~.~
"Don't move, Wraith. Please, I have it, just don't…"
"You have to keep moving, stop…"
"Don't. Come on, don't. I'm not. I'm staying. I'm going nowhere."
Her eyes are the same unreadable navy they've always been, but now they're wet, and he can't look at her properly because it feels like his chest is cracking open and his heart is breaking.
"I can't go. I can't leave-"
He can't get the final word out, but he hopes she hears it, anyway.
"Mirage…"
"No." he pushes her interfering hands away and presses the bandage more firmly into the wound again despite the way it makes her brow scrunch in pain, "Stop struggling. Just let me help."
His voice cracks on the last note of it, he knows it does, and even if he didn't know, he'd know by the way she stops fighting, by the hesitant brush of fingertips against the back of his hand as she drops her palm atop it. He'd know by the way her eyes shine like mountain lakes, and the way she smiles, ghostly, sadly. He'd know it from the sound of her voice as she whispers his name.
"Elliot…"
It feels too much like an ending, and his own eyes burn.
"Don't die here too."
"You're not dying."
"Stop."
"No. You're not dying."
Pathfinder's voice crackles over their intercom but he can't parse it. Nothing seems to matter outside of this moment, the battle and the world beyond this tight, dark lab room inconsequential. If she's dying here, if she's really dying, then everything else is useless anyway. When she tries to argue again he presses a dry, hard kiss on her forehead and shakes his head. He hopes it's too dark for her to see that he's started crying, too.
"I'm not going."
Her eyes look up at him, dark and unfathomably deep, and he wishes… everything. He wishes everything, that somehow this wouldn't be the end. That they'd go on, even if he lives his whole life with his unrequited love. It's a torture he'll bear gladly if it means she gets to live. But he does't know who to wish it to, who to pray to, what to say. It all just runs around in his head and won't come out his mouth right. Like everything else, it's stuck, a jumble.
But Wraith smiles. She smiles, faint and gentle, and she lifts her hand to press the pad of her thumb against his chin, and when she kisses him it tastes like the salt of his own tears and the sharp copper of her blood.
He's still kissing her when the harsh sun explodes into the space and the reality of the whole world invades with unfamiliar voices barking commands over the sound of gunfire.
"Surrender!" Wraith croaks, shocking Mirage silent as he blinks in the blinded fog of grey smoke and feels the tell-tale presence of people with guns storming their way, "He surrenders!"
Elliot closes his eyes and squeezes her hands in his against the gaping wound in her abdomen and simply presses his forehead against hers as his death arrives to claim him. He's done alright, really, if he's kind to himself. He's known loss, sure, and hardship. But he's won himself fame, and he's invented things that will outlive him, and he's felt real, life-changing love, even if he didn't experience it the way he hoped. He'd be a better son, if he could do it over, but he's not done too poorly, all things considered.
And he's a Legend, that's worth something too.
The shadow falls over him, and he reaches for his gun.
~.~