Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

ulysses | tennyson

Wash hates the nauseating fade back into consciousness. No matter how familiar it’s become, it hasn’t gotten any more enjoyable or bearable with time. Prickling blackness crawls away from the edges of his thoughts and leaves sharp, attention-seeking pain in its wake.

On the plus side, if he’s in pain, he’s not dead. He can feel all of his limbs, so that’s decidedly a positive; he’s got a few places that feel bruised to hell and back, but his head– his head is fucking killing him, and alarm starts to spread throughout his body.

He forces himself to shift gears and catalog his memories: he remembers gunfire, the extremely specific kind of adrenaline rush that hits in a firefight, the crumpled forms of Sarge and Lopez on the ground nearby, Felix and Grif and Simmons and Tucker and Caboose heading into the caves, Freckles in his final moments, and then— a split second of sharp pain at the back of his head.

Okay. Time to catalog whatever’s going on outside his memories.

He doesn’t move yet, just in case this situation is actually the worst it could possibly be, and instead he groggily opens his eyes to see that his HUD is on (good, that’s good, that means everything is working) and showing only that he’s got a fading concussion, but there’s a blip on his radar coded as friendly, which shouldn’t be possible because he knows he was the last person in that canyon, he knows no one could have gone back for him, he knows his IFF roster wouldn’t have been updated while he’s unconscious, he knows––

“Wash."

He knows it’s impossible.

"You’re awake.”

He’s on his feet instantly.

He knows it’s fucking impossible. The hazy pain of this concussion must be hiding something worse than what his HUD implies because there isn’t any— this isn’t possible. This can’t be happening.

(The IFF tag on his radar says otherwise. He’d never bothered to purge it from his system. Every Freelancer killed in action still lives on in his armor. The sentimentality had managed to be an asset in the Recovery force.)

And then a voice, softened by radio static, rumbles, “Move. Need to get clear.”

Wash’s tenuous grip on restraint snaps.

“What the fuck–”

“Move.”

“Look, I’m not going anywhere–”

“Quiet.” Wash gets a knife shoved handle-first into his hand and he fumbles it, fingers numb with shock, before muscle memory kicks in and he’s capable of a normal hold. “Want to get found by them?” Wash doesn’t answer. Can’t. “Follow me. Quiet.”

So Wash follows the hulking armor – armor that’s unfamiliar itself but those colors, that voice, there’s no one else it could be, meaning he’s alive, god, alive, impossible – around what he soon realizes is the rim of their canyon, boxed in by the tail end of the frigate they’d crashed on. The wreck looks sad from this perspective, a twisted, hulking mass of hull struts reaching for the sky.

The base of his skull is starting to burn right where his neural implants are, echoing through his temples, his fucking sinuses, the edges of his eye sockets. It’s far from the worst thing he’s ever experienced. The worst thing might just be walking in front of him.

He doesn’t get offered a weapon other than the knife, but a short burst of static confirms that the two of them are on the same COM channel. Wash comes up with about fifty questions to ask as they wind down the sides of the canyon into foothills but the words die in his throat every time, swallowed by the muted crunch of dry brown earth and rock.

It’s only when they get to the lip of a ridge, dotted with the same warm rock that formed the canyon, that Wash manages to form words.

“Okay–” The silence of stilled movement ahead of him is deafening; the carefully frozen figure, a warning. “–what the hell is going on?”

“Got rescued,” comes the terse reply, tinged with just the slightest note of humor, the faintest hint of warmth. An odd dread pools in Wash’s stomach.

“I have to ask,” Wash says, then swallows, his mouth dry, tongue heavy. There’s no way to keep going without knowing. There’s no way to ask this. “You’re– you can’t be him.”

Maine– the Meta– whoever this is– holsters his pistol with slow, careful movements, lifts up a hand, and pulls off his helmet.

It’s like being doused with ice-cold water. That face is unmistakable; older, sharper, more tired, but unmistakable. There’s a faint pull to the corner of his mouth, a slight crease to his forehead, and Wash is shocked to realize that he still recognizes these things. That he can still read them.

A sickening mix of emotions churns in his gut, ricocheting from elation to guilt to disbelief and back again, and before he can sift through the crashing waves of unidentifiable sensation, his mouth moves on its own.

“What the hell are you doing? How are you alive? I–”

“Quiet,” Maine – no, fuck, the Meta, that’s a safer assumption – grunts, without any real heat, then pulls his helmet back on. “Keep following. Car’s two klicks northwest, down.”

“No,” Wash says, scrambling for footing on a cliff’s edge, water rising in his chest. “Look– I want answers first.”

“Not safe here,” the Meta replies, and this time he steps close enough to loom. Wash stands his ground. There’s still something off here, something blurry and blunted about the edges, and Wash can’t quite grasp it. “Answers when clear.”

“So how do I know you’re not just here to kill me?” Wash pushes, fist tight around the knife.

“Kill you?” snorts the Meta. His shoulders are soft and easy. “Would’ve just left you.”

“How did you even end up here?” Wash adds. An old tide keeps rising at the back of his throat. He pretends it’s not grief. “What the hell–”

“Need to leave,” the Meta says firmly, cutting him off. “Not gonna kill you. Not gonna leave you. Stand– down–” He punctuates it by stepping closer. Wash reflexively slides the knife up to press against the Meta’s throat. “–and follow.”

The blood is rushing in his ears and Wash can feel every inch of emotion he’s built up, channeled into his hands, one braced against the Meta’s armor, the other still holding the knife to his throat, one half of his brain screaming this is him, what are you doing and the other half—

The Meta snorts. Dismissive. Familiar. It vibrates through the knife and down into Wash’s palm. Wash is so surprised that he can’t even make himself move, put the knife down, something, and the Meta takes the opportunity to shove Wash’s arm away, knife included. It’s more gentle than Wash thinks he deserves.

“Answers when clear,” the Meta repeats, and turns back down along the ridge.

When clear turns out to be after several hours’ worth of driving on pitted, cratered, blown-apart service roads towards a rapidly sinking glow in the west, and then another stretch winding through rocky hills in a lavender short-lived dusk. The Meta had only interrupted the silence to point out a handful of meal replacement bars and a canteen of water stashed on the passenger’s side. Wash had chosen to volunteer nothing save for a nod of acknowledgment.

When the ‘Hog slows, it takes Wash a few seconds to identify the slumped, slate-gray heap they’re driving towards as a building; as the Meta pulls them up towards the entrance, Wash thinks that maybe it used to be some kind of warehouse, factory, hangar. It looks like it’s been half-crumpled, and valiantly standing in spite of it. Another, more peculiar type of dread starts to creep up the back of his neck: he knows nothing about Chorus. He knows nothing beyond the walls of a canyon. And all this time, there’d been a base less than a full day’s drive away.

Wash follows the Meta on his instruction and drifts through getting food (more MREs; this base isn’t so well-equipped to have anything more than an ancient set of hot plates), finding basic but spacious quarters, and stripping out of his armor with the unsettling feeling that he is a prisoner somehow, bound to the Meta’s shadow as they’d silently walked through a building full of more human beings than Wash has seen in months. The most important skill he’d ever learned was the value of observation in place of haste, steadiness in place of immediacy. Whatever the Meta is up to will come out eventually.

Now, though, as he carefully locks his armor into a storage configuration, the Meta looks at him with something in his face that Wash can’t quite identify anymore.

“Injured?”

The question throws Wash off completely.

“I… not really.”

“Lying,” the Meta says easily, without judgment, and appraises him. Wash shifts uncomfortably under the attention. “Head?”

Wash rubs the back of his head – which, truthfully, is still killing him – and shrugs. There’s no need to show off just how badly he’s hurting; this situation still feels too… unbalanced. Volatile, maybe. The Meta narrows his eyes, then pulls something out of a duffel and tosses it to him. Wash catches it without thinking; the bottle is small in his hands, paracetamol printed on a label that’s a few months shy of crisp.

“Thanks,” Wash says, and watches the Meta’s face for a response.

“Saw you get hit,” the Meta replies. He’s not unreadable, per se; it’s just that Wash doesn’t find the answer (anger, resentment) he’s looking for. “Looked bad.”

“I’ve had worse.” Wash dry-swallows two pills and looks the Meta dead in the eyes. If this is the only conversational opening he’s going to get, he’ll take it. “What is going on, Meta? How are you alive?”

There’s a flash of something truly unreadable. The sensation is unsettling; Wash is familiar with the ample discomfort in watching a once-familiar face twist into unfamiliar words. But it passes swiftly, and the Meta sighs heavily and sits down on one side of the table, runs a hand through his hair. He looks so much older than Wash remembers him. It’s only been– god, what, three years? Two?

“Got lucky on cliff,” the Meta starts, and his hands start the process of disassembling his pistol, clearing the chamber, ejecting the magazine, checking for oddities. “Crawled back up. Left Sidewinder. Came here. Out of the loop for a while. Figured, be gun for hire. ‘S how Chorus works. Saw your ship crash. Saw headline: Agent Washington on list of greatest soldiers in galaxy.”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” Wash jabs, without thinking, and regrets it immediately. When the Meta meets his eyes, they’re unreadable. The gun lies completely disassembled on the table. It still feels like a threat.

“No,” the Meta finally says, voice low, and goes back to his work. “Know what I did. Not trying to be a hero.” And with that the Meta shoots him a look that’s almost contemptuous.

It’s silent for a few moments, save for quiet breaths and the ubiquitous, inescapable sound of metal and cloth.

“If you’re a gun for hire, who hired you? Who the hell wants anything to do with me?” Wash finally prompts. He figures he’ll start with the basics, if the Meta is going to be this sparing with information.

“Me,” the Meta says, and the ghost of a smile flickers across his face.

“What?”

“Need your help.” The Meta doesn’t look like he’s joking; Wash stares at him, eyes narrowed. “Know much about Chorus?”

“I know the basics,” Wash replies. “The established government got a little too powerful, so some people took things into their own hands, formed the New Republic of Chorus.” The Meta nods. “And... now there’s a civil war.”

“Close enough,” the Meta says, and shrugs, rolls his shoulders. “Both have rights and wrongs. Planet is–” He gestures, an even side-to-side tip of his hand. “–split.”

“And you?”

“Mercenary,” the Meta repeats, almost impatiently, with an edge of something more to it.

“Right.” Wash remembers Felix having called himself a mercenary too, and… well. It’s certainly one way to populate an army.

“Both sides, some squads have more resources,” the Meta says carefully. “Better people. Better tech.” Wash waits. There has to be a point to this; Maine had never minced his words. “Good tech. Overshields. Active camo. Speed units. Familiar.”

“No,” Wash says abruptly and stands, ignoring the way his stomach goes completely nuclear, lighting up his whole chest. “No. I’m not getting dragged back into this mess. I’m through with anything related to–”

“Washington.” The Meta cuts him off, low and threatening, and slowly gets to his feet. “–’S not all.”

“Meta, I don’t care. I’m through. I got my revenge. My loose ends are tied up. I’m done.”

“I’m not.”

The Meta grabs his datapad and pulls something up after a few quick taps.

“Been slowly raiding bases.”

“Chorus’s army’s– armies’– bases? On your own?”

The Meta gives him an odd look that’s halfway between hell no and why the fuck not? that Wash isn’t entirely sure how to interpret. Chorus: no intel. Meta: not as much intel as he needs. He waits for the Meta to continue.

“Few weeks ago, dug up encrypted audio logs.”

Against his better judgment, Wash finds himself intrigued; he looks pointedly down at the datapad. The voice clip that the Meta plays is highly filtered, a voice distorted down to flat tonelessness. It’s a tried and true encryption tactic; the waveforms are scrambled in a particular pattern that only the recipient has the key to, then filtered to be unrecognizable.

“Bothered me. Tried to decrypt, but scramble was good. Fed through filters just to see.”

He taps through a few settings and plays the clip again. Wash feels a chill run down his spine.

“That’s–” He swallows. The room is starting to narrow down to one point. “That’s Aidan Price’s voice.” And then it all comes together: leaving the Director on Sidewinder, all the tech in the wreckage, an explosive, aggressive civil war––

And then, like a cork in a bottle, everything stops.

“I don’t trust you,” Wash says simply. The temperature in the room drops by about fifty degrees. “I know what you’re capable of. I know what he’s capable of. How do I know you’re not sitting at his heel?”

“You think I would help him?” the Meta snarls. “After what he did to me? To you? All of us?”

“You’ve got no problems looking out for yourself,” Wash fires back. “Clearly. Why do you even need my help? For all I know, this entire thing could be a trap.”

The Meta stands abruptly and plants his palms on the table between them. Wash is on his feet before he can even think to react; his hand feels empty without the borrowed knife and the Meta is still so goddamn tall, still so large in presence and in physicality. Wash’s body remembers the drowning weight of those hands just as clearly as his mind does.

“Don’t,” the Meta says quietly, “mistake how I feel.”

Wash stares, uncomprehending. Five words: none of them make sense, not together or separately. Mistake how he feels? About what? But even uncomprehending, Wash still knows it’s a declaration of something overstepped, and the Meta’s stare is piercing as he slowly leans back to stand at his full height. It’s somehow less intimidating than seeing him loom over the table between them. After a beat he relents and sits, and Wash still feels so much smaller even when he’s looking down.

“Understood,” Wash replies, just as quietly. The shift of his clothing sounds deafening as he slowly sits down to match the Meta, to defuse some of this… whatever it is that’s lit this fuse between them. Whatever the fuse even is. He turns back to the larger conversation, arguably the more delicate one, and says, “How come you’re the only one who’s caught on to this? How come no one’s doing anything, if they were so happy to see Project Freelancer brought to its knees and now they’re caught up in it?”

“People get desperate.” The Meta’s voice drops low. “Desperate means dangerous. Means they’ll grasp for anything. Just for chance of what they want. Or had.” He drags a hand down his face, cradles his forehead in it. His eyes look tired as they slide closed. “Not tricking you, Wash. Just want to end this fucking mess.”

“I’ve spent the last few years trying to end this fucking mess,” Wash replies slowly. “All I got for my trouble was jail time. I’m listed as KIA because of all this, as far as their records are concerned. And–” He pauses. “Even if the Counselor gets shown for what he is, this is a backwater planet with a civil war on its hands. He’s not worth the UNSC’s attention any more. For their purposes, the Project is done, over with, and taken care of.”

Something thunderous cracks through the Meta’s eyes, wires right through the set of his jaw, and his eyes root Wash to the spot.

“Not for my purposes,” the Meta snarls back, louder than Wash has heard him in years. “You got your revenge. I didn’t.”

The skin over Wash’s knuckles itches and burns. He almost wants to split it.

“Asking for help,” the Meta continues, voice falling but only slightly, and his shoulders remain tense. Wash can hear the rasp in his throat growing, and a very small, very dormant part of him wakes up to recognize that sound, still knows what it means. “Helped you get closure. Help me.” He huffs out a dry cough. “Asking. Not demanding.”

Wash finds the Meta’s datapad with his hand and slowly pushes it back across the table to him. Unfazed, the Meta pulls up a holo display and starts typing.

I brought you here because I trust what you’ve been through. It’s not that I wouldn’t trust a paid merc to do their job, but you know this. You were there. You lived it.

Wash looks away. He’s staring his own arguments in the face and he can hear the Chairman’s smooth pompous voice, asking why on earth he’d ask to work with the Meta (such an unstable unit, Agent Washington, wouldn’t it be better to let such a thing like that quietly waste away?) when they have so many other resources at his disposal. Worse than that, he can feel the awful fucking clamorous weight of responsibility falling down on his shoulders; he should’ve known that Aidan Price would still be out there, he should have known, and it’s his fault for not tying up that loose fucking end, for not following all of the threads he should’ve followed. He sits back with a sigh.

“Okay,” he says. The word is heavy on his tongue. “Fine.” The Meta looks at him with a sort of inscrutable, halfway-decipherable look of relief. “If you turn on me – again – I’m not gonna hesitate to drop you this time.”

The Meta’s mouth turns up in half a cold smile.

If I’m remembering correctly, the last time around, I did a lot more of the hesitating.

A wan half-smile finds itself sinking across Wash’s face in return; not quite as cold as the Meta’s, but matching in tone regardless. He crosses his arms in an attempt to ward off his own discomfort; it fails. The Meta hasn’t put away his datapad yet, like he’s expecting this conversation to continue.

“We… hit some bumps in the road last time,” Wash tries. Not quite an olive branch, or anything even close.

That’s putting it mildly. The Meta watches him evenly.

“I don’t–” Wash closes his eyes, just briefly. “I don’t trust what the AI made you. I don’t trust anything those AI touched. I trusted Maine.” He pointedly avoids eye contact, and stares down at the Meta’s datapad instead. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever trust you.”

Fair enough. I don’t know that I trust you– A pause. His fingers are still above the datapad, but they don’t tremble. –but you’re the best I’ve got now. You took me to find Epsilon when you could’ve had your pick of SpecOps. I owe you the same.

“Fair enough.”

Just try not to stab me this time. Or throw me off of a cliff.

“Then don’t give me a reason to,” Wash fires back, bristling. The Meta narrows his eyes.

You don’t know what it’s like t

“I don’t know what it’s like? I don’t know what it’s like?” Wash is on his feet again, hands planted firmly on the table, temper flaring before he can even consider reining it in.

“Don’t know what it’s like to feel human only when AI drown you out,” the Meta snarls out loud, slowly standing opposite him. Wash feels a coldness creeping at the edges of his anger. “Don’t know what it’s like, them redefining you.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Not like this.”

He’s at that point where he’s either going to flare up or deflate, caught between anger and empathy; his head is fucking pounding now, the paracetamol still hasn’t kicked in, and it’s only exacerbating things. God. He hasn’t argued like this in fucking years. Arguments with the Blues usually made less sense and hinged on fucking– food. Or porn.

Just because we lived two different sides of the same fucked-up coin doesn’t make one worse than the other. Stop making this a big dick contest. The Meta snorts. I’m hitting the showers. If you trust me enough not to kill you with my bare, soapy hands, then come with.

Wash just stares as the Meta clicks off the datapad’s holo-display and stands. He’s got little choice but to follow.

(But, he thinks, what little choice he has does still leave him with a choice. And he chooses to follow. He’s not going to overthink this. He’s not.)

It’s a short shower, cold and communal, marked mostly by a) Wash realizing that he’s the cause of at least two of those stab wound scars on the Meta’s chest, b) Wash realizing that the Meta has cauterized burn scars from Tucker’s sword, and c) Wash trying to wrap his head around the fact that the Meta seems, for all intents and purposes, to have completely mellowed out and moved on.

It’s a distinctly weird thought. Uncomfortable. It makes Wash pricklingly aware of his own state; the paranoia has never left him, even with the Blues. The Meta doesn’t check corners when he walks through doors. Wash still does.

That look is gone from the Meta’s eyes, though. There’s no discomfort in that fact.

Wash follows the Meta, slightly hangdog, from the showers and out towards the rest of the merc base. It turns out to be sprawled through an old industrial complex, to the effect of looking like something out of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. From what Wash knows about Chorus and its problems, that’s not too far from the truth.

The near-cavern they’re walking through is well-lit with a haphazard collection of industrial lights all strung together along the ceiling, perched wherever the rubble will hold them. The cold light illuminates tables and stalls crammed with an uncomfortable amount of things that were all definitely contraband the last time Wash checked, all laid out as vendors and dealers haggle with scarred, tired mercs and refugees.

“How bad are things on this planet?” Wash asks the Meta quietly.

“Bad,” he answers simply.

“What happened?” It’s half a rhetorical question but the Meta slows anyways, and Wash watches him carefully consider his words.

“Not sure,” the Meta replies. “Wasn’t– here.” He shrugs, you know. “UNSC didn’t care, ignored by Covies. UNSC pulled out, left vacuum. Feds tried, Republic disagreed. Bombings, attacks, both sides.”

Wash realizes that he’s really only barely rusty at reading Maine’s – the Meta’s – body language, and that’s… well. That’s not something he’s going to pick apart.

“And there’s no way to try for a political resolution?”

The Meta snorts and shakes his head, then resumes his weaving path through the atrium-esque area they’re in. Wash can’t help but continue to catch the openness in his shoulders, the looseness in his hands. The Meta feels safe here and he feels safe around Wash. Safe enough to turn his back on Wash. Wash, who tried to kill him last time they saw each other.

He follows as the Meta suddenly veers and ducks into a doorway, bringing them to a dim but evenly lit room; more of a huge-ass garage than anything, really. The walls are covered, floor to ceiling, with padlocked cages, and Wash estimates at least a hundred different types of weapons, just from what’s displayed.

“Hey, sweetheart,” calls a voice, and Wash stops staring – looking – at the walls to see a short, stocky, older woman grinning at the Meta. “I wondered where you’d gone.”

The Meta smiles back at her and pulls out his datapad; she glances at the screen as he types, then nods and claps him firmly on the arm. She’s almost a full head shorter than Wash, to say nothing of her height compared to the Meta; her hand slides down to cup his elbow, firm and familiar.

“We just got back too. Hey, you with him?” Wash raises his eyebrows in surprise once he realizes that he’s the target of this question, and looks at the Meta, who takes the datapad back and types something out again.

“Wow. I’m Lucía,” she says once she’s done reading, and holds out her hand for Wash to shake. Fresh scars stand out bright pink on her knuckles against the warm, deep color of her skin.

“My name’s–” Fuck. Shit. “–David.”

He can feel the Meta staring a hole through the side of his head.

“You got a good friend in him, huh?” She grins again, smile lines pulling kindly at the sides of her mouth, and Wash smiles back in spite of the frigidity in his chest. “That, or M owes you big.” Lucía laughs, warm and open, and looks back up at the Meta. Wash feels something in his brain hitch on M. “And you owe me some food before you disappear again.”

“Scaring off customer,” grunts a pile of armor that Wash hadn’t been aware was animate. “Look, he looking like run away.”

“Can it, you know he'll buy,” Lucía replies, still grinning good-naturedly, then turns back to the Meta. “Don’t forget. Dinner.”

And with that, she smiles at Wash again, pats what she can reach of the Meta’s arm, and heads for the doorway.

The rest of the exchange passes in a haze. Wash answers the Meta mechanically when he asks what kinds of weapons he wants; something with burst fire, a pistol, and a DMR. The creaking armor-pile of a man behind the counter slams down an old but serviceable-looking BR55, an equally old-looking M392 (old enough to take the retired 15-round mags, Wash notes with surprise), and what he realizes with considerable surprise is an old M6D. Maine takes another M6D as well as a beat-to-hell MA5C; Wash wonders if there’s anything to the fact that he seems to be pointedly ignoring the heavy-bellied grenade launcher propped up against the back wall, or to the fact that an assault rifle covers the close-range that Wash has never been good at covering.

Wash waits until they’re back where their armor is stowed to try wrapping his head around the exchange between the Meta and the other woman. Lucía. His friend.

The Meta has a friend here. A close friend. Close enough to know him, to joke with him, smile at him, care for his well-being. To accept Wash’s presence just because it’s linked to the Meta’s.

“How long have you been on Chorus?” Wash finally asks, slinging the duffel onto the table next to the one that the Meta’s unzipping.

“Year,” he replies and then, anticipating Wash’s next question: “Met Lucía on Sidewinder, after the fall.” Damn. It doesn’t feel like it should be a year. He doesn’t know what it feels like, but definitely not a year. “Saved Lucía and her wife. First people saved instead of killing, after AI.”

Just because there’s an explanation doesn’t make it feel any less like the rug’s been yanked out from under Wash’s feet. He starts taking out the small arsenal he’d “acquired” at the shop (on the Meta’s tab, goods exchanged for services and favors, since apparently that’s how things work on Chorus) and he lets his hands go through the easy motions of checking and re-checking every weapon, setting everything out neatly on the table.

It takes him a few seconds to realize that the Meta is watching him carefully. Wash looks up to meet his eyes.

“‘David?’” the Meta asks.

Wash feels like he’s been punched in the chest. He looks away and takes a measured breath.

“Don’t call me that. I’m Wash to you.” He can see the Meta nod once in his peripheral vision; message understood. He’d been indignant, once, that his name had been taken from him. Washington had felt like someone else's clothes. Wash feels like armor now: comfort in protection. His choice to wear it. Home, in the mouths of the Reds and the Blues and Carolina, more than his rank and surname had ever been during the bulk of his service, more than his given name from distant parents ever had been. “I don’t know what kind of reaction ‘Agent Washington’ would have gotten. It doesn’t seem wise to broadcast any kind of military involvement here.”

“Maybe,” the Meta says, shrugging. “Reputation can do heavy lifting sometimes.”

“The last time I got attention for my reputation,” Wash counters, reining his tone in from scathing to dry, “I ended up getting knocked out in an ambush.”

The corner of the Meta’s mouth quirks up.

“Lucky I was there.”

“I’m sure,” Wash mutters, and looks down at the BR55 in his hands. It’s conveniently banged up and scuffed right where the serial number should be. “How did you even find me? Much less avoid two armies?”

The Meta starts laughing – quiet laughter but genuine laughter, the scars on his throat jumping as he smiles in a way that Wash remembers just as well as he remembers Maine’s voice.

Finding you was easy. Big ship, big crash. He pauses and looks up at Wash, and Wash shrugs. Felix, Locus, and their respective employers had found them, so he supposes it’s not that much of a stretch that the Meta could, too.

“And the ‘avoiding two armies’ part?”

On Chorus, flexibility is the most important thing to learn. The Meta pauses. Adaptability, he amends. You save someone’s skin one day, and they’re trying to put a knife in your ribs the next, and then they’re the only reason you’re still alive. Things change rapidly. The less people pay attention to you, the better. And if you get noticed, make sure it’s with a reputation you can leverage.

“Uh huh,” Wash says, and wonders just what about a person who’s closing in on seven feet tall, as broad and arresting in armor as he is out of it, makes him someone people don’t pay attention to, and then he wonders if it’s the last part that applies to the Meta. Judging by the odd, quelling look the Meta shoots him, now isn’t the time to get into that.

We didn’t get followed out of that canyon, did we? The Meta raises his eyebrows in challenge, and Wash doesn’t rise to it. Invisibility and anonymity are useful weapons.

“So I suppose it’s somehow, just luckily, a good thing that I’ve got a reputation,” Wash says, crossing his arms, “and not necessarily one that I can leverage.”

I’m not forcing you to come with, the Meta writes, and shrugs. You can go back if you really want to. I’m not going to stop you.

Something about that needles Wash instantly, like fine threads cutting into the bundles of thought he’s been carrying around all day. His chest tightens.

“No,” he says shortly. “I–” He stops, trying to figure out words for what’s milling around in his head. “This is my mess, too. You were right about that.”

You’re right, too. About visibility, I mean. You do have a reputation, on this planet and off of it.

That feels like a jab. Wash ignores it and plows on.

