Work Text:
DON’T EVEN
They ask him no questions and offer no threats. They only demand his blood and his suffering. That’s simple enough for Washington; he has no answers to offer them anyway. It is easier this way. All Washington has to do is sit there and take the abuse.
Each day, Locus and his goons come for him in the morning. He does not fight, not anymore; Washington knows what happens if he fights. The mercenary punishes Donut and Sarge for Washington’s actions, and Locus is devoid of any mercy or humanity. He is cold, calculating and methodical in his approach, as sharp as Carolina, as deadly as Tex, and as brutal as Maine. Washington cannot have any more of their blood on his own hands for his mistakes.
Donut and Sarge do their best. They hurl obscenities and threats at Locus and his henchmen when they come for him. They fight and lash out, but Locus’s subordinates have been too well trained. Neither of the simulation troopers stand any chance of actually stopping Washington from limping out of their cell after the mercenary, ambling his way to his own, private hell. They try, really they do. A part of that lightens Washington’s heart, but he stills trudges after Locus each morning.
Locus’s goons entertain themselves through the day using Washington as their plaything. They take turns with him. They beat him with fists and blunt objects until his face swells enough that the world blurs to his right eye and swims amid his left. They pry away his fingernails one by one. They hammer at his fingers until the bones crack and shatter. They slice at his broad chest and muscular arms with razor sharp blades. They shock him with electric prods until he pisses himself and saliva dribbles down his chin to his chest. Locus watches wordlessly as Washington clenches his teeth hard enough to make his jaw ache, if only to hold back the worst of his screams and shrieks of agony.
When they are done with him, or perhaps when they are simply bored with him, they take him back to Donut and Sarge. When Washington can keep himself upright and move of his own accord, Locus forces him to walk back to the cell. It is appalling how his generally composed strides have deteriorated to an uncomfortable, awkward lurching gait, but Washington savors the days when he can still walk. They feel like small victories compared to the days when his semi-conscious carcass must be dragged in a rather undignified manner back to the Reds.
Donut tries to tend his wounds as best as possible. The Federal Army and Locus offer them limited supplies to treat Washington. In truth, Donut is entirely unqualified to offer any sort of medical treatment to the former Freelancer, but it makes him feel somewhat better to try. Wash knows it helps to ease the guilt. Washington is willing to grant him that limited comfort and is often too exhausted and in too much agony to argue otherwise.
Under Sarge’s stern gaze and at Donut’s goading, Washington lips at the pathetic foodstuffs offered by the FAC. He cannot often manage to stomach much of anything after a day with Locus’s men. It hurts too much to even move or chew. After that, all Washington can do is curl up on himself and hug himself against the pain.
The Reds are worried about him. Washington knows this. He sometimes wakes in the night and hears them whispering. Even Sarge. The generally gruff soldier sounds concerned oddly for a man he would normally dismiss as a worthless Blue. It should warm his heart – he knows – but everything hurts too much to care otherwise.
The day that they break his arm is the day that Washington nearly shatters. The pain is so bright, so sharp, and so utterly, unapologetically perfect that it blots out everything else in his imperfect, fragile world for an alien moment of unearthly clarity. Everything becomes distant and void for an unknown time. The Director’s dark croon. Epsilon’s screams of rage and horror. His own bitter sorrows. Everything is eclipsed by the adrenaline that crashes through his system with the weight of a terrible tsunami, flooding down his veins and burning through his own nervous system. He knows now what is to become of him, and nothing can erase that. They will kill him, slowly and painfully just to send a message to Sarge and Donut before starting on them and interrogating the Reds in earnest – and neither Sarge nor Donut is equipped to handle the sort of “enhanced interrogation” techniques in Locus’s bag of tricks.
Then, much to his great surprise, Washington finds himself back in that dreadful cell, with Sarge and Donut peering over him as they try to wrap his arm with rags as best they can. It is acutely terrifying to be unable to account for the length of time before waking, as though the entire world blinked out of existence just for him, but Washington has experienced that sort of disconnected blackout before with Epsilon. He shrugs off the Reds’ concern and curls up on himself once more. He has nothing to say to them, not now – maybe not ever.
A week presses on with that quiet, somber knowledge eating away at him.
It is not until the night after Locus’s goons break several of the ribs along Washington’s side that the dam finally breaks. He wakes to darkness and an agony so real it seems a predatory beast crushing down upon him. He coughs and fights against the constriction about his lungs, only to send lightning hot flashes of pain scorching down his sides. He sputters and struggles to catch his breath, his heart hammering in his ears as his lungs burn.
A set of firm hands find him in the darkness, lifting him up. Washington fitfully and feebly tries to pull away, but he is too weak and too spent from the coughing fit. The hands pull him up and manipulate his battered body with a surprising tenderness after so much abuse. They turn sit him upright and turn him so that he reclines against a reassuring, firm bulk.
And, as if by magic, it is easier to breathe. The tightness across his ribs loosens slowly. He coughs a bit, spitting up to the side, but, then, Washington can breathe once more. He sighs and slackens there, unable to do much more.
