Notes: Crossover whoops. Dates might be off in regards to TW bc honestly when is this show taking place? I'm going off release dates/season 1 clues, since 3b seems to be in 2013 all of a sudden. Conceptually inspired by Lunarblue21's Badges of Honor on ao3, where this is posted under laratoncita. There are like two swearwords, so sorry/a warning in advance. Edited April 2019.

swish of blade in his back
the emblemed jacket split in half
ana castillo, "the toltec"

As soon as the boy—and he is little more than that, really, despite the muscles of his neck and the fading wonder of his eyes—becomes aware of the darkness, it begins to fade. It is not a room he finds himself in in, but a wide space, a swathe of deep, dark brown and light like moonlight, though there is no sky here. He is alone. He remembers little of what came Before. Jarred, knowing that he is somewhere but not knowing where that is, he reaches out. Perhaps there is a light switch somewhere; he knows, abstractedly, that looking for one is something he's done before. Soon, though, he finds himself wandering in the darkness, as if he has forgotten to be afraid of the unknown and of tripping over things that hide there.

The memory comes unbidden; nights in Binh Long, a foreign place. When his brothers-in-arms would take breaks two or three at a time, the rest of the group still on guard. He can't remember what they were watching for. He thinks he had other brothers, too, two who did not join him in the jungle, but who he thought of every day as well. The air was suffocating, too humid and heavy to be winter back home. With that word comes the memories: a rundown house, the smell of lemon. Air full of dust no matter how many windows were open. Now, though, it's startlingly clear, not even dust swirling before him—not that he would be able to tell, the light-that-is-not-moonlight just enough to keep him aware of the difference between his eyes being open or shut.

Almost as soon as he thinks that, a yellow light appears, and Sodapop Curtis finds himself in front of a small table with two seats, and sitting there in wait is a woman—because she is one, he can see it in her half-dead eyes, the way her mouth is set in a frown that seems familiar in a way that hurts. She doesn't look surprised to see him. She has a strong jaw, and dark hair that just barely passes her shoulders. Her mouth doesn't curl into a smile when she notices him looking at her, but there's a knowing look in her eye.

"Let me guess, she says, and her voice is higher than she expects. "You don't know what this is."

Soda doesn't want to admit that she's right. She nods at the chair, like she expects him to sit down with her. She could be pretty, he thinks. He usually prefers blondes, but her eyes are green, dead as they look, and her mouth looks like it's full of secrets. In another time he thinks he might have tried to charm her, if only to see where it went. He's not sure she'd like to know that, though.

"What's this?" Soda says instead of sitting down, and just looks at her. She tilts her head. It's a pretty face, he thinks again. It must be that there's no emotion there.

"I've done this before," she says, "it's a waste of time, mostly, but we have to."

He frowns, not liking the thought. What do they have to do? Who's going to make them? He says, "I don't know you. What's going on?"

She looks off to the side, bored, and he follows her gaze; there's nothing there. Just more earthy tones, like mud and dirt on brick walls. Like a jungle.

"Like a forest," she says, and then their eyes meet again. He takes a hesitant step forward, keeping her gaze. She's older, he realizes as he sinks into the chair across from her, and her skin looks washed out, tired. She has bags under her eyes, now that he's looking closely, but they look like bruises too. Like someone took a piece of her she can't get back. It hits him that no one should look that pale in life.

"Are you...?" he starts, but can't get the words out. It's hard to get the words to even form in his mind, hard to turn them into sentences. He's struck with a sudden longing for home, that ramshackle space whose smell is the only thing he can remember. Two boys who are almost familiar. She looks at him for a long time.

"I'm dead," she says. Soda feels his stomach drop, the yellow light catching on her features in a way that makes her look skeletal. Nausea hits him when she says, "And you are, too."

Everything goes black for a moment, like the power going out in a rainstorm, but then he blinks, gasps on the too-clear air, and he's sitting at that table again, in the middle of dark nothingness and the girl is still staring at him. She smiles, a little bit kind, a little bit mean, and says, "My name is Laura."

He gapes at her. She continues, unperturbed, "I've been dead since early 2011. Killed in the forest at night." She's still got that smile on her face, but the words are sharper in her mouth; must taste bitter from the way she spits them out.

"I," he says, and shakes himself. Stands up, almost knocking over the chair. He can feel his hands shaking. Like he's coming down from something. He's seen a few men like that out in the field, the memories coming back suddenly. Seen bodies covered up and the workers at the morgue shaking their head over it. A boy tells him—told him? No, no that's not it—that someone named Steve came back like that. He tries to remember a name. A sound that reminds him of home.

Ponyboy. Familiar and foreign all at once. Green eyes like—his mother. Soda had a mother once. And a Steve, a best friend he remembers all at once, the dark hair and the steely eyes who was supposed to be working with the machines and ended up hit in the stomach not even a year into it. Is he fine? Soda can't remember.

