Changes 4

"You always did have a taste for melodrama."

Fuzzy startled and spun to face the figure behind him.

"Sir?"
"You were expecting me to be crawling around, sunk in madness, plotting my revenge?"
"Well, yes. Everyone else is."
"Everyone? Plotting revenge against you is Mossfoot's job, or hadn't you noticed?"
"He does seem fairly anxious for me to stay."
"Is that why you're going?"

Sawgrass moved further out of the shadows. His size more impressive than Fuzzy had remembered. It had not been an easy job to finish him. Out in the swamp and the oppressive heat. He remembered the flies landing in the cooling blood.

"Am I going?"
"I can see it in your face."
"So tell me why I'm going."

The big rabbit stared down at the smaller, his head tilted slowly to one side.

"Because you want to know what it's like. To be the monster they've always said you were."

Fuzzy opened his mouth, as if to speak.

"Don't tell me we don't all become monsters in the end. You've read the files. More importantly, you've felt the change. She speaks to you, in your blood."
"But that's why I destroyed you."
"You didn't have a choice then. If you hadn't, I surely would have destroyed you. What makes you think you really have a choice now?"

Fuzzy sat back on his haunches, something itched along his back. The air was growing thicker, moister. Sawgrass began to blur around the edges.

"I'll give your regrets to the others. They'll be waiting until next time."
"Next time?"

The big buck laughed. But it was moving away. It was moving away through water.

"Silly bunny, you're becoming a wyrmbunny, not immortal."

A burst of pain hit Fuzzy. His lungs were filling with fluid and he coughed to try to prevent it. The coughing let him know that his ribs weren't healed. The pain was a bright light filling his head. His eyes snapped open again, delicate flowers of red drifted past his eyes. Red swirls like ink spreading in water. The fluid was all around him now, thick like honey.

Fuzzy's lungs pushed against the honey. It was as useless as his attempts to scream from the pain. The itching was becoming unbearable, red ants crawling along his spine burrowing into his skin and stealing his flesh. His limbs thrashed and touched nothing. The ants would have to swim back to their nest with tiny gobbets of flesh in their pincers. There were hundreds of them, thousands, burrowing down to his bones. Fuzzy twisted and writhed. They were all over him now, stinging and biting. In his ears he heard the high pitched squeal of his blood running through his veins. He heard the counterpoint of his heart rumbling low in Samba time. He heard his bones grinding and breaking. The honey tasted of metal in his mouth and pushed his screams back down his throat. One loud sharp snap and ...

Fuzzy was in the darkness again, splayed on the unseen floor, vomiting bloody honey.

"You're coming along nicely. I thought you needed a little break."

His skin still felt like fire, but it was fading away again. She was there, darker than the shadows that concealed her.

"I ..."
"Yes, it does hurt. I never said it wouldn't."
"I can't move."
"You don't need to. Be glad of the rest, you're going back to pain soon enough."
"Why?"
"Well, some say all of existence is pain. That isn't what you mean though. What you mean is why you? Am I right?"
"Yes."
"They always ask that, and they never like the answer. You won't either. The answer is ... 'because'."
"Because?"
"Because I can. Because you need to be tested. Because it keeps the riffraff out. Because two plus two is usually four."
"I don't understand."
"You aren't expected to."

Fuzzy felt the itch returning. His skin began to crawl.

"You're nearly there."
"Where?"

The light was returning and a feeling of cold on his skin. Something held him down.

"Fetch the Doctor, I think he's coming around."

It was a doe's voice, familiar but he couldn't place it. His body ached, but the ants were mostly gone. Fuzzy closed his eyes and drifted into dreamless sleep.