Work Text:
Dakan felt the knife before he saw it.
/////
He was at the Sinclair household, the only one there to his knowledge. Tristan had been called to work in the middle of the night which had left Dakan lying awake in his bed, unknowingly entertaining his worries for his lover. A scraping sound from elsewhere in the house snapped him out of his mental malady.
It was innocuous, a sound that anyone else could have mistaken for the house simply creaking. The building had seen some years, after all, but Dakan knew this house. In his mind, it sounded deliberate. Could Tristan be back already? Or perhaps Lauren? Lauren was rather sneaky, after all. Or, perhaps, it was simply some incidental creak that his anxiety made seem so much more significant than it was. The latter seemed most likely. Now that he realised how tense and on-edge he was, a sigh released from his chest like water decanting over a dam’s spillway.
Yet there was another sound. His fears were beginning to feel a lot more justified. He recognised the hefty creak of one of the stairs. The third step from the top always creaked. He’d told Tristan earlier that week that it probably needed replacing, lest someone fall through, but it wasn’t an urgent matter. For the time being, Tristan had jokingly remarked that it gave the house character. It could have been Tristan walking up the steps, but he would have heard him enter the house. Same with Lucy. It could have been Lauren, but she knew about the step and was very deliberate about avoiding it when she was sneaking back to her room.
This was a stranger.
Upon realising this, Dakan rose as quietly as he could, moving his blankets aside slowly and gently lowering his feet onto the floor. He reached for the bedside table, pulling open its drawer carefully, lifting the false bottom and retrieving the small handgun within. He checked it over to make sure it was loaded, and once he was satisfied that it was, he straightened a little. Although his heart was hammering heavily in his chest, the firearm in his hand was a comforting weight and brought him a sense of confidence to confront this intruder.
His stomach dropped as he turned to the door. It was now wide open.
No-one was there, it was just a door opened wide like the jaws of a lion…
Beckoning him closer.
The room was suffused with shadows, only faintly touched by distant lights from outside. His eyes had adjusted from the time he had spent lying awake in the dark, but not enough to make out every recess of the room. As deftly as possible, he stepped clear of the bed and approached the entrance, his gun raised and at the ready.
Everything in Dakan’s body screamed to back away and hide, but instead he shuffled closer, needing to find the cause of this suspense. The socks on his feet muffled a lot of the sounds his footsteps would have made, and yet the floorboards put up a minute protest as his weight shifted across the floor. He reached the door and faced the void of the hallway beyond. The limits of his vision were being tested as he peered into the darkness, a shifting mosaic of indistinct, shadowy fragments dancing before his eyes as he tried to focus. It strained his eyes.
Finally, he gave in and reached for the light switch.
Before his fingers could brush the switch, the jaws that he made the door out to be keened. He pivoted in surprise as something leapt from behind the door.
Dakan hardly thought of firing his gun when something slammed into his chest and penetrated deep between his ribs.
A strangled sound of alarm and shock escaped his throat. Anything he was planning to do to defend himself or to take stock of the situation withered away as a deep pain shot through his nerves from the intrusion in his chest. He reeled back, the knife tearing from his wound. New pain shot through his body and a damp warmth began to saturate his clothes. Dimly, he could see the shine of the weapon that had wounded him in the hand of his shadowy assailant, but there was no further detail to make out.
Dakan instinctively clasped a hand over his wound, failing to realise it was the hand that his gun should have been in. His legs felt overwhelmed by his own weight and the pain of the injury. Suddenly, it felt like he was short on air. In his panic of the last few seconds, he had only been breathing shallow, sharp breaths. He gasped now, but the breath trailed into an agonised groan. His chest seared and tears shot to his eyes. Pockets of discomfort swelled at the attempt to breathe, pushing against the wound. His desperate and confused breathing rasped on fluid in his lungs, forcing him to cough. He coughed again and again, trying to get the fluid out of his chest, each shudder feeling like another stab. The fluid did not clear, and instead the taste of iron permeated his tongue.
