Just a story I wrote a long time ago that I never posted because of some complications with Lost in the Shuffle. It's a bit of a writing experiment and exploration of a situation for Lauren as I've written her and I'm not sure exactly how well it works but I recently rediscovered it and I decided I liked it enough to post, at least.

The blood is still trickling down his forehead a little, and she isn't sure she can take it. She'd perceive a shift in the fabric of his uniform, feel a slight twitch in her shoulders in response and completely rearrange her posture, muscles already growing sore. A bruise is forming over his jaw, and a patch of skin on his forehead is burned, along with part of his eyebrow. She sees a long scar on the skin over his cheekbones, too, but it's old and means less to her than the ugly damaged tissue under her own right eye.

Lauren isn't sure exactly when Civil Protection started beating their own. Probably when the European Resistance began blowing up cities and giving them no people left to take their anger out on—it seems a logical explanation. Aggression fed aggression, and any weakness or slip up could set off their little time-bomb mentalities. She doesn't know what this particular one did to warrant the damage, and that's the only reason why he's tied to a post right now and not dead.

The fact that he looked disturbingly like Barney Calhoun meant absolutely nothing to her sleep deprived, shell-shocked mind. Nothing at all. It wasn't her first hallucination concerning him, even if that other time he was much more animate and less…bleed-y, more blame.

She needed sleep, her perception of time was slowly decaying and she wasn't sure how long she could go watching him and waiting without passing out.

But how could she sleep when he was capable of regaining consciousness at any moment? It was a ridiculous conundrum she'd put herself in, and she knew it. There is no leaving, killing, or sleeping until he woke, and she was too scared to get near him and try to speed that process. It would have been so much easier to just let him die in that holding cell, forget he was there and catch up with her squad. There would have been no problems, no dilemmas, and no doubts. Just a shooting range of creatures and zombies that the more competent people had missed. He just looked too much like an old boyfriend that she'd almost gotten married to, and it was a stupid, stupid reason to put herself within a one mile radius of a metrocop without blasting his head off.

Hm. The room wasn't big enough. If it were bigger, she could sit far enough away that his features would be too blurry to make out.

He mumbles in his sleep. It's the first indicator (in her mind) that his state of complete blackout has transitioned into actual rest. Lucky bastard.

To bide her time while she waited, Lauren had left—once, just once, and he'd still been there when she returned—to go catch some headcrabs. The area wasn't as crawling with them as was usual for infested towns back in the States, but there were still a fair amount to be found. Thankfully, they weren't nearly as interested in her as was the norm—maybe the ones here didn't like American food? Currently, she was attempting to cook the four she'd bludgeoned to death, using a hotplate she found in a crumbled building near the entrance of town and a pan that she'd discovered in a room still dolled up like a kitchen. It wasn't doing much to distract her attention, although she'd noticed for once they smelled like food to her and not "disgusting fried alien". What she wouldn't give for some salt and ketchup right then. Maybe if she hurried, she could go grab some water and make this a stew of some kind…

Her ears twitch. He's grumbling. Wakeup noise. Oh God. She looks at him and reflexively smacks her back into the wall. She holds her knees. Would that look weak? They zeroed in on weakness. Should she grab her gun?

…What is wrong with her? He's tied to a load-bearing pole.

Lauren leans over and pulls her shotgun right by her foot.

Barney—the CP Officer—shifts, legs stretching a little, head rolling, eyes drearily flickering. He leans forward somewhat, shrugging his shoulders, and then he goes rigid and completely alert when he notices the restriction in his movement. When he turns his wide gaze her way she…completely freezes and focuses on her food instead.

Stupid, imbecilic, short-sighted, weak, ridiculous, STUPID—

"Hey."

She looked up, and the two of them just stared for a minute. She tried to read his face, creased with confusion, disbelief, pain—it's all too distorted with her hallucinatory state, she's sure she can't get anything real out of her own eyesight. He seemed to be balking at her. She imagines he'd be rubbing his eyes like a flabbergasted cartoon character if his hands were free. It didn't make her smile, though.

"…Am I dreaming?"

Dammit. He sounded like Barney, too. "U-hm…" She looked upward for inspiration and found that the ceiling was descending. "Maybe, I think we both are, you probably have a lot of brain damage and I-I haven't slept for three—f-four days."

"Oh." A pause. "What are you doing?"

"Cooking headcrab." She wished he would stop talking. The meat seemed like it had finally been seared through, though—shame she didn't have any silverware to eat with.

The metrocop leans forward as if to get a better look at her and she snaps. She can't help it. "STOP STARING AT ME."

"AH." And she actually felt pretty terrible about how badly that startles him. He did just spend his previous conscious moments getting beaten into a stupor by Civil Protection turncoats. Even if he is one. "Sorry, there's not a lot else to stare at."

