Chapter Text
TW: references to torture and drugs
Fingers pried open your right eye before you even opened it. Scorching light spat down onto it. Then a jab in your left shoulder. What in the fuck? Your senses clawed through a thick and sickening fog, pain piercing the veils draped over your consciousness.
Pain was gnawing at your wrists. Burning, cuts and carvings burning through your thighs. Each breath scraped the inside of your lungs. Violent tremors wracked through your body. Your left eye throbbed uselessly.
Midazolam. Must have been what those bastards used on you. Little syringes, clear as glass lies. No pain. Then, drowsiness. Confusion. Detachment. Dissociation. That’s what you’ve seen and felt. Then you thought you were lying. You’re sure you must have managed to lie through the confusion. Afterwards, nothing. Someone took the film strip of your mind and smeared the frames black. Perhaps that’s their mercy.
If you talked, you don’t remember it. But God, you hope you didn’t.
The ceiling pulsed above you, now far too dark at once. The shadows in the corners crawled - long, spindly fingers that folded into themselves when you blinked. The tremors were getting worse.
Yet, the pain was foreign, muted, like a radio playing in the next room, crackling through the wall. You drifted somewhere above it, detached, feeling your own wreckage behind locked doors. How confusing for you, spectator of your own demise. Maybe this is the end.
Then, it crashed back all at once, violently. Your spine arched with the jolt of it, like your nervous system had just rebooted mid-scream. Blood pounded against your eardrums. A sharp gasp tore out of your throat, only to splinter into a choked cough. The suddenly white-hot light above you seared your vision through fluttering lashes, and your stomach lurched sideways. There was an uneven hum in the background.
Maybe this was it. Afterlife.
You were still tied down. The straps bit into your abdomen. You couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Static shivered through your jaw. A hand pressed flat against your chest. Flickers hovered just beyond focus, pulsing and gone like something alive. Swarms of lights.
A booming voice over you. “L.T., he's up, Jesus, fuckin’ hell, breathe, mate. You’re safe. You’re out. We’ve got you. You’re on a bird.”
Wait, what? Who’s that? Another one of them? No. No, this was different. The air was rushing. Thudding. The stink of rot was gone. Something cold brushed your cheek. Your right eye, half-lidded and burning, caught a blurry British flag, almost swallowed by the haze.
Is this real? A dream? A fucking trick? Did you have another choice than to believe him?
The hand tapped twice on your chest. It made you lurch forward violently.
You tried to speak, but your tongue caught on your teeth. Heavy. Swollen. Your mouth was full of metal, thick and warm. Blood?
“Tac,” you slurred, barely above a breath. Or the idea of one. “T-Tac… where's Tac? N’ Toe…?”
The voice hesitated. And so did your heart. Then it sighed. “They’re in another ride.’
Your chest convulsed, lungs catching on something sharp. Panic, or hope. “They - they’re okay?” you asked. “They got out?”
Silence. The kind that wraps around you like gauze. Sedative. Gentle. Too gentle.
“Aye,” the voice then replied. “They’re stable. Gettin’ looked after. Same as you.”
Relief broke like a bone. You nodded. “Thanks. They… prom’sed…S-said we’d go… t’gether. Last one out, no one left behind.” Your vision melted sideways, you body unresponsive. Maybe it wasn't you. Maybe the sky suddenly tilted. Your teeth clacked together hard. You tasted blood. This time, fresh. Your words bubbled through the hot, metallic warmth.
“For fuck's sake, he’s bit his tongue!" the voice snapped. "Christ, L.t., can ye not fly straight fer once, ya eejit?”
They were alive.
They were alive.
You were gone before the relief finished echoing. And the darkness that followed wasn't kind, but it wasn't Hell. They were alive. That was the promise. For now, that would do.
First comes naïveté. Then stupidity. Then idiocy. And then - then there's you.
You should have known better than to believe what the voice had said. Calm. Reassuring. Bastard. Liar. Traitor. Bloddy son-of-a-bitch- That- Whoever he was, whatever he thought he was doing, one day, if you ever find him, you’ll thank him for dragging your half-dead body out of hell… and then you’ll put your hands around his throat and squeeze until he can’t feed you another lie.
Tac and Toe weren't extracted with you.
They were left behind. Or worse. You try to not think about the worst.
The truth rotted beneath your skin. Yet, your mind slipped. The details were slowly scrubbed away from you as one day stretched onto the other. You were not allowed to remember. Against your own mind, the details of your interrogation slipped from your grasp. That's funny. Toe used to say that you're not the brightest of the group. "Lights on, but no one's home." You wished he'd tell you that once more, so you could punch him again for it. Just to know he was still breathing.
Either way, by the time the film reel started playing again, you were already in Ramstein. Some NATO hospital, generic walls, generic doctors, generic nurses. Standard procedures carried out in careful voices. Standard questions, answers duly noted. The voice was gone. So was your squad. The pain subsided. Your left eye disappeared behind thick gauze. You could not see your thighs through the bandages. But not everything vanished. You remembered enough. Enough to know something had gone horribly wrong. Just enough to know the presence of all that was missing.
You were still trying to place the accent of the voice from the chopper when a soft knock broke your focus, mid-slurp of a lukewarm chicken noodle soup. You already knew who it was.
Laswell stepped in with that calm, unreadable look she always wore. She paused just inside the door, taking out a small container.
“These are the cookies that my wife has made you. She says hi. The JTF2 sent me instead of your WO,” she said. “They want to pull you out. Said it’s time for an honourable discharge. Said you've earned it. Called you a good kid.”
"You'd think that after all these years, they'd have the decency to do it themselves after lending me out to you."
She just stared at you. Right. Then, she asked: “You feel alright about that?”
