Ambedo: n. the kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details – raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee – briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake
Even coughing up blood, the red painting his lips and chin into a grotesque picture, even dying – because he was surely dying – Scott Ryder couldn't help but notice just how beautiful Meridian was. Vibrant orange flora decorated an emerald green backdrop, waterfalls dotted the landscape, creating the rivers that flowed through crevasses before dropping off into sapphire blue lakes. There was smoke and fire and ash on the horizon, but it could do nothing to take away the beauty from the, well, planet? He would say planet.
White hot pain lanced through his chest, his lungs seizing as they tried to draw any oxygen they could get into the abused tissue. The loss of SAM in the Remnant city had almost killed him. Interfacing with the systems to create their elegant armada had put an incredible strain on his body to the point where he could practically count the brain cells dying under the stress. Scott could remember to the exact second when he noticed the red, red blood starting to drip from his nose, when he realized that there was probably no chance that he was making it out of this alive.
He'd stumbled back from the terminal, hands shaking like mad, before collapsing to the ground. Scott expected more pain. There was no way he wasn't just going to crack his skull open against the diamond hard surface, but the pain never came. It took everything in him to open just one of his eyes, however, the sight of Gil's – his lover's (and didn't that just make him obnoxiously giddy) – face was more than worth it.
Panic flooded the engineer's eyes to the point where Scott felt guilty for worrying the man. "Scott."
He was almost certainly grinning like an idiot even through the pain. Somehow, he managed to choke out his name. "Gil."
"What the hell were you thinking, you bloody idiot?!" The venom in his voice wasn't entirely unexpected, but that didn't make it easier to hear, "You aren't some fucking expendable chess piece, you can't just go running into danger at every turn not caring about the consequences!"
"I-I'm sorry, Gil."
His lover's face softened slightly at the admission, "Yeah, well, you're here now, right?" Scott smiled back, echoing that beautiful smile before everything began to degrade. A massive coughing fit wracked his body. Now, the youngest Ryder was many things – and most certainly not a doctor – but even he could tell that that amount of blood was not a good thing.
His partner's eyes darkened, "Doc! I need you over here now!"
Scott could hear the footsteps approach, but he couldn't see Lexi come up beside him. Why was that? Oh, his eyes were closed. He could hear the doctor asking him to open his eyes if he could, could hear Gil pleading for him to squeeze his hand, something, anything. The Pathfinder could hear it, but there was nothing he could do. The blood was weighing him down, the red soaking through the light fabric of his undershirt, staining his skin with the familiar ruby sheen.
He knew he was dying.
Scott could still hear, so he turned his face towards his partner's voice and managed to force a wry grin, or what he hoped was a grin, but was probably a grimace, choking out what was probably going to be his last words.
"Love you, Gil."
A/N: Just a little thing I had rolling in my head after the weird way they handled the whole, 'hey, this is totally going to kill you thing. Yeah, anyway, thanks for reading.