immortality anon back with more nonsense!
okay so in The Old Guard, whenever a new immortal dies for the first time, the others start dreaming about them
also i'm assuming that the healing factor doesn't kick in until you die for the first time (correct me if i'm wrong, maybe you know more about this)
what if soap was the first immortal of the group and then started dreaming about a man who was buried "alive"
(aka simon gets trapped in an unpleasant cycle of suffocation and resurrection until he gets out of the coffin)
Yes yes yes, everything about this!
Simon Riley has felt extraordinary, immeasurable pain in his life, from his father, from the military, from Roba, but it is nothing like the pain of being buried alive. His lungs ache, both from screaming and, later, from holding his breath, trying to conserve as much oxygen as possible once he’d realized that no one could hear him. His muscles scream in protest as he pushes against the metal nails of the coffin and six feet of sandy dirt on top of him. His fingernails and fingertips are raw and bloody, worn down to the bone in some places, and yet… the wood is still intact. He hasn’t even made a dent.
The jawbone that he finds helps, as long as he refuses to think about where it came from, who it belonged to, what he’s laying on, and finally, finally the wood starts to splinter.
It’s not enough. He suffocates seventeen minutes later.
And then he wakes up, jawbone still in hand, his lungs aching for a breath he can’t take, and he starts where he left off. It must be a nightmare, a delusion gifted to him by his quickly fading mind. He needs air, needs freedom, needs a blue sky above him and a breeze against his skin. He has to keep going, no matter how many times he nods off or falls unconscious.
In the comics, it takes him thirteen hours to differentiate himself out of Vernon’s coffin. I wonder how long it would’ve taken if he’d been stuck in a torturous cycle of death and rebirth, his muscles getting increasingly weaker each time, the lack of oxygen shortening his life with every round. Days, perhaps, or weeks. Long enough for Johnny to find where he’d been buried, to be waiting for him when he emerges from the dirt, lungs straining and eyes hazy, questions on the tip of his tongue, and Johnny has answers (Simon doesn’t necessarily like the answers, but they’re answers all the same)
Anyway, the part about all of this that I’m most intrigued about is the dreams themselves, because they’re not just of what the new immortal is going through right now, they’re flashes of details of the new immortal’s life leading up to their death. Which begs the question: what would Johnny see in his dreams about Simon, and what would stop him from storming Roba’s compound then and there?
gracieabrams
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
