You open your eyes.
(how?)
(you shouldn't be able to do that. you shouldn't be able to do anything)
Everything is black.
No—not black. Black is a color. You can see black, you can imagine it. You can point to a car, to a painting, to a wall, and say "that's black".
Where you are (where are you?) it is not black. It just...
Isn't.
Full stop.
Isn't black, isn't anything. You've heard people talk about how, in caves, if you turn off your flashlight you can experience absolute darkness, a space without say you can't see anything; that it's the blackest of blacks.
You've never been in a cave, but you know that it wouldn't be like this.
In a cave, there would be the ground under your feet, the walls around you that you might not see, but still know are there.
Where you are, there is nothing.
Not even black.
Except—
Well.
There's you.
You can't be the only something.
(can you?)
You sit up with a jolt.
(you were lying down. how were you lying down? there was no floor)
You shouldn't be something at all; you should be—
Your hands come up to grab your torso.
You feel your shirt. You feel the warmth of your body, the firmness of your abdomen.
You don't feel any blood. There should be blood—there was blood. Your shirt was soaked with it; it was pouring down your chest, down your back, down your lips.
You don't feel the stab wounds. You don't feel the holes in your shirt.
There should be stab wounds. There should be holes. There should be—
Where is the pain?
There should be pain—there should be so, so much pain. You had never felt pain like that before. You felt the swords in your back and you felt them punching through your chest and you felt them being yanked back out, all at once and as slow as molasses as they dragged on every bit of your muscles and your bones and your skin. You felt your lungs filling with blood and your body weakening as you tried to hold a gun steady, to stop Ken from ruining everything.
(you're not sure you succeeded. you hope you did)
You look down (is there a down?) at yourself. You see your hands, your shirt, your pants, your shoes. Your clothes are black. They stand out in brightness against this place (what is this place?).
You don't know what this place is. You don't know how you got here.
You know where you were, certainly. You were in a room with a portal and blaring alarms and the man who stabbed you lying dead on the floor and two desperate people who said they could fix things (except not really, because you can't fix things; you can't control it that's not how this works) and Ken shooting Dirk and you pointing your gun at him and telling Dirk to go and he did; he went through the portal with Lamia and Moloch and then it was quiet and you were on your knees next to the portal and it looked almost calming, like clouds, and your vision was fading and you heard footsteps from behind and you felt a shove and you were falling into the clouds and there was a flash like lightning and then—
And now you're here.
You're here and your shirt doesn't have any holes and you're not bleeding and you're still alive (are you?) and—
You don't know what's going on.
(you usually don't know what's going on, but this is different. usually things are happening and people are doing things and they don't make sense and you don't understand them, but things are still happening and people are still doing things. here nothing is happening and you are the only person here and you're not doing anything and you don't know what's going on)
You stand up.
(is there an up?)
(what are you standing on?)
You look up.
(oh.)
(there is an up.)
(there...
is)
It is not nothing. It is not black, either.
You've seen pictures of the northern lights before. Rich, blue-green swathes of light painting ribbons in the night sky, luminous and otherworldly.
This, though—
This.
If someone asked you to describe these colors to them, you would tell them that they were greens and blues and teals, swirling around in a magnificent mass above you, glowing and dancing and beautiful and terrible.
But there are no words for these colors, and there are no words for how they move, and how they gleam, and how they inspire awe and wonder and terror. For how the thing above him is the world and the universe and its creation and its destruction and its order and its chaos, and, above all that, how it is and isn't and was and will be and would have been and never will and and should be and must not.
There have been many, many things you have not understood in your life, but this—
This is truly incomprehensible. You could not describe it to anyone else in a way that they understand.
How could you, when you don't even understand it yourself?
Except...
Except...
(oh. now I get it.)