Prequel: Day 92

Sequel: Day 87

Nice short one down the same lines as the last three or so short stories. Next one we'll get away from this sadness, I promise!

Sorry for the length. I'm running on very little sleep right now, but more is on the horizon!

Enjoy! :)

Day Ninety-One – 18 November 2017

Prompt – Drowning

Summary – Neji faces death, drowning, pain...he faces everything.

Notes – Same lines as day 92

Word Count – 720

Drowning

He was drowning.

There was no other adequate explanation for what he was experiencing.

It wasn't like he was drowning in water. He could swim; it was an essential skill for a shinobi. He'd been taught the tools to survive in water. He hadn't been taught the tools to survive your own traitorous body, when your lungs filled with your own blood and there was no breath to take, just choking and coughing and drowning.

He hadn't been taught to endure excruciating physical pain.

For him, those were his two realities, drowning and pain. Little existed beyond them. There was no time, no earth or sky or fear or hope. Just drowning and pain.

There was an eternity spent submerged in those realities. It could have been a second or a lifetime, the length of his stay did not matter. Time did not matter. Nothing else mattered.

Then a third reality made itself very well-known next to the other two: Death. Though to him, it wasn't some dark despair of the unknown; he wasn't afraid of the looming, smothering blackness that slowly enveloped his consciousness. It seeped into every corner of his being, around and beneath drowning and pain until it swallowed them as well.

Death was peaceful. Death was a release. Its touch was soft and cool and such a welcome contrast to the stabbing, burning agony of pain and the desperation and choking of drowning. It was welcome to him.

Now, beyond Death, nothing else mattered.

Wait.

His body seized even as he remembered something that did matter, something that was far more precious to him than anything else. Death was something that directly countered that.

Tenten.

In a delirious rush pain and drowning returned, but so did time. So did the sky and the earth and the wind. He felt them all, a myriad of realities rushing to his senses that it seemed that they'd overwhelm him in their mad rush to be recognized. He felt them all.

Warmth from another body flooded into his, and Death retreated, though its presence demanded to be felt. It lurked in the corner of his mind even as he forced his eyes open, trying to focus on the wheeling trees as they whirled by. He was moving fast, but Death stayed.

She was holding him. He knew that, he could tell now just through her touch that it was her. Tenten, his reality, everything that mattered.

Pain and drowning assaulted him again and he cried out for relief. She said something to him and he nodded, though he didn't hear her. Her voice seemed to chase everything else away.

Death remained.

Hold onto her, focus on her, he thought, and tried to push everything else away. But those sensations were slippery, and they slipped around his mental barriers like water through sand. And they seemed to be growing stronger with every second.

And still, Death remained.

Every one of her steps fueled pain and drowning and Death until every reality was once again washed away but them. Them and Tenten, who acted like an anchor to the earth, who reminded him just who he was and what mattered to him. Without her guidance he would have long passed into the void.

And even then, Death remained. And Death would not be denied.

Pain and drowning grew ever more prevalent to the point where they ground his consciousness with their agony. He couldn't escape what was in his own mind. He felt himself cry out for relief again, though he was unsure if any sounds escaped his throat.

Then Death seemed to swell and encompass pain and drowning and Tenten and everything else.

In the end, Death wasn't a separate thing from the other realities. It was everything.

He'd resigned himself to his fate when he felt free from those earthly burdens, but then a bright light stabbed through the thick inevitability of Death.

"Neji!"

Her voice.

Tenten.

It was a lifeline, an island in a storm, his savior, and he clung to the sound of his name on her lips like a dying man who was offered salvation. Death pressed on him, tried to loosen his grip, throw him aside and fold him into its depths again, but he would not relent.

He would survive, he would endure.

For her.