through a glass, darkly

[soldado]

WHO: Daniel Sousa
WHERE: The Fountain
WHEN: Early morning of January 7
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Description and references of drowning and death. More to come???
STATUS: Open

---

He tells himself not to breath.

That's what happened to his buddy Jerry after their landing craft ran aground on the sandbars and they had to wade to shore in water up to their necks. Jerry was next to him in the water and, when he had made it to land, Jerry wasn't there anymore. His heavy rucksack had dragged him down, down, down until he disappeared in the inky blackness of the sea.

He struggles against the water. He should conserve his strength. So that, if it does happen, he has enough for the final struggle. He tries to lay on his back so he'll float and rise to the surface. But his damn leg is too heavy and drags him further, further down. He panics, the streaming tears mingling with the water, and he reaches down to remove the prosthetic. He stops himself. He's not getting rid of the leg. If it does happen, he's already decided that it'll happen on his own two feet.

Darkness begins to cloud his vision and his brain feels like it's filling with cotton balls. As a kid, he wondered how the wicked must've felt when the windows of heaven opened and it rained for forty days and forty nights. A steady flow of rain and the waters becoming increasingly higher as the days passed. During some thunderstorms, he would wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that God was destroying humanity for its sins again. How odd was it to think that, once upon a time, he thought humanity needed any help destroying itself.

His lungs on fire, a scream claws at his throat. On instinct, his body reacts and takes in a gulp. Breathing in water is preferable to asphyxiation, or so his body thinks. Water fills his mouth and goes down his throat. The muscles around his larynx contracts and he begins to suffocate. His throat constricts and tightens. He loses the strength to struggle.

Then suddenly, a nudge. It's vague — like a breeze amongst flowers. He rises to the top, slowly.

When he comes up from the water, he takes in several sharp breaths of air, gasping and violently coughing. He almost bursts in to tears at how good the oxygen tastes and that makes the coughing worse. The wind cuts across his cheeks, hard and sharp like bullets. He breathes, shakily. Then he starts to pull himself out from the fountain. His hand grips the edge of the fountain and his hand is almost numb from the bitter cold. His aluminum crutch hangs limply at his side, but his mind is so focused on getting out that he doesn't notice it (nor does he notice the change of clothing or the rucksack). He struggles for a few minutes, only able to pull himself halfway out before collapsing, his body crucified with lassitude.

Comments

[rangerbecket]

Raleigh tends to be an early riser and, like as not, he usually swings by the fountain at least once on patrol before going to check the river lines for fish. It's a good thing he's done it today because a guy's come up and it looks like he could use some help getting inside to somewhere warm before he freezes to death.

"Hey, you need my help getting indoors?" Raleigh asks. He doesn't want to call attention to the crutch or the prosthetic if he doesn't have to but if this guy does need a little extra assistance, Raleigh wants to offer it. "I don't want you to die of frostbite."

[soldado]

He remembers.... he remembers the last time: rain sharp and hard like bullets, moans mingling with the howling winds, sweat popping on his forehead, despite the chill in the air; pain fading to numbness and a peacefulness settling over his body —

A voice permeates through the fog.

It jolts him back to consciousness. Gasps wreck his body, as if there's not enough air in the world for him, and then he starts to shake from the cold. The lower half of his body is still submerged in the fountain. His teeth begins to chatter, making it difficult for him to speak and for him to be understood. He lifts his head to the person and it takes a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and make out a figure.

"W-where am I?" he stutters out.

[rangerbecket]

"Wish I could say it was a good place but it's some village where we're all trapped for the time being. There's a better explanation but I'm going to leave it until you're not about to freeze to death."

Raleigh offers his hands. "Come on. I'll help you out and down to the inn. You can at least dry out and warm up there."

[chosenbytheocean]

Moana jumped back when a man came crawling out of the fountain. She felt as if this was happening a lot since she's been here but then she had no base to compare it too. Her hands were raised, her palms out stretched towards him. In her jacket it made her look a little silly so she curled her fingers in and dropped her arms down to her sides. So far everyone's been.... sort of nice. There was no reason this man would be any different.

"Hi. I know you're still breathing but are you okay? Not hurt or anything?" She didn't know that people were healed when they arrived here. She just knew that he'd pulled himself from the fountain and was gasping.

