Void woke up with a massive headache.
Not the usual tension bullshit or "screamed into a pillow for an hour" aftermath - but a deep, bone-crawling ache behind her eyes. Her limbs felt like they were moving through wet cement. Her mood? Think black hole wrapped in barbed wire.
She'd been lying on the couch for two hours staring at a crumb on the ceiling.
And it wasn't just the fatigue - it was the rage. Like everything was too loud, too much and she was going to break the next thing that dared exist near her. Which, unfortunately, was the fridge. She opened it. Stared inside. Forgot why she opened it. Slammed it shut. Stared at her hands like they weren't hers.
"This body sucks," she growled. "What the fuck is wrong with it."
She paced the kitchen like a caged animal. Her skin itched. Her heart raced. Then it dragged. She got chills. Then sweat. And then... tears? No. No, no, no. She didn't cry. That was an Aura thing. She blinked them away, furious.
Something wasn't right.
She stormed into the bathroom and tore through the medicine drawer, hoping the answer was buried under floss and expired painkillers. Then she opened the lower cabinet. Nothing. Then the upper shelf.
There. Tucked in a black case, shoved all the way back, hiding from her: vials. Labels with long, science-y names. A note scribbled on the case's inside flap in Aura's stupid soft handwriting:
"Don't forget your shot, girl. You're stronger when you're you."
Void froze.
She picked up the vial with a shaky hand. Estradiol enanthate. She turned it over in her fingers afraid it might burn her.
"Wait... wait what?" Her voice cracked. She opened the box fully and found a pack of insulin syringes, a travel sharps container, and a tiny folder of printouts. Dosage tables. Injection sites. The word subcutaneous glared at her, curse-like.
Her knees gave out. She sat on the bathroom floor.
"Uuuuugh... This bitch forgot to leave a fucking manual."
Now the pieces clicked. The spiraling mood. The fatigue. The dysphoria like someone turned the dial to the max. Made sense. Cancer. Surgeries. The shit Void got Aura through meant she needed exogenous hormones. As in, her body couldn't make its own damn estrogen. As in, Void was running this machine dry.
She looked down at the syringes. Then the vial.
"Jesus fuck, I'm gonna have to stab myself in the ass."
Void got up on her feet again. She skimmed the instructions once more, squinting like a high-schooler bluffing her way through a pop quiz on quantum physics. "Administer subcutaneously into the gluteal region," it read. "Cool. Vague butt science," she huffed.
"Okay, sure. Shove the mystery juice into my ass cheek. What could possibly go wrong?"
She prepared a syringe, tilted the vial upside-down, pulled away exactly 0.17mL of the life-giving solution and braced herself, pants halfway down like she was about to moon a ghost. The mirror refused to help - what kind of sadistic architect installs a mirror that doesn't let you see your own ass properly? She twisted, turned, contorted into what could only be described as a yoga pose invented by Satan himself.
Her balance gave out.
She tripped over the bath mat and slammed into the doorframe with the grace of a drunk giraffe. The syringe clattered across the tiles.
"FUCK!" she shouted at no one, sprawled like a corpse at a crime scene, needle on one side, dignity on the other.
Breathing hard, she sat up, legs splayed out, hair wild. The estrogen vial rolled lazily toward her foot like it was judging her.
"I bet Aura just - whoosh - jabbed it in like some elegant hormone samurai. Meanwhile, I'm over here giving my hip rugburn and emotional damage."
She sat still for a minute, winded. Defeated. But the thing was - she had to do it. Aura had counted on it. Her body needed this. Void needed this.
She exhaled shakily, grabbed the injector again, and whispered, "Round two, bitch."
This time, she used her phone as a mirror, angled just right. A bit of trembling. A muttered curse. But the needle went in. Not gracefully. Not like Aura. But it went in.
When she pulled it out, a weird sort of calm settled over her - like she'd just made a pact with her own survival.
She tossed the syringe in a corner of the bathroom and laid down on cold tile, cradling the vial like it was a baby bird. Heart no longer racing, but her breath uneven.
"This isn't my body," she whispered, eyes burning.
Then softer:
"But it's mine to keep alive."