There was nothing he could have done. Nothing to stop her rushing towards the enemy, nothing to prevent her from slinging herself into the fray.
At least that what he tells himself as he kneels above her, one hand pressed deeply into the bleeding wound in her side while the other fumbles desperately at her throat. The pulse he finds is barely a flutter, but it's there. He speaks her name, hoping to see her eyes even briefly or elicit some kind of verbal response, but he isn't so lucky.
A moment ticks by, he grimaces at the blood soaking his palm, and suddenly there is no pulse. The stuttering rise of her chest ceases. He waits perhaps a second too long before he realizes she's trying to die.
He removes his hand from her wound, tears open her shirt with a mumbled apology and a promise to by her a new one, and wastes not a second more in bringing her back to life.
Her chest, bruised already from the fight, has more give than he anticipated as he starts slamming down into her. The compressions are unrelenting, hard, and precise. He forces her heart to do the job it has fogotten and he swears he will continue until it remembers.
He breathes into her, giving fully of his own lungs to revive hers, and he cannot help but notice the taste of her delicate mouth. Twice he fills her with his breath, twice he watches her breasts pretend to lift with their own cycle.
He pushes her chest again, already sweating and shaking. The blood coating her side now coats the ground beneath her as his work causes it to flow in waves. He halts and slips two fingers into her neck to seek her pulse once more.
Stillness, silence, nothing. He growls, cursing upwards at the sky, and begins the compressions again. His own heart is slamming against his ribs, a molten heat that throbs, anguished. He swore that he would keep her safe. He swore that she would come home. He swore he wouldn't let her become a corpse in the mud along a forgotten road in some nameless county where the local authority could let give two shits about the-
She heaves a shallow, trembling breath.
Just as he is bending to seal his lips over hers, she gulps and pants and it is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard. He holds back a cheer, opting instead to plant a kiss on her forehead. He can feel the hard, too-slow beat of her heart against his grip as he once again lays pressure over her injury.
She does not rouse fully, but her lips form his name, a whisper or a prayer it is hard to tell. He whispers back, speaking again his promise to protect her. His heartbeat would be hers, his breath, hers.
There's nothing else he could do, he tells himself, but to give his everything to her, for her.
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