warnings: grief, survivor’s guilt, self deprecation, canonical character death
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Twelve hours had gone by since the sun rose on Zelda’s seventeenth birthday. Twelve hours that repeated, and repeated, and repeated until she was so worn down and shattered that she couldn’t even stand up. The sky was dark over Hyrule Castle. The malice beast swirled high in the air, marking its territory before the burning buildings and stampeding guardians. It had not stopped–would not stop, no matter how slow time seemed to become when she pressed herself into Link and resigned herself to being a terrible, unworthy princess.
So many innocent lives had been lost tonight. Her friends, sealed forever in the ancient machineries she promised them were safe, her father, locked in an eternal state of disappointment, and her kingdom in tatters–this was the fate she’d resigned Hyrule to. And yet, she could not stop being selfish. She could not stop wanting something for herself, even when the world around her depended on her sacrifice. She was an utter disgrace to her people, to her friends, to every living, breathing thing around them, and she couldn’t even find it in herself to be sorry.
Too many times had the picture of Link’s mangled and motionless body been burned into her mind. Too many times, she’d gone back and tried to find a way to stop this. It was bitterly cruel how, in the end, her final choices required his demise anyway. But if there was even just a chance that her visions were true, a chance that he could come back in due time, then Zelda was going to take it. She was going to let her kingdom fall to ruin, all because she was a stupid child who fell in love.
Love was such a small word for such a big thing.
“Link,” she whispered when she found her voice again. It felt like hours had passed, but if that were true, then they would’ve been dead by now. “Would it be wrong of me to let my kingdom fall, when I have the chance to undo everything?”
Link was quiet. His fingers in her hair had stilled, but he did not try to push her off of him, and that was more reassuring than anything else. She preferred his silence to his rejection anyway, no matter how guilty it made him feel.
“This is a prophecy,” he said at last. He sounded far away, even a little angry. “This was something that was foretold before it ever came to this.”
“The prophecy did not detail the fall of Hyrule,” Zelda argued, though she had no energy left to argue. “It only told of the rising of Calamity Ganon. We were supposed to find the power to defeat it… We failed.”
He was quiet again. She wished he would tell her something else, that they didn’t fail, but she knew that wasn’t the case. If they hadn’t failed, then she would’ve never had to face this choice to begin with.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, because she feared he would turn out to be just as disappointed in her as everyone else was. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I told you I trusted you,” Link replied and part of her wished he didn’t. “I meant that.”
It was a big choice for a child. Maybe she was choosing wrong, but Zelda suspected happiness was not something she was destined to come by. She would be heartbroken no matter what she chose, and for choosing Link over Hyrule– Hylia should’ve had the good graces to strike her down. But perhaps she didn’t deserve that sort of mercy, seeing as she could not do what Hylia and every other Zelda had done. In theory, it was simple, but she did not have the strength the women before her had.
On the night of her seventeenth birthday, Hyrule burned. Guardians tore hundreds upon thousands of structures apart, stone brick by stone brick. Monsters and machines alike slaughtered countless innocents. Her friends, everyone she’d ever come to know and love, perished to the hands of a demon she was too weak to fight. Even now, as she tried in vain to awaken powers that wouldn’t come, her kingdom was being demolished. Very little was left alive. Very little was left untouched. She did not know how far the damage went. She did not want to know.
The sequence of events were so similar, if not identical, to the ones that proceeded on the very first loop. Zelda, not for the first time, held Link in her arms, and even though he was a breath away from dying, he smiled.
“I will come find you,” he said, weak and strained but sincere all the same. If she hadn’t cried all day, and all day, and all day again, she might’ve sobbed right there, as his eyes fell shut. Even covered in blood and dust and dirt, he looked peaceful. If her visions meant nothing, and Link was meant to remain truly dead, then she thought she would be okay with that. It was almost like he was sleeping.
And so, holding the tragedy that was the Kingdom of Hyrule in the palm of her hands, Zelda willed herself to ignore that beckoning of the power–that call to try and cut the predetermined strings of fate once more. She did not want to go back. She only wanted to look forwards.
A century passed. Time continued to flow, even when the world seemed to have stopped for so many. Hyrule never really recovered–not in the way that Zelda hoped it would. Too many lives had been lost. Too many people had lost the urge to go on, to continue their lives when they could not do so without pretending nothing had happened.
Even when Link returned to her, when he offered her his presence and comfort without a sliver of the man he used to be, they could not be happy. They could not escape the tragedy that seemed to follow them with every story, every iteration, every bit of history that had a hero and a princess built into it. She used to think tragedy was just something forgien, something that was a figment of a dark and twisted imagination, but now, as she sat with a giggling toddler in her lap, safe within the walls of a little Hateno house, decades and decades after the Calamity’s invasion of the world she once knew, Zelda knew better. Tragedy was something inescapable, something she would not wish on even her worst enemy.
