The Winged

22- Rescue (2)

The spear slipped from my fingers and clattered down. My legs moved on their own. I sensed each movement as it happened but I didn't feel it. I was someone else. The awful sound as stone collided with plastic didn't hurt my ears. I didn't even realise I had dropped Rosin's spear until I was halfway across the table.

The yells of a boy, the chorus of incredulous shouts that followed me as I emerged from my hiding place, the pounding of my own feet as I lurched into a run; each sensation was drowned.
I didn't see the faces of my brothers. I didn't comprehend the sounds of surprise or relief that escaped them when they saw me. Even Rosin's wide, pink eyes were a blur as I shot past. There was only him.
Only him.
Only him.

And there was no shock on the boy's face. No cries of relief, of fear, of joy- no moment where his eyes widened at the sight of me running towards him, or a smile appearing on his face. His eyes that ran deep with a thousand greens were shut. I couldn't see a flicker of emotion in the only person that mattered in that moment.

Aspen wasn't moving.

My knees buckled as I finally made it to the motionless body.
"ASPEN!"
I slapped hard against the glass as I fell, hands pressed against the crystal as if I could sink straight through. He didn't stir at my voice, nor the bang that sounded when I collided with the prison. I had never seen anyone lay so still.
"Aspen!"

Open your eyes. His blonde hair tumbled about his face, but I could see through the fair strands that his eyes had remained shut. The hair hung down across his face in a way that I knew he would have hated had he been awake, but now the boy seemed numb to all sensations. There was no signs of life.
My voice rode higher, "No, Az, no, Aspen, Aspen!"
No no no. He can't be. Behind me, I could hear someone's voice, yelling out.
"Azure?!"
I didn't have to turn to know that a cry of such ferocity belonged to Rosin.

The glass was glacial and smudged under my palms, an unbreakable barrier between the two of us. I couldn't turn to face the voice that was calling me, I couldn't bear to rip my eyes away from the limp body. It's not- he's not, Aspen, ASPEN!
I screamed and pounded on the glass. What I would have given to see his eyes open. Open your eyes Az please please open your eyes.

I tried his name again, but the call fell on dead ears. This can't...
Sinking down lower to the floor, I was laying next to him now, hands clinging to the side of the cylinder, clawing for some way through. No warmth from my hands could reach him.
He didn't move.
It was like I was trying not to collapse in on myself, like the world was folding over.

I knew that time was running out. I knew that if I sat and wept miserably that all this would be for nothing— but there was this horror, this anguish that was wrecking havoc on me, and it wouldn't leave. It was blinding. It couldn't be real, it couldn't be true it-
He can't be dead. A sob escaped me. Dead. Had that word really just gone through my head? In an instant, it had all escaped into a wail, "Aspen."
He wouldn't leave me.
I needed him, more than anyone else in the world, anything in this life, I needed him.

"Aspen," I shuddered, voice nothing more than a whisper, "I'm begging you. You can't, you can't. I need you, pl-" But I couldn't finish that sentence. I broke. This was dying. No person could live without the sun— I loved the sun, I had always loved the sun and he was my sun, and I had loved him before I knew what love was.
There would be no tomorrow if he never woke up.

Then the impossible happened.

A force erupted inside me, like a brilliant firework going off. I was sure that my eyes had deceived me.
I clawed at the glass, "Aspen?!"
However raspy and pathetic it was, had he-