Between Man and God (3/?)
Title: Between Man and God
Characters: Ten, later Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst (I love how this will surprise no one)
Spoilers: Through JE and then spoilers for other stories of mine, but nothing major there.
Word Count: 3249
Summary: Because that's what she does, my Rose. She lives everything so fully that the rest of us can't help ourselves. As we move into the Vortex--and by 'we' I mean the TARDIS and I--a thought strikes me and I start to laugh, even as tears leak out of my eyes. Even when she's universes away, on the other side of that damned white wall, she's still saving me.
A/N: Yay for more stream-of-consciousness! Yay more angst! This particular low in the storyline comes to a head here and then things begin to look up. Enjoy!
She thinks I’m crazy.
She has to think I’m crazy. Hell, if I saw me, paid attention to my behaviors-which I know she does, the doctor in her can’t help herself-knew even the shadow of who I was-and Martha knows a great deal more than that-I know I’d think I was crazy. And yet…
She never says anything.
Sometimes I catch her looking at me with a complicated set of emotions in her deep, dark eyes. It’s like she understands a part, but not the whole and the scientist in her won’t say anything until she has it all figured out. I love the scientist in Martha. I love the pride it instills in her and I adore the methodical way it prompts her to handle the world around her, even in a crisis. It works on a similar…wave or frequency I suppose to my own. Probably one of the smartest humans of her age.
Who am I kidding?
She’s not fully human, not anymore.
It’s the Time Vortex. Travel about in it long enough and you start to pick of background radiation. Pick up enough radiation and it starts to change you. Not Time Lords of course. Gallifreyans, too have a natural immunity to it. It’s part of what drew us to it in the first place. Long story, very complicated. But humans…it’s like a cancer. Not one that will kill them, but one that will most definitively change them. The very basic composition of her cellular structure is mutating. I saw it on her first med scan since she started traveling with me again and I’ve seen it on every scan since.
I should tell her. I should inform her and let her make her own decision, or failing that, I should at least find somewhere she can make a life for herself and leave her there. I should; I honestly, truly should. But I can’t. I’m far, far too much of a coward to tell her and… I’ve become far too dependent on her.
But the fact of the matter is that she was being changed and eventually she would notice. I’ve done everything I can to stall the process. I only hope it’ll buy me enough time. Time for what, I haven’t the slightest, but I’ll figure something out. Best under pressure, me.
Really it shouldn’t have surprised me when the claxon bell sounded for the third time that day.
Really, I mean… Really.
All hell was breaking loose, the universe threatening to fall down around my ears and at least five thousand planets in imminent danger; I was in my element. It had been a long time since a disaster of that magnitude had struck on my watch. The sick thing is just how happy it made me that there was such a crisis on hand. I’d been beginning to have hallucinations during my short sleep-cycles. Different from my usual nightmares, these were actually…pleasant hallucinations. It says quite a bit for my pathetic mental state at the time that the pleasant dreams hurt me worse than the nightmares ever had.
Mostly because with the nightmares, at least there was relief to be found in waking. Not so with these…dreams. Not so at all.
They were pleasant; memories of another timeline. We get them every so often, especially when a subject is especially potent to us. Emotion charges these types of things. I now understand the obsession my people had with repressing emotion. What could have happened, what was happening to her-to us-in another timestream…I dreamed about it. Whenever I woke up, I forgot everything but her face; her smiling, happy face. For hours upon hours after each time, the part of my mind monitoring her comatose one was warm and tingling, like a limb as circulation returns to stimulate numb nerve endings and synapses.
It was humming with this mental recreation of life that day, longer than usual. The last thing I remember about that day was standing at the crux-point of a lithium-carbide revelations system. The odd thing is…even with the most complicated piece of machinery ever created set right in front of me, ready to tear the fabric of space time into scrap rags, it all came down to the classic, cinematic climax.
Red wire; or green?
I pulled the green one. Why? I suppose there are a number of reasons. It could be because red is always the one you’re supposed to pull and I felt like being contrary. Maybe it was because green represents life and I wanted to pull the plug on that, because what has life brought me but pain and suffering? Or it could be that I chose at random or I might have known the right one to pull and intentionally pulled the wrong one; played God one last time and just ended everything. But all of these suppositions have one fatal flaw.
