The trees floated on the wind. Their roots gripped into the ground and held them down, but they wanted to be led around on the hand of the sky, leaves falling down into puddles that a child would play on. They did not wish to be imprisoned as they were, and with every gust of wind they seemed to whistle in tears, the chains of earth keeping them in bondage.
He found himself empathizing quite a bit with the trees.
He sat there with her. It was a kind of rest, a moment of respite in the middle of this journey. Five Wardens—they were not people to him, only obstacles—had fallen. His blade, blue cyberwire and steel, should have been covered in blood, rusting to the point of needing dire maintenance. Its features remained static. The gun shone as much as it did when he had taken it. His armor contoured to his body comfortably, hanging off of him like a second skin.
But his body ached. Ten thousand slashes, shots, hits, hammer strikes on the anvil of his being. Echoes of pain had been beaten into him. They had to be, because no matter how much they killed him, he never died. He always fell, and always got back up. So he had to be beaten; again and again and again he would collapse. They would laugh at him. They taunted him. They screamed at him. The scythe-woman screamed so much that sometimes he still heard her ringing in his ears.
Which is why he could appreciate the silence all the more. She left him to his thoughts because she thought that's what he needed. That he could be rehabilitated and taken care of in this place. She wanted to plant herself as the center of his life, as he had taken over as the center of hers. He was not sure why she had done that, it was simply the state of things.
The air was clean. It felt so good when it entered him. It was cool, and he felt the pleasant coolness branch outwards from his longs into the rest of his body. It was much better than the multiple times he drowned in the abyss of the one that claimed to know him. The many islands were not static, and the weather was never welcoming. It was here that, for the first time in a long time, he suddenly felt at peace. The warning made more sense now. The Voice had warned him about her, said she would try to trick him and make him want to stay. He didn't want to stay, though. He just wanted a second to breathe.
Inhale. Exhale.
"I promise you that you won't regret this."
Her voice was both a sparrow's chirp and the purr of a lioness. It felt intentionally designed to entrap any listener inside of it, a spider's silky web that you happily let yourself fall into. Whoever made this creature was a master craftsman, that he had no doubt of. He could feel the weight of his armor and armory pressing down on him, holding him grounded on this space, and yet…
She made him feel lost. Not lost in a distressing way, but lost as if he took the less-beaten path and found himself in a beautiful untouched spot in the middle of a forest. Something about him felt lost, something he wasn't able to hold onto.
He realized that he hadn't moved from the spot for a long time. His body was complaining about holding the same position for so long. He needed to move, he needed to drive, but the drive inside of him wasn't there. It was gone, that need to push forwards, why did he want to move? What was there ahead? Just more pain, more death, more suffering. He would die and live and die and fight and die, for what? What was he fighting for?
It hit him like a bullet. He had already fallen into the trap.
He shot up, possessed. The fog that had been enveloping his thoughts was rapidly lifting, and he remembered what he was doing. He remembered why he was there.
He had to leave.
Though he made to leave, it only took a simple request from her for him to stop in his tracks.
"Please, wait."