2020-03-23 - You again...

In the waking world the last thing Ignacio saw was a need, a woman in peril, and a city bus way too close... light...and then nothing.

He never saw the ambulance.
He never saw his life ending at 27.
There are experts at the hospital working on this.

He'd dropped Minerva off at the hospital after they burned down Murray House and the last inkling he knew is this... was probably retribution for that. But now? Now the world was so cold it didn't bother him anymore. Cold and... grey?

Looking around at the grey expanse hazed and blurred out a frozen white at the edges he tries to clear his vision. The Spanish uttered translating to "This better not be purgatory because I refuse to be bored to death postmortem." The glib comment presently his sole comfort while his heart stays gripped in fear and uncertainty.

His hand finds what might be a stone arch. His fingers are blanched and too frozen to tell. His foot finds the edge of something; a sharp drop off into... what? More white and grey? Vision clearing the world he's standing in slowly comes into focus as the sharp icy winds that freeze, but don't harm him, confirm his location.

"You know you'd return. You belong here. You are part of this. Is it so bad?"

He's back in the snowstorm, where he froze to death. Between the distracted whispers and the flurries at the edges of the snow field he sighs. "Why put off what is inevitable. It can't hurt you."

He's tired. so, achingly and unbelievably tired. The cold bites at him and bids just sleep. Pull up a blanket of snow and sleep. Instead he sits on the edge of the platform and looks out. English he chides the wind back, conversationally, "You know you are a shit enabler. We gotta work on that. There's this thing called 'Marketing'. Might wanna look into that." Every limb feeling like it's on fire and broken apart like a smashed tower of cards and tiny blocks.

The wind pushes the powder of the snow in drifts as a shadow moves across the otherwise still expanse. A large shadow. Shrike? Oh, those birds again. they perch, on what he does not know and it's too blurry inthe whiteout on teh edges to see. They are watching him. Shit thiy might flay him apart like they did Finch-

Finch.

The bird makes a noise but it's her voice crying when it does; that moment she pulled him out of the snow. That time he was almost left here. He flinches, and were his eyes not feeling frozen his eyebrows might get clumpy. His jaw tightens while his skin freezes and his nerves in his body are screaming and angry at him. Curiously as the snow drifts up against his shoe the cold creeps in and the nerves short there and freeze mid synapse.

He sits, the freeze creeping into his leg actually abating the pain as it once had like the only balm that actually does anything. The only time he could remember anymore not hurting all on his own. He couldn't feel his leg, skin, and with it some part of his memory that remembered it ever hurting at all. Hell, he could barely remember anything right now having only the cold to focus on and alleviated of his burdens of pain and guilt.

Small mercies, and yet, he can only see her face. Finch reaching for him and in the howl of the wind hear her rage. It really doesn't take much to make a murderbird really; to make someone give up hope. You don't even have to hurt them, you just have to take away the things that remind them there's something else. And what hurts is not his fragile body, but seeing so clearly, how easy that possibility, of Finch just burning down the world- all the things that ever failed to help in their multitudes.

Voice tight he murmurs tiredly, "I am not supposed to be here."

"But you are..." it replies. and while he'd love to call it likes Ignacio can feel the truth in that and the utter endless, absent oneness with this unending winter. A human machine rusted out in a field and reclaimed by nature, and never feeling warmth again, but never knowing so much peace as this.

He closes his eyes and leans against the arch letting his body rest as it is encumbered with lethargy. And its in the stillness, between the slicing words of the wind his name... sort of. "Figgy, don't go. I still need you."

The words hurt in that way touching warm water does when you have frostbite; the warm tone against the stark chill making his ears ring. There's almost a song quality to it. Singing? He doesn't even know but it feels familiar. Directing his words to the shkrike in the trees, so tiredly he croaks in Spanish, "Go tell Celano I'm not giving up on her. We're not done here yet."

The harder he tries to move the more it hurts. He belongs here but going back is as hard as trying to breathe water as a mammal. One hand tries to push off the frozen block next to the arch, and blindly he forces himself to reach out to the hand he knows is there and can barely feel through frigid fingers. On trust he forces (he thinks) his fingers to do what they ought to to grab on and feels pulled back through the door.

Everything feels heavy and frozen. Eyes open, bleary trying to adjust to both colour and warmth. It stings and breathing is laboring. Still there's a faint half smile on the full functioning side of his face and he murmurs, after what might be a couple hours or a few days, he does not know, "Ey bonita...missed you."

His fingers twitch in her hand, and that just took everything out of him. Breathing feels like inhaling fire,but right now? Right now he has everything he needs. She's there. The world is not on fire. Now he can rest.

His fingers curls around her hand and he lets himself rest between the beeps of the machine.
Who knew a hospital would ever be preferable to somewhere else?