Chapter Text
Salvus (adj): safe, saved, preserved, sound, unharmed, unscathed, unhurt, uninjured
Everything hurt.
Oh, god, it hurt.
He hurt, and it was all he could do to keep moving.
Breath rasped short and ragged, weakened muscles convulsed, legs trembled, eyelids, cheeks, lips, fingers twitched, vision greyed, ears rang, head swam, heart stuttered.
One foot in front of the other, one foot. Then the other foot. Then one more, focusing on nothing but Lucy in front of him, using her as his anchor, his lifeline to sanity and consciousness. Using nothing but his overwhelming relief she was out and safe to stay upright and fighting. One foot. Then the other.
Oh, god…
Pain was an old, old friend, one Lockwood pushed past rudely with a stiff check to the shoulder every time he possibly could, relishing his hard-won ability to ignore nearly every attempt of his body to get him to slow down, to stop, to heal. He disregarded countless headaches, sicknesses, sprains, and fractures; cuts—from scratches to stitches—he bandaged and resolutely ignored, and the blossoming ache of the myriad, ubiquitous bruise he proudly welcomed as part and parcel of his profession. Since he had already once brushed aside the bitter, biting agony of ghost-touch stealing insidiously through his veins, he assumed he had boldly faced the worst physical difficulty life could throw at him with both middle fingers extended.
But this…
One foot. Lucy.
Then the other foot. Lucy.
Vaguely, he saw now he had been rather arrogant in thinking he could blithely handle whatever sort of corporeal discomfort would come his way. Then again, he had never even dreamed he would end up in the clutches of true evil, at least not of the human variety. Flo’s warning he had brushed aside with casual disregard, not worried in the slightest. How many times thus far had he danced between Scylla and Charybdis and lived to tell the tale, after all? Everything generally worked out, and he was supremely confident in his ability to either talk or think his way out of a sticky situation with ease.
The shocking realization he might not be so lucky this time, brought on by the inescapable hold of the rough leather straps around his wrists, ankles, and waist and the inflexible cradle of the wooden chair, dawned with the slow, inexorable march of twilight stealing through an afternoon’s sun as he came to. Something cold was stuck to the back of each calf, directly on his skin. Whatever it was, it had itched, abhominably. His thoughts flashed immediately to Lucy, and visceral fear soured his mouth and curdled his stomach as he cast about for her. Seeing she was nowhere in the room, hearing from Winkman’s words he was the only interloper thus far snared, he felt a rush of gratitude followed by an iron-hard determination to keep it that way.
With this goal in mind, it was easy, too easy, to batten down the hatches and, without remorse, lie his face off in response to Winkman’s questions, threats, and insinuations. As the man had danced to the large, white machine, hitting switches and twisting dials, Lockwood braced himself and told himself he was ready for the pain as long as he could keep the bastard distracted. Lucy was clear. Lucy was gone. Lucy was safe. If that were truly the case, he could handle whatever was coming his way, letting his resolve give him strength to endure, and maybe, just perhaps, death’s ultimate release would be his reward in the end.
When electricity had flooded his body with the crackling intensity of lightning, however, all rational thought had fled. This wasn’t something simple and easy to disregard, like a gash from a rapier or a sprain from a fall gone wrong or a burn from a wonky magnesium flare. This agony was next level, an ascendance to a higher plane of suffering, and for the first time, he wasn’t sure if he was actually getting out of this in one piece. The foolishness of his earlier bravado was driven home with all the brutality of a hammer strike against a coffin nail, and he admitted to himself at last what a sham he actually was.
The only thing left to him was Lucy. He had held on to her memory by bloody fingernails even as everything else was stripped away, even as his eyes rolled back and every muscle and tendon and ligament constricted and spasmed beyond sufferance with a tetanus worse than ghost-lock, even as every nerve seared with blue fire, and his throat shredded raw with screaming.
One foot.
Oh, god.
The other foot.
Slower, stumbling, nearly falling now, he tried to recover, pressing one shaking hand to ribs he was sure were at the very least fractured from the intensity of his body seizing. As much as he tried to inhale and exhale in a measured rhythm, he couldn’t seem to gain any control: his breath was still uneven, shallow, and too fast. In a related note, he wasn’t sure if the grey mist fogging his vision was the result of hypoxia or if he actually couldn’t see, and either option was terrifying. Dizziness sank its claws deep into his head, the pressure nauseating and the repetitive, sharp stabs of pain relentless. His thoughts were fuzzy, dim, and all tangled around one another.
One foot…
The other foot…
Come on, Anthony.
Then the toe of his trainer, dragged in a shuffling step, caught against the lumpy surface of a manhole cover, and all the stubbornness in the world couldn’t save him from loss of balance and the grasp of gravity. A small sound escaped as he crumpled forward—not a cry, not exactly, for he didn’t have the oxygen or the vocal chords for such a thing at the moment. What escaped, rather, was a plaintive whine, the ghost of a sob, barely audible. His knees hit the asphalt with a muffled thud, and the rest of him followed soon after, folding in on himself nearly bonelessly.
“Luce…”
The name wasn’t even a whisper, more a desperate, last breath. He could hear her footsteps still cracking, vibrating against the pavement, though they seemed a long way off and rather curiously dulled, as though they were both underwater. Someone was ringing a tiny bell somewhere. No, make that thousands of bells. Maybe millions. They didn’t stop. Neither did she.
All he could do was stare, dumbly, at the searing twin stars of the streetlight above him, blinking every now and again.
Oh, god…
Lucy…
Everything hurt…