Somewhere With You
Acoustic Memory
Disclaimer: I do not own the Gears of War series and I don't make my money off of it.
A/N: So much for not making a habit out of songfics. Oh well. If you don't like it, don't bother reading it. This is also a companion-fic to Set Fire To The Rain. Basically just Hoffman's thoughts on Bernie and how their relationship had gone. It's a lot shorter than it's counterpart.
If you're going out with someone new
I'm going out with someone too
I won't feel sorry for me, I'm getting drunk
But I'd much rather be somewhere with you
Hoffman prided himself on one thing and one thing only; he never gave up no matter how tough the circumstances were. He never gave up Anvil Gate during the Pendulum Wars, or during the Lambent War. He hadn't lost a bit of faith during the attack on Aspho Fields, even despite losing some of his best men, and a good friend. Even after Margaret's death he still managed to get on with life and lead his soldiers during the Locust War. Life had taken its toll on the old man, for that's what he was now whether he liked that fact or not.
It wasn't in his nature to give up. As a life-long military man, he had a fighting spirit like no other, even when he was dead tired, frustrated and alone.
Now the wars were over though. There were no Indies that needed setting straight, or Locusts to protect civilians from, or Lambent stalks rising from the ground to destroy them. It was done, and he hadn't a clue what to do with himself. There was too much time on his hands in between construction to rebuild some of Anvegad's defenses and traveling between there and Azura to figure out how they were going to move people back and forth without their supplies of Imulsion to fuel them.
Time gave opportunity to thinking, and thinking always ended in retrospection with Hoffman. He had way too many regrets in his life to ever recall. His biggest was lying next to him at the moment, sleeping peacefully for the first time in ages.
Bernie Mataki, the love of his life, the woman who came back to him after so many years and had forgiven his every sin against her, even ones that had happened so long ago he could barely remember them. She deserved so much better than him, yet here she was giving him her heart, body and soul once again. He knew damn well that she could have easily found better than him out there if she had tried.
Laughing loud on a carnival ride, yeah
Driving around on a Saturday night
You made fun of me for singing my song
Got a hotel room just to turn you on
Their years together had been amazing, even though the latter half of it had been clouded over by the fact she was married and technically had a responsibility to that man over Hoffman. However she had spent every waking hour with him instead and he knew she would have left the other man if it weren't for the fact that Hoffman left her first over his promotion to an officer.
He tried to rationalize it that he didn't want to hurt her career with a charge, that he would just be getting her in needless trouble… however every part of him knew that his reasons for leaving were purely selfish. He could have gotten around the charge with a bit of effort; hell he had just given Marcus Fenix hell for not admitting he and Anya were in a damn relationship! Sure he hadn't known these things when he was younger, but that didn't excuse him at all.
Some days Hoffman wished he could go back in time and change things. Maybe some part of his life would change just by turning around at Bernie's door and seeing her breaking heart… he knew if he would have looked back he would have gone back to her in an instant. He never wanted to see pain on her face ever again… He had heard about her drinking fit after finding out about him and Margaret getting married. He should have been the one to tell her, not some grunt who didn't give a damn how she felt about it. He should have told her to her face, and apologized for not waiting longer than he did to find a wife. To this day he wasn't quite sure why his image was suddenly so important, or why he had even taken the offer for late entry into the Academy. He loved being on the front lines with his Gears, even to this day…
You said pick me up at three a.m. I won't sit outside your house
You're fighting with your mom again
And I'd go, I'd go, I'd go somewhere with you
And wait for the lights to go out
Call up an ex to rescue me, climb in their bed
When I'd much rather sleep somewhere with you
Even after the breakup he often dreamt about Bernie; about some of the crazy things they had done to be together when their relationship first started. How many times had they snuck off to fuck like horny teenagers behind their squad's backs? He couldn't recall anymore.
More than once he had walked past her old apartment and looked up and thought about going right up there and talking to her. Telling her how much he missed her and what she really meant to him. A few times he had made it as far as her floor before realizing he'd be hurting both her and Margaret more than he was doing his conscious any good. In the end he never did say those words that might have fixed everything a lot sooner.
It wasn't until a few decades later that he got the chance to apologize. And Bernie forgave him. She forgave him, and continued to love him, and he knew they'd die together side-by-side. Now he couldn't think of going anywhere without her, and he would be damned if he didn't tell her how beautiful she was once a day.
Like we did on the beach last summer I hate my life, hold on to me I can go out every night of the week
When the rain came down and we took cover
Down in your car, out by the pier
You laid me down, whispered in my ear
Ah, if you ever decide to leave
Then I'll go, I'll go, I'll go
Can go home with anybody I meet
But it's just a temporary high 'cause when I close my eyes
I'm somewhere with you, somewhere with you
He had gone out so many times thinking about Bernie and how she would react to situations… How she would have won that fight, and protected her boys from getting hurt. He was half sure that a lot of guys would have been saved had she gotten to Jacinto just a few years earlier. Maybe she would have kept Marcus out of prison, and kept him from doing all the stupid shit he did.
All of the maybes in the world didn't fix what was broken though, and Hoffman was a broken man in many ways, and all of them Bernie managed to fix little by little. No other woman could take care of him like she did. She didn't just stitch up his wounds and make his food… she mended the hole in his heart where Margaret and the many guys he had lost once had filled. She was the rock he needed to remind him that all of the fighting, all of the loss was worth something. So many of his boys had died over the long fifteen years of fighting; and he remembered almost every one of them.
Now they had peace though, and time to mourn those losses… and it all settled into his old bones like lead. For days after finding out about Dom's death he felt weighed down by grief. Dom was one of his favorites, one of the boys he had been with since before the Locust that had survived through everything… and in the end he died taking one for the team so Marcus, Anya and the others could get out alive and stop the war once and for all.
No one knew what he was feeling better than Bernie; Delta squad was the multiple kids she was never able to have no matter how hard she had actually tried. Losing Dom was like losing the responsible middle child that kept the other siblings from tearing each other's heads off. To Hoffman he was the closest he had ever come to having a son; he had met Dom at seventeen just as he was having kids of his own already.
If you see me out on the town Laughing loud on a carnival ride, yeah You said pick me up at three a.m. I can go out every night of the week Somewhere with you
And it looks like I'm burning it down
You won't ask and I won't say
But in my heart I'm always somewhere with you
Driving around on a Saturday night
You made fun of me for singing my song
Got a hotel room just to turn you on
You're fighting with your mom again
And I'd go, I'd go, I'd go
Can go home with anybody I meet
But it's just a temporary high 'cause when I close my eyes
I'm somewhere with you, somewhere with you
I'm somewhere with you
I'm somewhere with you
Somewhere with you
Somewhere with you
Hoffman was half sure that if they would have stayed together, he and Bernie would have found a way to have a brat of their own. They would have had plenty of time to work on it over the years, and there was always medicine and science to help it along. Any kid they would have had would have been just as loyal and strong as any one of the Gears that they had lost along the way. Maybe in the end their kid would have worked right alongside Delta and survived.
Now though, they were too old and too busy taking care of their big kids to think about it. Bernie never seemed to think about it anyways; she was happy with her surrogate sons and she was a damn good mother to them.
Hoffman looked at her sleeping form again, giving a rare smile. All he knew as come what may, he was going to stay by her side until the day they laid him in the ground, and even then he was half sure that wouldn't be until she was being laid down beside him if he could help it… and that was still a long way off if he had any say in it. There was so much to do and so many things to say to her, and he'd never be at peace until he said and did them all. There was no better start than today.