Friends Against All Odds?

Chapter I - The Void

AUTHOR'S NOTE!
First of all thanks for stumbling upon this story in the first place! I'll be updating the story irregularly, due to university, and I guess in the end it's going to have many, many, many parts, hopefully! Also: it takes some time to kick off into universe-badass-saving-the-world mode, so be patient! Always open for suggestions, and oh, some votes would be very much appreciated! 😍
ENJOY!

---------------------------------------------------------

I woke up to a rather disturbing light that flickered in front of my eyes, and it was, to be quite fair, incredibly annoying. Darkness clouded my mind as soon as I tried to rely on my brain. But there was nothing. Just darkness and... nothing. I tried to remember frantically, as I supposed people would do. People, hah, I am not people, I am superior, I am... I only arrived at the conclusion that I myself couldn't quite make out who I was. Where I was. When I was. When was always a valid question, I knew that much. The light burned in my eyes, it burned right through my eyelids, burned, burning, burning, always burning... The brightness hurt, that much I knew. I wasn't big on self-awareness, that was for sure, but I could feel the light making its way through my eyes, right up through my synapses, to my brain, and with every second I felt the light burning through I felt like it burned through my forehead, my brain was being cooked on slow heat and it turned warmer with the second. After, what, another eternity, I had decided on the light burning so strongly that I had the feeling that my eyes were burned out, slowly, cooking, as if a nearly melting metal piece was forcefully injected into my brain. Through my eyes. Slowly. With precision. I hated every second of it so desperately that I forgot that I existed. All that existed was the pain, the incredible amount of pain that shot through me, nothing else mattered. Time was a matter of pain, time was passing as the pain increased, so I wanted time to stop, time to run out, the end of all time would be required, but time wouldn't just end, time wouldn't run out for me this time. My brain melted under my last thoughts as I tried my best to regain consciousness, but I couldn't, of course. I was killed off, slowly, my eyes being the window to my soul. Sentimental folly, I reasoned screamingly, as I could quite imagine just how my brain was melting away. I had seen brains melt, it was delightful to watch. I am a bloody psychopath. I shook off the feeling. Of course you are. But just who was I? I silently endured the torture, every second of it, I cannot allow my head to scream, it would only waste resources that I wouldn't want to waste, maybe I would need to scream elsewhere, and I couldn't allow myself to scream. I couldn't allow myself to cry either. I do not cry. We do not. I wondered who I was referring to, as my thoughts weren't making any sense. I had no memories, I had thoughts that didn't make any sense to me. Whom am I superior to, who is we, and why do we not cry? In total, nothing ever made sense now. Everything was out of order. I couldn't quite make out a decent memory, a decent thought even. Although that might also have been influenced by the fact that my brain was melting into goo. I couldn't help but whine silently under the amount of torture. We do not whine. I tried to open my eyes, at least I wanted to see the torturers, but when I tried a pain so sudden, so sharp and so utterly piercing shot through me that I immediately faded to the darkness of the night.

Time was long lost in my head, and I had always been naturally talented with time. This time my eyes and my brain weren't simultaneously turned into pudding. This time it was a feeling starting in my toes. I felt cold. Then rays of heat shot though me, from my toes upwards. It was warm, but not hot, not burning, and I felt relieved for some seconds, instances, something, I couldn't tell time. Time was long lost in my head now, there was only heat, pain and warmth in this instant. I was lulled away by the warmth then, and I faded away. It cannot be done this time. I failed. I am dying.

I awoke again, to feel numb. I felt nothing. The only thing I felt was my brain. Amazing, this asset. I tried calculating where I was, but I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't quite figure where I was, when I was, when seemed to be a recurring theme with me, for whatsoever reason. Time had always been my friend, my foe, my saving grace and my downfall. Had it been though? I wandered lonely through being lost. A little bit of sensation shot up from my hands, for the briefest period of time there was a shimmer of hope. Without hope. I felt it fade so fast as it had come, and for an instant I believed that I had even heard a voice calling out for me. Unreasonable, you're in your own. I felt another arrow of light and warmth shoot up through my fingers, but I forced it back to the pit where it had come from. Hope is for good people. I am not good. I wondered just why, and what made me bad. But then again, I couldn't know good and bad. I felt the warmth and cast it back, it had no place within me, no significance. If I die, I die at unrest with my death. I focussed on the darkness overwhelming me, and I let it take me, I felt swallowed by the pits, by the void, by the endless darkness.

