A/N: So this is going to be a mish mash of vignettes, they'll hop around in the time stream, so just a heads up if that's confusing.
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Still Alive
By: Lady NeverAfterNon
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"Hurry up. This isn't supposed to be brain surgery," Royce grunted. His forehead was creased with strain and sweat made clean lines through the dirt on his face.
"Almost there." Isabelle was up to practically her shoulder in the gaping, drooling maw of a Predator hound.
The hound growled angrily and tried again to dislodge Royce, who laid half on top of it in an effort to hold it down and keep its mouth open. Tension lined his face as he tried to keep the beast's massive jaws from severing Isabelle's arm and avoid the deadly spikes on its back at the same time.
"Few more inches." Isabelle kept her calm and worked the IED into the alien hound's stomach, though she spared a quick glance up at the man flattening the hound into the dirt. "If you let this thing chew my arm off, we are gonna have words."
The hound snarled. Royce stopped another escape attempt by driving his boot into the hound's side. "The whistle sounded fifteen seconds ago. This is a bust, let's go." His face was creased with strain.
"No, they'll see it, know that we messed with it, and the jig will be up. We won't get a chance to try this again. " Isabelle told him fiercely, and yanked her arm out of the hound's mouth with a triumphant grin. "Done!"
She sprang to her feet and grabbed her grenade launcher, backing way up and taking aim. Royce waited for her to get into position. She nodded at him when she was ready. He sprang off of the hound and sprinted away from it, throwing himself behind a tree. Luckily the hound decided its master's call was more important than killing them, and it bounded away without attacking its temporary captors.
Royce got to his feet, and the two of them scrambled up the tallest tree they could find so that they could have a clear view of the Predators' camp. Coated in mud, they huddled together in the uppermost branches. Royce had a antique telescope they'd pulled off a mummified body a few weeks before, while Isabelle clutched a detonator.
"Now," Royce rasped, never looking away from the scope.
Isabelle squeezed the trigger of the detonator.
The hound exploded in a massive ball of blue fire, which obliterated the Predator's camp and their ship. The compression wave flattened much of the surrounding jungle. It nearly knocked them out of their tree, even though they were a good distance away.
"No movement," Royce murmured, still studying the destroyed camp, "All three Preds are down. We got them."
"We need to find more of their wrist bombs," Isabelle said, studying the destruction in awe. "Though I'm not sorry we used this one."
Royce finally dropped the spyglass and turned to her. "That hound trap was a good idea. This will buy us at least a day before the next drop. And now we know what the blast radius is for those bombs."
She nodded. This skirmish was a success for them, though the victory was by the skin of their teeth. It had been pure dumb luck only one hound had treed them, instead of a whole pack.
The Predators were nothing if not consistent. They always arrived in threes, unless they brought one of the smaller ones to hunt. They always gave their quarry, should the humans survive the Hunt, a day to regroup. It wasn't mercy- just more sporting to face a prepared foe instead of an exhausted one.
She kissed his temple, and he brushed his fingers along her cheek in a ghost of a caress. Together, they scrambled down out of the tree and off to find a new place to hide. They were alive for now, but with every new victory the Predators became more tenacious.
.X.
They followed Noland's advice after surviving their first drop: they ran as far and as fast as they could, taking as much as they could find off the bodies left in their wake- the Predators' gear, Hanzo's sword, filling an empty canteen of goo from Edwin's paralytic flytrap. Then they dug in and waited. Lying in a damp, wet cave, slathered in mud, they silently listened to the screams of the newcomers as they died on by one. Isabelle felt each death as another mark on her soul. But what could she do? Her shoulder had been severely injured by the Predator's wrist blade. She couldn't even hold her gun upright, let alone hold it steady enough to make a good shot. She knew better than to ask Royce to leave the safety of their cave. Maybe if she hadn't been so hurt, they would have tried to reach out to others. After a while though, it got easier just being the two of them. Now they wouldn't have it any other way.
His words rattled in her brain, when she'd asked him what he was: Alive.
Whatever her guilt, she couldn't make herself regret that fact. They were both alive. Lying in his arms, his breath in her hair, and his heart thumping under her ear, somehow that made it all worth it.
She saved someone, and she was glad it was him.
They emerged from the cave sparingly, coming out only to forage for food when they ran out of MRE's. Royce killed something that looked like a fat angry chipmunk with scales and fangs the size of Isabelle's pinky finger. They cooked it by burying it in a hole in the ground with hot coals a good distance from their camp, covered it and waited, hoping that they'd covered it enough that the Predators wouldn't notice the heat. Or the smell.
Mostly they lived off of Isabelle's jungle foraging knowledge, subsisting on fruit and roots, and recognizable insects. They left the cave only when they had to while they waited for Isabelle's arm to heal. She was no good to their little ragtag team of two incapacitated.
When Isabelle had been with the Israel Defense Force, she hadn't had much down time. She had a list of books back home that she always meant to read, but never found the time. Therefore it always amazed her that Royce, rough and prickly as he was, could be so damn poetic. His level of literacy was downright astounding.
While they lay there in the dark, he kept them entertained by reciting all of the book passages and poetry that he'd committed to memory. It was mostly war stuff or human struggle: Hemingway, Tim O'Brien, Wilfred Owen, Dostoevsky, Sun Tzu, etc.
The rasp of his voice seemed to fit the grisly content of his recitations.
She always shivered when he murmured, "Rage, rage against the dying of light," in her ear like it was the mantra that kept him going, the standard engraved into the fabric of his soul.
.x.
