⚜ 𝓑𝓮𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓭 𝓙𝓾𝓭𝓰𝓮𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 - 𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒳𝒱𝐼𝐼: 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒜𝓈𝒸𝑒𝓃𝓉 ⚜
*✧・゚: *✧・゚ ✧.*★ Thank you again to @evren-sadwrn for the beta read!
TW: crying, panic attacks, altitude sickness, coughing, almost vomiting, discussion of drug use, withdrawals
Author's Note: My information about altitude sickness comes from the CDC and can be found here.
Summary: John and Vincent begin their ascent to find the Elder in the Himalayan mountains. But only Vincent has taken the antidote to altitude sickness, and even John's body has a breaking point.
“I can’t believe…I did that to you again. I’m so - I’m sorry -“
“Hey. I forgive you. It wasn’t okay, but…we’re okay.” John was doing his best to put Vincent back together in the airplane bathroom, under the pretense of helping him get the rest of his suit in order. God only knew what the pilot thought they were doing in there.
It wasn’t going great. He was hyperventilating pretty bad. Between that and his thick accent, he was almost unintelligible. “I…I have to…get under control. If that asshole…realizes I’m having a…a…a meltdown thing…” he winced at his own words and John stopped fixing his tie to hold him tightly. He pressed his face into the side of his collar, enveloping this huge man whose shoulders nearly spanned the entire space and yet seemed smaller than John at the moment. Vincent clung to him in return.
“I don’t give a FUCK what he thinks. Okay? Take your time.” He could almost smell the misery on Vincent, something sharp and wet in the scent of his skin after all those hours of panic. It set his heart pounding in some frenzied bloodlust. Couldn’t they get to the Elder already? He wanted to kill him. Wanted to kill everyone who had ever hurt Vincent.
He cringed further into himself, away from the pity. “It’s the damn withdrawals,” he whispered, “I wouldn’t normally be this emotional, I swear.”
At this point, John had come to doubt that. Sure, the withdrawals couldn’t help, but he suspected that this was what sober Vincent looked like under pressure: deeply dysregulated. The drugs probably came about to manage that, rather than the other way around. And if he was ever going to get better, he couldn’t be so ashamed of that fact. “You just grieved your friend yesterday. And then thought you were about to die. I get it. It’s okay.”
He shook his head. “What a pathetic display this is.”
Forcefully, “No.” No further words were needed. That seemed to have some kind of effect, because Vincent kissed the side of his head with affection and took a long inhale. His breathing finally began to slow.
“I think…I think I’m ready.” He pulled away long enough to wipe his face.
“You know, if it helps, I’m sure they just think we were fucking.”
Vincent laughed half-bitterly and kissed him again, on the mouth this time, taking his lower lip by the teeth hard enough to bruise it. “I hope so. I want everyone to know you’re mine.”
John did not let Vincent lose contact with him for more than a moment between the plane and the helicopter. By the backs of their hands brushing together, their shoulders just close enough to touch, John fought to keep him relaxed.
And it worked, perhaps even a little too well. Somehow, it was in the helicopter, tilting against the sky with the roar of the engines deafening out all other sound, that Vincent finally slept. Once the adrenaline had drained from him, his body simply gave out. Better here than on the slopes, John thought.
But it was a short time, barely more than two hours, before the helicopter hung above a comparatively flat stretch of mountainside.
“میں جانتا ہوں کہ آپ کہاں جا رہے ہیں۔ [I know where you are going],” said the pilot. “اس آدمی کو دیکھنے کے لیے جو اپنی یاک کے ساتھ ڈھلوانوں پر گھومتا ہے۔ وہ مجھ سے کہتا ہے، جب لوگ اسے دیکھنے آتے ہیں، تو انہیں بس چلنا چاہیے۔ کسی بھی سمت میں، جب تک کہ یہ اوپر کی طرف جاتا ہے۔ وہ تمہیں ڈھونڈ لے گا۔ [To see that man who wanders the slopes with his yak. He tells me, when people come to see him, that they should just walk. In any direction, as long as it’s headed up. He will find you.]”
