Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Wash wakes up feeling overheated, slightly cramped, and shockingly well-rested. The cause of the first two is unambiguous: he blearily re-enters consciousness in an awkward curl, elbows and knees jammed in on himself, tucked tightly against a warm body. As far as the third goes, it’s a mystery he has no resources to solve.

He opens his eyes to the sight of Maine’s shoulder and throat, the line of his jaw, face lax with sleep. Wash’s breath stills, and it’s a long moment before he can force himself to look away and take in the surroundings past Maine. He’s eventually able to determine that he's the one closer to the edge of the cots, and Maine is sprawled halfway up against the wall. With ample protest from his cramped knees, he carefully unfolds himself and slowly, slowly slides over to swing his feet to the floor.

He gets as far as bracing his hands on the edge of the cot when he feels a touch at the edge of his palm.

For a while, neither of them move. Wash’s eyes are stuck on the sight of Maine’s fingers against his, a haphazard pattern of skin and nicks and scars over threadbare sheets. He can feel Maine’s gaze on his face.

And then Maine sighs quietly, contentedly, and settles himself again, hand dragging over the sheets to rest back over his chest, and within seconds his breaths are slow and deep again. Wash feels an odd smile trying to tug at the corners of his mouth, and doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

He stands and stretches, easing the sleep out of his muscles. The safehouse looks even smaller in the thin morning light, somehow, and Wash grabs a cardboard-y meal-in-a-bar and quietly steps outside before the prickle at the back of his neck can get any more insistent.

It’s both better and worse outside. Better for being out of that shoebox, in fresh air, with cool morning fog hanging low; worse for the sheer scale of isolation surrounding him, inexorably present in the wooded hush. They'd driven for two hours on a dirt road with nothing but endless trees arching over and around the car, and now it feels almost stifling, almost claustrophobic. Nothing but trees for miles and miles.

Wash ducks under the overhang that’s hiding their Warthog, sits on the fender, and thinks about Carolina. About how easy it must have been for the Meta to toss her off a cliff like a rag doll. About the sickening crack of ice when the Warthog impacted against the frozen drifts. About familiar hands scrabbling at ice and snow and then nothing but empty air. About how the Meta could never quite get a shot to line up in all those months of them hunting each other down, not even at the very end. About Maine's hands curved gently around his.

He doesn't jump when he hears the slight creak of the safehouse door, but it's a near thing. The sound of footfalls precedes Maine; Wash watches as he succumbs to reflex first and checks the corners, then ducks under the overhang as well, eyeballing the low roof warily before straightening back up.

Maine holds out a well-worn cup containing something that looks like tar, and Wash accepts the offering silently. The coffee certainly smells better than it looks, and he doesn't even need to brace himself for it when he goes in for a second sip. The 'Hog settles down a few inches when Maine sits down next to him.

There's still a lot between them that needs to be said. A lot. Wash can feel it brewing between them, but he doesn't dread it. Last night— something eased last night. Some wall had its foundations eroded. Just enough to shift.

"Do you remember," Wash starts, "when we were hunting down Epsilon and we ended up at that desert outpost, and you tried to say you hadn't seen that floating containment unit back at Valhalla?"

Maine gives him a long, odd look, and finally nods cautiously.

"That was–” Wash looks down into the sludgey dregs in his cup and bites back a smile. "That was one of the funniest damn things that happened to me then. In retrospect, I mean. I was pissed at the time." His own reflection stares up at him from the coffee, warped and muddled. "That's when I thought… yeah, maybe there's a chance. That it's you." He looks over at Maine. "I should have said something. I should have done something. I'm sorry."

Maine is still wearing an odd look on his face, but there's a familiar crinkle to his eyes, just the slightest tilt to his mouth, and he gently knocks his shoulder into Wash's.

"Can't change past," he says. "Can only work on future."

"I want to." Wash holds Maine's gaze with resolve, even though it's taking much more effort than it should. "Work on a future."

The unspoken second half of that sentence hangs palpably between them, and Wash's heart is somehow both in his stomach and also lodged in his throat. It takes Maine a split second – an agonizing fraction of a second where Wash tries to weigh what to spit out to cover that unsaid with you – and then Maine smiles.

"Good," he says, and leans back so that their shoulders touch.

They migrate back inside once they've had their fill of fresh air, and once the exchange of body heat along their sides stops being an adequate ward against the damp chill. The cots return to their shipshape stowage against the walls, the table is cleared of all miscellany, and Wash sets up his datapad to display on one of the blank walls. Maine sits down next to him with a sigh.

"So," Wash says, and stares up at his wall of data.

"So," Maine echoes.

Wash has no idea what to tackle first. He scans the recent batch of notes – all Maine's, he notices with a lance of guilt, since he was in no shape to take in any of this last night – and decides to talk about the first thing that catches his eye.

"Locus has to be a mole," he says. Maine hums in agreement; Wash updates their file. Locus - [decrypted metadata] - FAC compromised. "And there have to be others with the New Republic." Threads, threads, threads. Wash weaves them together and pulls. "This battle, the one they outright stated they engineered — there was detailed information on the New Republic's troops beforehand. Inside information, not guesswork."

Maine digs through a couple of files, clearly knowing what he's looking for, and eventually pulls up a short, plaintext report. Wash scans it, then turns to stare at Maine.

"They assassinated a general?" he asks flatly.

"Seems so," Maine replies, and the echo of a sneer flits across his face. "But, Wash— who's they?"

The question stops Wash's thoughts in their tracks.

Who is this?

It's coordinated. Subtle. Definitely within the general scope of what Aiden Price would be capable of manipulating. But the sheer scale implicates the presence of something a criminal on the run wouldn't necessarily have access to.

"Who's funding this?" Maine looks at him, and his brows slowly furrow. Wash goes on. "Say this is some kind of black market thing. Or a testing ground for new weapons, with the citizens of Chorus as the lab rats." An involuntary shiver crawls down his spine. "Where's the money coming from? Chorus is a backwater ag-industry planet that barely exported enough to make a profit before the Great War. Someone has to be bankrolling all this."

Wash pulls up a new section in their notes.

Human-Covenant War ends
UEG ignores Chorus’s post-war needs
NRC splits from FAC/Chorus gov’t
Mercenaries recruited to help w/ skirmishes
Group (?) moves in
War eliminates possibility of offplanet travel
Telecom networks go down
General(s?) assassinated
New weapons?
End goal?

“Need more intel,” Maine says, simply, like this is a conclusion he’s long come to, and he's been waiting for Wash to catch up.

“Where from?” Wash asks, and he can feel his voice edging into snappiness. “What we did at that Forerunner facility was as good as painting a target on our backs. This group or faction or whatever, they knew weeks ago that someone pinged their comm lines, and they know now that someone is willing to attack their bases.” Maine’s face starts to form into a rebuttal, and Wash heads it off. “If they haven’t either warned both Chorus armies or played them against each other over this, they will soon.”

Another sneer, more thunderous this time, crosses Maine’s face, but it tapers off as he looks back at the data they’ve managed to scrape together. Wash follows suit, and thinks.

It does feel like a pitiful amount of information. For the first time in a long, long time, Wash gets dangerously close to wishing he were back in the military. There are chains of command of yank on, protocols to cite, people to wheedle information out of, records to check. And here, nothing. No resources. Just Maine.

...Well. Not just.

"You're right, though," Wash concedes, belatedly. "We do need intel. I just don't know how we can get more information without risking our lives on an even bigger scale than we are now."

Maine lets out a long, measured sigh and runs a hand through his hair. The movement leaves their arms resting together shoulder to elbow. Wash nudges his datapad closer, and then pulls up a map and starts flipping through all their various sets of flags and routes. He doesn't know what he's looking for. There won't be an X marking the spot or an abandoned, secret hidden base with all the intel they could ever need. There's only the Feds, the Republic, the mercs trapped between them, and… these people.

...Huh. Wash goes back and turns off everything except city names and an old layer, one Wash had found while scrounging around at that very first base Maine had dragged him to.

The location they'd scraped from yesterday’s data is about a week's drive away, probably closer to two if they skirt around hotspots and stop to sleep a normal amount per night. It's east of Armonia, in some isolated mountains with few roadways marked, and suspiciously far from any civil war activity. A day south of Armonia, a small flag notes the location of a sizable merc base.

Wash sits back and mulls it over. Any merc base close to Armonia must have its fingers on the pulse of what’s going on in the area, Federal Army or Republic. And if there's a long-range comms facility in the area, close enough to be a noteworthy dead zone of no activity—

"No," Maine grunts, and reaches over to flick off the layer showing locations of merc bases before turning his head away.

"No what?" Wash looks over at him, uncomprehending. "Mercs in that area might know what's going on, or have intel on that base, or something. If we ask—”

“Don’t want to involve them. Not their shit. Involving you, mistake.”

Anger flares up in his chest like magnesium, white-hot.

“Asking for help is not a mistake.” Maine doesn't respond, head still turned, jaw clenched. "Maine." Wash wraps a hand around his wrist, and that finally gets his attention, surprise flitting across his face as Wash tightens his grip. The heat is still simmering under his skin, fueled by every injustice they've lived through, every way they watched their friends get beaten down, and in spite of it all Wash's voice falls quiet. "Asking for help is not a mistake. Not ever."

That wall between them, with its shifted foundations, crumbles just a little further. Wash feels it in the slow release of tension at every point they're touching, in the loosening of his own hand around Maine's wrist.

Maine looks at him, and Wash can pick apart all the various things simmering in his face, too: anger, like Wash’s, fueled by the same things; reluctance and resentment and old wounds. Maine shifts his arm in Wash’s now-slack grip, but doesn’t pull away.

“Carolina, right. Shitty of me, us, to pull people into our mess.”

“It’s their planet,” Wash says, still quiet. “Anyone here’s got as much of a right to push back as we do.”

“Don’t want to hurt them more,” Maine replies, and he looks away again. “You too. Feel guilty. Could have left you with friends. Not opened old injuries.”

“For the last god damn time,” Wash says, hand tightening on Maine’s wrist again, “I want to be here. I would–” Maine looks back at him, eyes unreadable this time. Wash swallows, suddenly nervous, anxiety skittering from his chest down to his fingers. “I wouldn’t want to keep living, thinking you’re dead, when that’s not true. It was the same when Carolina showed up. I’ve spent enough time thinking you’re gone.”

Maine’s other hand drifts on top of Wash’s where he’s still holding Maine’s wrist, and Wash relents on his grip once more, fingertips buzzing with all-too-much energy under the weight of Maine's palm.

"You're right." Maine closes his eyes. His voice is sounding hoarse and rough and Wash has half a mind to push a datapad over for him but one of his hands is trapped between Maine's palms now, and the other refuses to cooperate. "Can't make choices for someone. Can only offer."

Wash doesn't know what to say to that, and says nothing. They sit there for a bizarrely indeterminate, both-long-and-short amount of time; Wash watches Maine's face and Maine watches their hands, one thumb pacing steadily up and down the side of Wash's palm, the touch almost light enough to tickle.

Wash realizes that he's still tense, holding himself tightly, reflexively minimizing all contact besides what Maine has reached for. It shouldn't be hard to just fucking relax and the simple act of Maine touching him shouldn't be setting off anything other than mild pleasantries but Wash still has to exhale a steadying breath as he forcibly shoves tension out of his spine and thighs and shoulders.

This is a moment of sorts, maybe, perhaps, and Wash thinks that he should possibly try to say something to breach the quiet between them, but nothing feels good or right or natural. And really, he's said everything he's needed to say. For now.

It’s a weird moment. Wash lets it be weird. It’s much better that way.

They leave the safehouse while the sun is low and the fog still clings to the treetops, and Wash lets familiar comfort sink into him now the way it refused to the previous night. Nothing but road and engine and Maine’s presence.

They’ve settled on heading north, for now. Regardless of what they decide later, the communications facility is to the north, Armonia is to the north, and so are a smattering of merc bases and safehouses. Maine had confessed to never having been this deep on the continent; he and Sam and Lucia had spent much more time to the west and across the Sea, helping more isolated cities evacuate towards larger, safer gatherings of people. Not that it really mattered, in the end.

Chorus must have been beautiful, once. Wash can see it in swaths of ruined farmland being slowly reclaimed by nature; deep slate-gray rock studding hillsides, rich earth turned up in impact craters. Chorus isn’t home to him, or anything even approaching it, but he’s come to feel a sort of kinship with this scrappy planet full of people who refuse to give it up, for reasons right and wrong and everything in between. Maine spends most of his hours as the passenger watching the landscape, and Wash tries not to get too lost in the easy, relaxed line of his body, in such stark contrast to… everything before.

They have two full days of travel before hitting the first larger city they’ll be seeing in about a month. Wash tries not to be nervous when they stop for the night, but he pores over the maps anyways, marking out all the roads that lead in towards Tajrha and the back alleys that lead out. In the morning, they take the roadways that snake down hills like streams into a floodplain, pooling together alongside other cars and trucks carrying passengers and other cargo.

Wash feels distinctly, uncomfortably naked. There’s something truly unsettling about the mundanity of obeying traffic laws, of all things, but he obediently eases to a stop as the lights turn red even though his grip on the steering wheel tightens. It might be vestiges of paranoia still rattling around, or his senses trying to warn him of genuine threat, or something else, or nothing at all, but the discomfort persists nevertheless in slivers and shards just under the surface of his skin.

“You good?” Maine asks as the lights turn green, and they’re allowed to crawl forward another half-mile.

“No,” Wash replies, churlishly. Maine chuckles quietly, and Wash bites back a wave of almost-fond annoyance. “The sooner we leave, the better.”

Maine hums in agreement, and they roll to a stop once more.

Wash stares out at the other cars on the roadway, dark windows reflecting streetlamps and headlights and bright signs. The car next to them is thumping loudly with some music Wash’s doesn’t recognize and the woman driving the car is bopping her head to it, lips moving along in time. The car behind them is full of teenagers or twenty-somethings all talking over each other excitedly, leaning into the front seat, getting pushed back by the driver, hands hanging out the windows and idling in the cold air. Another car is caked with dirt, a ring flashing dully on the driver’s hand as she taps her fingers along to the radio, coveralls rolled up to the elbow and just as dirt-streaked as the car.

It feels so normal. Much more normal than the clinical, sanitized veneer of civilian life back in Cina. The gap is what’s unsettling. Life goes on. Life goes on. Even when things are as bad as they are. Two of the kids in his rearview mirror twine their fingers together and shout along to a song, raising their joined hands in triumph, and Wash looks over at Maine.

“Sorry,” he finally says.

“Hmm?”

“For being pissed.”

Maine laughs again, warmer and louder this time.

“Like you said,” he rumbles, “stop saying sorry. ‘S’fine.” His hand comes to rest on Wash’s knee in counterpoint to the hard plasteel of the ‘Hog’s body, warm and pliant. “People have feelings. Green.”

“What?”

“Go,” Maine repeats, tipping his head forward. “Green. Go.”

Oh. Lights. Green.

“Weird,” Maine finally says, once they’ve merged back onto a roadway without traffic lights. “This city. Feel it too. Not used to normal.”

Wash lets his thoughts steep as he takes a wide turn and gravel cracks under their tires. He’s not naive enough to think this city’s been a perfect refuge or anything like that; there are signs of war all around, shelled husks of buildings and abandoned neighborhoods. They’d even driven past some graffiti on the southern outskirts reading BETTER DEAD THAN FED sprayed over with WHO REPUBLIC?, though Wash had, admittedly, bitten back a snort at that because it was exactly the kind of idiot thing the Reds and Blues would have done.

“Life goes on,” he murmurs, voicing his thoughts. “I’m glad it does.”

They’d both managed to scrape together some map data from around the city, plotting out a steady course of civilization – former, or enduring, or both – leading northwards along a network of roadways, crawling towards Armonia like veins. Maybe they did carry the planet’s lifeblood, once; hauling lumber and crops to the space elevator to be dispatched to spaceports in- and out-of-system. Maybe they will again someday.

Wash finds himself idly daydreaming about what the skyline would have looked like as the sun sets with Tajrha to their backs. The space elevator reaching up into the network crowning Chorus’s sky. Metal lit up by the glow of sunlight, glinting in low orbit. Ships flitting around like meteors above them in shipping lanes almost too far to be seen.

Maine taps the steering wheel idly while he drives, and Wash can’t place the rhythm or if it even belongs to a song. He pulls up his map again and first checks the status of both their shielding recalibrations, then gauges the distance to the closest flagged location, some roadside hostel or inn that a trucker’s map had marked as safe and anonymous. It’ll be worth at least trying to eavesdrop on some conversation and check the local filenet for news, for any updates on the state of the capital city. According to Maine, the fighting has always been worse there; something about the symbolic heart, or other patriotic things Wash has never in his life been able to muster.

“What do you think we’ll find?” Wash asks.

“Hmm?”

“In that comms facility.”

Maine is quiet for a long moment, road humming underneath the tires.

“Dunno,” he finally replies. “Hopefully, answers. Or another place. Or someone. A reason.”

“Answers,” Wash muses. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want answers. Or need them.”

“Then what?”

Wash is silent. The road stretches on in the harsh pale cone of their headlights, old reflective mile markers blurring into senseless shapes.

“I want this to end,” he finally says. “I want this war to be over, and then—”

The air stills in his throat.

The phrase wants to march out, rote and plastic, demanding that he shape out the words I want to go home.

Wash clenches his jaw. Home is a joke. Home is an empty dormitory on Luna at eleven years old. Home is no escape on a ship housing a project destined for failure.

Home is—

Endless complaining for the sake of complaining. Shitty jokes. Fielding nonsense questions about every topic imaginable. Holding five other people together in the shadow of wreckage because he’s lived the alternative far too many times.

“Wash?” Maine is glancing at him in minuscule ticks of his helmet, visor refracting the glow of their headlights into a soft blur as he looks between Wash and the road, darkness racing infinite ahead of them. “You good?”

“Are you going to leave Chorus? Afterwards.”

Maine is quiet. The road hums on, tires to cracked asphalt.

“Dunno. Depends.” He pauses. “You?”

“I don’t know,” Wash echoes slowly. “It depends.”

There’s never been an after. There’s never been a future. There’s never been a home because there’s never been an end state. Not during the Great War, shades away from absolute and utter annihilation second after second. Not after Epsilon. Not after Alpha. Not after Carolina and the Director and a crashing ship. This one ill-thought-out conversation has blown open a door that Wash has refused to acknowledge for years, and his skin crawls as his world realigns itself to the possibility of something. Anything.

“Afterwards,” he tries, mouth bone-dry, “let’s find Carolina again.”

Maine is quiet for a handful of seconds. Air rushing. ‘Hog rumbling.

And then Maine hums, coloring the simple noise with warmth.

“Reds, Blues, too,” he adds.

“You’re kidding. Why?”

“Owe ‘em,” Maine says simply, then tilts his helmet with slow, sly grace. “Cliff or two.”

“That’s– I don’t–” Maine laughs quietly as Wash struggles to find words, but the laughter ends up catching on as Wash finally forces something out. “That’s awful.”

“Eye for eye.” Maine shrugs, offhand, but his voice is still warm. “Besides. Your friends. Should see them again.”

“Then Sam and Lucía, too,” Wash counters.

Maine laughs again, and then hums in agreement once more. The conversation fades back into familiar not-quite-silence, road and tires, engine, air, and Wash doesn’t feel quite as thrown anymore by the concept of after. For the time being, at least.

“Wash.” Maine glances over again, visor glinting. “Tell you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Looking for Merope took time.” Maine’s hands curl around the steering wheel. “Had time to think. What if you, what if Carolina. Didn’t know, which better or worse. You, killed me. Me, killed her.” He shrugs, but the motion is tighter this time, stiffer. “Couldn’t choose, even now. Both my friends. But— glad it was you.”

Wash swallows past the sudden resurgence of dryness in his mouth and throat, and the ambient noise feels almost deafening.

“Me too,” he replies, quiet and even, though he feels neither of those things.

The soft clink of ceramic-plated plasteel on ceramic-plated plasteel should be jarring, but it’s not, and Maine’s hand feels so much heavier than it should be as he reaches down to rest it over Wash’s, gauntlets brushing plate-to-plate, suit-to-suit in the absence of shields, HUD still ticking down progress on recalibration. It should be a lot of things that it isn’t, and it isn’t a lot of things that it should be, and Wash lets the soft pressure in the spaces between his fingers be a comfort as the road unfurls before them into night.

The roadside inn is visible from miles away, lit up by headlights and the bright, faux-inviting sign proclaiming it a cheap place to eat and sleep. The building itself is in a state of not-quite-disrepair; Wash guesses it wasn’t ever really in repair enough for it to be considered in disrepair. But there are people spilling out into the parking lot wearing armor, shouting angrily and jovially and drunkenly, truckers milling about and mixing in with the half-armored, mostly armed crowd, and Wash feels fairly confident in the anonymity of the place. Even if it’s too rowdy to stay for the night – god, he feels so old thinking it – they can at least check the filenet and get some food.

Maine parks the Warthog further away from the hubbub of the doors, and looks over at Wash with a question written in his posture.

“I’ll check the local filenet from here,” Wash says. “I could use a warm meal, but–” He winces as several people shout in apparent victory, followed by the sound of breaking glass and uproarious laughter. “–I don’t need it that bad.”

Maine grunts, agreeing, and pulls out his own datapad as Wash gets access to the most recent files. Nothing of note pops up immediately, but there’s an entire section dedicated to updates on Armonia and surrounding areas, and Wash downloads the entire directory to scour through at some point later.

“Food?” Maine asks, setting down his datapad. “Might go quick. Seems like, armor okay.”

“I’ve gotten everything I want off the local files,” Wash replies, then weighs his options. “I’ll go get us some food if you scope out what the rooms look like. If it’s a mess, we’ll find somewhere offroad.”

Maine nods, then climbs out of the ‘Hog and stretches as much as the armor will allow as Wash stows his datapad, deliberates over his weapons, and settles on tucking a knife into the magsheath the small of his back and one more against his thigh for good measure before setting off.

The knot of people grows denser the closer he gets to the door, and it is absolutely cacophonous inside the bar itself, people practically crawling over each other, unidentifiable music thumping loud enough to be heard even through his helmet. Thankfully, Wash only has to wait about five minutes for the food to be ready once he’s ordered, so he finds a free corner and tries not to feel like he’s sulking.

There’s an impressive spread of people here, and Wash gets the sense that this is what a usual night looks like here. There’s groups of truckers clustered together arguing over maps, several tables with helmets and gauntlets scattered between stacks of plates and glasses, dartboards bristling with knives.

He deliberates for a moment before taking off his helmet, and the noise and smell hit him immediately, strong enough to make him want to grimace. Most certainly smells like a bar. There’s a roar of laughter from a nearby group and the music shifts, and Wash is considering putting his helmet right back on when someone touches his shoulder.

Wash moves before he's aware of it, shrugging off the unknown hand and moving around the nearest stool, one hand awkwardly holding his helmet and the other on the hilt of a knife.

"Hey, man— oh shit, sorry," the stranger says, eyes wide, "fuck, dude, I thought you were a friend. My bad."

Wash exhales carefully.

"It's alright," he says, wary, and slowly straightens his back. "No harm, no foul."

“Good for you, the guy I thought you were is a douche,” the stranger says, leaning in to be heard over the din, vowels singing Chorus through and through. “Still lookin’ for some company, though. How ‘bout a drink?” A smile plays around his mouth, lighting up his eyes.

Wash feels the attempt slide over him like a knife to his ribs, and ice prickles over his skin as he's flooded with an unidentifiable chill.

He's spared from spitting out an answer by a server bellowing his order number practically into his ear, and he barely has time to back away before he’s flooded with disappointment that the server is shoving take-away containers across the counter at him right where he stands rather than calling him away, and he doesn’t have an excuse to just leave.

“Oh, let me help,” the stranger says cheerfully, and Wash snatches up as many containers as he can before the man can butt in even further, not even bothering to pull his helmet back on.

“I’m fine,” Wash snaps.

“Hey, at least let me get the door for you if you’re not up for a drink,” Worst Nightmare replies, still cheerful. “Which is cool, like you said, no harm, no foul. Which way?”

Wash’s lip curls, but he’s got thin biodegradable plastic stacked up almost to his nose and his helmet slipping off his crooked fingers, and he jerks his chin towards the door he came in. Worst Nightmare sets off, clearing the way ahead for Wash, parting people like stalks of grass, and Wash resigns himself to accepting the help. Which he doesn’t need. The man is wearing armor too, some unidentifiable color in the muddy dim light, accented with strips of glaring white.

Worst Nightmare only stops at one table, just to bend down and shout something into a woman’s ear before heading on, gloved hand patting her armored shoulder amiably. He props the door open and waits for Wash to walk through.

“Thanks,” Wash grinds out through gritted teeth, lengthening his strides in an attempt to leave Worst Nightmare behind, but unfortunately he keeps pace as Wash weaves through the thinned crowd along the outside of the building.

“Sure you don’t need a hand? I could grab some of those for you,” Worst Nightmare asks, voice bright and polite. And alright, maybe Wash is being a dick, or maybe—

He rounds the corner to see Maine ambling towards the bar, and relief blooms tightly in his chest even as the stranger continues to keep pace with him. Maine is without his helmet, hair pushed back carelessly, warm light spilling across his face through the windows.

