#(Remember when he basically scolded Topaz for not like colonising Jarilo IV ?��)

[rawbin-hsr]

Aventurine x reader

You die.

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TW: DEATH, heavy angst, gore, blood, kind of disturbing, a bomb explodes, derealisation/disassociation, graphic, I'll be so honest this fic is kind of fucked up

Lmk if I should add any more specific warnings!

If you're sensitive to violence and dark themes, you probably shouldn't read this.

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This mission had gone terribly awry. 

It was only meant to be a routine checkup. The IPC was planning on allocating resources from this planet, something the locals had not been pleased about. Aventurine understood. He would not be particularly happy to have his planet drained of all that made it worthwhile either. (He had not been happy. But all things considered, he thought he was being generous. Nobody was being directly killed, the IPC merely wanted a cut of the many materials the planet offered. The Avgins on Sigonia had all been very intentionally exterminated. He was not doing that to these people.)

Still, he couldn’t afford to take risks, hence the many IPC assigned bodyguards he had brought along. Deals like this, where the clients were undeniably on the losing end, were bound to go wrong in one way or another. Often violently so. 

He just had not expected the bombs. He had not expected the mass amounts of guns. The people were more capable and vengeful than he had assumed, then. Ultimately, it was his own fault.

Most of his goons were dead. Most of the government officials were dead too. It made sense they’d want to go out in such a loud and proud way. A declaration to their people they wouldn’t lay flat before the otherworldly corporation that had come to essentially take away what made their planet their home. Bold to be ready to kill so many of their own, but he could respect it. 

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t be very angry. It was fair, all things considered. He’d had this long coming; being killed by the people whose lives he was ruining. In their positions, he’d love to kill him, too. The only issue was that this hadn’t happened under normal circumstances. 

No, you were with him. You’d been just a bit away from him when they opened fire, when they set off the bomb. 

It was so stupid. It was so, so unbelievably stupid that he’d let you come with. It was your job, yes, but he should have reassigned you to some other mission. Something safer. Something that didn’t involve visiting planets to drain them of all their worth. Something that didn’t bring about rage from the clients. 

He could see you. He’d been saved from the brunt of the impact, and his luck had once again protected him from serious harm. He had only been slightly grazed by a bullet, had only been slightly burned by the heat of the explosion. Nothing serious. Nothing he couldn’t walk off within a week or two. You had not been so lucky. 

Your arm was outstretched over your head, body lying limply on the floor. Missing the other arm. There was only a gaping, red hole where it had once been attached to your body, a little bit of bone sticking out of the gory mess. The blown off hand with your engagement ring lay close enough to him that he could touch it. Maybe intertwine his fingers with it for the last time. The pinky was missing.  

He pushed himself onto his feet on unsteady legs. He could barely feel his own body at all. One glance down at it told him he’d been right in his initial assumption, though. No parts of him were missing. He was intact. 

He stumbled over to where you lay, your expression calm, almost peaceful. No pained pinch between your brows, no worried frown on your lips. Were you unconscious, or were you dead? Though he knew it was unlikely you’d leave this place alive either way, he hoped desperately for the former. 

He fell to his knees next to you. Something was buzzing beneath his skin. Something was buzzing in his vision. Had the world always been so blurry? Had there always been such a loud noise ringing in his ears? His hands trembled as he carefully reached out, a hand tenderly cupping your cheek. Your face was red, slightly burnt in places. Your hair was singed. You felt hot to the touch. 

No, not hot. Warm. Warm as in alive. He couldn’t hear you breathing, but warmth meant life. Warmth meant life. You were alive, surely.

He brushed his thumb under your eye. Tried to find something to say, but he found his mouth refused to open. Carefully, so carefully, he shifted you onto his lap. He stared at the dust from all the debris that had settled onto you. He couldn’t breathe. 

(He thought back to a time when the dust had been sand. He thought back to the red that had painted the ground then as it did now. He thought back to another body he had pulled closer, with hands much smaller and weaker than the ones he had now. He thought back to the taste of salt as tears fell in an endless stream from his eyes to cover his face and hers.)

He moved his free hand to your neck, gently pressing a finger to where he knew he was supposed to find your pulse. It wasn’t there, but only because he wasn’t searching hard enough. He carefully felt around, and though he couldn’t find it, he knew it was still there. He just didn’t dare press down hard enough to find it. The same applied when he felt your wrist. He was just bad at finding things today. 

(He stupidly hadn’t found a good enough reason to put you out of this mission. He stupidly hadn’t found anything that happened before the explosion suspicious enough to leave early. He stupidly hadn’t found his way next to you quickly  enough to save your life.)

