It’s a long moment before Aiden and I can bring ourselves to let each other go, but eventually we get to our feet and walk over to check on the soul we saved.

Luca is right. Justin Hayes is a very, very lucky man, and not only because Fate itself reached out to rearrange the threads of his life, to weave them into something more long-lasting, something warmer, more forgiving.

It turns out that the blood in Justin’s blonde hair didn't come from a head wound. While he was unconscious, his head was resting against his shoulder, the real source. There’s a deep gash there that Luca is in the process of carefully bandaging up. Roger has taken off his jacket and is using it to shield Luca from the rain while he works.

Luca tells us that Justin's persistent unconsciousness - which has already taken hold of him again - is a product of blood loss, exhaustion, and probably knocking his head during his fall down the slope.

"He's going to need some scans at the hospital, but at worst, he's concussed," Luca explains, shouting over the rain and wind. "I think he's gonna be okay. The fact that he opened his eyes and understood Roger’s questions is a very good sign!"

“His mouth is bleeding,” I shout back, pointing to the red streaks running the length of Justin's lip to his chin.

Luca must have already taken a look at that, because he yells in answer: “He cracked a tooth, and also bit the inside of his cheek!”

Small prices to pay, in light of what might have happened. And the blood loss - while making Justin very pale and very unconscious - isn't going to be fatal. If it was, Aiden’s eyes would still be glowing.

Again, Luca is right. Justin is going to be just fine.

As soon as the relief of this news hits me, the adrenaline I'd been running on begins rapidly wearing off. Suddenly I’m tired, so tired. I just want to lay down on the forest floor, close my eyes, and sleep for days.

But I have to stay on my feet and keep going. I’m afraid that if I stop now, I’ll sink so deeply into my exhaustion that I can’t get back out again. I know that if I sit down, I’m not getting back up for a good long time, and that's not an option.

Justin needs to get to a hospital. The brutal, merciless storm is still raging around us. No one can come help us. We have no choice but to make our way back down the mountain. I can see the same realization dawning on Luca’s face, and on Roger’s.

The expression on Aiden’s face is - complicated.

He’s stopped crying, but his eyes are still wet. His fist is wound tightly around a handful of my flannel. I don't think he even heard anything that Luca said. He's just looking at me, seemingly unaware of everything else.

“We have to keep moving,” I tell him, shouting over the roar of the rain.

Aiden blinks, then drags the sleeve of his jacket under his nose. He closes his eyes for a second, pulling himself together. Then he takes a long breath, lets go of my flannel, and reaches down for Justin. He lifts his unconscious body from the soaked forest floor, ready to carry him again.

Luca bends down to scoop up his EMT bag, Roger to retrieve his backpack. I reach for the backpack that Roger gave Aiden to carry up here. The zipper is slightly open, and inside I can see the corner of a neatly folded blanket.

I hold up the bag and quickly show this to Aiden, then cast my eyes up at the rain, like - is it even worth it?

Aiden’s free hand reaches for mine. He opens the connection just long enough to perform a little controlled magic.

It unfurls from nothing, directly over our heads. A smaller-scale version of the golden shield he made before. Gently curved, glowing softly. Aiden’s eyes are closed, but he must feel where it is, because he reaches out a hand and uses it to guide the heat barrier down until it’s sheltering us from the sideways rain.

Then he opens his glowing eyes, drops my fingers, and extends his hand to me, waiting for the blanket.

I wordlessly hand it over, and Aiden tucks it around Justin’s unmoving body.

“Are we ready?” he asks, his deep, rumbling voice cutting through the rain.

Roger and Luca are staring at the heat shield in slack-jawed, wide-eyed silence, their mouths slightly open. Droplets of rain are escaping around it and smacking against their faces, but neither of them so much as blink.

“Are you seeing this shit, Luc?” Roger mumbles, in a thin, scraping voice.

Luca shakes his head, staring with astonished eyes, his EMT bag slipping off of his shoulder. “I - I think so?”

“Hey.” Aiden snaps his fingers at them, then nods at Justin. “This guy needs a hospital, right?”

Roger and Luca reluctantly tear their gazes away, get their bags settled again. I pull Aiden’s backpack onto my uninjured shoulder, then reach for his free hand.

Our fingers meet halfway between us, and lock together.

Aiden makes sure that Justin stands no chance of slipping, then looks down at me. He takes another deep breath, and starts to walk. Leading the way, the soul he saved secure in his arms.

