He immediately regretted trying to open his eyes.

The lights were all too bright and overstimulating. Blurs of color whizzed by far too quickly, making him feel dizzy. Everything was out of focus and distant; it gave him a sense of displacement. The sensory overload made him yearn for the safety and peace of the darkness he was used to, even if it was boring.

The closed his eyes and kept them that way, but the blinding lights still shone through his eyelids, creating a strange reddish color. He waited a moment - a minute? an hour? a lifetime? - and slowly cracked his eyes open again. This time, the lights were nowhere near as intense as before, from a blinding supernova to a burning sun. Still too bright for his taste, but much better than before. The blurs of color were coming into focus at a snail's pace, becoming somewhat recognizable shapes.

People?

He closed his eyes once again. He wasn't ready to deal with people, not yet.

Even worse - and so much more interesting - were the sounds. A conglomeration of noises was assaulting his fragile ears. It all blended into a mess of unintelligible white noise, impossible to discern one from another. And it was all so loud.

Focus. Concentrate. What are you hearing?

There. Just barely, but there. The steady beeping of a machine. The sound sang out above the amalgamation, becoming clearer and clearer with each passing second. And then there, something else separating itself. The telltale click of heels on a hard floor. Finally, ever so slowly, people's voices began to emerge.

But what are they saying?

Then, almost as if out of the blue, one voice rang loud and clear above the others, sweet and soothing and familiar. This voice was relaxing and safe, and it made him realize that he was in a place that couldn't be completely unfamiliar. Home was sitting there, right beside him.

"Danny?"

Danny.

It echoed in his head, bouncing around endlessly. The way the voice spoke it, it sounded like it had rolled off its tongue, as if it had been spoken a million times before in a million different ways.

However meaningful to the voice's owner, the mish-mosh of syllables was meaningless to him. Just another noise to add in with the others.

No. Not meaningless.

His name. Danny was his name - had he ever even forgotten it? - and as astonishing as the discovery was initially, the wonder quickly wore off. His name was relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things; it didn't help him find out much more about his situation. There was no need for -

"Danny, please, wake up…"

The voice was full of a sad hope, the kind of hope a person clings to as a last resort when everything else is lost. The kind of hope a person uses to trick themselves into believing that things will turn out okay, even when the worst is inevitable. The kind of hope that - only when coming from this voice - shattered his heart and made him question whether it was worth it, staying sheltered in the darkness.

No. Wake up. Why are you even asleep?

He felt a previously dormant vigor bubble up inside of him. As much as he hated the idea of emerging from his safe, dark cocoon, there was no sense in allowing someone to suffer just so he could have a pleasant experience.

What kind of hero would you be otherwise?

The thought came out of left field. He'd never really considered himself a hero. Of course, that didn't mean he didn't think it was cruel to let the poor, sad voice continue living in misery.

But he didn't open his eyes. Not yet, it was too soon. He was still struggling to make out what the other voices were saying around him, and adding in the bright visuals would be far too overwhelming.

"... awake?"

"... is impossible, he…"

"... seen something…"

The bits and pieces of conversation he could interpret only added to his confusion. Forget what they were saying, these voices weren't familiar at all and made him feel uncomfortable. Where on earth was he where so many strangers were around him? Were they talking about him, too?

Remember the first voice. How it made you feel.

Why did it matter so much? He already knew how the voice felt to him. Yet even as the thought crossed his mind, he was struck with a new sense of familiarity. A memory flew by, followed by another, then another, then a swarm. All of them repeating his name - Danny - all of them accompanied by a petite figure surrounded by a blue aura.

It's a woman. Who is she?

His mother. Or was it? He felt a jolt of unease as he realized he wasn't one hundred percent certain. Shouldn't he be able to recognize his own mother? As hard as he attempted to identify the woman, his memory was foggy and jumbled. Trying to make any sense of the puzzle that was his memory only gave him a headache, and it grew worse with each passing second.

A second later, it dawned on him that he was actually feeling. He became aware of his arms and legs, all of which felt like dead weight dragging him down. His entire body was sore, and he couldn't help but suspect he was supposed to feel a whole lot worse. There was a fine weight settled on top of his legs and torso all the way up to his chest. His head was elevated, resting on something soft and comfortable.

And he was cold. So cold he should've been shivering, but he wasn't. Even stranger was that the cold felt normal, as familiar as the woman's voice.

The fact that he was able to feel excited him. It was something new and different, and although his dark shroud of peace was enticing, he had a new itch to see what was going on outside of his own little world, to try and figure out exactly what was going on.

You just need to open your eyes. Just open them, and you'll get the answers you're looking for.

He hesitated. Somehow, deep down, he knew that opening his eyes this time meant waking up permanently. There would be no returning to his quiet world of darkness. He would have to be prepared to face whatever was out there and take it head on whether he was ready or not.

Do it. Do it for her.

