It sure has been a long time since I updated this fic. 7 MONTHS! I am so sorry! I feel like I owe everyone an explanation. I've come back to it so many times but I just felt like it wasn't worth the effort to bring back, and I just hated my writing. But, recently I looked at all the great reviews it's had, and not one of them is negative, and so many people wanted it back, and so many people are, even now, still looking and reading it. People are still following it and adding it to their favourites, so I thought I'd give it a go and test the waters again. I feel like my style has changed a bit, but I can't be sure. It hasn't been revived, but I am trying to update it. I will try. My old laptop also broke with all the chapters and planning on it, too, so I'm trying to go on what I can remember. I want to thank you all for supporting it still, and encouraging me to bring it back. Every review helps!
P.S I'm sorry if this chapter seems a bit boring and shaky. I'm trying to find my footing again on this fic.
There is a bright light streaming through my eyelids, feeling like it's blinding me. I am forced to carefully peel back the lids to see what's going on, although I can't get them open properly at first, after a few futile attempts, I manage to keep them open.
I'm lying on quite a smooth forest floor, although it's not one I recognise, most definitely not the one from camp, I realise as my eyes adjust to the amount of seemingly white light. And this one is completely dry, with what I think is the sun giving of all this light, but I didn't know the sun could be this white. The trees themselves seem extremely beautiful, too, with straight, precise placement around the forest, and the sun's light streaming onto them. In the distance I see a small lake, with the beauty of the forest being amazingly captured in its water, like a photo.
It's all too perfect.
What am I doing here? What happened? As I recall what happened in the camps forest, with Scorpia and being shot, I come to the conclusion I'm in heaven.
No you're not.
No, not heaven. This place, although retaining its image, had become much more eerie and haunting than when I first looked. The bright light now feels very cold and unforgiving, while the trees seem alive, like they're stalking my every movement, calculating and too precise. This all feels like a place I just can't remember the name of, not one I previously believed to be real, either.
I hear some leaves rustle, and footsteps on the ground, and as I turn around, I spot a black figure darting between the trees, towards me. Well, I say figure, but it's more like an, terrifying creature, with long, sharp fingernails like talons, inhumanly tall (over 9ft, at least), and although I can't see its face now, I would rather not have the pleasure to look at it, and I'm certainly not going to stand here and invite it to come look at mine (or scratch it out).
I turn around in the opposite direction its coming at me and sprint. I run as fast as I can, as fast as I've ever run in my entire life, even faster than on missions. On missions the worst thing I thought could happen to me was dying. Something about this thing makes me feel like it can do a lot worse than I've ever seen. It feels like it could just engulf me in its darkness where I would then be sentenced to a lifetime of torture.
I just keep running, darting around trees and jumping over rocks that seems too conveniently placed in my path to be a coincidence. As I start to slow down, I suck it up, realising I may as well see where it is, if it's even still chasing me, and brave a quick look behind me.
Shit.
It has most definitely not gone away. It's closer. It's much, much closer. It's nearly upon me, actually, only a few metres behind me. I'm too out of breath to scream, so I let out a mere huff and try to turn my head back around, but the image in front of me is, while petrifying, oddly alluring.
The creature I can now see is like a strange hybrid of crow, panther and human, even if it is morphed so much it doesn't even look that much like anything, just a black animal. The talons look longer up close, and I can now see that it's holding something I think is a curved, sliver dagger that looks brand new, despite the amount of bloodstains on it. It is wearing a sort of cloak that billows behind it like in some action sequence, and its face. Oh, its face.
It has no face.
It's like a void. Just a black hole in the place where a face should be. It looks 2-D but I can tell it's all too real. The feeling of it engulfing me and sending me to hell or something intensifies to a breaking degree when looking at it. I'm just looking into pure nothingness. It nearly causes me to stop running and just reach out into it, but I know I have to keep going, because that black hole of a face is as terrifying as it is a curious thing. I don't want to go into it and die.
Death.
That's what it is.
Death.
Purgatory.
Not heaven, not hell. Purgatory. That's where I am, why everything seems so beautiful and perfect, yet completely strange and scary, keeping me on edge. Halfway between two worlds. Wow, aren't I being philosophical?
Not halfway for too long, though. As soon as I look into the creatures face, the entire forest moves and moulds into a dark fairy-tale forest, instead of a light one. The trees that were once perfectly straight, curl into darker versions of their past selves, making it harder to navigate this nightmare, while roots flick up from the ground and start lashing out at my feet and some longer ones at my face, scratching me and nearly tripping me up. The white light turns a dark, misty green, and to complete this new image, Death lets out a shriek so high pitched and monstrous that I don't think about how he even produced that with no mouth and no vocal chords, but instead I focus on getting the hell out of here. Now.
I pick up my speed so much that it's not just the roots I have to worry about tripping me up, it's my own legs. If I get caught, I die. I've heard the stories about people going to purgatory when they are on the edge of death, dying in real life, then having to outrun Death to some heavenly, white light at the end to stay alive. Where is my light? I do a quick sweep around me, careful not to look at Death itself and end up seeing absolutely nothing.
I manage to run for a bit longer, blood pouring down my face from all the lacerations the roots have caused, when I try to jump over another but accidently hit my head on a tree branch, and fall like a rock to the floor. I take a quick look round me and see Death only a few feet away from me by the time I get up and start running again. It feels like I've been going for hours. I'm exhausted but I have to carry on. I can't let myself die. I can't leave K-Unit. Especially after Ben.
