Pull Me Back from the Edge
It all happens in a blink of an eye.
One moment he is at the door, with his back to the room, looking for possible threats and the next a gun is fired behind his back. For a fraction of a second he expects the pain, believing that Skye's just shot him, but when it doesn't come, he turns around in haste, panic rising in his chest.
The HYDRA soldier Grant believed Skye's father had killed is alive and awake, holding his gun in his trembling hand, pointing it at… at Skye – at Skye, who is already stumbling to the ground, a veil of pain on her face.
He feels like his heart has just been crushed.
He is at the soldier's side in an instant, grabbing his head and yanking it to the side, breaking his neck, neutralizing the threat – now, maybe for the first time ever, he doesn't feel even a sliver of remorse for killing. The next moment, he is running for Skye.
He is there just in time to catch her before she'd fall. With his arm around her, he carefully lowers her to the ground, kneeling beside her. She looks bad, really bad – her face pale, almost lifeless, eyelids dropping, while her hand is pressed against her side. He peels that hand away gently to assess the wound – the bullet entered her on the right side, on the lower portion of her ribcage with no exit wound; far enough from the heart so he doesn't have to worry about that, but still close enough that it might have punctured her lung. And she is bleeding, losing blood fast, way too fast. Acting mostly on instinct, he shrugs off his jacket, bunches it up and presses it against the wound, trying the staunch the blood flow, or at least slow it down until he can come up with a better idea.
"Skye, just hold on, okay? Just hold on, and I'll…" he tells her frantically, his specialist's mask slipping, panicking. He's already almost lost her once, it can't happen again, she can't bleed out right here in his arms, she just can't…
"Grant…" she whispers, her voice weak, but it is still enough to make him still and focus completely on her, because she's just called him by his first name, something she's rarely ever done, something she hasn't done in a long time, not since… Not since everything went south. "I have to…" she says, but her sentence is broken off by a pained groan.
"No, no, sweetheart, don't speak." The term of endearment slips out without his permission, as he raises one of his hands to her face, caressing her cheek, but his fingers leaving bloody marks on her skin. "Don't waste your strength."
"But I have to tell you this," her voice is barely above whisper. "I have to tell you, because I… I might not get another chance."
"Don't say things like that – you'll be okay, I swear, Skye, you'll be okay…"
"But if I'm not…" She lets out a strangled little noise which he knows she intended to be a chuckle. "If I'm not I want you to know…" She closes her eyes and takes a breath, while placing her hand on his and squeezing it; she is way weaker than he'd like. "I understand. At least I think I understand – what you did before and what you did now. And Grant–" She coughs, her whole body seizing up. After that, there's blood on her lips. "Thank you for letting me meet my father. And for everything else – I forgive you," the last part she says with a tiny smile playing on her lips as her yes flutter closed again.
It awfully feels like a goodbye, and he just won't have it – he won't let her go now, now that she… now that she says she's forgiving him. When everything he's been battling for might be coming true. When he might get another chance to prove himself and his love for her.
"No," he says with newfound determination, pressing down his jacket to her wound tighter. "No. Don't you think I'll just take your forgiveness this simply." He grabs her hand and presses it against the fabric as well, showing her how to keep it down. "You have lost too much blood, you are not in your right mind. Sorry, Rookie, but you'll have to do this whole speech again once you're better, because I'm sure as hell won't let you die on me." And then, on a stupid impulse, he leans down and kisses her forehead. "Remember, Skye? You staying alive is still on me."
Satisfied with her tiny, barely-there nod and how she is holding the makeshift dressing down, he stands up, his plan already formulating in his head – her father, as crazy he might be, is a doctor, and Grant saw some kind of a medical kit with him; he sure can stabilize her, and then Coulson surely has a quinjet on standby, and with that they can get her to a hospital, where she can have a chance.
And she must survive – after all this, she just must. And then? He doesn't really care – if she'll be okay, and still keeps to her word that she's forgiven him, they can lock him up for the rest of his life for all he cares, because he'll still have what he wants the most.