Ame
Every time I remember the pain, I spiral. My mind sinks. I can't escape it. This fear. It's like when she touched me all over again, when I was stuck inside my body and all I wanted was to crawl out of my skin and wash it clean.
My dad lays across from me, asleep, tear stains reflecting the moonlight. He's afraid too. He's just as stuck as I am. All he can do is be here, I think. Be here for me and Yuki.
I hold the pillow that carries my mother's scent, only the longer I hold it the less it smells like her. The more it smells like me and the sadness it's meant to alleviate. The pain doesn't subside. It's there, in my head, fooling my bones into thinking they are broken and my muscles into thinking they are sore.
I don't know if my mom is dead.
I know she is gone.
All that's left are the memories left in her power that now lives in me.
After a long, sleepless while in the dark, I finally find the strength to sit up. The blue overcast softens, the space between me and the door less daunting than before. I leave the pillow next to my dad, making sure he's still sound asleep as I walk to the hall.
No light creeps beneath any of the doorways. Not even Yuki's or Rei's. Using the wall as support, I make my way to the bathroom and shut the door behind me locking it. The mirror only shows a dim reflection, but even without the light on, I can see the dark circles wrapping puffy eyes. I see the outlines of bruises healed too quickly on my arm that was broken only a few hours ago. My hair holds no true shape– just an overgrown mess of black whose shade I've only ever seen matched in the man the world claims is my uncle on a concrete podium. In the midst of that all, I see something flickering across the red in my eyes. A silver ember that has made a home of whatever wreckage you could call me.
"Do you know my name?" I say, looking into the mirror, my hands pressed on the countertop. There is silence for a few seconds, just the drip of a leaking shower head and the wind caressing the glass. Then–
Your name is Ame. It doesn't sound like a man or a woman. An adult or a child. It sounds like something in between any measure you could give a voice. And it doesn't come from inside my head either. It just is. Like blood flow or the feel of your lungs expanding.
I am Atomic, he says, although I'm not even sure he is a he or she or a they or an it.
"What did you do to me, Atomic?" I whisper, looking at my arm that should be broken, feeling my heart that is. "Why did you show me all those things?"
I did not want to. They are my memories, he says, like he's disappointed in himself. Like he didn't mean to let loose images of my father screaming over my mother's dead body and every other bit of suffering she underwent before that. My memories are not like yours. They grow as I grow.
"I don't understand," I say. The old me would've been warm with whatever this creature is. I would've been curious and enamored. But my life came apart today. Azaka and Zold betrayed me. My best friend will never see anything again. My uncle who I never even got a chance to know will be executed. My sister is injured, her friends hurting. My mother is missing and my father has already begun mourning her. And the one person I thought I could love with all my heart lied to me about everything.
There is no warmth left to give.
One for All is not like me, Atomic says. One for All claims its hosts. I merely travel through them.
I frown. "But–"
But you are different, Atomic interrupts. I have lived in your mother. In your uncle. Even in your father, for a short time. I was never made for anyone.
