9. Revert
Failed escape attempt, anticipated violence, stripped, concussion, firearms mention, referenced starvation, implied beating, vaguely implied noncon
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Harrison startled as the Wolf snatched his elbow. They had only been walking for a few minutes - half an hour at most - and they hadn’t gotten particularly far given Harrison’s weak body and wheezing lungs.
Which made the pause all the most frustrating.
“What - " He yelped as the Wolf put a hand over his mouth. The larger man’s eyes were furtively scanning the dark stairs above them, head on a swivel. In the indirect shine of the flashlight, Harrison would hazard to say those dark eyes were bright with fear.
“What is it?” He pulled away the hand, whispering as softly as he could. The Wolf flinched, looking down at him with abject terror.
“They’re back.” The words were squeezed from his throat, panicked breaths heaving from his heavy chest. “Go - go up. Hide - don’t let them catch you. Go.”
“Wolf - dammit - don’t!” Harrison stage whispered, hissing through his teeth as the Wolf’s heavy footfalls sped quickly back to the bunker. Harrison was too tired to run after him. He looked down the shadowed stairs with an ache in his chest. He would get out. Get help. Come back for him.
The Wolf didn’t deserve it, but he didn’t deserve starving to death in that hell either.
And Harrison couldn’t stand the thought of any more blood on his hands -
There was movement beyond the wall, the mechanical whine of electricity. The elevator. The elevator was going down.
That was good for him, right? Run up, hope they didn’t have a team taking the stairs, hope he could get out of whatever lay above. Hope he could get a vehicle - or otherwise navigate the desert and find civilization. Something that resembled safety.
They would probably move the Wolf before he could get anyone to come back for him. If they were merciful, they would kill the Wolf here. Harrison knew Goldtooth wasn’t merciful.
He crept back down the stairs, arguing in his head about the decision with every step. He hated the Wolf - he hated Goldtooth - he wasn’t going to save the Wolf he was going to - to check on him. Survey the situation.
(Always the hero, always trying to help, always getting everyone else hurt and killed and worse.)
—
“Where is he?”
Harrison wasn’t sure what he expected, but the curl of a Boston accent in Goldtooth’s English voice was enough to startle him to stillness in the shadows of the stairwell. The elevator doors were open, empty.
He could slip inside and ride away.
The harsh sound of a fist meeting flesh made him flinch from the idea.
“What? Cat got your tongue?” Goldtooth’s snarl had none of its usual sadistic amusement. He was enraged. There was a beep and crackle of static. “Anders, sweep the stairs. We’re down a volunteer.”
The response was too distant and muffled to hear, but Goldtooth huffed an unamused chuckle.
“Bitch either finally grew a pair or is as dumb as he looks and lost track of H after escaping.” Goldtooth’s voice rumbled low. “I didn’t say you could get out of the Box, did I?”
“No sir.” The Wolf wasn’t supposed to sound so small, so tired.
Harrison dared to creep forward, casting a glance down the hall. There weren’t any other soldiers.
“Last time I’ll ask: where’s H at?” The silence that followed was punctuated with a sharp slap. “No more questions. Red Room and strip. I’m not going to enjoy this nearly as much as I want to.”
Harrison breathed slowly through his mouth, pressing into the shadows as Goldtooth marched from the Wolf’s room to the weapons locker. Harrison couldn’t see, but from the sound of it, the Wolf had gone down the hall to the left - the door across from the water room.
He dared to poke his head out as Goldtooth stalked from the locker, neglecting to close it behind himself. For a split second Harrison feared he would be seen as the soldier turned to enter the Red Room, but all that followed was a slamming door.
The Wolf didn’t have long.
The weapons locker was stuffed to the brim with implements Harrison was far too familiar with. At first his heart sank, seeing firearms and ammunition behind a locked gate. But then his foot hit the handle of what he assumed was Goldtooth’s discarded weapon. A silenced semiautomatic - the same model Harrison had held so many months before as their helo took off from the air base.
Holding a loaded weapon in his hands had never felt so satisfying as he crept toward the door, double checking the hallway was clear. Goldtooth had asked a separate team to sweep the stairs, but they sure as hell wouldn’t be down here anytime soon.
For a brief moment he paused, eye catching the sterile white peeking through the ajar door across from the weapons locker. The Wolf had called it the White Room -
Focus, Harrison.
The Red Room door had slammed shut, but he hadn’t heard a lock engage. He could certainly hear the two on the other side.
