Author's Note: Written for bellebby's prompt Breath in the Friday's One Word Fic Challenge - Week 5. No spoilers but ANGST, my dear friends, heavy BAMF angst...
Disclaimer: I own neither the show nor the characters. I don't earn any money with this piece. I just do it for fun.
Kiss of Life
The second time they kiss, it takes place over four years later, August 2138, in the dense jungle of Somalia.
It's also almost her last one.
Alicia doesn't remember much of it but Taylor does. The second he hears the transmission, Wash's call for back-up, heavy gunfire and explosions in the background, then nothing, only static, he doesn't think twice. He arrives, the rest of their unit in tow, at her last known location in record time.
What he finds, is worse than anything he could ever imagine, and it takes a lot to make a hardened soldier like Taylor feel fear, be overwhelmed by an all-consuming terror.
There is blood, so much of it, too much to be of a single, harmless injury and he follows the trail of red, each step adding another layer of dread to his soul, until he finds her, lying motionless on the wet, muddy ground, in her right hand a gun, the left pressed to her stomach in a futile attempt to stop the steady flow of dark liquid.
For one moment, an eternity, Taylor believes, she is dead, and he drops down on his knees at her side, any strength he possessed gone with her, slowly reaches out, hesitates just before his fingers make contact with her skin, and then she turns her head a fraction, her amber eyes, glassy with pain, finding his pale ones, and the feeling of relief is like a sledgehammer to his gut.
The soldier in him yells for Doc, barks orders at his men, but the man is solely focused on the woman before him, almost overwhelmed by the need to soothe her pain but unable to do so because he has no idea how to help her without hurting her further. It rips him apart, brings forth feelings he buried in the darkest corner of his soul.
"Sir..."
"Hey, Wash." His smile is forced as he gently rubs over the smudges of dirt and grime on her cheeks, and the coldness of her skin squeezes the chain around his heart even tighter, a burning sensation pricking at the corners of his eyes.
"Ayan...Luc...got them...have to..." It's clearly painful for her to form the words (stubborn, strong woman, his Lieutenant) and he is just about to tell her to save her strength when Wash lets go of her weapon, closes her fingers around his wrist and, with surprising force, pulls him down to her, her eyes flashing and her voice steady. "No. Save them. Go."
It is too much for her already weakened body and a horrible wet cough wrecks her as she sags back to the ground. Another shudder runs through her body and suddenly she stills, her eyes drifting shut, her head lolling to the side.
"Doc!" Taylor swears under his breath and presses his hand to her wounds, ignoring the iciness spreading through his body as he feels no heartbeat. "Don't you dare, Wash. Don't you dare."
"Taylor, we need to get her heart starting again. The medicopter takes at least another ten minutes."
It's going to be CPR, Taylor knows it before Doc says the word and although he has seen Wash perform it on their fellow men many times (never on him though - she always says death is too scared of him to take him on), has even helped her once or twice, his hands, stained with her blood, still tremble as he carefully moves her head into the right position, following Doc's instructions.
When he starts breathing for her, his mind flashes back to their first meeting, when Wash saved his life with sixty-seven stitches, and with every push of air into her lungs that comes after that, another memory follows until he has no more left. Dimly, he hears Doc telling him it's too late but he's not listening, shakes off the hands trying to pull him away. Instead, he leans down, his lips brushing hers, passing his heat to her as he speaks, and his words are barely more than a whisper.
"I swear, if you die, Wash, I'm going to come after you and drag you back." For a moment it is as if the world stops but then he feels her mouth moving beneath his and his fingers, tangled in her hair, tighten their hold.
"Can't let that...happen, can we, sir? Hell...wouldn't survive you," she croaks hoarsely and yet it is the sweetest sound he has ever heard. He gives a chocked laugh before his gaze turns serious, his eyes dark as they hold hers captive.
"Who says, it's hell I'm getting you back from?"
ooo
Despite her protests, despite her pleading with him to go after his wife and boy, assuring him that she's fine now and going to survive, Taylor stays with her until the medicopter arrives, fingers tightly entwined with hers, his other hand lightly resting on her bandaged wound. When he has to let go of her, he does so reluctantly and the feeling is mutual if the squeeze she gives his hand is any indication.
Three weeks later Taylor visits her at the hospital in New Texas, and Wash greets him with such a look of utter despair and guilt that he literally growls at her to stop that right now. Neither of them is at fault for what happened to the civilians, to Ayani. Even if he had chosen to leave Wash behind at the compound and go after the enemy, the outcome would have been the same. There's still a glimmer of doubt in her dark eyes but he's willingly to give her time.
Too soon he has to leave her but just before he steps out of her room, he stops and tells her, almost too quiet for her to hear, that he wouldn't be able to go on if she had died. He's gone before she has a chance to answer.
When she starts her physical therapy, he's there, watches from the shadows, eyes shining with pride, as she slowly but stubbornly fights her way back, fights until she has recovered and is finally declared fit for duty again.