They give me far, far too much credit.
The truth, the sad and pathetic truth is that I didn’t even make a decision. It was made for me when I tripped over a crowbar and instinctively reached out to grab hold of something.
The universe was saved-or damned-because I subconsciously didn’t want to break my nose on the metal floor.
How vainly anticlimactic is that?
I remember staring at the wire in complete and utter shock. I didn’t look up to check if the machine had gone into final countdown or shut off. I didn’t do anything to try and further or prevent either outcome. I just stood there like a complete and utter moron; staring at the sparking end of a little green wire.
After that, there’s just an awful lot of black.
Sometimes that was all there was to it, blackness. Sometimes there were strange and unfamiliar sounds and smells to accompany it. But mostly it was the blackness mixed with cold. It was almost always cold. I never could figure out why, but it must have been very, very cold. Takes much more drastic temperatures to affect Time Lords than humans, it does. Once in a while I spared a thought to Martha and hoped that wherever she was, it was at least warmer than this.
Hell, if it wasn’t, she’d be dead within an hour, her heart beating slower and slower until it finally just stopped.
I tried not to think about that very often at all.
The strangest part about all of this wasn’t the blackness or the chill. I’d been in similar conditions before-usually someone’s idea of an appropriate prison cell. The strangest part wasn’t even that as time progressed I started to forget more and more and more of what had happened before. The strangest part was that I had no sense of time. None at all. I had no idea how long I had been there, how long between blinks, how long I’d been asleep, how long I could hold my breath. It was as if Time no longer had meaning. This was comforting at first, because it meant I could narrow the list of my possible locations to about a ten-fold list. But, combined with other things-the darkness, the cold, the eerily specific memory loss-none of the places I knew matched up.
That was most certainly not a comforting thought.
I kept dreaming though. Those same, happy dreams. The dreams of a life I had never had and now would never have. I didn’t even have the sight of her face or the feel of her hair to hold me to sanity now. It was gone, all of it. I couldn’t even feel her in my head anymore. I knew she was still alive only by the soft, rhythmic beat of a heart that echoed my own until it would have felt wrong to hear only two beats. Even that grew weaker and weaker as time wore on.
How much time went on I don’t know. But I do know that I prayed. I prayed to every possible deity of every possible race of every possible world and universe that I could remember. I have an awfully long list of those, and of other facts, just…no idea of how I learned them.
It didn’t work. I don’t know if I ever honestly expected it to work, but so long as I was trying something, anything to keep that heartbeat with me, I could ignore that gaping chasm in my mind. I could turn my back on it and pretend it simply didn’t exist.
But the instant her heart stopped beating, the very floor crumbled out from underneath me. My entire world was pain; pain and wrongness. It was wrong to hear only two heartbeats. I waited for the third each time, always waited for the third beat that never came, that would never come again. I screamed. At least, I think I screamed. I don’t know if my vocal cords were ever actually involved, but I screamed. I screamed and I spiraled into a void of cyclical pain, anguish, terror and the ever-present wrongness.
Even in this, this…hell, I didn’t stop dreaming of her.
These dreams were different, though. These dreams didn’t feature an alternate me. It was just her. Sometimes she looked younger and sometimes she looked older. It took me a long time to realize that she never actually changed. The change of age came from perceptions-how she wore her hair, how she did her makeup, how she dressed-superficially, but also from her eyes. In some dreams they were the eyes I remembered, wide and innocent and searching; so full of life and trust and awe. Other times they were older, wiser and more weary; jaded and closed off from the world around her. In the first set of dreams there was a tangible air of sadness around her entire person; in the second, an air of numbness.
I don’t know which was worse.
I didn’t even know her name anymore. I didn’t know where she came from or why she was so important to me. I had no idea what she did in those dreams-I still don’t know-because my entire focus was on her; just her. I don’t know why the little metal shape around her neck looks so familiar and I don’t know why I still dream of her, even now. Just now.
Right now.
I can see her.
