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What Darkness- - - - - -
He was walking.
There was darkness.
Everywhere he turned, only darkness. He tried to fight it, drawing his sword and feeling the cool metal in his hands like his last link to sanity, to hope, to light. He felt the cold as the only contrast in the shadows, and he fought as hard as he was able. He felt as the sword began to dissolve under his touch, growing fainter and farther away with every swing. Still he fought, searching for a door away from the dark.
He broke, when he finally felt the bandaged hilt slip from his grasp entirely. He broke, and all courage abandoned him. Alone in the darkness, where there were no directions, he ran.
What the dark demanded of him he did not know. It wanted everything so that there would be nothing at all. When it had taken everything he had to give, then he would become darkness too, and nothingness would echo forever where he never existed. Cold fear ran through him, and blue eyes sought for an escape. His cape was slowing him down, tearing in a wind that sucked him back like a vortex. Still running, he tore at it with his good hand, trying to break free.
He felt it snap, felt and heard as it was ripped away into the unending darkness behind him. That was when he realized that it was not only behind, but below, above, in front and on every side. He ran not away from the dark, but into it, he suddenly knew. But it did not matter because he had nowhere else to go. Breath coming in shallow gasps, he continued to run, knowing there was nothing ahead as there was nothing behind.
The memories began to slip away next, slowly from his outstretched hand. For a second they crystallized like silver in his mind, and he saw them all, a perfect, intricate lattice before him. It was at that moment that he realized how much he'd loved his life.
He saw a castle of stone and airy towers, although the texture of the rock wall under his fingers had disappeared. He saw a library full of mahogany shelves lined with books that should have had glittering gold titles on every spine but were blank. He saw a staircase, where he sat laughing with a girl, surrounded by people whose faces he no longer remembered. He sat and watched, unable to warn himself, still laughing like nothing was wrong, as one by one the people around him blew away like dust in the wind.
He could not move until the only one left was the girl beside him, whose laughter and dancing eyes he held onto even after everything else was gone. He clutched them close and held onto them with all his strength as it all faded around him, and he was running once more.
If he could just remember them, her name, than the darkness would be banished and he would be free. But instead, he was trapped here with nothing in the dark as it ate away even the things that were most dear to him. He could no longer remember what it had felt like the day the world had disappeared and he'd lost them all. All that was left was an astonishing numbness at the center of him, although that did not quell his fear. He knew that when it did, when even that was gone, they would have him.
He tried to reassure himself as he ran, his body screaming that it could not go much further. He tried to remember what he'd felt when he heard the girl laugh, when he'd laughed with her and her eyes had sparkled. It came to him, slowly, although he could not recall the name of the emotion. It was gone forever from him, like so many other things. He used the last bit of feeling to warm himself, and he vowed to himself in the nothingness that this would be the last thing he would let go of. Before he disappeared entirely, he would have this, even if nothing else.
He remembered despair, remembered it, and for a brief moment it consumed him and swallowed him down the throat of the great beast darkness. He remembered fleetingly that this was how he'd felt when he'd realized they were all gone, that he was the only one left. He'd gone on in denial, searching for them, for the girl with the green eyes, but he never found them and in his heart he knew why. That grief mingled with horror multiplied a hundred fold now, and then was gone in the blink of an eye. Inside himself, in that place of secret doubts, he found only a strange void. He was nearing the end, he knew.
The last thing he remembered as his eyes started to fail him was friendship. He remembered rich laughter and warm hands and open, hopeful smiles. They all seemed thousands of years ago now, and millions of miles away. He remembered a boy who'd been full of friendship, offering it even when they had both narrowly escaped the dark. He sought for a name, a face, a shred of the memory of the warmth and light but nothing came. Digging deeper, he searched for anything that would help him, and found only ripples in the still pond that he was becoming.
Exhausted, his legs gave out beneath him and he collapsed into the nothingness. They were coming to finish it now, to end everything and to make sure none of it had ever happened. He laughed weakly, and he could not even cry out when he felt that too fly away from his lips to never have been. With the very last of fading consciousness, he pulled out the final thing that was left to him, the touch of the girl with her eyes and her laugh. Vaguely, he recalled fingers on his cheek, warm lips against his, and that tiny flicker of life that he refused to let be taken from him. He was ended, going to join her in the dark where she had been stolen away from him, but he would not let go of the light that she was, though oblivion beyond death be their final reunion.
He felt the cold snow under him, and the harsh wind blowing across his skin, leaving tracks of icy frost where they passed. He felt thick, hot blood on his face and he tasted the strange metallic taste of it in his mouth. He was dying, he knew, lying there. The snow would be his final grave marker. But as he thought it, he rejoiced inside because suddenly he realized that he felt something. Even though it slowly dragged him away from life the memories began to come back to him, one by one, and the moonlight spilled slowly into his frozen mind.
He cracked his eyes open, and saw light there too. The sky above was filled with stars, but there was light in front of him, and warm air tumbled out from an open doorway. He could hear voices above him, maybe talking to him, but he could not answer or reply. He wanted to tell them that it was alright if he died, he was happy, because at last he was free. At last he could leave it behind. The people he loved were gone, and this was all he had left, but it was enough. Oh, it was enough.
And then he was being lifted, and he saw concerned eyes peering at him, repeating his name over and over. He tried to grasp the name of the person supporting him, and found it. He tried to say something, but it came out as a hoarse laugh instead, accompanied by a racking cough and more blood. The man holding him up steered them slowly into the warmth, and it wrapped all around them, banishing the cold and the ice.
"Cloud, don't try to talk too much."
He regarded the worried man on whose shoulder he was resting, and nodded. Deep inside where he had feared everything lost, recognition and forgotten joy stirred. He knew this man with the gruff attitude and warm heart, he knew the pilot and he might have cried had he been able. Instead, he just concentrated on walking, just letting himself be.
The room they entered was one he knew as well. The walls were made of a stone he had made friends with long ago, and he wanted to touch it and know it was real. All around were shelves filled with books, and he was almost afraid to look at them for fear they would be blank. A flicker of a light lit a patch of gold at the corner of his eye, and he turned his head just enough to stare in wonder at the rows of perfect gold titles, everywhere.
The last thing his eyes fell on was a girl who wore a pink dress, with long brown hair drawn away from her heart shaped face in an simple braid. When she turned to see him, her eyes lit up, and she approached cautiously, almost unbelievingly. Slowly, the man holding him let him go, and he walked slowly, carefully, trying with all he had not to stumble, towards the girl. Tears in her green eyes, she held her hands behind her back and looked up at him, a tiny smile on her lips. He knew those dancing eyes.
He remembered finally the name of the feeling that had been the last thing he'd kept, and he smiled then. He did not speak it aloud because he did not need to.
He knew that at last his light was found.
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