Chapter 20: The Art of Nothing

I didn't see any of floor 40 as I lead Lucifer and Caine back to the mansion. I didn't hear any of the shouts or questions shot at the three of us as we made our way past people who knew us at least by sight. This world and the people in it were all nothing to me and nothing didn't look like anything or sound like anything. I assume that as I slammed the mansion's door shut behind us, there were people's faces into which it was slammed, but that meant nothing to me. I couldn't feel anything as I left my brothers to their own devices, except the numbness crawling through my body like a parasite taking over.

This hollow feeling was so desolate and despondent that I was lost within my own mind and body without any means of escaping it. This feeling was worse than sorrow, remorse, hatred, pain, agony, or any other negative emotion or sensation that a person could experience, yet it did not hurt at all. If I was able to gather myself enough to make a coherent thought, I would be perplexed by this feeling. Regardless of how I felt, my body managed to find my bed and before I was able to decide one way or the other, I was drifting off to sleep. That night was filled with the same nothingness that I had been feeling and not a single dream drifted through my head.

The next day, or so I assumed it to be, I was awoken by my hunger which was more of an annoyance than anything. It was impossible to be nothing and do nothing if you had to worry about eating, but I felt little more than a slight physical exertion as I opened my inventory and pulled out some bread. I ate it without tasting it and stared at the wall of my room. My mind didn't wander, but it wasn't there at the same time. I was lost without being aware of the fact that I was. After some time, words began to surface in my mind like pathetic, sorry, insane, waste, useless. There wasn't any logical connection between the words, yet I could understand their meaning.

Those words were me and I was those words. That was what I knew and what I accepted to be true, yet with my acceptance there was a slight nagging feeling in the back of my mind. It was like a single person calling out in a vast expansive area, and I was on the other side of this expanse. I tried to focus on this feeling, but I was never able to grasp it. Time came and went by as I continued to live inside of my own head, but that person on the other side of the expanse never left me and I never stopped trying to reach him.

Eventually, my inventory ran out of food and I was forced to leave my room in order to acquire any. If I had to call my movement as I left my room and headed for the kitchen anything, I would call it shuffling. My feet weren't leaving the ground, but I was still moving with a sizable stride. Shuffling was accurate, and it seemed to be the extent of my physical abilities as I slowly made my way through the mansion. When I made it to the kitchen, I experienced my first authentic emotion in days: surprise.

"Hello Abaddon."

His voice sounded as empty as I felt, but that did not stop Caine from attempting to sound better than he felt. I could feel tears threatening my eyes as I witnessed my younger brother's strength and determination in the face of utter despondence. I forced myself to smile as largely as my face would allow, and by Caine's expression, I could tell it was pitiful. This thought actually made me softly chuckle to myself, though it was more of a strange huffing than a chuckle.

"Hey Caine. Have you seen Lucifer yet?"

My voice shocked me. I sounded older and weaker than I was. It was so sad to hear how beaten I sounded that tears actually came to my eyes. It took all of my limited strength to keep from crying, but I nearly failed at even that small of a task. The toll had been greater than even I had anticipated it to be, and I imagined what I considered to be the worst outcome.

"I've seen him, but only once since we've been back. He ran out of food in his inventory."

My chuckle actually sounded right as I laughed.

"Some things are just in our genes. I'm out of food."

"Figured as much."

Caine made a soft huff and shook his head as he turned back to the food he was preparing. I could tell that he was struggling, but he was still trying much harder than I was to return to some semblance of normal. Guilt ripped through my body as I both felt and understood the deep scar that would be rent into my poor brother's mind and heart. A scar which time would never heal and eyes would never see. It would stay with him for the rest of his life and no one would ever fully understand the pain. Lucifer and I wouldn't even be able to completely understand, but then the same could be said for any of the three of us.

We shared similar wounds, yet each affected us differently and would continue to do so regardless of what we wanted. I stood in silence as these emotions and thoughts ran through my head. Caine finished with his food and offered a slight smile as he left the kitchen and returned to his hiding place. I went ahead and made up some food to abide my hunger, but it was all mechanical motion and I hardly thought about what I was doing as my hands prepared the food. I didn't taste the food as I ate it and as I made my way back to my room, the hollow nothingness crept back over me like a tarp draped over my mind and senses.

My days passed like this, waking, eating, staring, eating, staring, sleeping. These days turned into weeks before my very eyes. It was a repetitive cycle which I had not the strength to break or disrupt, however, my awareness of my surroundings slowly returned with each passing day. Yesterday I heard knocking at the front door to the mansion, but according to Caine there had been knocking on that door every day since our return. It didn't shock me to hear this, but it made me feel all the more pitiful. I was staring at the wall just after lunch when I finally became sick of sitting in my room. I didn't want to do anything, but I didn't want to be inside any longer.

