DARKNESS

  Before I even opened my eyes, I knew something was wrong.The darkness was total. Not the soft, familiar kind that comes with sleep — this was something heavier. Something that pressed. Like being buried under yers of something I couldn't name, couldn't see, couldn't push through.

  It hurts

  The thought arrived before I did. Before I was fully aware of myself, before I could remember where I was or who I was supposed to be, the pain was already there. A deep, pulsing ache behind my eyes that made thinking feel like moving through wet concrete.

  Where am I?

  Why is there so much darkness?

  "Hello?" My voice dissolved the moment it left me, swallowed whole. "Is anyone there?"Nothing answered.I started walking anyway, because standing still felt worse. The ground beneath my feet had no texture, no sound. My footsteps made no noise. It was like moving through a painting of a pce rather than a pce itself.And then I saw it — a pinprick of light, impossibly far away, sitting at the edge of whatever this was.Something lurched in my chest.I ran.

  I threw everything I had into it, legs pumping, lungs burning, arms driving forward. The light stayed exactly where it was. No matter how fast I moved, no matter how much I pushed, the distance between us refused to close. If anything, it grew.I ran until I couldn't. Until my legs folded and I dropped to my knees, hands braced against ground that felt like nothing, chest heaving, drenched in sweat.I sat there for a long time.And then I heard it.

  "WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?"

  The voice hit me like a physical thing. I went rigid.I turned toward it slowly.She was small. Nine, maybe ten years old, standing a few feet away in the dark. Her clothes were torn, streaked with mud. Cuts ran across her arms, her cheeks. And her eyes — her eyes were full of tears that hadn't fallen yet, like she had been holding them for so long she'd forgotten how to let go.She was staring at something I couldn't see. Something that had already left.I don't know what moved me. Instinct, maybe. Or something older than instinct. I was on my feet before I'd made the decision, crossing the distance between us, reaching for her—The ground shook."Wake up, my baby"Mom's voice, from somewhere above me, warm and desperate and real.

  "Don't leave me here." The little girl's voice again, cracking now. "It hurts. I don't want to live like this.""Please. Save me."

  The plea tore through me like a bde.And then everything went white.

  My eyes opened.For a moment, I didn't move. The ceiling above me was familiar. My bed was familiar. The weight of the bnket was familiar. I catalogued each detail slowly, methodically, like a person checking that the world had reassembled itself correctly while they were gone.I was drenched. My shirt clung to my back, my hair to my forehead. My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat."Are you okay? Were you having a nightmare? Oh, mama will take care of you—"

  She was already there. Already holding me before I had fully arrived back in myself. Her arms wrapped around me tight, her voice coming in waves above my head, that particur frequency that only mothers seem to carry — the one designed specifically to pull you back from wherever you've gone.I sat frozen in her embrace for a moment, disoriented, my mind still half-caught in that dark pce, still seeing the little girl's torn clothes and wet eyes.Slowly, I began to calm.Her warmth seeped through. The rapid hammering in my chest started to slow. The darkness retreated to wherever it lived between dreams.And then it hit me — not pain exactly, but a fullness. A tightness in my chest that built and built until I couldn't breathe around it properly.I pulled back gently.

  She loosened her hold, just enough, and looked at me. Her eyes were red at the edges. She had been crying — or had been close to it for a while. The expression on her face was one she was clearly fighting to contain, pressing it down behind something calmer, something that wouldn't frighten me further.But it was there. Visible in every line of her face.The sorrow of a mother watching her child look at her like a stranger."Don't you remember me?" she asked.

  The words came out so carefully. Like she had been rehearsing them for hours and still wasn't sure they were the right ones.I couldn't answer.

  Did Sia already tell her?

  "Rio." Her voice cracked on my name. Just slightly. Just enough. "Don't you really remember me? I'm your mother. I carried you. I was there the first time you cried, the first time you ughed, the first time you—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together hard. "I… I…"She couldn't finish.

  Her eyes filled. She didn't let the tears fall — she held them back with everything she had, blinking rapidly, jaw tight, the way someone does when they've decided that falling apart is a luxury they can't afford right now. But her hands, still resting on my arms, were trembling.Something cracked open in my chest.I had known, in a detached, logical way, that she was the mother of this body. I had observed it — in the food left outside my door every day without fail, in the knocks that kept coming even when I never answered, in the way she sat near me without crowding me, as if she understood that I needed space but refused to give me so much of it that I disappeared entirely.I had catalogued all of it as information.But sitting here, watching her try not to shatter in front of me — I felt it move from my head down into something deeper. Something that had no name but had weight.

