the easy darkness of the night, you try your hardest to remind yourself.

Your body was a weapon once, sword and shield both, in service to Academy City.

Weapons can be smelted down and given new life when reforged.

And so can you.

:) Shoutout to all my reviewers! The reason there is a chapter two is because of those of you who wanted to read more.

Where are Kuroko's friends? ): and what became of Mikoto? Stay tuned to find out (if I ever get around to writing the next chapter)! Is it just me, or is the new Railgun chapter taking really long to come out?

A song I listened to a lot when writing this was The Nothing Part II by Lady Lamb the Beekeeper.