“No, wait, don’t!” I yelled as I heard another round of gunshots being fired. He was still hugging me, had cornered me against the wall with his back open and vulnerable. The heat of fire and the screams of the deceased surrounded us yet I couldn’t see anything beyond his harried and pained expression.
“MOVE, R!” I yelled as loud as I could, pushed against him as hard as I could, yet he had me trapped. He didn’t budge. His hands were hugging me tightly, his face buried in my neck. It was damp with sweat and too hot and my ears burned - not with heat but with the screams that still surrounded me.
A loud gunshot suddenly blasted and R slumped with a loud groan against me, his entire body convulsing. His arms tightened around me. It was then that I knew he’d been hit. I didn’t know where but I knew that he’d been hit. I couldn’t let him die, no please, I love him, no please.
Another loud gunshot and he yelled out in pain. He would have fallen if it wasn’t for my weight supporting him.
He lifted his head wearily to look me in the eyes. Somehow we both knew this would be our last time doing this. His gaze flicked all across my face in what seemed to be an hour but was probably more like a millisecond, and landed on my lips. He pressed a chaste kiss to my lips, and though it was short, I could feel the entirety of what he was trying to convey through his lips.
Please, I can’t live if you die. Please let me save you.
I couldn’t let him die, though. More importantly, I couldn’t let him die protecting me. We had an entire life to live.
Within a split second, I used his weakened state to successfully push him behind me as another round of gunfire started. There was nothing going through my mind at that point, except for the fevered chanting: I can’t let him die. I can’t let him die. I can’t let him die.
His hands pawed me from behind, but I didn’t back down. Smoke filled my vision, dead bodies were piled high like a shield around us, their eyes glassy and pained. Blood covered the ground in a slick of red like a stain on the world. I couldn’t see the exit but I was sure it was closed off.
I didn’t hear the gunshot as it came for me. I only felt it. I felt the whizzing sound, and after it entered me, I felt the fiery pain that it awakened in me. I let out a painful shriek, trying in vain to rid myself of the pain or to distract me. It was so painful I could barely describe it. All I knew was that I wanted to cut off my torso and put it at the side only so it would stop hurting. My senses had shut down by then; I could neither see nor hear anything. And then another. And another. I fell to the ground, writhing.
I didn’t know if I could have endured it or not if it wasn’t for R, screaming a hoarse “no” as I fell to the ground, trying to save me as I was trying to save him.
Then, another relentless gunshot. I tried to raise my body to stand in front of him again but since I was on the ground, it hit him. Shrieking, he joined me on the ground.
“NO!” I yelled, but it was of no use. He was hurt, and so was I. The world came to a stop around us as the shield of dead bodies protected us from the incoming gunshots. I held his hands as we looked up at the sky. It was innocent and azure blue as it always was, but at that moment, it felt different. Amidst the metallic shower raining down upon us, it felt like something to fight for. To live for.
We’d move, of course we would, just a little break wouldn’t hurt, right?
“Pretty,” R croaked out from beside me. I turned to look at him. Tears stained his face as I imagined it did mine. Seeing him in pain, pain that I caused, filled me with a deep hurt that even my wounds couldn’t create.
Sorry, was at the tip of my tongue, yet what I said was, “What?”
“You.” He smiled painfully and his eyes fluttered close. He opened them with much effort, and looked at me with bone-deep weariness. Even though I didn’t want to believe it then, I knew his time had come to an end.
“Sorry,” I said. I tried to lift myself off the ground, to help him in any way that I could, but my own pain was clouding my senses. I was all but paralyzed.
“I don’t regret it,” he said softly, his expression pained. “I didn’t - didn’t want you to go.”
He paused, breathing heavily for a minute.
He looked at me intently, eyes conveying what he couldn’t bring himself to say, and all our time together felt so short yet so long.
“I love you too,” I smiled at him trying to be strong for him in his last moments, despite how I felt. His eyes fluttered slowly to a close and his breathing slowed to an end.
Then the world came crashing down around me.
“NO!” I yelled with the last reserves of my energy, feeling his loss as if it were my own life. “NO!”
But I had no more energy left in me.
In my last moments, I saw the life we had imagined for ourselves. Two children, a pink house and all the careless time in the world. But I wasn’t sad then, I knew that wherever he had gone, I’d follow too. And in his company, I would never feel alone.
