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“Edward,” Izzy says, struggling to breathe past the pounding in his chest, “this is it.”
They’re just barely hidden in a ditch, mud-caked and battered, and from above there’s the steady drumbeat of metal feet on hardpacked earth. The rattle of gunfire. Explosions.
Edward’s started fiddling with his arm: the casement that makes it look human open, revealing the bright shine of metal underneath. The real one was blown off during the first war against the machines, when Edward was barely more than a kid, though there’s no one who knows that besides Izzy. No one alive, anyway.
For all that Izzy’s spent his life fighting against the machines, he can’t ever look away from the inner workings of Edward’s arm. Edward scrapped it together himself, using bits and pieces from dead machines, and fuck if Izzy doesn’t love watching all those different fragments working in mismatched tandem. Even now, with death marching its inevitable way towards them, he’s transfixed.
Edward’s hair falls into his face and he twitches with irritation. “Get that for me, Iz.”
Feeling absurd, Izzy scoops Edward’s hair into one fist and fastens it with a tie.
“You’re wrong. This isn’t it,” Edward says. He’s working on the metal arm one-handed, but after a few seconds he growls in frustration and detaches it at the shoulder, bringing the whole thing to his lap and digging into its innards. He’s working frantically, the most focused Izzy’s ever seen him despite the chaos all around them. The skin at his shoulder is ragged, burned away. Izzy’s never seen it before. It looks like it must hurt. “Pass me your gun.”
It's the only weapon Izzy’s got. He hands it over without hesitation, watches Edward take it apart.
Ten more seconds, and then a grin’s spreading over Edward’s face, feral. Fucking transfixing.
He turns, capturing Izzy in the light of his gaze.
“We’re gonna make it,” he says.
“Yeah,” Izzy says—croaks, really, with the smoke in the air and the terror in his lungs, the choking certainty that even Edward can’t get them out of this one.
“I’m not letting you fucking die, Iz. Don’t you even think about it.”
Izzy looks down at the arm. “What’d you do to it?”
“Rigged it to blow,” Edward says. “Cause enough fucking mayhem to get us out.”
“The others?”
“They’ll follow,” Edward says. His eyes reflect the glow of burning shrapnel. “We’re gonna make it.”
“Edward—”
“I need you to get clear,” he says. Izzy’s heart drops past his fucking toes, down into the ground below.
“No,” he says. “I’m not. I’m not leaving you.”
“You’re not leaving me.” Edward grins. Izzy wonders if he’s ever, for one second, believed in the fact of his own mortality. “I’ll be right behind.”
“Fuck you,” Izzy whispers. “I love you.”
“I know,” Edward says, and kisses him, hard. His teeth cut blood into their mouths. When he draws back, he keeps his forehead pressed against Izzy’s. “We’re still gonna have it, Iz. That place on the beach. That little boat we’ll go out on. You just have to fucking get clear, you hear me?”
“You have to promise me,” Izzy says, like a child, pleading. “You have to promise me you’ll be right behind.”
Ed kisses the space between his eyebrows. “I promise,” he says.
Izzy runs.