Ariel

  There was no ground beneath her.

  No sky above.

  Ariel drifted in a dark so complete it felt deliberate, as if the universe had taken care to remove every possible point of reference. No stars. No horizon. No echo of distance. Just an endless, soundless absence that pressed in from every direction at once.

  Her eyes were closed. She wasn’t sure when she had closed them. Opening them felt unnecessary.

  What would there be to see?

  She floated: Suspended, weightless, bodiless in a way that made her feel smaller than she had ever been and impossibly exposed all at once.

  The darkness wasn’t cold, exactly. It was worse than that. It was neutral. Impersonal. A void that did not hate her enough to hurt her, or love her enough to comfort her.

  This is it, she thought.

  The end didn’t arrive with fire or pain. It arrived with silence.

  Her chest tightened at the realization; at the awful certainty settling into her bones. Oblivion wasn’t a blade or a storm. It was this. The slow erasure of context. Of meaning. Of being.

  She tried to listen for something. Anything.

  There was nothing.

  Ariel swallowed, though she wasn’t sure she still had a throat.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  The word vanished the instant it left her. No echo. No answer. Not even the courtesy of being swallowed by distance. It simply ceased to exist.

  Her mouth trembled.

  “So this is how it happens,” she murmured to no one. “You don’t even get to know when you stop.”

  The darkness did not respond.

  A tear gathered at the corner of her eye, suspended there, luminous against the void. It didn’t fall. Gravity had abandoned her along with everything else.

  “I guess…” Her voice faltered. She steadied it with effort. “I guess I thought there would be more.”

  More pain. More fear. Some grand cosmic cruelty to justify it all.

  Instead, there was only the waiting.

  And the understanding, settling deeper with every passing moment, that she was being undone.

  That whatever came next would not remember her.

  And neither...

  Her thought caught, sharp and sudden.

  Neither would Holly.

  The realization hit harder than any blade ever could.

  Her lips parted, and this time, when she spoke, she didn’t bother pretending she was talking to the dark.

  “Holly…”

  The name left her like a prayer.

  Ariel curled inward instinctively, as if she could fold herself small enough to keep what mattered from being taken next.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  The void listened.

  And said nothing.

  She wondered, distantly, if time still existed here. Or if it had been stripped away with everything else.

  If this was Oblivion, it was thorough.

  Her arms drifted slightly as she shifted, though she couldn’t feel them brush against anything. She couldn’t feel much at all—no heartbeat, no breath moving in her chest—only the steady, hollow awareness that she was still here. For now.

  That, at least, was something.

  “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said quietly.

  Her voice sounded small, fragile in a way it never had before. There was nowhere for it to go. No air to carry it. No walls to return it. The sound existed only for the instant she created it, then disappeared.

  “I thought… I don’t know. Darkness, maybe. Pain.”

  She almost laughed, but the sound caught in her throat and turned into something tighter.

  “Punishment,” she whispered.

  For daring to live.

  For daring to love.

  For daring to defy a universe that seemed determined to remind her how small she was.

  Her thoughts drifted, slow and heavy.

  “So this is what you wanted,” she murmured, bitterness seeping into the words. “This is your victory.”

  She didn’t bother naming him. The name felt too sharp to touch.

  “You take everything,” Ariel went on, voice trembling now. “You hollow it out until there’s nothing left, and then you call it balance. You call it Oblivion.”

  The word tasted foul.

  Her hands clenched reflexively, though she couldn’t feel them closing.

  “You didn’t just take me,” she said. “You took her.”

  The thought made something inside her fracture.

  “Holly didn’t deserve this,” Ariel whispered fiercely. “She didn’t deserve to lose me. Not again. Not after everything.”

  Her voice cracked, and she had to pause, gathering herself against a swell of grief that threatened to pull her under.

  “She fought so hard,” Ariel continued, softer now. “She fought everything. She fought fear and grief and the weight of the world, and she still chose love. She still chose me.”

