all i can do is stand on the curb and say sorry about the blood in your mouth
The little bit of support he’d had, the hands on his head, fall away as he makes his request, and without it, Nate slumps again. Everything had seemed so fast before, the pain burning through what felt like minutes, hours, days. But now, it feels like he’s alone for far too long, long enough for paranoia and panic and pleading to creep back into him, to start a cacophonous roar in his head, somehow carving out a space between everything else.
His hand closes around the handle of the mirror easily, not unlike a child in that way, his instinct to grip, to hold. Once he’s told what it is though, it’s lifted, trembling the whole while, only making it that much more difficult for things to come into focus, for it to make sense. He finds his own eye in the mirror, stares, because... it doesn’t make sense. What he sees doesn’t even make sense as a face, but he’s not seeing the whole picture still.
It’s as if he’s the only person in the room, not asking for help, not heeding whatever reaction Sunjata has as he lifts his hand away from his face, dragging the makeshift bandage with it, a low clicking that’s trying to be a hiss leaving him as it pulls on blackened edges of whatever it is that’s replaced his face.
Everything around him fades, as he zeroes in on the reflection, the curse staring back at him in the mirror. A gash, splitting him in two, ragged and cracked at its edges, but deadly straight at its deepest, baring bone, in his cheek, in his nose, in his brow. Its strange how he’s still red inside, when that isn’t the colour of the blood, of the fluid, still smouldering and sizzling into itself, sending tendrils of burns deeper into skin, widening the wound for every moment it isn’t helped. It’s already scars, already there permanently, already replacing everything he was.
And his eye. At least it’s was a clean cut some part of him says, a straight line, splitting it apart. It breaks him. A little bit. The mirror doesn’t move, his gaze doesn’t shift away, but a bubble of what sounds like coughing at first leaves him, his mouth barely moving with it. He almost chokes on it, drops the mirror with how he jerks, and then tips back, the noise revealed as laughter, absolutely humourless, dragging out of him, dragging tears to the one good eye.
Whatever this moment is, it lasts too long. Too long where he refuses to move, or be moved, where that terrible rasping sound leaves him, though when it finally stops, it’s almost worse, gurgling into nothing. Some part of him, perhaps an ascended system, keeping him safe, perhaps training, how to deal with this outside of himself, whatever it is, it forces words out of him. ”W... ssh it.” He doesn’t know where the water is, but he knows it’s there, knows Sunjata has it, knows his instructions will be followed.
He doesn’t know then when the water touches him, it will sizzle, steam up, the last of the burning dousing with a hiss, like its angry it couldn’t linger, couldn’t eat into him more. All hell fee is the sudden absence of burning pain, the relief cutting any control he’d managed to keep hold of, sending him completely limp, dropping to the couch, or the floor, or Sunjata’s arms.
His hand closes around the handle of the mirror easily, not unlike a child in that way, his instinct to grip, to hold. Once he’s told what it is though, it’s lifted, trembling the whole while, only making it that much more difficult for things to come into focus, for it to make sense. He finds his own eye in the mirror, stares, because... it doesn’t make sense. What he sees doesn’t even make sense as a face, but he’s not seeing the whole picture still.
It’s as if he’s the only person in the room, not asking for help, not heeding whatever reaction Sunjata has as he lifts his hand away from his face, dragging the makeshift bandage with it, a low clicking that’s trying to be a hiss leaving him as it pulls on blackened edges of whatever it is that’s replaced his face.
Everything around him fades, as he zeroes in on the reflection, the curse staring back at him in the mirror. A gash, splitting him in two, ragged and cracked at its edges, but deadly straight at its deepest, baring bone, in his cheek, in his nose, in his brow. Its strange how he’s still red inside, when that isn’t the colour of the blood, of the fluid, still smouldering and sizzling into itself, sending tendrils of burns deeper into skin, widening the wound for every moment it isn’t helped. It’s already scars, already there permanently, already replacing everything he was.
And his eye. At least it’s was a clean cut some part of him says, a straight line, splitting it apart. It breaks him. A little bit. The mirror doesn’t move, his gaze doesn’t shift away, but a bubble of what sounds like coughing at first leaves him, his mouth barely moving with it. He almost chokes on it, drops the mirror with how he jerks, and then tips back, the noise revealed as laughter, absolutely humourless, dragging out of him, dragging tears to the one good eye.
Whatever this moment is, it lasts too long. Too long where he refuses to move, or be moved, where that terrible rasping sound leaves him, though when it finally stops, it’s almost worse, gurgling into nothing. Some part of him, perhaps an ascended system, keeping him safe, perhaps training, how to deal with this outside of himself, whatever it is, it forces words out of him. ”W... ssh it.” He doesn’t know where the water is, but he knows it’s there, knows Sunjata has it, knows his instructions will be followed.
He doesn’t know then when the water touches him, it will sizzle, steam up, the last of the burning dousing with a hiss, like its angry it couldn’t linger, couldn’t eat into him more. All hell fee is the sudden absence of burning pain, the relief cutting any control he’d managed to keep hold of, sending him completely limp, dropping to the couch, or the floor, or Sunjata’s arms.
i wish it was mine
NATE
