Chapter Text
*The 3 Elements I'm basing Johnny on in this fic*
You came out of nowhere
Stealing my heart and brain
Flaming my every cell
You make me feel myself
He’s not breathing. Get the defibs over here now! Stand back! *THUNK*
“Johnny…stay with us…ok??” Daniel LaRusso was in a near panic.
“Sir…how do you know the victim? How did you find him?”
“I...I’ve known him forever. He’s…He’s my high school…uh…”
“NO PULSE!!”
“AGAIN!!” *THUNK*
“Get him to the ambulance.”
“Johnny! Is he ok? What’s happening??!!”
“Well…shit.” I say looking down at myself. I don’t exactly remember when it happened. All I can recall is when I stood up but didn’t stand up. If that makes any sense to you. I felt a pull like the want to sit, to move to lift but nothing happened.
I tried lifting my arm, testing my fingers. Eventually, if I thought hard enough about it, I was able to raise my hand. It felt like the ripping of a phone book or a tough piece of paper. It took all of my efforts to make it move. I held my hand in front of my face. This couldn’t be right. I shook it in front of my face. Why can I see the ground? Right through my hand. What’s happening?
I sat up. Everything was easier all of the sudden. It was weightless. I sat up and up and UP like I was being wrenched from the earth. Wait a minute. I dug my heels in like it would stop me somehow. I looked down and saw…what? Who? I slowed and clawed my way back down to the…what was it…I could see a body lying on the ground. I could see others huddled over and around it. I didn’t know who any of these people were. What is that noise? Almost like singing. I ignored it. I wanted to know what was happening. I walked shakily over to the first person I saw and tried to get a look at the…what I knew now was a body on the ground. Was someone hurt?
Something slammed into my chest. I was being pulled. Forcefully pulled closer to the huddled form on the ground. It felt like someone playing tug of war with me. I didn’t want to see. But something was dragging me back.
“No.” The sound of my voice did not come from me but from all around me. That damn music growing louder in my ear.
I finally got enough courage to approach what was now being put on a gurney and wheeled over to red and blue flashing lights. The lights were everywhere. They bathed the night red on blue, blue on red. Washing over my face. Washing over what was lying on the stretcher. I approached it.
“Johnny I’m here for you buddy, I’m not going to leave you.”
“I’m not going anywhere, LaRusso…and what the hell are you doing here anyway?” I said turning to the on again, off again bastard that made my life hell on earth. The reason I was at this dive bar anyway, drinking my face off.
He just stood there not answering me. He was moving toward the ambulance with whoever was on the cot.
I looked down. Have you ever had those moments when it feels like your heart goes straight to your feet? Sometimes it’s like when you say something that just comes out of your mouth and you don’t think before you say it and that rush to your feet makes your face blush and it’s hard to recover from it? This is that feeling. I was looking at me. I was the one with the sheet covered up to my neck. I was the one being placed on the ambulance. I was the one….
“Daniel!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, looking across the stretcher at the shaken man holding on to my limp hand. I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel it. I wasn’t there. “DANIEL!” I screamed again. I can tell you I was starting to become really afraid now. This wasn’t some kinda drunk induced hazy dream. I pushed on the cot. It didn’t move and my hand didn’t stop moving. It went right on through.
I could see Daniel then. He looked up. As if he heard me calling his name. He looked right at me. Right through me. I wanted to smile at him. I wanted to shout…”YES you see me!! YOU can see me!!!” I opened my mouth to do so, but he shook his head, confused and looked back down at the stretcher. He went inside with…I don’t know what to call it. Me? The Body? I wasn’t there. I was right here. What do I do?
The ambulance started pulling away when I realized that it was leaving. “No wait…NO…you can’t leave me here!” I stood looking at the nearly empty street. Police cars were dotting the pavement asking the remaining bystanders questions. “What happened?” “How did you know the deceased?”
“Deceased.”
“Dead.”
Blinding white light. So bright I couldn’t see anything anymore. I put my hands in front of my eyes to shield them. It did no good the light went through me, around me everywhere. The people faded out and the music grew louder, deafening, pulsating. I felt it, going deep, throbbing inside of me. I started backing away. I had to get away from here. I’ve seen too many movies. This is not fair. “You gotta be kidding me.”
I turn and ran. I didn’t care where I was going. The white light was everywhere. I couldn’t outrun it. It was consuming me. I pushed past as fast as I could. I willed my legs to run, run past until everything was purple, until everything was black, until everything came back into focus.
I was in the emergency room.
Across the time and space
A never-ending dance
A blooming and a trance
You make me feel my soul
There's no more loneliness
Only sparkles and sweat
There's no more single fate
You make me feel myself
I could have told those doctors bustling around me that it was pointless. They already knew. I had to give them credit for trying though. I didn’t feel any of the needles, knives or electric shocks going into my body. It was just there. Looking back at me. I wish someone would have closed my eyes. I looked at me looking back accusingly. “I’m sorry.” I whispered. I don’t think I could have said anymore. But I was standing here. Something had to have happened some trace of me still fighting to come back. Don’t give up on me yet.
