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There was a soft noise urging him back to the front of his mind. The steady rhythm of a droplet of water hitting a puddle. He didn’t want to move—he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. His limbs were too heavy now, stiff with the consequences of staying still for such a time. How long had he been here, sitting on the floor in a pathetic ball, back to the wall as if to hide from some unknown enemy?

Not unknown. No, that was wrong; felt wrong to think. He knew what he was hiding from. The weight of it pressing him down, making him curl into himself like he was a but a child again, hidden in the closet to wait out their rage. He shook his head at the memory. Too far. He focused again on the steady droplets, grounding himself from his mind that threatened to suffocate him again.

Suffocating? He was suddenly far too aware of the mask on his face. The damned thing that made it so hard to breathe. The thing that failed to protect so many of his comrades. It was too tight on his face, trapping the warmth that he wanted so badly to get rid of. But he couldn’t take it off, it protected him from the things in the air that could kill you in a moment. A sting on the skin and a fire in your lungs.

A harsh sigh puffed from his lips and fogged up his sight for a moment. He shifted, only minutely at first as if trying to re-familiarize himself with the mobility of his own body. Then he truly moved. He stood up as a soft noise vibrated in his throat out of his own wishes. When was the last time he had even made a noise? He didn’t know; didn’t want to think about it much. Time was a foreign thing to him by now, passing over you without your knowledge and leaving everything else to rot. He didn’t like it, and did his best to ignore it. Lingering only made the aching in his chest worse.

He was standing now, although he had no clear motivation in mind. He needed to move somewhere else, the noise of the growing puddle now drilling into his mind uncomfortably. His limbs didn’t feel like his own as he moved, but that was something he was used to by now. It had happened even long before he was alone. Becoming detached from your body in such a way was something that his peers had all experienced at least once. His peers… stop. Too far. He shook his head once more to clear his mind. He didn’t want to think about that.

He instead took stock of the state of his body—as best he could, anyway. The tethers keeping him connected and aware of his body were still loose at best. First, glaringly: his knee hurt. It buckled slightly with every step, the stomp of his boot harder than it was meant to be. His whole body ached, really. The remnants of prolonged stillness dragging at him while his muscles begged him to sit back down and rest for a while more.

He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t need to. He had walked these tunnels many times, the paths engraved in his brain like a map. His feet just walked, leaving him to follow after them like a lost dog. Past barracks and dining halls and med-bays and- med-bays? He froze at the entrance, an invisible knife twisting painfully in his heart. He didn’t look in, just staring at the empty tunnel ahead. But he could feel it beside him, an oppressive, suffocating weight surrounding and pressing in on him until he was choking on air. His wide eyes stared at the unseen crimson filling his vision, his nose smelling copper that wasn’t there.

Another involuntary noise left him—something close to the groan of an injured animal. Something sharp and distressed, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t, hand grabbing at his worn clothes and clawing at him until his skin burned all over. There were voices around him, sharp and aggressive. Yelling orders and shouting words he didn’t understand. His chest was heaving with breaths that hardly filled his lungs. Choking on the bile in his throat that wasn’t there. He dropped to his knees, clawing at the uniform’s collar that felt too tight around his throat as more noise left him. Half-formed words and choked off shouts. He was drowning in nothing and everything.

He knew what happened here. He didn’t want to think about it. But he had to, he must. One voice cut through the rest, calm and sharp as the knife he used to kill. Edward. His beloved. His dove that had been shoved into a rusted cage and doused in the filth of mortality. That voice was calling at him from inside the med-bay, quieting his thoughts and sending them scrambling at the same time. He froze again, he didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to turn and see it. Edward was talking again, but he couldn’t make out the words. It was just loud static, noises he couldn’t understand passing over him and leaving him in a worse state than he began.

His body suddenly jerked to life below him. And he seized the opportunity. He scrambled up, stumbling and tripping over his own feet like a fawn on ice. He ran from the voices and clawed hands that chased him, ran from it all. He hated that he ran, knowing his own cowardice. But it was so loud, so painful. Shouting and gunfire erupting in his ears, bombs and pained yells. A loud rush like an ocean wave, like a trench flooded with water from the skies. Pure in its own right but deadly if it went on too long.

Someone else was yelling, but he didn’t know who it was. His throat hurt. He kept running, overriding the pain his knee was giving him and the way it threatened to give out any moment. And it did, and he fell. He came crashing to the ground, trying to pull himself forward and away from what came rushing toward him. His face was wet, his eyes wide and his teeth gritted around the noises that poured from him now. Like a filthy animal. Like those that he had hunted. The rush filled his ears and he was drowning in crimson, blood filling his vision and rushing around his ears leaving him deafened. He tried to cover his ears but he was frozen again, he couldn’t move.

He wanted to go home, he wanted to be with his Dove again. He wanted to be anywhere but here, enduring this agony that threatened to tear him apart at the seams.

Johan jolted, legs kicking until he fell onto the floor, forcing a soft oof! out of him. He panted, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to process. He had been dreaming, he was sure of that much. But it felt so real. He had been alone in these tunnels he had learned to call home, all alone in the silence. Nobody to talk to, his comrades gone. And Edward…- Edward! Johan shot upwards, looking at the bed with wide, crazed eyes. He couldn’t be gone.