Maine’s eyes immediately snap to Wash’s face, then slide over to his unfortunate companion.

"Perfect timing," Wash says, ice running cold and clear through his veins. He closes the distance between them and shoves the precariously stacked containers towards Maine. "Here."

Maine stoops down to shift the tubs into his hands, and as he does, Wash leans forward and presses a slightly misplaced kiss against the corner of his mouth.

"Thanks," he says airily, then turns, snatches the last container out of Worst Nightmare’s outstretched hand, notes his dimmed smile, then turns and marches back towards their parked Warthog.

He stands next to the driver’s-side door for about thirty seconds, at a loss for what to do, before Maine’s steady footfalls cease their rhythm behind him somewhere near their ‘Hog’s bumper. Wash pulls off his gauntlets and chucks them into the seat, then drags a hand down his face before turning around to face Maine’s inevitable raised eyebrows.

“I’m sorry,” Wash says, voice clipped. “That was without forewarning and for a petty reason. I won’t do that again.”

Maine is quiet as he finishes stacking up the steaming takeaway containers on the rear fender.

“‘S’okay,” he finally says, shrugging. “Don’t mind. You good?”

“Yes,” Wash snaps, and regrets his tone immediately. “Yes. I’m fine.”

Maine’s eyebrows remain raised and skeptical. Wash sighs again, hands flexing as he tries to banish the last of– that– and he reaches for a tub at random. The smell of maqluba – maybe a little greasier, more burnt than he remembers from childhood – hits him like a truck, and he realizes he’s starving. He gets halfway through the container before figuring out what he wants to say, and how he wants to say it.

“I’m not interested in random people,” Wash finally says. “I don’t want them to be interested in me.”

Maine’s eyes grow dark, and he looks out over the parking lot towards the spill of lights and people.

“You good?” he asks again, voice lower. “Something happen?”

“No,” Wash says, and when Maine’s lip curls, he quickly rephrases. “I mean, yes, I’m good. Nothing happened. Forget it. This guy just happened to piss me off.”

Maine gives him a long look, and then, apparently satisfied with whatever conclusion he reaches, he hunts down the bundle of waxed paper housing pita.

“If I fuck up,” Maine says slowly, “tell me.”

“What?”

“This. You.” He gestures with a wedge of pita. “I know – you said, okay. Trust you. Just want you to know, can always say I fucked up.”

Something hot and cold and yawning condenses to an impossible weight in Wash’s stomach as Maine’s words sink in, and he thinks about the way Maine’s thumb ran a gentle track up and down the side of his hand in the small cramped space of the safehouse, and he knows he’s holding the pieces of something vast in his hands but he doesn’t quite know what to do with them yet.

“I know,” Wash says quietly. “I appreciate it. Thank you.”

They fall into relative silence, working away at some of the food. It’ll reheat well enough, nothing that’ll get too soggy between meat and vegetables and rice, and Wash doesn’t regret the decision to buy enough for leftovers. Even after years of being relatively free from protein powder compressed into chalk-like meal replacement bars, fresh food still feels like heaven.

Maine leans back with a sigh and surveys the parking lot.

“Rooms okay. Stay the night?” he asks, before Wash can prompt him.

He thinks about it. It’s loud, sure, but they don’t stick out here among tired truckers and other mercs. And a bed is always enticing. And more food in the morning.

Wash shrugs agreeably.

They don’t bother stowing their armor in the ‘Hog, and manage to get a double room; the aging console that had spat a keycard out at them had shown no single rooms free, and Wash doesn’t want to think too hard about why.

The keycard lets them into an averagely shitty roadside motel room with two clean-but-eternally-musty-looking beds and one sad, spindly desk, upon which they both deposit their bags. Wash takes the shower first, and by the time he’s out, Maine has condensed their leftovers into a slightly more reasonable amount of containers rather than the absolute mountain the server had shoved upon him.

People are still shouting outside, though the din is fading as the night wears on. The bathroom door exhales a cloud of steam when Maine leaves, colored with the light not-a-smell of unscented soap, and they fall into a regular dance as they settle in for the night, silence falling over the motel as if the walls are going to sleep, too, hushing everyone along with them, and even the scratchy, unfamiliar pillow doesn’t do too much to deter Wash from falling into his usual muddled, uneasy doze.

The rasp of the lock is almost silent, but not quite. Wash snaps straight back into consciousness and forces his breath to keep to the odd, deep pattern of sleep, eyes cracked open, ears straining to hear more.

Another soft rasp, and the faintest click. Wash doesn’t need his time spent around certain lockpicks to know that whoever’s at the door is an amateur, but it does help highlight the clumsiness with which the intruder – intruders? – are making their attempt. A sliver of cold air blows across the back of his neck, almost like a breath, and the carpet sighs as it compresses under the weight of one footstep, and then several more.

Just one week. One fucking week without something going wrong or some earth-shaking revelation upending their progress. That would be nice.

He times sliding his hand under the pillow with one of Maine’s long, gravelly breaths, and as his fingers touch the hilt of his knife he realizes Maine is awake too. Wash has fallen asleep to this sound for weeks on end; the timing of the exhale is just slightly too mechanical, but Wash highly doubts anyone else would pick up on it.

The footsteps move, and Wash's ears catch the slight rustle of cloth. No armor. Probably carrying weapons, but at least no armor. That makes this much easier. He waits for a tell as one set of footsteps gets closer: two agonizing seconds, then four, then ten, and then he hears the muffled snap of cloth and a short, reflexive inhale as someone moves.

Wash moves as the intruder – one of them, there are other shadows in the room but he’ll deal with that later – pitches forward, clearly having expected their own knife to cease its downward momentum where Wash had been a split second ago. Wash makes a quick cut across their wrist and they drop the knife with a curse as all hell breaks loose.

Maine lunges out of bed at another attacker, tossing up the blankets, and the lump of sheets spits out a series of muffled curses before Maine sweeps their feet out and they drop to the ground, still.

“Don’t kill,” Maine manages to snarl, making fleeting eye contact with Wash, and Wash doesn’t think, just wraps his attacker in a chokehold before they can get up and squeezes until they go limp, pulse thudding against Wash’s forearms.

He vaults over the bed and disarms one of the two people attempting to take on Maine – unsuccessfully, Wash notes with vicious delight – using their distraction to his advantage, but she recovers quickly, slamming a foot into Wash’s gut and creating distance between them, and in the time it takes Wash to recover, she raises a pistol.

The room stills for a hair of a fraction of a second.

Maine knocks aside the man clawing at him like he’s made of paper and shoves himself bodily at the woman, impacting against the wall with a low thud, but the soft pop of the silenced magnum echoes even over the rush of air in Wash’s ears as he drops to the ground. Heat blooms over one shoulder, followed quickly by wetness, and Wash shuts it out of his mind completely before pushing back up to his feet, flipping the knife over in his hand, then letting it fly straight into the last man’s shoulder. He stumbles back into Maine’s waiting grip and ends up with his arms twisted into a painful lock. With a soft crack, his shoulder dislocates and he hunches over in Maine’s hold, chest heaving.

Wash walks – not stumbles, walks – up to the man, inspects his face, and then yanks his knife out.

“You do this to everyone who turns you down?” he asks, flicking blood off of the blade. A sneer builds on Maine’s face.

“Nothing personal,” the man pants, face drenched in sweat. “I swear, nothing personal, just the bounty. Night would’ve ended like this no matter what.”

He has the gall to wink at Wash.

Wash looks up at Maine, just briefly, before looking back down at the man. He’s not in armor, but it’s very obviously the same man who’d talked to him in the bar earlier; same flop of pale blond hair, same sharply cut yellow beard.

“Name,” Wash demands, voice flat.

“Den,” he replies, “Coulda asked me last night.”

Another grin. Wash ignores it.

“What bounty?”

Den cranes his head up, face contorted with pain, and even still he manages to grin instead of answering.

“What bounty,” Wash repeats, stepping closer. Maine heaves Den upright, forcing a huff of pain out of him, and his back arches as he attempts to ease up on the pressure Maine is exerting on one arm. The other hangs limply at his side, dislocated shoulder sagging. Den’s grin turns into a glare, chin tipped up as he squirms in Maine’s grip, and he still doesn’t answer.

Wash glances at Maine. Maine’s eyes skitter down towards Wash’s left shoulder, following the slow, cool flow of sticky wetness crawling down his arm.

“I’m going to ask one more time,” Wash says, and finally holds his knife up to Den’s throat, blade scraping melodious against a meticulously cultivated beard. “What. Bounty.”

“Fine,” he spits. Sweat rolls down his face. “Some people rolled through, the day before yesterday. Offered up a shitton of cash and some weapons to anyone who could bring in two mercs, your armor specs.”

Wash doesn’t break eye contact. He can see Maine’s jaw tighten.

“Who wants us dead?”

Den laughs, ragged and tight.

“Nah, not dead. They were firm on that. Doesn’t matter what state, as long as you’re alive. You musta really pissed someone off, huh?”

“Be glad it wasn’t you,” Wash says curtly. “Were they mercs? New Republic? Federal Army?”

Den is silent. More sweat rolls down his face, fracturing in his beard. Wash angles his knife.

“Fuck you. Mercs.”

“You’d turn a merc in for money? No honor among thieves, then.”

“I’d turn a merc in for my home,” Den spits back, and his eyes grow cold. “If someone wants you outta the picture bad enough to pay that kind of money, you must’ve done something real bad.”

His meaning is clear. It seems even the people of Chorus themselves have reason to believe the war was started – or worsened – by outside forces.

“Not on this planet, but sure,” Wash says. He pulls his knife away, and he can’t stop his fingers from trembling, but he looks back up at Maine. Maine nods. “Thanks for the information.”

“Wait—”

Maine’s arms move in a quick blur and Den manages to struggle for about five seconds before the chokehold renders him unconscious.

“Sit,” Maine snarls, letting Den crumple to the floor.

“Fine,” Wash grunts back, and shuffles until the backs of his knees hit a bed.

“Don’t move,” Maine adds, and stalks into the bathroom to return with a handful of towels, one of which he lobs at Wash, and the others he tears into even strips.

The blood loss is starting to make Wash lightheaded, and he sluggishly strips off his blood-soaked shirt, then braces himself and takes a look.

It’s shallow, surprisingly; the bullet must have clipped him at a weird angle, and the skin around the narrow track it left is raw and reddened. He presses the towel to the wound, setting aside the pain, and waits for Maine to finish binding and gagging Den and his associates. And shoving them all into an uncomfortable-looking pile. Just for good measure.

Maine holds out a hand to Wash, and his face brooks no argument. Wash slings the towel over his uninjured shoulder, wipes off his hand, and then grabs Maine’s forearm and lets himself get hauled to his feet.

The world swims, then narrows as Maine yanks him into the bathroom probably a bit more roughly than he deserves.

“I’m fine,” Wash snaps.

Maine gives him a thunderous look in return.

“Clean,” he says, jabbing a finger towards Wash’s mess of a shoulder. “Getting medkit.”

Wash doesn’t waste energy on a protest, just rolls his eyes, wets a fresh towel, and dabs at the tender skin around the wound before moving on to scrub the rest of the blood off of his arm and shoulder.

The light in the bathroom is flat and bright, dulling his skin and washing out the raw redness of the wound. Wash has half a mind to turn it off, but doesn’t, because Maine walks back in with the medkit and a scowl still set firmly on his face.

“I’m fine, Maine,” Wash repeats, more quietly this time. Maine snorts.

“Not yet,” he replies. “Ready?”

Wash sighs, nods, and closes his eyes before the darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision can do it for him.

Maine gets to work with ruthless precision, stopping only to briefly squeeze Wash’s uninjured shoulder in warning before washing it out with saline, and the sting crawls all the way down Wash’s spine to root in his stomach. Antiseptic salve comes next, then the odd careful tug of skin being taped, and then the soft pressure of a bandage.

Maine’s fingers are slow and warm as he smooths down the edge of the tape, tracing them up and around Wash’s shoulder, then down towards his chest. The firm tap of a finger brings Wash back to reality, and he looks down at Maine's hand, then up at him in question. His fingers are resting under a dark blotch on his shoulder, just past the edge of the bandage.

"Scar?" Maine asks. His voice is soft.

An odd rush of shame swims through him. He rubs the knotted scar reflexively, fingertips bumping against Maine's.

"That was from the Meta."

Maine stills for a second, two, and then he slowly shakes his head.

"Me." Before Wash can protest, counter, anything, Maine goes on. "Meta aimed lower."

Maine gently raps his knuckles against the swell of muscle over Wash's heart. A soft, bold corner of Wash's brain wonders whether Maine can feel the heartbeat echoing in Wash's ears, hollow thudding amplified by blood loss. Like this, with Maine still bent down, knuckles still resting against his chest, Wash can pick out flecks of complementary color in Maine's eyes in spite of the sallow light flattening everything into drabness.

“What now?” Wash asks, feeling slow and heavy.

“Rest,” Maine says, as if it’s the only obvious answer, and rolls his eyes.

“No,” Wash says, “I mean–” He tips his head just enough to look past Maine and out into the room, at the bulky shape of unconscious bodies near the foot of one bed. Weak light from outside the window seeps through the cracks in the shutters, and the visible patches of skin at the wrists and napes look sickly pale. “–what now? I’m sure it’s those… that group at the Forerunner installation. It must have been them who put a bounty on our heads. No one else would bother. Who knows how far that’s spread? How far they’ve spread?”

Maine closes his eyes, inhales, exhales, and opens them again.

“Same plan,” he says. “Head north. Find comms facility. Find way to end this.”

“It won’t be that simple.”

“We make it simple,” Maine presses back, voice low and heated.

A spike of protest buries itself deep in Wash’s chest, rooting itself deep among fear and other nameless seeds. He feels like his skull is spooling out reels of ancient film, miles of data tape filled with everything that needs to be weighed and reconsidered with new information in play and–

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t. He’s too tired for this. And Maine is right. Wash closes his eyes.

“We make it simple,” he agrees.

Ten minutes later, Wash is leaning his head against the passenger side of the Warthog, sparing a moment to be grateful that his armor and undersuit were made to keep infection at bay and that their medkits are still stocked with that one salve that can wipe away a nasty gash in a week.

“Keep me awake,” Wash mutters, breath crackling back at him over the private line.

“No,” Maine grunts back. “Rest.”

“No,” Wash snaps, very gracefully and maturely. “I’ll rest when we stop for the night.”

Maine huffs in a wave of static, then takes first one hand off the wheel, then the other, and pulls off one of his gauntlets. Wash stares at his bare hand, utterly nonplussed. Maine waves his fingers impatiently, and when Wash continues to not have a single clue what’s going on, Maine’s helmet tips over at him, reflections of mile markers like dull starbursts on his visor.

“Hand,” Maine says, and waves his fingers impatiently again.

Comprehension dawns, but Wash keeps staring at Maine’s hand for a few more beats until he finally pulls his own gauntlet off. His shoulder is stiff and a lance of pain jolts through his arm as he moves it, but he manages to rest his fingertips in Maine’s open hand, and then their palms touch. Maine huffs again, then pushes his fingers through the gaps in Wash’s own and squeezes.

“Awake?” he asks.

“Yes,” Wash replies, frowning, still not entirely certain why this is happening. He waits, expectant, but Maine just keeps his eyes on the road.

“Rest,” Maine says.

“I d—”

“Rest,” Maine repeats firmly, and then squeezes his fingers. Not enough to hurt, not even enough to be uncomfortable, just enough to redirect Wash’s attention to their linked hands. “Keep you awake.”

“I…” Wash blinks. “Well, okay.”

Not the weirdest thing that’s happened in the past… however long it’s been. Not the most unpleasant thing. Not at all unpleasant, honestly. Maine’s fingers are warm, much warmer than Wash’s ice-cold hand, blood loss still making him sluggish and chilled. He tentatively settles himself back in the seat, back in the sweet spot where he can lean against the doorframe, and within seconds his eyes drift closed against the backdrop of soft darkness broken only by the reflective lane and mile markers on the roadway.

Maine will keep him awake if he’s in danger of drifting off, Wash figures, and the backs of his eyelids are as dark as the night.

“You didn’t keep me awake,” Wash accuses the second he jerks back into consciousness, nearly slurring with drowsiness, and he repeats himself on the outside line when his HUD blinks at him that the recipient has disconnected.

He must have finally registered the car stopping, though it took him longer than usual for the change of state to beat itself through to his unconscious mind. They’re in a clearing off the road, but the trees look thin, so Wash assumes they’re not too far away from the roadway. It’s quiet enough to not hear any other vehicles, at least. Maine has his helmet and gauntlets off, face pink with cold in the dim light he’s set up.

Maine shrugs at Wash’s sleepy accusation, then crosses his arms against the ‘Hog’s frame and leans in. The suspension lets out a soft squeak of protest as it accounts for Maine’s weight, then falls silent as he looks over Wash. Wash pulls his helmet off and reflexively runs a hand over his hair, then frowns in surprise as the bare skin of his hand makes contact with the rat’s nest of hair sticking up in every direction. His gauntlet is still resting discarded across one of his knees.

“Feel okay?” Maine asks.

Wash shrugs back. His shoulder twinges.

“I’ve been worse,” he replies, then grudgingly admits, “but resting helped.”

Maine unfurls one arm and pulls off his gauntlet again before pressing the backs of his bare fingers to Wash’s cheek, then his forehead.

“Don’t feel so cold,” he says. “Shoulder?”

Wash moves it slowly, experimentally, then takes off the pauldron and gently prods at the lump of bandage beneath his undersuit. Again, a twinge.

“Better, but not great.”

“Change bandage?” Maine prompts.

Wash checks the timer he’d set once they’d hit the road; to his surprise, it’s already been a few hours. It doesn’t feel like it. But then again, he hadn’t been conscious for the last hour or so.

"Yeah," he sighs, and resigns himself to the task.

He strips off his remaining glove, then kills power to shields and sheds the bracers before pausing. His shoulder feels more stiff than anything, a dull haze of pain washing over the entire area, and stripping off all this armor to get to his undersuit and then piling it all back on is not a prospect he’s exceptionally happy about. Wash realizes he’s been paused only when Maine leans forward again.

“Let me help,” Maine says, quiet but matter-of-fact.

Wash nods, silent, and Maine’s hands gently remove the other pauldron, then move to the releases on the chest plate, and Wash sags forward in silent, boneless relief as Maine pulls it off. The air is cold enough to make his skin prickle almost immediately, even through the undersuit.

Maine gives him a long look before stepping away to find their medkit, and Wash feels just slightly morose as he unseals the undersuit and rolls it down to expose his shoulder. The faintest hint of dark red sits at the center of the knot of gauze. Good timing. If they’d done this in the morning – or whenever they’ll be ready to move on – the bandage probably would have been soaked through.

“Thanks,” Wash remembers to say when Maine is done, and his broad, warm hand slides down Wash’s arm, squeezing gently. Wash closes his eyes, just briefly. “We shouldn’t be wearing armor. That guy clocked us because of it.”

Maine makes a short, annoyed noise.

“Vulnerable without.”

“But at least we’ll be less identifiable.”

Wash reaches down to pull his undersuit back on properly, and Maine obligingly lifts his hand when Wash’s fingers bump into his, but only briefly. His fingers make contact again over fabric and come to rest against the side of Wash’s neck.

“Don’t like being less safe,” Maine says.

“Me either.”

The low hum of Maine’s shields stretches between them, and Wash can feel his head starting to loll down towards Maine’s palm, drawn to its weight in the simplest expression of gravitational pull.

“I’ll take first watch,” Wash says. Maine’s thumb brushes against his jaw. “You get some rest.”

“You rest.”

“I did,” Wash replies, too stubborn to let it go, too drained for a fight. “I’ve had more rest, more recently than you. Get some rest and we can head out.”

Maine sighs, but he concedes with grace, and Wash can still feel the warm imprint of his hand when everything’s long gone silent.

The back roads meander between hills and tiny clusters of people still working their land, barely constituting villages, more striking than the abandoned skeletons of towns they drive past. The next day is just as gray and cold as the previous one, but Wash is once again struck by how beautiful Chorus must have been before it was rent apart, and once again he is struck by the resilience of life and livelihood.

By the third time Wash finds himself wishing for the weight of Maine’s hand, he gives in. He carefully keeps his eyes on the road as he reaches over and touches the back of Maine’s hand. The ridges of his knuckles are pink from the cold but his skin is warm when he obligingly turns his hand over and lets Wash’s fingers fall into the spaces between his, head still turned to watch the landscape blur by.

Wash allows himself the slightest twitch of a smile.

He’s taken to thinking of it as their flight. It’s been a long time since Wash has been the pursued, not the pursuer. It’s distinctly unsettling. They’re not being pursued, though. Strictly speaking. Not yet. There’s no real way to tell just how far news of that bounty on their heads has spread, not unless they find other mercs to ask.

Wash is comfortable meandering northwards on back roads for now. More or less. Sleeping with one eye open and a knife in his hand is a habit he hasn’t ever managed to shake, not really, but now that his life is back to a nonstop blur of running and chasing and hunting, it makes the memory of calmer times – recent times – all the more bittersweet. It makes the sting of his time in the Recovery force even harsher.

But he's got Maine now. And it's different. That shift in the foundation, that erosion; Wash doesn't realize it's been more like a slow avalanche until he slides his hand into Maine's unthinkingly when they're stopped at a roadside eatery, crowded away to the side while they wait. Like glacial movement. Slow and inevitable, bound to gravity.

Wash stretches his legs out as far as they’ll go and leans into the seat, tipping his head back. Driving without armor is colder, but the fresh air whipping through the ‘Hog is worth it and the clear, frigid night offers him an unobstructed view of the stars, vaguely familiar now that he’s spent some time with those star charts.

...The star charts. Wash pulls out his datapad and pulls up one of the charts they’ve worked on, the one with a general range plotted out. Not that it’s bulletproof in any way, but it’s been a start. And they hadn’t factored in the comms facility’s location yet. Wash plugs in the data, refreshes, and sighs when absolutely nothing conclusive comes out of it.

Maine tilts his hand from where he’s resting it on the shift knob and taps Wash’s thigh with the backs of his fingers, then glances over at him with raised eyebrows when Wash looks up.

“Nothing,” Wash says over the rush of air. “I added that comms facility to the satellite map. It didn’t make much of a difference.”

Maine grunts in response and glances at him one more time before looking back at the road.

Wash ends up spending the rest of the evening’s drive reorganizing some notes, but by the time they stop for the night, he’s settled on just browsing through the star chart, trying to see if he can still accurately gauge their current location. It’s not going exceptionally well.

“What?” Maine finally asks, amused.

“We’ve been spoiled by technology,” Wash mutters, not caring how overly dramatic it sounds. “I was never good at astronavigation, anyways. I can’t place this cluster, so we’re either–” He squints at the map. “200 kilometers south of the north pole, or on the eastern shore of a totally different continent.”

Maine laughs, throaty and warm.

“Maps easier,” he replies. “Thankfully.”

Wash concedes with a shrug, and sets down the datapad.

“Do you want first watch?” he asks, mostly out of courtesy. He can tell how restless Maine is from the drive and he knows Maine will want first watch, just to burn it off. The signs of it are all familiar things; rolling his shoulders, flexing his hands, shifting his weight, cracking his neck.

Maine nods with a slight little smile, and as Wash settles in for a rest, he thinks about how comforting it is to know a person’s most pointless tells, their most irrelevant tics and particularities. And that small, warm smile’s got nothing to do with the direction his thoughts take.

Wash scowls down at the map again.

“Which continent now?” Maine asks, voice dripping with false sympathy, and Wash turns his scowl to Maine.

“Shut up,” he replies, though the facade of ire is feeble. “It’s that same cluster. It’s in the same spot, even though it’s morning. Maybe Chorus just has a fucked-up orbit.”

Maine shrugs, and the hint of an unapologetic grin flits across his face.

“Whatever,” Wash mutters. “I guess if it’s not gone today, it’ll still be there tomorrow. Not like it matters, anyways.”

Maine tosses him the keychip.

“Find out where we are one day,” he says, very seriously, and Wash has to resist tossing the keychip back squarely at his nose.

The cluster haunts him for the entire leg of his drive. It’s pointless to obsess over, really, but it’s like a dead pixel now: Wash can’t un-see it. It’s bright enough to be visible at dawn and dusk, but too dim for proper daytime; always in that same spot, about fifteen degrees northwest of polar north. It’s an annoyance, taunting him on their winding push north.

But at least it’s easy to get lost in the landscape, once he passes the driver’s seat off to Maine and forces himself to zone out. They’ve got a stop planned for the night, another roadside motel that’s been marked as safe and anonymous, albeit for potentially shady reasons.

It’s several klicks off the main roadway, which is fairly reassuring. There aren’t many cars parked, and only one truck, which could be good or bad; less people to potentially identify them, more chances to stand out. But a warm, dry bed is worth a shot, especially with how frigid the nights have gotten, and Wash hangs back to secure everything in their Warthog and make sure all signs of armor are carefully hidden.

