Written by @yakn0g and me
TW: drowning, near-death-experience
Characters: Grimmel, Ruffnut
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Blurry rays of orange sunlight reached Grimmel through the water surface but he couldn’t reach back, his arms flailing helplessly as he sank with nothing to hold on to. Pain spread like fire through his lungs, rapidly and merciless. He was burning up from the inside and there was nothing he could do to make it stop.
Before his eyes, the sun became smaller and smaller until it vanished completely. All that was left was cold darkness surrounding him, filling him, weighing him down and down and down. His chest felt incredibly tight and he held it in pain, wheezing, swallowing more fiery water.
All he could think about was how he just needed to breathe but he knew he couldn’t. Unable to fight back the instincts kicking in to save him from his inevitable death his mouth opened in a desperate gasp, promptly letting in more water burning its way into his lungs.
He tried to scream, tried to escape his fate, but his arms and legs were numb and all he could do was sink.
Just as he thought that this truly was the end, he got lifted up.
He couldn’t make out what was happening, all that counted was air suddenly surrounding him. He coughed and coughed, trying to get all of the water out while wanting to finally breathe but the more he tried the stronger he coughed, it was cruel.
“Grimmel, keep breathing.”
Grimmel’s eyes shot open and he finally woke up, sitting up straight as his hand immediately grabbed the first thing he could reach. He held on for dear life, coughing and gasping, afraid he might drown again if he let go.
Slender arms wrapped around his shoulders as a familiar voice soothed him, told him it was only a dream and that there’s no reason to panic, everything’s fine.
Grimmel’s ego told him to let go of Ruffnut, to stop clutching onto her as if his life depended on it, but his body wouldn’t let him. Instead, he let his arm close around her, too, weakly leaning into the crook of her neck and allowing her to stroke his head, to lean down and plant a gentle kiss on his fevered skin.
Just until his heartbeat was back to normal.
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I just wanted to share this little snippet from our fanfiction because we rarely ever show or talk about it even though we’ve been working on it on and off for two years now.
Early on we had the idea to let Grimmel suffer quite a bit from his near-death experience.
Up to this point, he had lived a life full of danger, this surely hasn’t been the first time he almost died, so we thought it would be interesting to have him experience this kind of anxiety for the first time ever. After all, not only did he almost die, he also had everything he ever believed in questioned all of a sudden. He’s even questioning himself now as he’s forced to watch his life work collapsing in front of his eyes while he finds himself in a state where his body is so broken he’s dependant on somebody else and he can’t do anything about it.
On top of it all, there’s a certain amount of thalassophobia/aquaphobia he has to deal with now, too.
