Darkness didn't come all at once.
It folded in unevenly, tearing pieces out of his senses instead of shutting them down clean. The last thing Xavier registered was the taste of blood and the weight of Jupiter's gravity dragging him back into the ground, his body refusing to respond no matter how hard he tried to move it.
Then there was nothing.
When awareness returned, it did so violently. Noise hammered against his skull, not external at first but internal, like fragments of sound looping without rhythm. Light bled in behind his eyes, broken and sharp, forcing a groan out of his throat before he even understood why his chest hurt.
He opened his eyes.
A white ceiling filled his vision, smooth and unmarked, close enough that he could focus on it immediately. No sky. No clouds. No color bands stretching into infinity. Just artificial light and a surface that didn't care whether he was awake or not.