He realised the extent of his injury. The knife punctured his right lung, and it had now collapsed. The warm liquid he now recognised as his blood had spread across a large portion of his nightshirt. He could only wheeze brokenly for breath, but the air simply escaped his lung out of the wound and into pockets throughout his chest cavity. Instead of air, blood and other fluids flooded the lung.
Not one minute after he had been stabbed, he realised the wound was fatal, and regardless of if the attacker stabbed him again, he would die without help. It all happened so fast. One moment, lying in the absolute safety of the bed he shared with his lover, and now…
There was a flash of anger within him, which must have had a physical response in his body for it caused a surge of pain with it. He gripped onto the doorframe harder, keeping himself upright, staring at his target.
“Don’t…” Dakan weakly spat blood and saliva from his mouth, dragging air into his airways in drawn-out rasps. “Don’t come… any closer…”
The shadow, who Dakan was sure was a Phantom, did not say anything in response. They merely shifted forwards, so silently that Dakan swore they were drifting towards him like a ghost. The shadow almost seemed like the grim reaper himself. In reverence, in pain, in a dull acceptance, Dakan was overwhelmed with the desire to succumb to his wounds, accept his fate and die. The pain was too great, and breathing was impossible.
And yet…
He wanted to see Tristan again…
With a visceral, broken cry and the desperation of a dying animal, Dakan flung himself at the attacker. There was a streak of pain as the blade the shadow held scored a long gash along his forearm. Dakan’s hand followed the path of the blade and caught the assailant’s arm. Seeing their weapon ineffective, they shoved Dakan back. He staggered back a pace, but his legs gave under him, and he crumpled to the floor. The sudden, unexpected movement from the fall caused pain so great that it winded him. Regaining that breath again made him feel like every muscle in his chest was heaving for air, only for his airflow to be interrupted by fluids rattling through his airways and he retched it out. It was becoming far more laborious to breathe, and there was nothing he could do to stop the Phantom if they wanted to kill him.
Unconsciously, he shifted his hand a little along the floor, and it brushed something. It was cold and metal and there was only one thing it could be.
Now determined, he put all of his energy into grabbing the gun, lifting it up towards the source of danger and pulling the trigger. While he could barely see let alone aim well, it was point-blank range, and his target was not exactly small. A stark bright flash of light lit up their surroundings accompanied by an ear-splitting ‘BANG!’. In the flash, he could see a little better, see his attacker reel from the wound. The gunshot rang in his ears, and yet Dakan pushed himself up a little and adjusted his aim slightly. He fired again; his attacker eerily quiet as they fell. There was a bodily weight that hit the floor. Dakan adjusted his aim once again.
He fired until the gun clicked empty, all six bullets finding their mark. The Phantom lay motionless on the ground. Dakan couldn’t be absolutely sure that they were dead, given how dark it was and how silent they had been earlier, but somehow, either by the warm splatters of blood across his face or the blood pooling across the floor, or even the sound the knife made when it dropped from the Phantom’s grasp, he knew they would not rise again.
Dakan had a flicker of remorse as he realised that he had just killed someone, but then his chest gurgled unpleasantly, and he felt like he was drowning. Maybe he would contemplate his morality more if he wasn’t bleeding out and choking with every breath. Now that the immediate threat was taken care of, he had to get help. While there was the main house’s telephone downstairs, there was an emergency phone in Tristan’s bedroom, for when something urgent came up for him. It was the same phone that had woken Tristan up earlier.
He tried to stand but bringing his leg up to push himself off the ground sent pain shooting through his wound. He collapsed back to the ground, wheezing in exhausted breaths that brought tears to his eyes. His eyelids hung heavy on his face. If only he could have felt so drowsy earlier, when he was struggling to sleep… how ironic.
