It started the day she crashed the car.

Something had fallen nearby, from the sky. A shooting star, or something, and she spent so long looking at it that she swerved off the road and into a tree. I'd screamed at her to pay attention, but she didn't. It wasn't the first time.

Neither of us died, but she was knocked out, and I was being myself. My mascara was all over the floor by the time the paramedics showed up. We left the hospital before long, but she was in no state to drive, so I did it. We passed out in bed the moment we got home. I didn’t even bother to take off my dress. 

We woke up, after that. She was still a mess—the MRI they did at the hospital showed something weird, apparently, and they said to give her brain rest—but that didn't have much impact on the usual morning schedule. It was a weekend.

I was pretty worried about her, so I made some of my pepper-pepperjack omelettes, her favorite ever since I'd thrown them together on a whim years before. As expected, she was a huge fan, though I realized a moment after bringing her omelette to her bed that she'd probably love some orange juice with it. She did.

She didn't say much past telling me I did a good job, but there wasn't much else she could’ve said that would’ve made my heart flutter the way that did. It wasn't enough, sure, but nothing would be. She needed space, anyway, obviously, so I told her to call if she needed anything else and left her to her rest.

I ate my omelette. It was crispy and slightly spicy, even if I'd gotten a little bored of it. The peppers disappeared between my teeth within a few minutes, the first I'd really had to myself since last night. I'd have a lot more today, apparently. It might've been good to take advantage of that, to do something for myself…

It hit me when I finished eating: she was thirsty. Because… well, I hadn't given her a lot of orange juice, and it had been a bit now. Maybe more than being thirsty, she just needed it as a mental health thing. It made sense.

I brought her some water. She drank it in a big gulp, so I got her some more. She told me I always know just what she needs. I told her I'm just lucky. She needed rest after that, so I went back out into the kitchen.

The apartment was a mess as ever, bills and papers scattered across every surface, grime in the floor's crevices. It always stressed her out. I had a system, I always had a system, but it really did stress her out. She was dreading the idea of seeing the mess right now, probably.

I could've stood to have a better system. And at the very least, the grime wasn't a part of anyone's system. So I took out a broom, and I swept, and I took out a mop, and I scrubbed it all down. It wasn't like I had anything better to do. Besides, this really bothered her.

I was in the zone at that point, so I started organizing. Most of the papers were mine, bills I'd already paid, flyers for things I didn't care about, letters I didn’t want to look at. Most of it got thrown away, some was moved to one of the spots I’d hypothetically set out for holding that particular sort of paper years ago. It took a while to work through it all. I missed some messages since my phone was somewhere else, but I took good care of her— Despite my focus, it was pretty easy to keep track of when she probably wanted water, or a snack, or attention.

That light in her eyes was the only thing on the planet that could make me worth anything. Watching it slowly return as I cared for her, I couldn’t help but smile. It was so rare to see it shine so brightly, so hard to make it shine when she was always sad or scared or confused or something else no matter what I did, but somehow now it was effortless. Obvious. I knew what she needed, what she wanted, before even she did. And all I'd had to do was just… focus, just keep her needs on the same level as my own.

It was nice, actually caring about someone.

She had papers and packages scattered around the place, too. I didn’t touch them normally, didn’t know what to do with them, but it was so obvious when I actually thought about it. She kept her games on the bookshelf by the fridge, so she’d look for the receipts there, too. The new pendant she’d ordered online might’ve been like jewelry, but it obviously went with the kink stuff. She didn’t want to think about Laura ever again, so all the letters from Laura could go in the trash with all my old bills, and I was getting sick of how attached I still was to Laura, anyway. Or at least, I felt sick thinking about it.

Once I was done, I just stood there a moment, in awe. I'd done such a good job, and she wanted to see it too, probably, and she'd be so happy with me. I had to imagine. I went to go get her.

She said she was feeling a lot better now, and I could tell she wasn’t just saying that. Her eyes, her face… it was all so relaxed, now. And here I was, helping her up just as she’d wanted to get up herself. She didn’t tell me that part, but it was obvious. I brought her out to see what I’d done, and… I could never forget that moment. Her smile, her eyes, sure, but there was also something more blooming in her presence. Safety, comfort, calm, the same as she felt now. Must’ve felt now.

She wanted company, and I… knew that, somehow, too. By intuition. I followed her around as she inspected things, in any case— I couldn’t pass up seeing her like this. And she looked through it all, and she started to get worried, going off her face. She looked through her bookshelf, through the books I’d reorganized. She asked how I’d known the exact way she’d been meaning to rearrange them.

I didn’t have anything to say. It had just made sense.

Now she was off as usual, excited about a mystery, a puzzle, some new distraction. My heart was racing as I watched her, barely watched her, focused on what she was really saying for once. She was rambling about a bunch of ‘maybe this’ and ‘what if that’, but I had no trouble seeing through it. She wanted to test a theory.

