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[nofortunateson]

Who| Agent North
What| Canon update
Where| Legion world
When| Just after the Game of Throne event
Warnings/Notes| Canon update to the end of the line for North, so warnings for death, violence, general bad vibes. Oh yeah, and Theta's gone.


It's the kind of thing that you couldn't ever possibly hope to describe, North will realize, sometime in the days after he wakes up in the medbay with his femur knitting back into a single uninterrupted piece and his vision still blurry at the edges. He gathers that he managed to message someone when he was dropped back onto his living room floor a mess of meat and blood inside of damaged armor, before he blacked out entirely. He's slower to really let it sink in that it's unquestionable that he was the one who made the hail, and no one else.

There's no describing the sensation of empty places carved out in the back of your head, a place that was never all-the-way you and a place that was only ever you until it was someone else entirely. There's no describing the sensation of steel-muffled nothingness that takes over once a place in your brain is hollowed out, once it's nothing but an unloaded chamber and the click-click-click of a hammer striking thin air.

He's out as soon as they let him, before the quiet and inaction can drive him crazy, and even if it's a few more days before he's cleared for harder training he's back on the range, dropping round after round through drill after drill. Like he can pull himself back into form hard enough to be the person he was a week ago.

Comments

[goddamngrenades]

York doesn't, in fact, have trackers on his teamates and other members of Project Freelancer. That'd be a gross invasion of privacy, more than a little creepy, and probably get him yelled at. So he doesn't for the aforementioned reasons but he does have a dummy algorithm keyed in to tracking their appearances on Legion World for maintaining routines and if they end up in medical.

Are they fine, are they hurt, that kind of stuff. Just a yes/no sort of deal. Are they around? Yes. Are they hurt? No. All's well.

Having North blip off for awhile on the heels of Sombra vanishing has York tense. More than tense, it has him knotted up with guilt and grief and frustration until suddenly he's back- not that the algorithm tells him this, he finds North on the range were he'd been trying to exhaust himself enough to sleep as it's been an elusive bitch lately. The relief is damn near palpable and, contrary to what is sane or wise, he can't stop himself from sprinting over to Norths' side of the range, ear protection be damned. "Gabe!"

[nofortunateson]

Ear protection, in theory, is good. In practice it's been lacking today, the itching paranoia of feeling like he couldn't hear what was coming up behind him enough to keep throwing North's shots wide and erratic until he levered one of the thick bells cupping his ears loose. The ringing is reassuring in its own way, anyway. Not quite the bright treble of a younger voice, but so much closer than the sound of his own breath, his own heartbeat, his own-

Gabe!

He looks back sharply, and in that first split-second he's unmoored, caught again between the last time he was on the Mother of Invention, the last time he was on Legion World, both of them seconds and years ago and he's automatically making sure his hand's off the trigger but the stock's still snugged close and ready, such a steadier thing than the world around him in that long, long moment.

[goddamngrenades]

He should slow to a walk, really. Should stop because Gabe's armed and training and hadn't said anything to anyone (red flag's all around) and there's no telltale flicker of fascia anywhere around his shoulders while he rattles through targets one after the other. He should.

Doesn't.

Slows from sprinting to jogging, jogging to walking as he lets go of that anxious leaden weight in the pit of his stomach. Gabe's back. Sombra's still in the wind but Gabe? Gabe's here. That's enough. "I've been worried sick, man, why didn't you say something about being back?"

[nofortunateson]

Sights down. There's no one else on his side of the range but he looks anyway, a quick flicker of pale eyes nested among a few more unhappy wrinkles than before. He wants to reach out and drag Taylor in and at the same time that's the last thing he wants, to bring those clever eyes and hands in that much closer to pick him apart and see everything that isn't there.

He looks down. Safety on. There's some room in the magazine where he can reload. Something to do with his hands, something with a purpose.

"Guess I pretty much came here straight from medical."

He'll figure it out, he knows, icy as staring down the barrels of a firing squad. They'll figure it out.

[goddamngrenades]

Now there's a tone he hasn't been on the receiving end of since- well. The beginning. With the bubblegum and the sparring and the absolute lack of being impressed and York being a fucknut. But he's not being a fucknut, he's been worried, is worried and-

Details filter in faster than they used to, with Delta and the Eye. The lines, the lack of light, the lack of an answering ping to Delta's silent, digital inquiry.