At the very least, she did not have to face it alone. Link was kind and patient with her, just as she tried to be with him, and they were never really happy. Not entirely, not perfectly, and that was okay. She could live with that honesty, because there was only so much one could go through before healing seemed impossible. But she took the rays of sunshine as they came. She gave the love she hadn’t the pleasure to know before. She was living one day at a time, carrying the world with the Hero of Hyrule, the legendary Champion, the silent knight–and if that was all she was going to be granted, then who was she to turn it away? It was better than nothing, and after a century sealed in waiting, she knew nothing well.
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Arthur had just been so… skinny. Years on the streets, and growing up with that horrible man, had shown. His skin had clung to his bones, and watching him move had been downright scary.
So it was only natural they’d start feeding him. Force stew and meat down his throat, make him eat as much as he could. And he definitely wasn’t complaining; they weren’t the best cooks, not even close, but it was far better than the stale bread and scraps he’d been living off of for who knows how long. Keeping the three of them fed was an effort in itself, and they found themselves hunting far more than they’d ever done before. But it was worth it, if you asked them. The boy was still scared, and skittish, but feeding him was quickly earning his trust.
In those days, re-feeding syndrome wasn’t something that was known about. It happened, of course. But not often enough to draw attention, and could easily be attributed to the person’s circumstances. It would be another sixty years before it was truly studied, when prisoners taken out of concentration camps began to be killed in great numbers by well-meaning rescuers. But in the 1870’s, there was no way to truly track the amount of deaths from re-feeding and, even if there was, there was no reason for people like them to have any knowledge about it.
So it had been an accident, a well meaning one, but still one that had harmed him in the end.
It had happened on a night they’d been celebrating. They’d robbed a train earlier in the day, and made out like, well, bandits. So Hosea had gone into town and bought a great deal of food: stews and canned beans, chocolates and other treats. Canned peaches, which he had discovered were the boy’s favorite. He’d bought the boy a new tent, too, supposed to be better at keeping water out, as well as new blankets for his cot. Knowing that Dutch would sulk if he didn’t get anything as well, he’d bought the man a new pocketwatch.
The celebration had been fun. They’d watched as Arthur choked on his first beer, spluttering and wrinkling his nose. Wolfed down a can of baked beans before eating himself near sick on the chocolates Hosea kept offering him, and gulped down the can of peaches in one go.
So when he kept getting up to piss, they put it up to too many drinks, and one too many cans of peaches. And when he started to doze off where he sat next to the fire, they’d teased him about eating too much. Hosea—he’d been young, then, and Arthur hadn’t been half so heavy as he would be—had half carried him to his cot and tucked him in when he’d just flopped down on it, limp as a child’s doll.
And when he woke them up retching, they teased him again about eating too much. His eyes were glazed, and so they left a bucket beside his cot so he could go back to sleep. Dutch sat in the chair beside him, running his fingers through his hair, while Hosea went back to bed, planning on getting up early to go into town to follow up on some leads.
But he wouldn’t even have time to fall asleep before a screamed “HOSEA!” had him on his feet. He couldn’t remember ever hearing Dutch’s voice so panicked, so terrified, and he didn’t bother to put something on over his union suit, bolting barefoot for Arthur’s tent.
The man was standing over the boy, hands hovering over him as though afraid to touch him, as though he would shatter like fragile porcelain, eyes wild, so wide open that, even from the flap Hosea could make out the whites of his eyes. But Hosea didn’t even have to ask what was wrong, he could hear it himself.
The tent was filled with a horrible wheezing, each breath choked off and gasping. His hands were weakly clutching at the chest of his union suit, and his mouth hung open, whining with each panicked breath. Hosea hurried into the tent, ignoring Dutch, he could ask what had happened later—
when he did, the man would tell him, shaking violently, eyes haunted, that Arthur had jolted awake, eyes dazed and confused. Before Dutch could do anything, his eyes had rolled back and he’d begun to convulse weakly, thrashing rapidly on the bed, and Dutch had frozen, he’d admit with a choked sob, unable to get the image out of his head, unable to do anything but watch until the convulsions ended—
murmuring “It’s okay, Arthur, it’s okay son, I’ve got you,” as he sat on the bed, cradling the boy carefully. His heart broke at the way Arthur looked at him, blue eyes glassy with fear, pleading, and Hosea carefully guided his head back to rest in his lap, arching his neck, “It’s alright, son, just breathe.” He ghosted his fingers along his throat, beginning to say, trying to keep his own panic out of his voice, “In, one, two, three,” he did the same, “Out, two, three,”
the boy whimpered, gasping desperately, throat squeaking as he tried to do as he was told, “‘sea,” he pleaded, and Hosea, stroked his fingers through his hair, stooping down to press his lips to his forehead,
“I’ve got you, son, I’ve got you,” he crooned, looking up at Dutch for a moment; the man looked even more panicked than before, and he feared he’d have to talk him through breathing, too.
But Arthur was only becoming more and more breathless. His lips were taking on a horrific blue tinge, and alarm was thrumming through Hosea’s veins. He carefully man-handled the smaller boy, moving to lean him against his chest, allowing his head to loll back against his shoulder despite the urge to support it. His breathing eased up some, the wheezing not quite so bad, and Hosea began to murmur in his ear, “Calm down, son, you have to calm down. I’ve got you, I’ve got you. You have to breathe, breathe with me. Do you feel my chest? Breathe with me. Iiiin, two, three, four, five. Ouuut, two, three, four, five.”
