Seeing you laying there. . .listening to the beeping of the machines keeping you alive. . .I wished I'd realized just how deep the love went before. Your red hair was spread across the stark white of the pillows, making you look nearly angelic. You were so still, it wasn't right, but what else could I do but watch over you and wait for those brilliant teal eyes to flutter open and sparkle with the inherent life that had always been a part of you again? Tseng came in earlier and tried to order me to go home, and I did something that would probably have made you laugh, Aibou. I gave him the finger and told him I wasn't leaving your side until you were awake again.
I hope it's soon, because I need to know who did this to you. No one gets away with hurting my partner, not without some significant damage being done to them as well, but until you're awake, I don't know who to hunt down to take my vengeance on. And. . .I need to tell you what I should have a long time ago. I love you, Reno. I love you more than my own life, and I've ceased caring who knows, or about protocol, or how bad an idea it might be to become too attached to someone that may lose their life before your eyes one day.
None of the others understood why I wore my sunglasses all the time. I was trying to hide the way my eyes would always travel your way during the most inappropriate of moments. The way they would follow every fluid movement, drinking them up like a man dying of thirst will gulp down a glass of water when it's placed in front of him. You were and have always been my drug, the one thing that I could never do without.
I know there will be nightmares, nights that you wake in cold sweats as you're recovering mentally from this, but I will be there with you to help you through them. You won't have to do this alone, not as you've had to before. I failed you after the plate drop, and that is something that I have never forgiven myself for, even if you tried to tell me it wasn't my fault and that there was nothing that I could do. I'm not going to let it happen ever again, that I promise you.
"Rude?" Elena is standing in the doorway, and she has a cup of coffee in her hand, and it makes me smile. You called her the Rookie, but I know you've always cared about her, like the annoying little sister that you never want to admit you love. She's matured, though, she's become the den mother of this insane family, and I wonder now if she's seen it in my eyes, the way I feel for you. "Here, I figured you could use it."
"Thanks." I notice the way she smiles when I take the Styrofoam cup from her hand, inhaling the rich fragrance, realizing it was not from the vending machines or the cafeteria of the hospital, but from the expensive coffee shop a few blocks down, and that thanks is suddenly doubly heartfelt, especially as one of her hands closes on my shoulder, squeezing it gently.
"He's going to be all right, Rude. You and I both know it. The man is a survivor, he has been since the day the two of you met, and he will be until the day his hair starts going gray and you both leave this life as Turk behind, probably you, Reno, and Tseng will be the first three to actually retire without having to do so in a casket." Elena's words are true, and I know it as well as she does.
The world had changed from the time we had all been recruited, Turks were no longer the feared hunters and assassins they had been under the Old Man's rule. We were enforcers and protectors now, and it seemed to suit all of us, especially the spirited redhead that had seemed to almost lighten in spirit when it happened.
Now, we had only to worry about those who were unable to let go of the past, and I was very sure that that was what had happened. My partner's past had finally caught up with him. Well, I wasn't about to let that stand.