Title: - Void

Title: - Void

Author: - Bella

Rating: - PG

Characters: - Stephen (will eventually be Nick/Stephen)

Warnings: - Spoilers for Series 2. Something odd happened with the tenses in places.

A/N: - Written after a depressing couple of days. Do excuse the fact that it might seem a bit odd in places. Thanks to reggietate for the Beta read.

Void

The ground has vanished, there's a rush of freezing air and the empty void is spinning. Down is up and up is down. He can't even tell if there are sides any more. Everything is skewed, strands of reality and fiction inter-twined like spaghetti. And he's falling, he's falling fast. He doesn't know why, or where, or how, or when. All he knows is that he's scared. Scared that no-one will catch him. Scared he'll never stop.

The first breath back is the most painful thing Stephen has ever experienced. His body's reflexes engage in battle as air attempts to enter his lungs and filth tries to force its way out. Normal coughing and breathing are both out of the question. His body won't allow it. Ignoring the tearing pain, he settles instead for retching; throwing up dirt, dust and all manner of other things. He doesn't think he wants to know.

With that finished, he keels back over onto his side, gasping for air like some kind of beached whale. It's not a flattering position. Everything inside him feels like it's been forced through a very tight rubber tube. His muscles ache, his lungs are cramping, his head is throbbing and right now, he doesn't even want to THINK about how his stomach feels. Or the fact that he appears to have gone blind. He hopes it's just really, really dark.

Pain receding slightly, he struggles upwards into a sitting position. All his senses are on red-alert; his nerve endings feeling almost raw. Eyes straining, he fights to make out a shape, any shape, anything to prove that this isn't blindness. But he can't quite manage it. All he can see is velvety blackness, unlike anything he has ever experienced. There are no chinks of light, no fragments of movement and more importantly, no stars. Wherever he is, thinks Stephen, at least it isn't exposed.

In a bid to work out his surroundings, he tries his other three useful senses. Sound reveals nothing. As far as Stephen can tell, all around him is absolute silence. The only thing breaking the blanket of quiet is the rhythmic thump of his own heart beat. There are no scents in the air either, only a slightly musty aroma and air so cold it seems to burn the insides of Stephen's nostrils.

Lastly he tries touch, and pulling an old wrapper out of the pocket of his jeans, he leaves it on the floor. It's an old trick he learnt, leave a marker so you always know where you started from. Something in the recesses of his brain is suggesting that he's missed out a vital detail of this plan, and that it won't work unless he remembers, but he firmly shuts it up. Then he tries crawling sideways, feeling all around him with his hands. After moving about 30 feet to one side, he concludes that either this is the world's biggest room or he is stuck in a really weird dream. He decides to move a few more feet, just in case. Oddly, he feels incredibly drowsy, his limbs feel as though they are made of lead, and he can tell that his movements are sluggish. He longs to just curl up and sleep but instinct tells him this would be a very bad idea indeed. Then he feels something crackle under the palm of his hand. Picking it up, it turns out to be the sweet wrapper. Stephen freezes, electric shocks running up and down his spine. Fully awake again. Something is wrong here. Something is really very wrong. He tries to backtrack, to scan through his last movements, to check for any mistakes.

But he realises that suddenly he can't remember. He knows he went sideways but he can't remember which way, he can't remember how far he went, he can't even remember if it was him who put the sweet wrapper down. Everything is suddenly so confused and his head is spinning. He can barely remember anything at all; it's becoming a struggle to recall his own name. The only thing sharp in his blurred mind is the image of a pair of light blue eyes full of shock and pain staring pleadingly at him out of the blackness. He feels that there is a story that goes with those eyes, something important and he strains everything trying to remember. But he can't. Memories are slipping away like wisps of smoke, uncatchable, floating out into the void around him. His whole life swirling in the blackness.

Then the pain starts to tear through him, not physical as such, but emotional pain, so intense he wonders if his heart is literally breaking. Sudden vivid emotions, happiness, grief, love, sadness, they all rip through him but he doesn't know where they come from, can't remember why he felt them. He always wanted to let go of the past and move on, and clearly something somewhere has taken him a little too literally. He hasn't left his past behind, he has quite literally lost it. And without his memories, without his past, he isn't Stephen Hart anymore.

Then one final sensation manifests itself. Pain. Pure, white hot agony and it's unbearable. But still he can't remember. His mind has become one massive blank space, as though the previously full storage-rooms have been suddenly been emptied. As the final throb of pain flares through him and fades, he is left an empty shell, feelings and memories, his entire past, released in a supernova of sensation. And he decides that it isn't worth it.

So he closes his eyes and just keeps falling.