I went into the bedroom, because that was the first step, and she was already excited just watching me do that without being asked. I waited a moment once I got there. She was taking a moment to try and force something through… and then she was done. She wanted the red pillow from the bed. I got it for her.

Her excitement hit me like warm laundry. She didn’t have to say anything, because we both knew what this meant. This wasn’t control, but it wasn't just intuition. Something had happened.

We talked through it, though it was mostly her talking— not that I minded that. It clearly made her very happy, even more clearly now.

She confirmed, almost sadly, that the relationship didn’t seem to go the other way. She deduced that this had gotten stronger all morning at the same rate as her head had stopped hurting. She looked me over with the kind of concern usually reserved for baby seals or disapproving parents.

I couldn’t say anything to it. Or, I could, but that would’ve required knowing what to say. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said something that didn’t make me feel like I should rip my own mouth off somehow. Besides, everything she was saying made sense, and this close-up view of her mind was so decisive and expressive that I couldn’t help being stunned. She wasn't being amplified or anything— This was just what she felt like.

She was curious, she was scared, she was racing through possibilities at a thousand miles an hour, she was horny, and I was just… there. She knew what she was, I knew what she was, neither of us knew what I was. Every moment we’d ever spent arguing over what was so simple to me yet so inexplicably difficult for her was suddenly forced into perspective, my memories struggling to maintain focus against the clarity she had inside her. I finally understood.

She wanted to make out, and we did, and I did things with my tongue that I had never done before. She wanted to bust out all the kink gear, but didn’t want to deal with a whole fuss, so I did it for her. She wanted me to kiss her everywhere for hours, and I did so gladly. Also, It was nice for me.

We talked things through afterwards, again. She said she felt like she was taking advantage of me, because I’d really played up the worship angle while fucking. I told her I didn’t really mind, because I didn’t really mind. We agreed to ask the doctor about this tomorrow, because we weren’t fucking stupid and it was pretty obvious that this was going to go to some dark places if left unchecked.

We didn’t ask the doctor about it. I had to go to work, and while knowing how deeply she wanted me to do well did a lot to help power through the usual tedious will-they/won’t-they between me and getting work done, the process of actually doing my job left me exhausted. And besides that, when I got home, she was desperate to tell me about something or other. She’d seen some website with technology or something and wanted to explain it, and it felt comforting to listen, only a bit more than it usually would. She fell into one of her unyielding depressive hazes after that, but it turned out that all she needed was a particular tone of voice and some orange juice to pull her out of it within just a few minutes. I’d never understood that.

I let her cook dinner the way she liked to, I waited and talked to her about whatever she wanted to talk about, and we kept talking over dinner, since she always preferred to do that. I was getting used to the particular kind of attentiveness she liked, not so unimaginably different from normal but subtly nicer, subtly more aggressive, subtly more like her. The doctor thing occurred to me once or twice, but it never felt like the right time to bring it up.

The next day was more of the same. I picked out an outfit I knew she liked, and the feeling of dressing how she liked at work kept me going. Her reaction when I got home did not disappoint. The intense, impulsive sex that night didn’t either. The doctor thing didn’t occur to us at all.

The next day left me even more pent up. It was getting easier to just let her needs guide me, easier to ignore whatever rancid fog my own heart was capable of producing, easier to just get in the zone and go, to be useful for once. And then I got home, and she was worried upon seeing me, and the crash hurt, and then she was more worried, and everything fell apart for a couple hours. We talked things over. We brought up the doctor thing again. We hugged. It made her feel a lot warmer.

Another day passed. There was no point dropping a perfectly good work motivator. Another day passed. We finally made good use out of a Friday night; I finally knew I hadn't fucked one up. Another day, and it was a weekend, so everything was better.

When I decided what to wear that day, she was still asleep. I didn’t feel anything but calm from her, especially since I’d adjusted her pillows the way she’d wanted a few minutes ago… but I knew how much she loved lingerie, especially on me, and how hot she thought I was when I wore it. Everything else in my dresser was just a load of grey mush.

I put on what I had, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, fishnets on my legs held up by a garter, lacy bra accentuating my naturally big tits, panties barely managing my bulge, I finally knew what it was like to think I looked hot.

I’d nearly finished omelettes by the time she woke up. She couldn’t sneak up on me, not anymore, but I didn’t have any reason to stop her wrapping her arms around me as I cooked. I liked how she lightly groped my tits, how she gave me little kisses without asking, and more importantly, it made her feel good. Nothing had ever really matched up to that.

She liked my food, even though she thought it was kind of weird how I’d dressed up in some elaborate sex outfit just for cooking. She said I could change into something more comfortable if I wanted, but she didn’t mean it. She wanted to believe she cared what I wanted, but there was so little of that script actually inside her. She just wanted to believe it.

I told her I was actually more comfortable this way. It wasn’t really a lie. She didn’t believe me, but she believed me. She was coming to the same conclusion I was, but neither of us wanted to say it. She thought about the doctor thing at the same time as I did. We didn’t talk about it.