Anyone else and he'd try to hide the creasing of his brow, the sharp downturn of his lip, the way color leaves his face all at one. He'd joke or laugh or say something, anything else but this is Gabe. This is North.

And only North.

"...jesus christ, Gabe." A foot away and he-

For the first time in months, in years, he doesn't know if he's got the same right to Gabriel's personal bubble as he would normally. Doesn't know if he's got permission. Uncertainty sits awkward on his shoulders, eyes flicking from Gabe's hands to his jaw, to the nape of his neck. "I'm sorry."

[nofortunateson]

Of all the undeserved bullshit, that look takes the cake. His hands are steady on the rounds and he focuses on breathing slow, keeping his throat from going tight. Taylor shouldn't be looking at him like that - like this is something that happened to him, not something he failed to prevent.

"Hey, I owe the apologies, not you," he replies, low and cool. Same voice he pulls out when everything's going to hell in a mission and they need to keep it together if anyone's going to come out of it. A flicker up to Delta's usual shoulder, then back down to finish reloading and level the magazine back home. "Sorry, Delta."

Maybe he can at least count on Delta to give him something appropriate.

[goddamngrenades]

"I think you got reason for needing catharsis." Training until everything is honed to a painfully sharp point and the mistake that got you killed will never, ever be a problem again? He's been there. He spent his first few months there and it's not. It's not a fun place to be.

Delta flared into life with a dim echo of his usual brilliance; quiet and concerned. "Apologies are unnecessary considering the...extenuating circumstances."

Tentative as hell Taylor reaches out to rest a hand against Gabe's shoulder, bottom lip clamped between his teeth.

[nofortunateson]

It's been a long time since anyone did that. Things went cool with South awhile before they went dark, not much more than a light shove, a hip-check, and elbow nudge - not that she was ever tender to begin with, but it had been going the other way all the same. And he'd told himself it was stress, preoccupation, whatever it is gnawing in his own chest that almost has him shrugging off that gesture until he realizes what a close mirror it would be and his stomach goes sour.

So he pats it instead. Brief, acknowledging, just enough to let him know he can take it back whenever he wants, thanks.

"Eyes forward, right?" No other choice. It's not as if they have anything to go back to.

[goddamngrenades]

It's stiff. Awkward in a way they haven't been for years- but does that count when a chunk of that time was spent running around deliberately avoiding each other so they could confuse the UNSC? This is a rougher shape of the man he knows, all lean angles and edges sharp enough to cut that doesn't fit with where Taylor is now.

Where he was when he woke up dead and with Delta? Yeah. But this...

"...you should talk to Doctor Ry'krr, maybe. She's better at walking people through this." Dealing with their own death, their fluid grasp of who they are in the face of it.

[nofortunateson]

"What's the point? I know what got me here."

It wasn't bad luck. Wasn't Taylor's situation, a jammed gun and decision that shook out wrong. It was a long string of choices that drove everything sour, and being too late to try to roll any of it back once the damage was done, and most of those choices being so bone-deep and natural he can't say he wouldn't screw it up the exact same way even if he went back and tried to do it differently. Being on the run gives you time to think about that, and being locked in medical while the labcoats fix what shouldn't be fixable is just enough time to put the final polish and perspective on the truth that there isn't any fishing that disaster back out of the fire like you always told yourself you'd manage to someday.

[goddamngrenades]

"...what happened? Wash wouldn't ever say." He can take a guess, he can take many stabs at possible scenarios that end with Theta gone, taken, and Gabe bleeding out in the middle of nowhere. Whatever had happened at least York chose his time and place of death after a fashion.

Going in and knowing it might happen is better than it just...happening.

He drops his hand and Delta flickers out, quietly running scans on every network he's aware of just in case.

[nofortunateson]

"Nothing special. The Meta found us."

With the hand off of his shoulder he can square up in his lane again, and after the first three shots, he can talk again too, muscle-memory and the sonic crack-boom diffusing some weight from his chest.

"It happened fast."

Another round, off-mark two centimeters, then a slow breath and the next into the black.

"The last I saw South she had her barrel pointed at the ground. Just . . . watching."

Next target, another one, two off-mark, before he finds a clear space in his head and it's one, two, three in a neat cluster.

