Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Characters:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2014-06-12
Completed:
2014-06-12
Words:
2,354
Chapters:
8/8
Comments:
34
Kudos:
305
Bookmarks:
37
Hits:
2,903

hard times come again no more

Summary:

They have a thousand days of crossing that beach, thousands of chances to hear the same bomb explode over and over again, thousands of deaths trying to evade this mimic and that bullet.

They only get eight drives across France.

Chapter 1: This car is alright.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He: "Do you think there is a limit?"

She: "To what?"

"How many times I could wake up. And-" Here he offers an entirely non-elucidating hand gesture. "I mean, if I didn't, if there wasn't a blood transfusion."

Her eyes remain on the roadway. "There's no indication that it would stop."

"You think you would have just kept reliving Verdun if you hadn't been injured."

Her eyes on the horizon and a straight line for a mouth.

He doesn't know when to quit. "And that's the way this Omega thing lives, it just keeps reliving–"

She is wading in reluctantly, parsing her words. "Living is a- perhaps you should be careful about how you use–"

He is not getting the hint. "I mean how does a living, thinking organism survive that kind of mental–"

She feels foolish for thinking that he was a soldier, that he was anything like her. It is her obligation to correct his naivety, it will not serve him. "I don't think we need to have a lot of sympathy for–"

And he's not even listening, he's suddenly dropped that train of thought for something more–

"How many times did you do it? The?" That same stupid gesture, the tentative rotation of the hand like the spin cycle of a washing machine.

Crickets.

"Rita, I'm just trying to get a sense of whether, if I'm close to where you were or."

Her eyes flick from the space in front of the steering wheel over to him for just a second and he catches it and he shuts up.

"Major. I do not know how many times we have hacked our way across that beach together, nor do I care. We are weapons, we are in a war, and I have not invited you to ask personal questions."

Chapter 2: This car is mediocre.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He: "I wasn't sure we'd make it this time."

She, with vaguely condescending confusion on her face: "You'd done it before. Hadn't you? I thought you said you'd-"

"Yeah– yes, but-"

"We always move forward," she declares.

"Yes," he does not declare.

Her eyes flick from the space in front of the steering wheel over to him for just a second and that is an accusation. "We are moving forward, right, we haven't stalled–" She catches herself sounding more scared than she means to.

"No, um, no, we're– we get to a house–"

He is not telling all, but who the hell cares, they are not caught in a loop and that's all she cares about and and she huffs and it's almost a laugh, it's almost a sigh.

"Well. Good. As long as–" She offers a meaningless hand gesture. "We keep moving forward, we're good. We'll figure it out." She kind of absentmindedly wipes sweat and grit and blood off her cheek. Eyes back on the road. Composure.

He is looking at her. "You didn't do that last time. The. Wiping your cheek."

He feels foolish for saying it out loud and she can tell. This is her chance to reestablish order. Poise.

"Different input, different output, Cage. You probably said something new and I reacted. Different input, different output."

Chapter 3: The car is not that great.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He: "If you turn on the radio in three minutes and you really crank the knob to the right, you can catch the full 'La vie en rose'."

Her eyes flick from the space in front of the steering wheel over to him for just a second and those eyes narrow. "Bullshit, there are no more French radio stations."

"Okay."

"Who would be operating a radio station in the middle– who would be playing Edith Piaf?"

He grins like a little boy (how dumb is that?) and here we have it, he's mock-offended. "You don't like Edith Piaf?'

She is not amused, these are not the corners of her mouth ascending toward the heavens. "How trite can you get."

He shrugs. He looks out the window. "Okay."

She is chewing on the inside of her lip, she is not smiling, she is not trying to look at him out of the corner of her eye.

He isn't looking at her. He's really not looking at her.

"There's no way this radio even works."

And all of a sudden, he's laughing, busting out like maybe he hasn't been able to laugh in 328 days. "God, of course the radio doesn't work, this car is a piece of shit–"

She's looking at him and she's not looking at the road and she catches herself and that was stupid of her and what if she had driven them off the road and what a stupid way that would have been to die. Maybe they have died like that already. Before. How would she know?

He's still laughing. Like breathing after drowning.

Focus. Job to do. Soldiering to do.

"Cage. I have a splendid idea. What if you don't talk the rest of the way."

Chapter 4: This car is actually quite bad.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He: "Did you ever have to kill yourself to-" He waves his hand back and forth instead of finishing the sentence.

Her eyes do not leave the space in front of the steering wheel. Her fingers curl around that steering wheel. "That is an abrupt question, Major."

"William, uh, Will–"

"Have you ever had to kill yourself to restart the day, William?"

He is not sure whether he should look at her or the windshield and he picks the windshield. "No."

"Yes, I did, William, four times. I did it four times."

"Is that a, I mean how many–"

"Please do not ask me how many times I did Verdun, William– no, four is not a big percentage of the number but it was enough."

He wants her to look at him more than he has ever wanted anyone to look at him and she doesn't.

And the not-looking hangs in the car, the air.

"Um, look, I'm sorry, you can call me Major or Cage or whatever you'd like to–"

"How do you usually die? Is it– is it mimics?"

He laughs and in the back of his mind he remembers laughing yesterday in the yesterday that never happened. "Uh, no, it's usually you that kill me."

She smiles and she nods and she almost looks over at him but she doesn't quite. "Good for me. You probably have it coming every time."

Chapter 5: This car is dreadful.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He: "That guy, um, Henderson, did you know him very well before the whole-"

She: "What?" and it sounds like all caps.

