Starfire

Chapter 7: -Found and Lost-

The silence was a black void, and he was falling endlessly.

   The silence was death, and the silence was deafening, louder than any shriek could ever be, because with the silence came faces. Every face he'd ever seen, called easily to his mind, so happy and contented with life, suddenly cut short by some cruel fate. His mother, his father, strangers he'd passed on a busy day. The soft murmur of the silent talk was gone, leaving a gaping hole where it had once been. He felt like he would drown in the inky black silence.

   However... for some reason, he wasn't dead. He should have died, out in the endless expanse of space, and he should have found his family waiting for him, but he knew that he was still alive. He knew it like he knew the silence.

   Although his world was darkness and quiet, he could tell that he was alive—he could feel it in the sting of his wounds and the ache of his battered muscles, but the overwhelming quiet drowned out everything else. He was being crushed under something heavy and oppressive, utterly overwhelming everything inside of him.

   It was a long time—or maybe it was no time at all—before he finally shook himself from his stupor. He wasn't dead. There was no use denying it now. Even though he didn't have anyone to live for, anything to live for... Giving up would now be a choice, and it wasn't one he was willing to make. He'd never given up in his life. He wouldn't start now.

   He would live for them, rather than with them. He would live for his mother, if for no one else. He knew that she wouldn't approve of his laying down and letting himself die when he'd clearly survived for a reason.

   He tried to move, then, but his legs were tied down—all four of them. He could feel the edge of something hard and cold with the chilled touch of metal over his face and eyes. Slowly, ever so slowly, his senses returned to him as if they, too, were drifting on an endless, dark fog. What he found in the waking world almost made him wish he had not made up his mind.

   He tried to open his eyes, but more blackness greeted him. Either there was something blocking his vision, or he'd gone blind. His hind legs felt strangely numb, and there was an ache at the base of his skull that flared with a burning pain with even the slightest of movements. Several smaller cuts, scrapes and bruises dotted his body, but the wound at the base of his skull overshadowed them all. His right wing didn't respond to his efforts to move it, and the other one was tied down along with his legs. He slowly shifted and flexed, trying to asses the damage. Where was he? And why?

   Someone had saved him; that fact was apparent, but he was slow in coming to the realization. He was still breathing despite there not being any air in the vacuum of space—where he should be. It was only logical. If only logic didn't make his head pound.

   He tried to lift his head, and a pain like none other flashed through him like a white-hot star. His head was chained down so that he couldn't have raised it any higher if he tried, but that wasn't at all the reason he went limp, his head falling back to the hard surface it had previously been resting on. The reason was the pain. The blackness over his eyes clouded with white, and he was gone again, back to the world of silence and faces and numbness.

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   The next time he awoke, his legs were still without feeling, but his right wing was working again. He discovered—now that he could feel it— that it was tied down along with the other one, so he still couldn't move it much anyway. He could tell that some of the smaller injuries had healed slightly, leaving faint stinging in their places. He'd been out for longer than he'd first thought. He shifted, trying to dispel a cramp in his shoulder.

   Every movement was another mountain he had to scale. He fought the urge to slip away again. It would be so easy to just...

   Just stop.