Chapter Text
Coby barely noticed the ride back to the base -- largely because he was unconscious for a lot of it. The blood loss from the two bullet wounds didn’t help with staying awake, but mostly, Coby figured it was just that he could sleep. For the first time in a while, he rested nightmare-free without medical help.
After all, they’d completed the mission. Helmeppo was in rough shape, but he was going to be OK. And so, for the first time in weeks, Coby could relax.
And that translated into basically passing out for the bulk of the trip back, and a bit of time afterward.
Of course, the first time he woke up on the ship, he’d still woken up anxious. Tashigi -- always Tashigi, she was like the most awesome older sister ever -- had come to see him with an update. The traps had caught some of the men off guard, and a few suffered pretty severe injuries, but nothing life threatening. They’d used snowballs -- Snowballs! -- thrown on the path ahead of them to set off several others along the path. It seemed somehow appropriate.
It was a toss up between himself and Helmeppo who was in worse shape. The ship’s doctor said he had the devil’s own luck, as neither of the gunshots had hit anything vital. Still, being shot was still one of those traumatic things, and the blood loss was significant.
“Too much longer, and it would have been really dangerous,” Tashigi chided as she passed this on.
Her report on what was wrong with Helmeppo ran less acute, but a lot longer. Malnourishment, hypothermia and dehydration were the most dangerous ones -- “Another day might have been too long,” Tashigi said through gritted teeth -- and there were the wounds at his wrists as well, obvious to anyone with eyes. He’d expected all that. But then she got into the rest.
“He left Helmeppo with some broken bones. The worst were in his right hand,” she said, her tone leaving no mystery as to who “he” was or what she thought of him. “They’ll need to look at that closer back at the base. A lot of deep bruising -- some fresh, but a lot old. A fairly recent sprained shoulder. I swear, if that man didn’t need to stand trial…”
Somehow, it felt good to hear that venom coming from her. It felt protective. Coby had glanced at her hands, half expecting to see them creeping for her sword. She noticed the look, and added, “And you need to stay away from him too. We can get away with this mission. But not anything you do from here. Understood?”
That sounded like words she’d gotten straight from Smoker -- he could almost hear them in the older man’s voice. But he nodded.
“Helmeppo’s going to be OK though?” he asked.
Tashigi smiled tiredly. “It’s hard to tell right now, but yeah, I think so,” she said. “He’s resting. You should probably rest too.”
That … sounded great, actually. He was out before another conscious thought entered his mind.
The next time he woke fully and properly, they were nearing port. After checking on Helmeppo (still asleep, but looking far, far better than back in that damnable cell), he’d dragged himself up on deck with the help of the hated crutches to find Smoker and Tashigi both watching the horizon. Tashigi waved. Smoker grunted a greeting.
“So is this the end of it?” Smoker asked.
It took a moment for Coby to figure out what he meant. Was it just this guy, or is this danger still lurking? Haltingly, he shared what he knew -- what it seemed caused all this.
“So all of this was just to try to impress a woman? That woman?” Tashigi sounded repulsed.
The Vice Admiral had a more pragmatic response.
“He thought that would work?” he asked around his cigars.
“I guess,” Coby said. It still felt surreal that something so objectively stupid had caused all of this.
Smoker mulled that over. “So he’s an idiot on top of everything else.”
And that might be the best way of putting it.
Coby insisted on walking to the medical area under his own power, even if it meant using the hated crutches some more. He wasn’t there long -- just an examination to make sure things were healing up as they should. Helmeppo, unsurprisingly, needed a lot more attention. They expected him to be in there for a while. They couldn’t say beyond that.
In the days that followed, the men of Coby’s unit began asking to visit him. Some of the folks outside their circle seemed surprised. But Coby wasn’t. Helmeppo was a little like Smoker in that way. People who only met him occasionally seemed to have a far worse opinion of him, but the people who worked with him got to know the real him. And the real him inspired some devotion.
They all wanted to know he was OK, but the doctors didn’t want a parade of people in and out of the medical area. A compromise had been reached. Coby visited and kept them updated. When they had decided on just one representative, it hadn’t even been a contest. None of the men would stand in his way here.
Which was good, because there was still something else Coby had to take care of.
So three days after their return, he sat by Helmeppo’s bed, even though his friend still slept. He’d woken a few times in the past couple days, but the doctors had repeatedly sedated him to do their work. Coby presumed they’d done the same to him.
The big issue was the hand -- the break there seemed to be among the oldest, possibly something that happened in that first fight, though it had been aggravated at least once since the initial damage. It had started to heal recently, but the doctors had decided to re-break it in order to set it correctly, in hopes that he’d regain full use of the hand. They were optimistic. Coby was too.
