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The feeling of a hand, cold and textureless, closes around his ankle, tight pressure through thin fabric, right above his boots. He hits the ground roughly, air knocked from his lungs as his ribs collide with the unforgiving ache of the planet’s surface.
Fingers scrabble through the dust, grit caking under his nails and sand rough against rawed skin. The clouds stirred by his own motion force their way into his lungs as he opens his mouth to cry out, to scream, to do anything. His eyes burn, dry and aching.
Data, something’s got me!
He almost yells for Tasha, before the remembrance settles into his chest, heavy and leaden against his ribcage as he gasps for air that will not come. The words don’t feel like his as they punch their way out of his lungs, hovering in the air like a threat. He’s not entirely sure he can rely on the way they buzz in his ears as proof they made their way into the world, but Data moves, quick and steady, before cutting off in an aborted motion at Armus’s declaration.
He slips under with terrifying ease, black sludge filling his lungs as he tries to make any noise, vision filled with terrifying darkness as pain alights in every nerve. He can’t hear the rest of the crew anymore, now endlessly distant from him, and he imagines, perhaps, that they have beamed back aboard the ship.
That would be the prudent thing to do, truly, the safest option. They would leave the vicinity and retreat to safety. Logically, he tells himself that would be the smart thing.
It doesn’t quell the sudden surge of fear and horror at being left behind, left to die here in this misery, alone and suffering, and he is filled with a newcome gratitude for Tasha not being alone when she was attacked.
Barely any time has passed, yet he misses her.
He finds some resolve in the idea of making her death worth something, and he fights back, thrashing wildly and attempting to resist. He doesn’t stop even when the searing pain resumes, like every cell in his body is grinding along sandpaper, joints greatly protesting any movement and screaming their dislike for the world.
Somewhere, far away, he imagines he can hear Deanna’s voice calling for him. Imzadi. He thinks it’s just a wish, a quiet late hope that he dearly wants to not be his last.
He doesn’t know what to think. His vision, still dark from his surroundings, blurs and whites out from the pain in his very bones. Stop resisting, Armus hisses, like a thought that isn’t his. It will make it easier for you.
He can’t believe that. Armus wants to be entertained. He is not sure how to do that, not yet, but he knows that his struggle is prolonging his life for the time being, so he grits his teeth and tries not to let the hypoxia fill his mind with madness, as much as it wants to.
He loses track of the time as the darkness pulses around him, cold and unforgiving and searing into him like nothing he has felt before. The next time he is fully aware of what is happening, he is being pulled up and dumped into the sand like forgotten luggage, his chest seizing in an attempt to draw in air.
Hands are on him suddenly, too many and too much, nerves still crackling livewires as fingers scrape darkness from his skin and his eyes. The doctor’s voice is faint, his thoughts awash in swirling colors of pain and worry for the shuttle, for Deanna, for everyone else. He is the first officer. He is supposed to be in charge of everyone. He needs to keep them safe.
He rolls onto his back, biting back a noise as the sharp pain reasserts itself deep in him, and blinks up at the sky he can now see until the transporter takes them away and he is nothing but particles and mist.
Later--god, so much later--when they are gathered in the holodeck to honor Tasha, he stands tall and pretends Deanna’s arm around his waist is solely for comfort and moral companionship, not one of the only things keeping him standing. His joints all ache and his skin feels to be on fire, but there is nothing wrong with him, nothing that can be done, and he needs everyone else to be okay and needs to grieve his crewmate, his friend, so he is quiet.
Deanna can sense the way his mind screams its protests so loudly, aching fire and heated knives in every gap and cell in him, and she stays close to him, fingers ghosting over seared skin in distant attempts to provide comfort that will not come.
“Will,” she whispers, words against his skin, as she leads him through the holodeck while acting normal. He offers a soft hum in response, noncommittal and offering to listen if she wants to talk. “What happened to you when you were there?”
They’re in the empty hallway now, and she lets him lean heavily against the wall. Data, something’s got me! Dark fills his vision as electric pain arcs up his spine.
He’s not sure what Armus did to him, and that frightens him more than anything else, his memories nothing but dark silence and blushed colors and needling pain crawling under his skin and burrowing into his bones.
Imzadi .
“Will?”
Data, something’s got me!
Touch him and he dies.
Any of you leave and he dies.
And he dies.
He dies.
“Will?”
He dies.
Fingers curl around his wrist, cool and gentle and familiar. A mind he knows presses against the edges of his being, calm settling through him.
Data, something’s got me!
Ice against his skin, fire in his cells. Darkness and silence stretches around him.
“Are you okay?” He shakes his head. It’s Deanna. She knows him. He can let himself be vulnerable. “I know,” she murmurs.
She stays at his side the rest of the day. When he shudders awake in the early hours of the morning, darkness threatening to steal his soul away, she is still there.