Not my original idea, but I’ve had this brain worm wriggling in my head for days and I need to get it out.
An AU where reader has magic healing hands. The one drawback is: for everything you heal, you yourself take on the bodily damage and have to take time to recover. Self inflicted damage and recovery time is dependent upon how severe the subjects injury is. (Doesn’t have to be a 1:1 injury transfer, was thinking more along the lines of temporary body deterioration due to the amount of energy it takes for you to heal someone.)
One can only imagine how you handle serving alongside the TF141: the most injury prone group of men out there. From broken bones to burn wounds to shrapnel tearing through flesh- you’re there with your healing hands to patch them back up better than new.
The boys take good care of you too, of course- they practically owe their lives to the person who takes their pain and willingly endures it themselves. They take turns watching over you when you need time to recover. Late nights of sitting in one or the others lap as they cradle you close against their warm chest in whatever filthy, freezing safe house you’ve landed in - hand feeding you water and rations when you’re too weak and pained to move.
Then, on a mission gone wrong, Soap goes and gets himself shot in the head.
It was fast, so quick it almost didn’t seem real. Not until Soap slumped inertly onto the concrete under him. Until you caught sight of the pool of scarlet around his head and the acrid tang of copper hit your nose. Until you dropped to your knees on the ground beside him, the warm viscous liquid splattering against your tactical gear, soaking into the fabric of your pants, staining the skin of your quivering hands.
You’ve never healed an injury this severe before, never brought anyone back from the dead. Hell, you don’t even know if you can. But god damn it, you’re not going to sit here and not at least try.
So you press your gore drenched hands on either side of Soaps temples and let his pain tear through you, each of your nerve endings burning under your skin as you use all your energy to try reversing and absorbing death itself. Kneeling on the cold dirty floor, you grip Soaps skull till your knuckles blanch. A blood curdling scream rips through you, echoing loudly off the metal ceiling, as your body writhes above him in agony. Tears flow down your face, off your chin, splattering in wet patches on the cooling skin of Soaps lifeless visage.
The others surround you, frozen in place and unable to do anything other than watch in abject horror as your body contorts and you let out inhumanly guttural noises. Your knees dig into the ground on either side of Soaps head, losing purchase against the wet floor and widening your stance as you curl inwards, nearly in the fetal position above him. You press down as hard as you’re physically able to, making sure to keep your hands on him even as your vision starts to blacken around the edges.
You’ve never felt a pain like this before -this intense, this all encompassing- but you can’t let go. Won’t let go. Not even after you hear the bullet fall with a metallic clink on the concrete next to his bloodied scalp. Not even after you feel the skin around the wound close under your fingertips as if it was never even there.
Not until Soap wraps his warm calloused fingers around your unyielding wrists and rips them off of his head himself, finally coming to to the sounds of your hauntingly agonized cries above him.
As soon as the connection is broken, you collapse -lifeless and no longer breathing- onto the floor next to him.
The others quickly spring into action. Gaz goes to examine Soap -his trembling body swallowing deep, frantic gasps of air into aching lungs where he lies on the floor- as Price and Ghost huddle around you. Ghost reaches down, pressing the rough pads of his fingertips to your throat to search for a pulse, and immediately starts to perform CPR when he finds there isn’t one.
Even now, none of the men who were present that day are able to explain what happened. Each simply thank god for the gift -the absolute miracle- they were given.
After fifteen minutes- fifteen excruciating minutes of you lying cold and dead on the floor, of your heart refusing to beat, of Ghost relentlessly -desperately- pushing against your lifeless body, of the other men watching helplessly, slowly starting to lose hope- you sputter in a loud stuttering breath and grab Ghosts wrists in an attempt to stop him.
Your vision is blurred when you wake up, a hazy filter over your senses as you try to make out your surroundings. All you see are two dark indistinguishable figures against a bright, nearly blinding backdrop. A loud ringing in your ears drowns out Ghosts words as he lifts you into his arms and tries to get you to focus on him. The dull tingle under your skin numbs the feeling of his hand smacking your cheek, a futile attempt to keep your drooping eyelids open. Your vision fades to black once more as you pass out, your body limply falling into Ghosts, but this time when his fingers search frantically for a pulse it’s there. Weak and faint, but there.
