A/N: I am mostly writing for myself and a few others, so why I used to fear this section I'll never know. Odd and empty as it may seem it is all that fits this unique story. This is one I am dying to write- I'm happy it's my 101st.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, regret nothing, and let them forget nothing.

You were never good at swimming.

You can't remember what landed you in the river by the time you were getting there. Against yourself you were still swinging for life, your lungs begging you stop. All the ideas of you never giving up were so easy to say before now, when you can barely think at all except to survive.

Your robes drag you down further than you can remember and your mask has filled with water too deep to see. You're kicking despite yourself, unfamiliar with actual techniques, but your robes cling to you and make it nearly impossible to move. It'd be so easy to let go, to let your eyes see your final resting place, to keep your arms motionless. It feels nothing like sleep. No peace at all, nothing but panic, and your lungs beating at you to escape, to get away, while they fill with something that makes your chest feel close to breaking.

The water surrounds you and you can feel it. You can feel the countdown. Your life doesn't flash before your eyes and there's nowhere your mind is except beating against the wall of your chest where your lungs are ready to collapse.

You lose consciousness before your body does.

-MoD-

You know something is wrong when you're able to think again. In the distance, you hear a voice call and you want to reach out to grab it, but you can't feel yourself at all. You want to grab it, hold it close. You try and connect this to what you've told others, about the afterlife, assuaging their fears, justifying everything, but this isn't what you expected. Sure, you had nothing to suspect, but your vision is blurred making your surroundings colors and not shapes, and this voice is not the voice who saw you, who lived through you, who is calling you.

Then the colors have shapes and the voice sounds less holy and you return to Earth to notice that your mask is gone.

You gasp, but you choke even further. The water still takes you whole and you still can barely breathe. Your chest tears into your muscle and you cough so much you still can't imagine breath, and gods above it'd have been so much easier had you died.

Your arms are flailing, but you still reach for your mask until your arm is pinned down. You can only look up, eyes burning, at the owner of the arm. You steal a desperate glance at him, this young light-skinned man with spotted rainbow paint around his eyes, and too formal a soldier's outfit to call his own- clearly given to him. He's looking at you in panic and his hand's still on yours. You feel his other hand on your stomach as it bridges to your chest, just below your breast, on sopping wet red robes.

Without warning, he pulls you up and places you above the river. Your stinging eyes take in a new sight and you gasp again, spitting more water out. His hands are on your chest, pushing sharply and holding you above. You kick at him as you spit more, wanting out before the other shoe drops, even if it means returning to the depths, because against yourself you want to see the gods again, even if you know you shouldn't.

All of the water spills out of your lungs and your chest feels so weak it's a wonder his hands don't crush you like you'd expect. You've heard of these hands more than you've seen them, but you fear them. You wait for him to push you into the river again, where you'd hope you'd drown. You cough as you try and process drive, only for him to pull you again, lying on your back, face to face with you again.

You close your eyes, desperate to see anything else, but your hands still reach for your mask desperately. You feel an object land on your chest, nearly crushing it. Desperate to remove it, your hands clasp and pull it before they recognize it to be perfectly spherical.

"You okay?" he asks.

You're too afraid to respond, for your lungs and your life.

"Are you okay?" he asks again.

Too worried about giving him even a hair-trigger reason to push you back into the water, you nod, nearly blasting your head against the ground on which it rests.

You hear him stand on his feet, wobbling and unsteady unlike the perfectly organized way you expected from him. Eventually, his feet stomp on solid ground, and you hear the crunch of boots on top of freshly fallen autumn leaves. Finally, you open your eyes, only seeing part of his outfit, blue and white as expected, cling to him with as much water, with a perfectly dry backpack as brown as you're comfortable with, familiar with.

He doesn't look back, but you still hear him say "Be careful." In a few steps, he's left your sight.

