i dont know if this counts for the wip wednesday thing @gurathins tagged me in but i have been writing... <3
(tws// injury, emeto)
"What if you've fallen a great height, haven't you?"
The garbled syntax is the first thing Remi feels aware of in the dark behind his closed eyes, winched shut in reflex. Slowly, he blinks them open, and startlingly bright sunlight causes a lurch of sickness building in his throat. Remi feels his arms try to push him up and feels them give out, his muscles give up on him. He lays back with a thud and the sickness feels pushed down for at least the time being. The grass he lays in is warm, his eyes stare up at beautiful blue sky. This is not the empty black void he fell down into. This is not the castle. This is a field that does not, he is sure of it, exist.
And bent at the waist to look down at him, blocking out the sun, is a bright, gaptoothed grin at home on the face of someone nearly a stranger, nearly a neighbor. Lavender hair, messy and slightly greasy, blows in strands in the slight summery breeze. Bright orange eyes shine even away from direct light.
Zephyr's got their right hand held up, fingers making a sort of OK-sign and held near their right eye, like a monocle.
They speak again.
"What if, if, a great fall, a great loss. What if you give up? What if you carry on?" They ask, their breathless tone and jittering excited pitch of speaking reminiscent of a toddler at their own birthday party.
Remi can only muster a weak groan in response, somewhere between pain and annoyance. Their hands come up and cover their face, returning to darkness that grows humid in their breath held in their palms.
"What if you go away. Please." Remi says after a few minutes of silence, muffled behind his hands. "Not now."
A full minute passes. Remi slowly lowers his hands, feeling remarkably tired, and is greeted by Zephyr in the same position.
He sighs, and to his surprise, all at once, the sigh becomes a hiccuped sob, and then tumbles out in pitiful cries. Remi's hands go now to cover his mouth, feeling shocks of exhaustion and pain in equal measure with the shaking that overtakes his body, and all he can do is maintain eye contact with Zephyr. In this horrible checkmate, all they do is watch, all he can do is feel it as his body dissolves into panic without his say so.
"What if you lost something? Could you keep going? Would you? Can you? What if no one saves you? What if someone does?" Zephyr says in slow, smoothing tones, as though the words were assurances, not questions. The lilt is all wrong for curiousity, no, it is more as though they are teasing Remi with a knowledge they carry. One they do not share with him.
The shuddering sobs that tug at Remi's diaphragm prevent him from saying anything further. He lays there in the sunlight, in Zephyr's slight shadow, and eventually feels himself blink into sleep.
And blink again, to a warm and rumbling stream of words against his left ear, pressed to something just as warm, and firm. It's hot, and cold, in strange fluctuations that Remi can barely keep up with. He feels as though there is water flowing over his leg, and he shifts, uncomfortable and distantly aware of a deep ache. The warm stream of words dries up as he does and Remi becomes more aware of his position as he feels arms tighten around his body, one around his upper arms and one curling under his knees, folding him into a small shape that fits in the nook of another body. His hands are damp with sweat, and he blinks hazily, his hands curling and uncurling a few times as they wake up. The more aware he feels himself become, the more he becomes aware of what is being said.
"You're going to be okay, we're going to get you sorted right out." The slight accent softens the consonants and melts them against the vowels.
"Howie," Remi says in a voice weak and dry, cracking halfway in the middle. He clears his throat in an attempt to fix it, and starts a coughing fit instead. The arms around him again hold him steady.
"Here, I've got you. Can you feel-" there's a pause in his words. "-Anything?"
In the back of Remi's mind, he feels a disorientation yell back that that sentence does not make any sense. Of course he can feel anything, he feels everything. It's hot and it's also cold and someone is pouring water on him. What else is there to feel?
As Remi's face scrunches up in reaction to Howie's patently, surely, absurd question, there is then a lightning bolt of sensation that rockets through his nervous system. No one is pouring water on him, he is on fire.
A yell that is dampened by sleep into a low volume screech answers Howie's question well enough. Remi's arms cross and tightly adhere to his body, he attempts to curl up as much as possible and soon warm, salty tears cover his face once again as the pain - the burning - does not cease, or let up, but falls on him in waves.
Soon enough, he feels a thud as Howie shoulders a door open and then there is cacophony. Too many voices, several familiar but all too together to pick anything out. Movement, jostling, and Remi keeps yelling and occassionally feels himself stubbornly attempt to resist being handled to little success.
