Neo hadn't moved in hours, his body stiff and sore. However, he didn't care - it was like he was in prison all over again, feeling as if he deserved at least a little pain for doing what he had done to Quilliene. It wasn't until voices erupted at the end of the hallway that he raised his head, a small huff erupting from him.
"Yes… He's in the farthest cell… Christopher froze the bars, I'm afraid… Yes, I will… Alright… Be careful, you two…"
Neo pondered for a moment if he should get up and not act like he was freezing to death, but he found himself not caring again. He stayed as he was, the sound of a door opening wheezing into the air. Footsteps erupted, slowly booming down the hall as a group of people seemed to be getting closer to the cell.
He could see a male coming up to the bars wearing strong, centred armour and a spear at his side. He had red glowing eyes that scanned the ice against the bars before he put a simple gauntleted hand to it. The ice crackled after a few seconds, before cracking and breaking down. After that, two others walked up - Kyrana and Raemith.
Kyrana seemed to thank the guard before he nodded and left down the hall again. She slipped open the bars then and stepped in - but she wasn't in her usual uniform. Instead, she was wearing normal jeans and a long sleeved shirt, a sword still at her side. Raemith stepped in behind her, in similar clothing with an identical weapon on his belt. Neo didn't react, keeping his face half in his knees as he stared at the ground.
"Neo," Kyrana began softly, but Raemith quickly took over.
"Get up, Nathan."
"Would you just for once, Rae, not be a twat?" She scolded, glaring back at him.
"If you hadn't noticed," He glowered. "Our queen may die because av 'im. Excuse me if am bitter."
"I don't have any answers to your questions," Neo said quietly, not moving his eyes from the ground. "So stop wasting your time and just go."
"We're not here to question you," Kyrana replied, kneeling down.
She put something on the floor, and Neo saw a small humanoid running across the stone and frost towards him. He raised his head, seeing Daileth stopping in front of him, panting. The little green skinned, brown haired pixie smiled, his wings still tucked away from their previous injuries.
"Daileth?" He questioned, raising an eyebrow. "What are you doing here?"
"Nobody would tell me anything about what happened," He spoke. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay…"
"I'm… fine," Neo put his head back down. "Can't say the same for Liene."
"Neo," Kyrana said. "It's time to come with us."
"Why?" His voice was muffled.
"Because Christopher said you have to come see her majesty," Raemith continued.
"I'd rather sit and wallow in my own self pity," Neo responded.
"Neo," Kyrana said, stepping forward. "We aren't going to drag you. Get up and come with us - we're going to see Quilliene."
A sigh escaped Neo as he looked up. "Do you at least have my gloves?"
Kyrana smiled and held out a pair of such white coverings, and he took them. Slipping them on, he held out his hand for Daileth, who gladly climbed up his sleeve and sat on his shoulder. Getting to his feet, he groaned and stretched his arms out in front of him. He stepped forward, following Kyrana out of the cell and into the hall. Of course, his feet left dark imprints on the stones. At the end of the hall, the guard there pulled open the door and shut it when Raemith exited behind Neo. It was when he pulled out a set of handcuffs that Neo stepped back mistrustfully.
"We won't be needing those," Kyrana informed him, waving him off.
"It's standard protocol," He insisted.
"Screw the standard protocol. Just get us out of here," She demanded.
They sighed, putting away the cuffs and leading the three down the hall. He stopped at a large metal door and pulled it open, letting them through silently. On the other side, a couple of people in doctor's coats, presumably demons, were talking amongst each other quietly. When they saw the trio approaching, they turned their attention to them.
"Ah, you fetched him like we asked," The older one spoke. "Thank you. Now come along, she's not exactly in the best condition and we would like to have him take a look at her."
The doctor speaking slipped away, while the other glowered at Neo for a moment before leading them down the hall. Out of the dungeon and up a few flights of stairs into what looked like a medicine bay, an assortment of rooms with medical beds and IV's and a further assortment of medicinal equipment around the halls. Led over to a white blanketed area, a larger group of doctors were standing there as they seemed to be unsettled by something. When Neo showed up, they quickly flipped through their clipboard notes before keeping them at their chests.
"Hello, Mr. Orient," One of them spoke - a woman. "Come in. We request that you see her majesty tonight. Please don't try anything, for as demons, it is our solemn duty to protect and care for our mistress."
Neo looked back at Kyrana. "Why am I doing this again?"
"We think that maybe something you did has an effect on her, and you could undo it," One of the doctors chirped.
"I…" His gaze returned to the door. "I don't know how to do that."
"We know," A new voice came, and Neo turned around to see the white haired man approaching him again. Christopher. "Which is why you need to figure it out."
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Neo questioned.
"We need you to pull her back," He answered. "A part of her back, at least."
"Like I can do that," He crossed his arms. "I don't know what I did, much less how I did it. You really think I can pull her out of whatever she's in?"
