Guardians of the Heart RP

Setting Currently: School grounds, in the halls.

Spoiling because length, NOTE: A GOOD PORTION OF MY POST IS THE SAME AS LAST POST BECAUSE LAZY AND NOTHING IS DIFFERENT:

^only thing different is the last three paragraphs^

The couch was comfortable. Nothing too fancy. Michael suspected he could find the exact same model at any Ikea shop, after browsing a few momments and partaking in some Swedish meatballs. At the momment, the idea sounded so appealing. Anything was more appealing than siting in a this roomy, open study, with its shelves of books, its pleasing furniture, and its shrink staring at him intently. The man seemed nice enough. Round, thin glasses. A dark green turtle neck. Well groomed jet black hair, showing the slightest touch of grey. The man across from him looked like he belonged in front of a camera instead of behind a notepad.

He knew he only wanted to help, but for some reason, Michael had trouble trusting him. Before, the young man had been sure seeking help was a good idea, but now he wasn't so sure. He could handle it on his own, couldn't he? He didn't need a psychologist. Only crazy people saw psychologists. Right? Michael knew that wasn't true. Plenty of well off people saught counciling and help. Then why did he feel so uncomfortable? What was wrong with him? He sighed out loud and leaned back into the cool leather. At least the couch was comfortable.

"Michael? Michael, have you been listening to me?"

Michael lurched forward, embarrassed. He had drifted off. "Sorry Doctor. I was thinking about something else." He grinned apologetically.

"That's quite alright Michael," the shrink leaned forward and took a sip from a small china cup. It had a flower pattern around the rim and looked delicate. Michael suspected it was filled with tea. The man set the cup back down and, in a pleasant tone of voice, said, "And please, Doctor is such a stodgy title. I want us to be friends. Please, call me Nathan." He smiled, revealing bleached white teeth.

"Alright... Nathan." The words felt odd comming out of his mouth, like they should have sounded differently than they did.

"So Michael, when we spoke over the phone, you said you wanted to see me to see if I could help you with a problem. Would you mind sharing your problem with me?"

"Yeah Doc- I mean Nathan." Michael smoothed his shirt nervously. He wished he had something to chew on. Nathan seemed to have noticed immediately.

"You don't have to be nervous around me Michael. I'm here to help."

"Right. Right." Michael felt like an idiot. "I'm just not used to this."

The shrink chuckled. "I assure you, no one is their first time."

"Right..." Michael took a deep breath and then continued. "It's just, I haven't been feeling like myself recently. I've been really tense. I jump at every shadow and sudden noise. I just can't relax anymore. It's like there's a knife hovering over my back all the time. I just can't deal with it anymore."

"That's what I'm here for Michael." The doctor smiled again. For some reason, those bright, white teeth unnerved Michael more than anything else. "Why do you think you're having these issues, Michael?"

Michael scratched the back of his head. "Well, I think it's because of the bombings a few months ago."

"You were involved with those?"

"Yeah. I got out without being too banged up. I was one of the lucky ones, huh?"

"Indeed." Nathan took another sip from his cup. "Michael, I want to try something with you. Could you lie down on your back and close your eyes please?"

"Okay" Michael situated himself flat on the couch, still unsure of what he was doing.

"Alright. Comfortable?" Michael lied with a nod.

"Good," said Nathan. "Now Michael, I want you to take me back to the day of the bombing. If you could, I'd like you to take me through your morning. Anything you remember."

"Alright." Michael laid a moment in silence, feeling incredibly stupid. "How do I start?"

"You just start. What did you have for breakfast?"

"An omelette. With green and red peppers. It wasn't fresh. It was leftover from the other morning. I was in a hurry. I remember not having time to iron my shirt. I figured it would be okay if I forgot. Most of the kids don't pay much attention anyway." Michael opened his eyes and looked at Nathan. "I'm a school teacher. High school. Did I mention that?"

"No, but that's fine. Keep going Michael. You're doing well."

"Okay." Michael closed his eyes again and took a deep breath. "Next thing I remember is that on the way to work some guy in a red sedan cuts me off. I think it was a Nissan. The guy has a beard. I'm not sure why I remember that. He had one of those crosses hanging from his rear-view. Um, so I get to school with a few minutes to spare. I headed to the office lounge to get some coffee. It was a little lukewarm. That was okay. I was just happy for the coffee.