These latest dreams aren’t like the others. She’s…happy. Mostly happy. It must be a time before the other dreams. I don’t see myself in them, but I do see her lips forming my name often. How I know it’s my name, I don’t have a clue. I’m not even sure what word-or words-her lips are forming, but somehow, deep in my primal parts I know that when her mouth shapes just that way and her eyes light up and her face brightens, she means me.
I make her happy.
But this dream-this one I’m in, right now-it’s not right…
I see her form my word with her lips, but her face no longer lights up. Instead there’s a shattering there, a breaking that looks superficial but must go much further. As she shatters, I see the second her, the one with such old brown eyes, I see her emerge and it adds a level of unbelievable sadness to my black spiral void. I made her happy, but now I’ve not only made her sad, I’ve broken her.
I’ve broken her.
That is inexcusable. Absolutely inexcusable. And somehow I know, deep in my bones, that I must have pulled the wrong wire and short-circuited the universe. How do I know this?
Because, this…existence, this painful, agonizing half-life is surely the worst possible hell.
The dreams are starting over again. I see the images of her now with an air of familiarity and it gives me hope. Hope that I cannot stem and hope that will inevitably be crushed as the cycle progresses; over and over and over again until there’s absolutely nothing left of me.
I’ve found a way to track time here; or at least I thought I had.
At first I could keep track of how many dream-story cycles I had been through, but… After a while it just became too much, far too much. My mind has broken down into the tiniest possible pieces. I am a collection of facts-times, dates, formulas and literature-but no story to go with it all, no reason why I know. I know what emotions are, all of them; happy, sad, angry, jealous, joyful. I know what it means rationally to love someone, to be hungry or thirsty, but I don’t feel any of these things. The only emotions I have left to me are the pain, the misery and the wrongness of the spiral.
I can’t remember why it’s wrong to have two heartbeats or why I’m always waiting for a third that never comes, but I do it. Eventually maybe I’ll stop questioning it, just become numb to everything while I float in a pool that can’t decide upon blackness or her.
I know I never will numb to it. It’s part of the punishment.
I have no idea what I did wrong. It has something to do with a green wire I think. I know what a wire is. It connects bits of circuitry and machinery together to create a single working unit. I even know that a green wire should never, ever be pulled unless one is in a film. But I don’t know why a green wire would torment me so.
As for physical needs, I stopped feeling them a long time ago. Or maybe I never did stop. Maybe I still feel them, but I can’t recognize them for what they really are. It’d be hard to notice anything in this cycle.
Ah!
It hurts! It hurts and I’m on fire and it burns and I’m empty and make it stop, make it stop!
Make it stop!
Make it-
Light.
There’s light in my cell.
I uncurl myself-did I curl up at some point?-and blink into a light that is far, far brighter than any light has the right to be.
At first it’s too much. My retinas protest and burn and my eyes water, trying to relieve a sensation that can’t be remedied physically. I do adjust though. I always adjust. I think. Why is there light here? There’s never been any light before, has there? Light is an energy given off by photons charged with atomic energy. I know that. I’ve always known that, but I’ve never seen it before… Or have I?
There’s something in the light. If I squint I can just make it out. Familiar curves leading up to a familiar halo of hair surrounding a familiar face; set into an unfamiliarly hard expression. I gasp sharply and it hurts. Have I not been breathing this whole time? How could I forget to breathe? Breathing is necessary to most forms of organic life. Does that mean I’m inorganic? How odd. She doesn’t seem to notice my plight, nor my confusion. She merely steps to one side.
“No!” I scream out to her. I meant to scream out, but the only sound is a twisted croaking. My vocal cords must be underdeveloped. Such happens in some lesser species, resulting in speech patterns of grunts and other masticular sounds. But an underdeveloped species can’t know it’s underdeveloped, can it? I don’t actually know. I don’t think I’ve ever asked one.
I try again, with marginal improvement. So not underdeveloped, just damaged vocal cords.
Either way, she doesn’t return. Instead, a new shape comes into the light, closer than the first shape. This shape is smaller than the first, shorter by a good four or five inches at least. It’s a feminine shape, so the proper pronoun would be she, I suppose. Well, that’s not entirely certain, but she does tend to be the most frequently used. Universe; life; patterns; repetition. Stick with what works.
