On Broken Wings

Chapter 23

Cassius

Darkness pressed around me, heavy and thick and cool like deep waters. But it was also soft, comforting. Like being carried to bed after having fallen asleep somewhere I shouldn't have. Silence clogged my ears as well as my mind. No thoughts formed there. Not a single one.

I wondered where I was. An endless expanse of black yawned open wide around me. There was nothing. Even my own body was invisible—did I have a body? I could not feel it. I could not see it. Perhaps I was just a conscious thought void of a physical form. A blank slate living in a state of nonexistence.

Who am I?

What am I?

I struggled to move, to speak, to do anything that would prove I am more than an empty piece of the abyss. I made no sound. I made no movement.

I did not breathe.

Panic consumed me. How did I get here? How do I go back home?

Where is home?

Home is...

Home is—

A warm touch graced my nonexistent form. I did not feel it, but I knew that it was there. I lunged after it, starving for the feeling of another after an eternity of being alone. I knew that if I let it go, it would not return, and I would be left as I was before. Pure desperation clawed for that warmth tooth and nail.

A light pierced the darkness. It shot for me, and I reached out to it. We collided in a burst of glittering sparks that burned gold and white and pale blue. Heat consumed me. It went down my throat, searing my lungs and stomach, dripping in cascades of liquid flame down each limb. I was drowning in it, that warmth; it was both a terrible and wonderful feeling. But I was not scared. I did not thrash in pain, not even as the golden liquid scorched my skin, white hot agony seeping into every sensitive nerve, blistering, branding, burning my body that slowly appeared wherever the liquid touched.

I could not see it, but I now knew they were there. My hands, my arms, my chest. Shoulders, back, legs, feet. Neck, head, eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Hair tickled at my nape.

A voice called my name. Gently, quietly, adoringly. Sorrowfully.

Ah.

This person loved me.

And somehow, I knew I loved him back.

I felt his arms tight around me, holding me to his chest, his lips pressing kisses to my hair between murmuring those gentle words. I felt his wet cheek on my neck, his hands carefully roaming my skin that was once cold and pale, and his long hair that framed my face. He held me so softly, the man I loved. He called my name, I think, but it fell foggy upon my ears, though I could smell his scent—citrus and vanilla— and that gave me comfort.

My eyes fought to open, to gaze at his face, one that I had guiltily forgotten along with his name. But his touch I recognized, the sound of his breaths and the cadence of his heart beating. It was all so familiar to me, as if we had laid like this together many times before, naked skin on skin, baring our souls raw to one another.

He reassured me with his words once more, soothing my unrest of not being able to open my eyes. He was so close, not even an arm's length away, and yet I still could not see him. He rubbed the space between my wrinkled brow, smoothing the skin; his voice was a steady, lulling rumble that soothed the turmoil raging inside me.

Cassius, he said. Cassius. Cassius. Cassius.

I'm here, I wanted to say back. I am here. I'm alive. Do not leave me. But my mouth was sealed shut, my throat frozen over.