A/N: Major trigger warnings for sensory stimulation and dissociation(?); it's chapter 11 but more descriptive but also less intense.

She snapped her eyelids open and woke up.

She parted her lips, drawing air into her lungs, until she felt her windpipe constricting from the sudden rush of cold air searing her nostrils and throat. The next thing she knew, she launched herself forward and coughed the air back out. She felt the ground moving beneath her, the darkness shifting before her, and she closed her eyes, hoping it would stop the pounding in her head. Something began to fill her mouth. Her body moved on its own, spasming violently, and when she felt the ground begin to steady underneath her arms, she opened her eyes, and stared down at the crimson droplets she spat into the dirt below her until black spots clouded her vision.

She tried to breathe again. Her lips drew in another burst of cold air and she could taste a vile metallic tinge in the back of her tongue before she had to choke it back out again. Through the nose was easier, she thought. Something was blocking the flow of air through one of her nostrils, but at the very least she hadn't started choking herself with the blood in her mouth again. The black spots were finally beginning to dissipate, her narrow gaze wandering to the curled fist sitting inches from her face. She traced it up to her elbow then her arm, keeping her face hovering mere inches from the growing pool of blood and drool in front of her. With another long breath, she moved the muscles in her arm and felt her body tipping back around, until her head collided softly onto a patch of untainted soil, and she closed her eyes.

She was awake. This can't be right. How was she awake? Something is wrong. Something must have woken her up. That had to be it. She wouldn't wake up on her own. She made sure she wouldn't.

The pills.

Her hand flew to her chest and roamed across the fabric, from her collar to the full sleeves covering her arms. No pockets on this one, she thought. Then her hand went down, trying to find the pockets in the pants she was wearing. It feels so cold here. Her other hand grasped around as well, attempting to feel anything against her person. Nothing.

She closed her eyes. Someone must have taken them. The pounding in her head was beginning to subside. Too long, she thought, hands reaching up to touch her face as she blew out a soft sigh. There had to be something more to this, though. The pills alone couldn't have done this, because even if she could wake up, it didn't mean she wanted to. Something else must have forced her out. Something outside of their hands.

She opened her eyes and stared up at the cloudless dark skies above her. She could hear sounds in the distance, amid the dull, low foreign hum and the pounding of her heart resounding through both her ears. She gathered strength in her limbs and forced herself into a sitting position. A tall lamp post entered her vision, its amber light dim and muted, providing little illumination in the darkness that surrounded her. The dark spots returned, and she blinked hoping it would clear them out. Then her eyes snapped wide open, and she stared long and hard back at the lamp post, sitting there in wait.

She could've sworn the light just flickered. She could've sworn she heard a buzz, too. Like a bee hovering above her head, or a fly fluttering its wings beside her ear. She felt her neck twitch involuntarily at the mere thought. She let her face fall to her palms, allowing darkness to overtake her vision, and felt the ground beneath her disappear, and she was floating in empty space.

It's been too long. She was seeing things, and hearing things, too, now. She felt sick. Her head was pounding harder. Or maybe that was her heart, she couldn't quite tell. The contents of her stomach were stirring. Everything around her was spinning. It felt much like waking up for the very first time after the disconnection. Like waking up to the real world for the very first time, when everything around her was no longer black and white static and noise, but in vibrant technicolor, and the strangest sensations pricking her skin, filling her nostrils or resting in the back of her tongue. Voices and sounds weren't just scratching in her ears. It was disorienting, and took her a longer while to adjust, but it improved over subsequent times. But it had been too long now, and she almost forgot what it genuinely felt to need to purge her insides out all at once.

Was this what Skye had to go through the first time around, too? And all the countless times afterward? She often wondered that, when she would wake up, or whenever she wasn't fully asleep and Skye was waking up instead. As if she needed anything else to add to the guilt still weighing her down in the back of her throat.

The ache in her head was easing now, and she could feel the ground beginning to solidify beneath her downward-facing palms, her legs and her feet. The black spots and the static were slowly fading from her vision, and when she finally felt like she could move without triggering her gag reflex, she lifted her head and tried to focus on her surroundings straight ahead, blinking.

