Work Text:
It’s not really that Russel really intends to question Finn’s judgement—he’s not their captain for nothing, after all, and there’s no leg he has to stand on himself, because God knows how Russel’s own foray at leading on Liquid had gone anyway—but being paired up with Helvijs leaves him with this ball of wound up nervous energy that just won’t go away.
He wonders how much Helvijs had known beforehand, or if Faze had simply elected for the news to be a fun little surprise, embellished with jazz hands and that signature Faze flair.
He certainly hadn’t acted surprised at all, had greeted Russel with a tiny dip of the head and a flat “Welcome back, musketeer” and not much else.
That’s not…bad, he supposes, professional and even borderline nice—by Broky standards, at least—and it certainly was very Broky. The shared nickname had gotten a smile out of Russel, though it had faded almost painfully fast when it became evidently clear that Helvijs simply had no other incentive to talk to him.
He’s talked more to Jonathan and even Frozen than he has to Helvijs, and wow, that’s the guy that’s been stuck on the bench for the new kid for the last couple of weeks and Russel’s own replacement after he’d left Faze just two years back. Well, one and half, to be precise, but really, who’s counting?
Point is, he’s barely interacted with Helvijs at all since he came back and he can’t quite figure out why. It’s not as if Helvijs is really avoiding him—not that he really can anyway—because Russel sees him at least once a day, usually down at the shooting range, surrounded by the pieces of his sniper rifle as he practices assembling and disassembling it with deft hands. If its not there, then it’s near the kitchens, even if Helvijs doesn’t even eat, or in the halls or even right outside of the shower, because personal space is always one of the first things sacrificed when they’re preparing for a hit like this.
He's even walked in during one of Helvijs’ routine tune ups, the panel set in the back of his head, normally covered up by synthetic skin and (sometimes) hair flawless enough that even Russel couldn’t tell that he was all mechanical beneath it all, popped up out of place while Finn checked the wires and connections and what-not wound around what should be Helvijs’ spine.
Russel had wandered in, old blue LEDs still half hanging out of his arm, and immediately frozen in place. Finn, if he noticed it or the way Helvijs’ eyes had immediately flicked up towards him, didn’t comment on it, merely offering a greeting before eyeing his clearly offline arm and pointing at the same dusty box shoved unceremoniously in a corner. “Don’t make me catch you blinking and giving our position away later though,” he had warned, only half jokingly, while Russel dug through the tangled wires and finally resurfaced with a handful of small red LEDs.
Through it all, Helvijs had kept staring at him, eyes flickering blue, and had said nothing.
And normally, Russel would offer a retort of some kind, because really? Coming from you, Karrigan? but all he finds himself able to do is walk away, LEDs in hand, while pretending that he isn’t running away from something.
He’d done his very best to just focus on installing the little lights properly, and tried to put all thoughts of flickering blue optics, musketeers, and Latvians out of his mind.
It had worked. Kind of. At least, he successfully manages to ignore the way his brain nags at him until Finn and Håvard call them in for a final meeting and inevitably, Russel finds himself pushed up against Helvijs in a corner, elbows and Kevlar and the hard edges of guns and nades digging into each other in that hyper-specific way Russel refuses to acknowledge makes him think of a certain Estonian.
Instead of thinking about him though, Russel finds himself half-staring at the curve of Helvijs’ ear, his flesh-and-bone hand worrying idly at the tiny ‘3’ engraved carefully into the thin plates of his mechanical wrist while wondering if Helvijs’ matching stamp is still there, and honestly, that might be worse. In the background, Finn goes on about how this should be a simple mission, almost like an exercise—just in to grab yet another Locked Nondescript Business Briefcase, an added ‘TM’ for dramatic effect, and out before anything can have the chance fuck this up.
“It should be easy enough”, he warns, flipping a flashbang in his hand, “but we’ll have Broky and Twistzz in a nearby building on look-out in case anything goes wrong,” and that immediately has Russel’s head snapping up.
Finn meets his eyes, gaze firm, and he doesn’t even get the chance to consider what he wants to respond with before Helvijs is nodding once.
“Good. We shouldn’t have anyone interfering, and this hit is better done quietly, but if shit goes down, use your comms, okay boys?”
Agreement sounds out through the room, and Håvard at least offers him a knowing and somewhat sympathetic look, but Finn ignores his aggressive attempts at eye contact and Helvijs, as always, says nothing, just adjusts his hand on the case of his sniper rifle and steps out of the room first, eyes briefly flickering electric-blue as he connects to their comms before the color settles back down to his normal hue.
Fine.
This can happen. Whatever. Russel can be professional about this. It’s just his every-day hit. He can stop thinking about it, surely.
He can’t stop thinking about it. Good fucking God, this is why he failed on Liquid.
Awkwardly, he shifts his grip on his AK, head turning in some pretense of keeping watch, before his eyes inevitably turn back down to Helvijs, gazing steadily through his scope.
Their comms went dead a few minutes ago, but he’s seen no flashes of light from inside the building, heard no pops of gunfire or civilian screaming, so it’s all going smoothly, at least.
If Helvijs can feel Russel’s eyes boring into him, he makes no sign of it, lying utterly still on the concerete, weapon trained down at the building across the street. If someone’s breaking the silence, it won’t be him, Russel realizes. The flashbangs on his belt clack gently as he shifts his weight from foot to foot.
And finally, “Are you avoiding me?”
That.
Hm.
That is not what Russel meant to say.
But it makes Helvijs stop—stop breathing for a moment, actually, because that’s really the only movement he can afford like this, before his lungs start back up again with a near inaudible hiss of steam. “No.”
“You’re ignoring me.”
A beat of silence that stretches on for just an eternity too long. “No.”