"The day went pretty normal. My first three periods usually go well. The kids are still pretty groggy, so they don't cause too much trouble. We were going over Early Slavic history. Vlad the Impaler, I think. After lunch the kids get pretty rowdy. It gets harder to keep them under control. I do alright. I think most of them respect me. They shut up when I tell them to, at least. I have a pretty good ear so I tend to catch the smart-asses and set an example pretty early. I try to keep class fun and interesting, but you have to lay down the line when it calls for it.

"So. I think it was Sixth Period. The kids were watching a video that class.  Neapolitan invading Russia. I figured the video would keep them quiet, so I excused myself to the bathroom. I don't like the ones on my floor. It's a three story building, and I'm on the top floor, so the janitor never gets up there. The best restrooms are by the cafeteria, in the basement. It's not really a basement at all. It's nice. It's more like a sub-level.

"I remember sitting down. I like it in the big stalls on the end. It's peaceful. Roomy. I don't remember much after that. I think I blacked out. The building never was put together very well."

Michael sighed deeply. He wasn't looking forward to this next part.

"So... I wake up... And it's dark, right? One light had been knocked out of the ceiling. Another was hanging by a chord. I remember sparks. I stepped out of the stall and I was really groggy. I wasn't sure what had happened. It was like being in a dream, you know? I remember looking in a mirror. There's blood running down my forehead. It's not bleeding too badly. I wasn't worried. It was all surreal. I noticed some rubble in the corner. I couldn't figure out why part of the wall was gone. I remember wondering if we were renovating. Then, it all sort of hits me. I didn't know it was a bomb at the time, but I knew something had happened. An earthquake, maybe.

"My first thought was for the kids. I ran out of the bathroom. There was a big pile of rubble on the stairway. I still don't remember moving it. I don't even know how I moved it. It must have been the adrenaline. I run up the stairs and, there's just this kid lying on the floor. Except... Except he's not all there. There's blood... There's a lot of blood. His hand. I just remember his hand... Just.. Twitching. I try to get this plié of wall off of him, but it won't move. God, his eyes! I still remember his eyes! He was just a kid! Just a scared little kid, and I couldn't-"

A hand on his shoulder. He snatches at the wrist and squeezes as hard as he can.

"Michael! Michael!"

He opened his eyes. Nathan was standing over him. He looked concerned. "Thank You Michael, but that's enough. I know this is hard for you. We'll take it slow, from now on, okay?"

He was still short of breath. His chest felt like it was about to explode. "Yeah... Yeah, okay. Thanks Doctor."

"Like I said Michael. Call me Nathan."

---

Later that night, Michael sat at a lonely barstool with a half finished glass of scotch in his hand. The numbness was starting to come. It was one of the few things that helped. He didn't want to think right now. Not about the crappy blues coming out of the radio. Not about his new job. Not about Doctor Nathan. Nothing. He just wanted things to stop. He slumped down against the bar and twirled his glass.

It wasn't your fault.

Micheal jumped. He snapped his head around and for a moment saw the vague outline of something, out of the corner of his eye. It was big, he thought. When he looked at the shadow, it faded. He shook his head and looked again. Nothing.

Michael turned, quickly finished his glass, grabbed his coat, and left.

---

For the next few days, nothing odd happened. Michael began settling into his new teaching job. They were going over Mesopotamia this week. Michael relished the Indus Valley's myths, but they weren't his favorite. He went through class with little enthusiasm. Then, one day, it happened again. He was busy lecturing over how the Fertile Crescent had been the perfect place for the first civilizations to form when he heard a voice, almost like a whisper in his ear.

There was nothing you could have done.

His eyes went wide. It was a woman's voice, soft and smooth, flowing through his ears like a mountain stream in the middle of the night. In the back of class. He saw it again. This time it was clearer. It was hazy, but he could make out something that looked like a giant wolf. It must have stood at least five feet high at the shoulders.  The teacher rubbed his eyes, not sure what else to do. It remained. It stood there a moment and then slinked out of the class room, passing straight through the closed door.

Micheal stood there for a few seconds, not sure what to do. Now he was seeing things. His mouth hung open. It came to him how foolish he must look, so he stammered something about going to get a drink of water and rushed out the door.

The hallway was empty. Nothing like what he had seen before.

"Fantastic Michael." He said to himself as he leaned against the wall, rubbing his forehead. "First you suffer a nervous breakdown, now you're seeing things. What the Hell is wrong with you, you son of a bitch...?"

Footsteps. He looked up. A student stood in the hallway. With him was another shadow. Michael wasn't sure what to do. Still, the kid should have been in class. Deciding to try his best to ignore the hallucination, he walked up to the boy and, in he best "teacher voice", asked, "What do you think you're doing out here? Shouldn't you be in class?"

