Work Text:
Drowning doesn’t even feel like drowning anymore.
When her eyes open, all she knows is the softly shifting space around her face, the press of hard metal on all sides, the darkness, and the burning.
Always the burning inside her chest.
She’s not even sure how she has lungs anymore. They haven’t touched air in what feels like forever. There are no bubbles streaming up from her choking, gagging mouth.
There’s just burning, and pain, like pressure coming from inside out.
Drowning doesn’t feel like drowning, yet it’s the only thing she knows.
~ ~ ~
Breathing is hard.
Quynh has only known choking in place of breathing and water in place of air for so long, but she’s trying. She stumbles along, trying to get her unsteady legs to cooperate again, and gulps down air, not understanding the sensation of it sliding in as easily as water but actually leaving her lungs when her brain commands it to.
Food is a whole other thing. She hasn’t been alive long enough to feel hunger until now, and it’s aching away in her stomach. There’s another feeling too, in her heart, and she knows it’s from a different kind of hunger; a longing for the one whose name has been spilling from her mouth like a mantra since she’s left that damned Iron Maiden and the water it trapped her in:
“Andromache,” she breathes.
~ ~ ~
Seeing Quynh again is like drowning.
The air stops at Andy’s lips, and it’s like there’s something else filling her lungs, preventing her from pulling the air in. She can’t breathe. She can only stare at her lover, who looks the same as she did centuries ago.
Andy rushes forward, driven and pulled towards Quynh as if by the tide.
Quynh is grinning, tears streaming down her face, as she breaks into a stumbling but determined run. It’s clear she hasn’t run in as long as Andy has last seen her, and it hurts to see any kind of water on Quynh’s beautiful skin, but Andy can’t think of a more joyous and relieving moment in her life.
They crash into each other like waves breaking. Quynh’s watery brown eyes dance as they take in Andy’s face, love pouring out of her very being, filling the hole that’s been aching in Andy’s chest for centuries on end.
“I love you, Quynh” Andy chokes out, finally finally getting to say it to her again since they were torn apart in that cell.
“I love you too,” Quynh croaks, as her mouth dives to meet Andy’s.
Kissing each other is like finally being able to breathe again.