It starts raining, because of course it does. Wash is half-soaked by the time the ‘Hog’s properly covered up and locked down, and he ducks into the building feeling utterly disheveled, dripping onto the floor. Maine turns immediately at the sound of the door, takes him in, and smiles. Wash scowls back. Maine holds a hand out to him and beckons with a twitch of his fingers, so Wash really has no choice but to walk up until Maine’s hand settles on his elbow, in spite of the rainwater still dripping.

“So?” Wash prompts, keeping his voice low.

“Waiting,” Maine replies, and tips his chin towards the lone desk. “Had to help someone.”

“Great,” Wash mutters.

He pushes his hood back, wincing at the soft patter of water dripping onto the floor, and takes in the rest of the lobby. It’s quiet but bare, and frankly, that’s the best possible outcome. That’s about as far as his observations get before Maine’s hand blocks his field of vision, and then warm, dry fingers push the wet ends of his hair up and off of his forehead. The contact is so gentle and Maine’s fingertips barely touch him as they ghost over his skin that, paradoxically, it makes Wash shiver. The rain drums down against the building in a soft hush, and for a few more seconds, only the two of them are here.

But heavy, steady footfalls break the quiet, and they’re joined by a man who glances at them only briefly before walking behind the desk and taking a seat. He looks young, and his eyes are hard, calculating. Wash shifts, wary. He can see the barrel of a shotgun poking up at the corner of the counter.

"How many nights?" the man asks without preamble. His eyes rake over Maine first, then Wash, at their bags and loose jackets and every spot they could be hiding an arsenal.

“Just one,” Wash replies, matching his stare evenly.

The man nods once, then tips his chin up like he’s judged them and found them neither wanting nor adequate.

“Single?” His eyes drop pointedly to Maine’s hand on Wash’s arm, then at Maine, then at Wash.

“Yes,” Wash replies.

He leans down and taps at a datapad, then pushes a keychip across the counter.

“Payment up-front,” the man says. “No disruptive noise. Check out by 0800.”

Maine has to move his hand off Wash’s arm to pay. Wash misses the contact.

Wash jerks awake – out of a restless haze, really, and he’d never really fallen asleep, so awake isn't quite the right word. The weight on his chest sparks a brief, brief moment of panic, but the full-body flinch that’d roused him also brought his hand up reflexively, defensively, and Wash’s fingers bump against Maine’s fingers splayed loosely over his sternum, warm under the covers.

He’d been irritable and tired earlier, with a shower only making his shoulder sting even more. It still aches, but it’s a dull ache, not the cloying, hazy pain from earlier. The rain persists, too, and the white noise must’ve helped lull him into some rest earlier. That, or the oddly comforting press of Maine’s dead weight on his other arm. He can’t really move anything but his fingers, but Maine is completely knocked out, if his rattling half-snores are anything to go by.

Maine’s heavy breaths are so familiar, and even the still-unfamiliar scars Wash finds are a comfort as he runs his fingers over Maine’s knuckles, down the back of his hand. The sleeplessness isn’t so bad like this, he thinks. Certainly better than any iteration of cold and alone he’s lived lately, even with the Blues.

It’s warm. It’s nice. If Wash turned his head, he’d probably mash his face into Maine’s cheek. Maine’s fingers twitch sleepily against his chest, and Wash thinks about pressing that hand closer, so he can feel the pulse in Maine’s fingers, so Maine can feel the thump of his heartbeat.

It aches. Not just his shoulder.

He stares up at the ceiling, too awake to sleep, too sleepy to get up, entirely unwilling to move at all, and the rhythm of Maine’s breaths and the steady hush of rain against the building is enough to fool him into something resembling rest. His eyelids don’t really grow heavy again, but he can pretend.

A thick, dim beam of light slides across the ceiling. And then another. Like headlights taking a turn.

Paranoia rears up in his chest. Wash shoves away the weird, twisting regret and slides himself out from under Maine’s arm as carefully and quickly as he can, then moves silently to the window and pushes the curtain aside just enough to show a sliver of what’s outside.

The rain is warping everything, but two sets of headlights are still clear for a handful of seconds before they each click off. Then the doors open, and six people spill out of the cars with quick, precise movements, dark clothing barely visible in the weak light shining from the front of the building. Two people head for the door. The other four fan out, splitting up and moving towards the parked cars and then circling around the sides of the building.

Wash is kneeling over the bed before he knows it, reaching down to shake Maine awake.

“Maine,” he whispers, and then a vice squeezes his chest for an unbearable second as Maine blinks up at him, bleary and soft. It’s gone in a flash as Maine’s eyes sharpen and he props himself up, hand coming up to cover Wash’s. Wash swallows past the tightness in his chest, his throat, and says, “Someone’s here. Two cars, at least six people.”

Maine sits up immediately, and reaches for their bags. Wash is jolted into action with it too, and digs out some pants and socks to throw on as he continues.

“I saw two flanking around the building, two heading in,” he says, yanking on his boots. “The rest are in the parking lot. If I were them, I’d be slashing tires.”

"Might not be for us," Maine says. He sounds skeptical, but he doesn’t hesitate as he moves out of the room.

Wash keeps his knife drawn as they move quietly down the stairwell at the back. They haven’t heard any kind of commotion yet, which is more or less good, sort of. It means that whoever’s here knows the importance of keeping quiet. Whether or not it means they’ve started shit remains to be seen. Maine is almost dead silent next to him, moving smooth and low in a way that still feels bizarre, like he shouldn’t be able to do it.

Their ‘Hog is parked right under the stairwell, and Wash has never been more thankful for paranoia masquerading as preparedness. Technically, all they have to do is pile in and peel out. Technically. But even crouched next to the door, there’s not much they can do.

A distraction would be nice. Even better, a way to leave completely undetected. But the car's got their armor and most of their supplies, and they can't ditch it as easily as Wash would like. The two people Wash had seen earlier – in armor, which is bad on many more levels than Wash has time to think about right now – are moving car to car, methodically rifling through open beds and shining lights into rain-pearled windows. Searching. The rain is falling just loud enough to make it difficult to listen for more movement, other footsteps, new cars.

“If we wait for one to get here,” Wash says, barely whispering, “we can take at least one person out and leave.”

Maine looks skeptical.

“Can try,” he whispers back.

The person– soldier– merc– on their side of the lot strides up another car, peering into the windows. Brown armor, green accents, mismatched and careworn. Wash holds his breath, even though they’re easily fifteen meters away, maybe more.

There are still two others somewhere, and the two that went inside the building. Even if they take out this one, that’s five more people, maybe more, who might immediately jump on their asses to pursue them. Unless they’re here for someone else.

Behind him, Maine lets out a long, slow breath.

All the hair stands up on Wash’s neck.

“Oops,” says an unfamiliar voice. “Guess you forgot to check behind you.”

Wash turns, blood cold, mind blank and ready to fight.

Someone in dark, sleek armor is standing with a pistol to the back of Maine’s head. Maine is still, eyes locked on Wash, and Wash forces himself to not move and take in the situation.

The person behind Maine stands with her side turned to them, slinking close to the wall and the shadows cast by uneven lighting, and something glows at the back of her armor, right where enhancements socket in. Cloaking, then. Orange plasma glows through the rain along the barrel of the pistol she’s holding, the light pulsing sluggishly.

Statistically, Wash thinks, this could technically be worse. At least he’s got a plan. Half-baked, but it’s a plan.

“Guess so,” Wash says, and does the one thing the Reds and Blues have taught him never fails. “Well, what are you waiting for? You’ve caught us. Now what?”

Her head tips.

“What?”

“You’ve caught us,” Wash repeats slowly. “Are we prisoners, are we dead, are we going to be experimented on?” Dead silence. Wash keeps his face carefully blank. Maine is visibly biting his tongue. “Come on. The suspense is killing me.”

The angle of her pistol grows lax, just a bit.

“I– you’re–” She shakes her head in quick, bewildered jerks. “If you move, he’s dead.”

“Right,” Wash replies, nodding agreeably, “so if he moves, I’m dead.”

“What the fuck? No. Don’t move. I will kill you.”

Maine closes his eyes and takes another deep, steadying breath.

“You can’t just change rules like that,” Wash says in his most reasonable tone of voice. “And besides, I thought you all had orders to take us alive, didn’t you? That’s a pretty empty threat, then.”

“Listen here, you little shit,” she hisses, leaning forward, “if you don’t shut the fuck–”

Maine grabs her pistol, quick as a viper, then slams his weight back to crack her head against the stairwell wall. She slumps down, motionless, and rain starts to puddle in the dips of her armor.

“Wash,” Maine says, very seriously, “the fuck.”

“Move,” Wash snaps instead of answering, and vaults himself into their ‘Hog. “Now’s not the time.”

He peels out of the parking lot as fast he can; he catches a glimpse of some commotion at the front, two soldiers standing their ground against the man from the lobby and his shotgun, but there’s no reason sticking around to find out. The ‘Hog’s suspension groans as Wash whips back onto the roadway, barreling south, and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

It takes him a minute to realize what the sound is he’s been hearing. A quiet, persistent wheeze. He glances at the passenger seat.

Maine is sprawled out, hand over his face, head tipped back, and his shoulders are shaking.

“Maine?” Wash asks slowly.

Maine just tips his head back further, hand slipping down, and Wash realizes he’s laughing. Hard enough that there are tears winking in the corners of his eyes. God, Wash hasn’t heard something like this – all-encompassing, helpless, gleeful – in so long. Too long.

“Maine,” he repeats, somewhere between stern and exasperated.

“What,” Maine manages between wheezing, heaving breaths, “was that.”

“If you ever spend more than ten minutes around the Reds and Blues, you’ll learn,” Wash replies simply, and a pang of longing lances through his chest.

Maine huffs out another breath, on the comedown and gathering himself, and Wash matches it with a sigh.

“Well,” he says, “that’s a new development.”

“Black armor with mercs?”

The timing, Wash thinks a few seconds later, could not have possibly been more cinematic. The Warthog’s windshield is solid enough that it doesn’t shatter completely, but the bullet hole is ragged, raining chips of glass onto the dashboard as they roll over a stretch of heavily pitted road.

The oncoming car has no headlights, but the metal glints anyways in the ‘Hog’s high beams, rain glittering around its tires. Wash jerks the wheel around, yanks on the handbrake, and jerks the car around. Maine reaches back as soon as the ‘Hog’s done not-quite-fishtailing, then loads a magazine into the DMR.

“You steer,” Wash says, clenching his jaw. “I’ll do what I can.”

He takes the DMR and twists around, foot flat on the gas pedal, and Maine presses against his side as he leans over to hold the wheel.

Pitted road. Shitty visibility. Moderate rain. Total breeze.

Wash scowls to himself, then raises the DMR. His shoulder aches. At least he doesn’t have to brace the gunstock against it. The wheels hit a patch of smooth road. Wash fires twice, and even at this distance – a distance the other car is succeeding in closing – he can hear the pop and hiss of the tire losing air.

“Turn coming,” Maine says.

Wash tries to find a better position, but there’s nothing he can do without lifting his foot off the gas.

“We need to switch,” he says, “I don’t know how, but–”

Maine makes a frustrated, low noise and the car slows just a fraction as Wash finds himself lifted like a sack of rice, and everything spins as the rifle jostles into his injured shoulder. Maine settles into the driver’s seat, looking ruffled, jacket pushed askew.

“Alright,” Wash says, lifting his eyebrows. “That works.”

He twists around in his seat and raises the DMR again, bracing it against the seatback so he doesn’t have to lift his other arm, and waits.

They blow past the motel again in the opposite direction, and Wash’s stomach sinks as he watches those two cars peel out of the lot and onto the roadway. They flank the car that’s rapidly losing speed to its shot-out tire, then pull forward, and all three cars turn their high beams on. Wash squints through watery, sunspotted eyes.

“Fantastic,” he mutters.

Nothing left to do except make a guess and take some hail-mary shots. The rifle beats back against his shoulder one, twice, five times, and finally one of the cars from the motel swerves and veers off, two flat tires rattling against the uneven pavement.

“One car left,” Wash says, seeing Maine glance over at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Turn coming,” Maine says.

Another high-caliber bullet cracks through the air, followed by a spray of pistol fire, and Wash flattens himself out as best he can. A tear blooms across Maine’s jacket and he grunts in annoyance.

“Not hurt,” he says quickly. “Got lucky.”

Wash props the rifle back up as they swing out of the slow turn, and fires off three more shots just as the other jeep starts to round it, headlights not wrecking his eyesight yet. Another pop, another hiss, another flapping rattle of loose rubber on pavement. The lights fade behind them.

“I think that’s it,” Wash says, after they’ve gone a full klick without another vehicle jumping into sight behind them.

For now goes unspoken.

They stop for the night well off the side of the road, covered by a spread of thick trees and dense underbrush, and the rain has softened into a steady mist. Wash has nothing to offer except silently holding his hand out when Maine trades his jacket for a thicker one, and he spends his watch mending the tear on the shoulder as best he can, one eye locked on trackers and ears straining for any sound of approach. He doesn’t sleep much when it’s Maine’s turn to take watch.

“Now what?” Maine asks in the morning, with the faintest hints of lightness in the east trickling down through the dense forest.

“I don’t know,” Wash says, and crosses his arms before leaning against the side of the Warthog. “We either drive erratically to throw off anyone tailing us, or we head to that comms facility in as straight a line as we can manage.”

Maine thinks. Wash can see it in the subtle clench of his jaw, the way he scans the treeline without really looking for anything.

“Straight on,” he finally says. “Plenty to distract a tail.”

The sunset lingers, leaving a strip of deep crimson to the west that bleeds up into endless, velvet navy as Wash drives on. Maine’s hand is resting loose and easy on his knee, and as his thumb brushes a slow, comfortable arc against his thigh, the last piece clicks into place. Wash’s stomach sinks down onto the asphalt.

“Maine,” he says slowly, “I think there’s something in high orbit.”

Maine sits up and looks at him. Wash glances away from the road, then locks eyes with the cluster of lights that had been annoying him, the cluster with no name on the star map.

“That cluster. It could be a ship in high orbit. I didn’t notice it before a few days ago, but I think I would have.” He shuts his eyes briefly. Maine’s hand squeezes his knee. “If there’s ships here, it’s either the UNSC, or–”

Or… fuck.

Who’d have ships at their disposal here? Insurrectionists? Separatist Covenant? Well— maybe not. The planet would have been glassed already if it were Covenant hardliners. It could be Covenant pirates, maybe. But why or how they’d end up in high orbit instead of getting shot down like every other ship is beyond him.

Which leaves the possibility of someone powerful, rich, or otherwise influential enough to command ships as being behind what’s happening on Chorus.

Ships means comms. MAC cannons. Visuals on the ground.

Ships means someone's serious enough about Chorus to bring out the literal big guns. There's a twisting, sinking feeling in Wash's stomach, like he's watching the last pieces of a game come into play, but he doesn't know what the game is or who's playing it.

On the plus side, it might mean that there are bigger fish to fry on Chorus than him and Maine. On the downside, Wash has an idea of just which band of idiots might be the bigger fish.

Maine is quiet beside him, hand still on Wash's knee. When the silence stretches on for far longer than usual, Wash glances over.

Reflected headlights flash across Maine's face, lighting up his eyes, picking out strands of hair in washed-out yellow. He's deep in thought, brow furrowed, eyes unfocused as he stares ahead. Wash glances back at the road, then drops his hand to rest on Maine's, glances at him, back at the road.

"We'll figure it out," he says, feeling disproportionately optimistic. Or stubborn.

Anything's possible. Maine's alive, here with him. Anything's possible. They'll figure it out.

What’s left of Armonia’s suburbs blooms in an ugly sprawl, spreading across a large, tonelessly flat basin of land cupped by a sharp jut of mountains far off to the northeast: their destination, silhouetted by a thin, hazy dawn. It’s easily the largest city Wash has seen on Chorus, built like it should be teeming with life, but the hundred or so klicks he can see as they crest a hill and slowly start to drive down look clearly abandoned, with none of the motion or care or life he’d seen in so many other places on Chorus. It’s unsettling.

Maine is silent as they inch towards the edge of the suburbs. The dense vegetation in the hills keeps them on the roads; any offroad paths that might have existed once have been thoroughly reclaimed by nature, and there’s nothing to it except to slink down towards what used to be a city. The whole area is blanketed by a pallid hush, and the snarl of their engine is so loud that Wash wonders if they might wake the dead like this, spark life in shambling husks of buildings with broken windows and support struts jutting through yawning doorways.

“That merc base,” Wash says, voice barely audible to his own ears over the crack of gravel. “How far is it from here?”

Maine checks a map, tips his head, and frowns.

“Fifty klicks. Why?”

“I don’t like this.” Wash gestures with one hand, the other tight on the steering wheel. “Look at this place. This isn’t just abandoned, it’s obliterated. And in the time since the war started, no one’s tried to move back here. If that’s not a warning sign, then I don’t know what is. If we stop at the base, we can get up to speed on what’s happening in the area.”

“Don’t want to lead a tail to merc base,” Maine says.

Wash is silent. Maine’s got a point. Expecting the mercs at the base to deal with anyone tailing them – especially if said tail comes in the form of other mercs – is unfair. But there’s something, something about this that’s sinking deeper into his stomach with each passing minute, heavier than insubstantial paranoias.

But then Maine sighs and tosses his datapad down into the bag at his feet, and runs a hand through his hair.

“Right, though,” he says. “This, not good. Maybe–” He pauses. Wash glances over at him to find a clenched jaw. “Maybe ditch ‘Hog. Go on foot. More cover.”

“Yeah,” Wash replies slowly. “Yeah, I think we should.”

They leave the ‘Hog tucked into some rubble about thirty klicks further north, empty their armor crates, and fill their packs. The ‘Hog is a potential loss they’ll just have to take; either they can get a new one at the merc base, or, worst-case scenario, they can lose time and double back. Wash doesn’t think too hard about what else a worst-case scenario would entail, this close to where the Federal Army is quartered.

It feels wrong, crawling from building to building like this, even as they make good time. Nothing stirs; there’s no roar of Warthogs pursuing them, no flicker of air that would betray cloaked scouts. Nothing.

The first five klicks are rough, instincts crossing wires with no rhyme or reason; he itches to breach open, gaping doors and to check corners that don’t exist. Beside him, Maine is jumpy and slow. The next five are a little easier, almost smooth. The five after that–

“Do you hear something?” Wash asks, voice quiet even over the radio.

Maine pauses.

It’s not a noise, not quite. For a second, Wash had thought it was a heavy truck driving past, or a train – but that wouldn’t make sense, not at all. It’s less of a sound and more of a thrum he feels in his feet and between his ribs, too low to hear, but loud enough to feel.

Wash shakes his head.

“Let’s keep moving,” he says, and points out a building that’s across a small clearing with little cover, but a decent view. Must have been a plaza at one point. “Cross over there. We can keep an eye out for anything weird as we go.”

Maine nods, lets out a crackling sigh, and starts a quick walk out across the plaza. Wash counts out five seconds and readies himself to follow, but–

But Maine stops dead in zero cover, and the low thrum rises.

“Maine–”

“Pelicans.”

And then Maine sprints into the next building, and Wash is left frozen with one foot out the door.

“What?”

“Pelicans,” Maine repeats, voice hoarse and intent. “Run.”

Wash is instantly galvanized into action, ice burning through his chest, and he ducks through another section of rubble and into the building Maine is in as the thrum slowly builds to a roar, and, sure enough, as he casts a wild glance at the northern horizon, a swarm – fuck, not even two or three Pelicans, but at least seven are sweeping southwards, evenly spaced in what is unmistakably a patrol grid.

He skids to a stop next to Maine, and watches as the dust they’d kicked up while moving refuses to settle.

The building rattles as the nearest Pelican makes its pass overhead. There is no insignia on the body, no identifiers or callsigns. The ice in Wash’s veins grows heavy as the roar slowly fades and the squat shape of the Pelican moves on, bizarrely unfamiliar after so much time.

“Run,” Maine repeats, and nudges him. “Wash. Next building. Keep going.”

“The low building,” Wash finally manages. “Northwest. There’s a parking structure behind it.”

“Go,” Maine urges by way of agreement, and Wash goes.

The sound of the engines is fading, he tells himself firmly. It’s fading. And even if they were detected, there’s no reason to believe that the Federal Army would fire on sight.

The next building is hollowed out, its roof barely supported by the splintering beams meant to bear its weight, and Wash chances a look southwards as the roar recedes back to a low thrum but the thrum refuses to fade.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathes. “One of them’s circled back.”

“Run,” Maine snarls for the third time, and streaks into the parking structure.

Wash follows. His limbs feel weightless and detached and heavier than lead all at once, and it takes his brain far too long to recognize the rattling sound of an M41’s barrel spinning up.

“Down,” Wash shouts as he charges into the mouth of the parking structure. “Underground, there’ll be more–”

A deluge of bullets slams into the wall behind them, throwing a cloud of pulverized concrete into the air. Maine barrels deeper into the parking structure, and Wash follows – but there’s no sloping ramp leading downwards, no secondary or tertiary exits, and the bullets beat a steady, unrelenting rhythm through the outer wall.

“Back out,” Maine says breathlessly. “Roof? We–”

And then there’s a loud, low boom, and a shockwave that blasts dust through the entire structure. The bullet fire stutters, and then continues.

A crackle echoes softly through the building, and Wash watches, in comical slow motion, as a crack spreads through the concrete of the floor above them.

“Stairwell,” Wash whispers.

Maine doesn’t move. Adrenaline spikes through his heart like a knife, and his voice rasps hoarsely, meanly, as he bodily shoves Maine forward and shouts, “Stairwell!”

Maine moves in a blur of white, streaks forward towards a stairwell in the northwest corner, and the bullets drum on relentlessly as Wash follows and the building groans again, louder, more cracks spidering throughout the ceiling, and Maine slams a shoulder gracelessly into the stairwell door but it doesn’t give.

A section of ceiling near the entrance slumps to the ground, as if exhausted, and the hailstorm of bullets ceases.

The silence is deafening. Concrete whispers as it crumbles, and Wash watches the pillar closest to them buckle with detached curiosity, as if it were nothing more than a tree swaying in a light breeze.

Another thud behind him. Maine throws his weight against the door again, to no avail. Dust rains down on them, and Wash feels nothing. Distantly, he can hear something in his ears – a familiar voice, one that matches the desperate body language before him, but the concrete beam holding up the ceiling has no more life to spare, and as it exhales a cloud of dust and collapses, Wash closes his eyes and tries to not have any regrets.

Beeping.

There shouldn’t be anything beeping.

Wash inhales a sharp, painful breath and gags immediately, throat bone-dry. He only manages to hack out one barking cough before pain lances incandescent through his ribs.

Okay.

Stop. Breathe. Assess.

He slowly unclenches his fists and takes a long, shallow breath, trying to force out all the tension in his body and mostly failing.

The beeping is coming from a heart monitor. He can feel the pull of tubing as he shifts one hand. It’s getting hard to breathe.

Slow down. Assess.

A hospital. He’s not restrained in any way, aside from his injuries. He’s alone in this room.

Even breaths. Even breaths.

He turns his head to the side. It hurts, but so has every other motion. He raises his hand up inch by inch, dragging it up his chest, testing his range of motion as he goes. Every movement aches, but no bones feel badly broken so far. He can feel a lump of bandages on his shoulder under the thin shirt he’s wearing, fabric unfamiliar and starchy. The skin on his neck feels clean, free of all dust and grime, and his knuckles brush against a shocking amount of stubble before he finds what he was looking for.

His fingers touch the skin-warm metal of his neural implants.

He bites down on the inside of his cheek. Moves his fingers over. Feels familiar, years-old ridges of scar tissue. Not raw, freshly broken skin.

He lets out a shaky breath and sucks it right back in, chest tight, and he forces his attention outwards.

The room is dim, but even so, Wash can tell it’s dingy. Cracked walls. Drafty window. Thick blankets, at least. As he forces even breaths in and out, he watches the strip of light under the door flicker and dim for a few seconds as if there’s a power surge, and even the heart monitor in the room fades slightly before resuming its muted beeps. The equipment all looks like it doesn’t belong, like this wasn’t originally a medical facility.

Great.

Breathe. Assess.

He pushes himself up slowly and the lancing pain in his chest bounces between what feels like all his ribs, searing and almost unbearable. Almost. So definitely broken, then. All his muscles are sore and stiff, and his shoulder – god, how long ago even was that – still burns with dull pain, so much less pressing than everything else.

It’s a wonder no one comes as Wash struggles his way upright. He can’t let himself question it. Not yet. Upright first, then standing. Baby steps. There’s nothing else here except for an extra bed, some medical equipment, and a bottle of water; no one else is in this room, but Wash can’t let himself think about that right now, either.

There’s no pain in his legs or hips to rival his almost certainly broken ribs, but one leg feels stiffer than the other when he tests his weight over the side of the bed. He can’t quite breathe right yet and it’s easier to ignore his trembling fingers, but it seems like he can try standing.

He contemplates the water – sealed bottle, no obvious tampering – but decides to leave it. The IV bag isn’t labeled with anything suspicious either, just the usual cocktail of saline and supplements, but he slides the needle out anyways and swipes away the bead of blood that wells up insistently.

