'Love means never having to say you're sorry.' 

- Erich Segal

. . . 

The loudest sound is silence.

The hardest part is dying.

Al doesn't want to die.

But right now, it looks as though that might be a real possibility, as though it's something inevitable.

His fingers slip on the handle of his gun, he doesn't find purchase. It's slick with blood, clatters to the floor, breaks the silence.

It's not enough to stop the death.

And yet, still the breath rattles in Al's lungs, still his life force is draining, dripping away.

Still there's hope.

A little flicker of it, nothing more than the pathetic glimmer of a candle that's burned down to the ground, stripped to the bones, and there's nothing for it. There's the inevitable end, but still it's burning bright.

Al isn't bright, not exactly. His moralities are gray, at best, and many a teacher had doubted his intelligence, had called him things like difficult and challenged.

And still.

He heaves and coughs and hurts, turns himself over to the side, reaches for the gun again.

He can't give up. There's still a part of him that's burning.

The silence isn't silent anymore.

There are footsteps now, and panic closes up the part of his throat that isn't already choked by blood.

Al can't breathe.

Al bites his lip and ignores the wound in his leg, the other one by his ribcage, in his side, the one above his eyebrow, across the back of his hand, ignores them all and clutches at his gun again, clenches his fingers around the handle and brings it up to eye-level, tries to aim in the direction of the sound, the possible threat, but the whole room is spinning around him and still he can't breathe.

He doesn't know where he is, barely remembers how he got there. Knows he's been here for too long now. Knows that it's been too long since he last saw daylight.

These aren't good memories to be the last things he thinks about before he dies, but right now he's in too much pain to remember the good times.

He knows that there were good times.

There had to be.

He just doesn't know them, anymore.

Can't remember.

There's a whisper.

A quiet but heartfelt "fuck," a choked sound, and it's the last thing Al expected to hear today. Ever.

It's a voice Al would know everywhere and in every state.

It's Jackson.

The name alone is enough to shock him into sucking in a breath, and the memories that follow on its footsteps are enough to punch it back out of his lungs.

(He didn't think Jax would want to talk to him ever again.)

"Fuck!"

It's not a whisper anymore.

"Shit, Al, fuck."

Silence gives way to running footsteps, scrambling for purchase on the floor that's slick with blood and ice and other things Al doesn't want to think about.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck."

There's a touch to his shoulder, then his cheek. The pad of a thumb wipes away the wetness that had gathered under Al's eye, but he doesn't know if it's blood or tears.

He just knows that there's too much blood, everywhere. Knows that he'd be dead already if it was all his.

(It's only mostly his.)

A shaky breath. "This was not supposed to happen."

Al barely hears it, against the ringing of the silence.

He does, though, and he laughs.

It makes him cry out in pain before he properly gets the sound past his lips, but he doesn't really care, anymore.

"Oh?" he asks, and he wants it to sound derisive, mocking, but instead it's laced with fiery-hot pain and a too raw kind of sadness, of resignation. "What was supposed to happen, then? What did you expect to come of it, when you told your hero buddies all about where to find the big bad villain?"

The silence fights back for its reign over the room, and for a few seconds, it wins.

There's nothing except for the ragged breathing of two people, the dribbling drops of blood, or maybe it's just water. Al isn't sure, and he doesn't want to open his eyes.

He might be a villain, sometimes, sure, but he's self-aware enough to admit that he's kind of a coward, too.

"Not that." Something like a sob echoes from the empty walls, but Al is sure that it can't be that. He wouldn't. "Never that." The words seem to rip themselves from Jackson's lips, and they're more forceful than Al had expected them to be.

The warm hand on his cheek disappears, and Al holds his breath, waiting for—something, anything.

Instead Jackson breathes out, harshly, curses and says, "Gods, Al, you can't think I'd want—" and he cuts himself off as though the thought alone is too horrible to contemplate, and then the touch of his hands returns, presses against the wound in his side hard enough to make Al hiss through his teeth, to make him see stars.

Now that the silence is gone death is taking the opportunity, comes creeping closer again. Al feels him pulling at his bones, feels him clouding his mind, making his limbs grow heavy and fingers numb.

The gun slips away, again.

"Fuck," Jackson says, again, like a broken record.

His desperation is palpable in the air, like the smell of copper, fear and urine and burnt flesh.

"Fuck, no, please. Al, please. You can't—" the pressure on his wound gets worse, the rushing in Al's ears too, "you can't die on me here, come on, Al, please. Don't leave."

Al's mind drifts, thoughts and regrets and anxieties tumbling over each other, melting into a mess of pain and love and history.

Melting.

"Since when do you care?" he croaks out, then, somehow, even though he knows he's being unfair. It seems the most prevalent thing at the moment, wondering what was real and what was one-sided, what was entirely imagined on his part, merely wishful thinking. How many of the memories he can still trust.