And with that thought, he opened his eyes.

Somehow, the lights seemed even brighter than before, and he could feel tears prickle up in his eyes from the sheer intensity. Still, he blinked them away, trying to drink in the world around him.

Most of the room he was in was a cold, uninviting white, which did not help with the brightness at all. Sunlight flooded the room, only adding to the brilliance of it all. Most figures were still somewhat out of focus, but he could get a general idea of what was happening. Like there, standing in the corner of the room, a man dressed in a long white coat, staring intently at a clipboard and muttering to himself. And standing directly in front of him, a woman, dressed in a sharp, scarlet business suit and holding a pad and pen. Beside her, another man, this one dressed in casual jeans and a bomber jacket, holding a fancy looking camera hoisted onto his shoulder.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. This was another woman, dressed in a strange turquoise outfit. She was beaming down at him with pure, unadulterated joy. Tears were falling freely down her pale cheeks, but her deep blue eyes - so blue they were almost violet - were burning with a fire of passion and love. Seeing her sitting beside him, thrilled to be looking at him in the eye, triggered a flood of memories.

Yes. This is your mother.

"Danny," she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion, "I've missed you so much."

He wanted to open his mouth and respond to her, but something was keeping his lips firmly shut. With great effort - and a lot of pain - he reached up with his right arm to get rid of whatever was keeping his mouth closed. He paused, however, when he caught sight of a little box clamped around index finger and a small tube sticking out from the back of his hand.

Those would have to come off too, but speaking to his mother was more important right now. Slowly, shaking with effort, he reached up towards his mouth. Much to his surprise, he felt another tube prying his lips open and shoving itself down his throat. His mouth wasn't shut at all, it was clamped around the tube. He couldn't open his mouth any further.

He grabbed at the tube to try and pull it out, but a black glove gently pulled his hand away. He looked up to see his mother shaking her head at him, but she was still smiling. He was vaguely remembered of another time when she'd responded in the same exact way when he got caught picking at a scab.

He tried to shake his head back at her to tell her that no, he was fine, all he needed to do was get the stupid tube out of his mouth so that he could talk to her, but he was stunned when he found that he couldn't. He reached up again, tentatively this time, only to feel something cold and metal surrounding his neck and pressing up against his chin. It held his head and neck in place, refusing to give him any sort of leeway. Was it a neck brace?

Just what on earth happened to you?

"Danny." A voice to his left interrupted his thoughts, catching his attention. This voice was unfamiliar, a smooth baritone. Slowly, he looked over to see the man in the long white coat leaning over him.

"Danny, my name is Dr. Rosenburg," he said. He spoke slowly, clearly, and loudly, as if he were talking to a small child. "Can you hear me? Blink twice if you understand me."

He registered absentmindedly that hearing and understanding were two completely different things, but he obliged anyway, blinking once, then twice.

The doctor smiled, but it didn't quite reach his stormy gray eyes. "That's very good to hear, Danny," he said. What was his name again? It'd already been lost in the sea of other half-baked memories dancing in his head. "You were in a very serious accident; you're in the hospital now. Don't worry though, you're going to be just fine."

All other thoughts came to a crashing halt as this new information came in an onslaught. An accident? He'd gotten hurt? By who? Or by what? Desperately, he racked his jumbled memory, frantically trying to produce an answer. Nothing about any sort of accident came up in his search; he couldn't remember anything.

Do you even want to remember?

The doctor was continuing on as if nothing had happened. "You've been asleep for almost five weeks now. We've actually been quite worried about you for awhile. We were starting to think you might not wake up."

Five weeks.

More than a month of solitude from the outside world.

His thirst for answers grew along with his confusion. What had he done or where on earth had he been to put him in the hospital for so long, asleep for all that time? He tried searching his memory once more for something - anything, really - to give him at least a semblance of an answer.

The last thing he remembered. It was there, mixed up in the cocktail of other seemingly meaningless memories. It was fuzzy and extremely vague, but it was there. He'd been chatting online with his two friends - but what were their names? - and then he went downstairs to meet his dad, who had been nagging at him to come for a while at that point. Then… he woke up.

But that's not the whole story, is it?

He looked back at his mother, hoping she would at least have some answers for him, but she just kept smiling down encouragingly at him, letting the doctor do the talking. The lady and the cameraman were not much help either. She was scribbling on her pad as fast as she could, and the man had his camera trained on him, a small red light blinking on the top.

The doctor was speaking again, but not to him. "Mrs. Fenton," he asked kindly, "do you mind if we do a few tests on your son? We need to check and see how his recovery is progressing."

He wanted to scream that no, he wanted his mother to stay by his side, to give him the answers he was looking for, but she rose slowly, stroking his cheek as she did so. Tears were falling from her eyes again, and her encouraging smile had turned into a sad one. "Of course," she said, her eyes never leaving him. "I'll be right back, okay Danny? Just don't go anywhere."

