Hiyya, welcome! I’m your local AuDHD author that obsesses over fictional characters. You can call me Chimera!
MINORS DNI. Ageless and empty blogs WILL BE BLOCKED, make sure to have your age in your bio if you follow me. I also don't do tag lists.
Unless I state otherwise, all my reader characters are female and plus-size by default.
I'd really rather you tell me why you liked one of my fics than just ask for a part 2 or update. hearing what you enjoyed about one of my stories does loads more for me and my motivation/will to write than just "part 2 pls!!"
Registered users can find me on ao3 under both chimera-dreams(pseud) and lumililyyy!
main blog: lumilily
be warned, I repost literally anything on there. I'm just more active there than here
All rights reserved to @/chimera-dreams, lumililyyy, and any of my other pseuds. Do not copy, steal, or repost my content without permission. I do not own the characters, just the plots and stories I write about unless otherwise stated
s: You slip into a world where androids rule the Earth and humans have fled to the moon. Despite your constant requests to go home, you have a feeling the androids aren’t too keen on helping you.
cw: rape/non-con, yandere oc x reader, dddne, captivity, isekai, dark content ahead
wc: 4.6k
co-written with @envy-of-the-apple ♥ read on ao3 here
(reminder to put your age in your bio/pinned before you follow me or I will block you)
[NieR masterlist]
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You got up early that morning. At least, you thought you did. It was hard to tell what time it was when the sun never changed its position in the sky.
As promised, Pascal set up a communication line with the androids yesterday. He seemed a hint out of practice; clearly, it had been ages since he’d had a reason to chat with the other beings of this planet.
Eventually, Pascal got them to agree to arrive. The details beyond that were lost to you.
Instead of worrying about it, you sat on the wooden platform of the upper tier of his village, swinging your legs off the edge. You regaled Pascal with stories of your universe, enjoying the last few hours you had left to spend with him. A gentle breeze brushed against you, rustling your clothes and bringing with it the scent of flora, the eternal blooms that thrived under the light. Beyond the forest, you periodically spotted boars and deer roaming about, feasting on never-ending expanses of greenery.
It was while you were telling him about the hell that was navigating subways that the Androids arrived.
A small convoy of people, four from the looks of it, crossed the bridges hung onto the trees, approaching Pascal’s village in a uniform fashion. They marched at a steady pace, one after the other, boots filling the same slot as the person in front of them.
Right off the bat, you clocked something strange about them.
They all looked completely identical. It wasn’t just in the clothes they were in, but everything, from the way they walked, to the weird masks they wore over their eyes, down to the straightness of their hair.
Strangest of all, though, was that they all had weapons hovering behind them, held up by a ring of pale yellow light. Mainly swords, though one had a polearm from what you could glean.
The group stopped at what functioned as the entrance to the village, heads tilted up to face you and Pascal, expressions neutral. Their presence caused the hair on your nape to prickle, suddenly nervous. They were (probably) your only way to get home, you couldn’t afford to give a bad first impression.
You trailed after Pascal as went to meet them, clunking down the ladder that creaked precariously under his weight. Resisting the temptation to hide behind him like a child, you stood at his side, waiting for someone to start.
The ‘leader’ of sorts spoke first. “Pascal.”
Pascal’s gears churred, a noise you recognized as him feeling pleased. “It’s good to see you again, 18.”
18? What a weird name, you thought. She was the tallest of the bunch, though the rest weren’t far behind. Her hair draped to her shoulders, bangs cut at an interesting diagonal line, but she pulled it off somehow. Her weapon was bigger than the rest, resembling a heavy greatsword. How a spinning circle of light held it up, you had no idea, and even less idea how the damn thing was used, considering it was as tall as her.
Maybe it was for aesthetics?
The android merely nodded, then turned her gaze toward you. “This is the human you told us of?”
“That’s right,” your friend confirmed.
18 examined you for a few seconds, standing unnaturally still. Then, she turned her head over her shoulder, motioning to the girl at her right. The girl took the hint and approached you, closing the distance in two long strides.
Before you could do anything, her gloved hands clasped your face, tilting your head this way and that, sparing little concern for the comfort of your neck. You opened your mouth to voice your panic, but she took the chance to hook a thumb behind your teeth and pull it open wider, peering into your maw. Reflexively, you tried to jerk back, a garbled complaint bubbling up, but your struggles didn’t move her. Either, she was ignoring the way you were pulling at her arm, or she was entirely oblivious to your discomfort.
It was when she put a palm to your throat, fingers nudging into the underside of your jaw, that she froze. You had no idea what she was searching for, but she seemed to have found it in the way your heart hammered in your chest. As quickly as she had grabbed you, she let go, staggering backwards like you’d burned her.
“It’s true,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. “She– she’s human.”
In an instant, 18 and the other android locked onto you, crowding your space. Touchy hands wandered all over your body, pawing at your flesh, treating you like a novelty. Someone pinched your waist, and you squealed, batting them away.
“Hands off!” You yelped, and they all retracted from you, surprise evident on their faces.
Chatter burst forth from them, the group babbling to each other rather unsubtly. Their conversation moved too fast for you to follow, only allowing you to catch the occasional word, like human and His Majesty, city. Pascal and you shared a glance; the robot shrugged unhelpfully.
Then, it stopped altogether. 18 took her spot at the front again and pressed an arm to her chest, elbow raised outward, and bowed to you. “I am 18D, an android that works under His Majesty. My companions maintain similar positions in His employ. We’d be honored to escort you to His Majesty, so he may aid you in returning home.”
As one, they spoke, saying, “Glory to mankind.”
Jesus, okay, you underestimated how much androids loved humans when Pascal told you about them, sort of just assuming they were bodyguards that took their jobs very seriously. But, hey, that meant they’d keep you safe during your journey to meet whoever this ‘Majesty’ guy was, right?
“We should hurry,” the second girl rushed, jittery for some reason.
As you were about to agree, you hesitated. “Wait, I want Pascal to come, too.”
At once, you were denied. “No,” she refused, stern, but not unkind. “Machine lifeforms are not welcome in the city.”
Offense surged through you at Pascal’s behalf. “What? But he’s nice! You know this!”
“It’s a rule. No exceptions.”
“You can make one–”
Pascal called your name, interrupting your bickering. His hand reached out to you, then lowered, as if he thought better of it.
“It’s okay,” he reassured you. “They have these rules for a reason. I will be fine here.”
You opened your mouth, but no words came out, stuck in your throat like thick honey. You wanted him to come with you, he’d been the only person you’d known since waking up in this strange place.
Fuck. Your chest ached with guilt, but if even Pascal insisted on staying behind, what choice did you have? You weren’t going to win this fight.
It was with a heavy sigh and the slump of your back that you conceded. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
The androids didn’t bother providing further conversation or wishing Pascal farewell, but you were not about to leave him without at least telling him goodbye. They were already marching away, but you weren’t ready, not yet.
“Wait, hang on,” you called to them. Not waiting to see if they stopped, you hurried back to Pascal, throwing your arms around the can of gears and bolts. “Thank you for being my friend,” you murmured into his shoulder.
He didn’t move initially, then cautiously encircled his arms around you in a facsimile of a hug, more so imitating you than actually understanding the action. “Of course,” he reassured you. “It was a pleasure to have you. I hope we meet again someday.”
You kept your mouth shut at that, not wanting to let him down and say this would be the last time you’d see each other, hopefully. Instead, you squeezed him tighter, then let go.
“Bye, Pascal,” you expressed, smiling sadly.
“Safe travels,” he responded, giving you a wave that you returned.
You turned around and made your way to the androids. It was obvious that they wanted to say something about your friendship with Pascal, but they thankfully kept their mouths shut. They led you away, further and further from the little village you had come to think of as your home-away-from-home. You peeked over your shoulder to give it one last look.
Pascal continued to wave at you, even after you disappeared behind the trees and descended to ground level.
A short walk away, you noticed a shape that looked distinctly familiar, tucked away under a tree with low-hanging branches.
It was a car – an off-road land rover of sorts, specifically. Unlike the other vehicle shells you’d seen here and there, rotted frames of crumbling rust and plastic melted under the ever-present sun, this one was in good condition. A range of floodlights were attached right above the windshield, powered off and unneeded in the current daylight. From the looks of it, the roof and windows had been removed, leaving only the frame for easy access.
You watched as 18D popped open the driver side door and climbed in.. You awkwardly waited outside, unsure where you fit.
And then, something grabbed you.
You were lifted like a damn feather, your indignant caterwauling ignored completely as your effective kidnapper jumped in and plopped you right onto her lap, arms looped around your waist.
“Be careful, G!” One of the girls cried out, the one settling into the passenger seat. “She’s fragile.”
Whoever was holding you – G? – cackled. “Relax, 73. She’s fine. Aren’t you, girly?” The girl leaned forward, her lips against the shell of your ear. You fully intended to pretend that you didn’t just experience a wave of shivers at the sound of her voice.
“Well, actually–” you started.
“73H is right, 5G,” 18 interrupted. “Be more careful.”
“Sure, sure,” 5G, G, whoever the fuck she was, answered lackadaisically. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep our little human safe.”
18 grumbled something that you didn’t catch under the roar of the engine turning over. In an attempt to save yourself, you wriggled, but it was useless against the unstoppable force that was this woman’s insane strength. Her arms didn’t so much as budge at your squirming.
“Um,” you spoke up above the rumbling purr emanating from the vehicle. “I can sit on my own just fine!”
5G grinned, propping her chin up on your shoulder. “Don’t be silly! I won’t let you go, you can trust me!”
Yeah, that wasn’t what you were worried about. It didn’t help that she was unfairly pretty. All of them were, really, in that inhuman way that bordered a little too close to uncanny valley, but didn’t quite fall into the steep drop yet.
You chewed the inside of your cheek. You were a novelty, after all; the last human on Earth. Maybe they’d never seen one before? You could hardly blame them for being curious.
Still, no matter how hard you tried to squash the thoughts under your heel, they persisted, whispering in your ear that you should have stayed with Pascal.
----
The entire ride to the city, the androids stared at you.
73H frequently turned around in her seat to chat with you and 5G, and 5G never loosened her hold. The only one that seemed to not be trying to pick you apart with her eyes was 18D, but with the blindfolds they all wore, for all you knew she could have been peering at you through the rearview mirror this whole time.
“What’s it like, being a human?” 73H queried.
“Um, what do you want to know?”
“Do you really produce milk?”
The question was so outrageous, you couldn’t help yourself. You choked on a laugh, then burst out into a fit of giggles. 18D chastised her, prompting 73H to apologize profusely to you, but you found it endearing.
Fanning your face, you answered, “Some people do, yeah. Usually happens after they give birth.”
“What’s it taste like?”
“73H!” 18 shouted.
“Sorry!” She whined.
5G nudged you while 18D chided 73H. “Can humans eat mackerel?”
You nodded. “Yeah, unless they’re allergic.”
“It doesn’t jam up your circuits?”
“No–” you made a face. “Humans don’t have circuits.”
“Really?” Both she and 73H asked.
As you chatted, you observed the changing scenery. The ruined structures of ancient apartments and house foundations fell away, replaced with idyllic landscapes.
It faded away, replaced with the curious chiming of music through old speakers, the sound tinny and popping. You leaned to the side to peek between 18D and 73H, watching as your driver raced towards an…
Amusement park?
Going straight through the entrance led to a partially destroyed statue, its body cut on a clean diagonal, as if sliced in half. Rainwater collected inside it, causing its protective coating to wear off in some places and allow the bronze to oxidize.
“What’s that?” You pointed it out.
5G shrugged nonchalantly. “Records show it used to be a machine lifeform. Good riddance.”
18D drove around it and further into the park, up a few ramps. They were steep, leaving you to fall back into 5G, but she didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.
Past the houses lining the street, the space opened up greatly, a circular plaza with an open gate at the end. It was when 18D drove onto what resembled a highway that you saw it.
A bestial fortress. The vestiges of sunlight bled through the misshapen heart of its core, your desired sunset handed to you on a silver platter. To the right of it, the remnants of a ferris wheel lay collapsed upon its siding, overtaken by nature.
“I bet this place used to be fun,” 73H sighed. “Wish the roller coaster still worked.”
“There’s a roller coaster?” You looked back to spot it.
“Oh, yeah,” 5G crooned, laughing. “Just a mess now. Bet you would have been too chicken to ride it, 73H.”
“I would not have been!”
The two bickered back and forth, with 5G provoking 73H, saying that all healer units were wusses while the other insisting it wasn’t true.
The highway curved, extending parallel to the massive structure, away from the winding pillars and tracks of the doomed roller coaster.
It was beautiful.
You feared that very beauty would grab hold of you and never let go.
Lost in thought, you didn’t notice that your ride had reached its destination until 5G was scooping you up like a soggy, wet cat again, lifting you out of the car. Looking around, you realized that 18D had parked in what seemed to be a garage lot somewhere underground.
Just as you were beginning to panic, thinking they were about to drag you down to some creepy-ass dungeon, 18D spun around and led your group up a ramp and out into the crimson-gold lambency of the forevermore lowering sun, hanging heavy on the horizon.
The first step you took into the city left you speechless.
All around you, skyscrapers rose to greet the sky, their spires still standing tall, even after all this time. In place of glass windows with mirror-like finishes, overwhelming amounts of bright green foliage sprouted from the sides of the buildings. Trees lined the streets in thriving columns, blooms of white and pink flowering atop the leaves.
Asphalt made way for sprawling ivy and stunning flora, pops of color breathing a sentience yet unknown to you into what was once a metropolis packed full of humans. The tram line that cut through the center of the wide street blended seamlessly with the copsewood, the passenger carriage itself serving as a home for verdure.
A squirrel skittered from bush to bush and raced up the trunk of a nearby tree, chattering with another that hid in the midst of leafage. Flocks of birds circled overhead, searching for places to nest, bugs to feast upon, and treats to stash away.
Androids roamed about in small groups, two or three making their way to wherever it was they were going. Most had white hair, but it was easy to spot those that were brunette or blonde. A few even sported brilliantly red locks, a shock of contrast against a nearly all-green backdrop.
You were so used to streets that were jam packed with people and cars, a constant buzz of sound. Instead of honking vehicles and rumbling engines, there was the swish of gentle wind between buildings. Humans were exchanged with wildlife. Things of scant importance had long since decomposed.
Fresh air flooded your lungs. You could see straight up into a vivid wisteria and bell heather sky, no haze present to block out the lustrous glow of perpetual early sunset. Stars speckled the heavens in dots of cadenced flickers.
The world smelled sweet, faintly of lemongrass and something distinctly wild that you couldn’t put your finger on. For a moment, you forgot everything, captive to the beauty of a planet undesecrated by humanity.
To your surprise, many buildings and streetlights retained electricity, burning strong in the evening hours. They made constellations of one another, their silhouettes blurred into softness by still-surviving lightbulbs and the mellowed sun. When you heard the word ‘cozy’, this is what you imagined. A place of peace, full of nature, gentle on the eyes.
If only real life was like this. Well, your real life.
The weapons your envoy possessed dissipated into sparkles of light as soon as they entered the official city boundary, embers fizzling away before you could enclose them in your palms and bring them to your heart.
“The King lives not far from the city center, in a castle,” 73H informed you.
You cocked your head to the side. “Castle?”
A smile curled the corners of her mouth upwards. “Yes! He built it himself.”
“Oh,” you responded, lackluster.
You wondered if this ‘King’ had a proper name amongst the androids, or if he identified himself with weird numbers and letters like everyone else did, as far as you were aware. It would be kind of odd to always refer to him as only ‘the King’ or ‘His Majesty’, wouldn’t it?
It gave you something to ponder about as you followed 18D, absentmindedly taking in the scenery and moping about your universe not having anything remotely like this. Had you not been experiencing it firsthand, you would have dared to call it magical, far beyond the realm of possibility. The entire path you took to the so-called “castle” was like this, the pure essence of creation at the nimble hands of Earth.
And the castle itself – well, it wasn’t quite what you were expecting.
Granted, you didn’t know what to expect in the first place, but it wasn’t so strikingly simple in your mind’s eye.
Sticking out like a sore thumb, a structure of pure, pristine white material occupied a space you imagined might have once belonged to a church, a place of worship. If you paid close enough attention, you swore you could hear the whisper of unanswered prayers.
Compared to the decrepit skyscrapers, it looked brand new, untouched, raised from the ground and kept in a bubble of serenity, away from erosion and time. Your hands itched to dip into paint and press into its sides, leaving a reminder that you were there.
The massive doorway opened at your approach, and you walked through them, down a long path that led to a raised dais. A throne resided atop it, and on it sat a man, chin propped on his fist.
King was right.
The man had an undeniably heavy presence to him, one that had you straightening up.
You were never good with estimating, but you’d place his height around 7 feet, at least. He commanded the very air about him with his presence alone, drawing the attention of everyone nearby. 18D was tall, but the king beat her by a head or two easily.
Like most androids, his hair was a gleaming, cool white, resembling the underbelly of a fawn. It fluffed around his head in mid-length strands, and you bet it was soft as cotton. Part of you wanted to reach out and run your fingers through his wolf cut.
Instead, you forced yourself to focus on his face. Unlike the other androids, he wasn’t wearing a blindfold, showing his pretty blue eyes; they swept over your escorts with little interest, then they settled on you.
And stayed.
Their striking hue made your breath catch. Stunning was an understatement, and you felt a smidge self conscious with how keenly he looked at you. You wrapped your arms around yourself, glancing away.
“Ladies,” he greeted. His tone was low and smooth. It passed over you, encircled you, and came to rest, a warm blanket made of affection and familiarity.
“Your Majesty,” your android companions all replied simultaneously, leaving you the odd one out once more.
The ‘King’ merely waved his hand. “This her, then?
18D rose first, thumping her fist against her chest before it fell to rest at her side.
“Yes, your Majesty. This is the human Pascal informed you of.”
In all the time that 18D was speaking, he never once looked away from you, wholly captivated by your existence.
His brows creased. “How did you end up here?”
It took you a moment to figure out he was asking you. “Oh, um,” you stammered, not expecting the unceremonious return of your vocal autonomy. “I… woke up here?”
Were you not currently busy getting the shit intimidated out of you, you would have considered a career as a wordsmith. With your talent for crafting intricate, yet easily-understood explanations, you could be a world-renowned author on any topic you craved to cover.
Surprisingly, the man didn’t ask you to restate yourself, moving on to ask, “What is your name?”
Hesitantly, you offered it, and received a dazzling smile in return.
“It’s a beautiful name,” he complimented. “You may call me Nier.”
Nier.
Why was the king – Nier – the only one with a name? A proper name, one that sounded almost…
Human.
You thought to question it, but the comfort that came with a human name belonging to a man that was the closest to a human you’d seen overrode it.
Nier rose to his feet, coming to stand before you. He wielded power in his stance alone; it drew you to him.
“Come inside, we can talk more there,” he recommended, motioning to an opening off to the side. You nodded and let him guide you away from your escorts.
The door slid shut behind you, giving you privacy. Inside, you found what looked like a completely normal home, although made of the same material as the rest of the castle and his throne.
Where you expected Nier to sit you down on the couch, or at the dinner table, he kept walking until he reached the end of a hallway. He raised a hand and pressed it to the blank wall, and a hidden door parted, revealing another small room. An elevator.
You entered it with him, and soon felt the floor rise beneath you and carry you smoothly upwards. For how long, you had no way of knowing, having no indication of what floor you were on. It could have been seconds or minutes, but by the time the door opened again, you were disoriented and a hint dizzy. Nier, of course, was none the wiser, focused on bringing you into a bedroom, of all things.
Your first instinct was to think it was his bedroom – but the more you took in the details, the less that seemed likely. For one, there was no indication of anyone having lived in it; the sheets on the bed were untouched, not a wrinkle to be seen in the comforter or pillowcase, both as equally white as everything else. There was nothing on the nightstand beside the bed aside from a small lamp. The desk was blank, a chair tucked neatly under it, and if you opened the wardrobe, you’d bet there was nothing inside it.
“What…” you breathed aloud, confused.
Nier finally let go of your hand and stepped further in. “This is for you,” he said, like that gave you any sort of enlightenment on the environment.
“For me?”
“Yes,” he affirmed, laying his hand on your shoulder. Faintly, his finger brushed over your neck, the sensation little more than the lightest trace of a feather. But there was too much else going on for you to notice it properly, your focus drawn every which way.
At his direction, the subtle persuading, you took a seat on the bed, bewildered to find that it was soft and comfortable, contrary to the blockiness you were expecting. Nier crouched in front of you, coming to rest on one knee, an arm laid lazily across the raised one. Even brought down to this level, he was nearly head-on with you, easily able to maintain eye contact.
“You don’t have to do that,” you said.
“I insist,” he asserted. “I am most happy when I serve.”
Your heart fluttered.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” He suggested.
So, you did exactly that; you told him how you went to sleep in your world, and woke up in this one. How you met Pascal, and asked him to contact the androids with hopes that they could aid you in returning home. Now, you came to Nier with the hopes that he’ll be able to help you return to where you’re supposed to be.
“Her name is Accord,” you told him. “She’s an android, like you. Can you contact her?”
His head tilted to the side, and he put a hand on your thigh, above your knee. “Don’t worry,” he soothed. “We’ll help you get home. It’s our responsibility as the servants of humanity to serve you, and keep you safe.”
You gave him a thin, watery smile.
“Thank you, your Majesty–”
“Nier,” he corrected.
You swallowed down the dryness in your throat. “...Nier.”
The delighted expression he gave you caused heat to rise to your cheeks. You looked away, and that’s when you heard it, a distant, muffled noise.
You spotted a nearby window where the noise came from. You turned to peer out of it, where you found dozens upon dozens of androids standing on the street below. They all hollered and flailed their arms about, heads bobbing like little whack-a-moles.
Beside you, Nier grumbled, “News travels so fast… I apologize, I hoped we’d have more time before they learned you were here.”
Leaning closer to the window, you awed at the amount of people gathered. “Are they all… here to see me?”
“Of course, they are,” came his soft reply. “You are a miracle to us.”
You peeked at him, and found him smiling tenderly at you, his expression warm and gentle. He gave you a slight nod, and you took it as permission to interact with the amassed people. Slowly, you raised a hand, and waved it at them.
Your reward was an explosive round of cheers that barely reached you, the androids jumping and waving back at you. Despite yourself, your lips tugged upwards, the tightness in your chest loosening.
If nothing else, it was nice to know the androids were excited to see you.
Nier rose from his spot. “I’d like to show you the rest of the castle,” he explained. “If that’s alright.”
There was something about him that made you feel safe. He was kind, and you knew he’d protect you. When he extended his hand, you took it, fingers gliding into his palm.
“I’d love to see,” you said.
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Come, then. There’s much to show you.”
divider by cafekitsune ♥
(reminder to put your age in your bio/pinned before you follow me or I will block you)
hello new followers!!
reminder to PLEASE put your age in your bio/pinned or I will block you. my blog is very strictly mdni. idc if you put "18+" "not a minor" or your actual age, just as long as I can confirm you're not a minor
thank <3
hello new followers!!
reminder to PLEASE put your age in your bio/pinned or I will block you. my blog is very strictly mdni. idc if you put "18+" "not a minor" or your actual age, just as long as I can confirm you're not a minor
thank <3
HEED THE WARNINGS: major injury, loss of a limb, black market, construct trafficking - read on ao3
[COD masterlist]
[prev] - [next]
"Weepin' Jesus!" Soap cried out. "He's alive!"
You frowned. "Hang on, it might be a system check," you said. You quickly read through the console log, typed what looked like a string of nonsense to Soap, then straightened. "Unit-0930, can you hear me?"
The console's cursor blinked, still.
Then—
Movement on the screen.
Yes.
"Run a diagnostic check," you ordered.
A moment passed, and a hollow bar popped up on the console. For the next few minutes, the bar progressively filled, the percentage listed next to it rising.
At 100%, a whole slew of information and warnings flooded the console.
"Outstanding," you muttered, sounding peeved, but Soap could see the glimmer of excitement in your eye at the prospect of a challenge. "Do you know who you are?"
I am unit-0980. I am a military grunt construct.
"He knows who he is!" Your companion exclaimed.
"No," you shot down. "He's just reading his system information, telling us what he is, not who. Shit that's hardcoded into his BIOS. It's like checking what graphics card you have on your computer."
"Oh."
You sent him a sympathetic lip press. "He's only got a basic, barely-functioning memory cartridge in him. It'll be invaluable while I work on repairing him, since it's a steady baseline, a safe-mode, but his real memories are stored in the broken cartridges."
You pointed to the cardboard box you stored his broken cartridges in, and Soap peeked at them with a conflicted emotion on his face.
"There's a chance though, aye?" He nudged the side of the box, but didn't reach into it.
You peered at him, trying to pick the right words. You couldn't promise him anything, but…
"Yeah," you answered. "There's a chance."
His shoulders dropped an inch, and the tight pinch between his brows softened.
Hope.
Hope had always been fascinating to you. People could find the tiniest things to cling onto, and if they wanted it badly enough, it could fuel their willpower to astronomical levels. A little bit of hope could go a long way.
Constructs couldn't feel hope. Not the same way. Hope was something innate to humans, to life, a spark of fire heart-borne. Organic.
Given that constructs were the antithesis to organic life, emotions didn't come from the same place — if a construct was programmed to feel anything at all in the first place. Long before and long after their common existence, it'd been debated whether constructs could be truly considered as 'alive' or not.
To those who argued not, no amount of tests for 'proof' could convince them that a machine was anything more than a machine. Nuts and bolts and gears that could clog and grind and break. Unfeeling metal, never to decay, never to return back to Earth as nature intended.
On the other end of the spectrum were those that believed basic predictive-text programs were sentient and capable of love. Their obsession ran deep, and only worsened exponentially when constructs began to trickle into the public market.
Neither side understood how constructs truly worked. Felt. The complicated machinery and computer science that went into making something as close to life-like as possible without playing god, without mutating nature, cursing it to suffer as something it was never meant to become.
You supposed it didn't matter in the end. A kingdom built on sand was bound to come crumbling down eventually, especially when all sides worked together to dig it out from beneath. 90% of constructs were gone, now. Dismantled and repurposed or simply dumped, and those that remained…
Images of the girl you 'saved' on your first mission with the 141 came to mind; her clicking, jammed ankle, the hydraulics and wires exposed, the hollow look in her eye.
Of course, if you wanted something to act human, you needed to give them the ability to suffer.
You tried not to think about it. Her. Those that were left behind, taken in by people who saw something they could torture without the risk of it making a mess or dying.
You tried.
Roach was a good distraction.
You had shooed Johnny out some time ago to go prepare for the mission. He complained, demanding to stay so he could be there to witness if Roach magically regained his memories, to which you responded by showing him the console and the thousands of lines of corrupted, fucked code. Upon asking if he wanted to do the coding to recover said memories, he grumbled and slinked out, tail drooping.
