Then everything exploded.
He fell back, ricocheting against the floor in perfect time with most others on the ward. AAU was eerily quiet and still, as though debris, fire and people weren't flying through the air like an angry toddler's playthings. The split second of silence was centuries long until..
Screams were the first to slip out of mouths and worm into ears, sending rationality out of smashed windows. There were shouts for loved ones and for help, but those who responded did so shakily and slowly. The shock was evident on every face. No one knew why this had happened, or how, or if they were ever going to get out alive.
Oliver Valentine lay still, mind reeling blankly in a corner. He felt light headed, sleepy and almost happy. Gleefully he figured he must be dying, the dust, the distant fires and the screaming barely touching him, as if he were in a giant bubble. He could almost feel himself floating above it all. This was what he wanted in those months after Tara left him; he wanted to join her. The limbo was unbearable; with Tara and Penny was where he belonged. And that's where he was going now wasn't it? Was it what he wanted? He felt reality slipping away...
It came back and slapped him in the face but a second later. The literal slap was the piece of ceiling plaster skimming off his cheek, but he barely felt it cut into his face. Instead the voice that slapped him in the face more metaphorically than the plaster nevertheless hurt him much more. If he had been able to restrain himself from following it for a second, he may have marvelled at how one word has the ability so wrench his heart so forcefully, but to make it swell simultaneously. He might have felt ashamed at his selfishness for needing her voice to remind him of her. He would definitely have let a small smile flit over his lips at its beautiful sound, despite the terror and panic it was laced with.
But he didn't have that second, he had to get to her and nothing else mattered.
Zosia March had been thrown backwards by the blast, the chaos spinning and dimming as she landed, hard, upon the floor. She was joined a moment later by an escaped light fitting from the ceiling, which fizzed sadly in greeting, awaking her fading visibility with a sudden panic. She was lying, trapped amongst screams and rubble, under a severed light and around a corner. She would be unseen, forgotten, left to die. She whimpered the name that first came to her mind, before even simply help.
"Ollie..."
He rose with difficulty, all pain seemed slip from him as the yearning to reach her took over. It took over, he scanned the surrounding ruins at a hundred miles an hour. He saw a hand, so perfectly sculpted it could only be hers, around a corner. As he picked his was quickly towards it, he identified it as hers from the bitten down nail on her littlest finger. He seen her gnawing it during rare moments of vulnerability, and he remembered seeing her wide, worried eyes floating above it, a forehead perfectly positions for a reassuring, sympathetic kiss. He'd noticed it, amongst her many other traits and habits, while trying to distance himself from her wherever possible. It was the best way, he knew. Something would slip out otherwise: a kiss on the cheek or a "you're great as you are," for example, that was totally inappropriate and revealing to his true, growing feelings. Distance and the heartache that came with it was better for her; she was dating Seb after all. His feelings didn't come into it. She Came First.
He reached her and stared. She looked so small and vulnerable amongst the debris. Forgetting his medical knowledge and letting his human instinct take over, he pulled the metal crushing her legs off her with newly energised strength gained by the simple act of seeing her face. She yelped as the metal crashed onto the floor, no doubt joining it's many counterparts down there.
The yelp stirred something inside him. The simple fact he knew she was in pain he couldn't bear. He instinctively grabbed her hand. She grasped it back. They both wondered why the surge of heat that reached their hearts hadn't illuminated them amongst the grey background, all sound blocked out by their united front against danger and fear.
He saw her there, lying before him. She was in no way his to take, how could he claim any of her beauty, her wild spirit and individuality as his own? But she was so delicate, so vulnerable yet so strong. Yet in that moment he saw something new, something he'd never noticed in all his stolen glances at her. There was a yearning in her eyes, a fire that had suddenly ignited. Was she thinking what he was thinking?
She saw him, kneeling before her. He was so strong, so brave, so dashing, with cuts covering his face from the plaster. She wanted him now; she wanted him to be hers, his arms to be her home. Between all of the fast paced witty remarks they'd thrown at each other a lot recently she'd learnt every crevice, line and contour of his face, but it would never cease to take her breath away. Of all the times she'd dared look at his face, she'd never seen it like this before. His eyes could have mirrored hers, she guessed, full of want and passion. But did, could, he really want what she wanted in that moment?
He felt her lean up to him. He leant down to catch her sweet scent. She leant in. He kissed her and she kissed him. In the middle of the chaos, their bodies morphed into one, and everything was better than it had been in a while, or perhaps forever?