Fade

Part 3

Beta read by Sassyblondexoxo. Go read her fics!

Then, the awakening of a single sense. A clank and scrape that seemed impossibly loud, and the whisper of a voice. A manipulation of soft sounds that should have had meaning.

Touch came next. The feel of a hand, soft and warm. Five-fingered and familiar in an indescribable way.

More twisting of sounds, now recognized as words, in a different timbre than before. The tone of voice was impossible to deny, so twist the body and focus on the source, as the darkness fades at the edges. A glimpse of skin, pale peach and ridged in old wounds, and the blur of blue cloth.

The hand, its palm covered in black cloth, fingers exposed, again reached out. An instant later the soft rasp of skin against skin, scars against scars.

A part that still understood the concept of comfort wanted to lean into the touch. But no. Movement without orders was impossible, incomprehensible, unsafe. To move was to remember. And to remember was… unbearable.

The silence was then flavored with more words, but with it now came the barest brushings of meaning. A question; it was a question.

Where are you, Leo? Where did you go that we can’t find you?

Oblivion receded a little, grudgingly replaced by a remerging understanding of self.

…I’m lost in a place of darkness and quiet, where peace is broken all too often by a confusion of faces I should recognize and names that should mean the world to me but no longer do. Where the concept of ‘I’ now brings with it memories of pain and horror, and of loss so profound it blackens and sears to the bone. A recollection of graves that will never know the touch of sunlight and of initials carved with an unsteady hand into brickwork; a final testament to those who deserved so much more.

My soul shuddered and I willingly descended into the void, but not before I had time for just one more lucid thought:

…Hell, April. I think I’m in Hell.