Light, sound - a nova sense of expanding awareness; a star burst to life in the skull as a furious gravity formed diamonds in her core. Every fragmentary piece of every substance and thought that had ever been Millie splayed out around her as an unfurling linen. The cloth stretched out into a scale which only emphasized the impossible vastness of the rainbow tapestry it was nestled within. Every colour, every length, every thickness and style - all components of a reality she was becoming unbound from. The Infinite. It pulled at every angle of her until the fabric was gossamer thin, until she started to urnavel. Her threads were nothing compared to the weight of this greater weave - she had plucked ever so slightly at an edge of reality, and now it pluck at her in turn - it would pluck her into thin string, and then into nothingness. A tempting dissolution, a truer end than death. A part of her yearned for it, reached for it - and yet the greater part refused.

This struggle had been Millie's entire life: a raw need to exist if for no other reason than to spite what nothingness could promise her - peace. Fuck that. Fuck any universe that would try to sell you on nothingness by making somethingness hell. She wouldn’t take that deal - the sort of sociopath scam run by the scummiest con artists. A single fibre of what had once been her flailed and strained for something, anything - and snagged it. One of the infinite threads that dangled from the infinite tapestry: Crow. Of all things that was it: Crow. Everything Crow entailed, everything it connected to, everything it meant. It was a feeble anchor - but it was all she had. It was the thread she had picked at. And it was enough. The cloth that was Millie stopped unravelling. She remained: a limp dangling thing frayed at the edges, but bound to something real - real in a truer sense than mere existance. And like that it was over - Infinity gave way to the finite. She had seen all of it, felt it, was it: crystalline and vast and perfect and a screaming, flailing, confusion. It was incomprehensible, and a mere instant.

Time returned with a vengeance. Too much. Too fast. She was falling, still falling, eyes wide and vibrating with what she’d just witnessed. Instinct and reaction took hold, slipping through the gaps of a shattered mind.

Wings. Wings! Millie flapped and fluttered in a desperate bid to survive. Overburdened by both Andrew’s weight and her own thoughts, she was manically flexing newborn… muscles? No - the will moved something but it was not the natural tension and pull of flesh. She slowed - the gurney didn’t. She was screaming.

Eyes clamped shut, she flailed her limbs in a impotent ward against death. The cane she still gripped caught the gurney as it sped towards her and it chorused the snapcrack of crumpling aluminium over the clang of metal struck with force. Her left arm vibrated with feedback and an unseen hammer blow struck across her right shoulder as she felt wind and weight fall past her and away, screeching as it struck the cave below. Death did not come.

More flailing and screaming and the flapping of wings-not-of-flesh. The blow to Millie’s shoulder had unbalanced her even further and no matter how frantically her newborn wings worked she could not keep them aloft. Andrew was screaming now too. She did not open her eyes in time to see them hit the ground. It was a hard landing, but a survivable one - Andrew crushed beneath her, his sounds cut off by a gasping exhale of impact.

It was dark then, and still. No noise or sensation - even the rumbling earth had given up its wrath. Millie stared into the dark, struggling to breath. Andrew writhed in pain beneath her, shielding her from jagged wet rock. She tried so very hard not to think - to be nothing but the stillness and the dark that surrounded her. She tried to push it back even as she felt it nipping at her as the adrenaline wave receded. The heat in the mind, the pressure in the body - a bubbling, burning, volcanic energy. She stayed still, so still. No movement, no thought - even a hint of herself seemed to provoke it, and she could only comprehend it as pain. Pain she couldn’t handle.

But it was fading, slowly. Millie gripped her cane, trying to focus on the other pains - what she could handle. The thing was broken, snapped in half and miserably crumpled in on itself. Thoughts tinged with surprising sadness came unbidden; she’d known that cane longer than she'd known most people. Pain. She turned away from her own thoughts and saw the gurney, visible at the edge of what little light still beamed down from the morgue above. The poor thing lay dead on its side; bent, crumpled, and... flayed? Split nearly into pieces by something, by her. She'd done that. Thoughts. Pain.

Inhale, exhale. Be still, be near to nothing - near enough that the pain wouldn't notice that she wasn't ready to stop, not yet.

--------------------------------------------------

With a slithering roll Andrew moved out from under Millie and she flopped boneless onto her side. He didn’t understand what had just happened, his thoughts moved like sludge through a cottony head - a concussion probably. Even still he knew what to do: check oneself and then check the survivors. You can’t help them if you’re dead.

Andrew pushed himself up to his hands and knees, wincing at every effort to catch his breath. He probed gingerly at his ribs and was certain that at least one of them had broken. Next he checked his head - it was wet, and a quick taste told him it was blood. Suppressing a rising panic, he ran his hand across his head and found the wound - it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. With a grunt he tore a strip of cloth free from his stupid sweater and tied it about his head as best he could - not ideal, but it’d have to do for now. A once over everywhere else revealed only superficial cuts and bruises.

Andrew looked up and saw where they’d fallen from - a halo of light in the dark roof of the cave. It must have been at least a hundred feet. They should be dead. Some part of him still rebelled against the evidence of his eyes - he knew what he’d seen but even with everything that had happened over the last week he struggled to believe it.

He let out a manic little chuckle. A week - it hadn't even been a week.

