I'm Sorry! (unboundbydeath) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-04-30 14:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !trigger warning, jaune arc, pyrrha nikos |
Who: Jaune and Pyrrha
What: Pyrrha dreams of the Fall of Beacon
When: Very Early This Morning
Where: Jaune's
Rating: Pg-13 for blood and death and hospitals and feels
Status: complete
In the end, Pyrrha met her destiny.
She hadn’t exactly handled dreaming of Penny well. She hadn’t even talked to Jaune about it at first though he’d eventually coaxed it out of her. Even though it had been a few days, Pyrrha had still needed something silly and distracting, so they’d watched movies.
Movies which had turned to somewhat frantic kissing, a little bit of groping and then curling against Jaune crying until she’d fallen asleep.
She probably shouldn’t have let herself fall asleep. The Dream picked up where she’d let off. The Nevermore, the other students, Jaune and Ruby helping her snap out of it.
And then she’d made eye contact with Ozpin.
The pain that she’d experienced inside that capsule was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Like someone had been stabbing her repeatedly at the base of her spine. She didn’t think it could get any worse, until Amber died.
It was like a part of herself got ripped out in that instant, leaving a vast chasm inside her soul. She emerged from the capsule dazed, but still ready to fight. Instead, she and Jaune had run, leaving Ozpin to face Cinder alone.
That was the wrong thing to do and she knew that instinctively. Her instincts were proven right when Cinder rocketed to the top of the tower.
Jaune wouldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Maybe not even after she kissed him and sent him on his way. This was her Destiny, and she’d follow it to whatever end became of her. Even if it meant battling a Maiden.
A battle she’d lost.
A battle she…
Pyrrha jerked, gasping in her sleep before a wet gurgling sound came from her throat. She clawed at her throat, blood oozing from a wound there to match the blood that had spurted from her ankle. She gasped again, desperate to breathe.
Nothing that Jaune had dreamed up to this point made sense. Aside from them winning their rounds in the tournament, of course, because the rest of his team was phenomenal. It was always a given that Pyrrha would end up in the final round. But Grimm attacking the city? What happened to Yang? And then Penny, and the fall of the Academy...
Jaune had tears in his eyes when a sound woke him up from the inside of a weapons locker that was speeding away from the one thing in his life he'd realised he cared about the most. It was a strange gasping and choking, a noise he'd only ever heard in the movies, and it was never a good sound.
Usually, it was the sound someone made when they'd been stabbed. And it was coming from Pyrrha, and for three seconds his heart actually froze with terror. His hands were covered with something warm and sticky that he registered as her blood, and he pulled away from her to take in the situation. Jaune knew he didn't have time to stare, or break down, though the him from two months ago might have. He was a team leader, and he was her boyfriend, and he had to act.
"Oh god..." He cried out, as he grabbed up his bed sheets and started pushing them against her wounds. "Pyrrha no.... You just... You better just hang on. Please."
He had no idea what first aid was for getting stabbed in the throat. He had no idea if they even had time to get to the emergency room or the campus hospital. One of his hands held the sheet in place while another one fumbled with the phone by his bed.
“Ja--Jaune,” Pyrrha gasped. She tried to form another word, sounding like Cinder, but the sound was mostly gargles and a sort of liquidy bubbling. Her mind was racing, filled with fear. Jaune shouldn’t be here. She didn’t want Jaune to see this, to remember her like this.
Dream her had accepted her death, but the Pyrrha of the waking world wasn’t ready, couldn’t quite accept that that of all things was supposed to be her destiny.
And worse than Jaune seeing her die, worse than the pain in her chest and her ankle, was this feeling as though part of her was missing.
“I’m sorry...”
"Don't you dare. Don't you dare do this to me, don't you-" Jaune had to cut his words off as his throat clenched and they started to crack into a half-formed sob. He couldn't cry yet, he didn't want Pyrrha to see him like this, no matter what happened next. He was still fumbling with his cell phone, the blood on his hands making the task even more difficult than the screaming he was doing in his head.
He eventually got the numbers 9-1-1 into the phone, and deliriously gave the operator on the other end what information he could. That was twice in the same year, and Jaune hoped he never had to dial it again.
"They're coming, okay? They're coming to help you." Jaune chucked his phone off to the side and grabbed one of her hands, squeezing it so hard that he was afraid he might break it.
