Kanna [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_40_Kanna-canvaedit.png]

The first thing that Kanna lost was the feeling of touch. She tried to curl her arms around herself but there was no comfort to be found. She couldn’t tell where she began, or where she ended. There was no sound, no cold, no place at all. She was the dark.

There was nothing left to feel and so nothing left to hurt.

What was left of her ached at it, howled at being trapped. It wanted to be free of this, to be something.

It was so easy to fight the howling. Outside was where the nightmares lived, where she never slept, where she never had a moment to rest. She wanted to be here, wanted to stay and no longer walk out amongst the living. She wanted to not be.

The world was safe only if she was here.

Time worked differently. Entire universes bloomed and died in the span of a moment. Everything and nothing existed as one, and she was all of it.

At some point between eons and milliseconds the intruder arrived. She felt a yank, as if everything that made her was being pulled away from the dark.

She scrambled to fight it but she didn’t know how. She didn’t know where her hands were to grasp it, or where her feet were to dig them into the ground, or where the ground was, or even if there was one.

The call was persistent. The more it drew her together, the more she could feel. There was an up and down, first, and then she stood in the black. She was separate from it, though. She could feel where she ended and where the dark began.

The sensation of touch traveled over her and through her and she looked down at the outline of her hands against the dark.

She turned them over, marveling at their existence.

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They were such frail things. They had taken so much, but it was no wonder why they had held so little.

Kanna, a voice said. It was far away, echoing at the corners.

She looked up and he was there. Whole and brilliant, he reached out to her.

He’d been in the Neither, always chasing her, always reaching. A light she couldn’t fathom.

She shook her head, tried to back away. But there was no distance between them, nowhere to go except back into the dark.

She wasn’t ready to go back. Not yet. But she didn’t want to go forward, either. She was stuck.

I can’t, she said. She felt the muscles move in her throat, the vibration of her voice as it came through. It is better if I am here. I am a monster. I should never have been awakened.

No, he replied. His voice was calm, sure. It washed over her, through her, and it was something she knew like her own soul.

You had to exist, because I do.

She couldn’t figure out why she wanted to be near him.

You were made by monsters, inara, he continued, but you aren’t one. You never have been.

The way he looked at her, even now, even here, was something she couldn’t understand.

Everywhere I go, there is death. It follows me. Everyone meets it when I am around.

Everyone meets death, Kanna. People follow you because they believe you. They need to believe in you.

She forced herself to meet his eyes, the shining blue of them, a cloudless sky on a brilliant day. Why?

You give them hope that there is another way. That not everyone will leave them alone when they need them. Hope is dangerous. You cannot let those who would destroy it win.

Kanna didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She hadn’t asked to carry the burdens of others, didn’t want to take the weight of it.

Kanna.

His voice cradled her name like he knew it, like he knew everything it contained and still wanted to speak it.

Please, come back.

Either come back, or take me with you.