A/N: Hey everyone! If you're waiting for an update on "Fresh Darkness", it will come, I promise! But for now, I have had "Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons stuck in my head for days, and i had a sudden thought a couple days back, that it would perfectly fit the end scene for "Knockout" (aka the Season 3 finale). So here you go! (If you haven't heard the song, you should go listen to it!) Cassie
Everything seemed to stop. The bright sun was too much to handle, the sunshine suddenly far too bright, far too happy when everything in the world was crashing down. The colors were vivid; the grass green and textured in a dichotomy of blades with smooth faces and sharp edges. The sky was blue, that deep color blue reminiscent of better days. The headstones were white and light gray, all shining in the summer sunshine, quite the opposite of what they represented.
The blood was red. That deep crimson color that you see right before you throw that first punch, that red that floods your vision in the middle of that passionate kiss. The blood was the color of anger, of love, of hate, of passion. The color of the most intense emotions. It spread through the deep blue fabric of Beckett's dress blues, the gold of her shiny buttons being slowly tarnished. The sounds of the tears and screams and distant sirens all blended together into a montage of background sounds. The cool dampness under his knees fell into direct contrast with the warmth of the blood that seemed to never stop flowing from her body.
The colors and lights and sounds around him were closing in, far more suppressive in that moment than any darkness could've been. In fact, he longed for darkness right then. He longed for the cool relief that darkness could bring, the distracting thoughts of now suddenly trivial problems. Suddenly, none of it mattered because his partner was dying in his arms and everything was wrong. Everything seemed to be in such conflict with its counterpart. Puzzle pieces that once had fit perfectly now couldn't be forced together without bending and becoming misshapen. He was saying things, but he couldn't even process the words that were coming out of his mouth. He was whispering to her, but he had no idea what he was saying. And then, he met her eyes and his whirling thoughts came to a screeching halt. The green-hazel irises seared into him, a haze of pain and fear and a mixture of innocence and that quality that comes from having seen too much.
He felt as if his heart was being ripped from his chest with every ragged breath that came from her mouth, every gasping, raspy exhalation that, like a ticking clock, slowly wound down the time she had left. He wished with everything he had that he could take her place. Every cell in his body cried out with anguish at the injustice of it all, and he wanted nothing more than to take all of her pain and make it his own. As everything around them became louder and more intense, it was as if the emotions that he'd been hiding for her benefit were all coming to a very dramatic crescendo, an uncontrollably loud, fierce crash that accompanied the anticipatory silence of a building wave. And suddenly, he couldn't hold it back anymore.
"I love you, Kate."