The world around her was on mute.

Right now, there was no other way to describe it.

Cold, submerged in darkness, it was the only thing she could associate with the world's condition.

The world was mute, because she couldn't hear anything.

It was so, because there was nothing around her that could tell her anything at all.

Darkness clouded her vision, rendering her blind, just as the lack of sound made her deaf.

Reaching forward, her fingers groping through the darkness for something to hold onto, her world swirled around, disorientating like the strong currents swirling beneath the surface of the ocean.

She searched for some hint of another soul in the darkness with her.

Repetitively, aimlessly, based purely on instinctive habit.

It was a small set of movements she'd go through every time she woke up in the dark.

When had it all started, though?

That's right ... it was when her mother had been wiped from the earth right before her very eyes.

Yes. It was caused by the one event that sent her life spiraling into chaos, driven by the whims of a man dressed in a white coat.

How long had it been since that day?

No sense of time greeted her, and in fact the memories still haunt her to this day.

Was it still June? Or had so much more time passed since that fateful day?

Inwardly she knew nobody would answer her, and her fingers continued to grope for some hint of anything that would tell her if she was all alone here.

It came in the form of a harsh cold that was familiar in a demoralizing, heart-wrenching manner.

Her fingers finally reached something through the darkness, something tangible that she recognized to be there with her in the darkness.

It was as cold as ice, a hard surface that upon contact with her fingers caused a dull, underwater tapping to echo through the darkness.

She blinked her unseeing eyes, her fingers remaining upon the cold surface that she had found in the black.

And then the world began to come into focus.

Strands of silver white glistened with light, slowly drifting through what she soon recognized to be some kind of water, reflecting light through the water and glistening around her.

The acrid metallic taste was a familiarity that scared her, terrifying in comparison to anything else in her conscious memory.

And yet her little body did nothing but stare forward through the water.

The cold, hard surface her fingers were pressing against soon came to her understanding as her vision cleared, and she found herself unable to see anything, despite the fact that she could feel it.

She was suspended within the inside of a tank scarcely big enough for her to stretch inside, filled to the brim with the acrid water she was terrified of, yet forced to spend great periods of time suspended within.

She was lying on the bottom of the tank, her body resting weightlessly on her left side as she stared blankly forward.

It was the dull feeling of waking up from an induced slumber, where her senses slowly began to return to her.

The world outside her little prison was white with tiled floors, white walls and a white ceiling, a rectangular room with her tank built into the far wall, with just one windowless steel door at the opposite end. The room was scarcely wide enough for two people to stand side-by-side, however length-ways, it could easily fit a good ten with room to spare. The walls were adorned with computer monitors turned off, black rectangles against an unlit white wall, but nothing further.

Beyond the windowless steel door was an elevator – The cable-drawn cage she'd never consciously been inside. She always just woke up in the tank, or outside in one of the other rooms in the building, so she never knew where anything was, or even if they were in the same building.

The room was dim, all lights turned off aside from one; A dull, green safety light that gave the prison an otherworldly glow.

It was terrifying to be alone in the water, but it was a nightmare she'd become used to.

How long had she been in the water, this time?

She had no true concept of time, even if she was conscious.

There was no telling how long she'd been asleep at any point, or even if she really was awake right now.

The only thing that told her she was still alive was the taste of the water she could never get rid of, and the pain that wracked her small form.

She closed her eyes for just a second, her fingers slowly slipping from the cold glass as a shiver shot through her form.

She wanted to go back to sleep, if only so she didn't have to lie there in her own personal hell.

However the tiniest sounds of movement echoed with dull clarity through her metallic water, bringing her to open her eyes once again.

She had expected to see the same empty room ahead of her, just like every time she woke up in her tank, however she found herself almost disbelieving what she found instead.

The dull clunking that was echoing through her water was that of footsteps, belonging to a form that was standing right in front of her tank.

