The Many Regrets of a Cyborg Werewolf

Darkness - XXXV

Luke hung in a void. He couldn't feel anything. He couldn't hear anything. No sight, no smells, no sounds. It was, if he had to guess, what it would be like to be dead. But he wasn't dead. Death would be cold, it would be numb, it would be nothing. Luke still had himself wherever he was. He still felt his own consciousness. His body perhaps was gone or he was just unable to feel it, but his thoughts were wide awake. Wherever he was, he was still alive, and he wasn't alone.

"I feel you," he uttered into the all-consuming emptiness. "You're there... just out of reach."

"I am," a voice replied. The only sound in this void, and it was deafening by contrast.

"Why?" Luke asked, "why so far away?"

"Because I am," the voice sounded familiar. Intimately familiar. "I'm very far away."

"You are," he started to understand.

"I didn't know if it was you," the voice said softly. "The one before wasn't."

"You expected me?" He asked.

"No," the glimmer of a light, weak and distant, flashed out of the corner of Luke's vision, "but I'm glad. I've always been alone here."

"Where's here?" Luke asked, and the glimmer came closer. It grew larger, grew a shape, and moved with purpose. A slender frame. Pale. Hair so nearly white.

"I've never known what to call it," Joan said, her face appearing from a haze, "I've just always been alone in it."

"You're awake," Luke uttered, but she smiled and shook her head.

"No," she said, her phantom hand held to his face, "but here that doesn't matter."

"Then where are we?" He reached for her hand, but Luke found he had no body of his own. No limbs, no matter. It was more like she gently touched his soul.

"We are where the light goes," Joan looked around the void, "but I don't think you see it."

"I don't," Luke said.

"You will," she nodded. "I think you're here because we're connected now. My blood, my essence, is within you."

"It's all I could think to do," Luke admitted, and realized he wasn't really talking. It was as if his thoughts and feelings just echoed from him, no lies, no holding back. "I couldn't let them die."

"It's alright," Joan said, "I always hoped one day I'd see you here. We're so similar." Joan grew close, her pale body seemed to seep into his own being. "You feel it now. That reprehensible lust. You thirst for it. Your hunger for life."

"I do," Luke uttered, only for the pain to stab at him suddenly. This was wrong, "but I can't. I made a promise."

"To whom?" She asked.

"Myself," Luke admitted. Finally, in his own words, in his own feelings, "I needed to know I could."

"Have you?" Joan asked, her words peaceful and not at all condescending. It was like she was truly curious.

"I have," Luke said. He felt Joan around him, like she was a fog rolling past his skin that wasn't there. He felt her weakness, her pain, and her own longing. "You're not well."

"I'm not," she said. "I've never been hurt like this. I never had a piece of me taken... I don't know if I can get it back. Yet I feel it in you. I feel your soul, your power, like it's my own. Right now, like this, I can feel the energy coming back to me as I cling to you."

"The hunger," Luke said, feeling as if they shared all sensation, "it hurts."

"It hurts," she said in agreement. "I can see the scratches from the inside. It wants so badly to be set free. It hasn't been free for so long, why not satisfy it?"

"Because I can't," he said, "if I do it won't... it won't ever stop."

"But it's you," Joan said, "it's only yourself you've trapped and tortured. Your hunger weeps."

"And I'll let it," he found it harder and harder to control this voice of his, "it's my hunger."

"Not now, it isn't," Joan whispered, "it's mine as well. Ours. Like this, together, it's our thirst."

"I want to give it to you," Luke said, the pain inside creeping up within. The longing. It was like a sickness.

"What if I offered you a deal?" Joan asked, and slender fingers were felt by his eyes. The eyes that weren't there until she touched them, "what if, in return for you letting our hunger free just this once, I let you believe?"

"Believe what?" Luke asked.

"Believe what you've always wanted to," she spoke so softly it was like her voice was fading away, "that what you see all the time is real, that all along it's been the proof you need. You see the light, you even showed her, now it's time for you to see for yourself."

"And what if I don't want to?" He asked even as the light began to appear before him.

"Then it won't make a difference what I do," Joan's voice had all but gone silent. "All that matters is what you do next."