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To the family, he was Junior. Naturally. You didn't mess with a winning formula, and as the third William J. Blaze (formerly Blazkowicz) in the family, he was destined to be B.J. III or Junior. That's life.
When he joined up, though, he got used to calling himself Will in a hurry. Grandpa had carried the moniker among a bunch of guerrillas who didn't speak English well enough to get the joke, and Dad sidestepped that shit by making his name as Captain Bill Blaze, but Will was a grunt among grunts who'd take "B.J." as an offer and react accordingly. B.J. III became Will.
He added an extra layer of protection with a nickname, too. When he let himself get "caught" praying on his first night in Basic, he became Choir Boy in no time.
Sure, the priest jokes got old fast. But now they weren't ripping on his grandpa's name.
Nobody ripped on Grandpa. Only Grandma Anya could get close. Will could still remember Grandma shaking her head in exasperation, saying "B.J.!" in her soft Polish accent, and Grandpa sheepishly owning up to taking "the boys" (Will and Dad, Dad with his graying hair and captain's stripes) fishing instead of getting the groceries Grandma wanted. The name was important because it meant family: don't talk shit about my family, 'cause I'll knock your head off if you do.
Will never heard the war stories from his grandparents. But when Grandma passed on and was buried next to Grandpa in the Blazkowicz plot, Dad opened up the trunks from the attic and showed Will—Junior—the blood-stiffened swastika flag and single dented stahlhelm. Trophies of a successful resistance against tyranny. One that had cost a lot of good people their lives.
It took years for him to see how much Grandpa's life had shaped theirs. Why they were Catholic like Grandma, not Jewish like Grandpa's people used to be, and why Grandpa didn't pray at all. Why the Blazkowiczs became the Blazes. Looking to the future. Sloughing off the stuff that once got people hurt or held them back.
That was when the name took on a new meeting for B.J. III. Blazkowicz or Blaze, it was his inheritance: they lived in peace because of people like Grandpa, who fought. Drop the old stuff, but keep the core. Protect the helpless. Don’t rip on my goddamn name. And do right, no matter how much hell it got you.
Not that Will was telling any of that to the fucking therapist.
* * *
It was part of the deal. If he wanted to keep his job, anyway.
After six years on heavy rotation in some of the shittiest trouble spots the UAC could find, a guy could get a little tense. Shit happened. Some people cracked and were invalided out, but Will Blaze was still going. No problem here, sir.
But something got to him eventually. He got in a little fight, questioned a couple of orders, and before you know it shit like "gross insubordination" and "post-traumatic disordered behavior" cropped up in his personnel file. Great.
He got shipped off to the ass-end of Mars, and his pay was stopped. If he behaved himself and completed the required counseling, the docs said he could possibly get another posting somewhere less shitty … and get his pay back, which was the really important thing. But he had to go along with the program and not draw any more attention.
It was tempting to tell them to go fuck themselves. He busted his commander's jaw after being ordered to fire on civilians, and no one was gonna convince him that that was a bad decision. But if he did say what he was thinking, then he was out on his ass with a dishonorable discharge and a black mark on his record from the biggest company in the solar system. Which would make getting another job a real pain in the ass. And Will Blaze might be a meathead grunt, but he wasn't gonna flip burgers for the rest of his life or crawl into a bottle like so many other ex-grunts. Put in the time, leave with an OK record. That was the plan.
So yeah. Counseling.
The counselor? Not the worst. Could've been bad, but this one was greener than a dollar bill and hadn't seemed to get the memo about who she was working for. There was a constant stream of fellow grunts in and out of her shoebox office, all completing the required UAC brainwashing after one fuckup or another. She still managed to play like she cared, though.
Sometimes he talked to her. Sometimes he didn't. But he put up and showed up, and she marked him as compliant every week, so the CO wasn't coming down on his ass.
After a few sessions of talking, she tried to get him put on medication. That was a fun couple of days. He took the first dose under the gimlet eye of the company medical officer—who should just go back to handing out aspirin and water like every other M.O. Will had ever met. Nosy son of a bitch.
Next morning, he woke up with his hands shaking. Couldn't see straight.
