Chapter Text
The Guardian awoke as the tremors started.
They were lying on the ground, their face tilted to one side, their left hand lying across their abdomen. Their eyelids felt heavy, and it took them a precious moment to pry them open and to recall what had happened. They could remember pain, the struggle to draw breath, and murmuring the reason for it in the first place to someone before slipping away into an inky blackness. What they couldn't comprehend was why they were seemingly alive now, unless Panacea looked exactly like the place in which they had died .
Slowly clenching their hands they felt the gritty dirt of the South roll underneath their gloves. They took in the red tone of it, amplified now in the evening sky, and they flicked their eyes upward and blinked to clear their bleary vision. The sky was bluer than usual now, and their mind wandered briefly as they thought about if they had ever seen blue sky before.
Fresh pain came rushing back and interrupted their train of thought as another tremor caused them to shift involuntarily. It wrapped around their ribcage, where the blood was pooling in their lungs, and in a fit of panic they rolled over and hauled themselves to their knees to cough. Fresh blood joined the drying that lay splattered across the dirt, their body crying out in pain from the movement of their hacking coughs. Regret filled them as the pain from moving made itself known, and they groaned aloud as the tremors - much more frequent now - continued to exacerbate the pain that was snaking out from their chest to leaden their limbs.
In a moment of stillness Guardian noted two things: their sword and companion - still functioning, so it couldn't have been too long - were still there, and that their cloak didn't feel right where it was clasped. Something felt noticeably different, but their train of thought was interrupted as they were overcome by another coughing fit, which brought with it another wave of pain. It was excruciating, but they were determined not to die again. At least it wasn't as bad as before.
It...wasn't?
Guardian startled at the thought, but as they stopped to consider it they found that yes, it wasn't as bad. It hurt, and they were barely gasping breath, but they weren't on the numbing brink of death that they were before. Choosing not to question it, Guardian grasped their sword and companion, and pulled themselves to their feet. They gasped and stumbled as the ground rocked, and they braced themselves on their sword.
The South gate wasn't far. If they used their sword to lean on, a makeshift crutch, they could get there. Especially as they noticed that the pain was easing as the tremors did. Only slightly, but they noticed. For the first time in their recent memory, Guardian felt the hope that they could make it.
After they had made it to the south gate and all but collapsed on the guard standing there, they were taken to the apothecary, and it was in one of his rooms that they awoke. Their helmet was gone, which was the first thing they had noticed, as was their armour. Slowly clenching their hands they felt the bed cover rustle underneath them, soft and light and smelling faintly of herbs. The moonlight was bright on their eyes as they cracked them open, and it lit the room as they slowly turned over to take in the rest of it.
That was not their cape hanging on the hook. It caught their eye the moment they turned, and upon gazing at it with confusion for a few minutes, everything fell into place. It was Drifter who Guardian had told their story to. It was Drifter who they had died next to, and they knew that they had died. They would not be able to recreate the feeling of slipping away if they tried.
The reason why their cape felt different - slightly more weighted at the base but cooler near the neck - was because it wasn't theirs .
It was Drifter who had taken his cape and exchanged it for Guardian’s own.
Emotions they didn't have the energy to acknowledge welled up, so they looked back out of the window as a sudden exhaustion threatened them. If they saw a familiar black dog in the distance nod at them, before turning in place and walking away and out of sight, their exhaustion and pain addled mind didn’t think much of it before falling asleep again.
Guardian recovered in less than a fortnight, which stunned both the Apothecary and Guardian alike.
Their coughing cleared up to almost nothing, and the pain in their chest that had been a constant throughout the last few months had gone altogether. It was something they had openly wept in joy about, even if they couldn't understand why it had cleared in the first place. The impressive weight of knowing that their own death was imminent felt lighter from the moment they woke in Central, and continued to lift as they got better and better, as they coughed less and less, and as they breathed deeper and deeper. They had been out of the small town hospital before they knew what to do with themselves, even though that had been wanting to leave for nearly the entire time they had been there. After all, they had enough energy to dash in the small garden outside of the hospital, so why couldn’t they go home?
(They were elated they could dash without pain now, no matter how many reprimands they received from the apothecary from performing such an act so soon.)
Everyone else Guardian encountered was amazed at the incredibly speedy recovery from something that had all but brought them to death's door. Something that they weren't even sure was able to be recovered from . Guardian could not shake the thought that Drifter and his disappearance into the underground had something to do with all of that.
They had heard what had happened to Drifter very early on, of course. How the tremors started after he went down the lift into the Abyss, and how no one had seen him since. Guardian warded off those thoughts, as if it would lessen the grief he already felt at hearing the story.
They were stood outside their home, hesitating before entering. The door looked exactly the same. A smooth red metal, chipped and cracked from being exposed to the elements for so long, the green symbol on the front still there. They grasped the cloak that wasn’t theirs around their shoulders and chastised themselves: of course it was still there, it hadn’t been long since they were here last at all.
“No one’s gone in since that Blueskin left down south, y’know?”
Guardian startled at the sudden voice to their left. The shopkeeper that sold the guns that both Guardian and Drifter liked to use was leaning against the wall. Guardian blinked under their helmet at the very quiet arrival, but refrained from commenting in favour of answering him.
“Honestly I wouldn’t have blamed them if they did. I didn’t think either of us would be coming back, after all.” They replied, glancing back at the front door. “Not that there is a lot of valuable items in there anyway. If anything they would have been more useful to others rather than collecting dust.”
“Hah, always a drifter, you are. A generous one at that. ‘Loot my corpse, loot my house, once I’m dead take whatever you want’, blah, blah, blah.” The shopkeeper laughed darkly, and tapped his foot in the dust a couple of times at the sideways glare they received. “Kept an eye on the place anyway, after they found you in the South. Thought you were a goner, for sure. They’re fairly sure the Blueskin’s a goner, too. He left not long after you and well, if they didn’t find him when they found you-”
Guardian held up a hand in interruption. “Yes, thank you for your concern, but I’d rather not hear that again right now.” They lowered their hand at the slightly affronted look on the shopkeeper's’ face. “I… apologise. I have heard that tale a fair bit recently and I am still trying to come to terms with it.”
The shopkeeper shrugged, and pushed himself off the wall. “Don’t go runnin’ off to the South again.”
Guardian nodded at him as he left. “I will try.”
With that they swallowed their hesitance, activated the door to their house, and stepped into the dim light of the inside.