Chapter: Heart
There's a fire starting in my heart
Awaking from the dreamless sleep he'd been submerged into was like trying to break through to the surface of a tarry lake. The darkness clung to him like a sticky substance, forcing his limbs to move at a snail's pace. He met resistance with every kick and every stretch. It tightened around him and tried to seep into skin, tried to trick him into thinking he was going to suffocate if he didn't breathe it in.
His head was pounding. He recoiled at the power of the dark around him, but he wouldn't let it in. He couldn't let it in. Not when he knew what he knew now.
He recognised the familiar coaxing of the things in the dark, and he strained against it. He heard his name. Again. And again. He followed the alluring sound like crystal bells clinking together. He reached up once more, gave one final kick; his lungs burst into action, filling with icy oppressive air.
His heart began to beat, and with it came the swarm of regret and pain and love that he'd been battling with before he'd been plunged into this darkness. He opened his eyes to see his elders dispersing from where he lay on the hard gray ground. Crocodile Eyes lingered until he sat up.
"The young," the Crocodile Eyed shadow man rasped out, making it sound like both an insult and a musing, before he evaporated into the shadows.
The small foetus-like shadow man remained the longest, standing quietly aside and watching. Their eyes met, and the foetus cocked its head to the side. The silence was deafening.
He didn't need to ask how he'd been brought back. Cutting his name from the Stave of Life cut him out of the family tree. What he once was, essentially ceased to exist.
He had no power.
He was no longer a shadow man.
He was broken, by all extents and purposes.
But he still had the memory of her honey-in-sunlight hair, her sparkling goldy-green eyes, the way she made his heart beat when he watched her. For now, her memory would be enough.
A/N: Because I'm anti-cliché, goremaggot!
Don't expect much from this fic, I just need to prompt a kick up my muse's behind to get it working for my novels.