But there was one more thing he was worried about -- one more danger. So he sat there, as afternoon dwindled to early evening. And after a while, he heard footsteps approaching. Coby looked up, waiting. And at last, Doctor Rayne, the same doctor who’d helped him, walked in smiling as he looked at some chart in his hand.
“Doctor Rayne. What are you doing here?”
The doctor’s smile faded as he realized more than just the patient was in here. “Captain Coby,” he said. “Hello. Was I interrupting something?”
“No. But you’re not assigned to Helmeppo.”
“Ah. Well, I’m on duty, and the on duty doctor checks in on all the stable patients,” he explained. “I understand you asked that I not treat your friend there though. Did you find my treatment of your leg to be sub-par?”
Coby sighed. “It’s not that.” Part of him didn’t want to do this. But he needed to.
“Well, as long as everything’s fine with you,” the doctor said, trying to sound jovial. “Is it OK if I check his pulse?”
When Coby didn’t answer immediately, he moved to do just that. Before his hand touched Helmeppo’s wrist though, the reply came.
“What did he have on you?” Coby asked, quietly so as not to disturb Helmeppo or the other patients.
The doctor froze. “Hmm?” he asked, his feigned innocence not even remotely convincing.
“What did that man have on you,” Coby repeated. “That he got you to spy on me?”
Doctor Rayne straightened up from the bedside. “I don’t-”
“Requesting to be the doctor who worked on my leg,” Coby said. He wasn’t looking up at the doctor. He’d know if the man made a move. “Asking me to let you know if things were bothering me. Maybe I should have guessed before I did. But it was him who told me.”
The doctor took a step back. “Told you?”
“He mentioned I needed help sleeping,” Coby said. “Only you and Tashigi should have known about that. Ordinarily I’d assume it was a guess. But then I remembered that that guy knew Tashigi and Smoker had watched the videos. Once we learned the packages were coming from outside, we stopped looking for an inside man. But looking back, it’s clear someone here was spying for him. So again-”
Coby finally looked up. The doctor stared back, pale and poised to flee. “What did he have on you?”
For a while, he thought the man was about to lie to him, yet again, and Coby wasn’t sure how he’d react if that happened. But then his shoulders slumped. He looked away from Coby, as if ashamed to even meet his eye. “It was money,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him. “My sister and her husband got in over their heads. He paid their debts, in exchange for a favor. I figured he’d want drugs, or for me to help out some friend of his when they got torn up. Then he just asked me to spy on you.”
“So you did.”
The doctor nodded. “I thought I got lucky, at first. I even said, when you got brought back here, I wouldn’t mess up your recovery. When he was OK with that, I thought everything would go smoothly, and once you left I could forget this happened.”
Coby looked back to the sleeping form in the bed. “So hurting me was out of the question, but you let him be-”
“It wasn’t like that,” Doctor Rayne protested. “I swear. I didn’t realize he’d taken a hostage until about a week ago. I called in to report, and he said he’d be sending you a present, that he wondered how you’d react to following up a funeral by seeing its guest of honor. And I was horrified, but I didn’t know anything that could have helped you. I didn’t know where he was! So I … I tried to ignore it. I was a coward”
“Yeah. You were.”
Silence fell between them. Coby let it linger.
Let the man’s conscience eat at him.
“So what now?” the doctor asked at last.
“Turn yourself in to Smoker. Confess. And take your punishment.”
A thoughtful pause followed. Then, “Why aren’t you bringing me in?”
“Because if I were to do what I want to right now, it would be revenge, not justice,” Coby said. “And because if you do turn yourself in, it’ll tell us a lot about how complicit you were in this whole thing.”
“And if I run?”
“Then I’ll tell Smoker what I learned,” Coby said simply. “I assume he knows how to handle traitors and deserters.”
The doctor went silent again for a while. Then he said, ”Let me call for someone else to take over for my shift. There are a few patients in here I’d rather not leave unattended.” At Coby’s nod, he left. The captain listened to his footsteps recede until he couldn’t hear them anymore. Only then did he sag forward, shoulders dropping and tense muscles loosening.
“That sucked,” he muttered to the quiet.
The next day, word got around that Doctor Rayne had been put under arrest. No one seemed to know exactly why, but he’d been shipped out for headquarters. Smoker glowered at anyone asking too much, and the only thing he’d tell people about why it happened was that the doctor “broke his oath.”
Coby ignored it. He had his own things to deal with.
