In Another Life

She had seconds left.
The disease had taken over every inch of her body. Previously pale blonde hair had turned an ebony black and fallen out. Her pupils had dilated and her face was ashen pale.
A throaty cough echoed through the room, and dark red blood splattered Aron's white protective suit. But he didn't move.
"Go," she croaked, weakly nudging him. "Leave me here."
"I'm not leaving you."
She smiled sadly, just a little tug of chapped lips, a pale imitation of the sarcastic and laughing Kaya she should still be. The girl who'd teased him, hounded him and pissed him off to no end. The girl he'd always loved, who'd finally confessed she loved him back.
The girl who was dying, who he was powerless to save.
Aron had been a medic, Kaya had been a soldier. At first, he'd hated her profession. Killing and shooting and maiming. But then he'd realised. Both were trying to save lives, in their own way.
The plague had started a year after they got together. No one had known where the airborn virus came from. Kaya and Aron drove off into the wilderness away from the major cities where the epidemic had struck.
Another happy year together on an abandoned farm, wearing the dead farmer's clothes, and sleeping in the dead farmer's bed.
Aron had been about to propose when a lone traveller stumbled up to their door.
He died within minutes.
Kaya started coughing up blood the next day.
They'd got in the jeep and he'd driven her to the nearest detainment centre.
The ring was still in his pocket.
He still loved her.
Aron pulled off the face mask and stared into Kaya's bloodshot eyes, willingly breathing in the contaminated air.
"Kaya, would you marry me, in another life?"