The Frozen Palace [Nasuverse AU]
A fair warning. This fic is basically almost made up of mostly OCs and re-imagined characters. If that's not your kind of thing, then it's not for you. For the rest well, I hope you all enjoy what I've written up. This is my first fic here in Beast's Lair so I'm extremely kinda nervous.
If you find any typos, spelling mistakes, odd sentence structure feel free to point them out to me, because frankly I'm still an amateur writer who's still learning the ropes. Also because I'm a perfectionist who can't let go of the feeling that his own writing is shit.
INDEX:
Chapter 1: Frozen Static
Chapter 2: Normal Problems
-For future chapters-
Chapter 1: Frozen Static
I smelled something sweet. That was the first thing that came to me. The smell was like chocolate, freshly baked from an assortment of egg, flour and freshly crushed cocoa. It wasn’t the only smell, there’s also the smell of melting wax and fire, the striking scent of alcohol and antibiotics. There was also sounds, blurry chanting of sorts. There were multiple people, that much was for sure.
I felt a back against a bed, it was soft and it held a body at an angle. There was something in the arm, something that pierced the skin. There were people on the bed, sitting on the edge. I got curious so I opened a pair of eyes.
I saw a sterilized room. It was very white, I didn’t think it could be this white but it was. The only things that weren't white were the cyan coloured lines that ran across the wall, the pieces of medical equipment carefully placed around me and the group of people who were staring at me. Oh, and the cake, can’t forget the cake. I looked around at the group around me, faces dumbstruck as if they saw a ghost.
I looked at the cake that stood on a lap, well a tray that had cake on it anyways. Yup, it was chocolate. Not just one chocolate, it had strawberry chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, mint chocolate, so much chocolate you’re at risk of getting sugar overdose. It had sixteen candles on it, all lit up. I stared at it for a while before I spoke up, out came a quiet voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in a long time. It was a whisper, a feeble vibration of air that pathetically came out of a mouth. “Can I have some?”
The room exploded into a chorus of cheers and shouting.
-(O)-
I was sad, very sad. The doctor told me I can’t eat cake. He said I’ve been on a liquid food diet for so long that if I ate anything stiffer than gelatin this body might go into shock. That made me sad. All that chocolate and I can’t eat any of it. Instead they gave me strained tomato juice, I didn’t like it.
I lifted a hand to a face, they said they did exercise for me so this body didn’t get stiff but it was still hard to move. The arm was all thin, black skin and veins that popped up from below the skin, it wouldn’t stop shaking. There was hair that was connected to a head, it was long and reached down to the waist. It was the colour black, I prefer periwinkle.
They gave me a mirror. I held it up to myself. There was a face, it was smallish with cheekbones that stuck out and eyes that looked sunken. Other than that, it looked very cute with childlike eyes that seemed to have endless curiosity. The face was frowning for some reason, I wanted it to be happy. I asked it to be happy and it smiled, it felt hollow though so I asked it to go back. It was frowning again. It was strange, I asked the doctor why the face does the things it did. He frowned and told it that it was my face. I looked at it again, it sure didn’t feel like my face. If it was my face, then I would know why it was frowning. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get cake? That made sense, when people don’t get cake they get all sad. People would be less sad if they had cake. I told the doctor that.
He gave a laugh. “Lots of people would love to have cake. Some however can’t eat cake due to many factors and circumstances, others just don’t like cake.”
People who don’t like cake? That’s absurd. I told him that it was absurd. He laughed again. “I know it’s a world breaking revelation but it’s true,” he gave a few snickers. “There are people out in the world who prefer well done steak over a medium rare, Hawaiian over pepperoni and etc, etc, etc the list goes on.”
“However it’s time for me to give you some more relevant explanations. You have been asleep for… about a year or so. Your body has gone weak but with help and support we can get you back to your old self.” He smiled at me. “Now then, I’m sorry I had to remove your family and relatives from the room but it’s best that you slowly acclimate into things. We’ve already checked your vitals and other than weakened muscles and bones, you’re just about as healthy as any other person. Plus by how you’re able to hold a solid conversation with me I’d say your mind is still sharp. First things first however I would like to ask you some questions.”
The man grabbed a chair and sat on it. He had a woman with him in a white and blue nurse’s outfit. It was pretty plain and practical. She had a clipboard with her. “Now, what’s your name?”
I stared at him for a bit. “I dunno,” I whispered.
He looked at me with a worried expression. “Oh dear.”