“I’m assuming you either know the planet well enough, or you’ve got maps. Do you even know where he is?”

“No,” the Meta says. “Tracked signal, found a base. That’s all.”

“That sure inspires confidence in me.”

The Meta shoots him a withering look, then picks his datapad back up.

Finish up and go to sleep. We might not have access to beds for a while, so savor it while you can.

Wash takes the advice. He finishes cleaning and storing his outdated new weapons, starts a travel log to track progress across a planet he knows nothing about, and goes to sleep with his back turned to the reason his chest and shoulder still ache on a bad day.

Wash is awake.

The journey to consciousness is short and brutal, as it often is. He wakes with his hands clenched tight in the sheets and he’s sweating, heart racing, breaths uneven; every time he blinks he sees the wrong face burned into the backs of his eyelids.

He swallows audibly, and it practically echoes in the cold concrete room. There’ll be no sleeping after this. There’s bleak light filtering in from somewhere; a datapad, a door, something, and it only serves to press against Wash’s nerves, reinforcing that he does not know this place. He does not belong here.

But he has something he needs to do, and he has someone who needs his help. He digs his fingers into the sheets one more time, and then wrenches himself upright, and then devotes himself to the pursuit of caffeine-assisted consciousness.

Finding coffee turns out to be an adventure and a half, but after fifteen minutes of awkwardly asking directions, he’s got a disposable cup in his hand and an expansive amount of maps downloaded to his datapad, courtesy of a local fileshare network. He’s shocked he still has the damn thing, to be honest, and it’s acquired some questionable marks from being haphazardly stuck to the magsheath on his thigh for a firefight, but he won’t discount this small blessing.

From what he can tell from quickly poking around the local filenet, Chorus had been the perfect little colony world. It’s a pretty sizable planet; it’s got highly stratified climate zones and warm oceans, wide belts of temperate and subtropical zones broken up by high and low deserts, and tundras at each pole. Mild summers, not-as-mild winters, wet between. Temperatures plummet at night in the deserts and there’s year-round snow at the poles, but the wide, flat zones of perfect farmland mean that Chorus has always been an agricultural gem. And that’s on top of a huge amount of natural resources.

Wash is reminded unsettlingly of what Harvest had been like. They’d all seen the vids. They’d all grown up with the horror story.

Except instead of aliens, Chorus got hit by a shitty government, and then everything escalated. Wash can’t find much about what’s actually happening here that isn’t horribly, transparently biased one way or the other, but it seems to be an average, run-of-the-mill civil war scenario.

Except the Counselor has to fit into this somehow, and there is no mistaking the timbre of that voice.

Of all the bizarre situations to land himself in, this is where he’s ended up somehow: stranded on a backwater planet in the middle of a civil war with someone he thought he watched die, and about to start on a crusade to go after one of the people responsible for ruining their lives and the bygone lives of all their friends.

He takes a long drink of his coffee and lets the bitterness weigh on his tongue.

Time passes, spiraling slowly as Wash sinks deeper into maps and public-access travel logs, and initially he doesn’t even register the soft rasp of noise as someone clearing their throat; it takes a half-remembered voice calling his name to jolt him out of his poorly caffeinated stupor. Wash looks up to see the Meta leaning in the doorway, hair mussed, and his throat closes briefly before he’s able to find his voice.

“Just looking at some maps,” he supplies, unsure why he’s supplying it.

The Meta grunts, grabs a bag, and heads out the door.

Wash swirls the dregs of his long-cold coffee around, then drains the cup and spins it mindlessly against the table as he maps out another possible route through nearby territory. It takes the Meta fifteen minutes to come back, hair damp, towel on his shoulder.

“Is the planet split fifty-fifty between the Federals and the New Republic?” Wash asks without preamble, still spinning the cup around the rim of its base with a finger.

“Mercs too,” the Meta replies, and sits down at the table opposite Wash. He pulls out his own datapad. “Lot messier than fifty-fifty. Makes searching hard.”

“For where the Counselor could be, you mean,” Wash clarifies. The Meta makes a wishy-washy gesture and pulls up a topographic map on his own datapad; it rises up from the screen to spread, glowing, across the tabletop. A small handful of flags pops up.

“Where signal bounced,” the Meta corrects. “3,000 klicks square. Don’t think he was there. Not hard to re-route signals.” He broadly circles the flags with a finger. “Most bounces in Fed territory nearby, some neutral.”

“Is there a planetary capital?”

“Fed control.”

“Orbital platforms? Orbital shipyards?” Wash runs a hand over his face thoughtfully. “He could be off-planet.” The Meta huffs out a laugh.

“Never had orbital defenses. Space elevators, spacedock, but–” He shrugs. “–defunct for years.”

“Wow.” No space elevators means no exports means no economy, which… well, now the state of the merc base makes a lot more sense.

“Signal was planetside,” the Meta says, and shifts. Wash narrows his eyes.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

The Meta shifts again, zooms out on the map a bit, scrolls around meaninglessly.

“Chorus…” He plays with the map again, uneasy. Wash doesn’t remember him fiddling like this back… then. “No long-range comms.”

“What?”

The Meta just looks at him, obviously unwilling to repeat himself. Wash tries again.

“What do you mean, no long-range comms?”

“Exactly that.”

Fuck. He’d figured that the crash had just fucked their radio net up entirely. He hadn’t thought about browsing outside the base’s filenet because there’d been no need to. But this–

“What– how does that make sense? How does anything function?”

“Doesn’t,” The Meta grunts. “No long-range comms. Anything distance, record it, give it to a person traveling there. Nothing off-planet.”

“So how is this long-range, then?” Wash asks, frustrated, pointing down at the Meta’s datapad.

“That’s the problem,” The Meta growls, gesturing sharply, and then letting his hand fall heavily to the table. “Don’t know. Don’t have enough info.” He gestures to the collection of holographic flags, then meets Wash’s eyes.

Wash leans his elbows on the tabletop and exhales slowly.

“Okay, then we need a plan.”

They’ve got three possible main routes mapped out, five backup routes, and two emergency routes laid out by the time the sun drops below the horizon. Wash is fairly confident that even if something completely unprecedented happens, they’ll be able to adapt. They’ve always been good at that.

The plan, insofar as one even exists, really, is to try and find a duplicate of the signal the Meta had intercepted. Someone else on the same frequency, a stashed record of the communiqué, another message sent long-range, anything weird. Which means raiding bases. Which means raiding both Fed and New Republic bases. Which means they’ll be on the run. Together. Again.

There’s a five-mile-long track running around the base, and Wash is three-quarters of a mile into a run to settle his thoughts when one of the knots in his stomach violently resurfaces.

The Reds and the Blues.

He nearly trips over a rock but keeps going, fighting down the panic that’s rising in his chest. He can’t fucking believe that all of this happening had managed to eclipse the thought of his team for so long. Yeah, it’s been hectic, but that’s no excuse. Fuck.

He brings it up as casually as possible when he comes back from a shower, towel draped across his shoulders.

“What I’ve heard, seen, no one’s in danger,” the Meta says. “Group with the New Republic, made it to caves. Feds, saw medics running to your friends after I grabbed you. Safe.”

Wash rubs his temples.

“Caboose and Tucker–” He stops. “I feel like I owe them… I feel like I owe them.”

“You do,” the Meta replies simply. “CO owes all their soldiers.” He pauses. “Feds won’t mistreat them. Republic won’t mistreat them. Don’t have to worry. They’ll find each other – take care of selves.”

“I can’t not worry,” Wash snaps. “I’m responsible for them. Well, some of them. Sort of.” He pauses. “Okay, not really. But they’re… my friends."

The Meta looks at him, and something almost sad flits briefly, so briefly, across his face.

Like I said, the datapad reads, I’m not forcing you to come with me. If you want to, go.

Wash is rendered speechless by the magnitude of– everything. The thought that he’s abandoning his friends. The reality that the Meta had clearly risked something, if not his life, to yank Wash out of that canyon and ask him to do this. The fact that the Meta is ready to let that go if Wash says he wants to go chase a band of idiots across Chorus. The gentle furrow between the Meta’s brows, the understanding in his face. A look he never thought he’d see again. Ever. Ever.

“Wash?”

“You’ve changed,” he says, summing up everything he’s been struggling to manage for the past two days before his brain-mouth filter can properly re-engage. He suppresses a wince. Of course the Meta has changed. There are no AI shoving his brain and his personality into a blender until what’s left is an incomprehensible mess. There is no one dogging his footsteps through a wake of carnage. There’s just– this. Whatever this is.

So have you. I don’t expect you to be the same man I almost killed on Sidewinder, so I don’t know why you keep expecting me to be the same person you left for dead on Sidewinder.

“You’re right,” Wash replies shortly, wincing, and he knows his voice sounds tense. “It’s not fair of me. It’s just–” He searches for a word, a phrase, anything to explain what it just is, and he steadily avoids the Meta’s eyes. The silence stretches on.

“Yeah,” the Meta says quietly.

You weren’t the same after Epsilon, you know. Not those first few days in the hospital, not when you were tracking–– A long pause. ––me down in the Recovery force, not when we ran that last mission together. And you’re not that same man now. You changed, and those sim troopers are a part of that.

“I guess these mercs changed you, then,” Wash says, because the universe of alternatives is too daunting to address.

No, the Meta types, and he looks thoughtful. not quite. Wash looks at him; the Meta meets his eyes, unyielding, before typing again. This– He taps the datapad, and Wash knows he’s talking about the intercepted comm. –could save a planet. I can’t fix what I’ve done, but I can try to help these people.

“I’m…” He pauses, torn. Honesty wins out. “I want to help you. I know how you feel. But I… also have an obligation to help my friends.”

He folds his arms across the table and hunches over to rest on his elbows. The Meta makes an odd, aborted half-gesture before carefully going back to his datapad.

I’m not going to push you, and I’m not going to force you. I want to leave tomorrow, and we could split up if you want some time, but splitting up would only cause problems when it comes to regrouping.

“Yeah.”

The Meta scratches absently at his throat.

I’ll see if I can get any more info on your friends. Sam and Lucía have He pauses. They have a lot of connections.

God. It feels like there’s a knife slowly being pushed into his chest every time the Meta opens that door just an inch wider. He’d always known that there’s a good, decent human being in Maine – and, by proxy, the Meta – but it’s been so long since Wash last saw it. Far too long. The Meta is so open with it now that it’s like facing a totally different person every time he nonchalantly offers Wash that decency.

“Why are you doing this? All of this?” It’s not that Wash wants to look a weird sort of gift horse in the mouth; it’s that paranoia is crawling up his throat, sinking its illogical claws in deep.

“Got a lot of people to make shit up to,” the Meta says, and meets his eyes briefly one more time before looking away. “You, the most.”

The garage is thrumming with an amount of activity belied by the rather sedate atmosphere elsewhere in the base the following morning. Perhaps not sedate, Wash thinks, watching a knot of what can only be civilians milling around two battered cars; diffuse seems like a better description of this sprawling net of relative safety.

The Meta drops his duffel into the back of a Warthog with a thud, pulling Wash’s attention away from a small group of tired-looking adults in armor arguing in a corner, some civilians hovering nervously nearby.

“Ready?” the Meta asks, looking pointedly at the bag slung over Wash’s shoulder. “Time to go.”

“Any news?” Wash asks, and the Meta shakes his head.

“Sam and Lucía–” He breaks off, looking away, and holds up a hand. “Be back.”

Wash watches him lope across the bay, watches people double-take and scramble out of his way. God, the Meta is fucking huge. And that armor certainly helps, as it always has. It’s not the same thing he was wearing when Wash left him for dead on Sidewinder. It’s newer, some of the same type of updated gear that had been stashed aboard the Hand of Merope; more slopes and curves than what he wore before, but just as intimidating.

The Meta pulls aside two mercs from the group talking to the civilians, and Wash is surprised to see how gently he does it. Lucía’s face is clear even from across the motor pool as she reads the datapad she’d been offered, and the woman next to her – tall, slim, densely curly salt-and-pepper hair shaved into a mohawk – leans over Lucía’s shoulder to pay attention. She’s got one hand resting on the Meta’s arm, Wash notes, and his surprise only intensifies. The back-and-forth conversation is short, seemingly uncomplicated; Lucía and the person Wash can only assume to be the wife that the Meta had mentioned both put on their helmets with a sort of finality after less than a minute.

The Meta takes back his datapad; Lucía raps his helmet with her knuckles, then the person who might be Sam claps his shoulder, and then the Meta turns and heads back towards Wash and the car.

“All your friends, safe,” the Meta reports, and climbs into the driver’s seat. “Had some mercs pass through, off Fed and New Republic duty.”

“Are they still here? Those mercs?” Fuck, if there’s any way he can find them, track them, maybe– no. No. He can’t involve them in this. He did that once. He won’t do it again. “I– nevermind.”

The Meta looks at him, quiet and patient, and Wash’s skin prickles with that same familiar, odd discomfort. Wash pushes it away and climbs into the passenger seat.

“Nevermind,” he repeats firmly, and looks ahead. “Let’s get going.”

The Meta follows him into the driver’s seat in silence.

The road that stretches before them is unfamiliar. Wash supposes that at some point in his career, he should have gotten used to it already. The landscape itself, though, feels familiar; an extension of the dry brown rock and warm scrub of the canyon they’d all been trapped in for months, the same he’d seen when the Meta had driven him out of the canyon. It still feels surreal. Wash clenches his hand into a fist, slowly, and watches the shielding over his gauntlet shimmer in the wan sunlight of a hazy afternoon. It’s hard not to let his thoughts roam with nothing but potential unfurling ahead of him on the asphalt, and Wash breaks the hours-long silence to ask, “Why me?”

The Meta looks at him sidelong, a quick tilt of his head away from the road, and gestures with his free hand. The other is hooked easily into the steering wheel, fingers lax and at ease.

“You’ve got people here,” Wash clarifies. “People who…” Know you better. Know the current you better. Pulled you out of the water when I couldn’t. Wash bites his tongue. “People you’ve worked with more recently. So why go to the trouble?”

There’s another flash of gold as the Meta looks at Wash again. The weight of his gaze is palpable.

“Told you.” It’s easier to hear all that damage in the Meta’s voice when it’s coming across their COM channels. Wash’s stomach twists with old sympathy. “Know what I went through. Went through it too.”

It’s the missing piece to Wash’s puzzle. What the Meta had said to him (before and now) makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense. In his shoes – well. No. Wash has no idea what he’d do in the Meta’s shoes. He’s in the Meta’s shoes now that he’s been dragged into this, and he still has no idea what he’d do. But the last time he’d chosen the Meta to help him deal with the shattered remains of Project Freelancer, it hadn’t been much of a choice.

(Or maybe it had been. He still doesn’t know. He still doesn’t regret choosing the Meta. He only regrets that it hadn’t been Maine.)

Considering all of that, it’s still a mystery. Wash asks, “So then why trust me enough for this?”

The Meta drums his fingers atop the steering column.

“Been with Sam and Lucía over a year. Trust them with life. But–” He pauses, tips his head with another dull flicker of gold. He doesn’t look away from the road. “–trust you with this. See this through.”

“Thanks,” Wash says. “I think.”

The Meta shrugs and looks back at the road.

See this through. Yeah, Wash intends to. To whatever end. He’ll see it through.

In the meantime, though, there’s only one step to take at a time; there’s only so much they can do in one day. When Wash takes over for a stretch of driving, there’s a dry, persistent breeze, and by the time he hands the car back off to the Meta again, it’s grown as frigid as the shadows have grown long.

The afternoon lingers, draped in deep sunlight that turns the Meta’s armor into something closer to caramel; nightfall is brutally swift, the broad purple of twilight lasting less than half an hour. The sky is liquid pitch by the time they pull over to stop, studded with distant stars Wash doesn’t know. It’s been a long time since he last spent the night outside like this. Even after the crash, it had felt different; an entirely different kind of necessity, a different kind of company. By comparison, this feels almost unbearably odd.

He walks back around the perimeter they’ve set up and double-checks that the trackers are working, then heads back to “camp.” It’s less of a camp and more of a waystation, truthfully; there’s a sturdy, simple concrete shelter, a waterproof dead drop with some non-perishables, and a healthy supply of wood and tinder.

“I set trackers,” he announces, and the Meta glances up from his datapad.

“Sam and Lucía passing through here later,” the Meta says after a pause. “Sam says, leave a message for your friends. Can pass it on, if she gets a chance. At least, pass on to others.”

“I… yeah. I’ll do that.”

The Meta’s fingers sprint across his datapad before he holds it out. Wash can feel the repulsion-pressure of their shields on his fingertips when he takes the datapad, like magnets rejecting each other.

He clears his throat awkwardly and moves back around the other side of the car, trying to come up with something to say. Something that doesn’t sound like “hey guys, totally abandoning you to waltz across the planet with the Meta,” but that isn’t actually a lie.

“Hey Tucker, Caboose,” he starts. “And… Reds. You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m not at the Fed base.” He winces. “I, uh… got out of the canyon. It turns out there’s something personal I’ve got to take care of here on Chorus. Something from a long time ago, coming back to bite my ass.” A pause. He furiously wracks his brain for the right thing to say and comes up with just about nothing. “I’ve gotten you guys mixed up in far too much to drag you into this, too, so… keep your noses clean. I’ll try my best to keep in touch, but given– circumstances– it might be hard. We’ll see.” Is there nothing left to say? There really isn’t, is there. Wash sets his jaw. “Take care of yourselves. Wash out.”

He checks the playback on that trainwreck to make sure it captured properly, winces at himself, and then walks back to return the datapad to the Meta.

“Glad for you,” the Meta says once it’s sent. “Good your friends are safe.”

“Yeah,” Wash says, and looks down at his hands. “Yeah. Hopefully they stay that way.”

“Take first watch,” the Meta grunts after an acceptably long pause. “Wake me in three.”

Wash jerks awake to the Meta leaning over him, hand on his shoulder, and shock floods his system before he can rein it in, before his thoughts can catch up to his body’s instinctive reaction.

“Morning,” the Meta says quietly, and pulls back his hand.

Wash drags himself up and leans back against the car. He feels rattled and unsteady, the memory of mottled dreams still feverish behind his eyes, and he can’t quite bring himself to stand yet. The Meta lowers his eyes and turns around to slowly walk to the edge of their camp, giving him space as literally and metaphorically as possible.

Wash reaches for water and takes a long drink, then inhales slowly and exhales slowly.

“You never had Epsilon, did you?”

The Meta looks back over at him and shakes his head.

“Lucky you.”

“I’m sure.”

Wash takes another deep breath and forces the lingering adrenaline to fade. He pulls his helmet on and throws what little gear he’d used back into his bag, then starts checking the tracker locations to pick them back up.

“Load the car, Meta. I’ll get the trackers.”

The Meta slowly looks at him, eyes narrowed, and Wash gets that sinking feeling in his gut like he’s messed up somehow.

“Watch your tone,” the Meta says, voice low.

“What?”

“Tone. Don’t be an ass again. Last time.”

Wash throws up his mental defenses and holds his ground.

“That was an extenuating circumstance, ” he snaps. “You don’t know how it felt––”

“What? Watch your own body kill your friends, AI screaming in your head? Fight for clarity when gun’s pointed at your–” He stops. “–at you, Wash? Then have it all ripped out, dead silence? Deal with that?”

“Right, because I sure had a great time working with the shell of someone I knew,” Wash spits. “Getting stripped down and thrown in jail for no reason, then to get let out like a dog on a leash along with someone who tried to kill me. Great times!”

“Pot meets kettle,” the Meta snarls. “Don’t act like only you were hurt.”

Wash laughs bitterly and says, “You nearly killed me during the Mother's crash, did you know that?”

The Meta is completely still. Right. That doesn’t come as a surprise. There had been nothing left of Maine in any of that body’s movements. Wash almost regrets that the Meta had to find out this way, but he’s too heated to give that any amount of care.

“Didn’t,” the Meta says quietly. “Wasn’t– didn’t know.”

“Lucky you,” Wash sneers back. The admission brings him no relief. He can feel his face flushing under the helmet but he’s angry – so much angrier than he thought he would be, and it sits knotted in his throat, choking away anything else. Leaving no room for remorse. Much less for the acknowledgment that he’s fucking up more and more with every word he says.

“If I could’ve done–” The Meta turns his head away. “Sorry. For what they did. To me, to you.”

Wash stays silent. The anger throbs. If he were feeling any less jarred– uneasy, unsettled, off-balance— he’d know this isn’t anger but something sharper, something that cuts rather than lances, cauterizes instead of burning.

But he’s not feeling balanced or clement in the least, and he staidly pretends that all he’s feeling is fury.

Falling back in step with the Meta is remarkably easy. Kind of scarily easy, actually. Wash had thought it’d be hard, after spending all that time with the Blues, but this feels like normality in a way that’s really unsettling.

He mentally boots himself off that train of thought and does a triple-check over the rifle, then neatly arranges all his extra magazines. The break in the trees here gives them just the right angle to see the building nestled right in the dip between foothills, tiny from this distance. Trust an army to set up a base blocking the only way through a valley. (Frankly, at this point in his life, it’s about the only thing he can trust an army to do properly.)

“Ready?” the Meta asks.

“Ready. Wish we had more equipment, though.”

The Meta shrugs and makes an if only sort of face; Wash rolls his shoulders back and does some stretches to limber up before deactivating the lockup keeping his armor in a neat, small stack.

He’s up to his knees in armor by the time he realizes that the Meta has been looking at him oddly. Analytically, even.

“What?” he grunts.

The Meta shakes his head.

“Been a while,” he says, beyond cryptically, and starts pulling his own armor on. Wash frowns at this and turns away, falling into a familiar, quick rhythm, when he realizes he’s looking at the Meta the same way the Meta had been looking at him.

Getting ready like this had been communal, once. Had been full of laughter and terrible jokes. It’d been angry and sharp once, too, a pressing reminder of the people they’d lost throughout Project Freelancer’s doomed scope. But this feels easy – much easier than it should be – and Wash doesn’t know if he should be finding comfort in how familiar the motions are.

The armor is a swift process; settling on a plan is as simple as using hand signals to mark one of the hillsides, and then following the Meta upwards through some sparse vegetation. Wash sets up camp at the edge of a short cliff, buries himself deep in the low brush and short, stubby trees, and sets his trackers. The Meta sends a short burst of static over their comm channel, then nods. Wash blinks his status light green.

“I’ve got nearly full coverage of the outpost up here,” he says, once the Meta leaves and starts winding down towards the outpost. “Looks like four… six people. That I can see, at least.” He squirms quietly and readjusts himself.

“Trackers?”

“Nothing so far. I’ll leave it to you to find surprises.”

“Won’t,” the Meta replies, his tone easy. “Got you to catch them.”

It’s been a long time since Wash last camped out as a cover like this. It’s so terribly intimate, somehow; he and the Meta had fallen naturally into quiet murmurs, disregarding the fact that no one can actually hear anything outside their helmets.

His trackers pick up someone moving through the small canyon framed by the cliff he’s on and he waits patiently, lines up the shot–

“Wash.”

“Wait.”

–holds his breath, moves his finger inside the trigger guard, squeezes once. That bullet will have clipped through the collarbone, probably shattering it. The blood loss will render the Federal Army soldier – or mercenary – unconscious swiftly.

“Wash.”

“What?”

“Chatter, patrol coming in. Southwest.”

“I just picked someone off along the creek to the southwest. I’ll keep an eye out for more.”

A few uneven breaths come through the COM channel, and then:

“Got one, in from southeast.”

“Wonder when they’ll notice.”

“Maybe when bodies start smelling.” A quiet breath; Wash can feel the amusement, can imagine the smile. And then, a grunt.

“What?”

“Nothing. Maybe.” The Meta pauses, and Wash feels tension creeping into his shoulders. “Might be active camo. Trackers–” A whump, an exhale, another grunt. “Camo. Two. Maybe more. Don’t like this.”

“I’m gonna take out as many as I can from here, then move up,” Wash says, lining up another shot. Through his scope, a sliver of thinly armored undersuit flexes over a thigh as the soldier he’s tracking walks on, oblivious. “Ready?”

“Sync.”

“Sync.”

One more clean elimination, and then another, and then someone finally notices and the alarm gets tripped. Wash down yet another person, then slings the DMR on his back and pulls off the BR55, loads a magazine and checks his trackers. Nothing. Time to use good old-fashioned eyesight, then.

A warped, soldier-shaped chunk of air launches itself towards Wash right as he turns, and only an uncharacteristic moment of trigger-happiness saves his neck, catching the cloaked Fed with two three-round bursts to the chest and shoulders. The unit that’s socketed into the armor looks like it had been scrounged off an Elite over a decade ago, and a weird sense of relief swoops through Wash’s stomach.

“Meta,” he barks out, and heads down the soft, southeast slope of the cliff, moving as fast as he can in a low crouch through the brush.

“Calling for–” A crackle. “–for reinforcements. Bug out, now–”

Wash takes out one of two Feds heading for where the Meta is absolutely decimating a group of four, then swears loudly because of course the fucking gun jams. He’s good, yes, but he’s also sensible, and he knows he can’t do this shit with a fucking DMR and a half-empty pistol.

He grabs the pistol on his thigh anyways and downs the Fed trying to get around the Meta’s back, then closes the distance between them right as the Meta drops the last Fed.

“Let’s go,” Wash says urgently, but the Meta kneels down to strip each Fed of mags and pistols with cold efficiency, each rough movement accompanied by a chorus of groans.

“Thank me later,” he huffs, and breaks into a run towards the center of the Fed outpost.

“Where–?”

“Faster to take their car,” the Meta says, boots pounding against the concrete floor.

“What?”

“Trust me,” the Meta snarls, and shoves an ignition chip Wash hadn’t noticed him take into the nearest Warthog before launching himself in with surprising grace. The Warthog’s suspension groans as it settles about a foot down.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Wash snaps back, and follows to perch himself in the passenger side. “Give me your pistol. Or a pistol, whatever. Rifle jammed.”

“DMR?” The Meta gets the engine snarling before he shoves a pistol into Wash’s open palm, and then peels out.

“No, the BR.”

The Meta grunts. Wash hopes it’s in sympathy. The Meta makes a wide loop around the base; they’re headed back to where they stashed their own ‘Hog, and now Wash sees the logic behind driving. Especially if that outpost called for reinforcements.

Clever. And, Wash realizes in lightning-quick hindsight, so was stripping the downed soldiers of their guns and mags. Not only does it disarm them more permanently than just kicking the weapons away, but it means that they’ve got more to use themselves.

The landscape whips by. Wash keeps his fingers crossed for smooth sailing.

By the time they’re gruffly handed a keychip to a room and then promptly ignored by the motel’s “concierge,” Wash has given up on trying to find a silver lining in the past sixty hours. He and the Meta have gotten roughly six hours of sleep each in the past two and a half days, on top of two skirmishes and at least thirty klicks of flat-out running.

