Defeating the Darkness

by Galaxia Alpha

It was dark in his tiny cage. Not the kind of darkness that was just annoying for its inconvenience, but the kind that was thick and oppressive. The kind that choked you with hopelessness and twisted your heart in an irrational fit of panic and depression. The kind of darkness that ate at you, consuming you slowly until it left you screaming for some light, for a little flicker of hope and mercy to make it all bearable. The kind of darkness that never relented.

It was dark and it was cold. Oh, so cold. He shivered compulsively now, rarely finding any warmth to provide solace. Frigid air slithered over him, slipping up and down his spine with its sinister emptiness. He paced sometimes, attempting to get his blood pumping and scare away the chills. It never worked.

And his cage kept shrinking, his little corner in this brain he now shared with another steadily loosing size. Squeezing in on him and forcing him to survive with less and less space, ripping away at his very being to compromise for the lost room. He was a ghost, no longer complete and fully real, and with every passing moment, with every time his cage got smaller, he faded a little more.

To put it bluntly, Scott Summers was dying.

But he really couldn't comprehend this thought. His existence was confined to shivering and pacing in the dark, tortured with the dim intuition that he had once been something more, had once been something noble. But it was all so far away, all seemed so impossibly distant.

It was dark and cold and lonely. He was dimly aware of the other that dominated this mind he lived in, but he tried his best to stay far away from it, to stay in his little corner. For that other mind was vile and scathing to his chilled spirit. It was apocalyptic in its thirst for power and its disdain for human life. He remembered reaching into it once to fight against the pressing wall of the mind that constantly forced him into a smaller and smaller cage. He remembered being repulsed with its... its inhumanity. That was earlier, though. That was when he had been brave.

Now he was just scared. Scared and alone and shivering in the darkness.

There really wasn't much room left for pacing now, and his grasp on his identity was so tattered, so worn, so thin, that he felt like a gust of wind could blow it to pieces, erasing his dull existence in this tiny cage.

Would that be so bad?

He sat down, legs drawn to his chest and arms wrapped around himself. It would all be over soon.

His thoughts, fleeting and fragile though they were, began to wander, no longer being occupied with the incessant pacing he'd preformed earlier. He wondered who he was. He knew he'd been someone special once, someone with a life and dreams and friends... and love.

Love? What was that?

He searched for some meaning to attach to the word, some explanation. What he found was an image of a woman, striking red hair flowing around the sea of deep green eyes. Slim body and creme-colored skin. Full lips and a delicate smile. She was beautiful. He stared at her, childlike wonder filling him. Who was she? Was she... love?

He was entranced by the woman, feelings manifesting themselves in a tornado of wind that whirled around him. And then there was light. Light! He could scarcely believe it, streaks of bright color swirled around him, around the image of the woman that wavered before him in his tiny cage. Crimson reds and deep purples and bright greens and more colors whose names he could no longer remember. They hurt his eyes with their intensity, him not having seen anything so glorious in such a long time, but he forced himself to watch them, twirling and looping in the air around the woman.

He stopped shivering. There was a strange warmth emanating from her, one that drove away the dark chill that resided so heavily within him. A comforting heat that slid across his skin, thawing out all the emptiness and depression.

He felt alive.

He felt strong.

He felt like he had to find her, had to be with this woman, whoever she was.

And he had to go into the dark mind that surrounded him to do it.

Gathering all the light and the wind and the warmth within him, tucking the image of the woman safely into his heart, he stepped up to the bars of his prison... and pushed. He pushed with all the love he could find within himself. It was the only ammunition he had, the only impetus to fight. He wondered if it would be enough.

He felt the cruel cold mind surrounding him as the cage buckled, felt the icy fingers of vile and evil things, and the opposing scalding touch of hate slither over his skin as he emerged from his cell. But he set the light free on them, released the cleansing warmth... and they withdrew.

Memories were coming back to him, an identity resurfacing, becoming stronger. And armed with the emotions, the determination, that came with that identity, Scott Summers took control of his mind, and eventually his body.

He was free. And he was full of love.

Scott Summers had reclaimed his life.

It was dark and cold, and En Sabur Nur sat shivering in the shadows. The cell that contained him decreased in size continually, forcing him to relinquish more and more of his grasp on life to the mind that pressed against him.

He was trapped and very alone. He was also scared. The mind that surrounded him was strong, solid, blindingly bright, and he could not fight it.

Startled, he realized that he was slipping away, loosing his sense of who he was.

To put it bluntly, En Sabur Nur was dying.

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