When his hand landed on your chest, absent of a heartbeat, tears started falling from his eyes. But why was that? You weren’t dead. In fact, the longer he looked at you, the more sure he became this couldn’t be you. Your skin wasn’t this hot. Your arms were both still attached. You did not have fresh burns covering your face. Most importantly, you were alive. Alive and well and happy and safe from this little mishap. He had misremembered, you had stayed home during this mission. The hand he’d been so sure belonged to you had been someone else’s, he’d merely mistaken the ring for yours. It was such a bland ring, after all. He’d have to buy you a new, much prettier one once he came home to you, and apologise for his oversight in giving you such a boring design. 

He ignored the repeated whispers of ‘not again, not again’ going through his head. Nothing was happening ‘again’. This was not Sigonia. This was not a person he loved, or even knew. He couldn’t understand why his body curled over the stranger’s, sobs wracking his frame as he pulled them close, soft apologies tumbling from his mouth. He nuzzled his face into your- their hair, hand carefully cradling the back of their head as the other supported their back. 

The body smelled like you. The body felt too similar to yours in his arms. The body had your face, even if your features were a little damaged. The longer he stared, the more he could feel his gut sinking. So he shut his eyes and reminded himself that there was no possible way this was you. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t. The universe would not be that cruel to him, would it?

Then again, maybe he had deserved this. If it was real. He was not a good man. He had not come to this planet with good intentions. Losing the thing most precious to him, the only thing precious to him, after taking away so much from so many others was a befitting punishment. 

But you hadn’t deserved this. Wouldn’t have, if it was real. You were so kind and generous and perfect and lovely, so different from him, so different from the position your job wanted you to be. You didn’t deserve to die. 

Die. Dead. 

Dead. Dead. Dead. 

You were dead. 

(Aventurine had seen so much death in his life. He should have been used to it by now. He was used to it. He had just forgotten how much it hurt when it is someone he loves.)

He held you tighter. If he held you tightly enough, could it piece you back together? If he held you tightly enough, could he replace the parts of you that were missing with his own? The sobs that escaped his lungs were violent, and quickly, some morphing into gagging. He felt sick. He had to turn himself away from you briefly to throw up, not wanting to soil what was left of you further, before he desperately held you again. Would it be the last time he held you?

Maybe if he took you back to the ship quickly enough, something of you could be salvaged. Maybe he couldn’t piece you back together, but he could find someone who would. There had to be something he could do. This couldn’t be it. He couldn’t lose like this again. 

He could barely stand. His body was already weak and your added dead weight made it even harder to balance. He picked up the parts of you strewn about on the ground he could quickly spot. Your hand, your shoulder, what he thought might be your bicep. He couldn’t find your forearm and he didn’t have time to properly search for it. Maybe someone could put all of you back together? Maybe you’d be whole again. He wanted you to be whole again. 

(He couldn’t save his people. He couldn’t save his mother. He couldn’t save his sister.)

(But things had to be different now, surely. He was a different person now. He had power, he had wealth, he had everything. What would it all be good for, if he couldn’t save you?)

Other IPC personnel met him outside the building as he stumbled out, and Aventurine’s mind was so hazy he couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening. He was pretty sure his own, now dead, workers had sent a distress signal. People rushed in to find anyone else from the wreckage. After, Aventurine found out he was the sole survivor. (He always was.)

(You had not survived.)

He demanded you be taken into surgery. That the medical staff on board had to get you to breathe again. For some reason, they had been hesitant. He threatened to have them fired or killed if they didn’t get to it. He set you as first priority, putting the best doctors they had on hand to work on you. 

They sewed you back together as best as possible at his insistence. They got your heart pumping blood again, they hooked you up to machines and forced your lungs to breathe. The surgery lasted for four hours.

It did not change the flatline on the screen signalling your brain activity. 

He could find the best doctors in the whole galaxy, but he already knew the line would remain flat. Nothing was bringing that back.

He stared at you for hours after your surgery. Interlaced his fingers with yours, feeling the artificial warmth of your hand. It did not feel like you. The temperature was wrong. The look on your face was wrong. Your body was wrong. Everything about what remained of you was wrong. 

He eventually laid his head on your chest, and then he cried.

He cried until the black spots in his vision grew so numerous he could no longer see, until everything faded and he could no longer hear the beeping and humming of the machines keeping you hollowly alive. 

(Why did he ever let himself love again?)

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Sorry that was messy I wrote everything today because I am con-crunching tomorrow and won't be available for like at least 3 days after this (usually I write over the span of multiple days so I can re-read for grammatical/spelling errors and so my language will be a little more varied + I get fresh ideas). Sorry this fic was ?? kind of messed up ??? I think ??? I think my perception of what's messed up and not is kind of weird (I grew up on warrior cats HELP.) so to me it didn't feel that fucked up to write about Aventurine literally picking up your body parts after you died but I've realised upon mentally summarising that part of the fic that maybe that was kinda horrific. Just a glimpse into my twisted mind heh 😈.... sorry

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