Page 143 of Falcon’s Forever

"Cara…"

"I'm coming, Zip." My voice doesn't shake this time. It's gone somewhere past shaking, into a place that's just certainty. "Tell him I'm coming."

Maggie's already got her keys. Sarah's pulling on her coat without being asked. Ice Pick appears in the doorway; his face carved from something that doesn't have room for softness right now.

"I'll drive," he says. "Fast."

We're in the car within ninety seconds, and the whole ride there I hold onto one sentence like it's the only rope left between me and the ground. He's talking. He's cursing Zip out. Hold onto that.

I do. I hold onto it the entire way, because it's the only thing standing between me and the five years I already survived once, and I am not doing that again. Not without him. Not ever again.

Chapter 19

Falcon

The first thing that comes back is sound, not my sight, the voices are too fast and too far away, metal is clattering, and someone is counting something out loud in a rhythm that doesn't mean anything to me yet.

Then the pain hits me, it’s low and enormous, it’s too big to actually hurt the way pain is supposed to hurt. Then I hear Knox's voice, it’s closer than the rest, and clipped and steady like he gets when steady is the only thing standing between a man and dying on him.

"Stay with me. You hear me? Eyes on me." Knox is talking to me.

I don't remember answering. I remember the ceiling of the ambulance moving wrong, too bright, too close, and Zip's face somewhere at the edge of it, and then nothing at all for a while, there’s no before or after, just darkness.

When I come back the second time it's quieter, and the light's different, softer, and my body's a long way off from me, like it belongs to somebody I used to know. I can hear the machines. There’s a steady beep that I decide, in whatever's left of my head, is a good sign, since dead men probably don't come with sound effects.

I try to move and every part of me that isn't numb screams loud enough to answer that question. Not dead. Just wishing, for one very long second, that I had a good excuse to be.

Then I hear her.

Not her words at first, just the recognition of her voice, low, and hoarse in a way I've never heard before, not even in the worst of it. It takes effort I don't have to open my eyes, so I don't. I just listen and let her voice pull me the rest of the way up and out of wherever I've been.

"…so if you can hear me, and I think you can, because Knox said you might, I need you to know I'm furious with you. Absolutely furious. You threw yourself in front of a bullet meant for somebody else, which is exactly the thing I told you, more than once, that I couldn't live with, and you did it anyway, and I've spent the last three hours in a waiting room deciding whether that makes you the bravest man I've ever known or the stupidest, and I still don't have an answer, and I hate that I don't."

Her hand's wrapped around mine. I hadn't noticed until she says my name and it tightens.

"Falcon."

I get my eyes open.

She's right there, close enough that I can see every hour of the last few hours on her face, her eyes are red-rimmed, exhausted, her makeup is long gone, her hair coming loose from wherever she'd pinned it. She's never looked less put together and I don't think I've ever loved her more than I do in this exact second, which is a stupid thing to think with a hole in my side, but it's the truth and I'm too tired to dress it up as anything else.

"Hey," I manage. It comes out wrecked.

Her breath catches, and for a second I think she's going to be angry, actually angry, the way she has every right to be. Instead, her face just breaks open, and she puts her forehead down against our joined hands and I feel her shoulders shake once, hard, silent.

"You scared me," she says into my knuckles. "You scared me so badly."

"I know, I scared myself."

"Zip called me and said you’d been hit and I dropped a mug on the kitchen floor and I don't even remember doing it. I just remember the sound, and the whole way here I kept thinking about five years, about how I already know what losing you feels like, I lived it, I know exactly what it feels like, and I thought I was about to feel it again, for real this time, permanently, and I couldn't…"

"Cara."

"I'm not finished." That shuts me up.

"Okay." I'd give her anything right now. I'd give her the moon if Knox would let me sit up long enough to reach for it.

She lifts her head. Her eyes are wet and furious and something else underneath both of those. It’s something that looks like the thing I've been waiting weeks to see and was starting to believe I'd talked myself out of ever getting back.