The water could be very mean when it wanted to be.

inn;

[repressings]

He doesn't like new arrivals much. That's not to say he doesn't like the people--he likes all the different people that come, all new and exciting with stories he can only dream of--it's that they're here, stuck in a place that's strangely monotonous and wildly erratic all at once. It's crushing when he sees someone he doesn't recognize open the inn door, no matter who, because it's another addition to something he thought, for a very long time, was purgatory.

He'd blame himself for starting all of this, except he's starting to believe what the others have been saying--that it's someone else. More than one person--people--holing them up here for who knows what reason.

When the stranger arrives, crutch and all, Credence isn't contemplating things like why or who or how they're all here--he's simply eating and trying to figure out if he should tackle sweeping the upstairs or downstairs first. It's a mundane but pleasant thought, and unfortunately one that's ripped from him immediately once the door opens, the familiar chill of winter whips through the place. He doesn't bother to hide the rather alarmed look on his face when he cranes his neck over to get a look at who opened it.

He was expecting something different. Something that's certainly not a man with a crutch, and it occurs to him that this hasn't happened before in the month or so he's been there--arrivals, yes, of course, but not arrivals already injured. Scrambling to his feet, his bowl of soup forgotten, he's already moving to the chair nearest to the fire to pull it out for the stranger. He doesn't raise his voice, he never raises his voice--but he gently clear his throat in an attempt to get his attention, hunched over and caved into himself. The stranger is wet and tired and probably panicked, and Credence knows all about panic. He knows about fear, too, and his gaze lingers over the other's leg for a brief moment before finally speaking.

"Here," he motions to the table. "You can warm up, um--your backpack, it has some clothes... you just came out of the fountain, right?" He's getting better at this, better at talking to people. Even if he still can't quite look them in the eye.

[candor1]

Cassian had been avoiding the fountain. Yet, as the… well… fulcrum of this place, in every conceivable way, he passed near it on every sweep.

He was nearby this time when he heard the splashing and retching sounds—someone coughing on water and gasping for air.

His mind froze, but, with the training it had, his body didn't need his mind to do what it had to. Cassian instantly turned and took off for the fountain at a dead run.

It wasn't Jyn. It wasn't Kay. (As if Kay would be able to rise through the water. —But this fountain didn't obey the laws of physics so stop being idiotic.) It wasn't Chirrut or Baze or Bodhi or anyone he knew. Not for the first time, he was angry at himself for allowing the thought at all. He'd been avoiding the fountain precisely to avoid such thoughts.

But the thoughts didn't slow him down for even a second. He was at the fountain in strides, pulling off his own pack and jacket as he went, and throwing them aside; then down on one knee with the other braced against the fountain's wall, throwing his arms around the newcomer's torso (in between his ribs and arms/entangled crutch) to dead-man lift him out of the water.

[womanofvalue]

In a village as small as this, word does travel quickly. It's not that Peggy intends to be gossipy, but when she's at the inn to collect some food for the day (her mind still keeping her on rations, even now), she hears someone talking about a new arrival that they helped out by the fountain just now. Dark haired, handsome, and with a crutch. Peggy keeps collecting food, steadfastly keeping her head and hopes down, because it could be anyone. Plenty of people have problems with their leg and it could be anyone, not necessarily Daniel.

And yet, she can't help but feel grateful that she's done her hair properly and she'd put on lipstick to be here in public. "Excuse me, will you just, hold this please," she insists, shoving the box of food at them before hauling her coat on to rush towards the fountain as quickly as she can, searching for a familiar face.

At first, Peggy doesn't see a soul in sight, her heart falling to think that she'd briefly thought that she finally had an ally here from her own time. She searches the nearby snow for tracks or evidence, but none is there before her. It's in her haste to search that she doesn't realize that there's a blind spot behind her that's been completely ignored and it's when she turns to inspect it that Peggy collides with a hard obstacle, sending them both crashing down, her knee clattering against a very familiar crutch.

Digging her hands into the snow on either side of him, Peggy doesn't quite register that she's flush against him until the awkwardness of a deep breath places them utterly firmly together, something that brings her right back to what had happened the moment before she'd arrived. "Daniel," she breathes out in awe. "You're here. You're real," she marvels, like she can't exactly believe it. She manages to lift herself up just slightly, guilt plaguing her as she realizes she's gone and knocked him over. "Are you all right?" she asks, her fingers lightly pressing through the short hairs at his temple, her gaze sliding all over his face as if she doesn't know where to start looking.