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In his dreams, the water is always pitch black. There’s no up or down, just a never-ending expanse of darkness, chipping away at his soul. It seeps into his bones, turns lean muscles to lead, dragging him down until he can no longer breathe.
Usually, that’s when he wakes up. Gasps for air, as sweat damp skin dries in the silent night.
He’s not waking up now.
His awareness returns to him in the blink of an eye. One moment he’s drifting along, remembering long nights and even longer mornings, and the next, every nightmare has turned into reality.
He’s underwater.
Surrounded by the ocean on all sides.
Hands are pulling on his cloak, dragging him down.
Qifrey kicks out. It doesn’t help. His legs are getting tangled in the flare of his clothes. Turning his head, he searches for his attacker – only there is none. No one swims behind him, pushing him down. There is no stranger keeping him under. The hands on his clothes are the billows of fabric, water getting tangled in the soaked cotton. He is totally and utterly alone.
His throat spasms.
Fear echoes through his body like a loud drum, each heartbeat a reverberation of his horror. Lips pressed into a thin line, Qifrey tries to make sense of the world. Tries to keep the water out of his body. Tries to—
His lungs ache. It is a small pain, growing greater by the second. Nestled deep in his ribcage, the urge to breathe blossoms like a flower ready to bloom. Qifrey won’t give in just yet – his phobia is good for one thing at least: as a teenager, Olruggio made sure Qifrey trained at holding his breath.
It might buy him a little bit of time yet.
His sense of direction is all tangled up, each desperate flail of his arm without a target. His cloak has turned into his enemy. How can he spot the sky when his own uniform is blotting out the view? Not to mention the weight the soaked cloth adds to his body.
Qifrey isn’t weak – he could never allow himself to be, so he isn’t.
But compared to the raw strength of an ocean? He is nothing.
There is weight pressing down on him from all sides, crushing in its pressure. He is but a flea, insignificant. A bug, drowning in a pitcher of iced tea. Qifrey can see it quite clearly, his tiny arms and legs desperately searching for a purchase, anything to hold onto, really, only for the liquid to drag him down, gluing his wings together until flying becomes an impossibility.
Flying.
Right.
He should still be wearing his glyph shoes.
Fighting against the currents to regain some coordination, the iron bands around his chest tightening another notch, Qifrey slams his feet together. The effect is instantaneous – speed propels him forward, his cloak billowing out and changing his trajectory. He can only hope that he is pointing in the right direction, but, really, he has no control over his movements, a gasp of air escaping him against his will. He snaps his mouth closed before the freezing water can race in.
Ice cold fear chases through his body as he watches a cloud of small air bubbles escape, their trail towards the surface obscured by his own spiraling path— sideways. It’s not up. At least Qifrey doesn’t think it is. The noose around his throat tightens some more.
Forcing his feet apart, his deathly tumble stops. And so does he.
It isn’t long before he starts to sink again, dragged down by the heavy weight of his own responsibility. His cloak is a teacher’s cloak. It tells the entire world that he’s allowed to teach the next generation; it is a sign to the Assembly that he is more than just a charity case. He had it made after he passed the fifth test, a gift to himself. A promise.
A sign for Olly, to make sure the other man knew that Qifrey was trying. Trying to do what? Stay alive. Be a good friend. Be a good teacher. Be more than what his past had turned him into.
And now, all of these promises are what’s killing him faster.
Finding the clasp on his chest, he hesitates. There’s little chance that he’ll survive, even if he sheds the cloak. It’ll be a piece of himself he’ll lose if he drops it. And yet— and yet he owes it to Olly to at least try.
His chest spasms as the cloth drifts into the darkness below – the ache is heavy and all-encompassing. Qifrey swallows it down, tries to at least, but the lack of air is making him gag.
The water is lighter than it usually is in his dreams, less monster black and more late evening blue. It moves when he struggles against it, the currents a gentle push and pull instead of a fierce grip keeping his muscles locked up.
None of that makes it any less deadly.
Drifting down, the pain threatens to overwhelm him. It’s so deeply rooted in his chest that, if he wasn’t underwater, Qifrey knows his eye would be filled with tears. Blinking frantically, the world remains blurry, far away. Drowning, it turns out, does nothing to help his fading eyesight. Far above him, the blue lightens.
That must be the surface. It feels impossible.
Apparently his survival instincts aren’t entirely numb, no matter what Olly says, because as if a switch has been flipped, Qifrey can feel energy return to his deadened limbs. Moving is a battle – Qifrey against a behemoth of never-before-seen strength. His muscles are starved for oxygen, his heart a kolibri fighting for yet another go at flying.