Wash has just enough energy left in him for a short stretch and a shower, and he has to bite back a groan slinging the pack off his shoulder. They had paused outside this tiny town for just long enough to strip out of their armor and safely stow it on the Warthog, and Wash’s sneaking suspicion that his shoulder is dislocated had been all but confirmed for him. And the Meta – he hadn’t even hesitated, just gestured for Wash to turn around instead of trying to do it himself, and his hands had been unyieldingly gentle.

It’s the first time anyone’s touched Wash in ages. The scramble and tension at the crash site meant that Tucker hadn’t been in as good a mood for days, that his joking shoves were in short supply; the discovery of (and subsequent issues caused by) Freckles meant that Caboose had sought companionship in his new friend, rather than in Wash. He’d been peevishly grateful for it at the time. Now, he still feels the faint echo of the Meta’s palm against his back.

The Meta closes and locks the door, primes an alarm, and then strips his jacket of the four scavenged pistols and nine-odd magazines they’d taken from the last batch of Feds. It’s truly amazing, Wash thinks, how little some things change.

“Want it?” the Meta asks, jerking a thumb back behind him.

It takes a minute to process what the Meta is referring to: the conspicuously lone bed in the room.

“Oh,” Wash says, and then glances at the bruises mottling the Meta’s forearm, the tender angle at which he’s holding his wrist. That’s easy math. “No, you take it. You’re in worse shape than I am.”

The Meta raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t protest further. Wash considers the matter settled and makes his exit for the bathroom. Ten minutes later, he leaves the shower in a not-yet-worn tee and a pair of sweats to find the Meta slowly opening and closing his left hand, trying to rotate it at the elbow.

“Hey,” Wash blurts, “don’t do that.”

The Meta snorts at him and stops trying to turn his hand, but his fingers curl slowly into a fist regardless.

“Sprained. Not too bad,” the Meta says. “Splint, should be fine.”

Wash sighs and picks the medkit out of the Meta’s pack, sits down on the bed next to him, and says, “Let me see.”

The Meta slowly extends his arm; it’s swollen under the bruising welt. Wash carefully runs his fingers over the joint, checking for any disconnects, doing his best not to jostle it unnecessarily. The skin is overheated under the bruise and warm otherwise; calluses stand out starkly at the bases of the Meta’s fingers. Wash thinks about the echo of the Meta’s palm on his back, just an hour ago, and wraps the wrist with a forced sense of detachedness.

“Wash.”

He looks over, the medkit halfway stowed in the bag. There’s a strange patience to the set of the Meta’s face, and he says, “Big bed. Just saying.”

Wash’s eyes flick to the bed. It’s big enough for two people, alright. Even with one of them being the Meta’s size. The Meta shrugs, offhand, in encouragement.

“Alright,” Wash says, and zips up the duffel. It’s late; he’s tired. He walks around to the unoccupied edge of the bed as the Meta stands and gathers his own duffel to head for the shower, and Wash falls back on top of the covers and slides into unconsciousness with uncommon speed.

Wash opens his eyes to hazy morning light and the sight of a scarred elbow two inches away from his nose.

The Meta is sprawled haphazardly across the bed, still asleep, breaths quiet and even, and Wash’s still-tired brain doesn’t so much grind to a halt as much as it refuses to have even started in the first place.

Somehow, like this, the fact that the Meta is absolutely not the same person that Wash knew is overwhelming. He’s leveled out and taken care of himself and it’s… frankly, it’s impressive. Encouraging, in its own odd, unsettling way. The Meta seems to have just carefully gone and sorted everything out and moved forward, living with his past instead of living around it or letting himself drown in it.

Wash lets his eyes fall shut for a few more seconds and he savors the feeling of being in a bed and with a pillow, in a quiet room with light filtering in dimly through thick, musty hotel curtains. When he opens his eyes again, it’s to the Meta looking at him over that scarred elbow, eyes half-open, and the proverbial knife that’s been sitting in Wash’s chest since day one digs in a little deeper, twists a little more.

He’s not really sure what to make of this situation so he does his best to sit up casually and ends up letting a groan slip out before he can catch it. His whole body feels like a giant bruise. Damn. Has it really been that long since he’d seen active, sustained combat of this caliber? Even the firefight in the canyon hadn’t ached like this.

“Shoulder?” The Meta’s voice is husky with sleep but the solid night’s rest – first in days, and Wash is half-tempted to keep resting if it means his spine doesn’t feel backwards and upside-down – makes his voice sound less strained.

“Fine.” Wash swings his legs over the side of the bed, cracks his back, and rotates his arm to make a point. “How’s your wrist?”

The Meta makes a noncommittal noise, and the covers rustle behind Wash’s back. Wash stands up and yawns like a monster, stretching like he’d just logged sixteen hours of sleep, jaw cracking. He heads for the bathroom and takes a piss and washes his face and brushes his teeth and it all adds up to go a long, long way towards feeling mostly human. He’s feeling nearly positive by the time he changes back into his bodysuit and pulls pants and a tee on over it.

“I’m going to go get food,” he announces, pulls on his boots, grabs the smaller jacket from the hooks on the door. He considers a pistol but takes a knife instead, because he’s not entirely sure how “civilian” civilian life is on Chorus, but he’ll be damned if he's going anywhere unarmed.

“Gonna shower,” grunts the Meta, scratching at his stubble. “Bring coffee.”

And that’s that. Wash’s datapad directs him to a small cafe three blocks down, and he hunches into his jacket, keeps his head low in the early-morning drizzle. It’s a pretty small city, he’s found, but there are some tired-looking people out and about, and a couple of cars pass him.

The cafe is small but the food smells good; the guy behind the counter makes pleasant small talk with him and gives him a couple of kind smiles. It feels halfway normal.

He gets a raised eyebrow and a snort from the Meta when he gets back with two coffees and two boxed-up sandwiches, one of which has a local comm frequency written on it with “Tjellek” and a smiley face underneath it. Life goes on, he supposes, even on a war-torn planet.

“Funny,” the Meta says dryly around half a mouthful of sandwich. “Thought of you flirting. Old man.”

“I’m not that much older than you,” Wash says indignantly. “You’re, what, thirty–?”

“–four. Born in ‘22.”

“I was born in ‘20. I’m not old.”

“Colony?” the Meta asks, and sniffs at his coffee.

“Earth,” Wash says, and he realizes that they’ve never actually… talked about this. He doesn’t think he’s ever talked about this to anyone, really. No one ever really cares where you’re from. Just where you’re going.

The Meta looks at him, hesitates, then looks away. He takes a drink of his coffee, blinks, swallows.

“Harvest.”

Wash watches as the Meta curls his thumbs neatly around the cup. A split second later, the information hits him, full-force.

“You’re from Harvest?”

The Meta nods slowly.

“Know what you’re gonna ask,” he says, and his voice is too quiet to be purely casual. “Remember bits. Too young to get it, but–” He shrugs. “–people screaming. Ride up elevator was hot. Crowded. People crying.” He pops open the lid on top of the coffee cup, then reaches for a to-go creamer that’s dwarfed by his hands. “Guess everyone has reason to join up.”

Wash looks down at the last few bites of his sandwich and takes a swig of coffee instead.

“I was supposed to go to Corbulo Academy,” he finally says. “Circinius IV got glassed. I went to the academy on Luna instead.”

“And then Freelancer.”

“And then Freelancer,” Wash repeats. “Now we’re here, still trying to clean up that mess.”

The Meta makes a noise low in his throat that Wash isn’t really sure how to interpret, then finishes off his coffee and rolls his shoulders.

“Rifle?” he asks, and stands up to haul the duffel full of weapons onto the bed. “In here?”

“Yeah. Let me deal with it.” Wash holds out his hand, and the Meta hands off the bag; their fingers brush. He hands the bag back after fishing out both the BR55 and the DMR. “I’m glad the DMR didn’t jam.”

The Meta hums in agreement as he sorts through the various pistols he’d taken from the Feds, and makes two piles before starting to empty out the duffel.

“Take care of these–” He gestures to their assortment of weapons. “–eat, move out?”

“Sounds good,” Wash replies with a shrug, and gets to work.

The BR55 takes some work to figure out. It turns out to be a tiny fault in the trigger mechanism that had caused the jam; the slightest misalignment of two parts had blocked the trigger from pulling completely. Wash isn’t sure if his fix will be permanent, but it’s better than nothing.

The DMR just needs a thorough cleaning, so Wash lets his hands roam and his thoughts drift. Weapons maintenance was like pulling teeth at “Blue” “Base” at the crash site; keeping Caboose distracted enough to replace the bullets in all of his magazines with crayons, making sure Tucker actually paid enough attention to put his rifle back together the right way. (Wash made the mistake of asking if the sword needed maintenance only once. A man can only handle so many dick jokes before they get overwhelmingly stale, and Wash had hit his limit decades ago.)

He’d done this with Carolina, when she’d come for them. The same ritual. The same soft sounds of cloth and metal. He’d done this with Maine too many times to count. With York. With Connie. His lungs ache with old grief. His thoughts turn to newer aches.

“How’d you survive?” he asks. His hands have been still for at least two minutes.

The Meta pauses, and frowns at him quizzically.

“That fall, on Sidewinder,” Wash clarifies.

The Meta gives him a long, long look. Eventually he shrugs, the motion nonchalant, but the set of his jaw betrays him.

“Not exactly a miracle.” He sets aside the rifle he’s holding. “Cut tow-line. Car yanked down hard, slammed against ice. Got lucky. Ice shelf broke fall, broke shitload of bones.” He rubs at his throat. “Used knife, armor lock to get back up.”

“Armor lock?”

“Crawl up, lock armor, wait for pain to stop, then, again.”

Wash runs a hand through his hair and exhales. His chest feels tight.

“Meta, you’re unbelievable,” he says. His voice is unsteady; he’s not sure why.

The Meta gives him another long, tight look before shrugging again.

“Is what it is,” he replies, and then gestures down at the rifles in front of Wash. “Done? Can put away.”

“Yeah,” Wash says, and leans away. “Done.”

“Head out early tomorrow,” the Meta tells him, his back turned as he arranges their weapons in the bag. “Be better that way.”

Wash doesn’t ask what it is that’ll be better. This conversation has been rocky enough. He’ll just have to trust in the Meta’s judgment.

It doesn’t take long to figure out what the Meta had meant: they hit a blockade two klicks out of town. The Meta advises him to take off his helmet but doesn’t elaborate further than that, and Wash dutifully quashes the millions of what-ifs that rise up in his chest.

It’s set up like a standard military checkpoint, which is both reassuring and not. Wash obligingly slows down when he sees the SLOW – CHECKPOINT AHEAD signs a klick before the small queue of stopped cars begins. They’re seemingly efficient, at least, and it only takes about a minute per car. There’s a sign with a long list detailing the procedure – Please Remove Headgear, Please Prepare To Show Documentation, We Will Ask For A Search – and it’s riddled with bullet holes.

This should be fairly simple. No harder than lying his way through Freelancer and the Recovery force, at any rate.

The checkpoint itself is small, practically ramshackle, and the “gate” barring the road is nothing more than two hunks of barbed wire piled atop old metal barrels. The people manning the checkpoint are in a similar state of dress, wearing mismatched scraps of armor, clutching outdated rifles that probably saw the start of the Great War.

Wash watches as two guards rifle through the back of the car ahead of them. The driver’s hands are raised, fingers trembling and silhouetted against the bright quicksilver of the rearview mirror.

“Are they– what are they doing up there?” he asks the Meta quietly.

“Taking payment,” the Meta replies, just as quietly. His lip curls around payment, and suddenly everything about this checkpoint becomes crystal clear.

“And people just let them do this?”

The Meta nails him with a sharp, pointed look as his voice rises, and Wash clenches his jaw.

People in town have nothing, the Meta types, angling his datapad so that Wash can look at it without being obvious. No way to defend themselves. If this helps them even vaguely get a reputation for being tough, they’ll take it. What do we lose, anyways? Some mags? A pistol? Who cares. Let them have their peace of mind.

“That,” Wash murmurs, inching up to the gate, “is so fucked up.”

“What’s your business?” says the captain, once Wash crawls to a stop. Or, at least, Wash is assuming that’s a captain. It looks like he’s shooting for the right amount of pips.

“Just passing through. Trying to get to the coast.”

“I’m sure you are.” The captain pointedly runs a hand over the knife on his belt. “What’s in the back?”

“Supplies.” He can see out of the corner of his eye that the Meta is staring evenly at the captain.

“Mercs.” The captain spits on the ground. “Never a straight fuckin’ answer.”

“Like I said, we’re just passing through,” Wash repeats carefully. This guy is clearly on a hair trigger, and Wash has no intention of setting him off. Beside him, The Meta’s hands are slowly curling into fists.

“Rollja, Saxal, check their bags.”

“There’s no need to do that,” Wash tries, raising his hands, and the tension in the air snaps tight. The two people behind the captain half-raise their weapons in pointed threat. The Meta’s hand drops down to the pistol Wash knows is tucked against the door.

And Wash is left staring down the blade of the captain’s knife, angled amateurishly at his chin.

“No need to do that,” the captain repeats mockingly, then looks at the two behind him and jerks his head towards the back of their ‘Hog.

Wash could disarm this man just as easily as taking a breath, and taking out the other two would be equally easy. It’s so deeply tempting; this would all be over in seconds, and this farce of a barricade would let people pass through this town easily. This road had been a major thoroughfare once. It could be that again.

The Meta’s fist shifts where it’s curled against his thigh, and his fingers slowly form the standard handsign for stand down.

Wash takes a deep breath, and trusts the Meta’s judgment.

The captain’s knifepoint wavers at his chin, like he’s not used to holding it at this angle, or at all. The other two are making a racket in the back of the ‘Hog; they’re shoving crates around, judging by the noise, but locking up all his possessions is a habit that nothing and no one could ever train him out of. They won’t get much aside from loose bits of gravel.

“Good for nothing mercs,” the captain snarls again, his voice quieter this time. “This planet’s always been better off without you.”

“I didn’t ask to be here,” Wash replies, keeping his tone even, matching the captain’s quiet volume.

“Then the least you could do is get out of our town,” he hisses back, teeth bared, and– with a bright, sharp pain, the tip of his knife nudges against Wash’s chin as the captain sways forward, mindless of what he’s holding.

Amateurish.

The captain jerks back in surprise, eyes wide, and Wash can see the apology forming on his face just as clearly as he can see a bright smear of his own blood on the careworn steel.

Wash swipes the back of his hand over his chin – the tiny nick won’t even scar, he’s done worse damage to himself shaving – and hits the gas before the captain can do anything to save face in front of his associates.

The rest of the day passes in near silence. The first time they stop to trade places, the Meta reaches over to thumb at Wash’s chin, and Wash finds himself frozen. It’s not ever hard to imagine those hands reaching out to crush his throat, his jaw, to do nothing but maim again. But the Meta’s thumb comes away flaked with crusted blood, and Wash hurriedly scrubs at his chin with the edge of his palm. The Meta says nothing.

It’s only when they’ve settled on a spot for the night that Wash asks.

“Why is there so much resentment towards mercs?”

The Meta looks down at him, then takes a seat against a rock, pulls off his helmet, and runs his hand through his mussed hair.

“Both sides hate other for hiring mercs.” He strips off a gauntlet and yawns, jaw cracking, and scratches at his throat before grunting in irritation and reaching for his datapad.

The Federal Army didn’t always have an advantage over the New Republic. Honestly, the New Republic’s big rebellion is what forced the Feds to train their men better, and to do that, they hired mercs. Then the Republic started hiring mercs to boost their numbers, but obviously neither side likes us much because it’s their planet and their fight. Now it’s all a huge circlejerk. If you don’t pick a side – or at least pretend to pick a side – you’re fucked. Why do you think so many refugees end up at mercenary bases? Why do you think there are even so many mercs in the first place? I can tell you right now, not everyone’s from off-planet.

“Wow,” Wash says, feeling exceptionally eloquent. “This planet is fucked.”

The Meta huffs.

When there’s a mess, everyone wants a solution.

“Great,” Wash mutters. The Meta doesn’t need to name the particular solution he’s thinking of. “I’ll take first watch.”

“No,” the Meta says abruptly, and stands. “Can’t– sleep.” He doesn’t meet Wash’s eyes, but pointedly reaches back to touch the base of his neck.

“Yeah,” Wash croaks, then clears his throat. “Okay. Wake me up in three, then.”

What a pair they make.

The week crawls onward. Their next destination has been declared by the Meta to be a nearby outpost, a few days’ drive away, and Wash welcomes the relative silence of the road. The Meta is neither an unknown traveling companion, nor is he, Wash is half-surprised to realize, an unwelcome one. The rough edges between them start to smooth easily. It’s a relief in some way that Wash cannot properly put his finger on.

The outpost they’re aiming for is a short, early-morning drive away from the last campsite they break on their weeklong route. A wide, flat, tree-covered hill knotted with thick underbrush makes for the perfect place to set up with the DMR; Wash has a view of the entire base, and a square klick radius around it. The Meta crouches at his side and falls silent. Again: neither unknown nor unwelcome. An odd thing to recognize, more than anything. Wash steadies his breath and keeps watch.

Two patrols leave on the hour. One pair heads northeast out from the base and Wash tracks them diligently through the DMR’s scope, waits until one of them trails behind to fire off two shots to the shoulder. The other one doesn’t even notice before Wash repeats the performance.

The patrol heading towards them has moved into Wash’s blind spot so he turns to the Meta and signals for radio silence, then turns back to keep watching the base. He can’t hear anything and his trackers aren’t going off (yet) but he can’t exactly turn around to check the Meta’s gone. It’s on faith alone that he’s got to assume that the Meta is doing what they agreed.

“Patrol down.” The Meta’s voice sounds harsh over the radio, but it’s quiet. “Gonna sweep for active camo.”

“Copy.”

Wash is not a sniper. He’s an excellent marksman, sure, but he just doesn’t have the temperament to camp for hours and hours on end, watching a shitty base in the middle of nowhere, waiting for someone to poke their head out. This isn’t going to work. He’s too antsy; it’ll make him reckless. He’s at least self-aware enough to recognize that much.

“Hey Meta,” he calls over their line, “what if we sped things up a little?”

A grunt.

“What, end up like last time? No thanks.”

“We’re gonna–” Wash freezes for half a millisecond then fires two shots. “Active camo on your six, few meters out, I think I got–”

“Down,” the Meta finishes for him, breaths uneven, and Wash watches him neatly trap someone in a chokehold as their active camo fizzles out. “Headed back.”

“I haven’t picked up any activity from the base,” Wash says.

“Scout in camo might’ve warned.” The Meta’s footsteps are nearly silent next to him. “Should probably move.”

“Think we can take the whole base now?” Wash stands up and swaps his DMR for a pistol. “There’s, what, five down so far? There can’t be that many more at this tiny outpost.”

“Relax,” the Meta says. “Antsy. Don’t be.” Wash winces. That obvious, huh. “Circle down to east side, enter there?”

“Sounds fine. Sync?”

“Sync.”

They move forward together, Wash in quick, sure steps, and the Meta in longer loping strides. It feels good to move with him by Wash’s side. Still. Again. The Meta’s movements are just a touch different now; he’s quieter, more prone to using the weight of his body as a weapon rather than unfiltered force. With the Meta at his side, Wash feels– well, he feels unstoppable. Efficient.

The base is small, and sparsely staffed; there are only ten or so people inside, each of them easily dispatched by a dislocated shoulder or swift delivery of unconsciousness. They save a stammering, sweating tech for last, who reassures them that there’s been no alarm, no one’s called it in, no reinforcements are coming from elsewhere. Wash pistol-whips him, and the crack echoes dully through the room.

The Meta pulls off his helmet, scratches at his throat, and hums in satisfaction before leaning over one of the consoles and pulling out his datapad.

“Wounded?” the Meta asks absently, fingers ghosting across the terminal.

“No,” Wash replies. “Anything useful in there so far?”

The Meta gives him a deadpan look.

“Nice desktop background. Local Grifball scores. Selfies.” He rolls his eyes and snorts. “Need more time to access coms. Especially high-level. Using decryption program Sam wrote.”

“Any updates from them? The mercs, I mean.”

“Not really.” The Meta shrugs one shoulder. “Hard to get updates far away.” A pause. “Got comms.” The Meta frowns and leans closer to the terminal.

“What?”

“High-level comms here,” the Meta says, voice low. “Encrypted. Between unknown and some merc. Could be Counselor. Same metadata tags. Too encrypted to crack like this, but at least, recognize same ID, maybe. This–” The Meta taps his datapad. “–decrypt it, maybe get frequency, track location.”

“So we might have a line to the Counselor.”

“Maybe.” The Meta’s jaw tightens. “Could be wild goose chase.”

“A lead is a lead.” Wash shrugs. “Not like we’ve got anything better to go off of right now, anyways. How much longer for decryption?”

“Day, maybe,” the Meta replies, and his fingers go back to dancing across the console. “Finish data uplink, get piggybacked into local system, copy relevant data. Decryption can run on datapad.”

“That’s useful,” Wash muses.

“Thank Sam. She’s good.”

Wash scratches absently at his jaw and watches the incomprehensible strings of data spool across the terminal screen. He’s really hoping this doesn’t take too long. He’d like to be clear of this base long before anyone regains consciousness, and there’s no telling when that’ll be.

The Meta leans back with a satisfied set to his shoulders and puts away his datapad.

“Ready,” he says.

“Then let’s leave,” Wash says, and retraces his steps with the Meta in his shadow, keeping pace silently.

The base is thankfully quiet as they wind their way back; Wash pauses occasionally to heap unconscious bodies together, just to make for a more disorienting return to consciousness. He glances over his shoulder as they leave; the base is still far too close to risk taking off his helmet. When he breaks into a jog, the Meta keeps pace with him easily, and the copse behind which they buried their Warthog comes into view in a handful of minutes.

“What’s your plan for this data?” Wash asks as they reach the car. All he craves right now is to feel the cool night air against his face.

The Meta makes a noncommittal noise.

“Find Price. Make him pay.”

Well. That’s not what Wash meant, but alright. He finally gives in and pulls off his helmet; the air feels frigid against the sweat on his face and through his hair. Just a handful of words, but it sets Wash on edge for some reason.

“Make him pay how? Do you really think anyone in the–”

“Don’t need ‘anyone,’” the Meta says shortly. “Just need you to help.”

“Be realistic,” Wash bites back, just as short. “No one will ever go out of their way to start these trials again. The UNSC wants this dead and buried.”

He would know. The Meta should know. Nothing is going to move the UNSC to open this investigation again. There’s no sense in getting the UNSC riled up about this. Chorus itself, maybe – if there were any courts of law, anything worth trusting other than their own hands—

“I don’t,” the Meta snarls. “Don’t care about UNSC.”

“Meta, the point here–”

“Don’t–” The Meta slams his hands down on the hood of the car. “Don’t call me that.”

The sound echoes. Distantly, Wash can hear birds startled into flight, their wings hitting the air. Across from him, the mass of white armor that Wash has become familiar with all over again is frozen, illegible.

“What?”

“Not the Meta any more.” It only takes him a few strides to round the car and stand far too close to Wash; their armor is nearly touching, shields starting to snap against the air. “Don’t call me that. Sick of the reminder.”

The strange knot sitting in Wash’s throat dissolves immediately to guilt like acid.

“You should’ve said something earlier.”

“Should’ve.”

“M?” he tries, echoing what Lucía had called him. It feels strange in his mouth, though, like it doesn’t belong, so he inhales slowly and takes the only risk that really matters. “Maine.”

Shock cracks cleanly through this new person facing Wash down. This new-old person. Maybe this had been the missing piece all along. Maybe it hadn’t been. But Wash watches the familiar expressions settle in – a ripple of tension through the shoulders, a slight tip of the head, fingers flickering briefly into a fist – and hopes. Just a bit. He stares up at his own reflection stretched in deep gold, and watches it dip slowly in a nod.

The ache in Wash’s chest is unbearable. He nods back.

“Maine,” he repeats, just to himself. He watches his mouth move in the reflection. Gravity does not shift; the universe does not contract to a single point. But something changes, tangible, like the name has been placed in his hands to hold.

A datapad beeps shrilly, audible even over the ‘Hog’s engines. It’s not Wash’s datapad, that’s for sure, so he twists around to dig through Maine’s pack for him.

Maine. Maine.

The fact that it really didn’t take any getting used to speaks volumes. Wash doesn’t feel like looking too hard at that just yet.

There’s a popup glowing softly that reads decryption complete – open files? on top of several older, greyed-out unopened comms and Wash taps the icon, scowling when he’s prompted for a bioscan to unlock.

“Well, decryption is done on that data,” he says over the wind and the engine, and Maine looks at him, expectant.

“Switch,” Maine says, and Wash nods back.

He pulls over on a stretch of gravel near some kind of fen and Wash takes the opportunity to crack his back and stretch and yawn like a monster. They’ve gone three days without seeing another human being, and they’ve got at least another day’s drive until the service road they’re on merges with a civilian roadway. Wash isn’t complaining, though. He’s enjoyed the quiet.

“Should we–?” Wash pauses, thinking. Maine lifts an eyebrow. “I mean, if you get some info out of there, and it turns out we have to head somewhere different…” Wash makes a vague sort of gesture. Maine shrugs as he slides into the passenger seat.

“Need to get to roadways regardless,” he says, then picks up the datapad and buries himself in it like he’s just gotten in the last word. Wash supposes he has, as he walks over to the driver’s side and starts the Warthog again. He’s not sure if he minds.

By the time they set trackers and make camp for the night, though, frustration is rolling off of Maine in waves. He keeps setting down the datapad, picking it back up, scowling, and setting it down again. It gets to the point where his angry fiddling is a pointed annoyance, and Wash feels his patience thin to the point of snapping.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Wash finally asks.

Maine frowns at him, then picks the datapad back up to type.

It looks like the first ID might match the ID on that voice sample. I’m not entirely sure, but it seems so. Something is wrong with the second ID, though. I want to ID that so we have a lead to work off of, but it keeps redirecting the ID to Lethbridge Industrial, and the COM signature isn’t theirs. It doesn’t make sense.

“Lethbridge Industrial?” Wash echoes. Something at the back of his mind is pinging insistently, but he can’t make the connection.

They’re one of the UNSC’s sources for armor. I thought it might be trying to ID the actual unit for me, but it just hits some wall and then redirects straight to the Lethbridge public COM channels. They’re unreachable from Chorus, obviously. I think something might have gone wrong with the decryption.

“So this was useless,” Wash says, fighting hard to keep bitterness out of his voice.

“No,” Maine growls, and there’s frustration evident in every single line of his body when he throws the datapad down with a thump into the dirt. “Info all there – date, time, location of transmission. Just won’t decrypt trackable ID.”

Wash shrugs. He was never too huge on the tech stuff, so he’s not going to bother offering his two useless cents.

