The scream tore out of me until my throat felt like it was shredding.
Everything burned.
If the black goo's invasion had been the chill of the abyss, this was lava being poured through my veins. Every nerve ending was on fire. Every cell in my body screamed in unison.
The sound coming out of my mouth didn't even register as my own voice anymore. Just noise. Raw, animal noise that went on and on until my ears stopped working—or maybe they'd given up trying to process anything over the roar of agony drowning out every other sense.
Can't—can't think—
My hyper-perception had collapsed into static. Too much pain. Too much sensory overload. I couldn't focus enough to look inward, couldn't muster the concentration needed to see what the hell was actually happening on a microscopic level.
But I could still see with my eyes.
The black goo was... retreating?
It pulled away from my skin in jerky, uneven motions. The slick shell that had encased me from toe to sternum was peeling back, retracting like it had touched something toxic.
My legs came free first.
The furthest point from the source—my right hand still locked around Reva's throat. The goo sloughed off my calves, my knees, my thighs, leaving behind skin that felt raw and hypersensitive.
And where it left... the burning faded.
Not completely. But enough. Enough that I could feel the difference between the parts of me still engulfed and the parts that had been released. Like pulling a limb out of boiling water.
Why? What changed? Did the experiment—
Then I saw the smoke.
Black wisps curled up from my exposed flesh. Not from me exactly, but from the goo itself. Wherever it touched my body now, thin tendrils of dark vapor rose into the damp air.
It's burning? What the-
The realization barely had time to register before another wave of agony crashed through me. My newly freed legs, suddenly lacking the rigid support of the shell, buckled.
The world around me suddenly lurched and it took me a moment to realize that I had dropped to my knees
The impact sent a fresh spike of pain up my spine.
Through with my upper body remained fused to the black mass, still connected to the rapidly retreating network, the angle had now shifted. With me kneeling now, hunched forward, I was practically held up only by the goo's grip on my torso and arms.
Then my left hand flopped free.
The goo practically spat it out, recoiling from the limb like it was radioactive. My arm dropped limp at my side, fingers twitching uselessly, and I watched through blurring vision as the black tide continued its frantic withdrawal.
It was pulling out of me. Extracting the tendrils it had woven through my muscles, unwinding from my bones, retreating from my nervous system with what almost seemed like panic.
And everywhere it left, the fire dimmed. My legs. My left arm. My lower back. The agony receded like a tide going out, leaving behind a dull ache that felt almost pleasant by comparison.
I stared at the churning mass of black matter, watching it consolidate around what remained of Reva's torso.
Just have to wait.
Few more seconds and it'll be gone.
Few more seconds and the pain stops.
...
...
No.
No, fuck that.
You don't get to run.
You crawl into my body uninvited. You dig your roots into my bones. You pump your filth through my veins. You make me do—whatever the fuck you made me do to her.
And now you just get to leave?
You think I'm your fucking booty call?
Nah.
Nah, we're not done here.
Get back here, you piece of shit. I'm not finished with you.
My left arm moved.
I punched into the mass.
The fire roared back to life. Every inch of progress was agony renewed, the burning sensation flooding back through flesh I'd just felt go cool.
My fist passed through the outer layer of black slime—cold and yielding, like gelatin left in a freezer—and then something solid.
Bone.
Her ribs, probably. What was left of them.
My fingers kept going, pushing past the fractured cage, sinking into the cavity beyond. The goo writhed around my arm, and I could feel it in the Force—a frequency of pure rejection and horror.
Yeah, that's right.
Doesn't feel so good when someone invades you, does it?
My vision was tunneling. Black spots danced at the edges, and I knew I was seconds away from passing out. The burning was worse now than it had been at the start—I'd willingly shoved myself back into the heart of it, and my body was making me pay for that choice with interest.
But I held on.
Both hands now buried in what remained of Reva's body, surrounded by black goo that couldn't decide if it wanted to consume me or flee from me.
You started this.
We're finishing it on my terms.
At some point, my brain stopped trying to make sense of what it was receiving.
The pain didn't lessen. The signals kept firing, the nerves kept doing their job, but the part of me responsible for interpreting all of it simply clocked out. There's a threshold past which agony becomes noise, and I crossed it somewhere in the dark.