He exaggerated his breathing, seeing Arthur move with the rise and fall of his own chest. The boy struggled, whimpering as he fumbled for each breath, Hosea bringing up his hand to stroke comfortingly between his ribs. To his relief, the blue tinge was beginning to leave his lips, and his breathing was becoming just that little bit easier. “That’s it, son, you’ve got it. You’ve got it, you’re doing so good, son. I knew you could do it.” He brought his other hand up to run it through the boy’s hair, beginning to count out loud again.
Arthur looked up at him, eyes wide, gasping “‘sea,” pleadingly, and Hosea smiled apologetically as he carefully guided his head back to his shoulder, arching his neck back.
“Iiin, two, three, four, ooout, two, three, four,” he hummed, losing count of how many times, occasionally murmuring praise or comfort when it looked like the boy was beginning to panic again. Dutch kept leaning forward, looking as though he wanted to help, but clearly lost, having no idea what he could do. So he simply hovered, watching them, hands trembling and his own breathing too fast.
Finally, after who knows how long, the boy slumped against him, turning his head to hide his face in Hosea’s neck. The older man still wasn’t too happy with his breathing, he was still breathless, panting, but he wasn’t struggling as he’d been before, wasn’t wheezing or panicking. His hand came up to fumble at Hosea’s chest, weakly clinging to the threadbare fabric of his union suit, trying to ground him. Hosea began to rock him, murmuring “It’s okay, Arthur, you’re okay, you did so good, I’ve got you,”
The cot dipped, and he raised his eyes to see Dutch, sitting close at Arthur’s side, wrapping his arms around them both, “We’ve got you son.” He still looked half out of his mind but, seeing Arthur able to breathe now, even if he was still panting, still breathless as he gasped “Hosea, Duuutch,” over and over, trying to ground himself even as they rocked him, stroking his hair, murmuring soothingly.
In the end, Arthur would be incredibly lucky. He would be weak for just over a week, confused and groggy and vomiting. Hosea would ride into town, and the doctor would give them a medicine to stop convulsions, to induce sleep and to stop vomiting. But he would come out of it a few pounds lighter, and relatively unscathed. They all managed to connect his sickness with eating so much, and never let him eat like that again—and they didn’t, either.
But he didn’t die, wasn’t permanently affected. He didn’t develop arrhythmia or heart failure, didn’t fall into a coma or develop paralysis.
It was all just an unfortunate, well meaning, accident.
@whumptober2019 - prompts: 14 (tear-stained), 22 (hallucination), alt 1 (“Wake up!”), alt 10 (nightmare), alt 12 (waterlogged), alt 13 (breathless)
Summary: Logan’s fear of the ocean manifests itself in a nightmare. Virgil is there to help.
Word Count: 2091
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Characters: Logan, Virgil, mentions of other Sides.
Relationships: platonic analogical
Warnings: drowning, nightmare, claustrophobia (maybe), what exactly is at the bottom of the ocean.
If I need to tag anything else, let me know!
———
The water seemed to be rising from the very floor itself, soaking through the carpet and pooling around Logan’s feet. He cast around, expecting to see Remus grinning maniacally at him as he turned the taps on full, but not one of the others were in sight. He frowned.
And why was the water rising up the way…?
He moved towards the stairs, intent on heading up to locate one of the others and make sure nobody was accidentally sleeping in the bathtub again, but as his foot touched the bottom step a torrent of water practically knocked him off his feet, failing only as a result of Logan’s instinct to grab the handrail. His eyes flickered to the stairs and then back to the carpeted floor which was now all but obscured, analysing, hypothesising, gathering data. But none of it made sense.
There was no feasible way for the water to be rushing down in such a huge volume, much less rising from the floor. The only ones with the power to construct something as… improbable… as this, would be the twins.
And Roman would never, not when he knew Logan was down here, and especially not when a number of his sketchpads still lay sprawled around the living room, now gathering water.
But Remus? ...Remus would.
Logan sighed.
“Remus! It is in both your and my own best interests that you stop the flow of water.”
He would have said there was silence, but the roar of water now up to his ankles made it hard to even remember what silence sounded like—or didn't, he supposed, as silence was defined as the absence of sound. Momentarily closing his eyes in annoyance, he instead sank out, hoping to gain a little clarity in a more familiar—and quieter—environment.
And all of a sudden he couldn't breathe, water inside his mouth and his ears and his nose and splintering his vision.
He was back in the main room barely a second later, now completely soaked, and beginning to feel concerned. Had something gone wrong?
He took off his glasses and dried them off quickly, before trying to duck into Roman’s room to see if he could reverse this—but Roman’s door must have been locked, for he couldn't get in.
Remus’s was empty of Remus, but was full of water much like Logan’s own before, and Logan couldn't help the jolt of…something that went through his chest as he began to fear predict the worst. But he wasn't afraid. He couldn't feel fear. Fear was an emotion. He had not emotions. Of course.
