For what seemed an eternity, there was nothing.

No pain, no emotion, no feeling. Danny felt the absence of everything, but it did not startle her. She felt complete. Intact. As if she was where she was supposed to be. But there was an absence. An absence of life, of sensation, of nerves and blood and muscle. She could no longer feel the rush coursing through her veins, the taste of adventure on her tongue, the longing for love in her heart. She was done, but she was not over. She was at rest but she felt grey, in limbo, like something was waiting for her. She felt the absence.

Then there was pain.

Harsh and brittle, teeth tearing at her flesh and white-hot silver burning in her back. The absence vanished and suddenly there was nothing but deafening, overwhelming pain. She screamed with no voice, writhed with no body, felt herself tear apart and catapult back into existence. Her nerves fractured and exploded, blood rushed through her being, and something changed, twisted, broke inside. The darkness pulled at her. A greater force pulled in the opposite direction. She screamed silently as eternity stretched out in front of her.

And suddenly she had form.

She felt her limbs flex, her skin cool, blood stickly sweet and wet on her back. There was breath in her lungs but it felt wrong. She waited for her heart to beat, but her chest remained hollow, empty, devoid of the rhythmic thrumming she was so accustomed to. The absence returned.

And then she felt nothing.