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The first thing that slowly filters through the dense, heavy veil of unconsciousness is an overwhelming, suffocating warmth, something thick and oppressive, wrapped around Mob’s shivering frame in layer after layer of woolen blankets that seem to press him deeper and deeper into an unyielding mattress every single time he attempts to take a shuddering breath. His eyelids are heavy as lead, utterly refusing to cooperate with his sluggish commands.
When they finally part with a microscopic flutter, the world doesn’t return in sharp focus as expected, but rather as smears of muted, watercolor colors that melt and warp together whenever he tries to force his burning eyes to steady themselves, the ceiling dissolving into a pale, bruised brown while heavy wooden beams stretch overhead in uncertain, threatening shapes that refuse to remain still for even a second. His vision swims so violently and unsteadily that he instinctively squeezes his eyes tightly shut again, a pathetic, desperate prayer forming in his mind that the spinning room might finally stop its dizzying rotation if he simply waits long enough in the dark.
But it stubbornly refuses to stop, blooming instead with terrifying intensity, rising steadily from somewhere deep inside his sour stomach until it floods every exhausted inch of him, turning his frantic heartbeat into something loud, erratic, and uneven, each heavy pulse echoing unpleasantly and painfully right through the center of his fractured skull.
He swallows hard against the dryness in his throat and immediately, bitterly regrets it. A sharp, acidic wave of nausea rushes upward before his sluggish brain can even think to issue a command to stop it, turning his stomach inside out.
His battered body twists awkwardly and clumsily on pure instinct, every single movement heavily delayed by an unbearable, leaden heaviness that makes him feel as though someone has cruelly replaced his limbs with solid stone, and then he is leaning just far enough over the precarious edge of the mattress for his stomach to violently empty itself onto the splintered wooden floorboards beside him, a messy, pitiful sound filling the oppressive silence of the room, embarrassingly loud, yet he barely registers it.
His entire frame trembles violently afterward, breathing in shuddering, ragged gasps, his forehead completely damp with cold, clammy sweat, his burning eyes watering as another wave of nausea threatens to pull him under again.
"...Mob?"
The voice reaches him from what feels like across an endless chasm, filtering slowly through thick layers of suffocating cotton.
It sounds so achingly gentle, so profoundly careful.
Almost agonizingly hesitant, as if the speaker is afraid that raising the volume even a fraction of a decibel might shatter him completely into dust. Mob doesn't answer immediately because he isn't entirely certain the voice is real or just a cruel phantom conjured by his fever-addled imagination.
Instead, with agonizing effort, he forces his heavy eyes to part once more, moving much slower this time, blinking repeatedly through the blinding haze until the blurred, unsteady silhouette standing several cautious steps away slowly begins to take a shape against the pale light.
It’s Verity, but… at the same time, it’s not.
Verity shouldn't look the way he does; yet the agonizing pain and seductive weariness still tugging at Mob’s mind and clouding his senses prevent him from even questioning why a body seems to have emerged from the yellow ball. A handsome, broad-shouldered body, clad in a shirt and tie, as well as trousers and shoes that appear positively formal. Verity’s shoulders are hunched, unnaturally and painfully rigid, as if he dares not relax them.
Mob doesn’t know how he got here. He cannot remember why his head is throbbing so painfully, as if someone had struck it with a hammer, nor can he think of any situation that might have landed him in this predicament.
It’s all right, he tries to tell himself.
Verity is here. He surely knows what happened. He will help me. I need to ask him what took place. He’ll help me. He’ll help me.
Verity. Verity. Verity.
Mob wants to say his name, and for a reason born of almost childlike frustration, he wants Verity to make him feel better. For several long, excruciating seconds, neither of them speaks, the heavy air between them thick with unspoken terror, exhaustion, and a fragile, trembling relief that feels entirely too delicate to sustain.
Verity simply watches him with an expression that feels strangely difficult to read through the thick fog currently clouding every corner of Mob's thoughts, standing just far enough away that the physical distance between them seems entirely deliberate, as though he has painstakingly drawn an invisible, sacred line across the wooden floorboards and refuses to cross over it without explicit, undeniable permission.
