I can't breathe.

I'm suffocating, with not an ounce of air able to bypass my severely constricted throat. I'm sitting here, fingers curled with desperate intensity into my bloodied hair, staring blankly ahead of me at the body laid bear upon the deck. I can't breathe, I don't want to breathe, not when his chest is so goddamn still. 

Someone's talking, I don't know who. Kay, probably. A hand grips me by the shoulder, vigorously shaking me, but I don't budge, don't move. I just sit and stare and hold my breath to keep from screaming out every vile obscenity I have in my admittedly rich vocabulary.

This is all my fucking fault.

"..ya... Raya! You damnable fool, answer me, for Kami's sake!" 

Kay's voice sounds like we're separated by an entire ocean, but no, she's right next to me; the warmth of her hand slowly seeps through the numbness, flushing a layer of crackling ice from my veins and sending an electric jolt racing up my spine. She moves in front of me, attempting to get my attention or simply block my view, I'm not sure which, but I don't exactly give a damn. I scramble around her on hands and knees, scraping my nails disastrously over the rough wooden planks that make up the deck as I skid over to the body.

"Raya, I beg of you, gain ahold of your senses and listen to me," Kay hisses from behind me, her voice dripping venom and forged in steel. Any other day, any other moment and that would have shaken me to the core, maybe warned me off whatever I was doing to warrant its use. But I do nothing more than sink my teeth into my bottom lip, just shy of drawing blood. "You're in shock. Understandable, yes, but that is precisely why I am asking you - ever so nicely - to go with Adriel--"

"Like hell I'm gonna leave him!" 

My voice - so different, so fragile compared to Katana's unyielding composure - sounds on the verge of shattering.

I hear her draw a deep breath, releasing it several heartbeats later. She doesn't press the subject again, giving me a moment to myself. 

I sniff, squeezing my eyes shut in the vain hope of trapping the inevitable cascade of tears behind flimsy lashes. Molten droplets slither down my cheeks, collecting into a steady steam that drips from my chin and onto his crisp white shirt. Not that it makes any difference now, him being soaked to the bone, his spic-and-span attire glued to his lean form like a macabre second skin. I brush the back of my hand over my eyes, swallowing a hiccuping sob.

Kami, it's been so long since I last cried. I had a nifty little record going, too. 

"Timor, man, I'm a badass. Badasses don't cry."

"Says the girl who wept a literal river when she was under the assumption that her beloved swordsman had gotten himself killed on Thriller Bark."

"Shut it, Dracule! I told you that in confidence!"

"Oh, did you? How positively crass of me."

"Ohhh someone's looking to get a lil' taste of Honoo, ain't ya? C'mere you damn snarky--"

"...The last time I cried was four years ago."

"...Holy... Timor, that ain't normal, I hope you get that..." 

A humorless laugh escapes me, though I'm quick to bite the inside of my cheek, silencing myself. Pathetic. I'm so pathetic. That conversation seems like a lifetime ago. I was arrogant and moronic, shooting my mouth off like I always do, with the same old horrid consequences. I didn't get it back then, why his reply was in any way significant. I thought he was just being freaky, as per usual.

But here's the thing. In four years Timor never cried once. Timor didn't feel the urge to cry, to sob, to lose himself in his sadness - because for four years of his life, Timor didn't feel at all. He was a shell of a man, devoid of passion, apathetic to the world save a few very special people. He's said himself a thousand times: He wasn't strictly human in all that time. 

(Well, alright, he might've said it two or three times... He didn't generally speak...)

And we'd just begun to see him rejoin us lowly humans. Hell, I'd even gotten him to crack a quarter of a smile just a week ago! That was a major accomplishment in my book, whatever Katana says about it being indicative of my primitive intelligence.

Useless now, though, what with him being dead. 

"T-Timor, I'm..." My tongue refuses to cooperate, clinging stubbornly to the roof of my mouth despite my mental (foul-mouthed) encouragement. I close my eyes, clenching my hands into trembling fists, shoring up whatever flaky courage is left inside my battered body. "I'm so-sorry... You didn't... You idiot, why did you... why did you save me?!" 

With a strangled cry, one that I'm sure has Kay (and Adriel, too) questioning my sanity, I latch onto the front of Timor's drenched vest, dragging his face closer to mine. His head droops towards the deck, damp pink hair falling carelessly across his forehead. I grip the fabric without remorse, uncaring if I tear it in the process. My chest practically vibrates with the force of my heart beating against my rib cage like a manic drum. 

The tears won't stop.

"You idiot," I choke out, giving him a futile shake, tasting bitter tears on my lips, "you goddamn idiot... I was dead, okay? I was fucking dead! You saw that, you bastard, you understood it even before I did! You shoulda left me there! I'm not Ace, I'm not Whitebeard! You could live without me! So why in the ever-loving hell did you save me?!"

I'm all but screaming now, raw and desperate with my pleas, demanding answers that will never, ever come. Timor, of course, is silent throughout all this, stoic as ever, though that one-noted expression of extreme disinterest has finally fallen away, replaced with a look so terribly open and vulnerable I have trouble keeping my eyes on his face. 

The tears burn like white-hot fire as they race, faster and faster, down my cheeks.

Blood. Oh Kami, the blood. I'd been avoiding it until now, choosing to ignore it for fear that I'd crumble instantly the moment I fully acknowledged it. But it hasn't gone anywhere. It's still there, tainting his pallid skin a sickening crimson, outlining wounds and streaking his hair with vibrant highlights. Front and back he's a mess, riddled with holes that tear not only through his stylish clothing but flesh and tendon and bone. 

Bullet holes. 

Kami, Kami, no, why did this have to happen? What sort of wicked, sadistic karma is this, that Timor is the one paying for my sins? He'd point out that his soul (whatever was left of it) was infinitely more blackened than mine, soiled by years of being the Government's lapdog, but he'd changed. Slowly but surely Timor had changed and become someone worth respecting in this world. He was good, goddammit, he was great, in fact. He was a savior, a hero, a pirate - for the love of Kami, he was my friend. And I promised myself, I swore that while I breathed nothing like this would ever happen.

But here we are, broken and hollow, a unfulfilled promise stretched taut between us. Ready to snap. And I'm not sure I'm strong enough to handle the backlash.

Just as quickly as it rushed through my, my minimal strength flees, leaving me trembling with the effort of holding Timor up. He sinks back to the deck with a muffled thump, and I follow suit, collapsing onto his chest, face buried against the frigid skin exposed from a devastating gash in his shirt. 

I should be dead, not Timor. It should be me laid out here, growing colder with every passing second. I shouldn't be the one dealing with this fucking agony. Timor's the immovable rock, the soldier, the assassin filled to the brim with an empty black void. The one who doesn't feel, doesn't care. He'd be more suited to the task of getting over the death of a crew mate. So what kind of cruel irony is responsible for it being me who's trapped in this unending hell while Timor gets blissful nothingness?

If it was Timor, he'd be able to survive having some incredibly important chunk viciously ripped out him.

I'm not Timor, though, and my survival rate is dropping as fast as this bastard's body temperature.

....and that's all I've got for now. Not my best work (and certainly not the most pleasant) but I had this idea and I couldn't not write it, ya know? 

(RIO PLEASE DON'T KILL ME)