Work Text:
The water is cold, frigid—this is the first thing that Nicolo knows as the iron maiden breaches the surface. He very nearly releases the last breath that he gulped down to the shudders that course through him, barely managing to hold onto it as the surface recedes from view, the noon-time sun growing hazy as the light scatters through the water that rushes in through the holes. He closes his eyes for an instant and tries to focus, thrusting his hands and knees against the iron door—he knows Yusuf will come for him, but he doesn’t know when, and he’d really rather not be in here any longer than necessary.
Despite his best efforts—or maybe because of them—his first death comes for him while he’s still sinking. He claws at his chest as the water scorches through his lungs, consciousness wavering. He hasn’t hit the bottom yet—oh god, how deep does it go—when he dies, which means that when he revives moments later the water above him is that much darker, that much murkier, that much colder. He makes the mistake of breathing in again right away, his body instinctively gasping for air, and drags in a second lungful of water.
This death is quicker than the first.
This time when he comes to, he is no longer sinking. The iron maiden has settled against something—the bottom of the sea, he supposes. The pressure is immense, the water squeezing in from all sides, and he feels a scream rising inside of him that he swallows back down. He can still see light, just enough to illuminate the silhouettes of his hands in front of him—using this as a guide, he thrusts his limbs out, bare palms and bare toes hitting the cold, metal walls. The water slows him, impedes him, but he can still strike the iron with enough force to hear the thuds through the water pressing into his ears, the rattle of the chains and the scrape of the bottom underneath the iron maiden. He grits his teeth, holding onto the precious bubbles that try to slip through his lips, and thrusts his fingers through the grotesque face holes so as to give himself leverage to strike it with his knees.
Once.
Twice.
Again—
—and again—
—and again.
Until he feels the burn of salt in broken skin.
Until there is the pull of his flesh as the wounds heal instantly.
Until his head is swimming, black spots bursting before his eyes, and he knows he doesn’t have long until his third death. He tightens his fingers and rattles the iron maiden with all his strength.
No use. He succumbs for the third time, the pain of the frigid water in his lungs making a soundless scream pour, liquid, from his throat.
He wakes again, and his body shudders, the strain of so many deaths in such quick succession catching up to him. He feels an ache behind his eyes—tears, flowing into the water, lost to it the moment they are formed. Yusuf will come, he thinks. He holds onto the thought as he jams his nails into the cracks around the hinges of the iron doors, his back floating just above the cold metal encasing him. He tugs uselessly until he cannot tug anymore, and succumbs for the fourth time.
He loses track of his deaths after that. He doesn’t know how long he works, alternating between hitting the doors, yanking at the hinges, and screaming. All he knows is that it feels like at least a year before he realizes that the last little bit of light is gone and he can no longer see the face holes of the iron maiden nor the outlines of his hands above him. Night has fallen.
It’s a bit anticlimactic. Aside from the light, there is no real indication that anything has changed. It’s still freezing, the pressure still immense. The only reminder of the time that has passed is the fatigue that grips Nicolo’s chest, so deep in his bones that he wants to cry again though he knows it’s no use. He’s lost count of how many times he’s died, how many times he’s come back—all he knows is that every time he wakes he has a few seconds, maybe half a minute, to fight before it all goes black again.
So he fights. He screams and kicks and claws at the iron maiden. He tears off fingernails on the hinges and tastes the blood in the saltwater as they grow back. If his back would keep bruises, he’d be covered, black and blue—but it does not, each one healing just as fast as the last. He thrusts his head back against the iron, feels his skull connect with the metal, and he wishes the pain would stay just to distract him from the icy water and the taste of salt that pours down his throat.
It feels as if another year has passed before the light comes back, the dim glow illuminating the face holes of the iron maiden. Nicolo, on instinct, thrusts his hand out of the iron maiden’s mouth, blocking the light as he pushes his wrist, his forearm, his elbow further and further through until the sharp metal is cutting off his circulation. His head hits the top of the iron maiden, his neck bent awkwardly as he feels around the front of his cage until he can grasp the massive padlock, tugging uselessly at it.
It doesn’t budge. He screams in frustration, yanking at his arm and realizing as he does that he’s gotten it stuck. He feels the metal biting into the muscle of his bicep, feels the cuts growing as his lungs scream for air. He struggles, making no headway. He dies, even more trapped than before, like an animal in a snare.
He comes to with his arm still stuck, his hand floating, fingers brushing against some sort of plant life. He holds his breath, trying to wriggle the arm free and feeling more panicked by the second as it refuses to budge. The pain spikes as he yanks, until, with an audible crack, he feels his humerus snap.
The pain whites out his vision for a moment, his entire body tensing like a taut bowstring. He sobs uselessly, caught between trying to pull free and trying to stop the pain. He can’t, he can’t, he’s going to be stuck like this until Yusuf can find him, stuck even worse than before, the pain unbearable—
—until, with another crack, the bone pops back into place.
