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The first thing Fitz feels when they come to is heat. Everpresent, ever burning, fiery heat. Everbright, ever glowing, fiery light. Where is he, what’s going on? The second thing Fitz feels when they come to is cold, like coals snuffed out by a stray boot or a rain storm. Ashy and messy and thick and dirty and unnatural and-
The third, and least alarming (at least, in the moment) thing Fitzgerald Massey, lineup player for the Hawai’i Fridays, feels when he comes to is a pair of hands on his shoulders shaking him awake. Shit, that’s probably important, huh? Moving to try to open their eyes and finding them shut with what feels to Massey like some sort of weird ash, he brings his hand up to try to at least get a grip on his surroundings, only to feel it connect with the arm belonging to (presumably) one of the aforementioned hands. He shakes his head, trying to loosen the sedentary- stuff off of their face, but, upon getting greeted by a throbbing headache, decide that might not be the best idea.
Mumbling an “ow, fuck” on instinct, the hands leave his shoulders and he feels someone shuffle back a bit. Moving their hands with a surprising amount of difficulty (what is this stuff made of, titanium?), they go to wipe away some of the junk all over them, maybe try to get a grip on their surroundings. The person they see when they get the chance to look around, though…
They weren’t expecting to see a dead woman.
It looks to him from where they are, and by her general demeanor, on edge and panicked, like the former star pitcher for the Seattle Garages (that he seems to be forgetting the name of, oh crud) doesn’t have much of a clue what’s going on either. How is she here? What’s happening? Is she trying to say something? Unfortunately for them, his ears are still ringing, and their vision is blurry, so they don’t quite catch if she’s saying anything to him. And, since he can’t get a grip on the individual in front of him, spawning a font of questions ranging from ‘Where am I?’ to ‘What the fuck is going on?’, he decides that maybe, hey, location might be important here.
He might be a bit dazed still, now that he thinks about it.
There’s time to think about that and every other alarming thing around later, but for now, the situation at hand. Moving to try to position themself in a way that might be more advantageous for figuring out what’s happening, he realizes, to his relief(?), he’s sitting up against a black wall. Actually, scratch that, if it weren’t for the person across from him looking exceedingly on edge, he’d think it was completely dark in here, since everything around them seems to take on a black almost imperceptible color, soaking up the scarce light that comes into contact with it from nearby behind the wall. Again, probably not the most pressing issue at hand, considering he realized he wasn’t breathing about thirty seconds ago.
Wiping away the grey soot-esque powder covering their mouth and preventing them from speaking, Fitz hopes enough of the stuff’s cleared out at this point he can hear anything the lady says. Wait, dammit, she’s already talking. Straining, they think they can sort of catch what she’s saying, but they try to get the ash out of their ears to hopefully improve the amount he can understand.
“A-e y-- o-ay? Wha- hap--n-d? C-n y-u hea- -e, h-w -id -ou g-t -er-?”
Well, turns out their efforts didn’t do all that much. Unable to understand what she’s saying, but catching enough to hear questions, Fitz decides it’s probably a good idea to say something.
“Hello?” they say, testing out the waters of talking only to find their throat uncharacteristically dry and their voice weak and raspy. “I can barely hear you through all of this- uh, this um- well I don’t know what it is, but it’s pretty thick.”
She seems to relax a bit at getting a response, but not very much, letting out a small relieved sigh and gesturing to probably get some of the- fuck it, he’s just gonna call it ash, out of his ears. He does, or at least, tries to, and now that some of it’s gone he can more make out both the voice of the person in front of him and the roar of something behind him. Well, at least he’s got a wall, he’ll figure that one out later.
“Okay, can you hear me now?”
“Loud and- well, sort of clear.” He echoes back with a response, and, again, finds it surprisingly difficult to speak. Why is that?
“Alright, now that we’ve got that out of the way, are you OK?”
The fact that they have to stop and consider that, to Fitzgerald, is confusing, but, again, he’s going to have to worry about that later. He’s a Friday, after all, so procrastinating moral dilemmas as an option is always on the table. Well, let’s see, he doesn’t know where he is, no idea why he’s looking at the person he saw got killed less than two weeks ago on the news, his head decided to jump straight into a volcano with how bad it hurts, but overall-
“I mean, as far as things go, could be worse-”
A much more pronounced, much more relieved sigh follows that. “Thank fuck, because if you were dead I did not know what to do with the corpse,” she says, almost jokingly, probably trying to relieve some of the tension. To her credit, it works.
