red riding hood | void stiles [au]

twenty-one ; bonus chapter

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE AFTER

HE DIDN'T KNOW WHERE he was. Faint memories prodded at his newly-awoken soul until he suddenly remembered what had led him here, what had led him to dying. Void, the merciless and murderous nogitsune, had died willingly after over 1,000 years of living. Why? To chase after a empathic, stubborn blonde who had stolen his fiercely cold heart that learned to only beat for her.

In sight of this, he turned his head from side to side, ignoring the fact he was in the clothes he had perished in and that he was still in what seemed to be Stiles' body despite the fact that he had exited him before his death. His brown eyes tried to adjust to the darkness around him, a thick fog looming over the area he was in. There appeared to be nothing except him here, and the dark fox began to think that this is what his afterlife was supposed to be like; with him alone, forced to spend eternity by himself with the darkness he was made up of.

Somehow his eyes began to water, another thing he didn't think was possible, the fact that even dying and surrendering wouldn't be enough to see her again. And that's all he wanted — even if it were for a fraction of a second. Void wanted to see her remarkable blue eyes peer up at him, her cute button nose, her knowing, sweet smile, and her soft, golden hair that always fell and framed her beautiful face perfectly.

He craved the way she would hold him, comfortingly and sometimes desperately, showing that she needed him as much as he needed her. The way she would say his name haunted the heartbroken creature even now, from the way the girl growled it out when she was furious at him to the the soft murmur of it she spoke when her love for him was all Pru could concentrate on. It broke him entirely knowing that he would never get to experience any of that ever again.

A sob broke out from him uncontrollably, the pain surfacing and not granting him any sort of mercy as his chest began to rise and fall, and he couldn't breathe. Tears were falling, pouring down his face like a heavy rainstorm, and his face was twisted into sadness once again but he didn't care anymore. This is what he got, this is what he deserved. Of course Void couldn't see Pru again, she was probably in someplace better, and no amount of crying or wishing things were different would change that.

In a way he would have previously found pathetic, the lost spirit fell to his knees, hurting so much that it swallowed him whole. There was so much he could've done differently, so many times he could have done the right thing for her, and... he could have told her he loved her over and over again until the girl wouldn't ever doubt it again. She deserved better from him, she only wanted him to try more, and he understood that now. Void messed up and there was no fixing it, that was clear at this point.

The hollow feeling spreading throughout his chest matched the lonely and bleak atmosphere around him. All he could do was stare forward, into the darkness, deciding this was worse than the hot flames of Hell humans were afraid of. This was his own personal form of torture, this is what it would never stop being like, and more importantly this is how it would be without her. The hope he had foolishly slowly diminished, eventually leading to him bowing his head in complete and utter sorrow.