Fix You

Willing Light

Cold...

Everything about it is cold, and damp, and...

Jennie takes another labored deep breath, the one that fills her lungs with a surge of air, that shakes her insides and swirls like a cloud, except ...it does nothing but suffocate her.

Dark...

She blinks, walking tentatively forward...or is it backwards? Or...

The coldness feels ...unreal, it seeps in between her toes and works its way gradually, creeping until there is nothing but the coldness.

She tries to concentrate, tries to drown out the ringing in her ear. For a while, she drifts in and out, never fully there. Everything is still spinning. She tries opening her eyes , and realizes that her eyes aren't closed but the place... dark.

Her breathing is beginning to come in ragged gasps, short, quick breaths that do nothing but fuel the pounding in her chest and the nausea that makes the thinking hurt. She tries taking another step, slipping on the damp asphalt.

Since when was she walking barefoot?

There is a spinning in her chest, like smoke that swirls, cold and heavy, that spills out into her throat and makes her palms clammy and the breathing even more difficult.

She is running now, the darkness is suffocating and every step makes her cling to the warm, sleek walls that feel oddly comforting.

She keeps on running, the ringing in her ears growing, drowning out the pounding in her chest and making her claw at her throat.

Why is breathing so difficult?

She blinks again, in what she thinks is a futile attempt at willing light, anything at all to take the darkness away.

Why is everything so fucking dark?!

Where the fuck is she?

She tries to walk again, careful, not to slip... trying to even out her breathing and finding her walk grow brisker with each step, faster...

She's running out into the same darkness in front of her.

She slips and finds herself tumbling into nothing, into a limitless darkness that spinned and spinned.

She tries to scream; everything...is slowly slipping away.

The cold

The ringing in her ears

Jennie cannot hear her own screams.

Numb

She's starting to feel numb

And a different kind of fear and panic worms its way inside her.

She screams again and again, grating inside her throat.

She sees her reach out, grabbing her by the wrist and for a minute everything stops. Jennie reaches out with her other hand but finds the hold slipping. She scrambles to reach out but every try feels farther, every scream for help falls flat and hollow against the darkness.

The hold completely slips and she's tumbling further.

No!!!

Jennie jolts awake and there's nothing but the pounding of her chest filling her ears, and the rapid gasps that compete with the beating -- filling her lungs with warm sweet air making her choke on unshed tears. For a quick minute she forgets where she is and takes hold of the first thing she could grasp, something to tell her she's not completely off the edge.