-(O)-
He was talking with someone outside the door. That nurse gave me another cup of tomato juice. “Drink up miss, you need to get back your muscles if you want to go out again.”
I looked at the drink. “The taste is bad.”
“I know tomato juice may not be your thing but please, bear with it,” the nurse left as she joined the doctor in the hallway.
There was another person in the room. I didn’t notice it until now, I didn’t know how. One minute there was nothing in the corner, the next minute there it was.
It came over to me. Regarded me with cold red eyes, no wait I think they’re blue… Purple? I don’t know, the colour doesn’t seem to agree with me. “Hello Sleeper. It seems you’re awake.”
“I guess?” I whispered. “Do I know you?”
“Once,” it said. “We were friends in school, before the incident. In official reports, I am dead.”
“Are you a ghost?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“Sorry, not feeling like it,” it brushed me off.
“Why?”
“I just don’t feel like it.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m watching you.”
“Watching me?”
“Please don’t repeat my words. It’s poor use of time.”
Who this person? Why are they in my room? I don’t know any of the answers, all I do know is that I don’t know anything. “Why do you watch me?”
“Because you’re under my protection,” the nurse came back and walked around it. She looked at my cup and frowned.
“You really don’t like tomato juice do you?”
“I told you that already,” I shook my head. “Are there other flavors?”
“Sorry, but tomato is all we got. The snowstorm outside had delayed the deliver tanks. It’ll be another hour or so before they get here.”
“I hope they get here. I want something other than tomato.”
“They’ll get here, don’t worry,” she said before leaving.
“How annoying. They should manage the delivery tanks better, that way they can be on time. Even in the middle of a blizzard.”
“She didn’t see you.”
“I didn’t want her to. It would complicate things.”
“You said you weren’t a ghost, but she didn’t see you. Are you lying?”
“That’s good. It’s good to be suspicious of things that people tell you are true. However as I said, no. I don’t care if you believe me or not but I’m not a ghost.”
“Then what are you?”
“Not feeling like it.”
The doctor came back along with the nurse and two people. They walked around it. The two people were a man and a women, the woman held a baby in her arms. It was sleeping.
The lady had light skin and dark hair styled in a bob cut, she wore a thick beige coat, a deep blue scarf around her neck and a pair of heeled boots. The man also had light skin with short brown hair with a short boxed beard. He wore a thick white parka, a black pair of snow pants and brown boots that looked like they’ve been used for a long time. His stark blue eyes were hidden behind a pair of glasses. The baby was wrapped around in a thick cloth of sort, it was trying to reach for the women.
“Hey honey,” the woman said to me. “The doctor told us about your... well your circumstances. I know you don’t recognize me but… well… it’s me, your mother.”
I titled a head at her, “mom?”
She gave a sad smile, “I know it feels strange to you right now but we’ll help you get through it all.”
I looked at the baby. “Is that a boy or a girl?”
“Huh? Oh! You mean Aoko,” she brought the baby closer to me. “This is Aoko, your new baby sister.” The little baby stared at me with round, curious eyes that too were stark blue.
“Sister?” I poked at the little blob of cuteness and flesh with a hand. It started sucking on a index finger. “Why is her mouth around this finger?”
“I think baby just mistook it for a pacifier. That’s all kid,” the man who I assume to be my father told me. He had an odd smile, it was happiness shrouded in grief or perhaps something of irony? I don’t know, I’m not an expert on faces.
“Why does she suck it like that?”
“Oh babies are like that,” my mother said. “They think that whatever’s in their mouth is something to eat or drink. Because that’s what mouths are used for.”
“Well you better be careful with that,” the man said. “Not everything that goes into the mouth is good for you.”
“Oh, you mean like all those little sweets that you’ve been giving to little Aoko haven’t you?”
“Hey, nothing wrong with the occasion sugar every once in the while.”
“You’re going to make her all fat and sticky!” She pouted at the man. “At this rate the only thing she’ll eat are candy and bakings!”
“Hey it’s just on occasions! Honest!” The two broke into an argument. Despite the heated exchange of words, they both seem more happy talking about Aoko than when they were talking to me. I felt an odd pang of irritation.
As I watched them argue over Aoko, I noticed something. She had a name, I didn’t. Somehow my irritation had gotten stronger. “What’s my name.”
They both stopped as they stared at me. “Oh, the doctor hasn’t told your name hasn’t he?” My mother said to me
She handed the baby over to father as she sat beside me, she looked nervous but she smiled all the same. “Come on Touko, drink your tomato juice.”
