Heartbeat
Title: Heartbeat
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: N/A
Rating: PG
Prompt: Heartbeat
Wordcount: 760
Summary: August waits for the inevitable.
Other: written for Prompt Table C at Once Upon a Prompt. You can find the prompt tables here.
August was afraid of many things, despite doing his best to maintain a carefree attitude. He was afraid that Storybrook would never be woken. He was afraid that his father would never forgive him. He was afraid of the Queen.
Today he was afraid of his heartbeat.
For the past week, walking had been a challenge, one leg thumping on the ground beside him while the passerby gave him odd looks. It ached, in a stiff, unyielding way, like a numb itch that just stretched and stretched until something was pulled out of shape that could never go back. It couldn't be scratched or kneaded or ignored, it just was. A curious, static, not-pain that never abated or changed.
August hated things he couldn't change. He lived for change, breathed for change, traveled the world to new sights and sounds and molded words and worlds out of nothingness onto paper, the most glorious sort of change there was.
And now there he was, stumbling onto his bed as his wooden leg was unresponsive.
Soon enough, it wasn't a challenge, it was a battle, spreading up above his knee, then infecting the other leg. He shut himself in his room the day it took over his hips. He pulled himself slowly across the floor to open the shades and let the sunlight in, then back up onto the bed. It took him an hour to make the three-foot journey, but it was worth it. He wanted to at least have the sun on his face, when it happened.
Idly, he wondered if he would be aware this time. He had been himself, after all, when he was still a wooden puppet. But there was magic, back in the world where he was carved. Here, he wouldn't be able to move, or speak, or breathe, that much was clear by the way his newly-wooden limbs laid heavy and unresponsive on the sheets. He would be as good as a statue here.
But would he know it?
Most of the time he convinced himself that he would just disappear, his soul, his mind, his memories, whatever it was that made him human for those brief and glorious years. He'd fade into blackness, and if Emma ever did get her shit together and figure out how to save everyone, how to save him, he'd wake up like it had never happened. The foggy drift from one instant to the next, bypassing the space between, like surgical anesthesia. Or a curse. In this world, he wasn't sure which was more appropriate.
But sometimes, some of the creeping moments of doubt when he lay there and gritted his teeth around the wooden pain and tried to stifle the urge to try and move, sometimes he thought he might be there. Stuck in the doll, lying there, awake, the entire time. Blind and deaf to the world, voiceless, with only his thoughts to keep him company in a little wooden cage for - days? Weeks? Years?
He imagined staring into the black, as the dust settled on his wooden body. Then what? A child's playroom, where he would be passed around to blind games, dropped onto floors, dented, scarred, drawn upon. Or put on a shelf. Stared at where he couldn't stare back. Or burnt for scrap wood.
He wondered if he would feel the flames, if he would know that he was dying.
He knew that he felt the pain now, as it slowly encroached on his torso and chest. As it hardened his diaphragm, leaving his lungs quivering and trying to compensate, forcing him to take shallow breaths that left beads of sweat on his brow. He couldn’t wipe them away, as his hands were wood, too. He felt his heart beat, drumming fiercely against his ribcage, sending his pulse thrumming through his temples, like if it just beat fast enough, hard enough, it could hold off the inevitable. But every few beats, it spasmed, catching and twisting and making him gasp. He could feel it was about to turn, and he had never been so terrified of anything in his life.
Staring up at the ceiling, he tried to memorize the cracks and shadows. Was this going to be the last thing he saw? That was depressing.
It was hard to concentrate on anything, even a boring ceiling, when his heart spasmed again, harder. He focused on his heartbeat, beats in, beats out, pain, beats in, beats out. Heartbeat. Don’t think about what was coming next. Just the heartbeat.
He lay awake, and waited.
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: N/A
Rating: PG
Prompt: Heartbeat
Wordcount: 760
Summary: August waits for the inevitable.
Other: written for Prompt Table C at Once Upon a Prompt. You can find the prompt tables here.
August was afraid of many things, despite doing his best to maintain a carefree attitude. He was afraid that Storybrook would never be woken. He was afraid that his father would never forgive him. He was afraid of the Queen.
Today he was afraid of his heartbeat.
For the past week, walking had been a challenge, one leg thumping on the ground beside him while the passerby gave him odd looks. It ached, in a stiff, unyielding way, like a numb itch that just stretched and stretched until something was pulled out of shape that could never go back. It couldn't be scratched or kneaded or ignored, it just was. A curious, static, not-pain that never abated or changed.
August hated things he couldn't change. He lived for change, breathed for change, traveled the world to new sights and sounds and molded words and worlds out of nothingness onto paper, the most glorious sort of change there was.
And now there he was, stumbling onto his bed as his wooden leg was unresponsive.
Soon enough, it wasn't a challenge, it was a battle, spreading up above his knee, then infecting the other leg. He shut himself in his room the day it took over his hips. He pulled himself slowly across the floor to open the shades and let the sunlight in, then back up onto the bed. It took him an hour to make the three-foot journey, but it was worth it. He wanted to at least have the sun on his face, when it happened.
Idly, he wondered if he would be aware this time. He had been himself, after all, when he was still a wooden puppet. But there was magic, back in the world where he was carved. Here, he wouldn't be able to move, or speak, or breathe, that much was clear by the way his newly-wooden limbs laid heavy and unresponsive on the sheets. He would be as good as a statue here.
But would he know it?
Most of the time he convinced himself that he would just disappear, his soul, his mind, his memories, whatever it was that made him human for those brief and glorious years. He'd fade into blackness, and if Emma ever did get her shit together and figure out how to save everyone, how to save him, he'd wake up like it had never happened. The foggy drift from one instant to the next, bypassing the space between, like surgical anesthesia. Or a curse. In this world, he wasn't sure which was more appropriate.
But sometimes, some of the creeping moments of doubt when he lay there and gritted his teeth around the wooden pain and tried to stifle the urge to try and move, sometimes he thought he might be there. Stuck in the doll, lying there, awake, the entire time. Blind and deaf to the world, voiceless, with only his thoughts to keep him company in a little wooden cage for - days? Weeks? Years?
He imagined staring into the black, as the dust settled on his wooden body. Then what? A child's playroom, where he would be passed around to blind games, dropped onto floors, dented, scarred, drawn upon. Or put on a shelf. Stared at where he couldn't stare back. Or burnt for scrap wood.
He wondered if he would feel the flames, if he would know that he was dying.
He knew that he felt the pain now, as it slowly encroached on his torso and chest. As it hardened his diaphragm, leaving his lungs quivering and trying to compensate, forcing him to take shallow breaths that left beads of sweat on his brow. He couldn’t wipe them away, as his hands were wood, too. He felt his heart beat, drumming fiercely against his ribcage, sending his pulse thrumming through his temples, like if it just beat fast enough, hard enough, it could hold off the inevitable. But every few beats, it spasmed, catching and twisting and making him gasp. He could feel it was about to turn, and he had never been so terrified of anything in his life.
Staring up at the ceiling, he tried to memorize the cracks and shadows. Was this going to be the last thing he saw? That was depressing.
It was hard to concentrate on anything, even a boring ceiling, when his heart spasmed again, harder. He focused on his heartbeat, beats in, beats out, pain, beats in, beats out. Heartbeat. Don’t think about what was coming next. Just the heartbeat.
He lay awake, and waited.