This new She walks towards me with slow, deliberate steps. As she does this, the light follows her until my entire surroundings are lit. I’m…in the hull of a ship? Or at least somewhere metal; cold and impersonal. There’s nothing of interest here. I return my focus onto the new she and wonder if this is some sort of bizarre new dream. That would break the cycle, but I’m not complaining.
The new She smiles at me and her expression is warm.
“Hello Theta Sigma,” she speaks to me. Theta Sigma? Yes, that sounds familiar. I think. That must be my name. I nod mutely. It’s the best I can do.
“You’re responsive; good. We’ve made it in time.” She has a very soothing voice, dry as old leaves and warm as sunshine, though how I know that is…I shake myself once, shivering against a tide of feelings that threaten to erupt over me. Apparently my own hell fears the light, but not enough to flee completely. She steps closer and I can see her a bit clearer. The She has lovely silvery hair swept up neatly to the nape of her neck. Her skin looks soft but frail, like onion skin or ancient parchment. Hazel eyes smile down at me and I feel my stiff face trying to copy the gesture. Try being the operative word.
“Come with me, Theta. There is much to be done.” With a deceptive amount of strength for her size, the She helps me to stand and then situates herself under one arm. So small a motion exhausts me, but she takes nearly all my weight. All I have to do is stumble forward and listen to the soothing sound of her voice as it drones on and on about things I can’t-or won’t-understand. We enter someplace I don’t recognize and she leaves me lying on something soft. There’s a burst of sensation on my left thigh. I suppose that it’s physical pain, but it seems to alienated from the pain I’ve been immersed in that even the comparison seems ludicrous.
I don’t see the familiar shape again, but the new She-or would it be Her?-smiles at me and then leaves the room. I think. My eyes close of their own accord and I’m fairly certain I’m losing consciousness. Behind my lids I can see her face, the face that has been my angel and my tormentor for time on end, but then she’s gone, vanished into an emptiness that has no color, no sound and no texture.
For the first time in a lifetime, I sleep without dreaming.
Characters: Ten, later Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst (I love how this will surprise no one)
Spoilers: Through JE and then spoilers for other stories of mine, but nothing major there.
Word Count: 3249
Summary: Because that's what she does, my Rose. She lives everything so fully that the rest of us can't help ourselves. As we move into the Vortex--and by 'we' I mean the TARDIS and I--a thought strikes me and I start to laugh, even as tears leak out of my eyes. Even when she's universes away, on the other side of that damned white wall, she's still saving me.
A/N: Yay for more stream-of-consciousness! Yay more angst! This particular low in the storyline comes to a head here and then things begin to look up. Enjoy!
She thinks I’m crazy.
She has to think I’m crazy. Hell, if I saw me, paid attention to my behaviors-which I know she does, the doctor in her can’t help herself-knew even the shadow of who I was-and Martha knows a great deal more than that-I know I’d think I was crazy. And yet…
She never says anything.
Sometimes I catch her looking at me with a complicated set of emotions in her deep, dark eyes. It’s like she understands a part, but not the whole and the scientist in her won’t say anything until she has it all figured out. I love the scientist in Martha. I love the pride it instills in her and I adore the methodical way it prompts her to handle the world around her, even in a crisis. It works on a similar…wave or frequency I suppose to my own. Probably one of the smartest humans of her age.
Who am I kidding?
She’s not fully human, not anymore.
It’s the Time Vortex. Travel about in it long enough and you start to pick of background radiation. Pick up enough radiation and it starts to change you. Not Time Lords of course. Gallifreyans, too have a natural immunity to it. It’s part of what drew us to it in the first place. Long story, very complicated. But humans…it’s like a cancer. Not one that will kill them, but one that will most definitively change them. The very basic composition of her cellular structure is mutating. I saw it on her first med scan since she started traveling with me again and I’ve seen it on every scan since.
I should tell her. I should inform her and let her make her own decision, or failing that, I should at least find somewhere she can make a life for herself and leave her there. I should; I honestly, truly should. But I can’t. I’m far, far too much of a coward to tell her and… I’ve become far too dependent on her.
