[ from this post ]69. “Why the hell are you bleeding?!”His blood is like a parenthesis,

[ from this post]

69. “Why the hell are you bleeding?!”

His blood is like a parenthesis, an abrupt punctuation interjected in the midst of a runaway thought, because once Satya sees it slick and red down his ribs, all coherent contemplation slams to a halt.

A part of her briefly considers voicing the question enclosed within dripping parentheticals, why are you bleeding, but there are more pertinent words to be said.

“On your back. Now. Quickly. Good. Stay still.”

The thick shot of epinephrine spurs her hammering pulse and injects a tremor in her hands, but she forms her mudras with desperate precision and encases him in a shroud of hexagonal light: damage control.

“I’m fine. Stop your—your worrying.” Junkrat grins up at her from the hot pavement. It’s forced, strained; his countenance is tight with agony. “S’only a scratch.”

“It is far more than a scratch,” she says. Her voice is too rigid; a razor’s edge.

“Right, yeah, but it’s—” He pauses, grits his teeth, breathes, wheezing, “—but it’s not a leg. Or—or an arm.”

Satya bites at the inside of her cheek. She does not want to look at his injury (too wrong, too red, an apostrophe, an exclamation point, an indefinite rerouting pause), but she must because despite Doctor Ziegler’s miraculous nanotechnology, she will still need to anticipate treatment.

She signals distress on her commlink. Help should come soon.

“It may be a lung,” she says.

“You already leave me breathless,” he manages. “Now it’s—it’s just terminal.”

“Be silent. That is the pain talking. You are delirious.”

Setting her jaw, Satya weaves another web of light and presses it into his chest, using as much force as she possibly can. She must do something to staunch the wound because the first shield isn’t working; sanguine still wells up beneath; damage control, damage control.

Junkrat makes a harsh hissing sound between clenched teeth. His body tenses under her touch, and he half coils up beneath her as if a new position might help him navigate the anguish.

“I apologize, but this requires pressure. You must—”

“M’not delirious,” he argues, gasping, “I’m—”

“What did you not understand about be silent?”

In spite of the apparent pain, he attempts a simper. “Everything?”

“Must I put a shield over your mouth as well?” She leans her weight into her hands and presses harder against his chest because she isn’t sure this is working; she isn’t a trained professional, she doesn’t have experience in this; all she has is hard-light and that must be enough, it has to be. “You will only make it worse if you continue to talk. Captain Amari or Doctor Ziegler will be here soon, and I would prefer you alive for their arrival.”

She averts her gaze from his injury and tries to study his face. Sharp, angled lineaments, half-shuttered eyes, smudged soot, wildfire hair, a flash of gold when he sucks in a ragged, heaving inhale like he’s—

… breathless.

Satya’s pulse skips. A tight knot already exists at the back of her throat, but it wrings tighter still.

Breathless. He said she made him breathless—

She digs her hands against his ribs and channels her strength there because she cannot believe that after all these months of light-hearted banter and cordial cooperation he’s decided to do this now. Just—why now? He can barely talk, no less hold a proper conversation; he’s an absolute disaster, the bloody madman, how dare he say something like that right now—

“If you got yourself injured just to make that joke,” she says, casting him a stern glance, “I am going to be very cross with you.”

He tries to laugh, but it sounds—wrong. Wheezy. “Didn’t,” he rasps. “Cross me heart.”

In the distance, Satya recognizes the familiar sounds of her teammates. The chatter in her visor’s commlink signals their approach. Relief nearly drowns her, a palpable riptide crashing down around her shoulders, but she keeps her hands flat and her focus sharp.

“Be silent,” she says, allowing herself a tired grin, “or you truly will be breathless.”

Junkrat grimaces under the pressure, but he still cracks a crooked smile.