“آپ ہمارے لیے کب واپس آ رہے ہیں؟ [When are you coming back for us?]”
“کل صبح اسی وقت۔ اگر تم مجھ سے ملنے کے لیے وہاں نہیں ہو۔ [The same time tomorrow morning. If you are not there to meet me…]” she shrugged. Enough said.
Vincent, already wearing an irritable expression that created little flickers of muscle at the corner of his jaw, broke in impatiently. “Translate, please,”
“When we land, we start walking until the Elder comes for us. Our return flight leaves at the same time tomorrow.”
“And how do we find our way back?”
She answered in English, gesturing to a huge role of cord between their seats. “Behind you, you have what’s called a ‘fixed line.’ You leave that behind you as you go. As a trail.”
“I’ve used one before. I’ll carry it,” said John. Though he did not feel particularly confident of that. He already felt mildly lightheaded. This was going to be a problem very quickly.
She looked them up and down, certainly able to tell that they were both novice climbers at best. “Have a nice death.” She dropped two lines for them to rappel down and they made their way onto the snowbank beneath - John with considerable ease and Vincent with considerable difficulty.
But in the end, the helicopter retreated into the distance, and there they found themselves, on the soaring, jutting face of Gasherbrum I, the Hidden Mountain.
It was a sight to take in, and Vincent seemed to enjoy it.
“Mon Dieu…I thought we’d see valley from here, but no, it’s mountains and mountains all the way to the horizon.” It was true. The snowcapped Himalayas stretched on endlessly, as if they existed in a realm entirely divided from that of safely habitable places.
Vincent had a way of marveling at the world around them, even as he complained every other step. It was too cold, he was getting out of breath, he was hungry, the climbing boots he had chosen for their appearance left something to be desired in terms of comfort (shocking), and on and on and on. But in the same breath, he noticed that the white fields around them sparkled in every spray of sunlight, that the ridge John was cresting reminded him of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, that the fog below writhed as if it was a living thing.
It was a consolation to hear the way he saw the world. John focused entirely on the Marquis as his own legs grew leaden with the lack of oxygen. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and altitude sickness at 15,000 ft above sea level wasn’t something that he could just power through. But he tried not to think of that. He tried to acknowledge it, note its effects on physical performance, and let it go, just as he was trained to do with all pain. Besides, Vincent couldn’t know what was happening, or he would panic. So John distracted himself as best he could from the rapidly intensifying throb that was splitting from the back of his skull to the space between his eyes.
“You really like this, huh? Tell about how you see it. What do you like most?”
“What don’t I like? Oh, it’s magnificent John, this is one of the finest views on the whole Earth. I would like to draw that quaint little row of peaks to our right, see it? Or maybe in oils, because the colors…that subtle cornflower blue against the deep grey in those foggy shadows…how could we miss that? But especially the sun.”
“Don’t look at the sun!”
“Well not RIGHT at it, but just glance at it, through the fog. Haloed in sheens of pink and blue where it splits into rainbows, the only thing more dazzling than the snow. Pale fire singing the edges of the sky, the god Apollo on his chariot - no, Zues, here at the top of Olympus.” He was really getting carried away. “It sings with light, John, looking down over everything. Even the mountain blazes in answer to it, and rises in waves of blowing snowflakes that try to reach up and touch it. It is in absolute majesty, revered by a hundred peaks, it must be so…” He trailed off into some private daydream, but soon resumed again, talking of the distant shadows between the peaks, and the strange dread that lurked in their depths.
John listened and listened, in a kind of meditation. He tried not to speak too much, conserving his breath. But it depleted anyway, as he knew it would. He felt as if the strength of his body was slowly seeping out, leaving him faint. He felt too light, empty even of air. It was late afternoon by the time he realized it was very possible that he would not make it. Maybe he would make it to the Elder, depending on how quickly he decided to come to them. But he would probably not make it back.
