[ closed ] why hold onto all that?

[hitokiller]

WHO: Okada Izou and "friends".
WHAT: Messy shenanigans.
WHERE: Out over the ocean, mid battle with the kaijuu, Revelation's communal bath.
WHEN: 2/3~2/4 & sometime... after.
WARNINGS: Drowning, blood, asphyxiation. More ??? potentially.

Comments

[skirm]

( how annoying, this feeling is. if wanderer searches the shelves of his long-lived memory, maybe he would be able to find a particular point in time where he felt... this, whatever this is. a suffocating feeling that eats him inside out, heavy and painful. for a being without a heart, it much feels like it's being squeezed by an invisible hand, a force that will make it burst and bleed. human emotions are overly complicated, and he has felt a great deal of them - anger, at the end of the day, had been his favorite, the one he had gotten to know the best, intimately. anger is a motivator, an enabler, the stepping stone for ambition. he keeps anger close to his chest, but not this.

something similar, perhaps, to fear. a sharp pain, a needle slowly piercing through flesh and muscle and nothing at all, because his body isn't so real, not nearly as human. wanderer has seen death so many times, has delivered it to those who deserved it and those who did not, and yet -

in his arms, fragile and weak, it's too close for comfort, too personal. he had been powerless once, unable to change the inevitable fate of those made of flesh and bones, painfully human.

at least one person. just one person. if he could at least save one person - )

You won't. I won't let you. ( he's talking, at least, breathing again. wanderer helps sit him up, head down, so the water comes out. ) Cough it out, then breathe. ( like he really knows what those mean tbh ) How are you feeling?

[hitokiller]

( the requests made of him are almost unreasonably difficult for something so simple: to cough it all out. to breathe. he tries to gasp through all the water he's been spitting, but his lungs won't obey him and do their job at first, and the ability to actually choke on air that he's gone without for so long is an experience he'll soon wish had never been granted to him again. he makes another attempt to suck in air before starting to spit again, his wet, grimy hands grasping at the folds of wanderer's clothing to steady himself.

even in this close proximity, the words said to him sound distant, but he's trying desperately to focus, to cling to life, because it's true—he doesn't want to die, not again, and especially not like this, with frigid fingertips pressing firmly on his windpipe. he tries to tilt his neck upwards to see his savior better, but even that feels like a monumental task.

fine. he can at least tilt it to the side... and as his blurred vision begins to adjust, the first thing that comes to mind while he's stiff with the cold and distressed is that... their small form reminds him of someone whose dear hand frequently stretched out to him as a child, the very notion of it drying his throat up even more than the continual coughing did. but that's...

—just not possible, and what's more, izou can identify who it is by their voice. )

C-Cold. What, even...

( izou croaks, the back of his throat burning. he's just gonna... attempt to stand himself despite everything, and despite it being a stupid idea after nearly drowning. )