Hearts Are So Cool

The planet was sweltering and humid, thick with trees that twisted this way and that. It reminded Cohl of the rain forests back on Earth, teeming with life, damp with rich soil, and clouded in mist. Yui was not so appreciative. He hadn't stopped bitching since they arrived. "There's no way in hell a frog is worth all this trouble," he huffed, slapping a brush out of his way. The environment was oxygen rich so neither needed helmets, but he was really starting to miss his with how often something smacked him square in the face, or some insect ended up a smear on his cheek. Cohl grinned over his shoulder. "You kidding? It basically sweats weapon grade peyote, there's already a bidding war for it." "After this, we're taking a break from the labor intensive jobs. Can't we just do a few financial crimes? Something more white collar?" Cohl blew a raspberry and cut through a thicket of vines. "Where's the fun in a rug pull?"

Truthfully, Yui wanted a rest more for his captain than himself. They were four months out from Cohl's record long clinical death, and the second in command still felt his heart squeeze whenever they took on these jobs. He felt like a mother hen, always fretting and clucking, but his mind made everything a connection to that terrible evening on the Hawk. He couldn't even lay beside him without imagining his still body being pumped and jostled by the medsystems. For so long he had wanted nothing more than to curl up against him like that, only now he woke gasping, shaken by memories. Every occupational hazard became ten times larger in his mind. Suddenly their life was not one of expected danger- it was a death sentence waiting to happen.

For days now he had been trying to think of ways to broach retirement. Would it be so terrible to stop? To rest? Their exploits had left them with enough credits to find some cozy midrise in a distant system where no one knew them and live comfortably. Part of him knew Cohl wouldn't go for that. He was the model of the swash buckling rogue, not made for grocery runs or afternoons at quaint cafes. Still, he couldn't help dreaming.

So lost in this dream, he didn't notice the loose path until his foot no longer stood on solid ground. He barely got out a harried, "Shit!" before he was rolling into an embankment, dense with moss, lichen, and prickly undergrowth that snagged holes in his suit. He stared up at the canopy, dazed for a moment when his body finally came to an abrupt halt in a bed of pokey plants. Perfect. Great. He dragged a hand down his face with an exhausted groan. Cohl's face poked out over the ridge above. "Fuck, Yui! You okay?" he called down. "Fan-fucking-tastic," he muttered under his breath and jabbed a spiteful thumbs up at his captain. Something blinked red on his wrist comm. He stared up at it. A triangular caution sign flashed, sporting a declaration all in bold block letters.

::WARNING:: MYCELITOXIN PRESENT:: PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION::

"Shit," he breathed, then, belatedly, slapped a hand over his mouth and nose. Too late, too late by far. He already tasted something thick and musty on his tongue. Cohl had begun to slide down towards him but Yui threw up his other hand and shouted, "Wait! Don't move, don't come any closer!" "What, what's wrong? You hurt?" he asked, voice rising in pitch with his surging panic. Yui's head swiveled this way and that. There- a thin cloud of yellowish spores lifted into the air to his left. He'd landed directly on the goddamn thing. He stumbled to his feet and threw himself out of the thicket, chest already heaving. Logic dictated the toxin took longer than a few seconds to fully absorb into his system, but the terrified animal part of his brain screamed that it was the cause of his racing heart. Cohl grabbed his arm before he could stop him and hauled him back up the embankment.

"Hey, hey, easy-" Yui cut him off, "Lockridge, in the- fuck- I inhaled it." He tore off the outer skin of his suit and tossed it back down into the brush, the cloud hanging like summer pollen where he'd disturbed the mushrooms. The back of it was smeared with a honey yellow dust. Enough of the toxic spores to put down a herd of elephants, easily. And he had swallowed God knew how much. He looked back to Cohl with round, terrified eyes. His captain just looked back at him with a puzzled expression. "What... what does that mean?" "Spores, Surat, for fuck's sake. Did you not look into any of the fauna records for this planet? It's a paralytic, that mushroom produces a powerful neuromuscular blocking agent. I-It shuts down everything. Everything." Cohl's fingers had gripped progressively harder and harder around his forearm until the force with which he held him had turned bruising. Blood had drained from the Captain's face by the time he'd trailed off into panting breaths.