Deceit’s was locked too, which didn't exactly surprise him, although it did perturbe him slightly. He was running out of people who'd be able to fix this.
Even Patton’s was locked, which was surprising, as Patton was always very clear that he would leave his room open as often as he was able in case anyone ever wanted to talk.
Virgil's room was the last he tried, already expecting it to be locked as it practically always was, so you can imagine his surprise when he found himself in the centre of the dimly-lit room. His confusion only heightened when he did not find himself completely submerged in water, nor even up to his knees, and when he squinted down to examine the floor and found dry carpet he was even a little suspicious.
No matter. He was here to check on Virgil, not analyse everything he saw when it didn't react as he expected it to.
“Virgil?” he called softly, treading gently towards the bed squashed into the corner and trying not to let his dripping clothes form too large of a puddle, eyeing the mound of blankets that may or may not be a figure.
The blankets suddenly sat bolt upright and Logan stopped in his tracks, frowning and wondering if he'd spooked the anxious side. “...Virgil?”
Two pinpricks of light appeared where eyes should be, and before Logan could react Virgil’s voice filled the room, loud and all-encompassing as it always was when he became anxious, except shriller, piercing, and unlike anything Logan had ever heard before.
“Wake up!” yelled the voice. “Logan! It's the bottom of the ocean!” it shrieked, growing more shrill and inhuman with every letter and Logan winced, pressing his palms into his ears in an attempt to block out the noise.
It only seemed to magnify it, sharp and penetrating as it continued to shriek, cries echoing around the room and seeming to bounce around Logan's very skull. “Wake up! Wake up!”
“Logan!” it cried, before the blankets began to sink, the sound of the voice reverberating around the room as echoes bounced off the walls, and it took Logan a moment to notice the sound of running water.
The blankets fell away entirely, now just a heap on the bed and Logan stepped forward, arm outstretched towards where Virgil had only just been, ears still ringing and the banshee cries playing over in his mind.
He realised with a start that the water was pooling from the blankets where Virgil had been situated, a gushing torrent that was slowly filling the room. Logan panicked, already knowing where this was headed and trying to sink out.
But he couldn't.
The water was up to his hips already, spilling over the top of the bedframe and soaking everything on it. He span towards the door, trying his best to wade through the water, but his steps were slow and the water was rising, only a matter of time before it overcame him.
The door didn't budge, and all Logan’s knowledge of physics was telling him of course it doesn't move, the pressure against the door is greater than that outside; you have to wait for the pressure to equalise before it can be opened. But the pressure wouldn't equalise, because the fact he couldn't open the door meant there was less water beyond the door, which meant there was no way the pressure would ever equalise because all the water was in here.
Abandoning the door handle, Logan instead began to beat against the door, hoping to create a hole to drain the water from.
But of course, Virgil’s door was made of iron, because of aesthetic of whatever it was Virgil claimed, and there was no way he was going to even make a dent in it, let alone a hole.
Logan's was somewhat aware that his breathing was worryingly high, but he didn't have time to think about that as the water surpassed his shoulders.
And there was nothing here that could help him, he realised in increasing distress, because the water was rising and it didn't look like it was going to slow down, and the only things that were floating were all too small to help him, and the two ways out of here were both blocked.
He tried to sink out again, trying every room in turn and even Thomas in the physical world, but none of them worked, each barred from him, and Logan was beginning to realise this wasn't a problem he could solve on his own.
“Roman?” he called to the room, hoping the creative side would hear him and perhaps come to his rescue; he would be the best option for helping in this situation anyway, Logan thought as he began to tread water.
“Remus?” he tried, any previous reluctance dissipating in the face of imminent drowning.
“De—” he began, but a thought suddenly struck him. If he called for one of the others and they did come, that would only mean they were stuck too. Which would certainly not be ideal. Logan wasn't even sure where any of them could be, as he had entered every room in the mindscape by this point and each one had been empty of the others, but they couldn't have just disappeared. That wasn't how this worked. That wasn't how any of this worked.
Logan was very glad Thomas had learned to swim as the ceiling came closer and closer, his head knocking against it with the rising water.
He braced himself and, taking a deep breath, dove downwards.
He tugged at the door handle, hoping beyond hope that maybe, just maybe, things would be different this time, but the iron remained steady, not even straining under the pull. He kicked towards the surface, breaking the top and almost hitting his face of the ceiling as he took a gulp of the two or three centimetres of air still left, and dwindling fast.
He dove down again, heading to the door in one last, desperate attempt, but instead of moving towards the door he was pulling away. Spinning around, he held a hand over his mouth to prevent gasping in surprise at the large whirlpool situated in the centre of the floor, grasping at him with water currents that steadily drew him nearer.
He tried to kick away from it, feet flailing wildly as he watched various CDs and notebooks disappear into the abyss, but no matter how strong of a swimmer he was the whirlpool was more powerful, and it was only seconds before he was inside the mouth. And then he was sinking down, down, down, spinning nauseatingly as small objects bounced against him. Somehow, his glasses remained—not that there was anything to see in the blackness anyway.