Andrew came back to himself, and his duty. He crawled up to Millie’s still form at a pace set by the ache in his ribs. She was little more than a tiny shadow in the dark. He shouldn’t have let her do what she did - he should have found a way to get her back into that damn emergency shelter. Too late now.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

He reached out to grab her, then hesitated - questing hand tightening into a fist. His entire arm was shaking - he was afraid. Not that she’d be dead; he could hear her breathing, if only barely. No, he was scared that when he reached out to touch that little shadow he’d feel feathers beneath his fingers, the brittle texture of shattered avian bones. That what he found would not be human. What would that mean? What would he do then?

He felt his shoulders square, his posture strengthen with his resolve. The question answered itself - he’d do what he always did: protect. A frightened fist became a sure hand once more - he reached out and found no monsters, only Millie. Andrew released a titanic sigh, shaking his his head with self-admonishment as he realized how long he’d been holding his breath.

“Hey. Millie. Can you hear me?”

No response, only breathing.

It always worried Andrew how easy it was to move the poor girl around, saying she was little more than skin and bones skirted dangerously close to being literal. He’d never asked Millie about her disease, and Reg would have snapped his spine if he’d heard Andrew had been rude enough to ask a nurse behind Millie’s back - but it must be something awful. As he flipped her over and placed her in the recovery position his eyes started to adjust to the dark. Laying there in tatters, barely breathing, she really did look more like a corpse than not. The fact that her eyes were locked open with a frightening intensity didn’t do much for comfort.

“Millie, come on - say something.”

Nothing. He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes to no response and checked that she was breathing with a hand over her mouth just to be sure. She had to be in some sort of shock. Could it be because of what she had done, somehow? Some sort of backlash or exhaustion? He gave her a once over and found only one obvious wound: a deep gash across her shoulder from…

“The gurney…” muttered Andrew, as he ran some cloth over the wound.

The injury wouldn’t be anything serious with some attention, but the gurney should have killed them just as certainly as the fall. He glanced over at what remained of their would-be-murderer; ruined heaps of torn canvas and warped metal. He’d seen her do that too, and it had been just as impossible as the wings. Well, impossible clearly wasn’t the right word… it didn’t seem the right word for anything anymore.

Andrew tore out more cloth and bandaged Millie’s shoulder with professional efficiency, nodding with satisfaction as the bleeding began to slow. She’d be okay, for now… hopefully. There was only one thing left to do - and the possibilities were nearly as frightening as what he'd imagined he'd find in that dark shape that had fortunately proved to just be the regular old Millie.

Andrew looked back up at the halo of light and cupped his hands around his mouth, crying out, “Hey! Guys! We’re alive down here! Are you okay!? We need help!”

Andrew winced and clutched at his ribs - yelling wasn’t as fun as it usually was. For a moment he truly believed there would be nothing but silence, that somehow the morgue had caved in, burying Paul and Olivia beneath cold cement. That they’d been wrong - that they’d never been safe in that place. That he and Millie were alone down here, trapped in the dark, forever. The relief Andrew felt as Paul’s familiar voice echoed down from above, clear and vital even as it was cut with fear and worry, was palpable.

“Yes! Thank God, yes! We’re okay, mostly! How are you okay!? How are you even alive?!”

“We… I… ” Andrew felt himself trailing off, unable to explain - how could he possibly explain? “No Idea! But we are! I’ve got a concussion and at least a broken rib, and Millie’s unconscious but I'm pretty sure stable!” Good enough for now.

There was laughter in Paul’s voice as he replied, “We really thought you were both dead! I've never been so happy to be wrong!”

Andrew couldn’t help but laugh in response, gritting his teeth as his ribs immediately made him regret it. “Yeah, well, me too! Now how are you gonna get us out of here?!”

“Uh, wait, hold on!”

Distantly, Andrew heard things being moved around, something metallic clattering to the floor.

Paul’s voice returned, excited and triumphant, “Okay, yes! I think we have enough material up here to jury rig a lot of rope, but it’ll take a while! How far down is it, we can’t tell from up here!”

“About a hundred feet, maybe more!”

The pause this time was quite a bit longer and Andrew took the opportunity to check on Millie. She hadn’t moved an inch, but she was still breathing. Andrew quietly hoped that she’d at least blinked when he hadn’t been looking.

“We’ll make as much as we can! But I don’t know if some makeshift rope can handle any weight at that sort of length!” Paul’s tone dropped, barely audible at the distance they were speaking. “How are you alive?”

Andrew looked down at Millie again. He tried, but no amount of effort would let what he saw slip past his lips. The wings had been impossible enough, and what she’d done to the gurney…

“I… really don’t know! We can figure that out later!”

Paul hesitated, but only briefly, “We’ll get this ready as fast as we can! Just hold tight!”

Their survival was someone else's problem for now. Andrew couldn’t exactly say it was a relief, but what else could he do? Stumble around a pitch-black cavern with a concussion, leave Millie behind, alone? Not an option. With a heavy bone-deep grunt of weariness, Andrew sat down besides Millie on the clammy uncomfortable rocks. Sometimes waiting was the only thing you could do, and now, it seemed, was one of those times. And if something happened, if a real monster came charging out of the dark, well, he’d just have to wing it.