The man stepped closer, towering over him slightly by a couple inches. "If you caused this trance, then by the gods you will take her out of it. Understand me?"
Neo was silent for a moment, then sighed. "Whatever."
With that, he entered the room, not waiting for an okay from the authorised doctors. Upon entering, he saw a white, wide bed that held a frail body. One could easily mistake them for a child, if they weren't looking at the right aspects of her. A heart monitor sat behind the body, beeping a steady seventy nine before shooting up and calming down every few seconds. For the moment, the frail form was covered in blankets, almost enough to be a lot.
The person he was looking at was Quilliene.
Neo stared at her, barely able to bring himself to fully examine her. The frailness of her body only broke his heart more, clenching and relaxing his hands two or three times. With a sniff, he glanced around for a chair - upon finding one, he proceeded to pull it over to Quilliene's bed. He set it backwards, seating himself down on it so that his legs went around the back and he leaned on the top of it. His eyes trailed over her, resting on her face for a moment before he forced himself to look at something else. Anything else.
Daileth slid down onto the front of Neo's arms, which were crossed over the back of the chair. The pixie looked at Quilliene as he sat down with his legs crossed, on one side of Neo's arms where his elbow was. Neo stared at the heart monitor, almost feeling that if he looked away, it would flat-line. How could Christopher think that he, a person that killed people just by touching them, could save Quilliene? She seemed almost… dead.
Neo could feel their expectant eyes on his back. Waiting. Watching.
Christopher stood beside him, arms crossed. "So, what I mean by fixing her isn't just a simple heal. It's not that it's physical. The doctors noticed a problem in her mentally. She would rather I told no one this, but… She's undergone depression since she was fifteen. The reason the sickness is spreading more is simply because she does not have enough energy to stop it."
"So what do you expect me to do?" Neo replied. "Say abra cadabra and she'll sit up right as rain?"
The man took a deep breath. "That's not what I'm saying. We want you to talk to her is all. This is seen as a symptom of depression and the sickness seems to have made it worse. You caused it. You can fix it."
Neo sighed, leaning forward on his arms. Daileth hopped back up on his shoulder. "What exactly do you want me to say to her?"
As he asked that, he waved his hand at her carelessly, not quite noticing when an invisible force flew from his hand. It wasn't until it slammed into Quilliene that he perked up, staring at her as the heart monitor suddenly spiked and beeped like crazy. He stood and stumbled back, eyes wide as it then flat lined.
"What did you do?!" Christopher shouted, running forward.
Neo continued stepping back, in shock at what he had done. A doctor rushed forward and grabbed the defibrillator, rubbing it together and pressing it against her chest. Her heart spiked, then went flat again. The first shock bounced Quilliene's body off the table slightly, and Christopher grabbed the blocks and did it again himself.
Quilliene's heart started up again, fast at first before it returned to the slow beats that it had before. Neo tried to calm down. His heart was bashing against his chest, his mind a frantic mess as to figure out what he did. Christopher whirled around, shoving Neo against the wall and towering over him.
"I should kill you," Christopher hissed.
"Christopher," Kyrana said, putting her hand on his shoulder. "She's okay, so calm down. Look at him - even he doesn't know what he did."
Even her voice sounded shaken and slightly relieved, the tone of it bittersweet. Christopher glowered at her, his ice spreading across Neo's shoulder where his hand rested, opposite of where Daileth was. He pulled away from him then, cursing under his breath as he turned away. That's when it struck Neo. He picked up Daileth lightly and handed him to Kyrana, and before he knew it, he pushed past one of the doctors and ran out of the room.
"Gods dammit, Chris!" He heard her curse him, then her call after him. "Neo!" He felt her grip close around his arm, stopping him short. "Neo, stop!"
He spun around, ripping his arm from her grip. She didn't have Daileth anymore, probably having handed him off to someone else. "What the hells do you want?" He panted.
"You still have to help her majesty," She said with a pleading gaze.
"And how, exactly, do you think I'll do that?" He growled. "You already saw what I did to her. I can't help her at all. I can't help anyone. Besides, you should be even more pissed because I hurt your girlfriend."
"She's not my girlfriend," Kyrana argued.
"Then why did you kiss her?" He demanded.
"I…" She paused, then shook her head. "I don't know, Neo. Whether I have feelings for her or not, I, unlike most of those people in that room, know how to separate personal feelings from my duty. I'm telling you this as a member of her guard, not as who I am. Get back in that room and at least try to help her, Nathan Orient." Her voice was stern, her eyes narrowed in a commanding glare.
Neo stared into her dark blue eyes, searching, before he sighed. "Even if I could help her, everyone would have to leave that room, and I doubt Chris or whoever he is would be too willing to do that. I'm not about to spill my guts in front of a bunch of demons and some ice dude."