And then everything was calm. He had stopped moving.
He forced open his eyes, and looked around, only to see he was surrounded by water that only seemed to stretch on no matter which direction he faced. Alone.
He was in the ocean.
As soon as he processed this, he was suddenly very, very cold and everything went very, very dark.
He was acutely aware of his lungs screaming for oxygen, and he could feel the water pressure crushing him, liquid forcing itself down his throat and into his mouth and eyes and ears, and from somewhere in the inky depths below, something roared. He looked down, a shoal of fish flitting past as they moved to escape whatever was below, but Logan could only sit and watch.
A huge mouth appeared, wide open, hundreds of rows of teeth lining the maw, each the size of Logan’s torso as fish who were not fast enough were swallowed whole.
This was it.
Logan looked up, towards where he was sure the surface must lie, and praying that the others were safe, wherever they were.
He only wished he could have had one last look at the stars, as the teeth obscured his vision and his lungs gave out.
And suddenly he could breathe again, shooting upright and holding a hand to his chest to feel his rapidly beating heart. Still alive. Still alive.
“Logan!” said Virgil’s voice, and Logan almost cried out, sure this was all just a cruel repeat, and any second now he was going to be back in the water, unable to breathe, unable to cry out, with no idea if the others—
“Logan. It's Virgil. Take a breath. You had a nightmare. You're safe.”
“I— what?” Logan said, voice breaking. It made sense. It made sense, but, how had, how— Quietly, unsurely, he whispered, “it seemed so real.”
“I know,” said Virgil, perching on the edge of Logan’s bed. Logan was suddenly reminded that yes, of course Virgil knew, because he always knew whenever any of them had a nightmare. He was Anxiety, after all, and selfish as Logan felt for thinking it, he was glad Virgil had come. “Want a tissue, Teach?” Virgil added softly, offering one off-handedly before looking away to examine the ceiling.
Logan took it somewhat confusedly, before he realised with a start that his face was damp. He had been crying. Hurriedly, he dried his face, thankful that Virgil had chosen to look elsewhere whilst he sorted himself.
“I'm sorry,” he said after a moment, locating his glasses from the bedside table and feeling a sense of relief wash over him as the world became clearer. “That was uncharacteristically… emotional of me.”
Virgil seemed almost to laugh, a withheld smirk flashing across his features. “I know you have emotions, Logan, and that's okay; you don't need to hide them. Do you want to tell me about it?”
Taking a deep breath and lying back onto his pillow, Logan’s eyes drank in the stars and constellations in his ceiling, the night sky Roman had put into place for him twinkling comfortingly.
Lup woke up breathless and shaking, the darkness around her felt like a physical presence closing in on her. Like black curtains. Like her prison.
Darkvision could make out the window, the open bedroom door, the bookcase, the armchair, a dozen other familiar things around their room. She listed them in a whisper as she looked around the room. It didn’t help slow her pounding heart, didn’t stop the terror making her clutch at the blankets. But it did keep her from screaming. It did force her to concentrate enough for her body to remember how to breathe. She’d take what victories she could.
“Hamper. Nightstand. Bed. Nightstand. Mirror.” She kept up the litany of objects, refusing to allow herself to get up or conjure a light until she’d finished the circle twice.
It was better than the first night back in a body, when she’d woken up unable to get enough breath to give sound to her screaming. As a lich it wasn’t a problem. It was that transition from sleep to wakefulness that left her trembling and gasping for air. It was the terror set loose in a body she couldn’t remember how to operate.
And trancing? Trancing was a thousand times worse. Trancing made her palms sweat just trying it. At least with sleep she could exhaust herself and then crash. That’s why she’d spent the day scrubbing everything in the house even though she’d just done that a week ago. She’d cooked and done laundry and met up with Magnus to spar and gone shopping with Taako and finally, her body had been tired enough to sleep.
But she hadn’t realized Barry was going to have to work tonight. She wouldn’t have worn herself out if she’d known, would have gone with him instead.
And she hadn’t wanted to admit to him that she was scared to sleep alone.
She reached over to her nightstand and grabbed her stone of farspeech. She could call Taako. He’d understand. Hell, he’d probably insist on coming over and they could stay up until Barry got home and make brownies and talk about…
No, he’d left for Neverwinter to do some stuff to set up his school. He wouldn’t be back until next week.
Her finger hovered over the stone. Barry wouldn’t judge her. Barry would rush home and wrap her in his arms and he’d make her feel better.
But.
They were still new with the Raven Queen. She didn’t want to be a problem. The Raven Queen had done them an enormous favor by taking them on. She wasn’t going to let on how damaged she was, especially when she’d done it to herself.
No. She’d just have to get through this on her own. She’d gotten through more than a decade in that fucking umbrella. She could make it a few hours until her husband came home. She could face the dark like a strong, confident elf.
“Window. Chair. Shelf. Door.”
She’d started her chant again, her eyes landing on each object as she said it. The stone was clutched in her hand, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs.
