Breath was loud, as breath was all there often was.
Ah, he could be loud, yes, but more often than not it was the breath that he heard, breath that drowned out the most awful sound of all.
The silence.
When he held his breath it weighted him down in a manner he would think comparable to the millions of tons bearing down on the sea creatures that dwelled leagues below the surface of the water, if he knew anything about the sea or its creatures.
It rang in his ears, echoing endlessly in the empty spaces that made up his physical and mental reality.
He attempted to make out shapes in the darkness, but it was too thick; there was nothing to even study, nothing to focus on after the sound of his sobs had subsided other than the continuous in and out of breath.
In this isolation, there was nothing better to do than nothing.
—
Thoughts bled into thoughts, slipping through his fingers just as he grasped them, oozing away to be lost into the infinity of his subconscious pool. He didn't mind. He didn't need to focus; he didn't want to.
To focus would be to care, and caring meant pain. Pain reminded him that he was alive, and being alive was to recognize that he existed. But he existed without meaning, and he would simply rather not remember at all.
After a time, not even gravity could keep him grounded, and nothing was safe.
—
Her existence rippled the waves, unsettling every thought he had long since believed to have grown still, and as much as he did not want to focus, facing her existence reminded him very clearly of what he wanted to have forgotten.
Himself.
The realization cycled him through each backward stage of knowledge, starting first with meaninglessness and carrying him all the way to focus until the focus was so clear that it burned, and he knew everything that he never wanted to face.
He had never expected her to appear, but once the blinding, effervescent reality of her cleared away the darkness in all his empty spaces, she supplied him with the final link to a chain long broken inside him — a purpose.