She couldn't make out much beyond the singular bubble of light directly radiating from the lamp post—the shrubbery beneath it, the metal and brick fence behind it and the cobblestone path that stretched out underneath her. There was no motion, no smells, no sounds, not even crickets or the electric hum from the lamp post. It almost looked like an oil painting, its details too delicate, a disorienting mix between surrealism and hyper-realism. Underneath her fingertips, the gravel and stone felt cold, almost frigid even, colder than the air that pricked at her skin like tiny invisible needles. She was hardly dressed warmly enough for such a climate.

When she drew in another breath, an itch persisted in the back of her throat, and with it, the copper fluid.

She coughed and swallowed. Gaze fixated on the lamp post, her fingers reached over down to her ankle, slipping underneath the pant leg, then the sock, then the boot where her fingertips grazed upon a small but hollow gap. Shit. First the pills, and now the knife. Skye knew better than to forget either of them. Something, or someone must have taken them from her. She might have been asleep for a while, but she made sure the girl never left home without either of those things. It was the least she could do.

So now they were lost and defenseless. Great. Her worst nightmare, she thought. Well, perhaps not the absolute worst, but it was certainly the beginning to it. She didn't think she would ever feel this much dread her entire existence—the sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach, the hairs standing up in the back of her neck, and the millions of terrible thoughts running through her head that almost brought the pounding back to her ears. It wasn't so much of a foreign feeling, but it was the first time she felt her muscles paralyze from her own dread, her own fear. And she was almost cherishing it as much as she was despising it.

She tried to focus on something else. Her fingers, her hands and arms and legs, her toes in the warmth of the socks. The tension in her muscles as she bent her leg with her feet flat on the ground, slowly pulling herself upright like an inflatable doll, but more awkward and clumsy, with quietly cracking joints. Unsurprising, of course, since Skye was never one for sports anyway, but she knew the girl worked hard, did too many things in a single day than she could handle. The dull ache in her shoulders as she craned her neck to the side attested to that.

Lost. She slid a single foot forward and shifted her weight onto it. Defenseless. She curled her middle finger into her palm and rubbed her thumb over it. Another intake of breath and she coughed to clear her throat. She closed her eyes, and was about to take another breath when something disturbed the air around her, piercing the silent stillness of her surroundings, and she froze.

A dog, barking in the distance. No, something barked in the distance. The echo reverberated through the air, once, then twice, before everything went still again. She didn't have a chance to even ponder what it was when an invisible blade suddenly stabbed right through her skull, forcing her to shut her eyes tight as her fingers clutched her head and her teeth clenched themselves from the pain. She felt her breath leave her lungs when all of a sudden the ache disappeared, as quickly as it came, but as she opened her eyes, she realized her mind had gone blank, and the echo had evaporated from her memory.

Her breath doubled in pace. She whipped her head around, almost cracking her neck, but saw nothing more than the darkness that surrounded her, tame and held at bay for the time being as the glow from the lamp post ahead persisted. Her heart was pounding in her ears again, and a freezing chill started crawling slowly down her spine.

He's not here, she told herself, eyes now wide and alert, carefully observing the terrain before her for any of the littlest sudden movements. He's not here. She would know if he was here. Even when she was asleep, she would know. I would, wouldn't I? Even after the disconnection, even despite everything that happened, she would know, wouldn't she?

She took another step forward, but quickly shifted her weight back to the other foot just in time before the body could tip over from imbalance, her heart stopping the moment her breath escaped. Miniscule specks of dust began to cloud her vision again and she rubbed her hand across her eyes until she could see the cobblestone beneath her again. She then lifted her head with her palm on her temple, eyes trying their best to focus on the lamp post as she took a second step, then another, and more until the light drew closer and closer towards her, enveloping her in its warmth and banishing the shadows further and further away from her.

She felt her heart stop when the light flickered, or at least, she thought it did. She could've sworn it flickered. She forced herself to blink once, then twice, then frowned. The low buzzing hum still persisted, though grown duller as her ears grew more attuned to her surroundings, and she attributed it to the electricity running through the bulb in the foggy glass chamber above her. But those flickers—her eyes were open the entire time, weren't they? She could've sworn they were.

