A/N: Written for the GX bingo, the non-flash version, #007 – patience is a virtue, and for the Diversity Writing Challenge, b95 – write about despair.


Things Will Be Okay

Things will be okay. Things will be okay. If only he can wait for that time but he can't because he's drowning and humans can't survive long without air or light and there's no air.

Funny how there's a lot of light under the surface of the sea.

He wonders why. The curtains are drawn and they've always worked before to blot out the sun. How many times had they slept in because of that? And they never bothered to change that because they liked the ability to sleep in and wake up when their bodies asked, not their alarms or the sun who really was up too early, day by day. The clouds and the wind and the moon took time off, and slept in every now and then but not the sun. Never the sun. Up the same time every day and it was only the earth having tilted on its axis that meant the days became long or short. A habit they both grow used to and despise. And that's human nature, he supposes. That foolishness where they abhor the very things they lap up, the things they can't do without.

And the sun is a sort of medicine for that foolishness? It's almost too silly a metaphor to fathom.

In any case, he's getting an overdose of sun right now. Too bright, almost blinding and it doesn't help that there are spots in his vision too. Odd spots. So particular. Why not a white dot in the centre of his vision instead? He could handle that. Sure, it'll make it hard to read and stuff but he's not a reader anyway. He's a listener. A talker. He doesn't need his eyes for that but he needs them when they're a door slammed and bolted shut between him and his cards because they're his oxygen and not to be found at the bottom of the sea where he's falling to.

Things will be okay, they say. Things will be okay. But that's the future. How can he see the future with a gap in his vision? How can he walk that glass road ahead of him when there's a giant hole right in the middle? He can't, of course. He's not afraid of the dark but he is afraid of falling, afraid of drowning – and he's drowning right now and that's why he's afraid. Because the surface is slipping further from sight with each passing second, and there's only that blinding white light mixed with tendrils of black underwater.

And the deeper he sinks, the brighter it gets. Why do they talk about blackness swallowing one's vision in such things? The authors of those books have evidently not drowned before – but he supposes he can't blame them. Experience speaks the truth, but there has to be a line, somewhere. Otherwise, the first death in their tale will be their last, and the story forever incomplete. In any case, they've got the drowning aspect wrong. Of course, it's probably an accepted fact and if he tries to fix it, he'll be the one nailed instead, and that's not one of his concerns. The concern is how far away the surface gets: his air, those spirits that have always been by his side – and how bright the light, without the soft darkness muffling it.

Things will be okay, they say. But when he's drowning and running out of air, there's no future. Only the present.