Chapter Text
When you’re trapped in a situation where your odds of survival are 12.5%, it’s only natural to spend a lot of time thinking about what it will feel like to die.
Damon was a person who always tried to think of solutions before letting his mind ruminate in dark places like that. Though, while accepting Tozu’s perk may have felt like his only means of control, it ultimately made the sickening dread he was running from all the more pervasive. He had to act fast if he wanted to survive, but was murder something he was truly capable of? If he could at least save one life–Kai’s life–would that be a justifiable outcome considering his impossible circumstances?
If Damon died now without successfully using his perk, he imagined death would feel like a pitiful, crushing defeat. Then again, he couldn’t imagine how much better living would feel after being forced to do the unthinkable. Damon wasn't the indecisive type, but the only thing he could do was stall. He stalled endlessly, secretly banking on someone else doing the dirty work so his countdown could reset. He chastises himself, wondering when he started to think such horrible things.
Maybe what he sees in the theater is his karma.
When Damon unearthed Kai’s bloody corpse from underneath the stage equipment, he cried out in anguish not only for Kai, but in anticipatory grief over his own life. Could he ever bring himself to let everyone else die when running away from Kai in his last moments made him feel unworthy of life? Could he ever risk it all to secure anyone else’s survival when Kai was the first face he imagined as he shook Tozu’s hand?
Was it right to make it out the victor, knowing he argued a fourteen year old girl to her grave?
It takes a different type of determination and focus to execute a murder, and Damon realized it wasn’t in him. Maybe it never was. Unless the game was miraculously put to an end or he kept getting lucky, which he couldn’t imagine Tozu allowing to happen, Damon’s fate was sealed. He was going to die eventually. But would he really accept going out a coward, someone who can’t see things through?
No, there had to be another way.
When Damon finally decided he was going to sacrifice himself, the first people he thought of were his parents. He was their perfect, golden child. No matter how much he wanted to see them, he couldn’t bear the shame of returning into their arms a dirty killer to people he eventually came to see as his friends. So, he imagines dying nobly, not only to protect his friends, but to be remembered in the best way he could despite everything. Maybe, he thinks, this is necessary to becoming the better person he spoke of during Wolfgang’s trial.
Still, Damon was undoubtedly terrified. Despite speaking so harshly about everyone needing to face their reality, he continues to imagine things instead of accepting the brutality of his own.
When he closes his eyes for the last time, will it feel like when his dad used to carry him inside after falling asleep in the car? Will it feel like his mom tucking him in with a kiss? Will it feel like passing out at his desk, working relentlessly to give them the life they deserved?
Poison rips through his veins.
Blurred vision, slurred speech, breaths that become shallower and shallower as his diaphragm can no longer physically expand.
Damon hears panic and cries from his remaining classmates as he lies in the lap of one, her flowing pigtails brush over his face like a goodnight kiss. He tries calling out to somebody, but it all turns black.
…
“Damon, DAMON! Wake up!”
…What?
“Fuck, how do I open this thing? Guys! I need help!”
This can’t be right. Damon was dead. He felt every second of it happen, so what was this? He hears two sets of footsteps hustle over.
“Oh my god, Damon? Is he–is he okay?! Is he breathing?” A bright, feminine voice starts to shriek. A raspier sounding girl follows, more composure is forced into her tone. “We’ll see when we get him out.”
“Don’t say it like that!” A male voice, the first one Damon had heard, cuts through the noise. “Damon’s definitely alive!”
Alive.
As if he’d been thrown into an ice cold lake, all of Damon’s dormant senses had been abruptly shocked alive. He was alive, draped in a hospital gown and packed in a sci-fi esque pod like a sardine. Before he could begin to imagine what any of this could possibly mean, he was instantly captivated by the familiar silhouettes and voices he could discern through the foggy glass.
“Kai…?” he finally manages, doubting he’d get a response. The three of them seem occupied trying to frantically open the hatch. But soon enough, compressed air from the pod releases in a huff, and Damon’s newly opened enclosure floods with the flickers of dingy fluorescent lights and the sounds of distant panic.
“Damon!”
Kai, emotive and undeniably alive, cries and launches his arms forward, ripping Damon free from cold wiring and into the warmth of a desperate embrace. Damon can clearly see them now–the disheveled appearances of those he so desperately wished he could save, all wearing the same dirtied gowns as him.
Diana smiles bittersweetly, though Damon remembers her crying over his body mere minutes ago.
Eva is hesitant to include herself as always, but is thankfully without any burns or bloodied limbs.
Most strikingly of all, Kai’s head, which is now buried in Damon’s chest, is pristine from any injury, which makes his throat tighten and stomach swirl into knots. His lungs that couldn’t physically expand moments ago were now violently ripping air through his body like a storm.
“Guys–” Damon repeats in a strangled voice, heaving so violently that his breaths whistled. He had so many things he wanted to say, questions to ask, apologies to give, but he couldn’t articulate a single word. How unbefitting of someone with his title, rendered so speechless.
“It’s okay, Damon. We’re here.” Diana reassures as she crouches down to his level. Eva remains silent, hiding her apprehension by eyeing around for the others who are loudly searching the strange facility.
Damon doesn’t register any of these outer stimuli. All he feels is Kai’s grip tightening against his quivering body.
“Just breathe.” he starts. “I– I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll figure it out. Okay?”
Damon imagined his inevitable death like a movie every night after Kai “died.” Not once did he imagine death actually feeling like this, being embraced completely alive knowing a part of himself had been killed for good. How could he ever be the same?
And yet, he had no choice but to breathe it all in.