a choice
FANDOM: Young Justice: Invasion PAIRING: Bluepulse (Bart Allen/Khaji Da)... that’s still bluepulse? technically? RATING: Teen
Summary: Khaji Da has a choice to make.
AO3 LINK
Analyzing. Vitals failing. Scanning. Heart rate drastically slowed. Error. Error.
The mission went downhill so quickly.
[Jaime Reyes] Khaji sends his voice to his host’s brain, [The mission has failed. Abort.]
No response from his host, no sign the boy heard him at all. Khaji observes from where he shares Jaime’s senses, observes a bloodied hand shaking as it reaches for something.
[Jaime, I said abort. Now.]
“I can’t,” Jaime tells him. Mentally. Without the strength to speak out loud, “I’m…”
[You aren’t functioning. Your vitals are failing. You are losing too much blood. We need to leave. Now.]
“Bart.”
Khaji Da hardly hears him. He’s busy letting Jaime fall into a sleep mode so he can take over, so he can switch out with him, so he can get them out of there. Jaime, fading. Khaji Da switching with him, feeling his senses heighten, expand. Blinking gold into his eyes, his eyes flickering about the situation.
Vitals failing. Objective, get Jaime somewhere safe and begin the mending process. Call for League help. Every thought so mechanical, so urgently practical, logical. Gold eyes flicker up to scan their surroundings.
A message sends itself to the League, requesting assistance, requesting medical. Urgent. Relief floods Khaji’s chest as he sees that flying up and out will be easy-- he’ll land, and he’ll be away from the fight. And then he can work on fixing his host up. Everything will be fine.
Rising to his feet, recalculating Jaime’s vitals. Gold eyes flicker back to the enemies, for just a moment, wondering why they aren’t on him anymore.
The answer is immediately evident.
Those auburn curls in a mess, messier than they usually are, and caught with dirt and with blood. His golden goggles are cracked, revealing dark lashes. His eyes are closed. A quick scan confirms that he is unconcious.
Goddamnit.
There’s blood in the scratches on his face, in the gashes on his legs, his arms, his stomach. A deep, wide gash across his torso. There’s blood everywhere. He’s down, he’s unconscious, and they’re surrounding him. There’s so much blood.
Khaji Da has a a very specific objective. A very simple one. Get himself and his host to safety. Protect them, them first, them over everything else. Be mechanical, follow the objective. Easy, simple. Practical and logical and simple.
He’s curled in on himself, one hand resting under his head, hidden by auburn curls. The other curled over the horrific gash in his stomach, in a vain attempt to keep the wound from bleeding. He’s bleeding out. Even if the enemies don’t get to him-- which they will-- he’ll be dead in ten minutes.
If they don’t get out, Jaime will be dead in fifteen.
Things were easier when Khaji didn’t have this sentience, these feelings and these emotions to get in the way and to complicate things.
“Do you like the movie?” He’d said. Khaji Da had looked at him, met big green eyes sparkling with a cute smile, with a comforting smile. It made Khaji want to smile too-- a feeling that was almost foreign to him.
“It’s fine,” he’d said, simply. He didn’t smile, but Bart giggled, laughed, a cute sound rising up from his chest and coming out beautifully happy, bubbly. Organic. Khaji had tilted his head, vaguely, and for whatever reason he wanted to laugh too.
“Yeah, I’m not a fan either.”
Confusion. “Then why are we watching it?”
Bart smiled, bright, those eyes locked on Khaji in a way that made him feel naked, like he was being stripped to his skin and to his blood and to his bones.
“Because I wanted to spend time with you. I’ve made it my mission to make us friends.”
We are friends, Khaji did not say. Why didn’t he say that? It was such a simple thing to say, so why did it scare him so bad? He liked Bart. He liked Bart a lot, in ways he thought sometimes that ran deeper than he had the capacity to understand. He was fun, he was cute. He was sweet. He was beautiful, charming, adorable and captivating. He made Khaji want to smile and never stop with the simplest things, the silliest things, the littlest things. It was unheard of, it was absurd, it was ridiculous. But Bart did anything and Khaji found a bubbly, light feeling rising up inside of him. Pure happiness, pure sweetness. And something else.
He’s bleeding out. He doesn’t have long. Khaji Da has a very simple task. He’s dying. Saving him could put both himself and Jaime at great risk, could kill them both. Bart is dying. Red spills from everywhere, those eyes fluttering just slightly. They’re closing in on him.
There’s a choice to be made. Khaji Da can act on base instinct. On what he knows, on what he understands, on what is safe and logical and practical.
Or he can act on this new instinct. A mushier instinct, a risky instinct, a foolish instinct. An organic instinct, through and through. One based on emotion rather than reason.
In the end, there’s no choice to be made at all. There’s no choice, and Khaji throws himself at the broken speedster’s would-be killers without further ado.
There’s no choice. Vitals failing. Thirteen minutes. Metal connects with flesh. Left, right. Fighting, fighting with everything he has inside of him and with all the urgency the situation calls for. Left, right. When the way is clear enough, is safe enough, Khaji Da kneels.
He gathers Impulse up in his arms. Careful not to disrupt his wounds too much, to make him bleed anymore than he already is. To put him in more pain than he is already in. Soft curls fall against his chest as he settles him, gently, carefully. Everything about his movements so soft, so gentle, more gentle than Khaji knew he could be. Cradling his head to his chest with a steady arm around his shoulders, under his legs. He's trembling, curled to Khaji Da like a child. It breaks something in his chest.
Ten minutes. His wings unfold and he takes off, taking to the sky. A blue tendril slips from his back, from his scarab, connecting without any wasted time with the base of Impulse’s skull to enact repairs to the best of his ability. Vitals unstable, but better. Better. He’ll live, and so will Jaime. The League is on its way.
Impulse looks smaller than he usually does, feels smaller, is so small. Frail, broken, fragile and soft and light. Khaji’s scared to shift out of fear of him shattering. A soft breath against his chest, scarlet-gloved fingers curling ever so slightly against Khaji’s chest.
“Khaji Da?” his voice is so soft, so broken, so light and so fragile. It breaks something in Khaji’s heart, and that feeling, that deep-running feeling he just can’t decipher-- it rises in his chest. Fills his veins. Fills his throat, makes him feel like crying.
“Shh. It’s okay,” Khaji tells him, as gently as he can. A hand cards through soft auburn, gentle, so gentle. Tender. Soft. “It’s okay. You are going to be fine.”
There was never any choice to be made. As Khaji holds Impulse's broken form in his arms, he knows now there was no way in hell he was ever going to leave his boy to die. As the League arrives overhead, he doesn’t look up, doesn’t keep his attention off of Jaime and Bart’s steadying vitals.
As someone lands in front of him, he realizes that these organic instincts are very likely to take control of him more often than not.
Soft breath falls against his neck, and that same feeling in his chest. Protectiveness, affection. Something more. The League doctors take Impulse away, and as Khaji Da falls into a mode to focus on Jaime’s injuries, he supposes he’ll have to save that puzzle for another day.