The sights are too clear and open for you- even as he leaves you can see the canopies of every pine tree and hear the edge of the river's merciless rapids. Too quickly, you place your mask back on, the remnants of water dropping onto your brow ridges, drops gradually leaking on your eyes. Closer than ever of the robes you fell in with, clutching your legs, merely a far-too-close extra layer of skin bright red, saying too much, too desperate to let go of the woman who nearly died.

You lie there for a full ten minutes after the soldier leaves, thinking only of the bottom of the river, trying not to reason that if there were any justice in the world, you'd have ended up there.

-MoD-

You don't count the sun when it rises nor when it sets. These aren't luxuries you know you can afford yourself, because you never have been that foolish. You're not surprised that you feel the sun more than you see it, as your eyes still sting and even as the leaves rarely are indented by your bare feet, you barely keep your eyes open. Only when the air has chilled and tries to bust inside your still-soaked robes are you certain it's night. The sense of touch is your closest friend. The eyes are too deceptive, the ears can be misled, and the mouth is capable of lies. Only when feeling something are you capable of the true honesty.

So you do. You feel the breath hit your own mask and cycle again. You feel the heat of the day dry your robes but never pull them away from you. You feel your own chest heave with a breath too much for them at times. You feel your feet hit the ground slower and slower by the second, by just a fraction of an inch. These feelings all tell you one thing, safe or not, the only thing you know.

Keep going.

You only stop through the halt when you hear a multitude of footsteps, perfectly in rhythm. The leaves beg for mercy beneath them and you hide behind a tree, invisible. No one looks for you, which is alright by you- one soldier is merciful enough but whatever good they can do washes away in a sea of hundreds. You hear their passing, but only move when you don't feel the crowd near you.

Even if you can't trust your hearing, best to be careful.

You can't tell anyone how many days and nights have passed when you hear more footsteps. You duck behind the nearest tree and stand on exhausted feet. Before you can stand tall, you've bent over, feeling intense exhaustion wrack your body. You only then realize how cracked your chest feels, how you can barely breathe, how much you hate standing still.

Against your better judgment, you peek behind the tree.

You see a new set of group marching, people you can't quite recognize. You only know your own group and the group fighting you, and anyone else is an odd human being. At first you wonder if this tribe is your own- their skin is not pale like the soldiers you run from, but it isn't your skin of tree bark- imposing and, you'd always assumed, closer to the Earth. Instead, their skin gleams enviously, like polished copper. You try to look away, used to rejecting superficial beauty, but you can't bring yourself to.

The people are entirely women, maneuvering through wagons and horses that move too calmly. They're also similar to yourself, and you wonder if they would be merciful, or- like you- too cutthroat. They don't seem similar to you at all- they wear pants close to their navel but aside from that, only a bra. You can discern their skin far too easily, but you're too tired to resent them.

Only when your thoughts are interrupted by a new sight do your judgments dissipate. A male figure, with clothes too intense to match the freed bondage of the women he's with, walks near them. He's donned with armor too dented to say that it serves no purpose, and boots even thicker than the soldiers you hid from, donned in skintight robes that are too similar to your own skin to leave you looking for long. Your mask gets more heated as you hide behind the tree, but their marching is louder.

You think for a few seconds before your thoughts disappear into nothingness, and all you feel is exhaustion. You know you can join them far too easily. You aren't sure they'll accept you.

You try and think again, your thoughts too heated and angry to ignore, but not strong enough to fight. You remove your mask, and the whole world gets wider than the eyes would have it. You look into it, plain white with black eyeholes covered in netting, and one small hole near the mouth to speak in, also netted.

It has no expression and you can't see your own reflection in it. It's comforting to you but you can't discern the person who's worn it.

You place it in your robes, and it acts as a breastplate, too close to your aching chest to heal. You slowly walk from behind the tree, waving at them. The back end of the caravan stops, and he distantly can be seen holding up a gloved hand, calling in a foreign tongue at those ahead. The whole crew stops- people, wagons, horses, and all.

Before you can say anything, you fall over and feel everything disappear.