Soft, small, quiet steps over piles of broken things and debris. Thin shoes ignore the fractured concrete; the rubble a forest floor, littered with shrubbery and full of wildlife. Her eyes do not see the truth, instead her disease hides the pain. She wanders over the corpses, soft, incoherent mutterings audible to any who could listen. Only few scratches and grazes can be found upon her body, whilst the corpses of doctors and innocents lie around her. She steps over another corpse, slowly taking a seat nearby on a patch of grass -no- rubble. She sits, she stares, and that is how they found her. Sitting by the body of her dead father, staring at his gruesome remains.

"Did you see the trees fall down? Timber!"

----------

It had been just a normal day. The sun was shining and Sophia's father had taken her to a doctor so that she could get a new prescription for some medication to help with her schizophrenia. The last thing they tried her on hadn't worked at all, little did they know that it was because she was hiding it from them after discovering the numerous side effects that they could produce.
"Negative reactions are more than plausible," she would say, shaking her head. But they'd still prescribe her the meds, and she'd still not take them, hiding them away beneath the floorboards in their house.

On this particular day, they were waiting for the doctor to call them in for their appointment when the first explosion ripped through the city. The shockwaves sent most sprawling on the floor, and yet Sophia seemed perfectly fine, the only difference being her beginning to mutter quietly to herself. The second one was closer to the clinic, destroying the building and killing most with it. Sophia was flung to the ground, but no debris fell upon her, her only injuries a few small scratches sustained from that fall.

She blinked, her green eyes unfocused on the real world around her. She wandered through the remains of the building, her mind's eye telling her that the blood was in fact flower petals, littered across the torn floor. She lightly stepped over a corpse, her mind not registering it as such, but rather a patch of delicate flowers she wished not to disturb.
"The mind is wrong," a voice inside her head spoke.
"The mind is wrong," echoed Sophia, tilting her head to the side as she did so. She blinked, her own words confusing herself.
"You're not there," she muttered, slowly stepping over the rubble, arms outstretched like she was balancing on a high wire, or a log upon the forest floor.
"You're alive," the voice said pointedly. It had a silky, yet mystical quality to it.
"So I am," she replied quietly as she stepped over another body. She blinked again, turning and lowering herself so that she sat on some of the rubble. She sat with her head in her hands and she stared at the familiar face of the corpse she'd just stepped over, apathy as a result of her schizophrenia preventing her from entirely feeling what what she thought she ought to be feeling.

Alive. Her thoughts had wandered once more as she reiterated the voice's words.
"Why is that?" she continued quietly as her green irises traced the rock and rubble around the torn room, eyes seeing the world for what it truly was as a tear rolled down her cheek.
For all intents and purposes she should be dead like those lying around her. What made her so different that she would survive what had killed all the people in the clinic. Was it luck? She had always assumed she had none...



A few hours later a search party entered the remains of the building, attempting to find any survivors and digging out the bodies so that each person could be formally identified. Sophia's tearful green gaze moved from her father's corpse to the group of people who had just arrived.
"Did you see the trees fall down? Timber!" she giggled, referring to the former walls of the building that could be spotted in the room around her. The almost trembling sound of her voice said that she didn't feel like laughing, but the sorrow in her eyes and tear-stained face told the story just the same.
The search party exchanged odd looks before the moved over to her, checking that she was alright before leading her away from the grisly scene.

In a matter of hours, the authorities had identified Sophia's next of kin, a woman named Zoe Whittaker. She was Sophia's aunt on her mother's side but had stayed in contact after Sophia's mother's death, meaning that she knew of her niece's mental condition and had experience with how to deal with it. Zoe also volunteered to foster another survivor from the explosion, a boy named Gabriel, in the hope that the company would do both children some good after their trauma.

Sophia had initially been curious about the boy who was now living with her and her aunt. She would occasionally wander over to him and attempt to try and help calm his nerves. However, with her disorganized speech problem, her words sometimes came out harsher than she expected, often pointedly telling him that 'Fear was not necessary.' Despite this, the boy remained silent and after a while, Sophia opted to just keep to herself.

When Sophia and Gabriel were both sent to back to school, she didn't see much of the boy. Being a schizophrenic, the school always wanted eyes on Sophia at all times, which meant that often a teacher would accompany her around school all day. She didn't like it, but opted not to say anything. The few times the teachers would leave her alone were at lunch and after school. The always watchful eyes being hard to dodge during lessons.
During lunchtimes, Sophia would sit wherever. She didn't much care whether she was sat alone on a table of her own, or on the end of a table containing someone else's friendship group. No one really ever talked to her, except for the occasional person asking her what it was like to have schizophrenia. She never answered.

