His eyes snapped open.
Pain followed immediately, not sharp at first but heavy, like his entire body had been shoved back into itself wrong.
A violent cough tore out of him before he could even understand where he was, thick blood spraying from his mouth as his body lurched forward against the couch beneath him. More spilled past his lips in dark strings, splattering down his chin and across his neck as he choked on the next breath trying to force its way in.
Air wouldn't come right. Every inhale caught halfway, wet and blocked, like something was already sitting inside his lungs and refusing to move.
He gagged again and another flood came up from deep in his chest, Hot blood spilled over his tongue and through his teeth, coating his mouth in a thick metallic taste before pouring down the side of his face. He tried to breathe around it but only sucked more back down, sending a violent spasm through his lungs that made his vision flash white.
Panic surged through him.
He reached for his throat instinctively, clawing at it as if he could force it open with his hands, as if he could stop whatever was filling him from the inside. His fingers pressed hard against his neck, trembling and slick with blood, but the pressure only made it worse. Another broken choke ripped out of him and more blood burst past his lips, spilling over his hand and down his wrist as his lungs convulsed violently beneath his ribs.
He thrashed blindly against the couch until the world suddenly tilted and disappeared beneath him.
He hit the floor hard.
Pain exploded through his shoulder and jaw as he crashed face first into the blood he had just coughed up, the warm liquid smearing across his cheek and mouth the moment he struck the ground.
WHAM
The impact sent another wave of panic through him. For a split second he couldn't tell what hurt more, the burning in his lungs or the shock of hitting the floor, but both crashed together hard enough to splinter his thoughts apart.
He tried to push himself up immediately, but his arms shook violently beneath him.
Another cough tore through his chest, spraying blood across the floor as he struggled to rise, slipping slightly in the mess beneath him. He planted both hands against the floor and tried to force himself upright, but his arms gave out almost immediately. One elbow buckled beneath him and dropped him back down before he could catch himself, his cheek dragging through the warm blood spread across the floor. He tried again anyway, fingers slipping against the wet surface as another cough folded his body in half.
He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. He couldn't stop panicking.
His body kept demanding a full breath, something deep enough to finally satisfy the burning in his chest, but every attempt stopped halfway. He would drag in just enough air to feel it enter before something caught inside him and turned the rest into another wet choke. The failure only made him try harder, faster, until he couldn't tell whether he was suffocating because of the blood or because his own panic wouldn't let him slow down.
The strain beneath his skin grew sharper as veins pushed hard against his neck and face, throbbing violently with every forced breath.
Tears streamed from his eyes without pause.
Everything around him blurred into smeared patches of color that refused to stay still long enough to make sense of.
Three figures.
He could barely make them out.
One tall, moving fast the moment he woke.
Another farther back, still, watching.
The third lower to the ground, smaller, unmoving.
His ears rang so violently it drowned everything else out, a high screaming pressure pressing into his skull as another coughing fit bent him forward. Blood splattered across his shaking hands as he tried to cover his mouth, but it kept forcing its way through his fingers in thick dark streaks.
It felt like something inside him had been ripped apart and stitched back together badly.
He tried to focus. Tried to understand where he was.
The room swayed.
The shapes moved again.
Every breath pulled against something deep beneath his ribs, stretching the pain farther through his chest each time his lungs expanded. Even trying to straighten himself made something inside him tighten sharply enough to force him back down. His shoulder throbbed from the fall, his throat felt scraped raw from coughing, and underneath all of it sat a deeper pain he couldn't place, buried somewhere inside his chest where Morgan's attack had torn him open.
The tall one reached him.
He flinched and tried to drag himself backward, panic surging through him as the figure grabbed his shoulder. The contact sent another jolt through his body and he twisted violently against it, choking on a ragged breath as a dull booming pounded through his ears.
Not sound.
Pressure.
Deep and uneven, like something striking inside his skull.
He thought someone was saying something, but the words broke apart before they reached him, swallowed by the ringing screaming through his head.
The figure paused, then raised something toward the side of his head.
Seventeen tensed, trying weakly to pull away, but a faint cool pulse brushed against his ear before he could.
The sensation spread inward, cold at first, then strangely light.
The ringing wavered.
Not gone.
But thinning.
The pressure cracked, and through the noise he began catching fragments of sound slipping through.
"-vent-"
The voice warped and distant.
"-ca-"
Another pulse.
The ringing dipped lower.
"-don-"
The words still broke apart, muffled beneath the pounding in his head.
Seventeen coughed hard against the floor, blood spilling from his mouth as he struggled to breathe while the voice slowly pulled itself together through the noise.
"Seventeen."
Clearer now.
Closer.