But Soda. Soda's dead, apparently.

"No," he tells her, and she just looks up at him like it's nothing. For the first time in his life he wants to hit someone for no reason other than to rile them up, too. He's not sure how he knows it's the first time. "No," he says again, "no, you can't be—that's not—but I only got three months left..." He trails off. Watches those dead eyes, feels something almost like anger spark up, says, "How do you know this? How do you know?"

But she doesn't say anything. There's something almost sad in her eyes. Soda breathes heavily for a moment, still staring at her, feeling like he's run miles. He turns. Sprints into the darkness. He runs for what must be miles, what feels like forever, seconds spanning into minutes into maybe half hour at most. He slows to a walk, and when he turns around he can see the light not ten yards from where he is. He starts to cry.

"I can't remember," he manages, and staggers back to her. He feels sick to his stomach, for showing emotion like this in front of a stranger, a woman, for not knowing how he got there. She remains sitting when he finally steps into the light, leaning onto the table for support. Like she has nothing to be afraid of. The wood is smooth beneath his hands, calloused though they are. He says, "What is this?"

The girl—woman—Laura—shrugs. She's got to be in her twenties, Soda decides, and then he takes a long look at her. A shiver goes down his spine as he finally realizes what's going on around him, all the things that don't make sense. Her clothes are ripped, jagged; there's what looks like fresh blood on the tattered remains of her shirt, half exposing her collarbone. He looks from her face to her neck and feels the nausea bubbling again, her neck rusted with caked blood. "What…what killed you?" he says, voice hoarse, and she shrugs again. Soda gags, then, the movement having cracked the scabbing of her skin, and she smiles real big, like it's nothing, like she hasn't seen herself.

"My uncle," she says, and her teeth are too sharp when she opens her mouth, her tongue a flash of pink. "Maybe I deserved it," she says after a quiet moment, "but if I ever get to him again I'll kill him. Kill him like I should have killed—" and she cuts herself off. Her eyes glance to the table half-between them, and she says, softly, "You should sit down," and Soda doesn't know what to do besides obey.

"Do you know what happened to you?" she asks him, and he sees something like—Darry. His brother. He has—had—a brother. Like the other one, Ponyboy. She's something like his brother, or maybe—someone official. Social Services, he remembers. He used to know a broad who worked them. An agent Social Services that would come to talk to them, who would ask questions meant to carry emotion, but would come out just this side of wrong. But her voice doesn't carry the cruelty Soda always thinks he might have heard in the State's workers tones, just a sense of resignation. She's tired, he realizes, eyeing the bruising around her eyes, even if he's not quite sure of what.

"No," he says, and she watches him closely. It's almost like she can tell if he's lying, which he isn't. "I was," and he pauses. Looks at her again, wonders who she's left behind, before he tells her, "I was in a jungle, I think," and she nods.

"What do you remember?" she says.

He answers, "Nothing."

She frowns, reminding him of Darry all over again, perhaps of someone else. Of, of—Ponyboy. It makes him feel concerned, suddenly. Guilty. Like the names should have sparked up the feeling sooner, because he knows that face, so much like his own and so much not. A little brother he loved like nothing else. A home. Then—

—God—everything comes flooding. Flashes of the gang and that night and Dally and Johnny and Sandy and that damned notice, of home and his mother and it hurts so badly he can't breathe. Can't take a breath of the air he doesn't even need anymore, choking on the painfully clean air and wanted to shout and run for another hour, even if it'll get him nowhere.

"I'm dead," he says, gasping, the word tinged like a question, and then it hits him; not just that he's dead, but why, too. The dead of night, and an attack, and gunfire and shouts and Jimmy-G next to him, bleeding from where the bullet grazed his arm as Soda jumped on top of him, staring with those crazy blue eyes of his, electric as they were, and saying, "Curtis, shit, no, Curtis, why did you—" while Soda claws at his uniform, practically ripping his letters in half as he shoves them into Jimmy-G's hands and rasps out, "Send them, send them," before everything went black with pain and he woke up in the darkness.

"You can't fix your mistakes," Laura says, like she's saying something new and not something that makes him want to scream. He can hear now, just how scratchy she sounds, like she suffered before her heart finally stopped. "Once people are dead, you can't make them undead."*

Soda stares at her. Wants to ask her if she's tried, what it was like. Wants to know what he looks like, what she sees when she looks at him. Another dead soldier. The hysterical laugh bubbles up suddenly, and he can't do anything but let it take him under like a wave.

Laura looks at him for a long time, until he stops, and says, "You've been here longer than me," and it almost sounds like an accusation. What's going to happen to Darry and Ponyboy? She said she died in, Christ, 2011. When is that? Thirty, forty years from when he can remember. The real life future. He feels sick.

"No," he says, even though they both know he's lying. "How? I just woke up and walked around, and here you are, waiting for me. I didn't remember nothing but my name, and here you are, like you got all the answers in the world."