Today was a lucky day however and for once Sophia didn't have a teacher sitting right next to her in all of her lessons. Apparently one of the usual ones was off sick today and instead of allocating another one, the school had left her alone. Sophia would relish days like these as it meant she could usually sneak out of the classroom unnoticed whilst a teacher's back was turned. It was always refreshing to finally be out of those stuffy classrooms, especially when she always sat there unable to concentrate because of the constantly watching gaze of the tutors around her.

The young female wandered down the hallways, stopping and shying behind a corner as she heard the voice of a male teacher calling down the corridor. Blinking, it took her a moment to realise that he wasn't speaking to her, but rather to a boy. The same boy that was currently living with her.
"Gabriel," she muttered, recalling his name.
However, Gabriel was not the only thing she saw wandering down the hall. Blinking, she noticed a dinosaur like creature... or was it more like a dragon? Turning her gaze away, Sophia turned and sat down, leaning against one wall whilst staring at the paintwork of one on the other side of the corridor.
She was hallucinating again, wasn't she.

"What do you think you're doing out here? Shouldn't you be in class?"

Gabriel flinched before taking a step away from the man that seemed to suddenly appear from nowhere. His attention was drawn away from the monster that spoke to him, and to the man with unkempt blonde hair. The raven haired boy stared as a response, trying to find out if the man was angry with him. He doesn't sound angry... he thought before giving a quick glance to the monstrous figure not too far from them, gazing at them with joyful eyes through the ebony skull, and back to the man before him, the seemingly lazy one that was bored.

"Heh, You're wondering if he knows I'm here. The beast spoke, his tone seemed to be as if he were a parent eagerly speaking to a child that was asking how rainbows were formed. Soles chuckled and stared at the man for a bit, Oi, Baggy, CAN you see me? You smell like you've had a burnt mutt with you recently. Did you over cook your dog or something? Smells dull with your bland smelling blood...

What should I do? Gabriel thought, Should I speak? Apologize? Run? Should he speak, he thought, the man would go from his bored tone to one of rage and lecture him on speaking back to what seemed to be a teacher. Should he apologize, he might be lectured on apologizing too much whenever he did something, though he did not think that this person even knew he did that often. Should he run, he would be chased for being suspicious. Keep still...and silent... He decided. He kept his trap shut while Soles merely laughed, as much as a lizard COULD laugh.

"Shy toy is shy to the point where it's almost cute! Hey...why do I small a cheetah or something around here?" The raptor did not seem to take in how serious the current situation Gabriel was in was to him. He instead walked over to where one of the corners ended, following a smell. He rounded the corner to face a small girl that was leaning against the wall while sitting, "Oh? We've got some spiciness over here with the feline smell..." he laughed once more as if it were a joke and wandered back towards Gabriel, standing behind the intimidated boy as they awaited answers.

"I'd expect you to smell leopard or maybe even some form of bird, not cheetah. Or maybe it's your sense of smell itself that betrays you," a calm, gentle voice replied to the raptor, the large, black gryphon-like creature it belonged to materialising a short distance away, nearer to Sophia.

Sophia herself sat leaning against the wall with her hands cupped over her ears. No wonder the teachers wouldn't leave her alone. She couldn't even walk down a near empty school hallway without her mind inventing elaborate creatures to roam it's halls. Talking ones too.

He tried to ignore it. It wasn't really there. It was all in his mind. The shadows, the whispers, everything. It wasn't real. Just ignore it. Just ignore it!

The kid just stared at him. Why was he just staring? Why didn't he do something? Run, try to talk his way out of it, apologize, something! What was this kid's problem? Was he real or was he just in his mind too? Out of the corner of his eye he saw another kid. Then, more shadows. His hands started shaking. Something was wrong. He couldn't do this anymore. He had to leave.

He had to leave.

In a trembling voice, he said, "Y-you kids reall sh- should get back to, um, class... Okay?" He turned and began to stumble down the hallway. After nearly falling down the stairs, he told the office that he had come down with something and he would need a substitute for his classes. The women wished him well and sent him off.

Michael was soon in his car. It was quiet. He didn't trust himself to drive. His hand were shaking too much. He had to calm down. Deep breaths. That was the key. In and then Out. Repeat. In and then Out. He repeated for several minutes.

Then, the voice appeared again.

It said something Michael couldn't comprehend. He passed out, alone in the parking garage.