He thought of that from some remote place outside of his body, without really feeling it. And he thought about what it might mean. That Vincent might face the Elder alone. He might fail. Or he might succeed…and get his Golden Age by bloody conquest. John would not be there to keep his promise of stopping him. They could all die, everyone who was left. Caine. Belle. If Vincent lost himself, if he didn’t have the time to heal…what have I done for the sake of this man? Trusted him, that was what. Trusted him, because he believed he was capable of doing the right thing.
He looked up at Vincent, who was beaming at a nearby promontory in their path, his face flushed pink from exertion. “Think about it. In a couple of minutes, we’ll stand on top of that one.”
John smiled, even then, at the sight of him, and forced enough air into his lungs to speak. “Yeah.” The effort set him coughing. He tried to recover himself but found that for once, he was the one doubled over with Vincent’s arms around his waist. Or at least briefly around his waist - he soon took to hovering in helpless nerves rather than doing much.
“Mr. Wick! Are you okay?”
John straightened up “I’ve been sick for a little while. It’s the height. Like they said would happen. I’m okay.”
“No you’re not.” Vincent had gone extremely pale. “You’ve been coughing for the past hour. And I saw you almost fall over.”
John considered for a moment. There was no more point in lying. He wouldn’t be able to control the symptoms soon anyway. “No. I’m not.”
Vincent couldn’t look away from him. He just stared, frozen to the spot. “What’s happening to you?” he demanded.
“I am having a pulmonary edema.”
“A what?”
“A…what is it…” His brain was foggy as hell and this wasn’t his most practiced area of linguistics at the best of times… “œdème pulmonaire.”
“Okay, that does not help. What does that mean?”
“My lungs…” he broke off to cough violently, “…are filling with fluid. …Don’t panic.”
Vincent did not oblige.
Trying not to talk, he took his hand and squeezed it. “Breathe,” he choked out, the irony not lost on him. He would have hugged him, but Vincent seemed afraid to touch John in this state, as if doing so would make it more real.
A second later, though, he found Vincent embracing him. “Please hold on for me, Mr. Wick. I can’t lose you too. I just found you. I just started to love you.”
“…I know.” He mustered up as much willpower as he could possibly manage to make his voice box function. “I’ll be okay. Let’s keep walking.”
So they did, now hand in hand and much more slowly, stopping now and then for a coughing fit. Vincent took over handling the fixed line, and bit back his complaints about how much the task was aggregating his body.
John just stumbled forward at his side, chanting in his mind, “For Vincent. For Helen. For Vincent. For Helen…” He felt like his head was going to break in half.
Finally, he stopped. “Vincent.”
“Yes?”
“By the time we reach that next ridge…I will no longer be able to walk.”
“What? What do I do!?”
“It’s okay. Just…I need to tell you something. What I was trying to tell you on the plane. I have to.”
Even with John about to collapse in front of him, his lips still tightened into a hard line, instantly defensive. “On death’s door and you still can’t let up about what an evil monster I am for seeing the world as it really is.”
“You are not a monster.”
He bristled further, dropped John’s hand and breaking eye contact. But John kept talking, as soon as he had finished coughing again. There wasn’t much time. “I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to be alone. If I die - “
“Shut up!”
“No. If I die, and you go back into the fucking gilded cage, you’ll be alone. You’ll be depressed. You’ll do things that make you hate yourself even more, and to stop yourself from feeling that hate, you’ll numb out, you’ll shut out love, you’ll shut out happiness. The same as it’s always been. It doesn’t change just because you’re at the top of the hierarchy. Hell, you’ve already been at the top. Think about how painful that was. I know it must have been, because you were using just to get through it. None of those people cared about you, and they didn’t fucking deserve you, and it was killing you. But I care about you. And I don’t hold any of it against you. But you…you have a choice. I want you to do…what will actually make you happy, Vincent.”
And he fell forward on his knees, half buried in snow, and choked until it was all he could do not to vomit.
He felt himself blacking out, but refused. He flat out refused.
When the dark spots cleared out of his vision, there was a man standing in front of them. A small figure atop that very ridge John had been unable to reach, silhouetted in light. A yak stood at his side, joined to him by a tasseled lead rope.
