AN: This is my first attempt at Heroes fic. It's AU and I'm still hammering together the idea behind it. Set during Volume 5.
Air.
It wasn't supposed to be so cold. So thick. So… empty. It wasn't supposed to clog lungs or weigh down fingers while trying to wiggle them through it.
Air certainly wasn't supposed to make anyone claustrophobic but he was trapped. He was choking in the clammy cool and he was dying. Pain shot through his body as he tried to move but couldn't. Not completely. He knew he was dying. He could feel it crushing around him.
Hands curled. Fingers clawed. Every movement was stiff and awkward in his dark prison as he fought up—because away from his body was up, wasn't it?
I'm going to die, he thought. I'm going to die and no one will know. But who would know? No answer came to mind for that one, either. So he kept clawing. Up. Up. Out.
He was suffocating in his prison. Dark. Alone. Was he blind? No… no, he couldn't open his eyes. His mouth was filled with the cold bitter air. It stuck to his tongue. Grainy. Thick. He was drowning in it, coughing and spitting. Inhaling more of it.
Air isn't thick…
He was dying. He had to hold his breath, though his lungs burned and protested. Hold them until what he didn't know but he had to hold them. Keep moving keep… digging. Digging up. Fingers broke through and that's when he realized exactly what it was he had been doing. Digging. Not air but earth, grasping at nothing but the cool night. Shoving it aside. Not air. Earth. Thick like concrete weighing down limbs as he dug himself out before he could be anchored to the earth forever.
Choking, he spit again and again trying to remove the debris from his mouth. Plugged one side of his nose and then the other exhaling with all his might until he cleaned them out as well. Scrubbing his eyes, that was harder. Trying to remove irritants even as they burned. Scratched cornea perhaps, but he was free.
Though his eyes were open the night was nearly as dark as the back of his previously closed lids. There was a buzzing, almost a hum somewhere. It was far off but not in the night. No, the night was silent, almost deafeningly so. It was in his head. Thousands of tiny noises far off like a swarm of bees wrapped in cotton behind thick panes of glass. He didn't recognize the sound.
Slowly, each of his joints aching, he rose to his feet. The trees rose so tall they blotted out the stars and the light. Where was all the light? The noise? The people. Standing with his head cocked back and his eyes raised upwards he felt terribly small.
I'm all alone.
But there… there was the North Star. He stood in the shallow grave his eyes darting across the sky. Somewhere off to his right a twig broke. Head snapped to the side and his body was flooded with endorphins. He's coming. Who he was or why he was coming he didn't know but he couldn't be there when he got back. No, he'd put him there. Struggling to control his own limbs he lumbered off through the forest zig zagging through the trees.
It wasn't just the earth that has made his limbs feel slow. They felt far away and though he moved him his actions didn't feel totally his own. Buzzing. Far off buzzing. He tripped over roots and stumbled through the brush following lights up ahead until the trees cleared. Cleared away overhead and the sky it was open above him and he could see the stars. Weaving in the road, he did the best to keep himself upright but his body was swimming. His mind was not his own. Everything was so distant coming through some unsharpened, untrained filter. There was a puzzle but so many pieces were missing. Or upside down so he couldn't see the picture just the shapes and their off-white backings.
Am I good at puzzles?
The thought lasted but a moment then drifted away. Brown eyes lolled in his head not quite keeping locked on any one thing. Focusing was difficult. But what was there to focus on out in the middle of nowhere? Ahh… yellow lines. Try his best he could not quite follow them but weaved in and out with each step a jerk up his spine, jarring his muscles. They were too tight and too loose at the same time, ready to snap but jelly hardly able to support.
Where did I come from? Glancing over his shoulder he saw the forest but he couldn't remember being in it. Or leaving it. He was on a road somewhere but couldn't remember where he was going. Just away. And what was on his hands, anyway?
There was something in his clothing rubbing against his skin as he walked. Running his hands over him he felt it clinging to him. Damp earth. He glanced down and he was covered. Furiously he began rubbing his hands over himself trying to brush off his clothing, brush off his hands, his arms, his hair. His face. Why was he covered in dirt? Each thought slipped through his fingers, staying but a moment and then melting away through cracks in concentration just as quickly. The cracks were more like canyons.
A loud double beep sounded behind him and lights—how had he not noticed lights? —startled him. The man almost fell as he stumbled to turn himself around, his balance not his own, and looked over his shoulder. A man hung from a police car eyeing him suspiciously. What's wrong? Hands up and away he looked down at himself… filthy. Torn shirt. Blood. Whose blood? Am I hurt? He didn't feel hurt but honestly he couldn't feel much of anything. Just cold.
The tone in the officer's voice and the look on his face were unmistakable even if he couldn't focus on what the other was saying. "Hands up. Stay right there," the cop called and from the distant look he was given, the man figured it wasn't the first time he had said it. But the blue blinking lights were blinding and they were slicing through his brain. The buzzing grew louder and he couldn't see, not in front of him. He could see the forest, and the earth, and the hole. The hole he had been in when he'd crawled from the earth. He'd clawed his way out of the earth—it had been drowning him. He had been suffocating. Brown eyes grew wide and he sputtered, a strangled noise leaving his lips. When his vision cleared it was to cuffs slapped on his wrists and the back of a cop car.
Frowning, he bit his lip the taste of the forest still in his mouth mixed with metal. When had he bit his tongue?
The lights… they're outside.
The buzzing quieted, wrapped in cotton. Behind thick glass. His eyes glassed over as he stared out the window, head rolling to the side. Maybe the forest hadn't been so bad. Maybe he should have stayed.
