First and Last Stand

An auburn-haired girl stood in front of an apartment door, her hand hesitating over the doorbell. Her father hadn't come to the hospital to pick her up, so she had relied on Bear, or, more precisely, Ryo Sakuma, the man that she had met as Bear inside the virtual reality known as The World, to take her home. Yet, so close, she was stopped by fear and doubt. She didn't have to do this, there were other ways. Nobody wanted her to go inside that apartment. She could go back down and into Ryo's car, and be safe. Yet, deep down, she knew why she had taken this decision, why she really had to do it. She had to stand up to him, at least this once, she had to leave this home, not be taken away. If not, the memories would hang like a shadow over her forever.

She faintly heard the bell ringing inside when she pressed the button. She put her hand in her pocket, feeling the object inside there, to reassure herself. When the door opened and a familiar man in his early forties glared at her from inside, she quickly put her hand away from the object.

"How did you get here?" the scowling man asked her, "because I'm not paying your taxi or anything"

I wasn't expecting you to, she thought. The imagined response was cocky, but the truth was she was nearly quivering in fear under the gaze of her father. She wanted to run away, run down to Ryo. He would protect her. Yet she had to see this through to the end.

"I made my own way," she said, trying to keep her voice as emotionless as possible.

"Well, at least you seem to be able to do something" her father said. He paused for a moment before grabbing her arm an pulling her inside.

She had barely kept herself from screaming when he had grabbed her, and now she frantically tried to seem calm as almost overwhelming panic washed over her. Memories of fear filled every corner of this house, and they came rushing to her mind like a rain of painful arrows.

"It seems I'm going to have to take care of you some more," said her father, irritated, "you could've stayed in that coma, you know"

Those last words hurt her more than either her father or herself had imagined. She had expected her father to say something of the sort, of course, but to hear him, to hear those words… it made her feel very lonely. She took a deep breath and answered him, as calmly as she could:

"You won't have to worry about that. I'm just here to pick up my things"

He had half turned away to look at something on the television, but his head immediately turned round again as he shouted at her, "WHAT?"

"I'm leaving"

The impact came before even she had time to brace herself. He was strong, stronger than she had remembered. The punch threw her against the door and from there she collapsed onto the floor. Her vision was blurred, both from the jar of the impact and from the tears that threatened to overflow in her eyes. Her head was filled with searing pain, but her heart and soul had received the worst of the impact. She felt dejected, hated. The only person left of her family was this man who preferred her in hospital and when she came home hit her. Blood trickled out of her mouth, she seemed to have bit her tongue. The metallic taste filled her senses, and seemed to go perfectly well with her miserable emotions. Yet she would not give him the pleasure of seeing her cry. She wiped the dampness from her eyes and looked up at him.

"I'm leaving"

He seemed surprised she answered back, and almost hit her again, but then turned away and said angrily:

"Do whatever you want, you'll come back here crying after a few hours"

So she slowly got up and walked into the bathroom, spitting a considerable amount of blood into the sink. She let the water rinse the blood away, and then she splashed her face with the icy liquid. She walked into her room, finding it exactly the way she had left it the last time she had been here, when she had logged into The World using the computer that lay on the desk in front of her, and wasn't able to log out again. She sighed and packed the most important things into a bag. Her computer went in, along with her copy of The World, even though the idea of playing that game again sent shivers up her spine. A photograph of her mother went in, the last item she conserved of her. The rest was mostly her clothes and other things like that. She had few things from this room she wanted to even remember, much less keep.

Her father glared at her as she opened the door slowly.

"If you go out that door, when you come back you'll wish you'd never been born" he threatened.

She turned back to him as she stepped out, and her hand removed the object from her pocket and pressed a button on it. As her father looked at her in surprise, she pressed another one, and a familiar voice said a familiar phrase, slightly distorted by the recording.

"If you go out that door, when you come back you'll wish you'd never been born"

"Everything's recorded," she said, "I think it will be enough. Goodbye, father, and see you in court."

She slammed the door in his face, and ran down the stairs. She had just severed the last connection to her family, the last connection to her mother. Rage and sadness boiled up inside her and out of her eyes as she ran down the stairs, ran out of the building and into Ryo Sakuma's arms, looking for the fatherly comfort she had never got from the man she had just left.