Nicolo breathes in on instinct, forgetting that he’s submerged, and chokes. He dies again, his arm still caught fast, and has a quick revival. He shudders, pulling weakly—the blood is so thick in the water that all he can see through the face holes is red.
Until a shadow passes overhead.
Nicolo’s first thought is that it’s Yusuf, come to rescue him. He pushes even further up against the front of the iron maiden, arm stretched out and fingers reaching, his heart pounding in his chest and his lungs screaming for air—only to wince back with all his might as he catches sight of an absolutely massive creature swimming above his head.
Shark, his frayed mind supplies, mental cogs whirring so fast in his head that he fears they’ll overheat. He’s seen what sharks can do, the chunks taken out of the enormous tuna that the fishermen haul up. He instinctively draws his arm as close to the outside of the iron maiden as he can, wincing as the lip of the mouth hole cuts in deeper. It only serves to spill more blood, and he feels cold, red water press against his teeth as he bares them, trying to hold in a whimper.
Please, he thinks, as he watches the shark turn lazily in the water above him. Please, just—go away. Go away, go away, go away—
The pleas do no good. Nicolo is caught fast, and he jolts as he feels something hit the side of the iron maiden a mere moment later. The metal container rocks from the force before it settles again, and a second shark swims past, so close that he could have touched it had his arm still been outstretched. He can’t make out its mouth or its eyes in the dim light, but he knows without a doubt that it has tasted his blood and is looking for the hurt animal. He shivers with fear, his eyes wide as he watches the sharks circle, calm and relentless. Two… and then three… scenting his blood in the water, predators tuned to their prey. He dares not move, dares not twitch… but he has no choice. He’s going to die sooner rather than later, and the sharks will surely take note of that.
With this in mind, he clenches his teeth, relaxes his stuck arm, and, on the count of three, tugs with all his might.
It happens in the space of a split second. One moment he’s straining to get his arm free, and the next there is no arm. He screams a wet, garbled scream, his bicep finally coming free, nothing left to keep it lodged there. He jerks away from the face of the iron maiden, curling up as much as he can around the stump of his arm as blinding pain courses through it. If he thought the blood was thick before it is nothing compared to now, the taste of it overpowering the salt and brine. He chokes and gags and dies, quick and dirty, his lungs filled with more blood than water.
He returns to life a moment later, floating in the iron maiden. He has a few minutes before his body realizes that his arm isn’t around to reattach, which means that he has a few minutes before his worst nightmare begins. As he thinks about what’s to come his entire body begins to tremble, a mixture of strain and fear rocking through him. He’s regrown limbs before, and he can confidently say that it’s the worst thing he’s ever experienced. It’s almost a relief when his vision starts to get spotty, death claiming him once more.
…And yet. There is no escape, not now. And a few minutes and two deaths later, he can confidently say that regrowing an arm while trapped in an iron box on the bottom of the sea is a hundred times worse than anything he’s ever experienced.
He moans, air bubbling up from between his lips as he waits for death to take him just to give him a moment, an instant, of reprieve from his agony. His entire side is on fire, white-hot sparks shooting up through the stump of his arm, the salt and the brine burning in the open wound. He clutches it with his other hand, and as he does he can feel the jagged bone—chomped neatly off—slowly elongating in his grasp, muscle crawling along behind it a centimeter at a time. He kicks out as the pain ratchets higher, feet striking the sides of the iron maiden with no rhyme and no reason. He dies and comes back and his arm is an inch longer and he wants nothing more than to scream and scream and scream.
He loses track of how many times he dies as his arm regrows. All he knows is the pain—bracing himself against it every time he wakes, thrashing and twisting in his frigid cage, unable to even draw a breath with which to cry out. He sobs into the water, his lips splitting over his teeth as he bares them until…
…finally…
…after what must be hours of agony…
…he revives to find that there is no more pain.
He stays still for a long moment, blinking slowly. The light above him is beginning to go out—the sun must be setting. The water around him is still faintly pink, but the blood isn’t fresh, most of it diluted in the currents passing above. He watches the silhouettes of the sharks still circling above him, his head completely, utterly blank.
It’s… nice, if he’s being honest. The blankness. Numbness. Nothingness. He wants to hold onto that feeling, the absence of pain. Unfortunately, however, it only lasts until his lungs begin to burn for oxygen—he sucks in water, the pain clawing through his chest, and he dies again. He wakes, and draws a hand down the stubble growing on his face, closing his eyes against the pounding ache of fatigue that pulses through his body. He can’t sleep, not with death hovering so close at his shoulder, but he can at least rest, so he does.
He hopes that Yusuf finds him soon. He has never been so exhausted.
Night has fallen for the second time before he opens his eyes again. He shivers in the cold as he stares up at the darkness, so utter and complete—he’s never seen a clear night without stars before, and he finds the experience off-putting. He has no idea what is going on up there, what’s happening on the surface—the world could be crumbling, the skies consumed by fire and ash, and all he would know is the cold and the wet and the pressure.