Shadows pass underneath the door, distant flickering things chasing the sound of quick footsteps, and Wash waits until they pass to crack the door open. The hallway is lit, but dimly, and a figure in scrubs is retreating down towards the other end, pushing an IV pole and checking a bright datapad.

He slips into the hall once it’s clear, silent and barefoot, and the concrete floor is freezing. He finds the stairwell easily enough; all he manages to glean is that there are at least seven floors, and he’s on the second. He’s got the handle turned almost all the way, silent to stymie any noise the latch might make, when a door slams down the hall and loud footsteps round the corner.

Wash would have lunged for the figure, but his body won’t obey; his arm is already trembling from the effort of turning the door handle, pain screaming across his chest, and he simply stares as the nurse stumbles to a stop.

“Patient 604,” the nurse blurts. “You should be in bed.”

“Where are my belongings?” Wash asks, instead of everything else he wants to ask. What happened. Where is this. How did he get here. What happened. Where’s— “Where’s my partner?”

The nurse steps back.

“You’ve had no visitors,” he says carefully, “and I cannot share information about other patients with you.”

Wash steps forward.

“Bullshit. Where’s my partner?”

“Sir,” the nurse says, voice still careful, “you should be in bed, and I can’t tell you–”

“If you can’t tell me, then take me to someone who can,” Wash snaps. God, his chest is burning.

“Sir, you need to be in bed,” the nurse repeats firmly, voice rising.

Another nurse appears around the corner, eyes wide, and she glances between Wash and her colleague before stepping forward.

“Patient 604?” she asks the other nurse, who nods, eyes never leaving Wash. “You do need to be in bed, sir.”

“Where is my partner,” Wash repeats for the third time, voice flat, and something close to fear flits across both nurses’ faces.

Two more nurses materialize out of nowhere, and adrenaline spikes through Wash’s chest as he shifts his weight, slowly curls his hands into fists. He doesn’t want a fight, but it’s becoming clear he might get one. There’s a slam and a clang from the far end of the hall – maybe even further, on the other side of the building – and the tension ratchets up further.

“If none of you can tell me where my partner is,” Wash says, looking at each of them in turn, “then tell me under what circumstances I’m being held here.”

“You’re not being held,” says the first nurse, and the second grabs his arm in warning. “This is a medical facility administered by–”

“This is a medical facility,” the second nurse interrupts. One of the latecomers suddenly turns to look down the hall, then jogs off. Wash strains his ears, trying to listen for more footsteps over these nurses. “You’re not being held. You are free to leave, but medically, you–”

“Administered by whom?” Wash asks, interrupting in turn. There are definitely footsteps approaching, multiple sets, as well as some kind of commotion.

“Sir, please,” the first nurse tries yet again, “you have several broken ribs and extensive–”

“If I’m free to leave, then let me leave,” Wash snarls. “I’ll find him myself.”

He barely finishes the sentence when a crowd of people barrels around the corner, and Wash’s entire world narrows down to the head of a pin.

He nearly bowls over at least four people as he shoves his way through the collection of nurses, doctors, whoever, and then Maine – bandaged, exhausted, in unfamiliar hospital clothes – has his arms around him, tight and immovable, and the pain is so overwhelming that tears prick at the corner of Wash’s eyes.

“Maine,” he whispers, “fuck, my ribs, I’m–”

Maine moves his hands immediately but doesn’t shift away, and Wash just rests his forehead against Maine’s chest and tries to breathe. Maine’s hands come to rest cradling his head, palms warm and broad, and slowly the clamor of angry, overlapping conversation filters back into Wash’s ears above the roaring thump of his heartbeat.

“—both need to be back in bed–”

“–should have let him know immediately—”

“And I told you,” rises a voice over everyone, half-familiar, “that M had the right to know–”

Maine raises one hand, signing what Wash is pretty sure is it’s fine. Wash’s skin tingles at the absence of contact, and he leans away to take in the scene.

A group of harried-looking doctors and nurses surround them both, and two fierce, familiar faces in neither scrubs nor coats stare at them both. Wash looks back at Maine in surprise.

“Sam and Lucía?” he asks. The exhaustion is starting to hit, even in spite of the adrenaline still making his heart race.

“Lucky,” Maine replies, and Wash’s heart rate triples at the sound of his voice. “Happened to be here.”

Wash swallows past a dry lump in his throat.

“We need to talk,” Wash says quietly. Maine hums in agreement.

“Let them be,” Sam says firmly. “We’ve vouched for them both multiple times over the past two days.” Two days? It can’t have been two days. “They need to recover. You can afford them the dignity of convalescing together.”

One of the doctors looks both furious and indignant.

“Fine,” she says. “But bed rest is mandatory for them both.”

“Fine,” Wash echoes, and it would have been as simple as that from the start. The first nurse shoots him a dark look for it, and Wash ignores him in favor of using the last of his energy to stumble back towards his room, hand firmly around Maine’s wrist.

Maine reaches out to him the second the door closes behind them, hands coming to rest cupped around either side of Wash’s face, and Wash leans into it hungrily, drunkenly, like this magnetism is the only law of nature he knows how to obey. Maine’s forehead is a bloom of warmth against his, and Wash screws his eyes shut, listens to Maine breathe, tunes out the hushed arguing in the hall.

“Thought you were–” Maine says, then cuts himself off. Wash presses closer, the cold tip of his nose brushing against Maine’s, at a loss for what to do with his hands until he realizes he can touch Maine’s wrist, his chest, his waist.

“Maine,” Wash replies, urgent, and then he promptly loses his grip on everything he was about to say. Maine’s thumb strokes a soft line over his jaw, down his neck. Wash closes his eyes. “What happened? How did we get here?”

“Mercs had eyes on Sfor,” he says.

"The suburb?" Wash interrupts. Vague, flickering things are showing up in his memory. Shelled-out buildings, gray and dead. Maine nods, gently bumping their foreheads together as he does.

"Had defenses, patrols," he continues, eyes never leaving Wash's between slow blinks. “See action there often. Close to Armonia.”

Wash doesn't think he's ever touched Maine like this. Maine's skin is warm under his palm, the stubble dusted across his jaw rough, and Maine's eyes slide briefly shut.

"After building collapse, sent nearest team." The words slide over him, melting helplessly into a pot of things Wash will deal with later. "Wash."

"What?"

"Let me finish."

He can feel the stuttered end of the word against his lips, Maine's soft exhale. Not surprised, but expectant.

"Okay," Wash says. And then he kisses Maine, because he wants to, and because he has no reason not to.

"Wash," Maine repeats, but it's soft and exasperated this time, and there's a warm curl in Wash's gut at the way Maine's slight smile feels against his mouth.

“Okay,” Wash says again, and then kisses him, again, not quite for the sheer novelty of it, but for something else he can’t quite wrap his head around in this state. Maine’s palm slides against his cheek, warm and broad, and all the blood in Wash’s veins stutters as Maine kisses him right back, a slow, gentle press of their mouths together.

“Let me finish,” Maine repeats gently, patiently, so Wash leans away to give Maine his requisite space, but only just enough. Even in the dim light he can tell that Maine’s face is flushed, eyes bright, and Wash can’t help but match his small smile.

“Mercs dug us out,” Maine continues, thumb stroking across the back of Wash’s wrist. “Brought us here.” He gestures to the room at large.

“This is the base, then,” Wash fills in. “Guess we made it here after all.”

Maine nods. His fingers drift up Wash’s forearm.

“Don’t have more info.” Maine’s hand sweeps back down, curling under Wash’s palm, and Wash squeezes his hand. “Woke up two, three hours ago.”

He leans forward and brushes a feather-light thumb over Wash’s temple, sparking a flare of pain as Wash becomes aware of yet another bruise.

“I haven’t–” Wash swallows. His fingers tighten around Maine’s palm. “Were you badly wounded?”

Maine shakes his head.

“Slight concussion,” he says, voice low. “Pulled muscles, sprained ankle. Bruises.”

Wash closes his eyes and breathes. He's had worse. There’s so much more that could have gone wrong, but they’re here. They’re alive.

Wash doesn't hesitate as much as he would have before he reaches out to Maine again. Maine doesn't hesitate at all to pull Wash with him until he can sit down on the edge of the bed, and Wash doesn’t even know if his eyes are open or not as he follows along in the warm dark. All he knows is the light press of Maine’s hands on his waist, his back, the rise and fall that brings Wash’s chest against his, the space between his knees that Wash can occupy. The impulse to touch Maine like this feels much, much less foolish than it ever has, and so Wash gives in, turns his head into the crook of Maine’s neck and holds in spite of the overwhelming pain crawling through his body, basks in the grounding weight of Maine’s palms stroking up his back. He smells like sweat and anesthesia and unfamiliar sheets and even in spite of that, Wash takes comfort in it.

Things stretch into a slow haze from there, the task of getting into bed with minimal pain and discomfort blurred into something underlined by the press of their bodies, sparks flaring to life under Wash’s fingertips and deep in his gut. It doesn’t take long for darkness to wrap itself around him in a thin echo of how Maine feels like this, and he’s finally lulled back to sleep.

The next morning sees him groggy and almost incoherent, joints stiff and injuries aching. Maine is still asleep by the time Wash manages to shuffle himself mostly upright, lying in an oddly stiff sprawl across the other bed in the room, and Wash watches the steady rise and fall of his chest as he gathers the will to stand and sort himself out.

Someone’s been in while they slept. There are some familiar (if dusty) packs in the corner, drooping slightly from atop two armor crates. There’s also a tray with water and some food that isn't shitty protein bars, and he wolfs down one of the MREs in near-record time before stumbling his way to the bathroom.

Everything in the room is temporary, fixtures from a field hospital or emergency medstations all shoved into this room to make it serviceable, and the bathroom is no exception. It's a strange familiarity that offers strange comfort, and Wash cleans up as best he can without bothering any ribs, but he does get a pounding headache for his trouble.

He looks for clothes just to keep his hands busy, even though every motion makes a new flare of pain burst in his chest, and cycles back through the sparse outline Maine had filled in for him last night.

Ships in orbit. The low thrum of Pelicans. Pelicans. They’d had Pelicans after them. Wash sets down the slightly grubby shirt he’s holding. Pelicans had meant that someone has the money and the weight to throw around, to control a resource as expensive as Pelicans and everything they entail: maintenance, crew, fuel, space. Powerful enough to send Pelicans after two mercs headed towards Armonia.

And this merc base – he’d seen it on the map, but he hadn’t realized it’d be so big. Big enough to house a field hospital on one floor. He supposes it makes some kind of sense, being this close to Armonia and the meat of the fighting, but he hadn’t really expected much more than an oversized warehouse akin to the ones they’ve stopped in before.

They’re both going to be in for some interesting conversations today, that’s for sure.

Maine wakes up not long after Wash finishes his impromptu inventory of their things, and his fingtertips graze Wash’s shoulder as he lumbers into the bathroom. Wash still feels the ghost of his touch by the time he comes back out, smelling like plain, unfamiliar soap.

“Maine,” Wash asks slowly, once Maine’s worked his way through his own breakfast-of-champions MRE, “what now?”

Maine sits down on his bed and looks across the room, thoughtful, then hums.

“Same plan,” he replies, but he doesn’t sound entirely convinced of himself.

“We’ll need to spend a few more days here, at least,” Wash says. “It’s safe here. Surprisingly enough.”

Maine snorts in amusement.

“Not surprising,” he says. “Base has SAMs. Chased off Pelicans.”

Wash raises his eyebrows.

“This base has SAMs,” he repeats. “Well, okay.”

“Sam made SAMs,” Maine explains, and huffs at his own joke. “Good at rigging things. Relayed M19Bs together.”

“Have they been here long? Sam and Lucía.”

Maine makes an uncertain gesture, and replies, “Month or so. Don’t have details yet. Waited for you to wake up.”

A rush of warmth passes through Wash, even though the rational part of him wants to protest, however unfairly, that him being unconscious is no reason for Maine to have not gotten any intel he could get his hands on.

“I was out pretty hard, huh,” Wash mutters. Maine hums. Wash finally gives in and sits down next to Maine, perched on the edge of the bed, and Maine’s fingers brush against the back of his wrist.

Maine hums again, this time in agreement, and leans their shoulders together.

“Talk to Sam and Lucía later,” he says. “Today, if medical lets us.”

“They can’t keep us here forever,” Wash reasons, voice dark, and Maine laughs quietly.

“Haven’t seen you that pissed in ages,” he says, and then clarifies, “yesterday.”

“I woke up in an unknown hospital without you, and the last thing I remembered was a collapsing building,” Wash replies. “Yeah, I was pissed.” He rubs his bruised, aching neck. “I was worried.”

“Me too,” Maine murmurs.

Wash doesn’t know what to say. He supposes that this is the part where they kiss again – and sparks fly, and grand declarations are made, but there’s nothing he could possibly want or need aside from their shoulders pressed together and the soft weight of Maine’s attention on him, the press of Maine’s fingers against the back of his hand.

A sharp knock at the door interrupts his thoughts with a wave of annoyance and immediate mistrust.

“Come in,” he says, reluctantly, and stands with tense hands.

Sam’s face pokes in from the doorway, and then she pushes open the door with a smile and steps in.

“Hey,” she says warmly, “you’re both awake. Feeling better?”

She directs the question to Wash.

“Better than yesterday,” he answers, which is true in many more ways than one.

“That’s good.” She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed easily, and she gives Maine a once-over as well. “Looking better too, M.”

He shrugs in admission, then signs, “We want to talk. To you, to Lucía, to anyone else. We need some intel.”

Sam’s face sobers, and her eyes grow sharp.

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with why a couple of Pelicans nearly offed you both, would it?” she asks.

Maine shrugs again, and manages to make the gesture vague. Sam turns to look at Wash. Wash glances over at Maine, and shrugs as well.

“You two,” Sam sighs, and shakes her head. “You found a good one, M. I’ll get Lucía and Thành together, and we’ll talk.”

Sam pings Maine’s datapad about an hour later with directions to a meeting room, and they make their way down through winding, hastily labeled and re-labeled hallways downwards until they’re met with a heavy wooden door, emblazoned proudly with Courtroom 6. There’s a dull, indistinct hush of voices from beyond, and they pause as Maine knocks.

Someone unfamiliar opens the door, eyes sliding over Wash to glance up at Maine with a flicker of recognition.

“Huh. Thought you’d be taller.” He breaks into a grin and opens the door wider, showing a handful of faces turned towards them. “I’m Thành.” He nods politely to Maine and then Wash in turn, then beckons them in. “Welcome to Courtroom Six, where court is not in session.”

Sam and Lucía are the only faces Wash recognizes among the six or seven there, and they both nod at him and Maine as they follow Thành in.

“You already know Sam and Lucía, of course,” Thành says, and he points jauntily across the room. “That’s Marna–” An older woman wearing a skeptical frown and grease-stained coveralls. “–and some of our lieutenants–” A sarcastic murmur and a handful of rolled eyes from the last few people. “–Meron, Esther, and Malik.” Thành perches on the edge of a long, lacquered table, polished and handsome, entirely at odds with the general disrepair of the building. “And like I said, I’m Thành, your gracious host here at Sfor Base.”

Wash stays awkwardly silent, entirely unsure what to do with this, but Thành seems to take his silence in stride, and Marna lets out a sigh from down the table.

“Have a seat,” she says, and waves a hand at any of the empty chairs.

Maine pointedly picks a seat next to Lucía and Wash follows, not aiming to make a statement but probably making one anyways by pulling his seat in so close to Maine.

Sitting at this long table with everyone scattered around the room is wildly uncomfortable. Wash shifts in his seat. He can’t look at everyone without moving, and he can’t move without revealing his discomfort, but at least he doesn’t seem to be alone. Thành hops off his perch and paces the opposite length of the table; Lucía pushes her chair back and rests an ankle over the opposite knee.

“So you want intel,” Sam says, and exchanges a pointed look first with Lucía, then with Marna, then Thành. Wash feels tension prickling at the back of his neck.

“Yes,” he says, and, figuring it’s best to cut to the chase, he lays out all their cards. “We’re trying to get to a comms facility in the mountains east of Armonia. There’s–” He glances briefly at Maine. “We’ve been tracking someone we think is behind a lot of what’s happened on Chorus recently.” A soft ripple of attention passes through the room. “It’s possible he’s at that facility. Even if he’s not, it’s likely to be a data center or to house relays bypassing the planet-wide comms blackout. So if–”

“What do you mean, someone who’s behind what’s happened?” Lucía cuts in.

Wash glances at Maine. Maine pointedly avoids looking at Lucía.

“You didn’t say anything to them when we left?” Wash asks him quietly. Maine’s jaw clenches.

Wash takes a breath. He doesn’t quite know how to talk about this.

“Maine and I were…” Wash doesn’t know whether or not this is technically classified information. He doesn’t know if that still matters to him, either. “We knew each other from a paramilitary program during the War. We’ve… tracked down someone else who was in that program, here on Chorus, to settle some personal matters.” He also doesn’t know why he’s sanitizing any of this. In a room full of mercenaries, for fuck’s sake. “Long story short, this person’s got a history of manipulating organizations, and we found a data cache pointing to some serious manipulation of both the Feds and the New Republic. And that’s on top of whatever else is going on here with the Forerunner facilities.”

“Explain,” Marna says, leaning forward.

Unaligned mercs, Maine types, displaying the words over the table. A group that’s never coordinated with any of us. We’ve run into them a few times. A lot, recently. Unmarked, dark armor, no known make. We’ve caught them successfully using long-range comms, and they use weapons of a similarly unknown make with some kind of plasma powering them. Not Covenant.”

The entire table exchanges a long, loaded look. Wash takes a breath.

“So if you’ve got any information you can give us about what that area east of Armonia looks like–”

“No.”

Marna’s voice is unmoving, but there’s an odd, amused smile playing around her mouth.

“Excuse us for a minute,” Lucía says, pointedly glancing over his and Maine’s shoulders at the door, and Wash tries to keep the paranoia from crawling further down his spine as he and Maine shuffle out and close the heavy door behind them.

“That’s encouraging,” Wash mutters, and leans his good shoulder against the wall. Maine mirrors him and frowns.

“Up to something,” Maine replies. “Not sure what.”

“You don’t think they’d sell us out?” Wash asks, and when Maine gives him a steely look, Wash amends, “I meant Marna. She doesn’t seem happy at all.”

Maine leans in and brushes his fingers against Wash’s hand.

“If something,” he says, “can always run.”

“I’m getting fed up with running. We’ve done enough of it.” Wash curls his hand around Maine’s before he can let it drift away, and Maine folds their fingers together without hesitation. “I want this done. I want to know if it’s even him.”

“If it’s not?” Maine asks quietly.

Wash is silent.

He hadn’t even considered that.

“Not your debt,” Maine murmurs once the pause stretches on for long enough, and squeezes his hand. “Not your fault.”

“How is it not? The Counselor–”

“You’re not the justice system,” Maine says, more sharply this time. “Not courts, not top brass. Not your fucking fault, Wash. Revenge–” Wash watches his eyes narrow as he searches for words, and then shakes his head as he evidently comes up empty. Maine lowers his voice again and bows his head, just enough for his hair to brush Wash’s forehead. “No matter what, this brought me you. Carolina. Doesn’t matter how it ends.”

“Of course it matters,” Wash replies, but his voice sounds weak to his own ears, breathless. “It ends with me, and you, and Carolina, and the Reds and Blues and Sam and Lucía.”

Maine says nothing, just squeezes their joined hands again, and they stand together in comfortable silence for about another minute before the door creaks heavily behind them.

“Alright, come on back,” Lucía says, leaning out of the doorway, and then she lowers her voice. “You didn’t need to listen to us squabbling. And besides, Marna’s a lot more manageable when she’s not pretending to be polite.”

Marna is frowning at Lucía by the time she turns back around to lead them in, and then she turns her sharp eyes first on Maine, then on Wash. Wash ignores her and settles back into his chair; Maine’s palm comes to rest over his knee as he sits next to Lucía again.

“Alright,” Thành says from across the table, looking much more serious than earlier. “Here’s the deal. We’ve got the intel you want, but we’ll share it with you on one condition.”

Wash glances at Maine.

He’d thought this kind of thing might happen. Fight alongside the mercs, contract out to one Army of Chorus or the other, money, guns, something. Maine squeezes his knee briefly. Wash nods.

“Okay,” Maine says, lifting his hand to sign along with his speech. “Condition?”

Thành glances at Marna, and then smiles.

“We go with you.”

“Sorry,” Wash says sharply, “we?”

“We,” Marna cuts in. “Us. Chorus is our planet. Our home. You’re telling us that we can get our hands on someone or something that’s been making this worse?” She stands and plants her hands on the table, and there is nothing but fire in her eyes as she leans forward. “You don’t have the right to take that from us.”

“Marna,” Sam says quietly, one hand on her arm, but Wash finds himself out of his seat before he realizes he’s stood.

“You have no right to take it from us,” he snaps back. “You don’t understand–”

“Wash,” Maine growls, and the intensity in his voice stops Wash dead in his tracks. Maine is looking up at him steadily, brows knit, eyes unfathomable. A wave of pain suddenly makes itself known through Wash’s ribs and the breath stalls in his chest with the force of it. Maine lowers his voice and says, “Sit. She’s right.”

“Everything aside,” Thành says, glancing over at Marna, “though I do agree with you, Marna– if you’re going to head for the mountains, you’ll need backup. That old telecomm relay was a hot commodity in the first few months of the war. Long story short–” He tosses Wash a slight, mocking smile as he riffs on Wash’s previous explanation. “Neither the Feds nor the New Republic let the other side get to it. Those mountains are a graveyard.”

“Although,” Sam says thoughtfully, “something’s changed in Armonia, hasn’t it?”

Thành runs his hands through his hair.

“Yeah, but we don’t know what,” he says.

“What’s changed?” Wash asks, and immediately feels like an idiot for asking when the obvious answer is that no one knows. Maine huffs quietly next to him. “What do you mean?”

“About a week ago, a massive amount of Federal Army forces poured into the city,” Thành answers, diplomatically sidestepping Wash’s gaffe. “And we’ve heard nothing since. None of the usual clashes, no troop movement.”

So what? You think they wiped each other out? Maine types, eyebrows raised.

“That’s the thing,” Sam says. “We’re still seeing movement consistent with patrols. Just none of the usual skirmishes that have been the norm.”

“No one contracted with either the Feds or the NRC has come back,” Thành adds, “so we’ve got no way of knowing what’s going on, unless someone volunteers to go check it out, which people are generally pretty unwilling to do. Most active war zone on the planet, and all.”

“And about a week ago,” Marna adds, sharp eyes cutting between Wash and Maine, “the Feds changed their Pelican sweeps. Only, as it turns out, we’ve got reason to believe it’s not the Feds making sweeps anymore. Whoever it is has fired on every patrol we’ve sent out. That’s why we had the SAMs on hand for when you two stumbled into our territory.”

“Those mercs you mentioned, M,” Lucía cuts in. “You got anything specific on them?”

Maine makes a vague, wiggling gesture.

Nothing on the armor, he answers. They used enhancements, though. Saw active camo more than once. They might have more than that.

“How often did you tangle with them?” Lucía asks.

A few times, Maine answers. We saw them working with regular mercs at one point, but mostly groups made up of just them.

“Any names? Anything?”

Just one name or callsign: Locus. Maine glances at Wash. And some weapon scans.

He displays a scan of what Wash recognizes as the pistol they’d tried using at the Forerunner facility, taken at a slightly awkward angle, and with little identifying information. No visible serial, not that he’d been expecting one. The plasma in the barrel glows a dangerous orange, even like this.

The lieutenants at the back break into a hushed murmur.

“Malik?” Marna prompts.

“I heard from Sri that Eunji said she heard–”

“Enough,” one of the other lieutenants hisses, and Malik’s cheeks go red.

“Anyways, there was someone here a week ago, maybe? She was treated for some older plasma burns, nothing pressing, and Eunji said that Aya said the patient didn’t know what kind of weapons they were. Just that they weren’t Covenant.”

“Is she still here?” Sam asks, already half out of her seat.

Malik shakes his head.

“Sri said she just got some basic medical treatment and left. I saw the charts,” he adds helpfully. “I was on rotation, I just didn’t see her. Seemed like what we’d expect from plasma burns. Just a different source, I guess.”

“We had bigger things going on,” Esther tells him. “We weren’t gonna pay too much attention to someone complaining about plasma burns when we had the fuckin’ Reds and Blues here. Pardon my French.”

Wash stands up again so fast his vision blacks out.

“The Reds and Blues?” he repeats, leaning over the table. Esther blinks in surprise.

“Yeah, like, the famous guys,” she says. “Honestly, that was kinda weird too.”

“They’re–” Wash forces himself to swallow. “Were they okay?”

Esther and Malik glance at each other and then at the other mercs in the room, and Wash mentally kicks himself for not explaining.

“They’re my friends,” he clarifies. “My squad.” He glances down and meets Maine’s eyes. “We…” He trails off, unsure of what to say.

“Oh,” Malik says, eyes growing wide, “oh, you’re–”

“Were they okay?” Wash presses, his palms digging uncomfortably into the edge of the table.

“Yeah, well, physically,” Esther says. “They’re all… a lot weirder than I thought a bunch of heroes would be.”

