The End.
--
Shin is drowning.
Easily, he could kick his legs and return to the surface. A tiny act that he is slowly losing the strength to commit will take him the few feet that separate him and sweet, cool air.
He is not bound, or injured. He is not dying (yet) or being forced into the water. There are no youja, no monsters, no evil creatures keeping him down here.
It is just him. Him and the armor.
The armor is still shining blue. He looks at his hands through the tiny bubbles floating from his lips and the cracks between the armor and his skin. The last desperate remains of oxygen flitter past his eyelids to rejoin in silence with the air above. Looking at the armor here is like looking at water the way water wants to be seen.
He never noticed how pretty it was, before. The light, the coolness of it. He was only concerned then with its purpose - to keep biting weapons from his skin. He had killed the armor over and over again, letting it be chipped away by heat and steel.
Now, it returned the favor. When the armors serve their purpose, they return to their resting places. No one knows what becomes of the armor-bearers.
Shin went with his armor, down into the deep. The last one to bear it did the same. He is detached from his lungs, but he knows that they are aching. He can feel the last of the breath he took lifting off and away, and he breathes in.
Water. He is water, like the armor. He's loved the water since he was very young, and now it loves him back. He wonders, briefly, if his friends will ever find him.
He knows, comfortingly, that they'll all be in the same places again, soon.
The water darkens, and there is a candle flame. Shin closes his eyes, and the flame goes out.
Blue water.
Dark water.
Gone.
--
I have no idea where the hell this came from.