Ascension Of The Villain

The world returned to him painfully slowly.

The similar distant beeping rhythm coaxed Vyan's consciousness back from the dark. His eyelashes fluttered against the soft white light above him, unfamiliar yet somewhat familiar. The scent of antiseptic clinging to the air stung his nose. It wasn't comforting at all. Wherever he was, it was cold and detached.

It felt like déjà vu. Like he had woken up like this in this very place once before too.

He blinked many times, trying to adjust his vision to the light when he had been floating in the darkness for how long he had no idea.

His throat burned like dry sandpaper, every breath dragging painfully. His limbs felt like they'd been poured full of cement. Heavy and unresponsive.

He tried to turn his head but managed only a slight twitch. Even that small effort sent a dull ache trickling through his skull.

There was no one in the room. Just him.

It felt like there was someone with him when he had opened his eyes the last time.

How long had it been since then? He couldn't tell. Time didn't exist in the void.

Then, like sunlight spilling through the crack in a silent storm, came the sound of soft, uncoordinated footsteps outside the door.

Tiny ones.

The door creaked open, and a little set of feet padded in. There was a hitch of surprise. Then, came the familiar bubbly voice:

"Daddy's twin, you're awake!"

Vyan's sluggish mind caught up a second too late, dragging recognition up from the fog.

He strained to move his head, and this time, the pain obeyed him. His neck tilted just enough to see the small figure at the door. A mop of chestnut-brown hair, cheeks flushed from a sprint, amber eyes impossibly wide and bright with something close to joy.

A child.

His child? No. Not his. But somehow… yes.

He parted his lips, his throat protesting from disuse. The sound that emerged was barely a whisper, so raw and cracked it was more raspy breath than voice.

"…Elian."

"Thank goodness!" The boy lit up like a firecracker, shoulders bouncing with excitement. "Wait here, I'll call Daddy and the doctor!"

Before Vyan could say anything more, Elian was gone, vanishing as quickly as he'd come.

The door thudded gently shut.

Silence came back.

So did the beeping.

He lay there, alone once more, staring up at that too-white ceiling, listening to the machine speak the language of life. The kind of life that didn't feel alive. The kind of life where the soul was still catching up to the body.

Everything hurt. Not in the sharp, obvious way of fresh wounds, but in the slow, aching absence of something once familiar.

His limbs were strangers to him now. His strength had been drained. He felt numb, hollowed out from the inside.

Even breathing required effort.

He closed his eyes again. Not to sleep. Just to escape the ceiling.

The silence didn't last long.

The door opened again, this time with a slow creak and a different rhythm of careful steps. A man in a white coat entered. Vyan didn't recognize him. Another figure followed: Adrian.

Behind them, at the threshold, stood Elian. Quiet now. No more chirping excitement. As if he had been told to stay silent in the distance.

Other voices spoke softly, but the words blurred.

They were talking about him. He could tell by the way their eyes flicked to his face, by the furrow in Adrian's brow, by the subtle tilt of the doctor's clipboard. But Vyan's mind was a haze, a curtain of static that refused to lift. The words reached him as muffled echoes through thick glass.

He tried to focus. Really tried.

But nothing stayed long enough to grasp.

He wanted to sit up. To ask questions. To move.

But his body wouldn't listen.

He attempted to shift his legs, but they felt like whispers of what they once were. A glance at his hands was all it took. They looked thinner. Bonier.

The horror crept in slowly.

Like ink spreading in water.

His breath began to hitch, even before the doctor finally said it.

Two and a half months.

He had been in a coma for two and a half months.

At first, the words floated past him. It didn't exactly register. He just thought, oh, my gunshot wound must have healed by now.

Then, those words crashed into him. Like a dam breaking.

"No… no," he rasped, voice cracking as panic clawed its way up his throat. "It can't be that long. It can't…"

His heart thundered. The beeping beside him quickened like a countdown.