He propped himself up on one hand and two knees, his injured arm pressed firmly against his wound. Slowly, he hobbled towards the phone, careful not to aggravate his injuries. It was tedious and exhausting, but it moved him forward. He clawed up the table to the phone, grabbing the familiar shape of the handset and squinting as he found where each number in the dial was. Blood smeared across the phone where his finger dragged the dial to each digit of Ardhalis’ emergency number. He had never known the dial to feel so heavy and resistant against his ministrations.
When he had dialled the number to call, he slumped forward, handset pressed against his ear. A sense of premature relief washed over him. With any luck, the hard part was behind him, and the paramedics would he here shortly after he explained the situation.
But luck had other plans.
For the line was disconnected. It droned endlessly, with no ringing sound, no voice on the other end. Nothing. He was confused. Why would the emergency line not work?
His arms trembling from the effort of keeping himself upright, he tried a different number. He would have tried Tristan’s work number, but he wasn’t at the precinct that night. Lauren, however, was at her workplace. At least, he hoped so. So he tried the number to the 11th district precinct. Each number felt harder to dial than the last and waves of dizziness threatened to pull him back to the ground again. He raised the handset to his ear.
Again, there was nothing.
Dread formed a tense knot in his stomach as he realised what this meant. He wanted to throw up. His attacker had not made any move towards this phone, and he was sure the phone’s line was intact. But this meant that the line to the entire house was disconnected, whether by his assailant or by coincidence.
Defeated, he crumpled back to the floor, letting the handset dangle beside the little table it stood on. His chest ached from the strain of breathing, the build-up of air pockets outside of his lung being painfully uncomfortable. Moving even a little made his nerves feel like he was on fire. Worse still, he was beginning to feel much weaker. He felt heavy, like he was turning into lead. It was getting harder to take air in.
He couldn’t die here. He couldn’t let the last thing he said to Tristan be some mumbled words when he was half-asleep.
Dakan found the will within himself to do something, anything, to survive until some kind of help arrived. Someone would have heard the gunshots, at least. In a neighbourhood like this, at this hour, such a thing would be reported. He hoped it would be, at least.
Although his mind was hazy, he formed a course of action, because it was better than thinking about the fact he was going to die. He couldn’t move far without aggravating his wounds or threatening overexerting himself, so leaving the room was entirely out of the question. He needed to stop the bleeding. He would use the Phantom’s knife to cut the bedsheets and use them as bandages. He would turn on the lamps beside the beds – he kicked himself for not doing so earlier, but at least it had possibly concealed his gun from the attacker. Then, he would try to get to the window. Screaming for help would probably kill him but he could at least try banging on the glass to get someone’s attention. Maybe someone would take notice of the illuminated window and the bloody smears he would paint across it.
Filing away the doubt that clouded his mind, he turned on the lamp atop the bedside table at Tristan’s side of the bed. Wan, warm light filtered from the lampshade and spilled over the room. The first thing he noticed was the crimson soaking the wooden floor, dragged and splattered across it between him and the ominous dark shape lying beside the doorway. He began to crawl across the floor again, limbs trembling trying to support his weight. The elbow of the arm propping him up sank lower towards the floor. Every few shuffles forward, he would rest his head on his forearm and groan in a couple of breaths before he continued. He practically collapsed on top of the dead Phantom, gagging on the blood in his mouth.
Dakan’s head lolled limply as he fumbled for the knife that had caused him such pain. It was a little ironic that it was now something that was going to help him with his survival. He used the now-soiled cloak of the Phantom to wipe the blade clean. He then shambled towards the bed and fumbled at the corner of the bedsheets, tugging hard at the hem to pull as much of the fabric down as he could. As it touched the floor, blood crept up the white sheets. There was too much of it on the floor, now cold and wet around his legs. It was impossible to tell how much of it was from himself and how much was from the Phantom’s corpse.
