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Jimmy’s out of time.
By some cruel hope, he’d believed that he wouldn’t be first. Not again. It had happened three times, now, once and again and again, and maybe it was folly to think that Fate didn’t have her cold fingers wrapped around his neck, but he had come to believe that Grian and Joel would cover him.
He’s not quite out of time, he supposes. The numbers on his wrist still showed some minutes, last time he checked. Not like that’ll last.
Who would sacrifice time for the Canary?
It would only bring his time up to around an hour. One more death, and he would be gone—and he’s certain that such a death would come swiftly. Even well-meaning friends wouldn’t be able to save him.
He hasn’t even died, not quite yet.
He fell off the bridge, hit the ground. Hard. Missed the water.
It was a common mistake, one that everybody's made at least once, but this time is different. This time leaves him here, in the grass, staring up at the blue sky above.
His communicator keeps buzzing.
If Jimmy could see himself, see through his flesh, he thinks he would see that every bone in his body is broken.
He can’t move. Paralyzed, then. He remembers falling, falling, then hitting the hard ground with several ear-splitting cracks, his spine buckling under the impact. His head had whipped forward and then back rapidly, whiplash that’s probably more than whiplash leaving his neck stiff and immobile. His boots are too tight on his feet and shins, a sure sign that they’ve swollen immensely. His elbows have shattered, his left hand turned entirely the wrong way. There’s a rib torn out of his chest, another one digging into his lungs. The back of his skull is crushed in so deeply that Jimmy feels if he could lift his head, his brains would drip out.
He’s bleeding. He’s bleeding from all over, from gashes and tears in his back and his legs and his arms, split open by protruding bones or ripped by the ground and grass. Blood bubbles up on his lips, spills down the side of his face. The only thing he can smell is blood. All he can taste is blood.
It’s more pain than he’s ever experienced, every part of him screaming out in a discordant chorus of agony.
There’s a couple of ways he might die here. It could be the pain. The shock of so many broken pieces. His steadily collapsing left lung, desperately trying to pull the weight of the punctured right. Blood loss from so many wounds. Brain death, the matter leaking slowly through the mess of his skull. Choking on his own blood.
He hates how aware he is. Canary’s curse, aware enough of death to send a warning to others. If this were anyone else—if it was anything but his last life—it would have been death on impact. It isn’t fair that he has to experience death, when everyone else just gets to die.
It isn’t fair. It’s torturous, and it isn’t fair.
He draws in another gasping breath, cringing as his ribs scrape against each other and his throat gurgles. Everything . . . everything hurts. Everything hurts so much, it’s terrible and overwhelming; black and blue spots dance across his vision as he watches the clear blue sky. . . .
He hates—more than the awareness, more than the pain—that he’s alone.
He’s always so alone.
He choked to death on an arrow, once. Slow, heat from the scorching desert suffocating him.
He bled out, traitorous slashes in his back, face-down in the marshy earth.
Shock took him, as an Enderman dug its long fingers into his abdomen and pulled out his organs, dragging them out of his stomach.
Always alone.
Is it too much to ask that someone just hold his hand? Sure, he’s not entirely certain that both hands are still attached to his body, but it’s the thought that counts.
More blood leaks from his mouth. His heart flutters, its jolts coming fewer and fewer.
He hasn’t got long yet. A few minutes at most. The time on his wrist continues to count down.
Joel had wanted to give him extra time. Joel was determined to not let him die first, had promised to help him when his time got below an hour.
He isn’t here. It’s just Jimmy and the end, as it always is. As it always has been.
Another breath, another jab of the rib into his lung. His left lung strains and strains, blood steadily filling his chest.
Maybe he’ll drown in his own blood. He doesn’t particularly want to. He wishes he could close his eyes, quickly and painlessly slip away.
Even more blood floods his throat. He doesn’t have the strength to cough, nor tilt his head to the side.
The sky is quite blue above him. The air is pleasantly mild, the sun warm.
This would be his kindest death, if it weren’t for the pain.
Early on in the game, he and Grian and Joel had gone swimming fully-clothed, then hiked up to a sunny hill and laid out in the grass, letting the sun dry their clothes.
This could be that day, lovely and full of laughter, sleepy and happy and Green.
It isn’t.
This day is Red.
There’s too much blood. Blood all over him, more outside than in. It feels like the majority of the blood in his body is in either his throat or his chest cavity.
One final breath, a breath that nearly doesn’t make it past the blood. The pain, thankfully, is starting to numb, his lack of oxygen finally dragging him from awareness.
Though his consciousness is dimming, Jimmy feels it when his other lung collapses. A sharp pain lancing through his chest, barely distinguishable from the rest of it. Whatever little air he’d been managing to get vanishes, swallowed up in the loss.
There’s nothing in his throat but blood. Too much blood to come out his mouth, so it goes back down into his over-full chest.
Too much blood.
Jimmy’s last coherent thought is that he’s going to need some therapy for this one.
-
Grian: did tim survive that?
Tango: ?
Inthelittlewood: what?
Smallishbeans: he fell off the skynet
Grian: water bucket?
Smallishbeans: he was so far out
Smallishbeans: I’ll go find him
Smajor1995: how many lives have we lost to these bridges
Grian: far too many
Etho: I wonder whose idea that was
Smallishbeans: im gona be sick
Grian: ?
Inthelittlewood: honestly if timmy pulled that bucket i’ll be well impressed
GoodTimeWithScar: Joel… the clockers will get revenge…
SolidarityGaming drowned in his own blood.
Grian: OH
Inthelittlewood: OH NO
Etho: !
BdoubleO100: UM?
Tango: OK UH
Smajor1995: oh nooo
Inthelittlewood: haven’t seen THAT death message before
Grian: OH NO
Grian: oh tim
Etho: I have
Inthelittlewood: ??
ZombieCleo: oh that sounds awful
BigBst4tz2: ohh jimmy
Smallishbeans: iwasn’t fast enough
Smallishbeans: nobody go over there
Inthelittlewood: oh geez
Smallishbeans: lots of blood
Grian: guess he didn’t survive it after all