Le La

“Do I know you?”

At that, the woman standing in front of him begins to cry. No, not cry—Sob. Hysterically. Her whole body shakes, her ruffled brown hair shaking with it. He shifts uncomfortably in his bed.

“You really don’t remember me?” she asks. Her voice has a tinge of desperation in it, her eyes searching for something. She waits expectantly.

He shakes his head. “Sorry, I-”, he says, but is cut off as she begins to cry again. He clasps and unclasps his hand. “I’m sorry, Miss. Maybe I’ll remember, though?” He ends his sentence in a question because he truly doesn’t know. He doesn’t know who she is. He doesn’t know if he’ll remember. He doesn’t even know what it is that he’s forgotten.

“It’s okay,” she says softly, having gathered herself. “It’s not your fault.”

They sit for a minute. She gazes at him with pity. He tries to mimic her sadness, but he doesn’t feel particularly sad.

“Do you remember…” she trails off. Clearing her throat, she tries again. “Do you remember anything about how it happened? About Le-” she trails off again.

“About how what happened?” He asks slowly.

She shakes her head. “Nevermind. It’s… That’s okay. You would know what I meant if you did. Maybe it’s better you don’t.”

Footsteps grow near. The woman wipes her tears. A man and another woman enter the room. They both don white coats and wear square glasses. He watches the pair as they enter. A touch on his arm draws his eyes away. Looking down, he sees the brown-haired woman’s hand on his arm.

“I’ll visit you,” she whispered, rubbing her thumb on his arm. “And if it’s meant to be, we’ll find eachother again.”

She pushes off the bedside table and leaves. He couldn’t help but notice that she was crying again.

The two other people in the room gather around him. They introduce themselves: Doctor Gordon and Nurse Flemming. They tell him that they’re going to help him. Help? Yes, he’d been in a freak accident and ended up hurt and without any memories. They tell him things they’re going to try to do to help him, but it’s lost on him.

A few minutes pass, and the two of them have fallen into a silent rhythm of working.

“Miss- uh, Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“Who am I?”

“Pardon?” she says, taken slightly aback.

“What’s my name? I can’t seem to remember, and nobody's told me.”

“Oh, of course.” She nods at nurse Flemming, and he reads off a clipboard.

“Aisea.”She says it like “Eye-sea”.

“I think it’s Aisea,” the nurse says. He says it like “Ay-she”. They’re both wrong. Aisea knows it. He doesn’t correct them, though. He’s just glad to know his name.

Two weeks have passed. My ankle isn’t swollen anymore. I can move around normally and eat normally. One more day before I’m discharged. Still haven’t remembered anything. Saydee came back. The blonde woman from before. Brought a duffel bag and a cardboard box of stuff. She said it's my stuff. Stuff I left at her house. I’ve been wearing the clothes around. The therapist said it might help me remember. I don’t. And I don’t like these clothes either.

“Aisea? Ready?”

“Yeah, I’m ready,” he says, closing his notebook. He was told it might help to write things down, and that writing might bring out some thoughts and memories. So far, journaling hasn’t helped, though.

He follows the therapist to a small room. It’s bland, with only a couch, a chair, and a table. Then they begin their cycle.

“Do you have any pain? Any headaches or nausea?”

No.

“You having any trouble with anything? Using the bathroom? Getting dressed?”

No.

Then they do puzzles, memory games, balance tests, and more. Anything they could do to test his affliction. They show him old photographs of himself. Himself with his family. Him with his friends. Him by himself.

“How does this make you feel? Do you know who this is?”

No. It’s always no.

The appointment ends. Aisea leaves the small room to head back to his. Down the hall, take a right, and keep going until the staircase, then-

GRrrrr

His rumbling stomach stops him in his tracks. He pivots on his foot and heads back the way he came. There’s a vending machine that way. Walking down the hall, he passes doctors, nurses, and other patients, or perhaps some are visiting friends and family.

Then, a flash of color in the corner of his eye.

Blue.

Blue and Black fabric disappearing around a corner.

Aisea doesn’t know why, but he has the feeling that they ducked to hide from him. He isn’t sure why, he just feels it in his gut.

Aisea hustles over to the corner to see who it is, only to see the ends of their coat dipping behind another corner. He follows suit. Chasing the mysterious figure around the corner and into the stairwell. Then up, up, up they go. Aisea finds himself quickly out of breath, out of shape from sitting in a bed for the past week or so.