I blinked and I was in the morgue. It was green in there. A green eerie glow cast shadows on my body. I was naked, covered with a thin white sheet on a cold metal slab. That I did feel. Freezing metal on my bare ass. Not pleasant. It was deathly cold in the room. If I thought about it I could see my breath billowing out in front of me. Or maybe it was just a memory. I came close and looked down on myself. My lips were blue and my eyes, now closed had blue shadows underneath. Can you imagine how surreal this must be? I fought against it but I wanted to reach out and touch my skin. I wanted to feel if I was cold, stiff. Dead.
Before I could the door opened to the room and Shannon and Robby were there. This I wouldn’t believe in a million years. My ex-wife and my son here for me. I know something has to be serious now.
“Dad…” My son whispered quietly. He reached out a hesitant hand.
I bit my lip. I could hear and actually feel the pain in his voice. It was red hot like a fire poker left in the embers too long. I could feel the strangle in his throat. The way he was fighting back his tears. I could see it like a hard knot in his chest. I could see the color of his emotions. It was like a kaleidoscope all rolling in on themselves and I couldn’t discern one color from the next. It was too painful to look at. I looked at Shannon. She was blue. I don’t mean sad. She literally looked blue. A cold white light pushed the blue to the edges. She was as cold as her color. I couldn’t touch her.
“Your father has really done it to himself this time.” She said, her mouth firm.
“Mom…please…just once…can you not speak about him like he’s always been some kind of ‘fuck up’?” Robby looked at her his eyes watering.
Shannon sighed. “Tell me how I’m supposed to think any different of him. Look at him. He’s…he’s…” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
I watched Robby lead her out of the room. I wanted to follow them. I took a step in that direction but an electrifying pain shot up through my leg and into my spine. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. I fought against the pain and pulled as hard as I could but I was rooted to the spot by a force that I would never be able to push past.
The door knob turned again. Daniel LaRusso walked in with his wife…what was her name? Amanda? That sounds right. I watched him stand in the doorway. He was afraid. No. Afraid wasn’t the right word. He was disbelieving. He was in shock. Shock. He radiated a bright white aura almost as bright as the white that tried to consume me on the road. I could barely make out his features. His wife, a warm yellow glow beside him, urged him into the room. When they came into the darkened green sickly glow of the morgue they returned to their natural forms, shadows highlighting their faces.
Amanda was holding on to her husband’s arm. I could see she was trying to steady herself as well as him. Something loud clanked against the cold metal table. It sounded like a cube of ice…no more like hail hitting a tin roof. It came again. I looked at Daniel’s face. Another tear fell and hit the table hard. *crack* Ice breaking. He reached for my fingers.
“Are you seriously crying, LaRusso?” I laughed at him. I would have never thought in my life. The last time we spoke he begrudgingly congratulated me for winning the tournament. For finally getting what I wanted. He didn’t mean it. He meant it more when he told me “it would never be over”. Those words were on a constant loop, repeat in my head right now. They danced in front of me, in front of him. “Right…Like this will ever be over….”
I didn’t feel him touching me. He bent down to whisper something in my ear. I couldn’t make it out. For all the things I could do, I couldn’t hear what he was saying to me now. Probably he wanted to kick my ass or something. I guess I would have let him, if I could have come back from this nightmare.
He took his wife’s hand and turned toward the door. “Don’t leave me!” I shouted at his back. He paused, if only for the briefest of moments. He opened the door and Amanda walked out first. I willed my mind, my body, my existence to follow him through the door. I wouldn’t be stuck here waiting to find out what happens next.
“Move!”
The feeling was instantaneous. Like water moving downstream. It was so lightening quick, I couldn’t stop myself if I tried. I slammed through the door and down the hall and through the back and through the front of Daniel LaRusso. I felt myself enter and exit. I touched his soul and moved past it and through it and now I’m on the opposite side looking at him. The feeling. I can’t describe it to you. There are no words. There are no sounds. No feelings that can compare.
I watched him shiver and recover.
“Are you ok, Honey?” Amanda asked concerned.
“Yeah…yeah I’m fine. That was weird. I just got a cold chill.”
“Come on…let’s go home. You need your rest. We’ll help with the arrangements tomorrow.”
I watched her pull Daniel close to her skin and his face buried in her neck. He let out a sob. “It’s ok…” she shh’d him.
I followed behind them as they made their way to the double doors of the emergency room entrance. The doors whooshed open and a blast of air hit the pair. Their auras mingled in front of me briefly. I wasn’t jealous. But I can tell you at that point I now know what it is like to be truly connected as one in a marriage. White and orange combined to make gold. It did make me angry. I kicked at the door in frustration. Daniel looked as if he heard something and looked up into the reflection of the glass. I looked back at him. Funny…it seemed as if he recognized me again. I started…I’m ecstatic. “You can see me!”
They pushed through and went to their car. I stood in the parking lot, unsure of what to do next. It had begun to rain. I couldn’t feel it. It had no effect on me. The drops fell past me, through me.
The car turned the corner at the end of the parking lot. I sighed. I blinked my eyes. I was in the backseat of the LaRusso’s luxury automobile. Was this getting easier? I shouldn’t be getting used to this. I shouldn’t be getting used to anything. I scrubbed my hands over my face and the back of my neck. Something told me I was going wind up spending eternity staring at the back of Daniel LaRusso’s head. “Well…shit.” I repeated and put my head back on the headrest.
Will you stand in this land?
Will you stand in this land forever?