That was a "possible side effect." Fuck that shit. He flushed the pills down the john and told the counselor to figure out some other way to fix his head, 'cause if he couldn't shoot straight, there was no point in even keeping this job.
She listened, which just went to show how green she still was. A lot of other UAC office types would have said "Fine, then you're not keeping the job." And hello, dishonorable discharge.
"Listen, William," she said. The touchy-feely types always used first names. "Think about what we've talked about in your past sessions." During which he'd said barely anything, but she was weirdly good at reading his pointed silences. "We know you're dealing with nightmares, depression, and mood swings. These aren't unusual, especially after years in the service. But that doesn't mean it's not troubling. If you won't take medication, are you willing to consider an alternative form of therapy?"
Will waited silently.
"You've been separated from your family for a long time now, but it's clear that you still care about innocent lives. Someone who didn't care wouldn't try to protect civilians like that."
Which was a weird way to say "you did your job," but if she wanted to think he was a softy, that was her business. As long as she stamped the paperwork every week.
She kept talking. "There's a program called Helping Hearts. It's actually an extension of a program they're currently running in correctional facilities, where it's actually proven really helpful."
What kind of hippie shit—? Was UAC actually paying for this?
"I think you'd be a great candidate for the UAC Helping Hearts pilot program." She leaned forward, clasping her hands. "We'd give you a chance to complete occupational therapy by handling an animal."
An animal? Like a dog?
Images rose in his mind. Memories of Sparky. Dad's dog, when Will was just a little kid. The biggest, dumbest German Shepherd in history. Will was barely out of diapers when the thing died, but it was an article of Blaze family wisdom: Sparky was the lovingest, stupidest animal to ever walk on four legs. Completely useless at anything German Shepherds were supposed to do, like guard, or bite, or patrol, or walk across a room without getting distracted by fucking air molecules. God, they'd loved that dog.
If Will could get UAC to give him a dog … But this was sounding too good to be true.
"Cat?" he said after a moment's consideration. The therapist smiled gently in that way that said she was about to blow smoke up your ass.
"Not right now. We'd like to give our candidates a chance at keeping cats and dogs some day, but right now, there just isn't enough living room in the Mars barracks. But a smaller pet, like a mouse or a rabbit, would be perfect."
Bringing mice into the barracks? After they'd spent months of field days trying to get them out. "No."
"Corporal." She leaned further forward, still smiling gently. "You may proceed with either occupational therapy or pharmaceutical therapy."
"No third option?"
The smile remained fixed. "None."
Well, shit.
At least UAC's current resident little fuzzy animal was starting to grow its own teeth and claws. She'd do OK in the company if she kept it up. Honestly, the "nice" thing was starting to piss him off. Better to know where you stand.
"OK," he said. "Gimme the fucking rodent. But no mice."
* * *
The rabbit arrived in a cage the size of a lunch box. The rabbit itself was brown and not much smaller than the cage. Was that what they liked? Rabbits lived in little holes in the wild, right?
The UAC's "Helping Hearts" information packet was a single xeroxed sheet with a few hazy instructions. The program would run for three months. His goal, as a "participant therapeutic test subject," would be to look after "the life form currently assigned" and keep it alive. He was supposed to "bond" with it at some point. After three months, his case would be re-evaluated and he'd be eligible to be placed in a lower disciplinary condition level. Which, once Will checked his UAC regulations manual, meant his therapy would be cut down to every other week and he'd get part of his paycheck back.
Good deal.
The rabbit didn't seem like it would be too much trouble. It just sat there, nose twitching. He dropped in some of the UAC-provided food pellets, and it went after them, snuffling around in the towel on the bottom of the cage. He should probably get it a dish or something. How much did rabbits eat? Or drink? The paper didn't say.
Well, at least the cage fit under his bunk. Feed it every day, give it some water, clean out the cage once a week, should be fine. Rabbits weren't like dogs, who needed to run and do shit. Rabbits were prey animals, right? Probably happy to be fed and not have to go out. If keeping this thing alive for three months meant getting his pay reinstated, he'd use his first check to buy it a whole bag of carrots.