He missed his friend. You understood; you missed your friends, too, sometimes. The ones you had before the technological collapse. Before everyone involved with constructs was rounded up for one reason or another.
In his current form, Roach wasn't the friend Johnny knew. You wanted to bring him back, if you could, but it'd require a lot of code clean-up, reconstruction, and data transferring. And time.
Much time.
Sighing, you ran a hand down your face and closed your laptop. You reached into Roach's chassis to power the machine off. The few functioning gears he had rattled and clicked as they slowed to a stop, and the hum of his power unit quieted into silence.
You packed your laptop into your backpack, and tucked his old storage cartridges into a protective case, also tucked into the bag. If you had time, you'd try to sneak in some work on the way to the mission or back. Speaking of the mission, you made sure to pack enough materials to tape together a mini-computer on the fly if you needed to for whatever reason. You were taken on as the tech specialist, after all.
Right on time, John came to grab you, his telltale two-two-one knocking pattern giving him away.
"On the road in twenty, Maven," he said.
You hummed, hoisting your backpack on and following him out of your shed. He gave you a spare second to re-arm your makeshift alarm and do up all the locks, then you were following him to a rather standard-looking truck on the field. The other boys were already present, dressed and ready to go.
"You'll be riding with Soap. Gaz, Ghost, and I will follow behind you, on a delay, so folks don't get suspicious of us," he informed you, guiding you to the truck.
"Got it," you said.
"Hold on tight to the grab-bar, Maven," Gaz warned. "Soap drives like a maniac."
Ghost snorted. "Understatement."
"You're no better, Ghost," Price scolded. "Muppets, the both of you."
"A'mnae tha' bad a driver, eh?" Soap held his hands up in surrender.
"How many humvees have you crashed again, Soap?" Gaz pondered.
Soap's lip raised in a snarl. "Away 'n' bile yer heid!"
"Boys," Price rolled his eyes. From the truck's bed, he grabbed a bullet-proof vest and ordered you to put it on, then had you cover it with a loose, worn sweater. A university hoodie, it seemed, from several years ago. Well loved, soft, and comfortable. You lifted the collar to your nose and sniffed it, finding warm notes woven into the fibers, something that no amount of washing could remove.
"One o' mine," Price said. "You'll stand out less, an' if they think ya have a man at home, they won' bother ya as much."
You hummed, and kept your mouth shut. The black market didn't care who you were, where you came from, or who was waiting for you. If you had something they deemed valuable and weren't willing to hand it over, they'd do all they could to take it from you.
Hopefully, though, having a bodyguard would discourage any grabby, unwelcome hands from coming near you.
You hopped into the vehicle's passenger seat, bidding a lazy, temporary farewell to the rest of your team as Soap joined you. You scowled as he didn't bother to buckle up. You knew it'd be pointless to fight him on it, though. The man refused to strap in unless absolutely necessary, and his apparent history of crashing cars wasn't deemed a warning.
Bastard that he was, he grinned at you, having the audacity to shoot finger guns at you.
The engine revved to life, followed by the second car's motor starting up. Your backup wouldn't follow immediately, as planned, but you could admit to yourself that you didn't like the idea of being so separated from them.
Discretion mattered more than your feelings on the matter.
Soap's fingers tapped on the steering wheel in beat to the rock tune he had blasting from the radio. Shameless, he sang along to the lyrics, too, his voice terribly off key. His enthusiasm and joy outweighed his cracking vibrato.
"Ne'er ge' ta do this, th' lads willnae le' me near th' radio whene'er we drive t'gether," he sighed wistfully.
You surely had no idea why. None at all.
Outside, the city blurred past, buildings and neon billboards merging together. Soap knew where to go, familiar with the streets and the path he needed to take to get to the underside. It surprised you a bit, you almost expected him to be helpless in civilian zones. Anywhere outside a battlefield or the base.
An unfair assumption. As much as you knew the boys, you still had plenty to learn.
Soap parked the car a couple blocks away from your destination, and this was where you noticed that being in the city did somewhat disturb him. His eyes kept darting around, and he was stiff around the shoulders and thighs, clearly on heavy guard.
Lightly, you tapped his stomach with the back of your hand. "Relax," you murmured. "Act like a bodyguard, not a soldier."
"I dinnae ken 'ow," he admitted.
"On your heels, heavy. Look like you're underestimating people," you instructed. You saw your fair share of bodyguards as a merc. They were always cocky, believing they could take on the whole world and not break a sweat doing it. "Be egotistical. But don't talk."
He nodded seriously, absorbing your tips with the diligence of the soldier he was. Taking a deep breath, he rolled his shoulders and forced his body to unwind, tense muscles loosening.
"Be'er?"
"Better," you smiled.
He grinned back, then quickly schooled his expression into something just this side of stern.
In another life, he would have made for a great actor, you thought. An idea you decided to toy around with another time.
Soap let you lead the way, countless alleys passed until you turned a corner and headed for a metro entrance. The lights spaced above the stairs that dropped down into the tunnel had long since burned out, and the city never bothered to replace them.
This metro entrance was considered redundant, abandoned. The metro didn't come down this way anymore after the city determined that maintaining it, and the tunnel, was too expensive. The metro system in general was falling out of favor, considered old-fashioned and wholly useless between unexplained, frequent delays and the overabundance of e-vehicles. More reliable to buy a cheap bike that would do all the work for you than risk a train that'd most likely leave you stranded in the middle of the underground for hours on end.
Which made it perfect for accessing the underside.
Anyone sensible, sane, or smart would avoid the metro entrance like it birthed the plague. The litter, the graffiti, and the distinct stink of dereliction left little to be desired for the average everyman. The speckled bloodstains removed any remaining desire entirely.
This part of the city was rarely busy. Few wandered the streets, which meant few eyes witnessed you and Soap descend down the steps of the metro's entrance. Plastic cups and empty snack bags crinkled underfoot, rustling after being kicked up by your gait.
You could hardly hear Soap's steps.
"Make more noise," you hissed. "You're not a soldier, you're a hired guard who thinks he's hot shit."
Surprisingly, he obeyed instantly, following your commands with ease. You anticipated push-back, some sort of 'I rank higher than you', but Soap slid into his role fluidly. Every note you gave him, he saved to memory and employed efficiently.
Honestly, you could get used to bossing him around. Most of the men you barked orders at would give you a smarmy grin, eye you up, and say 'I know what I am doing, sweetheart'. It made you shudder with disgust every time. It's one of the reasons you chose to be a merc; less chances of crossing paths with the dumbasses.
At the bottom of the stairs, you made a sharp right, walking briskly towards an unassuming door. The sign once marking it as MAINTENANCE - STAFF ONLY had faded and weathered, neglected into a sad state. The door's yellow paint was chipped extensively, exposing corroded, thin metal beneath.
You could feel Soap's stare prying into the back of your skull, no doubt curious about how deep your familiarity with the location ran.
Instead of sating that curiosity, you asked, "Ever been to the underside, Soap?"
"No' personally."
"Try not to get overwhelmed," you smirked at him over your shoulder.
Before he could press, you grabbed the handle and twisted it. The old thing put up a fight, grit and age turning a smooth glide into a crunching jerk. You shoved hard, and the door scraped open, revealing an empty, featureless room.
Save for the massive hole in the wall.
Bricks lied in heaps beneath it, torn away to get at the concrete behind it. That, too, had been hammered away, revealing a lightless hole.
"The fuck?" Soap muttered.
"There's a passageway they covered up. Used it while building this particular metro station, then closed it when it wasn't needed anymore."
"Where's it go?" He questioned, following you through the hole.
"Black market," you said, pulling a flashlight out of your pack to shine down the long pass.
He snorted. "No' wh' ah meant."
You hummed. "Streets cover what used to be the proper entrance to this. But they never bothered to close off the other end."
Your shared steps echoed as you walked down the slope, flashlights bouncing — yours mostly centered on the ground, while Soap's scanned the area; the monotone, gray walls, floor, and ceiling. Debris lined the edges of the space, covered in dirt and dust, from one place or another.
"An'… th' other end?"
As you made your way further in, a din began to rise. Noise, subtle at first, rose in volume, a distinct clamor made when large quantities gathered in a small place. The sounds of a healthy, thriving market.
You turned a bend, and the end of the tunnel expanded into a sprawling, enormous berth.
Inside it was a glowing city.
Neon lights were stuck to every surface imaginable, blinding and colorful, advertising all sorts. The bright billboards alone were enough to illuminate the space in a scintillating mix between red and teal, streetlights unnecessary. In their place, shop stalls opted for digital lanterns — a flickering candle within controlled like a hearth displayed on a television, the only difference being the amount of light they provided, and the ambient, artificial heat they produced.
"What in hell's bells…" Soap muttered, wide eyes jumping from one thing to another, unsure of where to start, what to focus on.
"Used to be a poor neighborhood," you began explaining, "way back when. City didn't know what to do with it, so… they buried it."
Something sick twisted in Soap's gut. "Buried it?"
You nodded, leading him to a rickety, grated staircase. "Yeah. Covered it up."
"How'd they do tha'?"
"They covered the area in a net. A lot of nets. Stacked and stacked them until they could put in rebar and pour concrete and whatever else over the area, seal it off from the topside."
"Jesus Christ…" Soap whispered, following you down the stairs. They made his insides squirm, each rattle sending a skitter up his spine. Never was a big fan of heights. "An'… an' th' people?"
Your shoulder lifted and dropped in a halfhearted shrug. "Those that stayed… stayed forever."
He swallowed thickly. "If they buried this place, why build a metro next tae it?"
"You ask a lot of questions," you accused, glancing at him over your shoulder. "Convenience. They didn't have to dig out a new tunnel, for the most part. All they had to do was find the old city and block off the parts they didn't want."
Soap sat with your explanation for a while, long after you reached the bottom of those accursed stairs. As you stepped into the market proper, he remembered to change his stance and school his face, staying two steps behind you. Close, but not soldiers-watching-each-other's-backs close. A bodyguard.
As subtly as he could, he peeked at the stalls you passed on, taking in what details he was fast enough to process before moving onto the next. Periodically, you stopped, scanning over the available wares, giving him a chance to take a good look at what the black market had to offer.
What surprised him was the variety. Beyond the standard affairs — liquor, sex, weapons, black magic — there were stalls of imported and smuggled fruits and vegetables, folks selling basic appliances, even an old woman offering handmade knitted pieces. Upon closer inspection, he realized some of the cabled accessories were designed to hide prosthetics and cybernetic parts. Her own leg was wrapped up in a sleeve, leaving only her foot below the ankle visible.
Metal, twisting gears and blinking lights. A prosthetic certainly not ordained by the government. Even with only a sliver to work with, he could tell it was made of things the big heads banned after the collapse.
At first, it confused him. Why bring attention to the part you were trying to hide?
But it clicked together a moment later. Hiding in plain sight. If anyone asked, she could simply laugh it off, claim she had an ugly piece that she couldn't afford to get replaced, so she decided to dazzle it up, make it nicer. What the sleeve didn't cover could easily be hidden with socks and proper shoes.
Down here, though, there was nothing to hide. It was an accessory, a token of pride.
You stopped properly at a stand in the middle of a street, nestled cozily between one selling banned books and another offering construct repair services. The table was littered with bits and bobs, unsorted and scattered; computer chips, appliance parts, an entire construct hand.
You were interested in something else, though, your eyes having locked onto it the moment you spotted it.
The old man running the stand watched with one organic eye and one cybernetic eye as you picked up a cartridge and turned it in your hands, studying its pins and the scraped off serial number on the back, any sort of brand or model identification peeled off. You blew lightly on the open bottom part, and hummed in satisfaction when no dust came out.
"How much?" You asked the merchant.
"What ya got?" He asked back, causing Soap's brow to twitch. Was money not used down here?
You pulled your pack off your shoulder and unzipped it, digging around until you pulled out something you considered to be equal value. To Soap, it was just a meaningless, rectangular chunk of something, but the man's eyes(? Just one eye? Soap couldn't tell) lit up with interested.
You handed it over, and Soap suppressed a shudder as the cybernetic eye stretched forward from its socket, like an extending camera lens.
"Gyroscope?" He asked, and you nodded.
"Where'd ya get this, lassie? Ne'er seen anythin' like it." The merchant asked as he twisted the gyroscope chip.
"Can't go sharing all my secrets," you said, tucking the memory card away into your pack.
He humphed. "Looks homemade."
You shrugged, swinging the pack over your shoulder. "Fuck if I know. I'm just the one that found it."
His shrewd eye darted between you and Soap, brows pinched unevenly. The cybernetic in his other eye kept it wide and unblinking, unmoving.
"Smart t' bring a bodyguard," he noted. "Since y're a newbie, I'll give ya a tip; stall on Myrrhder. They got newer car'ridges, ken? Fancier shit than this."
You nodded once. "Thanks."
"Don' go thankin' me. Just don' go gettin' kidnapped, migh' wanna trade with ya in the future."
"Noted," you said with finality. Jerking your head at Soap, he immediately began following you.
Once far enough away, Soap asked, "Why act like yer new?"
"Intel," you responded. "Merchants love to use the 'first sample is free' angle. Get you interested by acting friendly, makes you more likely to trade with them again. Chances are, he and the guy he mentioned are in cahoots."
"Ye gonnae go back t' 'im next time yer here?"
"Dunno," you answered honestly. "I trade with whoever has the parts I need."
He grunted. "Ye're nae 'fraid who they might be? Wh't if they're dangerous?"
You stopped, turning to look at him. "We're all criminals down here," you said. "Nobody will stop a commotion if one happens, but nobody is interested in starting one, either. The rules may be unwritten, but they're upheld well here."
"Meanin'?"
"You start a fight, you fuck with someone else's business, and you'll be lucky if you only get banned from the black market," you cautioned. "Nobody wants to die. It's bad for business."
He frowned. "Ah'll keep tha' in mind."
You opened your mouth, but paused when you caught something over his shoulder, your brow furrowing. When he went to turn and look, you grabbed his forearm, and hissed, "Don't move. Don't look. Pretend you're talking to me."
"What? Hen, wh' are ye—"
"Peas and carrots. Just say peas and carrots over and over."
He got a pinched look on his face, but did as you ordered, murmuring the bizarre phrase over and over again. You kept your gaze pinned over his shoulder, watching something he couldn't see, and being unaware made his hackles raise. His instincts screamed at him to turn and look, figure it out for himself, and it took all his strength to obey.
All he could do was watch your expression, eerily still, eyes unblinking. They fluidly shifted from one target to another, as if following someone pacing back and forth, but based on how quickly they glided, it didn't make sense.
Something in his hindbrain yowled wrong, wrong, wrong.
But it was there and gone, your lids blinking and eyes returning to normal. You reached for the choker you had hidden under the collar of your shirt and pressed down on it.
"Maven to Bravo Six," you said in a low murmur.
Instantly, both your ear pieces crackled, and Price's voice came through, somehow clear despite the layers and layers between you and the surface. "Bravo Six. What's your status, Maven?"
"South exit," you replied. "Traders moving crates."
Crates? Soap wondered.
You must have seen something, and Price must have known, understood.
"Copy. Moving to south exit. Trail them, over."
You let go of the choker and finally met Soap's questioning gaze.
"Follow me. Don't look, just stay close," you told him. Slowly, you turned around, and began walking elsewhere, away from the supposed traders you'd spied.
Soap was a good soldier, executed orders with precision and unhesitating determination.
But as he robotically copied your steps, he couldn't help himself.
He kept his head forward, but his eyes freely darted to the dark spot you were staring so intensely at. He didn't see anything initially, the area one of the few that wasn't illuminated by the neons.
Then, he caught it.
Two traders were hefting a large crate out the back of a truck and dropped it near a group of others. From over the top of it, a limp arm swayed along the side. As they set it down, one of the men grabbed the arm and tossed it lazily back into the box, but Soap caught the faint gleam of metal in the wrist, the knuckles.
Construct traders.
You found them.
He'd nearly forgotten the purpose of this mission, why you two went underground in the first place, too caught up in the novelty of technology that no longer existed above the surface.
Unlike him, his team, you weren't a soldier, yet you acted like one; efficient, quick on your feet, like you simply knew what to do. He recalled you saying you'd known Price at least ten years, and that you were a contract worker. A mercenary.
You weren't just some tech wizard; he had to remind himself of that fact. If you weren't familiar with all of this, if you knew nothing, Price never would have brought you on.
Everything Price did was with purpose. Looks didn't matter to him, so long as you could get the job done. Even if it meant paying you under the table, keeping your secrets under his tongue from his own men.
To keep out of sight, inconspicuous, you made a show of stopping at a few more stalls, trading for a couple more parts, your path an intentional loop that led to the alley with the truck and crates, just a different angle.
Both of you hugged the wall as you peered around a corner, observing, timing.
The truck roared to life, its engine sputtering like a sickly person coughing their lungs out. As its drone began to fade, you slipped around the corner, careful to stick to the darkness and avoid the traders busy unloading the crates. Closer now, Soap could see the people pulling out bodies, constructs that were powered off, limbs, having the nerve to joke about them.
He could feel the hatred you had for them, sense how you wished to do something right then and there, even if you didn't visibly show it. Your shoulders were relaxed, body loose, calm.
But your fingers twitched, and you never took your eyes off of them, not until the uphill tunnel the truck took forcefully cut off your vision. It lingered a moment longer, then shifted away, tracking up the path the truck took.
Like the previous tunnel, this one was dark, sporadically illuminated by the one-off lightbulb that somehow continued to burn a dim orange, doing next to nothing. It seemed endless, the steady incline burning Soap's thighs, a perpetual rise and twist that led nowhere.
Until suddenly, there was light.
It scalded his retinas, a pure white gleam that shone into the tunnel, a gate left open. Outside, the truck was idling, one door partially open with a foot sticking out, the person inside animatedly talking, based on the way his foot jerked.
You and Soap quickly escaped from sight behind a concrete pillar nearby as the man hopped out at last, moving to close the gate up. He muttered about lazy fuckers, likely upset his partner didn't want to be the one to do the work.
The entrance was disguised inside a rundown bridge, the gate covered with leaves-like tarp, a sort of ghillie suit. A different path in, one that seemed to be utilized by few. Perfect for illicit traders trying to stay undetected, or people carrying large cargo that can't be carried through the metro entrance.
As the man climbed back into the truck and drove away, your team's vehicle pulled up, Gaz behind the wheel. From what you heard, he was the most trustworthy driver, a point Ghost contended on anytime it was brought up.
You and Soap got in, and Gaz trailed the truck, close enough to see where it went, but too far for them to spot you. The car was silent, tight with unspoken tension. Collectively, the team knew what this meant, regardless of how the deeper definition differed between them.
Soap wondered what it meant to you.
He didn't ask, not now. But later, he would.
The truck lazily wound through a thinning part of the city until the buildings began to grow further and further apart. Just as you began to worry that you'd lose cover, the drivers stopped at an arbitrary building.
A factory, run down and discarded.
Its sheet metal walls were peeling, some panels missing, the rest rusted down to a muddy red. Thick chimneys sat at the top of the unreliable structure, their edges blackened from years of smoke discharge. Empty conveyors ran in strips to one side of the building, disappearing behind degraded, dirty flaps.
A staircase outside, climbing to the smallest point in the entire facility, had collapsed, leaving only the bottom part remaining, as well as a dangling piece connected to the platform outside the door of that little room.
There was a courtyard, partially hidden by an arching stone wall. It was too far to truly make out, but you thought you saw a pentacle painted on the cobbled ground. It almost made you snort.
Gaz turned down a different path, parking out of sight, but close enough in case something happened. Each of you got out, silent as the grave, preparing in your own ways. Ghost checked the magazine of his gun, Price dug through his vest, and you—
You held your breath.
It was what you did when too many thoughts began to drown you out, neural network working overtime to procure every possible outcome, everything that could go wrong, everything that could go right. When you tried to think of what to do, come up with a game plan.
You held your breath until your body forced the lungs in your chest to expand, stretch and press against the cage encasing them.
It helped distract you, push your thoughts towards breathing steadily and quiet the chiming relays darting back and forth in your head.
Price checked each of you, unspeaking, his blue eyes unwavering. When one nodded, they went to the next, until they landed on you.
You held his gaze, and slowly dipped your head in confirmation.
Ready.
He nodded back, and took the head, carving a path for you take. You fell into line, Gaz at your front and Soap at you back, the two sandwiching you in a blanket of false safety, a confidence you leaned on, knowing (hoping) they'd protect you if something went awry.
Your group darted from shadow to shadow, approaching the courtyard from the back after scouting and seeing no cameras. It was going smoothly, especially considering the size of your group, but you needed everybody.
Before you could so much as crawl toward a filthy, darkened window to peek inside, a spotlight hit you, and for a moment, everything froze.
Then—
"Run!" Price shouted, and you broke out in a sprint unthinking.
The air erupted with gunfire and screaming, a tug-of-war between the outraged raiders gunning you down and your team shooting back and dodging blistering rounds.
You ducked around the side of a building, Soap hot on your heels.
Something small and round clicked against the gravel nearby, drawing your attention as it rolled to a stop a short distance in front of you. It looked unassuming, perfectly spherical and coated in a black sheen. Were it not for the hook structure atop it, you wouldn’t have paid it much mind, not when all your energy should have been poured into running.
It took you a moment to process what it was, but when you did, it was too late. Your stomach sank, a stone dropped in a stygian lake that swallowed it whole and dragged it to the mud and silt below, a wrathful kelpie seeking to drown anything that dared to disturb its lochs deadly peaceful waters. Time seemed to slow, a vignette dissolving your peripherals, hands raised to block all but the terror that’s come to destroy you.
A grenade.
Panic seized you and you halted in place, allowing Soap to pass you as he kept running. The scent of gunpowder clung to him, deeply engrained into his hair and clothes, stuck beneath his nails and embedded in his pores. After working with him, with them, he was the first thing that came to mind when you smelled gunpowder; acrid smoke and pepper. Such a mundane fragrance made unique, special.
And, he was special. They all were. You tried to keep the squad away, at the tips of your fingers and no closer, but they’d weaseled their way in, disregarding your futile efforts that only became weaker and weaker with time. One mission blurred into two, five, ten, and suddenly, you were part of them.
Johnny, with his simultaneously brilliant and incredibly doltish mind. His knack for explosives, his cheeky personality, his gleaming grin and perpetual optimism. He was the blistering sun, the burning summer. The Hierophant, reversed.
Kyle, and his calm nature, tight and contained under stress, relaxed and smooth inside the safety of four secured walls with his mates present. The moon, coaxing and lulling, a gentle presence that guided with a tender hand at the low of your back, whispered words. The Chariot, upright.
John, the man who bore piercing winter crystals that stored a knowledge deeper and fuller than any library, a wisdom that he carried in the broad span of his shoulders. He was the pillar that kept the invisible barriers housing his ilk aloft, through flood and fire, storm and drought. He dug out paths through snow, carved them out with his own steps, so the ones he considered his could walk with ease. The Emperor, upright.
Simon. The specter, the wraith that hid in shadows, and that said shadows held onto so reverently. The old guard dog that laid by the door, one ear to his pack, the other always on alert, swiveling and locking in on any odd noise. Should anyone dare to stalk too close, they’d be met with glimmering, razor-sharp canines and unforgiving, unprejudiced razing. The Hound of Baskerville, protective of his own and none else. Judgement, upright.
How little it had taken for you to grow the very attachments you swore to wrest at the root, determined to reap before it could be sown.
How little it took to make your decision. Barely a thought; instinct, interwoven between the beating of your heart and the salt that burned behind your eyes.
Johnny realized after a tick that you had stopped and screamed out your name, asking what you were doing. The picture of a rage born from distress, an anger that stemmed from alarm, a worry held for someone he considered dear to him.
The world needed him, a silent hero in the eve that risked it all to give the weak and ill another night of rest. Selfless. Strong. Steady.
He’s too close.
He’ll die.
I can’t let him die.
I won’t let him die.
The seconds that had lagged behind, held back the hands of the clock, snapped back into place.
Action flooded your body, signals blaring and urging you to fucking DO SOMETHING!
Without a fraction of hesitation, you placed yourself between the grenade and Johnny, shoved him out of the way, and kicked the explosive as hard as you possibly could.
At that exact moment, it detonated, sending a rippling shockwave through you that knocked you back and onto the rough soil. Stray rocks and fragments of shrapnel cut into your skin, dragging scrapes against your exposed elbows and your upper back. Your head spun as your skull ringed violently off the ground, scattering your senses into a disarrayed mess.
The force of the discharge staggered him, but your form acting as a shield was enough to protect him.
In the aftermath, the silence that fell upon the chaos-strewn battlefield, you had only one thought.
The sky is beautiful.
A deep shade of cetacean abyss blanketed the expanse from skysill to skysill, washing the world in a melancholic cocoon. At one horizon, the stars still shone through the sleepy layer of night, freckling the never-ending expanse, blinking slow and lazy as they prepared to tuck in and make way for day’s bloom. At the other, the sun was stretching her heavy rays, waking languidly, taking her time. She yawned, eager to catch a few more hours of shut-eye, but she knew she had to rise to light the world. It was her duty.
Yours was to obey humanity.
To stay by the side of your allies and lay down your life, because you were made for this role, for this task, even if not directly. It was all you knew. It was your sole reason for being.
"What is your purpose?"
Ingrained into your very system was the answer.
"To know you. To love you. To serve you."
Distantly, you wondered if you succeeded. If all you’d done was enough, a scratch that would be seen, that caught the light. If you had left your mark, a sparkle that said ‘I was once here.’
It all seemed so far away, now. The stars flickered, waving at you. They giggled coquettishly and reached their blazing hands to you, nymphs of nuclear fusion and scorching hellfire calling to you. Brilliant stellar nucleosynthesis. Constellations danced upon rivers made from the wings of galaxies, listening to the songs of the supermassive blackholes that guided their steps to their pulsing tempo.
You longed to join them. To let the vacuum of space crush your lungs, for your spine to freeze whilst gamma rays seared through your existence until you were naught but stardust.
A fate too kind for a soulless creation, a being not born of sidus nor destined for astrum.
A high-pitched whine started to toll past your ears as you lay there, dazed and still computing what happened, but the nearby shout of the Scotsman breaking through the whistle had relief flooding your system. You did it. You saved him, he was alive. You could close your eyes, listen to the wailing melodies of the cosmos, and find joy in having succeeded in your mission.
It was only then, when you let yourself uncoil your tense body, that you realized something was terribly wrong, though you were struggling to figure out exactly what. All you knew was that something unraveled, split apart at the seams.
You didn’t have time to piece it together. Price was kneeling beside you only seconds after the blast, shouting your name. He grabbed your arm and yanked you upwards, swiftly flipping you around and placing you on his back. He linked your hands together at his throat, instructing you to hold on as he scooped up your thighs on either side of him and got back up, making a break for it again.