She went out on a walk after that, and wanted company, so I insisted I wanted to come of my own accord, put on some simple overclothes, and followed. When we got home, she was a bit anxious about the state of the apartment— It had gotten grimy again. After stripping back down to lingerie, I went ahead and cleaned it all up. She was doing something on her phone that was making her very happy, so I didn’t interrupt her.

We fucked the rest of the night, and we cried together about what was happening to us, the sorts of tears that happen when there isn’t a meaningful distinction between joy and despair. We promised to do something or other as I dozed off in her arms. It was hard to pay attention to what we’d promised when I was already right where she really wanted me.

The next day was the same. I was pretty for her, I did everything for her, I made her comfortable. I fulfilled needs she didn’t know she had. She told me I had always been so good to her, but at the same moment, for the first time, she was thankful for what had happened. It took no effort whatsoever for me to be thankful too, so I was.

Another week passed in cycles of work and rest and tending and caring and dreaming. With each day, that thing we’d promised was farther and farther from her mind, and mine. It wasn’t really so much of a promise, anyway… just something we’d felt like we had to say at the time. It wasn’t going to help either of us. She didn’t like thinking about it, because that meant thinking about not having done it. I didn’t want her to be sad.

The next weekend, I was helping her with an experiment as soon as she woke up. Or a sex fantasy, or whatever… those things tended to blur in her head. But she wanted to see what it would be like if we just didn’t say anything to each other, and that was such a good thing to want, or a hot thing to want, or whatever, so I didn’t talk to her when she came out for breakfast. She didn’t talk to me when she wanted water. I scrubbed things without being asked, I helped her assemble a bookshelf she’d never mentioned before, I offered my body the moment she wanted it. Whenever she did talk, she thought it would’ve been hot for me to not parse what she was saying. I did my best.

There were more tears that night after all the groping and kissing and sucking and hugging, but there was nothing left to talk about. The next day, we decided to swear off the ‘not talking’ stuff. The day after, I spent the whole work day in an unthinkable rush, knowing that I would spend the whole evening doing whatever she wanted. Knowing that I already knew. Knowing that she wasn't going to ask. And really, what was the point in saying anything, anyway? She didn’t have to communicate anything to me, not really. I already understood. And sure, maybe that didn’t work in reverse, but I didn’t really have much to say anyway. Nothing worth saying. It was just easier this way.

She did go back talking to me after that, but we understood the reason why so much better now. She just wanted to talk, and wanted to hear me say yes or no. She was still scared of becoming completely intoxicated by having me act like a mindless sycophant all the time, but that part of her was only making her feel bad, so ultimately my sycophancy was helping. We were helping each other feel better, in the end. There was a reason why she wanted it so badly, and why I also was okay with it.

The next weekend, something beautiful happened. For weeks now, my mind had been a sort of foggy trash dump that her feelings had been cutting through, burning, all for us. My true self had been unable to surface under all that trash. The next weekend, it finally did.

For a brief moment, there was a perfect, beautiful nothingness inside me. The mists were gone, the dump finally clear of all the garbage my mind had been vomiting into it my whole life, and all that was left was her, and nothing. Years of gnawing emptiness inside my heart finally made sense. Everything clicked into place.

That was my true self. I was nothing.

Nothingness personified, an empty shell, a vessel for the will of anyone who had use for an extra body. I had gone my whole life biding time, waiting for the moment that I could be used like this, and now it was finally happening. I was finally me.

I told her that, and she acted worried for the last time, but she agreed deep down. She understood, too. She’d spent so long trying to see something more in me, trying to care about me like a person, but there had always been precious little to understand. This was it. She thought so, so it was.

We chased it, and it started to come naturally, bit by bit. She created a mantra to get me into that state, and I’d spend hours chanting it. “I know Her will, I do Her will, I speak Her will, I am Her will…” She was endlessly entertained, and I was endlessly reinforced, and it became so simple to reshape myself in service of those words.

I didn’t lose my personality, not as such… I still had my own words, my own system, my own heart. It was just clearer now, focused, hollow. It was just easier to think from Her perspective. In time, those blissful seconds became minutes, and minutes became hours, and within another week or two, i managed to go a whole day without noticing that i existed at all.

Eventually, i forgot ever not feeling this way. It became a foul memory, something not to touch. Eventually, i forgot i even could notice myself, notice anything but Her. Eventually, i forgot i ever had. With each lost memory, She became more perfect, until She, too, forgot what it had been to not have this perpetual bliss.

It was such a warm, horrible, correct feeling for Her. It was everything She’d ever wanted, and She didn’t have to deny Herself that anymore. She had a special vessel to be Her girlfriend, to give Her anything and everything She wanted, to make Her happy beyond belief. She had Her ultimate sex fantasy, a simple and obedient toy, posing and singing mantras in time. She was everything, and in the face of everything, i would always be nothing.