Deep within his mind, battling with the rushing waves of thought which constantly besieged him, the young Mewtwo curled further into his foetal position and continued to stubbornly ignore the muffled cries of the outside. His spine, stiffened into the hunched posture he had adopted ever since his first time of horrified awareness, clamoured to be straightened. He ignored it, willing instead for sleep to come. Then... he could dream.
Dream... about her...
Slowly he started slipping lower and lower into unconsciousness, unaware that the sounds outside had been the concerned scientists' voices as they kept a close check on his breath and heart rates with their monitors. Ultimately it had been their doing which had induced him into the coma he had willed so hard for. He left that world where the outside was stress and tense voices, and drifted into another. He became aware of his surroundings which he never had experienced in his more lucid states of awareness in the tube. She had reached into his mind and taken it to another world - one where he could see, and breathe, and feel!
Indeed, the very first time she had ever greeted him,
"Those are words! They're talking!"
he had uncurled in shock, able to make such a quick moment only because he was in her place. Her 'remember place'. Sometimes it felt he could stay here forever. And sometimes he wanted it more than anything - more than the wish to break free of his physical prison and move his body in the real world - because it was only there that he felt truly awake and in control.
Before him was a light. It shone a bright sun-yellow, making him blink and quickly shield his eyes with a long grey arm. There was no light in the other world, the world where he couldn't move or see at all. But here... there were so many. This one, bathing and nourishing his body with soothing warmth, was only one of them.
"Mewtwo... I'm in here, Mewtwo." came her voice, startling him into dropping the arm to peer wide-eyed into the bright light. Slowly, his eyes began to water, but he ignored them. She lived in the light! How could he look away?
He heard a giggle, and as he groped forward, seeing nothing but the yellow rays of the light, he could practically feel her presence just darting out of reach every time he advanced slowly. "This is...?"
And she spoke, her voice that of a tinkling fairy's as it dances over the blossoms. "This... is the sun." she said, and giggled once more. "The sun is nice and warm and bright. Daddy used to tell me something: if you look at the sun for too long..."
Mewtwo hesitated in the blissful warmth, aware now that his eyes didn't seem to be working properly. If he moved them the world turned purple... "What? What happens if you look at it too long?"
As soon as he had finished speaking, his body was in agony, his skin blistering with an agonising amount of heat. He tilted his large head back and screamed; a shrill wail not unlike that of a human child, and tried his best to close his eyes.
His disobedient eyes stayed obstinately open. And when he ran out of screams and sucked in burning air to continue, he became dimly aware that she was now merely a foot away from where he floated, burning alive. He could not see her now, but all the same felt her smile at him, her cold eyes running up and down his form.
"You... go... blind." she said, her mouth opening widely into a savage grin, her small teeth - of a child not even ten years old - bared at him.
He screamed once again in horror, willing the pain to subside. But this was her world, and she ruled over everything which happened here. Omnipotently, she could show him the wonders of the world he had never seen before. She had showed him her special remember place, the sun, the moon and the wind. The sunset and the star-filled night. She had taught him what the sun does, how the wind works, explained that the stars are there so you never feel alone in the dark - and now she was teaching him about pain.
<Why?> he screeched, feeling the flames flicker their way down to his lungs and ignite his whole body from the inside. <Why did you do this to me?!>
She leaned forward, her glossy sea-green hair falling gracefully about her face as she bent. For a second, she was beautiful; a siren-like child who he gazed at imploringly with empty eyes to fix his broken body which was still burning steadily.
She giggled. "Because you lived."
It was then that he woke, his form shuddering as the dream-fire dissipated back into his subconscious.
