35. WEN

The total—displacement doesn’t feel like anything I’ve experienced before.

Not like the intangible emptiness of the void, or the sensory ambiguity of the Mindscape and the Imperial Realm. It’s a collision of the physical and metaphysical. A combination I can’t fathom, let alone handle, whether in mind, body or soul.

Come back to me, White.

That voice. Everything I love and hate and crave and need. It pushes back everything I can’t feel away, filling the vacuum expanding within and without, with its compulsion and necessity.

I scream back at it. At him. Always him.

Now you choose to be in my head

As if I ever have a choice with you. As if Choice and you can ever be put in the same sentence, the same Existence. But I don’t want a choice. I only want you to come back to me, White. Only close that rift before you do.

What rift?

The one you opened and disappeared through.

I didn’t open anything!

It doesn’t matter what you think now. You fell into the void, physically. That’s a first. I need to find out how it happened, just not now. Now I need you back.

How do I even get back?

Focus on me, and me alone.

As if I have any choice in that either. You’re always buzzing in my very being.

Good. Hate me, rail against me, let what you feel for me storm you, consume you, and make our connection even more powerful.

What connection? It doesn’t exist. You disappeared without a trace and I couldn’t even feel you. You cut yourself off from me and left me to wither and die, you heartless Angelhole!

Silence follows my psychic rant. I go insane in a second with the panic, and my screams fill the void.

Come back, Godric. Come back!

I didn’t leave.

It shatters me, hearing his voice again. It makes me sob and babble.

Godric, you bastard, you utter and absolute monster.

I never wanted to leave you. I would never want to leave you. No matter what I have to do, or what I must do. I’m incapable of it.

But you did leave me, and you won’t even tell me why.

Silence again until I start screaming again, incoherent with fury and fear.

Don’t you dare cut me off again. Don’t you dare leave me with the silence again.

I wasn’t doing that. I didn’t mean to. It was beyond me.

It was beyond you when you returned, too?

This time the silence is filled with hesitation, reluctance. It’s why I know he’s still there, and I don’t go insane when it lasts an eternal moment before he sighs.

I thought I was giving you space.

Space?Space? You wanted to give the girl who has a bottomless void inside her space? Who’s the fucking moron now?

I thought you’d reach out when you were ready. And when you didn’t?—

You came and acted like a galactic-level possessive jerk.

One who won’t even touch me, let alone possess me.

I did behave like a petty fool.

What? He’s admitting it? Godric can do that?

In answer to my incredulity, the sweet bitterness of his resignation blossoms in my awareness, and spreads over my tongue.

I’ve been trying to fathom why I did that. Why I do anything anymore. All I know is that you—unmake me.

This time when he pauses, not a single thought or fear or anything else sparks within me. Existence and nonexistence bate their breath until he sighs.

You. You. You unravel my certainties and unhinge my foundations. Ever since I dragged you into my life, I’ve been trying to rebuild my convictions, to restore the tangled threads of my path, and the scattered pieces of my being. But nothing fits together anymore, and I’m at a loss on how to proceed. How to be.

When silence descends this time, I’m the one responsible. I’m the one who’s not sure I understand anything anymore.

What he said. It’s—massive. Immeasurable, really.

Is–is that the reason you left?

No.

Silence again. But this time I wait. I feel he will say more. Then he does.

I need you to believe that if I could tell you why I left, I would.

This brings anger and heartache expanding within me again.

Even if you can’t tell me why you left, you could have told me you were leaving. But you left me thinking the worst, left me for nightmares to prey on, for dread and desperation to destroy me.

That’s another thing I need you to believe. That I didn’t know I would leave. I only knew that I could. I would have informed you of the possibility, if I even suspected it would affect you.

You didn’t suspect the dozen fucking ways I need you in this monster-land? You thought it okay to leave a Null alone with her void? But most importantly, you had no idea I would go out of my fucking mind worrying about you?

That last bit in specific never even crossed my mind. I thought you’d ask Lorcan if I disappeared, and he would assure you I’d come back within a week, and that would be that. I thought you might be inconvenienced because of your need for our training, that you’d probably burn with curiosity. The most I would have considered is that you might miss me, in some fleeting moments?—

Some fleeting moments? You know, Angelhole, I’ve been wondering. Have you ever given any thought to how you’d like to die?

Yes.

His immediate answer makes everything inside me stall.

Y-you have?

I never did. But lately, yes. I’ve been imagining the possibilities of my end. They all revolve around one scenario.

I bate my absent breath for him to tell me what it is. But that’s not what he says next. What he does say makes me forget everything.

No one ever worried about me. I thought it unfeasible that anyone could. I don’t understand how you did. How you do. What could I have possibly done to deserve your turmoil, and inspire your desperation?

I gape into the nothingness.

That’s it? He says a few words, a few unimaginable words, granted, and I’m no longer angry? I forget all the endless days when my sanity disintegrated and nothing meant anything anymore, starting with life itself? When I still have no answers, and no actual apology?

I’m that easy?

Yeah. I guess I am.

Resigned to the fact down to my bottomless recesses, I sigh.

All right, you win. I won’t ask again. And I’ll message you again. Just don’t complain when I bust your tablet this time. Now lead me back to you, my Godawful.