  A breath shuddered through her, imagined, but no less real for it.

  “And you took that,” she said. “You took us.”

  The void remained indifferent.

  Ariel closed her eyes tighter, as if that might somehow keep her from dissolving.

  “I don’t want to disappear,” she admitted, the confession barely louder than a thought. “I don’t want to be… erased. I don’t want there to be space where I used to be.”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “I don’t want Holly to wake up one day and feel like something’s missing, but not remember what.”

  That hurt more than anything else.

  The idea that the love they had built—the moments, the laughter, the quiet mornings and shared glances—might simply be wiped away as if they had never mattered at all.

  “I don’t care if the universe forgets me,” Ariel said hoarsely. “But please… don’t let her forget.”

  Her composure finally gave way.

  A sob tore loose from her chest, sharp and broken. Tears spilled freely now, glowing briefly as they formed before drifting away, dissolving into the dark without ever touching ground.

  She curled in on herself again, arms wrapping around nothing.

  “I’m so tired,” she whispered. “I’m so tired of fighting just to exist.”

  The void offered no comfort.

  No judgment.

  The darkness did not answer her grief.

  ...But something shifted.

  At first it was so subtle she thought she imagined it. A warmth, faint and distant, like the ghost of a sensation remembered. It brushed against her awareness and then lingered, stubborn and insistent, refusing to dissolve the way everything else had.

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  Ariel stilled.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. She was afraid that if she acknowledged it too quickly, it would vanish like the rest.

  The warmth grew.

  Not heat. Not light. Just a gentle pressure in her chest, a presence that did not belong to the void. And with it came something else.

  A memory.

  She saw it without opening her eyes.

  Wind, cool and sharp, tugging at her hair. The faint metallic hum beneath her feet. The city spread out below in a sprawl of lights; gold and white and distant, pulsing like a living thing. Night air filled her lungs, crisp and alive.

  The Great Wheel.

  She was there again, standing at the very top, the world impossibly far away beneath them. Her hands were cold, her heart racing, her thoughts filled with what she was about to do.

  Holly was there.

  Holly stared in awe across the Puget Sound, the sunset light dappling the water in golds and oranges.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this beautiful, she had said, eyes bright, face warm against the glow of the light.

  Ariel had nodded as she stared at Holly.

  “I hadn't either,” she whispered into the void.

  She remembered how close Holly sat. How she didn’t crowd her, didn’t pull away. Just… stayed. Solid. Present. Like Ariel was exactly where she was meant to be.

  The memory sharpened.

  The way Ariel's hand met the back of Holly's neck. How Holly had closed her eyes and smiled, saying I was wondering how long it'd take you.

  Their first kiss.

  It hadn’t been fireworks. It had been permission.

  Ariel felt it all over again. The way her fear had eased, the way her chest had loosened as if she’d been holding her breath her entire life without realizing it. The way Holly had kissed her like Ariel wasn’t too much. Like her wanting wasn’t a burden. Like she was allowed to take up space.

  A sob slipped free, quieter this time.

  “You made me feel real,” Ariel murmured. “Like I was allowed to be here.”

  The void pressed in, but the memory held.

  She drifted deeper into it, letting it wrap around her like a fragile shield. The way Holly’s smile had lingered afterward. The way she’d rested her forehead against Ariel’s and laughed softly, breath warm against her skin.

  Ariel squeezed her eyes shut.

  “No one ever did that for me,” she whispered. “Before you.”

  The warmth in her chest deepened, spreading slowly outward, filling cracks she hadn’t known were still open. The void recoiled, just a little, pushed back by the sheer stubbornness of the memory.

  She clung to it.

  Because as long as she could remember that moment—as long as she could remember how it felt to be kissed at the edge of the world by someone who saw her and stayed—then maybe she wasn’t gone yet.

  The memory did not fade when she let it go.

  It softened, settling into her like an ember banked beneath ash—still warm, still alive. Ariel drifted again, the void closing in around her, but it no longer felt quite so absolute. The darkness pressed, yes, but now it had something to press against.

