He wasn't certain of what had happened, but he thought he had been hanging in the darkness for days. Hanging, suspended by nothing, and yet he could not even drift in the swirling mist that licked at his pale skin like flame. His mouth waited partway open for words that he knew he should have, a protest, perhaps, but he found nothing. Fitting, as he could not really decide what he sought. His head was ringing, ringing with the slicing shriek of agony that had plagued his nightmares for weeks on end; but this time, it was not cut off even by the suddenness of her death. He closed his eyes, though he was well aware by now that there was no sleep to be had here, and found that though the darkness behind his lids was still, there was nothing more reassuring about it.

“You are /so/ very... softhearted. That's why...” The voice meant nothing to him, but the acidic sting of a hand on his chest, sharp even through fabric, brought him to stare into his own bloodstained gaze. “...That's why you need me... Your heart cannot handle anything but the shelter of a story.”