“Well, at least we’re somewhere.”

Maine grunts in response. They don’t talk for the rest of the evening.

The next two days slither by. Maine is in a shit mood, which puts Wash in a shit mood; Maine sleeps either fitfully or not at all, and Wash sleeps worse than usual. By the third day, Wash can tell that both of them are trying to reign it in. It’s not working particularly well, but the effort counts for something. Maine goes back to waking him for his watch with a gentler hand on his shoulder. Wash calls his name more carefully when it’s his turn to do the same.

And then – of all the possible mundanities – Maine catches a cold. It’s not terrible by any means; just a low fever, tiredness, and congestion. Their course has kept them on the edge of lived-in territory, and after one full day of a lethargic, sniffling Maine, Wash has had enough.

He angles their course towards a tiny town at the crossroads of two major civilian roadways and hopes for lodgings of any kind. Better to sleep this off in one night and get it over with than to deal with a protracted cold. They’ve driven one of the major roadways north for about a hundred miles so far, and this town will be a convenient place to stop before veering east to avoid what looks like a hotspot for clashes between a nearby Federal Army outpost and the small New Republic base further out.

The town is small, as it had been on the map, but something about it pings Wash’s danger sense as they drive through, following worn signs advertising roadside lodging. There are people in the streets, houses that are clearly occupied and cared-for, but the houses that are in disrepair look… off, somehow. He can’t quite put his finger on it. Maine is dozing in the passenger seat. Wash doesn’t wake him up to make note of it.

It’s midmorning by the time they get to the motel; the receptionist who gives them a room with two beds is pleasant and chatty, almost painfully civilian in her openness. Maine doesn’t say a word, just shoulders his way into the small, neat room and passes out immediately on the bed, which is how Wash knows he’s made the right choice.

Frankly, Maine’s got the right idea. Wash takes some time to shower and thinks about going to get food and replenish their supplies, but it’s barely noon, he’s clean, and there’s a big empty bed with his name on it, so he sighs and topples over and he’s asleep the second his head hits the pillow.

When he wakes up, the sunlight is thick and heavy, heralding the approaching evening. One broad strip of light has managed to slip through a gap in the curtains, warming the side of Wash’s face; it makes him feel oddly groggy. He sits up anyways, and sighs in relief as something finally pops in his back.

“Awake?” comes Maine’s gravelly voice. Wash looks over at the heap of blankets on the other bed; Maine is on his datapad.

“How do you feel?” Wash asks. His voice comes out gravelly too, albeit with sleep.

“Better than I sound,” Maine replies, amused, and then he tips his head. “Better.”

“I’m going to go get food and other supplies,” Wash says, sliding out of the bed so he can stand. His body feels like jelly after a meager round of sleep; he gets the feeling he’ll be asleep just as readily come night. “I’ll bring back something to eat.”

“Thanks.” Maine’s voice is soft, a far cry from the previous week’s snappishness. It’s nice.

Wash feels oddly warm as he shrugs his jacket on and tucks a knife into his waistband again, but he closes the door quietly behind him and heads towards the roadway on foot. The sun is setting quickly; he can actually feel the warmth leaving his face as he watches it sink behind the hills. The chill that comes down every night starts biting at him through his jacket as he waits for a civilian car to pass.

The slightly seedy-looking store across the pitted asphalt isn’t big, but it’s well-furnished, and Wash is glad for the opportunity to replenish the things they’re already running low on. Antiseptic cream, energy bars, MREs, painkillers. It’s a fairly transparent assortment of items, practically screaming that he’s on the road.

The back of his neck prickles. The person behind the counter – Wash can only assume it’s the owner, with a store this small – is staring at him openly every time he turns around. Wash is the only person in the store. Right. It’s probably high time to wrap up here and head to the deli next door, and hope it’s not more of the same.

Wash nods tensely, half-politely as he brings his items up to the front.

“This all for you?” the clerk asks. Their eyes flicker around Wash’s jacket; he’s suddenly conscious of all the places that are conspicuously missing patches and nameplates.

“Yes,” Wash replies curtly. He shifts; he’s close to the door in case he needs to bolt, and he can feel the knife lying easy-to-reach under his jacket.

The clerk rings him up in silence. When they finish bagging his items, their eyes dart to the door, then around the store. Wash tenses immediately.

“You’re not with the New Republic or the Feds,” they say. The first full sentence they’ve said to him. It’s not a question. There is no room for anything but honesty.

“I’m not,” Wash says carefully.

A brief spark flickers in their eyes.

“You’re a mercenary?” they ask. Wash takes a step back, towards the door, and the clerk throws their hands forward in a nervous, jerky gesture that brings Wash’s hand immediately to the hilt of his knife. “No no, that’s a good thing– if you are, I mean.”

“And why would that be?” Wash releases the knife. If the clerk realizes they nearly had a weapon in their face, they don’t show it.

“You take money, right? For– jobs?” The clerk tucks hair behind their ear. It’s quite the nervous gesture.

“Something like that,” Wash agrees.

“Would you be open to that? A short job, I promise.”

Wash stares at them. Is this really the reality of life on Chorus? Maine had said hired guns, Felix had said mercenaries, but this is the first time that Wash actually feels the full weight of the word.

“I–” He has no idea what to say. He needs to— “I’d need to talk to my partner.”

“I’ll pay you well,” they say, leaning forward. They’re not young, but they’re earnest in an painfully youthful way. “It’s just– we need help with this. It’s not really something we can do on our own.”

“I see,” Wash says, because he’s still not sure what to say. “I’m sorry, what was your name?”

“Oklar,” they reply, and tuck hair behind their ear again, tugging on the strand as it lies behind their ear. “I’ll be here in the morning, if you want to take me up on it. Talk numbers.” They shrug, nervous. “If not, no harm, no foul.”

“I suppose I’ll let you know, then.”

“On the house,” Oklar says, nodding at the bag of supplies. “Think about it?”

“I will.” Wash cautiously picks up the bag off the counter. “Thanks for the offer, at least.”

“Yeah,” Oklar says, “well, yeah. Thanks for considering it.”

And with the strange, pinched look on Oklar’s face pressed to the forefront of his mind, Wash finally flees the store.

The deli next door is thankfully full of people, making a repeat of whatever that was a relative improbability. On the flip side, he has to wait in a twelve-person line for food, and there’s a hushed nervousness about everyone that’s making him– well, nervous. The person who ends up serving him is young, maybe twenty or so, and there’s a deep-seated mistrust in the way his eyes never leave Wash’s face.

The roadway has deadened entirely by the time he leaves, the steam from the food keeping his hand warm. The lights are dimmed in every building he can see, and the only people he can see – far off, maybe half a klick away – are huddled together and hurrying. There’s definitely something happening in his town. Whether Oklar’s offer has anything to do with it remains to be seen, but Wash is happy to assume a connection for now.

When he lets himself back into the motel room, the shower is running. He’s picking at the very last bits of his meal by the time Maine comes out of the bathroom, looking flushed and tired but awake.

“I brought some food,” Wash says, “and a job offer.”

Maine raises his eyebrows and takes the container Wash is holding out, then squeezes his shoulder in gratitude and sits down on the other bed.

“Job?”

“The owner of a store across the roadway said they want us to do something ‘short,’” Wash explains. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but they wanted to make sure I wasn’t with either army.”

Maine rubs his jaw, his brow furrowed in thought.

“For pay?”

“They didn’t give me a number. Or any specifics at all, for that matter.” Wash hunts down a few more stubborn grains of rice skating around the bottom of his now-empty box. “I told them I needed to talk to my partner first.”

Maine cups his hands around his box of food and hums.

“No specifics, not encouraging,” he says after a pause. “But let’s see.”

“Let’s see,” Wash echoes in agreement, and then gets up to toss his trash.

The rest of the evening passes quietly. Maine goes back to sleep at a passably normal time of evening; Wash finishes logging the day’s travel and follows suit soon after. The sheets don’t smell like home, but it’s been a long time since anything has felt truly familiar. (Maine’s heavy, slow breaths come close. But not quite. Not yet.)

Wash wakes to Maine’s voice whispering his name.

He’s disoriented for a split second – his brain expects the hush of the outdoors, the texture of a thermal blanket – but then he takes in the sound of rain pounding the roof and a low rumble that he takes for thunder.

“What’s happening?” he croaks quietly. He can barely make out the shape of Maine sitting up in the dark. The rumble doesn’t stop. There are flashes outside, he notices, but they’re much too dim to be lightning. “That’s not a storm.”

“Close to town,” Maine murmurs back. “Maybe mortar fire.”

Mortar fire. This close to a town? Whatever is going on between the Federal Army and the New Republic bases nearby has to be a baffling level of serious if they're this close to involving civilians. Or they just don't care. Wash isn't sure what would be worse.

“Should we bail?” Wash asks, and at that second, the rumbling cuts out. Maine looks over at him after half a minute, his eyes shining in the weak light. “Go to sleep,” Wash finally says. “I’ll keep watch for an hour and wake you if it’s anything we need to worry about.”

He ends up just going back to sleep after the hour’s over, once he’s triple-checked that their four door alarms are primed and that he’s got all their things packed and in arm’s reach, and a knife under his pillow for good measure.

It’s still raining in the morning, dull and gray. Maine sounds better, too; it seems that stopping for the night had been the right call. They quietly load their things into the car, just in case something goes wrong – has gone wrong – and Wash takes a surreptitious look around the nearby stretch of road. Empty. No civilian cars, no people walking around. No lights in the windows. Curtains drawn.

“Feels off,” Maine murmurs from beside him. Wash hadn’t heard him walk up.

“Yeah,” Wash replies quietly. “Maybe that person at the store will clue us in.”

Maine nudges him with his elbow and nods across the roadway; comfortable, easy. Like they’re friends. Wash’s boots sound louder than usual as they hit the asphalt.

There’s no one in front of the store, no cars or anything else that would imply the presence of at least another person. But the lights are on; the door chimes and slides open when they approach. At the counter, Oklar raises their head from the slump in which they’d been curled over.

“Hello,” Wash says carefully.

Oklar nods at him, and then looks over to study Maine’s face.

“This is your partner?” they ask. Blunt and to the point. Yesterday’s nervousness seems to be gone, wiped away by the exhaustion haunting their shoulders.

“This is– Maine.”

“Sorry – I never caught your name, either,” Oklar says, and ducks their head apologetically. Their voice is hoarse with fatigue.

“Wash.”

“Are you up to speed on what’s going on here?” Oklar asks. Their fingers twist together.

“You didn’t exactly give me details,” Wash prompts. Oklar shrugs.

“How much did your partner tell you?” they ask Maine again, and Maine’s eyes flick over to Wash before making a swift, crisp gesture.

To Wash’s surprise, Oklar’s posture changes immediately and their hands move in a fluid set of gestures. Maine blinks in surprise, and then responds in kind. Their conversation lasts for a full minute; Wash watches with unabashed curiosity. He might have been fluent in Maine, once, but this is not a language he knows.

Maine turns to Wash abruptly, with a troubled look clear on his face.

“What?” Wash asks, then glances at Oklar. Oklar looks down at the counter. “What’s going on?”

“Town caught in crossfire last night,” Maine says. Oklar’s eyes flicker up to Maine and then to Wash; Wash ignores them. Crossfire. Are those two bases really close enough to the town for fighting to spill over? Is the town some kind of prize for either side to capture? Discomfort sits heavily at the back of his throat.

“What was the job originally?” Wash asks.

Oklar picks at their fingernails, then mumbles, “We knew one of the armies was gonna make a move soon. We thought–”

Maine interrupts with a broad gesture. Oklar makes a face, then glances between the two of them again.

“‘We,’” they say out loud, and gesture towards the door, “um, as in a bunch of people in town. We thought it would be good to sabotage their vehicles or something. Make it harder for them to move.” Wash raises his eyebrows; Oklar chews on their lip. “We’ve been caught between them before. It’s not great.”

“Right.” Ask later, Wash tells himself. Ask later. Later. “So what’s going on now?”

“Well, Triymal is a pretty nice catch for either side,” Oklar says. “Whoever controls Triymal controls the crossroads here, and they’re major roadways. Same philosophy as what they’ve got going on on the coast, you know?” No, Wash doesn’t know, but Maine signs something and Oklar continues. “One of their skirmishes got close last night, and ended up spilling over into a residential area on the north side of town.”

“And?” Wash prompts when Oklar’s pause goes on for far too long.

“Couple of kids are missing,” they finally say, their voice low. Wash feels like he’s been hit across the face. Oklar winces at whatever expression is on his face, then glances at Maine and winces again. “It’s happened before. It’s– usually fine. The New Republic sends their ransom demands, there’s a handoff, everyone’s alright. They’ve never actually hurt anyone.”

“Kids,” Wash repeats, disbelief making his voice crack. “But it’s fine.”

“No,” Oklar says, “no, it’s not fine. That’s the thing. We’re done. We’re not playing this game with them anymore.” There’s a hard set to their jaw, now. “Here’s the job now: you go in. You bring back the three people we’re missing. And you make damn sure the New Republic and the Federal Army both know Triymal isn’t theirs to take.”

“Excuse us for a minute,” Wash says, and grabs Maine’s forearm before heading for the door.

“Uh, sure,” comes Oklar’s voice, small, and then the door slides shut behind them and Wash rounds on Maine.

“You cannot,” he says, “tell me this is normal.”

Maine gives him a long look, and then says, “Not normal. Per se. But, heard of it happening.”

“So what? We can’t not do something here.”

“I know,” Maine says gently. “Agree, Wash. Just–” He shrugs, close to helpless. “How it is here. Things happen.”

“So we’re doing this, then.”

Maine nods once. Firmly. Wash nods back, then turns to head back inside. Oklar looks wary as they step back in; Wash decides he really doesn’t want to waste more time, and says, “We’re in.”

Oklar’s shoulders slump with relief.

“Thank you,” they manage, with some difficulty. “Thanks. It means a lot. Anything you need, we–”

Maine cuts them off, signing a short phrase. Oklar starts to respond, and Maine signs again, a little more forcefully; Oklar lets out a quiet oh and glances at Wash, then says, “Well, yeah. We can get you some maps, some recent ones.”

“Do you know anything about the outposts themselves?” Wash asks.

“We have maps of the outside and the areas around each base.” Oklar reaches under the counter and pulls out a datapad. “We try to keep track of how many people are there at a given time. It’s easier to know with the Feds. They’re more agreeable,” Oklar explains, when Wash raises his eyebrows. “They stay out of the way when people go hunting up on that ridge, and they don’t scare off the game. Here, if you’ve got a datapad on you–”

“I’ve got my comm frequency,” Wash says, and Oklar spins the datapad around so he can type it in.

“Can anyone come with?” Maine asks, and this time, he signs as he speaks. His eyes flick over to Wash, just briefly. Oklar looks between them again.

“I’d have to ask if anyone’s willing,” they reply, out loud this time. It seems like all three of them are finally in the loop now. “We don’t– we don’t have armor, or good weapons. Or training. Nothing.”

“This is away from the main roadways, isn’t it?” Wash scrolls through to the next map on Oklar’s datapad. “It would help to at least have people willing to drive away once we’ve got the kids.”

“I can figure something out,” Oklar says, nodding to themself. “Yeah. We can make it work.”

“Then make it work,” Wash tells them bluntly. “We need to go get ready.”

The New Republic’s base is eastwards off the northbound fork of the roadways, a handful of klicks up into the hills. Oklar patches through one of the town’s hunters and her spouse as they drive; she directs them to a good place to stow the Warthog near the roadway, and her spouse explains how to find and read the huntsmen’s and shepherds’ markers that litter the hillside.

Oklar’s reports (or rather, the reports Oklar had forwarded to them both) list a contingent of five people at the outpost: a CO with a purple visor and armor accents, and four others in blue. No mercenaries; mercs with the New Republic aren’t issued their own armor. Wash buries himself low in the scrub and trains the DMR’s sights on the base crowning the opposite ridge.

There are two New Republic soldiers standing near a wall, not looking too alert, with their weapons stowed. A Warthog – nicer and newer than the one he and Maine have been driving, Wash notes with a touch of envy – is parked out front, nicely positioned for Wash to shoot its tires out, if he’d want to. A ‘Hog’s tires are tough enough to withstand fire from most rapid-fire guns, but they won’t stand up to armor-piercing rounds. The base is, surprisingly, an old UNSC scouting outpost – just small enough to hold a team of about five or so. The kind Wash got intimately familiar with when he was still running trainings against sim troopers. The ‘Hog is parked along the south wall; there should be an entrance to the west and a ramp that slopes down to the north side. Lucky that they have at least this much. Wash is about to ask Maine if he should take the shot on the tires when Maine exhales, static clouding their comm line.

“What’re they doing?”

Wash barely restrains himself from sitting up to stare at Maine, nonplussed.

“What?”

“Said, what’re they doing?”

“They’re just standing there, talking,” Wash mutters back. What else would anyone be doing at an outpost in the relative middle of nowhere? Counting bullets? Really. “I can take the tires out from here. How do we want to do this?”

Maine hums.

“Tires will alert,” he says. “Let me get in position, opposite. You fire, I move–” He gestures, sketching out the motion with his hands. “–get attention here, you move in there.”

“That sounds good.” Wash nods. “Hopefully we can lure everyone outside. It’ll be easier to get the kids out that way.”

“Heading down,” Maine says, and turns away to start slowly moving down the hillside. “Signal you when in position.”

“I’ll signal before I take the shot,” Wash replies. Maine’s status light blinks green on Wash’s HUD; his shoulders slip quietly between trees, and he’s gone.

Wash moves half a foot closer to a tree for a slightly better view, hunkers down, and waits.

Down the hillside, the two New Republic soldiers continue to do just about nothing. They shift in place, clearly holding a conversation to some degree; their body language – so flat in comparison to the way Wash understands Maine – comes off as utterly bored. He glances at the hillside in the direction the lone friendly dot on his HUD had disappeared a few times, but he sees nothing as Maine, presumably, continues to slink into position. Only echoes of a light breeze that flickers through the greenery with a soft hush.

Maine’s status light blinks green.

Wash takes a steadying breath, then blinks his back green.

His lungs are full and still; he lines up his shot, prepares for the point of no return, and squeezes the trigger.

The shot flees the barrel with a deceptively soft snap. The Warthog kneels; a tiny knot on its front tire blooms open. Wash exhales, inhales, lines up the next shot, and fires again before the two New Republic soldiers manage to walk up to the first tire he’d shot.

Oh, they’re lucky. The soldiers are either slow or decidedly uninterested; only after the second shot and the second jolt to the Warthog’s frame do they start to move with any implication of urgency. Wash exhales. Maine’s status light blinks green again, and then a white blur darts out into the field in front of the base, and Wash knows he needs to move.

He heads straight down the hillside, accompanied by a cascade of dirt and loose brush. One of the soldiers is already out cold by the time he catches up with Maine; the other turns to glance at Wash, startled, and takes the butt of Maine’s rifle to the back of the head for it.

“Sloppy,” Maine notes, and tips his head down at the two unconscious piles of armor at his feet. He’s not even out of breath.

“Cover the entrance,” Wash says, and uses the momentum of his approach to pivot and makes for the east wing of the outpost. The open local comms channel snaps to life right as he rounds the corner; it’s shocking enough that Wash pulls back earlier than he normally would, and avoids a wild spray of automatic fire in the process. The entryway to the base yawns open; he catches a glimpse of someone in tan armor waving a rifle, demonstrating a shocking lack of discipline.

“Eat rocks,” someone howls over the open line, “and fuck off, you Federal fuckhe– shit!”

Wash immediately blinks his status light amber, checks that he’s on a private line with Maine, and says, “Fall back. Let them think I’m alone.”

Maine’s status light blinks green. His dot on the HUD, once more, heads for the edge of Wash’s visible range and warps out of sight. Wash plasters himself to the outside wall.

“Cap!” another voice shouts on the open line. “It’s not the Feds–”

“You don’t know that I’m not with the Federal Army,” Wash replies evenly.

“A merc,” cuts in a third voice. Presumably said captain. “Even better. Kiddos, I’m gonna teach you why you don’t deal with this kind of scum.”

“I’m here to talk,” Wash says. “Put your weapons down and come out here, and I’ll let one person go pick up the two unconscious soldiers by your Warthog.”

The reply is an incomprehensible string of expletives.

“Toss your guns outside,” Wash nudges, “and we’ll talk.”

“Alright,” the third voice snaps, “we’ll talk. Kuta, Malabanan, disarm yourselves for this merc.”

“Cap,” voice two whines.

“You heard me! C’mon!” With a clatter, one rifle hits the dry dirt just past the entrance. There’s a put-upon sigh over the comms, and then another rifle joins the first. The captain snaps Kuta! and a third rifle finally joins the rest.

Slowly, reluctantly, three figures trudge out of the concrete maw of the outpost. Each of them are dressed in drab, New Republic tan, and just like Oklar’s reports had claimed, one with purple accents and the other two with blue.

“I’ll be blunt,” Wash says, once all three visors are glaring at him. “I’m here for the hostages.”

“You have our payment?” asks purple-visor-Cap.

“I’m here for the hostages.”

“So no payment,” blue-visor-left-side mutters. “Great. I told you they’d get sick of–”

“You can fuck off back to that hole in the ground if you don’t have our payment,” the captain sniffs. “They’d really waste money on mercs instead of their own kids? Damn.”

Wash draws his pistol and fires. The bullet buries itself in the sweep of concrete that blockades the entrance from the other side. The captain flinches; the two others both throw themselves out of the way to crouch a solid two meters away. Wash takes a step forward.

“Hostages,” Wash repeats. “My next shot won’t miss.”

“Alright, alright–” The captain raises his hands. “Let’s be reasonable here.”

“What exactly is reasonable about civilian hostages, soldier?”

“Look, we grab a kid or two, we get supplies or cash in return, the Feds over there keep to themselves ‘cause they’re scared, and we all get to keep sitting here instead of heading out to wherever the newest front is,” the captain says. His voice is wheedling; he lowers his hands to gesture reassuringly. It’s nauseating.

“This isn’t a fucking game,” Wash snarls, and leaps forward to slam the captain back against the thick concrete wall. There’s nothing left but fire in his veins. “Waste your army’s time as much as you want, but you leave those goddamn civilians out of it.”

“He-ey, hey,” the captain tries, raising his hands again, “c’mon, it’s not like the Federal Army doesn’t pull the same–”

“I don’t care if they do. I’m telling you right now that you’re not going to take any hostages anymore, or the next bullet in my gun will have your name on it, and I’ve got really good aim.”

In Wash’s periphery, the two soldiers shift. Their breaths are quick and tight over the open comm line, loud enough to be picked up by their throat mics.

“Yeah?” The captain tips his head. “Well, by my count, there are three of us, and one of you.”

His hand inches towards the magsheath at the curve of his lower back. Wash hooks a hand into the edge of his chestplate and hauls with all his strength; the captain falls heavily to the ground and Wash draws his knife in the sliver of time the captain’s left immobilized by gravity. The knife leaves Wash’s fingers before he can even think through the consequences, and the captain’s strangled shout rings in Wash’s ears. At the edge of his HUD, Maine’s tiny dot starts moving.

“Learn to count,” Wash says. “And like I said, I have really good aim.” He leans down and yanks his knife out of the captain’s shoulder. It comes away slick. “If I’d stuck that in you an inch to the left, you’d be dead.”

“I still count one to three,” the captain manages, his voice strangled but triumphant.

Maine’s dot pauses, then moves again–

–and white boots thud down against hard-packed earth with enough weight and momentum for a low boom to echo across the comm line.

“Ouch, knees,” Maine remarks calmly over their private channel. “Huh. Might be getting old.”

Wash mutes before his strangled bark of laughter can make it back across the comm line, then he composes himself and looks back down at the captain.

“Count again,” he says, and amusement rings unbidden through his voice.

“Fuck you. Fuck.” The captain exhales raggedly. “Fucking mercs. What do you want?”

Maine clicks his tongue dismissively.

“Do I have to repeat myself again?” Wash snaps, and steps forward so that he’s standing with one foot on either side of the captain’s chest, pinning him down. Even if the captain goes for his leg, Maine is just over Wash’s shoulder. He says, “Give us the hostages. Leave the town and its civilians alone.” He lies, “We’ll be watching if you don’t.”

“Civilians,” the captain spits. “No such thing here on Chorus. Everyone’s part of this fight, whether they want it or not.”

“You have your choices.” Wash pulls his pistol off of his thigh. He has no intention of using it; the captain does not need to know that. “One option will leave you alive. The other won’t. I’d rather not waste bullets, so let’s get this done quickly.”

“We’ll do it,” blurts one of the soldiers. “I mean– we agree. We’ll leave the town alone. Right? Cap? C’mon. It only ever takes us longer to deal with it when we’ve got to haul someone all the way back to base.”

“Fine,” the captain mutters, then raises his chin, and repeats, louder, “fine. Take your people.”

“And the town?” Wash prompts.

“We’ll leave Triymal alone.” The angry embarrassment in his voice is clear. “Now get off me.”

“Where are you keeping the hostages?” Kids, Wash thinks to himself. They’re not hostages. They’re just kids. But he’s got a part to play here, and he’s playing it. The captain is silent. Wash repeats, one last time, “The hostages, Captain.”

The captain lets out a breathless, angry laugh, and says, “Find ‘em yourself. I’ve agreed to enough.”

Wash feels cold. He takes three slow steps back; Maine’s eyes are on him as he leaves the captain room to get back up. The captain is halfway to his feet, visor locked on Wash with vitriol, when Maine’s arm whips through Wash’s field of vision and the butt of his rifle cracks across the captain’s helmet.

The other two soldiers are shouting before his unconscious body even hits the ground; Wash fires once over the shoulder of one of them, close enough to startle, and delivers another round of unconsciousness with the other end of his pistol. Maine handles the other one just as swiftly.

Wash exhales.

“Let’s bring the other two over,” he says. It feels damningly quiet.

“You go,” Maine replies. “Can move 'em, want to find comms access too. You look for kids. Join you in a bit.”

Wash nods at him, looks at the base’s entry, steels himself, and moves.

His first impression of the base is that it feels unusually lived-in for a military outpost, like they’ve been here for a while. And then he thinks: no. It’s messy. It’s messy like Blue Base was messy. These people have probably been stranded out here in backwater fuck-knows-where for ages, and decided that keeping this stalemate is better than being rotated out towards an active front. Wash clenches his jaw and forces himself to not wonder if the Reds and Blues would have done the same thing.

The base is laid out simply, with an ample amount of living quarters – far more than just the five people here – spread out in two twin arcs. Wash picks the right-hand wing on account of all the closed doors; less likely to be actually used as living quarters. The first three doors he tries are just latched shut, not locked. One door is crooked in its track and only half-shut, showing a dusty, empty room past the jamb. The fifth door is locked; the emergency release still works. The room is trashed, all the way down to the toilet ripped out of the adjoining latrine, but otherwise empty of people. The next room is similarly locked and empty of people, but full of broken furniture. Wash unlocks the last room in the wing, and nearly raises his pistol out of sheer muscle memory as two sets of wide eyes blink up at him.