”There’s gotta be an antidote-” Yui cut him off with a shake of his head. The muscles in his throat stood out like iron cords as he huffed, “I didn’t think either of us would be stupid enough to land in the middle of a colony!” He shoved a hand through his hair, gripping at the strands hard enough to yank a few loose. “Onset of symptoms is usually around… a-around ten minutes or so. It disrupts the brain’s electrical patterns and cuts off the autonomic nervous system-“ Cohl caught his second by the chin and forced him to meet his gaze. Those dark black eyes practically vibrated with panic. Cohl took a deep, deliberate breath, coaxing Yui to do the same. Then he said, in that calm timbre that promised only happy endings at the end of the adventure, “What would you do to a patient that wasn’t you?”

Not himself. A heart that was not his own, beating so hard out of his chest it made his sternum jump. A brain that was not his most valuable tool. A life that was not his own to lose. Yui took another long, shuddering breath. “There’s no way to get the Hawk down here before the symptoms start. Even if we got her down here, there wouldn’t be a way to synthesize an antidote in time. Lockridge… it hits hard and it hits fast. But it metabolizes fast too. Fauna records indicate it’s usually fatal because the… the animal unlucky enough to come across the plant goes into respiratory and cardiac arrest, and by the time the toxin leaves their system, they’ve been too long without oxygen. They experience brain death and become a soil bed for the mushrooms. So we… you…” He swallowed, throat clicking audibly. “If you can keep my heart beating long enough for the toxin to break down in my bloodstream, then it’ll release the chokehold on my autonomic systems. Spontaneous return of circulation. Minimal brain damage. It’ll be like going under heavy anesthesia for a little while. You’re my ventilator.”

Cohl’s fingers slid into Yui’s hair and over his scalp, bringing both hands up to cup his face between his palms. Terror gripped the very core of his being, but he didn’t let it show. Couldn’t. Not when his doc was staring up at him, pale with fright. This man had done so much for him. Had saved him from death more than once. Yui was the only reason he even stood in the middle of this godforsaken jungle today. “How long?” He asked. Yui’s throat bobbed when he swallowed again. “About fourteen minutes. With decent perfusion I should still get enough oxygen to my brain to avoid too much damage.” Cohl smirked. “It’d be a shame to waste a brain like that,” he said softly, pressing both thumbs to the other man’s temples. Tears gathered in those dark wells and he reached up, covering Cohl’s hands with his own. “You’re an idiot,” he breathed.

The timer ticked down with relentless indifference as they made their preparations. As much as they could with minimal supplies. They put in an order for the Hawk to descend, but it would be easily twenty minutes until it made it out of low orbit and to their location. They had only what was in their packs. Of their belongings Yui gathered a few things; the heating/cooling blanket, the emergency ventilator, a wireless steth, and the stash of syringes. He made sure to pluck the two containing adrenaline from the pack. For once, Cohl was glad of his paranoid insistence on overpacking. They drew the cooling blanket around his shoulders and it hummed with bluish white coils up its length. Eight minutes had passed, and already Yui felt light headed. Sweat broke out across his forehead, even as he shivered with cold. His skin had taken on a pale, waxen look. They found a relatively safe patch of soft soil to lay him down on. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the inevitable.

“The laryngoscope might be a little tricky,” he said without looking over at Cohl. He simply stared up at the canopy while his fingers drummed restlessly against his chest. “It’s less sophisticated than the one in the MedBay, doesn’t have a guidance system. Just try not to knock out any teeth.”