Eventually, he loses the strength, and again feels himself slip into darkness.
---
Wicker found Remi first. Probably for the best, even if nobody would admit it.
His hands, slender and cold, carefully assessed Remi for fever and for heartbeat. Both were found, and Wicker quietly incanted with his palm pressed to Remi's clammy forehead, slowly soothing the internal heat to prevent his insides from cooking before anyone could move him.
He'd fallen in a bad way. Not that there was a good way to fall several dozen feet. He'd been just about to cross a bridge and be home free, Wicker was watching from the other side of the portal, when there was a loud cracking sound, like thunder, and suddenly Remi went down. And out of sight. Into a dark pit.
Here, now, at the bottom of that dark pitch, Wicker made care to stretch Remi out flat, instead of crumpled into himself as he had. His wings had balled around him like a flipped parachute, and seem to have prevented the worst of the possible damage. Wicker had slowly peeled them away from his form and then folded them back behind him, already using a salve that forced them to retreat back inside Remi's body. Much too unwieldy to leave out, and much too risky that they might become damaged as well.
Kneeling, Wicker gathered Remi's head and hand in his lap, his long and puffed white coat draped over them and already the fabric was filling with blood from the ground.
"Well, at least it's empty down here," Wicker says in a soft voice, a little giggle escaping him. "And nobody followed you down here. Good thing about these little pockets, awful hard to get to. Bad thing about them…" Wicker trails off, his mouth twisting slightly as he thinks about the almost-hour it took to find someone who was, in effect, right beneath their feet. Too much time.
"It's a good thing you dragons make so much blood. The heart is much more effective, you know," he chatters away, looking up and around. The hand not holding Remi's brushes some of their hair away from their forehead. Even without Remi conscious, Wicker finds himself continuing to talk in a level tone, calm and sorted. "Now that I've found you, I should probably get a way to the others. Howie's already probably found a drink, with how long we've been out here. Skylark'll still be right-headed, at least. Maybe you can say sorry to her when you're back with us, she did tell you coming down here was a bad idea."
As Wicker talks, he pulls a small velvet satchel from his belt loops and crushes it in his hand. A great white beam of light shoots up like sugarcane stalks and breaks the bubble of darkness formed around the pair. Finally, the pocket is closed and the two exist once more in Hades. In the center of a shallow rock stream, barely more than a few inches deep. Rivulets of blood flow from Remi's body and Wicker's coat, contaminating the otherwise clear water. Above them, the bridge.
"Perhaps more people should listen to Skylark," Wicker continues, discarding the pouch and its shining contents into the water pool next to him. As he speaks, he looks up and makes eye contact with a fast approaching Skylark - and Howie.
"By all means." Skylark responds, a hand on her hip as she comes to a slow pause next to Wicker. A frown stains her face as she surveys the mess. Her head tilts in curiousity at the coat covering most of Remi's body.
"I didn't want him to get cold," Wicker offers as an answer, a bright smile breaking open his face. "I found him! It's bad."
Skylark nods tersely, then looks over her shoulder as Howie arrives behind her. His arms cross, and an equal frown covers his expression. The snakes burned into the side of his head and along his neck and arms writhe and contort in painful scarring dance with a confluence of emotion.
He exhales heavily, and crouches down next to Remi, lifting the coat with a hand and then dropping it back down after peeking under it.
"What in hell firearms do you have here?" He asks pointedly to Wicker, who gleefully shrugs.
"That looks like a fucking cannon wound," Howie continues, pressing.
"Are firearms usually weaker around Terra?" Wicker asks in turn, tilting his head. His hands cover Remi's ears, despite his still being passed out. "I thought you carried your weak ones as a matter of convenience."
"You would know what a cannon wound looks like, wouldn't you," Skylark can't help but remark with a grim half-humored smile. A slow sigh. "Where can we take him? He's not going to make it across a dimensional line until he's walking on his own."
Howie nods slowly. "Mama's isn't far. And she has rooms he can stay in."
"Is there a doctor nearby?" Skylark asks as she straightens up, a clear sign of approving the plan Howie's building.
Wicker's mouth opens. At the same time, both Skylark and Howie shoot him a glare that closes his mouth again.
"I'll see who Mama knows. But we should move."
With Wicker's help, Howie carefully bundles Remi up into his arms. Wicker takes the coat back and puts it on blood and all, and Skylark leads the trio down the path towards the warm pub claimed as safehouse.
