Lawrence wasn’t afraid of death. The actual instant of cessation frankly held no real emotion for him. Death was simply failure, a transition from a state of activity and movement to stillness and void. You couldn’t fear what you would never really be aware of. In some ways it even seemed to him like he’d already been there finding himself as a child in that cold blank place where there had been no desire to exist, no desire for anything all. He had shut himself away there and backed completely out of the world. It had been death in everything but the physical sense, numb even to the pained voice of his mother trying to reach him.

He’d met it in the icy water around Wonder Park, feeling his muscles start to tire with no help in sight, knowing that nothing lay below him but emptiness and the dark and he had felt nothing.

Again in exile to the cold seizing chill of the snow and whiteness he had come close to death and felt nothing, no stirring of fear or urgency as the frost slithered into his blood, no romantic regrets or fond feelings of love. There was always just the void, the unsatisfied and yawning want that reached out into the darkness. Every time it happened he found himself braced and expecting it to be somehow different, waiting for the ridiculous moment that emotion would spring to life, spurred on by some newfound fear of death.

It never came. Not then and not now.

Instead there was nothing but irritation and tension as the claws sunk deep into his flesh and the sheer instinctual responses of a body finding itself rent open, the pain consuming all thought and coherence, reaching up as his claws vanished along with the howls that accompanied them. In a distant and dazed way he tried to press closed the far too ruined wound, in a state of shock and likely going into shock but even then finding himself treating it like a wounded animal rather than his own fragile body.

Hypovolemic shock is a risk, not much blood. Not much blood. Never had much blood. Pressure. Clots. Elevation. Arteries. It’s going to be difficult to stem, I need some help in here.

It was nothing he could do anything about and he felt the blood drip from his mouth knowing that that meant the damage was more than just a scratch could boast. He didn’t know when he hit the floor, simply that he did.

When America spoke (her clone, he told himself, it didn’t matter, he loved and hated all of her) the pain seemed to abate (maybe it did, maybe it didn’t) and she said he’d live. He believed her because it was her. The rest was a haze, words. He’d saved them. Maybe he had, he couldn’t… it was..

The contact so close to the wound was another lance of agony but it didn’t matter because it was her and he wanted anything she deigned to give him and would give her anything she asked for except to relent.

When again things changed he couldn’t tell if the crawling was in his head, his body feeling twisted up and ruined, every breath a shudder, heavy and laden down with weakness and hurt. The movement slithering through the open and slick wounds was almost pleasant in comparison to the raw throbbing ache of his heart beating against open veins. Even his mind was numbed, stilled and silent without Butch, his thoughts slow icebergs of detached and fragmented nothing. Even when the blackness overtook his vision and then his thoughts, he still believed America’s words, his certainty like iron.

---

The darkness wasn’t dreamless.

In it he was drowning. Of course he was drowning. He was always drowning, twisted up in chains which cut deeply into his flesh, leaden and heavier than his frail and slender form. He was holding his breath but he knew he couldn’t hold it long and was more worried about the scars on his flesh than the death in his lungs. The water would come for him in the end, from water he’d come and to water he’d return. Mostly water. People were mostly water, water tangled up with morals and given hopes and dreams.

The water was a roar in his ears which could have been Butch. It could have been a saw going through a sternum on the operating table. It could have been the car, revving it up and knowing what he was going to do.

Except there was no thud, there was no thud and thump of a limp body, there was not hitting, no hitting but so so much running.

He couldn’t run here, even as he twisted. Water pressing in all around him, a headache, a weight on his head, like a sword pushed into his forehead. Sword of Damocles. He remembered that word. Swords. The ten of swords. That was his card wasn’t it? Pain and ruin. Was it his or what he brought?

He couldn’t hold his breath. He couldn’t hold his breath and yet he laughed. It was all so ridiculous. The moths stole his breath from behind.

The chains were tied. Bright blue and glassy, dog-chains. Tied to a statue, and angel smiling and beatific as it pulled him down and down and down.

No air. No air. Nothing but the void and he didn’t want to breathe it in. He could taste blood and it was salty, like the water.

Mostly water.

---

With a gasp he awoke and it was to the irritation of his his carers and followed immediately by the resolute wish that he hadn’t woken up at all, his entire body wracked with pain, agony radiating out from his centre to every single part of him. He didn’t wear pain well, resenting inconvenience and indignity quite a lot and the immediate response was irritation and resistance. Still, he was helpless and could do nothing but turn an indifferent eye to pride and rely on those who helped tend him while Butch slowly and intently got to work aiding in the effort to stitch his master back together.

He was a mess and he had no idea how he’d look when it was over. Another scar had sealed him even more firmly inside this prison and all that could vary was the severity of that scar. There was no question there would be one.

He could taste blood in his mouth still and it dragged him back to his dream. He asked for water but was told the only fluids he’d be getting were through an IV for a day or two. It didn’t take long before he retched and that was just the beginning of the indignity of his situation, his body rejecting what was done to it. He’d always wanted a specimen to examine the effects of fear healing on, but it was another matter when it was himself.

He gave up talking after that for a while, finding that giving his digestive tract any reason to react to the hell he’d put it through was a very bad idea.

By the second day he was by no means better but was able to sit in bed without throwing up and to very carefully and slowly text people bizarre comments before drifting off again into drug hazed dreams still relentlessly beset by moths which crawled through his bones and water which forever silenced his voice and a growing heat which trailed fire through his nerves and stirred something darker than the oceans around him.