It was thunder. Thunder and lightning. He heard it in his one good ear, loud enough that the sound actually hurt. For a moment, he was afraid he'd lost the hearing in that one, too, after Gabriel's moment of self-destruction had cost him the hearing in the other, but the universe stopped its ringing after only a moment as he staggered back away from John and the gun.
The thunder wasn't permanent but the lightning was. His last time in the arena, he'd been hurt plenty of times, including the time he'd died, after Orc had slammed him into a tree but he'd never felt anything like this. He'd never seen anything like this, like the hole in his arm that was starting to gush out blood.
Too much blood. Maybe not enough that he'd die instantly but enough to worry about it happening soon.
Thunder and lightning, right in your hand. Things that blew giant messy holes in people with the flick of a finger, with hardly a thought. And the noise, the thunder - he remembered that noise now, from the shared nightmare he'd seen, from Hawkeye's fever dream of mud and blood and people crying out for their mothers, the one that hadn't felt real because he had no context, because it wasn't like any reality he could imagine.
It felt real now.
"I don't - I don't want it," he said vaguely to John, with lips that had started to go pale, only just loud enough to be heard over the tumult. He was clearly in shock, not going for his spear, not trying to attack him. He'd left himself wide open to attack but his gaze was an attack all by itself, at least for anyone that actually had compassion.
Because right now he probably didn't look all that different from those boys John had patched up in Afghanistan, the ones that looked around after the IED went off as if looking hard enough might help them figure out exactly where their legs had gone.
"I don't want it anymore," he said, his voice strange and toneless.
He didn't want killing to be that thoughtless, that easy. He'd thought it was something else he was running for, he'd thought it was just another type of spear or knife or sling, but he'd been wrong. It was too much, too horrible a thing, something that just shouldn't exist, and he didn't want to hold it in his hand.
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It was thunder. Thunder and lightning. He heard it in his one good ear, loud enough that the sound actually hurt. For a moment, he was afraid he'd lost the hearing in that one, too, after Gabriel's moment of self-destruction had cost him the hearing in the other, but the universe stopped its ringing after only a moment as he staggered back away from John and the gun.
The thunder wasn't permanent but the lightning was. His last time in the arena, he'd been hurt plenty of times, including the time he'd died, after Orc had slammed him into a tree but he'd never felt anything like this. He'd never seen anything like this, like the hole in his arm that was starting to gush out blood.
Too much blood. Maybe not enough that he'd die instantly but enough to worry about it happening soon.
Thunder and lightning, right in your hand. Things that blew giant messy holes in people with the flick of a finger, with hardly a thought. And the noise, the thunder - he remembered that noise now, from the shared nightmare he'd seen, from Hawkeye's fever dream of mud and blood and people crying out for their mothers, the one that hadn't felt real because he had no context, because it wasn't like any reality he could imagine.
It felt real now.
"I don't - I don't want it," he said vaguely to John, with lips that had started to go pale, only just loud enough to be heard over the tumult. He was clearly in shock, not going for his spear, not trying to attack him. He'd left himself wide open to attack but his gaze was an attack all by itself, at least for anyone that actually had compassion.
Because right now he probably didn't look all that different from those boys John had patched up in Afghanistan, the ones that looked around after the IED went off as if looking hard enough might help them figure out exactly where their legs had gone.
"I don't want it anymore," he said, his voice strange and toneless.
He didn't want killing to be that thoughtless, that easy. He'd thought it was something else he was running for, he'd thought it was just another type of spear or knife or sling, but he'd been wrong. It was too much, too horrible a thing, something that just shouldn't exist, and he didn't want to hold it in his hand.