He's caught off-guard by her volume but he powers through like the idiot he is. "The guy, the man you went through your- Verdun with–"

Her eyes flick from the space in front of the steering wheel over to him for just a second and she looks like she is on a battlefield, like this car is a battlefield. "I didn't tell you about that, I didn't talk to you about that–"

"No, I know, but in another– we did talk about it and– or at least you mentioned it and–"

The car shudders to a halt and for a second, he thinks they ran out of gas but they've never run out of gas and it's the same car and they didn't do anything different and oh, no, she slammed on the brakes.

"And what, Will. And what?"

They are parked in the middle of a highway. She is looking at him and he wishes for all the world that she would look away.

"I wondered. I wanted to know. If it was like us. Like the two of us. Or."

"Did I watch some random guy die a couple of hundred times or was it a guy I knew? It was a guy I knew."

They are sitting in car seats, they are parked on a highway and in no danger of being hit by another car, how odd to be having this conversation here, this very important conversation, and oh, he notices that her eyes are grey like his.

He says, "Okay."

She looks away. Key back in the ignition.

"You're not random," he offers.

She dignifies that with a curt nod. Car's back on. They have miles to go before they sleep.

Chapter 6: This car is a piece of shit.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He doesn't say anything.

Her eyes flick from the space in front of the steering wheel over to him about once every couple of miles but she never catches him looking at her.

He does look, though.

Twenty minutes in and she's singing under her breath. An old hymn. "Tis the song, the sign of the weary." Barely audible under the rattle of this crap car, but there is her voice, timorous but not the least bit self-conscious, if only because she seems hardly aware she is making any noise.

He wonders if she grew up religious, but he doesn't ask.

He wonders if she would have always sung if he hadn't asked so many questions the other times.

He wishes he had learned to be quiet sooner.

Chapter 7: This car is a deathtrap.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He: "What if we didn't take this road?"

She: "Why wouldn't we take this road? Did we die on this road last time–"

He looks so foolish, he looks like a child, he has to keep pushing it. "No, it's just– what if we– took a different road?"

Her eyes flick from the space in front of the steering wheel over to him and back again and back again. "How many times have we– this isn't our first time driving here, is it?"

"Yes, it's our first time–"

"No, see, you're lying, you just said we'd done it before and we should do it a different way, why would you say that?"

"Because–"

"No, I get it, I've– I've done what you're doing but I'm on the other side of it now and I can't– I don't know what we've been through the last five or twenty or one hundred and four times and I'm your fellow soldier and you need to explain to me–"

"You'll die. We take this road and you die."

She is shaking her head, she is all military and he has never been less military in his life. "We both die. We always die."

"Yeah, but. Yes. No, Rita. You die. And then–" He makes a meaningless, incomprehensible hand gesture. "What if we took a different road."

"Would a different road take us where we need to go?"

Crickets.

She absentmindedly picks at the dried mud on her upper lip. She looks at the road.

"Let's just reset."

He wants to say no, to plead, to bargain for this one chance but he doesn't.

He just looks out the window as she pulls out her gun and shoots him in the head.

Chapter 8: This car has to go.

Chapter Text

They are in a car, driving on a desolate highway in France.

He talks the whole way, he makes up things she never said to him, and she suspects he is lying but also wonders if she didn't lie to him on one of these trips. Hard to tell.

He eases her towards the hard stuff, the hard questions and answers and it's bumpier, but like all things, he has learned with practice. Relentless practice.

He has been saving the best for last.

He: "How do you–? Um. I guess I'm struggling. With. I meet the same people everyday and I get to know them everyday, or, um, they get to know me, and it's new everyday and I watch them die everyday."

Her eyes flick from the space in front of the steering wheel over to him and he wishes he hadn't seen that look but here goes, he keep talking.

"And I just–. You've done it. You've been there, too, and I just–. How do you hold on to these people who just die? Again and again."

She pushes a muddy strand of hair behind her ear. She nods minutely. Eyes straight forward. Grey eyes.

"Their deaths, I think. Yes. Their deaths, I guess. Seeing them die bravely, or, um, listening to what they say to you when they die this time or dying next to them. If you can't get something from that–"

She runs out of words to finish the sentence.

Her finger flex and curl around the steering wheel.

"We do this for a purpose. We die for a purpose." She nods, affirmation in her own statement.

"Favorite death?"

She is startled to laughter and he counts it a victory. "Mine or-?"

He shrugs.

"We. Well, we held hands."

She says it and then she remembers what that was really like to die holding someone's hand and she wants to say that it was nothing, to back peddle out of this, this honesty but she doesn't. She puts her eyes are back on the road. "Yours?"

"When we get married right before we both die."

She's the closest she ever been to a spit take in her life and she sputters and she grins and cannot stop herself. "That doesn't– who would marry– and besides, I wouldn't–. That never happens. You're an idiot."

He just looks at her. He has gotten careless with how much he wants to see her happy for just a moment.

The car sputters, grinds to a halt. No gas. No surprise. Same place, same time.

"Well, I guess here's our exit," she says.

"Here's our exit."

"What do we do next?"

"Walk north. There's a farmhouse two and a half miles out."

She smiles and he knows it's the last smile she smiles until they get there and then they'll have the coffee and then she'll start the helicopter and then she'll die again.

But here he is, smiling back.

"One long slow walk to the graveyard, Cage."

"Yes, ma'am."