The Other Side of Sorrow

For the First Time

He couldn't breathe.

Kai was laying on his bathroom floor for what felt like the millionth time, and he couldn't breathe. There was no oxygen to be found, not a single gulp of air to fill his lungs. It was starvation of the cruelest kind.

He gasped, but felt no relief. Tears flowed from his eyes and onto the floor. Choked sobs interrupted his attempts for breath. Everything was pain and pain and pain without respite.

It had been almost a week since his last panic attack, and there had been a moment there where he'd thought that perhaps his anxiety had truly left him as he had proclaimed to Cinder. But now he was back on the floor, wondering if this would be the time he actually died— if this would be the time that his weary soul finally gave up. He wasn't sure if that's what he wanted, but he knew that he would be relieved if that were the case.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it," Kai wailed, his whole body tensing as his head began to throb agonizingly. He wanted to slam his head on the floor, or scream until his throat filled with blood, or cry until he drowned in his own tears, but he couldn't seem to breathe. Of course, he knew logically that somehow his gasping breaths were allowing for oxygen to fill his lungs, but it didn't feel like it.

He knew that he had to think about his breathing— that in order to get it under control he had to think about the slow rise and fall of his chest rather than the torture it felt like. But logic didn't live in the town called panic, and he couldn't reign his thoughts in longs enough to gain control.

"I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't," Kai sobbed, pressing his face into the tiled floor, hoping that the coolness would pull him out, but it did nothing to soothe him. Everything was fire and pain and the end of the world.

Distantly, Kai heard a noise, but his brain couldn't piece together what it was, and quite honestly, he no longer cared. If the whole world wanted to stare at him at his lowest, to hell with it all. Just as long as it all ended.

Hands touched Kai, pulling his face away from the ground and onto something soft. He cried out as the movement sent a wave of pain through his head, but couldn't make a move to stop it. He heard a voice saying words in a slow, almost comforting manner, and tried to make out what they were saying.

"Kai, it's okay," the voice said, brushing the hair from Kai's eyes and the tears from his face. "Just listen to me talk— listen to my voice. Just think about my words."

Kai blinked rapidly, and suddenly Cinder's face came into view above him, her features pale and blurry. He tried to listen to what she was saying, but his terror screamed louder than her words.

As if sensing this, Cinder lifted Kai's head out of her lap and laid down on the floor beside him, pulling him into her arms. She cradled his head against her chest, his ear pressed over her heart.

He cried into her, feeling both relief in her being there and shame that she had to see him in such a state. No longer were his thoughts on his gasping breaths or the pounding within his head. He was thinking about her, trying to hear her words and understand what she was saying to him.

Gradually, his gasping breaths evened out, and the tears stopped flowing from Kai's eyes, though his body continued to quiver. Cinder held him, and Kai realized that she was talking about a small, inconsequential memory of him— their conversation after the Rampion Crew had kidnapped him.

"...I was shocked when you kissed me. But in all honesty, what I remember most about that day was not kidnapping you, or you kissing me, but the massacre in Farafrah. I had known those people, and they were gone— killed by Levana. I felt as if the whole world had crashed down around me.