  Another memory surfaced, unbidden.

  This one was harsher at the edges.

  Light too bright. Air that burned when she tried to breathe it in. The antiseptic sting of a place that smelled nothing like home.

  The hospital.

  Ariel flinched as sensation rushed back into her awareness—not her body, but the echo of it. The weight in her chest. The raw ache behind her eyes. The panic that had clawed up her throat when she’d woken suddenly, disoriented, drowning in smoke that wasn’t there anymore.

  She remembered the ceiling first. Stark and white and unfamiliar.

  And then the fear.

  Her heart had raced, hands shaking as she’d tried to orient herself, memory crashing in too fast, too sharp. Fire. Heat. Sirens. The terrible certainty that something had gone wrong and she hadn’t survived it intact.

  Her lips had parted on instinct.

  “Violet.”

  The word had torn itself from her chest before she’d even understood why.

  Here, in the void, Ariel felt her throat tighten around the memory.

  Holly, with her hair a little messier than usual, eyes red-rimmed and exhausted and so full of relief it hurt to look at her. Holly, who’d crossed the room in three quick strides and taken Ariel’s hand like she was afraid she might vanish again.

  I’m here, she’d whispered. I’ve got you.

  Ariel’s composure cracked all over again.

  “My parents never came,” she said softly into the dark. It wasn’t an accusation. Just a fact, heavy and old. “They didn’t answer. They didn’t show up.”

  But Holly had.

  Holly had slept in that stiff chair, curled awkwardly at Ariel’s side. Holly had learned how to comfort, the rhythm of her breathing, the way her nightmares announced themselves before Ariel even woke.

  “She took care of me,” Ariel whispered. “Like it was the easiest thing in the world.”

  The realization bloomed again, just as it had then.

  That was when she’d known.

  Not in the grand gestures or the dramatic moments. Not in fire or confession or fate. But in the quiet certainty of someone staying when no one else did.

  “I loved her,” Ariel said. “I love her.”

  The words echoed strangely, not vanishing this time, but lingering, like the void had hesitated to take them.

  She swallowed hard.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, and now the apology was fully, undeniably for Holly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from this. I’m sorry you have to carry me like this.”

  Her voice wavered.

  “You’re stronger than you know,” Ariel went on, speaking as if Holly could hear her. “You always have been. You’ll survive this. I know you will.”

  The thought hurt, but it was also strangely comforting.

  “I just…” She faltered, then pressed on. “I hope you won’t forget me. I hope some small piece of me gets to stay with you. Somewhere safe.”

  A tear slipped free, drifting slowly away.

  “I hope Oblivion doesn’t get to take everything,” she whispered.

  The warmth in her chest pulsed faintly in response, as if answering.

  Ariel drew herself inward once more, holding fast to the memory of Holly’s hands, her voice, her presence.

  If this truly was goodbye...

  Then she wanted it to be filled with love, not fear.

  The warmth lingered.

  It did not banish the dark. It did not drive it away or fill it with light. It simply existed, a quiet, stubborn presence in Ariel’s chest as the void continued to stretch on around her, endless and patient.

  And for a moment, she allowed herself to believe that might be enough.

  Then the darkness pressed closer.

  It tightened in a way that felt almost gentle, like a tide pulling back before it receded entirely. Ariel felt the shift immediately, a subtle loosening at the edges of her awareness.

  She was slipping.

  “No,” she breathed.

  The word felt heavier than all the others she’d spoken here. It carried understanding with it now. This wasn’t the moment of pain. That had already passed. This was the moment of absence.

  Of letting go.

  “I can feel it,” Ariel whispered. “I’m… coming apart.”

  The thought didn’t bring panic. Not anymore. Just a deep, aching sorrow that settled into her bones.

  “So this is how you finish it,” she murmured, bitterness dull rather than sharp. “You don’t tear me away from her. You just… let me fade.”

  She closed her eyes, even though they’d never truly been open.

