Sinuses be damned! Break has been as mobile as it's possible for him to be this week, enjoying life to the fullest. He's still reliant on his cane and far slower than he'd like to be, but he's been out every day, enjoying the warm air and the ease of the heat on his various aches -- and, most importantly, a renewed sense of independence. Whenever he's been away from home recently, it's been with Liam at his side and a Chain to transport them both, and being able to go out on his own has been doing wonders for his cabin fever.

But he's misjudged the end of the weather. It's been a week, yes, but because the false summer had appeared overnight, he'd assumed the return of the cold weather would, too. He isn't expecting the temperature to suddenly plummet and the snow to begin to fall while he's walking home from a visit to the mansion.

Break feels it in his wounds, first -- the old one on his shoulder, the new one in his knee. Then the shivering starts, and soon he's gasping for breath as the air thins out. He debates turning back, but he's well over halfway home now, and as his leg stiffens painfully underneath him he has to make the choice of getting to the house as fast as he can or stopping at one of these houses to beg a stranger for aid.

He makes the wrong one. When he tries to move faster his cane slides on a fresh patch of ice, and down he goes. He gasps when he falls and keeps gasping, that phobia of being suffocated that he's had ever since losing that lung surging to the front of his mind; and as he lays there shaking in the cold, he's too stunned to even comprehend just how much trouble he's in.



[Backdated to the "summer in winter" event; private to darkbrightflame.]