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Death. So many deaths. Of hunger and thirst and cold, of internal and external bleeding, of infection, of pain and fear and exhaustion and shock... So many deaths I could neither count them nor the time that had passed since the well had collapsed in a earthquake, burying my shattered body somewhere I could not hope to be found. I tried to kill myself at first, as quickly and painlessly as my pinned body would allow...
Later, I had neither the strength nor the presence of mind to do anything but lie there in total darkness, hearing nothing but my own laboured breath and rapid heartbeat, deafening in the absence of all other sound, and await a demise that was slow, painful, inevitable, and worst of all temporary.
This time, though, something was different. My broken bones had been set, allowing them to heal with my revival, and someone was stroking my sensitive throat to make me swallow a sip of water. I might have drowned in it, or swallowed and passed out, but the next thing I knew I was being given a mouthful of water again, and I was a little bit stronger, a little bit more aware - enough to swallow without choking and stay awake a bit past it.
I drifted in and out of consciousness. I registered things, like a kind voice and a Presence, but it all seemed dreamlike, both because how unlike my recent ordeal it was and because of my weakened state.
Slowly, I became more and more aware of the reality around me and stayed in it for longer. I started believing it to be real, not the dream of a mind shattered by dying over and over again with no escape and nothing to distract it.
And with that reality came a suspicion. What if my rescuer wanted my Quickening? What if they were just waiting for me to recover enough to make it a very unfair fight, not pretty much corpse desecration?
But there was no fear in that thought. Maybe I had run out of fear in there, dying over and over, used up an eternity's supply of terror until nothing remained.
Or maybe I could not yet focus beyond the now, beyond how I was whole and clean and as comfortable as possible, beyond the soft blankets keeping my emanciated body warm enough to survive and the broth and gruel put in my mouth to rebuild it.
Maybe being beheaded after thinking I had been rescued was better than remaining buried alive forever.
Or maybe, for the first time in millennia, I had been convinced to expect kindness from someone.