The strips of fabric he cut were ragged and uneven, tarnished with his bloodied fingerprints, but they were still helpful nonetheless. With a few strips of fabric to hand, he placed the knife a safe distance from himself and rested his back against the bed. His fingers shook uncontrollably as he wrapped the makeshift bandages around himself. His teeth, which blood snaked around the gaps of, grit tight together and he let out a gurgled grunt as he tightened the bandage around his torso. To his dismay, by the time he had tied off the bandage, blood had already completely saturated it. He wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Trying to convince himself it would work, he stuffed a wad of fabric against the wound and tied it on top of the previous bandage. There was a little less blood seeping out, but it was still completely soaked as he tied the bandage again.
“Gods… please…” he croaked to himself. He broke off into a cough, the effort of coughing draining him. His heart continued to hammer against his chest, only making the entire situation worse.
He tried to tie yet another length of fabric, and it still soaked through, but a little slower this time. It would have to do.
Dakan shifted forward to begin the long crawl around the bed to the window. His arm took none of his weight and he sagged forward onto the floor. His eyes fluttered close, and suddenly he found he couldn’t move them. He couldn’t move his arms, either. Even his chest struggled to draw in breath and his heart stuttered.
No… Not now… Dakan thought. The way he had fallen blocked his nose and mouth with blood and bile. Tears ran past his closed eyelids, running down his face like waterfalls. Tristan… someone… help me…
I don’t want to die here.
I refuse to.
Purely driven by the stubborn will to prolong the inevitable, he managed to lift his head a little. The wheezing sound he made was not a sound that should have ever come from a human. Air felt like agony all the way down.
He dug his nails into the floor in front of them and pulled himself forward. It was only a couple of inches out of the several metres to the window, but it was progress. He dragged himself forward once again, a Sisyphean struggle with every movement leaving his body burning and tired.
At one point, when he took a rest, he found himself waking up. He didn’t remember falling asleep. It terrified him, how easy it was to slip away and not notice. There was no way to know if he had blacked out for a few seconds, or a few hours. It was still dark. Well, help hadn’t arrived yet, so he leaned towards the former.
Each drag forward made him question if it was even worth living, and every time his resolve was the same: he had to see Tristan. He didn’t know his chances of survival even if help did come, and truth be told, he didn’t want to know. He needed to at least say goodbye.
It was funny how unexpected things were. He and Tristan had dinner plans for the next evening, and now he likely wasn’t even going to see the sun rise again. Here he was on this peaceful night, crawling across the floor, trembling in the cold, choking on his own blood. Every second felt like his last, and there was a dulled surprise that sparked in his mind when he found he was halfway there.
Unfortunately, he could no longer deny that his body was failing badly. Usually, it was severe numbness in his arms and legs and a near-total loss of control over his movements. Then, it was suffocating again on his own bodily fluids. He threw up, an agonising affair as blood and bile dribbled weakly from his mouth to the floor. His throat felt torn, but he could still just about breathe. Somehow, moving away from the foul-smelling puddle on the floor was more incentive for him to keep going, but it dragged along with him anyway. Maybe it was for the best he couldn’t breathe properly, so he didn’t have to smell properly either.
His hand brushed the wall and his eyes snapped open. He had made it.
A new rush of determination drove him to claw himself upright, sitting up against the wall. The new position made him feel faint, but he could breathe slightly better than when he was on the ground. He reached for the windowsill, trying to pull himself up higher, but the effort was beyond him.
Dakan’s vision went dark even before he slumped back down.
His own ragged breathing woke him again. He was exhausted, and unable to do anything other than tremble and shudder occasionally. Painfully, he wept.
“Help… someone…” he rasped. If anyone heard him, he was probably the only person who knew what he even uttered. “Tristan…”
Only the silence spoke back.
He closed his eyes again.
So this was death, was it? The unforeseeable end, the inevitable. It stole so cruelly from those who fell under its grasp. Memories, most of all. Dakan had no idea who he was, no idea where he was. He was so numb he felt like he was floating, except for the twisting pains of his lungs inhaling, and exhaling.
He was someone, something. Tendrils of tired apathy curled around his lingering thoughts, dismissing them slowly. Nothing mattered anymore. He was so tired.
He needed to rest…
“Dakan!”