Kids. They’re fucking kids. They’re grubby but not visibly injured; there are a few empty plates stacked up, the lights are on, and the room has two mattresses with clean-looking sheets. It’s still not much of a relief. The younger one can’t be older than seven or eight. The older one looks familiar; Wash must have seen him while getting food the night before.

He holsters the pistol, stands so that the hallway behind him is visible, and raises both open hands.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says. “We need to leave. I’m getting you back to your families.”

“Are you a soldier?” the girl asks, yawning. Her voice is bright with the kind of innocence only a child can manage.

“How do we know?” asks the other one. His eyes are red and dressed in dark shadows, not an inch of trust in them. “That you’re not with them?”

“I’m a–” Freelancer, his training supplies, designation Washington. “I’m a mercenary. Oklar hired me.”

“Oklar!” shrieks the girl, sleepiness discarded instantly, and Wash winces. “They give me my favorite candy! It’s the blue kind." She tips her head to the side and blinks. "Do you like the blue kind too?”

Wash stares at her, utterly at a loss. The closest he’s ever come to dealing with kids was Caboose, and that still seems worlds away.

Thankfully, the other kid interrupts and asks, “Oklar hired you?”

“Yes,” Wash replies. “I’m going to get you out of here, but we need to move.”

“They’re usually outside in the evenings,” the older kid blurts, and then his face shutters, like he hadn’t meant to say that. “You would’ve had to get past them.”

“I’m with a partner,” Wash explains. The kid blinks; the harsh edge of distrust in his eyes eases, just a bit. Wash takes the brief pause to flash Maine a green status light. Five seconds later, there’s still no response. Wash clenches his jaw and focuses back on the kids. “Alright, get up. We’re moving. The faster, the better.”

“Are you a robot?” the girl asks, springing obligingly to her feet. “Only ‘cause you don’t have a face, like a robot.”

“I’m a person,” Wash replies, and hesitates before reaching up to pull his helmet off. “See?”

“Oh.” She narrows her eyes, the cogs behind them spinning. “Are you like a robot soldier, then?”

“Not really.” He shakes his head as if that’ll clear it, and then pulls his helmet back on; the girl grabs onto the older kid’s hand with some difficulty when he’s finally, stiffly on his feet.

“C’mon, Manu, we gotta go,” the girl says, tugging on his hand. Thick plastic ties make the movement awkward, and Wash feels another ember of rage settle into the pit that used to be his stomach.

“Let me cut those cuffs off,” Wash says, and very slowly, very openly draws his knife with one hand.

“Me first!” yells the girl, but the older kid – Manu, Wash supposes – pushes her back behind him defensively.

“I won’t hurt you,” Wash repeats. “Just hold out your hands. And stay still.”

Maine’s status light has still not gone off. Wash tries not to think about this as he carefully presses the serrated section of his knife against the plastic cuffs and pulls once with a rasp, then shifts his grip and cuts through the rest. The little girl watches with round-eyed interest.

“Now me, now me!” she shouts, bouncing, and the second Manu is done shaking off his cuffs, his hands land protectively on her shoulders.

“Stay still,” he says gruffly, avoiding Wash’s gaze. “Just– hold out your hands. Like he said.”

It’s a bit of an exercise to cut plastic cuffs off of a child who’s vibrating with energy, but Wash manages it while seemingly winning a point or two in Manu’s trust column; that hard-edged look softens by just a degree again. Still no response from Maine. There’s too much space and concrete between them for the radar to register that pale green dot, and Wash viciously tamps down on anything resembling panic before stepping into the doorway again and glancing down the hall.

“We need to leave.” Wash draws his pistol as unthreateningly as possible and keeps it low but ready. “My partner is outside. We’ll meet with him, then go to a spot where someone from Triymal will be waiting for us with a car.”

Manu nods; The girl looks up at him, then at Wash, and she frowns and nods too, very seriously.

“Stay behind me,” Wash says. “At least a foot behind me. Close to the wall. If I tell you to run, you run back into that room and wait.”

Manu nods again, silent. The girl (maybe he should ask her name) just watches him with wide eyes. Wash looks back at them, then down the hall, and he starts moving.

Two sets of shuffling footsteps shadow him. He keeps his eyes trained ahead. There's a very, very faint noise coming from down the hall, and Wash curses the two kids plodding along behind him for making it that much hard to recognize the potential weight and cadence of footsteps; Wash readies his pistol properly, and then, as if in response, a jagged shadow flickers across the last doorway before the exit.

He can hear one of the kids suck in a high-pitched gasp of surprise, but it's muted to him: all Wash can focus on is lunging around the corner, weapon at the ready—

—and he nearly drops the pistol at the sound of his own name called out, flat and calm.

He holsters the pistol and shakes his hands out to kill the building tremor. The sight greeting him is so jarringly unexpected that he actually blinks a few times, dazed, before glancing over his shoulder and calling, "It's okay. It's my partner."

He looks back, and unpacks what's before him. Maine’s got his helmet off – explains the lack of communication – his hair is mussed, and he’s got one arm around a kid sitting on his hip like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The kid is holding Maine’s helmet cradled in his small hands and staring completely entranced at his reflection.

“Ruula!” the girl shrieks.

Wash winces. Manu's hand shoots out to grab her by the shoulder, albeit gently.

“Iqua,” Manu hisses. “Keep quiet.”

“Okay,” she whispers loudly. “Hey mister, that’s Ruula. He’s my friend.”

“Hi,” Wash says awkwardly, and looks at Maine instead. “Any trouble?”

Maine shakes his head.

“Are you okay?” Manu asks Ruula, and Ruula nods. Manu then holds his hands out, as if to take the kid from Maine, but the kid shakes his head, scrunches up his face, and signs something confidently with tiny hands that have not lost any of their baby fat.

Wash carefully shoves away the realizations that are breaking across him like a slow, syrupy dawn, and he locks away the look on Maine’s face as he watches Ruula in a box that should never, ever be opened again.

“My auntie says Ruula is re-al-ly stubborn,” says Iqua, bouncing around Manu in a circle, “but that’s okay, because he plays really good. Me ‘n him are gonna marry Yuli. Did you know that?"

Maine looks down at her. Wash is at a loss for why she felt the need to volunteer this information. Ruula grins toothily and waves at her, then looks back at Maine.

“This is Maine,” Wash explains, just to say something that makes sense. “He’s my partner.”

Iqua looks up at Maine quizzically, then turns to Manu.

"He's really big," she whispers at a deafening volume. "And he has mean eyebrows."

Wash is utterly unable to hold back a snort of laughter even as Manu groans weakly and says, "Iqua, that's rude."

"I can be very," Maine says, signing along with his free hand, "very mean."

Iqua squeaks and darts behind Manu – and then she bursts into helpless, bubbly giggles, her hand plastered in front of her mouth. Maine smiles at her, a wry little twist of his mouth, and Wash thinks that Iqua isn't quite right in her assessment; there's warmth in each line and hollow of Maine's face, if you know how to look.

In any case, the ice seems suitably broken. Wash shifts a little closer to Maine and staunchly ignores the child now tracing the grooves of Maine's faceplate with his fingertips, engrossed.

"We should RV as soon as possible," he says, and Maine nods once. "We–"

Wash jerks in surprise, and stares down at the tiny hand that's unerringly found a patch of unarmored undersuit on his hip to pat. Once she's got his attention, Iqua stares up at Wash, stretches up her hands, and bounces in the universal please pick me up gesture.

He feels something akin to horror rise up in his chest. Before he can even start coming up with a way to say I don't know how to pick up a child, Maine is kneeling down, his free arm spread in an open gesture. Iqua immediately climbs him like a ladder to perch opposite Ruula. Manu looks faint.

“What’s your name?” Iqua asks Wash, now roughly at eye level, and she primly sweeps her coarse, curly hair out of her face.

“Wash.”

“That’s a weird name.” She giggles. “My name’s Iqua. Like ee-kwa. You talk weird.”

“They’re not from Chorus,” Manu says quietly.

“Right,” Wash says, “We’re not. And we should get you three home now.”

Manu’s face hardens; even the two younger ones seem to grow more serious. Wash is once more reminded that this is their reality. Kidnapping and extortion in the name of the New Republic of Chorus is their reality. This is an immutable part of their lives, now and forever.

“Iqua,” Manu says, holding out his hands, “Ruula, it’s time to get down now.”

Iqua wiggles, mostly obediently, but Ruula’s face screws up again and he shakes his head, firm enough that his shock of dark hair scatters every which way. As Maine leans down to let Iqua slip back down to the floor, Ruula’s hands clutch Maine’s helmet so tightly they pale at the tips.

“Ruula,” Manu tries again, looking both slightly exasperated and extremely pressed, “He’s– he’s gonna need that back.”

Ruula’s eyes widen almost comically, and then he whips around to stare at Maine for a full five seconds before shoving the helmet against his chest. Maine laughs in response and pulls it on one-handed, and then kneels down all the way to gently, gently pry Ruula off of his armor. Ruula signs something, pouting; Maine laughs again, gently, and signs something back.

“We have someone waiting to pick all of you up and drive back to town,” Wash explains once Ruula has glued himself to Manu’s leg. “We’ll follow behind in our own car in case anything happens.”

“What about the New Republic soldiers?” Manu asks, and only now does Wash hear the faintest tremor in his voice. “Did you kill them?”

“They’re incapacitated,” Wash replies. Manu lowers his eyes and nods. Wash looks up at Maine; Maine nods too, and then blinks his status light green. “They won’t be a problem,” he adds, and decides against don’t worry because that sounds far too close to a platitude. “If something happens, there’s a car waiting for you by the roadside near a hunting track marked yellow. You know what that means?”

Manu nods again, then looks down at the two younger kids, jostles them gently by the shoulders and says, “Yellow forest trail, guys. Remember that.”

“Okay,” Wash says, watching the familiar silhouette of Maine’s shoulders duck out of the hallway and towards the exit, “then let’s go. You three ahead of me, and behind Maine.”

He’ll give credit where credit’s due; Manu shepherds the younger ones with alarming efficiency and silence, his eyes locked on the center of Maine’s back. Wash follows them at a slower pace than he’d like, keeping an eye on the sweep of his helmet’s trackers, and the only blip that arises as they exit the base is a cluster of bright red tags all clustered in one spot. Maine’s work, clearly.

They swing around the opposite side and head for the treelines, and all three of the kids – well, maybe it’s not entirely fair to Manu to think of him as a kid – collapse into one line, smallest to tallest, feet thumping neatly into the messy, wide track the New Republic have worn into the hillside, and then into the softer, nature-worn groove of the game trail Wash had marked out on their way in. Maine’s steps are steady even when they all have to slide down an embankment that seemed, paradoxically, much easier to climb; Ruula and Iqua smother giggles as they use his shoulders as a stepstool.

The last klick brings them parallel to the roadside. Only one car passes them by, and Wash is grateful for the relative silence. There’s enough of a prickle at the back of his neck already. Their line stretches out a little further with ease of movement on a wide path, with sparser trees, and Wash is focused only on the countdown of meters on his HUD when Maine’s status light blinks amber.

“Stop,” Wash whispers.

Manu stops dead immediately and makes a wild grab for Iqua’s shoulder, then lunges forward to grab Ruula.

“What?” he whispers back, his eyes wide. The tremble is back in his voice, full-force.

“I’m not sure.” He glances up towards Maine; Maine creeps forward slowly, his pistol drawn. “Maine? Go ahead. I’ll wait here.”

“Follow in five,” Maine replies, “if no comms.”

Wash blinks his light green.

Maine’s outline manages to melt into dappled green shadow as he continues to move up. Wash can see the outline of the hunters’ Warthog just over half of a klick away, but there’s enough breaking his line of sight – and Maine had been far enough ahead – that he can’t tell what the issue is.

“Federal Army,” Maine says quietly, but he blinks his light green. “Armed, but talking. Seems okay. Let me check.”

The next minute of silence is excruciating. Wash can hear Manu breathing: he inhales for precisely four seconds and exhales for precisely four seconds. His hands are white-knuckled, wrapped in the back of Iqua’s dungarees and Ruula’s shirt.

“Safe,” Maine says, and then he amends, “Safe enough. People from town still here, talking. Feds saw motion, got curious. Not hostile.”

“Okay,” Wash replies, and exhales. “Okay,” he says again, “The three of you, get behind me. Let’s get you home.”

His radar lights up before anything else, showing three bright red dots amid a wash of neutral green. The visuals take longer to resolve themselves out of the leaves and brush, but after a few dozen meters, all the edges sharpen into a complete picture: a white-marked Warthog parked behind a civilian car, the hunter and her spouse, Maine with one shoulder turned expectantly back towards Wash, and three unfamiliar people in armor.

Huh. Two are in standard Federal Army white-with-tan, and the third person makes Wash’s skin prickle with apprehension. Their armor is matte black and unmarked; the rifle on their back isn’t a make Wash is familiar with, though he can’t see much more of it than the stock.

“New fuckin’ Republic,” the taller one in white says as Wash walks up, trailing his three charges. “Every time I think they’re done pulling this shit, they do it again.” She shakes her head.

Wash has no idea what to say, so he says nothing. One of the two townspeople – Yaneli? or was that the spouse? – leans to look past Wash’s shoulder and waves, and in a thunderous patter of small footsteps, the three kids barrel straight into the car.

“Thanks for the chat,” maybe-Yaneli says, relief plain in her voice, “but we really should get going.”

“Well, hey,” the Federal Army soldier says easily, “if you ever need someone to really wallop those good-for-nothing New Republic bastards, we’ll take any excuse.” Her helmet tips over towards Maine, and then Wash. “No need to get mercs mixed up in this.”

The one in black doesn’t react; the other Federal Army soldier snorts in agreement. By the roadway, the three children have been packed tightly together in the Warthog – clearly a civilian model, with nicer rear seats than just an open back with benches – and maybe-Yaneli’s-spouse has the engine running.

“HI,” Iqua bellows at maximum volume, and twists around to wave furiously as probably-Yaneli gets in the passenger side. “BYE,” she shouts, still waving, as the ‘Hog peels out onto the roadway and rockets down the strip of pitted asphalt, suspension rattling.

"Glad you didn't choose the New Republic," the chattier soldier says, and her visor is trained on Maine with an odd intensity.

Maine nods curtly at her – Wash carefully bookmarks this exchange to pick it apart later – and then looks down at Wash and nods again. Incredible how much warmth can accumulate in just one gesture. A bit of an awkward standoff ensues; Wash most certainly does not want to turn his back first, but the Feds seem to find comfort in their numbers and turn away, wandering back through the trees towards where Wash knows their base lies.

Once they’re mostly out of sight, Maine tips his head down the roadway and sets off. Wash falls into step comfortably behind Maine, their ‘Hog marked two klicks down the roadway on his HUD. It's quiet between them as they walk; Wash can actually appreciate it, this time. Now that he knows to look for them, he can see the marks of game trails scattered through the forest.

“The mercenary we met in the canyon,” Wash begins without preamble, “made it sound like the Federal Army was the scum of the earth. I guess that’s not true everywhere.”

Maine hums thoughtfully, then says, “Merc must’ve been with New Republic for long time. Some mercs started on one side, never left.”

Wash hums back. It’s one thing to know, on some level, that both sides in a conflict like this are roughly equivalent; it’s another to have the scales of perception tipped in one direction at the start, and then to have them tipped the other direction – or balanced – by something like this. Wash doesn’t feel the weight of the realization for long. There’s no point in holding on. He lets go, instead, and the scale swings free again, waiting for the next weight. He hopes it’s lighter.

They leave Triymal quickly after they return. Wash feels unbearably awkward, standing on the receiving end of exceptionally emotional gratitude; the only other comparison he really has to this naked show of affection is Caboose, which isn't any kind of comparison at all. Oklar and Manu both ply them with travel-friendly food; Iqua's mother and one of Ruula's parents thank them with quavering voices as Maine crouches down to sign to both of the kids. The sight makes Wash’s throat go tight.

The most interesting “gift” they receive for their work comes in the form of a request. It’s technically more of a job than a gift; the motel owner gives them a set of coordinates to a town a relatively short drive out towards the coast, and asks them to deliver a data packet to the owner, one of her siblings. It’s recordings and photos, she explains, and her sister will provide lodging in exchange for the message. It’s a town with a high amount of traffic, close to a port city of some sort from what Wash can gather, and Maine readily agrees.

When they settle in for the night, back among silent trees and brisk air, Wash picks the easiest question to ask.

“When did you learn USL?”

Their campfire belches out a rain of sparks as something collapses further in towards the coals. Maine shrugs and nudges the rest gently with an already-charred stick, then gives him a one-shouldered shrug.

“Afterwards.”

“What?”

“Therapy,” Maine says impatiently, and picks up his knife – sausage adorning the tip, rendered fat glistening already on the skin – to pick gingerly at the meat. “After–” He jerks a thumb at his throat. “Part of the rehab.”

“I didn’t know that.” Wash frowns. “That’s still raw, by the way.”

“I know,” Maine grunts, and rests his knife back where it had been, propped up next to Wash’s. “Wasn’t during visiting hours. Hated it.” He stretches, rolling back his shoulders. “Stuck with me, though.”

“The UNSC hand signals come from USL, don’t they?” Wash asks. It’s mostly rhetorical; he knows they come from USL. He just doesn’t know to what degree.

Maine smiles at him and signs me, team, close, vehicle, far, dark, safety, cover before diverging into strings of words only sparsely peppered with the UNSC’s repertoire of standard hand signals.

“You sign sometimes, when people talk to you?” Wash gestures vaguely at his own throat, and Maine huffs quietly at him before repeating the sign that Wash can at least recognize as being the one that he used while talking to Oklar. Was that really only a day ago? That doesn’t seem right. “Teach me,” Wash says, shaking away the conversation with Oklar, the look on Manu’s face when he’d walked into that room. “It’s not a bad thing for me to learn. USL, I mean.”

Maine gives him a long, considering look.

“Not a good teacher,” he says slowly. “But, can try. Let me think.”

Wash turns back to the fire as he does, giving Maine at least some amount of silence to work with. The skin on the sausages is starting to crisp nicely. Wash doesn’t remember the last time he regularly ate homemade food.

Maine is silent until they’re done eating, though Wash is so thoroughly lost in the taste of food – food made with care, food made by hands that have done it over and over, food made from the land people live on – that Maine could have sung an opera and he wouldn’t have heard, and he can only assume, judging from the calm, sated bliss on Maine’s face, that Maine feels approximately the same.

“Okay,” Maine says once they’ve sat in silence for a good measure more, “got something to teach.”

He turns so that they’re almost shoulder to shoulder, his legs crossed loosely, and brings his hands up easily, openly before giving Wash a significant look and moving slowly, very slowly, through a short series of signs. Wash thinks he recognizes something that’s part of the my position signal.

“One more time?” Wash asks, and Maine nods before repeating, each movement still slow and clear.

Wash mimics the first sign and gets a nod – and then the second, he is pretty sure this is part of my position – and then the third—

Maine snorts and gently bats Wash’s wrist, knocking his hand back down to his lap. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh.

“What?” Wash asks.

“‘My cough nose,’” Maine says, signing along with the words, and Wash watches his hands because he definitely made the same– “Now, like this.”

“This?” Wash rotates his hand like Maine had; Maine nods. “Okay.”

Maine signs again. Wash follows. Another nod. Call and response. Wash’s hands feel clumsy, like the half-forgotten rust of speaking to his grandparents as a child, fumbling through words and sounds he only ever heard from his mother.

“What am I saying?” Wash asks, signing the phrase one more time alongside Maine’s broad hands.

“‘My friend is mute,’” Maine says quietly. “Or, ‘my partner can’t speak.’ Depends.” He reaches out to gently still Wash’s hand, and then guides it through a smoother arc. “Like this.”

“Are we?” Wash asks, letting Maine’s fingers stay looped around his wrist. “Friends.”

“Are we?” Maine echoes, voice low. Firelight licks into the scars lining his throat; his eyes are bright. Wash looks down at their hands.

“I don’t know.”

Maine’s fingers catch against the notch of Wash’s wrist as he takes his hand back. The motion is gentle; there is no bitterness or rebuke in the absence of his skin against Wash’s.

“Me either.”

Maine’s datapad pings quietly. Wash reaches for the makeshift fire poker and prods at the coals as Maine turns away to check the datapad. Maine had gotten exceptionally lucky with the databanks at the New Republic base. They’d had access to all the Federal Army’s data and had it all cached; something about a shared local network between the two bases, some old UNSC remnant tech that allowed the Feds to cache all of the New Republic’s data too, leading to a bizarre technological stalemate that likely only amplified their physical stalemate. No way to record a call for help on the network before sending someone off with it; no way to send someone off to call for help without yielding power in the stalemate.

Maine tosses the datapad back onto his duffel and frowns.

“What?”

“Found Lethbridge ID again, but with errors,” Maine grunts. “Need to re-run decryption. Corrupted files, maybe. Who knows what data management was like there.”

Wash turns back to watch the flames. Maine had explained that some of the files were old enough to have been sent long-range before the planetwide networks went down; it’s not a stretch to assume the data had gotten corrupted, especially if the New Republic were negligent. They didn’t seem to be the data-savvy type.

He reaches for his own datapad and pulls up his maps. Their route unfurls over this half of the continent, winding between all the bases they hit, all the places they slept. A few hundred klicks east, the point denoting the town they’re aiming for glows dimly with drive time calculations.

“We’re a few days out from that town the hotel owner is sending us to,” Wash says. “And there’s a merc base by the coast that isn’t too far from that. It doesn’t look like there’s much in the way of Fed or New Republic territory on the way there, though. We might be able to get more data if we double back after hitting the coast.”

“Base by coast,” Maine says, staring into the fire, “Cina? North Cina Base?”

Wash zooms in on the map. There’s a city right on the coast named Cina, and a merc base marked about about fifty klicks north.

“Looks like it.”

Maine snorts quietly.

“What?”

“North Cina Base,” Maine repeats, and finally looks over at Wash. “Biggest merc base on Rushaal. Continent,” he explains at Wash’s blank look. “Cina, only port city on this coast.”

“Only– the only port city on this entire coast?” Wash stares at him. “That can’t be right. What happens if it falls?”

“Hasn’t yet,” Maine says, and shrugs. “Held strongly. Don’t want to lose control of all traffic on and off continent.”

“Who the hell is holding it?”

“Cina is civilian. Don’t let anyone in, military or mercs.” Wash gapes like a recruit on his first day; Maine leans back against the ‘Hog’s tire and stretches his legs out in front of him. “Crossing sea, not easy.”

“How–” Wash closes his eyes and rests his fist against his forehead. This planet makes less and less sense the more time he spends outside the canyon. He feels a bizarre rush of empathy for the Reds and Blues when they’d gotten dragged out of their simulation bases. “How do civilians manage to hold a port city? Against two armies?”

Maine smiles wryly at him.

“Some people,” he says, “dedicated to illusion of power. Answer is simple. Pay mercs to protect city. Hypocrites. Only let in people they think deserve it.”

“If we need to cross the sea,” Wash says, “could we do it?”

It comes out as a challenge. Maine meets his eyes. Firelight continues to brush, gold and deep, against his skin. His eyes look uncharacteristically dark.

“With you,” Maine says, “yeah.”

Wash nods slowly, then looks back down at his datapad. He can feel the burn of Maine’s gaze on him and gets the overwhelming sense that in this puzzle he’s just been presented, he is missing some critical piece.

The next leg of the drive doesn’t bring much reprieve from the frustration of their botched data. Maine’s latest scan of the dataset – as a whole this time, checking for duplicates anywhere that could lead to a different angle – leads not to a duplicate, but to the echo of another frequency that had had contact with the original frequency Maine had flagged as Price.

They make for the hotel that’s been marked on their map once they hit the edge of the town; it’s small, and sleepy for its proximity to a roadway. Wash hands off the data they’d been sent to deliver while Maine waits with the ‘Hog just outside. He doesn’t necessarily trust an offer that had come from a different person several hundred klicks away, and free lodging for two mercenaries seems like one hell of an offer, but the sister – Natasha, she introduces herself – takes one look at the messages being sent to her datapad and tells Wash that he and his partner are welcome to stay however many nights they need to, no charge, and hands him a keychip. Wash politely ignores how wet her eyes look as she opens a file of photos.

A message on the hotel comms about an hour later, featuring Natasha’s much more composed face, thanks them again and lets them know that a place down the road is always kind to travelers regardless of their affiliation (or lack thereof), which is how Wash finds himself elbow to elbow with Maine at a slightly dingy bar, lost in the cacophony of far too many voices. “Kind to travelers” might have been an understatement on Natasha’s part; it seems like most of an army company is here, though which army it is, Wash still hasn’t been able to piece together.

“Sorry,” someone hollers directly into his ear in a wash of alcohol-laden breath, and Wash holds up a placating hand as he grimaces down at the sauce now spilled, very drunkenly, over the countertop.

“Loud in here.” It’s the first thing Maine has said out loud so far. Even ordering food had been forcibly relegated to a short game of charades, on both his part and Wash’s. Wash has to lean in and turn his head to hear the second half of Maine’s statement. “Think it’s Rebels.”

Wash glances up at him, and then takes another quick look around the room.

“Is that good or–” He leans in even closer at Maine’s nonplussed frown and tries again, nearly cheek to cheek. “Is that good or bad?”

Maine leans away and shrugs, then signs something.

Wash frowns. Thinks. And carefully signs, “Repeat?”

Maine smiles and repeats the sign. Wash understands the standard UNSC hand signal for wait and then something that looks like intel or line of sight.

“Wait and see?” he asks, leaning back in so as to be heard.

When Maine nods in response with a pleased sort of look wrinkling his eyes, Wash realizes that his cheek dimples when he smiles like this. He doesn’t know whether it had ever occurred to him to notice that before.

The thought – the realization, or whatever else it might or mightn’t be – is summarily interrupted as someone leans up against the bar on Wash’s other side again, only narrowly avoiding the still-glistening sauce puddle, and waves at the bartender with a near-empty beer bottle.

“‘Nother one!” the newcomer calls, and Wash looks over surreptitiously. When she catches him looking, the woman smiles: not unkindly, though not anything beyond casual kindness. “Mind if I join you two for a minute? Gotta get away from the–” She jerks her thumb back as the shouting in one of the back corners crests, accompanied by what sounds like fists pounding on a table. “That. I’m only paid to be responsible for those headaches during the day.”

“Whatever they pay you,” Wash replies, glancing at the riot of movement, “I hope it’s more than enough.”