Cohl sat at his side, cross legged with his head propped up in his palm. He smiled faintly. “I think you’d look cute with a missing tooth. Like a hockey player.” “You have weird taste in men.” “I’d love to argue that but I don’t think I legally can. I mean, I’m into you after all.” The corners of Yui’s lips curled, yet the smile didn’t touch his eyes. “And don’t try to shove anything in my mouth when I start seizing,” he went on, “You’re only liable to choke me. Just make sure I don’t hit my head.” “Yui.” “And if the Hawk makes it here in time, there’s a portable defib unit on the inner wall of the airlock. Just in case.” “Yui,” Cohl said once more with a bit more insistence. “And the adrenaline is in an intracardiac needle, so you have to inject it into the fourth inercostal space between the ribs, here-“ He pointed to a spot on his chest, but Cohl covered one of his chilly hands with warm fingers. Finally the second in command met his gaze. Cohl brushed a strand of hair out of his face with such tenderness, Yui nearly burst into tears then and there.

“It’s gonna be okay,” said the Captain in a hushed voice, “I’m gonna take care of you, right? You think I’d let anything happen to you?” Yui turned his hand palm up to slide his fingers into the spaces between Cohl’s. “I… yeah, of course I know you wouldn’t. I just… it’s, y’know, good to be prepared.” “I am. You’re gonna wake up back on the ship, and we’ll be a thousand light years away from this stupid planet. And I’ll never drag you on a hiking mission again.” Yui huffed out of his nose in a bare minimum laugh. Ten minutes. The timer on his wrist comm ran on and on, the milliseconds flying by while the minutes seem to crawl one by one. His heart beat a little harder- he couldn’t decide if it was the anxiety or the toxin anymore. Was the dread pooling in his stomach a precursor to the first symptom, or was he just that afraid? His eyes flicked from the canopy to Cohl and back and forth again. The words spilled out before he could stop them.

“I don’t wanna die, Surat.”

Cohl blinked, then his brow furrowed. “Haruki-“ “I wanna retire,” he blurted out, because he couldn’t stop now, not if this was the last time they might speak, “I wanna go somewhere no one knows our names and live in some shoebox apartment with a view. I wanna wake up every morning beside you and not worry if it’s the last time I’ll see you. I want- I w-want to live an actual life with you, not some adventure serial but a life-“ His breath came shorter and shorter until he was near panting. Without warning Cohl grabbed the front of his suit and hauled him up. His next words died as he was suddenly held against his captain’s chest, his legs, numb, he realized with increasing dismay, folded on either side of Cohl’s lap. A strong hand cupped the back of his head, cradling it against the other man’s shoulder so his face was buried against his neck. He had a good neck, Surat Cohl. Strongly corded with muscle and soft with brown downy hairs. Yui instinctively burrowed his face against that warm neck, feeling the heat of tears on his face before he even noticed he’d begun crying. The cooling blanket puddled around his waist as he drew his arms up around Cohl’s body.

”Come back after all this,” the Captain murmured against the shell of his ear, “And I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be whatever you want. Even if it’s just some moisture farmer on a podunk planet.” Yui’s arms tightened. “Do you really mean that?” He rasped, unbelieving something so good might befall him for once. “I do.” Cohl’s fingers tightened against the other man’s back as he said, quieter, “I don’t want to keep putting you in these positions. I can’t do this to you anymore, Haruki. I’ve nearly lost you one too many times. And despite… well, I may be an idiot, but I do learn my lesson. Eventually.”

Yui buried his nose against the sweat dampening his captain’s throat. Something like a cloud was descending, darkening his brain. The first symptoms, the really bad ones, were due to start any second. He’d be completely dependent on this man, down to the beat of his heart. It was as romantic and thrilling as it was utterly terrifying. His breaths came quicker. His fingertips ached where he dug them into Cohl’s back.

“Don’t let me go,” he begged quietly, even as it pained him to sound so pathetic and useless. He was a man in control of himself, it was for want of control he went to (and flunked out of) med school in the first place. He detested this feeling of being at the whim of a capricious universe. He loathed that he wouldn’t even be in control of his own breathing soon. Cohl just held him tighter. “I won’t, I swear It. I’ll fight for you as hard as you fought for me.” That would be a tall order. Only a few months ago, he had been laying beside him on what should have been a death bed, feeling a mechanical rhythm beaten into his corpse. But he was warm now. And soft. And even when his words stopped making sense, even when Yui’s dark eyes grew glassy and rolled halfway under his lids, he felt the closest thing he could to safety in those arms.

