The Watcher // Sheith

Chapter Eight

I'm standing on the edge of a cliff which is less of a cliff and more like a flat disc parading as a cliff, floating in the middle of nowhere. It's only about two feet wide and the surface is uneven, making it hard for me to find my footing because the terrain keeps crumbling under my boots. Right in the centre of the disk is a tiny pool of black. A single drop falls from far above me every few seconds, but it never gets any deeper. From over the edge of the cliff that is not a cliff, far down in the dark I can see a hospital room, sitting among it all like a fucking shoebox with the lid off. It's dark aside from the yellow light streaming in through the blinds that cover the internal wall windows. The light must be coming from the hallway, the nurses' station maybe. I'm not very familiar with hospitals. In the room, Allura is curled up on the visitor's chair, her legs slung over the arm of the chair and her head resting against the padded back. Her hair is a curly mess spilling out of a loose braid and she's wearing an old, stretched-out sweater that she's had since before I knew her. Her shoes are dangling from her toes and I can only see the curve of her cheek and one tense corner of her mouth.

I am in the hospital bed. I look like shit. Pale as death, with an IV line going into the back of my hand. My left arm is in a sling and there's a brace on my arm, too, with bandages running right up to my elbow. There's a thick bandage over my forehead, my hair shoved back from my face. It's greasy enough to stay there. I'm in a hospital gown and there is something bulky under the covers. I think it's probably a pillow propping up my wrecked left leg. I can see my chest rising and falling as I breathe and from all the way up where I can hear the bleeping of my heart monitor, steady and grating.

There is a fucking huge bouquet of flowers on the table next to my bed. Who the fuck bought me flowers?

There is nothing else to see here. I don't even know how I got here, to be honest. It's not a dream but it's not the darkness I had been in before. I don't know where Shiro has gone, I had just opened my eyes and he wasn't here and if I weren't already entirely dead inside, the fact would probably break me. Last time I had seen him, he was starting to fall away from me, crumbling apart in my arms. I guess he's dust now.

Under my feet, the disc starts to tilt forward and I lean back and try to take a step away from the edge but I can't get any traction underneath me. The ink pours out of the pool in the centre of the disc and I pitch forward, hurtling down head-first at a breakneck speed and I apparently have enough self-preservation left that I try to slow myself down, flailing my arms out and trying to twist around so I'm falling feet first, but it doesn't make a difference. I'm free-falling towards the hospital room. As I fall through the ceiling, Allura jumps to her feet and looks me right in the eye. She sees me. I gape and she reaches up and catches me by the hands. I come to a sudden halt and use the momentum to swing my legs under me. Allura grins at me, holding me suspended in the air at the foot of the hospital bed.

"It's about time you found your way home." She says to me, squeezing my hands in hers. I'm staring at her in shock, my gaze flicking from her face to our hands twined together. I can feel her hands, warm against mine. I crane my head back towards the ceiling and it's actually there- no endless black I've become used to, instead there's a flickering fluorescent light that makes me squint. I look back at Allura and she rolls her eyes good-naturedly. "Just try not to resist, okay?" She tells me and I nod, stupefied. "This is gonna suck."

After her warning, she tightens her grip on my hands and pulls me forward, her brow furrowing in concentration as she steps around the side of the bed and drags me forward. It fucking hurts , it feels like I'm being pulled through a hail storm, my skin getting torn at and my skin stinging from the cold but I grit my teeth and try not to tense up my body. Allura maneuvers me so that I'm suspended over my body and I stare down at my sickly, unconscious face. My breathing is shallow but even. I glance over at Allura from the corner of my eye and she has a pretty serious nose bleed but she ignores it and focuses on moving her hands along me, dragging them up to my face without letting up her grip on me. I try to help, reaching my arms down towards the bed, but I don't move at all. I'm just floating above the bed at Allura's mercy.