He knew where to draw a line. To stand his own ground, to keep himself together. There was still a remnant, something dark, akin to a black, deep Void, which always threatened to engulf him and his heart. Leaving behind only a soulless shell, with the denial of feelings. Perhaps with the simple but awful inability to feel anymore.

Sultry whispers, murmuring death sentences in his ears. Darkening his fragile heart, with the black ink of their words, flooding inside and twirling, melding with the blue. Drowning himself in a sea he fought everyday against, just to keep his head at the surface, and avoid sinking down. Escaping the depths of the abyss, coming closer and closer each time he found himself recoil an error, a mistake from his past.

Only space, survival and death waited for him there. It was maddening to think about. Already giving him headaches on the point.

It became almost insufferable to live. To even believe his own life, view what was going on, what's happening.

And at those very moments, when it felt like everything was falling apart, the ground moving under his feet, calling for him to kneel down, crouching and just submit in calm water, instead of rushing, violent waves crashing with him. It was at those brief, but numerous, periods that he had to settle down for a moment, and just remember how to freaking breath. Inhaling with fervor through his nose- and exhaling through his mouth deeply in one long drag, eyes closed, focus elsewhere, on a beautiful dream, just to prevent himself from dipping at the bottom of the ocean .

He would've liked the presence of cigarettes, a joint, something to help release the pressure. But his health couldn't be discarded by this, not with his actual position. Paladin obliges. It wasn't like he could find anything like that in space. And he couldn't risk himself by taking any alien things with a guaranteed similar effect. Way too dangerous.

After all, who knows how those products would react with a human metabolism? Knowing fully well how low was the number of population actually aware about their race, probably bad.

Survival. Space. Death. Three words constantly ringing in his head, heavy with sense - now more than ever - and filling the atmosphere. In nearly each room he entered, occupying the available place, only letting a cold and dark feeling sinking in, crawling through his skin like it did on the bright metallic walls. And with the incessant battles, always with his life on the end of the line, there was another notion, coming right after.

The quiet. But not the comforting one, no. Deep, deadly silence. Leaving no place for him to get air in his lungs. Hanging too heavy in the air, too low, too...It was too deafening to his ears. If there was something he couldn't bear, along with inactivity, it was that. This silence left nothing but ice. An incredible, huge iceberg with the rest of the team on the other side. It was comical, in a sense - it was exactly what he felt.

Having contrasted norms, on a whole new different level than the others, isolating him from everyone. For him noiselessness was unbearable.

A sense of shutting down everything, like he was disconnected with reality. He felt as if he was stepping on infinity, the ground being space itself - no, the Void. Being hush was almost like dying in a way, and he couldn't like it, support it, tolerate it. No.

With him, walking on the Void in a precarious balance, feeling emptier than the open space displayed under and around him. As if...as if, with the prolongation of it, he'll finish by forgetting who he was.

Lance.