After taking care of some paperwork, he headed back down to the medical area. Plopped himself in the uncomfortable chair in Helmeppo’s room. Spent a few minutes telling Helmeppo what had happened. Then prepared himself for another quiet day. Which was fine. He was here for Helmeppo, and for the rest of the crew, but he was also here for himself. He couldn’t feel wondering eyes on him here. Didn’t get stopped by people trying to think of the right way to phrase the wrong question. He just needed it all to stop for a little while. He could recharge, and later on he could face it all again.
“Coby?
He’d gotten so accustomed to the white noise of the area that hearing his name quietly spoken startled him out of his half-doze. He looked first at the door, but no one stood there. So that meant…
In the bed, Helmeppo’s eyes had opened, though not by much. He seemed about ready to drift back off at any moment. But when Coby met his gaze, Helmeppo’s eyes suddenly flew open wide, and he began struggling to sit up. “Coby. Why are you … No!”
Coby rose from his chair and put a hand on Helmeppo’s shoulder again. He feels warm this time, he thought, absurdly, as he said, “Wait, relax Helmeppo. You’re safe.”
“Not me.” Helmeppo reached across his body, grabbing Coby’s wrist with his left hand. “You. You can’t be here. It’s dangerous! He’s trying to-”
“I know. We’re back at the base now , Helmeppo. Please calm down,” Coby pleaded, trying to ignore the twisting in his gut at seeing Helmeppo completely avoided using his right hand. “He’s in custody. He can’t get to anyone.”
For a moment they stood like that, eyes locked. Then, as if some fog started to clear, he looked away from Coby, confused, and took in the rest of the room. Then he released Coby’s arm and looked down at his own hands. Took in the splint, the bandages on both wrists, the blankets.
“This is real?” he asked at last.
Coby’s heart broke. “Yeah,” he managed to get out. “Sorry. Sorry it took so long.”
Helmeppo closed his eyes again, and for a moment Coby thought he’d dropped back into sleep. But after several seconds, he drew a deep breath, exhaled, and said, “And that man is in custody?”
“Yeah. Awaiting trial.”
Helmeppo’s left hand bunched into a fist in the blankets. Feeling like he was walking on eggshells, Coby tried to think what to say. What did you say to someone after all that?
“Sorry they have all that stuff on your hand, but they said you should have full use of it once it heals up.”
The look of surprise Helmeppo gave his own hand at that felt so visceral that for a moment, Coby wondered if he’d already written the appendage off entirely. Maybe he had. He had sat there, day after day, knowing the hand was badly hurt, but unable to do anything to help it. How would-
Blocking that line of thought as well, he focused on Helmeppo as he sorted through whatever he was thinking about.
“These doctors really are miracle workers,” his friend said at length, laughing weakly. The rasp from before seemed to be mostly gone. Maybe it had been dehydration?
Smiling at the feeble joke, Coby said, “they really are. Speaking of which, how are you feeling? If it hurts-”
“I think the stuff they gave me for the pain keeps knocking me out,” Helmeppo said, the words coming slowly. “It’s not so bad right now. So I’d rather not. OK?”
Why did he sound like he wanted Coby to approve the decision? “That’s fine,” he said, trying to remain chipper. “Anything else? Water?”
“That sounds great.”
Coby excused himself and went to retrieve a cup of water. As he passed the main office, the on-duty doctor at her desk looked up.
“Heading out already?” she asked.
“Actually, Helmeppo just asked for some water.”
“He’s awake?” At Coby’s nod, she added, “the water’s fine then. I’ll send someone for a light meal. And I’ll be in shortly to talk with him. Want to make sure everything is progressing as it should.”
“Understood.”
Coby conveyed all that to Helmeppo with the water when he returned. His friend still looked remarkably tired. And when the doctor came in, Coby took the hint from the looks they shot him and excused himself.
The next day, Coby was back, and for the first time since returning, Helmeppo was awake, sitting up and looking alert when he arrived.
“Sorry for not reporting for duty,” Helmeppo joked. He started to raise his right hand in salute, but it moved only about an inch before he let the splinted appendage fall back to his lap and repeated the move with his left hand.
Taking his customary seat,” Coby said, “I guess I can let it slip another day or two.” Settling in, he asked, “So how are you feeling?”
“More awake,” Helmeppo said. Was it Coby’s imagination, or was he speaking more slowly than Coby remembered? “Getting tired of doctors. You’d think, being the experts, they’d know how useless a question ‘how is the pain?’ is. It hurts. It’s pain. That’s all it does. And I’ve been asleep for most of the last few days -- something else they should know. I gather it was on purpose. So I can’t really tell them if it’s better or worse. I thought that’s what they were paid to figure out?”
