There's something about a gentle touch against this backdrop that verges on utterly undoing. Tension shoots through him as he fights down the deeply embedded instinct to lash out like a wounded animal caught in a trap, to snap and snarl at anyone with the audacity to witness such a fundamental moment of weakness. Having lived through this once was bad enough, and a second time hurts, but someone else being here to see it just feels like an act of malice from the universe. They've shared pain all their lives, but pain is simply a fact of existence. This is...different.
He doesn't relax into the touch, but nor does he pull away. That alone is an effort of will.
The beat of her heart is steady under his palm. Measured. Nothing like the desperate pounding he can hear echoing in his ears, feel hammering against the cage of his ribs. He's dizzy with it, panic clawing its way up his throat as he struggles to breathe. But at that matter of fact offer he shakes his head sharply. The drive to keep fighting to survive is deeper than need, deeper than instinct, deeper than the grafted metal his bones have grown around. They need to keep moving and get the fuck out of here, and he refuses to be the reason that doesn't happen. It hurts, but he knows how to breathe through pain; it's humiliating, but since when does he get to have any kind of fucking dignity. He survived this once and he'll do it again. They're going to get out of here. And then he's going to go out there and find whoever thought it was a good idea to build this fucking nightmare machine, and give them a few memories of their own they'll flinch from having anyone else see.
There's a brutal, hard-learned abruptness to the way he forces himself back to an even keel, gritting his teeth and seeming almost to stop breathing for a few long moments before he raises his chin sharply, squares his shoulders, and takes in a slow, shuddering breath. His eyes are red-rimmed and wet when he blinks them open, but there's a glint of grim determination in the depths. "I'm good," he says, voice rough, and— well, it's not true exactly, but it's not a lie either. He can keep going. He'll live. What more can you really ask for.
His fingertips press in slightly more firmly against her skin for a moment — not quite gratitude but more than acknowledgement — before he pulls away, braces himself with a grimace, and turns to look himself in the eye.
He'd known what he expected to see, but it still takes him aback how young the face looking back at him is; fifteen, maybe sixteen at a push. At his feet is an adult man, stirring weakly in a spreading pool of blood. Behind him are three other kids, all in the same thin, scrub-like uniforms. One is already down; the other two are poised to flee with panic in their eyes. The smaller of the two, a girl with albino coloring and a cage of metal around her face, is frozen in the act of reaching out to try and grab his arm. There's a spark of vicious triumph in the kid's eyes despite the fresh tear tracks cutting down his cheeks, the sudden power of fighting back for the first time in his miserable life. It won't last more than a moment. In a few seconds he's going to turn around and see what it cost.
All he had to do was run. Why couldn't he just have fucking run.
Inevitably, the scene unfreezes. The hail of shots in both directions passes through them, ghostlike, without so much as a whisper of sensation. Behind him he hears the muted thump of bodies hitting the ground. Three shots; three clean, immediate kills. Not bad for someone who'd never touched a weapon before that moment. There's no fucking denying they did a good job making him into what he is, is there.
If there's one mercy in all of this, it's that from this vantage he doesn't have to see the look on his younger self's face as he turns and sees the others lying still and limp on the ground. It's painful enough to witness the sudden defensive drawing up of his shoulders, the shaky half-step back he takes. From somewhere beyond the edges of the scene there's the distant, echoing sound of shouting, of many pairs of booted feet pounding against the metal flooring. The kid hesitates a second longer before breaking and turning to run, the crack of gunfire roaring through the mists in the endless moment before the scene fades out.
no subject
He doesn't relax into the touch, but nor does he pull away. That alone is an effort of will.
The beat of her heart is steady under his palm. Measured. Nothing like the desperate pounding he can hear echoing in his ears, feel hammering against the cage of his ribs. He's dizzy with it, panic clawing its way up his throat as he struggles to breathe. But at that matter of fact offer he shakes his head sharply. The drive to keep fighting to survive is deeper than need, deeper than instinct, deeper than the grafted metal his bones have grown around. They need to keep moving and get the fuck out of here, and he refuses to be the reason that doesn't happen. It hurts, but he knows how to breathe through pain; it's humiliating, but since when does he get to have any kind of fucking dignity. He survived this once and he'll do it again. They're going to get out of here. And then he's going to go out there and find whoever thought it was a good idea to build this fucking nightmare machine, and give them a few memories of their own they'll flinch from having anyone else see.
There's a brutal, hard-learned abruptness to the way he forces himself back to an even keel, gritting his teeth and seeming almost to stop breathing for a few long moments before he raises his chin sharply, squares his shoulders, and takes in a slow, shuddering breath. His eyes are red-rimmed and wet when he blinks them open, but there's a glint of grim determination in the depths. "I'm good," he says, voice rough, and— well, it's not true exactly, but it's not a lie either. He can keep going. He'll live. What more can you really ask for.
His fingertips press in slightly more firmly against her skin for a moment — not quite gratitude but more than acknowledgement — before he pulls away, braces himself with a grimace, and turns to look himself in the eye.
He'd known what he expected to see, but it still takes him aback how young the face looking back at him is; fifteen, maybe sixteen at a push. At his feet is an adult man, stirring weakly in a spreading pool of blood. Behind him are three other kids, all in the same thin, scrub-like uniforms. One is already down; the other two are poised to flee with panic in their eyes. The smaller of the two, a girl with albino coloring and a cage of metal around her face, is frozen in the act of reaching out to try and grab his arm. There's a spark of vicious triumph in the kid's eyes despite the fresh tear tracks cutting down his cheeks, the sudden power of fighting back for the first time in his miserable life. It won't last more than a moment. In a few seconds he's going to turn around and see what it cost.
All he had to do was run. Why couldn't he just have fucking run.
Inevitably, the scene unfreezes. The hail of shots in both directions passes through them, ghostlike, without so much as a whisper of sensation. Behind him he hears the muted thump of bodies hitting the ground. Three shots; three clean, immediate kills. Not bad for someone who'd never touched a weapon before that moment. There's no fucking denying they did a good job making him into what he is, is there.
If there's one mercy in all of this, it's that from this vantage he doesn't have to see the look on his younger self's face as he turns and sees the others lying still and limp on the ground. It's painful enough to witness the sudden defensive drawing up of his shoulders, the shaky half-step back he takes. From somewhere beyond the edges of the scene there's the distant, echoing sound of shouting, of many pairs of booted feet pounding against the metal flooring. The kid hesitates a second longer before breaking and turning to run, the crack of gunfire roaring through the mists in the endless moment before the scene fades out.