There were only dark colour blobs, shapes and smudges, and he, nothing less, nothing more.
Freezing water was covering him with a thick, endless blanket of serenity and comfort. His eyes never closed but half-lidded with tiredness, his mind never drifting to sleep. Distant sounds enveloped his heart into a strange, aloof mixture of expectance and despair, bittersweet yet soothing, and far. He waited; he didn't know for what, or when it would come; he just did wait, silently praying for the turbid haze to disappear. Most of the time, though, he couldn't bring himself to care. It had been too long already to care, and besides, he needed to rest.
He struggled sometimes, battled with the fuzzy cape of unconsciousness just to hear the voices clearer; sometimes he didn't.
One day there was a name.
Just an echo, dying somewhere far away, but he felt it nevertheless, travelling all over his skin, making it hum and itch and scream with anticipation. His heart raced, filled with an unknown previously emotion and cruelly seemed to want to leave his ribcage.
The echo faded. The fuzziness never left.
He swayed with the currents, not resisting, not caring, never closing his eyes still, waiting faultlessly, and wanting.
His skin faintly lusted for warmth.
One day, long, long after, there was someone.
Come to me, someone said, his body haloed in the brightest sunlight from high above, his eyes glistening with amusement and foreign freedom, biting and fresh and they were telling him "believe", that in this someone's eyes there was something - he recognised - he so longed to see.
He opened his eyes, wide awake for the first time in his pained memory. Slowly, making his head spin like fresh air after long hours spent inside does - what was fresh air, he wondered absently, - the fuzziness began to dissolve.
Come, repeated someone, holding out his hand, his smile sharp as blades, his eyes intense and insolent and never leaving the other's.
I can't, answered he, but only he didn't: his lips wouldn't move, cold and cracked and blue. His heart was clenched suddenly in horror's icy fingers, leaping at the same time into the very bottom of his being, deep, deep, deep enough to painfully resonate with trembling, singing vibrations through his mind, clearing it. Just as suddenly, their hands - his and someone's - were entwined, and everything became clear, biting, sharp, devastatingly sharp.
- Who are you, asked the boy.
Dust and air and fire swirled around the two, or maybe they did not, but he failed to see anything but the familiar eyes, failed to feel anything but the familiar warmth of the hand in his own, and he only knew he was finally safe, and he could - finally - see.
- I am you.
He woke up, clenching the thin hospital sheets in his fists, his fingers screaming in agony, for the sudden movement after so many years of rest brought unexpected anguish. Near the bedside there was someone - no, he - looking at him with something fresh and biting and free in his eyes, despite the papery wrinkles in the very corners, and that someone - he - whispered:
- Finally.
The moon shone in the skies.
