the blood in our future

Embers and Stars

A/N: Sorry everyone I forgor

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He'd lost his breath when he'd seen her.

He'd spotted the bomb, and then Lockwood had twisted and turned, had searched for any way at all to apprehend it, to save them in time — and there she'd been.

On the edge of everything. Clad in red and silver and black.

Alive.

Agnostic he'd always been, he hadn't trusted his eyes. He'd scoured every inch of her face, instead. Had poured over every crook, every scar, every little thing that promised to him that this was really her. That she was really there.

Only then did everything happen very fast. Lockwood started walking without ever noticing. He barely saw anything but her, much less so his feet. His eyes refused to stray from her, afraid that if they did, he'd lose her again. That he'd find out she'd only been a hallucination, some haunting come to take revenge.

She looked beautiful. She looked like every dream of his. She looked angry.

For a second, the thought crossed his mind whether she might look angry because she'd spotted him, even through his mask. Whether she might already be readying the curses on her tongue.

Then, finally, he noticed that it wasn't even him she was looking at. No, she had her stare aimed right at the two people in front of her. Two guards, Lockwood realised. Two guards who had a tight grip on her, one arm twisted at an angle that made him shiver. That made his vision pulse in a nauseating red.

Lockwood was fast. He'd failed to save her once, he wouldn't do so again. She might storm and weather at him, she might never want anything to do with him again — but he would not let her die this time, too.

He reached for her arm like a drowning man clambered at the waves. He reached for her like he reached for his parents and his sister whenever he saw them in his nightmares; those in which the roaring and the fire was back, in which their skin was only air and his touch was what made them crumble.

Hand still in the space between them, some part of him feared that it would happen to Lucy, too. That he'd gotten it all wrong. That this wasn't her. That none of this was real, all of this a dream.

He reached for her like he'd never touched anything so breakable.

He reached for her like the suffocating boy he was.

She didn't dissolve into thin air. Her arm was solid underneath his fingertips, her muscles tensed. She was alive.

She was also turning her head, looking right up at him.

For all his bravery, he didn't dare meet her gaze. He wove some witty lies for the guards eying him, made them hand her over with only two sentences. But even as they walked away, he couldn't meet her gaze.

She'd know him if he did. She'd know it was him. He didn't think he'd be able to hide the love, the fear, the relief in his eyes if he looked at her now. Not after thinking he'd never get to see her again. Not after having hidden all of it whilst breaking up with her already, everything going so terribly wrong afterwards.

Not when everything he wanted to do was look at her forever.

He wanted to take her hand. He wanted to take her far, far away from here. Far away from the stack of sources, meant to explode soon. Far away from Colby, grinning and laughing up on that stage, sure to set off that bomb as soon as he finished. Lockwood wanted to beg her to endure him, just for the time being. Just for as long as it would take to save her.