At first, she didn't feel anything.
Somewhere in between it all, the fight had stretched and ballooned into a timeless and repetitive series of hit and kicks and crashing through walls. Still, at first… last, she didn't feel anything.
She'd chosen this. To be a hero. To be something more. She'd do it again, in a heartbeat. But there wasn't anything, and that was scary. Not the hits that had slowed her down made her so vulnerable in the first place, nor the fingers in her hair, clawed tight and holding her up so she couldn't look away from those gleaming, evil eyes, full of unbridled triumph.
She couldn't really focus on it, though, not really. She couldn't concentrate on anything because she didn't feel anything. Until she did.
A feeling like she was being pricked with a thousand needles across her whole skin. Breath kept escaping her, and she couldn't get it back because as painful as releasing it began to feel, drawing it back felt worse, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. Her body wasn't letting her do it's most basic functioned and the inhales she did manage weren't even taking in air.
If it hadn't been for the hand in her hair, she would have flopped completely. She'd lost all the energy in her body and legs. If she fell now, She knew she wouldn't be able to get back up. Her hearing was fading, growing muted, the same it did when she was underwater or flew up into the atmosphere.
She could see the lips moving, talking to her, a voice in a canyon echoing, again and again, sentences bounced back into her skull and becoming so indecipherable she couldn't manage them.
But none of that matched what it felt like when her head was let go, and her right side tried to fall but couldn't and she was suspended. Pinned. Agonising pain scouring through her right shoulder, lightning through her whole body because her own weight and gravity were battling against her. She registered it then, so obvious and close to her face. The green, pulsing blade she had somehow managed to snap in half thrust through her left shoulder, chest, muscles, skin, suit and the concrete of the wall behind her. She felt the warm liquid running down her chest now, like a leak of slimy heaviness.
A soundless scream scoured up the back of her throat, a thousand knives tearing to match the blade that was impaling her. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. There was no one to scream for except herself now. Her enemy was gone, wherever they'd gone, and she was alone and left to die in the desolate old battleground they'd picked this new fight. Abandoned to die. Held up and speared like a tough bit of meat on a dull edge that refused to just be sliced in half and just tore.
Torn and burnt beyond all its edges.
Her vision started going black. Her eyes were open, but her vision started getting dark. It was like a back circle just closing in. She could only see the small light in the middle, everything beginning to get blurry. Now there was ringing in their ears, she couldn't move and then, she swore, all her pain just went away. Some type of quietness fell. Peaceful, and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep.
She hadn't even realised that she was dying until then, and by then, she was ok with it. Surreal acceptance when all her worries and losses and demons just seemed far away and abstract. It was weird. Different. The small light in her vision, there because everything else around her sight was just a dark, blurry circle, maybe something to do with the light at the end or something.
Or not, it didn't really matter.
It felt good, easy now, wanting to close her eyes and just let go. But she was still thinking about things. Abstract or not, they were still there. Not caught up in pain between them all, she thought of her friends. Her family.
It took that maybe, knowing without self-doubt that if she let herself die now, it would cause all the people she loved pain. That she was more then what she could give. She fought against the end of her life then, holding onto those abstract things and used that to keep herself warm and awake.
That and the funny thought that the hazy way she felt now would definitely become the most vivid memory of her life.
Somewhere then, at the end of that tunnel, she thought she heard a voice. Her name said over and over again. She cracked her eyes wider. There was a vibration, a thump in front of her so heavy it vibrated through the wall, blade and her body.
Her head was lolling, and the world was sideways, but she'd recognise that hazy silhouette in front of her anywhere.
She whispered a name through her dry mouth, but she couldn't hear it over her own, shouted back in horrified terror from the caped hero who'd come to save her.
