Ellis
Cold. Always so cold now, despite the sweat coating his skin.
Not his sweat. Someone else’s. Many someone else’s.
The metal bit into his raw wrists as shifted, trying to find a position where it hurt less. There isn’t one.
His head pounds. His eyes burn. Every part of him aches in ways he doesn’t want to name, doesn’t want to remember.
He’s so tired. So very tired of... everything.
Maybe if he just closes his eyes. Just... stops.
Stops fighting. Stops hoping. Stops... being.
That would be better, wouldn’t it? Than this. Than becoming nothing but a body for strangers to use. Than remembering Gabriel’s gentle hands only to feel rough ones instead.
Just sleep. Sleep and never wake up...
A crash somewhere beyond the ratty curtain.
Shouting. French and... something else? Russian? The sounds blur together, meaningless.
More crashes.
Gunfire.
Screaming.
tried to drag his mind back from the edge of oblivion. Tried to... to think.
He pulled against the cuffs weakly, attempting to sit up. To see past the shabby hospital curtains separating him from... from others. Others like him. He can hear them stirring, whimpering.
A voice.
A voice he knows.
But that’s... that’s not possible. The drugs. The drugs are making him hear things again. Making him hope again when hope is dead, and he should be too.
Gabriel steps into view.
No. No, it’s just another hallucination. A cruel trick of his dying mind.
But this Gabriel looks... wrong. Shocked. Angry. So angry. Real Gabriel would never look so... so devastated.
Would he?
The hallucination moves closer, rattles the cuffs at ’ wrists.
“Did you...” ’ voice cracks, barely a whisper. “Did you really come?”
“Yes, mon petit oiseau.” Gentle fingers brush his cheek. “Mon coeur. Je suis là.”
A shadow appears. Nika has keys that click and scrape. Then his wrists are free.
Nika vanishes, shouting orders in English and Russian, but barely notices. Gabriel’s arms are around him, real and solid and warm. Then pulling back slightly as something soft—a blanket, Alain’s doing—wraps around him.
He’s being lifted. Cradled against Gabriel’s chest like something precious. Like something worth saving.
His head finds Gabriel’s shoulder as the world starts to fade again.
If this is his final hallucination before the darkness takes him... it’s a good one.
closes his eyes one last time.