Mob desperately tries to form the mechanics of speech once again, wanting nothing more than to break the heavy silence, to acknowledge that he is here, that he is listening.
Nothing even remotely coherent manages to emerge from his cracked lips.
"...wha..."
Even his own voice sounds utterly alien and unfamiliar to his own ears, rough and shredded enough to painfully scrape against his dry throat, immediately dissolving into an unintelligible, pathetic murmur long before the sentence ever has a fighting chance to exist in the open air.
Verity's guarded expression shifts almost imperceptibly, a micro-expression so raw and exposed that it almost hurts to witness.
First, there is a shuddering wave of relief that washes over his features, before it’s instantly replaced by a deep, aching concern that tightens the corners of his mouth.
"You don't have to force yourself to talk, Mob," Verity says quietly, his voice carrying a fragile, trembling resonance that Mob cannot ever remember hearing from him before, a tone stripped of all pretense and courage.
"Just... please, just stay awake for me. Can you do that much?"
Stay awake.
The simple request barely makes any logical sense in the labyrinth of his mind.
All Mob truly wants, all his burning nerves and exhausted cells are screaming for, is to let his heavy eyelids drift downward again, to surrender completely to the dark and let go.
The thick blankets surrounding his feverish body are impossibly, deceptively warm, the mattress yielding beneath his dead weight in a deeply comforting way that makes every single aching, bruised part of his anatomy want to sink infinitely deeper, to completely dissolve and disappear into the welcoming abyss of dreamless sleep where the room will finally stop its relentless spinning and his chaotic thoughts will finally stop scattering like autumn leaves before he can ever hope to catch hold of them.
His eyelids begin their slow, inevitable descent once more, sliding downward like heavy curtains closing on a tragic play.
"No."
Verity's voice remains remarkably calm on the surface, but there is an unmistakable, desperate edge of raw urgency humming beneath it now, a sharp wire pulled to its absolute breaking point.
"Mob."
A breathless, heavy pause hangs heavily in the air between them.
"Please."
The simple, pleading word catches somewhere deep inside Mob's chest, echoing inside his empty mind.
Slowly, with an obvious, bone-deep reluctance that makes every muscle fiber protest, he forces his burning eyes open once more, blinking away the stinging tears of pure fatigue.
Everything in his body still hurts with a dull, throbbing persistence in a hundred vague, indistinct places that blur together into one continuous symphony of pain, until he completely loses the ability to tell precisely where one ache finally ends and another cruel pain begins, while the relentless, Jackhammer pounding inside his bruised skull remains the only solitary sensation capable of cutting through the heavy mental fog with any harsh clarity.
His trembling hand moves instinctively toward the source of the pounding, drawn like a moth to a flame.
Only halfway there, his arm freezes completely in mid-air. There are bandages. Thick, coarse layers of fabric wrap tightly around part of his head, rough against his sensitive skin beneath his hesitant, trembling fingers.
A deep, confused frown pulls at his brow.
"...how..."
The question barely exists before it shatters into a million invisible pieces. Verity notices the sudden movement and the vacant stare instantly.
"You were hurt," Verity answers, his voice barely louder than a whisper, as if speaking too loudly might cause the very fabric of reality to tear apart.
Mob stares at him blankly, his mind turning the words over and over like a foreign coin he cannot quite recognize.
Hurt.
Yes, that actually does make sense.
Still somehow, in the vast, empty wasteland of his memory, that single word feels far too small, far too ordinary to encompass the sheer magnitude of whatever catastrophe has landed him in this bed.
He searches desperately, frantically into the dark corners of his mind for the missing memory attached to it, reaching out with mental hands, but finds only violently disconnected fragments floating aimlessly through absolute darkness.
Voices–familiar voices–arguing.
A blinding, searing light.
An unbearable, biting cold that felt like teeth sinking into his marrow.
