Beta'd by: psychotriton
He hears a click.
Just a click but it feels like glass in his lungs.
It's all glassy and see-through, with black as the drop back. There's no sound, no people, but the whispers of different voices so quiet that it only seems like a ghost of wind.
He lightly wiggles his fingers, to see if any part of him is here- wherever this place is. His eyes find his hand, palm open and fingers outstretched. Words are written on his knuckles, he gently turns it to see what the letters are.
D. E. A. T. H
He finds it ironic, ironic enough to bring up one side of his lips, because his hands are glowing- no, gleaming. The center, the palm of his hand, with a green light switching to a glittering golden white.
A healer's hands.
The bloodiest kind.
(The only kind that can truly heal; the hands of those with their own darkness and grief, pain and sadness.)
Then there's this thing- no, this voice, causing a ringing in his ears that won't go away.
The voices whispering, a tangle of men and women voices that don't seem familiar, don't feel familiar. Quiet.
The ringing in his ears fade down to a buzz. He removes his hand.
His eyes narrow at this place. An illusion of reality and somewhere else, all squeezed into one. This voice feels familiar. The voice is an echo, but a quiet one- he can't make out the words, only the determination laced within them.
It feels like something blooms- this, this light within him, sucking in a breath when he previously wasn't breathing. It sends a rush through his body. He wasn't breathing.
The air ripples, the voice becoming steadily louder, saying something he can't make out. He looks up, expecting a sky, or a gate coated in fire, because he wasn't breathing, meaning he's dead. Or was, the air being entered into his lungs reminds him.
Looking at the pitch darkness above him, that voice causing small ripples steadily turning into tremors, he thinks that most likely he's in between.
It's true that he planned to die- wanted to die because living is hard when ghosts weigh down his body with each reminder of them, each thought of them that drives him mad. Each nightmare that haunts him at night- of every nightmare that gets added on the piled up corpses that dance behind his eyelids with their twisted smiles and dead eyes, dragging him down to a place he knows he belongs.
The ground shakes, something akin to an earthquake underneath his feet disrupting the draft here, a new gust of wind for his lungs to welcome. And suddenly, he feels so cold, goosebumps breaking against his skin and shivers wracking his body like in Punk Hazard, but this time without a coat.
He didn't realize how cold this dark box of a reality is, tongue darting out to wet his dry lips. Then it hits him, arms wrapped around himself, desperately trying to preserve any semblance of warmth he can find.
He shouldn't have an arm.
"ao.."
That voice again. It's familiar. What happened rushing to his mind, how that person is warm and currently alone on the battlefield without Law. Against him.
There's a cracking noise, tremors causing him to catch his balance. A bright orange light reminding him of the beating sun which bore down on him in Dressrosa's streets, beaming down on him.
"Torao!"
He knows this voice, this bright and bouncing person. The cold begins to cut like the water underneath an iced over lake, the floor begins to crack and crumble, he tries to scream, throat dry, nothing coming out. Paralyzed.
Law gasps.
"Luffy-ya..."
The light engulfs him.