Wash sags over the table in relief, and Maine’s hand gently touches the small of his back. They’re fine. Weirder than I thought means they’re probably perfectly fine. He falls back into his chair, Maine’s hand still a comfortable weight at his back.

“One thing at a time,” Thành says, head in one hand. “Comms facility first. Then wackos with new plasma guns. Then Locus.”

“Ah,” Wash says, memory jogged, “the Forerunner base we, uh, visited– what, two weeks ago?” He glances over for confirmation and Maine half-shrugs, half-nods in response. “We think it might have been a production or testing facility of some sort for the weapons.”

Thành closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“You know what,” Wash says, pulling out his datapad, “let me give you our travel logs and the data we stole.”

The exam room is cold and silent, and Wash’s mood is plummeting by the second. The pain, by contrast, sits an uncomfortable simmer, just bad enough that he’s almost glad to have been strong-armed into this exam.

Thành and the rest had given them all the information they’d asked for, and more. All their survey data had been old, pre-war and pre-War, corroborated by some old, old flybys that had been done by some mercs at the start of the civil war. There’s even, apparently, a Forerunner structure on a nearby peak, though it’s been inaccessible by land for decades after an earthquake sparked a landslide. The fire roads are still visible, though, as stark, empty lines snaking up the mountains, which means they’re likely passable, and they’re likely to be their best shot at any kind of assault on that base.

They’d also been told that the regular host of mercenary companies filtering in and out of Armonia had slowed, then trickled to a stop over the course of the past month. None of them have any idea what it means. Upheaval, peace talks, anything is possible. And as for Locus– it’s a name a few mercenaries with the Federal Army had heard, but nothing concrete. And nothing recent.

Wash clenches a fist, then slowly lets his fingers relax. There’s no point in overthinking Locus or his connections. One thing at a time.

There’s a knock on the door just as he’s starting to contemplate getting up to pace, and a doctor slips in, tapping at her datapad.

“Broken ribs, right?” she asks. “Name?”

“Wash,” he supplies, and she types something in a blur of fingers.

“Didn’t have one listed,” she explains with a brief smile, then sets down her datapad. “Looks like it’s not just the ribs, though, right?”

Wash sighs and runs through the catalog of every injury he can still feel.

“I’ve got a bullet wound to the shoulder,” he says, nodding down at it, “but it’s about two weeks old.”

“Does it hurt?” she asks, washing her hands.

“It’s stiff.”

“And what else?”

And so it goes, with Wash listing out everything that impairs his ability to shoot properly or wear armor comfortably, and the doctor giving her quick, honest assessment. It’s not the worst thing he’s sat through, by far, and he’s feeling much less irritated than before by the time she finally sits back and strips off her gloves.

“You need about a week of rest,” she says, and when he opens his mouth to protest, she adds, “at least two days of bedrest, no movement. But you’ve already botched that by walking around.” She sighs and picks up her datapad. “And I’m assuming there’s no chance you’ll stay in bed tomorrow, or the day after.”

“Not really,” Wash says honestly.

“For your own sake, please, stay out of combat for a week,” she says. “And I mean it. You don’t, and those injuries will only get worse.”

He draws up some quick mental math. Thành and Marna had made it seem that assembling enough people to properly head into the mountains would take a few days, and a few more to properly reassess defenses, gather up rations, prepare transport, and do all manner of other things it’d never occurred to Wash to think of on a scale of more than a handful of people.

“Okay,” he says, resigning himself. “A week.”

“Wonderful,” the doctor says, smiling as if she’s just won a much larger battle. “I’ll see you again in two days, then.”

He wanders slowly back to his room, taking his time on the two flights of stairs between the designated exam rooms and the overnight rooms (old clerks’ offices, apparently) in the hospital wing.

It’s busy, with nurses flitting in and out of rooms and keeping a steady flow through the hallways, and Wash is tired of the bustle by the time he thinks to knock on the door before just barging in. Tired of a lot of things, but mostly tired. Maine looks up from his datapad when Wash pushes the door open and smiles as the door closes, shutting out the quiet sounds from the hall.

The room is mercifully dim, already pushing back at the headache building behind Wash’s eyes, and Wash lets his momentum carry him toward where Maine is seated on the edge of the bed. Maine offers no opposition, no resistance as Wash steps between his knees and only comes to rest once his forehead presses against Maine’s.

“Lucía asked,” Maine murmurs, “‘bout our bounty.”

“The bounty on our heads?”

Maine hums, then says, “Told her ‘bout other mercs. She said, sorry for people who tried.”

“I don’t feel sorry,” Wash snorts. “They knew what they were up against.”

Maine’s hands come up to cradle Wash’s face and for a moment everything stills, like a breath between gusts of wind. Wash lets the weight of the day come to rest over him, and he closes his eyes. Maine’s thumbs stroke mirrored lines across his cheeks.

“Doctor?” he asks.

“I’m supposed to rest for the next week,” Wash replies. “You?”

“Same,” he replies, wrinkling his nose.

“I figured it would take about a week to get all these mercs assembled and ready, anyways,” Wash says, and leans forward heavily in Maine’s hold. “And then we can see what’s going on at that facility. If it really is that heavily fortified, that definitely means there’s someone or something valuable there.”

“Mmm.” The sound vibrates through Wash’s chest, and then Maine’s forehead shifts against his, just a bit, and he feels the gentle press of Maine’s lips against his. His eyelids are so heavy, not even the electric jolt through his stomach forces them open. “Don’t like involving them.”

“But they’re right.” Wash opens his eyes and leans away to frown at Maine. “This isn’t just about us anymore. Hell, it never was, was it?”

It’s Maine’s turn to close his eyes and let out a sigh.

“Right,” he agrees heavily. “But now, my fault, putting them in danger.”

Sparks of annoyance flicker and catch in Wash’s chest, and he wraps a hand around one of Maine’s wrists.

“It is not–”

Maine moves his hand over Wash’s mouth, muffling the second half of his sentence, and only the slight smile on his face keeps Wash from fuming.

“Let me feel guilty,” Maine says, and turns the hand in Wash’s grip, miming glancing at a wristwatch. “Thirty seconds.”

“Seriously,” Wash says, wrenching his chin up out of Maine’s hand, “don’t. We all understand the risks. This is what we do. They want to be here. I want to be here.” Maine’s hands settle on his shoulders, warm through the well-worn fabric of his shirt. “You said it yourself: all you can do is offer someone a choice. And–” Wash’s mouth goes dry. He’s not entirely sure what it is he’s talking about at this point. “I’m choosing this.”

Maine looks at him, solemn and silent, and Wash quietly accepts the knowledge that anything there was left of the careful walls between them has been gone for much longer than he’d thought.

The next day crawls by in a haze of pain medicated into discomfort, and melts into night. By the third day, they’re both cleared to move out of the hospital wing into the barracks. The lower levels of the building are a flurry of activity; there’s an ever-shifting display on one massive wall of the converted parking garage grouping unfamiliar names into and out of squad assignments, rippling as more and more people add their names to the roster.

It should be uncomfortable, but it’s not. The mercs that filter in and out of the barracks are nothing but friendly with each other, easily extending their warm politeness to Wash and Maine, and it makes a slow ache settle in between Wash’s ribs, drifting alongside the residual pain still swimming through his chest.

The Reds and Blues are alive. They’re together. They’re fine. And he’d missed them by a week.

“Thoughts?” Maine asks quietly, much later, voice rumbling against Wash’s cheek.

“I still feel like I abandoned them,” Wash confesses, and the words feel ugly in his mouth. “The Reds and Blues, I mean.”

Maine’s fingertips brush against his jaw, heralding the soft weight of his palm against Wash’s neck.

“Why?” Maine’s voice isn’t judgemental, nor does it have that particular edge of patience Wash has heard from the throat of superior officers, teachers, therapists, and anyone else trying to coax him into some kind of lesson. It’s just simple curiosity.

“For obvious reasons,” Wash says, blowing out a breath. “They’re my friends, and I left them. I could have gone back. I didn’t.” Maine is silent. “You gave me a choice, and I chose. I just wish I could have chosen both.”

He watches Maine’s eyes lower in the dim light, eyelashes casting dim shadows on his cheeks, and when the corner of his mouth tenses, Wash adds, “And don’t even think about apologizing.”

Maine rolls his eyes.

“Should apologize,” he grunts.

“Don’t,” Wash says firmly. “Christ. You’re not responsible for my choices.”

It’s Maine’s turn to heave out a sigh, his chest rising and falling, gently jostling Wash’s cheek where it’s resting on his shoulder. Wash watches as he blinks slowly, and what little light there is in the room skates across the bridge of his nose.

“I just hope they’re safe,” Wash finishes, muffling the words between Maine’s shoulder and the bed.

“Kept safe this long,” Maine says. The sheets rasp softly as he turns his head, and then Wash feels the gentle weight of Maine’s temple rest against the top of his head.

“I know,” Wash mutters, the words barely comprehensible this time. Maine hums quietly, then falls silent.

Wash watches the rise and fall of Maine’s chest, light spilling over fields and valleys of fabric and skin, and envies the ease with which Maine’s breaths grow so heavy.

The rest of the week’s planning comes to a head with about as much fanfare as most military ops Wash has been a part of, which is to say, none. It had taken some convincing for the mercs to agree to Wash and Maine being the forward scouts, but in the end, they’d relented. Primarily on the grounds that no one else wanted to do the job, but Wash had taken the victory for what it was.

The plan is simple, but that’s fine. Wash has long lost his taste for convoluted ventures and backwards secrecy. The mercenary company has ‘Hogs parked at the base of the mountain range, ready to start the assault as soon as he and Maine give the signal: a flare gun, clunky and old, rests dormant in Wash’s pack for now. His and Maine’s job is to head up, draw out scouts, engage, and stall for the fifty or so minutes it’ll take for the ‘Hogs to barrel up the fire roads and sweep through the front door.

Nothing to it. Wash pauses and tips his head up. The air is clear and cool here, helmet offering him a crisp -1 degrees Celsius, and the hazy, convenient fog they’d driven through yesterday has been blown away by a firm breeze. From here, he can just barely see the peak that houses the Forerunner structure; only the very tip of it is visible, jutting stark and flat up over the soft, distant bristle of trees around it.

Maine stops ahead of him and turns, tipping his head in a silent question.

Wash shakes his head in response, and trudges on.

“Hey.”

Wash opens his eyes immediately to see Maine kneeling in front of him, and the wooziness of a sudden waking washes through him like ocean waves, unsteady and rolling.

“I’m awake,” Wash says, though he doesn’t feel it at all as he struggles upright, arms soft and unresponsive. Maine’s got his helmet, gauntlets, and bracers off, and it takes him a few seconds to register the weight of Maine’s hand on his shoulder.

“Sure,” Maine snorts, offhanded and light, but his knuckles brush against Wash’s cheek with decided deliberateness as he moves his hand away.

It’s snowing. Unsurprising, giving the heavy-bellied, gunmetal gray clouds that had crept across the peaks ahead of them yesterday, but the snow falls silent and gentle, and the world feels yawningly huge as they strike out up the old fire road again.

Maine’s armor blurs into nothingness whenever a flurry drifts past him just so, the edges of newly familiar shapes skewing away into fat soft flakes before the sharp, dark break of his undersuit reappears, and Wash loses himself to the rhythm of their march once more, planting his feet against gravel, then slush, then the gentle downy press of fresh powder.

They should clear the nearest ridge by nightfall. Every step brings them closer to the next, and Wash realized two days’ march ago that he is exhausted. This string of chases – finding a replicated signal, tracking the Forerunner base, running from the dark-armored mercenaries – has drained him. The potential of this march being just one more step instead of a finality is more deeply exhausting than he cares to admit.

It hasn’t been all bad. Hell, a lot of it’s been good. He watches Maine’s shoulders ahead of him, moving resolute through the snow. He wouldn’t trade this. Any of it.

He wants it to end. He wants an end. He wants to take this bizarre new normality and shape it into something even newer, into something steadfast. He wants Maine’s presence and Tucker’s awful jokes and Caboose’s utter lack of sensibility. He wants Sarge’s nonsense and Grif’s and Simmons’s bickering and Donut’s odd enthusiasm. He wants all of it together, and more. He wants a goddamn future, for the first time in more years than he can count.

And he doesn’t get to create that until this is over.

“Thoughts?” Maine asks as they rig up a shelter for the night, the cold air driving bright pinkness to his cheeks, eyes brilliant in the dim orange lamplight.

“Too many thoughts,” Wash says, shaking his head, but Maine smiles at him, and he lets it all ruminate in his head a little longer.

Four days. 2,186 meters of elevation. With this angle of approach, they can see Armonia itself whenever the clouds part; a sprawling, dilapidated metropolis, dark smoke curling up from somewhere different each time Wash looks down. This far away and this far up, everything looks abandoned. There’s no flash of metal or headlights on the dark strips of road that wind through the valley. The air is enlivening in its frigidity in the mornings, enervating in its draining chill at night. It’s not unpleasant, on its own, but Wash finds himself wishing the circumstances were different. As ever.

A tiny knot of matte black catches his attention.

Wash freezes and holds up his fist; behind him, he can hear the snow crunch and settle as Maine freezes in response.

“There’s a tracker up in that tree,” he says, before Maine needs to ask. “This is it. We cross this line, and we’re in their patrol zones. Whatever’s up there, there’s no going back.”

Maine lets out a soft, slow sigh.

“Ready?” he asks, so much more gently than he should.

Wash looks back at him. After so long, Maine’s armor is as comforting a sight as his face, but he’d give anything to be reading Maine’s eyes instead, the set of his jaw rather than the drawn line of his shoulders.

He nods. Maine nods back.

This time, it doesn’t take Wash anywhere near as long to recognize the telltale thrum of a Pelican’s engines.

“Fast,” Maine says quietly, and ducks closer to the dense, thick trees they’ve been using for cover. They’ve passed a total of four trackers in the past thirty or so minutes; a fairly high density, but if a distraction is what they need to be, then luring out guards is their first step.

Armed guards, Wash had expected. He just hadn’t counted on a Pelican. Judging by the stiff tension in Maine’s shoulders, he hadn’t either.

Snow rises as the Pelican’s engines roar overhead, and Wash presses himself against the tree at his back. The foliage overhead is dense here, but there’s a clearing visible about forty meters away. Probably big enough to land a Pelican in. Wash signals to Maine, and starts to creep forward as the engines crest and then cut, a dark shape coming to rest between slim trunks buried in snow.

He doesn’t see any motion, but that doesn’t mean anything. He signals Maine to watch for tracks, dipping back to UNSC handsigns in lieu of USL. Hopefully these guards are either smart enough to realize that active camo still leaves tracks in snow, or dumb enough to use it anyways.

Maine keeps pace with him, flitting silently from shadow to shadow, armor dappled soft gray against the snow. Wash is wracking his brain for the right signs to phrase what he wants to say when the snow between them explodes into steam and powder and the crack of a high-caliber round echoes through thin air.

“That was your only warning shot,” comes a rumbling voice through the trees. “Step into the open, or we’ll be IDing your dead bodies.”

That voice. That voice.

Wash looks over to Maine and signs frantically, fingers clumsy as he spells. L-O-C-U-S.

Maine immediately draws his rifle and signals engage, then stall. Suddenly, the flare gun on Wash’s hip weighs a million pounds. He’s acutely aware of its presence, of everything it means. But first – before anything, before they start this irrevocable thing – they need to assess just precisely what they’re dealing with here.

Wash takes a breath, steels himself, draws his own rifle, and follows Maine’s footsteps towards the clearing.

The Pelican’s bay doors are open, engines still bellowing out heat, and the snow has already started to pearl into water. Locus cuts a dark, imposing figure in the snow, stark even against the Pelican, long rifle raised and steady in spite of its bizarre, alien profile, but what makes Wash stop dead in his tracks is that Locus is standing next to–

“Felix?”

The armor – dark gray splashed with bright, rusty orange, so much flashier than Locus’s, borderline impractical – recoils with theatrical surprise, snow crunching audibly under his feet.

“Oh! Oh, I forgot, you went into this without any spoilers!” Felix’s voice is unmistakable as he lets out a laugh, a low, dark thing, curling and predatory, nothing like the dry-but-upbeat personality he’d shown at the crash site. “Yeah, surprise, news flash–” He hooks his fingers under the lip of Locus’s helmet and tugs, just enough to tilt Locus’s head towards him. “–Locus and I are good buddies. Aren’t we, pal?”

Locus just snarls disapprovingly and wrenches his helmet away from Felix with considerably less force than Wash would have expected. Ice crawls slowly down his spine as everything starts to line up. The Feds being compromised, the New Republic being compromised, Felix and Locus showing up together in the canyon, that stunt with the shield–

“We’re real close,” Felix practically purrs, ripping Wash back to the situation at hand. “And you, Wash, you’re really surprising me with this whole stunt.” He gestures, a reckless thing that leaves him wide open for a split second. “Practically eloping with Mister Big Hunky Merc here, leaving behind your precious little Reds and Blues.”

“This is none of your business,” Wash says.

“Mmm, you see, that’s where you’re wrong,” Felix counters. “Everything that happens on Chorus is my business. Literally–” He laughs again. “–literally business.”

Wash’s mind is racing. There isn’t going to be a clean way out of this. Felix and Locus are well-armored and well-prepared. He and Maine have been climbing this mountain for half a week. His ribs still ache; his shoulder was still stiff this morning. Reinforcements are less than an hour away, but if this isn’t the right time—

“Back off, Felix.” Wash’s voice is sharp. “We’re not trying to interfere.”

“Oh, you’re not? Because last I checked, busting into a secure facility and killing most of the people there sure seems like interference. And that's the least of your offenses, pal.”

“Back off,” Wash snarls, and the threat in his voice feels fragile and hollow. “All I want is to get off this godforsaken planet, and I don’t care who or what gets in my way.”

The lie is bitter as he sinks his teeth in deep and holds tight.

“This is golden,” Felix crows. “You should hear the way your precious teammates talked about you. Agent Washington, gone off on his own for some noble mission. I cannot wait to tell them that it was just an excuse for you to be rid of them. Do you think they’ll get disheartened enough to drop everything? Maybe they’ll think you got smart and realized the good money’s with us. Maybe–” Felix’s voice drops low again, the kind of seductive, predatory purr that makes every nerve in Wash’s body scream danger. “–just maybe, it’ll be just the leverage to push them into doing something reckless.”

Wash’s stomach churns, even as it’s flooded with ice.

“I’m disappointed, Agent Washington,” Locus says quietly. “Here I thought you were a soldier who cared about his men.”

“I’m not going to warn you again,” Wash says, ignoring Locus and stepping closer, rifle still trained on Felix’s helmet. “Back. Off.”

“Ooh, that one hit a nerve.” Felix tips his head again, acting for all the world like he doesn’t care, but the tension is clear in his stance. “You really think that you – a washed-up Freelancer and some merc – can take us?”

“Do you really want to find out?” Wash asks.

“I do,” Locus murmurs, and active camo washes over his armor.

Felix laughs again – Wash has already learned to hate that laugh – but before Wash can make a move, Maine lunges away from him and whips the stock of his rifle forward, hitting the air with a solid thump. Locus lets out a huff of surprise and stumbles backwards, active camo flickering away for just a second, balance awry for half a breath, and Maine shoulders in heavily to engage him, cutting Locus away from his partner as Wash darts forward and faces Felix head-on.

“One more chance, Felix,” he says. “Walk away.”

“Nah,” Felix replies easily, and shrugs. “This is real adorable, by the way. Acting all big and brave with your new pal. You know, I really can’t wait to snitch on you about this. I can already picture Tucker’s heartbroken little face.”

Wash tries a slow step to the side, and Felix mirrors him. Automatic, drilled. Alright. This he can deal with. He summons all the scraps of everything he isn’t and says, “Thinking you’ll leave here alive is a big assumption to make.”

“You keep that bravado up, Wash,” Felix says, the grin broad in his voice. “It’s cute.”

Wash lunges in before Felix can quite finish getting the last word out and manages to hit him in the tiny, unarmored crevice on his wrist; Felix curses loudly, rifle clattering down, and Wash kicks it away before he can pick it up.

“Alright, fine,” Felix snarls, and slams his shoulder upwards.

Wash can’t stop his own rifle from smacking him clean across the side of his helmet and he drops it purely out of shock, cursing himself for the slightest delay in his clumsy hands, for the weight of this unfamiliar rifle––

“I don’t know how I ever could have considered you a threat,” Felix continues, and reaches back to pull out a handful of throwing knives.

Wash nearly sighs in relief.

The first of four knives streaks past him, then the second, third, and by the fourth, Wash knows the playing field has changed.

Felix is good. Wash is better.

He snatches the last knife out of the air, and watches with savage satisfaction as Felix recoils.

“You think you’re the only one who’s good with knives?” He tosses it experimentally. “Big mistake.”

Wash lets the knife fly from his fingers, light and easy. It’s well-balanced, a comfortable weight, and Wash almost mourns its loss as it flashes through the air and nicks Felix’s shoulder. Superficial, but just enough to bring Felix in to close the distance between them. Wash draws his own knife and braces himself for what’s sure to be a brutal fight.

Felix is angry. It’s more than anger, really; it’s pure, unadulterated rage that’s manifesting itself as brutality without any restraint, and even the moments where his blindness makes him slip up are compensated for by the relentlessness with which Felix keeps coming at him. Felix keeps trying to maneuver them towards Locus but Wash is standing his ground as firmly as he can, and in his periphery he can see Maine pushing Locus back every time he tries to advance.

“Enough– of this– bullshit––” Felix hisses, and lashes out with his knife, blade glinting dully just before it bites deep, deep into Wash’s shoulder.

He cuts his mic and swears. It’s not his knife hand, but it’s enough to slow him down alongside his older injury, and Felix knows that. Blood sinks into the snow as Felix uses the momentary impasse to flick it off of his knife, standing just out of Wash’s range.

“Locus! Stop fucking around,” Felix shouts. “Kill him already.”

Locus drops his cloaking, and Wash’s gut goes cold. Locus is now the only person holding a rifle, and that rifle is pointed dead at Maine.

And then, out of nowhere, both Felix and Locus cock their heads like they’re listening to a transmission.

“This is your lucky day, assholes,” Felix declares, voice cold, drained of all the theatrical cheer he’d mustered just bare minutes– seconds ago. “Fortunately for you, there’s something that requires our immediate attention.”

Locus’s finger moves inside the trigger guard. Before Wash can even feel the fear that hits him seconds later, Felix immediately lunges over to slap the barrel down with his palm.

“No,” he snaps, and Locus slowly, stiffly turns his head to look at him. “Leave them.”

“Felix,” Locus snarls sharply, in warning, but Felix ignores him and turns to Wash instead.

“We know where you’re headed,” he spits, voice acidic. “This far away from anything, there’s only one place you can go. If you can get through the defenses, I guess you deserve your prize. We’ll get our money anyways.” Felix sweeps his hand out and lets out another low laugh, the gleeful cruelty creeping back into his voice. “So run along, little runaways. Letting you go now will only make killing you later even more satisfying.”

Locus breaks the staring contest with Maine he’d been losing to look down at Wash’s feet, and Wash follows his gaze to see a few dark droplets coloring the snow.

“Disappointing,” Locus murmurs again, and raises his rifle. “Prime the engines,” he says to Felix. “If we’re done, we’re done.” Locus keeps the rifle trained squarely on Wash as Felix jogs back to the Pelican and cycles the engines, and then he slowly walks backwards up the loading ramp, barrel never leaving Wash’s head.

Wash is fully expecting the Pelican’s guns to rip them apart, but the Pelican just makes a fast turn, almost reckless, and breaks the sound barrier as it heads west.

Wash exhales, sheathes his knife, and stares at Maine.

“Now,” Maine says, and the urgency in his voice is terrifying. He steps towards Wash, one hand moving to clasp the pauldron over his bleeding shoulder, and he pulls the flare gun off of Wash’s hip. “This starts now.”

Wash leans back against the trunk and tests the log under his feet. Between the snow and its age, it seems to be solid under him; Maine is a blur of white and gold below him, helmet tilted up.

“Steady?” he asks.

“I’ll be fine,” Wash replies. “They’re hitting the first switchback.”

A dark streak of dots is steadily making its way over a strip of bare snow. It’s hard to see anything more from here, but it's the best vantage point facing the base that they’ll get without moving; the fallen log had made a perfect bridge up to the solid trunk of an old, sturdy pine just half a klick downwind from where they’d fired off their flare. If anyone’s going to come this way, Wash will be able to catch them. Hopefully.

Visibility is good. The sky’s clear; the breeze is crisp, and the smoke from their flare has started to drift steadily west. Practically perfect conditions, save for the sheer amount of space he’s contending with. He almost wishes he had a sniper rifle – and then he's hit by the dizzying sensation of someone else's memory, the weight of a long rifle filling his hands, the familiarity of its heft through another set of hands.

He tears himself back to the present. The DMR is steady in his hands, solid and slender. His shoulder throbs and burns red-hot where Felix had wounded him; whatever they’ll be up against at this base, this won’t make it any easier to deal with.

“No movement,” Maine reports quietly, after twenty minutes have passed on Wash’s timer. Wash has long lost sight of the trail of mercs downslope.

“We should move up,” Wash says. “Worst comes to worst, the mercs catch up with us and we go in together.”

