Summary:
Ward lives a NDE (Near Death Experience), that will last for the following 12 chapters.
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Chapter:
Now, seriously, he would never have expected something like this!
Someone was kidding him!
He couldn't believe to his eyes!
It couldn't be possible!
He was standing beside his own body, looking at it, from outside!
He saw his own handsome face, with a surprisingly serene expression… his half open eyes looking into the void… his designed lips slightly parted… his tied beautiful hands resting on his belly, unmoving… his long legs, relaxed on the ground… his wide chest, motionless… his broad shoulders slightly curved… his own body laying down in that bluish light. That body… it felt strangely three-dimensional…
And then he saw Coulson running towards Fitz, and both sprinting to the portal and jumping in it…
while he remained there…
on the sand of a distant planet…
on an alien world…
far, far away from Earth…
from home…
And in that unbearable solitude, in that unnatural silence, he felt lonely, abandoned by everyone and everything…
He was alone.
…
He didn't want to be alone.
The longing, the nostalgia of contact with another human being, of another face to look at, another hand to hold, another voice, another pair of eyes looking into his own pierced in his heart more than his broken ribs… more than during those five years in the woods… more than during the forced isolation all those months in Shield captivity…
He was alone, completely, utterly alone in the middle of the Universe…
And he felt desperation clawing his soul.
But after a few moments he saw an otherworldly light coming from the sky, like sun's rays peeking from a cloud.
It was strange, because, on that forsaken planet, the sun never showed up…
And he walked towards it, feeling the unconnected roughness of the terrain under his feet, the warmth of the desert wind on his face, but most than that a pull towards that light, like it was calling for him. And at the end he ran and threw himself into the light, without a second glance to his body lying on the ground.
It felt like being swallowed into an opal tunnel, that compressed him more and more, like a second birth… but for the first time ever, he felt what felicity was.
He never felt so embraced, so loved, and cared for, and peaceful, and happy, and enthusiast, and whole… ever!
He felt so grand that he could embrace the entire Universe!
It was like falling in an ocean of immense love and infinite comprehension… like he finally was freed from all bounds and boundaries and limits, like he was his true self for the first time, so wonderful and precious!
Incredibly, immensely precious!
All of that felt so incredibly real, much, much more real than anything he had ever experienced.
He would have stayed there forever!