WHITE NOISE

He wasn't accustomed to this type of darkness. He was used to sneaking through back alleys at the earliest hours of the morning, the inky, black night shrouding him in the shadows and the other monsters too. As much as his heart pounded, he always felt free in those moments. He always felt at one with the darkness, but he wasn't friendly with this darkness. 

This was a darkness he didn't know existed. There was no body to it. The dark was just merely flat. There were no different shades, or danger omitting from the colour because he knew he was looking at something, he just no longer knew what. It was a type of darkness that inprisoned him, stole him of his life and his purpose. 

How could he defeat Thanos if he couldn't even see him? 

These thoughts were on a loop in his head, as if they were a broken record. Even when he was focusing on the noises in the world around him - his ears now the closest thing he came to his sight - they were like a whisper. He just wanted to plug his hands in his ears and scream for everything to fall silent, to match what he could see, to have no reminders of everything he had stripped from him. 

He couldn't do that though. 

Messalina's voice echoed down his comm. It was the only source of reassurance he had, the burnt hand on his knee having done nothing to calm his racing heart. That reassurance didn't last long. 

"What's going on?" Messalina frantically cried. Octavian's muscles tensed, sitting straight up. He brushed the hand off of his knee, pleading with her down the comm to explain to him what was going on. His pleas fell on deaf ears, her voice only increasing in hysteria. 

"We failed." Octavian grimaced at the words. It was a harsh truth to accept, but somehow they'd managed to fuck up this reality too. 

"I need to say goodby-"

And just like that, white noise deafened him.