And then it rang.
She jumped and jerked her hand up. “H-hello?”
“Hey,” Barry’s voice said softly. “Did I wake you?”
Lup swallowed, trapped somewhere between relief and shame. “No,” she answered honestly.
“Had a feeling I should call,” he told her. Then, before she could begin telling him how fine she was, how great and not a problem everything was on her end, he said, “You know how Magnus has been talking about raising dogs? And Taako’s starting his school? And Davenport and Merle and… everyone seems to have these big plans?”
Surprised at the change of subject, Lup could only answer, “Yeah?”
“Well, we’re not retired but I think we need a retirement project.”
“Yeah,” Lup answered. Her heart squeezed tightly again but this time it wasn’t from terror. This time it was because she just really loved her husband. “Yeah, we do. Any ideas?” Her fingers were no longer clutching the blanket and her breath had settled to something much more regular.
She actually managed a laugh. “Farmer Bluejeans, huh? I had no idea you had agricultural aspirations.”
“Well, there’s just so much you don’t know about me,” he told her and she could hear the smile in his voice. “We hardly know one another what with our whirlwind courtship.”
“What can I say? I saw you and couldn’t help myself. Immediately put my 47 year plan to seduce you into action.”
“You had me after 47 seconds,” he told her. “Could have curled that finger at me and I’d have fallen at your feet.”
“That long? I’m slipping.”
“Well, it would have been quicker but I’m kind of old fashioned.”
Lup laughed again. She laid back against the pillows and felt herself relax. “Babe?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Of course,” he answered instantly. “You good until I get home?”
The way he dismissed it as nothing was one more reason why she loved him so much it overwhelmed her sometimes. “Yeah, I’m good. How much longer?”
(Trying to get back in to writing by catching up with the Whumptober Challenge for @whumptober2019!)
Alternate prompt for today!
Day Twenty-One - Breathless
You’re just lucky they want to take you in alive, Clint thought bitterly as he ducked a punch and barely got his bow around to block the knife coming at him from the other side.
“You are a fool, Hawkeye,” Zane Maddox hissed. “Coming here alone? Thinking that you could take me on alone?”
As if on cue, the building suddenly shook with the force from a small explosion. As Clint held the knife at bay, he grinned. “Who said I came alone? I’m just here to keep you occupied.”
A horrified look consumed Maddox’s face as he realized what was happening. Clint seized the opportunity to take the upper hand, shoving Maddox back and sending him stumbling. Clint pushed his advantage, pursuing the man and using his bow as a staff and forcing Maddox to use his knife defensively to keep from getting pummeled.
“You are done, Maddox,” Clint growled. “That explosion means that Stark finished hacking your systems, and the rest of the Avengers are laying waste to your weapons. The only reason that you’re still alive is to make sure we get every last one of your snake holes.”
“You will pay!” Maddox shrieked as he blocked Clint’s bow with his knife and made a wild swing with his other fist, a frenzied look in his eyes.
The sudden shift of the man’s demeanor threw Clint off balance, and he used his forearm against his bow in order to shove Maddox away again. Clint took several defensive steps back in order to get some space to regain himself and drew an arrow. If Maddox wasn’t going to back down easily, Clint might have to explore the “damaged but alive” contingency that they had discussed during the briefing.
What Clint hadn’t anticipated… was the gun. Maddox was a cruel man who enjoyed using knives to do his dirty work, because he liked to be up close and personal. So, when he suddenly brandished a gun from a hidden holster under his jacket, Clint needed a few seconds to adjust. But he didn’t get those few seconds.
Shots rang out immediately followed by an explosion of pain that ripped from the middle of his chest. The world tipped wildly around him and he went sprawling to the ground. Clint’s brain whited out in agony for just a split second, but he forcefully dragged himself back to reality, his ingrained survival instincts taking over.
Ignoring the pain that tore at his every nerve, he twisted and pulled himself up as much as he could into a defensive position. Without a conscious thought, he nocked the arrow in his hand on his bow, but when he went to draw it the pain almost sent him spiralling into oblivion again. He snapped off the shallow shot to buy him a precious few seconds. As Maddox lunged backward, Clint yanked his sidearm out and fired two shots, taking out each of Maddox’s kneecaps. Maddox went to the ground with a spray of blood and agonized screams.
Clint’s muscles all released at once, sending him back down to the ground as he gasped in several shallow breaths as he tried to catch up with what had happened. He… had been shot? Right? His hands went to his chest, but even just that small movement caused the pain to skyrocket.
“Thor, Stark, contain Maddox. Clint! Clint, are you okay?”
Clint blinked in confusion, unsure what was happening until Steve’s face suddenly entered his field of vision. The team was here. He should be relieved, but all he could think about was the horrible pain that was trying to consume him.
“Clint?” Steve was suddenly gone and Natasha immediately took his place. She was pale, looking him over frantically.
“I… maybe… got shot?” Clint said between gasps for breath, his hands now desperately searching his chest for the wet blood that had to be there.
