"Oh, god. Please be alive. Please still be alive."
dying starters | accepting
The world is noise and color and fury all at once until is none of those things – in the span of a heartbeat the thick of battle seems to have faded away entirely and he is there, reeling, trying to discern up from down and why he seems to be looking up instead of ahead. There is a creeping coldness snaking up his side that cuts through the clutter of settling dust. Coldness and a voice.
When he tries to speak, to fall back on a familiar line ( of course I’m alive, don’t be an idiot ), he finds that his breath catches in his throat and all of his unspoken words force themselves out as a strangled sounding cough. Something registers, dimly, in the back of his mind – that breathing shouldn’t be this hard, that he should be pushing himself upright, that his arms shouldn’t burn when he tries to brace them against the ground –…
And thought registers, drifting soft towards his consciousness. He’s hurt.
The realization dawns but he also doesn’t quite care; the moment he understands that something has gone wrong, he’s searching. Ahiru – he heard Ahiru’s voice…
Maybe if he makes it through this, he’ll stop and wonder and trying to figure out just when it was her name, her face, that he began to turn to before all else. When she had eclipsed his heart and his care but now, in this moment that feels on the verge of shattering out of his grasp, he fixates on her face and reaches out through force of will he wasn’t aware he possessed.
When he tries to say I’m fine, it comes out, “Sorry – sorry, just –…”
Because he can see it now; the lines underneath her eyes, the edge in her voice that pierces through his heart more effectively than Siegfried blade could ever manage. No, no this isn’t right. He can’t be this person again – he can’t go back to hurting her, to leaving her without protection, to making her cry –
“’S fine. ‘S alright. I’m – ‘s alright.”
He doesn’t if that’s true in the coldest light of reality. He doesn’t know if he can die like this, under the weight of claws that aren’t the Raven’s. He doesn’t know if this is the story or if things will turn their way and he very nearly lets those dark clouds block out the vestiges of sunlight until he finally feels something to hold onto ( her hand? ) and remembers that one, burning ember of truth that will always stand. That she is his hope.
Secure in that knowledge, he can take care of business.
Sitting up proves futile, his other arm collapsing before he moves it. So he contents himself with inclining his head upward and locking onto her gaze.
“I don’t know – if they’ll be back. You have to go, alright? Everyone needs you, you – have to get back to town.”
He knows – no, he believes, adamantly, unabashedly, that she is the stronger of the two of them. The Raven’s crows, the Raven himself, he will fall at her light. And as much as he wants to watch her dazzle until his last breath, that old habit resurfaces. If he pulls through, she won’t have to worry and she’ll be safe. Mytho too. And if he doesn’t –
then it’s probably better to see that through alone.
“This story still needs its ending.”
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
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germansingergirl
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