That makes me pick up the pace.
But it's easier said than done. I can feel Death so close behind me, it's like his cloak has transformed into a mist and its tendrils are reaching out towards me like deformed hands, about to wrap around me at any second and plunge me into the abyss of death itself.
In the distance I am filled with jubilation and the urge to celebrate when I spot a faint white light in all this darkness. I feel tears streaming down my face from an extremely painful stitch in my side and I speed up as much as I can go to get to it. To life.
As I come close I can feel Death easing off me, albeit not much. I can now make out that it's not just a white light, it's the lake I saw earlier, still in its pristine condition, but not creepy like everything else. It is the only thing in the forest that has been untouched by Death. Water. Life. Light. As I approach it, I spot two figures next to the lake. Not being bothered that much anymore about anything but getting to the light that I can now see is actually in the water, so I'd have to dive in, I ignore the figures until I see some painfully familiar red hair on one.
Jack Starbright turns around to face me.
I feel Death disappear.
I stop in my tracks, on the edge of the lake.
"Alex." She says with a curling smile "How nice it is to meet you here."
I am too speechless to reply, so I just stare at her instead. She looks completely wrecked. Her clothes are torn and shredded everywhere, most of her hair is singed off, and most of her body is burnt horrendously. As I take a closer look, I realise that there are many crudely sewn stitches on her body, where it looks like someone has attempted to sew back together a doll whose body had been dissected.
Jack noticed me looking, "Ah, see these Alex?" She asked, gesturing to her body's burns and stitches, "These are the result of when I blew up in that car. Remember that?"
I nod, making a low whimpering sound.
"My whole body was scattered and disintegrated. My death may have been quick, but in those three seconds that it took for me to die, it was hell. My whole body was on fire, I went insane in those three seconds. It's all your fault, and you know it."
That is an internal argument I've been having for years, and I still haven't settled on a conclusion. But staring at Jack's maimed and mangled body decides it for me. I did it. I killed her. And now I need to take the penalty. Everything I just did was for nothing.
I start to walk reluctantly away from the lake, as Jack coerces me away yelling spiteful things, when another voice calls my name.
Ben Daniels.
I spin around quickly to find Ben, the second figure I forgot about, jogging towards me with an angry look. I want to run away and not deal with another berating, but I can't, yet again. But he doesn't shout at me for killing him, even though his death had nothing to do with me in the first place, he hugs me. It has been so long since I hugged him, even talked, and because I thought that when he died I would never see him again, I enjoy the moment. He lets go and speaks in a disappointed tone,
"Alex, don't walk away! What's wrong with you? Don't you dare listen to her for a moment. That is not Jack. That is the figure from your nightmares, from the depths of your imagination." He pauses, "To be honest, this whole place is really." Ben places his arm on my back and pushes me forward tO the edge to the lake again, where the light is still shining so brightly.
"Just go. Go back to Wolf. And Snake, and Eagle and Bear. Right now you're in a coma. It's been 2 weeks, Alex. They all need you to wake up. They can't handle it on top of me. If they lost you too…"
I nod to Ben, and although I am extremely reluctant about leaving him, I have a duty to my friends, my family really. I give him one last look and smile before I jump into the lake.
A burning hand reaches out for me at the last moment.
I kick out as they pull me back to the ground and pin me onto the floor. Then I look into the face of Jack, again.
"You're not going to get away from me that easily, ALEX!" She screams as she puts her hand on my new bullet wound on my stomach, which burns my skin, clouding all my thoughts and filling my whole body to the brim with pain I can't handle as I scream out.
Her weight lifts off me as I see Ben take her away and throw her into the lake, dousing her fire in its waters, but she climbs right back out again, and tackles Ben to the floor, as I still lay, unable to get up, drifting away.
"GO!" Ben yells at me, before he is covered in Jack's flames.
I want to cover my ears from Ben's screams of pain, but I can't move my arms, so I settle for lying there, hoping to die.
Then I see Death again.
He is looming above me, leaning over my body, inspecting it, as his misty tendrils reach out to me. The void of death suddenly doesn't seem as appealing and I manage to fight back against every bone and muscle in my body to sit up, and even more strength to lash out a pathetic strike at Death. Even though it was small, it was still a fight and Death disappears once again, letting me go. I still can't stand, pain ringing in my ears, now along with Jack's screams from where Ben is now winning their fight.
I crawl over to the edge of the lake for the third time, and finally collapse from exhaustion. I slip over the side as I fall, and I plunge headfirst into the shining water of life.
XXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXXOOXX OOXXOOXXOOXXOOXX
I feel like I've just been placed back into purgatory, or whatever that place was, my recollection of it is fading fast, when I see a bright light through my eyelids. It takes only a moment to open them though, because I am so happy to see the familiar Infirmary.
I'm still looking through closed lids when I spot all of K-Unit, taking up their usual positions around the room, all asleep as usual. Then I realise that Wolf isn't. He is slumped down in one of the chairs in the corner of the room, also asleep. Why isn't he next to me like he usually is? I hear a small gasp come from the seat next to my bed, so I look over to see who has taken Wolf's place.
It's Ben Daniels.