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Do you know what dying is like? The feeling of life leaving you?
It feels like falling. Endless falling without any ground to catch you. Just as you think that you cannot sink any deeper, you simply keep sinking. Everything becomes dark, like some awful night that swallows you. You know what's happening, in your mind you know that this is the end. But your body becomes tired, and soon all you can do is yearn for the climax. Yearn for the sweet release of death. Yearn for that strange feeling as you slowly go from falling to flying.
I didn't see Ivar when he came back to our room and found no one there. I didn't see the dread in his eyes, the way he stormed outside to ask everyone if they knew where I was. I didn't see him, or Harald, begin their search for me.
I didn't see him toss his crutch aside when he saw me lying there, my hand still clutching my wounded belly, or his blue eyes fill with glassy tears as he looked down at my pale face.
I didn't see him every day for the following weeks either. Every day praying for some flicker of my eye, some gentle movement, some sign that I was alive.
Hvitserk came home in that time. I didn't see his sadness either. The way he waited and watched over me when Ivar wasn't there, the way he talked to me, urging me to keep fighting.
Sometimes, I wish I hadn't listened. Sometimes I wish I'd just kept falling. But life never goes as one plans. And it's funny how we just keep on fighting, no matter what.
It was three weeks of darkness before I woke up. Three weeks of purgatory as I wondered whether I would survive, whether I even wanted to. Every now and again, I would wake and stir and drink water to quench my thirst. But I was never truly awake. Everything was always in darkness.
Sometimes I could hear the things that surrounded me. But I couldn't move. I couldn't join the world around me. I was trapped, somewhere between life and death, unable to leave that awful state of being. There came a point at which I didn't really care which side I feel into. I just wanted something definite. Something final. Something, anything, that wasn't this.
I'm not sure what made me stay to be honest. I'm not sure what pulled me back to the land of the living. I suppose it was what always brought me back, the same thing that always kept me fighting.
Ivar.
But if I had known then what I knew now, I don't believe I would've opened my eyes. I don't believe I would've kept fighting. I don't believe I would've done anything except fall back into the black abyss of death.
When I was lost, so many things flooded back into my mind. Memories, dreams, thoughts and fears. All of it came back, washing over my like a flood as I stirred in my bed. I could hear the sound of gunshots on TV when I was a child. Some old country and western that my father loved. I could smell fish and chips on the beach when I was seven, could hear my mother calling for me to join her in the icy water. I could feel my mother's tears on my shoulder as she hugged me one last time, I could feel the way she squeezed me closer as if she never wanted to let go. And the way she whispered in my ear that she was proud of me, proud of the woman that I'd become. And I could see Ivar. The day I met him in York. The way I'd looked him in the eye, refusing to back down. And the way he smirked back at me, that dangerous glimmer in his ocean eyes.
And then I was back.
My vision was a blur, lights streaming in to lighten the darkness of my hellish world, but all the shapes in my line of vision were just shapes. I couldn't make anything out, not for a while it seemed. But as I blinked, my eyes slowly began to adjust to the light.
I gave a sharp inhale before breathing out a heavy sigh. Everything left my lips. Death, life, fear and pain. They all slowly slipped past my lips and away into the distance as I stared up at the wooden ceiling. And then I felt it. Reality.