He carefully repositions himself, then scoots down the fallen log as swiftly as he safely can and jumps the last few feet. The soft powder sighs around him, cushioning the landing as he sinks down up to his knees in the snow. He looks at Maine, waiting for him in the snow, wind stirring powder up around his feet, and wills this image – soft shoulders, the attentive tilt of his helmet, hands easy but at the ready – to override everything else about Maine and snow and mountains that’s been seared into his memory. Wishful thinking, but he thinks it anyways.

They stay close to the fire road, but keep to the trees for cover. They’re at a distinct disadvantage approaching from downslope, but there’s nothing they can do about that. The peak has mostly flattened at this altitude, anyway; it’s just a matter of moving around a few more small ridges, and they should have eyes on the facility itself soon.

“Movement,” Wash says. A dark shape flits between some trees again, about half a klick up from them. He unslings the DMR from his back as Maine steps back into cover. “One person… two. I don’t see active camo.”

The silence hangs over his neck like a physical thing. If he takes the shot, then this, more than even that fight with Felix and Locus, will be the start of all this.

“Take it,” Maine says quietly, and out of the corner of his eye, Wash can see him nod.

He fires. The first guard nearly pirouettes with the force of the shot, the bullet digging deep into the tiny, vulnerable patch between pauldron and chestplate. The other guard draws and lunges forward, the muzzle of their rifle flashing dim orange, and Wash takes a steadying breath. The guard he’d shot slowly crawls back behind a tree, leaving a dark smudge on the snow. Wash fires again as the other guard’s attention lapses, just for a second, helmet tilting just a degree away to watch their ally, and at least now they’ll have scars to match.

The shoulder’s a bad place to have a bullet lodged in it. The guards will live, but they’ll be next to useless until they can get serious medical help. He shifts over to a slightly different vantage point, and waits.

“...Why isn’t anyone else coming?” he asks, after five more minutes have passed without any more movement. “I just shot two guards.”

Maine shakes his head.

“Wait for mercs,” he says. “Better face this together.”

Wash nods slowly, and holsters the DMR across his back in favor of his worn pistol. Odd to think that of all things, it’s this that’s been with him from the start; it’s the same pistol Maine had handed to him all those weeks – months – ago in a Warthog, slightly more scuffed and entirely at home in Wash’s palm.

They slowly edge towards the fire road, and Wash turns his radio on with as much range as he can muster out of it. If anyone’s watching for a signal, they’ll find him – but at least he’s prepared. And hopefully, the mercs will find him too.

Another five minutes pass, and Wash’s radio crackles. He shifts impatiently, and it crackles again.

“Does anyone read me?”

Silence. He tries again.

“Does anyone read me?”

A burst of static answers him. Maine dips into his comm line, eyes on the fire road.

“Repeat.”

“–read me?”

“Sam?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” comes the staticky, crackling answer, and Wash lets out a sigh. “You two safe? What’s going on?”

“It’s quiet up here,” Wash replies. His sensors are picking up a low noise nearby, consistent with Warthog engines. Many of them. They must be closer than Wash thought. “Quieter than we expected.”

“Got your IFF tags,” Sam says. “We’ll give you a ride. No more stops till our final destination, though.”

Despite everything, Wash smiles.

“Roger that.”

Sam cuts the connection, and Wash turns to look at Maine.

“You ready?” he asks, and Maine nods.

“Ready enough. Glad they’re okay.”

“Me too,” Wash replies. “I just wish we had a better idea of what was waiting for us.”

The Warthogs are heralded by the growing buzz of their engines and by the slushy powder kicked up by their wheels, digging into fresh powder and the ice that lies beneath it. Wash braces himself and jumps just as the first ‘Hog in the train slows, slinging himself into the back as hands reach out to pull him on. The radio murmurs with greetings.

“Welcome aboard,” Lucía calls, her visor flashing as she glances back at him from the driver’s seat. Wash looks at the ‘Hog next in line and sees Maine occupying a similar position, crouching next to the heavy turret with his rifle at the ready. “Any updates?”

“Took out two guards, but no one else has come to follow up,” he says. “A Pelican with two others found us first, just before we fired off the flare. Locus, and– another merc he was working with. They headed west.”

“We’ll deal with that later,” comes Marna’s voice. “No intel on the facility?”

“No,” Wash replies. “We didn’t want to risk getting closer.”

“Eyes up,” Lucía calls sharply. The fire road has widened, trees thinning out, and with one last turn they swing out to face a large, flat clearing free of trees, housing an intimidating comms array that bristles up towards the clear sky, radio dishes tilted in precise, marching arrangements.

A line of guards stretches out across the road like a ribbon, holding fast, and each of them holds a rifle branded with a searing line of orange plasma.

For a second, the Warthog slides through the turn and everything floats, weightless and just slightly ethereal.

And then Lucía drives straight towards the guards without a word of warning or any hesitation, and Wash scrambles to turn around as the ‘Hog barrels towards the small building tucked away between arrays. Lucía yanks on the wheel and the ‘Hog whips around again.

“Final stop,” she says, the grin clear in her voice. “Let’s go.”

Behind them – before them – Sam launches herself out of the next Warthog in the line and Wash watches, mesmerized, as she bowls over and knocks out one of the guards with a ruthless swing of her pistol, then rips off their helmet.

“Keep going,” she calls over the radio. “I’m going to see what I can do in their network. Go!”

Wash shakes himself and bolts out of the ‘Hog. Plasma streaks past him, orange and somehow even more alien than the greens and purples he’s seen and feared all his life, and he fires back into the fray, his bullets finding their mark in someone’s shoulder, their thigh, their hip.

He was expecting guards, well-armed and well-armored. He wasn’t expecting this few. He takes out another guard, and then another, and thinks as his hands go through the automatic motion of reloading.

These guards are well-trained, but they’re no match for what amounts to a small invading army the mercs have mustered. This speaks of either cockiness or expendability. Or both.

“M,” comes Sam’s voice, urgent, “the comms are being routed through a room belowground. I think it’s a jammer, or at least a comms suite. And someone’s in there. If we can get down–”

“Let me blow the door,” Thành interrupts, just as urgent.

The mercs closest to the facility – a simple thing, just a blocky slab of concrete with a large, heavy grate over the entryway – immediately vacate the vicinity, as if Thành had just announced a live grenade, rather than offered a suggestion. Wash is about to ask what the timer is when a dull boom rolls through the air and snow flies seconds later, and realizes the suggestion had actually been a warning.

“Move,” Lucía urges, not leaving any time for questions or regrouping, and with a quick, neat burst, she takes down the last guard standing in the snow.

“Getting downstairs is first priority,” Sam says, and no one contradicts her. “Wash, M, I’ll take you to the door. Everyone else, we stay up here and make sure no one gets downstairs. We clear?”

A flood of acknowledgement rings through their channel. Wash’s mouth is too dry to answer, and he nods firmly instead.

“Take these,” Thành says, and presses two small shapes into Wash’s hand. “Luck!”

And with that he signals two others and heads deeper into the facility, his form melting into the dim lighting. Wash looks down numbly to find a flashbang and a concussion grenade.

“This way,” Sam says, and lights up a point on their HUD. “There’s a huge underground complex here, but this room’s entirely isolated – whatever’s here, it’s in that room.”

She leads them up to an entirely nondescript, unmarked door, and then she, Lucía, and the three other mercs who’d stayed with them all fan out around the doorway, weapons bristling outwards in an echo of a phalanx.

“Go,” Lucía says, nodding up at Maine. “We’ll hold here. If anyone’s left, they won’t get through to you.”

“Thank you,” Maine says quietly, then nods back and looks at Wash. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Wash replies, even though he’s never felt less ready for anything in his life.

He hands Maine the flashbang, moves to flank the doorway across from him, and Sam unholsters an old plasma pistol.

“Breaching,” she warns, and the pistol hums a familiar warning tune as she overcharges a shot.

The plasma crackles as it eats through the lock and the handle, and Maine slams the door open with his shoulder just wide enough to toss a flashbang into the stairwell. There’s a small clatter, then the heavier thump of a body, and then the low resonant boom of the flashbang, accompanied by light flaring against the wall opposite the doorway.

Wash is trailing Maine the second the flash dies, and a haphazard burst of hot-orange plasma fire lights up the dim stairwell around them for a few seconds, fizzling into the walls and missing them by a wide margin. Maine answers with a short spray from his rifle, straight down the boxy center of the shaft, and the bullets sing as they jump and skitter downwards, ricocheting.

“At least two,” Maine says.

“I’ve got a concussion grenade on me,” Wash replies, already palming it.

“Go.”

He pulls the pin and lobs it, then cuts all audio. The impact thumps through his chest, startling a cough out of him, and the stairwell hazes over with years – maybe even decades – of dust shaken loose.

Maine vaults the next section and Wash follows without thinking, boots thudding down in a practiced rhythm, his thoughts entirely consumed by invisible thread connecting him to that familiar silhouette, pulling him forward, nudging his hands into automatic motions disconnected from all consideration as he slams the butt of his rifle against one black-clad soldier’s head and Maine does the same to another.

The last door is simple, marked only with a small plaque that reads Communications.

Maine stands by the door, ready to breach, and looks over at him.

God, Wash wishes he could see Maine’s face. But this is enough, in its own way; a familiar, battered helmet, dust gently settling in the warm recessed gold of his faceplate.

He nods.

The door slams open with little resistance.

Wash turns the corner to do a quick right-left-down-back sweep and at the end finds one solitary figure at the very back of the long, narrow room, behind a table, clearly fighting the instinct telling him to shrink away. He’s so much smaller than Wash remembered. Bile rises in his throat.

Maine holsters his pistol and–

It’s not a walk, it’s not a run, Maine simply closes the distance between the door and Aiden Price’s irreconcilably small form, in spite of the pistol that Price is firing, and Wash is vaguely aware of himself shouting something that feels like a name, rifle trained on Price, because there’s a wet thump that means Maine’s been hit.

Price fumbles trying to reload at the wrong time and Maine reaches forward with all that momentum and throttles him, slamming him against the wall like a rag doll, hand dwarfing his entire neck.

“You know, Agent Washington,” Price chokes out, hands scrabbling in vain against Maine’s forearm, “I’d expected you to show up, but you–”

Maine tightens his hold. Whatever Price had been about to say, he won’t be saying it. Wash finally reaches Maine’s side, rifle still aimed squarely between Price’s familiar, cold eyes.

“Wait,” Price manages, barely a strangled rasp. “I’m not in charge.”

“What?”

Maine relents on his grip, just slightly, and a satisfied, breathless smile spreads across Price’s face.

“Someone else is in charge of operations on Chorus.”

Wash doesn’t glance at Maine, but he can guess that what’s going through Maine’s head is exactly what’s going through Wash’s: what the fuck.

“Don’t care,” Maine finally snarls, and leans his weight into the grip he’s got on Price’s throat.

The blood is rushing in Wash’s ears and Maine’s breaths are ragged through the comm and time has stopped working because the only thing that exists is the roar in his head and his finger brushing against the trigger guard and the Counselor’s face getting blotchy and pallid, Maine’s grip on his throat unrelenting, and Wash thinks that maybe Project Freelancer died the minute that leaderboard went up, and everything that happened afterwards was just the death rattle.

Maine’s still breathing ragged and uneven and Wash has never known him to hesitate before a kill like this, neither the old Maine nor the Meta nor this Maine, but then––

Maine lets go. Price sags with Maine’s hand still around his throat, barking out wheezing coughs, and then Maine snaps his head against the wall. He crumples to the floor, limp, unconscious, and his chest rises faintly as he breathes.

Wash doesn’t say anything, can’t think of anything to say, and then Maine finally moves, exhales sharply, and brings a hand to his side.

“Maine?” Wash asks, very quietly. His voice is hoarse.

Maine pulls his helmet off and turns around, sets it down gently on the table, metal clinking against the glass surface. Wash slings his rifle onto his back and slowly walks up to him.

“Got hit,” Maine replies, just as quiet, just as hoarse. Wash doesn’t think he’s ever heard Maine sound like this. “S’okay. Grazed.”

“Let me see,” Wash says, still approaching him, still slow.

Maine finally half-turns to face him and moves his hand off of his side; Wash takes a look at the way his eyes are glazed, red-rimmed, exhausted, and he busies himself instead with inspecting the hole in Maine’s undersuit, just above his hip, sticky and damp and darkened with blood.

“You’re right,” Wash says, “it’s shallow. I saw a medkit in the hallway, I’ll–”

He stops abruptly when Maine brings his hands up and slowly, gently pulls Wash’s helmet off and sets it down on the table next to his own. Strangely, of all the things that have happened since crash-landing on Chorus, Wash thinks that this is the most intimate thing he’s experienced. Maybe ever. Maine cards shaking fingers through Wash’s hair, then moves his palm to Wash’s cheek. Wash covers Maine’s hand with his own.

“Medkit,” Wash repeats quietly, hating that he has to kill the moment. Maine gives him a small, slightly sheepish smile, and lets go.

Wash has to step over the guards’ bodies to get to the medkit, and it kickstarts his brain into slowly thinking about their next steps. When he gets back Maine is leaning over the table, face pensive, searching through whatever Price had left pulled up on the glass display.

“Looks like he told the truth,” Maine says as Wash walks up, and nods down towards the table. “Loads of other comms here. High priority. Encrypted.”

Wash is silent. There’s nothing for him to say. Instead, he opens the medkit and starts looking for what he needs.

“Biofoam.” Maine stills Wash’s hand as he’s trying to dig down to the gauze and antiseptic.

“Are you sure?”

“Deal with it later. Now, need more answers.” Maine looks back at the Counselor’s slumped form.

Wash takes a breath and picks up the biofoam canister, gives it a few cursory shakes, and gently finds the edges of Maine’s wound with his fingertips. He meets Maine’s eyes when he’s ready and Maine nods, clenching his jaw, so Wash slowly applies the biofoam, watching it bubble against Maine’s skin and the edges of his undersuit, fizzling till it goes flat against the edges of the gouge, re-sealing the bodysuit along with the wound. They’ll need to both seal the bodysuit and treat the wound properly, but– later. There’ll be time later. There has to be time later.

Wash sets down the biofoam canister and sighs, running one hand through his hair, keeping the other against Maine’s non-wounded side, and it’s quiet again save for the hum of their shields. His shoulder throbs dully.

“I thought you were going to kill him,” Wash eventually says. It’s not a question, it’s not a judgement, it’s not an accusation, it’s just–

“Me too.” Maine is quiet for nearly a full minute. “Killed enough people in Freelancer’s name. Felt wrong.” He leans down and presses his forehead to Wash’s. “Besides, with him, might be able to help–” He gestures, vague and slow. “–fix this.”

Wash stays quiet, and lets his eyes close for a few breaths.

There are a number of details they need to get out of the Counselor himself, and there’s probably a wealth of data they can dig out of the computers here. The room they’re in is some kind of SCIF-like thing with a full communications suite, though it looks inactive, every light dim and every screen off save for this workstation.

They also – maybe first of all – need to dig their way back out of this bunker and rendezvous with the mercs before it gets too late, or reinforcements arrive, or something worse. Wash can’t shake the pervasive feeling of wrongness that their fight with Locus and Felix left in him; there’s something they’re missing, something he can’t quite put together. If they can get any of these workstations unlocked, they can check comms logs for any silent alarms or requests for backup.

“I don’t think,” Wash finally says, eyes still closed, “that our radios will have any signal down here. Not in a bunker like this.” He opens his eyes when Maine doesn’t reply for a few seconds too long. Maine’s eyes are distant and unfocused, deep in thought; he doesn’t startle when Wash lays a hand on the side of his neck, but it’s a near thing. “I’ll head up the stairwell to check in with Sam and Lucia.”

Maine takes his hand, squeezes it briefly, and murmurs, “Be safe.”

He’s halfway back up the shaft before the signal is strong enough to connect. He climbs a few more stairs anyways, just to make sure it’ll hold.

“Sam,” he says, “Lucía. Maine and I cleared the room at the bottom.”

“Wash?” Lucía sounds a little out of breath. “You two okay? Find anything?”

“Yes,” Wash says, unsure which question he’s answering, and goes on anyway. “There’s a communications suite downstairs. And…” His throat closes, bone-dry, and there’s no air left in his lungs.

“You find what you thought you’d find?” she asks, just gently enough for some wild emotion to come crawling up the back of Wash’s throat. When the silence crackles on for long enough, she says, “Alright. Well, we’ve cleared this floor and we’re starting on some sweeps.”

“Have you found anything?” Wash manages.

“Actually, no,” Lucía says. “Seems we’ve cleared out just about everyone. A squad’s chasing down some stragglers outside, but we haven’t found anyone else in here.”

“That’s not encouraging,” Wash says. His body doesn’t have enough fuel left in it to manufacture any dread for him to drown in.

“I don’t know,” Lucía counters, humming thoughtfully. “We found launch controls and firing solutions for SAMs. Seems this place was more worried about air assaults than anything coming the way we did.”

“You said comms suite?” Sam cuts in, sounding decidedly out of breath. “Knew it. They might have control over the jammers there. Or enough data for me to scrape a location together.”

“Maybe,” Wash replies. “It looked offline to me. You’d have to take a look yourself.”

There’s a slight pause before Sam answers.

“Let us finish sweeping this facility. I’ll give you and M some time to sort things out.”

And with that, she ends the call and Wash is left in silence.

The comms suite won’t have the best information. The simplest route would be to ask the one person who’d know everything. The problem isn’t going to be getting Price to talk. It’s going to be figuring out what he’s hiding behind.

“Wake up.”

Price stirs groggily. Wash turns him over roughly with the toe of his boot, and feels nothing even remotely close to remorse or pity as Price’s head and shoulders jostle into the wall of the small auxiliary electrical room he and Maine had shoved his unconscious body into.

“Wake up,” Wash repeats, more forcefully.

To his credit, Price’s eyes are clear by the time he finishes dragging himself upright, struggling against his bound hands. He even tests the restraints, and Wash feels a flood of unwarranted paranoia as the bonds that Lucía had tossed town the stairwell flex, then hold.

“I think we can work together to find several possible resolutions to this,” he starts, voice falling into a familiar, calm cadence.

“I don’t think so,” Wash replies brusquely. “I think you can tell us everything you know, and we won’t leave you here to feed the local wildlife.”

“Everything I know about what?” Price asks with a bland, patient smile, and Wash feels a wave of helpless rage rise that he has fought for years to keep under control. Next to him, Maine shifts.

“I won’t play this game with you,” Wash replies, voice flat and firm. “It’s over, Price. You tell us what you did on Chorus and who you did it for, and we let you live.”

“I can offer several possible explanations, Agent Washington,” he says smoothly. “If—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Price regards him evenly, and blinks. It’s a crack in his facade. Wash takes the victory with vicious satisfaction.

“What would you prefer me to call you, then?”

Wash looks at him and, feeling so much more like a Red or a Blue now than he ever remembers feeling like a Freelancer, says lightly, “Don’t address me at all.”

Price levels him with a long, calculating look, his eyes cold.

“So you want my cooperation,” he finally says. “In exchange for certain… protections, I presume.”

“No,” Wash replies. “No protections. Just cooperation. Maybe you live out the rest of your days in a UNSC cell, or maybe you don’t.”

“I’m not seeing the benefit for me here, Agent Washington.”

Wash doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. It’s just one needle under his skin, and he has weathered far worse.

“You know what?” Wash looks over at Maine. “He’s right. We’re wasting our time. I’m sure no judge would find the data we’ve extracted to be lacking in any way. And considering the new slew of crimes you’ve committed–”

“Escape from penal ship,” Maine notes thoughtfully. “Insider trading. Bribery. Warmongering.”

“Right,” Wash agrees. “And hey, probably even more we don’t know yet. I’m sure civilian and military courts will be clamoring for the chance to sentence you again.”

Maine claps a hand on Wash’s shoulder and turns, heading for the door. Wash follows, and Maine’s hand centimeters from the access panel when Price says, “Wait.”

Maine’s hand pauses. Behind his helmet, Wash smiles. Behind them, Price lets out a soft, measured breath.

And then he says a name, and Wash’s blood runs cold.

His HUD claims that about an hour and a half has passed since Locus and Felix, since they signaled the mercenary company to start their assault. That doesn’t feel right at all. Not with the adrenaline still rushing through his system, collecting in his chest in a yawning pit of dread.

Maine walks all the way through the comms suite and tosses his helmet onto the nearest surface, entirely heedless of the dark dials on the board, and he runs a hand through his hair.

Wash follows him sluggishly, his hands heavier and slower than they’ve ever felt as he clumsily pushes his helmet off and sets it down on some paneling near Maine’s.

“Now what?” Maine asks, hollow, but there’s anger brewing in his face. “Believe him?”

Wash rubs his face.

“No. Maybe.” He leans one hip against the console and crosses his arms. “He’s got no reason to lie about this. He gains by implicating someone that powerful. If he’d just been trying to deflect onto someone innocent, he wouldn’t have chosen–”

An ear-deafening shriek interrupts him – Wash actually cringes at the squealing pitch, pulse leaping up into his throat – and the console flares to life at his hip with a blinding wave of bright indicators underlaid by the empty-static noise of a live speaker waiting for input.

A workstation flares to life. And then another. Then two more full rows light up, and then the low hum of server racks multiplies, and the air stirs as the cooling system kicks on.

The short-range radio they’d patched into the mercs crackles through the speakers in their helmets, signal weak even with the kitbashed amplifier strategically positioned halfway up the stairs. Sam’s voice comes through harsh with compression and she asks, “You guys getting this interference?”

“Yeah,” Wash says, “but what’s the source?”

Sam’s answer is a stuttered, garbled mess of noise as static surges across the line: “—check inbound... suite— –omm lines, if it’s… –might be.”

Maine looks at Wash, then down at the console.

And then, a new signal cuts in through their helmets and Sam’s voice comes through, crystalline and urgent.

“Long-range comms are up. Planetwide.”

He looks over at Maine, holding his breath, not letting himself get his hopes up. His heart is completely still, like he’s waiting for something to galvanize him into action, like this isn’t happening at all and it’s just a daydream stuck between two heartbeats.

“Long-range comms,” Maine repeats, slowly, and with complete disbelief. “Wash–”

And that’s all it takes. Wash scrambles for his helmet, jamming it back on; his HUD is an absolute mess of pending outbound connections and old downloads he’d never bothered to clear after the crash, and he clears everything away without pausing to check any of it.

The comms frequencies he’s looking for are still on his active roster, still ordered by recent connections. Maine’s name is higher than theirs. The amount of weeks listed since last connection makes Wash’s chest go hollow and faint, and there’s nothing he can do to stop his pulse from thundering as the outbound signal warbles and strains before connecting.

“Tucker, Caboose–” He has to remind himself to take a breath. “This is Washington. Long-range communications are back. If you–”

“Yeah, no shit they’re back,” comes a familiar voice. “Who do you think was responsible for that, the tooth fa–”

“Agent Washington!”

Tension and weakness slam into him in equal measure. He’s breathless, thoughtless, utterly numb and feeling altogether too many things at once, and then Maine shifts at the very corner of his eye and everything is knocked clean out of his system. Wash grabs Maine’s hand, ignoring the awkward bend of their elbows, and squeezes until he swears he can feel the imprint of plating against his palm.

“Yeah,” he manages, “it’s me.”

The connection is slow and compressed, but it’s steady, and Wash can hear something happening on the other line, noises that sound suspiciously like an active firefight. With a quiet blip, a new frequency cuts into theirs.

“Hey boys,” comes a breathless voice.

“Carolina,” Wash blurts out. “What are you–”

“I’m with the Reds and the Blues right now, ask me later. Where are you?”

Wash is losing his tenuous grip on everything he wants– needs— must say. Maine’s hand flexes gently under his, and he shoves his thoughts into some semblance of organization.

“What, no welcome for us?” Tucker says indignantly. “What do you mean, boys? Wait, who else is on this line? Hey–”

“Hello?” Caboose bellows, voice blowing out the connection. “Hello? Is someone there? Is it– are you a radio ghost?”

“Calm down,” Wash parries, automatic and firm. “I promise I’ll explain everything as soon as I can, but just–” He pauses for a second, scrambling to think of how to say what he needs to say as expediently as possible. “Carolina, what we found – we were right, it’s old ghosts, and it’s worse than we thought. We need to call in the UNSC.”

Ominous silence meets him.

“The people of Chorus are not going to be happy about that,” Carolina says quietly.

“I know.” Wash squeezes his eyes shut for a second. “This is a whole lot bigger than any of us thought it was.”

“What the fuck,” Tucker interrupts. “Why the fuck are you always so fucking cryptic?”

“I am really confused,” Caboose shouts, eclipsing everyone else on the line. “Agent Wash, are– are you okay? Do you need the heroes to rescue you?”

“I’m fine, Caboose,” Wash says patiently, and bites back a smile. “And Tucker, I promise, I’ll explain everything as soon as I can.”

“Send me your coordinates, Wash,” Carolina says, and her voice is starting to snap into business mode. “I’ll talk to Vanessa and Doyle. UNSC attention is a difficult thing to ask for.”

“Keep me updated,” Wash says. “And Carolina– this is a story I want to hear.”