When the first tremor ran through his second in command, Cohl tightened his arms around him. “I’ve got you,” he murmured against his cheek as muscles began to clench and unclench through Yui’s body. His core and back strained, bowed, bucking harshly in and out as he lay crumpled in Cohl’s embrace. His arms stiffened at his sides, wrists bending at awkward angles while his shoulders began to jerk. Cohl slid a hand between their pressed cheeks, so when his head began to thrash to the side, he didn’t end up knocking them both unconscious. He instinctively rocked their bodies back and forth as Yui began to seize in earnest- he practically fought the warm arms around him, thrashing nearly out of his grip. Tendons bulged in his neck, corded in his arms, stood out in his shoulders. His body bowed forwards over Cohl and then snapped back the other way. His legs moved restlessly, making tracks in the dirt where his boots scraped back and forth.

“You’re okay, you’re gonna be fine,” Cohl murmured, more for himself than the spasming body in his arms. Yui’s brain was misfiring too badly for words to get through. But he hoped, somehow, that he understood Cohl’s presence if nothing else. There had to be some part of him that knew he was there, holding him. He swept damp hair from his sweaty forehead and kissed him there, the ridge of his brow, his temple. He could feel a pulse pounding there, his heart punching against his ribs hard enough Cohl felt it through the other man's entire body. His throat worked, bobbing soundlessly against his shoulder until it seemed to uncork and a guttural snorting sound replaced the silence. His jaw spasmed open with each weak attempt for air, his brain scrambling for the familiar comfort of his autonomous systems. Lungs, air. Heart, contract. His cheek rubbed back and forth over Cohl's clavicle, muscles spasming in his throat.

Wet rasps rattled out of Yui's mouth, hanging open with each short circuited attempt at air. His tongue pressed against his bottom teeth, partially obstructing his airway whenever he took a breath, worsening the sounds of his struggle. Cohl wanted to just grab the damn thing and pull it forward, out of his way, but knew he'd just end up with teeth reflexively baring down on his thumb for the trouble. Instead he slapped his second between the shoulder blades, shifting his position in his lap to try and open his airway. His head lolled back without resistance, cupped in the palm of one hand. "Take a breath, doc," he growled between gritted teeth, "A real one, not this gasping shit." His only response was a strangled grunt.

Since he was straddling his lap, Cohl felt the moment his bladder loosed warm urine down the inner seam of his suit and across his thighs. He stroked the smaller man’s cheek with a thumb. “I gotcha, doc. You're alright," he assured him in a tremulous voice. Color had drained from Yui's face, the exposed whites of his eyes making the pallor all the more alarming. A faint blue crept around the edge of his mouth. His throat worked, his chest heaved, but no breath would get in. Cohl eased him to the dirt, a hand on his forehead to still his head. His other slapped his sternum with an open palm. A hollow thud echoed in the quiet jungle, forcing another choked gag out and little else. He wasn't getting air. Cohl swiftly pinched his nose shut and crashed their mouths together. Resistance stopped his breaths short. They puffed out Yui's cheeks and stalled halfway down as his airway spasmed with those awful gurgling noises.

His eyes cut over to the laryngoscope amid the neatly set array of tools. He had only performed intubation on a few dummies at Yui's behest. The tool was advanced enough it could do part of the work for him. Not all of it. There was still every chance he could hurt him, and he had no idea if you even were supposed to intubate patients in active seizure. The dusting of blue around Yui's lips and flexing tongue were cause enough for him to try. However long this stage lasted, he couldn't ride it out without oxygen getting to his brain. Cohl moved to cradle his head in his lap, hooked his fingertips under the hard edge of his second's jaw, and drew his mouth down.

