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He can't breathe. He can't get up.
The shape of a man in the smoke haze, but Nicky knows it's not Joe, it's not the beloved silhouette of the man that's kept him sane all these years.
Get up
Nicky sees the impression of something in his hands, not a gun, cuffs? No, those new plastic ties that bite and chafe and hold just as surely as metal.
He won't let them be captured again, he can't.
(Joe beside him, so close yet unreachable, so close but shaking in pain then so still in death again and all he can do is pray that the next test might be on him instead)
g et up
get up
get up
a silent mantra as he struggles up on elbows, too slow, much too slow, Nicky barely manages to look up in time to catch the kick that knocks his teeth loose and sends his mind blank, already fighting the concussive blast from the grenade and more deaths than he cared to count today, everything goes terrifyingly dark. He rolls back over on instinct, just trying to get upright, to have a chance.
He's barely balanced on hands and knees when a kick takes the air from his lungs, takes the strength from his arms and he crashes to the floor again. Pure stubbornness gets him back half upright with ribs grinding together.
Joe's stirring. There's no time, there's nothing more he can give but the millennia of muscle memory that allows him the chance to dodge the next kick, allows Nicky the opportunity to tackle Keane down to the ground.
He can't get the upper hand, he knows this as surely as the bone deep exhaustion drags at his every move, all he can do is buy time, throw as many hits as he can before he goes down again. Hope, pray and believe that Yusuf will recover enough to be able to fight, that maybe the two of them - no matter how handicapped - together had a chance to win.
Keane's next kick sends him flying, the movement making his bruised brain shutter before he hits something hard, metal unyielding as his already battered body slams into it.
He loses a moment.
He doesn't know how long, there's nothing in his head this time, just the dull sound of Joe upright and fighting back under his blood rushing in his ears, Nicky tries to pull himself out of the rolling darkness that surrounds his thoughts like cotton wool, somewhere he can hear the harsh sound of flesh hitting flesh and Joe choking.
Keane goes for his gun, payback, revenge, whatever sadistic little game he was playing forgotten as he's begun to realise the threat Joe and Nicky would pose fighting as a single seamless unit. He goes for his gun, Nicky's world narrows down to that hand, there's no time for critical thinking or smooth practiced moves, uncoordinated he grabs for it, latches onto the arm like a child might, not capable of anything but being a roadblock to be bulldozed.
let it be me, let it be me, don't take him.
He has nothing more left in him and Keane moves with professional ease. Nicky finds his body violently maneuvered, suddenly on his back, a knee his cracking his sternum, he gasps in a futile attempt for air. There's a flash of metal, it grates as it shoves past teeth, chipping enamel with a bright bloom of nerve pain, the hand cruelly gripping his hair seems kind in comparison, he thinks wildly, madly, nonsensically. There's no time to think of Joe,
(oh but there is, every moment of Nicolò's life he is thinking of Joe, even now in the stretching milliseconds before death all he thinks about is Joe, the soft curls at the base of his neck, his gentle hands at the end of a long day, the fire in his eyes when he's faced with injustice, the way his heart breaks for every single soul he comes across, has there ever been a man that loved like Yusuf?)
He wants to feel those hands once more, he wants to die in the arms of the man he calls home, he wants,
oh god he wants.
He thinks his hands move, he thinks maybe he tries to fight back, but it doesn't matter, that hand wrenches his head upwards and what he wants is a non issue. He doesn't hear the shot, but the moment still feels like the loudest thing he's ever heard as black overtakes him and no matter how much he can't leave Joe behind, Nicky's fight is over.