The person shoots out of the stairwell on the 13th floor. Aisea chases close behind. They run down the hall, around a corner, and all the way down another hall. Their feet thud heavily, slapping the floor with all the grace of two elephants in tap shoes. At the end of the hall was another door. Following the blue-clothed figure into it, Aisea finds himself in another stairwell.

Up two more floors. The door to the roof, which was locked. Dead end.

“Wait-” Aisea called out, but before he could say anything else, the figure kicked open the door and darted onto the roof.

Pursuing them onto the roof, he sees them run to the edge and stop.

“Wait! Don’t jump!”

The person jumps. Aisea watches in horror first, then disbelief, as they leap forward and onto the next roof over.

“Jesus!” he shouts, watching helplessly as they get away.

He turns to go back inside the hospital, but finds the door closed and locked.

“Hello? Helloo?” Aisea calls through the door while banging on it. No response. He puts his head against the door and listens. Nothing.

Turning back around, he gets an idea.

No, not an idea—a feeling. He doesn’t think, doesn’t hesitate. Just runs forward and jumps.

For a moment, he’s falling. Hanging hopelessly in the air with limbs swinging. Then he’s landing on the other roof with a painful thump. He lies there in shock. A part of him can’t believe he just did that. Another part of him can. So he sits up and thinks. It had felt almost like muscle memory. Maybe it was.

Remembering why he jumped sits up and looks around. He can see the figure on the next rooftop over. They’ve slowed down, no doubt thinking that they got away. This was his chance.

He pushes himself off the ground and brushes off his legs. Then, he takes off. Jogging, then running. Then he’s leaping onto the ledge and pushing himself to the next. This time, when he does so, he feels in control of his body. No twisting awkwardly in the air, and when he lands, it’s graceful, painless, and nearly soundless.

Aisea looks up. One more leap over and he’ll reach them, whoever they are. One more gap, one more ledge. He stands up. A tugging in his chest urges him forward. Is this crazy? Maybe. He doesn’t care. He jumped the last two rooftops, so surely he can jump this one.

Thwap, thwap, thwap.

His feet slap the roof softly in a snappy rhythm. Running. Then the edge. Then the leap. It’s not until after the leap, though, that he realizes that this gap is quite a bit larger than the last two. By at least three feet, which doesn’t seem like that much till you’re 163 feet in the air and plummeting to your death.

“Ah-” he squeaks out, his voice choking off fearfully in his throat. He closes his eyes, hands outstretched, legs limp.

Suddenly, a sharp, sudden jerk on his wrist. His whole body lurches midair. His eyes snap open. Looking up, there is the blue-clothed figure. They’re hanging dangerously on the edge of the roof, inches from his face, holding tightly on to his arm. Their grip is like steel, their muscles tight. Sweat beads their forehead and drips onto their mask.

That’s all Aisea has time to notice, though, before he’s pulled up and hauled over the edge, back onto the solid ground. Or rather, solid roof.

He crawls away from the edge and collapses onto the gravel roofing, gasping for breath. If not for his heart hammering against his ribs, he might think he’d died.

“You idiot,” the figure spits out, their voice low and tired. “What were you thinking? Are you crazy?”

Aisea pushes himself onto his knees and stares up at his savior. “I… I was following you. Who are you?”

The person turns away and behind to brush off their shirt. They seemed mysterious and stern, but Aisea could tell they cared. Much in the same way, he could tell that they were hurt by his response. Their eyes, now hidden from Aisea’s view, had seemed like Saydee’s.

“Do I know you?”

No response.

“I know you, don’t I?”

The cloaked figure takes a step back, creating some distance between them. “You shouldt’ve followed me.” They glance back towards the Aisea, then at the edge of the roof, as if calculating their next move.

“Wait!” Asiea scrambles to his feet, ignoring any aching in his body. “I- I’m stuck. I can’t get back down.”

They stand there in silence for a moment, the only sound being their labored breathing.

“You got yourself up here,” they said with a tilt of their head and a shrug of their shoulders before taking off running towards the far side of the roof. Aisea jumps up and follows.

Black and blue disappear over the edge with a metal clang of the fire escape. Aisea lunges after, tumbling over the roof and landing with a painful Thwack-like sound.

“Wait! Please!” Aisea pounces forward, just catching the edge of the figure’s arm as they descend down the ladder. The fabric of the jacket is cold and rough. Utilitarian.

They pull away, the fabric pulling from Aisea’s desperate grip. Landing ot the bottom of the fire escape, they look up and shout, “Stop following me,” and jog off down the alley.