She laughs, deep from her belly, and leans her elbow against the bartop; Wash leans back in his stool as if he’s done with his food, and Maine takes the given opportunity to mirror the woman’s position.

“My name’s Jeffries,” she says easily. “I can tell you aren’t locals, and you’re not with my company, so I gotta assume what I gotta assume.”

Wash glances briefly at Maine. That’s either a burning red flag or – given her general easiness – a careful way to let them know that she knows what they are, and she won’t make a mess about it. Maine meets his eyes, then looks back at Jeffries and nods.

“I’m Wash,” he says, and then tips his head. “That’s Maine. You probably assumed right.”

Jeffries shrugs.

“My company is full of mercs. It’s no problem to me, if that makes you feel better.”

She points with the lip of her now-empty bottle to the entire back of the bar, and Wash uses the excuse to properly take stock of the room. Out of armor, there’s no clear way to tell merc from soldier, but there are a few clusters of people sitting away from the knot of chaotic shouting; three women having an intent discussion over a datapad, two people arguing over the dartboard, a couple who look like they’re dozing in their chairs. Jeffries was right. It is easy to tell the locals from the people who are just passing through. There’s a sense of unease to the people who aren’t scarred and broad-shouldered, who don’t have that particular angle to their posture. Wash tracks the path of a large man, clearly strong but with an inebriated clumsiness to his movements, as he walks up to a slim, unremarkable man sitting alone at a table, buried in his datapad. That almost-familiar tilt to the merc’s posture – he can only assume it’s a merc, sitting isolated like that – as he looks up at the local sets off a ping in some primal part of Wash’s brain; there’s danger brewing there.

“Interesting group,” Wash notes as the cacophony explodes into howls again.

“Yeah,” Jeffries replies, wincing, “but they do good work. Best salvage crew I’ve seen in a long time, so I’m hoping they all choose to stick around.” She nods up at the bartender when another beer slides her way, and then takes a pull. “Sure, maybe they’re not the Reds and Blues, but they get the job done.”

Wash’s blood runs cold. Faintly, he can feel something shift under him; like he’s swimming in waterlogged clothes, he realizes that Maine has rested his foot on the bottom rung of Wash’s stool.

“Oh, so you’re a fan?” Wash hears himself asking, his voice just the right touch of wry.

Jeffries laughs again, bright and full.

“Yeah,” she says, “yeah, I guess so. I mean–” She leans forward, a bit conspiratorially. “We’ve been tracking their movements since they went AWOL and went after the guys the Feds captured. Hard to get a bead on them, but I’m pretty sure we saw the yellow guy a week or so ago.”

Wash watches a datapad slide over the counter, and feels Maine’s body heat radiating against his side.

AWOL? it reads.

“Oh, you didn’t hear? Shit, let me fill you in, then.” She scoots in closer; Wash feels like his tongue is made out of lead. Maine shifts, and Wash briefly feels the imprint of a broad palm between his shoulders. “The four we saved – New Republic, obviously – trained with us for a while. They were—” She screws up her face. Wash understands. Even though he feels like he’s a million miles away, he understands. “Interesting. But good. I think they were really what we needed. And they left us.” The bitterness rings clear, too. “Word is that they went for the other half of their team, the ones the Feds captured. It gets complicated from there, but the long and short of it is that those fuckers actually did it. They actually broke into a Federal Army compound and saved their team. Can you fucking imagine that?”

From the corner of his eye, Wash can see Maine shaking his head in slow disbelief, an agreeable smile tempering the tightness around his eyes as he types.

So where are they now? Back with the New Republic?

“No idea,” Jeffries says, and shrugs. Her voice rings with honesty. Wash’s blood still feels like ice. “As far as I know, none of them have made contact with us since they left. We only found out about the raid on the Fed complex from some Feds another unit ran into.” She shakes her head and takes a swig of her beer. “Still can’t believe they pulled that off.”

“Well,” Wash manages, “If anyone could do it, it’s them.”

“Right,” Jeffries agrees, and grins. “The war’s gotten a lot more interesting, hasn’t it?”

“I think it’s not quite done getting interesting,” Wash replies, and wishes fervently that he were lying.

“Yeah.” Jeffries’s grin edges into something more rueful. “Well, I’m glad I could get you guys caught up on the planet’s favorite gossip,” she says, and takes one more pull from her beer, “but I’m going to get back to that mess before someone loses an eye.”

Thanks for the update, Maine types, and nods at Jeffries. She nods back, still smiling, then pushes away from the counter and wades into the sea of people.

Wash jumps at the sensation of pressure against his wrist. He looks down, uncomprehending for far too long, and the sight before him only resolves itself into Maine’s fingertips at the edge of his jacket when he hears the sound of his own name.

“What?” His head feels too heavy when he turns it to look.

“Outside,” Maine says. His face brooks no argument; Wash wants to argue anyways. “Just a minute.”

He stands and nods at the bartender, gestures at the door and then again to express that they’ll be back. The bartender waves from the other end of the bar, and then Wash feels a muted tug against the arm of his jacket.

“Fine,” he manages, “okay. Just for a minute.”

It’s cold outside. The temperature sinks into his cheeks, pricks at his eyes until they sting, and Wash feels the distance between his mind and his body shrink back to normal as he exhales breath after measured breath, Maine standing silently beside him.

“Wondered, sometimes,” Maine murmurs after Wash has counted out far too many breaths, “how you passed evals.”

Wash looks up at him, uncomprehending once more.

“What?”

Maine inclines his head, and then looks away. Wash watches as the wind picks up and combs gently through his hair.

“Psych evals. Recovery force.”

“Oh.”

Of course Maine would have put that together, after— after. He hopes that Maine understands just how deeply Wash had been lying through his teeth with each word and each action and each bullet fired.

“Good liar,” Maine says, very quietly. It doesn’t sound like a compliment. He doesn’t meet Wash’s eyes.

“You know what they say,” Wash says, turning away, bitterness raw and heavy in his voice, “necessity is the mother of invention.”

Maine barks out a harsh laugh, and says nothing more.

Wash counts out another breath. And another. And another. And then he inhales deeply enough to make his lungs sting, and holds it, and tips his head all the way back as he lets the breath out.

“Let’s go back,” he says. “If that’s the intel we got out of one person, let’s see what we can get from someone else.”

Maine gives him a long, appraising look that Wash meets in challenge; whatever Maine sees must convince him of his loss in this arena, and he turns back towards the door. Wash follows.

The racket has only intensified in the handful of minutes they’ve been outside, and Wash almost regrets having returned. There are more people milling about on their feet, and an odd sort of tension to the air; the bartender is speaking intently with someone else behind the bar, clearly another worker. Maine moves with a bit more care towards their seats, and Wash follows him just as carefully.

Most of the bar is trying very hard not to look at one of the corners, which has the effect of all the weight of fifty-odd people’s attention drawn to what’s happening there. Wash has no such reservations about looking, and stares unabashedly over Maine’s shoulder. The tall, broad local from earlier is still standing over one of the tables in the corner; from this angle, Wash can’t see the face of the person sitting down, just legs clad in plain pants, boots braced firmly on the floor in a position Wash recognizes clearly as one that’s prepared to bolt.

“Maine,” he says quietly, “I think we should leave before things get bad here.”

Maine’s eyes flit over his face. Wash wonders what he reads and how he reads it: the same methods as Wash, maybe? The pinch of skin at the corners of his eyes, the tightening of lips, muscle held taut under the downward curve of a cheek? Whatever or however Maine reads the seriousness in Wash’s face, he nods in agreement.

Payment is easy and quiet enough, credits fed to the reader just to their left; Wash sneaks one more bite of Chorus’s version of the ubiquitous fried-dough-and-meat dish, tidies up his and Maine’s plates, and then stands and stretches with as casual an affectation as he can manage. Maine readjusts his jacket and takes his time guiding the zipper onto its track, his shoulder canted so that Wash can look past it. The knot of people near the corner is thinning out; the tension seems to be building. The civilian is gesturing sharply with an empty bottle. Wash knows that all it would take is one good hit to break the glass for the makeshift weapon to turn lethal.

“No,” Wash says, his mind suddenly made up, “I can’t watch this happen.”

Before Maine can protest, he surges forward through the bar, catching the flash of wild looks as he passes through, and he reaches the civilian right in time to have to duck and avoid another wild gesture with the bottle.

“—and you got no goddamn right,” the man seethes, “to come here and–”

“Oh, ‘scuse me?” Wash interrupts placidly, and steps between the table and the local.

The local’s eyes swivel to him. He’s livid, and he’s drunk. Wash glances down at the person at the table, a silent check for condition as he meets the man’s eyes. Almost certainly a merc, Wash thinks; he’s got a thin, unassuming face, the sides of his head shaved, brown hair swept back on the top, and an odd look – surprise and the heat of anger, barely restrained – flashes through his eyes as Wash shoulders his way in. Probably the kind of person who thinks he can handle a situation like this by himself. Probably right, too, Wash thinks, because he can see the handle of a knife in a magsheath against the man’s thigh, his arm carefully lax so that his fingers are resting over it.

“The fuck do you want,” the local sneers, his words melting together.

“Is that your car out there?” Wash asks, earnest and oblivious. “I asked the bartender and she said she thinks it’s yours.” He turns his head to look out the window, but not so far that he can’t still see the drunken time bomb he’s dealing with. “You should probably go check on it, it looked like—”

“Outta my fuckin’ way,” the man snarls, and storms past Wash unsteadily enough that Wash has just barely too little room to move away, and their shoulders clip together painfully.

When he looks back at the table, the man sitting there is gone. When he looks across the room, Maine’s eyes are burning, his brows furrowed thunderously. Wash shrugs at him. The situation’s defused (at least for now), that merc made a clean getaway from whatever the hell was going on, and no one got hurt. The results couldn’t be better.

Maine is still frowning by the time Wash makes it back over to where he’s standing now – by the door, pointedly – and he huffs out a low noise when they both finally step outside.

“What?” Wash asks. He’s starting to feel testy.

“Stupid,” Maine mutters.

“You think I can’t handle a drunk farmer?” The testiness morphs into anger, lapping hotly at the back of his throat. “I had that under control. It was clear the other person needed an out, and no one else was going to do it.”

“Fight would’ve given everyone an excuse,” Maine fires back. “Everyone, on edge. Civilians hate armies and mercs, Wash. Hate them both.” He huffs again, sharply, and shakes his head. “We fuck up their lives. Should let them be.”

And something clicks.

Wash lags half a step behind as the realization really, truly takes root in his chest. He should’ve known it in Triymal. He should’ve known it all the way back at that very first merc base Maine had pulled him to. He should’ve known it when Felix had explained the situation on this planet. It was never about the two armies going head to head. It’s always been about the people caught between them.

Maine pauses ahead of him and turns, the annoyed furrow still clear on his brow, though it dissipates when Wash looks up at him, feeling like startled game.

“What?” Maine asks, annoyance fading into concern, and Wash shakes his head.

“Nothing,” he replies, and shoves his hands into his pockets. He looks at the parking lot full of trucks painted slapdash with New Republic olive drab, piled high with armor crates that read Misriah Armory and Lethbridge Industrial and Materials Group, ready to deliver death. “Let’s go back.”

“Okay,” Maine says. His voice is full of doubt, but he doesn’t press further, and Wash is glad for it.

Natasha nudges them towards a small diner for breakfast the following morning, and they’re informed immediately upon walking in that breakfast is on the house by way of Natasha. (Wash is thankful, yet again, that Chorus is happy to trade on favors rather than currency.) They take their food to go and sit on the fender of the ‘Hog by the roadway, not quite committed to packing up and leaving the town yet, but – Maine glances down at his datapad; Wash can’t see the screen from this angle – probably inching their way towards it.

“Anything new?” Wash asks.

Maine feels around blindly for his coffee, bumps his fingers into the side of the cup, and replies, “Same. Decryption goes fine until location and ID.”

“Isn’t that the only data to be decrypted, though? Location and ID?”

Maine glares over at him. It’s softer than it could have been; Wash holds his ground with ease until Maine relents, sighs, and looks back down at the datapad.

“Encryption package,” Maine explains, ticking it off on his fingers, “message shell, sender callsign, receiver callsign, geotag.” He nods his chin down at the datapad. “Data refresh did something. Gets to receiver and geotag, stuck in loop. Location, locus, location, locus.”

“Do you think it’s something in the d—”

Wash has experienced the sensation of time stopping before. In battle. In long sessions with the Counselor. When lying through his teeth. When Epsilon slid into his neural interface.

This is different.

“Wash?”

He’s barely aware of Maine carefully setting aside his coffee.

“Locus,” Wash repeats, and turns a little too quickly towards him. “Locus, right? It’s telling you ‘location locus?’”

Maine nods slowly, and reaches for the datapad.

“Maine, Locus is the name of a mercenary.”

Silence. And then Maine barks out a skeptical noise.

“No, listen to me.” Wash can feel his temper flaring amid the ice flooding his chest. “Locus is a merc. He’s the one who attacked us in the canyon. He’s working for the Federal Army, apparently has been for a while. He and his squad are the ones who took me out.”

“Don’t recognize name,” Maine says doubtfully, his frown deepening.

“Obviously you don’t know everything,” Wash snaps. He regrets it immediately; Maine’s eyes harden. He’s much too wound up to do anything to fix that. “If Locus is behind the attack on the canyon, and he’s responsible for separating us all, and he’s the ID who’s been talking to the Counselor–”

“Didn’t think it was necessary?” Maine interrupts, voice deadly quiet.

“What?”

“Telling me who attacked.”

“You were in the goddamn canyon! What, was I supposed to also report to you that I got knocked out and that my teams got separated?”

Maine snarls at him wordlessly. The escalation feels utterly out of control and a box buried deep in the distant corners of Wash’s mind calls for his attention, wants to be filled back up with all this vitriol and packed away for good this time.

“Okay,” Wash says, trying to keep his voice under control, “Okay. Fine. Locus is a merc working for the Federal Army. We were told he ditched his real name and doesn’t even go by a callsign, just by the—”

Of course. Of course. He can’t believe he didn’t see this before. All the pieces were literally in front of his face, and he missed the seams.

“Wash?” Maine asks carefully, again.

“Lethbridge Industrial,” Wash says simply. Blankly. “Lethbridge manufactures the LOCUS variants for GEN2 MJOLNIR.”

Maine stares at him, silent.

“That’s why it was redirecting you,” Wash finishes, “to the Lethbridge comms, because your decryption program – Sam is good, right? She has to be. But if the data the program is scraping off of a comm is just broad enough to interfere with the way the code reads the output…”

He doesn’t need to finish the statement. Maine continues to stare.

The datapad pings again. This time, both of them look down at it. Decryption complete, it reads. 3 data errors detected. Run again?

Maine hums.

Run again?

Wash stares at him. All of the tension has dissipated from between them; Maine’s eyes are distant and buried in thought, tracking swiftly over nothing in particular.

Run again?

“Maine,” Wash says, “let’s see what we can do with more data.”

Their decisions are made swiftly after that. Wash politely says his goodbyes and thank-yous to Natasha and doesn’t stay long enough to explain why they’re leaving so quickly; Maine waits by the car, impatient and fully armored, and Wash takes the keychip from him before sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Take roadway south to double back,” Maine says, pulling up the dashboard map. “Fed base 276 klicks west-southwest.”

Wash swings out onto the roadway and fumes silently at all of the cars going a respectable, safe speed for a small town. The map tells him he’s got several more stoplights to turn through before they reach the roadway proper and he can floor it; he leashes his patience and plays the good driver for the first three intersections they have to crawl through.

At the fourth, the back of his neck starts to prickle. By the fifth, he goes straight instead of making a left.

“What?” Maine asks. There’s no accusation in his tone; it’s low and intent, on edge.

“Two cars behind us in the lane over,” Wash replies. “They’ve been somewhere behind us for a while now, I think since we left the hotel.”

Maine pulls up the map again. Two blocks later, Wash can see that he’s rerouted them west instead, on a path that puts them on the lone roadway that snakes westwards from this town. Heading all the way out towards the coast will cost them time if it pans out to be nothing, but on the off chance that they are being followed…

Wash clenches his jaw. If someone wants to track their movements, that’s one thing. If someone wants to make sure they don’t move any further, then he’d rather stand and fight well away from a city full of civilians. And just because they have some sort of lead doesn’t mean they need to act on it immediately, anyways. Half the point of getting more data somewhere – anywhere – is to make sure that the Locus thing isn’t a glitch. And while Wash’s first reaction had been to point to Locus as the obvious perpetrator, the more he’s thinking about it now, behind the wheel in half-meditative silence, he wonders if that’s the right reaction. The Federal Army clearly isn’t universally evil. Sarge and Donut – and he himself – were knocked unconscious in that canyon, not killed.

But if it is Locus, if there is a mercenary working with one of the armies who’s also talking to probably-the-Counselor—

Prickling cold spreads down the back of Wash’s neck, radiating out from the knots of scar tissue that ring his neural implant, traveling slowly down his spine.

“Windshield,” Maine says curiously, and his voice snaps Wash out of his thoughts. He glances over; Maine is staring at the rearview mirror. “Coated somehow,” Maine explains. “Can’t see inside car.”

They pull out onto a longer, more open stretch of road – almost at the roadway, and they’ll be clear of the small city soon – and Wash glances into the mirror.

“Huh.” Maine’s right. The glass is smokey, almost shimmering, and every time Wash thinks he sees who’s behind the wheel something shifts and obscures even the silhouette. “That’s not a good sign.”

Maine hums in grim agreement.

The car follows them all the way out onto the westbound roadway. Whoever is tailing them is good; they keep their distance, and even overtake them when Wash purposefully gets stuck in a lane that’s backed up due to a turn-off ahead, but the other car falls behind again once the traffic eases. By the time the farms surrounding the city bleed out into nothing but coastal scrub, they’re the only two cars left on the roadway.

Maine loads two pistols, the BR55, and the MA5C. Wash keeps his eyes locked on the rearview mirror.

The city they’d left had been about four hours’ drive from the coast, and this roadway will split into a northward branch towards where the merc base is in about another hour’s drive; the main roadway will continue to wind out until it hits the city of Cina.

Thirty klicks before the roadway splits, their tail disappears.

The continent is wrinkled up against the coast, like someone has thoughtlessly rumpled a tablecloth right before the edge. The hills they’re driving through to get to the coastline itself are gentle, nothing like the rougher, rocky hills where the Hand had crashed, and Wash watches as the car disappears after one wide curve and never reappears.

“Maine–”

“Pull over past hills,” Maine says, and marks a point on the map. “Hills end in four klicks. More visibility.”

Wash tears through the last few winding curves and drives until his mirrors show as complete a picture of the slopes behind them – and his HUD shows the flat plain and the glittering, cast-iron sea before them – as possible, and then eases off the gas and lets the car roll to a stop.

There’s no telling what’s under the carpet of knee-high grass around them, waving soft flaxen gold in the bleak sunshine. He takes the pistol that Maine offers him silently, and then slips out of the car and takes the BR55 as well.

“You think we’ll wait long?” Wash asks. He keeps his voice quiet even though there’s no need. Force of habit, probably, or something like that. Maine turns to face the hills; Wash turns to face the plains.

“Dunno,” Maine grunts back. “Might be nothing.”

“I highly doubt that anyone who followed us all the way out here did it for nothing,” Wash notes. Maine hums noncommittally, and then shifts to a one-handed grip on his pistol. “What are you doing?”

Maine tips his fist to show Wash the grenade – not primed yet – and nods out towards the plains.

“Trip mines, common,” he says. “Why wait for them to find us? Know where we are. And if someone’s hiding there–” He gestures. The meaning is very clear. Wash loses one frantic second to a horrendous loop of memory resurfacing, ice fracturing deep and blue under his feet with an almighty rumble, white armor at his side.

“I don’t think that’s—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. The grenade is in the air before he even starts to speak, and a distant part of him admires the strength with which Maine throws it; his whole body bends and snaps forward like a bow, launching the unassumingly small frag grenade an impressive distance across the grass that spreads out before him. The only reason his hands don’t raise and squeeze the trigger of their own practiced accord is because they’re holding the gun that doesn’t have enough range to hit a grenade that’s already entered the second half of its lovely parabolic arc.

Muscle memory drives him to the ground before gravity exerts its fatal claim on the grenade. Maine was right about mines; the ground roars. His helmet compensates immediately for the noise but Wash can still feel the inexorable bass thrum of each chained explosion thundering through his chest and lungs as the grenade sets off one trip mine sets off the next trip mine sets off the next, and Maine was right, but this still feels dangerously reckless.

Wash lunges back to his feet and draws his BR55 this time, opening his mouth to finish that fucking sentence, and a bolt of plasma hits the asphalt between them like a thunderclap.

“Move,” Maine snaps unnecessarily, because Wash is already moving – there’s no shelter to be taken behind their car because there’s no fucking telling where the shot came from, except for probably-not-the-cratered-land, but he fans out further down the roadway while Maine moves back down towards the hills, and Wash strains at his radar and looks.

But there’s nothing. Nothing save for autumn-yellow grass (what season is it on Chorus? Dry? Wet?) and the long shadow of their Warthog and Maine— Maine flashes his status light amber.

Wash meters his breathing against the urge to hold his breath. There’s nothing. There’s no movement except wind weaving through grass. Except grass swaying with wind. Except—

Except grass flattening down against the breeze coming from the sea.

Wash fires without another thought, aiming about four feet above the patch of flattened grass, and with a telltale spark, the air warps and flickers. He fires again; this time there’s another spark, and a suit of armor materializes out of the warping air for a split second longer. Wash fires again. The cloaking finally sparks and dies, followed immediately by the soldier wielding it. The armor crumples to the ground.

Active camo. Nothing on radar. Someone has a local jammer unit. That means someone is cloaked with a local jammer unit. One car had been following them; four people maximum. At least one down.

“Maine–” Wash calls warningly but he can see Maine turning already, scanning the area because there’s no way he hasn’t come to the same conclusion as Wash, there’s no way there isn’t someone else waiting to take advantage of this situation, and sure enough, someone de-cloaks twenty meters away from them both with a raised rifle.

He doesn’t recognize the rifle. Something about the utter lack of recognition makes his blood run cold. There’s nothing in his memory that sparks recall. Not in any of the experimental tech he declined from the Chairman, not in anything Project Freelancer ever tried to obtain. Something here screams danger in a way that feels completely alien.

Wash sinks two shots into the de-cloaked soldier’s chest and one into their head, hands and eyes moving together before his brain can catch up, and then he sprints towards the body. If his suspicion is right–

And then he’s barreled sideways so goddamn hard he wonders for one hazy second whether he’d managed to not see a car, god, his ribcage– but instinct takes over again and he finds something invisible and solid, wrestles his pistol off his thigh, and fires three shots again. Another spark, another fizzle, and he heaves the body off of his chest.

He can’t breathe without razor-sharp pain in his side but there it is, just like he’d thought: a radar jammer, drumlike and clunky in comparison to the sleek, matte-black armor crumpled next to the jammer unit. Wash smashes it with the butt of his rifle and his HUD refreshes immediately with just one more red dot, closing in on Maine.

“Maine, wait–” Wash is back on his feet but Maine’s already hurtling towards the soldier’s position as they de-cloak––

“Maine!”

TIme stops again. Worse, this time, than when Wash put Locus and location together. He sees the old, drumlike unit in the soldier’s hand – all too damningly similar to the radar jammer to be anything other than scavenged Covenant tech as well – and knows it’s already too late. He sees Maine pull the trigger, watches the soldier jerk with the impact of the bullet. Watches the soldier go down like a rock. Watches the power-drain unit leave their hand and turn on in a blinding flash.

It’s clear that the unit’s been overloaded, and whether that’s intentional or not doesn’t matter right now; Wash’s shields get drained instantly, HUD frying into static and other wild shapes at the edges, even though he’s still forty-odd meters away. He can’t do anything but watch as Maine freezes completely, arcs of electricity sparking across his armor, and then Maine crumples.

The only thing stopping Wash from launching himself forward – aside from his systems still going haywire even without complete power loss – is the fact that the unit is still humming ominously, audible even at this distance, pulsing out uneven flares of energy and glowing a deep, pure Cherenkov blue. The second the power drain unit finally gives its last flicker and shuts down, Wash limps towards Maine as fast as he can amid struggling shields and a HUD that won’t stop beeping shrilly.

“Maine,” he gasps out, gritting his teeth as his side fucking burns when he kneels down, fingers scrabbling over Maine’s armor to find the manual pressure release, coldness seeping into his gut as the armor vents its regulated atmosphere. He practically rips off Maine’s helmet once it’s done and Maine’s head rolls limply to the side, damp hair slicked across his forehead, blood starting to pool at his nostrils; Wash pulls his gauntlet off and shoves his fingers against Maine’s neck, praying for a fucking pulse, nearly fainting with relief when he finds it. Wash doesn’t need to see another person killed by armor shutdown. Some things should only be witnessed once.

Fuck.

He exhales explosively. The car is a solid distance away – his HUD still won’t give accurate distance readouts, only partway through recalibrating other, more vital systems – so he shoves the pain even further away to be dealt with even later, grabs Maine’s helmet, and slings his dead weight across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

He’s shaking by the time he reaches the car and Maine is still unconscious, still refusing to stir past the breaths that Wash can feel so, so very faintly against his fingers when he removes a gauntlet to double-check after slinging him down onto the roadway as gently as possible. The pain in his ribs is excruciating. Wash swallows it down, tips his head back, and breathes. He can’t carry Maine in his armor again. The ‘Hog’s systems are still in the process of rebooting too, the map offline as the engine cycles. Wash takes another breath, makes his choice, and starts to strip Maine of his armor, pausing every few minutes to check for that pulse, to look for any twitch of consciousness.

By his last count, they’d been twenty minutes from the split in the road that leads to North Cina Base, with about forty-five minutes from there to the base.

Wash makes it to North Cina Base in thirty minutes flat.

Wash jerks awake at the sensation of pressure on his thigh.

Instinct discards itself, and he wrenches a tremulous creak out of the rickety chair he’s in as he leans forward and blurts, “Maine.”

Maine blinks at him blearily, head lolled over to one side. His eyes are bruised and sleepy; the hand on Wash’s thigh (he registers this so belatedly that it only occurs to Wash that the bumps under his fingers are Maine’s knuckles well after he’s placed his hand there) is heavy and limp, and his other hand is resting crooked with carefully placed precision over his chest. A skein of cables winds its way down to the back of his hand. Wash’s ribs burn with the sudden movement.

Time either stops or passes. Wash isn’t sure. He also isn’t sure what to do other than stare at Maine and watch lucidity beat away the exhaustion plain in his face, watch the tense jump of muscle in his cheek as he flexes both his hands and finds an IV sticking out of one of them.

“In Cina?” Maine croaks.

“Yeah,” Wash replies, “at that base. It was the only thing close enough.”

