The ghosts have rejected Aura's application for afterlife once more.
Void's eyes snapped open to the sound of sirens in the distance and the cold bite of water pressing into her lungs. Gasping, coughing, choking, she surfaced like an airport terminal miraculously surviving the CrowdStrike incident - spitting river water and blood under a violet night sky.
Every nerve screamed like it was on fire.
"Ow. Ow, ow, ow-fuck, this sucks. This sucks."
Her voice was raw. Her throat burned. Everything ached like it had been shattered and glued back together by a toddler.
She dragged herself onto the muddy bank, hands trembling, knees giving out halfway through. Her head swam - not just from the fall, but from existence itself. This was her first breath that was really hers, her first time feeling cold that wasn't metaphorical. First time tasting pain and calling it hers.
And it was horrifying.
"What the fuck were you thinking, Aura?" she muttered, collapsing onto her side, clutching her ribs with one arm. "You gave me the wheel in mid-air. MID-AIR, YOU GLITTER-INFECTED MANIAC-"
Silence.
Void turned inward. Nothing. No flicker of magenta light, no spark of laughter or sobbing. Just... quiet.
Her chest tightened.
"Aura..?"
Still nothing.
And that silence - Void had mocked it before. Had danced inside it like a shadow in a spotlight. But now it was unbearable. Deafening. Like screaming into nothingness and hearing only her own echo.
"I didn't ask for this..." she whispered, curling into herself as the cold seeped deeper. "I was supposed to keep you alive. Not take over like some final failsafe."
The sky above her glitched with clouds and stars. Somewhere nearby, a siren wailed again, but far off, as if the world hadn't even noticed the break that happened here. The fracture in one girl's reality.
"You made me real."
Her voice cracked again. She hadn't even realized she was crying.
"You stupid, reckless, beautiful girl. You made me real, and now you're gone."
But not forever. That was the difference. At least Void hoped so.
She sat up slowly, pulling off the soaked hoodie and staring at the jagged skyline beyond the riverbank. Somewhere out there, the world kept spinning. Aura's "forever" was still gone, but Void cast that thought aside, her existence mattered absolute naught from this point onward. The pain was still here. But so was Void - in a body full of scars, memories and loss.
She had no idea gravity could hurt this much.
"Alright, alright... Fine." She sniffled and forced herself to stand, swaying like a baby deer on stilts. "Guess I've got some rebuilding to do. And a violet mess to keep alive in here until she's ready to wake up."
She looked up at the sky, wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand.
"I'll hold your place, Aura. I'll make you proud. You rest."
A broken smile tugged at her mouth.
"But if you leave me alone with our Spotify playlists for too long, I swear to fucking Bartmoss, I'm deleting every sad lesbian love song in your liked list."
The wind howled.
Void took a step forward. It was clumsy.
It hurt. It meant nothing.
It meant everything.