[ Two words, and the last flicker of hope he had that maybe, somehow, he'd simply... been incapacitated, perhaps in a coma, that they'd managed to save him after all is snuffed out as simply and completely as a candle. His lashes flutter as he blinks, rapid, his fingers beneath Maelle's warm hand rubbing against one another where they're set on his thigh, and he lifts his left hand — in perfect condition, gliding as easily as the first day he attached it — to that spot at his ribs where it had rested before, as if he might somehow have been able to halt the flow of his own blood through a cage of metal fingers.
But there's no wound there, and his uniform is as perfect as the arm. His breath comes quicker, a little too fast, and he feels it again, like he had when he first woke by that waterfall what feels like a lifetime ago: his heart fluttering, unable to pick up its normal rhythm. He died.
Through the low hum of burgeoning panic — he died, how can he panic about dying again? but he can feel it just like he's back on that cliff looking at the man who killed him, cold terror gripping his heart and making it stumble and skip and forget how it's supposed to beat — he hears her go on, telling him that they succeeded, that the man — Renoir — is gone. The Paintress is gone.
He breathes, fast and too light, through his nose, and tries to find something to hang onto. ]
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But there's no wound there, and his uniform is as perfect as the arm. His breath comes quicker, a little too fast, and he feels it again, like he had when he first woke by that waterfall what feels like a lifetime ago: his heart fluttering, unable to pick up its normal rhythm. He died.
Through the low hum of burgeoning panic — he died, how can he panic about dying again? but he can feel it just like he's back on that cliff looking at the man who killed him, cold terror gripping his heart and making it stumble and skip and forget how it's supposed to beat — he hears her go on, telling him that they succeeded, that the man — Renoir — is gone. The Paintress is gone.
He breathes, fast and too light, through his nose, and tries to find something to hang onto. ]
It's over?