Chapter Text
He still hurt.
Why did he still hurt?
If he was dead, shouldn't the pain have left him?
Unless he was in hell. That wouldn't surprise him, after everything he'd done. What was one more twist he wasn't expecting?
Slowly, he became aware of voices around him. He wasn't sure what they were saying, they sounded all garbled and strange.
Perhaps it was the language of demons, discussing how to torture him.
He supposed he deserved that. The road to hell, paved with good intentions.
Bah. Who was he fooling? He always knew he'd go to hell, since the start of all this. Since he was killed in the hospital and didn't die when he should have. It wasn't like he'd been an angel. Had he been actively malevolent? To Alex, yes. Not the others. Manipulative, moving the pawns on the chess board, sure. But not malevolent.
He hadn't meant for Jay to die. That hadn't been in his plans. But Alex was the black queen, against his white pawns. Alex was unpredictable. He could try to plan for his next moves, but that would only be so effective when Alex went the wrong way, made an unexpected move.
And pawns are the sacrifice.
Although… were they pawns? Tim, he thought, could have been a knight. A valuable piece, but it takes a lot to get him where you want him, sometimes takes extra steps. Jay could have been a bishop, or rook. The path he can take straightforward, but limited.
The Operator would have been the king to Alex's queen, he supposed. Even if Alex hadn't been meaning to, he was helping the entity, protecting it. Himself… perhaps the hand moving the white pieces? He wasn't a chess piece in this metaphor.
Although, by that logic, neither was the Operator. He reassigned the being the role of controlling the black pieces. Alex. That fit better. It controlled Alex much more than Alex defended it. Alex was just doing its work.
None of this explained, though, what was going on now. If he was dead, he was dead, right? Death was the end of it.
So why could he think?
If death was the end, why could he think?
Unless he wasn't dead?
But that made no sense. The only one around when he fell had been Tim, and he doubted Tim would have done anything to help him. Not after the past few years.
He suddenly became aware of a quiet beeping. Why would there be beeping?
The voices got louder and his face twitched into a small frown as he started trying to open his eyes. He needed to figure out what was going on.
It took a lot of struggle, somebody touched his hand, but he managed to pry his eyes open…. And immediately closed them again at the bright light. What the hell?
Why was it so bright?
It took a few more tries before he managed to get his eyes open again, and he noticed somebody had turned the lights down.
He blinked and tried to look around, but his vision was blurry and he was being attacked by a sudden, painful headache.
Blurry faces surrounded him and he blinked at them. So many seemed to be talking at him - at least, the blurry underwater voices seemed to be directed at him.
He turned his head, with struggle, to see a heart monitor beeping and he frowned. Why would that be in hell if he was dead?
Unless… he wasn't dead?
Was he in a hospital?
Why would he be in a hospital?
And why did he think he'd seen Tim??