Searchlights

She was breakwater. Out on the sea, inaccessibly far in cold and groundless water, drowning in the heavy swell, her eyes wide open without blinking, shining with paralysing intensity. Screaming silence. Dark and merciless waves swallowing her forever, leaving nothing but emptiness, grey and icy.

His fingers dug into the sheets, vainly searching for hold. But there is no hope in places like this, no closeness and no comfort.

Eyes staring into nothingness, the smell of decay and rottenness filled his nose, he desperately grasped for air but the oxygen didn't seem to reach his lungs. There was something in his throat, something that tasted like metal but had no substance. It was only the soft tone of Kira's slow breathing that told him where he was, that he wasn't buried yet. Numb but aware, caught up in waking nightmares.

He saw her everywhere, on the walls, in the air, her eyes gazing at him from out of every mirror. The woman he'd let die a thousand times. The mother of his only child.

In his way, he had loved her. Those rare moments between blind hate and complete tranquillisation, he had felt love for her, or at least what was closest to it. Sometimes, when he had breathlessly collapsed over any nameless woman's body, her eyes had found their way like searchlights through the darkness, seeking for him, seeking yet never reaching. He had always found a way to erase the picture, to drown it on the bottom of a bottle.

Gone in an instant - that's what death is like. No last words, no holding hands, no goodbye. Simply gone. Erased. Disappeared.

Kira was right. He deserved her death. Just as he deserved the nightmares.

Tired, so tired, empty eyes caught nothingness again. A different space, as unreal as endless. He wanted to reach for her, rescue her, but his body didn't seem to move. He felt like petrified, a rock in the surf. Silence screamed louder as waves got higher, she was drifting too fast now, too far. Staring at him without blinking, begging, breathing in and breathing out, suffocating, drowning.

Damar was dying a little bit more.