She placed her left hand on the stem of the lamp post, and flinched slightly from the freezing coldness of the metal surface. Turning her head to the right, she saw the cobblestone path stretching wider out into shadows ahead, then into another two bubbles of light in the distance, both adjacent to each other, illuminating what looked to be the end of the path as it disappeared under a set of vertical lines—a barrier, a form of fencing of sorts, but much taller than the low brick walls to her left.

A gate, she thought. Whether it was real or a figment of her imagination, it looked to be her next destination for now.

Her hand left the metal pole just as the surface was beginning to absorb the heat from her palm, and she took another step forward, and another, blinking away the blots of blackness and little dust specks threatening to cloud her vision again as she strayed further away from the glowing warmth behind her. She took an extra stuttering breath when the tip of her foot touched the shadows for the first time, and almost stopped her pace entirely when she drowned the other foot in the darkness, feeling herself sigh in relief when she felt the bottom of her shoe still making contact with solid ground.

Just a few more steps. The darkness was starting to welcome her back into its cold embrace, but within a few seconds, the front tip of her boot was dipping into light again. She could see the wrought iron gate now, standing tall and stiff at a mere few yards away, seconds from within her reach. She could see a narrow gap in between, an empty space that offered her a sparing glimpse of a different road stretching from the gate into parts unknown.

More than anything, she remembered this feeling of warmth, an invisible blossom blooming from the center of her chest, yearning for the first rays of sunlight breaching through the darkened overcast.

Finally—

"He's coming."

She heard the soft thump of her own footstep after the voice and immediately froze where she stood.

"What are you doing?" She held her breath. "We don't have time to take a break, you—"

"Go on without me."

She took a step backwards and stilled. It wasn't coming from her head. Those voices were real, she was absolutely sure of it. And there were two of them, both leaning to the lower end of the vocal pitch, one more nasal, the other hoarse, as though on the verge of a coughing fit much too similar as she did mere minutes ago. Though audible, the near-hushed whispers were faint and rather distant, likely a few yards away, behind the very gates she was limping, almost dragging herself towards until a literal half second ago.

The same gates her eyes remained fixated upon, as she slowly blew her breath out through her lips, silent as possible as to not disturb the stagnant air around them.

"Are you kidding? This isn't a time to be a goddamn hero!"

She took another step back, and bit down on her lip when she felt her boot skid a mere half inch against the cobblestone. She blew her breath out slowly through her nose, and held her breath again.

"I know, I know." She took another step back. "But I can't go anywhere with this leg. Nowhere far, not right now."

She was approaching the center of a light dome now, standing stiff with a lamp post towering behind her. Her right hand reached back until she felt her fingers wrap across the cool surface of the metal pole, and she brought herself around until something tiny but many in numbers pricking the side of her left arm. Never once did her gaze stray from the gates, cautiously watching for any slightest disturbance in the idle image before her with bated breath.

"What are you going to do, huh? Just let him catch you like this without putting up a fight?"

"I'll hide. Wait until he's gone."

There was something about that second voice that irked her. An invisible itch in the back of her head that she couldn't scratch because she didn't know where it was or where it came from. It was too faint for her to discern whether it was a familiar one or not, though. Trying to single out each coherent word was taking more than enough toll on her focus as it already was.

"You can't be serious."

"He's not going to be down here forever. He'll get bored soon." A cough. It sounded rather harsh, she thought. Nowhere as bad as hers earlier, but very reminiscent to a physical ailment, something worse than a common cold or a simple flu. "You heard what that Jeff guy said. He still has unfinished business up there."

"Up there. Yeah." A short pause. "You can't hide from him. You know that."

"I can try. And I still have this."

"That's not going to stop him."

She ducked her head down, slowly creeping further into the shrubbery while trying her best to ignore the little twigs grazing and scratching against her skin and her clothes. There was a narrow spacing between one row of shrubs to the next one behind it, wide enough for her to remain hidden without disturbing the vegetation too much to alert anybody of her presence there.

"Just go. I'll meet you guys there." Another pause. "Go."

"Are you sure—"

"Just go."

Another slow breath. Her eyes stared at the gates, not even daring herself to blink once.

"We are not losing you, man. Not like this."

"Hey, I've been the last man standing before. I'll make it out, I promise. We all will."

"You better."