Through all this grousing, there was a small smile, and Coby knew this rhythm -- the complaining that Helmeppo engaged in to avoid saying other things. It felt so familiar and right that Coby chuckled in spite of himself.
“Consider your complaint formally lodged,” he said.
“I knew I could count on you.”
They both laughed this time. But as the laugher faded, a heavy silence followed. He got the sense Helmeppo wanted to say something, so he waited.
“Sorry for being weird yesterday,” Helmeppo said at last, subdued. “I knew I was here. Sort of, at least. But I keep feeling like… nothing. Nevermind.”
“No, what?”
Helmeppo hesitated. “Sorry. This is going to sound stupid.”
“If it does, I promise to only laugh a little.”
That got another small chuckle out of him. “Fine. I’ll hold you to that promise.” At Coby’s nod, he added, “I had a lot of dreams like this there, at first. Being back. Seeing you, or Tashigi, or hell, even Garp. Doing paperwork. Chores. Grabbing lunch. Dumb, little, normal things. I kept waking up, though.”
As Coby watched, his left hand tightened on the blankets again, as though clinging to the moment. “I’m afraid I’m not quite convinced it won’t happen again,” he finished.
“Then we’ll come get you again,” Coby said.
Helmeppo looked ready to snark back at that cheesy line, then just shook his head and sighed. “Right, right,” he said. “Though if it’s the same guy, please send other people. Don’t come yourself. He’s pretty intense about you. Really intense. Uncomfortably intense.” He paused again, then added, “Not that I’m not grateful. Thank you, if I didn’t say it before.”
“You did.”
“OK. But please never walk alone into a trap like that ever again. Especially not just for me.”
“I make no promises.”
For a moment, Helmeppo’s expression darkened. He didn’t look angry, but there was something a little intense there. Then he sighed, and the darkness fled as quick as it had arrived. “How did you even find me?” Helmeppo asked instead.
“We gathered what clues we could and eventually they pointed to where you were being held. I’m sorry it took so long, but we didn’t get any of those clues until just about a week ago.”
“Ah.” Helmeppo’s eyes were on his hands again. “The, uh … the funeral?”
“Yeah.”
He fell quiet again. Then, more quietly, he said, “One day there was a… a recording thing, I think. Did he really…?”
Coby cut in so he didn’t have to form the rest of the question.”Yeah. It arrived the day he expected.”
“Sorry you had to see that.”
“What? No. You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“I wasn’t careful enough.”
“It has nothing to do with being careful.”
“I got caught, and it played into his hands! So you saw that stupid video, and you got worried, and that’s why you-”
“Yes! Yes you idiot!” Coby was somewhat aware that calling a badly injured guy in the infirmary an idiot was maybe a bit rude, and didn’t really want to be raising his voice, but Helmeppo wasn’t listening. “I was worried about you, and I wanted to come help you. We all were, so...”
Then suddenly he realized, this was it. This feeling was the look in Tashigi’s eyes so many times over the past few weeks. And he leaned forward, waiting for Helmeppo to meet his gaze.
And he said, “This was not your fault.”
Helmeppo’s laugh was bitter this time, his smile small and sarcastic. “Everyone else managed to avoid the guy. I knew he was dangerous. I knew I should have run. Or figured out how to escape.”
Coby watched his friend as that smile faded again into something grim. And he asked, voice pitched low so that no one outside could possibly overhear, “He was coming for the stragglers, wasn’t he? While everyone was retreating?”
Helmeppo wouldn’t meet his eyes, which was enough to tell him he was right.
“You stayed longer than you should have. So you could be sure. Because there were so many wounded and you knew they’d be moving slow.”
Another direct hit.
“This wasn’t your fault. It was his.”
“You don’t understand-”
“I think I do. Unless you asked him to take you with him because you’re too tired of having to listen to orders from me-”
“What?!” Helmeppo sounded so indignant that Coby nearly laughed. “It’s not that.”
“Then it’s not your fault,” Coby said. “And I’ll keep reminding you of that until you believe it. OK?”
For the third time in roughly a week, he reached out and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. And for the first of those three times,. It just felt … normal. Familiar. After a few seconds, the hard look on Helmeppo’s face softened. He reached over with his good hand.
“Fine,” Helmeppo said. “Even if that was corny.”
“I blame it on the blood loss. It’s surprisingly effective as an excuse.”
“Ah. Shame, I don’t think I can steal that one.”
“Blame the pain medication. I bet it works even better as an excuse.”
This time they both laughed, and finally, finally, things were starting to feel right.