On the third day, though, the rabbit stopped eating. Wouldn't take its pellets. Just sat there, shivering, its eyes glassy. It looked a lot like he'd felt when they gave him the drugs.
Didn't think anyone was going to poison a damn rabbit. Was it sick? Will vaguely remembered hearing something—from Grandpa, that's right—about how rabbits were easy to kill. The Underground trapped 'em a lot during the war, he said. Weak and not too smart, like a lot of prey animals. Probably really easy for this thing to just up and die.
Will wasn't a doctor, but he'd had some first aid training. The squad bay was empty during certain times of day. He sneaked back in and pulled the cage out.
"All right, let's have a look," he muttered, setting the cage on his bunk. The rabbit didn't look any better. It was still shivering, and it hadn't touched its food.
He opened the cage and scooped out the rabbit. It felt weird in his hands: tense and shivering, like a strained muscle. Its heart pulsed wildly, and its feet paddled in the air. It squirmed when he picked it up, but didn't seem to have much fight.
It was dehydrated, for a start. Gums and eyes looked weirder than usual. Will tried to pry its jaws open and pour some water down its throat, but it squealed and convulsed in his hands. Its heart was beating faster and faster, like it was going to burst. Jesus, it was going to die of fright!
"Come on," Will muttered. He took a quick look around the bay to make sure he was still alone. Then he settled the rabbit in his lap and spread his BDU blouse over it. Rabbits liked the dark, right? They hid a lot? Fuck, he hoped this worked.
The rabbit was still shivering, but having darkness to hide in seemed to help a little. It burrowed its face into the sleeve of his BDUs and hunched there, frozen in fear.
"All right, all right," Will said to the little lump. "You're really gonna make me work for this, huh?"
The rabbit didn't have anything useful to say. Fucking slacker.
"If I get kicked out because of you, I'm using Grandpa's recipe for rabbit stew."
He got the rabbit settled in its cage again. It still hadn't eaten or drunk anything, but aside from general dehydration and low energy, he couldn't spot anything really wrong with it.
Could rabbits get … sad? Bored? Hell, he didn't know. The xeroxed sheet was spectacularly fucking unhelpful. But it had to stay alive until he figured out how to get it to eat again, or goodbye paycheck and good record. Well, he'd have to make it happen.
It squealed again when he moved the cage back under the bunk, so he draped a blanket over the cage before he headed out. That seemed to calm it down, anyway. Then he went to the infirmary.
The M.O was a shitbird, sure. But there were different flavors of shitbird available in any barracks, and after a few years with the UAC, Will knew which one to zero in on. PFC Romero, AKA Bitch Boy, had some kind of pharmacy certification that landed him on lab assistant duty. He could usually be bribed to overlook a failed drug test or two. He also had a pretty profitable sideline in company-issue needles and rubber tubing, for those who were working really hard to fail those tests.
Ten minutes and twenty bucks—the last in his wallet—got Will some needle supplies. Romero side-eyed him just like the M.O. would, but they both knew that anyone who squealed on anyone else in these barracks would get flipped on twice as hard. Nice thing about being with the UAC: in one way or another, we'll all shitbirds.
(Like that asshole Blaze, who's jerking around the doctor and trying to cheat his way out of therapy. What a dumb fuck, huh?)
Back in the squad bay, Will mixed up a saline solution in a canteen and dissolved some powder from a crushed vitamin tablet. No room for an IV pole; he hooked the tubing over a protruding nail in the window frame. The rabbit was shivering so bad, it didn't even flinch when the needle went in.
After a few minutes of fluids, he checked on it again. There was a little movement under the blanket. The rabbit was gingerly investigating its food tray, apparently not too fazed by the IV in its little leg.
"Holy shit," Will said. "You rebound quick."
The rabbit didn't have anything to say about that. It crunched a pellet.
Will closed off the IV drip and taped up the site. The rabbit snuffled and bonked its head against his hand, wriggling its little whiskers.
"Yeah," he said. Half to himself and half to the rabbit. "You're OK."
