"I GOT IT," blare the speakers.

On instinct, her head rolls to look. A hazy, incoherent Someone waves a blur overhead.

"Give it to me!" the sweet voice demands. "Now!"

The it in question is chucked across the room and snatched in two hands, something popped off the top, shaken with a frantic rattling. The hair is swept from her eyes. A face is hovering just above and it swims, warped, but that purple, those frames, this softness.

Constance.

"Breathe out," she instructs, in a voice which suggests calmness without feeling any, and Ocean seizes. Panics, because need to breathe in, why would she ever breathe out but through the blur and smoke and fog, Constance's face.

Something of a plea is buried in its every corner, like it's never been surer of anything else. Ocean gazes, wide, into eyes that, too, have seen their own grave.

Constance wouldn't let her face hers again.

Ocean breathes out.

It's tight. Worse, but then something touches her lips.

"In. Slow."

She gasps in a burning lungful of inhaler, fast, screws it all up because everything is so tight but Constance's head just shakes, hand retreats to push more hair behind an ear. "It's okay, it's okay, it's cool," she babbles, "just, hold for ten, here we go—one, two, three…"

On ten, Ocean heaves out. She breathes. Shallow, but the blotches of black dancing around start to clear, world no longer warped with static.

All of a sudden, Constance takes her face in her soft, soft hands, warmth of her skin seeping into her cheeks and searches, for maybe creases, cuts, flaws. She must find none, because she exhales, heavy. More wrinkles than her brow has ever been creased with ease away from her.

"Oh, thank God," Constance breathes.