Melting.

Al doesn't wait for Jackson's useless protest, blinks his eyes open instead and searches out his hero's gaze. The light is blinding, in the first moment, makes his vision blurry with tears. His voice is still hoarse, when he says, "You gotta cauterize my wounds."

A heartbeat.

"What?!" Jackson takes his hands off of Al's skin as though he had burned himself — as though that wasn't impossible. He probably would have scrambled backwards in a mad dash to get away from Al if the blood didn't start gushing as soon as he did so.

Al closes his eyes again, from exhaustion and against the pain, and also because he can't bear seeing that look on Jackson's face.

"No! I can't—I won't hurt you! I won't." He's being irrational now, and Al feels worn down to the bone, weary with the knowledge that just ten minutes ago he was prepared to die, that he still technically is dying.

He doesn't even try to check himself or his words. "Two things. One: you already did hurt me. Two: it's either that or letting me bleed out right here. Your choice."

"Alec." Jackson's voice sounds wrecked now, and he probably looks the part, too.

Al's mind is still racing, though, making plans. "It's— wait, what day is it? And what time? If it's early evening they'll come back again soon, we'll have to hurry—" because suddenly, for some reason, death doesn't look like such a desirable option anymore. Because no matter what happened, Al still loves Jackson, and he couldn't bear to leave him behind, to go on without him. He couldn't die a peaceful death, knowing that he'd left him alone.

Al might be overcome by his insecurities, sometimes, but he knows, deep down, that Jackson loves him too, and that he's a much less happy person than he lets on to the general public. He needs Al as much as Al needs him, even they're destined to destroy each other.

"—you mean by that? How long have you been— Al! Fuck, listen to me!" Al snaps back to awareness at Jackson's voice, blinks his eyes open and flinches at the look he finds on his face. This, he wanted to avoid.

"C'mon, Jax," Al coaxes. "You gotta do it now."

Jackson's hands are back on Al's wound, and they're steadily getting warmer, but the idiot refuses to back down and just get it over with. "No. How do you know what time they'll be back?" His voice is calm now, collected, and Al knows he means business. Fuck.

"Well, what do you think?" Al can't help it. His super villain persona is used to getting cornered, used to respond with sarcasm in these kinds of situations, there's no way to beat down that instinct now.

(There's no way to forget about the many times he met Ignition himself in exactly these kinds of situations, about how battling the hero had always made his stomach swoop, his ice run colder, the hail storms harsher, he really should have known— but no. He'd had the heart, after almost a year of being in love with Jackson Pale, to reveal his second, secret identity to his boyfriend, and Jackson proceeded to freak the fuck out. Because of course he did. Al could understand that. No civilian would be pleased to learn that they'd been dating one of the city's most elusive super villains. But he'd thought Jackson would be different, that maybe he'd get it. That he'd notice that Al's alter ego Shiver had never caused more collateral damage than absolutely necessary, that he was fighting for a cause, just not on the side of the law. But no. Jackson was different, yes, but he had more reasons to hate Shiver than just about anyone else. Because Jackson was Ignition, was Shiver's self-declared nemesis, and he just couldn't handle that. He'd left. Told his merry band of heroes exactly where Shiver was and didn't think twice about it, apparently. (Didn't look back and left him to their mercy.))

It's instinct to try deflect and to lash out the only way he knows how without being able to use his powers.

Jackson doesn't catch on to Al's flashback, but he does get what he was playing at. Al sees the realization hit when Jackson's eyes widen and the little rest of color on his face drains away, leaves him ashen and disbelieving, rattled.

"No," he whispers. His eyes are bloodshot, his lips dry and cracked. There's a fresh scar on his temple that Al doesn't remember being there, before.

He looks like shit, Al realizes with a start. He looks like he did on the anniversary of his sister's death, when he hadn't slept for days beforehand and didn't manage to keep his food down for long. Al wonders what's got him so messed up, wonders and finds anger igniting in his chest, find himself swearing to find whoever's responsible for it and make them pay — until he realizes that it's probably him. That finding out you've been dating your sister's unwilling murderer could probably do that to a person.

"Yes," Al says, because he can't stand to lie anymore. He's tired and there's no energy left to put inflection in his voice when he continues, "you told them, and so they came. You can't expect them to have mercy when they think I've betrayed you to such an extent. You can't expect them to have mercy when there's no way for me to deny their claims when it's nothing but the truth. I hurt you so much and I hate myself for it."

He doesn't say he's sorry.

Sorry is an empty word, one that's lost its meaning long ago, and anyway, it's not like Jackson doesn't know.

It's just that being sorry will never be enough.

An apology will not make it all alright.

"I'm gonna kill them."