It was now most of the way into June and with great pain I noted how much time had passed. I had lost three months to staring at the walls now, yet it did not feel like it. I made sure that I was wearing my armor before heading out of my room and down stairs to the front door. There wasn't any knocking at the door, which was a small blessing. I left the mansion and made my way as discreetly as possible to the teleporter dais. There were plenty of people out and about, but none paid me any mind as I stepped onto the dais and called out the floor my mind had selected.

"Floor 15."

The light engulfed my vision and for a moment, I was in the nothingness of teleportation. It felt so familiar to me. A moment later, I was back in the fabric of reality and the surroundings of floor 15 materialized before my eyes. The floor was an enormous plateau which dropped off suddenly at its edges and specific locations into clouds and nothing. It gave the illusion of being high in the air with the absolute certainty of death for those unfortunate enough to fall off. The plateau itself was covered in luscious green grass and scattered trees which offered perfect areas for a nap.

The sun was high in the sky as I made my way to the eastern edge of floor 15 and the cliff-like drop off. There was a light breeze which carried the scent of springtime flowers through the air and across the plateau. I reached the edge and sat with my legs hanging off the edge as I stared out of Aincrad and into the digital void beyond its borders. I stared off into the empty space and felt the breeze lightly caress my face. For the first time, I felt peace rather than nothingness. There was still pain and nothingness creeping at the edge of my awareness, but they were held at bay by the beauty of my surroundings.

The more I stared, the stronger the urge to burst into tears became. Nothingness was put aside and now I could feel, but what I was feeling was far from pleasant. The guilt returned accompanied with many other forms of misery. I fought the urge for as long as I could manage, but when thoughts of Lucifer and Caine flew through my mind, the dam was shattered. A flood of warm tears streaked down my face and blurred my vision as the pain I had been suppressing surfaced and wreaked its havoc. The emotional pain surfaced with an accompanying physical pain which caused me to double over.

"I…I did this. It's all my fault. How could I do that to them?"

I clutched my sides as my tears brought about body rattling sobs. I was falling to pieces as my sobs moved on to incoherent sounds and moans. I was shaking so hard that my body was beginning to hurt and I couldn't stop myself from gasping loudly. I was absolutely pathetic and now anyone was able to see just how much so I was. My head ached and the world around me was blurred as I rolled onto my side and slowly curled into a ball of misery. Nothingness was a horrible feeling, but it was better than the pain I was feeling.

I don't know how long I was lying on the edge of the world, but eventually my sobs quieted and my body stopped shaking. I was still curled into a ball, but now my physical pain was subsiding and my tears were drying. I felt better somehow, though I was unable to describe exactly how that was. When my mind finally quieted, I stretched my stiff limbs and slowly climbed to my feet. The blood began to rush from my head and I nearly fell backwards from the ensuing dizziness. Once I was standing, I looked out into the nothingness beyond the edge of the plateau and slowly extended my arms outward.

In my mind, I was finally embracing everything and now my body was doing the same. I spread my arms and fingers out and felt the breeze and sun on my skin for the first time in what felt like an eternity. Life was slowly returning to my body, but that didn't mean that all of the pain was gone. It was merely stifled for a time. As I fully extended my arms, and held my face up to the sky to take in the sun, a shout rang out from behind me.

"No!"

I couldn't tell who had yelled, but a moment later, arms were around my waist and yanking me backward from the edge of the plateau. I fell hard onto my side and rolled away from the person who had grabbed me. When I turned to face the other person, I came face to face with Lisbeth. Her eyes were filled with tears and she had the most horrible look on her face. I could see both pity and fear in her eyes, and then I understood what she had thought I was doing. It was no surprise, but that did not hold back my shame from surfacing.

"Yo-You can't! It can't ever come to th-that. Please don't. Please."

Tears filled my eyes once more as I crawled over and held Lisbeth in my arms. She was shaking unbelievably as I comforted her. She sobbed into my chest and made me cry even more as her fear took control of her. It took a while for her to calm down enough to form even partial sentences, but even then she was shaking too much to speak coherently. The sun was nearing the horizon when I helped Lisbeth to her feet and guided her back toward the town. She was silent and clutched my arm tightly while we walked.

We were almost to town when Lisbeth stopped walking and looked into my face. I could see the pain in her eyes, but there was something else there that I could name.

