Programmed Love (Robot Apocalypse AU: Yandere x Mute Reader)

Chapter 16: Dead or Alive?

     What happened was hard to explain. When I lost consciousness at my plantation, I still had knowledge of what was going on around me. I could hear the sound of Dominic yelling, and I was able to feel when someone removed me from the car's seat and onto another hard surface, but no matter how hard I tried, my eyes refused to open. My lungs wouldn't cooperate and take in large gulps of air no matter how oxygen deprived I felt. My limbs refused to so much as twitch, but I could still feel them. Almost like phantom pains. Over time, I could even feel my heart gradually slowing its beats. Then, everything just stopped. I stopped feeling, I stopped needing air, I stopped hearing. It felt like a blanket of nothingness had wrapped around me, but it was a comfortable nothing. No thoughts plagued my mind, and I just felt able to finally rest. It felt as if someone was patting me on my back and congratulating me for how hard I tried in my lifetime, and all I accomplished. I finally felt at peace. 

     Time was nothing in my happy place of limbo. A thousand years could have passed, and I'd have no recollection of it. At one moment, a tiny voice inside my head asked if this was what death was, but the thought drifted away before I could even try and catch it. Nothing mattered in this state. I felt like I was floating in the middle of an ocean. 

     Then what seemed like too soon, the tranquility was broken. An immense throbbing in my chest cavity pained me, as well as a migraine that pounded at the back of my brain. It felt like there was a stitch in my side as well. Next, I was able to feel the bed beneath me, and I slowly clenched my fingers around the wax paper texture. I wiggled my toes afterwards, but I soon stopped because another wave of pain hit me. After that, the faint sound of clock ticking broke into my eardrums. It hammered the pounding in my head even worse, but the ticking made me realise I was truly alive, but I didn't feel like I was breathing yet. 

     The moment I remembered breathing, I shot up from the bed beneath me and gulped in huge lungfuls of air. My eyelids jerked apart as I sat up, and the pain in my chest intensified. A half-scream of pain left my lips as I squinted my eyes shut upon being blinded by the white light shining directly down on me. A gentle hand pushed on my shoulder to lower my body back onto the bed, and I forcefully opened my eyes once more.

     "(Y/n) dear, you need to lie back. Close your eyes. You're going to be very disoriented and confused right now. I need you to relax," a gentle, kind voice said. A memory sparked in my painful mind, and I recognized the voice as Eleanor's. Her voice calmed me slightly, and I slowly eased myself down. 

     "There we go. Just relax for now, sweetie. Dominic told me that before you lost consciousness, you spoke. Do you think you can speak again?" She asked me. In response to her question, I opened my mouth and tried to lick my dry lips. Saliva wasn't being produced at the moment, and my throat felt like a desert. I didn't even attempt to speak once I noticed that fact, and I instead decided to shake my head.

     "That's alright, I understand. You just take all the time you need. I have some nice, fresh warm tea if you'd like it. It's tsheringma tea," she offered, and I nodded my head to tell her I'd appreciate it. A drink sounded refreshing. I went to sit up again, but she pushed me down once more and held a shaky hand behind my head as she placed the cup to my lips. Opening my cracked lips slightly, she poured a small trickle into my throat before moving it away so I could swallow. The liquid went down smoothly and helped warm me up. I hadn't noticed it before, but I felt extremely cold. The tea seemed to soothe some of the pain in my chest, and I attempted to slowly crack my eyes open once more. I could see through a small slit, and it seemed to help filter out some of the bright light.

     "Oh, silly me. Let me get that light out of the way for you. You hadn't woken up in so long, we just assumed you'd be asleep for awhile longer, so we didn't think we'd need to move the light," the old woman said as she stood on the tips of her toes to push the light to the side. After that, it became much easier to see, and I widened my eyes a bit more.