He said, in an unexpectedly soft, lilting voice that carried on the wind, “Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont.” It was neither a command, nor an accusation, nor even a greeting, but a wholly apathetic statement of fact, as if he had looked at Vincent absentmindedly and named exactly what he saw. After a long moment, he gestured to the yak. “Mettez votre animal sur la selle de mon animal et suivez-moi. [Put your pet onto my pet’s saddle, and follow me.]”
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آج کی پوسٹ ان دیہاڑی داروں کے نام جو ہفتے میں ایک دفعہ اپنی بیٹی کا پسندیدہ انڈے والا بند کباب لاتے ہیں اور ساتھ اعلان بھی کرتے ہیں کہ انکا پسندیدہ کھانا تو بس روٹی اور چٹنی ہے👇
💕آج کی پوسٹ ان عظیم مردوں کے نام
جو رات کو ا��نے چھالے بھرے ہاتھوں سے , اپنی ماں , بہن , بیوی , بیٹی کے لۓ گرما گرم مونگ پھلی لاتے ہیں اور ساتھ بیٹھ کر قہقہے لگا کر کہتے ہیں , تم لوگ کھاٶ میں تو راستے میں کھاتا آیا ہوں
💕آج کی پوسٹ ان عظیم جوانوں کے نام
جو شادی کے چند دن بعد پردیس کی فلاٸٹ پکڑتے ہیں اور پیچھے رہ جانے والوں کا ATM بن جاتے ہیں ۔ ۔ جنہیں اپنی بیوی کی جوانی اور اپنے بچوں کا بچپن دیکھنے کا موقع ہی نہیں ملتا
💕آج کی پوسٹ ان سب مزدوروں , سپرواٸزروں اور فیلڈ افسروں کے نام
جو دن بھر کی تھکان کے ٹوٹے بدن کے باوجود , اپنے بیوی بچوں کے مسکراتے چہرے دیکھنے کے لۓ رات کو واٸس ایپ (voice app)کال کرنا نہیں بھولتے ۔ ۔ ۔ ۔ ۔
💕آج کی پوسٹ ان سب دکانداروں اور سیلزمینوں کے نام "
جو سارا سارا دن اپنے وجود کے ساتھ لیڈیز سوٹ لگا کر کہتے ہیں : باجی دیکھیں کیسا نفیس پرنٹ اور رنگ ہے
💕" آج کی پوسٹ ان سب عظیم مردوں کے نام "
جو ملک کے کسی ایک کونے سے ڈراٸیو شروع کرتے ہیں اور پورے پاکستان میں اشیاء تجارت دے کر آتے ہوۓ اپنی بیٹی کے لۓ کسی اجنبی علاقے کی سوغات لانا نہیں بھولتے
💕آج کی پوسٹ ان معزز افسران کے نام
💕جو ویسے تو ناک پر مکھی نہیں بیٹھنے دیتے , مگر اپنے بچوں کے رزق کے لۓ سینٸیر اور سیٹھ کی گالیاں کھا کر بھی مسکرا دیتے ہیں ۔
" آج کی پوسٹ ان عظیم کسانوں کے نام "
جو دسمبر کی برستی بارش میں سر پر تھیلا لۓ پگڈنڈی پھر کر کسی کھیت سے پانی نکالتے ہیں اور کسی میں ڈالتے ہیں ۔ ۔ ۔ ۔
آج کی پوسٹ میرے والد صاحب کے نام
جنہوں نے مجھے زندگی دی اور زندگی بنا کر بھی دی
آج کی پوسٹ ہر نیک نفس , ایماندار اور محبت کرنے والے باپ , بھاٸی , شوہر اور بیٹے کے نام
جو اپنے لۓ نہیں اپنے گھر والوں کے لۓ کماتے ہیں
جنکا کوٸی عالمی دن نہیں ہوتا ۔ ۔
مگر ہر دن ان کے لۓ عالمی دن ہوتا ہے ۔ ۔ ۔ ۔
کیونکہ جن کے لۓ وہ محنت کرتے ہیں انکی چہروں پر مسکراہٹ ان لوگوں کی وجہ سے ہوتی ہے۔۔🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰🌹🥀🌷🌺
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