  "I know I don't remember," I said quietly. "I know that every time you look at me and I don't recognize you, it must feel like losing me all over again. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I can't give you back what was there before."She exhaled shakily. One tear escaped, and she caught it quickly with the back of her hand like she was angry at it."It's not your fault," she whispered. "Don't you dare apologize for something that isn't your fault.""Still." I looked at her properly — really looked, the way I hadn't let myself since I arrived in this life. The tired lines around her eyes. The way her hair was slightly undone, like she had rushed in without thinking about it. The way she was holding herself together by sheer will alone. "You've been coming to my door every single day. Even when I didn't answer. Even when I couldn't look at you."

  Her breath hitched."Of course I came," she said, and something fierce entered her voice. "What else was I supposed to do? Leave you alone in there? Let my son sit in a dark room and think there was no one on the other side of that door?" She shook her head hard. "No. Never. I don't care if you remember me or not. I don't care if it takes the rest of my life for it to come back. You are my son. That doesn't stop because you've forgotten it."The tightness in my chest became almost unbearable.

  "Even if I don't remember who I was," I said, and my voice came out rough, unsteady, "I know that I love you."She went completely still."I can't expin it. I don't have the memories to expin it. But sitting here, right now — I feel it. Whatever I was before, whoever I was — he loved you. And I'm going to carry that forward even if I have to rebuild everything else from scratch.""Rio—"

  "I don't know how I behaved through all the years before this." The tears arrived without warning, and I let them come. "Maybe I was difficult. Maybe I took things for granted. I don't know. But I know what I want to be now. I know the kind of son I want to give you going forward." I met her eyes directly. "So don't grieve what's gone. Please. Let me build something new with you instead."For a moment she just looked at me, her expression caught between devastation and something that hadn't quite decided what it was yet.Then the sound she made broke through — not a loud cry, but something quieter and more ruined than that. The sound of something held together for a very long time finally letting go, just slightly, just enough.She pulled me into her arms before I could say anything else.Tighter than before. The kind of tight that doesn't ask permission, that doesn't negotiate. She held on the way people hold on when they have been terrified of losing something and have just, unexpectedly, been handed a reason not to be."I love you," she said into my hair, her voice muffled and unsteady. "I love you so much it terrifies me sometimes. And I don't care who you remember being. I don't care about any of that. You are here. You are here, and that is enough. That will always be enough."I pressed my face into her shoulder and didn't say anything. There was nothing left to say.

  We stayed like that for a long time.Eventually, she pulled back. Wiped her face in that brisk, practical way — the way of someone who has decided that the crying is done now, that it served its purpose and can be set aside. She straightened. Took a breath.But her hands lingered on my face for just a moment, cupping my jaw, thumbs brushing my cheekbones, studying me the way you study something you were afraid you'd never see again."You scared me," she said softly. "These past few days. I kept standing outside your door and I kept thinking—" She stopped. Shook her head. "It doesn't matter what I was thinking. You're here now.""I'm here," I said.She nodded, once, firmly, as if sealing something.

  "Then let's go see a doctor tomorrow," she said, her voice practical again but still warm around the edges. "We need to understand what happened. I can't—" Her jaw tightened fractionally. "I can't lose my only precious son. Not after everything.""You're not going to lose me," I said. "I'm not going anywhere."She looked at me for a long moment. Then the corner of her mouth lifted — just slightly, just barely."Good," she said. "Because I would follow you."

  She stood, smoothed her clothes, patted my cheek once with the firm tenderness of someone who has said everything important and is now ready to be useful.But just before she turned toward the door, she paused. Her hand rested on my shoulder for one moment longer than necessary — pressing lightly, as if making sure I was still solid. Still real. Still there.Then she let go and walked away.And I sat in the quiet she left behind, feeling, for the first time since I had opened my eyes in this strange and borrowed life, like maybe I had something worth staying for..

  .

  .

  .

  AnnouncementIt was an emotional episode. Also had a small hint of his past self. Do let me know what you think of this chapter..