So thick, that Upton almost didn't feel the actual warmth, notice the spread of sunlight, real sunlight across his burning, bloody, battered form. It had started out as a single slit that Upton had collapsed beneath, something written off as his imagination. Now, it was gaining speed, more and more falling into the chasm of the cave system below. The first few drops landed on Upton, his freezing, frail limbs began to tense against the sudden heat, hotter than lava scorching inches away from his flesh. They then traveled out, finding American's form next.
His skin had never appeared paler. What had so long been known to Upton as gentle, tan skin with the rough feeling of bark across calloused fingers was now weak. Draining of life and color and put directly beneath a widening maw of deadly, blinding white light washed Meric out. He was pale. The gash in his stomach that had torn and ripped through his shirt was no longer a terrifying, blackened crimson but the soft, glittering red of cherries ripe for the picking in the early fall. Blue eyes stared straight up at the incoming light, lighting themselves up more but in a deadened, hollow way as if they had been made of glass, rolled and rounded, and shoved painfully into the sockets to mimic a limp doll.
It made the world feel surreal, imagined even. So long spent beneath the world, the real world, trapped in an inescapable realm that was nothing but bloodshed and pain. Lacking rain and sun, but mimicking snow. Where monsters without faces skittered up across the roofs of walls and familiar faces swam in pools of memory. Where strangers became allies and friends and fell to enemies and rose to something more, only to fade away. Where cold had reigned as an unopposed leader, shaking trembling hearts and destroying them from beating again, turning snow white skin to red and delicate stitching hands to violent killers.
The sun filled out into a full circle. Beams split apart the large, grassy field in its entirety and revealed the other bodies left without breath. Each was encircled with a halo of their own blood, black grass spread out even farther. It looked like an infestation, so much of the cavern's beauty spoiled by the sickening, wet, moldy darkness that cropped up to overtake it. Upton had been a part of that. He knew he had killed people, he knew he had killed more than one, and not just in this room either, but looking at the mangled, bludgeoned faces and torn wounds through thin skin, he couldn't recall a single one of them. The only name he knew was that of the boy's empty husk laying by his side.
Upton took American gently back into his grip. His warmth had drained away, now as cold as the hands the boy was used to holding. The heat instead came from above, beating down too warm, too bright. Hiding, almost sheltering his friend's form, Upton curled both arms around American as a new sound hit the horizon. That of one he hadn't heard in weeks or maybe months, for however long they had been trapped underground in the arena. It hurt his head, thumping deep and stirring a headache locked back in the frail boy's skull so painful that he chose to ignore the incoming hum and bent heavily over the body in his arms.
Dirty, bloody hair mingled with blonde straw, forehead pressed to forehead, uneven breath mixed with absolute stillness. Upton held on. And though the numbness was heavy on his shoulder, he clung to the edge of his sanity there in the blackened, ruined grass with his body curled around the only thing left he had. He didn't notice when the announcement came or the ladder fell or the crowd, away in a land he could no longer understand nor belong in, cheered. He only knew when the cold shadow swept in and hands met his grip that American was taken.
And when he was ripped away, Upton screamed.
Fierce and bloody and terrified, it came from his lungs as a piercing, painful expel of air. Everything surged in a final, indescribable moment of anguish. Pain, fresh and brutal, slammed Upton down in a wave and dragged him out to sea. He was barely conscious or aware. Aware of his nails, bitten and cut and bleeding, digging into bark-like skin and leaving long, impressionable claw marks deep in the body. The boy screamed despite the hands around him, despite the fight being useless. He wasn't thinking. He wasn't breathing. Only screaming, until the lining of his lungs broke and grew raw, until blood warmed his mouth and choked him on the taste of blood. Until his energy gave out and he was forced to collapse, eyes fresh with a new wave of tears that obscured his vision until it was nothing but green and black spots and then white. Until the numbness finally found its way to his head, and with thickly coiled black tendrils wrapped around his neck to cut off his airflow, it pulled Upton's head under the waves.
☠Upton Snapper's Fading☠
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