In time, he musters the effort to grunt out, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Washington furrows his brow. The voice is familiar but utterly alien at the same time. It is deep and retains a vaguely familiar drawl, but the accent is no longer as heavy. It seems misplaced, as well, different somehow. It is odd. The voice sounds tired, almost as tired as he feels, as though worn by time and trial.
“Sarge….?”
The older man chuckles strangely behind him and composes himself, the same rich drawl returning just as swiftly as it had fled. “What, dirtbag?”
Washington shakes his head. It must have been his own mistake, perhaps an auditory hallucination after all this time. He pulls away from Sarge, and the man allows him. Washington crawls to the corner that has been rather charitably left to what little privacy he can have. The next morning, Sarge regards Washington with little more than the worry that has permeated the man this whole time, and Washington writes the night before off as a dream, a fevered illusion brought about by the torture of the days and previous trauma from the Director’s and Epsilon’s shared marks upon his psyche.
The next night, however, he is stirred in the night before the agony of his ribs can deteriorate further by strong arms gathering him up once more and holding him. Sarge. The older man cradles him close, leaning up against the cell wall so that Washington might recline against him once more to breathe easier against the grating of his own broken ribs.
“Sarge?” Washington dares test the waters.
The older man gives a strange sound, something akin to a chuff. “Yes, Agent Washington?”
The voice is wrong once more; it confuses him enough to ask, “Who are you?”
“A friend, I suppose.”
It is as cryptic an answer as Washington has ever received, and, in a way, it tastes of home. It screams of the Mother of Invention, of the Director’s uncompromising skullduggery and the Counselor’s never ending litany of platitudes. That is, after all, the only place that Washington has ever heard such answers before; Project Freelancer.
“Don’t….”
“Don’t what, Washington?” Sarge’s unusually accented voice takes a frightfully dark tone, dropping to a threatening hiss.
Washington scowls into the darkness. “Don’t do that. Don’t be like that.”
Sarge chuckles softly, clearly holding back his laughter. Whether that is to avoid stirring Washington too hard or waking Donut, the freelancer cannot know. Either way it is a mercy for which he is grateful.
“Don’t be like what?” His voice shifts, back to the drawl, “Don’t be like this?” His voice takes on another note, the accents gone altogether for but a heartbeat. “Or this?”
“Don’t be a dick,” Washington settles upon with a huff.
The two sit in silence for a moment, listening only to the soft breaths of Donut slumbering in his own far corner. The FAC’s base is quiet at night. It is the only time it is quiet there. The rest of the hours of the day are filled with the sounds of human suffering. Washington had hated the quiet in the past, when it had been filled with Epsilon’s grief, but, now that he has made his peace with the AI, the silence is his ally once more.
Sarge breaks the silence. “I had a boy once, a little older than you.”
“Yeah?”
The older man nods behind him; Washington can feel the movement translated through him. “Yeah. Sweet boy. Smart kid.”
“What happened? You sell him for shotgun shells?”
The gruff man snorts. “No. We lost touch some years ago. He’d fallen in with bad company.”
“Gang?”
Sarge’s voice holds something of a hint of humor. “In a manner of speaking.”
Wash says nothing more for a few moments, just turning the thought over and over again of Sarge as a father. It is alien and incongruous with the man that Washington has come to know from the Blood Gulch simulations and records. It is completely ridiculous.
Finally, Washington dares ask. “How did you get into all this mess?”
“Isn’t is obvious, Agent Washington?” Sarge counters. When Washington fails to answer, Sarge simply responds, “I came looking for my son.”
“He joined the UNSC?”
“Initially. Then, he was recruited out of the UNSC for a classified, elite and experimental unit,” Sarge explains.
Realization dawns over Washington sourly. “He was a Freelancer.”
“Yup.” Sarge sounds almost pleased that Washington is capable of making the logic jump with him.
“Why Blood Gulch? The only Freelancer to head there was Tex.”
“Not exactly,” Sarge answers oddly.
“Who else?”
Sarge makes an odd, musing sound before answering, “The Alpha.”
“Church,” Washington breathes.
“Yeah. Figured, if I waited long enough around the Alpha, he’d come around in his own time. Picked the Reds to keep clear of other Freelancers.” The older man sighs heavily. “Didn’t exactly work out that way, now did it?”
Washington tries not to laugh. It hurts to laugh, and it feels inappropriate considering the weight of what Sarge has admitted. None of the Freelancers or simulation troopers seem the sharing kind – well, outside of North and Donut. Wash hasn’t the heart to question Sarge now. Fortunately, Sarge says nothing more that evening.
The days wear on and on, one blurring into the next as Washington’s body begins to fail him slowly. Each night, he is awakened to Sarge moving his body to hold him upright. Although it hurts to sit in such position, it does help him breathe somewhat. Washington knows better than to question such small blessings. He sleeps easier, a small miracle he will not threaten, especially as fever begins to take him with chills that send waves of agony coursing through him.
