Chapter Text
He could hear the cries of the animals around him. It was as if nature itself was crying out. Beneath him, around him, everywhere. The cries of animals that were burning or desperately trying to flee. The cries of burning trees and bushes that were slowly succumbing to the flames that attacked them. Deafening cries drowning out the deafening roar of the fire. And him, in the very middle of it. Alone…
The wind was picking up around him, almost sounding like it was whispering words, calling out to him, telling him to follow its call.
But running wasn’t an option. This place was sacred to him, he couldn’t let it be destroyed. Not before-
The wind got stronger, pulling at him, getting more insistent in its pleas.
His people had always known the risks of living where they did. They had deliberately chosen the place because of the material the trees provided, and all the wildlife residing in the forest around them. It had been the ideal home, there was no way they could have gotten any closer to the nature that they had sworn to protect. He could still remember when he had first gone into the woods with his tribe’s lumberjacks. He would always remember the feeling of working so close to nature, feeling the connection strengthen with everything he took and gave in return. And now it was in flames.
He could feel the flames reaching out to him and still he was floating in the air, frozen, watching. His strength was slowly depleting and it was getting harder and harder to stay airborne, to keep breathing.
Not yet… I can’t…
He could feel his sight getting blurry, the images before him blurring until nothing but colorful dots remained.
He could almost make out actual words now. The wind was screaming…
He could feel himself falling, clinging to the wind that was shaking him, yelling at him to…
“WAKE UP!”
Windlifter’s eyes snapped open, his breathing quickening to the point that he was hyperventilating as he desperately tried to make out where he was.
“Hey! Look at me, listen to my voice! Deep breaths, in and out, you hear me?”
Wind? Through the blur of colors and voices around him, this one voice sounded familiar.
“That’s it. Good. Just breathe. That’s right, everything will be okay. No need to panic.”
The voice was calm, cool lifts resting against his hot plating, slowly rubbing his sides in a calming motion. Windlifter let his eyes fall shut again, following the wind’s instruction and focusing on his breathing. The images – memories – slowly faded into the background as he put his entire focus on the touch to his side, grounding him into reality.
“There you go.”
The rubbing slowly subsided, forcing Windlifter to open his eyes again. He was in an emergency room, from the looks of it in a small countryside hospital. One look at himself showed that he was covered in burns and had several smaller injuries over his body. And with the realization that he was currently in pain, came the realization where it had come from.
It wasn’t a dream…
It felt like something was shattering inside him and before he knew it, he was in tears.
“Hey… Don’t cry.”
Windlifters focus snapped to the other mechanism in the room, nearly forgotten through the realization that his home, his family, his entire village was gone.
“Hey… Uh… So… Your chart doesn’t state your last name, so for the sake of communication I’ll just go by your first.”
Windlifter remained silent. There was nothing that the forklift could do to change his situation. He had failed his people, and even worse, his nature that he had sworn to protect.
“Oh no you don’t! You don’t get to have survivors guilt when everybody survived. That’s not how it works Windlifter.”
What?
“You got them out. I don’t know how the hell you did it on your own but you kept the fire in check long enough for your village to get to safety. You got them out.”
The ‘and then you managed to crash right into the flames, after everybody was already safe and you had no more business anywhere near the fire, damn it!’ was hanging in the air unsaid. And still, Windlifter heard it, just like he had heard the wind.
“We barely managed to get you back… You were well on your way to shut yourself down. Your injuries aren’t that grave - for the stunt you pulled they are actually pretty minor - but I think you were unconsciously trying to save yourself from waking up to the reality of what happened. We tried everything, believe me. I ended up talking to you for half an hour, at least half of that I was yelling. There was just no getting through to you…”
Windlifter couldn’t help it, he raised an eyelid and stared at the mechanic with a mix of disbelief and gratitude.
“You yelled at an unconscious patient?”
The look on the forklift’s face turned somewhat sheepish as he regarded him with a crooked smile.
“Yep. Got me into quite some trouble too… I think it may have cost me my job. I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing though. We were losing you!”
His words were quiet but no less determined and to Windlifter they rang core deep.
“Thank you, wind.”
“The name’s Maru, but I’ll take you mistaking me for yourself as a compliment.”
Windlifter chuckled, mirroring the smile that slowly overtook the mechanic’s lips.
“When I was unconscious I was back in the flames. I would have died if it hadn’t been for the wind holding me back. I heard you.”
At that, Maru blushed, the sheepish expression returning to his face as he regarded Windlifter with a wary look.
“You heard everything I said?”
Windlifter shook his head, simultaneously wondering just what the mechanic could have possibly yelled at him to have him blushing and get him fired.
“I just heard the wind whisper. I couldn’t make out the actual words, aside from you screaming that I should wake up at the end. But you kept me from falling nonetheless.”
“Huh.”
Maru looked a mix of intrigued and relieved at that news, the smile slowly returning to his face as he carefully bumped Windlifter’s side.
“So, you talk to the winds, ey? Anything else I should know about you? Like how in the name of the seven skies you ended up taking on that fire all alone?”
That sobered him up again, the memories slamming into him full force. He nearly lost himself in them for a second, distantly noticing the cool lifts returning to his side.
“I wanted to protect our nature from the danger of fire that our people inflict on it. We belief in letting nature run its course and let the fires come and renew the earth. But I didn’t want the home of so much life to get destroyed by the additional danger that we proposed. So I trained, got certified. I never did something about the smaller fires. The natural ones. They always took care of themselves, as Kayori intended. Until suddenly the wind turned against our village and then there were too many of them at once.”
Maru nodded, tree-green eyes never leaving his. At that moment, more than anything, they served as a reminder of his failure.
“Don’t blame yourself Windlifter. You did what you thought was right. And you did a hell of a job of it! I’m not sure how many people would have been able to pull something like that off and get out relatively unharmed. And I know quite a few who tried.”
At Windlifters questioning look, Maru’s eyes turned sad.
“You get used to people dying from stunts like yours when you do the job for a while. That, and I occasionally volunteer to be on call for several fire departments in case they need an extra mechanic. So believe me, doing what you did…”
His voice broke for a second, but Windlifter understood. They stayed silent for a minute, each of them caught up in their own thoughts on the subject. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Maru cleared his throat and slowly distanced himself from the helicopter.
“I should probably go. You have some recovering to do and I shouldn’t even be here, so I better leave before they throw me out for patient harassment.”
His smile turned into a somewhat mischievous smirk and Windlifter distantly wondered how this person even became a mechanic. So far his personality didn’t quite fit the image of the kind and reserved healer. Then again, I would probably have died if it weren’t for that attitude of his… Maru was already halfway out the door before Windlifter fully realized that he had even moved.
“Just so you know, don’t expect me getting fired to keep me from making sure you actually recover from this, copy that?”
The smirk was audible in his voice and Windlifter couldn’t help the small smile that overtook his face at that.
“I will be waiting, wind.”
Maru snorted, before letting the door slide shut behind him.
I think I might even look forward to it.