Leaving Orbit

Content Warning: Despair, Suggested Gore/Violence, Dark Imagery

The expanse reached out mile upon mile, endless black layers rolling on top of each other. His heart thundered in giant, singular echoes as his hands reached for her, his fingers numb to the nails, as the hairs on his arms stood, evolution fruitlessly throwing spasms in an act of protecting the skin against the ice creeping to his elbows. The stillness closed around the smile, her smile, the lips and teeth seen clear even with thousands of dark miles in between them. Carefully, he extended his fingers, feeling his joints strain from lack of movement. His heart leapt when his effort made the smile clearer, almost right next to him, a taunting memory of their first encounter. But they wouldn’t touch. They couldn’t touch, for thousands of dark, limb-shattering and soul-crushing miles stretched into an unforgiving wasteland between them. 

His light only reached as far as his fingertips, and he leaned forward on his perch, trying to see further. Trying to see what was between them, to see what the darkness held inside it that could possibly keep them apart. His feet shifted, his soles finding no purchase on the ice beneath them. If he hadn't already been stuck to the solid surface, he would’ve tumbled. His thin, weak light illuminated his precarious position  Her light, gold, taunting, pulsed as the cosmos orbited around them. She had taken the pieces from him and him, and expected him not to want, not to beg for her light. His addiction bled into him, a dull, shambling thing that sapped the warmth from his limbs, the numbing growing and increasing its advance, sapping light from his core. She smirked at him, his skin still tingling from their touch. 

He could feel the memory of their last touch freeze behind his skull, the crackle of ice along his limbs as he leaned forward again. There was no comfort in the place where she had   once been. The warmth bled down in tears on his face, freezing before they could reach his chin. Cold was fine. Cold was nice. He tilted too far, his feet shifted on the perch, too far past the edge. As close to her light as he could be, as he would ever get, he pushed off his fall, trying to feel her light for the last time, leaping towards a lie, hoping to catch a hand reaching back to him. There was no hand, and he fell, feeling the after-burn in the back of his eyes for the last time.

Dark swallowed him quickly, a beast voracious beyond all power, beyond all thought. His thoughts wandered as he fell endlessly, ray upon ray of himself peeling from away. Strips of him fell beyond, upwards somehow, out of sight and past the reach of the universe. The source of her light had faded long ago, but the afterimage still burned in the back of his eyes, memory grasping a hold of what it could, as he spiraled away beyond his own reach. Her name did not echo, did not even manage reverb beyond his mouth. It hurt that her name no longer held weight in his mouth, no meaning for his tongue, in the space before him and beside him, behind him and beside him. 

 How could that be? That her name didn’t make pressure as his lungs were crushed and pieces of him were ejected out of their places and catapulted into the black before him and beside him, behind him and beside him? He said it again, more firmly, as if his resolve could convince the void to let the sound make its trip along it. His resolve did nothing.

He was left with his core, a broken piece of himself that held on the single memory of her. He had started spinning ages ago, the pressure no longer removing him from himself, but instead pushed him, causing a spin that caused trials of his own weak, dimming light in front of his eyes. He could feel the movement, but all he could see was black upon black, layering into something so much deeper than darkness. He busied himself with the one memory he had, her face, face in a half smile as she took the orb from him, the chase intense and quick, a whirlwind beginning to their romance. She didn’t- she didn't mean to leave him behind, but now everything was broken beyond repair. Her face faded and he saw other lights around him, as weak and broken as his. Their halves had lost to the void, a broken memory spinning around them. A kiss, a whispered promise, a reprimand.  

“If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times, you have to be more careful!” She looked up at him as he squirmed under her touch. “What would you do if there was no one here to patch you up?”

“You know you mean more to me than that.” Their hands touched for a moment, and he felt his own leg flinch, causing a flare of fire up the path of his stitches.

“That doesn’t mean you can just get away with anything. I’m telling you right now to be more careful.” She stood and pulled him up to meet her eyes. “This only works if we only stay alive and in one piece.”

“I’ll stay with you.” 

“What?”

“I’ll stay with you as long as you promise not to do anything stupid.” 

She smiled, pressing her hand against the wall to ease herself onto the floor. She curled her hand onto a fist around her necklace, snapping the chain with an expert pull.

“It’s a deal.”

Their lips met softly at first, carefully testing the other for passion. He felt his fire rage against hers, rolling upwards until it scorched the ceiling. They were made for each other, twin flames burning on a single wick, wax cooling at the bottom of their lives as a mural of their story. 

The pressure compounded all at once, dark  matter forcing itself on him and pressing into every remaining orifice of his body. It closed in, and he felt the sides of his torso touch. The remaining matter ground against each other with a wet stick, the moist goop of existence trembling in exertion. His pain suddenly spiked, the exponential force of the pressure suddenly much greater than before. His heart shook as it could not beat, no place to expand. His life slipped away, piece by piece alway down to his bones, until the only thing that was left was a sputtering light forever spiraling downwards until its light was too, forgotten.