Russel leans forward, just far enough that he can peek at Helvijs’ face, and he manages to catch the way Helvijs’ face goes completely empty, artifically blank in the way only turning off his expressions could be, and Russel snorts. “Come on,” he says, pushing a flyaway strand of hair out of his face. “You just turned off your emotions in front of me.” Helvijs’ eyes flicker up at him for a split second, before they return back to staring through his scope. “This isn’t because I, like, I don’t know, left two years ago or something, right?”
That doesn’t really seem fair, Russel thinks, not when shuffling from team to team, year after year, was almost expected in their world, and not when Russel’s far from the first person to leave.
“No.”
Russel’s exhale is near explosive in the dead air, and he sees Helvijs flinch slightly at the volume, gaze moving back up to shoot him a quick reproachful glare for being loud. Russel ignores him. “I know that you’re now technically a robot and all—”
“Android.”
“Android, yeah, sure, and I know it’s been two years, but I can still tell when you turn your expressions off, you know.” Helvijs doesn’t respond. Russel sighs. “And,” he adds, “it’s not as if you can still fool me with your expressionless and emotionless act. It hasn’t been that long.”
This time, Helvijs’ eyes don’t return back to his scope immediately. Instead, they flicker slightly, brightening and dimming as he seems to consider something, and Russel finds himself waiting with bated breath.
But, of course, because Russel’s life so very clearly has a habit of being nice to him, whatever response he might have gotten is interrupted by a blinding light and—
Something slams into the side of his head, sending him reeling into a wall, his gun clattering from his hands, and he gets the brief notion that maybe he should fight back, should let someone know that their mission was no longer going to be so nice and easy because that was a flashbang going off near the door, but he’s too disoriented to do much but hit the floor, hard enough the impact rattles up his head and down his spine.
He thinks he says something like “Oh, fuck,” but even as his jaw moves, the high pitched ringing in his ears drowns it all out.
The sparks start to clear out of his eyes and he blinks frantically, trying to look past the afterimages blurring his vision, but the world swims nauseatingly when he lifts his head, so he lets it drop back down, trying to realign the swimming shadows of the cracks in the ceiling instead.
An annoyingly bright yellow light glints down at him, and sluggishly, he raises his hands to try and fight off whoever it is standing above him, but they bat his arms away, fingers punching through the plates protecting the joints of Russel’s mechanical arm, and sparks throw themselves across the skin of his cheek as they rip something out.
It’s a testiment to how fried he is when it doesn’t even hurt, and holy fuck, what the hell had been in that flashbang?
“Trade secret.” It takes a moment for him to make out the muffled words, that yellow light blinking back down at him, and God fucking damn it, Russel recognizes that eye.
Surprisingly, he’s allowed to claw his way half upright, mechanical arm dragging him down, fully dead weight.
Robin stares back at him, face blank, one of his dualies held loosely in a hand, and Russel knows it’s been half a year now—more than that, really—but seeing that poisonous yellow shine out of Robin’s left eye instead of some shade of red still feels wrong.
Russel manages to drag his eyes away, only for his gaze to catch on Helvijs, crumpled in a heap on the floor, sparks still jumping erratically out of the now exposed port in the back of his neck. His gun’s been kicked to the other side of the room, lying there haphazard by his pistol and knife, and Russel looks up to see Robin idly tuck another flashbang onto his belt.
Of course. Their easy mission involves dealing with fucking Vitality.
Russel hates bees.
Then again…
When he looks again, he realizes that Robin’s not quite as shiny and polished as he’d been just a few months ago. He looks better than Russel does at least, better than Helvijs, but his cybernetics sport their own fair share of scrapes and dings, the metal of his mechanical eye scuffed slightly, and somehow, that’s what cracks something in Russel’s chest.
He lets out a snort, letting himself slump back down to the ground. “Damn it, Robin.” His own pistol and knife are nowhere to be seen, his AK lying on the dusty ground behind Robin, all tangled up in his utility belt. He knows when he’s been beat.
Robin tilts his head at that, a quick smile flickering over his face. “Maybe that’ll teach you two to finally get some anti-EMP wiring,” he snarks back, and for a moment, Russel could pretend that it was red shining out of his eye instead of the obnoxious yellow he’s had all year.
“Is that what you put in the flashbang? Fuck.”
“No hard feelings,” is all Robin replies with, shrugging. His mechanical eye flickers, yellow darkening to orange for a moment. “Twistzz and Broky down. Building across from you is clear.” It’s almost fascinating, Russel thinks, watching Robin brush off any lingering emotion, but as he studies Robin’s face, he suddenly finds all thoughts of Vitality or yellow flooding out of his mind.
Robin’s little ‘3’ is gone, he realizes, replaced by a little splotch beneath his eye, as if it’d been buffed out by someone recently.
Suddenly, his stamp, which he’d covered up while he’d been on Liquid but had never really had the heart to scratch out or permenantly remove despite the fact he’d left first, burns.
Helvijs, still motionless, doesn’t stir at all when Russel’s gaze moves to him. He wonders, again, if Helvijs knew about any of this at all, and if Helvijs had kept his stamp, carved at the same time his and Robin’s had been in a drunken dare three years ago, hidden just under his ear.
It’d be ironic—cruelly poetic, Russel thinks, if he’s the only one who’d kept their mark after all this time.
Suddenly, there’s this bitter taste in his mouth as he watches Robin turn away, nudging Russel’s weapons further away from him, moving to step out of the door.
Before he can stop himself, he’s calling out. “Robin!”
In the doorway, Robin stops, glancing over his shoulder, hands deceptively calm and loose at his side.
They stare at each other for a moment, and whatever words Russel thinks he could have said harden in his throat.
Finally, it’s Robin who smiles, quick and almost not there at all. “Better luck next time, musketeer.”
And Russel can do nothing but watch him leave.