Aisea finishes bumping and tumbling down the fire escape and begins down the alley after them, with only a few more cuts and bruises than before. He chases for a minute longer before they speak again.

“Go back to the hospital,” they say, climbing skillfully up the side of an old, brick building. Out of breath and concentrating, Aisea says nothing. He climbs after, in a slightly less skillful manner.

Two stories up, his hands slip. His body lurches forward, slamming painfully into the brick ledge before falling back down onto the paved ground below. His breath is shocked from his body as his back slams into the pavement. He lays their and groans, taking in deep, and painful-sounding breaths with his eyes closed.

His arm is suddenly yanked up. Opening his eyes slightly, Aisea can make out the blue-coated person. The turn Aisea’s arm in their hands slowly before lowering it back down to the ground, kneeling down next to him as they do so.

“You moron! You’re going to kill yourself following me!”

“You were watching me. In the hospital,” Aisea breathes out, grabbing the edge of their sleeve and rubbing it in his fingers.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Why?” Was he asking why they ran then, or why they came to see him? Not even Aisea knew why he was asking.

The person suddenly lifts his body up with unexpected strength. They look him up and down. Something flickers across their gaze for a second—recognition and something else. Sadness? Regret? They shrug Aisea onto their back and begin walking.

“How are you feeling?”

“Hurt. Sore.”

“Where at? Your head? Your arm?”

“You sound like my therapist.”

They walk another two minutes in silence, with only the sound of their breathing to fill the gap. Their messy dark hair bounces as they walk, brushing Aisea’s cheek in gentle curls. The setting sun casts dark shadows around them, cooling the air as it does.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I… I don’t know. I can’t remember anything, and I feel like everyone’s waiting for me to. I thought I knew you. I thought if I followed you I’d remember, but not only did I not remember, I also almost got you hurt.”

“But you’re the one who got hurt!”

Aisea doesn't respond. They continue walking, the silence between them now heavy with unspoken questions. Aisea, still draped over the person's back, rests his cheek against their shoulder.

“You got hurt because of me.”

“I wanted to follow you. It’s not your fault I chased you.”

“No, not today. Two weeks ago.”

Aisea thought for a second and realized what that meant.

“We had been fighting. You thought I didn't think things through, and I thought that you didn't trust me. So, that night, you listened to me—no talk back, no questions. We broke into the Fitzgerald Northgate Estate-”

“We’re robbers?”

“What? No, uh, just listen. So we broke into the Fitzgerald Estate. Super old, super horrible rich dude.”

“Oh, so we’re like Robin Hood?”

They didn't laugh. “We went through the north side third-floor window—the skinny one—just like I said. I don’t want to get into the specifics, not this soon, but you were right. I rushed into things; I didn’t think the plan through. I thought that even if something happened, you’d figure your way out of it. You always do.”

They take a deep breath. Their shoulders droop. Aisea rubs the shoulder with one hand to reassure him.

“We had split up. You got caught. No backup. No exit. I had used old blueprints. They were different. You had to go all the way back up. Onto the roof. You were climbing down, and they hit you, and you fell.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me back at the hospital?”

“Because! It wasn’t just that time! Its everytime. Every time we do a heist. Every time we hang out. Eveytime were together, you end up hurt. Hurt or upset or in debt or something.”

“So you thought it would be better if I just didn't know?”

They nodded solemnly.

“And you called me the moron.”

“What?”

“I may not remember much, but I know that that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“But you were safe at the hospital. You only got hurt when I showed up to check on yo-”

“No. I got hurt when you ran. You can’t run away from your problems.”

They stop abruptly, causing Aisea to hit their heads with them. The figure—his friend—gently lowers him onto the curb of a quiet side street. They sit next to him, their shoulders touching.

“I ran because I was scared of what could happen,” they say, lowering their mask.

“But running never solves the problem, does it?”

“Just puts it off for later.”

“And maybe you came back because you wanted to face your problems,” he murmurs, exhausted, finally catching up to him. “Now help me up. I need to get back to the hospital, and I need help doing it.”

They help him stand, supporting his weight as they approach the hospital. The night lights flicker on, casting the shadows away. They walk into the hospital, both filthy and tired. Aisea thinks that they must be quite the sight to see, the two of them.

A couple nurses approach him, looking at him with both worry and fear. They look him over and ask him questions before ushering him back into the hospital. Aisea turns his head to look at his mystery friend one more time, except, they’re not a mystery anymore.

“See you when I get out, Le la,” he says to the blue-jacketed person, much to their surprise.