"Calm down."
A hand tightened slightly against his shoulder, firm but controlled.
"Don't move. You're safe"
The ringing continued to fade in uneven waves until another sound finally forced its way through.
Breathing.
Harsh.
Wet.
Short desperate gasps that kept breaking apart halfway through.
For a second he thought someone else in the room was struggling to breathe.
Then another ragged inhale tore through his chest.
And he realized,
It was him.
Each breath came in sharp uneven pulls, trembling and strained like his lungs were fighting for every piece of air they could drag in. He could hear the liquid caught inside them now, the wet choking rattle underneath every inhale that refused to clear no matter how hard his body tried.
The tall figure lowered its arm toward his chest.
A faint blue pulse spread outward the moment it touched him.
Seventeen tensed immediately, but the sensation that followed wasn't painful.
Cool.
Steady.
The tightness crushing his chest began to loosen slightly as the pulse moved through him in slow waves, dulling the violent spasms running through his body. His breathing didn't stop hurting, but the panic clawing through him started to pull back just enough for him to think.
His next inhale still caught, but not as quickly. Air made it farther this time, filling his chest until the pain stopped him instead of the blood.
It still wasn't enough.
But it was the closest thing to a real breath he'd managed since waking.
His vision finally began to steady.
The blurred colors slowly sharpened into shapes, then details, until something in the dull metal directly in front of him caught his attention.
A face.
Warped by the curved surface of the bucket.
Bloody. Shaking. Barely recognizable.
His face.
Dark streaks ran down from his nose and across his mouth before drying unevenly along his skin. His eyes looked swollen, the skin around them irritated and red, and faint streaks left behind by dried tears stained the sides of his face beneath the blood.
His nose still ran slowly, thin trails of red slipping past his lips every time he breathed too hard.
He looked lower.
At his mouth.
His lips trembled violently with each desperate breath as blood continued spilling from them in thick strings that dragged down over his chin.
His teeth.
He could see them through the blood.
Barely visible beneath the dark red coating clinging to them like molasses.
For a moment he just stared at himself breathing.
Or trying to.
Every inhale looked desperate with a stutter here and there.
Every exhale looked painful.
Like his body was still fighting something it should have already lost to.
He looked at himself.
Pathetic.
The word came so easily that he hated himself for how quickly it fit. There wasn't even anything to argue against. He was shaking on the floor, terrified, barely capable of breathing without someone else's help, and no amount of looking away would change what was directly in front of him.
He was weak. He was afraid, and when it mattered, fear controlled him far more often than he wanted to admit.
A coward.
He hated that one most because he couldn't completely deny it.
And now he could see it without anyone else having to say it.
Before he could sink any further into it, the figure in front of him shifted.
The tall one.
Myers.
Or at least, that's what he assumed.
His vision still wasn't steady enough to be sure, edges blurring just enough to make everything feel slightly off, but the presence was familiar.
Focused.
On him.
"...have you calmed down now?"
The voice came through clearer this time, low and controlled, with a slight edge of concern that didn't quite match the rest of him.
Seventeen didn't answer right away.
Another uneven breath dragged through his chest, catching halfway before forcing its way out again, followed by a weaker cough that still brought up traces of blood. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand without really thinking, smearing it across his skin instead of clearing it.
His body still trembled.
Not as violently as before, but enough that he couldn't hide it.
He hated that.
He kept his eyes low at first, avoiding the way Myers was looking at him, but after a moment he forced himself to look up anyway. The motion was slow, deliberate, like it took more effort than it should have.
"...I'm fine."
Even to him, it sounded stupid.
There was blood on his teeth, blood on the floor, and he could barely finish a breath without shaking. He wasn't fine.
But saying anything else felt worse.
Another breath caught in his throat and he had to stop for a second, jaw tightening as he forced it down instead of letting it turn into another coughing fit.
"...just... give me a second."
His voice dropped slightly toward the end, not weaker, but controlled, like he was trying to keep something from slipping through.
He shifted his weight slightly, testing his body, and immediately regretted it when a sharp pulse of pain shot through his ribs. His hand instinctively moved toward his side before stopping halfway, fingers curling instead as he forced himself to ignore it.
Don't show it.
Not again.
Not like that.
His gaze flicked briefly away from Myers, just for a second, catching the edge of the room
The other figures.
Still there.
Watching.
He didn't look at them long.
Didn't want to.
Didn't want to see how they were looking at him.
His breathing was still uneven, but steadier than before. He swallowed carefully, tasting blood as he forced his thoughts away from the reflection in Myers's bucket and toward the one thing he could actually understand.
His voice came out quiet, but sharper than before.
"...what happened?"