My first attempt at actually diving into Hood's head. I've been putting it off, because it's a rather intimidating place to jump into, but the episode Medea just begged for me to take the plunge. So, deep breath… and here I go.
SPOILERS for season finale, Medea.
Warnings: Definite Hood/Rachel overtones. I think that, after Medea, we can safely say that Hood/Rachel is becoming canon. Also, blood, angst, etc.
Mega thanks to Aethre for the Beta!
WONDER
He wondered, as Rachel lurched from Sophia's grasp into his arms, if she could make out the relief and horror chasing one another across his face. Relief, simply seeing Rachel alive again, and horror at her pale face, the blood on her leg, the arrow in her thigh. For a brief second, he flashed back to his wife, pale and listless in the hospital bed, but he shook the thought away.
When Sophia fled, tearing out the bolt on her way, his thoughts descended into frantic terror for the space of a heartbeat, watching Rachel's lifeblood flow away. It took the space of a breath for his logic to reassert itself, but later, he wondered if he might have moved a second faster, would Rachel's recovery have been easier? Or, conversely – he tried not to wonder this – if he had moved a second slower, would she not have recovered at all?
When he lifted her into his arms, cradling her frail-seeming form against his body, he wondered if she could feel his heart, racing frantically in his chest. Or, perhaps, if Rachel knew just how deeply into that heart she had unintentionally insinuated herself? Did she know just how badly that barely-healed vessel would shatter if she left him now?
And then she'd told him that it wasn't his fault, he couldn't fix everything, and he'd had to blink his eyes clear as he struggled to make a joke about the truck he was stealing, trying not to remember his wife whispering almost the exact same words before…
NO!! Rachel was going to live. He wouldn't allow another life to slip away from him, not if he could prevent it. Clasping the wheel with both hands, he wondered if he could ignore the fact that his skin was crimson with Rachel's blood.
And then, waiting helplessly outside the door of the emergency room, he watched nurses and doctors scrambling back and forth like ants in a disturbed hive, shouting for blood, for hemostats, for a crash cart, until a nurse with a kind face and a grip like granite dragged him away from the transparent wall to answer questions about who and when and how, and he wondered how he was supposed to remember Rachel's insurance carrier at a time like this.
The next day, when he walked into Rachel's room, smelling the flowers that he and Felix had brought in, he looked at her, frustrated already in the pale white bed, and sat down to lie to her with as much believability as he could muster, because if she left him, it would still break his heart, but he knew he wouldn't survive seeing her die to protect him.
And then he wasn't lying, even though he intended to, and he wondered how he'd gone from trying to say 'I don't want you to come back, I don't want you to get hurt because of me,' to saying, utterly truthful, that he wouldn't – couldn't – manage if she died.
And Rachel had smiled at him and said that he needed her, hitting closer to the mark than she knew. And as she succumbed to the medication and drifted off, Hood sat in the chair and watched her sleep, wondering if Rachel realized just how much he'd fallen for her.