[Eiffel doesn't know what he was expecting when he said yes, but the reach makes him take half a step back automatically--

And then - he's not. He's- someone else, picking himself up from the floor to face- Jon, the Archivist, his Archivist, beating the shit out of him.

P-Please John... He coughs, rough and wet. I don’t want to die.

Neither did they.

The sense of the knife slipping between his ribs is icy cold, vicious, and the sharp heat of blood and sudden loss of pressure makes him cough, ragged and wet and fear wells hard and fast as the impossible world fades away...

...and when the memory lets him go Eiffel is still coughing, doubled over on his hands and knees, heaving and wretching with one hand white-knuckled gripping at his chest where the knife went in, where the Decima ravaged and suffocated him, but the only thing spilling from his mouth is saliva, and his shaking hands go to his throat as his breathing finally begins to-- not even out, but it turns slowly into deeper, wheezing breaths, as that memory of fear and dying crystallises into his own mortal terror.]

Wh-what-- [Speaking still hurts, ribs still twinging with the phantom stab and the real coughing fit.] What- th-the fuck?!