“I promise, I’ll explain everything,” she says wryly, and Wash can hear the smile in her voice.

“You better,” Wash replies, and he slowly, finally feels the tension leaving him. Maine squeezes his hand again. “I sent you coordinates, I think we’re fairly close to Armonia.”

“Looks like an hour’s ride in a Pelican,” Carolina says. “I’ll see what I can do. It might be a while, but I’ll keep you updated.”

“Thanks, Carolina. Tucker, Caboose – stay safe.”

The line goes cuts. Wash takes his helmet off again and sets it down, gingerly this time, and runs a hand through his hair.

“Sam sent message,” Maine says quietly, tipping his head down to his datapad. “Comms really back. Everywhere. Seems like, only some local jammers left. But mostly, everything back.”

“That’s good,” Wash says. His voice feels hoarse. It’s hard to hold all of this in his head; everything feels like it’s in boiling water, bits and pieces floating to the top only to be chased away. Maine is watching him, careful but not distant, and Wash feels like he might shatter if he meets Maine’s eyes.

The radio suddenly whines with an incoming transmission, and Wash is jolted out of his thoughts; he hastily links his helmet comms to the nearest workstation and prays it’ll work.

“That was fast,” Wash says, once the line is open and clear.

“Vanessa and Doyle aren’t too happy at the thought of calling in the UNSC,” Carolina replies. Her voice is controlled, breaths tight like she’s running somewhere. “And you aren’t exactly calling at the best time. I need a reason, Wash.”

“It’s going to sound far-fetched,” Wash says, “but I promise it’s the truth.”

He strips off his gauntlets and sets them down on his helmet, careful to not make too much noise.

“Give me the facts.”

He keeps his eyes on the workstation, but he can see Maine going through the same motions out of the corner of his eye; the practiced, slow sweep of his hands easing off one glove and then the other, the soft flash of his skin against the armor and the undersuit.

“We found Aiden Price in a comms facility east of Armonia. What we tried to tell you when we met–” He pauses and takes a breath. “We were right. He’s the one who got the civil war here going. A skirmish here, an assassination there, almost everything was him.”

Carolina makes a quiet noise. Wash reaches his hand out and Maine’s fingers bump against his, cool and firm.

“The problem is, Price is working for someone else. Someone with money, who got a taste of power during the war and never wanted to give it up.”

“Someone in the UNSC,” she guesses, voice low.

“Not just anyone, Carolina.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Maine’s hand squeezes his. “The Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee.”

“What?” Carolina’s voice huffs out, like she’s trying to catch her breath. “How?”

“After the manhunt on the Director and all of Project Freelancer, he went back to a quiet life behind a desk, but apparently that wasn’t good enough anymore. He quietly bought out the remains of Charon Industries a while ago, after the Freelancer investigation got wrapped up. He used it to get a foothold in the arms industry, but he never got an edge. He’s been dealing under the table to get his hands on this planet, and he’s planning to cash in on all of the salvage from the wrecks, the black markets, and all of the Forerunner tech that’s here. Once he’s got all that, he’s going to reverse-engineer it and sell it back to the UNSC. At least, according to Price. But Price has little reason to lie, if it means putting the blame on someone that can take the fall for him. It’s worked for him before.”

The radio crackles, silence stretching on.

“Well,” Carolina finally says, voice carefully even. “I’d say that’s a good enough reason to call in the UNSC. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll explain it to Vanessa. I’ll buzz you when I get a response.”

The transmission ends.

Everything dissolves into a blur of information after that. Thankfully, Sam and Lucía jump in and take point immediately after Maine updates them on the situation, and they get in contact with Carolina who patches them through to someone in Armonia who passes word along to someone else; the flood of updates is thoroughly dizzying, and Wash doesn’t know what to make of any of it just yet.

Felix is dead. Locus is missing. The two armies of Chorus have reconciled in Armonia, evidently as of a few weeks ago, somehow. Teams are being prepared – merc, New Republic, and Fed, all around the planet – to track down the last of Hargrove’s people as word filters out that it’s over. On paper, at least.

And Carolina, the Reds, and the Blues are aboard the Pelican that’s just touched down in front of him.

Wash shifts his weight nervously as the Pelican’s engines cut. Maine is with Sam and Lucía in the comms suite, helping them finish prep for leaving, and suddenly his absence is completely unbearable.

The bay doors open.

Wash has almost zero time to prepare between hearing a wordless yell, and seeing a blue blur bolting straight at him. The impact is bone-crushing.

“Caboose,” he wheezes, “you’ll break my ribs.”

“You are even taller than I remembered!” Caboose shouts, obligingly letting go. Wash hopes his armor isn’t dented. “You’ve grown up so much!”

“It’s good to see you too,” Wash replies, patiently ignoring the content of his statement, and focusing instead on the sentiment.

“Wow, go ahead and break him, why don’t you,” Tucker calls, and even colored with annoyance, the sound of his voice is a salve for something Wash hadn’t realized was so deeply wounded.

“Focus, everyone,” comes Carolina’s voice, and Wash clasps her on the shoulder as she walks up next to him, squeezing tight enough so she can feel it. Her posture eases, just a fraction, and Wash is flooded with warmth as more people step out of the Pelican’s belly.

“Aw, I was hopin’ all of this was an elaborate prank,” comes Sarge’s voice, plaintive, “and the Blues actually were down a team member.”

“That’s alright, sir. I’m sure you’ll just devise new strategies for our updated combat situation.”

“What combat situation? We literally just ended a planet-wide combat situation! You can’t seriously be thinking that we’re just going to go back to our old bases in that goddamn canyon!”

“Oh man, I wonder if those cabbages are still alive!” Donut chimes in, helmet bobbing cheerfully behind Grif and Simmons and their stiff, bicker-ready shoulders, and Wash feels familiar old guilt worm into his gut all over again amidst the warmth. “Maybe they mutated!”

“Hello, uh, Reds,” Wash says, before the conversation gets any further out of hand. He surveys the small party – a few other soldiers in New Republic armor, a few in Federal Army armor – and then addresses them all. “If that’s everyone, then you can all follow me.”

“Wait–” Tucker catches him as he’s turning away. “Look, she refused to tell us what’s going on. What the fuck is going on? What’s so fucking important that you ditched us in the middle of a goddamn civil war?”

Wash pauses. The harsh note of bitterness in his voice stings, and it stings hard.

“Just… follow me,” He finally says, and heads towards the base. Tucker keeps stride with him, shoulders angry. “When we went after the Director, there were a lot of loose ends that we left to the UNSC to tie up.”

“I swear to god, if that Director asshole’s alive somehow–”

“He’s dead,” Wash and Carolina chorus, voicing mingling flatly.

“Good,” Tucker mutters.

“Unfortunately,” Wash continues around the bitterness on his tongue, “someone else made it.”

“Great,” Grif mutters. “Just great. More work! Not like we didn’t, you know, save the fuckin’ planet already. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Wash pushes through a door into the makeshift staging area and lets out a sigh he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Maine looks up at him immediately and nods, shoulders easing, Sam and Lucía flanking him as if they were twice his size rather than half; Wash nods at them all, then braces for the next leg of his explanation.

“Project Freelan—”

“Oh, fuck,” Simmons shouts, and Wash realizes just what kind of mistake he’s made.

“Holy shit–”

“Open fire, open fucking fire–”

“Weapons down,” Carolina snaps, but half the room is reaching for their holsters, and there’s no way this is going to work because if the Reds shoot then the Blues will too, and—

Wash sprints across the room, plants himself in front of Maine and Sam and Lucía, the three of them standing together wary but stock-still, and he squares his shoulders to face the Reds and Blues.

“Shut up, goddammit, let me explain this!”

There’s a thud as Carolina pulls off her helmet, drops it to the floor, then puts two fingers to her mouth and lets out a piercing whistle. The clamoring stops immediately. Maine stays deathly still, shoulders easy, hands up palm-out.

“What the fuck, man?” Grif yells, voice at least one octave higher than normal.

“Let him talk,” Carolina snaps. “All of you, shut up.”

“You knew about this?” Simmons asks her.

“She knew,” Wash says, pulling off his helmet, “and you’ve got no right to get mad at her about it.” Maine looks down at him with uncertainty in his shoulders, and Wash inclines his head in a half-shrug. “Alright. Everyone, this is my partner, Maine.”

“No, that’s our enemy, the Meta,” Grif snaps back.

“You know, I could always just not explain anything and just leave you guys in eternal confusion,” Wash fires back sharply. Maine snorts out a laugh and some of the tension leaves his frame as he reaches up and openly, easily pulls off his helmet, keeping his hands visible.

“So you’re tellin’ me,” Sarge starts, skepticism plain in his voice, “that you survived being thrown off a cliff while attached to a car?”

Maine shrugs.

“Didn’t you turn on Wash the last time you guys were partners?” Tucker asks, crossing his arms. “If you stabbed him in the back once, who’s to say you won’t do it again?”

Wash looks over at Maine because he really doesn’t know how to answer this, and Maine looks down at Wash like he really doesn’t want to be thinking about that point in his life.

“Situations change,” Wash finally says, looking back at the Reds and the Blues. Carolina is studying the two of them, head tilted just slightly.

“Still waiting on an explanation of everything, dude,” Grif reminds him.

“Maine pulled me out of the canyon after Locus knocked me out,” Wash says, drawing on old reserves of patience he hasn’t resorted to for months.

“That was really considerate of you,” Caboose says to Maine, voice mild. Maine just looks at Wash, completely unsure of how to react. Wash dismissively waves a hand in response.

“Why would he– you– do that?” Simmons asks. Wash feels his temper slowly rise.

“Felt like it,” Maine says blithely, and Wash grits his teeth at the blank looks on everyone’s faces. Carolina, at least, looks like she’s just bitten back a smile.

“At this rate, I’m never going to finish,” Wash says. “Maine found out that our ship had crashed, just like Felix and Locus found out, and around the same time, he intercepted a long-range transmission.”

“Wait, didn’t we just turn off the long-range jammers?” Tucker interjects.

Maine snaps his fingers at Tucker and nods, a nonverbal exactly.

“It was heavily encrypted, but Sam–” Wash looks over at her and nods. “Managed to work through some of it for Maine. It turned out to be a transmission from Aiden Price.” The Reds and Blues look at him, nonplussed. “He was essentially the second-in-command of Project Freelancer. The Counselor. We thought he’d gone down at the same time as the Director, but apparently not.”

“So?” prompts Donut. Maine spreads his hands in an obvious gesture.

“Revenge,” he says simply, and when that nets no reaction, he rolls his eyes and reaches for the datapad behind him, then types out revenge large enough for everyone to see, sarcasm written plainly in the set of his jaw.

“What? That’s not a good reason,” Simmons says indignantly.

“Are you kidding me? That’s the best reason!” Grif fires back immediately.

“What do you have to do with his personal quest for revenge?” Tucker says, cutting across the beginnings of a squabble between Simmons and Grif.

“It was my loose end,” Wash says, frowning. “I didn’t tie it up when I had the chance.”

“And?” Tucker prompts immediately. “Did you find him?”

“Yes,” Wash says, and briefly meets Carolina’s eyes. “That’s why we’re here. It took us a long time to track him down, but we did it, and… there’s more.”

“Oh boy,” Grif mutters sarcastically.

“The Oversight Subcommittee was tasked with taking down Project Freelancer and the Director once they found out what was happening. The Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee is also the person who sent the two of us after you all again to try and collect the Epsilon unit.” He pauses awkwardly. “I’m sure you… remember that.”

“Damn right we do,” Simmons snaps.

He glances over at Maine. Once again he’s overcome by the sheer absurdity of this situation, like once he says it out loud, it’ll all be revealed as some kind of long-running joke, like they’ve all been played by the universe on nothing more than a whim.

“Long story short, the Chairman and the Counselor engineered the civil war on Chorus to profit from all the salvage and Forerunner tech that’s on this planet.”

Another moment of dead silence. Wash lets it sour before continuing.

“The Chairman gets a nice fat paycheck as a part of the UNSC, but apparently that’s not enough for him, so he reached out to the craftiest bastard he knew. Price was the one who sat behind the scenes to really get both sides going against each other.”

“Felix and Locus,” Carolina clarifies for the Reds and Blues. “We knew someone was pulling their strings, just not who.”

“So, to wrap this all up, we’ve got Price tied up downstairs–” Wash jerks a thumb at the door. “–but we don’t have Hargrove, and that’s why you’re here.”

Yet another moment of silence.

“That was a really nice story,” Caboose says thoughtfully. “I think I’d give it five stars.”

“No one asked you,” Tucker immediately fires back. “So now what, we just wait for the military to show up and take this guy?”

Wash glances up at Maine again, then at Sam, then Lucía, then Carolina.

“Yeah,” Carolina sighs, “guess so.”

Wash cuts through the flurry of activity and chases a bright flash of aqua until he catches up with Tucker. He resolutely ignores the knot in his stomach.

Tucker barely glances at him as he walks up. Wash clears his throat.

“Tucker, I’m sorry.” The words are easier than he thought they would be. The weight of them still sits on him, resolute. “This whole… none of this was fair to you.”

“You’re right,” Tucker says, resolutely refusing eye contact, “it wasn’t.”

“I just…” Wash trails off, unsure of what he wants to say. Or how. “The idea of dragging you guys on another wild goose chase that had to do with my dirty laundry–”

“You didn’t think we could’ve made that choice for ourselves?” Tucker finally looks at him. “What, you didn’t think we’d all have the ability to look at this situation and think, hmm, Wash’s old buddy from Freelancer wants to take his revenge and Wash is going with him, they’ll be safe together, we don’t need to be babysitters, huh?”

Wash looks away.

“I’m sorry.”

“We were really fucking worried about you, man. Carolina told us you were safe and in good company when she showed up, but–” Tucker shakes his head. “We were really fucking worried. For months, Wash.”

“Well, if it helps, I don’t think there’s anyone else in my life who’s going to come back from the dead and rope me into a quest for revenge,” Wash says, helpless.

Tucker finally cracks a smile at that.

“Good,” he says, “‘cause that’d be bullshit. You’re coming back to Armonia with us, right?”

“Of course,” Wash says. “Where else would I go?”

Tucker shrugs and picks absently at his helmet, turning it in his hands.

“Somewhere with Maine and Carolina? Fuck if I know.”

“I–” The idea is overwhelming, too huge. “No. You’re my team. I’m staying with you.”

Tucker’s smile broadens. It’s still just a shade of his usual reckless grin, but it’s more than Wash has gotten in months, and he’ll take it.

“Dustoff in five, by the way,” he says. “That’s also why I came to find you. Thành, Lucía, Sam, and Marna are all coming with us. They’ll be more helpful than Maine or I could be.”

“You’re probably gonna love Armonia,” Tucker says. “You know how they set up the barracks there?”

“How?” Wash asks, a sinking feeling growing in his chest.

“Two groups,” Tucker tells him, and hides the smug tilt of his smile as he pulls his helmet on. “On opposite ends of a training field.”

Carolina gives them both a quick glance before folding her hands neatly behind her back. Wind whips across the LZ, blowing her hair around like a halo of flame.

“I’d like to introduce you to Generals Vanessa Kimball and Donald Doyle,” she says, sharp but not cold. “The current… interim leaders of Chorus.”

Kimball nods crisply at them so Wash nods back and sees Maine do the same, but Doyle shifts awkwardly, almost extending his hand to shake. Interesting. Wash will tackle that and a million other questions once he gets some fucking sleep.

“Wash and Maine are old friends of mine from Project Freelancer. Marna, Sam, Lucía, and Thành are…”

“Informally representing mercenary groups across Chorus?” Thành supplies. Sam makes a so-so gesture, and Marna shrugs.

“Close enough,” Lucía says. “Informally is the key phrase there.”

Doyle clears his throat and says, “Very well. If you would please follow us to the war room, then.”

Wash trades a look with Maine and then with Carolina, and then follows Kimball and Doyle into a building, low and plain, with an undercurrent of simple elegance. Kimball sighs as she enters the war room and takes off her helmet to run a hand through her hair; Doyle takes off his helmet and he seems slightly more together than he’d been at the LZ. Carolina reaches up to take her helmet off, too, so Wash throws in the towel and follows suit, watches Maine do the same, and the gesture spreads across the room as he sets his helmet down on the table.

He meets Maine’s exhausted eyes and for a split second everything else disappears, and his world narrows down to just this one point. The corner of Maine’s mouth lifts up and his eyes crinkle at the corners, just a bit, and Wash feels the tension start draining out of his chest.

Carolina quietly clears her throat, and it’s enough to jolt him back to the present situation.

“–sure we can resolve this without any incident,” Kimball is saying, looking pointedly at Doyle, who’s determinedly looking at the table like a scolded child. “The UNSC have long made it clear that they have no interest in Chorus. Now, I know everything that Carolina told me, but I think I speak for everyone when I say that I would like to know exactly what you all have been doing.”

Wash looks over at Carolina and then opens his mouth, but she cuts him off.

“They’re exhausted,” she says. “We can debrief tomorrow.”

Kimball’s brow furrows, and Doyle doesn’t exactly look pleased, either.

“Generals–” Wash’s voice rasps out by the end of the word, frayed by everything that’s happened today. In the past few hours. He tries again. “Generals, with all due respect, we have travel logs and maps that we can share with you right now.”

“Sam and I can also provide information on our movements,” Lucía says, “and I agree. There’s no reason to debrief tonight.”

“If I’m going to be holding a UNSC official in custody, I need more information than word of mouth,” Kimball says, leaning over the table.

“I’m– well, I’m inclined to agree with Miss– General Kimball.” Doyle wrings his hands, and the gesture is deeply disconcerting. Weak. Indecisive. Especially next to Kimball’s frown, thought written deep in her face.

With the soft light hitting her at this angle, Kimball looks both livid and placid somehow, and there are deep lines of worry written between her brows, furrowing the corners of her eyes. It’s a look Wash is well-acquainted with. She’s barely holding it together.

“Vanessa,” Carolina says quietly.

Kimball tenses.

“It’s not that I don’t trust—”

“That’s not what I meant.” Carolina steps forward, standing between the generals and the mercenaries. She faces Kimball with her chin down, the line of her back soft. Wash can’t remember ever seeing this look on Carolina. “I know for a fact that none of us can make a sound decision on anything right now, and we don’t even have a full debrief from the lieutenants yet.”

There’s a loaded silence as Carolina and Kimball stare each other down, and something passes between them that’s much more than words could convey. Kimball is the first to break eye contact with a sigh, and then she shoots Doyle a glare that is, by contrast, very comprehensible.

“Let’s see the logs,” Kimball says, leaning back, and she opens a secure data-share channel. Doyle looks at her, sputters, and then falls silent.

The table gets very crowded, very fast, and the array of file transfer windows from six different people clouds over a heavily marked-up map that’s apparently displaying a small zone in downtown Armonia. It takes an unexpectedly long time for the files to transfer. Wash hadn’t realized that there was so much.

“This is… very thorough,” Doyle comments, surprised. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Kimball echoes, and then looks at Carolina. Her face looks decidedly softer now, away from the dull blue light of the display. “Well, let’s get you all a place to stay, then. We can go through your data and see what’s left tomorrow.”

Wash nods at her.

“We’ll stay for now,” Marna says, looking at Sam, Lucía, and Thành before nodding at Kimball. “They need the rest more than we do.”

Kimball nods back.

“Okay, then,” Carolina says, reaching for her helmet. “Grab your gear, and let’s go.”

“Oh, you weren’t going anywhere, were you?” calls a slightly shrill, almost sickly-sweet voice. “I have some medical scans to do!”

“This, er, is Doctor Emily Grey, our lead medic,” Doyle explains as the medic in question walks in through a door, and Wash notes the look of almost-fearful discomfort on his face. Seems like a medic is a medic is a medic.

“You aren’t injured, are you?” Carolina asks.

Maine grimaces before meeting the medic’s eyes, turns his side to her, and gestures at the tear in his bodysuit.

“Gunshot wound!” Dr. Grey warbles. “Aw, how dull. How old is this biofoam?”

Maine shrugs.

“Half a day, maybe?” Wash supplies. Maine shakes his head, and counts off four fingers instead.

Four hours. That’s it. This has all happened in the span of four hours.

“Feel fine,” Maine grunts, clearly just wanting to be gone rather than stuck here with Dr. Grey flitting around his ribs. “Your shoulder?”

Wash grimaces.

“Ooh,” Dr. Grey says, voice low, “now I really want to get to know you two.” She moves away from Maine, though, head bobbing cheerfully. “And don’t worry! That’s just a teensy little bullet wound and the biofoam did its job beautifully. Just go ahead and stick a bandaid or two on it after you shower off the biofoam and keep it clean! Anything else I should know about?”

Her eyes glitter with something just a little too close to eagerness for Wash’s taste. Maine pointedly looks down at Wash’s shoulder.

“My shoulder,” Wash supplies reluctantly, and gestures.

Grey hums and leans in close, her scanner humming uncomfortably, but her hands are clinically gentle as she inspects the wound with the same amount of delicacy and expediency she had shown Maine’s.

“Pop by the clinic tonight,” she eventually says. “You’re not dying, but that should get a little more treatment than–” She lets out an unsettling, chiming laugh. “–well, the nothing you’ve done so far.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Wash agrees, sullen in the face of Maine’s pointed stare and Carolina’s equally pointed frown.

“Other than that,” Dr. Grey continues, “you two seem to be fine! Well, whatever counts as fine for you Freelancers. I’m actually surprised you haven’t died of exhaustion yet. Bioscans look normal compared to Carolina’s, though! Just remember to stop by the clinic after you get settled, Mister Gray-And-Gold.”

Her voice is light and saccharine, and Wash knows a threat when he hears one. The cheerful tilt of her helmet is as good as a knife to his throat.

“Speaking of getting settled,” Wash says, and pulls his helmet on. The less time he has to spend with this medic and her deeply uncomfortable cheerfulness, the better. She flits away to go talk to Doyle, who takes a nervous step backwards.

Carolina snorts out a quiet laugh, watching Doyle, then turns back to Wash and Maine and says, “Let’s go.”

Wash follows her out of a different door, presumably further into the complex that houses this base, and immediately has to stop himself from running straight into her back. Behind him, boots scuff sharply against concrete, and Maine huffs.

“Oh, hey!” comes Tucker’s voice from somewhere beyond Carolina’s shoulders. “So this is where you guys went.”

“Tucker, you heard us say we were taking them to the War Room for debriefing,” Carolina says, with a very impressive amount of patience.

“Yeah,” Tucker says, shrugging, “but I was trying to be casual about hanging out by the door waiting for you guys.”

Wash bites back a smile behind his helmet. Carolina glances back at him and then at Maine, and then looks at Tucker.

“Carolina?”

They all turn, shuffling awkwardly in a space not made to house quite so many people in bulky armor. Kimball’s head is poking out from the door to the war room, and the shadows that drape across her face make her look tired, hard edges worn.

“I need to borrow you for a few minutes,” she says. “Sorry, gentlemen. Tucker, if you wouldn’t mind showing our guests to the armory?”

“Yeah, alright,” Tucker says easily, and shrugs again.

“Oh, and–” Kimball leans further out into the hall, one foot bravely trying to assert her continued presence in the war room. “We’ve been doubling and tripling up on rooms. We just have too many people and too many wounded. It might take some time to find a room, but–”

“They’ll stay with me,” Carolina says.

“Bow chicka b–”

The words die in Tucker’s throat, presumably because being stared down by the entire hall – including someone about twenty feet away, who’d turned to look at them with a bewildered expression – is somehow enough to make him rethink his actions. Kimball gives Tucker a long, stony look, then turns back to Wash and Maine.

“You’re free to do whatever you like,” she says. “It’s late, but the mess hall will be open, and there’s a training facility at the center of the field if you want to keep moving. Medbay’s on the north end, if you need anything more.” She looks at him and Maine in turn, sharp eyes cutting into them both before her face softens. “Just… relax. Do what you need. It sure seems like the whole planet can stand to stop and take a few breaths.”

“Thank you,” Wash says, and he doesn’t add for everything, but Kimball looks like she understands.

“If you need me, Carolina knows where to find me,” she replies, nodding.

“Take all the time you need,” Carolina follows up, stepping past them both towards Kimball. “I’ll probably be at the training field when we’re done here. Just come find me when you need me.”

“Thank you,” Maine says, his voice quiet.

“For everything,” Wash adds, out loud this time, and Carolina gives them a short but genuine smile.

“Take your time,” she reminds them again, and heads toward the war room.

“Well,” Tucker sighs as the door slides shut, “Armory’s this way.”

“How did all of you end up here in Armonia?” Wash asks as Tucker leads them further down the hall. Tucker sighs.

“After Carolina…” Tucker trails off, then makes a complicated, wiggling frown before settling on, “uh, showed up? Shit got kinda weird.”

“What do you mean, showed up?” Wash asks.

“So we left the New Republic to go track down Sarge and Donut and stuff, right,” Tucker explains. “And then when that was going down, we thought the New Republic was attacking the Fed base we were at so we ran, but turns out, that was like, a Felix-Locus thing they engineered to confuse people. Classic.” He makes a left turn to a locked door, punches in a code, and the door slides open. “Armory’s in here. You can stow your armor wherever, none of this shit’s organized.”

