Hey Reno and Rikku, here's some more Untitled.
Hands snatched at Dan's clothes and tangled in her hair in the midst of suffocating darkness. The strength behind them lent bruising force to their grasp, and dull pain began to throb all over. When lines of fire streaked across her skin, she didn't need to see to know that those hands had sprouted cruel hooked claws. They tore her to shreds as she screamed herself hoarse.
Then a different darkness fell over Dan, one that was cool against her fevered flesh, filled with muffled voices and sounds and pushed everything else away in a haze of numbness. She could see a little, but vaguely as with the voices, and it all felt so very far away.
Sometimes the haze would clear and she'd get a glimpse of the hospital, a taste of the ache all over, and hear snatches of conversation around her. None of it mattered, though, because her friends were never there. Then Dan would remember why her friends weren't there and sit in a pain-filled daze until the darkness returned. Her life became a cycle of horror and pain, relief, and heartbreak.
She had no sense of time in these places, though it seemed that everything had slowed way down inside her head. It seemed to go on and on until everything else felt like forever ago, some half-remembered dream.
Until the Voice came. Dan remembered it from the painful place, speaking to her, right before she got to the comforting darkness. At first hearing it would send her right back into the burning and grasping hands, and she tried to shut it out. It stopped for a while - how long, she couldn't have said - and when it came back she almost didn't recognise it. The Voice was softer, muffled this time, and when she would try to see who it belonged to, a strange dual impression greeted her. What her eyes said did not coincide with what her heart perceived; she thought she saw a woman, but at the same time the person's posture was rather masculine.
The next time darkness threatened to return, she fought it back. Dan became consumed with the puzzle of the Voice. It would come back every so often, and she'd try to figure out her puzzle while it told her stories and talked of things outside the hospital room.
And when she was finally sure the Voice was a man and had realised that perhaps it didn't bother her the way the very masculine hands in the awful darkness did, it almost stopped coming. She began to count the time instead of letting it slip by, waiting for the Voice to return. There was never a pattern to his visits, and now when he did come he tended to pass out in the chair beside her bed while he talked.
This didn't bother Dan, 'cause now she could practice looking at him, seeing through the clever disguise. He wasn't old like the doctors who'd been to see her while the haze had all but blinded her, but there was an oldness to him. A sort of tiredness she had always equated with age hung about his shoulders. And recently the eyes that had been bright and alive seemed a little duller, a little less full.
Sometimes the nurses would have to shake him awake when the visiting hours were over. He'd rub his eyes and whisper, "Good night." to her before leaving, looking no better for his nap than before it.
She couldn't figure out why he still came to see her if he was so tired. Finally, Dan decided shed have to ask him directly.
She waited till just before visiting time was done. Then, gingerly, she prodded his arm with one finger. His eyelids fluttered and she recoiled nervously, but he didn't wake. She gathered her courage and poked him again...
So this is "The Meeting" between Wes and Dan from the kid's perspective. Thought you might like it?