“Slow down, I’m not in a rush.” Goldtooth’s laugh burned like acid in Harrison’s stomach. “All you had to do was say something - he went up the stairs, he hid in the elevator shaft - but no, your dumbass forgot the first rule: do as I say. Anders will find him - or what’s left of him - and if he’s lucky I won’t have a new chewtoy.
Now - slow the fuck down, one button at a time, nice and easy. And quit crying like a little bitch for fuck’s sake.”
Harrison was a goddamn Marine. He had seen live combat. He had killed before. It certainly wasn’t for lack of will that he found himself on his back, dazed with a gold-toothed smile baring down at him.
He was half starved and certainly dehydrated. He didn’t know the layout of the Red Room - a dark, dank place so thick with the iron of old blood. He wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t strong enough.
He wasn’t enough.
“Look who’s decided to show up.” A hand snatched his ankle, dragging him across the concrete too fast. He winced, groaning as his aching skull and bony body scraped against the rough flooring.
Christ - there was definitely broken glass on the floor in here.
“Fuck you too, asshole.” He weakly kicked away the hand, the snarl on his lips loosened as his swirling vision glimpsed the Wolf. Jacket and gloves off, shit buttons undone, and eyes wide with blind panic and guilt.
“Hm, and here I heard your quips died with the other little piggy, hm?” Goldtooth pressed his boot to Harrison’s chest, smirking down at him. Harrison winced, writhing as small glass fragments buried deeper in his back. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”
Harrison nearly attempted to rear up the second the boot left his chest. He wanted to lunge at the torturer, the monster who pulled puppet strings and laughed. The crack of a kick to his skull made those wants a very far away and blurry concern.
AU Masterpost / Previous / Next
(An AU of my Freelancers series)
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who needs memories?
miya atsumu does. he clings to them desperately, dearly, keeps them close to his chest. his memories are both a curse and a blessing - because they are not just about him, they are a reminder that there is another, a partner in crime, a best friend and mortal enemy, a person he cannot stand above all else and loves so much that even when they fight about their split future, atsumu knows he has to let him go. "i'll be happier than you someday, just wait and watch!" atsumu had said. will he remember that, years down the line? will he remember if he meant it?
(the answers to both questions: yes, atsumu will remember. but it will not matter at all.)
who needs memories?
memories have forged kita shinsuke into the person he is, against his wishes. his are full of his grandmother - happy times, he tells himself, only remember the happy times. because who needs the memory of absent parents? who needs the memory of people who were never there? just take each day step by step, just keep building and building and you will be more powerful than you will ever realize. memories have no place here, shinsuke thinks, when all one has to do is keep moving forward. he refuses to let the past linger.
(it will, anyways. but shinsuke will not mind. they will be memories he can be proud of.)
who needs memories?
suna rintarou had forgotten, almost, what home meant to him. he used to dream of coarse sand and ocean breezes - so very, very far away from inarizaki. he used to waver, haunted by what could have been and where he will be going. the names of old friends die on his tongue. his family sends him pictures of places he does not recognize. "look, rintarou," they say, "it's changed so much! don't you remember? don't you remember home?" but rintarou's home is neither here nor there. rintarou’s home exists only in his memories. he wonders if there will come a day when he is no longer shadowed by ghosts.
(rintarou will make new memories, eventually. the mountains of inarizaki are sturdy and unrelenting - and his teammates are even more so.)
who needs memories?
ojiro aran thinks he doesn’t. he does not care for them much, of the days when it felt like him and his sister against the world. their parents tried their best, he knows, but they could not be protected from everything. there are some things a child never forgets - no matter how much they want to. so aran holds his head high, marches on with no plans to look back, has discarded memories as something to be treasured. he swears to live in the moment and the moment only. when his sister asks why, he tells her that it is safer this way. that life will hurt less if he does not dwell on the past. he is willing to shoulder everything else, but never the past.
(when aran’s family grows, he will think that there are some memories he would like to keep.)
who needs memories?
miya osamu: a brother, friend, teammate. his memories are . . . complicated. they tell him of being one half of a whole. they tell him he is loved and cherished even in the most frustrating moments. they tell him that there is someone who will always have his back. but, osamu thinks, they do not tell him what life will be like without atsumu. they do not tell him who he truly is when taken out of the equation. and maybe that’s the core of it, because osamu doesn’t want a life that is not his own. will atsumu understand? his memories don’t tell him this, either. but they tell him he is loved and cherished and that atsumu will always have his back, and osamu thinks that’s good enough.
(he knows he made the right choice, in the end. his memories now are the happiest they have ever been.)
so, who needs memories?
well. why don’t you tell me?
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