  “I guess that’s fitting,” she said softly. “For Oblivion.”

  The warmth in her chest pulsed once, faint but steady.

  Ariel clung to it.

  “Holly,” she said, the name barely more than a breath now. “If you can hear me... if there’s any part of you that can still feel me... please know that I tried.”

  Her voice trembled, but she forced herself to keep going.

  “I didn’t stop loving you. Not for a second. Not even here.”

  She swallowed against a tightness that had nothing to do with breath.

  “I know you’ll keep living,” Ariel went on. “You’re good at that. You always find a way to keep going, even when it hurts.”

  A pause.

  “And I’m glad,” she admitted. “I don’t want my love to be a weight around your neck.”

  The words cost her something to say.

  “I just hope…” Her voice wavered again. “I hope when you laugh, sometimes it’ll feel familiar. I hope when the sun hits your hair just right, you’ll think of me without knowing why.”

  The void seemed to stretch wider, thinner.

  “I hope the shape I made in your life doesn’t disappear,” Ariel whispered. “Even if my name does.”

  She tightened inward, gathering what little sense of self she still had.

  “If this is really goodbye,” she said, quieter now, calmer, “then thank you. For choosing me. For seeing me. For letting me be more than I ever thought I was allowed to be.”

  A tear slid free, warm as it drifted away.

  “I love you,” Ariel said. “I always have. I always will.”

  The darkness continued to press in on her...

  ...And Ariel waited, suspended between memory and nothingness, as the last pieces of her began to loosen their hold.

  ..........

  ............

  But the waiting broke.

  Pain tore through her.

  It was sudden, violent in its contrast to the stillness; an intrusion so sharp it dragged a cry from her throat before she could stop it. Ariel arched instinctively, though she had no body to obey the motion, as something pierced her from behind.

  A line of agony burned straight through her spine.

  She gasped, the sound jagged and raw, as the pain traveled through her, back to chest, searing, undeniable, real in a way nothing else here had been.

  “Ah—!”

  For a heartbeat, she thought this was it.

  Punishment, at last.

  The void recoiled as the pain surged outward, ripping through the numb quiet like a blade through silk. Ariel cried out again, tears spilling freely now as sensation flooded her awareness all at once—too much, too fast.

  And then…

  It stopped.

  Not faded. Not dulled.

  Gone.

  In its place came warmth.

  Not the faint ember she’d been clinging to before, but something fuller. Stronger. It spread through her chest in a steady pulse, rhythmic and alive, filling the hollow spaces the void had been hollowing out.

  Ariel froze.

  She knew this feeling.

  Her breath grew sharp as understanding washed over her, sharp enough to hurt all over again.

  “Holly…” she whispered.

  The warmth pulsed in answer.

  She felt it clearly now. A thread of light anchored in her chest, humming with intent and care and fierce, stubborn love. It didn’t ask permission. It didn’t waver. It held her.

  Ariel let out a broken, trembling laugh that dissolved into a sob.

  “You came for me,” she breathed.

  Tears slid freely down her cheeks, warm against skin she could suddenly feel again. The void pulled back another inch, another breath, as the threaded light pushed outward, staking its claim.

  “I love you,” Ariel said, the words pouring out of her like a confession and a promise all at once.

  The warmth surged, brighter now.

  Ahead of her, a light appeared.

  At first it was dim, barely more than a suggestion against the dark. Then it grew, fed by the rhythm in her chest, spreading outward in hues of red and orange, wild and untamed.

  Fire.

  The flame curved around her as it expanded, encircling her completely. Ariel turned slowly in the air, awe and quiet joy filling her as she felt the presence beside her: close, steadfast, unmistakable.

  “I can feel you,” she whispered. “You’re here.”

  The fire drew nearer, its heat gentle, familiar. Ariel closed her eyes, calm settling over her at last.

  “I bid my soul through the flames before me,” she said softly.

  The fire surged forward.

  Ariel smiled…

  …And let it take her.