She was sinking, slipping, drifting... F I R E. It consumed her, so bright, yet so dark. Eyelashes fluttered in a daze, images dancing in front of her eyes like spots of colors rather than items or beings. They moved and spun and tilted, or at least that's what Ampere thought, unable to comprehend that she was the one that was askew and turned all around.

She breathed in a great big shaky breath born of confusion and desperation. Her nostrils quivered as they brought in the air, lashes still flickering with some awful desire to see the kaleidoscope of reality. Oddly though, the breath calmed her, chasing out the demons that she could feel moving inside her veins, amid the fire and the poison. He calmed her. When she breathed in, she took him in, all earth and smoke and safety. He was the heat that stroked her back in the sunlight, the vigor that filled her bones in the fresh dawn, the light that carried her through the darkness. In that moment, it was okay that he was the burn too, that he was anger, that he was the shadow. He was all that was right for her, and all that was bad - he was simply, Gaucho, and that was enough.

In response, a smile curled onto her velvet lips. It's okay she thought as his power reverberated through her, shaking her foundation and splintering the last remaining shreds of fortitude that she had. It's okay she hummed again, probably aloud this time as the line between her mind and outside of it cracked apart - but if she did it was surely incomprehensible, but the tone, the reassurance, that would have been there. If you asked her, she couldn't even have told you what was okay. Maybe one thing, maybe lots, maybe none or all or what did it even matter, because it was okay.

So Ampere toppled down, sliding from his bulk like a drop of water falling with all the rest. As she went one of his spikes snagged her skin, tracing a thin, shallow line of raw skin down the slope of her right shoulder. It's okay. SPLASH, went the water as her knees sagged into it, it's okay. The rest of her body followed suit with a similar sound, and Ampere's lashes trembled one last time before sealing shut as she descended fully into the sea, cradled by the wet sand beneath. Though in water, the snake's fire still ate away at her, and where there ought to have been light for all the flame, there was only an overwhelming loss of everything. Like the color and the void that had filled Gaucho's mind, the vantablack took Ampere, and that was okay.

---

A: 4/4
D: 1/1
W: /800

Going to use her passing out for my NPC thread <3 she won't be out long, so won't drown or anything!