Her weak eyes traced the form, slowly from the feet upwards as she slowly forced her body to turn a little more onto her back, despite the sharp, jabbing pain of metal prodding down her spine.

The form was that of a man she couldn't recognize; Only that he was a silhouette appearing to wear a black suit and tie. The green light from the door of her room illuminated short, snowy white hair and the tiniest hint of a beard.

Piercing, blood red eyes stared into her own as she remained unmoving.

The only thing she knew was that he wasn't her father, or anyone else she had seen before.

Small hints of movement signified speech, as if the intimidating man standing in front of her tank was talking to her right now.

However much like many memories relived in dreams, no words echoed from him in a way that her ears could hear.

And yet deep down in her subconsciousness, she knew what the man was saying to her – what he was informing her with no care or consideration evident in his expression or tone of voice.

Instead, as realization that this was a dream built out of memories, her vision began to fade to black.

The pain in her body and her heart began to fade, along with the world that haunted her very soul.

The divide between her nightmare and the outside world reconnected, allowing her to escape from the room, and the intimidating man with no name or face.

Consciousness came to Amaya slowly and gradually, and when she finally came to, she had no understanding of what had happened or even what was going on around her.

She couldn't even remember where she was, nor how she had even ended up there in the first place.

There was no comprehension of time for Amaya, who for the first time in her conscious memory, awoke with no comprehension or recognition of anything. Her mind was heavy, and yet there was no immediate conscious awareness that could be found.

The scene she woke up to was as peculiar as it was painful, for more than one reason.

Her body was aching with pain when she awoke, wracked with cold inflicted by the water she was drenched in.

She found that she was in an unfamiliar room, but nothing else.

A familiar form her stomach told her she knew very well but her mind did not recognize right yet was staring down at her, his form a silhouette against the bright, painful light that filtered down from the ceiling.

Just like the man in that memory.

About the most she could ascertain from her disconnected state was that the familiar person was about as drenched as she was right then, and there was a tension about him that actually bothered her.

He seemed to be talking quickly to her, almost desperately.

And yet she could not hear him – He spoke without sound, much like those dreams of memories she would have.

She felt oddly detached from an emotional state, instead overly perceptive to physical sensations instead.

Such as the smallest sensations of warmth against the side of her face, and the cold droplets of water from his sodden form hitting against her skin as they fell.

She could tell that something was very wrong, however.

So she asked the first thing that came to her mind.

'Karma...? Why are you all wet?' Amaya managed to ask through the haze that had yet to release it's hold of her.

Immediately, he fell into a state of bewildered silence as he stared at her, that of which Amaya could tell now that her senses were beginning to come back to her.

Only it was a few seconds later when he seemed to suddenly become quite angry, where he then grabbed the sides of her face in a harsh pinching manner.

'What the hell, Amaya?! Are you trying to kill me?!' He seethed at her, his grip of her face causing quite a lot of pain.

'O-owwww! That a-actually hurts!' Amaya whimpered as tears began to form in the corners of her eyes.

No response – The red-head actually seemed to increase his pain-inflicting hold of her as he pulled at her face.

'Wh-what'd I do wrong?!' She managed to ask.

Her question seemed to startle him just enough to have him halt in what was obviously a kind of punishment for her, however the angry look actually seemed to escalate all of a sudden as he actually looked at her teary expression.

He quickly released the sides of her face and dragged himself to his feet before Amaya had even realized what had happened.

And just as she opened her mouth to question him, he'd already stalked out of the door before.

Leaving her alone in a bewildered silence.

She blinked slowly, wincing at the after-image of that green glow dancing about in her head.

Carefully, Amaya lifted herself upright to gaze around at her surroundings.

She didn't understand what was going on right now, even though pieces were beginning to come back to her now that she was upright and had regained her senses. She didn't think there was something she'd managed to do wrong, but his seething words stuck out painfully to Amaya.

Why was he suddenly so angry at her?

