Prompt: Breathe Again
Characters: Sigrun
There was at least one time in every Hunter's life when they stared death in the face and wondered: 'Is this it?'
Sigrun had wondered it when she'd first seen the tentacle come up at her out of the water. Hel, she'd been considering it from the moment she'd first been knocked in, but even then she'd still had a good fighting chance: she'd known how to land without hurting herself (too much), how to swim, how to climb Mikkel's rope before she froze. Up until that point, she still might have been able to get out none the worse for wear.
When it had truly targeted her, though, anything could have happened. It could have broken her body against the wall, struck her head, knocked her out so she'd drown even if it didn't eat her first. Death would have been instant, and there would have been nothing that Sigrun could do.
Instead, she was now wondering it again with every subsequent blow, with every second she struggled to hold onto consciousness long enough to take her next desperate gasp of air. Would the next blow be the one that jarred something loose, and started her brain bleeding to death inside of her skull? Would the next dunking be the one where she lost the battle with unconsciousness, and drowned? Would the next minute in the icy water be the one where her muscles locked up and she could no longer swim?
It seemed that she would soon get her answer: every time her head went back under the water, the voices grew louder, voices of friends who'd long ago asked themselves that question for the last time. They were calling, welcoming, singing, even daring: inviting her to join them in Valhalla.
No, she answered. She'd take her place when her time came, but there were lives she was responsible for right now: her right-hand warrior Emil (the water closed in over her head), Fuzz-Head and her strange cousin (she gasped in a breath, not even half a lungful, but enough), even the mutinist medic (a stinging pain in her skull, and water rushed into her lungs in addition to the air she'd been gasping for) and that stupid civilian kid who should have stayed home. Besides, a real Viking warrior died in battle, going down fighting when her time came: not giving up like a coward.
The caged stairs caught her eye even as her vision swam, and Sigrun began to formulate the beginnings of a plan. It was not a good chance—but it was still a chance.
Quick thinking, powerful strokes of her arms and legs, and a whole lot of luck, and then Sigrun was in the cage, up the stairs with the sjødraug too big to fit slamming into the bars after her; her head broke the water, and she took in her first burning lungful of air.