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He was free from the gross wriggling tentacle. The last thing he wanted was to find out what would have happened if it had it's way with him. He began to scramble to safety when the ice collapsed from under them.

There was a sudden shock as all air left his lungs, the freezing cold water pulling him under in a vortex of ice and water. He spun and twirled against his will, ice shards slashing against him without any way to stop them. The force of it ripped off his shoes, and nearly took his coat. He could barely move. Everything hurt, yet everything was also numb. Nothing moved against the force of this disaster. Tenya screamed in his mind, pleading with the boy to try and fight it. His own body was working against him as his mind started to blank out.
The teenager managed to summon the boomerang in time before accidentally breathing in. While under water that was a bad idea. He choked, nearly drowning. In one swoop he managed to swing the weapon enough to force him up to the surface. He dug the weapon into a chunk of ice big enough to hold him, garbled gasps escaping him as he coughed up the icy water he'd choked on.

He now had something to keep him afloat, but he was not out of danger. He was still pummeled with ice debris, his Fear shield only barely staving off the horrible paralyzing cold that threatened to black him out.

Was he seriously going to die here?

Clerise grinned as the harpoon directed towards its target, heart soaring. She waited, unable to breathe as it got caught in the ice, grip tightening around the harpoon.

But then the lights flickered on. Her world was surrounded by the cacophony of shattering ice. When the tentacle finally-- finally-- dropped both Rep and Otto, she let loose a heavy sigh of relief.

"Good, it looks like they're safe--"

Oh.

Perhaps, Clerise thought in a haze, her body slipping into the frigid water, she had spoken too soon.

They all went under.

All of her mind's amazing speed slowed, numbed by the cold, eventually stuttering to a stop. Despite the fact that she had started off with a full fear shield, Clerise could feel it rapidly deteriorating.

How could she tell?

Everything hurt. The water's temperature was well below zero, and its chill was swiftly setting in. Clerise felt ill from the sensation of pins and needles that covered her skin from head to toe, covered by clothing or not. She tried to swim, to get her head above surface once more, to get precious air, she needed air--

But as she broke the water's surface, desperately gasping for air, a paltry attempt to fill her burning lungs-- a chunk of ice bludgeoned her square in the face, her striking her jaw with a sickening crack.

With a mouthful of water and a depleted fear shield, she felt herself succumbing to the vortex around her. The waters hurried and cold and awful and then--

She felt it pull.

Ripped away by the force of the water, Clerise's scarf was the first article to fall victim to mother nature. It was soon followed by the hat she'd worn, and then the tenuous straps holding her runic daggers slipped away, the weapons vanishing into the deep.

During Clerise's brief surface above the waves, she hadn't managed to take in enough air to keep her failing body going. With her gloves slick from icewater and daggers gone, she had no way to get any grip on the ice.

Clerise Nicole Wilson was a fighter, but you can only fight the elements so hard. You can only fight so far alone. She was a hunter, but she was neutered like a stray dog, incomplete and insufficient.

Her mind was flooded with regrets, with actions left undone and words left unsaid. Slowly, Clerise's oxygen ran out, her limbs slowing in the water. There was nothing but the white noise of rushing water in her ears, and her panic slowly turned to acceptance.

Red eyes finally-- finally!-- fluttered shut as Clerise's limp body fell prey to the sea, her lungs steadily filling with water instead of air.

It was time to go home, again.

It was time to die.

From where he was, Harrison couldn't see anybody. The water kept on spinning and churning, and all he could feel from the hand in the water was pain. Crushing pain, sharp pain, pain from cold, pain from being battered.

He'd grasp a chunk of ice, throw it aside, dunk his hand again.

Fishing.

There was a bright flash of light.

He looked up, and for a milisecond saw it- the sliver of glowing, powerful light that meant a portal. Extraction.

Not yet, he thought desperately, and went back to searching through the eddies.

The headset crackled in his ear, startling him. He'd never know how it had survived the chaos down there but it did it's job. The portal was a beacon of utter ******** hope in the darkness, a way out of this nightmare of swirling death and ice.

But he couldn't leave.

He peered through the darkness for a glimpse of anything, a reason to even try and make it out, to not stay behind.

A glimpse of the gold of a coat, of pink and blonde. His heart missed a beat. He was alive. For now he was ******** alive. Tracey was dismissed in a heartbeat, and he stood, steadying himself in the rocking slippery chaos.

He didn't run to the portal, hopping from one ice floe to the next, escape was a secondary priority while he could still make sure that sinking dread of moments before never came to pass.

