Viking's Mate (Twilight OC X OC)

Chapter 62: In with the New

~ Aria POV ~

I burned. 

For days, and weeks, and months, and years, I felt the flames spread over my body. 

Agony battled with pain in a never-ending suffering hell. 

It took all my focus not to scream in rage and pain. My only constant, my only reminder of why I was enduring this punishment, was a beautiful deep voice speaking to me. The voice of my mate, my husband, my Ivar, as he read my life to me. 

My mind began to expand in its focus, growing smarter as the fire raged on. I began to catalogue the pain, ranking parts of it in comparison to other areas. I decided that the pain in my fingertips was sharp and grating, but hurt less than the stabbing, insufferable pain in my chest. I ranked that my ankles, when slightly moved, shot up much worse in pain than the pain when I lifted my shoulder slightly. I spent the time on fire cataloging little things like that in between hearing my stories.

I heard my brother whimper during my mate's reading of Gotham, and as much as I wanted to reach out and console him, I could not move, for fear the fire would burn him as well. I felt when my sons were laid next to me, their sleeping bodies flanking my still form. I knew I couldn't move, because I felt that the second I tried to move, the fire consuming my very bones and burning me black would then spread to everyone and everything around me.

So I endured. I remained silent. I remained unmoving. I remained on fire.

For however long it is that I suffered in outward silence, the screams staying safely locked in my nightmare of a brain. Until at one point in seemingly endless time, it finally started to change.

Only, it didn't get less painful, it got worse. As I felt the fire leave my fingers and toes, it all congregated at my heart, getting worse, and hotter each inch it retreated from my body into my heart. 

When I finally left like there was no reason to remain in this much pain, that nothing could matter so much to continue holding on, that nothing was worth suffering through another second of this, and when my screams in my mind made me forget all reason and my sanity finally snapped, everything stopped.

Everything went dark. Everything went silent.

I opened my eyes, only I wasn't in the room I had been in. I couldn't even remember what room I had been in before. No, I was in darkness now, a long tunnel of black, leading to a soft dark glow in the distance. I walked curiously towards the glow, until I came to a place I knew very well by now.

I was in Death's realm again. 

And there they were, just as I remembered them, floating next to a screen, ready to show me my life I just left behind. 

I couldn't remember what life I had just been in at all though. Was I waking up here a second time after dying with Tom? Did I die already? Something felt wrong... It felt like I was forgetting something, something important. 

All I can remember is fire and pain. 

Perhaps Death has the answer, or maybe I'll remember when they show me the after affect of my life again. Surely they would show it to me, I gave up, I couldn't remember why I stayed in pain, and fiery death was all I could remember as I greeted Death again.

"Hello Death. I died again?" I ask curiously as I approach the floating being. "I just remember fire." I tell them.

"Not yet." I hear from them, their voice emanating all around me and inside of me. I tilt my head curiously at their answer to my question.