"I need to go home. Iyana—"

Her name burst out of him like a sob.

He remembered the dreams. Over and over again during the endless dark void. Her face, her tears, her body locked in a cold dungeon, whispering for help, for him. He remembered the fear, the helplessness, coming from the strongest person he knew. Her scared voice had been echoing in the corners of his broken mind this entire time.

She was waiting.

She needed him.

And he had been lying here, useless. Unmoving. Unaware.

Vyan's breath turned erratic. His fingers trembled, gripping the sheets.

"I have to go," he cried out, eyes wild, chest rising and falling in frantic waves. "I have to go to her!"

He tried to push himself up. Muscles long forgotten screamed in protest, but he didn't stop. With sheer will, with the kind of stubborn desperation that only love and guilt could conjure, he pulled his upper body forward, arms shaking, chest burning.

Adrian stepped forward instantly, voice urgent but gentle. "Vyan, no, stop. You're not ready to move so suddenly yet."

"But it's been so long!" Vyan choked, his voice a raw mess of fear and sorrow. His eyes brimmed. "Adrian, I have to go. Iyana is waiting. I can't— I can't waste another second."

"Yes, yes," Adrian said quickly, approaching the bedside, hands hovering near, ready to catch him if he fell. "You'll go to your home. You'll see her. I promise. Just… not like this. Please. You need to calm down. You won't reach her if you collapse trying."

But Vyan couldn't stop. His body may have been frail, but his heart was breaking in full strength. Tears streamed down his cheeks without restraint, hot and bitter.

"I wasn't there…" he whispered, voice cracking under devastation. "I wasn't there for her."

Adrian gently placed a hand on his shoulder, grounding him. "Iyana will understand why you weren't. She won't blame you, Vyan. She would also want you to not harm your body more than it already is. She wouldn't want you to act so reckless."

He had no retort to those words. Because they were true.

Yet, he couldn't help it. The vulnerability and the helplessness was unbearable.

Vyan buried his face in his palms, his body shaking with silent sobs.

As Vyan continued to cry, Adrian stood frozen beside the bed, fingers twitching at his sides, lips parting as if to speak, but no more words came. He didn't know what else to say.

What comfort could he offer to a devastated man who had woken up after months, while he knew the one he loved was suffering somewhere else the entire time?

What could he possibly say to a heart that was crying for someone else?

Maybe Emma would do a better job at consoling Vyan—

Just then, there was movement.

A soft shuffle of tiny footsteps. A small figure brushed past Adrian. Elian climbed up onto the bed.

Adrian's eyes widened.

There was no hesitation in his son. It was just pure, wordless instinct.

Elian wrapped his small arms around Vyan's waist, and Vyan's shoulders stopped shaking, frozen. Elian pressed his cheek gently to his chest.

Vyan pulled down his hands from his face and looked down at the small child anchoring him like gravity itself.

And in that moment, just like the very first time Vyan had fallen into this strange world, it was Elian who brought him back to earth. The one who grounded him when he was on the verge of falling apart.

The boy didn't say much, didn't need to. His hug was warm. His little hand began to rub gentle circles along Vyan's back, as if he knew—truly knew—what this man needed wasn't logic or promises, but something far simpler.

Love. Uncomplicated love.

"Don't cry," Elian whispered softly. "Don't cry… it'll all be okay."

And Vyan broke again.

But this time, not from panic.

From softness. From comfort.

His arms trembled as he wrapped them around the small body holding him. And he cried—not with noise, not with thrashing grief—but quietly into the safety of Elian's shoulder. Each tear seemed to carry pieces of a weight he didn't know how to bear alone.

The sterile scent of antiseptic still hung in the air. The heart monitor still beeped in slow, steady time. But inside the quiet of that room, a man shattered by distance he couldn't cross was gently stitched back together by the hug of a child who saw him not as broken… but simply as someone who needed a hug.

And for the first time since waking, Vyan could breathe again without pain.