[goddamngrenades]

It took a moment for the details to sink in. For the pieces to slide and click in place to paint a horrible picture. Why? How- It doesn't fit, didn't fit, but the last time he'd seen South, actually seen her awake and moving, she'd been angry. Bitter. Tangled up in whatever lie the Director spun, frustrated with a lack of her own AI. Played by the Project in the worst kind of way just like the rest of them.

Was this what they'd wanted the whole time?

He opens his mouth to say she wouldn't, but she did. Wants to offer something more than this stilted silence between gunshots, ears ringing, full body flinching in a way that'd been trained out of him a long time ago. "...shit."

[nofortunateson]

He finishes out his target and clears the lane, giving a one-shouldered shrug. "That's how it goes. I screwed up in Freelancer and nothing on the run was going to make it better."

Simple, tidy, closed-book. You fuck up, you pay for it, and since there's nothing else to do after that you do whatever you're still good for. And even broken down to component parts, he knows how to be boots on the ground and rounds in the target.

[goddamngrenades]

"You didn't- we were all taken for a ride in the Project, Gabe. You know that. You- that's why you went AWOL." Should've gone with him, should've tried to check in more, should've gotten them all further away from ground zero-

Delta flares in the back of his mind for a moment, attempting to help him settle. Divert some of that manic thought into something useful. "We're here now, right? We make the best of things here."

It's all they can do, really.

[nofortunateson]

"There's being taken for a ride, and then there's putting the top down and really enjoying it."

None of the target selections make sense. They never had to, he was never the one keeping track of his performance to the tenth decimal, never the one with the precise documentation instantly at-hand for which drill honed which specific skillsets in which percentage and he swipes through them aimlessly, eyes narrowing at the acceptable target of concentration and not caring how much spillover frustration lands on his own head. It's becoming the normal background noise, something that at least kind of fits that empty space.

"Do you know how I got her to come with me when the ship was going to go down? I fired on her, York." His voice is paced carefully but still tense beneath it to have to even skim over a truth he's been sitting on as long as he's been in the Legion. Sure she was armed too. But he was the one with the shield and the AI, just like he was the one so puffed-up proud and drunk on being right that he didn't think twice about just dragging her along in his wake.

[goddamngrenades]

"Is it enjoying the ride if you don't know you're on one? None of us knew." That'd been the point, the whole fucking point, keeping them in the dark, poking around in their brains and playing. Seeing what happened. Scientific AI and Social experimentation with untested tech and-

Old resentments rise up like bile and are swallowed down just as quickly; he's got no time for that.

The bit about the firefight- he'd heard. Vague nonsense mentions, Tex said something at one time on the way out but he'd been deep in the engine room by the, elbow deep in systems, trying to make a mess. A distraction. Trying to secure their exit in every underhanded way he could possibly think of and in the end not a lick of it mattered. None of it had.

Not a goddamn thing.

"Gabe-" What do you say to that? What does he say to this? "Come back to your habitat, okay? Rest up. It's safe here."

[nofortunateson]

Taylor stops trying to defend him. He stops trying to make this something good. And there's enough relief in that for North to slow his sightless scrolling until he stops, and releases a breath, and shuts the lane down.

He'd been planning on staying here until he started falling asleep or until they cut off his ammunition supply. And a dug-in part of him is growling that this is where he needs to stay, training or eating or sleeping until he can break himself down and come back together as something better.

But he knows Taylor, too. And this is the kind of thing where he digs in his heels.

"Your place?" He doesn't want to go back to his habitat. There might still be blood on the floor, and even if there isn't, there's a pile of small clothes and a few miniscule skateboards and a well-used loaner chassis that he's not thinking about with everything in him.

[goddamngrenades]

"Yeah. I've got beer and food and a comfortable sofa." No hammock, no birdsong and waterfall but it's got bits of him, of North, of Sombra and Connie and Locus and Parker's bear still tucked up against the mantle. Bits of everyone that's reached in and helped haul him out of the whole. Bits of the life he's built here because he's not going to get anything else and now-

Now Gabriel knows that feeling for himself.

It's not one he'd ever wanted to share. Quiet and careful he sidles up like he used to, bumping against Gabe's shoulder gently. Years. It's been years for Gabe and he's- he's in the place York had been when North swung in with a smirk and a shield, saving his ass. "I think I've got some bitterballen in the freezer."