-(O)-
“Good morning Winnipeg! This is 144.43 Jam. Your daily source of the good old classics. Today’s May 7, 2018 and boy do I have good news for all you folks, it seems like the snow will let up for the week so expect those roads to be cleared for today. Dress cozy though since it’s gotta be minus thirty-five Celsius. Now for this morning’s music we have some Queen for you all, I’m Going Slightly Mad-
I turned off the radio beside me on the bedside table. “Oh come on honey it was just getting to the good part,” my mom pouted at me.
“I want things to be quiet,” I whispered to her.
“But it’s Queen!... Fine…” She mumbled under her breath. “Anyways, you’re learning, or rather, relearning your kanji rather quickly.” She took the paper from my lap and made a frown. “Your handwriting still needs more work though.”
“It’s not my fault that these hands are shaky..”
“Your hands honey, your hands.”
I looked at the hands in front of me. I ask them to stop shaking, they didn’t listen. I asked the fingers to move and they did move a bit but not much. The arms moved around in front of me but they didn’t feel like my own. It felt more like hands that so happened to be connected to a body that’s just so happened to be connected to a head which just so happened to be connected to my brain.
It’s been a week now since my birthday. They started me on physiotherapy and it felt so odd and painful. I had to do small exercise everyday and the arms feel sore after each one. They had to move my legs for me, they said that the part of my spine just above the base had been split apart so I can’t use the legs anymore. They still exercise it so that it doesn’t develop anything bad, not sure how that works though.
My mom gave me another paper. I took the pencil and started writing again. I had to spell it twice, once in kanji and again in English. 蒼崎 橙子, Aozaki Touko. You couldn’t tell because it was printed in plain text on this paragraph but on the paper I was writing on, it looked like someone was vaguely scribbling something on the wall with a crowbar.
“Don’t worry honey. You’re just out of practice is all.”
Well, it only was just one week since I woke up. I guess I just needed to give it time, maybe then these thin black hands that mom says are mine will actually write something that doesn’t resemble someone’s butt. I had to say, I was confused as to why my skin was dark while the rest of my family was white. I asked that question two or three days ago and they told me I was adopted.
They couldn’t conceive a child a long time ago so they got me. The fact that they managed to have Aoko was a miracle and the doctor still wasn’t sure how they did it. He even ran DNA tests just to check if it was legit. It was. It felt like she was more legit than me, I felt irritated again.
Dad was somewhere else, working at one of those fancy steakhouses as one of their chefs. Mom was off from work due to some sort of renovation happening. She worked at a tech firm where she helps maintain the servers. Aoko was at a daycare so mom could spend time with me, I felt good about that.
“Mom, when am I going to get out of the hospital?”
“The doctor said that you’ll be discharged on the first of June if you make your progress as steady and fruitful as it is now. Just be patient honey and you’ll be able to go home with us. We’re even preparing you a nice electric wheelchair for you to use.”
“Okay mom. I can wait.”
“Good girl. It’s so nice that you’re listening to me, you used to do your own back when-,” she stopped herself as a frown formed on her face. “Oh uh… Please excuse me deary I need to powder my nose,” she told me before leaving the room.
The room was empty now. At least, I think it was.
“Are you there?” I called out. No response.
I haven’t seen it in a long time. It has chatted with me for an entire week now. I wonder where it went? I really wanted to ask it because I wanted to know why everyone kept avoiding a certain question of mine. Whenever I tried asking how I ended up here, they kept avoiding it, changing the subject or ignoring it altogether.
I wonder why. I mean, I kinda want to know why I’m in a hospital bed while being comatosed/paraplegic and getting amnesia all on top of it all. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I lost large chunks of my memory but that kind of combination seemed kinda far fetched even to me.
“Are you there?” I called out again. No response.
-(O)-
“Good morning Winnipeg! This is 144.43 Jam. Your daily source of the good old classics. Today’s June 1st, 2018. Buckle up folks, there’s a storm incoming. Remember to check your emergency generators just in case the power goes out. It’s gotta be -forty-three Celsius out there. Good luck folks. Now for something to calm the nerves, ladies and gentlemen, The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel-”
I turned off the radio before I looked out the window. The snowfall was thick and I couldn’t see anything past the house across the street and even then the house itself was at risk of getting blurred from sight as the snow raged harder.
