There's a thousand hands. There's a thousand grips. There's a thousand voices.

He tries to thrash, tries to scream and break away from the hands holding them down. Despite it all, a sharp needle breaches the soft skin on the back of their neck. Don't take me back--he screams, but it comes out as a laugh--a broken, mindless sound. The cracked asphalt beneath Abel's face fades. Their vision swims and darkens until there's nothing. 

It's cold.

---

On all accounts except truthfully, Abel Nakamura died when they were eleven.

Though their body was never found, the authorities have long since labelled it a cold case. No use in finding a ghost, especially when there's nobody to miss them.

Abel Nakamura is turning twenty-two in three months. They sit with their arms forcibly crossed in a room far too cold. There's a mirror, but even through Abel's delirious state, he knows that there are people staring at him from the other side. The room is white. Abel hates white. The lights are too bright. Abel hates the light.

For most days, Abel's mind wanders. All the pieces aren't back yet, but judging from the itchy stitches laced through his scalp, it will all return eventually. He shakes. The stiff jacket locked around his torso hardly helps to block out the cold. 

Minutes or hours later, the door clicks. Abel's eyes open, narrow slits from where he looks behind his black and blue bangs.

The room gets a little colder.

An all too familiar and all too foreign face appears in the doorway. Abel bites at their cheek. Abel bites away the heat forming in the pools of their gut. 

"Hey," the man says.

"Leave me alone," Abel snarls.

Despite the warning embedded into his words, the man persists. He approaches slowly, which is smart. Approach the wild animal with soft words and an extended arm. Abel can't quite take that arm. There's a reason they trapped them around his sides. 

"How are you recovering?" The man continues, dragging a metal chair against the grating concrete floor. He sits carefully, naturally wide-legged with elbows resting on his knees and Abel knows it's a mirror of how he would sit in that exact chair. "Are the pain meds still working?"

"Don't talk to me."

A sigh. The man runs a hand over his face. His hair is black and gray; Abel's is black and blue. "I'm trying to help you--"

"Then get lost." He had no issue leaving the first time. There shouldn't be a problem leaving the second. 

The man's face shifts, eyes welling before he shakes his head. "Abel, I can't leave you--"

"Not for a second time?" Abel thrashes, but the jacket holds true. His heart thrums, wanting nothing more than to evaporate and get out. "You ever think about if you were there the first time?" A hiss. "You ever think about what I would've become if you didn't abandon us."

Because even if Abel Nakamura isn't truthfully dead, there's no denying the death of Mischa Antonova. She died alone and with a pistol held in her hand. She died after years of screaming for her corpse of a brother and ghost of a husband. She died because her only support was a child who could hardly care for himself.

The man clenches his jaw. He doesn't defend himself. That's not fair-- he could say, except they both know that it is. The man sitting across from Abel isn't one worthy of sympathy. 

"Leave. Me. Alone."

The man nods. Abel stares at the empty chair.

---

The next time somebody enters the white room, Abel's trying to fall asleep on the sorry excuse for a bed. Their arms have long since grown numb. The cold hardly bothers them anymore. The stitches still itch.

Abel doesn't turn to see who it is. He already knows. There's only one person daring enough to try and talk to him on a daily basis.

How are you feeling? Is what the man will ask. 

"Tired," Abel answers.

"Have you not been sleeping?"

"It's a little hard to when nobody shuts off the fucking LEDs."

"Oh."

Silence. Abel only turns further from the man. There's no blanket on the bed. Of course they wouldn't provide one. The warmer he is, the easier it is for them to get away. The last thing they need is their little prisoner to escape. Abel vaguely wonders if this is how Shea felt. Trapped. Desperate. Borderline insane.

Abel wishes he could tell his best friend that he understands now. They'll see her tonight in their nightmares. Apologizing to a corpse has become a new hobby of Abel's.

"I'll turn them off tonight," the man's voice is sickeningly soft. 

Abel chooses not to respond to that, instead wondering how long they've been trapped in this little white room in a stiff white jacket. They're without a window and a clock. The events after the Collapse are hazy. There was a Sante Fe supermarket, a parking lot, and a thousand hands. They fell asleep and woke up in the white room. Abel represses the shudder as the man leaves.

---

Really, Abel knows the name of the man. He could never forget it. He could never forget how many times their mother woke up in the middle of the night screaming for his love. 

Haru--Mischa Antonova would sob into her blankets. Some nights it would be for the uncle Abel never knew. Some nights she would scream for a pair of women lost on the same horrid day. 

The man enters again the next day, Abel's internal clock at least somewhat online thanks to the dimming of the lights in their white room. It's morning now. Abel's never liked mornings.

"What day is it?" Abel would eventually ask when the man takes up his regular seat in the steel chair. Abel's staring at a wall, trying to get the jacket to itch an annoying spot near the small of their back. The man's fingers are steepled between his knees.

He sighs. "February sixth."

Ah. The blessed day Abel was born twenty-two years ago. 

"Happy birthday," the man supplies, though it's hesitant, a question more than a statement. 

"Hardly."