[Become a ghost. Become. Ghost. Akira was taking a good look at Arthur's face anyway, so he gets to see the way his eyes dilate further as all the color drains from his face. His breathing stutters and he starts gasping for air and sweat beads on his forehead. His voice comes out oddly still and all but a whisper - quick and quiet. He doesn't seem aware he's spoken.]
Suicide?
[Or is he planning to let Vita...? No. Not again. Arthur knows what'll happen if anyone here dies, they all know it, but it's different for him. He's so tired. He doesn't want to die anymore. He does it, he's willing, but to hear someone planning on it, and soon, like this....he can't.
It's warm, too warm. The only word he can come up with for the sensation in his skin is burning, but that's not right at all. He's burned, before, has the scars to prove it. Burning is his. This, this isn't his, this was hers. But what other word is there for the feeling of blades underneath your skin? What other words can describe the horror and agony of that? There aren't any. There aren't, because Arthur's the only one who can tell that story, because he's the only one who's lived it. He's the only one who's died over and over and over again, and he knows, like an ice-cold stone in his gut, that it's not over.
Certainty is terrifying. The unknown, that's nothing. He's a scientist. But the certainty that there is nothing he can do, because this change in him is permanent and there's no going back to being an ordinary human now that he's a weapon. It will never be over.
He needs air, and he doesn't know if that's because he's stopped breathing or because he's screaming. Is he screaming? He can't tell, he doesn't know. He can't hear anything but a high-pitched ringing and that incessant tickticktickticktick.
He's wrapped his arms around himself now and his knees are on the ground. His knuckles white, nails digging into his sides so hard he'd be drawing blood if his coat weren't so thick. Three vertical eyes hover in the edges of his vision, shivering and staring, unblinking, They know, they know, they know. He feels sick, bile burning, burning, more burning, as it rises in his throat. Not again.
He completely misses Akira's diagnosis, that line of thought entirely lost to the void now.]
cw: uh......panic attack, reference to suicide, torture, emeto
[Become a ghost. Become. Ghost. Akira was taking a good look at Arthur's face anyway, so he gets to see the way his eyes dilate further as all the color drains from his face. His breathing stutters and he starts gasping for air and sweat beads on his forehead. His voice comes out oddly still and all but a whisper - quick and quiet. He doesn't seem aware he's spoken.]
Suicide?
[Or is he planning to let Vita...? No. Not again. Arthur knows what'll happen if anyone here dies, they all know it, but it's different for him. He's so tired. He doesn't want to die anymore. He does it, he's willing, but to hear someone planning on it, and soon, like this....he can't.
It's warm, too warm. The only word he can come up with for the sensation in his skin is burning, but that's not right at all. He's burned, before, has the scars to prove it. Burning is his. This, this isn't his, this was hers. But what other word is there for the feeling of blades underneath your skin? What other words can describe the horror and agony of that? There aren't any. There aren't, because Arthur's the only one who can tell that story, because he's the only one who's lived it. He's the only one who's died over and over and over again, and he knows, like an ice-cold stone in his gut, that it's not over.
Certainty is terrifying. The unknown, that's nothing. He's a scientist. But the certainty that there is nothing he can do, because this change in him is permanent and there's no going back to being an ordinary human now that he's a weapon. It will never be over.
He needs air, and he doesn't know if that's because he's stopped breathing or because he's screaming. Is he screaming? He can't tell, he doesn't know. He can't hear anything but a high-pitched ringing and that incessant tickticktickticktick.
He's wrapped his arms around himself now and his knees are on the ground. His knuckles white, nails digging into his sides so hard he'd be drawing blood if his coat weren't so thick. Three vertical eyes hover in the edges of his vision, shivering and staring, unblinking, They know, they know, they know. He feels sick, bile burning, burning, more burning, as it rises in his throat. Not again.
He completely misses Akira's diagnosis, that line of thought entirely lost to the void now.]