His fingers are still trembling, and I can tell that he's by no means recovered from what just happened. But he goes forward, forging through the storm.

Fiery, unyielding determination radiates from him. I can feel it. He wants to get us all home, to see us all safe, to see Justin delivered into hands that can help him. The protective instinct in Aiden never turns off, even when he’s this upset and shaken up.

I smile tiredly up at him, my eyes full of love. My Aiden, my Companion Plant. My Guardian.

My warrior, always fighting on.

~~~~

I have no idea how long we've been walking down the storm-wracked mountain. I honestly couldn’t even throw out a guess.

Aiden, Roger, Luca, and I all have a lot to process from tonight. A lot. But I think our bodies just won’t let us, not right now.

We walk in stunned, numb silence.

I’m aware of the rain-filled darkness around me, the thunder and lightning, the wind-torn trees in their wild dance. I’m aware of the glow of Aiden’s shield. I watch when we stop so that Aiden can hand Justin off to Roger, or so that Roger can hand him back to Aiden. They swap every time one of them needs a break, or when Aiden needs to reinforce the barrier, or when Roger needs to check his watch to make sure that we haven’t lost our bearings.

I see all of this. I breathe the icy air and feel it sting my lungs. I listen to the thunder that roars in my ears, feel the freezing touch of the icy droplets that make their way around Aiden’s barrier. I hear the rush of the rain, which is still falling thick and fast, in heavy sheets that blot out the landscape around us.

But I’m in a daze, disengaged from it all. Oddly disconnected from my feelings, beyond a few basic things: cold, tired, wet, sore.

The emotions and thoughts I have about everything that just happened are staying silent, waiting beneath a layer of fog, which is where I need them to stay until we make it back to safety. All that really matters right now is that I keep moving, so I keep moving, and keep moving...

I realize with a jolt that my boot just landed on concrete, not forest floor.

I slowly become aware of things that happened some time ago, which I don’t think I actually processed. Luca stopping to huddle next to Aiden’s heat barrier so that he could shout into a radio extracted from one of the backpacks, calling one of the ambulances back. Aiden dropping the barrier, leaving us with only our flashlights to illuminate the darkness, letting us get soaked all over again.

Signs that we were nearly there, all of which I missed. I'm even more checked out than I realized, right now.

With the solidity of the road beneath my feet comes the startlingly bright blue and red glow of the ambulance. That’s all we can really see of it, through the rain.

Aiden swiftly hands Justin off to Roger again, then leans forward and says something into Roger’s ear. Roger blinks in surprise, opens his mouth to argue. But Aiden firmly shakes his head, and my ability to process words returns just in time to hear his answer.

“Don’t tell anyone that Jamie and I were even here," he tells Roger. "It was all you and Luca, alright?”

Then he takes a step back, leaving Roger and Luca to take Justin the rest of the way.

Luca falls back, too, and I see the flash of Roger’s car keys in his hand.

“At least let me give you a ride down the mountain!” he shouts.

The next thing I know I’m in the backseat of Roger’s car.

It’s all nothing but endless rain on the windshield until, finally, we see a bright flash of blue paint.

~~~~

Luca lets us out right next to my car, waits while I work the keys out of the pocket of my soaked jeans.

I know that we’ll have some explaining to do later, but Luca clearly understands that this isn’t the time. I share a glance with him before I get out, and he nods at me, telling me that it’s alright.

Aiden and I silently get out and make the short, drenching journey to my car. I think he probably needs to lay down, so I open the back door for him. He gets in, moving mechanically, without saying a word, and closes the door behind himself.

I race around to the other side of the car, so that I can help him get comfortable. But when I lean in through the open backseat door...

I go motionless, staring at him, the rain dripping down my face.

Aiden has his back against the closed door, his broad shoulders heavy with exhaustion. His glossy hair wet, a mess, spilling into his face. Droplets clinging to his stubble, to the long, dark lashes shading his eyes.

All the rich hues of him strike me at once. His bronze skin, his soft chestnut hair, his staggering blue eyes.

I look into those eyes, and suddenly I understand that I almost lost him. And from the look on his face, he just suddenly remembered that he almost lost me.

The numbness is gone, just like that. It all breaks over my head, and his.

As Aiden sits there frozen, staring at me with enormous eyes - something huge happens within me. An immense supernova of love that starts from somewhere unfathomably deep in my soul and explodes outwards to fill every atom of my being. So powerful, so intense, so profound that it hurts. There's so much love for Aiden in my heart that it's almost too much for me to bear.

