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sun-snatcher · 3 months

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🌾 ・ OF CLARION CALLS

summ. The rebellion runs into trouble, & Jet takes the brunt of it. In the aftermath, you fight to keep him alive. pairing. Jet x f!medic!reader w.count. 1.5k a/n. So little Jet fics/imagines around so i had to take matters into my own hands. Enjoy!

The moonlight casts a halo above your head, and for a brief moment, Jet thinks you’re a divine spirit, perhaps a goddess— or whatever it is his mother used to read to him before bed.

( In some ways, you are. )

…Jet, he hears, distant. He can’t pinpoint exactly where— every sound is either muffled or echoing, and the world keeps tipping in and out of a blur. All he can sense through the haze is the belt of dull pain creeping up his chest, and the cotton-numbness engulfing his head. Right. He’d been shot clean through his armor plate by a wayward arrow after he’d jumped infront of Sneers to protect him. He remembers now, vaguely. It had been an ambush on their way home.

...et, stay with me.

Jet.

“Jet!”

The world focuses. He inhales, sharp, and the pain blinds him white as he gasps.

“Easy there, handsome,” you joke (not really), holding his twitching body down and trying to meet his dazed look. The blood is thick enough to taste, and one look is enough to tell he’s walking a tightrope between life or death. He's growing colder, and losing colour by the minute. You make quick work to staunch the gaping wound in his chest, hope he can’t detect the shakiness in your hands, or the tears gathering in your eyes. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“Will he?” comes a voice behind the two medics crowding him. It’s Smellerbee, standing at the step of the medical tent; her voice sounds uncharacteristically frightened, and it sends a pang through your heart. I’m fine, Jet instinctively wants to insist, but you answer for him instead. “Yes. He will." ( And, well, surely such a small deception would not count against you, not when it was meant to give the others some measure of peace. )

Jet blinks, finally orienting himself enough to look at you and not through you— and blinks again. You’re lying. He could feel it. He could always tell, whenever it comes to you.

…Stay, he thinks, suddenly and senselessly, and clasps his bloodied hand around your wrist. He calls your name, voice straining in pain. But he must’ve said it aloud instead, because you’d smiled at him as gently as you could— even when it looked as if the effort of doing so would wound you— and said, calmly, convincingly: I promise, I’m not going anywhere.

“With me?” he asks, again, even when he knows he must’ve sounded like a madman. Perhaps it’s the bloodloss. Likely, it was. It wouldn’t be such a bad end, though, so long as you stood by his side. He wants to tell you this— been wanting to for a long time, now— but the strength has left him, leaving him floating somewhere between the world of waking and dreaming.

“With you,” comes your reply.

You catch the ghost of his trademark smile just before he slips away.

Jet survives.

That’s the first surprise.

The second is that; you’re here. Just as you’d promised.

He must have been out for longer than he thinks, because the atmosphere in the medical tent seemed to have ebbed to something much more conducive than last he remembers. The tinctures of alcohol and sedatives surrounding him and his bloody bandages that night are now replaced with dry ingredients; yarrow half-crushed in a mortar and pestle, mixed herbs and colourful liquids corked in tiny bottles and tins he couldn’t begin to name. His armour had been stripped from him, lying above a chest by the corner.

Ever the leader; “Sneers,” is the first word out his mouth, once he’d stirred awake on his cot and recognition returned slowly to him. It’s early sometime in the morning, judging by the colour of the sky outside the tattered tent flaps and the still quietness in the air. Beside him, an incense of sandalwood burns. “Sneers—”

“Is alive, thanks to you,” you override. The faint bitterness in your voice is not lost on him.

Somehow, someway, seeing him conscious now seemed to make you bristle. You think— no, you know— that it’s unfair of you; that it’s simply the pent-up frustrations and stress overflowing from the night he’d been hauled back to camp with one foot in the grave. But Longshot’s harrowing clarion call for a medic from the trees still rings clear as a bell in your head, just as much as the cold shock that had seized you the moment you realised the birdcall was for Jet.

“Good.”

“Not good,” you correct, “Not when you of all people pay the price.”

( Jet doesn’t delude himself into thinking that there could possibly be another meaning to what you said. It would be impossible. ) “You would’ve done the same,” he bites back, and takes your silence as quiet agreement.

“You’re upset,” Jet points out, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”

A sigh. “You just woke up,” you dismiss, if only to get him off your scent. “We can talk another day.”

“We’re already here, so let’s settle it now. The mission went well, and as far as I can see, I’m the only one in here, which means nobody else got hurt on the way back but me. Atleast, not as badly.”

It’s a debrief, you recognise. A coping mechanism for him— to spur himself into action and settle himself. Given the stress and trauma his body has been enduring the past days, you let it pass.

It’s only when you shift out from your seat by his cot, standing to begin putting away the bowls of medicine prepared, that Jet realises your fingers had been holding his wrist before. You must have stayed up for, what he can only imagine to be long nights, to keep track on whether his pulse was still beating. ( Something inside his chest burns. He can’t tell if it’s your doing or the injury being fussy. )

“I’m sorry,” he huffs, sighing out. “If that’s what you wanna hear.”

“For what?” You set the mortar down on your table with more force than necessary, and looked at him sharply from over your shoulder. Jet, damn him, still looks at you straight in the eyes, confident as ever. You want to kiss him. You want to break his nose. “For being a hero?”

“No.”

“Playing martyr?”

“No.”

“For saving Sneers? Everyone?”

“No—”

“Then what?”

“For scaring you,” he says, simply.

Your heart starts.

A frisson runs through you, and you feel the back of your eyes begin to burn.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” he emphasises, and doesn’t say, I’m sorry I made you cry, because your prideful self would have denied it instantly, even if he remembers it clear as day. “I’m sorry I put you through that.”

He yanks at a loose thread on the blanket you’d laid on him a night ago. It must have been terrifying to see him be dragged to the table, half-dead with a broken arrow in his chest, and leave a mess of blood and horror in his wake. It must have been terrifying, indeed, to be the one responsible for him against Death itself— to carry the weight of his life on your shoulders, while the rest of the Freedom Fighters watched on.

“It’s, it’s my job,” you turn away to close a drawer of medical instruments, because you’re not quite sure you can stand meeting his gaze. Not when it only reminds you of just how much he lived, breathed and bleeds chaos and revolution; not when you know this accident definitely won’t be the last.

You can’t handle him. Or maybe it’s yourself you can’t handle, when it comes to him. “Just, be careful.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he salutes mockingly, albeit with a wince. The flinch is what kicks you back into action.

“You’re staying in bed until you’re better,” you order, curt, ignoring his groan. His wrapped shoulder still seems painfully defiant despite all the numbing you’d given him; it would be a couple of weeks longer before he’d be fully healed, but knowing Jet— he’ll be up performing duties within a week. “That means no strain at all. No scouting or recon or hunting, got it?”

He lulls his head, but there’s a dash of humour on his face. “Since I’m bedridden, does that mean you’re at my every beck and call, then?”

Your face twists. He lets out a laugh when you answer, "In your dreams, Jet."

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

You roll your eyes, though without heat, and place a bowl of fresh water by his side. There is, at the very least, a smile on your face, and Jet’s sure he can sleep well tonight knowing you both are, at the end of the day, okay.

“Hey,” he calls your name, once you've begun making your way out the tent. You try to ignore how much more sweeter it sounds coming from him. “I really am sorry. I’m serious.”

He had caught your sleeve when he spoke, so your fingers now brush against his. You try not to focus on the touch too much. “So am I.”

“We can’t lose you, Jet,” you continue, unsteady; because saying I can’t lose you would have been unthinkable.

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