“Okay,” Wash says slowly, and walks in. There is actually some semblance of organization, with weapons on one half of the hall and armor crates on the other, but it seems like everyone had just picked an empty spot and dumped their gear there. Maine glances down at him, shrugs almost imperceptibly, and heads towards an empty spot near the back of the room. Wash follows, and Tucker trails after them both.

“Oh yeah,” Tucker says, “anyways, after that, we kinda did our own thing, tried to figure out what the fuck’s going on here, that kinda thing, and then some weirdos started trying to chase us down–”

“Weirdos?” Maine prompts, signing along with his speech. Tucker squints at the signs and does some visible mental math before replying.

“Weird? Weirdos, yeah, those guys in the black armor. Obviously we had no fuckin’ clue what was going on with that ‘till like, way later, but–” He shrugs. “Eventually some shit happened, and then some other shit happened, and then Felix found us and saved us from Locus, and then he got all gloaty and bad, and then Carolina appeared out of nowhere.”

Wash nods along. Somewhere, distantly, he’s mentally recording all of this information for dissection later, but there’s not much of it getting through to him as Tucker goes on.

“We knew we had to talk to both the Feds and the New Republic, so, long story short, we did, and then some other other shit happened, and then the pirates–”

“Sorry, the pirates?” Wash blurts.

“The black armor guys,” Tucker says impatiently. “Space pirates.”

“Space pirates,” Wash echoes blankly. “Right.”

“Yeah, they started attacking Armonia, and then Dr. Grey found out where the main radio jammer was, and then–” He waves a hand vaguely. “Well, you know the rest.”

Wash refrains from replying that he really doesn’t know the rest, but nods anyways.

“And now we’re here, and now I’m gonna go to the mess hall,” Tucker says, waving as he turns. “Caboose hasn’t shot someone for a few hours, I think he’s overdue. Come find us at Blue Base later.”

Wash nearly drops his pauldron.

“Blue Base?” he asks.

“Yep!” Tucker calls from the doorway, popping the p, and then the door closes with a soft click and Wash is left in thin fluorescent lighting and a very, very familiar sinking feeling.

“Blue?” Maine asks, frowning, and Wash decides that now is not the best time for this conversation.

True to her word, Carolina is at the training field by the time Wash feels human enough to keep moving. She’s sitting on a bench, alone; the fading daylight glows in the brilliance of her eyes, and the sight of her face is so deeply, dearly familiar that Wash’s breath catches for just a second. He sits down next to her and waits.

“So,” Carolina says, very carefully, like she’s taking aim.

Maybe six months ago, Wash would have stayed quiet. Let the moment stretch on between them, let sleeping dogs lie. Let things go unsaid. Because there is a lot packed into that one small syllable, and in a breath Carolina has said and done much more than she would have once upon a time. Than either of them would have. She’s opened the door, just wide enough for Wash to know there’s something past it, but she hasn’t stepped out to meet him.

He’s had enough of that. Wash kicks open the metaphorical door.

“How did you end up here, Carolina?” he asks, and he can’t quite keep the amused incredulity out of his voice. Carolina’s shoulders stiffen, and she looks out across the training field.

“After we met,” she begins, slowly, still careful, “I kept going up the coast. Following that UNSC survey map. Making sure anyone who found it knew there was safety and supplies. It was quiet, and…” She trails off, then looks at her hands, linked loosely between her knees. There’s a new scar stretching from the base of her thumb up the side of her wrist, a patchy strip of blistered skin in the last stages of healing. “I was wrong.”

She’s silent again. This time, Wash lets it stretch.

“I was wrong,” she finally says, words rushed out on a frustrated huff. “I was wrong. I was fucking wrong and it sucked.”

“...About?” Wash prods, hopefully gently enough.

“Walking away. Leaving you. Leaving Maine.” She drags her hands through her hair, sharp and angry.

“You were right about other things,” Wash replies. “You were right that it wasn’t fair to drag you back into another Freelancer mess.”

She gives him a thin smile, but a genuine one.

“None of us had a choice there, Wash. The Merope’s crash was no accident. We were all in another Freelancer mess the second our boots touched the ground. I just thought I… I don’t know.”

“You didn’t deserve to be tangled up in this.”

“Neither did you. Neither did Maine.”

“Not like you,” Wash says quietly. Carolina tenses and looks away again, rubbing over the blister on her wrist with a thumb. “What we went through – me, and Maine, and CT, South, North, everyone – it’s so many orders of magnitude different from you. And you’re still here. You stayed. You fought.” She opens her mouth to protest, and Wash cuts her off. “You stayed,” he repeats firmly. “You fought. Because that’s who you are. You care about your friends. Even ones you don’t know you’re making.” He tips his head towards the scene the Reds and Blues are currently making, an explosive argument about… he can’t even tell. He doesn’t want to know, actually.

“I’m trying to admit I made a mistake,” Carolina snaps, though there’s no venom in it, just traces of lingering frustration. “Stop trying to make me feel better.”

“You’re my friend,” Wash fires back, stubbornly earnest. “That’s my job.”

“...Thanks,” she says, after a long pause.

Wash lets the silence stretch on, comfortably this time. Simmons’s voice keeps climbing in pitch; Tucker’s gestures are getting more and more exaggerated, and Grif is clearly losing interest.

“You never answered my question, though,” Wash prompts, once Sarge starts digging through his pockets for pen and paper. “How did you end up here?”

“Oh.” She sits forward again, and frowns briefly at Simmons’s back before resting her elbows on her knees. “I kept following that map to update it. Epsilon–” She pauses. Wash’s breath stills. “That map took me away from where I… where he left. So, I went. Eventually, I hit the shore north of Armonia. There was supposed to be a refueling station there with some supplies, but it was trashed when I got there. Recently. It didn’t look like bandits or the civil war, so I followed some tracks. Long story short, it turned out to be Felix and Locus’s crew. I caught up with them right around when they pinned the Reds and Blues down. I managed to get to their group undetected, but things got out of hand. Grif thought fast, teleported everyone away with some stolen tech, and–” She shrugs. “I was in the thick of it. I had no idea that what they were dealing with was the same thing you were chasing.” Her eyes dart over to him sidelong, sharp with guilt. “I probably would have stayed with you if I’d known I’d get dragged into it anyways.”

“We’re here now,” Wash offers diplomatically. “In… a delicate political situation on a backwater planet with a prisoner waiting to be delivered to the UNSC.” He can see the tip of Carolina’s nose wrinkle, hidden behind a sweep of hair. “But we’re all here.”

“Yeah,” Carolina says slowly. Two more people have been roped into the debate now, and it’s still escalating. “We are.”

It’s quiet between them, for some time. The evening is cold, but bright; the training field is softly lit, enough that the stars are still visible as a soft sweep of pinpricks, little scraps of cloud drifting slowly across the sky. Wash’s chest seizes.

“Carolina–” He turns towards her, chest tight. “There was a ship in high orbit.”

“The Tartarus? We took care of it.”

“The–” He stares at her. His ears are ringing. “You what?”

“We took care of the Tartarus,” Carolilna repeats. “The Forerunner facility housing the signal jammers also had some kind of Forerunner-created tractor beam. That’s how the pirates were causing ships to crash here on Chorus so they could scavenge them. Tucker and I took out the jammers and used the tractor beam to crash the Tartarus while everyone else held back the assault on Armonia. We thought whoever was in charge of Felix and Locus would have been aboard the ship, but obviously, that wasn’t the case.”

Wash stares at her.

“Wow,” he finally manages.

“Yeah,” she replies. “Guess I’ve got a pretty bad track record when it comes to crashing ships.”

The shouting down the field reaches a fever pitch, Grif’s voice rising over everyone else’s, and Carolina cracks another tiny smile, and Wash thinks that as long as his future holds this, it won’t be so bad.

Wash comes into consciousness softly, warmly, unhurried in any way. It’s almost unusual enough to set off warning bells, but he quiets that impulse and lets himself drowse. There’s a warm body next to him, almost too warm, but this cot is more comfortable than it has any right to be.

He cracks his eyes open. It’s past dawn but not by much, judging from the faint, soft gray light that spills from the cracks in the shutters. He can’t see much more than that without moving, and his limbs are far too heavy for that. Maine is still breathing slow and deep next to him, mouth open and head turned almost entirely into the pillow, hair tossed haphazardly away from his face. The hard lines around his eyes and mouth are soft like this, creased with sleep instead of worry, dusted with stubble that’s born simply of time and not the lack of it.

Maine’s breath shallows, and he blinks open one bleary eye. Wash looks at him, struck by all the things he’s never known how to name, and Maine sighs and closes his eyes again as one of his hands finds Wash’s arm, then sweeps up to his shoulder. Under its warm weight, Wash lets his eyes fall shut as well, and gravity gives him just enough of a nudge to bring his forehead to rest against Maine’s.

He comes out of a doze again some time later. The light is still gray and soft, though it’s brighter now, gently coloring the shirt he finds his face pressed into. Maine shifts, and Wash realizes he’s twisted himself over enough to be mashed into the side of Maine’s ribs, the slow rush of air through his lungs a familiar rhythm.

“Time?” Wash croaks, straightening out his back slowly, one vertebra at a time. Maine’s fingers nudge against his back, and Wash slowly becomes aware of new aches and old stiffness as his body crawls inexorably towards wakefulness.

“0800,” Maine replies. There’s a datapad lying on his chest, balancing tremulously every time Maine takes a breath.

“Wow,” Wash mumbles. Maine hums in agreement, then reaches over with his free hand – the one not crooked, likely awkwardly, around Wash’s back – to brush hair off of Wash’s forehead. His fingers are warm. Wash leans into the touch. It brings his chest to Maine’s, and the minor discomfort of his tender ribs is well worth the weight of Maine’s palm, and so are the tiny shifts they both inch through until Wash gracelessly rests his head in the small dip between Maine’s shoulder and his chest. “Where’s Carolina?”

“Out,” Maine says unhelpfully. “Dunno.”

Wash’s shoulder feels stiffer than the rest of his body, but nowhere near as bad as he’d expected it to be. Vaguely, he remembers that he had gone to the medical suite last night, some time after talking to Carolina but before going to sleep. Grey must be one hell of a medic.

“Any other news?” Wash asks, tipping his chin towards the datapad.

“Lots,” Maine replies. “Too much to catch up. Big galaxy.”

Maine’s fingers drift down Wash’s forearm, and he turns his palm up as Maine’s fingertips follow a roadmap composed of bruises and scars both new and old down to his wrist, and then his palm where it rests idly on Maine’s chest.

“What now?” Wash asks quietly.

Maine snorts in response.

“Was gonna ask you,” he says. His fingers curl under the edge of Wash’s palm.

“I think,” Wash says slowly, “that this doesn’t belong to us anymore. Maybe it never did.” Maine is quiet. Wash loses himself in the warm weight of Maine’s hand on his, and thinks. “Marna was right back then. This is about Chorus, not us. There’s no guarantee that the UNSC won’t take Price, hush up this whole thing, and forget about Chorus all over again. If we can use our reputation to make sure that doesn’t happen, that’s the least we could do.” He pauses. “Well, maybe not us. Carolina, definitely.”

Maine snorts out another laugh.

“Carolina,” he agrees. “Right, though. This is theirs.” He nudges his fingers into the spaces between Wash’s and lets them rest there. “Could use him to barter. Trade for aid.”

Wash watches their hands. It’s not a bad idea. It’s a little brutish, sure, but drastic times call for drastic measures. The UNSC ignored Chorus for years. It’s equally as likely that Hargrove had a hand in that as it is that Chorus simply fell through the cracks. Plenty of planets in the Outer Colonies were cut off during the War, and plenty refused or simply failed to return back into the UEG’s selectively open arms.

“We should get to that debrief,” Wash says. Maine turns his head so that his cheek rests against Wash’s crown, an odd counterpoint to the gentle pressure of his other hand under Maine’s. “Whatever conclusion they come to about why we were chasing down Price in the first place, we can tell them that we want Chorus to take the lead and that we’ve got no stake in this.” Maine looks at him steadily, and Wash suddenly feels nervous, like he’s overstepped without thinking. “Do we?”

Maine continues to watch him, steady and immovable, and then nods.

“No stake,” he repeats, and the words are firm, with no trace of hollowness or resentment.

And, Wash realizes, he feels the same. There’s no resentment that his closure has been taken away, or anything even resembling that. Only a simmering, deep-seated fury that the same people responsible for his misery have continued to do worse to others. This isn’t in their hands anymore, but he’s going to do everything in his power to help the people in whose hands it rests now. No matter how long it takes.

The admission – hearing it out loud, saying it out loud – is so much more liberating than Wash ever thought it could be. He looks down at Maine’s hand over his and lets it all sink in, here in a room filled with hazy morning light and not much more, on a planet he never thought he’d come to admire. Maine squeezes his hand, and Wash squeezes back.

They slowly wind their way to the mess hall. The whole training complex is in an odd state of suspended animation – or maybe animated suspension, with an air of soft lassitude to every motion, even the hurried few couriers hauling bright datapads. Carolina’s been absent from their shared room all morning, leaving behind only a neatly made bed against the opposite wall, and her absence continues throughout the slow morning, growing only the more conspicuous as Wash realizes he hasn’t seen the Blues or the Reds yet, either. They must have things to do. Training. Duties. Debriefs and check-ins.

It feels weird. Weird, but decidedly not bad. It’s a newness that Wash wouldn’t mind folding into his idea of normality. It’s a big, bubbling thought, something he doesn’t quite know how to breach, though he figures the question will have to come up eventually. They’ve got time, though. He knows this with unusual, unyielding certainty. They’ve got time.

He and Maine leave the mess hall side by side, without anything immediately pressing over their necks, without a looming threat taking up residence in the backs of their minds. Wash gently knocks his elbow into Maine’s, and when Maine looks down, Wash smiles. A small indulgence, but it feels monumental.

“Wash,” calls a familiar voice, and it stops him in his tracks.

Tucker is standing in front of them, having just rounded the corner of the building that Wash had been aiming for, the training field unfurling past this small collection of buildings clustered near its center. Maine pauses next to Wash, looking carefully between him and Tucker.

“Tucker,” Wash replies, for lack of anything better to say. There’s a strange look on Tucker’s face.

“You’re still here,” Tucker says, with a hint of ice to his voice, and it matches the oddness in his face.

“Where else would we be?” Wash replies carefully. He’s placed this chill, now; it’s the same distance he’d faced when apologizing to Tucker yesterday. God. Only yesterday.

Tucker doesn’t say anything in response, and instead gives him a long, calculating look the likes of which Wash has very, very rarely seen from him. If ever. A faint trace of satisfaction glitters in his eyes, just for a split second, and then he shrugs and that hint of ice, matching the frost that lines all the grass on the field, melts away. One day, Wash thinks – he hopes – that ice won’t be there anymore. But that’s another journey to take.

“Fuck if I know. Hey, did Carolina find you yet?”

“No,” Wash replies, his voice dragging up with uncertainty. He glances up at Maine. “We haven’t heard from her since last night.”

“She left our meeting to go find you,” Tucker says by way of explanation.

“You had a meeting?” Wash asks, unable to hide his shock that not only did Tucker voluntarily attend a meeting, it was at some point much earlier in the morning, and the tail end of his sentence is smothered by a loud gasp.

Caboose rounds the corner, clearly having trailed behind Tucker, and before Wash can even really brace himself, Caboose barrels forward and wraps him into another utterly bone-crushing hug.

Wash inhales sharply as his shoulder howls with pain, but Caboose is an unstoppable force and Wash feels some soft thing in his chest take a fatal blow as Caboose hangs onto him without any of the usual million things he’s usually bursting to say.

“Seriously, dude, don’t kill him,” comes Tucker’s muffled voice, and obligingly, Caboose unfurls himself and takes a step back. Wash feels like half his rib cage has been rearranged. Caboose is positively beaming.

“Hello, Caboose,” Wash says, and gingerly moves his shoulder.

“Carolina?” Maine asks, fingerspelling her name as he looks over at Tucker. Tucker watches his hands, and then gives Maine another one of those sharp appraisals that Wash is so unfamiliar with before answering. A flash of movement catches Wash’s eye, and he looks past Caboose to see Grif, planted firmly down the field, with Simmons at his shoulder.

“I dunno,” Tucker says, and shrugs again to make his point. “We were heading back to the mess hall because Grif was whining–”

“A), I was not whining,” Grif calls, across the distance, arms crossed, “and two, seriously, is no one else uncomfortable with the fact that we’re all buddy-buddy with the Meta now?”

Silence hangs uncomfortably. Simmons breaks it by shoving Grif forwards with a grunt, giving up when Grif refuses to move, and then he scowls and shoulders past him across the hoar-crisp grass.

“Wash trusts him,” Tucker says in clear challenge, turning to level Grif with a cool stare, and Wash hastily reels in his shock before it can spread across his face.

“Okay, first of all?” Grif fires back, pointing imperiously, “last time, Wash also trusted him, and the Meta nearly killed Wash. Again. Second, they both–”

Maine snaps his fingers for attention – which, shockingly, does shut Grif up – and then fingerspells his name with crisp, firm motions, face impassive. M-A-I-N-E.

“What?” Simmons asks, oblivious, and Caboose leans in like he’s expecting something to pop out of Maine’s hands.

Maine spells it again, slightly slower, much sharper. M-A-I-N-E.

“Oh,” Simmons says, “‘Maine.’” Then: “Oh.”

“Main what?” Caboose asks. “Oh! Is this charades? Oh, I love charades! Uh– main event?”

“Caboose,” Wash sighs.

“No? Um, main floor. Main Street.”

“Shut up, dude,” Tucker says.

“Mainframe!” Caboose shouts, eclipsing Grif’s groan. “Main door!”

“Oh my god,” Tucker says, and starts to bodily push Caboose towards the mess hall. “You two just go find Carolina. We’ll be seeing each other later.”

“What?” Wash asks, and Caboose bellows, “Main display!”

“Just go find her,” Tucker repeats, and waves a hand at them in dismissal.

Simmons gives them both a wide berth as he darts ahead of Caboose into the hall, chased by more phrases in his game of charades. Grif, by contrast, pauses by Maine and gives him a long look, not too dissimilar from Tucker’s, then shakes his head and trudges off after the others.

“What,” Maine says, once Caboose’s shouts have died down, “was that?”

They get called for debriefing by a cheerful lieutenant before they can get much further than the other side of the training field, but Carolina flits into the hallway like a ghost before the lieutenant – Palomo, according to the odd, eye-searingly turquoise patch on his shoulder – manages to get them through the door back into the war room. Carolina gives them both a smile, then squeezes Wash’s arm and whispers, “Check your datapad.”

Before Wash can ask why, she’s gone, and the door closes behind them.

The debrief is long, but not as arduous as he’d anticipated. It mostly consists of him and Maine verifying all the information that the Generals and the mercs have amassed over the course of the last twelve or so hours, and then Kimball launches into a brief explanation of what had happened after the attack on the Merope’s crash site.

Most of it, Wash had pieced together from what Tucker and Carolina had told him; Kimball fills in the rest of the gaps in neat, broad strokes. Felix and Locus had carefully maneuvered the New Republic and the Federal Army into reckless skirmishes once the Reds and Blues had left, and then they’d left their respective armies to track them down. The Reds and Blues eventually got wise to someone on their tail, and Carolina had shown up right when everything had come to a head; they’d all intercepted the New Republic’s poorly planned assault on Armonia shortly after, and managed to get both sides to agree to a temporary cease-fire, and then a more permanent one.

Dr. Grey had been their breakthrough, scraping together comms data from skirmishes with the space pirates – Wash doesn’t know how Kimball keeps a straight face while saying space pirates, of all things – once the two armies had made it clear that neither was leaving Armonia. Eventually, she’d gotten her hands on a prisoner, and Wash has to work hard to keep a neutral face as Kimball describes what is most certainly a violation of wartime humanitarian protections. They’d planned an assault once she’d pinpointed the main radio jammer, and it had just been sheer, dumb luck that it had coincided with the mercs’ arrival at the comms facility in the mountains.

From there, the debrief dissolves into a conversation that Wash does not feel compelled to take part in. His hands don’t belong in this. He’s done what he can for Chorus, and he will not tell them how they should handle their justice. Whether or not they call in the UNSC is ultimately their decision, not his, and beside him, he can read the echo of his thoughts in Maine’s expression, the soft attentiveness in his eyes as he watches the conversation unfold.

This debrief doesn’t feel like the neat bookend that he supposed it might be. It doesn’t even feel like an ending, really. All the endings in his life have been quiet and amorphous, and this doesn’t feel quite the same. The beginning, though – Wash thinks about the way Price’s chest had risen slowly, the slackness of his unconscious face past Maine’s unyielding silhouette, and thinks about the cold fury in Marna’s face when she talked about Chorus, and thinks about that first ice-cold shock of seeing Maine’s face again, and thinks that really, the best way to begin something has always been to stand with someone else.

Regardless of what else the future holds, he knows this: he’ll stand with his friends, and with Chorus. He reaches under the table to curl his fingers around Maine’s wrist, and his grip drifts gently down towards Maine’s palm. They’ve come this far. Whatever happens now, he’ll face it with the Blues, and the Reds, and Maine and Carolina.

Carolilna slips into the room long after the discussion has turned towards nitpicks and debates, and she tips her head silently towards the door. Maine squeezes Wash’s knee and stands; Wash follows him, moving swiftly and silently to the room’s perimeter and following Carolina to the door as Kimball and Marna continue to argue over the facts of some skirmish.

“Consider that your one free rescue for the day,” Carolina says once they’re all in the hall. “Everyone in there has been in a sour mood all morning.”

“No kidding,” Wash mutters, and Maine snorts.

“Come with me,” Carolina says, and pushes through a door and into a hallway they haven’t been down yet. “The Reds and Blues commandeered a dining room for themselves. There’s something we have to talk about, but we can do it over lunch.”

Her shoulders are easy, hands completely relaxed, and nerves spike in Wash’s chest anyways as he thinks about the short, simple message he’d read what feels like only minutes ago, a handful of words that had left him with the same odd, fragile bubble in his chest that he’d felt in the morning, something close to hope but too delicate to name yet.

“‘Bout what?” Maine asks, and Carolina shoots them both a look over her shoulder.

“You’ll see,” she replies, and the smile is plain in her voice as she looks away.

The door she leads them to is nondescript save for the soft murmur coming from the other side, and it falls to a hush as she pushes it open.

The whole room comes to a brief pause as the three of them walk in, and Wash takes note of everyone; for once, not the instinctive judgment drilled into him by the military, but a cataloguing of people he’s spent so much time around, people he’s missed much more deeply than he thought he would. Grif darts an arm around Simmons’s waist to grab the last pastry. Simmons and Tucker actually pause in their squabble, eyes lighting with a shrewd, calculated interest. Sarge folds his arms and stares at them from over Carolina’s shoulder. Caboose sets down his datapad, which is, incidentally, faintly smoking. In the corner, Donut’s voice trails off as he turns away from Doc.

“So,” Carolina says, and the air itself feels like it’s holding its breath.

“Get to it!” Sarge barks. “No sense wastin’ time.”

“Tucker?” Carolina says, raising her eyebrows.

“I thought you were gonna do it,” he protests, then throws his hands up. “Fine! Alright. Hey Wash and Maine, you guys wanna stay with us? Like, officially. Here in Armonia.”

Silence rings. Wash’s heart is thumping so loudly out of time, he’s certain the whole room can hear it. Carolina’s message suddenly makes so much more sense, and Wash’s head feels much too light as the future unfurls.

Maine looks down at him, eyes bright. The corners of his mouth tick up, ever so slightly, and Wash can’t tell whether his own face is smiling in return as warm, numb surprise breaks over him in a rushing wave.

“Yeah,” Wash replies, his voice quiet even to his own ears, and he repeats himself. “Yes. Of course we want to stay.”

“See?” Grif exclaims, smacking Simmons on the arm. “Told you. You owe me fifty bucks.”

“You said thirty,” Simmons hisses back, rubbing his arm pointedly.

“Now that that’s settled,” Carolina says, her smile curling mischievously, “we’ve got one more thing to do. Wash?”

And all at once Carolina’s planning comes together, executed just as neatly as anything she’s ever done on the battlefield, and the warmth of satisfaction and anticipation blooms sharp and rich in his chest.

“Wash?” Maine asks, his voice heavy with suspicion. Confusion and apprehension grow in equal measure across Maine’s face as he waits.

Wash takes another handful of seconds to savor the weight of the most important question he’ll ever ask of his partner, and glances around the room. Carolina’s still smiling – she’s always had a terrible poker face when it comes to things like this, and evidently that hasn’t changed – and so is Tucker, albeit with a little more subtlety to it. Caboose looks confused, but attentive; Grif and Simmons look like they’re waiting for the outcome of yet another bet, and Donut is counting something off on his fingers, eyes flicking between Grif and Simmons. Sarge is apprehensive, though in a much different way than Maine. Doc has procured a crochet hook out of somewhere, and his hands are working swiftly on something that’s trailing gently onto his knees.

Wash looks back up at Maine, and he can feel the slightest wicked edge as he finally smiles.

"What's it gonna be, Maine? Red or Blue?"