Work Text:
Death, she thought, felt like drowning.
The air being ripped from her lungs, pain on every inhale, the feeling of weightlessness as her mind slowly drifts away.
Air pressed into her lungs. Awake and alive. The last face she saw now only a memory.
And then, she thinks, death feels like falling asleep.
Not in a natural way, no slow drifting off with warm thoughts of tomorrow, but quick -sudden- wrong and then-
The pain comes in waking. A body learning to breathe again, pain burning life into her veins. The moments in-between are lost; living came just as suddenly.
The third experience is slow and laborious. Her brain ripped in two, her body slowly shutting down but she is struggling to live, to survive, to save them-
She falls. She does not get back up.
Death feels like failure. An obstacle she couldn't defeat. She should've tried harder, why couldn't she-
She springs forward with a jolt of life. She still doesn't feel like one piece, but she is alive and she can, she will-
Arms hold her up, encircling and warm.
Death, she thinks, can wait one more time.