Work Text:
Sometimes, there are just some battles that you can’t win.
Bart knows this. They’ve been prepped for failure more than enough, and M’gann’s scenes, though she tries to keep them as gentle as she can without babying the team, are ones that still leave the group somewhat shaky. The prospect of losing each other isn’t one that anyone wants to think about, but with early death being an inevitable risk for a superhero, it’s best to be prepared.
But, lying in Jaime’s arms, vision blurred by red, it doesn’t actually seem so bad. It isn’t the dying that Bart’s afraid of.
The pain was screaming and violent before, but it’s a dull ache now, like shrieking forced into static. He thinks he can almost feel the skin and flesh trying to heal over the wounds and shards of weapon in his thigh and his stomach, but his body, for once, is simply too slow. Or fast, because by the time any proper medical help arrives, the flesh will have repaired itself over the rubble. (If he doesn’t die first.)
He’s given up on protesting the outstretched hand of death, but he doesn’t move toward it as it comes closer and closer. Instead, he focuses on Jaime’s eyes, pupils dilated in fear and frenzy. The arms around him are shivering even though the armor, and the mask is pulled away from Jaime’s face, tears and frantic expressions beneath. Bart thinks he hears Jaime panting and muttering to himself about how to help, begging the scarab to help—
Bart knows it’s too late. Jaime doesn’t seem to, not yet.
Bart presses a hand to Jaime’s cheek, the palm of his glove a gaping hole from skidding it against the ground so often during the last battle. The movement hurts, it does, but Bart holds his fingers limply up to Jaime’s skin anyway, and he feels tremors beneath the Latino’s skin.
“No,” Bart hears the whispers, Jaime quivering as he clutches Bart’s hand like a lifeline, his other arm desperate as it props up Bart’s body, “no, no, no, no, no!”
It gets quieter as Jaime continues, that word eradicating the rest of his vocabulary. It’s a demand, an order, a plead of utter hysteria. Softer and softer and quieter and dulling to the same static that much of the pain in his body had become. Blood loss. His hearing is failing him.
But with the little vision he has, black clouds growing more and more prominent, he can tell that Jaime’s screaming at this point. He can just barely feel the vibrations against his skin, can make out the way Jaime’s throat works and his Adam’s apple bobs with every gasp of air to propel another shout, every other yell.
Something starts to buzz in the distance.
He’s pretty sure he hears his name scattered among the thick and hoarse pleas of ‘no, oh, god, NO!’but he isn’t sure, because he can’t really hear much, now.
He almost doesn’t see the way Jaime’s suit changes erratically, several different utensils forming themselves as if Jaime would attempt to try and heal him.
“Too late,” Bart tells Jaime, and the weakened voice he hears doesn’t sound like him at all. But at the broken look on Jaime’s face, he can tell that he’s heard him.
It’s really this part that he hates the most. Seeing Jaime so torn, so distraught and tormented— Bart never wanted this.
The dying itself isn’t so bad, really, and Bart knows this will all be over soon. It’s not so painful anymore, not like it was when he was drugged with whatever had warped his abilities.
And Bart had always been ready to die; he’d expected it ever since using that time machine, ever since that talk with Neutron. It doesn’t even hurt too much anymore. But it’s this that he was never ready for. He’d never thought he would become so close to someone, that he’d miss them.
Or that they’d miss him.
He wants to say sorry, wants to apologize. The shaking in Jaime’s shoulders could be remedied by a long night outside, by the gallery of stars lit in the sky. Bart wants to dry the tears on Jaime’s face, to press band-aids to the few cuts along Jaime’s cheeks that made it past the armor.
He can’t.
What was that line? Parting is such sweet sorrow? He’d read it somewhere. With Jaime. From where? And who’d written it?
He can’t remember.
Jaime holds him closer, and Bart pretends that he’s just as warm as the Beetle, and that he’s not slowly losing everything. He never wanted to see Jaime like this. Never.
It will all be over soon.
When Bart manages to open his mouth, lips cracked with dried blood, he can’t speak. His throat protests, and no sound but a distorted gurgle comes from his lips. He smiles weakly again, and, from what he can see with such a blurred vision, it looks like Jaime’s breaking just a little bit farther.
Buzzing growing louder in Bart’s ears, he puts his other hand on Jaime’s cheek. It slips. Jaime takes it and places it there again, trembling, and holds it there for Bart. Jaime is warm against him. So warm. So sweet.
“I love you,” Bart mouths, and the buzzing dims. “I love you.” It hurts his lips to move them.
Jaime’s eyes squeeze together tightly before they open once more, glassing over almost immediately. He shakes against Bart, but his grip grows slightly tighter, and he pulls Bart gently against his chest to place a kiss against his paling lips. Bart can feel the tremors.
When he lays Bart back down on his lap, the lines of his face less and less clear, there are shadows in Bart’s vision.
It’s failing. But they succeeded. The Reach is no more. And Jaime is…
Jaime is safe.
It’s failing. His vision is failing.
He almost doesn’t see the “I love you” Jaime says back. But he feels it mouthed against his skin when Jaime holds him close, when Jaime rocks back and forth. He feels it through the dirt and through the grime, through the tattered uniform stretched across his neck, through the dried crimson. Again and again and again and again.
The dying itself isn’t so bad.
“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Jaime’s tears are wet against Bart’s skin, and Bart’s body grows slack in Jaime’s arms.
“I love you.”
The buzzing fades completely, and static becomes silence.
“I love you.”