But the fact of the matter is that she was being changed and eventually she would notice. I’ve done everything I can to stall the process. I only hope it’ll buy me enough time. Time for what, I haven’t the slightest, but I’ll figure something out. Best under pressure, me.
Really it shouldn’t have surprised me when the claxon bell sounded for the third time that day.
Really, I mean… Really.
All hell was breaking loose, the universe threatening to fall down around my ears and at least five thousand planets in imminent danger; I was in my element. It had been a long time since a disaster of that magnitude had struck on my watch. The sick thing is just how happy it made me that there was such a crisis on hand. I’d been beginning to have hallucinations during my short sleep-cycles. Different from my usual nightmares, these were actually…pleasant hallucinations. It says quite a bit for my pathetic mental state at the time that the pleasant dreams hurt me worse than the nightmares ever had.
Mostly because with the nightmares, at least there was relief to be found in waking. Not so with these…dreams. Not so at all.
They were pleasant; memories of another timeline. We get them every so often, especially when a subject is especially potent to us. Emotion charges these types of things. I now understand the obsession my people had with repressing emotion. What could have happened, what was happening to her-to us-in another timestream…I dreamed about it. Whenever I woke up, I forgot everything but her face; her smiling, happy face. For hours upon hours after each time, the part of my mind monitoring her comatose one was warm and tingling, like a limb as circulation returns to stimulate numb nerve endings and synapses.
It was humming with this mental recreation of life that day, longer than usual. The last thing I remember about that day was standing at the crux-point of a lithium-carbide revelations system. The odd thing is…even with the most complicated piece of machinery ever created set right in front of me, ready to tear the fabric of space time into scrap rags, it all came down to the classic, cinematic climax.
Red wire; or green?
I pulled the green one. Why? I suppose there are a number of reasons. It could be because red is always the one you’re supposed to pull and I felt like being contrary. Maybe it was because green represents life and I wanted to pull the plug on that, because what has life brought me but pain and suffering? Or it could be that I chose at random or I might have known the right one to pull and intentionally pulled the wrong one; played God one last time and just ended everything. But all of these suppositions have one fatal flaw.
They give me far, far too much credit.
The truth, the sad and pathetic truth is that I didn’t even make a decision. It was made for me when I tripped over a crowbar and instinctively reached out to grab hold of something.
The universe was saved-or damned-because I subconsciously didn’t want to break my nose on the metal floor.
How vainly anticlimactic is that?
I remember staring at the wire in complete and utter shock. I didn’t look up to check if the machine had gone into final countdown or shut off. I didn’t do anything to try and further or prevent either outcome. I just stood there like a complete and utter moron; staring at the sparking end of a little green wire.
After that, there’s just an awful lot of black.
Sometimes that was all there was to it, blackness. Sometimes there were strange and unfamiliar sounds and smells to accompany it. But mostly it was the blackness mixed with cold. It was almost always cold. I never could figure out why, but it must have been very, very cold. Takes much more drastic temperatures to affect Time Lords than humans, it does. Once in a while I spared a thought to Martha and hoped that wherever she was, it was at least warmer than this.
Hell, if it wasn’t, she’d be dead within an hour, her heart beating slower and slower until it finally just stopped.
I tried not to think about that very often at all.
The strangest part about all of this wasn’t the blackness or the chill. I’d been in similar conditions before-usually someone’s idea of an appropriate prison cell. The strangest part wasn’t even that as time progressed I started to forget more and more and more of what had happened before. The strangest part was that I had no sense of time. None at all. I had no idea how long I had been there, how long between blinks, how long I’d been asleep, how long I could hold my breath. It was as if Time no longer had meaning. This was comforting at first, because it meant I could narrow the list of my possible locations to about a ten-fold list. But, combined with other things-the darkness, the cold, the eerily specific memory loss-none of the places I knew matched up.
That was most certainly not a comforting thought.
I kept dreaming though. Those same, happy dreams. The dreams of a life I had never had and now would never have. I didn’t even have the sight of her face or the feel of her hair to hold me to sanity now. It was gone, all of it. I couldn’t even feel her in my head anymore. I knew she was still alive only by the soft, rhythmic beat of a heart that echoed my own until it would have felt wrong to hear only two beats. Even that grew weaker and weaker as time wore on.
