WHO: Rae, Eli, David WHAT: Eli wakes up! :O WHERE: Liberty Island infirmary. WHEN: January 14th, 2019. Morning. RATING: Low, maybe low-medium for a tiny bit of language? STATUS: In progress.
Loss was still a new feeling to Rae. She'd felt it vaguely a few times... her grandparents that she'd never been too terribly connected to had died when she was just a teenager and yeah, that had sucked and she'd missed them for awhile, but she'd always been mature enough to respect death for the inevitability that it was. Her first real, true experience with loss on a level like this was when her mother had died just a few months ago. Back then, she'd begged God never to make her feel it again. Here she was, three months later, feeling it again.
With the chance to feel it a third time. Her red, puffy eyes raised from where she'd been staring at her hands to look at Elliot. God. How had this happened? Rae liked to believe that every person had some good in them but these people—these monsters—had come in and destroyed her world. Her only blood family was dead, it was still possible that she would lose her boyfriend and she didn't dare look at the main hall of Liberty. It probably looked so empty. Everyone she knew was gone and the man she loved was laying in front of her, barely clinging to life. She blinked back tears, refusing to cry because crying felt like admitting that maybe Eli would die. He couldn't. He couldn't leave her.
Not him, too.
She stood up from her spot across the room, doing something that she'd taken to doing over the past few days. Every now and then, she would walk over to Eli's bedside, sit on the very edge of the bed, take his hand and talk to him. “You know, the word love is thrown around loosely. Lots of people say it and they don't mean it,” she muttered, taking his hand in hers and letting it lay loosely on top of it. “People say they love the sky or they love the water or they love silly little things that don't really have any great meaning. I'm sort of one of them. I'm not going to lie.”
She swallowed thickly and blinked again, willing the tears away. “But you know what I realized the other day? I've only ever really loved family, as far as people go. But not anymore.” She let her free hand smooth through his hair and felt a couple tears escape. “I love you. We've only really been together for a couple of weeks, so it seems really soon to say it, but I can't help but feel like this is what love is supposed to feel like. I don't know if you can hear me, I don't know if this is a stupid idea, but... I just needed to tell you.”
Another pause to regain her composure, and she reached up to wipe her eyes. “So you can't leave me, okay? I know I've begged you not to enough times for it to sort of lose feeling, but I'm not begging this time. I'm telling you. You can't leave me. Because I can't lose everyone I love. I may be strong, but I'm not strong enough to face this alone.” Her voice cracked a little in her emotion, and she lifted her hand, touching his cheek once again. “I know you need to take your time. You need to recover. I'm just telling you... you have to come back.”