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Story Notes: Title: "Absentia"
Author: EA Karras
Rating: R
Notes: For Sylvie's scary story challenge. Man, oh man. It's a doozy. Don't say I didn't warn you.

At first there was only color. Swirling rainbows of blues and reds, red like blood, like Fraser's Serge, like the dress Stella wore the day she left him. All the colors, moving all around his field of vision like the climax of a Fourth of July Picnic. Blues gave way to purple, reds to pinks and then there was an explosion that would have sent anyone running, including him if he could have moved at all.

After that, there was nothing. Nothing but the dark, nothing but the cold. At first the nothing was a suffocating blackness that came at him from all sides, crushing him in it's grip of terror and unfeeling strength. Screams bubbled up in a throat that did not exist, and possibly never did exist and he could feel himself struggling in the grip of this....nothing.

Nothing but a great expanse that suddenly let him go, and then everything felt loose. Everything /was/ in fact very loose, and he was falling in darkness. Deep into the nothing.

Deep into his own raving terror at what may lie at the bottom of this pit of whatever the fuck.

He could hear his own screams now, and at least that was something. At least that was sound. Any sound was better than the ear popping realisation that there was no sound where you were at all. No sound, not even the rush of air as you fell, the sound of your heavy breathing as you struggled.

Just....nothing.

But now. Now, there was screaming. Fuck, how deranged must he be to relish the sound of his own embarrasingly weird shrieks as he fell for what felt like hours down this possibly bottomless pit.

He had no memories of how this had happened. Just....he was /there/ one minute, talking to Fraser. He was on the phone, listening to Jack describe what was happening at the consulate, tell him about everything that was going on over there, the Ice Queen, Turnbull, whatever. It hadn't mattered, just mattered that it was Fraser.

His eyes had closed slightly as he listened to the soothing sounds of Benton Fraser's voice, the accent and Canadianisms that drove him absolutely bog wild when they were at home together, or at the consulate together, or hell even at the 27th, worked just as good on the phone.

And then he was here. Wherever here was. Wherever the hell this black nothingness was.

Twisting arcs of light now. More somethings. Finally and thank God. Thank God until the pain. The agony. There was screaming again, and not just his this time. So many voices. So many....

White light as he neared the bottom. Either that, or there were so many arcs of light, that they were overriding the blackness. Erasing the nothing. Erasing...

Him.

he could finally move as the bottom quickly came towards him. Hands defensively going over his face as he desperately tried to curl into a tuck-and-roll.

And then....

As he hit...

Nothing.