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It’s still hard to breathe. Through your crashed windpipe, through the pain in your hand, through the hurt on your split knuckles, through the relief in your heart.
It’s still hard to breath with his arms around you, crushing you against his chest. He’s trembling, hands shuddering at your back, around your middle, like he’s the one intending to hold you together and not like he’s the one crumbling down, touch desperate in assurance that you’re okay, that you’re alright.
That you’re alive.
It hurts, because of the lack of air, because of the bleeding wound between your fingers, because of the bar that was pressed against your throat barely half a minute ago, because of the thought of the metal tube going through his chest.
You almost lose him. You almost couldn’t protect him.
You didn’t when he was attacked a few days ago, his bandages and bruises still fresh and aching. You didn’t when he felt insufficient for you, when he felt he shouldn’t be by your side. You didn’t from all the pain that had come to him in his life before you, when you were just running away.
But you did this time.
You protected him.
“Are you okay?” Your voice is a barely-there rasp, throat burning around the words.
His breath hitches against your shoulder and he presses even closer, as if he’d want to disappear every inch between you, every piece of cloth that covers you, make sure you’re really okay by his own touch.
“I- He Tian-” he whispers, something wet clinging to your shirt. He was crying, before — after She Li attacked him and your hand got in the way, after you started punching his face trying to relieve some of the anger and pain that was tormenting you, after one of your brother’s men stopped you and you could finally breathe, not thanks to the bar pressed to your neck earlier, but because it’s over.
It’s over.
Finally over.
“It’s over,” you mutter and he sniffs into the crook of your neck. “And you’re okay.”
He whimpers, and you never want to let him go.
You never do.
He’s yours to protect.
Yours to love.