"You stupid fucking idiot!" He yelled at you, although it was drowned out by the cacophony around you. Even if he was cursing you to hell and back, his voice brought you a measure of comfort. A comfort you desperately needed.
Not for the first time in your life, you were scared, trapped by the impossible pull of gravity that was confusion.
Everything went by in a haze, your eyes half-lidded and unseeing. Objects and structures blurred past, the ruckus of explosions and gunfire slowly fizzled out. You were vaguely aware that Ghost had taken up the rear while Gaz led the group somewhere, but it all seemed eons away, far beyond your grasp, impossible to catch and hold, no matter how hard you tried.
In your head, alarm bells were screeching, banshees warning of tragedy approaching on the hills. Your concentration slipped between the loose gaps of your limp fingers, the sand of an hourglass reaching its last minutes of life.
Nobody would be there to flip it over and start the process anew.
It was the slam of a door that began to bring you out of your stupor. Propping your chin up weakly on Price’s shoulder, you watched Johnny and Kyle skittering about in a frenzy, pulling open the boot of the vehicle. The sun had broken through the cozy cerulean sorrow, sowing thorns of gold upon the crests of far-flung mountains.
In the cool morning dew, her light kissed your cheeks, catching on the length of your lashes that struggled to stay open in face of the harrowing dawn. Clouds dotted the sky in thin waterwashes of waxflower and marigold. Snow, pure white and glimmering, bled arylide and carmine, a touch of color that you yearned to graze your fingertips upon, yet knew would never belong to you.
Perhaps, though, mercy would cup your face and press her lips to your forehead, the space between your eyebrows, and allow you the chance to transcend the bounds of this mortal plane in peace, gift upon you a home beyond the gravity that kept your feet glued to the ground.
It wouldn’t happen, but it was nice to think about, if nothing else. A comforting lullaby, a mother's bosom.
You blinked back to consciousness at the jolt of Price repositioning you. Your fingers had loosened, causing you to slip a bit too low on his back.
You flinched hard when someone hit a switch and a series of bright, overhead lights burst to life in the car, illuminating the trunk in a white glow. The trunk itself wasn't very spacious, but it was well stocked, boxes packed with equipment and tools, weapons and spare ammo.
Price wasted no time in sitting you down in the open space of the boot, unable to relax yet until the damage done to you was assessed and treated. Your bottom hit the plastic well cover with a small grunt from you, your head still spinning after being hit by the grenade. Ghost had taken the wheel, the engine rumbling underneath you as the rest climbed inside with you, pushing you further in while shutting the trunk.
You sank into the stiff material, looked down, and felt the world collapse.
All at once, a collective shock hit you, save for perhaps the captain.
Your right leg was mangled from the knee down, a mess of synthetic skin hanging in loose shreds around exposed wires, rods, and gears. Your foot had been completely blown off above the shin, taking the hydraulic that functioned as your ankle with it, alongside steel platings and the network of sensory nodes that connected them to your nervous system.
You had been injured before, but never to this extent, never this severely. Scrapes, knife cuts, dented plating, all of those were easy to fix, a breeze to buff out and repolish. This, however? This could break you permanently. This could result in your deactivation, the death of your internal workings one by one, until the world went dark, and you’d never open your eyes again.
You felt sick. The closest your system could get to simulating nausea.
You failed.
The secret you kept bound like a mummy in coils of barbed wire and layers of thick, impenetrable iron came undone, forced into the open.
John looked grim, delicately raising your leg as gently as he could to examine the disfigurement done to you. His brow was furrowed, and he mumbled a quick apology when you winced and hissed in pain at his inspection. This was more than you could handle, more than you could reasonably digest and keep down. Your stomach churned, an endless stream of thoughts consuming you, none clear or coherent enough to pick out.
If you could throw up, you probably would have.
The consequences of your actions were easy to accept. You didn’t regret saving Johnny, not at all; you’d do it again in a heartbeat. It could be your last second, the last thing you’d ever do, and you still would. Injury, death, you could accept that for yourself.
Could they?
Your skin prickled, hands trembling where they gripped the plastic of the trunk base until your your metal knuckles thinned the skin.
They know. They know. They know.
After everything, in the end, you failed yourself. You failed the one who was closest to you all those years and years ago, a promise broken.
You raised your head, and saw three pairs of eyes staring right at you.
Curious eyes peer down at a neatly-wrapped box, the paper a bit crinkled, but otherwise handled with care. The weight doesn’t give many clues as to what could be hidden inside. Somewhat heavy for the small size of the box.
"I can open it?"
"Of course. It’s yours."
There’s a moment of hesitation before hands are carefully peeling away the wrapping paper, laying it aside neatly. The action earns a chuckle from the old man, who watches on with warmth and kindness in his gaze.
"You don’t have to be so careful, you know."
"But you worked hard on this."
He waves his hand dismissively. "Hardly. Go on, now."
Still, the paper is stripped delicately and stacked into a neat pile, revealing a nondescript, cardboard package. It’s examined briefly, then the flap on the side is pulled open, the top lifted. Inside lies a device. A tablet. It’s old, used, the screen cracked in one corner. Pressing the power button proves futile; it doesn’t turn on.
"What’s this?"
The old man smiles conspiratorially. "I’ve seen you eyeing that old thing," he says. "It’s been broken for years, now. It’s an old model. It’s not worth fixing, nowadays; figured it’d be of more use in your hands."
"Mister…"
"Go ahead. I give you my permission."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure, yes."
Earlier hesitation melts away quickly. A flat, metal tool is passed over, and it’s wedged into a crevice on the side of the tablet. It takes some effort, but when the back of the tablet pops clean off, all earlier reservations evaporate.
Eager hands pry apart the device, eyes glimmering with pure wonder and fascination as they take in the inner workings. A circuit board, ribbon cables, dozens of tiny chips soldered into place, and endless pathways inlaid with gold and aluminum and copper. The battery is huge, positioned off-center, aging the device by well over several years.
"Got it, oh, ten years ago, I believe?" The man explains. "Discontinued, now."
Little care is given for its age. If anything, the ability to compare the advancement of technology in such a short time, all things considered, is mesmerizing. So much has changed, yet not many things at all.
It’s wonderful.
A small toolbox is handed over, and the old man wheels himself away to go make some tea, knowing the toy will last hours, if not days, or weeks. He returns shortly after, and he smiles, finding the tablet methodically disassembled already. Everything is placed somewhat haphazardly on the tile floor, but he knows there’s a method to the madness, an organized chaos that only one person can truly understand.
You’re on your stomach, intently studying the tablet’s organs. Your expression is blank, but the old man has known you long enough now that he recognizes the look of pure, unbreakable focus you wear. You’re zoned in, and it’d take the will of god to tear you out of that level of concentration.
Having no interest in doing so, the old man takes his spot next to his little table, setting his mug of tea down to cool while he watches you.
He isn’t sure what it is exactly you see in electronics; to him, they’re just a mess of wires and finicky touch screens, but you get drawn in by them like a moth to lantern.
Well, if he can nurture that fascination, why not?
"What do you see?" He asks.
You grunt, peeling old ribbon cables off with sharp tweezers. "It's fried," is your answer. You point at the copper traces under the solder mask, some of which are scorched black. "Might have gotten overcharged. Or it just got so hot from usage that it fried itself," you theorize. "Maybe some game caused it?"
He elects not to inform you of the several… dozen hours he put into 'old people' games on that device. Those days are behind him, he's moved on.
To the sequels.
"I can probably fix it," you offer.
He waves a hand. "No, no, that's alright."
You frown at him. "You don't have any memories on here you want to preserve? Photos?"
That gives him pause. He thinks about it, tries to remember what was on the tablet before it up and died, but…
All his memories are in picture frames and on bookshelves. Everything he wants to remember is right before him.
He smiles and shakes his head. "There's nothing of worth on there."
-
"Next mission's takin' us underground," Price announced, motioning towards the current slide on the projected screen.
It showed a photo of a neon sign, half of it dim, the glass of the last letter shattered. The sign itself meant little on the surface; it used to advertise a dentist's clinic some 20-odd years ago. To the average passerby, it was a relic, an art piece, denoting the time that had gone by.
To those that knew, the sign marked the entrance to an underground city, one that hosted a black market.
It was a bit of an open secret, in the right circles. Standard civilians were none the wiser of the entire ecosystem they walked over on the daily, but all it took was one errant, careless person for the secret to spill into someone's ear. Through a game of telephone, said secret would end up in the hands of the government.
In the past, John and his team had been sent out to investigate the rumors of an underground black market trade. They were strictly ordered to be inconspicuous, no shooting it all to hell unless there was an active bomb threat or something of the sort. Recon. Look around and come back with whatever information they uncovered.
Of course, his boys being who they were, they spent a bit of their hard-earned government-funded money on a few trinkets for themselves.
John, kindly, left it out of the report. It was none of General Shepard's business that Soap purchased some (very obviously fake) libido pills, or that Ghost splurged his deadman's cash on high-end weed.
Or that John himself had bought some… let's say less than legal cigars to enjoy in his free time.
Regardless, this new mission would have them going back to that playground.
John had received word from the brass that a new circuit of constructs (they thought they were very funny, coming up with that name) was being rotated through the black market. Salvaged models, stolen parts spliced onto mismatched constructs, even constructs being sold to have their pieces used as cybernetics.
Sometimes, it was cheaper to have a back-alley doctor attach a robot leg to you than it was to get a prosthetic. It made John wonder what he was doing all this shit for, sometimes, if his own countrymen had to resort to unlicensed practitioners for a chance to live a normal life.
But that wasn't his concern, not for the time being.
He, his boys, and you had been assigned to track down this ring of robot traffickers and crack down on it. Subtlety was key. They didn't want to start a mass panic event and lose their targets in the ensuing hysteria that'd undoubtedly follow.
It was easy work. They could do this kind of shit in their sleep.
You being a new addition did put a small wrench in the works, but John trusted you, and knew they'd be able to fit you right into the moving unit that was their team without a hitch. You'd already done so well on the times you accompanied them, this should be a breeze.
Speaking of you, though—
"Where's Maven?" Price questioned, peering around the darkened room. He counted three heads, and none of them belonged to you.
Soap blew air through his lips. "Probably 'er workshop 'gain. Can hardly get th' lass ta leave it."
Price sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Told her we had a meeting today."
"Should star' doin' rollcall," Ghost suggested. Price glared at him.
"Wh't ye lot think o' 'er?" Soap asked.
"Maven?" Gaz clarified.
"Aye."
Ghost hummed, "She's hidin' som'n."
"Arenae we all, Lt?"
The brick shithouse of a man shook his head. "Nah. S'bigger th'n 'er. Th'n us."
Soap's brow pinched. "Ye think she's a mole?"
Ghost leveled him with a blank look. "Didn' say tha'."
"So, ye trust 'er?"
Their lieutenant left the question unanswered initially, long enough for them to think his silence was a clear and concise no. Then, he spoke, his voice low, scraped over hot coals.
"With my life."
Price huffed through his nose. "I trust her. Known her longer than I've known some of you muppets."
"Ye have?" Soap's expressive brows shot up.
"Yes. Now would one of you go get her alread—"
"I'm here!" You burst through the meeting room door, stumbling in gracelessly. You were disheveled, like you panicked when you realized the time and crashed into everything imaginable on the way. Knowing you, you did. "I'm here! Shit, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to be late."
Price sighed and pointed at a chair. You obediently scurried to it and plopped down, running your hands over yourself to smooth out your appearance. It didn't do much.
"Oi, Maven," Soap called. "How long've ye known th' Cap?"
"John?" You pondered. "I dunno. Ten years, maybe?"
"Ten!?" He squawked. "How? Where'd ye meet? When?"
"MacTavish," Price said his name in warning, prompting the sergeant to snap his teeth shut. "Not now."
He nodded, but pointed to fingers at his eyes, then directed them at you. He wasn't going to let you escape his interrogation.
"Reiterating for Maven: we're headed underground," Price said. "Rec0n on construct and cybernetic trading."
You visibly sat up straighter, only a smidgen, but it was clear you were giving Price your full attention. "Construct trading," you repeated, a look crossing over your face for a split second. It was difficult for the boys to catalogue exactly what it meant, a million emotions there and gone in the blink of an eye. "Understood."
Price nodded. "Good. Gaz and Soap, you two will be going through the market and noting down anyone who looks like they might be involved. We have spare parts from dismantled army constructs you can use—"
"Don't," you interrupted.
Price paused, blue eyes looking you over. "Got something to share?"
You sat eerily still at the table, face flat. "Don't trade army parts. Black market traders can sniff that stuff out from a mile away. They'll completely shut down, you'd have an easier time prying open an oyster with your bare fingers than getting anything incriminating out of them."
The Captain thought over your warning. "What do you suggest, then?"
You took a slow breath. "I have black market parts. I brought them from my place. We can use those."
Gaz leaned forward. "How'd you get those?"
You didn't meet his gaze. "A lot of time and legally questionable methods," you answered vaguely.
Your offer was suggested, and Price eventually accepted it with a nod. "Alright, we'll use those parts, then."
"And— and I should replace one of the boys," you tacked on. "Black market dogs have really good noses. Two beefy dudes who haven't been civvies in a long time? It's not gonna work. But if I go, then whoever I go with will just look like my bodyguard. Traders won't blink twice at me bribing the army for protection."
"Sayin' our governmen's corrupt?" Ghost prodded.
"Yes," you said.
He snorted. "No' wrong."
Price ran a hand across his forehead, massaging into his temples. "Christ. Alright, yeah. Soap and Maven, then. Ghost, you're on backup. Gaz, you're with me, gonna be lookin' into the folks that Soap and Maven report back to us."
"Understood, sir," Gaz confirmed.
"Anymore suggestions, Maven?"
You shrank back slightly. "No, sir."
"Wonderful. We're leaving at 0900 tonight. Market starts ramping up around 1000, so we've got an hour to prepare after leaving. Any questions?"
You raised your hand. "What happens if we get caught?"
Price skipped through a few slides to a map and tapped out an area. "We regroup at this building outside the South entrance. Brass pulled some strings and we can use it as a safehouse."
"Got it."
"Anything else?" At the lack of response, he shut his laptop and powered off the projector. It was different from the one you'd seen before; just standard, basic, meant to enlarge an image.
You still eyed it like it was gold.
Price snorted. "Back, Maven. Gave you a whole shed t' disassemble. Leave my projector alone."
Caught red-handed, you slouched. "Sorry."
"Speakin' o' th' shed, ye manage ta clean it up?"
You shrugged. "Depends on your definition of 'clean'."
Soap narrowed his eyes at you. "Ah willnae eat shit an' die if ah go in there, will ah?"
"…Probably not."
"No' very convincin'."
Price waved everyone off to dismiss the room. "Get out of here. Ya have work t' do. Go prep."
You filed out of the room and turned, ready to go back to your shed until it was time to leave, when you felt a presence behind you. Peeking over your shoulder, you found Johnny waiting on your heels, ocean-blues bright and curious.
"What are you doing?" You asked.
"Followin' ye," he answered simply.
"Why?"
"Wanna see wh't ye've done wit' th' place."
You cocked your head to the side. "It's not that interesting."
He blinked at you. "'Course it is."
He was up to something. You crossed your arms over your chest. "What do you want, Soap?"
Johnny hissed at the use of his codename. "C'mon now, lass, dinnae be like tha'."
"You're procrastinating, aren't you?"
The man deflated. "Ah dinnae wanna prep yet. Please, bonnie? Lemme hide out wit' ye for a bit?"
You rolled your eyes, but didn't argue otherwise, just motioned for him to follow. He fist-pumped the air and trotted behind you like an imprinted duckling, practically buzzing with excitement over the prospect of leaving more work for himself to do later.
Granted, inventory and packing were never particularly fun. It wouldn't hurt to let him stick around for a little while.
The path to your workshop, your home away from home, had become well-worn. You went down it every day (if you left the workshop in the first place), and in the maze that was the base, it was the one line you were confident you could follow with your eyes closed.
The several padlocks you added clicked open one by one, though the real security lied in the fishing line you'd strung up from one end of the shed to the other in front of the door. It was low to the ground, and rigged to an alarm that'd let out a piercing screech if anyone tripped the rather sensitive wire. It took very little to set off the alarm, which is why you didn't let Johnny in before turning it off, as well as pointing out where the line was so he wouldn't catch it.
"So protective," he commented.
You hummed. "Like I said, I have black market stuff here. That alarm will deafen anyone who trips it since it's right next to the door, and it can be heard across the base."
"Does Cap know 'bout this?"
"Got his stamp of approval," you grinned over your shoulder.
The workshop itself was marginally cleaner than it had been last time Johnny visited. Specifically, the ground was properly visible and the shelves could be somewhat safely walked between.
There was another new addition, though, being a brown curtain you'd strung up to cover one area of the workshop.
When you drew it back, Soap nearly screamed.
Roach was sitting upright on a table, his front chestpiece removed entirely to expose his innards. He was slumped over, inactive, unpowered. Like this, he almost seemed… small, though Soap knew Roach to be anything but. The guy was built like a tank, both figuratively and literally.
Being able to see straight into the black hollow of the dead soldier's guts threatened to make Soap sick. The endless stream of wires that spilled out of the open chassis resembled intestines a little too close for comfort, down to their multicolored nature. Bruises, internal bleeding, it could fuck up the inside of a body as much as the outside.
Logically, Soap knew that the man leaning against the wall you propped him up against wasn't alive, nor a human with their viscera strewn in beautiful chaos across the table, but it didn't stop the images from flashing through his mind.
That had been his friend. A man lost and grieved, one he still missed, still mourned.
"Thought they would'a gotten rid o' 'im," he murmured quietly. "Toss 'im like th' rest."
You paused, the slightest of hitches in your step.
"Guess John saved him," you said, mimicking his tone.
Johnny shook his head. "None o' us could save 'im when it mattered most."
"I think that's part of why I'm here," you voiced the theory that'd been brewing since you found the decrepit construct. Like it was waiting for someone to come around and fix it. Waiting for you. "To bring him back."
"Wouldn' 'ave th' captain told ye 'bout 'im, if tha's th' case?" He questioned.
The corners of your lips twitched upwards. "John's not good at asking for help. Not in finer detail."
Soap chuffed. "Don' ah ken it." Cautious, he stepped closer, ghosting his fingers near Roach's left knee. "Can… can ye power 'im on?"
You hesitated, rubbing your arm. "I… could, but…"
"But?"
"He wouldn't remember anything."
Your words sank like a rock in his stomach.
He ran a hand through his mohawk, messing it up as he tugged on the strands. "Wouldnae remember anythin'?"
You shrugged one shoulder. "His personal memory cartridges… they're fucked, to put it lightly. If I'm being honest, I'm hoping to trade some of my parts at the market for new cartridges that I can overwrite the data of with his old ones."
"S'tha' why ye insisted ye come instead of Gaz?" He frowned.
"I wasn't lying about market hounds being able to sniff out government pigs from a mile away — no offense — but… yeah. Kinda the perfect opportunity, y'know?"
The sergeant sighed heavily, torn. "Th' cap should know."
You dropped your hand. "I know."
"Ye gonnae tell 'im?"
"I was planning to tell him… eventually. Ideally after the mission. Forgiveness over permission and all that."
Soap shook his head. "He's no' gonnae be pleased."
"Yeah, but it'll be for a good cause."
It wasn't like Johnny could judge you, either, or rat you out. He'd done the same plenty of times himself. He could only be glad that he was assigned to be your partner. Gaz would've led you right to the captain's office and had you tell the old man yourself. Sure, his reason would've been just, citing safety and needing to keep everyone in the loop.
But where's the fun in that?
"Fine," he said. "But ah willnae be th' yin savin' yer arse when th' Cap tears ye a new one."
You smiled cheekily. "I'll handle it, don't worry."
Deciding it was time to pack up, you pointed out a chair off to the side of the room, and laughed as Soap stumbled his way through the mess you'd yet to clean, cursing in every tongue he knew.
He plopped down into it and gave you a withering glare. "Ye need ta organize yer shite better, hen."
"That an invitation to help me clean, MacTavish?"
"Fuck no."
You barked out a laugh as you moved around with far more grace than him. Grated, most of it was muscle memory and familiarity, seeing as you spent the majority of any spare time you had in here, but you found humor in looking like a swan on a lake compared to Johnny's "bull in a china shop" general existence.
He watched you flit about, plucking rather innocuous objects off various shelves to tuck away into a worn, cloth messenger bag. He had no idea what any of the parts and pieces were or how they worked, but he harbored a guess that they were the black market parts you talked about.
Initially, he wondered why you left them out in the open. It took him a while to note that, from what he saw, they looked damn near identical to just about anything else in the room — and then it struck him.
You were hiding them in plain sight.
You had good reason to believe there were people interested in breaking into your shop to steal shit, but if they couldn't tell what was the valuable stuff apart from the cheap junkyard finds, chances are that the actual valuables would remain untouched in favor of something that looked more expensive.
From your expedition to the junkyard with him and Gaz, he learned that gold was often found caked in dirt (sometimes very literally). If someone didn't know what to look for, what would sell, how were they supposed to choose the right thing to pawn off out of several dozens of scattered electronics, casings, and wires?
You told him that you tended to look for older stuff, back when constructs were still in their infancy and were made from sturdier, better materials, before capitalism got ahold of them and streamlined them for mass production.
"Like cars," you told him. "You want something that's not old, but in that golden age. Designed to survive a crash and be repairable afterwards, while keeping its occupants alive. That's what I'm looking for."
If you hadn't told him that and someone asked him what he thought would sell best, he would have guessed the modern, 'high tech', cheap shite. Shiny, clean, something appealing to the eye.
You were banking on the vast majority of the populace thinking the same way. Smart.
Besides, he knew the stuff you truly valued was nowhere near the base.
Working with you over time led him to learn bits and pieces about you, mysterious as you tended to be. Anything you deemed irreplaceable you wouldn't bring to base, take them to wherever you kept your treasures. You never let your eggs all fall into one basket.
Inefficient, but smart. He admired it. A glance at the cards, and you burned them so nobody else could ever take a peek.
Made him wonder what happened to make you so vigilant.
He and Gaz had begun betting, tossing theories back and forth. Gaz recently proposed that you were some sort of vigilante criminal, hiding undercover. When Soap pointed out that it was unlikely the government would hire you to do their dirty work if that was the case, Gaz reminding him that it wasn't the government that brought you along, it was Price. Personal.
Soap was toying with the idea that you worked at a construct factory before the collapse. It'd explain why you knew so much about them, though he questioned how much of that knowledge also translated into general electronics. Then there was Chicken. Not exactly a construct herself, a wee clockwork toy, but somehow she felt… alive. Undoubtedly because of you, some magic touch you had.
Maybe Ghost was right. You were hiding something bigger than any of them. Assuming you weren't a mole, you still could have been a spy. You did contract work, dirty work for CEOs and rich fucks and whoever else. People with grudges on one another. You could have worked for some other agency.
And Price had known you for longer than some of his own team, it seemed. How else would he have met you?
Hm. He'd have to tell Gaz about this theory. Might not be far off.
He zoned back in, and saw you working on Roach, your head halfway stuffed into his empty chassis. A bone between a dog's jaws. A thin string of smoke poured from the opening.
"Wh't ye doin'?" He asked.
"Soldering a new capacitor into the spare PSU I found at the junkyard," you answered.
He blinked. "A what?"
You retreated from the opening. "Fixing a power supply unit," you simplified.
"Ohhh," he nodded, pretending to understand. "Gotcha."
"You don't have a clue, do you."
"Nae in th' slightest, no."
You both burst out laughing. The tension in Johnny's body visibly melted away, and he tipped his head back, leaning it against the wall. He observed as you worked, a mini tornado in your own right.
He knew from firsthand experience (sisters) that, on the off chance you did accept, if he offered to help, he'd just muck everything up. He was a good artist and a damn good soldier, but a decent assistant he was not.
His poor ma had too many stories to share of little John MacTavish getting into trouble in the kitchen. More flour on him and the floor than in the bowl.
For an hour or so, you repaired Roach piece by piece, adding and removing all sorts of things. Some he recognized as shrapnel, and for the millionth time since Roach "died", he mentally apologized to the poor man. So much had happened since then, yet the night they lost their trusty companion still felt so near, barely a step behind them all.
What was he going to say to Roach? If you were able to fix him up, of course. If Roach retained his memories.
Soap couldn't tell what would be worse; if Roach remembered nothing, not his team or his own codename or his history with the 141, or if Roach retained his memories, and knew the exact moment they failed to bring him back whole. He almost wanted to avoid the matter entirely.
He couldn't change the past, he made peace with that, but god did he really wish he could at times.
Your voice drew him out of his spiral. "Hey, Johnny, come here."
He rose and snaked through boxes and littered tech to get to you. At the table, you were rapidly typing away at a laptop, lines of code born from skill and practice.
"Need you to do me a favor," you said.
"Sure."
"There's a switch sorta dangling inside the torso right now. Could you flip it? I wanna try turning him on."
He glanced at the void behind the construct's metal ribs and shuddered. "Wh't a thing ta say ta a man."
You snorted. "Just flip the switch."
Choosing to act like the goddamn soldier he was and not like a squeamish medic on their first day at the job, he did as you ordered, reaching inside and moving his hand around blindly until he located the switch. At your go-ahead, he thumbed the lever to the other side, and jumped back a full meter when the construct sputtered and whirred.
Rather, the electronics within it did, but it caused a minor jolt to roll through the artificial body.
Soap could see errors popping up on your screen in rapid-fire, and you fought to fix them, matching their fervor. He was pretty sure you hadn't blinked once in at least five minutes, nor had your pace faltered.
You grumbled to yourself, words that were too slurried together for him to make out, a trait that seemed common across the few programmers he'd met in his time.
Programmer for the state, that's a good theory.
He shook away through ill-timed thought, frantically glancing between you and Roach. You were fluid, seamless as you went between writing code to digging around inside of Roach's skeleton, plucking wires and replacing them, or flipping them over to then reinsert.
It was reaching a fever pitch.
Soap flinched when you growled and slammed your fist down on Roach's thigh.
All at once, the warnings quieted. Not gone, but the most pressing of them vanished, flashing lights he hadn't spotted before flicking off. The console you were using for programming slowed down, text no longer flying up in a blur he could never dream of keeping up with.
"Wh't was tha' fer?"
With a sigh, you stood straight. "Sometimes, you just need to hit something really hard for it to start behaving."
"Ah. Like rookies."
"Yeah, like rookies," you said.
Both you and Soap stared at Roach's body intently, waiting for… something to happen.
No movement. No sign of life. The incessant buzzing of flowing electricity had softened to a dull drone, but for all intents and purposes, Roach was still dead.
Then, a new line of text appeared on the console. Small, unnoticeable in the grand scheme of things. If the console hadn't been at a standstill before, Soap wouldn't have noticed it appear at all.