I was in a room that hadn’t had a soul in it for a long time. I could tell the room was recently cleaned up, the mattress was new with a fresh cover and a nice thick blanket in the colour of periwinkle. The room had a strawberry smell to it, I guess to make it more welcoming. The walls had a white and blue striped wallpaper, they looked new as well. There was a machine in here, a hoyer lift to help me get on and off my bed. There was a desk with a bunch of books and sketchbooks that I assume were mine before whatever happened to me. I had a small bedside table with my birthday present on it. They gave me a 2DS XL for my birthday, they said I had a bunch of games waiting for me at home. I found them neatly organized on a repurposed bookshelf that had been well cared for.
I was sitting in an electric wheelchair. The one they promised to get me. It was tilted slightly backwards since I don’t have any control over the legs, the body would just lean forward awkwardly. I had to learn how to use the toilet all over again, not that I even remember using the toilet before all this. The butt seemed to just poop all on its own. I’m actually wearing some adult diapers just to deal with it at the moment. It was annoying.
“How’s your room honey?”
I used a little joystick to turn around my chair. “It’s nice,” I said to her. “I have lots of games to play so I won’t be bored. Also,” I grabbed a piece of paper from a pile on my bed. “Look mom! My writing doesn’t look like someone tried to draw a zebra by holding their pencil with their butt!”
“Seriously honey what’s with all these weird little metaphors (or was it similes) that you’ve been making recently? I mean, there was ‘taste like someone shoved a dead rat into the crevice of a bug infested air conditioner’ or ‘feels like someone rubbed my arm with a wooden board that had flaming nails haphazardly sticking out of it,’ just where does it all come from?” She shook her head before inspecting my handwriting. “Well it’s almost perfectly legible but some more practice wouldn’t hurt.”
“I guess,” I threw the paper into the pile. “The metaphor thing? They just kinda come to me.”
“You don’t say…” She paused for a while. “Well… The doctor says that we can now start introducing some solids into your diet, well, soft solids anyway. Hope you don’t mind mashed potatoes for dinner tonight.”
“Mashed potatoes?... I don’t think that I would mind that too. Better than strained tomato juice at the very least.”
“You never did quite like tomatoes honey,” she laughed. “Now I need to go downstairs to help your father budget our taxes and consolidate the budget spent on all those new additions to our home. Just remember, if you need anything just call us,” she said before leaving.
Left all alone in my room, I started gazing out the window again. It decided to talk to me again. “So, what do you think of the snow? Hasn’t let up for almost an entire year now.”
I looked at it. “Where were you?”
“With you,” it said.
“Why didn’t you responded before? I have been calling for you the entire last month, some of the nurses even asked why I called for them when I needed nothing. That sure was embarrassing.”
“There was no need.”
“You’re annoying,” I told it.
“I know. I just don’t care,” it also looked out the window with me.
We both kept silent for a while. The house across the street was gone now. Absorbed into the raging billow of the blizzard. I decided to break the silence. “Mom told me that there used to be spring.”
“That is correct.” The snow seemed to enchroach on us. What little I could see of the driveway and mailbox was taken by the frost. If I was outside I could probably only see about 3 to 4 meters ahead of me.
“What was spring like?”
It paused for a while. "It was warm. I remember hotdogs fresh off the barbecue, ice cream that stood out in the heat, picnics and laughs. Family and friends gathering. Tree after tree after tree littered the city. Funny, Canada always had a lot of trees even in the urban areas. If there was a patch of green and there was enough space to plant a tree in it, then a tree was there. The only trees left here in this frozen land that still have leaves on them are the evergreens. The rest are all bare wood, asleep and waiting for the faithful day that the sun will bare its light on the world again. We did have have a wide variety of trees here.”
“That was the most amount of words that I’ve heard from you.”
“I did rant a bit, didn’t I?” It was gone again. It’ll probably be a long time before I see it again if my best guess is correct.
I gazed out to the world outside. The window looked more like a television screen that had static on. That’s what it felt like at that moment, a newborn girl staring at useless static on a television. A hand was raised up to it, it didn’t quite reach. The body was tilted backwards in the wheelchair. A body that didn’t feel like mine.
I decided that it wasn’t a good use of time, staring at frozen static. So I swiveled around my wheelchair when something caught the corner of my eye. The sudden stop made the body jerk around. Ii was nice that this strap was around the waist, it kept the body from falling out.
I strained my neck around so I could take a look at the window again. I saw nothing. Nothing but the same useless static of ice that played across the window. “Huh… Could’ve sworn I saw a person outside…” I turned away from the window. Time to check out those sketchbooks over at the desk. I wondered if my spelling was better before.