Price carries you back to the heli, your unconscious body flaccid as his strong arms hold you protectively against himself. Ghost and Gaz follow close behind, each under one of Soaps arms to help carry him back to the extraction point
Doctors are on you as soon as you make it back to base. They hook you up to machines, to IV lines, pumping things into your bloodstream and monitoring you closely to make sure you don’t crash and die a second time.
When you finally wake up you find yourself lying on a cot in a dimly lit hospital room, hooked up to machines that beep gently in the quiet space. The sky behind the window is dark, the moon shining full and bright above you. You can’t be sure what it is - maybe it’s the fact that you died, that Soap died, that you looked up at an identical expanse of stars not 24 hours prior to this moment and thought nothing of it, completely taking the peace and serenity of what was almost your final night alive for granted- but the sight is so beautiful that oncoming tears sting your weary eyes.
Soap is there, hunched over in a plastic chair that’s much too small for his large frame, at the side of your bed. Your hand is gripped between his, has been for hours now, and he presses it against his balmy forehead as he mumbles prayers to some god he had lost hope in a long time ago. You hear the sound of his breath catching before his head snaps to look at you, the feeling of you moving in his tender grasp startling him. The knee that had been bouncing erratically stills. When your eyes meet his, you notice they’re red rimmed, bloodshot, and glassy with tears. Mohawk mussed from him gripping tightly at the strands.
Wordlessly, he stands up, letting go of your hand in favor of taking your face in both of his. His usually bright blue eyes are now muted, glittering with lingering tears as the moonlight filters in through the window, and he leans in to kiss you. The softness of it belies the deep desperation within him. There’s so much emotion behind the gentle press of his lips against yours. It’s gratitude, reverence. Despair, an apology. It’s searching, seeking, questioning whether you’re really here, whether he’s really here, whether the two of you are really alive after everything.
His fingers slide across your neck, down your arms, one finding the small of your back and the other nestling between your shoulder blades. Your body still tingles with static numbness, his caress unfelt by blunted nerve endings, but the heat of his hands bleeds deeply beneath your skin - warming wherever he touches down to the bone. He pulls you up and against him, squeezing as tightly as his weakened muscles will allow.
Your trembling fingers find themselves twisted in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer, closer, closer. A deep seated need to feel his heartbeat against your own, to feel the warmth of his body, to feel the life within him. To try and absorb his life into yourself and prove to your broken spent body that you’re still alive too.
You tangle leaden fingers through his hair as the kiss deepens, force your loose jaw to move in tandem with his. It’s all a frenzy of wet tongues, clashing teeth and hands that grasp onto one another as if the other could disappear at any moment.
And maybe either of you could.
It was so sudden the first time. Finished before the surprised shriek that exploded in your chest could escape past your lips. The firing of the gun, the drop of his body onto the hard floor in front of you, his blood that spread from the hole in his head to the soles of your boots and stained your hands in sticky crimson.
Your eyes sting with tears as you start to bawl against him. You break away from the kiss and let your head fall into the crook of his neck, pressing your ear against his pulse point just to hear the blood rushing through his veins. Alive. He moves his hand to cradle the back of your neck and clutches you impossibly closer, breathing life back into your body with his touch. Alive. His sobs wrack against you as you cling to him -the world dwindling down to just the two of you as you grasp onto one another tightly, letting the tremors of each other’s bodies prove to each of you that you’re both still here. Alive.
“You died.” The words come out as a breathless sob, coarse and gravelly from emotion and the strain caused by your earlier cries. “you were dead.”
“Aye, I ken.”
It takes a great effort for him to speak, his voice watery and fractured as he mutters each syllable into the quiet of the room. He crushes his wobbling lips to the skin of your temple in an attempt to ground himself, his tears dampening your skin as he burrows his head into you.
“I ken. Ye died bringin’ me back tae life”
Soap slides into the cot next to you, carefully maneuvering himself around the cords and tubes, and you two hold each other for the rest of the night. Your bodies meld together, your head resting on his solid chest, arms and legs tangled under the flimsy hospital blanket. There’s no use in trying to fall asleep, both of you too terrified that the other might fade away if you shut your eyes for more than a moment. Instead you lay there, listening to one another’s steady heart beats, focusing on the feeling of the other’s chest moving as you breathe -as if doing so is the only thing keeping either of you from slipping away again.
You lie together in silence, staring into nothingness, anchoring one another to your fragile reality.