"Hrm." The problem with human senses was that you could turn your eyes away, but the ears were stuck on and in the optimal hearing positions. There was no such thing as selective hearing. "I guess it's-it's fine…"

"Oh, great. Because I was afraid I'd crossed a line there." She glared, but he ignored her and began to struggle with his bonds.

"Stop doing that."

"What, did you see me passed out on the floor with a few broken ribs and a cracked skull and decide I'm not restrained enough?"

"Yes."

After another silence filled moment he swallows, voice noticeably quieter. "I notice that I'm not in the metrocop station anymore."

"Mhm."

"Thanks."

She keeps her shoulders tight and tries to stop herself from mumbling out a "You're welcome" and fails.

"Ah…" He squirmed—movement on his end makes her uncomfortable, but she ends up keeping her mouth shut. "I was with some people before they grabbed me—a group I'd been escorting out of City 17—"

Her eyes snap up to glare and he stops talking. Stopped talking. "…Go on."

"Uh…Yeah, what I'm trying to say is that I've got friends who are probably worried about me and I wouldn't want them to go staging a rescue if I'm, well…Would they have to stage a rescue?" His eyebrows get that quizzical tilt and dammit that also looked like Barney. "I mean, can we discuss that? I can't just sit here and have a staring contest for the next few days, you know. There's a possibility I'm going to have to rescue them. Or starve to death, I don't know if you're planning to feed me at all."

She has to stop and think. Her brain has been stopping and starting so much today. He's not making any sense to her, and many of his questions go whizzing through her hair. "What—what people? What the hell are you talking about?"

"The refugees from City 17…?" He frowned. "Did you not notice the massive explosion and the wave of people and aliens trying to escape the blast?"

Feeling somewhat self-conscious, Lauren rubbed her scabbed elbows. The interior of "the loop" and her are not on speaking terms. "I-I might have."

"And all the buildings started falling down because of the shockwaves?"

"Like London?" A very horrible grin split her lips, and she really didn't mean for it to, she's not sure where it's coming from. She saw an old clip once of the city collapsing in WWII. "Like somebody bombing London? I think I remember that."

"Er…yeah. You could say that, I guess." The longer the conversation goes on the more uncomfortable he seems to be with the rope around his arms and waist, but that's too bad because to her he might as well have been radioactive. "Hey, listen, the only thing I've eaten in the last day or so is dirt. Like, literally, dirt. I don't suppose you could…" He briefly grits his teeth and maybe she's just being hypersensitive but he's going back to the disturbing, anxious twitching of when he first woke up. "…Maybe you could toss some of that headcrab my way?"

"You can't eat it with your hands behind your back."

"Seeing as how my being tied up is actually your fault—"

"I'm not untying you." Taps her foot. "That would require getting within striking range."

"I'm not gonna hit you, Lauren." The cooked, dissected body of the headcrab hits him smack in the face. He sits there and blinks with bits of the skin clinging to his stubble.

"Oh great." She grabbed another one from the small, toothless barbershop quartet she had arranged along the wall and threw it in the pan. He didn't just use her name. He couldn't know her name. "Now I have to wait even longer for my food..."

"Lauren."

"WHAT?" If he would just stop talking. "I'm trying to think, okay?!" She pulls her muddy straw bangs over her face to block out the light. It doesn't really help, her hair has been losing too much pigment lately. No way to get rid of distractions. Her ears twitch. Struck with horror she looks over and he's undone the rope.

He was a little wobbly on his feet, stumbling and having to lean on the nearest wall. That he was standing up also made it more painfully obvious how many gashes in his armor he had—and just in general how beat up, bloody and disheveled he looked. It almost made it a little undignified the way she yelped and reared back, smacking her skull into the plaster and dizzying her too much to think about her shotgun. Barney shakes himself off comparatively quickly.

"Lauren, it's me, I'm not—oh." He sees his hands (or rather, the gloves on them), stops and takes a look at the uniform he's wearing. "…Oh. I get it."

She's still shuddering pretty heavily, but it's marginally better that he hasn't attacked her yet. "So…I'm not hallucinating either thing? You're wearing a CP uniform and your—well, your face?"

"Am I wearing my face?"

"…Yes."

"What, like am I some B-movie psychopath using a belt to keep my face on?"

She glared. "That would be stupid."

"You asked."

Her look becomes more suspicious. "You didn't answer."

"No, alright? Wait." His eyes roll to the left (is that significant?) while he tries to remember. "Uh, yes to the first one."

