Luke (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burningdaylight) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thearena2015-02-09 07:19 pm
burningdaylight) wrote in thearena2015-02-09 07:19 pm
Entry tags:
our hope here’s never found [closed]
WHO| Luke + folks who volunteered to keep his half-frozen self alive.
WHAT| An attempt to escape an angry sabretooth tiger leads to Luke falling through a snow-covered lake. Ice isn't the only thing that'll break, though -- this here log's all about time-breaking.
WHEN| Early Week Two
WHERE| The iced-over lake and the shelters of his rescuers.
WARNINGS| TWDG s2 spoilers, near-drowning, ref to gore, death, zombies. More added as they come up.
Maybe it's a blessing that there isn't chance to feel dread sluicing through his gut or that long, torturous stretch of time for the delicate craquelure across the ice to spread until it reaches him. By the time he hears that bone-snap rolling across the clearing he's already falling -- and he snaps his gaze sideways as water rises on all sides, fur and curving, spit-slick fangs flashing in his vision. The snow-blanketed layer of ice is caving beneath the smilodon too, the lake swallowing them both.
Pain needles into his skin, the muted thrum of moving water flooding his ears. His pulse quickens in his throat. The lake's so scorchingly cold that the muscles in his chest constrict like thick bands of rope, his ribcage viciously clamping around his lungs and triggering a trapped-animal panic. And for a long, terrifying moment, a few seconds that seem to last an eternity, he fights the shock-reflex to hyperventilate, screaming in his own skin. Bursts of fractured light go off in his skull.
He hasn't snuck more than a shallow gasp of a breath in, the beginnings of a dull ache already setting in his lungs -- and amid the manic whirling of his thoughts, a single, fixed idea crystallizes right at the forefront of his mind.
He was going to die.
Before the cold could leach the strength out of his body and kill him the water would, tearing into his starving lungs and drowning out a would-be scream with a pain he still remembered too well, his mouth opening uselessly.
hate to break it to you, kid, but everybody dies
there're worse ways to go
(i ain't goin' anywhere)
Luke angrily squeezes the voice out of his mind, forcing his eyes open and staring into deepening darkness. Air bubbles jet from his nostrils, floating past him the other way – and with a stab of alarm he realizes he's facing the lake floor, straddling the knife-edge between panic and focus as he paddles his arms to reorient himself. Something moves soft and slow in his peripheral vision, drifting away: the water-blurred photo of a family sitting at the porch, relaxed and smiling. Even dad. The last memento he had of a time that had been and would never be again slowly being destroyed.
By the time Luke realizes what he’s looking at, it’s too late. He makes a low, pleading noise in his throat, a different sort of struggling desperation - something child-like and needy - surging through him as he grasps for the token once, twice. It flits teasingly out of reach, displaced water only pushing the photo further from his numbed fingers until all he can do is look on briefly, wrenchingly helpless, as it slips away from him. Following the drowned smilodon to the bottom of the lake.
--out, had to get OUT--
Luke kicks away and swims up and up towards the thick crust of ice walling him off from the surface, eyes darting left and right in search of the hole he fell through. He drives his palms against the ice, a stream of bubbles escaping his lips.
This couldn’t be it.
you're done like dinner, boy
but it’s okay
maybe it’s for the best
maybe it’s better that you won’t have to fight so hard just to end up seeing them all die one by one all over again and knowing it’s on you
Adrenaline screams through him as he feels around for weak spots and hammers his fists again and again with a frustrated, fiercely anxious futility that pushes him to the edge of tears, his lungs burning, too big for his chest like taut, overblown balloons about to burst.
A broken slab shifts out of the way of his fist as it breaks the surface, the ripples scattering other loose chunks of ice– and then his head punches up a half-second afterwards, dark hair plastered over his eyes. There could be a tribute poised to drive a spear through his skull but he wouldn’t know it while he gasps, big, hungry gulps of air, coughing up the water sucking into his throat while his scrabbling hands find the splintered edge of the hole. He latches on with a white-knuckled grip.
The wind slices his wet skin like a knife.
Paddling his feet, he gathers a breath and forces his clumsy, trembling muscles to work under the crippling weight of his water-logged parka and backpack, straining to haul the deadweight of his body up and over the edge with everything he has. He roars through clenched teeth, dragging himself from the hole inch-by-torturous-inch until his soaked-dark boots slide out of the water and the realization that he’s made it sweeps over him in dizzying waves, overwhelming.
He's free.
He flattens bonelessly against the ice, breath shivering in and out of him. There’s some thirty feet of army-crawling to reach the shore - he claws his dripping hair out of his eyes to look, wincing against the wind. He’s spear-less now – and without a fire, he’d be dead in an hour, if that. If nothing got to him first.
He pushes on.
(OOC: I’m open to handwaving Luke having his ass helped along by your character back to shelter mostly because I know he won’t make for very good company while half-frozen, but we can start threads wherever you’d like. He’ll be better able to hold a conversation when he has stabilized – or depending on how badly off we want Luke to be, while he’s suffering from confusion and hypothermia-induced hallucinations and struggling to talk.)