"Three months Abaddon. You have been back for three months and no one has seen even a hint of you or your brothers in that time. I haven't seen you for even longer than that. Then when I finally happen to see you outside, it's beside a cliff and getting ready to-to—"

She couldn't finish her sentence and had to stifle another round of tears before she could saying anything else. I didn't have the nerve to say anything as she made herself ready to speak again. Shame was all that I could feel as I watched her struggle to tame her own emotions.

"I never thought that I would see you turn to such things, and you're such a jerk for not letting anyone help you. Any one of us would have tried to help, and it would have been a better way than that! That doesn't solve anything Abaddon. It just makes more pain. I know that horrible things happened, but you still can't do that to Lucifer and Caine. You can't do that to me. You can't do that to anyone, ever."

There were tears in her eyes and pain in her voice as she fought back her own emotions to maintain control. My heart was in agony as I saw what I had done to Lisbeth. It was too much for me to handle and my shame only grew with each word that left her mouth.

"I-I wasn't. I can't explain what I was doing, but it wasn't that Lisbeth. Never would I allow myself to do such a thing, no matter what had happened. I'm sorry that it looked like that. It never even occurred to me that someone would see me, so I never thought about what it would look like. I—"

I was cut off by Lisbeth's lips on mine and her arms around my neck. I was frozen and stunned by what she had done. For a moment I didn't even breathe. Her lips spread warmth across my own and with her kiss, she breathed life back into me. The warmth spread from my mouth and over my face and head before spreading throughout my body. The nothingness cleared away and my pain softened as a new feeling filled my body and mind. She pull her face away from mine and looked at me with a look of realization. I didn't know what she was thinking, but I could hardly think myself.

"It's you. It's always been you, but I never saw it. Even after the quest with Kirito I never saw it. Always right in front of me."

Her voice sounded so distant and she seemed to be talking to herself as my mind struggled to grasp reality once again. Her words didn't make much sense to me, but I could somehow understand what it all meant, and what it all would mean. Warmth spread through my body in waves as I stared at Lisbeth and attempted to grasp what had happened. Her face shifted from realization to embarrassment and fear as I stood in awestruck silence.

"I'm sorry Abaddon. You probably don't feel the same and I just—"

My lips cut her off this time and my arms wrapped around her. In all of my emotional turmoil and confusion, there was now something which made perfect sense. The pain, the shame, the guilt, the nothingness all faded from my mind as Lisbeth consumed every fiber of my consciousness. After being so inept and lost for the past three months, I was finally feeling something real and beautiful. When I finally parted my lips from hers, I could see that she was blushing so much that her whole face was a bright pink.

"You have nothing to be sorry about Lisbeth. You saved my life after all. It is I that should be sorry for all of this. Though, my penance will have to wait for now. I have two brothers just as lost as I was, and I need to bring them back. We have too much pain ahead to be optimistic, but we have to face it. It is time we returned to the fight."

Lisbeth had tears streaming freshly down her face and she smiled brightly at me before hugging me again. I hugged her back and led us into town toward the dais. We slowly parted from each other as we entered town until we were holding hands. We met no one else as we stepped upon the dais and called out the floor.

"Floor 40."

The sun was almost gone when floor 40 materialized before our eyes and we headed for the mansion. As we made our way through town, familiar faces and voices called out for me and Lisbeth. I produced a genuine smile and waved back to everyone who greeted us. Their faces held the same concern that Lisbeth's had, and more guilt welled up inside me as I saw the genuine care these people had for us. I was selfish for locking myself up in my room and now I was seeing just how much so that had affected everyone.

When we reached the mansion, I opened the door to find the place silent as a tomb. Lucifer and Caine were still in their own little worlds somewhere in the mansion, but now I was ready to take on the responsibility of being the older brother. I had to help them in any way that was possible and put them back on their feet. We were still trapped in this damned game and moping in our rooms wasn't helping anyone, including ourselves. I braced myself for the struggle which was about to come, but my hopes rose as the warmth of Lisbeth's hand in my own reassured me. We could do this.

(A/N): Sorry, once again, for the large gap between updates, but things have been crazy lately. I can't promise the next gap will be shorter, but I'll try my best to update sooner than I have been. As for the story, I did take some license with the time jump, but I figured a drawn out chapter about depression wasn't something anyone would look forward to reading. Before anyone writes up some complaint about Abaddon's miraculous recovery, he is not all cured and ready to go, he's just been brought back to reality and now has to deal with it. As for our lovely Lisbeth, she will have a lot more 'screen time' now, so three cheers for that, but with that comes some mushy stuff, so be prepared. One last quick note, for those who are reviewing, please review only on my latest update and not on every single chapter you have something to say, it's obnoxious and annoying when that's done. I appreciate and enjoy your thoughts, but please be considerate. Until next time, see ya!