Dax didn't move.
He didn't let go.
Killian was dead in his arms, the weight of him settling wrong, the tension leaving his muscles like a cord cut, the last heat draining out through the open ruin of his abdomen.
Blood kept coming even after the heart stopped, sliding out in thick, warm sheets that cooled by degrees and turned sticky against Dax's gloves. It pooled under Killian's hips and lower back, saturating the grass until the spring green went black and glossy. The smell of it hung heavy - metallic, wet, and intimate - too real for a garden that had been full of a ball and a dog less than a minute ago.
Half of his abdomen was missing.
There was no world where a person came back from that.
Dax knew it.
His hands refused to accept it anyway.
The medic had gone still, fingers pressed to a wound that no longer pulsed. Their face tightened, pale with the helplessness that professionals learned to hide but could never fully conceal.