Finally, one evening, when Washington’s curiosity piques too great, he dares ask, “How did you know about the Alpha?”
“What do you mean?”
Washington shifts his weight, gritting his teeth against the motion, before questioning, “No one knew Church was the Alpha. The Director made damned sure of that. How did you find out?”
Sarge is quiet for a moment, too long for Washington’s comfort. “I did my homework.”
“How?” Washington presses. “Only a Freelancer could….”
“Don’t,” Sarge hisses under his breath, gripping Washington’s shoulder tightly enough to hurt but not bruise.
Washington snaps his mouth shut before he can say those terrible, awful words, but he cannot stop the mighty gears tuning over in his mind. Underneath it all, under that seething hatred for the Blues, behind the obsessive and near mindless love of his primary firearm, lies a Freelancer. No. The more Wash considers the possibilities, the more he knows Sarge has always been a Freelancer. His ingenuity. His combat skills. All hallmarks of a Freelancer.
The pieces slowly come together in his mind, a story forming before his eyes. The more a narrative comes together, the more it pains Washington. Not only is Sarge another Freelancer, but it is all too apparent that Sarge became a Freelancer just to find his son. Washington shudders to himself, wondering what horrors at the hands of the Director this man put himself through in some vain hope of finding and saving his own son from the same hell. Unbidden, memories of his own time in Project Freelancer bubble up, and it is abruptly too much for the younger man, too raw for him to focus upon for too long.
It is fine; Sarge’s gruff voice stills his thoughts anyway. “Should be restin’.”
That is all the excuse Wash needs.
Rescue comes for them in the morning in the form of the rebel army led by some familiar faces. It is extremely fortunate for Washington, according to the field medics and physicians that tend to him upon their rescue and subsequent arrival at their ragtag base. The doctor is keen to cautious Wash that he is not out of the woods, and that another twenty four hours would have likely spelled death for the former Freelancer. Washington tries not to point out the myriad of times he has heard something along those lines in his storied life.
Wash spends a few obedient and quiet weeks in the hands of the rebel medical staff, following their instructions to the letter politely and respectfully, all the while luring them into a false sense of security. Then, once he is capable and sees the opportunity, Wash makes his break for it. He has never been a fan of hospitals or medical units; the Epsilon incident only honed that discomfort to a fine terror that he has only kept under wraps by sheer force of will. He bolts at the first opportunity exactly seven days after arriving, struggling to keep his legs under him as he flees the flimsy, haphazard structure that is the field hospital and ducks into the nearest bunk tent. Only there, curled up and hugging his side on a bunk that does not belong to him can Wash actually sleep instead of feigning slumber as he has the last few weeks in the medical unit.
That is precisely where Sarge finds him, or so Washington believes it is Sarge who finds him. At any rate, when he wakes some indeterminate time after finding the bunk, the older soldier is sitting on the bunk across from him, his feet propped up on the end of the bunk and his face adorned with a mildly bemused smirk.
“Don’t sweat it, kid,” the Red says softly and warmly, in that yet alien accent to the former Freelancer’s ears. “I can’t stand docs either.”
“You’re not going to turn me in?” Wash questions, still groggy from sleep.
Sarge shakes his head. “No. Guys like us have got to stick together.”
Wash nods gratefully and closes his eyes. “Good to know.” He lies there for a moment before a queer thought prickles in the back of his mind. “Hey, Sarge?”
“Yeah?”
“You never told me,” Wash breathes, almost hesitantly. “Who was he?” When Sarge merely lifts a brow, the younger man further prompts him. “Your son?”
It has bothered Washington immensely since that late night confession. There are any number of possibilities. Wyoming. Georgia. Kentucky. York. Maybe even Maine. The only candidate that Washington can easily rule out has been North. If it had been North, Sarge would have said he was looking for his “children.” Even though the agony of those days before the warm, chemical embrace of anesthetics, Wash clearly recalls that Sarge had said “son,” as in a singular, male child in Project Freelancer. Beyond that, there remain several possibilities.
Something uncomfortable flickers across Sarge’s features, but the man quickly schools his expression. “Don’t.”
“But, who was he?” Wash presses.
“Project Freelancer is gone, Agent Washington, along with all the Freelancers outside of Carolina, you, and me.” Sarge sighs heavily but reclaims his southern accent. “Doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
Wash nods slowly. It’s true; the other Freelancers are all dead. The only three that still draw breath are Carolina, Sarge, and himself, but they are no more Freelancers than the sim troopers are. Knowing who Sarge’s son is – was – will do nothing to bring the man back. It will not change anything.
“For what it’s worth, thanks.”
Sarge’s smirk widens to a warm smile. “You’re welcome. Now get some rest.” Then, as though an afterthought, Sarge adds in a hush, “Son.”
The simple word surprises Wash, but he says nothing of it. They never mention any of this, not to anyone. Not that it makes any difference, really. Whoever Sarge was and whoever he joined up looking for are both long gone. It certainly doesn’t matter when the war on Chorus deepens.