Maine closes his eyes briefly, inhales, and then says, “Need to talk. Bout those mercs.”

“Yeah,” Wash agrees, “but I think–”

“Knock knock,” someone’s voice calls, short and crisp, and the curtain separating this room from the world flaps as a medic whirls in, adjusts her ponytail, and gives each of them a sharp, evaluatory look before pulling out her datapad. “I’m short on time, so I’ll make this quick.”

“‘M’fine,” Maine grunts, predictably, and Wash grimaces.

“It’s good you’re awake,” the medic notes absently, “finally.” She checks a monitor and then scrolls through the datapad, eyes flicking back and forth. “Last shift filled me in on what happened with the armor lock, so I’m just here to make sure all your organs are still where they’re supposed to be. Quick thinking, by the way,” she says, turning to Wash and pointing with the corner of the datapad. “Depressurizing the armor as quickly as you did probably saved his life. Be thankful for your training.”

There’s an odd pressure on Wash’s hand that takes him another delayed moment to register: firm, warm, all around his hand. It takes yet another delayed moment for Wash to realize that Maine has turned his hand and squeezed Wash’s palm. Wash very carefully does not meet his insistent gaze.

“I am,” Wash manages stiffly.

The doctor nods back, still staring at her datapad, and then leaves it balanced across the small sink and walks briskly over to Maine’s side.

“The short version is: one more night of monitored bedrest, and the IV stays in,” she says, and it’s Maine’s turn to grimace. Her hands press gently, swiftly over Maine’s chest, then against the pulse point in his neck, then back down over his heartbeat. “Have you been awake long enough for your partner to explain what happened?”

Maine shakes his head. This time, Wash feels it from start to finish when Maine’s fingers twitch around his and tighten. Something compels him to not move his hand away.

“You have multiple fractured ribs and severe bruising, but nothing much worse than that,” the doctor says. “Be very thankful. I’ve seen armor malfunctions that turned the wearer into a smoothie. You got off lucky, though.” She tips her head over at Wash. “Your partner thought fast and got you out of the armor before it could crush you. For now, all you have to do is not move. We’ll discharge you tomorrow morning if everything looks like it’s continuing to be on the mend. If your chest pain gets worse, call a nurse. Understood?”

Maine nods. His hand is relaxed, heavy and warm where it blankets Wash’s.

“I noticed that you have some older injuries as well,” the doctor says, and Maine immediately stiffens. She pays it no heed; Wash watches her eyes dart all over the datapad she’s returned to as she types in a flurry of notes. “Muscle that didn’t heal properly in your shoulders and chest. If it’s not impeding your movement, then it’s not a problem. If it is, the right surgeon can correct that. And your throat–”

Maine lets out a low, wordless noise; the doctor’s head snaps up immediately, the hand not holding her datapad drifting to her side. Wash’s weight is already shifted onto the balls of his feet, ready to move in case of– something.

The standoff lasts in silence for a few seconds before the doctor carefully continues, “I don’t know how old that wound is, but judging by the scar tissue, it’s at least five or six years, is that right?” Wash stares at her. She stares Maine down. Maine is silent. “We could try for a throat reconstruction.”

There’s a dull ringing in Wash’s ears. The room is dead silent.

Maine gestures for her datapad.

Is there something wrong with my throat? he types, and the look on his face is chilling as he hands it back to the medic.

The night passes with no further incident. Wash weaves in and out of uneasy sleep on the hospital chair for the second (third? fourth?) night in a row with the frigid chill in Maine’s eyes imprinted upon the backs of his eyelids, the very base of his spine aching at the angle he’s been forcing it into for far too long, bruised ribs still lancing white-hot pain across his side when he shifts. Old wounds, he thinks, as he blinks gummy eyes open to a dark room and then closes them to the phantom warmth of Maine’s hand gripping his own.

A nurse finds them in the morning and gives them both a strict lecture on what to look out for – blood in the airways, sudden new bruising on the chest, any sharp pain after exertion – and Maine nods at each instruction with a sullen air.

The base is – much like the first one Wash had seen – housed in a massive old building, so large that Wash suspects it may have been a planetside drydock at some point in its lifespan. The ceilings are uncomfortably high. The medical bay is housed in a corner he only saw blurrily upon rushing in, sequestered into smaller sections by liberal use of field partitions. It occurs to him, as Maine slides socked feet out of the bed and onto the cold concrete floor, that he probably should have retrieved their belongings from the car at some point after learning that Maine wasn’t going to die.

“I don’t have our stuff,” he says before Maine can ask. “I haven’t… left here.”

Maine looks at him sharply.

“Injured?”

“No,” Wash replies, and at the thunderous, pointed furrow of Maine’s brow, he relents. “I either pulled something or cracked a rib. It’s fine.” He rubs his side. “I didn’t want to leave. We can replace armor and weapons.”

Maine’s face softens, but only by a degree, and he sits at the edge of the bed. The shirt he’s in is borrowed; it’s starchy and oddly creased, a scrub top that he’s clearly meant to return. The bodysuit is folded over the end of the bed in the same rumpled way it’s been since Wash blindly helped the nurses strip Maine of it.

“Let’s get going.” The silence feels awkward as Wash breaks it. “Their quartermaster AI assigns priority to people getting discharged from the medbay. We can talk about… what happened.”

Maine nods slowly, and then holds out one hand. Expectant. Wash stares down at it as if an answer will materialize. Surely Maine can stand on his own, surely the nurse wouldn’t have discharged him if he couldn’t – but Maine’s fingers curl inwards, insistent, so Wash reaches out to meet it with a frown.

Wash finds his hand is intercepted before he can wrap it around Maine’s forearm to lift him up. Instead, Maine grabs him by the wrist, squeezes, then slides his hand down until it dwarfs Wash’s palm once more, and squeezes again.

“Thank you,” Maine says. His voice is quiet. Wash can almost pretend that there’s no damage audible in the words. “Mean it. Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Wash replies. His mouth feels dry, his throat thick. “Yeah. I– of course.”

Maine nods again slowly, and then lets Wash’s hand slip out of his grasp before gingerly pushing himself up to his feet. Wash feels numbed by exhaustion and other unidentifiable things; it doesn’t occur to him to take a step back until his nose nearly brushes against Maine’s shoulder. But he steps back to give Maine space, and Maine looks down at him again before pulling the undersuit into his hands, and they leave the medbay together in a terrible mockery of every time they had followed the steps to this dance aboard the Mother of Invention.

It doesn’t take long to track down their ‘Hog; the medical staff had apparently sent word for someone to move the car away from where Wash had left it at a haphazard angle near the closest entry he’d seen, and they fetch their armor crates and gear bags without issue once Wash stops someone to ask. The quartermaster AI is expedient with assigning them a room, too, and Wash is grateful for the general pace at which things are moving because he is well aware that the minute he stops, he will be unable to move for at least twelve hours. Better use this momentum while he can.

The door slides open to the keychip fisted in Maine’s hand; Wash manages to shove his duffel and armor crate into an unoccupied corner of a room that could generously be called “cramped” before the bed meets the backs of his thighs and he’s summarily immobilized by all of the compounded exhaustion he’s accrued over the past… however long it’s been.

Maine shuffles past him to the other bed. He’s been moving more gingerly than he normally would; on one hand, Wash is glad that he’s being careful, but on the other, it must be a tremendous amount of discomfort to force Maine into slowing down. Wash plants his hands on the mattress behind him, leans his weight back, and closes his eyes.

“Maine,” he starts. Maine replies with a low noise. Not particularly affirmative. Wash opens his eyes and twists around to look at him. “What?”

“Gonna say, need to talk,” Maine says. His brows are pulled down into a sharp frown. “Don’t. Rest now. Look exhausted.”

“I am exhausted.” The admission comes more easily than Wash had expected it to, almost indignant. “But the sooner we get our facts lined up, the better.”

He stares at Maine. Maine stares back for just a handful of seconds before sitting down gingerly on the other bed, elbows braced on his knees, shoulders curved forward. He meets Wash’s eyes again, and Wash holds his gaze until Maine relents again, with a sigh this time.

Wash sighs back, and then reaches into his duffel for his datapad. Instinct leads him to check his COM lines; hope makes it sting when he sees no update since the last LAN communications he sent weeks ago.

“Here,” Maine grunts, and displays a blank document on the equally blank stretch of wall above the beds. A second later, Wash finds himself granted access. He checks the current date, subtracts… fuck, two days? three? and approximates the hour, just for the sake of thoroughness.

“What’d you see first?” he asks.

“Shimmer,” Maine replies as he types. Even the way he uses shorthand is damningly familiar, the way he phrases what he means. “But older armor tech. Seen newer units around. Tech is good now.”

“The radar jammer I found on one of the others was older, too.” Wash adds to Maine’s rapidly unfurling line of shorthand. “The armor and weapons weren’t. I wonder if that was some kind of tradeoff they had to make. What could have been running those units?”

Maine pauses. His fingertips flex around the edges of his datapad.

“Heard,” he says, “from someone who heard–” He waves his hand in a circle; so on, so forth. “New armor, powerful enough to run units without AI.”

Wash digs the blunt edges of his short fingernails into the meat of his palm. Maine looks at him with an expression so deeply empathetic Wash can’t bear to look for more than half a second.

Maine relents and glances back down at his datapad.

“Didn’t recognize merc armor, either.”

“Is there a system to it? The types of armor people wear?” Yet another question Wash should have asked weeks ago. If colors on Chorus mean anything close to as much as they mean to his own chromatic idiots—

“Yes, no,” Maine replies, and makes a gesture. “More like, everyone wants to look different. Looking same means army.”

Same. Same. Something jostles loose in Wash’s memory.

“There was a merc in all-black armor with the Feds back outside of Triymal,” Wash says, and adds that to their file of shared notes.

Maine makes a sound, half-interrogative, half-disbelieving, and says, “Remember a merc. Don’t remember armor color.”

“I do, though,” Wash replies. “Newer armor, all black with no accents. No visible battle damage, so shields must have been in top condition. They had a rifle–” He shrugs. “–but I remember that I couldn’t see the make. I didn’t recognize the stock, either. I just figured it was something new that I’d missed somehow.”

Maine raises his eyebrows, and then shrugs loosely before adding again to their notes.

“Good memory,” he says.

Wash swallows around an awkward lump in his throat, and sits back in his chair.

“I don’t–” He rubs the back of his neck. Maine looks up at the movement. “I don’t really have a choice, anymore.” Maine frowns, clearly waiting for more. “Epsilon was the memories,” he says. I can’t forget things, he means. “It’s– hard. Sometimes. Sifting through all this information that’s sitting in my head because it won’t leave. Because I might need any of it at any point.” He drops his hand and picks at a seam lining his pants. “Because there’s always danger out there, right? Always a scenario I never prepared for.”

“Sigma–” Maine starts, hoarse in a way that has nothing to do with the tunnel of scar tissue that replaced his vocal folds, and then he stops, blinking. “Occam’s razor,” he says instead, and glances at Wash. Wash nods back and waits just as Maine had. “Doesn’t exist anymore. Why simple? Creative is better.”

Silence unfurls slowly between them.

“The weapons,” Wash says, surging forward to break it. A blunt change of subject. “What was that? Have you seen– heard of anything like that?”

Maine shakes his head slowly.

“Looked like plasma. Maybe.”

“Bolts didn’t glass, though.”

“New weapons? Old Covenant weapons? Either way, what the hell are they doing on a backwater planet?”

Maine frowns at him and says, “Why not grab one?”

“What?” Wash blinks, feeling slow. “What, take one of the weapons?”

Maine nods, his brows still knit. Something hot starts to burn in Wash’s chest amid all the slowness, some cousin of anger, quicker to flame. His throat tightens.

"I don't know," Wash replies through gritted teeth, "I wasn't thinking straight. I didn't–" He inhales. "I thought you were going to die, Maine. I couldn't watch that happen again."

Maine’s eyes widen. Just a fraction. For expressive as Wash finds him usually, this tiny motion feels more earth-shaking than any tremor before. Maine is silent; Wash watches Maine watch him, like he’s trying to make sure Wash isn’t mistaken.

“What now?” Maine asks eventually. Wash just stares at him. He’s the one with a better grasp on what’s going on here on Chorus, what this weird group of mercs and strange weapons could mean. The exhaustion is catching up with him, like a fog bank rapidly spreading through his skull. Thankfully, Maine catches on and continues, “Could cross sea.”

“This sea?” Wash asks. Maine nods. “What’s on the other side?”

“More fighting. More people.” Maine shrugs. “Capital.”

The capital. Presumably, a location that both the New Republic and the Federal Army want control over. More people means it’ll be harder to stand out. Probably. If someone is on their trail (why would anyone be? that’s concerning enough in its own right) then an area with more activity might provide more anonymity.

Wash hums and says, “It’s not like we wouldn’t be able to find more data, either. If we had to come back here, could we?”

Maine shrugs yet again.

“Probably,” he replies. “Not much point. Been looking for excuse to cross sea.” He gestures: like you said. “More data.”

“So then let’s do it,” Wash decides, abruptly, before he can talk himself out of it. “And if someone’s on our back here, then maybe going to a different continent will shake them.”

Maine hums in agreement, and then nods.

“Settle it tomorrow,” he says. It’s clear this is the opening he’d been looking for. “Rest now. Okay?” He raises his eyebrows; Wash knows the stubbornness in that look intimately, and sighs.

“Fine.”

Maine sits back, satisfied; Wash kicks his duffel towards himself with his heel, then leans down to fish out something to sleep in. He can hear Maine rustling around behind him, but his attention span has narrowed to the small chain of gestures necessary for the moment: shirt off, shirt on, pants off, pants on. He gets as far as picking up his toiletries and turning towards the small field bathroom crammed into the corner when Maine carefully steps closer, barging right into Wash’s steadily narrowing tunnel vision. He looks up, too tired to be startled.

Maine looks contemplative. Almost hesitant, but hesitation has never been a lexeme in his body language. Wash waits. Exhaustion drags the moment out to an entirely impossible length, and time dilates again when Maine wraps a careful, warm hand around Wash’s biceps.

“Wash,” Maine says quietly, “you saved my life.”

Wash blinks, mind blank. Some kind of urgency beats back the edges of exhaustion whiting out his mind; he fishes with dull desperation for something to say. That it was no big deal? That it wasn’t a problem? That Wash felt the telltale ice-in-his-gut fear of losing Maine for the first time in years and it’s (more than) slightly terrifying? That it finally clicked for Wash that this is Maine, however different, however changed – it’s Maine?

“I– guess I did,” Wash says instead, ever so eloquently. “I mean,” he tries again, “you saved my life back in the canyon.” He’s never been good at this. “You’re– my partner. That’s what… partners do.”

Maine looks down at him with something in his face that Wash can’t quite pick apart – a little bit of amusement, some gratitude, a hint of genuine affection – and then nods.

“Thank you,” Maine says. He lets his hand fall away from Wash’s arm.

The next few minutes are a blur of mechanical movements. Wash crawls onto the bed, succeeds in curling one arm under the sheets, and is unconscious before the warmth of Maine’s hand has the chance to fade from his skin.

Wash wakes up the following morning with an exceptionally clear head. There’s a narrow window in the room, its UV treatment peeling pitifully, and muddied light warms the negligible space between his cot and Maine’s.

Across the narrow gap, Maine’s broad shoulders are right at eye level. Wash looks, because he can.

The scarred exit wounds from Tucker’s sword are burned dark against his shoulder, two small, scarred knots. It’s some kind of miracle that the sword missed his lungs. More of a miracle that Maine didn’t hit the water with a punctured suit. Wash bites back the old, familiar bile that rises in his throat at the thought of Maine’s life ending in silence, under black frigid water.

He jerks his eyes up and away. The next thing that catches his attention is the same latticework of scars that decorates the back of Wash’s neck, familiar tracks mirroring fingernails clawing desperately at the metal shoved through his occipital bone, laced into his spinal cord. There’s wretched comfort in the sight.

But there’s no sense wasting time dwelling on old wounds, literally or figuratively, and Wash stretches out the full length of the cot before slinking off of it and moving through some easy stretches to work the ache out of his muscles.

It’s a pitiful distraction from what he can’t help but think about, and he gives up after easing the stiffness out of his back. He showers – still not enough to quiet the loop of thoughts that keep floating to the forefront of his mind – and finally gives in once he’s done shaving, skin prickling faintly as the aftershave sinks in, condensation beading at the edges of the small mirror.

He gets along with Maine. They work well together. These are simple facts; they were true many years ago, and they are true again now. But the sweeping discomfort of nostalgia tints everything that Wash feels, always, always, every good memory so deeply drenched in emotion that feels far too much like fact against his own will, all tinted with livewire static that does not belong to him and that he cannot shed. It feels nearly impossible to tell whether this, this, now, is the product of echoes of echoes of a time that died when both their names got modified with KIA, or if there is an actual, real emotional connection slowly starting to sprout roots between himself this new Maine, this older and harsher Maine, this Maine who’s re-forged himself out of smoldering wreckage.

His own tired eyes stare back at him. No answers to be found in a mirror. (Worth a shot anyways, he supposes.)

Maine is sitting up, scruffing a hand through his own hair when Wash exits the bathroom, his fingers caught briefly in a tangle. Wash looks down at him; Maine looks up, slow and contemplative, before leaning down to scoop clothing out of his bag and then take Wash’s place in the bathroom.

They leave in silent, mutual agreement; Wash works on his meal-in-a-bar slowly as they walk without much purpose. Now, in daylight and without the haze of tiredness and worry, Wash is almost certain this building used to be a drydock for smaller ships. The skeleton of it still lurks at the edges, in machinery so large Wash can’t quite comprehend the scale.

Unlike the first base that Wash had seen, it doesn’t look like there are any civilians here. Or if there are, then they’re in an entirely separate area. For better or worse. Plenty of mercs to make up for it, though; almost everyone is out of armor, but there’s something in the way people hold themselves and watch their surroundings.

Wash’s neck prickles with heat. No less than five people already have turned to stare at him and Maine. Probably because of the dramatic entrance he made, collapsing to his knees with Maine slung over his shoulders, not three steps into the broad hangar doors into the base. At least it’s embarrassment, for once, rather than wariness that’s flushing his skin.

They skirt around the medical wing then wind through the garage, mostly aimless, before Wash ducks through a large doorway on a whim and Maine follows. This corner of the base looks like a large training area, mat spaces marked out for sparring and signs denoting a shooting range; a set of distant shouts in an unmistakable cadence makes Wash suspect that there’s a more formal level of training happening here than just mercs keeping up between jobs.

“Are most merc bases repurposed like this?” Wash finally asks as they pass by racks of mismatched weights.

Maine nods, then rescinds it with a gesture.

“Mostly,” he replies. “Armies kept most formal bases. Mercs took what was left.”

It makes sense. Someone walks by and stares intently at Maine, then glances at Wash. Wash’s skin prickles yet again; distantly, someone else shouts in triumph, chased by another voice.

“Chorus is stubborn,” Wash remarks. Maine snorts.

A much closer shout grabs Wash’s attention. He starts; Maine looks down at him, and Wash sees the same thing in his eyes: no matter how long it’s been, there’s something in their blood that demands a reaction to the deep-bellied bellow of a drill instructor. And, well, they’re here, so Wash figures he might as well sate this little bit of curiosity, too. He glances up at Maine and tips his chin towards a thatch of people gathered around a nearby mat.

The spectators are a mixed bag; a few visibly seasoned veterans, some sweating from their cool-downs, some looking eager to warm up, and a smattering of young, young faces spread in the middle. They are cadets, Wash realizes. All dressed in shades of mismatched grays, dotted around the mat, covered in bruises.

“Tosses and takedowns,” the instructor – a tall woman, slender but broad-shouldered – bellows, and the cadets respond in a ragged, mostly affirmative chorus before spreading around the large mat. “Swap every four sets.”

Wash glances up at Maine. A strange, two-pronged nostalgia wells up inside Wash as he stands, looking up at Maine like this, in a training room full of the sound of bodies hitting each other and the mat. He’s been here before and he’s here now again and the gulf of years hangs so heavy around his neck. There are creases, now, at the corners of Maine’s eyes, at the dimples of his cheeks, and they only serve to soften all the clean brutal lines he’s made up of. Wash blinks; he doesn’t know how to ask what he’s trying to ask. He must catch Maine’s attention anyhow, and he watches Maine blink slowly back.

“Need to find new soldiers somewhere,” Maine says, his voice low.

Wash’s stomach twists. Getting kids ready to die because a war against an alien covenant had killed everyone else had been one thing. This civil war trapped in a bottle is something else entirely.

He turns his attention back to the cadets. They’re clumsy but enthusiastic; Wash remembers being sixteen and gangly and feeling an unmistakable rush of power upon figuring out the right combination of leverage and weight and movement to throw someone down onto their back. The instructor weaves deftly between all the sets of flying limbs, correcting here, encouraging there, chatting briefly with some of the bystanders.

It feels all too normal. Nostalgic. He misses sparring. There’s no real way to do it on the road, no reason to exhaust and bruise themselves when their muscle memory has crystallized so beautifully already, when their skills have been tested and re-forged for so many years. Maybe– Wash glances back up at Maine. Maybe one day.

“Hey there, new faces,” calls the instructor’s voice, quieter than her boom and just a shade hoarse for it. “My name’s Aurrey.” She gestures around the mat. “Captain of the second training company here at North Cina Base. Freshest scrubs on the coast. Pleased to have your attention,” she pauses, considering, then raises her chin again, and continues, “M.”

A very small, very significant ripple of awareness passes through the handful of people near them. Wash rifles furiously through all his previous interactions with Chorusans, with mercs, with civilians, as everyone presses in just an inch closer to the mat.

Maine nods at her in greeting. His face doesn’t show any signs of recognition, but something like embarrassed humility is gathering high up in his cheeks, dashed a bit higher as he glances at Wash. At Maine’s nod, Aurrey’s face sets in deep satisfaction, and she nods back.

“You wouldn’t remember me,” she says, her voice quieter again, a little hoarser again, “but you and Lucía saved my partner’s life and mine during that siege in Arcaip. Thanks.” Maine inclines his head again in acknowledgement. That odd, embarrassed set to his jaw settles in deeper as Aurrey smiles, and then looks over at Wash. “Your partner?”

“I’m Wash,” he answers, because that’s the easiest thing to say. Aurrey’s smile hitches back across her face.

“Sad to not see Lucía again,” she says to Maine, “but I’m glad you’ve got someone watching your back.” She glances back towards her cadets. “I’ll leave you be. Thanks again.”

And with that, she slides back into the fray unfurling across the mat, and Wash immediately opens his mouth to ask.

“Later,” Maine says, cutting him off before he can even start. “Promise. Later.”

“Fine. I’m ready to head back, anyways.” Because they’ve got more to discuss, and last night’s notes to go over, and decisions to make, and Wash is going to burn until he’s got that question answered. Maine thins his lips at whatever look Wash is wearing, then turns away from the mat and heads back towards the barracks.

Wash patiently – very patiently – contains his questions until the door locks shut behind them with a soft whir and Maine is seated back down on his bed for lack of anywhere else to sit.

“So,” Wash asks, sitting down on an armor crammed next to the door, “what was that?”

Maine meets his eyes for a good ten seconds before relenting with a sigh, looking away and shifting in his seat.

“I’m a merc here,” Maine says slowly, like he’s thinking it through. “Sam, Lucía–” He pauses, scratches at his jaw, and then reaches down to pull out his datapad. “Here for a year, little more. Sam, from Chorus.”

When Sam and Lucía left Chorus, it wasn’t this bad, Maine continues. They were gone for maybe six months. I helped them out–

“You saved their lives,” Wash interrupts, and it’s half a question.

I did. Maine pauses. They offered for me to come back to Chorus with them. They knew I’d– He pauses again, and then changes his mind. They knew that I was looking for a place to start over.

Wash quietly lets him continue. There’s nothing for him to say.

I helped Sam and Lucía as best I could after we got here. Escorting people, helping both armies if it wasn’t too outlandish, that kind of thing. Sam and Lucía have a rule – they won’t take a job if it means they’re putting civilians in danger. Well– He shrugs. –there really aren’t many civilians left on Chorus, but we do our best. Not a lot of people used to think that way. I guess I kind of made a name for myself, working with Sam and Lucía.

“I don’t understand,” Wash says. There’s something about this – the scope, the breadth, the depth. Something makes him feel like he’s drowning.

Sam and Lucía are– He pauses yet again, shifts like he’s trying to find a word. Everyone knows who they are. They’re the people that you go to. I can use their names anywhere to get what I need. I can– Another pause. Maine lets out a quiet breath. –use mine like that, too. Mercs know me. Usually it’s the armor that gets recognized, though.

“I don’t know anything about you anymore,” Wash says. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, the words dropping heavy off of his tongue. It’s not a reaction he particularly feels like scrambling to recover from.

“Know plenty,” he replies. His eyes are unyielding. “Still the same person.”

“You are not the same–”

Maine smacks a hand down on the table and stands up, and Wash realizes he’s standing too, hackles raised, bristling.

“Think you haven’t changed?” Maine snaps. “Think I don’t–” He exhales sharply. “In Freelancer, working for Chairman, now— think I don’t get lost?”

And there it is again, that yawning gulf, that endless weight of nostalgia, pulling them both under the water.

“I’m sorry,” Wash says quietly, after an acceptably long pause, and slowly sits down. “Everything here is different.” He rubs a hand over his forehead, pinches his nose, digs fingers into his cheeks until he feels teeth. “I’m different, too.”

Too different. Not different enough. When he opens his eyes again, Maine nods at him slowly.

“Change,” he says, very quietly, “‘s’good. Even when hard–” He pauses, looks away. “Hard to look and see, old person.”

Wash swallows with a bone-dry throat.

“Yeah,” he replies. “I get it.”

Last night’s decision, Wash is pleased to find, still holds up after a full night’s sleep. It still makes sense to cross the sea. Maine digs around for something on the local filenet and apparently finds it before shooing them both out of the room; minutes later, Wash finds his boots thumping a little too loudly as they head down a long, dim hallway, almost comically reminiscent of being sent to a CO’s office.

The door at the end of the hall is wide open; Maine seems to have expected this, so Wash lags a step so that Maine can walk in first. The room is small but open, neat, sparse. Maine clears his throat quietly, and the person behind the desk looks up at them.

“Ah,” she says, and sets down her datapad. “The dramatic entrance pair.”

Wash feels his neck heat immediately. Maine says nothing. The woman stands up from her chair with a quiet groan and gives them a very tired smile.

“Metyna Parnit,” she says, and holds out her hand to shake. It’s a simple prosthesis, worn but carefully cared for, and the whirr of joints in her palm is comforting. Maine gives her a small, genuine smile as he shakes her hand in turn. “Call me Parnit. You’re here for a reason.” She tucks her hands into her pockets and leans back easily against her desk. “What can I do for you?”