You didn’t answer. The silence stretched out, heavy and slow. She knew the answer. She glanced at the heart monitor beside your bed. “Look,” she said, voice tighter now, “I can pull some strings. Get you transferred to another unit once you’re cleared. Maybe CIA. Somewhere that’ll take you. Somewhere you can still do some good.”
"You know that that's not what's important to me, Laswell."
Laswell gave you a slight nod, as if she expected it. She crossed the room and sat down without asking. Her voice lowered.
“Tac and Toe…” She hesitated, just a second too long. “They’re MIA. Presumed KIA. ”
The world didn’t stop, but it should have. Your hand clenched around the spoon. Your throat constricted. Bile and soup surged up and tears punched to the corners of your eyes. You pulled back your head. Swallowed. Breathed - in or out? Out. And in. Air was not coming in. Breathed in. In. You were choking. In, dammit. You coughed. Breathed in again. Slowly. Slowly suffocating. You coughed again. Try to breathe out.
“You’re lying.” Your voice was hoarse, even to your ears. “They’re not dead. They’re not.”
“ We didn’t recover them. Best guess is that they were displaced before our people got there. It means that there's still a chance. Until we know for sure, I won't close their files in the CIA,” Laswell said gently. “We have no further intel. I’m telling you what’s on record.”
“That's not what the voice said." Your eyes stung, your chest caved in on itself. You whispered: “They’re mine. You can't take them from me. Please.” The last word shattered as it left your lips, small and broken. Pathetic. "They're still there. You have to go back for them. I can go. Yeah. I'll get better, then I'll go and get them back. I just need you to organize my transport. Please. We can't just leave them there."
Laswell didn’t flinch. Briefly (or maybe you imagined it), she looked tired. Or guilty. Or maybe nothing. "Then get well first, Tick. What's the voice? You're hearing one?"
Did you answer that? You're not quite sure that you did. But you do remember your tears mixing with the chicken noodle soup. Gross.
The lights stayed on. No one was home. Which hardly mattered: since then, there has been no home.
You've decided that you're going to find them yourself
No matter how long it takes. No matter how cold the track will be at that point. You'll feed on every scrap of information and claw your way to them. Dig until your fingernails are gone, until your fingers bleed, until something gives. Because you have to.
It might take years.
That is evident; so you accept that now. In the slow, solemn way someone accepts winter's first snows. Accept that for years maybe there will only be fields and fields of blank space to thread through. But that's alright. You'll learn to dig through the cold. It will be a long season. Inevitable, but not forever.
One day you'll reach them. You have to believe that. No, you do believe that,
Nor Tac, nor Toe would go down this easily.
Not Toe with his crooked grin and his endless, southern charm. He's always had his way of making war feel a little less like hell. Field surgery on a Humvee felt like a stroll on the porch with him around. He had a joke for everything, even the things that shouldn’t be joked about. Especially those. And somehow, he made it work.
Not Tac, who was your anchor, Tac's never told you that he was proud of you, or that he believed in you. But the way he stood beside you in the aftermath of every mission, he didn't need to. Calm and level-headed, Tac had this way of looking at you like he already knew you’d get through it, even when you didn’t believe it yourself. In that look was everything he'd never have said. "You’ve got this.", "You’ll make it.". "I’ve got your back". You’d come to count on that silence like you did on oxygen. Still do.
And Toe. Oh, Toe hated the fact that Tac was promoted Sergeant first. You’d never seen a man sulk so dramatically while fighting so hard to hide his smile. For two weeks, he had muttered about how “quiet doesn’t equal leadership”, knowing full well that Tac just sipped his coffee, five feet away, unfazed. You and Toe were stuck at Master Corporal like bad jokes without a punchline, while Tac got to play Dad like he'd always been meant for it.
Once, in private, Toe even mockingly saluted him with the most disrespectful salute imaginable (to Toe), with three fingers and a wink.
But it was all in good faith. Toe had a special way of lingering a little longer when Tac was around. Used to nudge him during debriefs just to watch the poor man blink. You’d caught Toe watching Tac afterward, like he was waiting for something. A crack, anything. Tac just blinked at him, then continued. Oblivious as ever. Maybe too oblivious. Once, Toe had said that Tac's resting face made him feel "oddly safe and wildly judged all at once." Tac hadn’t even blinked at that either. He'd just raised an eyebrow and passed him the mission file.
They were your world. Tick was the little dumb one. Smiled too easily, cared a little too much, missed some cues here and there, believed in people after all the evidence to the contrary. Tick was nothing without Tac and Toe. Tick did not work alone.
That's the thing about parasites. They die without their hosts.
But you were never meant to be a parasite. More like a canvas. After all, that's how you three had gotten your callsigns. You'd passed out on the cot, bone-tired, when a drunken Toe had gotten his hands on a sharpie and got himself and Tac into your room. You should have known better. Hell, Tac should have known better. But maybe Tac was also drunk. Or maybe too amused to stop Toe. He never really did, when Toe got like that.
You had woken up groggy, still shaking off the exhaustion of training. You hadn't found a clean shirt to slip on that morning. It was only when Toe kicked your door open with breakfast in hand and burst into one of his wheezy laughing fits that realised something was off. That always meant trouble.
You looked down and noticed the game of Tic-Tac-Toe scrawled on your left chest. A full game; and Tac had won. He always played Xs.
That’s how it started. Tac. Toe. Tick. Somehow, it had stuck. It was still sticking.
And they’re still out there. Somewhere. You feel it in your bones - in that same quiet place inside you that used to settle when Tac was near, that same breath of laughter that Toe used to drag out of you when nothing was funny. And you, the idiot, the parasite, the dumb one, you're going to bring them home.
Hope was sour in your chest. Hope meant that they were still alive.
And you would not let that sparkle go out. Not while there was even a flicker left.