And then...
Absolute, terrifying nothingness.
His brow furrows even harder, deep lines of strain etching themselves into his skin as a quiet, mounting panic begins to bubble up from his stomach, cold and sharp.
"I was..."
The thought completely escapes him, melting away like sugar in hot water before it can ever form into actual language or meaning.
Verity waits for him, standing frozen in his spot, patiently, endlessly.
"You… Veri…"
As though he already intimately knows that no coherent answer is ever going to come, yet remains willing to stand guard in the wreckage anyway.
"I know," Verity says softly after a long, agonizing eternity has ticked by in the suffocating silence.
"You probably don't remember. That’s okay."
Mob blinks slowly, his heavy lashes sticking together.
Doesn't he?
He desperately tries to force his brain to cooperate, trying one more time to excavate the ruins of what had happened to him.
There has to be something left behind.
Some single image, some faint echo, some rational explanation for why his entire body feels completely borrowed, why his head is awkwardly wrapped in stark white linen, and why his racing thoughts refuse to stay still for even a single second.
Instead, there is only a vast, howling empty space.
The harder and more frantically he reaches out into that void, the larger and more terrifyingly hollow it becomes around him.
The quiet panic blooming beneath his bone-deep exhaustion suddenly shifts into a sharp, terrifying spike of disorientation, his breath catching painfully in his raw throat.
"I don't..."
His breathing turns shallow, and uneven, his chest heaving under the weight of the woolen blankets.
"I don't... I don't know..."
"It's alright, Mob. Really, it's alright," Verity murmurs, his own voice cracking ever so slightly around the edges, betraying the immense fortress of control he is desperately trying to maintain.
Verity still refuses to close the gap between them, stubbornly remaining rooted precisely where he is, his hands held up and entirely visible, his shoulders deliberately lowered in a universal gesture of surrender, speaking with the cautious, hyper-vigilant gentleness of someone desperately approaching a wild, severely frightened animal that might bolt or lash out at any sudden movement.
"You don't have to remember a single thing right now," Verity continues, his tone a steady anchor in a sea of madness.
"You don't have to figure it all out today. Just focus on breathing."
Mob's unfocused gaze slowly drifts away from Verity's face, wandering aimlessly around the unfamiliar room instead.
There is a simple wooden chair pulled remarkably close beside the head of the bed, its legs slightly scuffed.
Someone has clearly been sitting there for hours on end.
Very recently, judging by the indent in the cushion.
Mob’s heavy eyes slowly settle on a small washstand resting atop a nearby wooden table.
A ceramic bowl filled with clean water. Fresh, folded cloths. Several small, dark glass bottles and various containers of medicine, their labels turned away from him.
Everything in the corner appears strangely, meticulously prepared, as if curated by a careful hand. As though someone has been sitting in the dark, desperately expecting him to finally wake up from the nightmare.
As though someone has been waiting an eternity for these exact eyes to open.
His sluggish attention slowly drifts back to Verity, anchoring on the silhouette that refuses to vanish.
"...why..."
The single syllable is a struggle to push past his lips.
"You're safe," the answer comes instantly, reflexively, without a single moment of hesitation.
"So please, don't waste your energy trying to think about anything else yet. Just let it go."
Safe.
Once again, the word feels completely foreign, echoing in his mind like a sound bouncing off the walls of an empty cave.
Safe from what, exactly?
The terrifying question forms only halfway in his consciousness before it completely dissolves and evaporates, just like every single other thought that attempts to maintain its structural integrity under the weight of his disorientation.
His exhausted eyelids begin their slow, inevitable descent once more, sliding downward toward the dark.
This time, he is so entirely gone that he doesn't even realize they are closing completely until Verity's voice cuts through the gathering silence like a lifeline.
"Mob."
A heavy, breathless silence stretches out.
"Look at me."
His eyes reopen, fighting against the heavy pull of sleep with a massive, visible effort that sends a fresh wave of pain rippling through his temples.