“Pfft- yeah, that’s fair."
Now that he’s a lot less ash-ed up and hazy, he can kind of get a better grip of their surroundings. Notably, the lack of a ceiling and walls that stretch upwards as far as the eye can see, which, to be fair, isn’t very far considering the low light and the black coloration. The woman across from him has a flannel tied around her waist, and seems to be sporting a less formal Garages uniform along with a cap sporting the team’s branding. This is the first time they’ve met, face to face, since the Fridays never played the Garages, and as far as Fitz had known a few days ago, they wouldn’t ever meet, considering, you know, she’s supposed to be dead.
“Okay, so, I get you uh- probably don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t really know either, but um… do you have any questions or anything? I don’t-” She trails off from there, but the message rings almost as loud as Fitzgerald’s ears right now.
Finally. They’re getting to it. “HOO BOY do I have questions. First, where the heck are we? Second, how are you here? I thought you died?? Third, what’s going on? Fourth, again, what’s going on? And uh- yeah, what the fuck-” their voice cracks, again, at that last word, “is going on?”
She looks like she’s about to say something when she stops herself to more thoroughly ponder her choice of phrasing here. It takes her a bit, or at least a few seconds too long to be comfortable, to settle on a response. Her expression seems to get a bit more sullen as she continues.
“Ok, what’s… what’s the last thing you remember before waking up here?”
Massey has to think for a second on that one. The last thing… that’d be-
Oh gods.
Inning… something, and they’re walking up to plate when they see the Umpire looking at them weird. Not focusing on the pitcher, but him, specifically him. Weird, again, but probably nothing, right? The eyes behind the Ump’s mask glow white and hot, and they’re visible even while the somewhat bright solar eclipse shines on in the sky above the field. They’re batting against- well, a humanoid horse of sorts, when the air around them starts to grow hotter. Weird, again, but it’s probably just nerves. Strike one. It feels like the eyes of the ump are burning holes into his neck, even though they just called a strike. Strike two, swing and a miss, and the crowd in the stands is unusually quiet. Everything seems too still, and hot. They make eye contact with Jessi, off in the dugout, and… they look scared.
What’s going on?
And then they find out. The first thing, the Ump charges them, fiery and glowing and dEAR GOD WHY ARE THEY ON FIRE-
The second thing, they’re on fire oh god oh fuck it burns it bURnS SH IT-
The third, he catches a glint of Sebastian Sunshine as the fire roars in his ears and eats away at his body, and it’s the first time he’s seen them anything but jovial. They’re horrified.
The fourth, everything’s getting dark real quick, and the fire is starting to dull, or it feels like it anyways, and they feel themself start to collapse oh go d n o-
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no n-
There’s a hand on his shoulder and a couple of hotdog-esque fingers snapping in his face back in what Massey assumes to be reality. Is that- oh right, that pitcher. Huh, he probably zoned out there for a s-
“Hey hey hey hey hey are you- oh shit are you ok I didn’t mean to set anything off oh fuck are you alright everything g-”
“I…”
Hearing him start, she stops freaking out quite so much, and waits, concerned, not taking her hand off his shoulder.
“Did I-...”
Huh. Well, now he’s feeling a little bit silly, and a lot more sullen. It should have clicked earlier, he thinks, what with the ashes and the almost black void and the dead woman talking to him and the sinking feeling things were amiss and-
“...Am I dead?”
He doesn’t need an answer from her at this point, but the pitcher’s face says it all. Sadness, and empathy, and concern. And shock, as she gets pulled into a very-ashy embrace by a very frazzled batter. She leans into it, and he gets the sinking feeling thanks to a better view of the empty room they’re in that this might be the first physical contact either of them have had with another person in a while.
Wait, fuck, he never caught her name, but now, after doing this, they feel a bit awkward asking, so-
“I- I’m Fitzgerald Massey, by the way…”
“...Jaylen. Jaylen Hotdogfingers.”
“...Did you know Rogue Umpires can incinerate people mid-game?”
A pause in the conversation, as he feels her tense up, and then, in an almost hysteric tone-
“I’m- sorry, whAT-?!”