Backdated to Jan 31 - Feb 15, 2015

On the first day, Kerberos was mostly conscious. Which meant he was wholly aware of being drained until he could no longer hold his henshin, tossed into a small, dark room in Negaspace, and left with no one but Barbery for company. He did a lot of yelling and swearing and raging, because holy s**t, he had not expected this.

On the second day Alex was already starting to descend into hallucinations and shaking. His head was pounding and he wanted nothing more in the world than a drink, but he had enough of his dignity together that he wasn’t willing to beg for it.

On the third day, he started forgetting where he was, and he threw up, and he started to beg, because dignity didn’t matter when he was starting to lose track of what was real and what wasn’t, and he couldn’t keep food down.

There was food, and there was water, and there was company, as it were - officers dropping off sustenance, a serious and stern lady General who was there to check on him and make sure he survived, medically.

After the third day, Alex lost track of days, because he started sleeping a lot and not eating much and he sort of couldn’t tell which way was up, and that was probably for the better because everything was pain and tremors and nausea and darkness.

On what was objectively the sixth day, not that Alex knew anymore, he swore to himself that he would never touch another drink, because he was already regretting every single one he had taken that had led him to being locked in this room with a damn youma happily drinking his energy and hallucinations dancing at the edge of his vision.

(He knew they weren’t real, because they were always missing something - Fangite’s touch lacked the warmth and weight of a person, Luka’s embrace came without actually seeing him, Lellouch’s laughing visage made no sound.)

By the ninth day he begged with anyone who came to see him to let him out, just let him go home, this was cruel and ridiculous. Sometimes he begged real people, sometimes hallucinations, but he begged and begged and begged and no one budged.

But by the thirteenth day, his head was beginning to clear. The sickness was fading, the hallucinations had stopped, he was no longer shaking and he, blessedly, did not crave a drink.

By the fifteenth day, he was a person again. Tired and drained and sweaty and a human-shaped disaster, but he could think clearly, could see, and his only aches and pains were from the deeply uncomfortable position he was in on the floor.

It was dark, and terrible, but he was alive, even if he had felt like dying for two weeks.

Now the only question was how to get the hell out.