Heads snapping towards the laptop screen, you and Soap read what was left beside a blinking cursor, awaiting a response.
s: You slip into a world where androids rule the Earth and humans have fled to the moon. Despite your constant requests to go home, you have a feeling the androids aren’t too keen on helping you.
cw: rape/non-con, yandere oc x reader, dddne, captivity, isekai, dark content ahead
wc: 4.7k
co-written with @envy-of-the-apple ♥ read on ao3 here
(reminder to put your age in your bio/pinned before you follow me or I will block you)
[NieR masterlist]
[next]
In your universe, accidentally falling into another is pretty common.
You never fully understood the science behind it, but in your world, cracks lingered everywhere. An object, an animal, or even a person slipping through was not unheard of.
It happened often enough that a system was created to retrieve those who slip. Warnings are issued throughout the city whenever there’s a ‘reality tear’ in Central Park. Certain places of the world are permanently closed off from humanity. Schools make drills educating children on what to do if they’re ever trapped in another universe, alone. The world does whatever it can to protect society and the people from slipping into another world, lost forever.
Slipping isn’t an inevitability, but it’s a possibility. Like getting into a car accident, or getting stuck outside in a hurricane. It’s something to prepare for.
So when you woke up underneath a bright blue sky, away from your bed, your apartment, your town, your entire universe, you weren’t wholly unprepared.
It’s not that you weren’t surprised. It took you an hour to finally give up the delusion that you’re dreaming. Another hour later and you were finally starting to realize this new world played a whole lot differently than your old one.
Firstly, there were no people.
You walked around for what felt like years now, and yet, there was no hint of humanity. No sign of intelligent life. No roads, no cars, no telephone towers in the far distance. There were just trees and plains and valleys. Back home, this would be a rarity. A place untouched by civilization.
But there were remnants of it.
At first you thought it was a piece of furniture–decayed and rotting in the middle of a random clearing. It wasn’t until you took a few trepid steps closer that you realized it was something more intricate.
Clunky and robust with gray metal that was starting to oxidize. It was some kind of robot. It might have been years since this thing was active.
You stared at the find for several minutes. Was it man-made? That didn’t really feel right. You didn’t know how to explain it, but this robot looked foreign to any Earthly element. Alien.
Strangely, you felt as if you were examining a corpse.
Weird, really really weird. But apart from the strange robot, you couldn’t find anything else off with this world. You mostly recognized the animals, as well as the plants. The most you could conclude was that this was some type of post-apocalyptic Earth where humanity was scarce or just gone entirely.
That sounded a bit depressing, but you weren’t surprised. You’d heard of others who’d slipped into similar realities where humanity had blown themselves up till extinction. Or a disease wiped them out entirely. They often talked about how nice it was seeing animals that were on the endangered list, just frolicking about in the thousands. You hoped this was one of those realities. Realities without humanity often sounded more peaceful.
The panic hadn’t set in yet. There was no need for it to. You knew people would eventually realize you’re missing and the system would kick in to find you. Accord was really good at her job. It was what she was created for, after all. Since her creation, everyone who slipped was often found by the end of the day, perfectly safe.
You were in good hands, you assured yourself. Accord would find you. She’s found everyone else, so far. Why would you be an anomaly?
You ignored the tiny voice of paranoia in your head, distracting yourself by admiring the large trees and other vegetation. One field in particular caught your attention. It was not the beauty that made it pop, rather, the familiarity.
You bent down, lightly touching the bright red tomato happily growing from its stem. Beside it was a cucumber vine, creeping along the floor with its dark green vegetables. There were a few strawberry shrubs, something that looked vaguely like a pomegranate bush. All of the plants were bunched together, healthy and growing strong. It almost resembled a shabby garden.
“Oh, hello there.”
You jumped up straight, surprised to hear a voice, and from the sound of their tone, they seemed to share your reaction.
When you spun around to face the source, you were partially expecting to see that robot you’d seen earlier.
It wasn’t that robot. It was a different one.
You stared, the robot stared right back. It was larger than you, bulkier, and a bit more humanoid in shape than the other one. Its metal was old and rusted in some places. What could only resemble eyes were bright green lights on either side of its face.
Given any other situation, you might have run. Maybe even screamed. But being stuck in a world where you didn’t know the rules of the game was enough to leave you stumped, and so you just echoed what the robot said.
“Um, hello,” you replied back nervously, raising a hand in greeting.
The thing straightened up at your voice. You could hear the gears and bolts shudder every time it moved.
“Hello!” It repeated. It almost sounded excited. “How are you, today?”
“Fine?” You responded before your mind caught up to you, force of habit forcing pleasantry. “I’m sorry, but…what–what are you exactly?”
You heard the gears again. “I’m Pascal!” The thing chittered, clearly misunderstanding your question. “What’s your name?”
Not quite what you were looking for, but it seemed friendly, at least? You gave ‘Pascal’ your name with less enthusiasm and more caution. ‘Pascal’ didn’t seem to mind. If anything, the robot strode even closer, clearly not sensing your wariness. If anything, it seemed entirely oblivious to it.
“Is this yours?” You tried, gesturing to the garden. God, you hoped it was a nice robot and wasn’t about to kill you. Pascal gave an eager nod.
“Yes! Yes!” Pascal agreed. “The deer like them, as well as the rabbits. I try my best to keep the plants growing every year.”
An animal lover. You wondered if it was programmed for that. Your shoulders relaxed a little, relieved that the thing was harmless. Probably.
“Really?” You prompted, fiddling with the hem of your shirt. “Do you grow anything else?”
It shook its head. “These were the only plants that sprouted,” it informed you, gears crunching as they got stuck for a second, then continued to operate smoothly. I collected them during my travels and decided to plant them here.”
Pascal’s blabberings simmered. It peered at you with those green lights it called eyes, digging far too deep for your liking.
Robots weren’t supposed to replicate life. Their entire existence stemmed from certainty — a feature of life that often fails to be duplicated.
But maybe you were wrong because, just for a brief moment, he hesitated. Then, he asked.
“...Are you lost?”
-
It’s a village, at least you thought it was a village.
High up in the trees. You weren’t sure if the rickety ladder would’ve held your weight, but you believed the fear was well worth the scenery.
A treehouse village. Each hut was built into the trunk. There were at least two ‘floors’, with another clearly in the process of being built. There were clothing lines where clothes and rags were hung up to dry, though it looked as if they had been up there for a long time.
“Welcome to my home,” Pascal chirped while you gazed around in awe. “This is so exciting! It’s been a while since I’ve had someone see it. Would you like a tour?”
You nodded, finally beginning to feel properly excited about this world you’d fallen into. Pascal clasped his ‘hands’ together, thrilled, as far as you could tell. He led you around the village enthusiastically, pointing out every detail he could find. He talked a lot, enough to fill the space for two people, leaving you to bob your head long to everything he said. It was nice, you were content enough to sit back and let him do the talking. It allowed you to absorb everything just a bit more.
The chirping of cicadas, the rustle of leaves, being able to weave between the trees and never touch the ground — it all called back to the more childlike side of your being. The desire to have a majestic treehouse from which to rule, that childhood dream almost felt fulfilled as you took in your surroundings, learned where all the ‘houses’ were.
The more he showed you, however, the more strange this place became. There were hints of life everywhere, clues that somebody should have been actively living there, occupying the huts, greeting you as you passed. There were multiple ladders and bridges, clearly made for more than just one person in mind. There was something that oddly resembled a children’s toy — a shabbily made see-saw. Clearly, it couldn’t have been only Pascal residing here.
Every so often, you expected someone — a robot, maybe one shaped like Pascal — to pop up. Yet, there was nothing; only the eerie silence, save for your footsteps and Pascal’s metal clanking.
“Where is everyone?” You interrupted Pascal in the midst of his rambling, feeling a spark of guilt at the way he stuttered.
He looked back at you, and by now you were starting to get the hang of gauging his reactions enough to understand that he looked confused.
“What do you mean?” He prodded. “It’s only ever been me here.” He paused to think for a moment. “Actually, when I first got here, there was a lot of junk laying around. It took a while to get rid of.” He hummed good-naturedly. “It’s more than likely other machine lifeforms found this place first before moving on.”
That caught your attention.
“Machine lifeforms?” You repeated. “Is that what you are?”
“Machine lifeforms are those brought by aliens to Earth.” Pascal provided, nodding along.
So they weren’t made by humans. You had a feeling, but it was nice to be certain. It was obvious that this world is far into the future compared to your own by decades — perhaps even centuries.
“Pardon me for asking but…” Pascal tilted his head. “You are human, yes?”
You assented, albeit reluctantly. It sounded more like a yearning for confirmation than actual ignorance. Besides, it might have been pure naivety on your part, but in the short while you’d known Pascal, he’d never once been malicious. A bit weird, but not bad.
You flinched when he threw his arms up in the air, jolted out of your thoughts. The gears within him whirred in delight at your testimony.
“Splendid! I had an inkling you were…but I didn’t want to assume!” He gushed, bypassing your personal space once again to analyze you. “I’ve never met a human before. How exciting.”
You had a feeling you were the only one left, but for your suspicion to be confirmed was a little disappointing. You didn’t want to admit it, but you were holding out a little bit of hope for another human to be around, someone you could relate to more easily. Someone who understood.
“I’m guessing humans here are long gone then.” You murmured, mostly to yourself, but Pascal heard it loud and clear.
“No?” He told you, confused. “All humans are on the Moon. Isn’t that where you’re from?”
“The Moon?” You echoed, glancing up at the sky. “All of them? How did they even–”
You swallowed your voice, perplexed. What kind of world was this? Robots on Earth? Humans on the Moon?
“No, I’m not from the Moon.” You finally told him. “And…I’m not even from this Earth. It’s–it’s hard to explain.”
Sighing, you took a seat on the wooden floor of the village. Pascal followed, watching as you crossed your legs, and he did the same. It reminded you of a child following the actions of an adult, learning from the people around them.
You assumed you spent about twenty minutes on the platform, explaining about how you woke up here no more than a few hours ago, Accord, how you were supposed to be in your own bed at home…and now you were somewhere else.
“I’m still not too sure how it works.” You admitted to him. “But…think of a cup filled with water. Whenever you shake it, the water spills over. That would sort of make me a droplet.”
Insignificant, in the grand scheme of things.
“Fascinating.” Pascal swooned before his posture dropped. “My sincerest apologies. I’m sure your friend is very worried.”
“My friend?”
“Accord.” Pascal clarified. “You mentioned she was looking for you.”
You weren’t sure if you could call Accord a friend. You’d never met her before, but every human in your universe knows her name.
“In my universe, people get into these types of situations all the time.” You motioned to yourself. “Accord is the overseer of my world. She’s a system! Whenever someone goes missing–like I did–she tracks them down and brings them back home.”
Accord would find you eventually. You were sure of it. Ever since her creation, there hasn’t been a single human that wasn’t recovered in a week.
“I bet my friends and family are pretty worried.” You acknowledged, realizing how long you’d been gone. “But I’ve heard that time moves slowly in my universe. A few hours here, might only be a few seconds there.”
A few days here could be a mere few hours there. Weeks and weeks might only be a day or two. Years might be–
“From what you’ve told me, Accord seems very proficient.” Pascal proclaimed, proud for you, somehow. “I’m sure she’ll find you soon.”
You gave a weak smile, your stomach churning at the unsettling feeling that his words seeded. “Of course she will.” You agreed in spite of the anxiety that licked at the soles of your feet. After all, Accord hadn’t lost anyone before, right?
Right?
You just had to stay put, and stay hopeful. You’d be found soon. Someone would notice you’d been gone, or you hadn’t been answering your phone, and you’d be reported. It’d be fine.
Everything will be fine.
Speaking of, you weren’t sure how interdimensional travel worked, but you didn’t want to take a chance of straying too far from your original spot. Pascal’s place wasn’t too far from where you originally woke up. Maybe if you lingered around a bit, Accord might have an easier time finding you.
“Pascal?” You called.
He tilted his head as an answer.
“I really don’t mean to be a bother, but.” You glanced away into the trees. Despite the sun hovering strong and still in the sky, the forest looked dark and daunting. You weren’t sure if it was a good idea to be alone anymore.
“Would you mind if I stayed for a while?”
You wanted to say more. You wanted to explain yourself. You wanted to promise you wouldn’t take too much of his time, or be too much of a burden, but Pascal didn’t seem to want any of it. The most inhuman thing on this planet was showing you the most humanity you’d ever experienced.
“Of course.” He chirped cheerily. “Stay as long as you would like.”
True to your word, you made sure you weren’t a burden. You tried your best to help out in the village, folding the rags of cloth he had lying around, brushing off the twigs and leaves that occasionally cluttered the floor. You didn’t think you were doing a lot, but Pascal was very sweet with his assurances.
“So are there any other machine lifeforms that you’ve seen?” You asked, tucking away another bundle of twigs as per his instructions.
Pascal sat right next to you, showing you the proper way to store the sticks. You lacked the efficiency and the perfection he had, and your bundles looked like complete messes compared to his. Thankfully, he said nothing about it, placing the stacks you made right next to his own.
“Yes.” He answered. “Most don’t stay around these parts, however. The android kingdom is very close, though.”
“Android kingdom.” You quoted, brows furrowing in consideration. Robots like Accord?
“Oh, yes,” Pascal said, “I heard they have contact with the humans on the Moon.”
Okay, so aliens created Machine Lifeforms, and androids were clearly an invention of humanity. What could they possibly have created them for, you sarcastically wondered. You were just glad you came into the aftermath of whatever horrors happened, rather than the midst. You were no fighter, you wouldn’t survive longer than a minute if you were dropped into an all-out war in the middle of who-the-hell-knows-where. Much less one between androids and aliens, of all things.
Still, a kingdom of androids, fully independent from humanity to the point where their creators were up on a satellite doing who knows what. It sounded fascinating, you couldn’t deny that you were immensely curious as to how things turned out this way.
“What are they like?” You prodded, wanting more information out of your walking history book. “The androids, I mean.”
“I don’t know, these days.” Pascal hummed. “ The Android King doesn’t allow much contact.”
So much for history book.
The androids didn’t seem very friendly, then. Maybe it’d be different for you, considering your humanness, but you weren’t ready to take a chance today. The adventure you were on right now was more than enough excitement for a lifetime, throwing in the risk of hostile entities in a single day was too much.
“I was friends with one.” Pascal suddenly murmured. “I don’t think she’s around anymore.”
You waited for him to continue.
He never did.
-
Pascal didn’t know a thing about humans.
You thought you could bear it, but after he kept bringing these robot fish and tried convincing you to eat them, you decided to take things into your own hands.
The fishing pole was basic, but it got the job done. You waded in calf-deep water, your shoes and socks tossed on the shore. The calm river lazily passed you by. You’d never seen water so clear before, rippling around your legs, bouncing off the pebbles and gravel.
“Oh.” You felt a tug on the rod, your heart skipping a beat. “I think I got something.”
“Really?” Pascal asked in excitement, bounding over.
“Pascal, wait–” Too late, whatever was on the other end was scared away by his movements. You watched with a frown as a shadow trickled back into the water. There goes lunch.
You pulled back the empty rod. Pascal stood still next to you in the water.
“I startled it, didn’t I.” He realized in disappointment. “I’m sorry.”
You shook your head and offered a placating smile, reaching out to pat his shoulder comfortingly. “There’s plenty of fish in the river.” You told him kindly and held out your rod to him. “Want to try?”
He grabbed the stick eagerly, mimicking your movements. Pascal didn’t try to hide his curiosity about humans, nor his willingness to learn from you. He was clearly being honest when he claimed he hadn't met one before you. Since the moment you got here, you’d been barreled by questions about humanity and the world you came from. He was floored when you revealed there were billions upon billions of humans in your universe. It must have been an unfathomable number where humanity was scarce.
“Did you eat fish back home as well?” Pascal questioned, flailing with the rod. At least he was having fun. You sat back on the shore, enjoying the sun beating down on your skin.
“Hm, sometimes.” You answered lazily, closing your eyes. “But humans eat other things: Other types of meat, fruit, vegetables. We use spices to make them taste even better.”
“Really?” Pascal asked. You gave him an affirmative, dipping your toes back in the water, feeling the biting chill and the trickle of water weaving past.
“Humans do a lot to make food taste good.” You admitted. “Regardless of how healthy it is. The most popular foods are sweets; cakes, cupcakes, cookies, brownies.” What you wouldn’t do to have one of those right now.
“I’m sure we can make those!” Pascal exclaimed, and you realized you muttered that out loud.
You smiled warmly at him, appreciating his wishes to help bring you joy. “That’s sweet.” You told him, letting him down gently. “But I highly doubt it. Those foods are pretty complicated. We’d need a lot of ingredients like eggs and sugar.”
“I wonder if the android kingdom has those items.” Pascal pondered.
“I thought the android kingdom was closed off to outsiders?”
“Sometimes the Android King allows trading.” Pascal answered back.
That’s the second time Pascal mentioned him. What kind of person was he to forbid entry to his kingdom, and only occasionally open routes for trading? Was he scary? Cruel and tyrannical, keeping his people clutched in an iron fist?
Or was he simply protecting his citizens?
“It’s a little funny we went back in history, though.” You said out loud.
“What do you mean?”
“Back home, most governments aren’t monarchies anymore. We mainly have democracies.” You enlightened Pascal. “If you asked any modern-day human, they’d have some pretty choice words about royalty in general. So now, centuries later, with even androids adopting monarchy…makes me wonder if there’s a human king up on the Moon now.”
Pascal’s machinery droned. “Well, on Earth, I think the Human King would be you.”
You barked a laugh, taken aback by his declaration. “Yeah? Are you the Machine-lifeform King then, Your Majesty?”
He preened. Something simmered in your chest as you continued to look at him. You were so happy to see your friend so happy.
“Still, what are humans even doing up there?” You questioned aimlessly, gazing up at the sky. “When I was young, every kid on the block wanted to be an astronaut. And now, apparently, every human is born one.”
Pascal didn’t answer. He was distracted by something tugging on the fishing pole.
“Did you get something?” You perked up, jumping to your feet. Please, oh, please be a fish. You were starving. Hell, even those robotic fish were beginning to look appetizing.
“Yes!” He chirped back animatedly. “It’s rather big, I hope the rope holds…” He trailed off as the thrashing got louder and more violent, droplets of water splashing every which way.
You were both silent when he finally pulled it up, a clump of algae hanging limply from the hook, peering back at you.
“Yeah.” You said after a pause. “I don’t think fishing is either one of our strengths. Maybe we should try to make a salad instead.”
“Agreed.” Pascal grumbled.
-
It was the strangest thing. You'd been here for a couple of days now. You were sure of it.
And yet, you hadn’t seen the sun move an inch.
It was still hovering above Pascal’s Village, sunlight filtering through the leaves and branches. You lied flat on the wooden pathway, staring up blankly. Pascal was next to you, fiddling with one of his machines.
“Pascal?” You summoned his attention. “Do…sunsets not happen here?”
“Sunsets?” Came his response. “What are those?”
You sat, propping yourself up on your elbows. “Seriously? The sun just stays up there? There’s no day-and-night?”
Pascal considered you with what you equated to a frown. “Are you referring to the night kingdom?”
“Night kingdom?”
He pointed across the village, far past the trees and plains.
“It’s on the other side of the world. Sunlight can’t reach there, so they mostly rely on artificial light.”
You tilted your head. “People actually live there?”
He nodded. “I believe a small group of androids, also a multitude of machine lifeforms.”
You kept forgetting that humans no longer lived on Earth. It was overrun by androids and machine lifeforms now.
“I was there a few centuries ago.” Pascal happily continued, oblivious to your disquiet. “I bet a lot has changed since.”
“Centuries?” You repeated. “Pascal, how long have you been on Earth?”
He’s not human, and yet you’d learned how to read his emotions. It wasn’t hard; he practically wore everything on his face, in the way he moved, the tone of his voice.
His arms dropped into his lap. His body language became stiff. He’s hesitating.
“I can’t remember much from that time, Machine Cores aren’t made to last this long.” Pascal divulged to you. “But I believe I was created between the 7th-8th machine war.”
You gaped at him, eyes flickering over the dents—battle scars, metal bent by violence and a bloodless war.
It was like pulling out teeth. Pascal revealed to you the history of the wars that had ravished Earth for centuries upon centuries. Aliens created machine lifeforms to take over the planet. Humans created androids to defend Earth. How overwhelming the machine lifeform army was, to the point where humanity retreated to the Moon, letting androids continue the war. He talked about the brief memories he had of those times, where he was hunting down androids from orders — where he was nothing but a machine.
“And then, one day, you woke up?” You probed, when he grew silent.
Pascal confirmed with a droll hum. You leaned back on your hands, thinking on all he told you, processing all the information you’d received.
“Humans and aliens are enemies.” You said out loud, “Does that make us enemies, Pascal?”
Pascal flinched. “No! Of course not!” He vehemently denied it with so much certainty you had to smile at how seriously he took it. “I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
“I know, I know.” You assured him. “I’m glad. I consider you my friend. I don’t care about anything else.”
You didn’t know how you could’ve survived out here, had Pascal not found you. How much did you owe him? Hundreds and hundreds of lifetimes over. He was practically the only thing keeping you afloat. You didn’t care if Pascal was created to end humanity. That wasn’t who he was. He was the kindest, gentlest person you’d ever met. You wouldn’t let his past taint his present.
“I consider you a friend as well.” Pascal voiced sweetly. You thought, if he could, he’d be smiling right about now. Maybe even blushing.
You wished you could stay here forever with him. It could be a nice life. You could help Pascal spruce up the village. In the late evenings, the two of you could go fishing. In the mornings, you could tend to the garden. Maybe the two of you could start a new adventure to the night kingdom one day.
It would be really nice, but you knew you couldn’t.
“It’s been days,” you finally started, “and there’s still no sign of Accord.”
Pascal’s movements stopped. You knew he was sharing your thoughts.
Accord should’ve been here days ago. The fact that she hadn’t showed up yet was alarming. Despite enjoying your time here, you missed home, your friends and family, the internet. Your patience was wearing away. Anxiety was starting to grow. You needed to make your own move.
“Accord is an android,” you spoke, trying to avoid Pascal’s eyes, “I was thinking, maybe if I talked to the android kingdom, I could get closer to going home.”
You didn’t say it out loud. You’d have to leave Pascal.
The thought made your stomach twist.
Pascal, who was nothing but kind and gentle to you. Pascal, who had made sure you were safe and protected. Pascal, who was your friend. You were leaving him just for a bleak shot of getting home.
The machine lifeform said nothing. He just turned away, looking up at the sky. The sun was still up, lingering over the world, you could feel its warm rays on your skin. They almost scorched you now, burning you for scorning your only friend in this world.
“I’ll contact them later today,” he finally said, “they’ll be here tomorrow.”
His gears and metal felt awkward under your skin as you threw yourself at him, but you didn’t care. You squeezed him into the tightest hug you possibly could, even as his endoskeleton pinched your forearms and hands. Pascal barely seemed to register the hug. He froze for ten whole seconds underneath you. You knew, because you counted each one.
“Thank you,” you whispered to your friend, “thank you so much.”
Pascal stayed silent, but when he hugged you back, his hands were warm.
divider by cafekitsune ♥
(reminder to put your age in your bio/pinned before you follow me or I will block you)
Hello, do you have a schedule for your work, Into you into blue
oh, Into You, Into Blue is a completed one-shot! I had to post it in two parts bc tumblr decided it was too long, but it's all considered one whole piece!
simon 'ghost' riley x f!reader | soulmate!au | 18.8k (oops)
Ghost didn’t want a soulmate, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either.
cw; soulmate!au in which soulmates share scars, references to self-harm, lots of talk about scars, angst, fluff, references to domestic abuse and past violence, references to simon's past, descriptions of pain, military inaccuracies, miscommunication, touch aversion, reallllly slow slowburn, ghost being sort of really bad and weird at affection
Simon didn’t remember how he got every scar on his body.
The big ones, the important ones, sure. He remembered them all too well, even through the haze of pain and fatigue that often hung thickly around their reception.
But there were too many to account for. To remember the particulars of each slash and burn and gunshot wound was a losing battle. He’d long since given up on keeping track of them. Little lines on the sides of his fingers, stretchmarks on the backs of his biceps, winged fans of a burn on the side of his thigh, a pale line along the point of his elbow that he might as well have been born with.
There were ones from further back, too. Scars that time and pain had eroded the precision of the memory, but not the feeling. Cigarette burns on his forearms, a necklace of animal teeth on his side, a craggy line across his hip, accompanied by the shadowy memory of hand reaching for him, and not being quick enough to duck out of the way.
They all meshed together into the hard patchwork of scar and muscle his body had wrought itself into.
Almost none of them could be helped, out of his control, out of his hands.
They were a catalogue of his life, a story traced on his skin.
Stamped, more like. Branded.
Survived.
And soulmates shared scars.
Their hurt was his; his hurt was theirs. Literally or metaphorically, he wasn’t quite sure. Simon had so many, spent so much time in pain, it was impossible to know if any of them didn’t belong to him originally.
He didn’t like the thought of someone sharing his scars, having felt what he did. Possessive of them and the pain in a strange way.
It’s ironic, then, that he should be able to find his soulmate more easily than the average unmarred person, and wanted to do nothing of the sort. Simon dismissed the whole thing as drivel a long time ago, anyway. If they did exist, if they weren’t just incredibly rare instances of luck, Simon was sure that he hadn’t been afforded one.
There was guilt, too, settled somewhere deep inside him, that someone had to endure it alongside him. It was easier to believe he’d been left out of the whole thing.
Better he was alone.
The likelihood of finding that person was slim. It almost never happened. Eight or so billion people swanning around the planet would do that. A one in eight billion chance.
A grand, cosmic joke. The unfairness of it drove some people crazy, drove them to do insane things to increase a probability that couldn’t be altered—to know that person probably existed somewhere and yet know that they would probably never run across them.
A trend of self harm cropped up online every few years, healed over self inflected wounds posted in forums of people seeking their other, fated, half. The presumption being that they were being desperately searched for in turn.
Idiotic. Determined. Fallibly human.
And taboo. Most saw it as circumventing fate.
Violently frantic for the thing Ghost had been unwillingly given. A way to find them, or, at least, easily identify them. And he never would.
But, sometimes, he wondered.
He tried to picture the imprint of a person somewhere out in the world wearing his wounds, suffering his losses. The thought would circle his brainstem in an unrelenting loop, a bright fish whispering around the perimeter of its bowl before it dissipated in lieu of something more pressing.
It was always there, though, waiting to be grappled with again.
He always came up blank. Nothing but a shadow in his mind where a person should be. Fitting, typical.
It was a cruelty he couldn’t imagine, somehow. Someone being fatefully, inescapably afflicted with him.
Simon didn’t want a soulmate anyway, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either.
If there was someone out there, someone wandering around with his scars on their skin, he was certain they hated him already.
