A/N: Hello! This is my first fan fiction that I've actually seriously tried to write. I guess I sadstucked. Please don't read if you're sensitive to psychological problems? I don't really know what else to say.

This is only the prologue, expect more later! Please review if you like or would like to critique.

Prologue.

It had been nearly an Alternian sweep since she'd died.
The pain was still unbearable.

Sure, she was in a dream bubble. She was free to create whatever she wanted in her very own bubble of preserved consciousness.

But it just wasn't enough.

She wanted to live. She wanted to roam and run and hunt and do all of the things she'd done before she'd died, before Sgrub ever happened.

Sure, she could make the dream bubble edit itself to where she'd be in her cave-hive, a naïve six sweep old huntress, living with her adorable double-mouthed lusus and acting like she wasn't dead, that dying was just a nightmare and Pounce would be there to comfort her, licking her hair and lulling her back to sleep.

But there was always something off about it. Something wrong with the entire scene, and in the back of the mind the dull pain was back, telling her this wasn't a roleplay with Terezi, this wasn't a nightmare, this was real. And she was truly dead.

She knew that some of her other friends were dead too and that she could visit them, preserved consciousness to preserved consciousness, but that only made the dull ache stronger. It turned into burning in her no-longer-real veins; it gave her a headache without truly having a head. It made her hurt. She didn't like the feeling of being hurt.

So now she spent her days sitting in her dream bubble, curled up in a corner where nothing could touch her, where the shadows couldn't reach. But of course, they could. She was lying to herself. The ache was ever-present, no matter what she did.

So she just dealt with it, day by day, hour by painfully… slow… hour. She slowly went insane inside of her own consciousness, not able to move, to speak to anyone. Or else she would hurt.

End of Prologue