[ Eleanor is safe and away. Good. And yeah. Yeah, the body. The dead man; they both know enough of disposing a body that it's not a stretch, and Mako is dazed for a few long moments, on the fringes of going into shock before Raleigh's voice calls her back. He needs her, she knows, he needs her and she has to be there for him -- it's the way it's always worked, a lifetime ago.
But here they are, right in her bedroom with a blast from the past and it's as if nothing's changed; the two of them, lovers and outlaws and partners in crime and killers and the knowledge threatens to choke her. You never run away from your past -- but here Raleigh is, solid and strong and distressed he'd saved her from a fight she was going to lose. She feels warm blood trickling down, sticky and uncomfortable and she fights the urge to curl up against him, when she lifts her shirt.
It's a not deep graze on her side -- not fatal, but it'd be a bit of a pain in the ass to treat because it's bleeding everywhere -- inches beneath the scar that had been a souvenir of the first time she'd met Raleigh, when he'd saved her instead of letting her bleed out.
And here, he'd saved her again. Her thumb traces lightly over the puckered scar tissue, reminded of his kindness, before she applies pressure directly to the wound.
I love you, too, she wants to say. I love you so much. Because she does, and there's nothing like a near-death experience to be brutally clear of one's priorities in life. She needs him, he's the last person she'd thought about when she'd been dying and that means the world, doesn't it? It means everything, when the last thought on your mind is your not-quite-ex. ]
Years later, and we're still meeting each other like this.
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But here they are, right in her bedroom with a blast from the past and it's as if nothing's changed; the two of them, lovers and outlaws and partners in crime and killers and the knowledge threatens to choke her. You never run away from your past -- but here Raleigh is, solid and strong and distressed he'd saved her from a fight she was going to lose. She feels warm blood trickling down, sticky and uncomfortable and she fights the urge to curl up against him, when she lifts her shirt.
It's a not deep graze on her side -- not fatal, but it'd be a bit of a pain in the ass to treat because it's bleeding everywhere -- inches beneath the scar that had been a souvenir of the first time she'd met Raleigh, when he'd saved her instead of letting her bleed out.
And here, he'd saved her again. Her thumb traces lightly over the puckered scar tissue, reminded of his kindness, before she applies pressure directly to the wound.
I love you, too, she wants to say. I love you so much. Because she does, and there's nothing like a near-death experience to be brutally clear of one's priorities in life. She needs him, he's the last person she'd thought about when she'd been dying and that means the world, doesn't it? It means everything, when the last thought on your mind is your not-quite-ex. ]
Years later, and we're still meeting each other like this.