Holding his breath, Nicolo forces his tremors to still and reaches slowly for the face holes above him. He has no idea what foul beasts lurk nearby—sea serpents and krakens and monsters, surely. Still, he slips his hand through the hole once more, slowly reaching up toward the surface. Kelp and seaweed brush his fingers but he pays them no mind, simply stretching, as far and as long as he can before he sighs out a stream of bubbles and draws his hand back inside. He dies again with his eyes open, unseeing.
The third day is much like the first two, sans arm regrowth. Nicolo fights, his fingernails chipping away against the solid iron encasing him, and he rests, curled up as close to the bottom of the iron maiden as he can. Time passes in slow spurts, eternity caught between lungfuls of water. He prays for Yusuf to find him. He isn’t found. He dies, and he wakes.
And the next day, the same.
And the next.
And the next.
Until he loses track of the days. Until each one blends into the last. Until he’s so desperate for a reprieve from the monotony of constant death and the thud of his fists against the door that he drags his wrist against the iron maiden’s mouth hole, cutting it wide and letting his blood seep out into the water to attract the sharks. He watches from his cage as they circle above him, beautiful in their movements, wondering if they feel invincible…
…or just monstrous.
He gets better at drifting, as time passes. It’s impossible to ignore a death, but he finds that he can numb the sensations leading up to it, pushing the burn of his lungs down underneath his consciousness. The numbness is welcome, though he still finds the burning need to fight nestled deep in his chest. He fights as long as he can, limbs searing with strain, and then he drifts, his eyes open as he floats, suspended, in the frigid water. He wonders how long it’s been since he slept.
Too long, he realizes, as he drags his nails down the iron in front of him and notices for the first time that said nails are starting to grow long. His toenails, too, are growing—he feels them as he braces his back and pushes his feet against the door. He can’t help the laugh that escapes on a bubble of air, and claps a hand over his mouth before he wastes any more. His beard is growing scruffy, his hair brushing his ears in the water—he wonders who he’ll be when Yusuf finally finds him. Some sort of unkempt hermit, most likely.
He can’t help it. He laughs again, air escaping him. He dies with choking laughter on his lips.
He measures time in the length of his nails, of his hair and beard, after that. The growth becomes milestones—when his hair touches his nose, and when his fingernails are too long to fold his fingers into fists, and when he can no longer press his bare feet flat against the foot of the iron maiden because his toenails are so long. His fingernails still break, sometimes—when he finds the energy to fight. But the fight, when it comes, never lasts long before he finds himself going limp again, his body too fatigued from a lack of food, a lack of sleep, a lack of air to keep up the energy. He feels like a ship run aground, like a beached whale struggling to move.
He’s just. So. Tired.
It isn’t long after that when he realizes that it’s been… a while since he moved. He shifts, feeling threadbare clothes shift against him in turn. His hair brushes his shoulders. His nails, when he stretches, reach down past his knees.
He’s thin. He knows he is, can feel it in the looseness of his clothes, the weakness of his limbs. He wonders how long it’s been. How long Yusuf has spent looking—how long Nicolo has spent dying. He blinks, and pushes one hand forward until his knuckles are pressed against the iron door. He pushes, the motion as familiar as breathing once was. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
He dies. He wakes. He stops moving altogether.
After that, things get a little hazy. He blinks sparingly, coming up from the numbness sporadically. He’d really rather stay under, but sometimes things draw him out—the sound of fish hitting the side of the iron maiden, shadows passing overhead. Every time he blinks his nails are a little longer, his hair and beard a little more tangled around him, until said hair is so long that it’s like a blanket, wrapping him up, and his nails have nudged up against the bottom of the iron maiden, scraping the bottom. His arms fold up toward his chest, his knees bending, to give them room, until he is curled up on himself, small and cold and still under a hundred, a thousand, a million gallons of water.
It is here that he finds himself thinking about Quynh. How she must have felt, all alone out in the burning desert. He thinks… maybe this is his desert. Except there is no sunlight here. There is no heat. There isn’t even air. And he doesn’t know how much longer he can do this, how long he can wait for Yusuf to come. He wants it to end so badly that it feels like a rupture inside of him. He’s desperate for a way out. Even if that means to lose touch with himself. To lose touch with humanity. To shed everything that makes Nicolo Nicolo.
He doesn’t know much time is behind him, or how much more stretches in front of him. All he knows is that he can’t stop himself from slipping away into the numbness. He dies, he wakes… and he lets go. He doesn’t think he’ll come back this time.
And then… just like that… comes a spark of life, zinging up through his spine. A split second of something that feels like a dream catches him, curling around his neck and yanking. He gasps in water as a rope burns around his neck—only it’s not his neck—this isn’t him—it’s—it’s—
He doesn’t get a name before his body gives out, death taking him once more. When he comes around again, however, he does it with a dead certainty flooding through his veins—there is a new immortal.
And Nicolo… trapped, numb, lost Nicolo… he will survive to meet his new brother.
Whether he wants to…
…or not.