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He lay on the floor unmoving, curled up like a child. The wire on the sensor for the door was fragile; if she tried to reel it in it would likely snap before she could lift him again, and then they’d both be doomed. Whatever it was that He had done to him had made it so her gun could not swap their places.
Still she tried. Charged up one shot, two, three four five, and even as the wind whipped her hair past her face, air thinning with every breath she took, she stood aiming at him with her heart in her throat. Willed it to work, willed him to miraculously appear on the other side of the door, willed him to at the very least stand--at the very least kneel--at the very least look up and meet her eyes. He did not.
Her face was dry; she had not cried in years. Robin stumbled back to his side and knelt and tried, futilely, to rouse him. Tried, futilely, to say his name. Found herself unsurprised when in the end, she managed neither.
The sanctuary was coming down around them; a poster featuring a stranger’s brightly smiling face flew past her into the open depths of space. Back down on the planet they’d come here to save, which had looked no larger than a marble from the viewing platform, must've been its featured model, who might’ve had a family, or friends, or a cat to feed. Back down there on the place she called home: where Mina was waiting, where her brother would be bleeding out. She couldn’t stay. There was no time.
So Robin pushed the hair back from Royal’s forehead, and pressed a kiss to the cold and clammy skin there. Then she stood, and turned, and left him lying there to die.