Beep.

The world smelled like something unfocused.

There was a smell of plastic, of cold air, rubbing alcohol...the stinging fluorescence of strip lighting, a coldness of sheets. What she saw in her head was reminiscent of a kaleidoscope filled with beige.

She felt weak.

Beep.

She needed water.

Beep.

The hospital gown was too cold.

Beep.

She wanted to be in bed at home.

Beep.

Why...?

Beep. Beep.

What did they want with me...?

Crash

"Stay quiet or I'll cut you."

Beep beep beep beep beep

Her eyes opened in fear at the memory - it was them, it was because of them that she was -

Crash

The door opened loudly; Aki would have screamed if not for the mask on her face. She gripped the sheets anxiously, feeling her throat crushed by a phantom hand -

"Kataoka-san, you are safe here," someone said quietly, soft but dutiful steps approaching the bedside. A woman's hand flitted to Aki's left wrist, resting on her pulse to steady it naturally. "Remember?"

  Beep beep beep beep beep

  Aki's hands were still clenched against her bed sheets, breath condensing rapidly on the underside of the respiratory mask. It was only Dr. Sasaki, she saw that, but her heart still beat too fast.

  Beep beep beep beep beep

  "Please breathe, honey. You're safe with me."

Beep beep beep

It was simple, right? Respiration was inhale-exhale. A contraction of musculature in the abdomen to pull in air and acquire oxygen. To expel carbon dioxide and nitrogen and other molecules.

Beep beep

It was simple.

Beep beep

It was...just that. Beiology. She liked biology.

Beep beep

"You're safe, honey."

  Beep

  Fog condensed more slowly on the underside of the respiratory mask as Aki began coaching her lungs again, breathing the smell of plastic and hand sanitizer. She registered the clinking noises of acrylic origami cranes dangling from Dr Sasaki's hairpiece and the shine of the sun through the window blinds. The smell of rubbing alcohol stopped thrashing violently through her airways. As her pulse slowed, the doctor went through her routine checks.

"You're very lucky, Aki-chan," Sasaki remarked, as she checked her notes. Considering chloroform poisoning and battery - the girl's neck and limbs were bruised, and she had been very sick for days when she first awoke - she seemed to have escaped the more serious consequences. No broken bones, no renal failure, minimal permanent liver damage...

"Sasaki-obasan...did they take my laptop?"

  Her voice was barely loud enough to overcome the sounds of beeping monitors and her ventilation mask, strained as if her vocal cords had been tuned badly. She could have said she was thirsty or that she was cold...but the laptop. That was...important...

  Dr Sasaki blinked at her. She had expected some kind of plaintive complaint, something she could address, but she knew the laptop was like lifeblood to her patient.

  "I don't know, dear. Once you're discharged, you'll be taken to your house. You can check then."

  Aki flinched and said nothing.

  "Are you thirsty?"

  Nod.

  The bed was raised with a whirring of compliant gears and a wrinkling of fabric. A paper cup of water brushed her fingers as Dr Sasaki removed the oxygen mask, having checked several criteria off her mental checklist. Aki drank, a residual taste of oxygen running through her mouth.

  "You seem to be doing well enough to be discharged within the next three days," Sasaki said, looking at Aki as she put the cup down on a small table. Her dark hair was messy from being pressed against a pillow for so long, and she was paler than usual, but the wary shyness in her eyes remained, afraid of asking too much.

  "Thank you."

  Dr Sasaki patted the top of her head, running fingers through thick, lightly waved hair and watching the girl's soft dark eyes widen a little, so much like Kataoka Ayeka's. Her features were quintessentially Asian. Her face shape was her father's - smooth-skinned, with a slightly pointed chin and thin eyebrows with long lashes - and her facial features - the softness of her dark eyes and the way her mouth moved when she smiled was her mother's. None of it had changed through her growth.

  Her slim fingers gripped the fabric of her hospital gown, twisting the thin cloth, as Sasaki stood, wishing she could look after her honorary child, but knowing full well the spider-silk will of the girl would refuse.

  She slid her hairpiece from the bun in her hair and settled it in Aki's hands. "I'll get you some paper. I know you love origami."

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  She left. Aki turned the hairpiece in her hands, looking at the silver tortoiseshell patterns on the teeth and the acrylic paper cranes attached to it by thin black strings. She'd always liked it, and Sasaki-obasan knew that. She'd been there since Aki had first spoken, first walked, first started putting things together to make other things.

  She'd been there through checkups and award ceremonies and the days Aki had spent waiting outside her mother's hospital room when her mother was no longer the surgeon, but the patient, weakening, weakening, weakening, unraveling like a frayed thread with every pass of sun.

  She'd been there when her father broke down on that first day, the first day without Ayeka, held Aki close to her chest when she stood, stoically, uncomprehending, the pieces of a machine falling to pieces in her shaking hands.

  Aki hugged her knees, soft tears soaking through the fabric of her gown, because now Junpei was gone, and now Sasaki was the only one left and people still wanted to hurt her because of her father, and because now she was in a hospital that smelled so heavily like the perfume of death and the smell of chloroform was in her head -

  And it was all because of Kira.

  Kira had killed everyone. Every last one of the people she had tried to help.

  The fear, the rage, at that name seemed to boil in her chest and rise in her throat as if it were bile, alive, straining to destroy her from the inside out. Somewhere in the world, Kira was laughing over the people he had killed.

  She was still alive though. Kira hadn't killed AZRIEL. The one behind the screens who had all the information that Kira had killed for. 

  She, the angel of Death, could hold it over Kira himself. In memory of her father.

  The thought made her feel better. No matter what had happened to her father's laptop, she had spares. She had drives. Everything. If Kira continued, she'd be able to keep working on her father's research. L himself would listen to her if she could do something. Dubious history or not.

  The world knew Kira. Now Kira needed to know the name of AZRIEL.

  She dried her eyes.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  I'll show the world what the true Angel of Death can do.

  I am hope.