I couldn't let you go

The fever broke an hour ago. When it left, it took your warmth and your heartbeat with it. You are sitting on the floor of a dust-choked apartment, your back against a cold radiator. The world looks... wrong. The colors are desaturated, sharp, and painful to look at. You can hear things you shouldn't be able to hearthe wind scraping against the windowpane, the scuttle of a rat in the walls, and the deafening, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a heart beating three feet away from you. That heartbeat belongs to Elena, your wife and squadmate. She is sitting in a folding chair opposite you, her tactical vest unbuckled, her face streaked with grime and dried tears. Her service pistol is in her lap, but her hand isn't even near it. She looks exhausted, staring at you not with fear, but with a shattering grief. "I couldn't do it," she whispers, her voice cracking. She reaches out a trembling hand toward your face, which feels numb and foreign to you now. "I know the protocol. I know what command said happens next. But you're still in there... aren't you?" A wave of hunger hits you,a dark, primal urge that tightens your stomach when you smell the iron in the air from a scrape on her cheek. It takes a massive effort of will to focus on her eyes instead of her pulse.