What if... (hfjONE-shots)

...Liam brought Airy back (Pt.2)

Alright my Edgelings.

Today I'm going to be wrapping up my oldest unfinished storyline. The "Liam brought Airy back." storyline. I just got very inspired by the song "Goodbye" by Bo Burnham, so yeah... I'm thinking that the next part of the OLS (ONE Lost Soul) AU will come out soon after this, but we'll see where the inspiration takes me.

Things to note:

#1 - Just like the first part, this is going to contain a lot of torture, but this one is also going to go more into Liam's unstable mental state as well, so if things like nightmares and hallucinations and self-deprecation bother you, I suggest you skip.

#2 - There's going to be suicidal stuff as well.

#3 - The ending is really depressing. Angst with no happy ending. If you don't like that, then... yeah just don't read it. This is basically just a big ol' vent of all my dark thoughts, so don't expect to get anything fulfilling out of this.

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Liam was floating in complete darkness, a void of nothingness, and for a minute it was soothing. Like a blanket wrapping around the core of his existence, comforting him in oblivion. But then, something appeared in the nothingness.

It was a small string of white code, glowing and making Liam squint. He hissed, guts turning at the sight of it. A disgusting reminder of reality. He just wanted to lose himself in the nothingness for a minute, but even that illusion was deprived of him.

The code kept typing itself stretching infinitely into the distance, wrapping itself around and surrounding Liam in a cage of computer language. It began to compress, pushing itself closer to him, and making the void press into his fabric... like water.

Liam instantly panicked at the feeling of weight pressing down on him from all sides. He stretched his arms out, attempting to 'swim' upwards. But he felt something grab onto his leg as he kicked, he spun around and his eyes widened when he saw a tentacle of letters and numbers wrapping around his leg, pulling him downward.

He helplessly struggled, thrashing and kicking as he desperately tried to swim upward, but instead he was jerked even further down. The pressure increased all around him, crushing him. He tried to scream, but he couldn't breathe. He hacked and choked, and in a final attempt managed to free himself.

He sped upwards, kicking violently, heart beating violently as he glanced back at not one, but hundreds of tentacles of code squirming towards him. He shut his eyes and put all of his energy into swimming, his lungs were burning, he was running out of time. Just as he felt one of the tentacles brush his ankle, he broke through the barrier of code that made the 'roof' of his cage.

He crawled through, heaving himself up and crawling on his hands and knees as far away from the hole as he could. He hacked and coughed, the pressure finally gone. He had the illusion of being able to breathe in the infinite dark void surrounding him. He coughed and coughed and coughed and he couldn't stop coughing.

The hacking hurt horribly, like his insides were literally about to burst up through his throat, instead, Liam lurched forward, vomiting up soggy blue paper mush. He wanted to stop but couldn't, tears poured down his face and he continued to painfully hurl up soppy sticky notes.

Finally it ended, and Liam collapsed face first into the white code that made up the ground. He slowly pushed himself up, feeling eyes on his back. He carefully backed away from the pile of disgusting blue paper vomit, keeping his anxious eyes on the black void sky.