When He Awoke

When he awoke, the first thing he noticed was the pain.

There was none. And that was odd, considering.

He lay still for a minute, staring through dark, barren, spiky tree branches to the pale sky above. Finding no answers there, he half-turned his head and saw Vila, sitting on a log and watching him.

"You're awake," Vila said, and his voice sounded odd, as if far away.

"Demonstrably," he whispered. "Where are we?"

"Doesn't matter, does it? Come on," Vila stood and half-turned as if expecting him to follow. "We have to go."

"Go? Go where?" He got to his feet with difficulty, still waiting for the pain to start.

"Does it matter? We need to get away from here."

Memory kicked in - a gallery, blaring noise and flashing red lights, and someone saying his name and falling...

"Blake!" He stumbled slightly. "What happened to Blake?"

"What do you mean?"

"I - I remember -"

"No you don't," Vila said, looking at him with mild, unfriendly eyes, shadowed and vacant in a face that was more thin and gaunt than he had realised. "Never mind. We have to go."

"Go where?" Obscurely annoyed, he stopped. "What's going on, Vila?"

"Nothing's going on, that's the problem. They're all gone, and we have to go, too."

"No."

"You saying you wanted to stay there, then?"

"No, I -"

"Then come on," Vila headed towards the shadowy trees. "We've got a long way to go."

"Go where?"

"Away from here."

"No," the obscure annoyance was becoming an indistinct anger. "I have to find him - them - him."

"No you don't."

"Yes, I -" He rubbed his head, feeling a numbness that might once have felt like pain. "I'm sorry, Vila, but -"

"What was that?" Vila turned back. God, he did look thin, almost sere and translucent in the fading light.

"I'm sorry -"

"You never said that before."

"I didn't -" He stopped, unwilling to say that he hadn't meant it that way. Staring at Vila, he found he did mean it, but he knew it was too late now.

"No, it's not," Vila said.

He hadn't said it aloud, had he?

"Not too late."

He must have.

In the fading half-light, Vila 's death-coloured eyes were sunken within his head, his skin stretched on the bones, his hand, pointing into the forest behind them, oddly long, thin - skeletal. "Say it to Blake, then," Vila said through fleshless lips. "Say it to him."

He turned, and stared at the figure behind them, black and shadowy with one hollowed, burning, empty eye.

A deep, distant, echoing voice spoke, as cold as the night fast approaching. "I'm done waiting for you, Avon..."

~oOo~

- And he awoke, and the first thing he noticed was the pain.

There was none.

-the end-