He wakes with a gasp. The fact that he can even breathe is as much of a shock as it is to find out he’s still alive. After all, nothing about that oceanic darkness seemed forgiving enough to imply that anything other than death was even an option; for it had felt merciless when it clawed its way up his neck and clouded his mind. One moment he was choking on tar made of shattered stars and dull dreams, and in the next he was gasping down lungfuls of air.
Sensation doesn’t come back slowly to him. His eyes fly open as his nervous system becomes overwhelmed. Ziun shakes, shivers; panic and latent fear making itself known as he desperately tries to make sense of his situation. That same panic bares down on him, heavy and choking. It takes almost all of what little energy he has to ensure that it doesn’t find a secure foothold.
Slowly, he adjusts, and when he does so — Ziun finds himself staring up at a swinging light. It seems to constantly flicker, which honestly does nothing but enhance this feeling of nauseating disorientation. Sure, his ears don’t quite ring anymore, but the sound of his own blood thundering throughout his body is still very much present.
In the end it takes more effort than he’d like to admit just to get himself to focus.
The first thing Ziun notices with this new awareness is that wherever he is: the walls surrounding him are a distinct slate grey. The lighting that does manage to illuminate the room between its patternless flickering and endless swinging; is unsurprisingly dim.
Ziun is in half the mind that he would prefer there be no luminance, if only because this shitty strobe light continues to invoke the feeling of needing to vomit within him. Apart from that, the second thing Ziun registers with his limited senses, is the sound of chains.
From the way they scrape against the bare floor whenever he so much as shuffles, he understands that they're somehow linked to him. How lovely. Not moments later he's made aware of the dull throbbing in his ankles, and— ah. The chains are apparently wrapped around said ankles, and are rather painfully digging into the skin there.
He minutely shuffles which still causes the chain to yet again scrape against the floor. The grating noise pours into his ears, dully echoing, and does nothing to soothe his high-strung nerves.
Ziun really would’ve preferred an eternal slumber to this. He’d wished his mind had never cleared, had never been granted awareness and longed to bathe in the fact that he was simply alive for just that bit longer; because when the pieces finally click together—the cement walls, this brutal captivity; even the smell of damp and water that drips down from the ceiling—they form an image that is more than displeasing to the eye.
Why was he here..? Didn’t he make it out?!
This… place that he finds himself in.. he knows it. Recognises it from where the memory is buried deep down inside. Never to be forgotten, never to be erased— but not for a lack of trying.
This place—it’s not just a change in his immediate environment or decor—is a whole entirely different World than where he was before, back in the safety of his Hub. More specifically; this was the eleventh World he had transversed, and yeah, it may not have been the first World he had died in, but it sure as hell was the first time that’d he’d been so violently and mercilessly killed.
To make matters even worse than they already damnably were, his would-be killer was both his captor and the person bound to walk into the room, really any minute now; in this World.
Ziun’s chest heaves as his breath comes rushing into his lungs in a panic. The more he tries to deny the reality of his situation, the more painfully vivid the things lain out in front of him are. All too clearly is he reminded of the cold metal framing his wrists. His arms were half-numb already so he hadn't paid attention to the intricacies of their physical impediment until now.
An uncontrollable sob makes its way past his lips as a shiver wracks his pathetic form. Tugging on the chains above proved that they weren’t unanchored like the ones around his ankles were, and instead linked to the ceiling. It explained why his arms had little feeling in them — they’re raised above him and are what Ziun guesses are keeping him suspended.
With the balls of his feet nowhere close to touching the ground, he can’t help but worry about his lack of stability. His toes barely manage to brush against the ground and another helpless sob falls from his lips.
How the hell was he supposed to break free without a secure foothold? He hadn’t managed to do so the first time around—escape, that is—but he refuses to give up before he’d even really tried.
A sound distinctly like a heavy door being opened traveled to his ears and Ziun snapped his head up. He didn’t care about being caught nearly having a breakdown, too numb to feel anything other than cold, so all he did was blink to clear his teary eyes and squint up at the person suddenly in front of him to better see if they were someone he knew. When they lift a long arm to still the swinging light hanging above and then step directly under it, a heavy stone drops to the bottom of his stomach.
They…. It was a face he sadly recognised. The silver hair, the cornflower blue eyes. Hell, even their gait were all things Ziun had seen before.
“A-Aa.. ron?” It was almost unbelievable. Which it shouldn’t be. Ziun had already confirmed what World this was, but it seems his denial was more firmly rooted than he had thought.
Despite meeting this man many, many years ago; Ziun still held a clear image of him in his mind. There was no mistaking that crazy glint in his eyes, the arrogant stride in his steps, nor his aura that felt so heavily of death.
“Awake?” Aaron greets him with a smile, pulling Ziun away from his drifting thoughts. The man then placed the metal tray in his hands onto the floor and proceeded to sit on the damp floor while crossing his legs.
More than familiar with his mentality, Ziun surmised that his captor probably thought the height difference between them would make him feel more comfortable. With them on the floor and him suspended, it almost seemed to give the illusion that Ziun was the one with all the power.
The subtle manipulation doesn’t fly over his head.
Even though Ziun never answered him, Aaron nodded like he had. “That’s good.” And his pink, thin lips quirked upwards to reveal another smile that caused his eyes to crease. It looked as though Aaron were relieved about something, but the expression looked… off somehow. Perhaps it was because of whose face it was on.
Ziun couldn’t help shivering in his cuffs. He didn’t know if it was from the cold or the uncomfortable feeling that bubbled to the surface when faced with a smiling psychopath.
It was simply.. jarring. For someone who had locked him up, had stripped him of all his belongings—including his pride—to show such an expression as if he had no choice but to do so; just reminds Ziun how psychotic the man was and why it was one of the worst Worlds he had traveled to.
‘In fact,’ Ziun quietly muses to himself, ‘Any World where this man resided was never anything good.’
It never used to be like that though. Ziun can easily recount his younger years of freedom beyond this controlling psychopath. Before the “system” had decided that every other mission would be related to his captor. It had mentioned something about recovering the shards of a ‘precious soul’ — never caring about the fact that these very same missions were what was tearing Ziun apart.
The worst thing about all this though? He didn’t even know who he was saving.
Not really, anyways.
All and any information Ziun had been given on this topic was that they—Aaron(?)—were a well-respected, SS-graded Marshal capable of destroying warships with the flick of his fingers. He was supposedly a never before seen genius that was also, apparently, worth all the pain and suffering Ziun had been through.
In hindsight maybe he knows more about this man than Ziun does about himself. Although, now that he actually thinks about it, the information he’d been provided shows that maybe, perhaps, this man comes from the same place that Ziun does..? It’s definitely something he needs to look into, though why he hasn’t done so before now, nor bothered to think too deeply about whether he had a life before or outside of these seemingly never-ending missions...
…the reason was probably related to whatever had caused that blockage in his head. You know, the same one that gave him the slightest bit of amnesia whenever he did question things just that bit too much.
But now with that same blockage gone, and the rush of it doing so finally wearing off, Ziun is left with the astounding realisation that everything he had done—the countless horrors he had seen; the infinite Worlds he had been thrown to—all led up to this.
To Him.
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