He didn’t particularly believe in fate; life had taught him not to. He believed in himself, his capabilities, planning and contingencies. And Simon didn’t relish the thought of something he couldn’t control, someone holding the other end of his corded, deformed soul, like a leash they could tighten and use to yank him to his knees. Compromised, vulnerable.
It wouldn’t happen; the margin for discovery was so small it was practically nonexistent.
He blamed Soap, then, for tempting fate.
Ghost listened to Johnny yammer on, the sound of his voice louder than usual in the rattling dark belly of the transport plane home. The glow of green light, the roar of engines, the jangle of gear.
It was an irritating, and sometimes endearing, quirk of Johnny’s that he couldn’t stop talking in the post-op cortisol and adrenaline drop, his words a smeared haze of jumbled thoughts spoken aloud for hours afterward.
The notion of a soulmate was at the front of Soap’s mind, not for the first time. He’d always seemed to enjoy the idea of it, and find some comfort in it, particularly after a close call. There was someone waiting for him, somewhere, after all, it couldn’t all come to nothing yet.
Simon glanced out the window, watched the sea below morph into land.
A yellow network of light winked below, a sea of reverse stars swimming in the black.
“Lucky that way, Lt,” Johnny declared with finality, finally winding down, sounding exhausted. “Findin’ ‘em will be easier.”
Ghost glanced over, the first time in nearly an hour that he’d acknowledged the conversation beyond a hum and a nod. “What do you mean?”
Soap gestured to his scarred chin, then his temple. “Know ‘em straight away, wouldn’t I?”
Simon’s own thoughts spoken out loud; his hopes to never see his own scars reflected back at him turned on its head.
Johnny made it sound like a good thing, instead of the nightmare it was.
No, he thought for the nth time in his life, not that, not for him.
But he’d always had an extraordinary knack for beating the odds.
.
.
.
The base was a constant flurry of activity, a relentlessly buzzing hive of people. There were very few places that skirted away from the general chaos of life on a military base, but Simon had catalogued them all—the field behind the barracks when drills were not being run, the concrete service walkways beneath the base, crowded with spiderwebs and dust, the cool, sterile medical wing, and, the orderly administration offices.
Each place had caveats.
The service walkways were the most reliably quiet, but Simon hated being underground, hated the claustrophobia of it, like some part of him would always be clawing at black earth, and so usually avoided it.
Soap had found him smoking behind the barracks once and now regularly joined Simon there.
The medical wing could be crowded and frenzied, depending on the day.
The administration offices were practically serene in comparison. Neat file folders, tidy desks, windows that let in the watery, gray English sun. Square offices with their doors propped open, conference rooms bathed in the light of glowing intel reports, data convergences, and map overlays, uniform gray walls and floors.
The admin wing only occasionally spasmed into restless activity if an emergency op was underway or about to be, and if that happened, Ghost was usually already swept up in it himself, probably already long gone.
A spare office stuffed away at the end of the hall with the name plate removed technically belonged to him. A mostly unused space he sometimes finished reports in but, more often than not, sat empty.
He preferred to haunt the corridors, observe the more peaceful, inner workings of the military, breathing in the quiet air for five minutes at a time. It gave his perpetually over taxed nervous system, his forever-in-fight-or-flight-mode body, to relax, if even it was only an increment or two. The lightning was softer, the constant bark of orders and drills, the snap of gunfire, the general loudness of the rest of the place, was muted and far away.
Simon knew of all of the staff and their precuilarities—names, ages, birthdates, minor feuds among each other, immediate family members, previous posts, favorite foods, habits, complaints about the building’s irregular temperatures and the pervasive scent of diesel. It wasn’t information he necessarily collected on purpose. Gleaned over years of half heard conversations, glimpses of photos on desks. They, like the medical staff, didn’t often change, not like the revolving door of soldiers and operators.
It was a regular, routine, quiet place.
So it would be difficult for even the most oblivious person not to notice when the familiar order of the place was interrupted.
Soft, dandelion light flooded the hall from a doorway that had always before been shut tight.
The scent of an unfamiliar perfume lingered in the hall in a feathery streak, oakmoss and lavender. It settled hard in his lungs, made his footsteps slow slightly, caution prickling at the back of his neck.
The click of ceramic being sat on wood, the soft shuffle of files, tapping of computer keys emanated from within the now open office. The faintest notes of bubblegum pop floated by, at odds with the chill, still air.
Inside, you were hidden behind two massive computer monitors, the very top of a pair of lilac headphones just visible over the rim. Plants in colorful painted terracotta pots lined the window to your left absorbing what they could of pale winter light, a thick blanket was thrown over the back of a chair in the corner, a jumble of bright, hand crocheted squares. A brass floor lamp with a circular shade sat behind your desk and drooped forward like the antenna of a giant radio, or a bug, casting a delicate halo of light around you like a protective ward.
There was something. . .lambent that emanated around the room, that had nothing to do with the ridiculous lamp.
Simon hovered in the doorway, in the shadow of the dim hall, just to get a glimpse of your face. Start a mental file on you, begin his careful catalog. Something to match the color and light to.
It was a surprise to you both, then, when you glanced up and caught him at it.
You stood hastily, headphones sliding down your neck when the cord jerked taut, the tinny sound of pop echoing loudly from them until you slammed your fingers down onto the keyboard and silence descended abruptly. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t see you there. Can I help you with something?”
Simon could only stare at you, a curl of dread snaking its way between his ribs.
Johnny was right, then, he would know his own scars anywhere.
He would know his own face anywhere.
He would, apparently, know you anywhere.
Your face was a faded mapping of his own, the same scarring traced with a lighter hand. The same crack over your lips, a line drawn across your cheek, a faded check through your brow, the bridge of your nose bisected, the outline of webbed burn scars crosshatched at the edge of your jaw and shoulder. A jagged, thick line crossed your throat.
Despite his legacy marring your face, you were pretty. Beautiful, even, with curious, cautious eyes, one side of your mouth pulled up into a half grin that tugged at the line across your cheek and somehow didn’t ruin the brightness of it.
You were watching him watch you with a tentative gaze, brows drawing slowly together the longer he stood there staring at you, breathing around the newly minted cavern under his lungs.
His eyes met yours again, and as soon as the realization settled in, something clicked violently into place inside his chest, like a missing rib bone had suddenly slotted into the cage around his heart.
Pain bloomed hot and tight across his chest, so acute he covered his side, expecting to find a knife inexplicably lodged there. He grunted mutely. The discomfort receded as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a vast hollow just beneath his breast bone. Cavernous, lurching, undone.
The hollow hardened into a solid brick of pain.
Nausea swept into the back of his throat.
“Are you okay?”
He was frozen in the direct line of fire. Your eyes swept over him, fingers curling around a folder on the edge of your desk which you thumbed nervously. You began to lift your other hand, an aborted half movement toward your face that you dropped at the last second. But you didn’t avert your gaze. You looked past the mask, past him, and into his eyes.
You saw him.
Simon was not to be seen.
Ghost didn’t get caught, didn’t freeze.
Didn’t feel like an animal trapped in a cage, pinned and weak and panicked.
Not anymore.
He was a ghost, a shadow, a silent—
The silence unspooled, thin and fragile as unraveling lace.
Your smile widened, a slow, confident thing that stretched across your face crookedly, pulled at your scarred skin as you tilted your head. It was, maybe, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Sir?”
Amusement threaded your voice; a laugh curled like a sleeping animal in your throat.
Instead of answering, he faded back into the hall.
As he retreated an uncertain realization prodded at the back of his mind. One wonderful contingency.
You had not felt the shift, the world turning horribly on its axis, the pain that radiated hot as a wildfire.
You hadn’t recognized what he was.
And he was going to keep it that way.
.
.
.
It felt like there was a hook in his chest, slipped right between his ribs, a constant painful tearing that landed him again and again outside your office door. Like he was a fish on a line, and you held the reel in your fist, totally oblivious to it.
He didn’t love you, that’s not how the soulmate bond worked. You were tied together, for some reason, though that reason remained to be seen. Resentment was all he felt, a burning desire to chew his leg out of this trap, to grip the line that bound you and run a knife through it.
Better yet, through you.
Sever the tie as cleanly as a blade through an artery.
One sure way to free himself was your death.
It was unusual, but it happened—headlines of a soulmate killing their pair because they couldn’t tolerate the connection. It was taboo, considering how rare the bond was. The link suffocated them, instead of comforting them.
Simon understood the urge.
He thought of your office, the way your back was angled half toward the door, how easily he could slip in and slice your throat open. He had seen and done worse, but the thought of you lying in a pool of blood, let alone at his hands, was so abhorrent and wrong that he doubled over as an acute, sharp pain pinched between his ribs, like someone wriggling their fingers between the bars to claw at his insides.
Which irritated him. Things like that didn’t bother him, not anymore. At the very least, he was better at handling discomfort than this.
It did start him thinking about someone else doing it, though. Slipping quietly into your office and nudging a knife between your ribs, pressing a silenced pistol against your temple, Ghost left to find your cold corpse.
It was wrong.
He could feel your life wrapped around his fingers, tangled in little ribbons around his wrists. A pulsing, glowing, bright thing.
The resentment doubled because he should not care. He didn’t know you, trust you; your death should mean nothing. You should mean nothing.
Still, he found himself walking the administration wing again the following day, even though the sun was out and it’d be nice to sit behind the barracks and smoke and listen to Johnny rattle on about something or the other when he inevitably showed up.
Your door was open again, gold light spilling into the corridor, the low flutter of too loud music in your headphones accompanying it.
Simon would never admit it to himself, but he also needed to know that he could remain hidden from you. The shock of your eyes finding his still hadn’t left him. It had never happened before—not on an op, not about the base, not out among civilians. He blended in, he remained invisible, but you saw him, sensed him, and he needed to know if that was something he had to adjust to. Planning was survival, and you were an unknown factor he needed a method for handling.
Simon stepped close to your door, out of the beam of light.
Your office was bathed in soft, cream light but not from your antenna bug lamp.
Your back was fully turned toward the door, face tilted into the scarce winter sun streaming in the window as you leaned back in your chair. Your eyes were closed, headphones over your ears as he suspected they were.
Fuuucking hell.
Couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, back toward the entry point of the room.
Your life hung there, trusting, fragile as spun crystal.
He waited, but you didn’t turn, didn’t seem to know he was there. Something in his shoulders uncoiled, tension slowly replaced with an odd sense of calm. The pain in his chest eased for the first time in twenty-four hours, fading to a tender ache.
Your lunch, half eaten, laid abandoned on your desk. The blanket that had been on the chair in the corner was swaddled around your shoulders.
You yawned, eyes still closed.
He waited for you to sense him, glance up, but you seemed unaware of him. He wouldn’t admit it then, but he half hoped you would.
Ghost backed away, left you to your peace.
The weight in his chest intensified again.
He hated you for it.
He went back the next day.
And the day after that.
.
.
.
Anchor might be a better descriptor.
Hook was too violent.
Simon knew what it felt like to have a hook between his ribs, and this feeling was not that.
He was satisfied, after weeks of observation as late winter turned to a wet spring, that you did not have a preternatural sense of his presence. In the process, he learned other things.
You hated the cold, and your office always seemed to be chillier than you would prefer, blanket perpetually tucked around your shoulders. He watched you fiddle with the radiator one morning, bottom lip caught between your teeth, sigh, and resign yourself to it. He waited for you to complain to your coworkers like everyone else did, to call maintenance to fix it, but you didn’t.
You liked to sit in the sun, however you could, squinting against the glare of it against your computer screens just to have it on your skin.
You hunched over your desk, and clearly had pain in your neck and back because of it.
You often stayed later on base than many of the staff and walked out of the building alone late at night.
You didn’t drink tea, but politely accepted the tea several different coworkers made for you with the very good intention of showing you a proper cup. You drank every drop as you chatted with them, even though you clearly detested it. It didn’t show, but Simon could tell. He didn’t like that he could, that it was instinctual and nothing else.
They were also plying you with shit tea, of course you weren’t going to like it. He watched as one bloke let it steep for a full fifteen minutes and then presented you with what must have been the bitterest lukewarm tea to ever pass through the base. An older secretary took the opposite approach and handed you a cup of barely brewed tea with approximately four tablespoons of sugar in.
Absolutely bloody foul.
Horrific crimes committed in your name, and you swallowed them with a smile.
And you smiled a lot. From the tiniest twitch of your lips when you were alone, to a grin so big he could see all your teeth, that your eyes squinched closed.
You nearly always had headphones on—wired earbuds dangling from the collar of your shirt as you walked down the hall, or over ear headphones looped around your neck at your desk, usually pop, occasionally 70s rock or alternative spitting from the speakers.
You talked a lot, and your voice carried. One of those truisms about Americans, you could be heard long before you were seen even if you weren’t being particularly loud. He didn’t need to be close to hear you, and he found himself thinking one afternoon good. It would be easier to keep track of you.
He liked your voice, anyway, liked your laugh, liked to hear you say English phrases in that accent of yours that made them sound ridiculous.
You could likely give Soap a run for a world record of useless chatter. Anyone who walked into your office was subject to your stream of consciousness if they lingered long enough.
Lonely, he might have called it. But you were new, to the base, and to the country. Your only connections were those you were attempting to craft with stuffy intelligence officers who sometimes seemed to regard you as below them.
He found his thoughts drifting to the sound of your voice once he’d left you for the day, replaying things he’d heard you say in the period of observation he allowed himself, like the tune of a lullaby. It calmed him.
The resentment in his chest festered like a badly healed wound. You were nothing but a distraction, a thorn stabbed into his side, stealing his focus from nearly everything that was more important.
That used to be more important.
Now his every thought was asterisked by you.
Distracted.
He didn’t do well with it.
He didn’t like that he could feel the newly rended hole in his chest corroding and throbbing when he wasn’t near you, suffocating him. He’d felt worse in his life, so he could mostly ignore it.
Simon decided that the nature of the bond was at least neutral. You were not a threat.
He was tired, anyway, of constantly thinking about your back to the door, your headphones playing too loudly.
After you left one evening in mid spring, he moved your desk.
Simon sat in your dark office for longer than he should have, letting the pain ease out of his chest.
It was enough to be where you had once been.
That was as close as he cared to be.
He fixed the radiator before he closed the door again.
.
.
.
He went by Ghost, you learned eventually.
His was a redacted, blacked out name in the files on your computer, so Ghost seemed less a name than a description. You briefly scanned the ops he had been on. It was a horrifyingly long list, most of them totally classified or excised beyond comprehensibility. And those were only the missions you could see, likely his involvement in many ops had been scrubbed entirely.
It was clear that he was good at his job, though it left you to wonder what he had been doing in the administration wing of the base, let alone peering into your office like a silent wraith.
It should have been terrifying to find him looming in your doorway. His massive frame had blotted out the corridor behind him. Mostly in black, a skull mask covering his face. You hadn’t been able to see his eyes in the low lighting. But you had only felt curiosity, apprehension, a delicate wrenching in your gut.
Something that a different person might liken to butterflies. Absolutely absurd, but nonetheless true.
Fear, afterward, of course, that you’d missed some kind of order or request.
It had also been a while since someone stared so openly at you, since you’d felt the urge to duck your head, obscure the scars littered across your skin. You never had before, and you wouldn’t have started then. You wore them proudly. Most bore their soulmate’s scars better than their own, and you were no exception.
It had become a rarity, really, in recent years that anyone spared you more than a glance. Being surrounded by military personnel who had seen worse, might have had worse on their own skin, meant you didn’t stand out.
When you mentioned the incident to Laswell, worried that some kind of disciplinary report, during your first month at this post no less, was headed your way, she had only shook her head. “That’s just Ghost. He probably didn’t say anything. You get used to it.”
The base, especially among the operators, was filled with odd personalities with even odder quirks, so you decided not to question it. You had only nodded, and said, “Okay.”
Laswell had smiled. “You’ll do well here.”
You suspected you were being watched in the weeks following the incident, though you couldn’t say why at first. The suspicion was confirmed when you arrived one blissfully sunny spring morning to find your office warm and your desk moved. Your other furniture was rearranged neatly around it. You rounded it, dropping your bag as you went, half expecting to find a note.
There was nothing, and you started to rotate it back, a bit irritated, when you paused and sat. The new angle gave you a clear view of the door and window. The sun hit your face without causing a glare on your screens. The monitors had been lowered ever so slightly so you could easily see over them.
You left your desk in its new position. It was better that way.
Ghost appeared in your office that afternoon as suddenly as he had left it.
You sensed that he’d been there for a long time when you finally noticed him in the doorway, that you were only seeing him because he wanted you to.
You smiled and turned away from a report. A welcome reprieve for your strained eyes and hunched back.
“Hi. Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?”
This time, he stepped into your office, grasped your offer with both hands.
The room seemed to shrink and adjust to his size. He was more massive than you remembered, in height and breadth. His eyes didn’t leave yours, a deep blackened honey brown half hidden by skull. Neither of you looked away.
“Have I passed?”
His head tilted ever so slightly. When he spoke his voice was like an iron rod shoved down your spine. Deep and jagged and rough, it settled between your ribs, in the pit of your stomach. “Passed?”
“Your test?”
“Think I’m testin’ you?”
“You moved my desk.”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, still not dropping your gaze. The silence lasted so long you began to think he wouldn’t answer at all. “Practically had your back to the door,” he said eventually, as though that explained it.
It conjured the image of Ghost creeping around the base in the dead of night to adjust offices into more tactical configurations and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep the giggle in your throat from bubbling out.
You nodded and then shrugged instead. “I guess I don’t think about things like that.”
“Should.”
“Maybe.”
“Especially in the field.”
“I don’t do field work.”
He nodded slowly and finally took his eyes off yours, glancing around the room again. When his lashes caught the light, you saw that they were a light blond.
“Welcome to sit,” you offered, taking up a pen and a pad of yellow paper. “Ghost.”
He didn’t sit, but he didn't leave either. When he remained mute and motionless, you looked back at your report and continued working, resigned to the new addition to your office.
Minutes passed in silence, with only the scratch of your pencil over paper, the tapping of computer keys, for company.
All at once, the room sighed, and when you looked up, he was gone.
Ghost was strange, slightly off putting.
You liked him.
Maybe, you thought, he’d come back.
.
.
.
Ghost visited regularly after that.
Sometimes he simply stood at the door and watched you work.
His boots were so silent that you often didn’t know he was there until he was leaving again. It felt as though he often melted into nothing but shadow, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling.
You didn’t feel watched, so much as observed, minded.
But the lengthy silences began to wear thin, so you started talking to him.
Talked at him, more like, about anything that came to mind.
The shit weather and how cold you always were. Recounted phone calls with your sister and noted things you’d seen on your commute. You told him of your slightly creepy neighbor who would follow you occasionally down high street when you did your weekly shopping trip, but that was probably harmless.
You were sure he wasn’t actually listening, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance as he stood statuesque in the middle of your office.
The visits were occasionally broken up by operations that could last days or weeks, once up to a month. Time passed either way, but you found it passed more easily when you could reliably count on a visit from Ghost. Hearing his voice in staticky communications wasn’t the same. A blinking green dot on a map that you tracked just a little more closely than the others.
Ghost sat down for the first time toward the middle of a particularly miserable and cold spring afternoon. He sighed as he did, the only sign of any feeling. Almost a resignation in the soft cut of it.
You didn’t comment on it, just chatted as you usually did, buoyed in a way that you could not explain.
He started to bring you coffee, done up to your preference, always when you were hitting the midday lag.
In exchange, you left offerings at the edge of your desk. Baked goods, protein bars, chips, sweets— which disappeared when you looked away from him. You noted what went first so you could invest in it. Chocolate went more frequently.
But Ghost, whether he was listening or not, made you feel less alone. The ache of loneliness in your heart eased, and maybe that said more about you than him.
If he was around, he usually slipped in while you ate lunch. He didn’t eat with you, the mask never moved, but you began cooking extra in the evenings, leaving tupperware containers at the edge of your desk in addition to brownies wrapped in waxpaper, chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with sea salt. “Don’t have to,” he always said.
“Want to,” you answered, and then received the empty, clean container from the day before as though it were an offering.
Your office always smelled like tobacco and tea for hours after he left, a comforting combination that you began to wish you could bottle.
He didn’t appear one day at his usual allotted, precise time. You figured something came up or he finally got tired of you, but he turned up instead late in the afternoon.
“Sorry,” he said as he sat, without explanation, a paper cup of coffee steaming at the edge of your desk like it appeared there by his will alone.
“Oh,” you answered. “You didn’t have to—“
“Did,” he said simply. “‘ave you eaten?”
“Yep. Got something for you, too.”
He settled back. “Neighbor still botherin’ you?”
You blinked in surprise, the slightly creepy neighbor had not spoken to you in a few days. “Oh. . .I—You were listening.”
He tilted his head. “‘Course I was, bird.” He leveled you with a look. “So?”
“Not recently. Not in a couple days.”
“Good. Let us know if he does, yeah?”
Then he sat back and waited, shoulders relaxed as though attending a sermon, but content with silence anyway.
When you glanced up from a report a while later, for clarification on a mission detail that he happened to be on, his eyes were closed.
It felt akin to having a wolf willingly curl up in your lap, blood wet maw dripping peacefully onto the floor.
.
.
.
When you turned from watering your plants one innocuous spring day, you found Ghost entering your office with a different mask on. A soft black balaclava. You could see his eyes and brows, the bridge of his nose and the thin, bruised skin beneath his eyes.
You froze and then smiled at him, tried hard not to stare. His eyes were always pretty but now you felt you could actually see him. Blond brows and lashes, his irises were lighter, amber honey in the yellow light of your bug lamp, as Ghost had called it one afternoon without a shred of humor.
It was raining, and the dim light made the small space cozier than usual. The patchwork blanket was around your shoulders, a ward against the chill bleeding beneath the window.
In his usual chair, you’d laid a gift.
He pointed to the blanket you had carefully folded there earlier.
“It’s for you. I knitted it.”
He froze, hand half extended toward it. You swept past him around your desk again, inundated with the scent of black tea and cigarettes as you went. His was alternating black and dark blue squares to your brightly colored purple and teal. “Just in case you were cold. You’re always so buttoned up after all,” you joked. “And you fixed my radiator this winter. So it’s a thank you, too.”
Ghost only moved it to the back of the chair. You hadn’t expected him to take it, really, but his gloved fingers lingered on it for a moment, rubbing the fabric gently. “How d’you know it was me that fixed it?”
“Who else would have?”
He grunted. “You knit?”
“When I can’t sleep,” you answered. “Keeps my hands and brain busy.”
His brows furrowed, and seeing even that small movement felt like seeing him naked, like seeing something he didn’t want you to. You averted your eyes, heat crawling up your neck.
“Can’t sleep?” His fingers slid off the blanket and he sat.
You shrugged. “Must seem silly to you. You see it with your own eyes. But some of the reports. . . stick with me.”
Ghost considered this for a long moment. “It’s not.”
“What?”
“Silly.”
The way he grunted the word made you laugh.
“Could I ask you something, Ghost?”
“Reckon you just did.”
You rolled your eyes. “Am I allotted only one question?”
“Just two.”
It was. . . funny. You giggled and shrugged. “Guess I’m shit out of luck.”
“And out of questions.”
You laughed again.
He surprised you by laughing too. If a low, graveled grunt counted as a laugh. You certainly counted it, a cache of swollen pride bubbling in your stomach. “Go on, then.”
“Where are you from?”
The levity vanished. His brows lowered. “Why?”
You shrugged. “Just curious. I’m not good with all the accents yet. Just can’t place you.”
He relaxed back into the chair again, but didn't answer.
The pinch of his brows, the tense line of his jaw, remained, his expression considering as he tilted his head back.
“Why do you come here?” You asked instead.
This question he answered readily. “It’s quiet.”
“That’s one way to tell me to shut up.”
He blinked and lowered his chin to meet your eyes. “Not the kind of noise I mean.”
You decided not to take offense at being called noise.
You snorted and reached beneath your desk, taking some pride in the fact that Ghost did not tense anymore than usual when you did, withdrawing your lunch.
“Hungry?” You asked.
“Tryin’ to see my face?”
You smiled. “Never,” you answered, “Not sure I want to see what you’re hiding under there.”
The rain tapped against the window as you popped the thermal lid off.
“Why are you here?” He asked as you folded your legs beneath you on the chair and tucked the blanket around them. Ghost rose without asking and twisted the knob of the radiator beneath the window a bit higher.
You waved your fork, indicating the office. “Fairly positive I work here. But perhaps base security is more lax than I thought.”
He sighed, a long suffering sound. “England, smartarse.”
You smile and dig your fork into last night’s spaghetti bolognese. The steam caressed your face in a warm puff as you lifted a bite. “I’m on loan to Laswell.”
“On loan?” He asked as he settled back into the chair, broad shoulders pressed to the wall behind him, against the blanket. It slid over his elbow a little, curled over his forearm. He didn’t move it.
When you lifted your gaze to his, his stare was piercing, brows lowered, furrowed. You imagined he must be frowning.
“Temporary replacement for whoever used to be in this office,” you explained. “She needed someone quickly, who she could trust.”
Ghost folded his arms across his chest, something more tense than usual in the movement. “How long are you on loan for, then?”
You shrugged, twisted your fork into the noodles. “It’s unclear. So, for now, indefinitely.” You smiled, “Hopefully not through another winter, though, I don’t think I’m cut out for the rain and cold.”
His shoulders eased, but only marginally. If it weren’t for all the hours he’d passed in your office, you weren’t sure you would have caught it at all.
“From somewhere warm?”
“Warmer than here. Especially in the winter.”
“Must be nice, that.”
“Has its perks. But the summer is its own kind of hell.”
“One you enjoy.”
“But of course. I like feeling like I’m baking alive.”
He snorted again.
You ate in silence for a bit. The quiet had become comfortable between you somewhere along the way, silken and gentle.
When you were scraping the last bit of sauce from the bottom of the container, Ghost said, “Manchester.”
“Hm?”
“Where I’m from.”
His voice was low; he wasn’t looking at you, eyes trained on the door instead.
“Manchester,” you repeated, trying to place it on the map of the UK in your mind. “And do you all sound sort of like—“
You were about to say like you have gravel in your mouth but he makes an affected noise, that stiff grunt again. “Are you laughing at me?”
“It’s your fucking accent.”
“My accent?” You asked incredulously. “Have you heard yourself?”
“Got a thick one, bird.” He imitated your voice. “Manchester.” The sharp rhotic r sound was like a gunshot in his mouth, each letter enunciated to the point of being butchered.
You scoffed, not bothering to fight your smile. “Takes one to know one, I guess.”
“Suppose it does.”
“Fucking Brits,” you said, without any venom. “I can’t do anything right according to you all.”
He tilted his head, something predatory in it. It made your heart flutter a little. “Who’s tellin’ you you can’t do something?”
You sighed, long suffering. “My coworkers. Can’t make tea, apparently. I don’t care for it and everyone keeps insisting I just make it wrong.”
“They make it wrong too.”
