There was a shout, and then a scream, and then there was this deafening roar that ripped through their smiling peace, light searing through the most tightly shut of eyes.
Bart was standing in the snow, staring blankly. He was lucky he could see at all. He was lucky to be alive and almost, almost as fully functioning as ever.
Terror flooded him, pumping through his veins, and he let loose a panicked cry, the sound cut short when the breath was knocked soundly from his lungs. Bart's face was crushed against the pavement, blood running freely from what he was sure was a broken nose, but he didn't notice. He struggled to suck in air, pressed between the sidewalk and Jaime, whose armor had only managed to cover him halfway in the split second they had to react to the explosion.
He was lucky, he knew; everyone had said it a million times, though he didn't hear any of it. He couldn't, not anymore.
And then Bart was sitting in a white room, the chair stiff and uncomfortable beneath him, the steady beeps from the monitor telling him it was okay, at least for the time being. Bart clasped Jaime's bandaged hand and squeezed just a little tighter.
It didn't really matter what he couldn't hear. The team had all quickly learned ASL, but he himself hadn't bothered. It was funny; they assumed that, by going deaf, Bart had automatically learned and switched to signing. He might have laughed—if he could at all, ever again.
Bart squeezed and didn't let go until the monitor sped up to a pace so fast all even he could hear was a single, agonizingly long beep, and he stared at the doctor uncomprehendingly when the news was delivered. He could read just fine, thank you very much, but the words he was reading—they didn't make any sense. It wasn't possible.
Lucky, indeed. It should have been me, he thought wildly, desperately, as he did with every stolen beat of his heart. Hearing didn't matter in the slightest, nor anything else, not if he couldn't hear Jaime's laugh ever again. Nothing mattered. The world was cold and numb, and so was Bart. After all, how could he care about what he still had—his sight—when all it ever processed was the same picture?
"Jaime Reyes," he read off the grave, over and over and over until his eyes ached and his throat dried up and his heart froze over entirely. "Jaime."