Footsteps. Soft and fleeting, as though the soles were barely touching the ground at all. Whoever, or whatever it was, they didn't pass through the gates, even as the light tapping of the footsteps grew further and further away until she couldn't hear them anymore. It was definitely only one pair of feet, however, not overlapping enough to discount the other individual in the two-way conversation she was eavesdropping on seconds ago.

A bad leg. That put the other party at a disadvantage, against whoever was pursuing the pair, from what she could gather from the earlier conversation—but also against her, in case the situation should ever come to that. She was still slightly disoriented, sure, but at the very least, she had full conscious control over her limbs now. These were her arms, her legs. She might be lost, but she was certainly not defenseless, not anymore.

Keeping her body crouched down low, she gradually started creeping forward until she was at the edge of the light, almost resorting to her hands and feet to keep the muscles in her legs from straining too much under the tension. She immediately stopped when she heard more footsteps, slower and heavier with a much more irregular pace, with one short skip following each almost dragging scrape against the ground. The bad leg, she thought. It might actually be worse than she initially thought it would be.

Her hand skimmed across the soil beneath her, hoping to find a loose but sturdy branch somewhere she could use as a makeshift weapon for the time being. The footsteps were drawing closer, and when she briefly glanced down after thinking her fingers stumbled across something, she quickly glanced back up towards the gates and caught a glimpse of a shadow through the wrought iron bars, moving across the length of the first half of the gate.

She drew in a sharp, haphazard breath, then held herself perfectly still when the shadowed figure stopped, right in the middle of the gates, right where the narrow gap in the center was.

The metal shifted then groaned, as one half of the large structure started swinging open, creating a gap wide enough for a single human person, wide enough for the shadowed figure, to slip through with ease, creaking again only when the figure slowly nudged the gate back into its original stationary state, closing the gates shut.

She rested her hand on the soil beside her and steeled her will. She could wait it out. She had to. Until this person, whoever they were, made their way past her and down the cobblestone path where she initially came from. Until they would reach the other lamp post further down the path, out of sight and out of mind. Then she could head back to the gates, and slip out herself, and continue back on her way, avoiding anything and everything. No conflict necessary, she thought.

She almost scoffed to herself. Easier said than done.

Heavy feet continued to drag almost forcefully across the cobblestone, with a suppressed grunt following each erratic footstep the stranger made. In the fringes of the dim glow radiating from the nearby lamp post, she could further make out the shape of the shadowy figure: they were humanoid, no doubt about that, and looked to be the size of the average human male, albeit poorly postured with a slightly bent spine, likely from the bad leg. As the figure stepped further and closer into the illumination, their brown shoes first came into her view, then the jeans, with a large crimson stain blooming in the right thigh; then a shade of dull mustard yellow, before the lamp finally casted light upon the figure's face, and she couldn't stop herself from gasping.

It can't be.

She didn't even realize her feet losing their balance until she heard rustling behind her, and she felt herself turn into stone.

"Who's there?"

She tried to silence her heaving breaths to no avail. Her head was spinning, pulsing and pounding against her ears again, and the ground was vibrating beneath her, threatening to give away. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and in the midst of the static noise filling her ears, she could almost hear her calling out in the back of their head.

"I can hear you." She took a deep breath and focused on the voices, hoping they would drown the noise out. "I know you're there."

Her breath left her lungs in a rush and she almost lost all energy in her knees and legs, almost falling completely back into the shrubbery behind her.

"And I know you're probably not who I think you are. You would've already killed me if you were."

She heard a faint click and it felt like a switch turning off the pulsing in her head. She opened her eyes and glanced up, catching only a glimpse of a silver barrel aiming right above the top of her skull.

"I'm not going to shoot. Just come out of there now, and we can have a little talk."

Her hands almost felt weightless as she lifted them off the earth, slowly raising them to the side of her head while directing her remaining strength to her knees, to gradually pull herself up to her legs until she was standing upright, just barely out of reach of the light radiating from the lamp post.

When she took her first step forward through the vegetation in front of her, his arms started to falter and his shoulders fell, until the barrel of his gun was pointing at a few inches away from her knees. His eyes grew wide, and she could almost hear his gasp escaping from his parted mouth.

Her own shaking breath expelled forcefully out her throat, and her lips moved before she could even think of a single word to say.

"Tim?"