You groaned. “Not you too.”
Ghost rose to take his leave as you snapped the lid back onto the now empty container.
“I’ll show you how to make a proper cup sometime.”
You paused, a warm surprise sweeping into your chest, and decided not to linger on this solitary acknowledgement that Ghost would return to your office. “Big fan?”
“I love tea.”
It made you laugh. “Of course, English afterall.”
He nodded, just once, and started toward the door. “Ghost?” You called.
Ghost turned and you slid another tupperware container across your desk. “For you.”
He stared at it, for a moment too long, as he always did, like he was telling himself to leave it. “Didn’t have to.”
“I know.” You nodded at it again and then then ducked behind your computer screens. “I always want to.”
Ghost moved so silently that you didn’t hear or see him take it, but when you looked up again he and the container at the edge of your desk were gone.
.
.
.
It should be a good thing.
You would be gone soon enough, none the wiser of who Ghost was. Of what you were to each other.
But it didn’t sit well. It was a new thing to nag at the back of his mind, finding your office empty, you becoming a ghost in your own right. He hated the ache in his chest, the thought of you so far away. He could only assume you’d be stationed back in the US.
The thought festered, burrowed.
“Laswell.”
She jumped, hand going beneath her desk before she spotted Ghost in the corner of her office. She sighed and closed her eyes, fingertips rubbing her eyes instead.
“Ghost,” she sighed, “Don’t do that.”
Simon said your name, and Laswell lowered her hands to look at him. “How long has she got?”
“What do you mean?”
“Said she’s on loan. I want to know how long.”
Laswell considered him; Ghost waited. He wouldn’t explain himself, and Laswell knew that.
“Maybe as long as a year.” She tilted back in her chair and asked anyway. “Why?”
Ghost didn’t answer, slipping back out of her office and down the hall.
You were still in your office, hunched over the desk, lavender headphones pulled down around your neck. He watched you for a long moment, eyes tracing over scars that belonged to him. It was jarring each time to see pain he experienced threaded over your skin. It made him feel exposed by proxy.
As he watched, you lifted a hand and rubbed your neck with a wince, fingers lingering on the long scar slashed at the base of your throat. The grimace faded from your face and your expression receded into the impassive, blank, focused slate it always settled into as you continued working.
When he sat down in your office, you just shot him a tired smile and continued working.
He walked you to your car around midnight.
“Tell us if you’re here this late again,” he said, not looking at you.
“Ghost,” you said. “It’s almost enough to make me think you like me.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he answered.
You just laughed.
.
.
.
“Tea?”
You jumped, just as Laswell had, only your hand didn’t go beneath the desk. Nothing there to reach for, he knew, your vulnerability like a beacon, or a stain.
It would need remedied.
But first, this.
It was the sixth time in two weeks that you were at your desk well past when everyone else had gone home.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Unfortunately not.”
You laughed; his shoulders eased. “Ghost,” you said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” You tilted your head. “I’m starting to think you’re spying on me.”
“What’re you still doing ‘ere?”
“What are you doing wandering around our wing after hours?”
Not a line of questioning he was keen on following. That just being near a place you had been earlier in the day was enough to loosen that fucking tether in his chest. That he was worried incessantly about you being alone at night.
“Offerin’ to make you a tea,” he answered. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” you echoed. “Of course.”
“You’re supposed to tell me when you’re stayin’ late.”
“Ghost,” you said seriously, lifting your brows, “I’m here late again today.”
“Hilarious, you are.”
You giggled again. “Are you really offering to make me tea?”
He nodded. “C’mon then.”
You smiled and shrugged the blanket off your shoulders. He waited while you locked your computer and stood.
Simon allowed you to lead toward the breakroom where he’d observed the many cups of tea you’d politely swallowed from well meaning coworkers, who left it to steep for too long or too short, added too much sugar and milk, or left it totally plain.
The overhead lights were too bright, a blue-white glare that made you frown and squint. Your nose scrunched up in distaste. There were circles beneath your eyes, exhausted loops that matched his own.
“So,” you prompted, leaning against the counter, “How does one make a proper cuppa?”
“Not bad,” he said of your accent, lifting the electric kettle from the hook to fill with water. “Little posh.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
He grunted, and put the kettle on, before rooting through the cabinet above the sink for tea bags. A grim selection awaited him, but he’d make due with what was available.
“Ah, so you boil the water. I was under the impression you could just stick it all in the microwave.”
He involuntarily made a pained sound. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, “That your usual method?”
You bit the inside of your cheek, poorly concealing a laugh. “I scandalized a data analyst with that joke.” You cup your chin in your hand, peer up at him from beneath a thick fringe of lashes. “I do know how to boil water, I’ll have you know.”
“Got a head start then.”
You laughed again, shoulders shaking. Simon watched the corner of your mouth curl, and it eased something in his chest. You were painfully close, the woodsy, floral scent of your perfume curled in the air. Your elbow brushed his. He didn’t know how you could be unaware of the bond at that moment, when being that close to you felt like being lit on fire. He wanted to reach for you so badly that he had to clench his fist closed to avoid it.
If someone were to ask him to move away from you right then, it would end badly. Bloody.
The thin, needle sharp connection ached, begged.
Simon ignored it.
When you glanced up, he looked away. He could feel your eyes on his face, and didn’t mind the scrutiny in it. He didn’t mind you watching him, and wondered what you saw.
“I like being able to see your eyes,” you said, just as the kettle clicked off.
He met your gaze, disarmed by the declaration. Your features had softened, melted into a dangerous fondness. “Why?”
“You have pretty eyes,” you shrugged. “And it’s hard to see you with the other mask.” You shifted, watching him lift the kettle, pour the hot water into a mug and over the teabag he’d dropped into it.
“You can tell me to fuck off, if you want,” you began carefully, fingertips drumming nervously against the counter. “Why do you wear it?”
Simon watched the teabag bob on the surface of the water, thin amber trails unfurling, coloring the water slowly brown. “Five minutes,” he nodded at the tea. “Don’t touch it. None of that dunking shite.”
“Yes, sir,” you agreed. “Five minutes, no touching.”
He huffed, and your smile widened. You bumped your shoulder against his. The contact only lasted a second or two, but the relief it provided was so intense that he nearly choked on it.
The pain, softened by your proximity, returned immediately, crept down into the soft ligaments between his bones. He felt the loss in the roots of his teeth, the middle of his chest; it was like losing his breath in a different way, being suckerpunched in the solar plexus, knocked on his ass.
“To hide my face.”
“Your identity, you mean.”
“My identity,” he agreed.
“Why?”
He released a long, slow breath, and thought about telling you to piss off, maybe even just to see how you’d take it. Were you as good as your word? Would you let the subject drop?
Instead, he said, “There are a lot of bad people in the world, bird.”
You pursed your lips, fingers toying with the teabag string, flicking the tab at the end with your nail. There was another question swimming in your eyes, but you let it go unasked, dropping your eyes from his instead.
“You’ve seen more of them than most,” you said. “I would guess.”
“Part of the job.”
Your mouth curled a little, lashes fluttering against your cheek. “Hm. But y’know something? I think I’d know you anywhere,” you said, without a hint of shame or irony. “It’s all in your eyes.”
Before Simon could respond, you hid a yawn in your sleeve and rubbed your hand over your face, exhaustion layered in thick rings beneath your eyes. “Even if this is gross,” you indicate the tea, “At least it will keep me awake.”
“I take offense to that.”
You laughed again. “Hm. Sorry, Lieutenant.” You leaned in, “It smells so nice, so why does it taste like shit?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll make you a coffee if it’s shit.”
“You’re kind.” This time when you leaned your shoulder against his, you left it there. The empty soreness like a bruise inside his ribs loosened again. For the first time in a while, he was left with the absence of pain.
When the tea was done steeping, he did yours with a bit of honey. There was no way you’d take it plain and like it, but he drew the line at milk. Especially the blasphemy that was the military issued powdered milk in a canister that sat on the counter. Abso-fucking-lutely not.
“There you are,” he said, “Cup of tea.”
“A proper cuppa,” you tried again. It was a little less posh this time.
He huffed. “Better all the time.”
“And I have you to thank.”
Your face creased as you took the cup between your palms, an unreadable expression flitting across your features. Then your mouth twisted to the side, a sure sign you were attempting to keep some emotion or thought in check.
Your shoulder was still pressed heavily against his.
“Thanks, Ghost.”
“”S just tea.”
You shook your head and lifted the cup, blowing gently on the surface before you took a tiny sip. He watched your face, watched your throat move as you swallowed, the flickering web of your lashes. A step up, at least, from all the shit tea from your coworkers that make your brows tense in an effort to conceal a grimace. “One good thing has come of this,” you said after a moment of contemplation.
“What’s tha’?”
“I know how to make tea for you now.”
“Like it?”
“I love it.”
You briefly tilted your head onto his shoulder, then pulled away entirely. The flood of discomfort was worse than before. His muscles spasmed around it in a violent convulsion. “I mean that really.”
He breathed out, through it. “I don’t take honey.”
You studied the contents of the cup, tilting it one way and then the other, like something important laid at the bottom of the porcelain well.
“Noted.”
Sure enough, the next day, a hot cup was waiting for him, which he drank as you chatted from behind your computer, decidedly, pointedly, giving him the privacy to do so.
.
.
.
Things settled into a pleasant rhythm.
A regimented, regular existence that you had long ago learned to embrace. The base became home more than the tiny apartment you rented and spent only enough time to sleep, bathe, and cook in.
You timed your days to the ebb and flow of the base, to visits to your office, debriefings and conference rooms, the restless energy of so many people in one place moving. You breathed around absences, the pockets of emptiness that sometimes cropped up. The loneliness that felt like an unfillable pit in your stomach.
People often saw your scars and thought not to bother. Why would fate have marked you so heavily if you weren’t meant to find your pair? The scars meant nothing, really. They were no more significant than anyone else’s. Your chances of running into your soulmate was no higher than someone who had accrued no scars from their bond.
You were a stopping off point, a bit of fun, but not someone to invest time and effort into, not when the reminder that someone else might come along and render it all moot was so visible, so literally in their face. To look at you was to be reminded of that bond waiting in the wings, for them and for you, and that you could only ever be temporary.
It made friendships hard too. Some were jealous, others thought there couldn’t be room for anyone else in your life. You were important to no one.
It had been proven to you time and again, and you weren’t sure what kept you hopeful that someone would one day see past it. So when Sergeant Davies stuck his head in your office one Friday afternoon long after Ghost had departed your office for the day, and asked you out, you found yourself saying yes.
“Would you like to go out sometime?” He asked, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Just round the pub for drinks?”
“Oh,” you said. “I—”
It had been a long time since anyone took interest in you. You’d only talked to him a few times before, but Davies was handsome in a boyish way and sweet and you liked him well enough, you found yourself hesitating for half a second. To your horror, your mind flashed to Ghost, stomach lurching painfully, a knot of tension fisting itself in your chest.
You looked at his usual chair, empty now, seeing his large frame sprawled there anyway, thighs spread wide, arms crossed over his chest, eyes steady and focused, locked onto you with an intensity and constancy you still weren’t used to.
Heat bloomed in your lungs, crept up your neck. You glanced away, back at Davies waiting at the door.
“Yeah,” you answered firmly. “Sure.”
“Brilliant,” he grinned. “How about tonight?”
Your belly gave another sour squirm that you ignored; it had just been a long time, that was all. “I’m free.”
“Brilliant,” he said again. “I’ll text you.”
“Okay.”
His grin was crooked and self satisfied as he exited your office.
So you found yourself walking off the base with Davies later that evening. You found yourself laughing and hopeful in a local pub that you hadn’t gotten the chance to explore yet, busy as you were, the base a tide that tugged you back again and again. Like a magnet, you wanted to be there.
And all of it came to nothing, the moment Davies saw the extent of the scarring when you took him home. It wasn’t just your face, it was your hands and arms and chest and belly. Your whole body was marked, dogeared for someone else. He looked down at you in your bed, his head framed by your ceiling fan and you saw the moment it clicked. The moment it wouldn’t work.
“Someone out there is really looking for you,” he said. “You’re lucky.”
“No more than anyone else,” you countered. “You know that’s not how it works.”
“I know,” he said, pulling on his shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” you said before he kissed your cheek and retreated.
Still, you didn’t sleep, just laid on your side, half undressed, staring out at a sky that slowly lightened, stars fading, wondering if perhaps your truest fate was to be lonely for your whole life.
You didn’t hate your scars, or your soulmate. But sometimes you thought it would be easier if you didn’t have one at all.
.
.
.
Monday.
There was a knife in Simon’s pocket.
Not unusual in and of itself, he carried several at all times, slipped into his sleeves and belt and boot.
The one in his pocket, though, was for you.
A gift, a contingency, and an offer all wrapped in one.
The knowledge that it was yours was an uncomfortable weight in his chest. It meant admitting he cared enough to procure it, test it, hand it over.
It wasn’t quite your typical lunch hour, but Ghost was headed to your office anyway. It was sunny, for once, and he expected to find you taking an early break anyway, leaning back in your chair with your headphones on, absorbing the rare rays.
And, he wanted to be done with it, to stop tapping his pocket repeatedly, checking the blade was still there, like it might have run away.
Soap had noticed his fidgeting as they all sat through a briefing on intelligence reports with Laswell that morning. Ghost had forced his hand still, exuded a forced calm, but Johnny’s eyes hadn’t turned away.
When he arrived at your office, deliberately rustling against the doorjamb so as not to startle you, you glanced up and smiled tightly and his plan vanished.
Something was wrong. The blinds were closed, your office an unusual sea of gray air. Your shoulders were caved inward protectively, your expression wan and closed. Your smile didn’t reach your eyes, your voice was rough when you said, “Hey, Ghost.”
Simon took his usual seat, watching you type something, decidedly not looking at him. He watched you, the set of your mouth and eyes. He waited for your chatter to begin but it didn't.
“All right?”
“Hm?”
“You’re quiet.”
“Oh, only one of us is allowed to be quiet?” You joked, but it came out a bit brittle, and worn.
There were, he noticed as he looked at you, circles beneath your eyes. “What ‘appened?”
You looked up again, and shook your head. “I’m just tired.”
“Try again.”
Frustration crept into your features. “Who said I want to tell you?” With that, you ducked behind your monitors.
Simon waited, but you did not reemerge.
He stood, and rounded your desk. You glanced up then, leaning back when you found him so close. “Jesus, Ghost—”
“Nice weather.”
“I can see that.”
“And you aren’t out there sunnin’ yourself? Something horrible must have happened.”
Your mouth twisted to the side and you glanced away. “I. . .I’m just being dramatic.”
“C’mon, then.”
You blinked up at him. “Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer, but you rose anyway when he tilted his head toward the door. Simon snagged the blanket you’d knitted for him months ago from its place along the back of his chair, finally with a proper purpose, and carried it over his arm.
“Lunch.”
You grabbed it and followed him down the hall. Simon shouldered open an external door and held it open for you, the scent of your skin, the warm brush of your body so close to his as you ducked under his arm like a beacon, a light he wanted to follow.
Carefully, you nudged your shoulder against his as you walked. The familiar sharp, sweet pang whenever you brushed too close together settled in his chest. He wondered if you felt it too, if you felt that sickly flutter in your chest, or if his suspicion that he was holding one end of an untethered bond in his hand was right.
Just his luck.
Didn’t matter though.
He ticked his elbow out a little, and after a moment, you pushed your hand against the inside of his arm. His shoulders loosened; his jaw unclenched. The pain in his chest settled.
The absence of the ache was intense; he was so used to being in near constant pain.
“So, what are we doing?”
“Walking.”
“I can see that.”
“Why’re you askin’, then, bird?”
You huffed but didn’t ask anymore questions as he led you down one concrete pathway.
The sky was a flawless robin’s egg blue, only a wispy, thin line of cloud on the very distant horizon. The distant shouts of drill instructors snapped in the warm summer air. Your shoulders drooped as you walked, eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds at a time as you tilted your face to the sun, inhaling deeply.
He led you around the last building in a long line of barracks and brought you to a halt. The only thing beyond was a chainlink fence that marked the edge of the base. A faint breeze coated him in the smell of your skin, settled deep in the well of his lungs. He took a breath, watched your lashes flutter.
Your thumb stroked a pattern against the inside of his arm, lazy and slow. “You’ve got a soft spot for me, Ghost.”
He didn’t deny it.
“What are we doing back here?”
Ghost pulled away from you with some effort and spread the blanket over the grass. He sat on the concrete steps that led to the back door of the unused barracks.
You sat on the blanket, started to open your lunch and then flopped back in the sun instead. “A usual haunt?”
“Sometimes.”
“Secret’s safe with me.”
“Mind if I smoke?”
“No.” Then, “I won’t look.”
He grunted in acknowledgement, rolled the bottom of his mask up, carton of cigarettes and lighter pulled from the depths of a trouser pocket. Simon watched the rise and fall of your chest, tracing the latticework of scars over your face. They looked better on you, he decided. Not as noticeable as his own, faded and light, pencil through wax paper instead of the thick groves of his own.
They glinted a little in the sun, like the scales of an iridescent fish.
Your eyes remained peacefully closed, soaking up the sun like a long deprived plant. Sweat beaded along your forehead, and when you pushed up your sleeves, Ghost was reminded that all of you matched all of him.
He recognized a burn mark on your forearm that belonged to him, a cut that wrapped halfway around your wrist. He was pretty sure the burn mark was from a mishandled flare, the wrist scar from a rope that had gotten tangled and burned him.
Simon wanted to reach down and cup the side of your throat, feel the soft, sun warmed skin beneath his fingers. He wondered if your scars felt the same as his own, rough and grooved.
Probably not, they were imitations, ungenerous sketchings of his own.
He’d like to map them all against his own, find out if he bore any of yours. He wouldn’t have noticed something small that you might have collected yourself. A childhood fall, a careless burn while cooking.
He watched the delicate flex of muscle in your forearms. Your shirt was a little askew, more faded marks left like a tracery of veins on your chest and collarbone and shoulder. It was fucking awful, a wrenching feeling in his chest, to know all that had been inflicted on him, had fallen on you too.
He wondered about the pain again, imagined you writhing with terror and agony and confusion, every gunshot wound and burn and slash he received an echo inside you. Cigarette burns dotting your arms and wrists when you were just a child, months of pain without end when he was captured and tortured and his life was irrevocably changed.
Simon wanted to ask, needed to know just how much damage he’d inflicted. But the words stuck in his throat. A fear of knowing, if he asked about the pain, maybe he’d hear other things too, how much you must hate him and didn’t know it was the man in front of you your hate should be directed at.
When he stubbed out his cigarette on the heel of his boot and rolled his mask back down, you blinked into the sun and exhaled, long and slow, and then sat up, leaning back on your palms.
“What ‘appened?” He asked.
Your mouth twitched into your usual, if a bit more sheepish, smile. “You’re like a dog with a bone, you know that?”
“Affirmative,” he said.
You rolled your eyes and set up straight, brushing your palms together before reaching for your lunch. “I brought something for you.”
“Stalling.”
“Pushy,” you countered, giggling, rummaging around in your bag. Your smile faded as you pulled free one of the usual containers, what looked like lasagne within. He watched the edge of your mouth curl, the scar slitted along one side pulling at your expression. “I went on a date this weekend.”
Ice slid down his spine, curled in a viscous circle in his gut. “Bad date?”
“No,” you said, shaking your head adamantly, staring down at the container in your lap. “No, it went really well.” You glanced up at him and then dug in your bag again, passing another one to him along with a fork. “Until he saw my—” You fidgeted with your sleeve and then yanked it down. The other followed suit. “My marks. My scars.”
“He’s a prick.”
“No, he wasn’t,” you shook your head. “It’s happened before. They see the extent of it, and it’s like something biological clicks. I’m off limits.” You sat your food to the side and wrapped your arms around your knees. “Even though I’m no more likely to find mine than anyone else.”
You looked very small, and alone at that moment.
“I know it’s not my soulmate’s fault,” you said quietly. “I know that. I know that. And I don’t blame them for it. But sometimes I get so lonely I just—I wish—I wish I didn’t have one. Sometimes I wish I could hate them.”
The chill spreads outward.
It was confirmation enough. If you knew, you would hate him. All that repressed, sentimentalized resentment would come bubbling up the moment you were actually faced with the person who so fundamentally changed the course of your life.
He looked at his scars winking in the sun on your skin and felt a self hatred so intense it nearly made him flinch. He wished he could crawl out of that grave and kill them all over again, slower, just for this.
You glanced up and smiled tightly. “But I’m a hopeless romantic, and dramatic. It was just disappointing. I always have hope someone will see past it.” You ran your hand over the blanket and unfolded yourself to finally begin eating. “This helped, though,” you said. “Thank you, Ghost.” You nodded at the food in his hands, averted your gaze again.
And even though you could easily glance at him, Simon pushed up his mask and popped open the lid of the lasagne still warm between his hands.
You ate together for the first time, in silence in the sun. You closed your eyes, kept your face pointed up and away, a cool breeze ruffling your shirt sleeves.
“Have you found yours?”
Simon looked at you, the edge of your jaw, the soft shadows your lashes cast over your ruined cheek. “Don’t think someone like me is meant for one.”
You nodded. “Me either.”
.
.
.
He walked you back to your office.
You felt better, settled, but he sort of just had that affect on you, you were coming to find.
Ghost smelled like sun and freshly mowed grass and cigarette smoke. His shoulder kept touching yours, something in your chest lurching each time, like a rib bone had come loose and was knocking against your heart and lungs.
Ghost carried the blanket back, folded it and set it carefully along the back of what had become his chair.
You sat and turned, expecting to find him already silently gone as was his way.
Instead, he was very close and depositing something on your desk.
Matte black, compact, deadly, cold to the touch.
A folded pocket knife sat at the edge of your desk. Ghost loomed over you, his shadow curling around your edges.
He slid it toward you, watched you fold your fingers around it. For a long moment, each of you was holding it. “What’s this?” You asked when he released it, gloved fingers sliding across your desk, back to his side.
“A knife.”
“Oh, really? I've never seen one before.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s for you. I’ll teach you how to use it.”
“Why?”
“In case you need to.”
“Is this about me staying late?”
“No.” He did not elaborate.
“You know I received firearm training. I can shoot a gun. Isn’t a knife a little—”
“But you don’t carry a gun.”
“No,” you agreed. “I don’t.”
He nodded as though that explained it. “Right.”
You considered it, flipped it open. Deadly, shiny blade newly sharpened and oiled and well cared for. It was odd to be given a weapon, and yet unsurprising where Ghost was concerned. You glanced up, watched his dark, intense eyes flick over your face. You weren’t sure what he was looking for, but his brows knitted the longer you stared at each other. Concern, weariness.
“Okay.”
His shoulders loosened. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” you agreed.
.
.
.
If you thought you would receive one lesson in knifework and be done with it, you didn’t know Ghost very well.
You only ran drills first, as though Ghost were making sure the physical fitness exam you had to pass once a year was up to scratch. You proved again and again that you could run without getting too winded, disassemble, load, and fire a service weapon. When he was satisfied with that, the real training began.
You practiced with a rubber blade that bruised when stuck into your ribs. He did not go easy on you. You left the gym battered and bruised, sweaty and just a little bit resentful. But you could break a wrist lock hold, grapple and use your body and size to your advantage. The goal he repeatedly told you, was not to turn you into a fighter or a soldier, but give you an opportunity to get away, to run away.
What kind of danger he imagined you getting into between the base and your apartment you couldn’t begin to imagine. But you enjoyed spending time with him, enjoyed being in the gym. You found yourself laughing when you were repeatedly slammed into the mat, knife wrested from your fingers. It was fun. And, it was good for you, you decided, even if you thought his intense insistence was a tad dramatic.
Ghost was a bit dramatic about certain things, you were coming to learn.
This was one of them. You were, you thought with warmth, one of the things he was a bit dramatic about. For whatever reason, you’ve been tucked under his wing, into his shadow.
On the third week of relentlessly brutal training, you arrived at the base gym, empty as it always was, to find him holding a length of rope.
You eyed it warily and shifted from foot to foot, amused despite the discomfort. “What do you imagine is going to happen to me?”
Ghost didn’t answer as you set your bag down and pulled off your sweatshirt. The room was warm, close and humid, the scent of left over dregs of soldiers clogging the room for most of the day. The scent of plastic, lemon disinfectant, and sweat is thick on the air, but when you stepped toward Ghost, his familiar comforting smell of tea and cigarettes washed over you in a vacuous, orbital cloud.
You looked up just as his eyes slid away from you, blond lashes catching the light, skin pink around his eyes. You’d swear it was a blush if you didn’t know better. “Ghost?”
“Better to be prepared, yeah?”
“For what?” All the same, you turned with a sigh.
After a painfully long moment he stepped close and pressed the dark material around your wrists. His body was warm behind yours for that brief moment even without touching you, like the glow of a heat lamp that made the rest of the room feel cold by comparison.
His gloved fingers were carefully delicate against your skin. It sent sparks skittering up your arms. What would his bare skin feel like against yours?
Rough, warm. Safe.
It’s a thought that had curled its roots into your mind the first time you fell to the mat together and you felt his weight against yours, brief and heavy, but comforting somehow. It wasn’t supposed to be, he was playing predator, it should have been panic inducing.
Stupid, silly.
If your most recently failed date had shown you anything, it was that feeling anything for anyone that had seen your scars was a failing venture. And Ghost had seen more of them now, than most. Maybe you should start wearing a mask.
“What’s the goal today?” You asked, feeling a little like you couldn’t breathe. His warmth and scent and the weight of his presence was overwhelming in a way that made you want to curl into him, gladly suffocate.
“Same as always,” he answered drolly. “To get away.”
“Hm. I keep thinking you’ll challenge me,” you teased.
“Not a game, bird.”
“But what am I meant to do? I can’t fight.”
“Get out of the bindings. Get to the door.”
“Is that it?”
You would swear he’s smirking. “Simple enough, aye.”
It wasn’t easy.
For the third time in a row, you landed hard on your back.
Ghost’s weight was heavy against you, before it lifted away. Your sweaty skin stuck to his hoodie.
Your breath comes in hard, deep pants. Your wrists ached and panic had begun to set in.
“On your feet.”
Clumsy as a newborn deer, you stumble to your feet. You had to be faster than him, incapacitate him. “You won’t be getting away from me,” he’d said once, “so you’d have a chance.” It was a compliment; one that said you were doing good.
It didn’t feel like you were doing good now.
By the sixth time, you felt raw and helpless, wrists caught at an odd angle beneath you. It wasn’t fun; it wasn’t sparring. You couldn’t manage to wriggle out of the bindings and you were useless at anything he’d taught you without your hands.
“You’re hurting me,” you gasped.
He released you immediately and the pressure in your wrists eased. It hadn’t been pain, not really, just panic, just exhaustion.
But you knew instantly that you’d made a mistake, that he would not take it that way.
“Shit.”
