A/N: Prompt: 'Injury" by opalescentflame
Bart smells the blood before he sees it. The sharp metallic scent permeates after the second shot rings out, and whisks him away to a different time, a different injury, a different body falling to the ground. He remembers that specific death because he was old enough to be able to try do something, but still too young to realize that he shouldn't have bothered. If the Reach wanted you dead, you were dead, and retaliating would only speed up the process. But this time it's different, because it isn't some unnamed soon-to-be-forgotten slave that's been shot; it's his best friend.
"B-Bart," Jaime gasps in a voice that makes Bart's vision blur with irrepressible tears.
"Hey," he attempts to choke out, but the word is strangled. "Blue, Blue, Blue. Hey. It's…" he wants to say 'okay', but that would be a downright lie, so instead he swallows the rising lump in his throat and falls to the ground with Jaime.
He holds Jaime upright and the older boy grabs onto each of his shoulders, blunt nails breaking the skin. The chill of his dying breath on Bart's flesh is dizzying, and all Bart can think is 'we are so moded', before he promises to himself that he'll never again let Jaime deactivate his armor until they're a safe distance from enemy lines.
"Bart I—you need to… I—" the disjointed mumble that escapes Jaime's lips cuts deep into Bart's bones. He can sense the emotional power behind what Jaime was trying to say.
"Armour up, her-mano!" Bart begs, a panicked edge creeping into his voice. "Scarab should be able to heal you."
"Systems s-shutting down," Jaime splutters, blood bubbling in his throat and beginning to seep down the corners of his mouth.
'I came to the past to stop you. I was prepared to kill you, if necessary. But I never expected to fall for you.'
Bart retrieves a spherical blue orb from a compartment in his uniform and feels it sear into his palm as strongly as he tastes bile in his mouth.
Is he really prepared to use the capsule, his last resort, his lifeline, to save the very person he came to stop?
In the future, he and Nathaniel had only salvaged two of these capsules capable of either destroying or rebooting Reach technology; one of which had already been used to stop Neutron. If he used the final orb to save Blue Beetle then, should he go on-mode, there really wasn't anything more Bart could do. Was he really willing to risk that?
His temples throb as a moral war wages in his head. Jaime mumbles something unintelligible, but the fragmented words don't even reach Bart's ears. His breaths are becoming laboured, his pulse faint.
'I'm sorry, Blue,' Bart thinks silently. Fate has a very cruel and twisted sense of irony, but Bart is the descendant of the Flash. It is his duty to uphold the ideals and virtues of a super hero and he can't threaten millions of lives to save one.
Yet his hands move independently of his thoughts and before he realizes what's happening, the capsule is falling in a cerulean blur, before it falls on the sheen of sweat covering Jaime's skin. Armour begins to grow and spread across the Hispanic teen's limbs, blue and black to contrast against the crimson oozing from his bullet wounds.
Bart's heart shudders violently against his chest, bruising himself inside-out, until finally (finally!) Jaime slips back into consciousness, though he is feverish and delusional, and Bart doubts he'll even remember the kiss he's engaged with the speedster.
Bart tastes blood, and sweat, and saliva as their lips latch onto each other. But all he feels is dread. That capsule was his chance to end or save the Blue Beetle. He hopes he chose correctly. Because the future was now out of second chances.