“Stop, let me,” Natasha said briskly, knocked his hands away impatiently. She quickly undid the clasp for Clint’s quiver, pushing the straps out of her way. Then she pulled the zipper on his outer uniform to reveal his Kevlar vest underneath. Natasha’s hands went to his chest, and even just the light pressure from her searching fingers caused a hoarse groan to claw its way up Clint’s throat.
“Your Kevlar is dented, but I don’t think it went through,” Natasha reported cautiously. Her brow furrowed. “There are several dents. Jesus, were you playing target practice in here?”
Clint made a pained, coughing noise that was supposed to be a laugh, but didn’t come anywhere close. “Turns out he’s… he’s a decent shot.”
“Okay, we need to get this vest off before we move him,” Natasha said firmly. “See what we’re really dealing with here.”
“You guys got this?” came Tony’s voice from somewhere beyond Clint’s small world, which at the moment only existed within his line of sight. “As much as I’d like to watch him slowly bleed out, we need to get Maddox into custody, we unfortunately still need the bastard.”
“Yeah, get Maddox to Interpol,” Steve said. “And brief Bruce on the situation, we’ll get Clint out to the Quinjet after we assess the damage.”
Natasha was already reaching for Clint’s vest, peeling back the velcro strap on one side, causing Clint to wince at the way it pulled at him. Steve did the same on his other side. Then they were carefully lifting the heavy Kevlar vest up and off of his chest… and for several long moments the only this Clint could concentrate on was the blessed air flooding abused lungs. It was a dizzying mix of relief and anguish.
“Well, you’re gonna be bruised to hell, but it looks like the Kevlar did it’s job,” Natasha said with a sigh of relief.
“This bruising is already pretty bad,” Steve said. “He could have some fractured ribs.”
“We can’t do much about that here,” Natasha pointed out. “Let’s get him back to the jet and let Bruce take a look.”
Steve threaded his arm behind Clint’s shoulders, slowly lifting his upper body as Clint moaned and gasped in pain. He let Clint sit for a minute, struggling to regain his composure. Finally, Clint looked at Steve and gave a small nod. Steve ducked under one of Clint’s arms and the leveraged him up to his feet, Natasha steadying him on his other side. Despite the two of them going as slowly and gently as possible, the pain was still horrible and left Clint gasping desperately for breath as his chest protested the movements.
“Clint?” Steve said worriedly.
“Just… go,” Clint panted. No use in waiting on him when this wasn’t showing any signs of improving.
The trip through the building a blur to Clint. Every movement was agonizing, but he determinedly put one foot in front of the other as best as he could as he was supported by Steve and Natasha.
“How’s he doing?” Bruce’s voice floating to him through the fog of pain was a comfort.
“The bullets didn’t pierce his vest, but he’s still in a lot of pain,” Natasha reported as Steve helped Clint lay on a cot in the back of the Quinjet. “He also started to wheeze, like he’s not getting enough air.”
“He was shot in the middle of his chest?” Bruce asked as he knelt next to Clint, studying his bare chest.
“There were several dents in his Kevlar,” Natasha said. “I’d say he got shot three or four times by a high powered firearm at close distance. All clustered around the middle of his chest.”
“Clint?” Bruce prompted, looking at him expectantly.
“Soun’s… righ’…” Clint managed to ground out. The air in the jet seemed so much thin all of a sudden and the world blurred around him.
“Okay, Clint, it looks like you’ve got a pneumothorax,” Bruce said as he disappeared from Clint’s line of sight. Clint heard him rummaging through medical supplies. “You’re going to be fine, but I need to place a chest tube to release the pressure. It’ll make it easier for you to breath.”
Natasha appeared above Clint’s head, placing a gentle hand on each side of his head in order to provide support. Clint looked up at her and allowed his fear to show through his eyes. It felt like his lungs were strangling themselves and it was getting so hard to breath.
“It’s okay,” Natasha told him quietly. “Bruce is going to fix you right up.”
“Here, get that on him,” Bruce said, and the next thing Clint knew, Natasha was slipping an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. “Sorry, Clint, but we have to do this right now, we don’t have time for painkillers. It’ll only hurt for a minute though.”
Bruce working on the side of his chest drew Clint’s gaze down, but Natasha put her hand under his chin to stop him from seeing what was happening. “Don’t look,” she told him quietly.
He reached up his arm on his free side to put it over the hand that Natasha had on the side of his head, hoping to absorb some of her calm composure. There was a sharp pain in his side… and then a harder, sharper pain that caused him to yelp hoarsely.
“Okay, try to take a few deep breaths, Clint,” Bruce instructed.
Clint tentatively did as he was told, wary of the pain that promised to intensify. But though his chest still protested any and all movement, he found that he was able to breathe a little deeper than before. Over the next few minutes, his breath started to come much easier and Clint finally started to relax a bit.
“I’m going to give you some morphine to help with the pain,” Bruce told him just before there was a pinch in his arm. “You’ll still need medical attention, so this will keep you comfortable until we can get you back to the Tower.”
“You’re a lot of work, Clint,” Natasha said teasingly as the warmth of the morphine lulled Clint into a deep sleep.