The first thing I realised was, in fact, the darkness. It was simply there. And I was in it. There was nothing there. No air, no sound, not even the sound of my own body, no ground, no clouds, no gravity, no nothing, and I was terrified. I remembered. I remembered being here, but almost always for so long that I could only have caught a glimpse of what was to come, before being long gone again. This time I stayed in the darkness. Forever lost. I was terrified, for I was to die alone. For I was to live an ancient life in the darkness now. Once I had been here, I remembered at last. Once I had been here, but it had been different. It had felt right. Now I couldn't help but notice that there was something so awfully wrong with this that I couldn't even find quite what it was. I lingered in my mind, because I couldn't figure where else to go. Darkness drained me, darkness bowed to me. But I would die alone. Without witness. I tried to move, but I failed. There was no moving from beyond the grave. This was it, the final destination. I was long gone and so would everything else be. The worst thing about the time after death was perhaps knowing that one had been deceased. Probably at the hands of my enemy. I had not bothered to research the afterlife. I had not browsed through accounts of death. I had seen this world, but I had only ever thought to forget it, to snap out of it as quickly as possible. Ignorance. I floated within the darkness, without destination, without help, without time, without love. Love is for pets, friendship for intellectuals. Perhaps the second most frightening thing was that I didn't even know who I was, when I was, where I was. In the afterlife, being taken care of. I couldn't think of a worse thing to happen, of a worse scenario to be in. I couldn't imagine. I had never imagined but death and destruction. Now darkness, eternal darkness was my toll I had to pay, my deepest and most frightening fear. Death. Had I not once tried to die, and a folly had revived me? I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember anything. In fact, I felt no such feelings as happiness or sadness. I wasn't sad considering my passing. Everything passes in the end, everything ends, it all ends, the universe as well as I. I felt fear. I felt encaged although there was an eternity around me. It was perhaps that and the eternal darkness that crushed me, that made me fear, that filled me with the worst feelings. And then there were cold and hot. Maybe. Here was nothing, nothing filled this space of emptiness, this was the ultimate prison, without surveillance, without a chance to escape. My fate had finally caught up with me. Finally my life had put me where I, for some reason, rightfully belonged. Just that I couldn't remember why I did. The prison that I would forever be trapped in extended to all horizons, just that there wasn't such a thing as horizons, atmospheres, air and dust. There was nothing. This was the ultimate nothing. A prison out of nothingness. No matter, no weight, no air, no material, simply a matter of endings. A perfect invention, has nobody thought of this before? I was nothing. I realised as much, and I wanted to escape my perfect prison. It needed no key, no lock, nothingness needed no lock, and there was no key for the darkness to open. I was trapped in a prison, a truly breakout-proof prison. I couldn't break out, and there was no way I could be freed. The perfect prison. Maybe I had deserved being put here, but I couldn't see just how I would benefit from thinking on, not remembering. If this were intended to be a prison I would maybe be confronted with all of my memories, to come and regret them. But I couldn't regret anything that I couldn't even remember. And I didn't. And I was quite sure that I wouldn't. I tried to find walls to bang my head against, I tried to force myself into thinking about the prospect of escaping, I thought for time and time again. I thought of a thousand ways to escape my perfect prison, used my head, making my synapses burn, I thought of a thousand more, but within the shortest matter of time I lost faith. I lost my ability to believe. I lost everything. I lost myself, and I didn't even know who I was. I thought of a thousand more, through another eternity, through the darkness that, after a certain time, crushed me, folded me down to the smallest piece of matter. I thought of a million more, in just another instant, or another eternity, there was no way to tell. Without reward. I finally arrived at a point where I couldn't stand it any longer, where I had screamed my lungs out, where I had cried more than oceans would have had to offer, but I didn't find relief. I finally arrived at a point where I lost hope. Finally I had no hope left. But I still cried. My head told me that tears were linked to hope, so I cried.