.
.
.
The window was open and you were not in your office.
Simon paused in the doorway, noted your bag on the chair in the corner, the patchwork quilt trailing over the arm of your desk chair and spilling onto the floor. His was gone from the chair. You’d been wandering off without him recently.
He turned and marched back down the hall. An administrative assistant pointed toward the external door. “Getting sun, she said,” he said. “Sir.”
Ghost nodded and shouldered the door open. He found you behind the barracks, lying on his blanket, staring up at a patchy sky, slices of blue peaking from between low hanging gray clouds.
When his shadow fell over you, you opened your eyes and squinted up at him. “Ghost, you’re blocking my sun.”
“Not much sun to speak of.” You grimace and frown at the sky. “You weren’t in your office.”
“Sorry, should have left a note.” You patted the blanket next to you. “Sit.”
Simon sat on the concrete steps. “Where’s your lunch?”
“Forgot it.”
Worry sprouted, blossomed along his veins, ubiquitous as the pain that accompanies it.
“Canteen,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“It’s okay—“
“Wasn’t a suggestion.”
“You’re bossy,” you said but didn’t move, chin tilted up, eyes flitting shut again. “I’ll have a big dinner.”
He sighed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, content enough to wait you out and smoke. The clouds continued to gather, putting your beloved sun to rest for the moment. The air grew steadily thicker with humidity.
“Gonna rain,” he commented.
You ignored him, eyes squinching closed harder, like you could will the sun to return. He watched you, made himself look at the bruises on your wrists and forearms, he knew there were matching ones on your ribs. They were harmless, just the usual consequence of sparring, but the ones around your wrists—that’s a mistake he won’t soon forget.
When a fat raindrop landed on your arm, you sat up with a grumble. “Ready now?” He asked, pulling down his mask again.
“I can see you won’t leave it alone.”
“Affirmative,” he said.
You rolled your eyes and started to get to your feet, pausing when he held out a hand to you. You stared for a beat too long before gripping his hand in yours.
Even through his gloves, it was like being electrocuted.
You released his hand as soon as you could, eyes skirting his. “Your lead,” you said. “I haven’t had the privilege.”
He grunted, followed you closely back inside.
As Simon’s misfortune would have it, Johnny was still in the canteen.
He lasered in on the pair of you immediately, a grin growing across his face as he approached. “Ach so this is where you’ve been off to LT.”
Ghost herded you into line, a raucous group of new recruits halting their conversation to ogle you before their eyes flicked to his and away, conversation continued at a more subdued level. He shifted closer, between you and them, though you didn’t seem to notice.
“Haven’t been off anywhere,” he grumbled.
“Who’s this then?”
You smiled and offered your hand and name. “It’s nice to see that Ghost has bad manners with everyone.”
“John MacTavish,” Soap said, all charm as he practically bowed. “Call me Soap.”
“Soap,” you giggled. “I’ve seen you in my reports.”
Soap’s gaze flicked over your face, sharp eyes making the quick calculations that had made Simon hope he wouldn’t be in the canteen. “Are they yours?”
“Sergeant—,” Ghost said sharply, a warning in his voice.
But you only laughed and touched your cheek with obvious pride as the line moved up. “No. None of them belong to me. They’re nice though, right?”
Simon went very still, swore his heart rate slowed. You held out your arm, showed off a sliver flash.
“Very becoming, lass.”
You smiled again and gestured to your own chin, the side of your head. “Yours?”
“Aye, all mine.”
“Ah, luck.”
“Lucky indeed.”
Johnny’s eyes shifted to Simon’s, brows raised, with a look that said he knew. Simon glanced away, gritting his jaw so hard it ached.
“Am I going to get food poisoning from this?” You asked as a tray was handed over, eying warily what was ostensibly mash, peas and carrots, mystery meat.
“Probably not,” Johnny answered cheerfully. “Been mostly fine.”
“Yes, but I think you military people might have tolerance to low levels of poison.”
“That’s for sure, bonnie.”
“Bonnie,” you said, giggling. “Are you calling me pretty?”
Soap covered his heart, balancing his tray with one hand. “You wound me. Simon only keeps us good looking bastards around.”
“Simon,” you said softly, glancing up at him. “I didn’t think anyone knew your name.”
Ghost didn’t answer for a moment, glaring daggers into the side of Johnny’s head, ignoring the way his heart was clenched so tight it felt like it was in a vise. Simon, his name on your tongue—
“It’s need to know,” he snapped.
Your expression folded and you glanced away. “Right, of course. Sorry.”
Simon clenched his jaw so hard it clicked as Johnny shot him a look. “This way, lass,” he said, leading you toward a spot in the corner of the mess.
“Oh,” you said weakly, “That’s all right. You don’t have to—”
Ghost couldn’t help but notice the anxious look you threw him, the thin line your voice had transformed into.
Soap wasn’t listening, already talking your ear off, pulling out a chair for you. You smiled and sat and Simon was left to silently watch it unfold.
.
.
.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Soap muttered when they’d safely returned you to your office where a contingent of lesser analysts awaited you. The corridor leading away from the now closed door seemed impossibly long. “D’ya know how many people would kill to meet their soulmate? You’ve got yours right under your fuckin’ nose and haven’t even told her yer name!”
“She doesn’t need to know.”
“Yer name?”
Ghost leveled Soap with a stare.
Soap gaped at him. “Steamin’ Jesus. You aren’t plannin’ to tell the lass at all?”
“Stay out of it, MacTavish.”
Johnny followed him down the hall, outside into a bleak, gray drizzle. “You know it can kill you?” Simon kept walking. “Simon.”
He stopped, glanced at Soap with a warning in his eyes. “Do ya?”
“It won’t.”
Johnny continues anyway, urgently. “There’s a pain, they say, under the ribs when—“
“Stay out of it, Sergeant,” Ghost growled, that very pain growing as it always did as he moved further and further away from you. “It’s nothing.”
“It‘ll corrode,” Johnny said to his retreating back. “She’ll feel it eventually.”
Simon ignored him.
But he wondered as he walked away, if he died, if you’d feel the corded snap of his life floating away from yours.
Somehow, being that sort of ghost, didn’t sit well with him.
.
.
.
Johnny, predictably, did not stay out of it.
He regularly and reliably began to show up in your office. More than once, he looped Garrick into accompanying him. Ghost had watched as the same realization Soap had snapped into place on Gaz’s face, and knew it was only a matter of time before Price knew too.
Luckily, they were the only three on the entire base that could make the connection, that had seen his face, so at least it was done with. None of them said anything to him about it, but there were a lot of worried glances being exchanged.
Ghost felt the edge of his sanity begin to wear thin the longer it went on, not that there was much left of it in the first place.
The disruption, the infiltration, the distraction grated until his insides felt raw with irritation. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to know, not because he was ashamed, but because you were his, and you didn’t deserve to be burdened by that. He would shoulder that horrible belonging for both of you.
But the way you’d tenderly touched your cheek remains burned into his memory. The soft look in your eye. The gentle way you and Soap always spoke of soulmates whenever they came up, reverent and tender.
You enjoyed their company, Johnny and Kyle, and seemed all the better for it. It was clear immediately how much you liked both of them. How much you desperately needed friends.
Ghost was loath to admit there was a seed of jealousy wriggling in his belly. The easy way you got on with them proof enough that a wire had gotten crossed somewhere, that you were more cursed by him than anchored by.
Then, the gifts left at the edge of your desk began to extend to the lads and not just himself, and it felt vaguely as though he were losing a vital piece of himself to it.
Then, you stopped coming to the gym. You were gone, office dark, before he could walk you to your car. You went on another date.
He didn’t know what to do with any of it.
One Tuesday at the end of July you were in your office, but Soap was there before him, tearing into a packet of crisps, lounging in Simon’s chair, patchwork quilt flattened beneath him in a heap. It was hot, and humid, a fan in the corner working overtime, window propped open.
You were happily listening to Johnny explain the ins and outs of football. A match was playing on your computer screen which you’d turned back so both of you could see.
Your eyes found Simon’s when he paused in the doorway, and you waved him inside, an unsure smile twitching at the corners of your mouth. “Hi, Ghost. Do you keep up with soccer, too?”
A groan from Soap. “Bloody Americans.”
“Sorry, sorry. You keep up with footie too, mate?”
“Horrendous,” Ghost said flatly.
Your smile faltered then brightened again. It didn’t quite reach your eyes. “You should hear my Scottish accent. Soap said I offended every one of his ancestors.”
“Aye and you did lass,” he said solemnly. “Yeh—”
“Sergeant,” Ghost interrupted loudly. “Aren’t you due for PT?”
“Ach, right,” he muttered, getting to his feet, “Thanks for the reminder, LT.”
“Oh, Soap,” you said, “Hold on.” You rummaged beneath your desk for a long moment, then passed him a brown paper bag full of cookies. “Your favorite, as requested.”
“You sweet on me or something, bon?”
You rolled your eyes and said, “Out of my office.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ghost took Soap’s vacated seat, watched you avoid looking at him as you moved things needlessly around your desk, twisted your monitor back around and muted the match.
The silence was suffocating.
“All right?”
You froze, then shuffled the papers together and slid them to a corner of your desk. “I wanted to apologize.” Your voice hitched a little.
He blinked, taken aback. He didn’t like that you could surprise him. “For what?”
You bit your lip, fidgeted again. “Your name, I guess. You didn’t want me to know.” Your mouth twisted to the side. “And your team bothering you here—”
“You’re apologizing for Soap?”
Your brow furrowed. “Well I encourage it—”
“No.”
“No?” You shook your head, “and that day in the gym—” You opened and closed your hands anxiously. “I think I upset you.”
He stared across the room, toward your big, sunny window, all those little potted plants that have flourished through the summer months. Your bug lamp seemed to droop in the heat, sad and watchful. He’d hurt you, and you’d taken the blame. Something horrible lurched in his belly, heavy and unforgiving. “Didn’t. I should have been more careful.”
“Right,” you said carefully. “So if it’s not that, why are you—”
He shrugged, watched one of the emerald leaves sway in the warm breeze. “I like you to myself,” he admitted. “Not the best at sharing.”
“Oh,” you said, voice tender. “Oh.”
“Mm.”
“I’ll make space.”
He didn’t quite understand what you meant by that, but he liked the way it sounded. Space for him.
“You’ll come to the gym later, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He stood, deposited your knife, which he’d snagged early in the morning to clean and sharpen, back onto your desk, along with the new box of tea because he noticed you were out the night before. “And don’t tell bloody Soap.”
“Aye, LT.”
He chuckled. “Take care of that.”
“Teach me how?”
He nodded.
“Thanks for the tea. I used the last bag yesterday afternoon.”
“I know.”
Your smile was soft, your fingers touched his. He breathed a little easier.
“‘Course you do.”
.
.
.
Simon couldn’t stop thinking about pain.
His body functioned at a constant low level of pain, had for years. Maybe it had his whole life, so he tended not to notice it. But the ache you caused had only seemed to grow over time, tendrils spreading to the furthest reaches of his body, the tips of his fingers, the backs of his knees, places he didn’t think could hold pain.
The intensity increased too, until he could no longer ignore it. It was like a whine, like a child begging to be seen to.
He kept thinking of your voice, too, dreaming of it. You’re hurting me. Panic ridden, laced with fear.
You said he didn’t, after, but he didn’t relish the thought of the possibility. Accidentally hurting you, hurting you on purpose. He thought of his mother, doing her best with a brutal man. He was afraid of unknowingly stepping into a cycle, to find himself standing above you one day, drunk, mean, angry.
You’re hurting me.
It echoed like a heartbeat. Inevitable.
You might collect his scars, but he would not add to them with his own hands. He’d rather die; he’d rather be burned alive; he’d rather crawl out of a grave a hundred times over.
He was afraid of it. Afraid that every terrible aspect of this bond between you could only bring you pain.
His father loomed in the recesses of his mind, all the violent men he’d ever known, every bloody fist. Simon’s scalp ached, the memories swam behind his eyes. Long nights, wild animals, dead girls.
There was one person who had a preoccupation with soulmates who was likely to know, who badgered him regularly about eroding the bond, about bond tears and pain. Simon could know, once and for all, if he was the cause of the indirect pain, at least. His own imposed on you, pushed into your skin like a punishment. He could cross that off his long list of sins.
Johnny, when Simon finally tracked him down, was sat in the armory cleaning a rifle. He watched over his Sergeant's shoulder for a long moment. The methodical movement soothed him, brought his heartrate down a little.
“Johnny.”
Soap jumped and glanced around. “Spooky fucker. Should put a bell on ye—”
“Does she feel it?”
“What—”
He exhaled long and slow. “My pain. If I’m shot tomorrow, would she feel it?”
“No, the lass doesn’t feel it.” Soap turned his wrist, pointed to a scar that was lighter than some of the others, a pale tracery that slipped from the inside of his elbow to mid forearm. “Not mine. Watched it fade in one mornin’. Didn’t feel a thing.”
Ghost looks at the scar, and Soap lets him. “Tha’ why you haven’t—”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Deserves better.”
Johnny nodded, continued cleaning the rifle. “Thing is, LT. She doesn’t. That’s the point.”
Well, at least he only had to worry about becoming his father.
Fucking perfect.
.
.
.
Two months deployment.
The pain in Simon’s chest was agonizing, a constant fire. He couldn’t sleep, pain meds did nothing for it.
He could only wait it out, wait until he was back on base and hope you were in your office, that the solace of your presence in that warm yellow light would be waiting for him. The pain would recede. He needed a plan, though. Clearly it wasn’t fucking viable to just let it go on. It was too distracting and only getting worse. It was no longer something he could ignore.
Maybe, he didn’t really want to.
Maybe, Johnny was right.
He half convinced himself that the lancing ache was so bad because you’d been posted somewhere else the last two months and you were further away than ever. Your office would be empty. This was just an agony he would have to learn to live with.
Finally, though, they were going home. Intel secure. One last building to sweep. Empty. A loaded silence that made the back of his neck prickle.
Not as empty as they thought.
Soap steps quickly into the last room ahead of him, gaze sweeping from one side to another before he lowered his weapon and stepped forward.
Ghost followed quickly, lowered his gun when he saw what Johnny had. Civilians. One curled around the other, sobbing so hard she made no noise.
When she lifted her face, Simon sucked in a startled breath. She looked like you, only without his scars. There was a mark slowly bleeding into place on her temple, one that matched the gunshot wound of the woman beneath her.
The wail that suddenly pierced the air was distraught, horrible, a lurch and a bang.
Soap was there, kneeling, looking for wounds that Ghost knew didn’t exist. Horror froze him for the second time in his life, your face swimming behind his eyes.
“I thought you said they couldn’t feel it,” he barked.
“What?”
“Soulmates.”
Soap looked at the pair with fresh eyes.
“They can’t, LT,” Soap said without glancing at him. “It’s no’ that. It’s just—”
Grief. The unbearable snapping of a fated cord. The tether in his own chest pulsed, ached. He thought of it breaking cleanly in two, as though it never existed, your light snuffed out, leaving him in total darkness again.
It wasn’t pain she was feeling, it was the absence.
“Ghost,” Johnny said sharply and Simon finally snapped out of it, went to his side.
It wasn't worth it, he thought. None of this could be fucking worth it. He was left with the sinking sense that all he could ever do was hurt you.
All the same, he felt an urgency to go home. To return to your side. To feel your pulse under his fingers.
Just to be sure.
It took them a long time to get her to leave the body.
.
.
.
Task Force 141 was deployed for nearly two months.
September and October passed slowly, in starts and fits that seemed to drag.
You developed a pain in your side, a stitch from taking it too hard in the gym you assumed. But nothing seemed to help it. The pang became a prick became a small misery that the base medical staff couldn’t pinpoint the origins of.
You missed Ghost, and Kyle and Johnny, tolerated the terrible tea your coworkers made for you, went on another series of failed dates, and finally became friends with your cross-hall apartment neighbor. Months of baked goods and hellos finally coming to fruition. Pieces of a life were falling together.
Finally, they were coming home. You left your offer that night with the assurance that they were uninjured, that Ghost, and likely Soap, would be in your office by noon the next day.
But Simon still managed to reappear as he always did, silently and without warning. A shadow crossed your back as you were locking your office near midnight, a hand grazed your back. You followed the series of steps you’d been taught months ago. Foot back, elbow out, knife in hand, open, turn—
Your wrist was caught by the flat of his palm, fingers of the opposite hand yanking it from your grip.
You blinked and breathed out heavily, relieved. The tight tenderness in your side leveled off for the first time in a month. “Ghost,” you murmured, lowering your now empty hand, “You aren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow morning.”
“That disappointed to see me?”
No. Never. But he was still in full tactical gear. The skin around his eyes was still layered with eyeblack, exhaustion and an acid tension rolling off him in a thick wave. His gaze was heavy, but steady, assessing you in turn. He smelled like diesel and cigarettes and gun powder. You lifted your chin. “Surprised to see you. Glad to see you.”
He only flipped the knife around and held it out to you. “Nice work.”
You smiled as you took the blade and stored it again. “You’re making me paranoid, I think.”
“Good. Paranoid keeps you alive.”
His eyes flicked over you, looking long and hard, though for what you couldn’t be sure. He stepped closer, until you were forced back against the door. He towered over you, corralled you back against the cool wood. Soft, dark eyes like wells of ink in the shadow of the hood pulled over his head, searched long enough that you began to worry something was wrong.
You reached out and rested your hand on his forearm. His body was so taut you could feel the tremble of exhausted, overwrought muscle. “Ghost,” you said gently, carefully. “Are you okay?”
He inhaled deeply, so hard and fast it sounded pained.
He looked at you again, eyes sliding over you slowly, like he was orienting himself, finding steady ground on which to stand.
“Why don’t you cover ‘em?”
Your belly clenched. “Cover what?” you queried, silently begging him not to ask that question.
“Scars.”
You went still, looking down at your skin. You had rolled up your sleeves earlier in the evening when furious typing had required it. They glinted silver in the low light of the hall. Pretty and delicate as dragon scales.
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before.
Still, you fought the urge to cross your arms. You hated when he stared at them.
“Why would I?” You rubbed your wrist. “I don’t want to. They belong to my soulmate.”
He glanced away from you, his jaw tight beneath the mask. “You actually believe in that shite?” His voice was harsh, aggressive in a way he had never spoken to you before. “It’s a bloody children’s tale.”
You bristled, felt something hard and mean well behind your breastbone in a tight knot. The pain that had been kicking you in the ribs lately reared again, made you wince and cover your side. “Well,” you snapped, gesturing to yourself with your free hand, “these aren’t mine, so I guess I have to.”
He scoffed and you felt your heart lurch, hurt settling in your gut, twisting an invisible knife that much deeper. You tried to side step him but he didn’t move, a terrible, solid wall of muscle and—anger? Irritation? You couldn’t tell. “What the fuck do you care? Maybe you’re ashamed of yours,” you said roughly, “But not all of us are.”
His brows furrowed and he shook his head again. “Oh, come off it.”
“What?”
“You’re tellin’ me that if you came face to face with the bastard that did this to you, you wouldn’t hate him?”
Indignation burned a righteous path up your throat. “You don’t get to do that,” you said lowly.
“You didn’t deny it,” he said. “You would.”
“No,” you interrupted vehemently, swallowing around the word like gravel in your throat. “No, of course I wouldn’t. It wasn’t done to me, it—”
But Simon was determined, his mind set.
“He hurt you, changed the course of your bloody life, whether you want to admit it or not. You’ll hate him for it, love.”
“For something he went through?” You asked incredulously, defensively. “Do you know how scared I was?”
Ghost’s eyes went blank, his stare suddenly flat and far away. His gaze drifted from yours, the weight of flinty amber lifted. “Of him,” he said viciously, like something terrible he’d always known had been confirmed.
“No,” you snarled again, not sure why Ghost was fighting you, not sure why he cared about your scars suddenly. “You aren’t listening. For him.” Your ribs ached, your breath came in short bursts. He was too close, the clashing sensations of safety and agitation calcifying the tension between you into a solid, immutable wall.
You inhaled shakily through the sudden distress. Your lungs hitched and spasmed before you could suck in a proper breath, feeling faint, glad for the wall behind you.
He blinked, looked down at you again. “Hey—”
“I was so scared I would lose him before I ever got to meet him. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had scars. Cigarette burns and scratches, bite marks. I used to hope he was older than me, so it wouldn’t have meant that he—so that he wouldn’t have been—” Agitation rises like a tide, all the nights you’d sat awake watching scars bleed into your skin. Your parents had been unable to look at you in the morning, wondering what the future held for you. What kind of person that child would grow up to be.
The same fear Simon seemed to be holding onto so tightly.
You stumbled over his concern, something prickling at the base of your neck.
“Once,” you continued shakily, “they just kept showing up, day after day, for months. I didn’t know what was happening and there was nothing I could do. I thought he was going to die and I couldn’t help him. I was so worried and all I could do was watch.”
You met his eyes, saw something so raw and wretched there that you flinched back, closed your eyes, breath caught.
You aren’t sure when you transitioned to using he instead of they.
It suddenly didn’t feel like you were talking about someone you hadn’t met yet.
You thought of how strangely intense he was about you. How you had felt so strongly about him immediately. How the only bit of his skin you’ve ever seen has been around his eyes; the delicate veins at his wrists.
You thought of him making you tea and teaching you to defend yourself. You thought of him walking you to your car and pulling you into sunny days. You thought of all the cups of coffee and boxes of tea, the gentle way he handled the blanket you made him from cheap cotton like it was spun gold.
You thought of Johnny asking after your scars the first time you met him. How not long after you’d been personally introduced to the rest of the 141 for no discernable reason. How they checked on you. How they were probably the only people that knew what Ghost’s face looked like.
“No,” you whispered, pieces of a terrible puzzle sliding together in your mind.
You opened your eyes.
“Ghost?” you asked softly, tentatively lifting your hand.
He jerked back. “Don’t do that,” he warned.
You stepped closer, knowing you were playing with fire, that he might burn you, lash out like a dog with its leg in a trap.
But if he was yours—
If he was yours, you would not be the one to inflict more hurt on him.
He did not want this, he did not want you, that much was clear.
You closed your hand and let it fall, pushed your fist against your heart instead. “I see you,” you said gently. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“You don’t understand,” he rasped.
“You survived.” You backed away. “That’s enough. To know you’re okay.”
The empty spot in your chest ached, seemed to grow tendrils that wrapped around your heart. A bond so close and not latched. Because you haven’t seen him. He has to let you in.
“When you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. I'm here.”
He finally returned his gaze to yours.
“Did it hurt?”
“Did what hurt?” You tilted your head but he didn’t answer, just stared at you with big, moon dark eyes, brows pinched inward, eyeblack creating a tiny white line there. “Oh, you wouldn’t know, I guess.” You shook your head, “No I was just scared. Just worried. It didn’t hurt. You’ve never hurt me.”
He moved so quickly and silently that you jumped when his hand curled around your wrist. Light enough that you could pull away if you wanted.
“You don’t have to. You never have to. I don’t want to take anything else from you.”
Ghost hesitated, his chest rising and falling quickly. “Do I have any of yours?” The question was quiet, almost reverent.
You nodded, “‘Course you do. I fell out of a tree when I was a kid. Gave me a nasty scar on the back of my elbow. I landed on a rock.”
His eyes flicked away, like he was trying to imagine it. You twisted your arm, showed him the thick line of scar there, totally different than the lighter version of his on your skin. “See? You’ll have that one in the same spot but lighter. Maybe not even visible, since you’re so pale.”
Your breath caught when he stepped closer, the pain in your chest was so intense it made breathing difficult.
“It’s not fair to you.”
“What isn’t?”
“To bloody leave it. Hurts, yeah?”
You didn’t admit to the spasming in your chest; it wouldn’t help anything. “When have you ever cared about fair?”
He made a pained sound. “Don’t.”
“I’m okay. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you.”
“You’re supposed to need things from me.”
He peeled his gloves off, tucked them into his back pocket. The hall was still and silent aside from your combined ragged breathing. It sounded like you’d been running a marathon. “Ghost—”
“Simon,” he said. “Please, call me Simon.”
You closed your eyes, felt his hands graze your collarbone, your throat, before anchoring on your jaw, tilting your face up. “Look at me, sweet’eart.”
“I can’t.” Your voice trembled, tears clogging your throat.
“Can.”
Very gently, he leaned down and pushed his forehead against yours.
You shuddered and swallowed and stepped closer. Simon curled his arms around you, pulled you into his chest. He was so broad and tall, you felt swaddled against him, warm and secure. His scent wrapped around you like ribbons holding you together. “No point dragging it on, yeah? No point you being in pain.”
“How long?”
“The whole time,” he admitted after a moment. His voice rumbled against your cheek. It felt like home. “First time I saw you.”
“You have had this pain for almost a whole year—”
“Not your fault,” he interrupted, one massive hand sliding down your spine. “Not your fault.”
You huffed, hooked your fingers beneath his tac vest. “I’m sorry anyway.” You pulled back, felt his arms tighten around you for a moment. He didn’t want to let you go. “Is there anything you need to take care of? Reports or debriefing or something?”
“No.”
“Would. . . would you want to come to mine—”
He reached under your arm and plucked your keys out of the lock before you could finish, guiding you down the hall, his hand never leaving your skin.
You had never seen Simon outside the base, you realized suddenly, and everything felt vastly more fragile. It also felt as though that hollow pulse in your chest would tear if you were asked to walk away at that moment, something real and physical would tear and drop out of you, an irreparable part of your soul.
You weren’t sure how you drove home, Ghost huge in your passenger seat, your hands shaking each time he shifted his grip on you.
In your apartment, you hesitated, not sure where you belonged in your own space anymore. Simon looked strange in your tiny living room, among soft blankets and years of collected books and knicknacks. An all consuming shadow. You wondered if this would end like all those dates, just another failure, another loss.
When you started to step toward the lamp, Simon’s fingers curled around your wrist to keep you by his side. “No.”
“Just turning on the lamp.”
He released you.
As you stepped away, a hollow pulse in your chest retched with pain that made you gasp and clutch the edge of the sofa. It felt real, like something was breaking, jagged edges clawing at the inside of your skin. You wondered what Ghost’s self imposed distance might have done to the bond. There were stories, albeit few, of corrosion. The bond literally rusting out, slowly poisoning the soulmate and their pair.
“Come ‘ere,” he muttered. “Sit down.”
When his palm cupped your elbow, the world became softer. Like purr instead of a shriek. He guided you onto the sofa.
Your hands shook when he released you, making quick work of the lamp. The room flooded with soft yellow light. He glanced around. Art on the walls, forest green rug over hardwood floor, molding you had painted a delicate gold. You felt embarrassed of it all suddenly.
“God,” you muttered. He didn’t seem to feel the pain at all, which made your chest ache in a different way and guilt pool heavily between your bones for it. You didn’t want him to be in pain, but you felt as though you were breathing water, choking on your own lungs. “How have you dealt with this?”