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Characters: Steve McGarrett, Danny "Danno" Williams, Tani Rey, Junior Reigns
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Drama, Suspense
Summary:
All it took was a split second for it to all go wrong.
(There are brief mentions of not so good parenting in this and just overall self hate. Remember, you are amazing and important. Love yourself.)
Sorry this is a bit short!
“So this is it? This is how I die.”
“Keep trying. Don’t give up.”
“It isn’t worth it. I can’t do it.”
“You have to keep trying!”
“I can’t!”
“TRY.”
Hazel argued with herself, underwater. She was drowning and there was nothing she could do about it. Before this, she was already tired from walking all day and the impact from the fall made her entire body ache. Every time she tried to swim up, her body would give out she would be helpless again. She didn’t know how far down she was or how much time she had left before she drowned.
She still remembered the argument she had with her mother before she left. Leaving her siblings, her whole life at 18.
“You’re being selfish!”
“How dare you.”
“Why are you overreacting so much?”
“I wonder what she would think? Would she call me names or would she help me out? What happened to her? Whatever was going on with her, making her worse, I should’ve stayed to help. I shouldn’t have left.”
“I don’t believe that,” Hazel thought, arguing against herself once more, “It was what I needed to do. My mother doesn’t control my life. I am strong. I have faced so much, physically and mentally. Yet I’m still here.”
“Yeah? Not for long. Saying your final peace, girl, because you won’t be here much longer.”
“I guess that’s right. Maybe I should just give up. I’ve tried so hard and I’m still going to die,” Hazel gave up and relaxed her body, struggling no longer, “Who should I start with? I’m sorry Boone. I’m sorry for dragging you out here. I’m sorry for being an idiot like I always am. It wasn’t your fault, I hope you know that. It was mine. I’m sorry to the others, they’re going to hurt from my death. I hope they can move onto better things without me holding them down. I never deserved any of them. My family won’t even know I’m gone, I haven’t seen them in ten years, they probably don’t even remember me. They probably hate me and it’s my fault. I should’ve stayed for them or at least taken them away with me. I don’t care if it would’ve been hard, I could have managed it for them. There’s so much I want to say to Erin. But I’ll probably be seeing her soon, so it doesn’t matter.
Hazel’s vision started to darken until it finally went black.
The sound of them grew louder in the dank, stale air surrounding Sean. He huddled in tense silence, trying futilely to stop the trembling shaking his frame, and waited. His brain was still frozen in fear. Reality felt warped as the anxiety left him unable to formulate a rational thought. Pain still frayed the ragged edges of his nerves, and the gathering darkness left him feeling safer, yet more vulnerable, as he was unable to see his surroundings clearly.
The sirens stopped. The silence seemed deafening as he strained to hear anything in the absence of sound.
Suddenly his heart jumped into his throat. Footsteps scurried, and distant, distorted voices called to one another. He put one hand over his ear, aching to block out the sounds, yet equally desperate to know what was coming.
The door swung open, sending a wave of panic crashing over him. Instinctively, he threw his hands over his face and curled into a ball, trying to make himself as small as possible.
For the space of a few heartbeats, the only sound he could hear was his own ragged breathing. Then, the beam of a flashlight swept over him, the light penetrating his closed eyelids, and he struggled to blot it out with shaking fingers.
A radio crackled to life, the sound alarmingly loud in the silence. “Scene clear, I’ve located the victim,” a female voice intoned. Then the speaker directed her voice towards him. “Sean Reynolds?” she called, expectantly.
He couldn’t look. Couldn’t answer. He could barely hear anything over the roar of his pulse in his ears.
Soft footfalls drew near him. Others, more distant, seemed to be heading closer. Radio communications chirped from somewhere outside.
Don’t move. Don’t move.
“It’s all right, I’m with the police. You’re safe now,” soothed the female voice, but Sean’s brain couldn’t absorb the words. A hand reached out to touch his arm, but he jerked away with a stifled scream. The hand quickly withdrew. “We’re going to get you out of here,” her voice called out to him gently.
Slowly it began to register in the recesses of his brain that he wasn’t feeling any fresh pain, and his breathing began to slow imperceptibly. No one was touching him; more importantly, no one was hurting him. Uncertainly, he opened one eye, then the other, peering out from behind his hands. A female police officer crouched in front of him, and footfalls echoed in the corridor. Two other officers, both male, appeared in the darkened doorway, shining flashlights left and right. The light momentarily blinded him. “Scene’s clear,” the woman called. “I’ve got the victim here, but he’s in pretty bad shape. Give me a hand.”
In a few moments, Sean felt himself being bodily lifted from his huddled position on the floor. His cramped and battered body protested violently, and he cried out. “Sorry,” one of the officers apologized. “Can you walk, sir?” he asked Sean.
He tried to put his full weight onto unsteady legs, but the world began to tilt at a crazy angle, and he broke out in a cold sweat. His stomach lurched, and he suddenly retched, feeling helplessly out of control. The spinning intensified, and everything went dark.