His shoulders still shook this way and that, arms curled against his chest, his abdomen tensed almost painfully. His airway was tight. The blade eased down his trachea, but Cohl's grip was iron just to draw it open enough for the tube. His hand shook from the effort of keeping it open long enough to actually intubate. There was a moment of panic when he stared down at the mess of pink flesh and couldn't see the larynx. Sweat broke out over his entire body- he scrambled to make sense of what he'd been taught. Pressure, pressure, you were supposed to apply pressure if you couldn't see the larynx then an assistant- fuck, he was alone for all of this. Against every protocol in the book, he took the handle of the blade between his teeth and pinched the narrow strip of cartilage Yui had told him about and the larynx opened in a dark chasm at the bottom of his line of sight. All the while Yui rasped and grunted and choked on the blade. Every part of him wanted to just tear the damn thing out of his throat and apologize for the pain he was causing. No going back now. He pushed the endotracheal the last few inches, inflated the cuff, and took the blade back up with trembling fingers. Belatedly he thanked his lucky stars he wouldn't have to do rescue breaths. His own came far too shallow and rapid to offer even himself enough oxygen.

He stuck the wireless steth ear piece in one ear and pressed the diaphragm against Yui's chest. It stuck fast wherever he put it, leaving his hands free. It was the first time hearing his heart slamming against his ribcage during this strenuous seizure. The poor thing galloped, racing hard enough it visibly jumped against the tight fit of his space suit. Cohl unzipped down to his navel and nestled the bell closer to his sweaty skin as he gave a few tenuous breaths with the bag. Air whooshed into his lungs. Good placement, at least, he thought it sounded good. By the time he was done Yui's muscles had finally started to slacken as the seizure ebbed. His dark lashes fluttered, his eyes easing back down from the depths of his skull, the movements slowly easing from thrashing to small jerks. The relief was short lived. With the relaxation of his muscles there also came the slowing down of his pulse. What once throbbed in a terribly fast rhythm began to wind down like an old clock. The drop was a slow slide into cardiac arrest, and Cohl knew it. There was nothing to do but wait for that rhythm pounding in his ears to stop. Wait for the next battle he'd have to fight to keep Yui at his side.

He wiped sweat and spit from his mouth with the back of his sleeve, one hand constantly pumping Yui's lungs. The little display on the stethoscope's bell glowed with 170 bpm. The numbers rolled down to 150. Then 120. Then 90. His second in command stared up with eyes already gone glassy and empty. Cohl cupped his cheek. "It's okay," he whispered as the display read a rapidly descending heart rate. It reflected in the stethoscope's output too- the too-quick stride gradually moved slower and slower, the chambers of his heart struggling more and more to squeeze out blood. Thumpthumpththump thump thump thump thump thump th thump.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Thump.

Th...

The final pathetic half beat left his body in silence. For a brief moment, Cohl could only stare down at him. Everything seemed to stop for a second that stretched into eternity. He'd actually heard it. He'd heard the last beat of his heart. The way his lungs emptied in a long sigh that fogged up the endotracheal tube. Yui stared back up at him, a hollow shell. A body. All the lights had gone out.

It was the glaring red 0 on the steth's display that brought him back around. It only stayed like this if Cohl let it. Pushing two full pumps of air into rapidly starving lungs, he balled up a fist and brought it down hard against Yui's sternum. It bounced with a percussive thud, a sound that nearly deafened him as it echoed in his ear piece. As loud as it was outside his body, it was worse inside, bouncing off the walls of his chest cavity. The shock forced out a few weak attempts from his heart, like he'd slapped it awake, before it went still. He struck him again. Nothing that time. The paralytic was doing its job and ceased any and all movement in his body. Cohl rose up on his knees, hovering over the top of the other man’s head, planted the heel of one palm in the middle of the still, sunken chest, right between his nipples, and drove down with all his weight. Yui’s stomach rippled, straining against the seam of his suit’s zipper. He was a fairly slim man, smaller than Cohl by a good deal. Waves rolled through his body with each downward thrust. His head bobbed, pulling at the intubation tube Cohl still held with his free hand. One of his arms stretched out to the side, carving a line in the dirt where his hand rocked back and forth. His other lay against belly, following the motion as it swelled and collapsed back again.

