“I’m here- I’m here, now” // for rhys :-)
from here | NOT ACCEPTING !!
it’s hard for rhys to focus on anything that isn’t the abject pain scorching through his body. everything is – - it’s hard to stay afloat, hard for him to keep his eyes open at this point, or to even string together a coherent thought that isn’t just the blaring allure of slipping into unconsciousness. something tells him, though, that if he gave in to the pull of that then he would never see the light of day again. not that he’s been seeing much of that ANYWAY ;; they’ve had him locked up in this containment box for so long now that rhys isn’t sure how much time has passed.
he really HAD tried to keep track of the days at first, but things started to all blur and bleed together after the initial two or three days, and now they’re… they’re gone. rhys knows that much for certain. WHOEVER has been keeping him here has left him here to ROT. they rushed in to TORTURE him just one last time, couldn’t have been too long ago, and then rhys thinks he can vaguely remember that one of the dozen or so of them had stumbled in, completely out of breath, and yelled something about…
but rhys doesn’t want to get his hopes up. not again. there’s a gaping wound in his side that he’s been bleeding from for what seems like HOURS, his arm is gone, ripped jaggedly off in a way that rhys doesn’t have any doubt has left permanent nerve damage, and his echo eye has been gouged out since the beginning ( though the pain makes it feel FRESH ). he can’t feel his right leg anymore. thinks it may be fractured, sprained, broken, SOMETHING.
and if help was going to come, it would have come by now. it’ll do him no good. rhys can’t move, and it doesn’t even matter that his assailants have flown the coop, because he’s going to die right here in this dingy concrete box. he’s got no way of calling for anyone, no strength left in him, no FIGHT left in him to try and drag himself out, and this is really it, isn’t it?
rhys’ eyes slip closed even though he knows he shouldn’t let them. his one-sided vision is just starting to make his head hurt WORSE than the stab of the damaged echo eye connectors, and it’s too much to stare at the bleak ceiling right now when all he can think about is TIMOTHY. timothy and PIPER, his family, who he’s. fuck. who he’s really never going to see again. he thinks there may be TEARS sliding down his face, cutting through the blood and dirt clogging his pores, but he isn’t sure. his whole face feels numb, beaten, bruised to a jarringly unrecognizable mess.
he does not register that there are hands on him, attempting to shake him gently back into consciousness, for several minutes. thinks that SURELY the voice calling his name, muffled by cloudy cognition, cannot be real. rhys just wants to SLEEP. wants to fall into the inky blackness wrapping around every tendon in his body, every muscle, every bone, trying to drag him under and smother him in the darkness of nothing.
“Rhys. Rhys, please wake up.” the voice says, and rhys would like to think that it sounds familiar, and that the hands pressing all over him feel familiar, like coming home from a long, hard day at work, the pleasant pressure of them lulling him further into that eternal sleep as much as they are trying to do otherwise. “Oh, god, Rhys, please wake up.”
no, he thinks he might say if he had the energy to. no, he thinks he would like to argue if he could. he has been awake for too long, hurts too much, feels too TIRED to stay awake. all he emits is the most pathetic groan, furrowing brows, eyes cracking open though only one of them is capable of seeing the tear stained face above his own. eyes seek his out, wide with RELIEF, but rhys wants to tell timothy – - and it really IS him – - that there is nothing to be relieved about. sticky hands cradle rhys’ face, shaking around the curvature of the ceo’s jaw, and rhys just barely recognizes that they are sticky with his BLOOD.
“I’m here.” that achingly familiar voice says, sounding so horrifically distant with its fear tinged lilts. too distant, when timothy is right there. “I’m here now.”
but it doesn’t matter, rhys thinks. they sure did do a number on him, and no amount of medkits and medical attention is going to be able to bring him back from this brink. he can see it written ALL OVER timothy’s face. the knowledge that rhys is going to leave everything behind in only a matter of minutes, if he’s lucky. a pool of blood, too much permanent damage that no stitches could possibly fix. rhys had always envisioned a much more honorable way of going out than being kidnapped and BEATEN TO DEATH, but… even the best laid plans of mice and men, as they say.
rhys sucks in a stuttering, painful breath, pure agony, deep enough to form words with whatever he has left in him, and it isn’t much. if he’s going to die, then he’s not doing it without saying his final goodbyes. he wishes that piper could be here to hear him say what he has to say, but he is also so, SO thankful that she’ll never have to see her father so weak, so small, so DESTROYED.
“I love you.” choked out, garbled by blood, a frail hand wrapping around the shaking one on his cheek, keeping it there. a refusal to let timothy go. this is all rhys has left – - this is all he’s going to get. all he has to GIVE. “I love you, so much, and I am s.. so sorry, Tim. Tell Piper that I’m… that I love her.”
“Don’t do this, Rhys.” Timothy is shaking his head, looking up, looking out of the torn down door just beyond rhys’ line of sight. frenzied, desperate, but rhys doesn’t want him to go. “Hold on, there’s – - HELP! Help, he’s in here!”
and rhys doesn’t know if help ever comes, because the darkness sings to him like a long lost lover, and rhys goes to it, drawn in by a magnetic force that will not accept no as an answer. at least he was able to say goodbye, at least he did all he could while he was alive, but perhaps none of it really matters, in the end.
his best legacies are the husband and daughter he’s never going to see again.
