HER

HER

Leonard’s pov

Darkness.
That was the first thing I knew. The only thing.
It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t just anything. it was more like an empty, endless
abyss that is wrapped around me, pressing in from all sides.
I had no body. No weight. No breath.
Nothing at all.
Was I dead?
No.
No, I cannot be dead.
But if I was alive, where the hell was I?
I strained to hear any sound, to feel, to grasp onto anything that might anchor me, but there was
nothing. Just silence. Just nothingness.
This scared me a bit.

This wasn’t the kind of darkness that came with sleep—warm, soft, a gentle descent into rest.
No, this was so much different. This was heavier, suffocating, wrapping around me like a
shroud, thick and inescapable. It pressed against me from all sides, an endless, crushing weight,
as if I had been buried beneath layers of something I couldn’t push through.
Was I drowning?
I couldn’t answer that.
But I couldn’t feel my body. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even tell if I was breathing. But I was
aware. Not in the way that brought me any comfort or clarity. This was the kind of awareness
that made it worse, that magnified the fear clawing at the edges of my mind. There was nothing
to grasp onto. No ground beneath me. No way to tell how long I had been trapped here.
Maybe this was death, I tried to reason again.
No.

No, I was still here. Somewhere.
Memories flickered in and out like weak signals on a radio, just out of reach.
A memory.
Headlights.
The blaring of a horn.
The impact.
Headlights slicing through the night. The screech of tires skidding across pavement. The
sickening crunch of metal colliding, twisting, crumpling. And then—pain. Blinding, searing,
swallowing me whole before I could even process it.
Her or me.
And I had chosen her.
I always would.

That is not even something that can be argued.
But had it worked?
I hope so.
And before that— was she feeling okay?
I strained to hear, to feel, to grasp onto anything that might anchor me again, but there was
nothing, absolutely nothing, Just silence. Just nothingness
A sharp, searing sensation cut through the void, so sudden and violent that it sent my mind
reeling. It wasn’t physical, not really—I still couldn’t feel my body—but it was there.
Trista.

Her name cut through the void, sending a slow, aching pull through my chest.
A weight settled inside me, very familiar and quite relentless, just like muscle memory. She had
been there. I had seen the car coming. I hadn’t thought. I hadn’t hesitated a bit.
There had only been instinct.
There had only been her.
Ony her on my mind at that moment.
I tried to hold onto the thought, to reach for anything solid, but the darkness was relentless. It
stretched on and on and on, endless and empty, a vast nothingness that refused to let me go.
Time didn’t exist here. There was no past, no future. Only this moment. Only this void.
Until…
A sound.
Distant. Faint. Muffled, as if coming from underwater.

I strained to hear it, reaching for it with everything I had, though I had no way to move. It was
familiar, tugging at something deep inside me. A voice.
Tris.
I could hear her.
Not clearly. Not fully. But just quite enough. The edges of her voice broke through the foggy
haze, threading through the silence like a lifeline.
“
…wake up, Leonard…
”
The words barely registered in, slipping through my mind like echoes in an empty space.
But the feeling that came with them—God, the feeling. It tore through me, sharper than pain,
deeper than memory, It sent something sharp through me. Something more painful than any
injury I had ever endured.
She sounded… broken. Not just tired. Not just frustrated. Just broken.
I had never heard her like that before, ever, Not even when we had torn each other apart years
ago. Not even when we had walked away from everything we could have been, but I was all my
fault regardless.

The sound of her voice sent something sharp and unbearable through me.
She sounded so broken.
I had heard Tris in a thousand different ways before. I had heard her angry, heard her amused,
heard her exhausted. I had heard her laugh, sharp and sudden, the way it always caught me off
guard. But this?
I had never heard her like this.
This wasn’t frustration. This wasn’t annoyance or stubbornness or any of the things that made
her her.
This was grief.
And it was because of me.

I wanted to tell her I was here. That I wasn’t gone. That she wasn’t alone.
But I couldn’t.
I was screaming into the void, but no sound came out.
More words drifted through, broken and scattered, like fragments of a conversation I could
almost piece together. She was afraid. She was waiting. And I had done something
reckless—again.
And now, she was the one paying the price for it.
Then—
“Damn it, you don’t get to do this.
”
Her voice cut through the fog, sharp and raw. There was something else there now, something
that wasn’t just fear.
Anger.
Tris was angry.
At me.
I almost wanted to laugh. That was the Tris I knew. The one who fought even when she was
exhausted, even when she was hurting. She was still here. Still fighting.
Something inside me stirred. If she was angry, it meant she was still fighting. Still her. And if she
was still fighting for me…
Maybe I could fight too.
The darkness didn’t loosen, but it shifted.
A weight settled over me, heavier than before, pressing down, pinning me in place. I tried to
push against it, tried to move, but I was still locked in, still helpless.
Still—
“I hate you for this,
” she whispered, her voice breaking.
making me need you.
”
“For making me feel this way. For
Something shattered.
Not around me. Inside me.
It wasn’t just the words. It was the way she said them. The way they trembled, barely held
together, like she was barely holding herself together.
I had spent so long convincing myself that I was the only one still holding on. That whatever had
been between us, whatever I had felt—whatever I had never stopped feeling—it had died for her.
I had been wrong.

The words hit me like a punch to the gut.
She still cared.
Not just in the distant, we were once something kind of way. Not in the I owe you way.
She needed me.
And I wasn’t there for her.
I had been wrong about how she felt.
And that realization wrecked me.
I needed to get back to her.
And now, when I should have been able to reach for her, to fight for her, to hold her—I couldn’t.
I tried again.

Tried to move. Tried to force my way back to the surface, to the light, to her.
I fought harder, clawing at the edges of consciousness, pushing against the nothingness that
refused to let me go
But the darkness wasn’t done with me yet, it gripped me harder, harder than the last, and it felt
like there was no saving grace.
I drifted again, losing her voice, losing everything. The weight on my chest pressed down harder,
suffocating, unrelenting.
Was I dying?
Had I already died?
I didn’t know.
But then, there a shift.
Something small. Barely there. But different. A flicker of warmth against the cold that wrecked
my body.
I knew that warmth.
A touch, Not imagined. Not distant, it was Real.
Fingers against my skin and I fought off a familiar shivers.
It was Trista.

I couldn’t see her. Couldn’t respond. But I felt her.
The darkness tried to pull me back under, but the warmth Tris had created has become an
anchor. It felt like a steady ground in a wobbly world.
And I held on.
Time passed. I didn’t know how much. Seconds. Minutes. Hours.
Then, another shift. This one stronger than the last.
The crushing weight on my chest eased, just slightly. Just enough for something inside me to
stir.

A flicker of strength, a sliver of hope and I latched onto it like my life depended on it.
Just one more.
I tried to move, but nothing. I couldn’t give up, not when I could feel at atom of life right now.
Tried harder.
A twitch., Small. Barely there. But it was something.
Another shift, another flicker of warmth.
Her voice, softer now, quieter, but still there. Still with me.
I wasn’t alone, I would never be alone, not as long as she was here.
And if she was here, I had to get back to her. She was my silver lining and I was going to get her
back.

I didn’t know how long it would take. Didn’t know how many more times the darkness would try
to drag me under.
But I had her voice.
Her touch.
Her.
And that was enough, enough to hold on to the thoughts of hope the earth has offered to me.