Countdown [Milliways]
Feb. 25th, 2007 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
princeinexileZuko doesn't go down into the Bar unless the pain has moved to a place he can manage. Today, it settles in his legs, making walking agony-- he lays back on the couch, panting, panting--
--thinking of the dogs, tongues dangling out, the summer they got them when they were great, grey fluff balls, full of wonder and love and innocence despite that he'd put a broadsword through their mother's brain pan--
--until it passes.
He doesn't go down to the Bar. The pain clenches his heart, and he can't stop his eye from watering. Every lub-dub may kill him. His heart may stop. Gasping for breath, he twists and turns, remembering Semirhage made a man scream for five years, it was five years--
Having reached five days, Zuko keeps counting.
His ribs are starting to show. Too often it hurts to eat -- his throat closes, rebels against food. His stomach sours, brings it back up. He's slept a few nights -- when he can sleep -- on the bathroom floor where the tile is like ice against his flesh.
The first time the pain sank it's teeth into his his groin, he was trying to pass water -- he did, oh, he did-- all over the damn place, after the pain made his vision blur and his world spin. He fell, struck his head-- another pain, that's where it moved-- and then had to wait there, in the mess; the stink burned his nostrils and his head throbbed all the harder for it. Tender flesh decided the wash cloth was wires and razors, when it came time to clean himself up.
Six. Seven. Still counting.
Soemtimes he doesn't leave the bed; that doesn't make things more comfortable. No, there's pain whether he's laid out on a bed of rocks or whether he's walking over the barbed wire that his carpet's become.
Zuko's thoughts are back -- stirring in his voice, not the peasant Li's -- and the boy allows himself to hear his uncle's voice, reprimanding: You never think these things through! Who will save you now?
Despair only nestles him closer when he realizes he's still to proud to let himself be saved at all.
--thinking of the dogs, tongues dangling out, the summer they got them when they were great, grey fluff balls, full of wonder and love and innocence despite that he'd put a broadsword through their mother's brain pan--
--until it passes.
He doesn't go down to the Bar. The pain clenches his heart, and he can't stop his eye from watering. Every lub-dub may kill him. His heart may stop. Gasping for breath, he twists and turns, remembering Semirhage made a man scream for five years, it was five years--
Having reached five days, Zuko keeps counting.
His ribs are starting to show. Too often it hurts to eat -- his throat closes, rebels against food. His stomach sours, brings it back up. He's slept a few nights -- when he can sleep -- on the bathroom floor where the tile is like ice against his flesh.
The first time the pain sank it's teeth into his his groin, he was trying to pass water -- he did, oh, he did-- all over the damn place, after the pain made his vision blur and his world spin. He fell, struck his head-- another pain, that's where it moved-- and then had to wait there, in the mess; the stink burned his nostrils and his head throbbed all the harder for it. Tender flesh decided the wash cloth was wires and razors, when it came time to clean himself up.
Six. Seven. Still counting.
Soemtimes he doesn't leave the bed; that doesn't make things more comfortable. No, there's pain whether he's laid out on a bed of rocks or whether he's walking over the barbed wire that his carpet's become.
Zuko's thoughts are back -- stirring in his voice, not the peasant Li's -- and the boy allows himself to hear his uncle's voice, reprimanding: You never think these things through! Who will save you now?
Despair only nestles him closer when he realizes he's still to proud to let himself be saved at all.