“Worse now,” he said, though you felt it was his version of a kind untruth.
He sat next to you, reached for you, then faltered, unsure. You closed the space, folded your fingers between his. The scars made a fucked up little mirror when you looked down at your hands. They matched exactly. “I’m sorry.”
Simon didn’t answer, but stayed close to you, letting you hold his hand. Even the smallest amount of space between you seemed to burn, a brazier that flared hot and demanded attention. But it was better; just having his bare hand in yours helped.
“Nothin’ t’be sorry for.” He said after a few minutes of uneven breathing, eyes trained on your hands, thumb running over the back of your fingers.
“You don’t want me.”
It wasn’t a question.
He glanced up, something razor sharp in his eyes. You flinched a little, but his hand tightened on yours.
“You don’t have to—We don’t have to bond,” you tripped over the last word. “It’s okay.”
“Obviously it’s not, bird.”
Your heart sunk and you glanced away. A one in eight billion chance was sitting under your nose for months, and he wanted nothing to do with you. He was being forced into it.
“I’m sorry,” you murmured again. “Ghost, I’m—”
“Simon,” he corrected.
“Simon,” you echoed.
He curled his hands around your wrists, lifted your palms to the bottom of his mask. He let your hands settle at the base of his throat, eyes never leaving yours. “I didn’t want you,” he said plainly. “I never wanted you to know.”
You swallowed and nodded. “I’m s—”
“No.”
You closed your mouth with a click of your jaw. You don’t expect a speech and he doesn’t give you one. “You deserve better,” he said. “But I’m all you get.”
His knee touched yours. Your faces were tilted together, so close that the only thing you could see were the soft depths of his eyes reflecting the gold light.
It didn’t feel close enough.
You wished it were all different.
That he didn’t feel forced, that you were what he wanted.
“I deserve you. Isn’t that the point?”
He watched you for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face, then nodded.
“Go on, then.”
Your throat felt tight as you tugged the mask upwards, heart lurching when you recognized the same scar on your throat on his. You pushed the fabric over his chin and mouth, up until you could pull it over his head.
You looked at him, the same scar over his mouth, along his cheek, the bridge of his nose was nicked, the outline of burn scarring crossed the edge of his jaw and neck. When you looked past that, you saw him. Crooked nose, thick, furrowed brows, dark eyes you’d loved for a long time cast darker by the black around them, light eyelashes and hair, longer on top and curling.
Something seemed to. . .snap then. A warmth broke between you, filled that awful, dark, pained well in your chest. It hurt, but the pain was brief, like stitches done by a seasoned medic.
Breathing was easier. You could feel the pulse of him without the threat of imminent pain. It was a warm, comforting, safe thing in your lungs. You inhaled, attempted to stand, to give him a bit of space. “Should be able to separate now. Shall we test it—”
You didn’t get a chance to move away, tugged suddenly from your seat and into his lap. You fell heavily against his chest, wrapped tightly in his arms, foreheads slanted together.
“No,” he said, sounding, for the first time since you’ve known him, breathless. “No.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Good.”
“Can I touch you?”
“Can do anything you like to me, bird.”
You stroked the side of his throat, felt him shiver. “Well, I won’t. Not anything.”
He made a content noise of agreement.
You touched his jaw, his cheek, the tail of his brow, the faded check through it that you’d never noticed matched your own. His arms tightened around you in increments until the pressure forced you to take shallow breaths. “You’re beautiful.”
“Lookin’ in a mirror, are you?”
“Sort of,” you answered. “A little.”
His hands shifted, anchored on your hips, and pushed you back a little.
Disappointment that it was over so soon pinched at your throat but you backed off, attempting to slide from his lap. His hand caught at your hip. “Stop trying to bloody move.”
“What—”
He was only taking off the vest, which probably should have been left at the base. It dropped heavily to the floor as he pulled you against his chest. It was warmer, softer like that, thick muscle coiled beneath your cheek when you rested it against his shoulder, heartbeat hard against yours.
“No more pain?”
“None.”
“Good.”
You pushed your face against his throat, felt him tense and then uncoil. One large hand cupped the back of your neck, holding you there. You brushed your lips against his pulse point, felt a scarred flutter against your mouth, a muted grunt.
“You’re all I want,” you admitted quietly. “I think I knew. I think everyone knew. I’m sorry,” you finally said, “that I’m not who you need.”
His hand squeezes your neck and then he’s pushing you down against the cushions, pressing one massive thigh between your legs, hauling you closer like it could never be close enough. The space between your bodies would always be too large, because you couldn’t climb into his chest, nest among his veins.
It would have to do then, his hand tilting your jaw up, his eyes searching yours as you part your lips.
“You are, sweet’eart,” he said simply, mouth brushing yours before he kissed you properly.
He tasted of black tea; his eyeblack rubs off on your temples.
Already, he was leaving pieces of himself behind with you to mark safe.
“Simon,” you murmured against his mouth. Just to say it, just to be rewarded with a shudder.
The kiss slipped into something more desperate, your hands felt the skin of his back, your own scar on his elbow, and you thought, maybe, you could become what he needed.
if you made it this far thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!
There was a man in front of you. You didn't recognize him.
Then again, when was the last time you recognized someone you'd only met in another life? You had a hard time recognizing your own teammates on a bad day. Recognized yourself even less on worse days.
But something struck you in the knees, the gut, the echoing toll of funeral knells as you stared at this man, who stared right back at you.
"It's you," he said, whispered, eyes wide and darting across your figure.
"You're a bug," you answered.
He staggered in place. "What?"
"Bug," you repeated, more insistent, your heart starting to pound behind the cage of bones protecting it. "Bug. Bug. You. Are. Bug. Pest. No, no. No. Not bad. Bug. Name. What is. Name?"
He struggled to follow your influx of words, the rapid-fire speech that stuttered from you, hindered but undeterred by your disabilities. You could tell in how his brows furrowed that it was difficult to keep up, to parse what you were saying. "S-Sanderson?" It came out more like a question. "Gary. I'm Gary."
"No," you hissed, pacing in a circle. Your cane tapped the ground repeatedly, sharp and frantic. "No. Name. Name. Name."
Nik frowned, a thought crossing him. He stepped close and reached out to touch your shoulder, but you waved him off. "Милая? You recognize him?"
"No, name, need name," you panted, trembling. Your grip on your cane faltered, your fingers tightening and loosening involuntarily. Like a song stuck on the tip of your tongue, evading you just barely, but worse, so much worse. If you didn't get a name, a name, his name, his goddamn name—
Gary's eyes lit up as understanding struck him. "Roach!" He said hurriedly. "It's Roach."
All at once, the tension left your body, and you sagged to the ground. Nik was quick to catch your puddle-like body and lowered you gently, sitting you between his knees. Had you not known any better, you would've believed it was another seizure. But you were still conscious, still present, just weak with relief.
"Roach," you murmured back, barely a whisper.
Roach, Roach, hesitated. "Do you… do you remember me?"
Despite finally having what you were looking for, the silken ribbons of memory slipped through your fingers, caught up by a wind you could never outpace.
You slowly shook your head, and he visibly deflated. "Do not. Know. You. But I know. Know. You. You."
"You do?" Both he and Nik asked at the same time.
You nodded, dizzy, almost. "You are. Friend."
There was silence, then Roach was dropping to his knees in front of you, ignoring the painful impact in favor of sitting close to you. "Yes," Roach affirmed, desperate. He reached for your hands, and you let him take them, something Nik no doubt noted. "Yes. I'm your friend. Was, am— I— I don't know, but— but yes."
You exhaled and dropped your head back, eyes fluttering shut. Nik supported your neck, that big paw of his engulfing most of your jaw as he angled you back into his shoulder.
"Wh— what's happening?" Roach questioned, beginning to panic. "Is she okay? Did I do something?"
Nik huffed through his nose. "Give her moment. She is overwhelmed."
"Fuck. Fuck, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"Shut," you grumbled out, earning a chuckle from Nik. "I'm. Fine."
"But you—"
"Yap. Per," you teased, peeking an eye open. "Yap."
His teeth audibly clicked shut as his jaw closed.
For the first time since you could function post-coma, post- everything, you felt happy meeting someone new. Old. Whatever.
You didn't know what it was about him, but your mind didn't scream danger like it did with others. If anything, your head was blissfully quiet for once, empty beyond a boost of dopamine, a reward after piecing something together. You didn't question who he was, or wondered if he'd be overcome with a rage whose reasons were unknown to you. You didn't fear him attacking you, or simply wholeheartedly disappointed in you.
Well, no, that wasn't entirely true. You did wonder who he was, what he meant to you before you had been forcefully and traumatically reborn, but for now, all you knew was that he was safe.
Nik helped reposition you to sit under the shade of his plane's wing, murmuring about needing to talk with the captain, whoever that was. He said it more to Roach than you, anyway. Nik stepped away as Roach took a seat beside you; he didn't go far, still within relative earshot in case he had to interfere if something happened, but far enough that he couldn't hear your mild conversation, nor could you hear what he was saying into his phone.
It was quiet for a while. Roach was deep in thought, his fingers twitching and drumming against his hiked knees. Comparatively, you were relaxed, enjoying the faint breeze that nipped at your cheeks as you watched your boys chat in the distance with Soap and Ghost.
"What… happened to you?" Roach eventually asked. Then he backtracked, saying, "Sorry, that's rude. Just ignore me."
You waved a hand dismissively. "It's. Fine," you replied, peeking at him from the corner of your eye. "Bad. Mission. Fever. Tr. Tra. Traumatic brain injury," you gave the condensed version of events. "It's all. I've. Ever known."
Roach frowned minutely, the corners of his lips tugging down. "But…"
You shot him a placating smile, one that was genuine and calm, not forced. "Can't. Remem. Ber. How it was be. Fore. For all I. Know. I was born. Born. Like this. Broken."
"You're not broken," he disagreed, placing a hand on your leg, a comfort.
"It's okay. I know what I. Am. Have come to. Terms. Terms. Terms with it."
He sighed, rubbing his face with his free hand. "I should have been there."
"Mission?"
"Yeah," he confirmed. "Maybe if I was, then you wouldn't be…"
He didn't say it, neither of you did, but his meaning was clear. No matter how consolidating anyone was, the fact of the matter was that you were disabled. Maybe not broken, like you sometimes believed yourself to be, but not what you once were. No longer the person that existed before.
You had thought about it a lot, in the past. What would have happened if you weren't alone, if the mission hadn't gone to shit, if you were found sooner. You wondered if you would have ended up like this anyway, if this was your destiny. Not everybody got out of that kind of job alive. Most didn't. You were the small minority that lived, and if this was the price to pay to be alive, if there had been no other way, you supposed it was alright.
You wouldn't take it back. Even on your worst days, when your head was killing you and you needed to be carried to and from the bathroom, needed help eating and moving and doing anything, you didn't wish for things to be differently. Wished for the pain to be gone, yes, maybe for a less thick tongue that didn't stick as much as this one. But you never asked to change fate.
It led you to your boys, who took good care of you, and made sure you never felt alone or useless. For that, you were grateful.
In the end, you found acceptance with them, your team, who saw you not for your disabilities, but for you. Your humor, your smile, your drive to do more, to live. Yes, they acknowledged your state. They didn't sugarcoat or brush over it or invalidate you for it.
But they showed you every day that you were more than your limp, more than your speech impediment, more than your poor memory and spaciness and reliance on them.
You were you. For them, that was enough.
"You are here. Now."
Roach scoffed sardonically. "Yeah, but it's too late. Not enough."
You thought on his words, careful to pick your own. "Yes. Too late to. Fix. The past."
The muscles in his jaw fluttered.
"But not too. Too late to. Start over," you finished.
He paused, glacing at you. Something like hope glimmered in the very depths of his pupils, cautious to emerge. "Yeah? You mean it?"
You grinned. "Yes. We can. Try. Again."
His shoulders dropped an inch, but you saw the relief bloom across his expression, the slightest tremble in his bottom lip. You wondered if he wore a mask a lot, and was unfamiliar with guarding his emotions, hiding what he felt.
"I'd like that," he smiled back, warm and hopeful.
If he sniffled a bit, neither of you said anything about it.
Boots crossed the pavement of the tarmac, and a hulking shadow followed suit.
"Häschen," König greeted, though he was eyeing Roach suspiciously. "Who is this?"
You started to move, grasping your cane in an attempt to stand. König and Roach were both there, helping you up.
"This is. Roach. He is. Friend," you told your protector.
You could see the giant frown. Well, not actually, what with his mask in the way, but you knew him. "Is he, now? Do you remember him?"
"No," you said, somewhat remorseful. "But I. Want. To know him. He is. Safe."
"How can you tell?" Your ever-faithful guardian kept you close, never tearing his eyes away from the unknown element. From your peripheral, you saw Roach shift nervously, and you turned to smile at him.
You shrugged. "Can. Tell. Doesn't hurt. Here," you placed your palm to your heart.
König sighed softly. "We are going to stay in the hangar for a bit, hase. A storm is coming. Are you okay to stay, or do you want to go home?"
You searched Roach's expression. "I want to. Keep. Talking."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Can he. Stay?" You asked just as Roach requested, "Can I stay?"
Another sigh, this one weary and long-suffering. But König could never deny you anything. "If his captain approves of it."
You beamed up at him. "Thank. You!"
"Ja, ja. Du bringst mich noch um, frau."
"But a. Pretty death. Right?"
"Of course," he softened, brushing a thumb over your cheek. "The prettiest. Come along, now."
König tilted his head toward the hangar, and you motioned for Roach to follow, who hung to your heels like a lost puppy. König led you, a hand to your lower back, a common position he took. Always and forever your guardian.
Inside the hangar, the rest were already waiting for you. König sat you down at a small, round table near the back, and Nikto plopped a rucksack down next to you. He dug through it, pulling out a container, condensation sticking to the insides from warmth. Alongside it, he retrieved utensils, a bottle of water (pre-opening it for you, the sweetheart), and a juice box.
"Справишься?"
"Yes, I got. It," you assured. He nodded, lightly knocking his forehead against your temple in the way a cat would. To Roach, who took a seat across from you, he motioned with two fingers between his eyes to Roach, then stalked off.
Once he was gone, Roach commented, "They're very protective of you."
"Crown. Jewels," you replied with a snicker. "Don't mind. Them. They can't help. It."
He huffed a small laugh of his own. It faded as you popped open the container and sniffed its content with a pleased hum. "I… did you really mean it? About starting over?"
You paused, peering up at him through your lashes.
"Do you. Want to. Start. Over?"
"Yes," he answered without hesitation.
You looked pleased with yourself, your eyes twinkling. "Then we start over."
Roach's expression softened. "Thank you."
"No prob. Lem. It's nice to. Meet you…?"
"Uh— Gary. But my friends call me Roach."
You reached across the table to offer him a hand shake. "Roach. How did. You. Get that. Name?"
He chuckled. "Well… it's a long story."
You sweeped your hand out towards the front of the hangar, where the sky was turning a shade of dark teal. "All the time. In. In the. The world."
johnny and simon both eat like dogs. like you could actually feed their meals to a dog. sweet potato, ground beef, and whatever veg was about to turn rotten. and no seasoning. time can’t be wasted on seasoning in their household.
dinner is a fleeting affair. both of them hunched over their bowls and inhaling. you’re staring at them in shock as they devour their flavorless, meaningless slop.
then to the couch for tv time. you feel a bit like a zookeeper that’s just thrown a limb of mean into a lions enclosure. the beasts fed, and now they lick their paws and relax.
they don’t even like the two teams playing on the television right now.
“why don’t you two come to my place tomorrow for a change?”
“wot? something wrong with our flat, dove?”
“no, no! of course not!”
they may look like lions but they frighten easily. the last thing you mean to do is scare them off.
“course not, just thought a change of pace might be nice?”
they share a weary look. change isn’t their favorite thing, not after years of strict military routine. they agree nonetheless. and they show up right on time, no surprise there.
they share another weary look when you ask them to take off their shoes before coming in.
“i made dinner. just something light,” you smile despite knowing dinner was far more effort than you care to let on.
johnny barrels towards the kitchen. “what’s the occasion, lass? you did all this for us?” and you shrug.
“just thought i’d thank the two of you, y’know. you’re always around to lend a hand.”
they just gape at you like there’s no brain activity happening within their thick skulls.
“well, have a seat then.” you gesture towards the set table with proper cutlery and a vase of flowers in the center.
you bring them both their plates of food, no ground beef, or sweet potatoes, or cottage cheese. and they hunch themselves over, ready to inhale as per usual.
“hasn’t anyone taught you how two to take your time?”
they stare at you again. just as stupidly as they did moments ago. this time they’ve gone silent because both of them are half hard beneath the table.
“going slowly makes it better, you know. not everything is a race.”
and that’s how you end up with simon between your thighs and your back pressed against johnny’s chest as he rubs your shoulders.
“slow, right? that makes it all better?”
simon is rolling his hips agonizingly slowly, dragging his cock against your warm walls.
“simon, faster please,” you beg him. he’s been going at this for the better part of an hour.
he tuts at you. “none of that. you wanted slow, you’re getting slow.
“that’s not—not what i meant,” you pant. you roll your head back to look at johnny, hoping he might help you out. he just brushes your hair from your sticky face instead.
“dinner was nice, sweetheart. now enjoy your dessert.”
Hiyya, welcome! I’m your local AuDHD author that obsesses over fictional characters. You can call me Chimera!
MINORS DNI. Ageless and empty blogs WILL BE BLOCKED, make sure to have your age in your bio if you follow me. I also don't do tag lists.
Unless I state otherwise, all my reader characters are female and plus-size by default.
I'd really rather you tell me why you liked one of my fics than just ask for a part 2 or update. hearing what you enjoyed about one of my stories does loads more for me and my motivation/will to write than just "part 2 pls!!"
Registered users can find me on ao3 under both chimera-dreams(pseud) and lumililyyy!
main blog: lumilily
be warned, I repost literally anything on there. I'm just more active there than here
All rights reserved to @/chimera-dreams, lumililyyy, and any of my other pseuds. Do not copy, steal, or repost my content without permission. I do not own the characters, just the plots and stories I write about unless otherwise stated
s: So'lek gets a moment alone with you and will not waste it
cw: non-sexual nudity (nothing described), bathing together, banter, background standard avatar politics, fluff, So'lek being So'lek
an: a gift to @thee-horny-thicky for her birthday! :D happy birthday!! (sorry it's not smut </3)
wc: 1.7k
"Sarentu."
"I have a name," you rolled your eyes. "Always 'Sarentu'. The others are Sarentu, too, y'know."
So'lek raised a brow, letting you ramble. A frequent topic of bickering between you two.
Methodically, he began pulling off his gear and laying it aside neatly; bulletproof vest, knife sheath, leg guards, arm guards, cummerbund, necklace, chest piece, maybe he wore too many things, head piece, tewng.
By the time he was done, he had some 15-odd parts of his typical outfit laid on the soft, mossy ground beside this little cove's pond that he decided to take you to.
You were still ranting about him refusing to use your name, pacing back and forth in the cove.
He knew your name. Of course, he did. How could he not? It was what circled on his mind any time he had a moment of peace to himself, without the RDA hounding his ass, or the Resistance requesting help of some kind. It's what he repeated to himself at night, as he laid under the stars, wondering if sleep would decide to grace him or not.
Truthfully, though, he was used to calling you Sarentu. You rejected olo'eykte as soon as it left his lips, barely having time to be spoken aloud. Sure, you agreed to Ri'nela being tsahìk of the Sarentu, that made sense, but you sneered at the title of olo'eykte, feeling undeserving.
"Sarentu, fool, 'angtsìk," you listed. "Next thing I know, you'll start calling me Ìley!"
So'lek deadpanned. "I would not call you by my ikran's name."
"You don't know that!" You exclaimed, hands thrown up. "You'll call me anything but my name!"
Despite your complaints, So'lek knew you were more exasperated than genuinely frustrated. You were outspoken, and made your thoughts clear, always open about your feelings. If you were truly bothered, you would have said so.
The water was lukewarm as he stepped into it, tail flicking behind him at the shift in temperature. The day was warm itself, so a nice, cool dip was a suggestion you jumped onto immediately. You especially tended to struggle with hotter days, the constant physical activity, running to and fro, attacking RDA outposts — it was no wonder you tended to overheat.
You were overdue a break, too.
He recognized the irony in that statement; So'lek himself was a workaholic, rarely stopping to rest beyond sleeping at his camp and bathing. Even eating was done on the move, or on rare occasions when he was forced to sit with the other Sarentu to a communal meal.
Not like you were any better.
Which is why So'lek took it upon himself to drag you away for a relaxing bath, a chance to slow down and regain your strength and energy. Not that you ever seemed lacking in either, but he knew from experience what overworking the body and mind did.
When the water reached his upper thighs, he grabbed the case of a shellfruit he used as a pitcher when bathing, the rope worn soft by time.
You had stopped grumbling, your gaze focused on the entrance to the cove, arms crossed.
Your expression settled into something mellow, brows pinched, too many thoughts occupying that thick head of yours. He sighed to himself, knowing that if he did not distract you now, you'd find an excuse to go back out there.
He called your name.
Your head snapped in his direction immediately, your eyes wide, evidently taken aback.
"Come, ma'yawntu," So'lek, summoned, motioning with his head toward the pond.
You swallowed, shifting in place as you hesitated, uncertain. Your initial agreement was losing conviction, he could see the excuses beginning to form, but he wouldn't let you run away. Not when you needed this.
"Ma'yawntu," he repeated, more sternly.
Visibly, you deflated, but finally obeyed. Like him, you wore much, though you stuck more to traditional Na'vi clothing, preferring them over sky people options. The Aranahe really beat that preference into your head, apparently. Not that he personally minded; he found they suited you quite nicely. Were it not for this war, and his willingness to adopt any weapon and tool it took to win it, he would prefer his own garb.
One day, he reminded himself. One day, when this wretched war was over, he'd take the time to weave a matching set for himself and you. Something to celebrate your hard-fought victory.
That thought, that promise he made to Eywa and his heart in the quiet of night, kept him going more times than he'd like to admit.
You kept him going.
Your usual chattiness went away as you undressed, your pile of clothes more messy than his, clumped together rather than neatly laid. Oddly, he found it endearing.
He was ready for you after you finished, his hand held out. You took it, and his fingers closed over yours, rough calluses petting so gently over the backs of your knuckles. He held you steady, aided your balance while you stepped into the pool with him. An amused smirk tilted his lips as your tail jerked at the temp, cool water coasting over heated skin.
"Yeesh!" You yelped, a shudder running through you. "You told me it was warm!"
He snorted. "I told you it was not cold like the rivers," he corrected.
"Same difference!" You hissed, the furry tip of your tail lashing back and forth.
"It is not that bad," he insisted. "Come, ma'yawntu. It is warmer further in."
You chewed around halfhearted words, but let him pull you deeper. Glowing anemonoids clung to the bottom of the basin, clustered mostly in the center. They illuminated the water in shades of teal and magenta from below, while the surface reflected the warm, orange light of the torches So'lek had lit earlier.
True to his word, the closer to the center you got, the warmer it became. The anemonoids gave off heat, just enough that the liquid was pleasant as you came to a stop at rib-level.
You sighed, melting into the warmth.
"That's nice," you murmured, lashes fluttering shut.
He hummed, agreeing.
From his pitcher, he retrieved a handful of flower petals, light pink with orange painting their edges. He crushed them in his hand and massaged them, working their sap into a lather. The sweet scent, bitten with a pinch of sharp earthiness, wafted around you, pleasant and calming.
So'lek worked the suds into the skin of your shoulders, your collarbone and neck, down the center line of your chest. He worked gently around your body, scrubbing off sweat and grime, working the dirt out from beneath your fingers. The petals left bits of themselves on your skin amidst the suds, further imparting their nectar-like fragrance on you. It would linger for days, and he'd take great pleasure in inhaling it any brief moment he got alone with you.
Which was… not as often as he would prefer.
Between the RDA and you visiting the Aranahe, Zeswa, and Kame'tire frequently, you were stretched thin, and he wasn't much better.
So, catching a second of free time with you like this? He wasn't going to pass it up, not for anything.
As he worked, you further melted into his ministrations, muscles and tension unwinding at each press of his strong fingers into tight knots and aching spots. You groaned softly when he hit a particularly sensitive spot, stiffening before you practically dissolved into the waters. Your sigh let him know he did a good job, and he certainly felt proud of himself, being the only one able to help you decompress like this.
Or, 'chill', as you would say. You and your strange sky people talk.
He was doing what he could to teach you Na'vi, but old habits died hard, he supposed. Some harder than others, like the way your ears twitched as Ìley and your ikran played, lightly nipping at each other's maws. Your tail flicked under the water, a sign of restlessness and agitation, familiar to him.
Just as you were about to look at them, his hand cupped your cheek, keeping your focus centered on him.
"Tam tam, ma'yawntu," he hushed, rubbing your cheek. "Eyes on me."
"But—"
"It is only us," he asserted. "Only us."
You exhaled slowly in defeat, and he smiled, a tiny thing. It barely quirked the corners of his lips, but it made you beam at him, wide and bright.
That is why he did what he did; your smile.
Whatever it took to protect your smile, he'd do, no matter the cost.
Huffing fondly, he shifted his hand to your jaw, bringing you close. His lips pressed to your forehead, soft and sweet, as your arms looped around his middle, your front pressing to his. He took the opportunity to scrub down your back, gathering more petals to lather it with. Your lashes tickled the hollow of his throat as your eyes closed, leaning into him.
What he wouldn't do to have you here like this always. In his arms, laying your weight on him, simply existing together.
One day. One day.
He finished bathing you not long after, and as he was rinsing you down, he yanked your tail. Lightly, of course.
You yelped, then whacked his chest. When you reached for his tail to pull it in return, he dodged, causing you to give chase. Your laughter bounced off the walls of the cove, harmonizing with his and the splash of water. His name sounded like a blessing from your lips, a melody sung by Eywa herself.
You tired yourself out soon after. The days of endlessly running back and forth, sharing mission details, following up on requests from the other clans, it was all catching up with you.
He laid you out in the sun outside the cove, the spongy moss making for the perfect pillow and best napping spot imaginable. As you rested, absentmindedly running a hand up and down the length of your ikran's snout, So'lek washed both of your clothes, cleaning the fibers thoroughly.
Besides needing to, it was a good excuse to keep you around longer. You weren't exactly keen on wearing damp clothes, and didn't like the idea of putting dirty ones back on after he'd so diligently scrubbed and bathed you.
"I guess I could use a nap," you had mumbled sleepily at his suggestion.
When So'lek was done hanging your clothing out to dry, he sat next to you, and found that you were out like a blown flame, deep in sleep and lightly snoring.
He smiled at the sight, brushing a few strands of your hair away before he laid down beside you, cushioning your head under one arm while the other looped around your midsection. Safe in his arms, where you belonged.