”Unk knk hn khn…” Huffs of air drove out of his lungs and rasped around the tube in his trachea in time with compressions. “I know, baby,” Cohl whispered to the aching silence and stillness that seemed to form a bubble around them in this forgotten jungle, “I’m sure it hurts like hell. I’m sorry. Just a few minutes, alright? You’ll be back in a few minutes.” His gaze flicked to the timer. Two minutes had passed since he had a heartbeat. He had to keep this up for fourteen minutes, maybe more. Time had never moved so slowly. Already his shoulder strained. One handed compressions weren’t going to cut it the whole time. He reached the end of the cycle, short of breath, and squeezed two breaths in. Yui’s chest rose, hovered for a moment as Cohl held the bag briefly, then sunk back down with a slow rattle partially muffled by plastic. The captain shifted positions to kneel beside him. “You’re gonna be okay,” he told him, and wasted precious moments to briefly run a hand over those hollow eyes, forcing the lids down. He couldn’t stand to look into them anymore. It all felt too real staring into that dead gaze.

He stacked his hands, squared his shoulders, and once more dove into compressions. Without him holding it steady, Yui’s head lolled to the side. Something gave way inside his chest with an audible pop. Bile rose in Cohl’s throat. He wanted to scream. He wanted to beg. He wanted to slap the little idiot around for putting him through this. There was no point. He had to focus, he had to be the unshakable piston, the unfeeling, unthinking, unloving process of a heartbeat and lungs. A heart didn’t beat for any reason other than because it had to. Fourteen minutes until the Lockridge was out of his system and his body remembered it had a job to do. And that beautiful brain, those dark and deep eyes, that heart too big for the world of outlaws and thieves- all of it would come back.

“You have to come back,” Cohl breathed out, each word punctuated by another shove. With his head straining to the side, the pulse his compressions forced into Yui’s silent body visibly throbbed in the column of his throat. His skin was cool, but not distressingly so. There was even still color in his cheeks, even if it was a few shades lighter than it should be. If he just didn’t look at the dark stain down the inner seam of his suit, he just looked sick, not dead. That was something. Something to hold onto.

Six minutes passed. Eight since the seizure had stopped. A lifetime since Yui had curled up beside him in the darkness of the Hawk’s sleeping quarters, lips tracing the line of his jaw and shoulder. Cohl slammed his hands into his sternum. “…Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Almost there, doc, just a bit longer.” He took the oxygen bag between both hands and squeezed until his fingertips met. Yui’s chest rose. Fell. The breaths made a quiet kuhh, koo, kuhh, koo, as it went in and out of his lungs. The grief Cohl had smothered and stuffed into some deep corner of his mind slipped its bonds then. His breath came short, a sob bubbling out of him before he could stop it. Rationality screamed at him that this wasn’t the time to break down, not when every cycle brought Yui closer to returning. Love, ever the irrational emotion, broke his resolve, even if only momentarily. He doubled over Yui’s body, forehead pressed to his clavicle. While the rest of him had cooled considerably, it was warm there from the heat of Cohl’s hands, colored a motley tapestry of blues and purples in the vague shape of his hands. The steel’s display read a complete flatline. Knowing it was accurate, knowing it was a waste of time, Cohl turned to pressed his cheek hard against the apex where Yui’s heart should have beat up against his ribs. Silence. A well-tuned machine at a complete standstill.

“Don’t stay dead,” Cohl groaned, tears spilling down his cheeks and soaking into his second’s chest hair. “I’ll be whatever you want. I’ll be some no-name pacifist. I’ll be a salaryman. I’ll be anything you want me to be if you’ll just wake up. Huh? Wake up, Haruki.” His body shuddered as he dragged in a breath. He kissed the ridge of his clavicle, then his cheek, the inner curve of his nose, the lashes of his left eye. “Please… please, just fucking wake up!” He pushed himself up, hands on Yui’s shoulders, and shook the man to no avail. His head hung limp, the intubation tube hanging from between his slack teeth as Cohl drew him up and slammed his down. “Wake up!” He bludgeoned Yui’s sternum with the bottom of a fist- once, twice, a third time. The next round of compressions were accompanied by staccato sobs as he thudded his palms into the center of Yui’s chest.

