Work Text:
The most agonizing moment of your life is not the fifteen minutes that your heart stopped. The most agonizing moment is the next hour, when you find yourself utterly alone for the first time in your life.
Your mother is gone, after giving you comforting words that did little to soothe your wounds. How can I give them hope, you want to scream, when I don’t have any myself? You keep your thoughts to yourself and watch as your mother leaves to go to work. To go help others, when you both know she should be there with you. You don’t know why she left you. You don’t know why everybody is leaving you.
They say you were only dead for fifteen minutes, but as you struggle to the bathroom you find it impossible to believe. You don’t remember what happened when you died, but you can’t imagine it only lasted for fifteen minutes. But maybe it did. Maybe you’re only hoping that it was longer than that. You don’t know anything anymore, save for your own name. It feels like someone scraped your memory clean and left you with endless black thoughts.
You remove your shirt and recoil at the sight of the blood oozing out of your abdomen. The edges are raw where he shredded through your skin and muscle, the wound so dark that you can’t see inside. Your vision blurs, and you wipe your eyes before the tears have a chance to fall. You know it’s your fault, and the only thing that comforts you is the knowledge that your beta wasn’t the one who did this to you, the one who killed you. That he stopped before he could cross a line that would never be uncrossed. You feel as empty as the gaping cavity in your stomach.
Your fingers curl around the rim of the sink, and you breathe a quiet, tired curse. I could break this sink, you think, but even as you do, you know it isn’t true. A week ago you could have broken the sink—now, as the red in your eyes falters and fades, you doubt you could crack it. You want to scream, to smash the mirror, but you either don’t want to or can’t move. You don’t know which; you don’t care.
Death is an invisible memory. You’ll never know what happened during those fifteen minutes. You decide it had to have been peaceful, and you wish you could go back. Your fingers hover at the torn skin. You know how easy it would be to rip into the flesh like he did, you know how easy it would be to end your own life. The tips of your fingernails touch the exposed wound, and the shot of pain makes you jerk your hand away. No, a voice tells you, but you want to. You want to go back to that place where you can neither remember nor feel anything. You want to be able to rest. This world has never been kind to you, and you are too aware of it.
But your mother’s words come back to you. The reminder that your friends need you is enough to make you abandoned the idea, even though it’s the only thing that you want. You are not the only one in pain, you tell yourself, but in that moment, you realize that you are the only one who has never been given relief. It’s not a competition but you can’t help the bitter taste in the back of your throat. You just died, and you’re already attempting to save everyone else. This is what killed you, this is what crushed you, and yet you know that you must help them.
You return to your room, but sleep evades you. You lie on your bed anyway, staring at your ceiling, and you suddenly wish you were with her. You cry again, and this time a headache starts behind your eyes. You close them, but you don’t sleep. Time slips by, and you don’t move again until your mother texts you a message saying your best friend’s father is in the hospital, insisting that you come.
You drag yourself out of bed and go back to the bathroom.