“Jaune I…” Pyrrha grasped for his hand, finding it after several attempts and squeezing it with all the strength she had left. Coldness was creeping into her limbs and she felt as though something were pulling her down into darkness. But she had to say it. She hadn’t been able to in the dreams. She had to say it. “I love…”
She coughed, splattering blood across Jaune’s face.
That was it, Jaune realised as he wiped an arm across his eyes to clear them out. Those words stripped away the last of his strength, and he broke out into a sob. He shook his head and squeezed Pyrrha's hand even more tightly. Tears started rolling down his cheeks, leaving little trails through the blood on his face.
"No... no... that's... love me all you want but not as some deathbed confession damn it! You have to live! You have to. What am I- What am I supposed to do without you?"
Jaune didn't know how to handle loss, but he figured being angry was a perfectly reasonable feeling. Except that it was awful, and he didn't want to be angry at her. And he didn't want her to die just laying on his bed like that, so he carefully picked her up and pulled her into his lap. "Please live... It's not fair. I want to love someone who's around to share it with me."
Pyrrha remembered the day she’d met him. Both days she’d met him. Things had gotten all jumbled, especially now that she was dying. And she felt like she was dying. It was painful and drawn out and maybe she was drowning in her own lungs with no Cinder to blow her away.
“I guess...I waited too long,” Pyrrha suggested, sirens ringing in her ears. Or was that an ambulance? That was an ambulance!
She found some renewed strength, hand tightening around Jaune’s. Pyrrha the wonder girl, Pyrrha the gifted, strong, centered Pyrrha, reduced to pleading, “I don’t want to die.”
Why had she given up? She’d faced Cinder down, she’d even taunted her at the end, and then she’d closed her eyes and waited. And Pyrrha didn’t understand why.
"If this is your destiny, then I don't believe in it," Jaune managed to whisper. His throat was already hoarse from the crying, even though he hadn't been doing it for that long. But he, also, could hear the sirens, and he perked up a bit as there was a knock on his door.
A crowd had already gathered in the hallway outside his door, probably drawn there by the sirens and the rushing of the paramedics down the hallway. Jaune squeezed Pyrrha one last time before relinquishing her to the people who could, he hoped, save her life. There were going to be a lot of questions, a lot of forms to fill out, and a niggling voice at the back of Jaune's mind told him he was likely going to be in trouble later.
All of that could wait. He refused to leave her side, even in the ambulance, and no one could make him.
Whatever happened next, Pyrrha was no longer conscious for. Instead, she relived that day. She watched Penny die, over and over and over again. She connected with Amber, felt that connection sever and take part of her with it and she said good bye to Jaune.
And she fought Cinder. Again, and again and again. Each time was the same outcome, each time ended with her dying. And once, she died on the operating table.
But she woke up hours later, in a hospital bed. In a raspy voice, she croaked out, “Jaune…?” Was he there? Nora? Ren? Ruby?
Meanwhile, Jaune waited in an emergency room lounge for hours. At some point, after someone had come to tell him that Pyrrha would be in surgery for several hours, he'd gone to the hospital cafe to grab a coffee. People stared at his bloodstained appearance, but Jaune had crawled too far into his own head to really notice. He'd washed his hands and face, but his clothes would just have to stay the way they were. He wasn't leaving. Not until Pyrrha was okay.
Instead, he sat there, milking his cup of coffee while his own dreams spiraled around him. Penny's accidental death, Pyrrha kneeling on the ground in frozen terror. The Grimm attacking, the school... The vault. What had that even been about? Her screams were still echoing in his head. The sounds of combat when Cinder attacked, and then that kiss.
Jaune was completely and entirely tired of feeling helpless. But there he was, and there was nothing he could do but wait.
It was when they wheeled her into a room and let him in to sit with her that Jaune's mind touched upon a thought that ripped his heart out. It had been bad in the real world, so bad she'd probably died a little. The outlook in the dreams was not at all good, in that case.
He'd pushed that thought out of his head, dashed out a few text messages, and waited for her to wake up. And the second that she did? He roused himself from a quick nap and took her hand. "I'm here. Some of the others are... coming, I think. Soon. If they let them all in."
She turned her head towards him, managing something close to a smile. “I’m sorry.”
For scaring him, for dying, for not telling him how she’d felt sooner. There might have been time after the tournament, but destiny had other plans.
It seemed like such a small thing to say after everything they'd said before. Jaune wasn't sure what to say in return, either. What really could be said after all of that?
He shook his head and squeezed her hand a bit. "Don't be sorry. Just... rest."