The Void - Sequel to The Rift

The Void - Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

It had been three weeks since the day we had returned from the doctor, three weeks of replaying the doctor’s words in my head. That there was ‘nothing medically wrong’ with Aiden, that they ‘had never seen anything like it’, and that all the tests they had run showed no reason why Aiden hadn’t regained his sight.

We knew only one thing for certain. Whatever the Sentinel had done to him, it wasn’t physical. It couldn’t be fixed by human means. There was no surgical procedure and no therapy that could help him.

But whatever the Sentinel had done, I was going to find a way to fix it, even if it meant tracking down every telepath left in the city and forcing them to help.

However, my determination to help him, and my vow to get his sight back appeared to have no visible affect on Aiden’s demeanour. My hesitant words offered him no comfort, because, from an outsider’s perspective, Aiden appeared not to need any comfort. Aiden appeared to be just fine. There had of course been a period of silence and what appeared to be sadness from him. But remarkably quickly, it seemed to me anyway, Aiden appeared to go back to his usual self.

I personally was finding his return to normality,  too quick for me.

He had listened to what the doctor had told him with a sort of stoic resignation - calm and serene, the words seemed to wash over him, leaving him untouched, even as they tore at me.

Then leaving the hospital, he was back to smiling and chatting; for all intents and purposes it appeared that Aiden had lost nothing. The fundamentals of emotion told me to act as those around me did, to reflect their emotions back at them in order to fit comfortably. But this good cheer, an emotion so in contrast to my own feelings, was something I couldn't easily replicate at present.

Only two days later we had set out in Maddy’s bright yellow beetle towards his family’s farm.

They had reacted with the sort of emotional shock and sadness that I had come to expect from humans, with all the volume that I had expected from Aiden himself. It was almost reassuring to see the emotions I was feeling, but not sure how to express, openly displayed.

I had watched Aiden explain the ‘accident’ that had blinded him, watched his family’s tears and frustration, watching their worlds crumble, and forced myself to remain strong and distant so that I would not give into my own grief. 

I had received my share of supportive hugs, from Sam and Andrew, even from the hesitant Marie, Aiden’s mother. This contact was something that I was coming to accept as a normal function of human behaviour, and they did help lessen the harsh feelings within me, although I was not sure I would ever be entirely comfortable with the close proximity of other humans.

The one image that stuck with me though from that weekend, as we sat in silence on our way back to the city after dropping our shattering news on Aiden’s family, was something I had viewed from my spot near in the doorway at the moment shortly after his family had learned of Aiden’s blindness.

There had been noise aplenty; Sam had sat crying with Brandon on her lap, her husband Tom’s arm around her. Cassy had stood at her feet staring up at her mother, repeating the words ‘what’s wrong?’ over and over, still too young to understand. Marie was attempting to make sense of it, voicing question after question into the air, while Aiden’s grandfather Andrew, and Maddy, attempted to answer her concerns and to calm her.

Amidst all this, Aiden sat stoically on the sofa amongst them all, so close to his family, but at the same time wholly separate. For just a moment, he didn’t have his ready smile. He had sat in silence, and I watched as the grief and despair of his family swept over him, and I saw just a brief flicker of emotion - their grief touched him in a way that the doctor’s words had not. That tiny flicker was enough to make my heart ache, it showed everything I was feeling and more.