Work Text:
The blood gushes out of his chest, quickly filling his lungs, his mouth and nose. They say the longest minute you have is the minute before death and Jin Zixuan knows he will not survive before he even feels the pain - when his life starts to flash before his eyes.
15 seconds—
He sees the young face of little Jiang Yanli, her bright smile blinding and her kind hand outstretched, reaching out to him in a warm greeting. He watches his younger self slap her hand away and storms off, leaving her there with her hand still outstretched. It was their first meeting. Ah, how he wished he had taken her offered hand sooner. Perhaps, then, they would have had more time together.
30 seconds—
He sees a teenage Jiang Yanli tending to her brothers’ wounds. He remembers. It was shortly after the Sunshot Campaign. He wondered, then, how could this young woman stand firm and strong after losing everything she used to call home? How did he ever think that this strong woman was plain and average when there she stands, in his memory, the very backbone of two of the strongest war heroes in his generation.
45 seconds—
She looks so beautiful in red. Her smile makes him want to immortalise her in a painting charmed to last forever, the red that colours her cheeks mirrors only a fraction of the colour that marrs his own. Their first kiss, their first taste of each other’s love, he remembers the sweetness of it all. Oh how much he loves her.
50 seconds—
His beautiful A-Li. His wife. The mother of his child. She glows the brightest as she holds their son in her arms. Two beautiful people he will love in life and in death. Jiang Yanli and Jin Ling. He remembers his tears when he first heard Jin Ling’s cry. He remembers feeling so grateful to have both his wife and child in his life. He remembers promising himself to be a better person for them, to be a person Jin Ling would be proud to call “father”.
55 seconds—
He knows.
He knows she is only a shadow from the recesses of his memory, yet he calls out her name anyway. She turns to look at him. He lets his eyes drink the sight of her eyes, her lips, her face, her hair, her everything. He watches her as she tilts his head like she always does when she has a question for him. Adorable.
59 seconds—
“A-Li, I love—“
One minute.