maverick hale | d5 | done

There was nothing left, not even nightmares. He'd call it hopeless if it wasn't too kind a word. Smothering, maybe. A suffocation defined by its aching lungs without lips to relieve them. There was nothing left and it was agony.

The air is hollow here, like an echo holding its breath. Sometimes the nothing takes shape, always the same stairwell of an old apartment building. The railings have peeling blue paint and are a little bit rusty, whenever he pulls his hands away they come back smelling metallic.

He started at the top, he thinks. Climbing down, down, down. He walks until his thighs burn and the stairs start shifting in and out of focus. And Mav knows better but he's never been a boy of great willpower. He always peers over the railing, hoping that this time he's made some progress in a fight against infinity.

But he knows.

There's no bottom, no end. There's nothing left, not even nightmares.

Sometimes a memory rests on the tip of his tongue. Of his ending and how nothing was supposed to come after it. Always accompanied this terrible sound in the distance, like a gunshot or a bone breaking.

It sounds silly but he's never tried to open his eyes. The stairwell was always just there with its jaw hung open in an endless yawn; both out of focus and the only thing there was to see.

Whenever he tries to really look at the stairwell it whispers sweet nothings to him. It promises that this is better than whatever awaits him on the other side.

But Mav has always been a little bit indignant - he's the youngest after all.

So as thunder roars overhead once again he finally opens his fucking eyes and-

oh.

He never had to get to the bottom, he's always been there. Body contorted into a space that's too small for it, neck hanging limp over a railing with peeling blue paint. Alive but just barely; those Hale boys never were ones for letting go of dead things.

Up there, at the top - that's Gavin. He looks about fourteen so Mav's gotta be twelve. He's always idolized his big brother, even if Gav gets mad and lashes out whenever Mav treads on his shadow. He even shoved his brother a little too hard one time because he wasn't thinking about how high up they were he just wanted him to go away.

Gavin smiles down at him, that's a rare sight.

So obviously Mav smiles back.

Well, he tries to but then he

wakes up.

Then there's just high pitched beeping and bright lights. Alarms start blaring and white walls laugh as he clutches at sheets he doesn't remember falling asleep in. Nurses with their faces pressed against the glass go bug-eyed, suddenly shouting nonsense at a man with salt and pepper hair and ebony skin.

A pretty nurse with a white-blonde plait flung over her shoulder gets closer than she should and so he tries to bite the hands she's shoved in his face but his body is sluggish and sore and won't fucking listen to him.

They call his parents but they don't look like his parents anymore. Their skin has too many wrinkles and they cry far too many tears.

"You've been asleep for four years." Mav's mother tells him he was supposed to be a dead man.

And what else is there to say to that but: "I know."