He ran to Harrison.

And as he ran, terrified to stop for a moment in case the ice underfoot gave way, he counted Cass and Otto. But there was one person missing, one gap in their number. He could only hope she had reached the portal early. Sis was an acrobat right? This was probably easy.

Please let it have been easy.

Landing on the ice next to the other man, he yelled through the roaring water. "WE CAN GO FISHING LATER ACE."

He offered a hand.

"LETS GET THE ******** OUT OF HERE."

As the seconds ticked on, Clerise had come to term with a singular, simple fact: she had embraced oblivion.

Dimly aware of the tenuous and quickly fading connection between her and her body, Clerise loosened her grip on life, letting it slip away like the last days of warm summer before the fall.

Although, that wasn't quite right at all. There was no letting life slip away. No, it had left of its own volition. Clerise's fate had been sealed from the moment that she had tumbled into the turbulent water left behind in the leviathan's wake.

After all. She could only struggle for so long before her body gave out. Before her will gave up.

Back at Deus Ex, there were to be no more wild smiles given to any and everyone. No more crinkled red eyes, no easy laughs.

No inappropriate hand gestures.

No rushed attentions given to Dakota in his dorm, or sly ones given to Dwight in the a/v room.

No one to take care of Clarice, whenever she came back, to coax those easy smiles onto her face. She would merely be another notch in the woman's belt that was loss.

Because, in the frigid deeps, away from her team and away from the mission-- Clerise was utterly and completely alone.

Before the final peace had set in, she had stretched her mind out to the space that Balthazar had occupied. Desperate to find him, one last time.

To apologize, perhaps, for being such a disappointment. That their end should come at the hands of nature, rather than some ferocious beast.

The trainee realized, with despair, that the space was still empty. Silent. Walled off.

He had only been in Clerise's mind for a brief two months, and yet...It was funny, really. How much she missed him. She had spent twenty four years alone, and yet, Clerise still missed him. Every day, she would strap on her daggers and wonder when, if ever, Balthazar was coming back.

Clerise realized, then. She had forgotten the texture of his accent. She remembered stern disapproval barely concealed at her every action and council on everything, good or bad, warranted or otherwise.

She remembered that he was always there, protecting her, with the shield that was the only indicator that he was even alive.

But, of course. there was nothing, in that place.

So Clerise faded.

{[ WAKE UP. I SAID, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS AWFUL AND UNHOLY, IN THE NAME OF JACK, WAKE UP. ]}

Red eyes flew open, her hands moving with a fury beyond her own. Memories of being tossed overboard in a different sea, years ago, filled her mind but--

She was moving. Under the water's surface, Clerise groped for the pocket watch that was always a heavy weight for her in a pocket. Fortunately, she had put it in a zippered one in this winter coat, a small, thoughtless action that would be her saving grace.

His weight was familiar in her hand, and without thinking, without sparing a moment to look at his face, she knew.

Clerise summoned Balthazar.

He was different, now, but there would be time to think on that later. They were two large sickles, and they clawed at the ice nearby, leverage used to pull her towards the churning surface.


{[ You don't get to die yet, love-- you didn't even ask me. ]}

His voice was grating, hoarse as if from yelling, exhausted, and irate.

But underneath all that? Relief. Complete and utter elation. Determination.

By sheer force of Balthazar's will, a familiar red head surfaced from the icy depths, coughing up huge amounts of water and hauling herself on top of the ice, the sickles in her hand large and metallic and gleaming.

She heaved, still choking, and made her way to the portal, eyes bleary, of course, but just from the water. Not from the relief of being whole again, of course. Not that.

{[ Get yourself through the portal. Now. ]}

Clerise obeyed, grinning from ear to ear at her companions, raising a fist, still with one sickle clenched within it, up high.

"EVERYONE OUT." She laughed, coughing up a little more water, soaked from head to toe, cold as hell, exhausted, and gone to the brink and back.

But Clerise was alive, and Balthazar?

Balthazar was awake.

******** Ice + No shoes + No Socks + Soaked to the bone.

Otto finally had gained some distance from the swirling vortex of death. It was a wonder his body was moving at all. But now that he wasn't in as much danger as before, he took a moment to see who was where. The small shuddering teen looked around, finally catching sight of Cass, Clerise, Harrisson and Rep. Some were closer than others, but no one was dead. The world felt a little less empty.

Otto didn't bother confirming with a nod and simply continued to try and make it to the portal.