Dakan’s eyes opened at the sound of the familiar voice. It was no longer as dark as before, with a soft glow beaming from the window above his head. A blurry figure approached, side-stepping the blood strewn across the floor as he rushed over to Dakan. Dakan felt himself be gently pulled away from the hard wall and into someone’s arms. By touch alone, he knew it was Tristan. His head slumped towards his lover, and he felt a warm hand caress his cold, pale face. Through slitted eyes, he could see the sunrise across Tristan’s face.
“No… no… Dakan… I’m sorry,” Tristan wept. Dakan wished he could comfort him, ease the guilt in his voice. “An ambulance will be here any second. I came as fast as I could when I heard… Please, my love, hold on a little longer. Please…”
“It’s…” Dakan rasped hollowly for air, “…too late… for me…”
“Don’t…” Tristan sniffled. “Don’t talk. Please, save your breath. Everything will be alright. I’m here.” He reinforced this point by moving the hand from Dakan’s face to his stiff, icy hands that were plastered with dry blood. The warmth felt nice.
“Tristan…”
“You can’t die. Not now. You can’t…” Tristan trailed off into sobs, unable to convince even himself that Dakan was going to be okay. He buried his trembling lips against his brown locks, his face scrunched up in sorrow. Blood and pale skin blurred together in his tear-filled vision.
Eyes barely open, Dakan managed to say: “It’s hard… t-to… say goodbye… so s-soon… isn’t it?”
“I love you,” Tristan whimpered. “I’m sorry. I should have been here. I should have been faster. I-”
“Hey…” Dakan said, his voice weaker and weaker with each syllable. Though his hands were stiff and weak, he rubbed Tristan’s hand with the faintest movement from his thumb. Tristan pulled his head back a little to see Dakan’s face. It was gaunt and deathly pale, his eyes barely open, his lips barely moving, but adoration was written on every feature of his face.
There was an entire lifetime recounted between both of their eyes, sparkling with the light of a new day that only one of them would get to see. Their embrace seemed eternal, one so familiar that it was simply part of them. It was where they would fall in love with each other again and again every day. Though a dismal display, the embrace was comforting. Dakan could think of nowhere else he would rather spend the rest of his life.
“I love you… Tris…tan…” His voice rattled brokenly. “I will… always… l…ove…” He took in a breath to say more, but he couldn’t form the word. His eyelids slowly drifted shut as he looked at Tristan for the last time. Dawn and despair painted him. Was he always… so beautiful…?
The veil closed. His head sagged forward.
Tristan listened as that dreadful wheezing sound became slower and slower, feeling as Dakan stilled in his arms. It was rhythmic, his descent into death. Then a breath caught and Dakan’s body shuddered. Once, twice…
His breathing ceased.
Tristan cradled Dakan, resting his lover’s limp form against him as he sobbed. Under the pale light of the dawn, they both remained there, wrapped in a final embrace.
/////
Later, as Tristan watched the paramedics load Dakan’s body into the back of the ambulance with a numb stare, nothing but the final moments of his lover lingered in his mind. He sat in the back of another van, a blanket around his shoulders and a cup of water in his hands. The front of his house had police and paramedics, forensics and reporters all swarming the scene. Tape barred the front door.
Dakan was pronounced dead at the scene. The paramedics could not resuscitate him. There was nothing Tristan could have done. Though Dakan tried his best to survive – an admirable effort given his wounds – he was lucky to have lived past the initial attack. For a while, Tristan was hysterical, caught up in the what-ifs of it all. What if he hadn’t left? What if he had gotten there sooner? What if the phone lines hadn’t been disconnected?
Those rampant thoughts faded into the grief, and the grief faded into the daylight. It was ultimately useless, to think of what could have been. It had already passed.
The only thing that held Tristan’s attention was the sky. The sky, and the breeze tousling his hair. The sun on his skin. A new day.
If nothing else, he was at least there for his lover at the end.
Sometimes, just being there is all you can do.