The Little Dove #3 ✔️

67. A Time So Deadly

"I am alright, sweetheart. It's going t-t-to take a lot m-more to get rid of m-me." He breathes out. Marvin wraps an arm around Mom's shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut as I watch my family be ripped apart. Mom's crushed shoulders hunch around Dad protectively, she runs her fingertips through his hair, something he's always cherished. I see that look he gets when she does this...just like those days your mother and I were teenagers, I've never lost those sparks I feel with your mother, sweetheart-it's what he said.

"Hold on, Darling." She whispers against the skin of his temple.

The first tear escapes his eye, he lowers his head on her lap, "I'm alright, honey. Don't cry." He murmurs.

She sniffles, "You can't do this, Maximus. The chopper is close, Darling." She whispers against his forehead.

He grips her hand harder, swallowing and I close my eyes, he was trying, but that wasn't guaranteeing me relief that he'll make it out of this. Marvin makes eye contact with me for a second, we were reading the worst as we huddle over Dad, not letting one single drop of rain fall on his skin and letting that be his calling to leave us permanently.

We wouldn't dare.

"Honey...I'm fine. We're g-going to be alright." He whispers into her abdomen. She sniffles, leaning further down and dropping her head into his hair, burying deeper into him as she holds him as tightly as possible. I wanted to hold his hand too, I wanted to huddle in closer as he tries to reassure Mom, wincing-not because of the wound, but because he can feel her shaking where my Dad isn't trembling at all.

Unadulterated fear.

Loss.

I felt my world crash around me when I watch my father's lips part in one breath, his eyes staring out into the distance when I hear the chopper in the air, but that wasn't what made me scream louder than my lungs could bare. Mom's lips curl in a roar when I check anywhere and every where for a pulse.

NO.

NO!

On Dad's neck.

His wrist.

NO! PLEASE!

I couldn't find what I was looking for.

It was his eyes, I watched something-the colour, violent violet turned into faded lavenders-I watched it seep and dim down when nothing, not even the reflection of the hellish building in front of me, not the trees, not even the rain.

Mom grips him tightly, "Maximus!" She shakes his uninsured shoulder, she growls out his name.

"MAXIMUS!"

She grips his hand, hers drowning of blood from the grip she has on him, "No. No! Don't you dare, damnit. DON'T YOU DARE! No, Maximus. Baby, you swore, YOU SWORE TO ME. Maximus, come back to me. Come back to me! You swore we would be in it to the end, you'll get to walk your baby girl down the aisle, you promised me that we would babysit and spoil our grandchildren to the ends of time. This isn't our end, Maximus! PLEASE! PLEASE!" She roars into his ear.

I slump on my back legs in the wind.

Is this what it would feel like?

I felt every nerve in my system tear and slice, cutting up my heart with a cold metal scalpel, ripping apart skin and bone, I was a simple skeleton. He wasn't breathing, the first man to love me, to raise me into the person I am today. The first man to make me laugh. The man who threw me in the air as a child and made me scream out in excitement when he took me out for cherry ice-cream in the park, when he told me stories of how he and Mom fell in love...their own fairytale. When he didn't ever tell us off, even when Marvin and I set two German shepherds off on Dad's clothes while Mom was at the hospital after giving birth to Mathias.