I was weak. Finished. There was no more I could endure. One by one, my mental and emotional psyches were expended, now leaving only the physical to burn. Looking out at the city I was destined to destroy, I could feel all of the emotions I had worked so hard to suppress welling up inside of me. All at once, they made my knees grow weak, my chest cave in, and my body go numb. I was exposed, raw, and defeated in more ways than one.
In the shell of the girl I had once been before, everything was hazy and the only things I was certain of were the things I would give anything for to be foggy and unclear. But I knew I would end the world, draining the life out of every thing and one I had grown to love. I knew there was no hope to try to change it. And I knew that around my shoulders, Slade's lifeless, merciless hands were the only things that kept me upright.
Snaking out of his unreadable mask and into my fuzzy range of hearing, Slade found it within where his heart might be to wish me a happy birthday just as he let me slip out of his icy grip and into the hungry dust air waiting below.
Feeling my chest tighten and close in around itself, I shakily let out a last breath. In the small moan I had let out with it, the air now felt somehow fuller and I felt somehow more empty. It later came to me that in that breath, all of my heart was let out too. With nothing left to give me any power, I let it all fade away.
I seen to remember feeling a lurching sensation, and everything starting to slow down. Everything stopped, and I could hear the familiar street noises as if from afar. I waited, breathing, afraid to let them go. Afraid that if I opened my eyes, my world would be already gone.
Now ready for whatever horror was going to reveal itself to me, I slowly opened my eyes.