Selene

57 | Drowned

Selene swallowed a lump in her throat and felt her way along the wall with one hand. It was cold to the touch, and her ears nearly rang, despite all the noise. The door swung open automatically as she approached, and the darkness beyond the menagerie was eerily endless. Only the birds and frogs and wildcats could be heard; the corridor was too silent, too dark. She didn't want to go. Selene wanted to stay in the menagerie, where it was light, and loud, and where Winter was. But when she looked back at the cage, Winter was gone, and Ryu the wolf lay with his head on his paw. Selene put one foot into the darkness and plunged into it.

She screamed, and her lungs filled with water. Selene gurgled and choked and reached up toward the surface, but she couldn't find it. The rush of water and her struggle filled her ears, and Selene kicked her feet, trying to hold what was left of a breath remaining in her. The water was so cold it felt like knives against her skin, and she pushed higher. But higher turned lower, and lower turned sideways. She was in a vast ocean. No light penetrated the water. Trying to gulp in a breath to push back the mounting pressure in her lungs, Selene reached her arms up. She reached, and found nothing. Her feet fluttered frantically until they kicked and struggled no more.

Selene drowned. A million times over, again and again. She died and died a horrible death again. Over and over again, she saw momentary portraits of waves, crashing down above her on a stormy beach she'd never seen in her life. Visions of rain so heavy it smothered her. Every time she cried out, she drowned again. And then, suddenly, she was floating. The barrage had stopped. She still drowned, but as her heartbeat slowed, she opened her eyes against the pressure of water and saw light.

It dappled the waters with streaks of sun, and Selene saw the first life, a fish swimming by her foot. Releasing a bubble in surprise, she kicked her feet and found that she had a sense of up and down again. She tried to swim up, pushing momentum through the water with her arms. Her metal hand wanted nothing more than to sink again, like she had so many times before. But Selene was sick of drowning. She wanted air.

And she surfaced. It was a miracle. She closed her eyes and felt cold air and breathed in a breath so long, it very well could have been her first. And then she felt fingers. Arms, toes. Her body was no longer numb. She grabbed her arm. Was it real? She opened her eyes, and it was so bright she shut them again.

No more extremes were to be found. She was in a bed of snow. It was winter, but she was awake, and she was protected. She tried to work her eyes again, and squinted them open, letting the light blind her for a split second before they began to adjust, a ceiling coming into view. It was the Ceiling she remembered. The one so familiar it made her choke up. She sat up and tried to leap out of the bed, but her legs failed her and she fell to the floor onto her shoulder.

Selene had emerged from the water, but her memories remained. With a heaving breath, filling her water-logged lungs with air and sputtering it out, she patted the floor and tried to pull herself up by the leg of a table, voices sounding faraway in her ears. Her arms were too weak. No will was found in them. Her body and hair was exceptionally dry, and she heaved breaths of crisp oxygen in and out as though she never expected to know them again.

With a ringing cry of reality, Selene knew why she was dry and warm. She knew why she was in a world of white and a room of glass and wood. She wasn't in her ruined, singed, threadbare dress— she was in a hospital gown, white and new. Her hair was washed and soft around her face. It felt so alien that Selene's arms collapsed again, and she fell to the floor, hitting her jaw against the hard wood with a hard thump.

Her indistinct voices were closer, and when she looked up, there were figures attached to them, fretting, busying themselves back and forth across the room. One held a portscreen and talked frantically in words she couldn't make out. Another scrawled quickly on a clipboard, notes and numbers and times. The last was trying to help her up, back to the bed, so gently that she could hardly feel his fingertips on her.

Selene thrashed out of his grip and found the strength to stumble half-heartedly to her feet, slamming against the smooth wall for support, the voice trying to calm her, going after her. She thought they were doctors, but she didn't care. She wanted out and away. She needed to tell. They would forget about Winter. She needed to—

Selene forced the door open, violently shaking away from a hand on her shoulder, a grab at her arm. The doctors hurriedly tucked away their portscreens, threw down their clipboards— Selene threw them off of her and screamed at them to stop, to leave her alone. There was a flashing light in her head. A red light. Her thoughts travelled one track only— Winter.

She slammed out of the room and into the hall, against the opposite wall with a rough impact that rattled her, and she began to stumble down the hall. Where was she going? She didn't know who she was looking for, what she was looking for. She picked up speed and looked over her shoulder. She couldn't outrun the doctors, because they were strong and healthy and even she knew she was delirious. She banged into the wall and tried to round the corner and—

Warm arms were around her, restraining and comforting at once. They couldn't seem to decide. Selene recognised them. Her eyes widened, and then closed. She slowly grabbed the fabric of the shirt that was wrapped around her, and buried her face in the chest that was so close.

She didn't know how long she stood like that. It was the most comfortable she'd ever been. She felt his hand lightly touch the back of her head, and she squeezed her eyes shut. All her panic had drained away, and all that remained was a draining, hopeless emptiness and the feeling that there should be something there. Something soft, warm. An uncontent calm.

Voices were still fuzzy. Her limbs still felt weak and drowned. She couldn't stay standing in the hall forever, and they took her back to her hospital room, back to her soft white bed and the big window and the familiar ceiling. She couldn't tell what they were saying, and it gave her such an intense headache, trying to make it out, that she had to bury her head under her pillow. But it was ripped from her grasp, and she was angry before she remembered that feeling she'd had before in the menagerie, that indistinct memory of her hands working together against her throat. They thought she was trying to smother herself.

I'll feel better when I sleep, Selene told herself, and tried to bunch up her blanket as a pillow behind her head. She told herself that she would be fine in the evening, after she'd slept. But she had to shut her eyes tight against the thought that she might not wake up again, at all.

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a/n:

Hey, you guys! Here's another cheesy chapter of the cheesy fanfiction. I wanted to throw in this note to celebrate a bit— I went to the trouble to count up the word count of Selene thus far and found that I hit around 60,000 words with this last chapter! It's really exciting for me, and a bit of a landmark. I'm closer to finishing this fanfiction than I've ever gotten with any novel-length piece before.

Thanks for reading, as always! Hope you enjoyed!