But he pushes. Each motion makes him sick to his stomach, the horror of what is happening only held at bay by the knowledge that giving up now would be certain death. It doesn’t matter that the coldness of the water reminds him of the casket they buried him in; it doesn’t matter that the taste of bile and salt water against the back of his throat is the same taste he swallowed down again and again when he was a child; it doesn’t matter that he knows what drowning feels like.
(it hurts)
He has to survive.
More than that, he wants to survive.
At least this time he can see. At least this time the darkness isn’t impenetrable.
Another stroke closer towards the surface, and hope dares to take root somewhere in his chest. Small and fragile, it nestles next to the growing need to breathe. Only iron welded stubbornness has kept him from breathing in salt water so far, but even that won’t hold forever.
Another push, and a cramp races down his leg. Sudden agony pulling his muscles taunt, fiery peaks of stabbing pain down his entire left side. Teeth clenched until they hurt, it’s not enough. A groan escapes him. Air bubbles up towards the surface.
Fuck.
Qifrey has to close his eye to stop the tears from escaping. Huh. So apparently you can cry while drowning. Who knew? That young sprig of hope in his chest dies, shrivels up, and turns to dust.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
He can no longer see the light promise of the sky above. With his eye closed, the darkness comes for him.
Brimmed caps and long, flowy cloaks. The promise of– not safety, but less pain. And then the water. So much water. Again and again. They didn’t stop when he threw up, they didn’t stop when death turned to reality. They just brought him back. And then they started all over again.
Qifrey remembers what it feels like to drown. And he’s scared.
The invisible band over his throat eases slightly. It’s not a good feeling – it’s giving up. His chest hitches, his heart losing the impossible fight. There is only so much a body can take. There is only so much horror it can withstand. His lungs burn, their scalding pain welcome. The longer he holds onto this deep seated agony, the longer—
In the endless expanse of water, something brushes against his leg. Qifrey gasps, two dozen hands – scarred, pale, manicured, rough, callused – running up and down his body, pushing him into the casket, leaving him to drown one last time. Water floods his mouth.
It’s salty.
Right, the ocean, not the never-ending rain.
Not a river bed in some forsaken forest, the water dripping in slowly, one inch at a time.
Just—
Qifrey kicks out. He’s not quite sure whether his leg moved. Can’t really feel it anymore. There’s salt in his throat. He gags. Swallows. His chest hurts. Fuck, it hurts so much.
For a time after Beldaruith saved him, he would seek out this feeling. He would purposefully walk past the barriers in the Assembly to feel the Great Lake press down on him. He thought he could conquer his fear that way. That if he was the one who chose to breathe in water, somehow it would hurt less.
Turns out, in the end, he only grew more afraid.
His fingers tingle when he balls them into fists. It’s barely his body anymore – just a soaked bag of flesh, soon to be a winged whale’s dinner. When his eye opens, it’s not his choice. There is no part of Qifrey that wants to walk willingly towards the end. He doesn’t want to see what comes next.
But the muscles in his face no longer listen. His mouth hangs open, filled with water as his useless throat tries to keep it out, and his lone eye stares up towards the light, unblinking.
His heart trips. Pulls. It’s like a gumtree band being pulled taunt. At some point, it has to snap. Qifrey didn’t know he would be forced to listen to his own demise. He always thought – wished – he’d be gone by now.
Fate is cruel, even in his last moments.
At least the sky is bright. The sun must be shining up above, not everything as hopelessly drenched in darkness as Qifrey’s deepest fears.
Hands are reaching for him from the Below. Their fingers are long and elegant, short and covered in paint, scarred and knobbly, pretty and dainty. It’s their hands, clawing at his robes once more. He doesn’t want to go with them. He wants to stay here where the world is brighter, even as he’s dying.
There is no fight left in his body, mostly dead as it is. And still, he wishes.
That is more than he did as a child. Maybe he did grow up after all, even if he will never grow old.
Like spilled ink, the world grows tendrils of black. They trail through his vision until only the faintest echo of sunshine can reach him. He won’t ever make it to the surface, but it’s a certain comfort that it remains in his view. If he could wish for anything, he’d wish to see the sun one last time. As it stands, he is glad to at least bear witness to its diluted echo.
And then even that is covered by a shadow. Quick and vaguely humanoid, it sprints across the ripples cast by the waves. Some mythologies believe in a big bird that comes for the deceased. As his consciousness fades, Qifrey hopes that maybe the same is true for him, even if he’s not a believer.
Only he knows that he belongs to the Below – never really escaped them, really. He can feel them teasing him, beckoning him forth.
Hands close around his shoulders, urgent and hurried and harsh.
It might just be the last flickers of a dying brain wasting oxygen, but Qifrey could swear that they are flesh and blood.
That unlike him, they are alive.