[ he's not, for the record, and for some reason he'd thought he'd pass away as fast as his onset. he thought, foolishly but perhaps hopefully, that it would be quick after what felt like the harshest of pains mangling his heart. it's everything but, starting with his earlier, numbing pain dissiminating through the rest of him: chest, torso, abdomen, back, shoulder, his left leg and arm are the absolute worst of it. he stops writing his letter on the dash board when there's a smudge of blood on it, uncertain of where it came from and searching— until he finds it's from his nails. every blunt bed is bleeding. it dawns on him that his clothes are wet where they hug his hextouched scars. back, shoulder, leg— a look and touch at that— bleeding. something wet splashes his shaking hand. blood from the nose. the aches turn to stabs, and before jayce could get out of the car on his own, his leg crunches under his weight, and he falls sideways with a sodden yelp.
his vision is swimming, his heart thumping so unbeleivably fast he could hear the racing in his ears, feel that it could pop out of his chest at any moment and he'd die that way. from a broken, overworked heart. but it is not stopping there. jayce's lungs try to keep up, give him air, but no matter how quickly he tries to bring the oxygen in, it wasn't enough to soothe his invisible suffocation. it burns. the faster he breathes, the more the fire catches, and he cannot seem to slow it down.
he feels— an energy. a flow. pulsating and invading and wrong, and jayce scrambles for the front seat door swung open, for anything he may have left in the compartments or pockets to cut open the fabric under his brace. he finds— he doesn't even see what it is, only that he could use the edge of it to pull apart seams in his rush. under his soaked pants leg is the nasty concoction of iridescent decay touched by the anomaly. strings of pus stick to cotton as he peels it away, or tries to, the dribbling blood from it mixing with bright greens, blue and pinks like gasoline. it smells god awful. the bone jostles inside and jayce feels like he could vomit and expire right there.
his consciousness dips, the blackness of his vision spreads at the edges, but he's thrown back to awareness by god knows what. his body doesn't want to stop. he realizes in his desperate heaving that he doesn't want to die, because— he still has something to do. send me back. he needs to go back. he wants to go back, there's a chance, there's still a chance there. where he actually needs to be.
his attempts are futile, but he hasn't come all this way just to give up. he hasn't. his own words thrum deep in his mind with each batter of his irratic pulse: i won't fail. he takes the leather straps of the top of his brace and squeezes as hard as he can to form a tourniquet. it still bleeds and the anomaly crawls higher. his arm— it's juttering on its own.
hiking his sleeve up his forearm to catch the webbed throbbing from the embedded rune overtaking his veins, jayce could feel the last of his strength being sapped. he sinks backwards against the truck's step up, trying to stay upright with useless gasping— the anomaly claws up his arm, plows a byway of multicolored nets up the left side of his neck and leaves a perfect pattern of holes crawling under his skin and boiling up to the surface.
now comes the panic. he's tachypneic, dyspneic, every shallow breath is painful and useless and still he's trying, writhing at the wheels of the truck and frantically raking at the footwell for viktor's cane on the passenger side.
(2/2) cw: gross infection stuff and imminent character death
his vision is swimming, his heart thumping so unbeleivably fast he could hear the racing in his ears, feel that it could pop out of his chest at any moment and he'd die that way. from a broken, overworked heart. but it is not stopping there. jayce's lungs try to keep up, give him air, but no matter how quickly he tries to bring the oxygen in, it wasn't enough to soothe his invisible suffocation. it burns. the faster he breathes, the more the fire catches, and he cannot seem to slow it down.
he feels— an energy. a flow. pulsating and invading and wrong, and jayce scrambles for the front seat door swung open, for anything he may have left in the compartments or pockets to cut open the fabric under his brace. he finds— he doesn't even see what it is, only that he could use the edge of it to pull apart seams in his rush. under his soaked pants leg is the nasty concoction of iridescent decay touched by the anomaly. strings of pus stick to cotton as he peels it away, or tries to, the dribbling blood from it mixing with bright greens, blue and pinks like gasoline. it smells god awful. the bone jostles inside and jayce feels like he could vomit and expire right there.
his consciousness dips, the blackness of his vision spreads at the edges, but he's thrown back to awareness by god knows what. his body doesn't want to stop. he realizes in his desperate heaving that he doesn't want to die, because— he still has something to do. send me back. he needs to go back. he wants to go back, there's a chance, there's still a chance there. where he actually needs to be.
his attempts are futile, but he hasn't come all this way just to give up. he hasn't. his own words thrum deep in his mind with each batter of his irratic pulse: i won't fail. he takes the leather straps of the top of his brace and squeezes as hard as he can to form a tourniquet. it still bleeds and the anomaly crawls higher. his arm— it's juttering on its own.
hiking his sleeve up his forearm to catch the webbed throbbing from the embedded rune overtaking his veins, jayce could feel the last of his strength being sapped. he sinks backwards against the truck's step up, trying to stay upright with useless gasping— the anomaly claws up his arm, plows a byway of multicolored nets up the left side of his neck and leaves a perfect pattern of holes crawling under his skin and boiling up to the surface.
now comes the panic. he's tachypneic, dyspneic, every shallow breath is painful and useless and still he's trying, writhing at the wheels of the truck and frantically raking at the footwell for viktor's cane on the passenger side.
he can't reach it— ]