Her eyes watch Maine carefully. Now that Wash knows what he’s looking for, he can see it: deference. This woman is the de facto head of every merc here, and she’s clearly putting herself at Maine’s – at M’s – beck and call.

Wash glances up at him before answering.

“We need to get to Rasst,” he says.

Parnit leans back further against her desk, crosses one leg over the other at the ankle, and sighs. She’s about their age, but it takes Wash more than just a glance to read that; her face is worn and drawn, eyes tired, hair streaked with gray. Wash wonders if this is what other people see when they look at him.

“Well,” she says, “you’re shit out of luck.” Wash feels a weight of near-pure annoyance drop into his stomach. Maine makes as if to say something, then reconsiders, and doesn’t. “I say this,” Parnit clarifies, looking at them sternly, “because the only transport available is civilian transport. We’ve got one dropship, and it’s grounded on the other side of the Seyyal Sea right now. If you want to get to Rasst any time this month, you need to go the civilian route.”

“And how hard is the civilian route?”

“Depends on how convincingly un-military you can be.” Parnit raises her eyebrows pointedly, and Wash realizes he’s been standing perfectly at parade rest.

Well.

Maine throws Wash an amused look before signing clearly and carefully at Parnit. Wash is pleased that he can now recognize each of the signs that make up Do you speak USL?

“Sorry, but I can’t sign,” she says, shaking her head.

Maine shrugs and pulls his datapad out of his pocket, and gestures at it with a question.

“Works for me,” Parnit replies.

If the civilian way’s the only way, we’ll do it, Maine types out, and makes a resigned gesture, a weary half-shrug. Do people do this often?

“What, use civilian transport?” Maine nods. “Often enough.”

“Do they succeed often?” Wash asks.

“Often enough,” Parnit says, half-amused. “It all depends on how well you can spin your story. You two are clearly capable in a fight, but that’s no marker of how well you can lie through your teeth.” She crosses her arms. “I’ve seen it all. Strangers acting like they’ve been married for 20 years, lifelong partners failing miserably at being on the same wavelength, you name it. Getting seats on a flight is a matter of forged IDs and stolen credits. That’s the easy part.”

Wash wonders for a second just what even counts as an ID on a planet like this. Or as forged, for that matter. Or if it only really counts in the strange bubble that the civilian city of Cina has managed to create for itself, like a blanket over a cage.

Weapons? Armor? types Maine, brow furrowing, deep in thought.

“Boats go between here and Rasst every three days.” She holds up a hand, stopping Wash’s question before he can even say it. “Smuggling equipment is hard enough. Trying to fit people in would change a steady operation into a catastrophically risky one. We use Pelicans to transport people whenever we can, and that’s unreliable, but weapons, ammo, gear–” She waves her hand. “–food, crops, anything like that, we can keep a steady flow with the boats.”

What do we need to get into Cina? Maine asks, and the question feels final. Parnit leans back in her chair and cracks her neck.

“Forged IDs, forged travel permits, a few maps, and one hell of a cover story.”

When Wash glances at Maine, he finds Maine already looking at him. The set of his jaw is clear as day.

“We’ll do it,” Wash says. “Any intel you can give us on the state of things in Cina right now, we’d appreciate.”

Parnit reaches back behind herself and fishes a datapad off of her desk.

“I’ll send you a file with our latest updates,” she says, and seconds later, Maine’s datapad pings. “Business as usual, mostly. Reports say that Cina’s been a bit meaner lately.”

Maine snorts quietly. Wash raises his eyebrows.

“Meaner?”

Parnit smiles wanly.

“Delaying transports, diverging routes,” she says, gesturing, “making trouble for everyone involved. If you’re headed for the other coast, get to Cina sooner rather than later.”

When’s the earliest we can send our gear out? Maine asks.

“Tonight,” Parnit replies, casual as anything. Wash kicks his brain into gear; that’s a lot to prep in a short amount of time, but he and Maine have done worse. “We’ve got a ship leaving at dawn. Bring your bags down to the cargo bay before 2200 and you’ll be set.” Wash opens his mouth, but before he can ask – before Maine can type out his follow-up – she continues, “It’ll take three days for our transport to reach the other side of the Sea. Plenty of time for you to get stuck in Cina.”

“We’ll do it,” Wash replies. “Thank you.”

“I’ll give the cargo crew a heads-up.” Parnit taps briefly through her datapad; the one in Maine’s hands pings again. “There’s your info for all the documents you’ll need. We’ll get them done quickly for you.”

Maine nods once more in thanks. Wash gets the odd sense that Parnit wants to dismiss them, but isn’t sure how.

“We’ll get going, then,” he says, and nods at Parnit as well. “Thanks for your help.”

Parnit’s eyes flick up to Maine, and then back down to him.

“You’re welcome,” she says. Her voice is warm.

Wash had been last in the room; he makes it a point to be first out. That sprawling discomfort in the gap between the Maine he knew then and the Maine he knows now still prickles under his skin, not quite soothed by their earlier conversation, and Maine’s silence means he’s aware of it, too.

The silence stretches – not cold by any means, just dull with strangeness – as they follow the directions Maine had been given down to a cramped office for forged IDs and permits. It’s a fairly streamlined process at North Cina Base, apparently, requiring only a photo and some short answers to short questions. Wash wonders just how often people need to forge IDs and travel permits for themselves, given how quick and painless this is, and given the five or so people that had queued up behind them in the ten minutes it had taken them to get this done.

Wash mentally maps out the rest of the day: restocking ammo and packing their armor crates is the priority, and the documents will be ready by evening. Plenty of time. It’s almost unsettling. They had time like this back in Triymal and in that last little town whose name Wash doesn’t think he ever read off a map, but it still feels so markedly different here: surrounded by others hardened by war and living in it rather than existing desperately at the fringes, clinging to the refusal to accept a violent normality.

Busy hands make the day go by faster, without the horrible molasses crawl of anticipation. Their tiny room feels yawningly huge without the added bulk of armor and weapons crates at the late end of the night, and Wash finally turns to the data from Parnit to keep away a familiar, paranoid itch.

It’s detailed. Exhaustively so. Up-to-date maps of the city, traffic flows, lists of places where people are willing to turn a blind eye, even guard rotations (the irony of guards in a city that refuses to acknowledge a war is nearly comical) for a few locations.

“This dossier has almost everything we could possibly need,” Wash says, breaking their relative silence as he flicks through an extensive collection of overnight stay options. “Timetables, maps, everything. It’s all planned around the time between the sea transport with equipment and the civilian air transport.”

“On our own, on other side,” Maine reminds him. “Just us. No guide.”

“Isn’t that how it’s been so far?” Wash asks. Maine blinks at him, slow and considering.

“Guess so,” he concedes, albeit with warmth coloring his voice.

Wash looks back down at the map of Rasst and its surrounding area on the opposite coast. Maine’s already marked it up with a few potential overnight stays, emergency routes, and the pickup dock for their armor and weapons. Wash marks another emergency route, and then zooms out further.

“What’s this building out here?” he asks, and projects the map out between them.

“Old comms facility, used to be Rasst’s. Been abandoned, but–” Maine shrugs. “–chance there’s info. Easy source of data.” Maine makes another gesture; if we get lucky. Wash nods. “If not, keep pushing towards Armonia, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Wash echoes quietly. The closer they get to Armonia, the more difficult things will be. Probably. At least, he assumes so. “Well, let’s focus on getting across the sea, and hope we’re going in the right direction.” He takes down the comms facility’s coordinates and marks it on his own maps, then tackles the last thing on his mental list. “We still need a cover for the time we’re in Cina.”

“Not my problem,” Maine replies disinterestedly, and pauses in tracing his way through a map of the city to sign I can’t speak at him glibly. Wash scoffs.

“So if we run into someone who speaks USL and you fuck it up–”

Maine cuts him off with an exasperated noise and pushes the hologram map away from where it’d been glowing between the two of them, staring up at Wash. The empty crate he’s sitting on is tilted onto its back-most edge.

“Fine,” he says. “Idea?”

Wash frowns and takes a few seconds to reply, looks down at his datapad without really reading anything.

“There’s more people over there, right?” Maine gives him a half-shrug that isn’t entirely positive. “So we’re… looking for relatives, maybe. Moving to be closer to friends or family.”

Maine shrugs again, and then narrows his eyes in thought. There’s a sinking feeling in Wash’s stomach as he watches the proverbial lightbulb go off over Maine’s head. The crate thunks back onto its bottom plane.

“Married.”

“What?”

Maine looks at him, eyebrows raised.

“Makes sense,” he says. “Good reason to travel together. Besides, sympathy.”

Wash crosses his arms.

“So we’re about to try and sneak into a city that’s pulled the wool over its own eyes about this civil war in order to smuggle ourselves onto a transport across the ocean, and your brilliant suggestion for a cover is to pretend we’re married.”

Maine makes a you asked, I answered sort of gesture. Wash drags his hands down his face.

“I can’t believe I’m considering this,” he mutters.

“Logical,” Maine offers, and shrugs. “Less suspicious, traveling together.”

“Alright, fine,” Wash says, and he can feel one of the last scraps of his dignity fade into nothingness. “If people start acting weird, then we can just–” The words bottle up in his chest. Heat crawls over the nape of his neck; the same thing that’s been lurking under his skin the entire time they’ve been here. He clears his throat. “The less detailed this whole… cover story thing is, the easier it’ll be to work with when need be. We just need some–”

“Boundaries,” Maine interrupts, albeit gently, and crosses his arms. “You talk. Good liar. I’ll play along.”

“I can’t just drop something like, ‘hey, by the way, we’re definitely married and not mercs working together’ and expect people to believe me,” Wash reminds him. “I know how to be a soldier, not a civilian.”

Maine processes a thought for a few seconds, then uncrosses his arms.

“Know, not big on being touched, but–”

“It’s okay,” Wash interrupts. He knows what Maine’s getting at. “It’s fine, Maine. I don’t care.”

“Me, anything, anywhere,” Maine says, gesturing to himself and shrugging. “You– shoulders? Back?”

“That’s fine.”

“Hands?”

“It’s fine, seriously–”

“Kissing?”

Wash pauses at that, slightly taken aback, and then appraises him.

“Well, I’ve survived worse.”

Maine rolls his eyes impatiently.

“Serious.”

“I am serious,” Wash retorts, “I really don’t mind. It’s fine. This isn’t– this is survival on a mission.”

Maine has a strange look on his face – part surprise, part gratitude, of all things, and something else Wash isn’t sure of – but this is an intensely awkward conversation and Wash would like out, please.

“So.” Wash clears his throat. “We can make our way to Cina tomorrow, like Parnit suggested. If we get delayed, we get delayed. At least we’ll be in Cina itself by that point. Hopefully.”

Maine makes a noise of agreement, and then rolls his shoulders back and glances around the room. Wash follows his gaze to each spot where their armor should be, where their weapons should be. It’s weird. It’s weird being in an active war zone without his full kit of weapons. He’d be hard-pressed to think of the last time he wasn’t in some kind of active war zone, and he hasn’t been without weapons like this for even longer than that.

When his head hits the pillow, he wonders if there will ever be a time where he thinks the opposite.

Wash wakes up to the distinct feeling that something is wrong, and it takes a couple of seconds for consciousness to settle in. The room is small, but it swallows noise; the rustle of their sheets, the soft hush of the shower, none of it had reverberated in this too-small space.

The ragged breaths tearing thunderously through the air are not shielded in the slightest.

Wash’s first, overwhelmed-with-dread thought is that the medics had made some kind of mistake and that Maine’s injuries are way worse than they’d seemed. He opens his eyes to Maine’s dimly outlined silhouette, sitting up with his shoulders bowed. Even in this near-nonexistent light, Wash can see the tension in his muscles.

“Maine,” he tries. His voice comes out quiet, raspy with sleep, but still far too loud.

Maine flinches, full-bodied, at the sound of his name. He glances over at Wash in the barest sign of acknowledgement; Wash slowly pushes himself upright. Maine’s breaths are heavy, uneven, but his eyes are clear as he drags a shaking hand through the cold sweat on his face, blinking at Wash a little too rapidly. Wash doesn’t know what he would have done if he’d woken to Maine’s face set once more in that clouded, expressionless cast he’d last seen on Sidewinder.

When it becomes clear that Maine is just going to keep looking at him, Wash slowly shuffles to the edge of his own bed and slides his legs off the side to mirror Maine. The air is cold on his skin, but welcome. Wakening. Maine watches him like it’s revolutionary that he’s even moving at all.

Wash is careful to give no signs of rebuke as Maine reaches out to put a hand on Wash’s shoulder; he squeezes so tightly that Wash can feel his circulation starting to get cut off. Maine takes a few shaky breaths like that, and then, unexpectedly, moves his hand to briefly touch the edge of Wash’s face before sliding his hand back down to rest with a little more ease on Wash’s shoulder.

“Alive,” Maine says, so quietly that Wash almost misses it, and Maine squeezes his eyes shut before bonelessly pushing himself up off of the bed and practically stumbling towards the bathroom. The shower starts going almost immediately after Maine closes the door.

Wash checks the time and decides he’s rested as much as he’s going to rest, so he figures he might as well get the day started. Maine takes just slightly longer than normal in the shower; by the time he gets out, Wash has shuffled around all his now-meager belongings and has started stretching through some tightness in his hips. He stands up straight when Maine quietly closes the door behind him and gives him a very long look. Wash feels an incredibly strong urge to ask Maine what he needs, but somehow the thought of saying it out loud is completely ludicrous.

Maine sits down, very slowly, at the edge of the bed. He’s still got the towel in his hands, as if he’s trying to keep them busy; the collar of his shirt is damp where beads of water are still rolling out of his hair. Wash slowly keeps moving, slowly starts to gather up his toiletries for a shower; he makes it as clear as he can that he’s not trying to rush out of this situation, that he’s trying to keep this open.

“Killed a lot,” Maine says very quietly, right when Wash reaches for the door handle. He turns around. Maine doesn’t meet his eyes. “See ‘em all dead. Almost every night.”

Wash swallows, throat dry. He’s familiar with those dreams. Armor sprawled on the ground, limp, empty. Eyes staring at him through the visor with a single accusation.

“Sometimes–” Maine clenches his jaw. “–can’t remember. Not sure if I killed York, South.” He pauses and then, much quieter: “You.”

Wash exhales slowly. The only action that makes sense is to sit down next to Maine so he does, careful to keep space between them. It takes him a few seconds to find his voice.

“The UNSC came to clean up afterwards, on Sidewinder. They asked us what happened, where you were, and where the AI were.” Wash pauses and looks down at his hands. “Sarge and Grif tried to get me to come with them to the side of the cliff, to check for your body along with the UNSC personnel. I– couldn’t.” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Maine turn his head to look at him. “I wish I’d gone, just to see… something. For two weeks straight, every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was–-” He swallows, hard. “Just– armor, all piled up wrong. Your armor.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why–” Maine gestures, unsure. “–react?”

Wash laces his fingers together, tightly, and refuses to make eye contact with Maine.

“You can lose yourself to an AI when things go wrong,” he says, and it feels like he’s stumbling over his words. “But they can’t wipe you out. Not completely.”

He doesn’t really know how to go on. He also doesn’t really want to go on.

But Maine places a very gentle hand on his knee before standing up, and Wash is pretty sure Maine knows what he’d been trying to say.

The journey to Cina is long. A surprisingly civilian-looking shuttle takes Wash, Maine, their gear, and a couple of other mercs to a train line and drops them off at a few different train stations, presumably to keep the general level of suspicion down; the train towards the city takes up the meat of the day, and Wash even dozes off a few times.

It’s dusk once they get off the train, and Wash feels horrifyingly unbalanced with only a duffel bag and none of his gear. There’s a queue forming where all of the exit signs are pointing, and Wash trades a long look with Maine. Things are going to be much different now, and there’s not much that he or Maine can do about that.

“C’mon,” Wash says quietly, then steps primly out of his comfort zone and reaches out to touch Maine at the small of his back. Surprise flashes across Maine’s face and then he smiles with just the slightest edge of satisfaction before putting a hand between Wash’s shoulder blades in return, lightly urging him forward.

Alright. This isn’t too weird. Wash can get used to this. Probably.

He’s about to comment on how worried he is about their appearance when Maine picks up his duffel, slings it over his shoulder, and changes his demeanor entirely. He lets the duffel pull down at his frame, slouches in on himself, lowers his head, and at first glance Wash can barely recognize this person as his partner. Maine almost looks small like this, almost completely unremarkable among the crowd of equally beat-looking people shuffling towards the queueing area.

So Wash forces the military rigidity out of his spine and picks up his duffel as well, then trades another look with Maine before joining the press of bodies moving away from the train platform.

It seems like everything is moving along at a steady pace – streamlined, as it were – and Wash is frankly a little surprised. He’d figured that in a place as uptight about suspicious travelers as this, it’d take more time to get in and out of the city, but whatever’s happening at the gate they’re being funneled into seems to be happening fairly quickly. Whatever trouble Parnit had been referring to, it’s not here at the gates. At least, not visibly.

Wash pulls the forged documents out of the inner pocket of his jacket and rifles through them – a government ID, nicely scuffed and banged up, some miscellaneous scraps of paper, a few credit chips. It all looks worn, like it’s crap that’s been drifting organically in his pockets for years. Wash can only hope it’ll serve him well.

Armed guards are directing the flow of people, guiding newcomers towards a row of checkpoints with the kind of efficiency that comes from years of practice. Armed guards. The irony of having what essentially amounts to a militia in a city that’s supposed to be a hundred percent civilian and military-free is almost hilarious.

Maine gets directed to a different checkpoint line, and Wash feels a very unfamiliar spike of anxiety wedge itself into his sternum. There is absolutely no way to do anything about this situation so Wash just keeps shuffling forward and throwing glances at Maine, hoping against hope that he doesn’t come off as suspicious. Regardless of any of his actions, though, the second he opens his mouth, he’s outed as an off-worlder. The more time he’s spent listening to Chorusans talk, the more self-conscious he feels about the way his speech immediately makes him other.

Each queue ends at a small booth, unremarkable, but staffed with people rather than terminals. There’s a stern armed guard standing next to an official who’s got a carefully cultivated air of boredom about them, but their eyes are sharp as they take in the face (and documents) of everyone moving past, quick and efficient in how they process every incoming person. When it’s finally Wash’s turn, he tries not to brace himself.

“Documents.”

Wash hands them over.

“Traveling alone?”

“My–” He looks over at Maine automatically, at the booth over and with one person ahead of him, and their eyes meet. “My spouse.”

They squint down at Wash’s documents and then back up at their screen, one more time, then they hand back his ID and wave him past.

“Welcome to Cina.”

Wash holds in a sigh of relief and readjusts his bag before moving a few meters past the booth to watch as Maine passes through his own booth, looking equally as relieved – and trying to hide it – as Wash walks up to him. Wash is feeling more than just slightly awkward about this situation and the cover they’re supposed to be hiding behind, but Maine puts a hand on his shoulder with ease as they follow the crowd towards the city proper, and Wash can’t help but also feel uneasy about how little issue they’d run into at what should have been their biggest obstacle.

And then, as if on cue, a short, quiet alarm blares. Half the people in the crowd pause and look around, along with Wash and Maine. Wash tries hard to play this off to himself as blending in with the other civilians, but no: it’s paranoia, plain and simple. The source of the commotion isn’t immediately clear, until Maine nudges him and tips his chin over to one of the far booths.

Sure enough, four of the armed guards are quickly and efficiently moving to restrain someone, struggling hard, and Wash catches a few words that sound like a vain attempt at an explanation. Everyone who’d stopped to check out the ruckus is starting to turn away like this is something they shouldn’t be acknowledging, so Wash shares a look with Maine and starts moving with the crowd again.

Cina is beautiful. It’s the first thing that really hits him once they move past the industrial gates, past the booths and the building and the guards. It’s untouched by war, architecture that looks new to Wash’s childhood memories, to the pre-war photos he’d seen. The streets are wide so they can house pedestrians, not facilitate evacuations. The clothing he sees on the people who walk without the weight of gravity on their shoulders looks anything but plain. There’s warm food displayed in the windows they walk past.

Nausea gathers low in Wash’s stomach. Hating the war is one thing. That, Wash understands intimately. But pretending it’s not happening is another entirely. The hard set of Maine’s jaw indicates that he agrees.

In the end, the trip through the city itself ends up pretty damn unremarkable. Unremarkable in a way that only compounds the lurking paranoia that something is going to happen, simply because nothing has so far. Things usually go south much more quickly than this.

Taking the train through the city was unremarkable, walking to their overnight accommodation was unremarkable, getting their room key was unremarkable, and by the time Wash sets his bag down, he’s almost expecting to be ambushed in the small room. His skin is crawling.

Maine finally lets out a sigh, rolls his eyes, and says, “What?”

“What?”

“Been tense since we got here. What?”

Wash gestures at him indignantly.

“Doesn’t this seem a little too easy?”

Maine rolls his eyes again and half-huffs, half-groans in response.

“Easy so far, can deal with hard when it comes. Take it as is,” he says, and crosses his arms with a finality Wash can’t debate.

From there, the evening slides slowly into something just as unremarkable as the rest of the day had been, but Maine’s calmness is a balm to Wash’s jangling nerves. It could certainly be going worse, he repeats to himself for the millionth time, and lets his thoughts fall back to something else, a problem he can actually solve as they quietly kill time.

“What’s the sign for ‘spouse?’”

It’s occured to Wash, quite belatedly, that this is something he should know how to say, even with his extremely limited grasp of USL so far. Maine looks up from where he’d been buried in his datapad with the slight grogginess that comes from getting interrupted while in one’s head, and then slowly, clearly signs at him. Wash puts down the shirt he’d been mending out of sheer restlessness and signs it back. Maine nods. It’s so much easier now to sign back when Maine shows him something, now that he understands more of USL. How to pick it apart. He only wishes he’d started learning sooner.

“‘Husband,’” Maine continues, then signs, and waits for Wash to sign it back. “‘Married.’” Waits again, nods again when Wash signs it right.

“This is ridiculous,” Wash mutters, but a good-natured smile curls up the corner of his mouth. He shakes his head with incredulity and picks up his needle and thread again, starts searching for the seam from the inside of the shirt. Another tangible problem he can solve.

Getting food – dinner, he supposes, since it’s well in the evening now – had gone without a hitch, and the pessimist in him is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Moreover, the room feels empty and unsettling without their armor crates and weapons, only inhabited by half-empty duffels filled with just clothing and MREs.

“Penny, thoughts,” Maine says.

“I just… I don’t like this,” Wash admits. The needle slides easily through the worn cotton. “I don’t like waiting here, like sitting ducks. Today was almost too easy.”

“Still?” Maine huffs, but there’s no malice or annoyance in his voice. “Turn out fine. Besides, if caught–” He raises an eyebrow, mouth turning up. “–really think we couldn’t take them?”

Wash smiles back despite himself.

Wash hasn’t been in an airport in years. Spaceports and hangars, sure, but nothing even remotely like this. The security check is short, almost brutally so, and they get quickly hustled into a waiting area unlike anything Wash remembers of civilian airports; open, bare, almost clinical.

Everything happens exactly as it’s been outlined in the dossier they’d been given. They wait for roughly twenty early-morning minutes, watching families milling around, and then the intercom announces their transport, their queueing area, the approximate wait time they have left until boarding begins.

Maine is nervous as they line up in their queueing area. Wash knows that it’s most likely not obvious to anyone else, but Maine is unnaturally relaxed, ironically enough, which is how Wash can tell that something’s gotten to him. Funny, that. Wash feels better today than he did the day before. The dossier had been up to date. There are no immediate, obvious red flags. Everything is happening the way it should be happening.

“Everything okay?” Wash asks, and, figuring this is probably a good time for it, he gently touches Maine’s forearm.

Maine shrugs offhandedly in response and smiles, but his face is tight. Another announcement drones from the loudspeaker: tickets out, boarding will begin shortly, please prepare to board.

“Well, we’ve gotten this far,” Wash mutters, and Maine huffs out a quiet laugh.

Everyone shuffles into a ragged queue, mostly obedient. Wash pulls up the ticket on his datapad just to have it done, and then makes a point to stand closer to Maine than he normally would. Their jackets brush with a soft rasp. Outside the large windows, the sky looks dull and gray; there are raindrops pearling along the glass, but Wash doesn’t see any rain coming down. Probably stopped just after they got inside the airport.

WIth another grating, crackling announcement on the loudspeaker, guards start walking along the line, counting heads; Wash forces himself to not pay them any mind. He thinks he can hear the thrum of engines outside; the sooner they board, the better. Maine shifts next to him and then frowns, eyes flicking carefully between the guards, and then with a rushing release of his willpower Wash notices that there’s some kind of commotion at the head of the line. He’s about to say something to Maine when–

“Listen up,” a guard booms from the head of the line, “we’re over-capacity for this flight to Rasst. Anyone whose ticket number is over 145, you’re on the transport to Marmur.”

Ah. And now, what Parnit had said makes complete and terrible sense. Hushed mutters spread through the crowd; Wash shuffles one half-step closer to Maine. Their elbows touch.

“And from there?” someone calls out from the head of the line, voice angry. “What, we’ll just be stranded?”

“It’s not our business what you do,” snaps another guard. “You want to cross the Seyyal Sea, you’re crossing the Seyyal Sea.”

Maine grabs his forearm in a vice-grip that grinds the bones in his wrist. Wash looks up at him, startled, then looks down at the datapad Maine is holding out to him.

Maine’s ticket reads 98.

Wash looks down at his own. 152.

Maine throws a surreptitious glance over at the nearest guard before wrapping his hands around Wash’s biceps and pulling him aside, moving close.

“It’ll be fine,” Wash automatically says, even though there’s a 99% chance that’s a lie. He’s looked at maps. Marmur is just over a hundred klicks down the coast from Rasst, over a ridge of mountains. The chances of him traveling that far without reliable transport or long-range comms are incontestably bleak.

“Won’t be,” says Maine, and a wry smile spreads across his face, missing his eyes by a mile. “Gonna stay in Rasst. Wait for… stuff to come. Wait for you.”

“I can make it to Rasst,” Wash says firmly. “If I have to steal a few cars, so be it.”

“Tickets out, let’s get moving,” barks a guard. “Don’t even think about swapping tickets. Everything’s coded to your ID. Move, people.”

Wash’s hand snaps out to mirror Maine’s grip on his biceps in a knee-jerk reaction that surprises himself, fingers digging into Maine’s arm like a vice. Wash feels a pit starting to yawn open in his chest, black and full of dread, and then there’s a moment where everything just stops, like some great cosmic pause button’s been hit, and all that exists for Wash is Maine’s arm under his hand, Maine’s hand wrapped tightly around Wash’s arm, and there’s only one thought drowning out everything else: please let this not be the last time he sees Maine.