The pain is excruciating, a dragging siege on his central nervous system and everything attached, impacting the core of his self with repeated concussive force. He's aware, dimly, that at some point he must have fallen to the ground, curled in on himself, back and shoulders throbbing with a distant physical ache that is nothing, nothing compared the shrieking agony attacking every metaphysical fiber in his being. He might be yelling too. He can't -
He can't think, can't move, can't process or feel or anything, just lie in tortuous concavity while the blinding skid of pain receptors fire off, repeatedly, and he listens to Aliyah cry.
Some distant part of him registers Julian's voice. An even more distant part accesses the itch, the need to get back to Aliyah and, miraculously, seizes on it. Movement aches (everything aches), movement is an exercise in pain tolerance and grinding slowness (the pain is constant), movement is spasmodic shift through air that is denser than Daniel remembers (Daniel, he can remember his name and its individual syllables now, he must not forget again), movement is a slow and terrible effort to push through the viscosity of his pain and his absence of thought.
Speaking is harder.
"Ju -" Daniel gets no farther. Aliyah's cries reach a piercing, tearing peak, Daniel's heart wrenches in its cavity, one hand leaps out toward the rubble, but unless his reduced sensory inputs are playing havoc on him, the entire cave is shaking again.
no subject
He can't think, can't move, can't process or feel or anything, just lie in tortuous concavity while the blinding skid of pain receptors fire off, repeatedly, and he listens to Aliyah cry.
Some distant part of him registers Julian's voice. An even more distant part accesses the itch, the need to get back to Aliyah and, miraculously, seizes on it. Movement aches (everything aches), movement is an exercise in pain tolerance and grinding slowness (the pain is constant), movement is spasmodic shift through air that is denser than Daniel remembers (Daniel, he can remember his name and its individual syllables now, he must not forget again), movement is a slow and terrible effort to push through the viscosity of his pain and his absence of thought.
Speaking is harder.
"Ju -" Daniel gets no farther. Aliyah's cries reach a piercing, tearing peak, Daniel's heart wrenches in its cavity, one hand leaps out toward the rubble, but unless his reduced sensory inputs are playing havoc on him, the entire cave is shaking again.
"J -"