On Thin Ice

Chapter 17- empty abyss

(Y/N) POV:

There's pain.

Then hollowness.

And then... emptiness.

A gaping growing sense of nothingness that stretches out from the numbed space of my mind down to the nerve cells in every inch of my body that slowly flicker and then extinguish. Feeling and sensation leeched from them. Pain ebbing away as if it's being drained out of my body. As if all it wants to leave behind is a husk.

Empty...empty...empty.

Fingers tracing over the red and purple, over splotches of colour across my nose, a distant hiss of breath as my fingers probe and press against too-sensitive flesh and tissue, a rippling pulse of pain that fans out, that makes my face feel like it's on fire and my head pound as if someone's taking a hammer to it. Again. And again.

Fingers tracing further out, over angry red cuts against my skin. Tracing them doesn't make the pain flare hotter, harsher, skin rough underneath my fingertips.

Touches tracing, tracing, mapping out something that's still a blurred rush in my mind, not able to sort it entirely from the onslaught of sensations and feelings that'd rushed inwards, a barrage of them until...nothing.

Until there had been nothing.

Until that nothing had threatened to drag me under.

And from that nothing.

There'd been Jungkook.

"Does it still hurt?" a voice interjects. Drawing me back down, back here. Voice re-entering my consciousness, my awareness, my senses. But I hadn't heard him come back. Hadn't heard the door open, nor the steps approach the bathroom. Hadn't heard him until he was here.

"No." voice hoarse. Croaky.

Liar.

"Where does it hurt?" he asks instead. Eyes skimming over me, their weight lighter, gentler than the brush of my fingertips against a scrape on my cheek. Skin abrasive under my touch. Fingers stilling when a hand slowly loops around my wrist. Draws my hand down.

Turns my body to his.

"It doesn't hurt as bad as yesterday."

A hammer to my head.

A constant pounding sensation.

Lungs aching to breathe.

Nose throbbing, pulsing.

Body aching in places I hadn't known there were aches.

Skin raw and sensitive.

Liar.

But some part of me relishes in feeling the sensations, layered over one another, oppressive and suffocating, merciless and harsh, attacking my senses, one sensation bleeding into another, letting myself feel every moment of it because I deserved it, I should've been on it, focused and ready but I wasn't and if I wasn't ready then I wasn't—

"1-10?"

"3. Barely."

"10 then."

"It's not that bad."

"The shock's worn off, the adrenaline's worn off. Your face must hurt like a bitch." Voice laced with sympathy, eyes heavy with it, but the kindness, the gentleness... I don't deserve it.

Just dead weight after all. If Jeon has to baby you. If you had to have your hands held every moment, from sitting out the last season to this—the sharp voice in my head hisses, a harsh roughness that only seeks to amplify the throbbing behind my sinuses, the pulsing pain rippling behind my eyes, pressure building in my temples.