The second question, or rather, the intentions of it and not the literal, pedantic point, was left there between them, clogging up any words that might escape. He would take a step forward and she'd flinch—he would quickly remove himself from her personal space bubble. She couldn't stare at him without feeling immense guilt every time he fidgeted under her gaze, and so not a lot of progress was made. Eventually she regained the frame of mind to stand, so it would at least look like they were on equal footing. The rush of blood makes her dizzy and she thinks she's too close to the ceiling now.

Lauren had always hated reunions. Especially if it was after, oh, twenty years had passed, and the person happened to have been the long lost love of your life who was supposed to be a pile of ashes in a crater way out in some desert in New Mexico. And they were dressed up like your nightmares.

"I'm real, by the way," she said finally, taking in a few shaky breaths. "I don't know about you, but…"

"Oh. Oh, good, that, uh, clears things up." Barney ran his hand through his salt and pepper hair. "Well, I'mreal too, far as I can tell. And, uh…" He pointed to the gun by her feet. "Can I borrow that? I really do have places to be and I'd like to have a weapon."

"I'm pretty sure you have a concussion, Calhoun." There's that bizarre twitch of her lips again. "I don't think you're in any fit state to handle a firearm."

He scoffed. "And you are?"

She gets close enough to wave her hand obnoxiously in his face. "How many fingers am I holding up? Huh?"

"Forty. Your headcrab is burning, by the way."

"My what?" The smell of charred flesh reaches her nostrils. "…Oh." When she goes down to flip the carcass to the other side, she hears the sound of him cocking the shotgun and reflexively hops into a feral, defensive stance, startling him back in the process. To his credit, he doesn't fire when she begins to hit him with a raw headcrab. "GIVE IT BACK."

"Lauren stop!" He pushes her and she falls down, smacking her palm and leg against the concrete floor. Barney leans the shotgun against the wall and stops to help her up, but she scrabbles to her feet on her own, snarling and throwing punches. He practically crumples, and she takes the opportunity to grab her gun back and shove it in his face.

"BACK. OFF."

"Okay, okay!" He obeys and keeps his hands up like he's being mugged, bruising tired eyes twitching. Standing there, glowering with rage, Lauren gets a look at his armband with the lambda painted over a set of numbers and letters. Despite the nausea and fear coursing through her system right then, he's abnormally calm, like he's had to deal with this kind of thing before. "Please don't shoot me. I just want to leave."

"And take my gun."

"Keep it. Don't know what I was thinking."

"You were going to shoot me," she accuses, eyes stinging.

"I wasn't." The implication actually seems to make him upset. "I swear to God."

"This is mine." She has the butt of the gun pointed at her ribcage to discourage herself from pulling the trigger, briefly lifting it up to her chin demonstratively.

"You don't seem like you're in the best state of mind to use it, is all."

"I know." She sniffs, feeling like somebody's bad dream. "But I can't let you have it."

Barney dropped a hand to his hip, pinched the bridge of his nose with the other and sighed, and she pointed the shotgun at the floor because she couldn't possibly shoot him when he was doing that.

"Barney?" Her voice is shaking. She hates that. "Your hair's graying."

"What?" The look he gives is pretty freaking incredulous. "You tie me up, threaten me with a gun, and now you're insulting my hair?"

For a moment she thought he was serious because of his expression, but decided this must be some new, bitter style of humor he'd adopted since she'd seen him last. "I just thought I should tell you. I don't know when's the last time you looked in a mirror."

"Well thank God I have you to tell me that, because I never would have known."

She swallows. "Barney?"

He just seems tired, and she thinks to herself that they both need some sleep. "What, Lauren?"

"I haven't said your name in eighteen years." Her gaze fell on her feet. "I need an excuse, give me something to ask."

"How about, 'Barney, would you like to hold my gun?'"

She glares and grips the shotgun protectively, unamused.

"Or maybe, uh...'How've the last few years been for you?'"

"Like hell, I imagine." Lauren's stomach growls. "If you'll excuse me, I haven't eaten since yesterday." She lets herself fall into a sitting position, wincing a little because the ground is harder than she'd thought, and tries to resume cooking. Keeping her eyes down, she kicks the shotgun in Barney's direction and it slides to his boots.

He sat down opposite her and she muttered, "You didn't shave. I thought you were going to shave."

"When did I ever say I was going to shave?"

"Didn't you?"

"Does it look like I have a razor to shave with?"

"I have teeth. Headcrab, I mean. Sharp."

"I'm not shaving with headcrab teeth."

"They work."

"I don't care."

"You're not kissing me while you have facial hair."

"I'm not kissing you while you're psychotic."

"That sounds fair."

"Do you know what year it is?"

"No."

"Do you know where you are?"

"No."

"Do you know who I am?"

"You're Barney Calhoun." She looks at him like he's crazy. "Who else would you be?"

Barney made a tired half smile and looked down at his gloves while she turned the cooking headcrab over on its side. "Just checking."