Another four minutes. The timer ran faster and faster, but time never seemed to move forward. It felt like he would be here forever, forcing a heart to beat that was incapable of beating on its own. He would have, too. He would have stayed like this forever if that was what it took. It didn’t matter that his lungs burned with exhaustion, or that he could barely feel his arms anymore. He might have collapsed were it not for the gathering signs the Lockridge was wearing off. Yui’s skin had begun to flush, his oxygen starved tissue better soaking in the blood Cohl forced through his body. Agonal gasps had started to fight the intubation. Occasionally his mouth spasmed against the tubing as a choked noise left his throat. A terrible sound, but one that meant his brain was still trying to breathe. The seconds wasted to lift his eyelid were not in vain- his pupils shrunk when the light hit them. Still in there. Two more minutes.

Cohl’s adrenaline had started to dip, but it came roaring back into his veins with a vengeance. His hands thudded harder against the bruised and broken chest of his second in command, pumping more than he thought was even possible after this long. “Almost there,” he panted, his whole body involved now. It felt like every muscle responded. He sat straddling Yui’s hips, each lash against his sternum reverberating down to his toes. A mad peal of laughter overtook him. “I know you’re in there, I can feel you in there. C’mon, Yui. C’mon!”

His blood rushed so loudly in his head, he didn’t hear the shift in the jungle around him. He wasn’t aware of the mechanical hum that disrupted the quiet dance of nature until it was too late.

At the end of another cycle, as he reached up to force air into his body, pain erupted from a point in his back. Cohl’s vision whited out for a second as his muscles locked up under a sudden lightning strike square in the spine. His teeth clenched hard enough to ache, fingers curling in a claw midway to the oxygen bag, his spine curving back as every nerve ending sang with agony. He didn’t see the world shift, didn’t feel himself fall, until his sight came back in a new perspective. He was crumpled on his side in the dirt, drool hanging in a wet string from the corner of his mouth. His whole body buzzed with the aftershock. Having spent the last twelve minutes in the rhythm of Yui’s heartbeat, it felt like he was still in motion. His brain rushed to catch up.

Polished black boots filed past his narrowed line of sight. A figure crouched beside Yui’s head- “No!” Cohl screamed, “No, no! Don’t touch him! I-I almost had him back, just hold on-“ When he tried to surge forward, another shot of electricity stopped him dead. He cried out, writhing involuntarily, veins standing out with strain, until the shock stopped and he abruptly went still again. His eyes rolled in their sockets up towards the figure.

An older man with slicked silver hair, clad in the black and red military garb of the Peace Force. They were anything but peaceful. Especially when it came to outlaws like the two of them. The officer pulled off his cap and dangled it casually from his fingers as he surveyed the downed man. “Haruki Yui, I presume. Looks like our work is already halfway finished.” Cohl squirmed with nerveless limbs, clawing closer to the officer. “Please,” he choked out, “Just… just a couple more minutes… He was coming back-“ “Looks pretty dead to me.” Cohl’s stomach turned over inside him as the officer curled his fingers around the endotracheal tube, that delicate thread he had worked so hard- he tore it free from his throat in a single tug. Mucus hung from the end, splattered against Yui’s cheek, and he casually tossed it aside. Then he stood, forcing Yui’s head to face Cohl with the tip of his boot against his temple, holding him there as blood trickled from between his lips.

“Stop it, leave him alone!” Cohl bellowed, squirming against binds he hadn’t even felt locking his arms behind him, “Yui! Yui! He was coming back, goddamnit I almost had him back!” The officer’s only reply was to apply more weight against his skull. Cohl’s stopped fighting in an instant and whimpered, “Just let me keep going, please! Just a little while longer!”

”Bounty says dead or alive. Less of a hassle if one’s already dead.”