#emptyshell

Kurt looks up at her then. An emotion crosses over his eyes and it's like a wave, crashing on the shore then receding back into the ocean. “I did.”

Her breathing is the heaviest it has ever been. But she won’t black out. She can’t faint anyway so there are never black dots, clouding her vision. Only the ghastly memories float in front of her eyes.

The usual rush of feelings slams hard in Gale’s head with a million new images like a dam was destroyed. Her system kicks in, trying to fight, trying to track and organize, recognize what is happening, but it overheats. Gale’s body feels on fire and she screams.

She couldn’t explain that rush then but now she calls it what Hallow told her one day--feelings.

Gale’s system wakes with another save of Stuart’s voice then. She hears it so many times in her memories, when she gets her updates. But to hear it in person, in real time, alone in this hallway, she could imagine herself shivering as his voice runs up her spine, leaving her ears tingling.