"Jax—"

"No, no, you don't get to 'Jax' me! I told them— I told them, so often, that no one's to touch you. Now they think that what? Just because you've hurt my feelings would suddenly make me change my mind? No. Fuck them."

"Jackson, Jax, what the fuck are you talking about?"

There's a kind of fury in Jackson's eyes that Al hadn't ever seen there before, not even after the Great Reveal that made everything go so spectacularly wrong. His fingers spark when he runs an agitated hand through his hair. "I'll rip their arms out and burn them to ashes, make them eat the dust so they might choke on it and—"

Al shivers. Strangely, hearing his hero say that makes him feel all kinds of fuzzy things inside. Then again, that fuzziness might come from the blood loss, or from any of all the other bad, no good things that had happened in the last few days. "Jax, darling," Al interrupts his (ex?) boyfriend's tirade, eventually, "while that's oddly specific and adorable and maybe a little over-the-top, don't you think you might first want to prevent my death and then worry about causing it for the ones that put me here?"

It certainly shuts him up. But it also puts a kind of constipated look on his face, and that makes Al dizzy with the sudden memory of how he actually does know what Jackson's constipated face looks like and it's remarkably similar. And that, in turn, makes Al realize that death is lurking just out of sight, that the blood loss and the possible infections and other strains his body had to suffer through might actually make him delirious, sooner rather than later, and hysterical, maybe, too, because there's the urge to laugh at the situation even as there's nothing remotely funny about it. Rather on the opposite. Al should probably want to cry, especially thinking about the kind of pain that lies in his near future.

Then again, he's used to pain by now, and he's gotten rather good at blocking it out. Mostly by thinking about Jax, though, so for him to be the one who's going to cause the pain... well. Fun.

Jackson seems to have taken the few moments of Al's internal freakout to have one himself, only to now be pulling himself together, steadying his hands.

"You're right, of course."

He doesn't say he's sorry, but Al can read the apology in his eyes nonetheless.

This is going to hurt.

Jackson doesn't count down from three, doesn't give any kind of warning. He presses three fingers to Al's side, just enough to cover his wound, and the smell of charred flesh permeates the air before the pain registers.

And then it's hell.

"It's fine," Jax says, mutters, like a prayer, chanting under his breath as he holds his hand steady. "It's gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. Just fine."

He takes his hand away, and for a few minutes Al doesn't feel or see or hear, taste or smell or sense anything other than the hot-white pain lacing through his body, the ringing in his ears, the stars behind his eyes, the blood in his mouth, the smoke and heat. It consumes him, like fire consumes all things that can't resist. He can't even use his own powers to ease the pain, because of course the heroes aren't stupid enough not to make sure that he's completely Drained and doesn't get the chance to recharge.

"We're gonna be fine," Jackson is still saying it, and Al reaches for that, him, to pull himself out of his mind, his body, the pain.

"Stop saying that," Al grits out. It's a lie, after all, and heroes aren't supposed to lie, especially not Jackson Pale of all people. Then again, it's a lie that might become a truth one day, if only they work for it hard enough, and maybe that's the whole point about being a hero.

Or maybe it's the pain that's making him stupid, now.

"But it's true," Jax protests. "I want it to be true. I want to believe we can make it out of this and stay alive, learn how to be fine again."

He doesn't say he's sorry. Jackson doesn't, and Al doesn't either.

They're fire and ice. They were bound to end up in a place like this, all around them the shattered remains of their old lives, death waiting just around the corner. But they'd refuse to give in. They'd rise like the fire-phoenix out of the ashes, like an ice-phoenix out of the mist.

Sorry wouldn't even begin to cover it.

But it doesn't have to.

So.

Al doesn't die.

The heroes don't, either, but also they know better than to cross either Ignition or Shiver ever again.

It's not a bad thing, and even with multiple holes in his body and barely-wrapped, freshly-cauterized wounds, Al has to admit that it's also kind of hot to watch his boyfriend (no ex about it, apparently. (Not yet.)) threaten the guys that hurt him, and that doesn't only have to do with Jackson's powers.

. . .

"You know," Al says, a couple days later, all faux-nonchalance, "I thought the hero was supposed to leave the villain to die, but here we are, you awkwardly sitting beside me in the hospital with a bouquet of flowers and a 'get well soon' teddy bear."

Jax laughs and sobs and chokes, clenches his hands around Al's, and kisses him so hard their lips bruise, saying, over and over, "this isn't funny, you stupid bastard. This isn't funny."

"It's not," Al says, when he manages to pry himself away. "But it's Valentine's Day and I really wanted a chocolate box."

"I love you," is Jackson's only reply, and if it sounds suspiciously like a final 'I'm sorry,' well, then Al's answering "I know," is a 'I forgive you,' and a 'I'm sorry, too,' and a 'I love you' all in one.