Work Text:
Often he does not feel alive.
Distant and hazy. Sounds and sights blur together. Time feels stagnant and impossibly fast at once. An hour turns to a week, days into seconds. And in all of it, he thinks, this must be what death feels like. He's felt a fraction of it before. Injured and dying and alive and so endlessly exhausted.
It's death, it's dying, and it is peaceful and it is terrifying.
And there are moments that break through. A glass shattering. The sound of the waves. Scrapes and bruises. Staring at the sky and seeing stars. His wife weeping. His son grinning.
And in these moments, he is living- not just alive, but
living
- and against all odds, it is a wonderful thing.