This is his fault, he knows. Knows it so deep down he can't even pretend it's not. Knows if he'd just listened, let her come back on her own, didn't rush in after her they wouldn't be here now.
His thoughts are a flustered flurry, but he knows he needs to stay calm, and keep her sitting up, she'll breathe easier that way. He just has to wait, hold out for their team. They are smart, reliable, they'll come through. As long as they find them before Hydra, everything will be alright. They'll make it, there isn't another option. They had too.
They'll come through. They will, he believes in that, in them.
While that belief sustains him for hours, his hope dwindles as each breath rattles deep in her chest, the gaps between them widening to an uncomfortable length. Her eyes have been shut for hours, the entire time he's been with her, and she hasn't moved of her own accord or given any responses.
Brushing her hair back, she twitches in her death-like sleep, and a hollowness empties his chest. It could have always been like this, he realizes, without all the blood and bruises. Where he wipes hair from her face as she sleeps, and she hogs all the blankets. It could have been like this. If only she'd let it, if only he'd let them.
It strikes him then, that maybe this is where it was going to end. Hiding deep in cold, wet woods. There'll be no whispered confessions, no murmured words of love, no grand apology for the ass he'd been. The ass he was.
Anger flares within him. At Skye. And Trip. And Simmons. At all of them. They should have been there by now. And the blame starts to shift to them, from him. He can feel himself becoming lighter. If they'd paid better attention. If they'd just found them sooner. If only they'd listened better. He shakes his head because this isn't their fault, none of it is, but the blame is too heavy for his shoulders just yet, he can't take it on and keep watching this.
He could say it to her now, apologize until he runs out of words, but it won't matter, he doesn't think she can hear him, and the only reason to now is to placate the guilt he feels. Hope the act loosens the knots in his gut. Inside though, he knows without a doubt, she holds none of it against him. She never would, never does, but that doesn't mean anything. Not now. He thought there'd be more time. More time to apologize, to prove she was more than an asset, more than just a friend, more than the tool he turned her into. More time to reinforce those truths.
But there isn't.
Her hand is cold and hot in his, and the knot builds as he sees her fingertips are once again dark purple. He pretends to not know what it means, and focuses on the tingling of his feet under him, and the coolness of the settling night on his skin.
He shouldn't have followed her, she would've been better off on her own. He knew what he'd done when he sent her off, couldn't predict the consequences, but those hadn't mattered when he'd started. He wanted answers, and she could find them.
He knows now they were answers to questions that could wait, but he can't change what he's done. Can't take back the fit of anger he was in before sending her off or make himself feel something when he hadn't. But a chance glimpse in the mirror had caught in his conscious. His scar standing out, hard and jagged, and he'd had to find her. Life was too unpredictable to leave things unsaid, to have the last thing a loved one hear be bitter words. And though he knew he should wait, that she wouldn't want him trailing after her, he couldn't.
That had been her downfall, the way his bitter words rang in his ears. And he could run through the memories a million times a day, and never figure out how he could be so reckless with her life or his, but he had been. He'd been caught and she'd been found, though he had an inkling that they already knew she was there.
He tucks the ends of his torn jacket tighter around her, remembering the fear that had held him as they'd been separated.
But they never came for him. He'd been left alone, in the dark, for how long he could only guess. Days, week's maybe. None of it had mattered though, their capturer arrived, at some point, in a wave of glaring light, asking how it felt to inspire such loyalty? How he'd broken a woman of such strength, that she was unbreakable to others?
His heart clenches even now thinking of it.
Stomach in his throat, he can't see past the haze of building tears. His nose is in her hair, a sob slipping from him unbidden. The rasping is so loud in his ears, and more than anything he wants it to stop because the sound is deafening, but if it stops… oh god, if it stops then he's alone, and he doesn't want that either. It's been decades since he's been without her, baring those years in administration, and he doesn't want to figure out how to go on without her again.
He doesn't want any of this.
The rattle stops, and he's in front of her again, her clammy hand in his. And her eyes are open, for the first time, but they're glazed, and he can't see her in them. He tells himself it's just a reflex, she's not gasping for air, she's not. There's no real struggle. No panic in her eyes, no fight to take in what she can't. It's a reflex. It's her shutting down.
He almost can't stand to watch, nearly tears his eyes away, but it won't be long now, seconds, a minute maybe. Then it'll be over. That's all the time he has left with her. Before they're separated by more than walls, and enemies. And his own selfishness.
He moves beside her then, her hooded eyes don't see him anyway. He readjusts her, so his back is against the tree, and she is leaning against his chest because there won't be another time for it, and he can tell himself it's a reflex all he wants, but if it's not – and he prays to every god he knows of that it is – but if it's not, he wants her to know she's not alone, wants her to feel it.
Then it's just… over. And he can't breathe.
It's over.
It's over.
It's over.
She's gone, and still he holds her tighter, his mouth forming words he can't hear. Sorrys', and loves, and nothings… and everything else he's never said, but always meant to. There'll be no other time to say them. Out of all the ways they imagined going out, together or apart, this was never on any list. And he's so glad for that because this is horrible, and there wasn't even a chance.
He doesn't expect them there so soon after, but there they are. Skye leading, Trip bringing up the rear, and Jemma sandwiched right in the middle. They're on guard, and he almost wants to yell out to them, tell them there's no need because Whitehall accomplished his goals, and there's no need to be afraid. But he can't, his throat is closed tight.
Suddenly they're in front of him, trying to take her, to save her, but it's too late. It's too late for anything. Why can't they see that?
His hand finds Skye's arm to stop them, they can't take her, he's not ready yet. And she stops, her head falling forward, a hand running under her nose, all of it telling him she understands what he's doing. Why he's doing it. He sees Jemma fall to the ground, the shock of it pushing down on her, and Trip is standing with his back to them, his eyes scanning the darkness no doubt, but Coulson can see the stiffness in his shoulders.
He isn't ready to leave yet, to make this real, but he knows they need to go, Whitehall won't give them a pass forever, so he reluctantly nods his consent for their help.
Skye sniffs, and pulls her forward so he can stand, but she keeps her eyes up, and Coulson can't blame her for it because she's hard to look at, after all discovery requires experimentation, and what can't be broken is fascinating. But that doesn't stop her from resting her head against dark hair, her gaze glassy.
Trip is facing them now. He wipes at an eye before kneeling, and picking up the fractured bundle, acting like it doesn't outrage and unnerve him when her head rolls limply against his arm as he stands straighter, eyes back to scanning the surroundings. Coulson looks away quickly as he pushes off the tree pretending he didn't see that. He understands the need for a distraction, wants one of his own. So he turns his attention to one stunned, wide-eyed Jemma, and helps her up, wrapping his arm around her. He aims them in the direction they came from, towards the Quinjet. He wants out of the dark as fast as he can, out of this nightmare.
But even if he sleeps a thousand nights and wakes a thousand mornings, it's never going to be over. He's always going to be submerged in this hellhole because he fucked up, and now they all have to live with the consequences.