She makes a sound in her throat, rolling her eyes. It makes her look younger, but it also highlighted the grotesque state of her clothes and body, all that red and dirt for ages. With a sudden jolt Soda looks down at himself, swallowing sharply when he sees he was still in his fatigues. They, too, are caked with dirt and grime, still damp around the legs from the weather. There's blood at his ribs, the material wet even though his fingers come away dry after pressing there. Everything's in order—except for the dog tags. He grasps at his neck, at his collar, but his neck is bare. Cold, too.

Her eyes are still on him, though, and she says, "I came in nothing but my clothes, if that explains anything." She shrugs, "Looks like anything they take from us is gone forever. Things that say who we are."

"My uniform makes me a soldier," Soda says, voice flatter than he means it to be, and she glances at him. He's not a soldier, though. Not a good one. More concerned with getting home, doesn't give a fuck about what any president says about Vietnam. When he looks at Laura she looks like she's lived more wars than should be possible.

"Hm," she says to that, looking thoughtful. It's a fake-looking thoughtful, sure, but there's a gentler smile on her mouth than Soda thinks he's ever seen on anybody. Like she's trying to spare his feelings. The purple around her eyes is still strong, but the expression makes her features relax. Soda doesn't think he can still say he thinks she's pretty, not knowing that he's dead—he'd seen worse broads, American nurses who shoot up as much as the boys do once they're in the jungle. Seen better ones, like any good girl who let him charm her out of her clothes, back when the war hadn't gotten ahold of him. But there's just so much exhaustion in the face before him, suddenly, and it leaches away what could have been beauty on her. She notices his gaze and raises both eyebrows, says, "You're not the first one here, you know. And you're not just a soldier, are you?" His answer is immediate.

"No."

She smiles, leaning forward. "I'm just a dead girl."

His muscles lock at the matter-of-fact tone she takes, and he shakes his head. "You can't be," he says, "what about your family?"

"Dead," she says, "or they might as well be."

Soda stares at her. She gives a self-deprecating smile. "My family was murdered six years ago," she says, "and what's left is either responsible, or murderers now, too. Peter can bite the dust for all I care." Her face is stony, a snarl forming on her face, and she continues, "My brother's the only one left and—it's too late." She settles back in her chair, crosses her arms over her chest. He can tell she's trying to look hard, remorseless, but all he sees is resignation. She's tired. Has to be. The spread of red has stopped, her clothes and skin oddly tinged orange in the flickering light above them. He feels a little like he's sitting in the police station again, except then he'd had Steve to shoot the shit with.

"What…" he starts, and then stops. The look on Laura's face is too severe for him to finish his question, and he quietly wonders who could have done something like that to a girl. Thinks of what he's heard out in Vietnam. Feels sick. She's got a steely look in her eye, a little bit like Dally had, but there's a softness underneath it all. Maybe the only one to ever see it was this brother of hers, because the other guy—Peter—seemed to be dead in her eyes, too.

"My parents died when I was sixteen," Soda says instead, and Laura lets out a breath. She looks off into the darkness, says, "I can imagine," in response to a sentence he never said.

They sit in uncomfortable silence. Maybe Laura's thinking of her brother, or her dead parents, or whether it was a life worth living. Soda thinks about all the things he still wanted to do. All the things he's going to miss out on.

"What about my brothers?" he finally says, and her eyes snap back to his. He finds sympathy in them, a pain that must be shared.

"Nothing," she says, and her voice is hushed. Still high and girly, still raw. "there's nothing left for you to do about anything." Soda bites his lip, tries not to scream.

"And us?" he says, "Do we just sit here forever?"

She lifts one shoulder, and red flakes off her skin; "Life is what you make of it, right? Shouldn't death be the same?"

"Fuck," he says, half-under his breath, and then louder, "fuck. I can't do this." He sets his elbows on the worn wooden table before them, cradles his head in his palms.

"There's nothing left to do," she says again, and then she gets up. "There isn't anything for anyone to do," she says, and it's quieter. There's resignation in her tone, now, matching her expression, and she continues, barely louder than a whisper, "Maybe there never was. Maybe that's okay." Her gaze is far off.

"I never gave you my name," he says blankly, realizing she's about to leave, she's going to try and get out of wherever they are. A quell of panic bubbles up in him, and he says, "You can't just leave."

"Can't I?" she says, and looks behind her shoulder. Something in her face shifts, and it looks almost like the bruises are fading. Her head swings back to him, and this time her smile is more genuine. The expression on her face reminds Soda painfully of Johnny, and then she says, "I'll catch you on the flip side," like it's supposed to mean something. She already walking away by the time he manages to get to his feet. Again, he runs into the darkness, this time towards her instead of away, but she gets farther and farther away the faster he runs. Finally, she disappears into the blackness. He falls to his knees.

Next to him, the yellow light flickers. The air is still too clear to breathe.

.

.

.

*Quote from Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," page 39.