| All the Way Through. [Closed to Genma & Raidou] | [May. 4th, 2009|10:01 pm] |
[Directly follows Strong on the Surface]
When Raidou woke up, it wasn't to darkness. He wished it was darkness, but someone had made a light so bright it was bleeding through his closed eyelids and leaving red after-images scrawled across his brain. Or maybe that was pain.
It was amazing, he thought with the parts of himself still capable, that the human body could tolerate so much pain without falling to pieces.
It was amazing you could give a feeling this big a name so small.
It was amazing he could still be amazed.
His weight wasn't even remotely on his feet. He thought about moving, trying to find his balance, and didn't dare. His hands were almost completely numb, his arms leaden and bloodless to the shoulders; but compared to the alternative, he'd take that lack of sensation and throw a parade.
One shallow breath was enough to break his gathering awareness apart. Ravaged flesh screamed. He hung, feeling blood pound beneath skin, his ribcage hitch around a sound he couldn't voice, and waited for it to be over. Unconsciousness or death--he'd take either right about now.
Instead he got something else: the stretch and pull of something pressed tight against flesh, noticeable the moment he could actually bring himself to focus on anything. It was all over his scar, his left cheek, the right side of his ribcage. A dull pressure against brutalized skin. When he moved his tongue and swallowed, he found a blood-clotted gap where two molars should have been.
Bandages. Someone had pulled his broken teeth.
They still wanted him alive.
Raidou groaned, tried not to let it become a whimper, and lifted his head. His right eye was bruised and swollen, the left far too close to fresh burns; he forced himself to open both just long enough to catch a glimpse of the room. Light seared him, but he got what he wanted. Needed.
Genma was still there. Still breathing. And he hadn't been touched.
Relief almost destroyed him.
Raidou let his head hang and focused on breathing as little as possible, expanding his chest as much as he could stand. Remembering how words worked.
"You--look--" he broke off, coughed a mouthful of old blood, "--like--hell." |
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