Verity offers a small, trembling smile, the most heartbreakingly fragile thing Mob has ever witnessed, curving upward at the corners of his mouth as if it takes every ounce of his remaining strength just to keep his face from crumbling entirely.
"Good," Verity whispers, the breath hitching slightly in his throat.
"There you are, my sweet boy."
Something entirely irrational and heavy blooms inside Mob's chest at the sight of that smile, aching in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with his physical wounds.
It hurts not because of his torn muscles or his bandaged head; it hurts somewhere infinitely deeper, right at the core of his heart.
It feels as though there is a massive, complex ocean of emotion stubbornly attached to that look, an entire history of terror and devotion that he almost, almost recognizes for a fleeting fraction of a second, right before it slips entirely through his fingers like water and vanishes into the fog.
Verity's sharp eyes catch the sudden, tragic flash of profound confusion crossing Mob's damp face.
"I know this is completely overwhelming for you," Verity says, his voice dropping down until it has become almost impossibly, painfully quiet now.
"I know none of this makes any sense right now."
Mob watches him through a thick haze, his mind drifting like a rudderless boat on a stormy sea, unable to fully grasp the weight of the words, yet feeling the heavy impact of them vibrating against his ribs.
Verity slowly kneels down slightly on one knee, closing a tiny fraction of the space between them, though he still painstakingly maintains that careful distance, absolutely refusing to reach out and touch Mob's skin despite the overwhelmingly obvious, desperate impulse radiating from his entire posture to do precisely that: to grab hold of him and never let go.
"You were severely injured," Verity continues, his voice trembling as he forces the words out into the open air.
"You've been completely unconscious for a while."
Mob's lips part slightly, struggling to catch up to the timeline.
"...while..."
"A little more than two weeks," Verity supplies softly, the confession heavy with the ghosts of hours spent staring at a motionless chest, waiting for a rise and fall that sometimes felt too weak to be real.
Two weeks.
The number means nothing.
Mob desperately tries to visualize those missing, stolen hours of his life, trying to construct a bridge across the gap in his memory, but nothing comes. His thoughts continue drifting apart like loose pages caught in the wind, blowing away into nothingness.
"You've had a dangerously high fever for a few days now," Verity murmurs, his voice tightening, the words spilling out as if he has been holding them captive behind his teeth for days.
"And for a while there... I honestly wasn't sure..."
Verity abruptly stops speaking, biting down hard on his lower lip as if trying to physically anchor himself against a sudden, overwhelming wave of… emotion.
For just a single, arresting second, something completely raw, stripped bare, and terrifyingly vulnerable flickers across the entity’s face, so exposed and intense that even through the heavy fog clouding his consciousness, Mob catches every devastating ounce of it.
Fear.
A profound, soul-shaking fear that has nothing to do with what had actually happened and everything to do with the fragile body lying on this bed.
It disappears almost immediately beneath a heavy layer of fiercely practiced composure, but the ghost of it remains etched into the tight lines around Verity's eyes.
"I wasn't entirely sure if you were ever going to wake up at all," Verity finishes in a breathless whisper, his words dropping heavily into the space between them like a stone in a well.
Mob stares at him wide-eyed, the declaration hanging heavily in the air.
A statement like that, carrying the very weight of death and finality, should logically terrify him, should send a spike of pure adrenaline straight through his veins.
Instead, it feels completely, numbly abstract, as though Verity is recounting the plot of a tragic story that happened to a completely different person in a distant lifetime.
His physical body simply feels far too exhausted, far too hollowed out to process the weight of what those words truly mean.
"...sorry..."
The quiet, miserable apology slips out from his cracked lips completely of its own accord, an automatic reflex of a soul accustomed to carrying burdens that were never meant for it, long before Mob even fully understands why he is apologizing in the first place.
"I’m… sorry."
Verity's eyes widen in sudden, sharp shock at the sound of the word.
Then, instantly, they soften into something so achingly tender that it threatens to shatter the fragile silence completely.
"No," Verity breathes, shaking his head vehemently from side to side almost immediately, as if physically swatting the word away.