"I'll take care of that," She said, grabbing his hand. "Just come on." With that, she pulled Neo back into the room, where she let go of his hand and turned to Christopher. "Chris," She said in the same confident tone. "Get everyone out of this room, and turn off the sound to the camera."
Christopher stood up, crossing his arms as he scowled at the thought. "Why the hell…? Fine. Doctors, leave. You too, Raemith." He looked at Kyrana. "Is he just now deciding to talk to her? I swear…"
"You're lucky I even convinced him to," She hissed. "Now get out, sir, unless you don't want her to wake up."
She stepped out as Raemith, holding a waving Daileth, shot an untrustworthy glare at Neo, and Christopher passed him by with the same look. As soon as everyone was out, Kyrana gave him a nod and closed the door. Neo looked at Liene, sighing. He walked over to her, only noticing then about the fact he had left black prints on the floor. He pulled the chair up by the top of the bed, sitting down the way he had before.
"I left prints on the ground because I'm not wearing socks or shoes," He said. "Hope I don't have to pay for that, since, y'know, I'm not getting paid."
His eyes travelled from the floor to Quilliene's face, sighing and leaning forward. "They want me to talk to you to help you mentally, but I don't know what the hells to talk about…"
He paused for a long time, the only sound being the slow beeping of her heart monitor. "I've killed a lot of people," He said quietly. "The last person I killed before I went to prison was a girl named Fleur Greevson. If what you said is right, then you hear me say her name in my sleep."
His eyes drifted towards the camera in the corner of the room, wondering if they actually turned off the audio. Neo's attention went back to Quilliene's silent body. "I was living with her. I was eighteen, she was nineteen. We were... Together. Or, at least, as much as we could be. Her father didn't approve of us, but he couldn't do anything about it. Even so, he refused to pay for our flat. That was fine, of course, since Fleur had a decent job and was going to college, and I... killed people for money. It's not like I could really do anything else... but, one day, a man broke into our home. He..."
Neo found his voice wavering, and he swallowed. "He shot Fleur while trying to get away. I killed him, but… I didn't think Fleur was going to make it. She asked me to kiss her... It's one of my biggest regrets. When the police came, one of them, a medic, said that the bullet didn't kill her. It passed through cleanly…" He rubbed one of his eyes, holding back the pain in his voice. "I killed her. For no reason…"
He stopped, staring at Quilliene's face. Was it even working? "After that, they investigated our– well, my home. They found black mould, as if things couldn't get any worse. Then they discovered the thirteen million I stole, then that I was a hitman, and soon enough, they put me in prison for life."
Once again, he went silent. "I never meant to hurt you. If anything, you remind me of Fleur… You both share the same stern look, always contemplating… Always harsh. And yet, there's always a spark of kindness somewhere in there. A silent understanding of what pain is…"
The quiet room encased him, the beeping seemingly a little bit more lively. "I killed my mom when I was born. My father took care of me. One day, I hurt a boy at school by accident. That night, someone came in and tried to kill me. I discovered it was my father... The parent of the boy I hurt told a few people that he would pay a man kindly to get rid of me. My father told me that he had always hated me for killing my mom, and he had stepped up to do what the man had asked of his own will. I didn't mean to kill him… But I did. He was one of the few people to call me Nathan."
He looked at Quilliene, sighing heavily. "I… I'm sorry, Liene. You probably don't care about any of this, but I wanted you to understand. I don't know what happened, but I'm sorry. I didn't intend for this to happen…"
Neo stood, giving a lingering look at Quilliene's face. He reached out and softly slid a few strands out of her face, his red eyes searching for absolutely anything. When nothing happened, he sighed, turning to walk away and give up on saving her. It wasn't until he heard a cough and soft breath that he turned around to see Quilliene stirring, her dull eyes sad as she looked up at him.
"I-I'm sorry… Neo…" Her soft, feminine voice spoke as she coughed once more. "I-I never meant… To hurt someone… I truly value…"
Neo's eyes lingered on her for a moment, his hand slipping down to hold hers for a time. "Don't worry about it, Liene," He said quietly, a smile forming on his face. It wasn't a sarcastic or joking smile, but one of genuine care. "Don't waste your breath so soon… I don't want you to go back into whatever you were in again."
"Noted…" Quilliene nodded weakly.
Then they were interrupted when the door opened, and he carefully slipped his gloved fingers out of her gasp. Quilliene curled into a ball-like form, seemingly already in a dormant state by then. Christopher stood by the doorway, eyeing Neo silently with a glare before he turned away. Neo stepped back, allowing the doctors to take over as she scanned her for a moment.
"Neo," Kyrana interrupted his viewing, and he turned to look at her. "I'm sorry, but I have to take you back to your cell now. I don't know if Christopher told you, but you have to stay there until Saturday."
"Yeah, he told me," Neo sighed.
He gave Quilliene one last lingering look before he turned, following Kyrana out the door. He couldn't help but wonder about her last sentence. Someone I truly value. What had she meant by that?