She just didn't get it, no matter how hard she tried to think about it.

The pain that she'd woken up to had dulled, however the cold was still there, harsher still it seemed.

She began to shiver from both the cold, and the rolling waves of stress and anxiety as she remembered being thrown into the bathtub.

Amaya then began to string bits and pieces together from what she'd finally managed to remember, now that her senses were back.

She guessed she must have blacked out when she hit the water, and when she didn't throw herself out of the water like he'd expected, Karma'd probably realized something was wrong and dragged her out.

She wondered how long she was out cold like that – it felt like it had been a while.

But then again, Karma was dripping with water when she woke up.

So ... maybe it had been a matter of a couple of minutes?

However Amaya didn't have a chance to contemplate these small tidbits of information that seemed to matter to her right at that second.

The door of the bathroom opened with a sharp, sudden motion, causing Amaya to look up at a suddenly present Karma as he crouched down right in front of her.

The angry look was still firmly in place as he wordlessly set a dry change of clothes and a warmed towel in her hands, and it only seemed to grow stronger as he inspected her face for a couple of seconds.

And yet he didn't say anything; He just picked himself up and marched himself out of the bathroom again, water still dripping from his hair and clothes.

Okay, he wasn't mad.

Amaya realized as the door slammed shut behind him that he was actually livid.

She couldn't tell who he was so angry with even though she felt pretty certain it was her, but she could at least tell that he was trying to keep his temper in check.

That was probably why he wasn't saying anything to her right now.

So she decided to do as he obviously wanted, lifting herself to her unsteady feet to get herself out of the sodden clothes.

It wasn't in her best interests to sit in the bathroom all night, anyway.

As she ambled along in her motions, she found herself wincing at glimpses of that room that would pop into her head every time she allowed herself to drift into thought.

She couldn't recall who that man was, but it wasn't like she was trying to remember anything about him.

Not when an instinctive, visceral sense of discomfort and apprehension began to bombard her every time she glimpsed that green-washed silhouette in her mind.

The only thing she knew was that he wasn't her Father, but at the same time the mere thought drew a very strong emotion from her in just the same way.

In how she loathed Katsuragi Toji with every inch of her body, the faceless, nameless man in that memory had her overcome with fear.

Though that might be because of the memory, not because of the man himself.

The sounds of Karma's voice somewhere in the apartment drew Amaya out of her thoughts, bringing her to look up from the dripping shirt and shorts in her hands. She stopped to listen for a few seconds, her ears straining to pick up on who he was talking to.

There was silence at first, and then Karma's muffled voice would echo once again as if responding to something.

She couldn't hear what he was saying, but she could tell that his mood was reflected in his tone of voice.

Amaya let out a breath, gently squeezing out the excess water in the clothes before she began to leave the bathroom altogether.

Would it be better for him if she just went to the school and stayed the night there, instead?

It felt like she was just inconveniencing him by being here.

Inconvenience?

No, it was more like her presence just brought uncomfortable situations and incidents about.

Right ... it was like she just caused problems for him.

She really should have just gone to the Classroom and slept there instead.

But Amaya was pretty certain the red-head would have gotten mad at her for doing that, so it didn't really matter either which way.

Somewhere in amongst her thoughts, Amaya found herself standing in Karma's room, damp clothes gone from her grip, and no livid red-head to speak of within the room. She hadn't noticed it at first, however it was the sounds of the door closing from a few paces behind that Amaya actually realized she'd been lost in her thoughts.

'You're not going to grow any taller by standing there all night.' Karma remarked as he walked past her, causing the girl to look up at him in surprise.

He hadn't looked at her, however she could see that he was still in a bad mood.

'S-sorry ... I didn't--'

'I know.' Karma dismissed her words as he dropped himself down onto the futon on the floor.

'Umm ...'

'You've got the bed.'

He was giving her his bed to sleep for the night ...?

Wait – why was he doing that?

