Beep.

Beep.

Pasha's eyelids slowly fluttered open, quickly closing again as they met bright lights. This was particularly disconcerting because he didn't remember ending up anywhere that was especially blinding...but he didn't remember much of anything at all. Groggily, he tried to wade through all of the noise and lethargy - what was that awful beeping? - in an attempt to make sense of it all. He knew Abel had sent him out on patrol again. He knew that the entire patrol had been uneventful, with not even a youma in sight. But he didn't remember ever making it home. Why did his chest hurt so badly?

The strong scent of chemicals and air freshener hit him all at once, jolting him awake. This he could remember. This smell meant hospital. The beeping suddenly made sense as its rhythm picked up in tandem to his racing heart. Not good, not good.

Beepbeepbeep.

The small boy say up in bed, disgusted by the tug of the tubes that were stuck in his arms, secured by tape that would probably hurt way more than a rainbow band-aid when they eventually had to pull it off. He could see his Senshi uniform draped, somehow, over one of the chairs next to the window. The edges of it were tattered and burned, bits of ribbon missing from it here and there. But most noticeable was the gaping hole where the ribbon at his chest should be: there was nothing. The faded green diamond pattern on the hospital chair stared back at him instead of the cheerful, bright bow, solemn, serious.

"Pasha! You're awake!" Though her voice was familiar, it still managed to be absolutely frightening in the midst of such a grave situation. He turned to face Audrey, completely unable to muster up a smile that could match hers. There was something different about her that he couldn't quite place his finger on that made him uncomfortable, which was something his best friend shouldn't ever do. She held Abel in her arms; Pasha could see that she was holding him too tightly, and that he was bent all funny. Abel was a cat, but even cats couldn't contort themselves that way. His guardian didn't speak - only stared. This was all wrong.

"Au...Audrey?" Even his own voice scared him. The heart monitor continued to race faster and faster, its beeping becoming akin to a timebomb near its detonation. "What happened?"

"Oh, nothing terrible! You were on your way home because you totally failed at being a Senshi, and someone came and stole your starseed! I think you'll live, though, so it's okay!" Audrey's expression was so darkly cheery that Pasha had to turn away from her, eyes focusing again on his uniform. The hole in the chest matched the story, but-

"Who told you...how do you know all that, Audrey?" Maybe the doctors had been able to infer some of it, but he'd never told Audrey that he was a Senshi. Even if she'd caught a glimpse of his outfit, it would have just meant that he had a connection with terrorists, not that he was anything particularly special. And she had no reason to think that he'd failed, because that was only in his own mind. Abel assured him that he was doing okay. Tallulah said the same.

"You're not doing okay."

"What?" Pasha whipped around, painfully tugging on the tubes once again. Tallulah was now standing next to Audrey and the still-contorted Abel, eyes downcast on him in disapproval, apparently having gained mind-reading capabilities. That was worrisome in its own way - not to say he didn't want to share things with Tallulah, considering what a good friend she was to him, but he didn't want anyone be able to read his mind. "How come? I thought you said...?"

"Well, you hadn't lost your starseed then, had you, Pyxis?" Instead of the response coming from Tallulah alone, the voices of Audrey and Abel mixed with hers to form the biting inquiry.

"I didn't...I...!" His eyes pleaded with them while words failed him. His chest hurt more than it had before, even more uncomfortable with its newly warm, wet feeling, and his stomach was full of knots and anxiety. What had he done? Was he going to lose his friends all because he'd done a terrible job at fulfilling the requirements that destiny had laid out for him?

The door to the hospital room was thrown open as an overly-cheery doctor made his way into the room, smile stretched impossibly wide across his face. He held a clipboard in one hand; not particularly unusual, except for the long sheet of paper that streamed from it and trailed behind him. Pasha couldn't even see the end of the thing - it disappeared in the hallway and showed no signs of stopping even as the doctor stopped at the foot of his bed.

"Sailor Pyxis! It's a miracle that you're alive, son. A real miracle. Now, you'll never have a soul again, your chances of being happy are extremely slim, you may turn into a youma within the next few years, and there is a tiiiiny issue that I'd like to discuss with you. Your friends here-" he gestured to Audrey, Abel, and Tallulah, who leered at him, "tell me that you love eating sweets and candy. Well, that will have to be cut entirely out of your diet. The bionics we gave you to keep you alive won't cope well with any sort of sugar intake - any at all - and I'd hate to see all of my good work go to waste."

Pasha just stared at him, eyes wide.

"Oh, you're too shy to ask about my work! I understand. Here, take a look." He lifted the thin hospital blanket off of the boy, exposing the hospital gown beneath...and the reason Pasha thought that his chest had felt particularly wet and oozing. Every beep of the heart monitor came right before another little bubble of thick, red blood passed through the disfiguring, gnarled scar that streaked across his pale skin. "Just a masterpiece, isn't it?" the doctor asked, eyes and smile widening past their already impossibly wide limits.

"No!" Pasha shrieked, shoving the doctor away. The beeping monitors grew deafeningly louder as he lunged towards his friends, reaching out for them. Shaking fingertips barely brushed Audrey's hair as she stepped away and just missed Tallulah's arm when she sidestepped. Though he hadn't seen Abel move at all, there appeared to be reddening marks on his hand that were telltale of being scratched by a cat. "Help me, please! Please!"

Tallulah smiled cynically at him and turned to leave. In the bag she carried, he could see her carting away the drawings he'd made for the Basterds and his Model U.N. Russian flag (how'd she get that from his desk?). Abel flopped to the bed, suddenly neglected by Audrey, his cravat stained with the same jarring red that stained Pasha's hospital gown. Audrey simply leaned forward to hug him, the red stain from his chest transferring to her shirt as she held him close. "Oh, Pasha," she whispered out of the doctor's earshot. "Why would we help you? We're the ones who did it."

Pasha fell out of bed, earning a yowl from Trinket as he landed on him. He kicked and flailed, trying to get out of the tangled bedsheets, fighting against the nightmare version of his best friend that (thankfully) didn't exist in this reality. His eyelashes felt thick from tears, and his chest ached, unsettlingly reminiscent of the terrible dream. The blue LED of the clock beside him flashed "3:27 A.M.", but he still reached for his phone, flipping it open with a rattle of charms and highlighting "Audrey" in his contacts list. She'd surely fix it, just like she always did. His thumb hit the green call button, and he reached for a Starburst, unwrapping it to pop in his mouth with a definite urgency.