How much time went on I don’t know. But I do know that I prayed. I prayed to every possible deity of every possible race of every possible world and universe that I could remember. I have an awfully long list of those, and of other facts, just…no idea of how I learned them.
It didn’t work. I don’t know if I ever honestly expected it to work, but so long as I was trying something, anything to keep that heartbeat with me, I could ignore that gaping chasm in my mind. I could turn my back on it and pretend it simply didn’t exist.
But the instant her heart stopped beating, the very floor crumbled out from underneath me. My entire world was pain; pain and wrongness. It was wrong to hear only two heartbeats. I waited for the third each time, always waited for the third beat that never came, that would never come again. I screamed. At least, I think I screamed. I don’t know if my vocal cords were ever actually involved, but I screamed. I screamed and I spiraled into a void of cyclical pain, anguish, terror and the ever-present wrongness.
Even in this, this…hell, I didn’t stop dreaming of her.
These dreams were different, though. These dreams didn’t feature an alternate me. It was just her. Sometimes she looked younger and sometimes she looked older. It took me a long time to realize that she never actually changed. The change of age came from perceptions-how she wore her hair, how she did her makeup, how she dressed-superficially, but also from her eyes. In some dreams they were the eyes I remembered, wide and innocent and searching; so full of life and trust and awe. Other times they were older, wiser and more weary; jaded and closed off from the world around her. In the first set of dreams there was a tangible air of sadness around her entire person; in the second, an air of numbness.
I don’t know which was worse.
I didn’t even know her name anymore. I didn’t know where she came from or why she was so important to me. I had no idea what she did in those dreams-I still don’t know-because my entire focus was on her; just her. I don’t know why the little metal shape around her neck looks so familiar and I don’t know why I still dream of her, even now. Just now.
Right now.
I can see her.
These latest dreams aren’t like the others. She’s…happy. Mostly happy. It must be a time before the other dreams. I don’t see myself in them, but I do see her lips forming my name often. How I know it’s my name, I don’t have a clue. I’m not even sure what word-or words-her lips are forming, but somehow, deep in my primal parts I know that when her mouth shapes just that way and her eyes light up and her face brightens, she means me.
I make her happy.
But this dream-this one I’m in, right now-it’s not right…
I see her form my word with her lips, but her face no longer lights up. Instead there’s a shattering there, a breaking that looks superficial but must go much further. As she shatters, I see the second her, the one with such old brown eyes, I see her emerge and it adds a level of unbelievable sadness to my black spiral void. I made her happy, but now I’ve not only made her sad, I’ve broken her.
I’ve broken her.
That is inexcusable. Absolutely inexcusable. And somehow I know, deep in my bones, that I must have pulled the wrong wire and short-circuited the universe. How do I know this?
Because, this…existence, this painful, agonizing half-life is surely the worst possible hell.
The dreams are starting over again. I see the images of her now with an air of familiarity and it gives me hope. Hope that I cannot stem and hope that will inevitably be crushed as the cycle progresses; over and over and over again until there’s absolutely nothing left of me.
I’ve found a way to track time here; or at least I thought I had.
At first I could keep track of how many dream-story cycles I had been through, but… After a while it just became too much, far too much. My mind has broken down into the tiniest possible pieces. I am a collection of facts-times, dates, formulas and literature-but no story to go with it all, no reason why I know. I know what emotions are, all of them; happy, sad, angry, jealous, joyful. I know what it means rationally to love someone, to be hungry or thirsty, but I don’t feel any of these things. The only emotions I have left to me are the pain, the misery and the wrongness of the spiral.
I can’t remember why it’s wrong to have two heartbeats or why I’m always waiting for a third that never comes, but I do it. Eventually maybe I’ll stop questioning it, just become numb to everything while I float in a pool that can’t decide upon blackness or her.
I know I never will numb to it. It’s part of the punishment.
