WOOOOO
thanks to @cirrus-ghoulette for organizing whumpmonth!! also i'm using @wrathofrats beautiful dividers!!
Day Two: Hiding an illness/injury
(well half hidden? it's got weird sorry)
TW: blood
Phantom coughed, for the tenth time in the last few minutes, someone behind him grumbled angrily and the quint tried to swallow around the lump in his throat, around the annoying tickling scratches.
"You okay?" Someone from behind him asked, and Phantom just nodded and hoped that it was clear that he's just fine.
He isn't sick, he can't be sick. He's a quint, he's supposed to be a healer. He isn't supposed to be sick.
At least it's just this dinner, and that's it. He just needs to survive this dinner and he can go away, lock himself away.
It's just a cough. It's always been just a cough, since the day he was summoned, the others aren't worried anymore, well Aurora sometimes is, but that's it. It's normal.
Phantom is normal.
He's okay, he's fine, he so isn't exhausted every day, because everything is okay.
The topside is okay, actually it's amazing to live on the topside, it's so amazing that Phantom hasn't slept in days, so so amazing that everyone tells him that soon he'll be sent back to the pit.
It's nice on the topside, so nice that Phantom can't shake the thoughts that he isn't enough, that he's just a replacement, because that's what everyone says, beyond his back, to his face it doesn't matter.
And if everything on the topside is so great then why does something in Phantom just doesn't work?
But Phantom is fine. He just can't get this cough to go away.
And Aurora keeps telling him that he isn't alone, that she's there for him, but Phantom feels selfish talking to her, she's doing good with the pack, he shouldn't drag her back to the pit with him.
So he smiles at her, says "thanks" as politely as he can, but he won't take up from her time, he won't keep her from the pack.
He loves her so he lets her go, and maybe it'll hurt so much less when he gets sent back if he won't hold onto her like a drowning man.
And at least he made it through the dinner, and he knows that no one will come looking so he just, locks the door, it doesn't matter and never truly will, so he can just relax for now.
And now, laying on his bed, all the lights off, and still not being able to sleep, he just sighs.
Phantom would try to find the answer to why he's like that, to his cough. But he's already so exhausted. It doesn't matter.
As long as the others just keep thinking that it's just a cough, it's okay.
It's just a cough, nothing in the world can help, he already knows that, there's no way to get rid of that cough.
And it's okay when Phantom feels the familiar tickle in the back of his throat, the copper taste in his mouth.
And Phantom is still okay when the blood just dribble out of his mouth, when he coughs up blood clots.
It's okay because it's just blood, and his blood is laced with quintessence, it's okay, it's healing.
Phantom doesn't need help.
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