Never let me go

35: The End

A/N: Happy new year everyone!

If you like this story I would encourage you to take a look at my other short-story "No one's daddy" - It delves into Levi and Kenny's shared past.

35

Darkness is all around him. There is no sky, no ground beneath his feet, no air to breathe and no heart left to beat in his chest.

Am I dead? The cave, the corpse laid out upon a stone slab, Iris, everything is gone. He tries to feel his body and with mixed awe and dread he realizes that he cannot. Unnerved by the possibility of having been reduced to a something floating through endless space or worse, the lack of any space, he feebly tries to push away the sensation of his mounting panic. What is this place?

A thought comes to him that is even worse than all the previous ones. This place might not be a place, maybe it is just void. Who said there is something waiting for us on the other side; there could nothing at all. He feels afraid. This is nothing like the releasing disappearance that he had imagined death to be. The thought of ceasing to exist had always been beyond his comprehension, but now that he finds himself trapped here another far more terrifying possibility presents itself: The world is gone but his memories and the feeling of shame, failure and hopelessness are not. He could be trapped like this forever.

He has heard about damnation but he never believed in it. How any intelligent person could believe in superstitious crap when all powers of observance and science seemed to speak against it had always been a question he found no answer to. And yet all this time he might have been the conceited one, believing more fervently in his own skepticism and rational thought than the believers believed in their god-person.

Iris... Did she come here? He seems to vaguely recall her mentioning someplace like this, but the recollection is so vague and without detail he might just have dreamt it all. He feels a pang of grief thinking of her. He remembers her sad and frightened eyes as her hand had shook, more from the weight her resolve than from that of the gun as she had pointed it at him. She had believed with all her heart there was a force somewhere capable of bringing him back, believed against all common sense that he would come back. "Nothing comes back from the beyond" his logical self urges, but what if all that is wrong? Something has changed in Iris; she looks the same, perhaps she is the same, only more now than she had been before. Her hand regenerating before his eyes, the dead soldiers in the enemy trenches, that grinning corpse with its huge and pointed teeth - All these things point towards a conclusion that his rational mind still refuses to fully digest.

In the midst of this there is his promise gnawing away at the back of his mind. He had promised to try to come back for her, and having broken enough promises already he decides that he will try. But what is he to do?

Not knowing if he still has eyes through which he sees, he makes an effort to look around. There is only darkness. At once he feels his resolve waver and he gives in to despair. The darkness seems to be pressing down upon him with immense force, wanting to devour him like it has devoured all the light. He throws her name to the hungry dark and he feels no sensation of his throat clenching or his vocal chords vibrating, but he hears the sound of her name carried out. He says it again letting the syllables roll musically off his numb tongue. "Your dead tongue" a voice whispers at the back of his mind, and the thought brings up some rather unpleasant mental images.

...Reiner...

He listens intently but all is silent again. He could have sworn it was his name someone had called out, but the sound was distorted and echoing. He goes towards it, or rather tries to go but has no real way of knowing if he is actually moving. He might have considered whether it is possible or not to move through a lack of space the same way one moves through space, but it never occurred to him at that time. His thoughts are of Iris as he tries to move towards the sound of the voice he had heard.