It was really dark; this could very be the darkest place in the galaxy, Mick thought. There were no lights on anywhere--there were no other lights--and the sky was perfectly clear; before the moons, the night was so black. The water and the breeze were very calm, silent. He had been alone for far too long, and now he was farther than anyone had ever been. He could physically feel the desolate emptiness opening before him, dead, dark, and cold. It was a worthy dream to bring light and life to that emptiness, but he had no role in that. He could no longer believe in any state other than alone, even with Taya, and could not even imagine who might have once been a companion. Standing with the empty house behind him and the vast ocean ahead, Mick believed this could be the end, for even though he had such an improbable physical vigor, he was lacking whatever vital spark of spirit that was necessary to do more than simply exist. He was creating the darkness now; it was rushing out from him to fill the space; he was more alone than the had ever been, and he was grateful for the solitude. He was breathing but there was no air; he was standing but there was no ground beneath him and no sky above. He was falling into the void. At long last there was nothing to bind him. With an unfamiliar panic, he realized that he could not see any way back. With no familiar and no routine, he choked on the crush of oblivion. He calmed and ordered and stretched himself into nothingness he was becoming but came crashing down under the weight of the first bolts of the dawn.
Mick slid to his knees and coughed up some slippery yellow bile. He wasn't thinking clearly but he knew his head hurt and his feet were burning. The breeze picked up ever so slightly with the sunrise with very little sound. His head felt like it was cracking into large, irregular sections; the taste in his mouth was rancid and metallic, but he could not even consider moving from his collapse. With his long period in healing, he had gotten quite good at ordering his consciousness. Being by himself helped, but he had put the time in and was usually in control of his memories and his perception. Nothing was helping this time. He was pummeled by his fears and his failures; stretched into nothingness, they snapped back in wave after crushing wave. This was worse than anything. He needed to stop.
He caught himself looking at the disgusting oily slime dripping from his lips and realized it had only been a second or two since his knees endorsed the concept of physical reality. This imposition gave him a lever and he pulled himself up. He wiped at his mouth with his hand and immediately regretted it.
-Motherfucker, he said aloud and tried to spit but nothing was there except that rotten taste.
He could not contemplate two hundred years of this, or four hundred, or whatever the fuck it was going to be. One lifetime of desolation and fear was enough; he had no energy to go on, but he would for at least another day, apparently.
If Taya had stayed with him, he could have gutted it out. She was his angel; she understood him, knew him, but there was no way he could join her family. Hannah didn't need him anymore; she had Rebecca, a better Rebecca than would have been possible anywhere else, and Mick didn't want any part of that, either. That was his dilemma. He'd been alone for his whole adult life practically; he couldn't do anything else now, and there was no one he wanted to be with. He was glad Olivia was alive and shit, but he would be perfectly content to never see her face; the living woman whom he had loved in his teens was not the girl he had thought of every day, the ghost who had schooled him in the possibility of lifelong love. He was damn lonely--he had been lonely every day, even if he hardly ever admitted it to himself--and would only get more lonely every day, and there was no longer even the tiniest hope that someone worthy would finally decide to love him. They were all dead, and he might live for a thousand fucking years. Taya didn't stay. Taya didn't want to stay. And he missed her. And he really wanted to be fuck her again. He really wanted to shower first and brush his teeth and then fuck someone. Jerking off wasn't gonna quite cut it.
Thankfully, he was exhausted. He hadn't slept for the past couple of days, and whatever he did last night, it wasn't restful, so he would be able to sleep for a while. While his head was clearing, he regained his clarity. He could hear them in his head, just beyond his comprehension. The Saga and the Morning Song were there, too. It was quite remarkable; if he focused they were barely there. He had no idea if most of them even knew he was there. Regardless, he knew that most of them wouldn't care anyway. In the most practical sense, Mick didn't give a fuck; what he most wanted in the short term was a period of deep, dreamless sleep.
Even in his wrung-out, maudlin state, Mick felt jittery and spastic. Not sleeping until he was worn down was his plan to try and find a balance, a routine in tune with his existence. That hadn't worked so well last night. He was wary but fucking tired.
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