WHAT| An attempt to escape an angry sabretooth tiger leads to Luke falling through a snow-covered lake. Ice isn't the only thing that'll break, though -- this here log's all about time-breaking.
WHEN| Early Week Two
WHERE| The iced-over lake and the shelters of his rescuers.
WARNINGS| TWDG s2 spoilers, near-drowning, ref to gore, death, zombies. More added as they come up.
Maybe it's a blessing that there isn't chance to feel dread sluicing through his gut or that long, torturous stretch of time for the delicate craquelure across the ice to spread until it reaches him. By the time he hears that bone-snap rolling across the clearing he's already falling -- and he snaps his gaze sideways as water rises on all sides, fur and curving, spit-slick fangs flashing in his vision. The snow-blanketed layer of ice is caving beneath the smilodon too, the lake swallowing them both.
Pain needles into his skin, the muted thrum of moving water flooding his ears. His pulse quickens in his throat. The lake's so scorchingly cold that the muscles in his chest constrict like thick bands of rope, his ribcage viciously clamping around his lungs and triggering a trapped-animal panic. And for a long, terrifying moment, a few seconds that seem to last an eternity, he fights the shock-reflex to hyperventilate, screaming in his own skin. Bursts of fractured light go off in his skull.
He hasn't snuck more than a shallow gasp of a breath in, the beginnings of a dull ache already setting in his lungs -- and amid the manic whirling of his thoughts, a single, fixed idea crystallizes right at the forefront of his mind.
He was going to die.
Before the cold could leach the strength out of his body and kill him the water would, tearing into his starving lungs and drowning out a would-be scream with a pain he still remembered too well, his mouth opening uselessly.
hate to break it to you, kid, but everybody dies
there're worse ways to go
(i ain't goin' anywhere)
Luke angrily squeezes the voice out of his mind, forcing his eyes open and staring into deepening darkness. Air bubbles jet from his nostrils, floating past him the other way – and with a stab of alarm he realizes he's facing the lake floor, straddling the knife-edge between panic and focus as he paddles his arms to reorient himself. Something moves soft and slow in his peripheral vision, drifting away: the water-blurred photo of a family sitting at the porch, relaxed and smiling. Even dad. The last memento he had of a time that had been and would never be again slowly being destroyed.
By the time Luke realizes what he’s looking at, it’s too late. He makes a low, pleading noise in his throat, a different sort of struggling desperation - something child-like and needy - surging through him as he grasps for the token once, twice. It flits teasingly out of reach, displaced water only pushing the photo further from his numbed fingers until all he can do is look on briefly, wrenchingly helpless, as it slips away from him. Following the drowned smilodon to the bottom of the lake.
--out, had to get OUT--
Luke kicks away and swims up and up towards the thick crust of ice walling him off from the surface, eyes darting left and right in search of the hole he fell through. He drives his palms against the ice, a stream of bubbles escaping his lips.
This couldn’t be it.
you're done like dinner, boy
but it’s okay
maybe it’s for the best
maybe it’s better that you won’t have to fight so hard just to end up seeing them all die one by one all over again and knowing it’s on you
Adrenaline screams through him as he feels around for weak spots and hammers his fists again and again with a frustrated, fiercely anxious futility that pushes him to the edge of tears, his lungs burning, too big for his chest like taut, overblown balloons about to burst.
A broken slab shifts out of the way of his fist as it breaks the surface, the ripples scattering other loose chunks of ice– and then his head punches up a half-second afterwards, dark hair plastered over his eyes. There could be a tribute poised to drive a spear through his skull but he wouldn’t know it while he gasps, big, hungry gulps of air, coughing up the water sucking into his throat while his scrabbling hands find the splintered edge of the hole. He latches on with a white-knuckled grip.
The wind slices his wet skin like a knife.
Paddling his feet, he gathers a breath and forces his clumsy, trembling muscles to work under the crippling weight of his water-logged parka and backpack, straining to haul the deadweight of his body up and over the edge with everything he has. He roars through clenched teeth, dragging himself from the hole inch-by-torturous-inch until his soaked-dark boots slide out of the water and the realization that he’s made it sweeps over him in dizzying waves, overwhelming.
He's free.
He flattens bonelessly against the ice, breath shivering in and out of him. There’s some thirty feet of army-crawling to reach the shore - he claws his dripping hair out of his eyes to look, wincing against the wind. He’s spear-less now – and without a fire, he’d be dead in an hour, if that. If nothing got to him first.
He pushes on.
(OOC: I’m open to handwaving Luke having his ass helped along by your character back to shelter mostly because I know he won’t make for very good company while half-frozen, but we can start threads wherever you’d like. He’ll be better able to hold a conversation when he has stabilized – or depending on how badly off we want Luke to be, while he’s suffering from confusion and hypothermia-induced hallucinations and struggling to talk.)