Will I heal?
When that Violetblood broke his arm, it’s the sound that sticks with Rijora the most: a dull cracking noise with a meaty *thump* underneath. It’s nothing like the sound effects in the movies or video games; not a sharp, clear snap, but a fleshy muffled thump, mostly overshadowed by the squeak of his sneakers as he collapsed, seeming like slow motion at the time. It’s a gross noise. It’s so much more *real* than Rijora would have expected. The break of the bone is buried under the sound of wood against skin, and it’s that nasty, heavy, meaty thud that stands out more than anything.
His screams don’t sound like the movies, either. They’re too hoarse and random. He tastes blood in them; chokes on them and garbles half of them into wet gasps or gags. Ringing in his own head from how utterly loud and real it was. It could only be described as *agony*.
He’s almost thankful for how much it hurts. The pain is everything, everywhere, all over him, all over the room. The air is humid with his pain. It condenses on his skin like sweat and drips down into every part of his being. It hurts so much that it doesn’t fit—he can’t compare it to anything; can’t even call it pain when it’s so much more than that. It’s like trying to understand the distance between here and the Sun, comparing kilometres to light years—how many paper cuts is this pain? How many bruises? How many tears? Mental defeat was what burst up. Rapidly growing and invading and enveloping his mind. The horrible, *real* sound of him breaking from the right arm. He thought he could hear it in his brain, but that now seems more like his *hope* snapping. He dreams about it when they put him under; hears his former coach taunting, “are you strong enough? or are you weak like your lusus,” and then that awful thump-crack-squeak on a loop, and realizes that shit, the asshole had broken him twice in ten seconds flat.
He breaks a third time, too, when he wakes up to no one at his side. He doesn't know what he was expecting. His lusus is gone, who else would worry? And a fourth when he asks, “will i he>l?” to a nearby doctor and gets a tight, uncomfortable, “We’ll see, one day at a time...” in response. He would've been better off without an answer. He would've been better off never coming out of that hospital. Wallowing in his shattered strength. His shattered mind. His shattered arm.
He’s almost thankful for how much it hurts. The pain is everything, everywhere, all over him, all over the room. The air is humid with his pain. It condenses on his skin like sweat and drips down into every part of his being. It hurts so much that it doesn’t fit—he can’t compare it to anything; can’t even call it pain when it’s so much more than that. It’s like trying to understand the distance between here and the Sun, comparing kilometres to light years—how many paper cuts is this pain? How many bruises? How many tears? Mental defeat was what burst up. Rapidly growing and invading and enveloping his mind. The horrible, *real* sound of him breaking from the right arm. He thought he could hear it in his brain, but that now seems more like his *hope* snapping. He dreams about it when they put him under; hears his former coach taunting, “are you strong enough? or are you weak like your lusus,” and then that awful thump-crack-squeak on a loop, and realizes that shit, the asshole had broken him twice in ten seconds flat.
He breaks a third time, too, when he wakes up to no one at his side. He doesn't know what he was expecting. His lusus is gone, who else would worry? And a fourth when he asks, “will i he>l?” to a nearby doctor and gets a tight, uncomfortable, “We’ll see, one day at a time...” in response. He would've been better off without an answer. He would've been better off never coming out of that hospital. Wallowing in his shattered strength. His shattered mind. His shattered arm.
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