Work Text:
A thick haze invaded his thoughts. It swirled slowly, settling into every corner of his mind with a heavy weight and skimming through the delicate threads of thought and being that were essential to him; pulling at them sharply, trying to unravel them into a jumbled mess of words and emotions that tried desperately to form coherence, to form clarity. Blurry pictures assaulted his senses, fighting through the fog that was almost reminiscent of the fog that perpetually surrounded his homeland, but fell apart in his mind’s feeble grasp.
However, in amongst the hazy confusion one thing was clear: he was cold.
The icy feeling snaked through his limbs, encompassing them in a frozen numbness that dulled the pain - oh, of course there was pain - to the bearest of tingles, the work of a mind that was desperately trying to protect its vessel. This feeling was difficult to ignore, settling heavily on his chest and causing spikes of discomfort to course through him. The realisation that something was wrong struck him suddenly, the influx of sensory data compiling in his mind and hitting all at once, and in response he tried to curl up to escape from it; but his legs were unresponsive, the toes on his right foot twitching slightly and shooting sparks of pain through his nerves.
His involuntary groan of pain seemed far too loud to his ears, rising scratchily from his dry throat and, almost at once, everything became marginally clearer.
Heavy eyelids struggled to open, dim light assaulting unfocused hazel eyes, causing a moan to escape past chapped lips and for the effort he’d spent to fail him, his lids drooping shut. He exhaled slowly, his ribs screaming in protest at the action, and reached out across cool, jagged rock with a heavy right hand. Immediately he encountered a cold, fleshy barrier.
His eyes flew open, watering from a mixture of sudden light and discomfort, and he flinched; his mind struggling to pull together what it remembered and what it was seeing, converging in a heavy mix of disorientation that threatened to overwhelm him, and with great difficulty he turned his head to the right.
Focusing on the pale skin of the man who lay next to him, widening in horror at the trail of blood that led from a slack mouth and staring frightfully into lifeless blue eyes, he couldn’t stop the words that slipped past a numb tongue and out from his lips.
“R-ryan?”