"No, Mob, stop it..."
Verity takes a sharp, uneven breath, his voice catching.
"You have absolutely nothing, not a single thing in this world, to apologize for."
Mob's foggy mind turns the correction over, utterly unable to remember why that answer sounds entirely wrong, why every instinct in his bones tells him he has committed some vast, unforgivable crime simply by surviving.
He only knows with absolute certainty that something deep inside his chest insists he should say it anyway, should bow his head and beg for forgiveness.
For simply existing in this messy world.
For putting everyone through the terror everything that happened.
For making Verity look at him with those wide, swimming eyes that are suddenly, unmistakably shimmering with hot, unfallen tears catching the dim light glass.
Mob stares, completely paralyzed and disoriented, watching the wet sheen gather along Verity's eyes, watching the way his throat works as he desperately swallows down a sob that threatens to break free.
"Mob, I promise to do better," Verity whispers softly, though the words barely reach Mob anymore.
"We’ll start all over again, you and I... And this time, I’ll do everything right. I’ll be there for you. Always."
Mob doesn't understand.
Why is Verity crying?
There are no tears in Mob's own dry eyes, only a vast, burning emptiness, but looking at the wetness pooling in Verity's gaze triggers a sudden, sharp pang of unadulterated pity that twists painfully inside his ribs.
It hurts to see him like this, broken down and failing not to show it.
Without warning, another violent, sickening wave of dizziness crashes over his senses like an incoming tide, pulling the rug out from under him.
He instinctively squeezes his eyes tightly shut again, his breath hitching in his chest.
The entire wooden room tilts violently sideways beneath him, the floor shifting like the deck of a sinking ship in a storm.
His rebellious stomach gives one final, painful lurch, threatening to revolt against him once more.
Without thinking twice, abandoning his previous caution entirely, Verity takes a single, desperate step forward, his shoe scraping sharply against the wooden floorboards before he forces his muscles to lock up and stop himself just inches short, his hands tightening into iron fists at his sides as he fights the overwhelming urge to bridge the gap.
"Are you alright? Do you need... do you need me to get something?" Verity finally asks, his voice cracking loudly on the final syllable.
Mob gives the absolute smallest, most microscopic nod of his head that he can possibly muster against the pillow.
Whether his answer is actually true or a complete lie, Mob hasn't the faintest idea; his entire reality has shrunk down to the agonizing rhythm of his own erratic pulse.
Everything feels so impossibly, infinitely far away from him.
When he finally forces his heavy eyes open once more, blinking through the watery haze, Verity is still standing right there, locked in place precisely where he stopped himself.
The raw concern is written plainly across every single tense feature of Verity's face, refusing to hide behind any mask, despite the deliberate, painful distance he continues to force between their bodies.
For reasons that Mob's broken, scatter-brained logic cannot possibly explain or put into words, the simple, steady sight of Verity standing there anchors him, easing a tiny fraction of the terrifying panic tightening around his lungs.
"What is it?" Verity asks softly and cautiously, dutifully keeping his distance–even though his gaze and his entire posture are practically screaming for physical closeness.
"What can I do to make you feel better?"
Mob still doesn't have the slightest clue where in the world he actually is.
He still cannot find a single reason why his head is heavily wrapped in thick, coarse linen bandages.
He still has no idea why Verity is looking at him as if a miracle had just occurred, while at the same time conveying an impression of infinite, crushing sadness.
He still cannot hold onto a single thought for longer than a heartbeat before it dissolves entirely into empty, echoing silence, leaving him completely bare.
Yet, despite all of that overwhelming confusion swallowing up every other certainty in the universe, Verity is right here.
And somehow, miraculously, even while the rest of the world and his own mind continue to melt and dissolve away into nothingness around him, that single, unshakeable fact feels solid enough, real enough, to cling to with both hands as the darkness tries to pull him under once more.
Mob takes a rattling, heavy breath that burns in his chest before wheezing softly: "Stay."