I let out a sharp, gasping sob. Before I know what I’m doing, I throw myself into the car and go crawling for him.

Aiden takes in a stuttering breath. He reaches for me, and I see that there are bruises around his wrist. Imprints of where my fingers caught him when he was falling. I have the same ones around mine, from where he caught me.

We normally only leave bruises on each other when we're naked and tangled up in bed, but I guess these are sort of the same thing. Left there by love.

I forget about the deep ache in my shoulder. I fling myself into Aiden's arms, let him catch me. I need to touch him everywhere, so I do. Pushing my fingers through his soaked hair, feeling his face, nuzzling my nose into the warm nook of his neck, pouring love all over him.

He’s doing the same thing to me, just as urgently. His fingers go beneath my clothes, but only to hold me, to trace invisible paths up my body that only he knows, just like how there’s a part of me that only he can hear.

It feels like there’s no solid line differentiating him from me. No real barrier. We’re fused together, drawn in by a powerful magnetic force that we’re both helpless against.

Our mouths come together, our bodies, our hands. I’m taking deep breaths of Aiden, and he’s taking deep breaths of me. We’re clinging to each other so tightly, like something might rip us apart at any moment.

When I finally pull away from Aiden, it’s only because I want to look at him. I sit back and stare, taking him in.

Everything about him seems so vividly colored in, right now. Each tiny detail is of the highest significance and importance to me, every subtle element somehow sacred. The faint turquoise lines of the veins in his wrists. The hugeness of his warm, caressing hands. His soft lips, his stubble, the way he wears his tiredness, the way he's looking back at me. All of it. Everything.

Even the clothes that he happens to be wearing are yanking at my heartstrings, right down to his belt, his hiking boots. His drenched sweater is clinging to him, slightly pushed up by my movements, leaving exposed a little stripe of bronze skin just above his jeans.

But his eyes overpower everything else. I stare into their breath-stealing blueness with my heart in my throat. His eyes are so full of soul, sweetness, serenity, sex. So rich in passion, staring so intensely into mine. Overflowing with love and meaning and emotion.

Aiden cups my face in his trembling hands. Without breaking his gaze from mine, he drags his thumb over my lips, then my cheek. He leans forward and starts landing kisses on my face like he’s got to get each individual freckle.

I let out a breath, wrap my arms around his neck, and melt into him. I let myself sink deeply into his protective, all-encompassing embrace. Leaning on his strength, even as he leans on mine.

Aiden draws back just enough to bury his nose into my hair.

“Jamie,” he rumbles softly.

That voice, deep and gentle. Like rich, warm, melted caramel. A little rough around the edges, hoarse from his earlier tears.

God, I love that voice so fucking much, I want to wrap it around me like a blanket, I want to sleep in it, I want to eat it, I - I can barely handle it.

My own voice comes out fractured apart, weak and broken up with love. “Aiden...”

He breathes out a heavy exhale into my hair, then kisses the top of my head. Lingeringly, slowly.

I distantly remember using my inhaler on the way back down the mountain, but it’s only now, in Aiden’s arms, that I’m truly starting to breathe again. Starting to get more and more air into my lungs.

My arm is aching, but somehow it feels good. It means that Aiden is here with me, that I didn't let him slip out of my grasp. I wouldn't trade that ache for anything in the whole damn world.

I want to curl up and live solely in Aiden's arms for a while. The place where I’m the safest, happiest. I know that we have to talk about what happened, but that can wait until tomorrow.

I have a feeling that Aiden is going to ask again how the fuck I could do that. Throw myself off of the cliff after him.

I’ll have to find a way to explain to Aiden that I was already falling before I jumped. My heart and soul were already falling, already suspended in midair, because he was falling.

I don’t know how to tell him that. All I can do is hope that he understands.

The rain is hammering against the windows of my car, letting in no lunar or stellar light. It occurs to me that I shouldn’t even be able to see Aiden, but - I can. He’s nearly out of energy, but he’s giving off just enough of a glow for us to see each other by.

He’s not the only one. I could swear that my love for him lays thick over everything, casting the world into soft brilliance, a shimmering glow. I see it everywhere, feel it in every breath I take, even in my dreams.

The glow exists with no horizon. Just like my love for Aiden, it's boundless, timeless, endlessly bright.