Afire Love- Paladin Danse x Reader (COMPLETE)

blind betrayal, part freakin 4

Pain. Pain rushed to your hand, and you dropped the gun. You felt your heart beat in your palm as blood rushed to the bullet wound. It ran down and soaked into the sleeve of your uniform.
You looked up, and Danse had crumpled onto his knees, his gun at his side, his uniform soaking in a pool of crimson.
"Danse!" you choked out, and you were stumbling to him, kicking up dust as you went. Something grabbed your foot. You felt topheavy. Dizzy. It didn't take much to send you down. For a moment, your face was pressed in the dirt, and then you were being pulled back up again, both arms behind your back. You cried in pain and thrashed against Elder Maxson's strong grip as he started to drag you away, away from him, back to the Prydwen, where everyone would congratulate you for putting an end to that monstrosity, the abomination...
You head cleared suddenly, and everything car into sharp focus. "Don't touch me!" you shrieked, the lump in your throat breaking up your voice, making it crackle and waver. You pulled vigorously away from him, and one of your arms slipped from his grasp. You turned around. You locked your free hand onto his wrist and started pulling your other arm away. It had started to go numb from being deprived of oxygen, and was also losing a lot of blood.
Maxson bared his teeth at you like a wild animal. "We're leaving that machine," he growled.  "Come on!" He tugged on your hand even harder.
You brought up a leg and kicked at his knee. It buckled, and both of you came crashing down, your torso landing on your injured hand. You winced in pain, but you shook it off. He's dying, you told yourself, he's dying, there's no time to complain about your hand...
You pulled yourself up and half walked, half dragged yourself to him, leaving a trail of blood as you went.
He had fallen to his side now, his bloodied hands wrapped around his chest.
"No, no," you tried to make your voice seem calm. "It's okay, we'll- we'll get you to Virgil, because he can help you again, like he did when the deathclaw hurt you..." You sat on the dirt cross legged, resting his upper body on your legs. You tugged at the dry sleeve of your uniform until it gave, ripping off the fabric and pressing it to his chest. Blood soaked through it almost immediately. Tears gathered in your eyes, but you pushed them back. Don't scare him, don't scare him... you warned yourself. But when he reached up to tuck a stand of hair behind your ear, you broke.
"It's not okay, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it's okay. I- don't want you to be scared..." Your bleeding hand held his cheek, staining it red. A silent tear rolled down your face as he touched your jawline and muttered your name.
"Look." His voice was a fading, an echo of what it was moments ago. He pointed straight up, into the night sky, at tens of thousands of twinkling stars, each of them thousands of miles away. Thousands of miles, but still there. You couldn't touch them, or talk with them, some of them you could just hardly see, but each and every one of them had their own spot in the sky, their own mark on the world.
He let his hand drop, and you swiftly picked it up.
"You're here," you told him. "You're always here. You changed my life. I can never forget you for that. I had everything taken from me, I thought it was over. But I met you, and I know there will always be new beginnings. You saved me." You gulped and let a few tears slip out. His eyes were hazy, and they fluttered a few times. But you still felt him gazing at you with adoration. "I love you, Paladin Danse."
He smiled through cracked lips. "Love you, too," he barely spoke the words as he squeezed your hand once more. The world was fading out around him as you felt his tense muscles relax. His eyes took on an emotionless state as they looked deep into the night sky. And he was gone.
You sat in silence. Your face buried in his chest, crying in his uniform like the countless times you had before, when you were stupid, and scared, and selfish, and naive, and ignorant of the future. You continued to rub his palm, trying to ward off the cold of death.
The sharp jerk pulled you to your feet, and you realized Maxson was watching you that whole time.
"Let me go!" you cried as he tried to pull you away a second time. You turned to face him, the one who had shot Danse without a second thought, the psychopath who didn't understand what he was to you, the goddamn murderer.
But his face wasn't laced with madness this time. You saw pity. You saw anxiety. You saw sympathy.
"Come on," he told you calmly. "We need to leave. If we stay... you'll stay like this..."
He dragged you through the dirt. You put no effort into going with him or going back. You had to be heaved into the vertibird.
The flight home was silent as you looked into the night sky, thinking of his last message to you.
Thousands of miles away, but still there.