Nothing Gold Can Stay
The man who had been called "Gabriel Gray" tore away from the police station and into the surrounding night, caught in a panic. He understood little to nothing about what had just happened. He knew that it was all strange and wrong, thanks to the look of fear and panic on the faces of the people there, but he had no explanations. Hell, he didn't even know the words for 'night' and 'dark' and 'fear' until he tried to think of them.
The branches of the trees whipped at his face as he ran down steep hillsides, deeper into the cover of growth and away from the men with their loud voices and bright lights. Even that doctor woman, who unlike the rest had started out so gentle, had turned on him. What was he?? He needed answers and felt a terror that there was no one who could provide them, not without wanting to harm him.
He could smell the blood on his clothes, damp and tangy like cold iron, the deep earth scent of the ground he'd been buried in. But there were no wounds. Even as twigs scratched his skin, the lacerations healed, and knowing nothing he still knew that wasn't normal. He wasn't normal.
His heartbeat pounded in his ears as he sped over the crackling leaves. His breath rasped in his chest, his body feeling none of the exertion of the run, none of the exhaustion. He could run like this for hours, with the fear licking at his heels. Though everything else in the world seemed somehow alien and unfamiliar, this anxiety seemed some how the most normal thing of all, this sensation of not knowing... who he really was.