The sharp pain in his chest had him coughing before he could even open his eyes. It hurt with every breath he took, making him want to stop breathing altogether. And yet that painful cough kept forcing him to gasp for new air.

The warm blanket around him shifted, helping him into a more vertical position, and something warm covered his forehead, holding his head in place.

"Calm down and just breathe with me. Slowly. In. And out. In. And out," a calm voice told him, and Snow closed his eyes, trying to focus on that hypnotic rhythm.

Stop coughing was the hardest part, the taste of blood coating his mouth making him wince. But the warm surface he was leaning into kept calmly rising and falling, as that calm voice marked that constant rhythm. And Snow simply allowed his mind to fuse with it, as if his body wasn't his anymore, but a mere extension of that enveloping warmth.

"You're doing good. You're doing very good," the soft voice complimented him and Snow pressed his lips shut when that sharp pain almost made him cough again.

Slowly, carefully controling the quantity of air filling his lungs, Snow was finally able to control his breathing. Better yet, he more or less managed to get used to the pain. In fact, as long as he kept his breathing shallow it didn't hurt as much. He just had to keep that limitation in mind, the same way he kept the need to never raise his voice.

The warm hand that kept gently caressing his hair finally became the focus of his attention. A hand that, by now, he was way too familiar with. And that awareness left a completely different kind of pain stabbing his chest.

Raising an arm, he pushed against that source of warmth and tried to pull himself away from it. Surprisingly enough, the arms that had surrounded him released him with ease. And Snow just sat there, clenching his chest, trying to keep his breathing under control.

ZaiWin¹Literally zai (blade) + win (chaos). didn't want to have to see him in so much pain anymore, struggling for every breath in and out of his mouth. But he couldn't avert his gaze either. He wanted to keep holding him, but didn't dare doing so against his will. He wanted to talk to him, ask him how he was faring, but he couldn't help feeling he had lost the right to do so. In his heart he had lost the right to a lot of things. And so he couldn't help hold his breath when that silver head slowly turned to look at him.

Snow looked extremely tired, his lips almost as pale as his skin. And he was obviously in a lot pain. But what had ZaiWin's heart beating in desperation against his chest was the cold, detached way he looked at him, almost as if he couldn't see him. That and the fact that his eyes had darkened so much that they were almost black again.

ZaiWin clenched his fists to stop his hands from Shaking. He had only seen him with black eyes twice, before. The first time he'd met him, during the Seventh Year Gathering, and when he'd found him practically dying in that ice cave.

Back at the cave, ZaiWin had been so excited at the sudden realization that Snow was actually the small child who had helped him all those years ago, that he had never taken the time to thoroughly think about the reasons that made Snow's eye color change so radically. It couldn't be a sign that he was dying, right?, he wondered in fear. When he'd met him in the forest his eyes had been completely black and he'd been fine. A scrawny, little child, but a clearly lively one. Was this a side effect from the darkness that had entered his body? Hadn't he been able to extract it completely? Suddenly he really wanted to take a look at Snow's markings, make sure they remained uncorrupted, but he didn't dare ask him to simply strip.

Unable to resist, ZaiWin raised a hand to touch him, but Snow immediately leaned back, away from it, his gaze turning even colder, filled with pain and suspicion. He'd seen that look on his face before, back at the Fortress. The look of a suspicious, wild animal, frightened but, at the same time, ready to fight back. And then he remembered what VinWei had told him, and his gaze immediately fell on the boy's naked wrist.

"That's right … you can't see me right now …" he muttered with a bitter smile, scooting back as far away from him as possible.

Things couldn't get any worse, ZaiWin thought, averting his gaze. First he had lost control of his markings and had almost killed him. And now he looked exactly like the type of monster that would do exactly such a heinous thing and much worse. How could he even begin to try and fix things if all Snow could see was exactly what had almost stolen his life.

"You … just try and get some rest," ZaiWin told him, dragging himself to the edge of the bed and standing up. "Try to keep yourself warm," he added and, not knowing what else to say, he simply left the bedroom.

Silvareiel

Ah, it's almost like they're really back to the beginning ? Snow can't even see him. Better yet, he sees can only see the black monster that used to threaten him with certain death every time he so much as looked at him the wrong way. I wonder how they'll be able to fix things between them ?