Heart of Glass [manxman]

Chapter Twenty-Four

"There's a hundred things I would've done differently."

"Louis—"

"No, really, I would. If he comes back from this, I don't know if he'll forgive me for everything I said and did to him... I feel awful."

"He's been just as bad."

"He's broken. I saw that he was broken, but I ignored it. I overlooked it, because it was easier." He sighed. "I love him so much, you know? It hurts, honestly. It makes my chest ache. I just can't imagine how much worse it's going to hurt if he wakes up and doesn't love me too."

The room was empty and quiet. Low hums of medical machinery accompanied by soft beeping livened things up by making the silence feel a little less overwhelming. The lights had been dimmed as well, and strangely enough, the room didn't reek of that rancid infirmary stench—bleach, death, and depression.

Well, the stench of depression tended to stick to me, but I'd grown used to that. Death had gotten so close that I managed to touch it, only for it to be ripped away from me again, before I was pitched directly back into the land of the living. In that brief moment between life and death, as my eyes closed and my organs failed, I'd been relieved. It was finally over. Everyone was finally safe.

Waking, though... I wasn't sure. Something felt different, felt off. While I was upset about the fact that there was still blood being pumped through my veins, as well as normal brain function, I couldn't say that some part of me wasn't relieved about the same thing. Of course, that relief was somewhat squandered by the fact that I woke up to an empty room. Upon inspection, everything looked perfect and in place, like nothing had been disturbed—like no one had passed by to disturb it.

I wasn't expecting a fucking parade. I knew a whole hell of a lot better than that. All I wanted was Louis, maybe Dr. Ponds or Meredith. They didn't even have to be there for me; I was perfectly fine if they were only there to show Louis support. I just didn't want to be alone.

But, I was always alone.

Frowning, I sat up, propping myself up on my elbows as I squinted at the wall. I grabbed my glasses off the bedside table and slid them on, seeing that the one thing that had been altered was the whiteboard by the door. All that was written on it was the date—October 29th. I was two days late for honoring the deaths of my fallen comrades during the first Aquireign defeat.

Damn it.

That was the first time I'd been late.

Sighing, I took another quick inventory. They had me attached to a number of machines, but a jam in the system would be able to fix any alarms that'd go off if I unattached myself.

I couldn't sit there feeling sorry for myself when I'd survived and my life had reverted to normal and not at least bother to light one goddamn candle in their memory. After all the havoc I'd wrought, it was the right thing to do.

Detaching myself from the machinery, I silenced anything that threw off a signal, either by spell or by waving my hand, twisting the metal inside of it to rupture it and keep it from making noise or alerting anyone outside to its failure. I got out of bed and went to the closet at the corner of the room. It didn't look like the school's infirmary, which meant it was likely I was at one of the local hospitals. More than likely, that meant it was standard procedure to keep candles in the room in the case of mournings during hospital stays or due to the death of the room's occupant.

Sure enough, on the top shelf of the closet were three black candles. It wasn't enough, but it was a hell of a lot better than doing nothing. I took the candles to the other side of the room and placed them in a horizontal row in front of the window. Cracking the blinds, allowing a few slivers of moonlight into the room, and lifting the window a few inches for the spirits to enter and exit, I went back to the closet, fished out a lighter, and shut the lights off.