It made no sense to her, and in fact made her feel even worse about the situation.

'You don't have to ... I can just go home ... if you lend me the key ...'

She heard a frustrated sigh escape the red-head, however she had averted her eyes to stare down at her feet.

'Stop being stupid, Amaya.' He told her, exasperation playing heavy in his tone of voice. 'It's fine.'

Amaya actually winced as he called her by her whole name.

It felt much like she'd just been struck, but she did inwardly know that he was just in a terrible mood.

She still couldn't shake the thought that she was the one he was angry with.

However she did as she was more or less told – hesitantly, she ambled over to climb on the bed, her gaze kept furtively away as she settled down in a sitting position with her back against the wall, and her knees pulled up to her chest.

She couldn't see any hint of Karma over the edge of the bed, or even the futon.

It was a few seconds later when the light had turned off, and she heard the smallest sounds of something being set down on the bedside table.

She stared blindly at her knees as the room was plunged to darkness, realizing before very long that she wasn't going to be sleeping anytime soon.

She had almost entirely forgotten about that room after seven years, but now she couldn't get it out of her head, no matter how hard she really did try.

Because the darkness in Karma's room felt so uncomfortably familiar.

It felt like the darkness in the second room before she would wake up in that water, and it scared her.

Paranoia began to take ahold of her as a sense of familiarity began to stab into her chest, and it was all she could do to rest her head atop her knees and place her hands to her ears.

If she could focus on the sound of her own pulse in her hands, it might help.

She had no concept of time anymore, and maybe that was to her benefit.

Because if she knew how long she'd been sitting there trembling on the verge of bursting into tears, she might have cracked altogether.

And if she cracked, then she really might stop spinning and drown.

Somewhere in the span of Amaya's trembling, she hadn't heard the sound of movement in the room, nor had she felt the bed move at all.

The only understanding that she had through her internal screaming was as she felt someone wrap their arms around her and pull her against their chest.

No words were spoken at that moment, no sound escaping either of them as she felt the warmth from his embrace begin to sink into her frozen, trembling form. The tears she'd been struggling to contain finally escaped her as she realized that this wasn't an illusion created by her overstrung, lonely little heart.

The warmth in his grip of her was enough to help her drag herself out of reliving the nightmare inside her head.

The arms tightened around her as she finally cracked, and two little words were whispered into her ear.

'I'm sorry ...'

---=[Authors Note]=---

Chapter Twenty Six is DONE!!! A Chapter that belongs in a Feels Book, I believe. I must apologise to everyone who's used to the humor that previous Chapters have in overabundance. But, how'd it turn out? Did I do alright with the Chapter? I hope y'all enjoyed it anyways.

No dedications this time around, however I must thank Timelogical and Odd_Numbers_Die for the sweet compliments on my story ^_^ Thank you both, and I hope you enjoyed the story, despite being a bit feelzy at the moment.

Oh! And Yander3RedQueen! Was this the kind of Enlightening that you were expecting?

Translation Notes for Chapter Twenty Six of Marionette (Just the one today xD):

Mizu no Sekai – Translates as World of Water, which is written as 水の世界 in Japanese. Mizu (水) means water, Sekai (世界) means World. Our Title Chapter is called this, in reference to Amaya's memory, here.

The video in the Top of the Chapter is an Original Soundtrack from an Anime called Black Rock Shooter (One that I'm very fond of, and highly recommend it if you like stories with a bit of a sad twist in them) and the piece itself is called Kanashimi, which means Sadness / Sorrow. It's a song I absolutely adore, and it's kind of the piece I've been listening to on repeat while working on this chapter. I just felt like sharing it with you all because I think it's a really beautiful, bittersweet composition that kinda fits in with the chapter (In my own preference of music, haha).

Would y'all like me to link music to the chapters in future updates? It's what I did with one of my stories on my Fanfiction account :) Lemme know your answer below!