I didn't know when my consciousness gave out. Didn't know how long I spent in that formless nothing between one heartbeat and the next. Could have been a minute. Could have been an hour. The distinction didn't seem to matter anymore.
Awareness returned in fragments. Brief flickers of sensation surfacing through the black before sinking back down.
"—back isn't what it used to be, carrying this—damned metal bucket of a—"
The words drifted past me, half-heard and already fading. An old voice, familiar and weary, grumbling about something.
Arms around me. The gentle sway of movement. Someone walking.
A presence brushed against the edges of my awareness, and something in my chest unclenched before I could consciously identify it. The taut strings I'd been holding for so long loosened on their own, and I stopped fighting the pull of exhaustion.
The burning had faded at some point, replaced by a warmth that spread through me like settling into heated water. And underneath that, a strange sense of relief—like a burden I'd been carrying so long I'd forgotten its weight had finally given me a moment's reprieve.
Sleep came without resistance, and I let it take me.
And along with that, I found myself lost in a half-remembered dream, longing for what I had lost long ago and had yet to find.
--
The humid night air stuck to my skin, smelling of cut grass and impending rain. She stood in the doorway of the garage, the yellow bug-light above buzzing in the silence. She looked small in her oversized coveralls, arms wrapped tight around herself to stop the shaking, forcing a smile that cracked at the edges. Her lekku were unnaturally still today... but after all that happened today, I couldn't find a reason for them not to.
I took three steps down the concrete path, the gravel crunching under my sneakers, and glanced back just to make sure she was actually going inside.
She was still standing there, looking at me with those tender blue eyes. I could feel the tremble in them even from a distance, and again hesitated on leaving her alone here.
Mom would find out if I am late...
That voice of reasoning inside me spoke again, making me clench my fist again. Mom can find about me sneaking out, yes... but is that really so important that I should leave her be?
A part of me was for some reason feeling a sense of premonition, as if leaving her would be the last time I see her again.
H-how could that be... they didn't see our face and I made sure we weren't followed... Arno... he would have gotten out too.
The last part felt false, yet that was all he could hope for.
I saw her raise a hand, perhaps to wave a bye.
Fuck it, doesn't matter if mom catches me. I can't leave her alon—
A bright flash came from behind her, illuminating everything orange. I only realized it when the sound reached my ears and the heatwave prickled my skin.
N-NO—
—Fire roared on all sides, wood collapsing inward, glass shattering somewhere behind me.
I felt my knees burn under the heated metal floor, yet all my body could pay attention was her's weight pressed against my chest, her blood soaking through my shirt. I pressed my hands against the worst of the wounds, trying to hold her together, panic clawing up my throat.
Her hand lifted, trembling, fingers scorched and slick with blood. She touched my cheek with a tenderness that didn't belong here, her gaze unfocused, distant, like she was seeing something else overlaid on my face.
"Ezra...?"
Her voice came out wet, barely audible over the crackling flames.
"You're... you're safe, right? Y-you must be..."
Her thumb brushed along my jawline, tracing the bone structure that hadn't been there before. Tears cut tracks through the soot on her cheeks, her smile widening even as the life bled out of her.
"Look at you... you got so big... when did you get so big, little thief?"
Her hand went slack, sliding down my neck, and the light behind her eyes snuffed out—
__
I jerked forward with a gasp, hands grabbing at nothing.
Blue light. Everywhere. Streaking past in long, silent lines.
I sat there breathing hard, blinking, my brain sluggish and heavy like it had been packed in wet cotton. The seat underneath me was cold. Something hummed through the floor. My fingers were gripping armrests.
The fog lingered for another half-second, warm and dull, before the memories of what I'd just seen caught up with the rest of me.
...oh yeah. That happened.
Wait—WHAT!?
__
A/N: Fever is goner now, so i finally got the will to write the chapter that was on hold for so many days.
The dream above referenced content from Perfect World Arc but I tried to keep it as minimal as possible. No worries if you didn't get it, it will be clarified in next chapter.
And once again, thank you for your patience