He could only watch helplessly as his mother left him alone in this strange room with these strangers in this strange situation. As the doctor ushered the lady and the man out of the room too, he kept his eyes trained on the door, attempting to will his mother back into the room. Who cared about some stupid tests? All that mattered was his mother.

"Alright then," the doctor said, turning back to him. "Let's see just how well you're doing shall we? Don't worry, I promise I won't hurt you one bit."

The doctor had lied.

Shining a bright light into his eyes was certainly not pain free. Getting hit in his knee, in his elbow, while he was already so sore was not pain free. Even trying to move on his own, clenching his fist when the doctor told him to, was not pain free.

After finally deciding he was aware enough to continue, the doctor told him they would be going to a different room for a different kind of test. He did not elaborate. As a nice, young lady dressed in dark blue arrived to help the doctor wheel him in the bed he was laying in, he grew excited. Maybe he'd get to see his mother again.

Instead, they wheeled him down a series of winding hallways, making him dizzy. Other doctors and nurses bustled around the strange trio, tending to their own patients and running their own tests. Machines were beeping in an odd cacophony of tones and rhythms, and a lady's voice was calling above him, asking repeatedly for a Dr. Malikova. It was all becoming too overstimulating again.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the doctor and the nurse steered him into a room labeled "MRI." He vaguely recognized the letters as some sort of test they did by using brain scans, but he couldn't remember exactly how said brain scans were recorded.

The doctor left, mostly speaking to the nurse when he said he was going to prepare the actual testing room with the technicians. She stayed. She came around to where he could see her, and she smiled down at him warmly. "Hiya, Danny," she said. Her voice was unfamiliar just like most of the others he'd heard, but this one was less unsettling. It was like honey, he decided. "My name's Linda. I've been taking care of ya for awhile now, so it's kinda cool to see ya finally awake. I'll tell ya, you gave most people around here a good scare when you first came in."

Yes, you already knew that much. But what happened to make them scared?

"Now this test is gonna be super easy," she continued. "In fact, you don't even have to do anything. You just get to lay there and enjoy yourself. It won't hurt a bit, I promise!"

That's what the doctor had said, too, and his tests were somewhat painful. Before he could try and express this, however, the doctor came sweeping back in, ushering him and the nurse into the testing room.

This room was a cold, sterile white as well, and it was just as bare as the room he'd woken up in, too. There were three technicians, each dressed in brown and each scrambling to prepare for his tests.

What stood out the most, however, was the huge, tube-like machine in the center of the room. It had a hard outer covering, but it almost looked like a soft pillow on the inside. There was an opening in the middle, not big at all. He figured he couldn't sit up straight and still fit even if he was able to sit himself up. A table with a tiny pillow on it was waiting to cart him into the hole.

He stared at the machine. Overall, there was something unnervingly familiar about it. A pit settled in his stomach, and it seemed to grow exponentially. Why did the portal seem to -

- blinding green light -

- burning electricity -

- white hot pain -

Panic flooded his veins and icy cold fear drilled into his heart. Flashes of memory - terrible memory - absorbed him. He began to thrash around violently, disregarding any pain. A tube fell onto him, trickling clear liquid; blood began to seep down the back of his hand. Terror-stricken gurgles came from his throat, causing the tube lodged in there to jostle and get stuck. All logical reasoning escaped like a cloud.

Do not go in there!

Reality was distorted. There was the doctor, calling for help from someone, and there was his sister - is that even her? - screaming as he laid motionless on the floor. There was the nurse, restraining him and holding him with every last bit of her strength, and there was a paramedic yelling code blue over and over again as they sped along. There was the sharp jab of a needle in his arm, and there was the deafening click of a button.

There was a flash of light.

And there was nothing.

…

…

…

…..

….

There was nothing.

He was floating in a blank dream. Far away from the rest of the world. This was peace. This was so much nicer than wherever he'd been, where…

Where…

Where were you? What happened?

And yet even as the thought fluttered by, soft and silent, he paid no attention to it. He paid no attention to anything. He was unconscious to everyone and everything, even himself. He had returned to his small little bubble world of absolutely nothing.

Even though he was not there to experience it, the world continued to turn. Seconds melted into minutes melted into hours melted into days. Outside of the hospital, people went about their daily lives, blissfully unaware of him and his solitude. Inside the hospital, patients came and patients went, each with an untold story of their own. And there inside his room where he laid unmoving, snippets of hushed conversation were passed around the room, some caught by his ears, never to be understood, never to be processed, never to be remembered.

"... severe PTSD…"

"... more extensive than…"

"... may not return…"

But he drifted, forever swimming in a vast sea of nothingness. No direction or guidance. No memory to wake him or to aid him. No thoughts of what to do or where to go.

Nothing but the infinite realms of

dead

empty

space.

….

…..

…

…

…