I have no idea what I did wrong. It has something to do with a green wire I think. I know what a wire is. It connects bits of circuitry and machinery together to create a single working unit. I even know that a green wire should never, ever be pulled unless one is in a film. But I don’t know why a green wire would torment me so.
As for physical needs, I stopped feeling them a long time ago. Or maybe I never did stop. Maybe I still feel them, but I can’t recognize them for what they really are. It’d be hard to notice anything in this cycle.
Ah!
It hurts! It hurts and I’m on fire and it burns and I’m empty and make it stop, make it stop!
Make it stop!
Make it-
Light.
There’s light in my cell.
I uncurl myself-did I curl up at some point?-and blink into a light that is far, far brighter than any light has the right to be.
At first it’s too much. My retinas protest and burn and my eyes water, trying to relieve a sensation that can’t be remedied physically. I do adjust though. I always adjust. I think. Why is there light here? There’s never been any light before, has there? Light is an energy given off by photons charged with atomic energy. I know that. I’ve always known that, but I’ve never seen it before… Or have I?
There’s something in the light. If I squint I can just make it out. Familiar curves leading up to a familiar halo of hair surrounding a familiar face; set into an unfamiliarly hard expression. I gasp sharply and it hurts. Have I not been breathing this whole time? How could I forget to breathe? Breathing is necessary to most forms of organic life. Does that mean I’m inorganic? How odd. She doesn’t seem to notice my plight, nor my confusion. She merely steps to one side.
“No!” I scream out to her. I meant to scream out, but the only sound is a twisted croaking. My vocal cords must be underdeveloped. Such happens in some lesser species, resulting in speech patterns of grunts and other masticular sounds. But an underdeveloped species can’t know it’s underdeveloped, can it? I don’t actually know. I don’t think I’ve ever asked one.
I try again, with marginal improvement. So not underdeveloped, just damaged vocal cords.
Either way, she doesn’t return. Instead, a new shape comes into the light, closer than the first shape. This shape is smaller than the first, shorter by a good four or five inches at least. It’s a feminine shape, so the proper pronoun would be she, I suppose. Well, that’s not entirely certain, but she does tend to be the most frequently used. Universe; life; patterns; repetition. Stick with what works.
This new She walks towards me with slow, deliberate steps. As she does this, the light follows her until my entire surroundings are lit. I’m…in the hull of a ship? Or at least somewhere metal; cold and impersonal. There’s nothing of interest here. I return my focus onto the new she and wonder if this is some sort of bizarre new dream. That would break the cycle, but I’m not complaining.
The new She smiles at me and her expression is warm.
“Hello Theta Sigma,” she speaks to me. Theta Sigma? Yes, that sounds familiar. I think. That must be my name. I nod mutely. It’s the best I can do.
“You’re responsive; good. We’ve made it in time.” She has a very soothing voice, dry as old leaves and warm as sunshine, though how I know that is…I shake myself once, shivering against a tide of feelings that threaten to erupt over me. Apparently my own hell fears the light, but not enough to flee completely. She steps closer and I can see her a bit clearer. The She has lovely silvery hair swept up neatly to the nape of her neck. Her skin looks soft but frail, like onion skin or ancient parchment. Hazel eyes smile down at me and I feel my stiff face trying to copy the gesture. Try being the operative word.
“Come with me, Theta. There is much to be done.” With a deceptive amount of strength for her size, the She helps me to stand and then situates herself under one arm. So small a motion exhausts me, but she takes nearly all my weight. All I have to do is stumble forward and listen to the soothing sound of her voice as it drones on and on about things I can’t-or won’t-understand. We enter someplace I don’t recognize and she leaves me lying on something soft. There’s a burst of sensation on my left thigh. I suppose that it’s physical pain, but it seems to alienated from the pain I’ve been immersed in that even the comparison seems ludicrous.
I don’t see the familiar shape again, but the new She-or would it be Her?-smiles at me and then leaves the room. I think. My eyes close of their own accord and I’m fairly certain I’m losing consciousness. Behind my lids I can see her face, the face that has been my angel and my tormentor for time on end, but then she’s gone, vanished into an emptiness that has no color, no sound and no texture.
For the first time in a lifetime, I sleep without dreaming.