Later, he would find out that the UAC-issue vitamin tablet powder contained minute amounts of opiate sedatives, as per standard issue to all military personnel. When it bonked its head against his hand, the rabbit was stoned off its lucky feet and wouldn't have cared if he tried to make rabbit stew right that minute.
But hell. It turned out OK.
* * *
Will quickly came to the conclusion that the Helping Hearts program was a crock of shit.
Sure, he liked the rabbit. OK? Sure, she was dumb as shit, but she couldn't help that. Her brain was the size of a grape. He knew COs who couldn't beat her in field exercises, that's for sure.
(At least she could run—as he learned when he left the cage open a second too long.)
She bounced back quickly from whatever the fuck had been wrong with her. When he sat in the squad bay alone, with her on a makeshift leash snuffling at his fingers or prowling around between the bunks, it was nice. Relaxing.
But whoever put the program together had designed it to fail. That, he was sure of.
Rabbits? Will quickly learned that you couldn't have picked a worse animal to hand to an untrained grunt. Rabbits, it turned out, were complicated little shits and as neurotic as their CO brains could manage. Rabbits got scared easily. Rabbits got bored and gnawed through their cages. Rabbits had complicated food requirements (not just pellets and carrots. Who knew?) and died if you looked at them wrong. You weren't supposed to bathe them, which was weird for an animal that shit in its own bed.
Will still had some of his base privileges, so he went to the tiny library in the PX back room and ordered some books on rabbit care. By the time they finally arrived, the dumb bunny had nearly died three times and Will was so sleep-deprived that he actually saluted the fucking librarian.
He compared the books to the care sheet and, yep, the sheet was bullshit. According to the UAC program, a rabbit needed about as much effort as a pet rock. Anyone following this thing would end up with a dead bunny and a black mark on their record for failing out of their occupational therapy .
This rabbit was, in short, another way for UAC to screw him over.
"Fuck 'em," he said to the rabbit, who was nibbling on some greens he'd filched from the officers' mess. "They had to go and make this a fight."
The UAC was willing to fire on civilians, but they still had a reputation to push. All the “company that cares” stuff. It had to look like they were giving busted grunts a chance to “heal.”
If letting someone kill some rabbit was the price for kicking out that someone and not having to pay their pension, then, shit, bring on the bunnies. Who cared about a rodent? Cats and dogs were more expensive to buy in bulk, and too easy to take care of. You'd do that if you actually wanted someone to get better. But if you wanted to screw over a troublemaker and keep his pension, too …
Once he'd started thinking along those lines, Will could see it all the way to the end. Either he lasted a minimum of three months with this rabbit, or UAC won.
So. Fuck 'em.
He wasn't getting his pay, but he had savings. He drew on some of them. Bought a bigger cage, with some little toys and stuff. Ordered the food the books recommended. Since the mail was monitored by UAC, he had the food sent to his sister on Luna, who forwarded it to him in unmarked boxes. When the mail got stopped (fucking interplanetary shipping), he raided the officers' mess again and bribed a couple of civilian workers to get him grass hay from town.
Meds were easy, at least. Romero thought Will had developed a smack habit ("So much for Choir Boy, huh?"), but got him needles and antibiotics in exchange for Will agreeing to keep his phantom supplier from cutting into Romero's business on base. Not a problem.
Six weeks in, the rabbit was doing OK. Will marked each day in his head and silently prayed that this would work.
The rabbit was a girl, by the way. He originally wanted to name it Duke, because the way it whapped at him when it was pissed made him think it was putting up its dukes, but the books also included a crash course on rabbit anatomy. He was eating from a can of Daisy-brand condensed milk while reading, and the rabbit seemed to like the smell. It—she—poked her nose into the can.
"Sorry," he said, holding the can out of the rabbit's reach. "Pretty sure this would kill you. Like everything else in the goddamn world."
The rabbit looked at him for a long moment. Then it whapped him again and hopped down from the bunk, apparently offended. It really wanted that fucking canned diabetes.
So. Daisy.
He wasn’t sure why, but the little shit’s attitude made him smile. He stroked Daisy’s long ears, and she whuffed and snuggled into his hand.
Yeah. He was gonna win the bet.