"Royce!" The scream was wrenched from her throat in a ragged keen.
The Predator ignored her scream and instead focused on strangling her lover. It lifted Royce off of his feet with one meaty paw wrapped around his neck. A large knife spattered with green blood dangled limply from Royce's hand. Isabelle shouted again. The Predator paid her no mind. She was out of ammo and weaponless. Since she was smaller and weaker and female, it did not consider her a threat and so she did not warrant its immediate attention. Royce was the better trophy and it wanted his head. Big mistake. Isabelle exploded from the cover of brush and sprinted straight at them. Adrenaline didn't do much but it did give her the energy to scramble up the Predator's back like a monkey and get it into a choke hold. It didn't do much more than piss it off. The Predator shook her off like a dog shaking off water. Isabelle crashed to the ground and something crunched. Those five seconds of distraction was all Royce needed, however.
"Get off me, you ugly mutherf-" Royce jammed the knife up under the Predator's chin, drenching himself in bright green arterial spray.
The Predator dropped him in order to claw at the massive knife sticking out of its head.
Isabelle dragged herself to Royce, who was getting to his feet. He threw an arm around her and Isabelle leaned against him heavily. Together they fled into the forest. The Predator was probably mortally wounded, but they didn't want to stick around and find out. They were both wounded, both severely handicapped. Neither was willing to take the chance that the other could fall.
They'd been on this shithole planet for three years, three Seasons. Isabelle was fairly certain Royce felt the same way she did: there was no way they could do this alone. They covered their tracks by sticking to rocks and trees, hardly daring to speak as they retreated back to the drilling rig Noland had called home. They went deep into the bowels of the rig, going through nooks and crannies that the large Predators could not even hope to fit into. It was a well played gamble on their part: the Predators wouldn't expend too much trouble to find them on the off days, because the lure of a good hunt was too much to resist. It wouldn't be sporting to blow up an entire drilling rig just to get at two annoyingly persistent battle weary soldiers. Their base wasn't much, just a cramped little room that had been a junction in an alien cooling system. Royce wasn't much for interior decorating, but Isabelle had drug back anything that looked interesting. Along with the weapons they'd collected, there was a battered Walkman that had a tape with five working songs (Long Tall Sally by Little Richard, I'm on Fire by Bruce Springsteen, Rock of Ages by Def Leppard, Catch Us If You Can by The Dave Clark Five, and Who Do You Love by George Thorogood), the quilt Isabelle had sewn from scraps of cloth and parachute when she'd been laid up with a broken leg, Royce's numerous whittling projects, and a slew other knick knacks.
"I hate this planet," Isabelle growled, not bothering to lower her voice as she plopped down onto the patchwork mattress stuffed with parachute cloth that served as a bed. They were too deep within the machine for sound to matter.
Royce collapsed next to her, breathing heavily. "If I recall correctly, a girl with a really big gun once told me a while ago that we all deserved to be here," he murmured.
Isabelle grinned at him, shook her head, and lifted her shirt to get a better look at her ribs. She grunted with pain as she extended her arm to get it over her head. Royce raised an arm and gently ran his palm down her side.
"What's the pain on a scale of one to ten?" he asked, peering at her skin.
Isabelle took a deep breath and winced. "Broken. At least one, maybe two. Dammit, the last bone I broke just healed, too. That thing just had to toss me onto the one rock in that stupid clearing."
Royce eyed her, eyes glittering in his expressionless face. "You good to go?"
Isabelle didn't bother to pull her shirt back on and crawled over to him, gingerly arranging herself against him in a way that didn't aggravate her newly broken ribs. She relaxed with a small sigh, head pillowed against his shoulder.
"What was your favorite thing to do, back home? And don't say hunting," she added. "Something that didn't have to do with all- all this."
"When I had downtime, I'd ride my bike to my cabin in Montana. Didn't spend much time there, but it's the eye in the storm of my crazy life," he said, staring up at the dark metal ceiling.
"What kind of bike did you have?" Isabelle asked, tracing patterns onto his stomach with her finger.
"A Triumph Thunderbird Storm," he answered, "1699cc's. Bought it after surviving my first Spec Ops mission for the US Air Force Combat Rescue.
Isabelle wanted to ask him again what had messed him up so bad that he'd written off the 'duty' aspect of war. She knew better. If Royce wanted to tell her, he would. So instead she asked, "What color was it?"
"Matte black," he said, grinning.
Isabelle rolled her eyes. "Such a boy."
"We're getting off this rock," he said fiercely, turning to look at her, his hand running along her arm. "And when we do, I'll take you for a ride."
She snorted and eased herself up so that she could press her mouth against the pulse point below his jaw. It fluttered against her mouth like wings. "I won't ride bitch, baby. Maybe I'll take you for a ride," she murmured against his skin.
In answer, Royce crossed the scant bit of distance between them and kissed her.
.x.
It was the little rebellions that counted. Isabelle had long ago made her peace with the fact that she was probably going to die on this planet- it would be horrible, messy, painful, and she would probably die alone. There was no getting out of it. This planet was all an entire game to the sadistic Predators, but that didn't mean she had to play it the way they wanted her to.
It started with her making Royce recite her favorite of his poems: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas while she inscribed it in large letters on the wall of a cliff face near the drop zone with red ochre. It would be one of the first things the new victims saw when they arrived, provided they weren't attacked first.
Royce had grumbled and growled, looking around like he expected a Predator to be lurking in the bushes watching them, but he'd done it.
They avoided newcomers by habit now since direct encounters with the bewildered mercenaries and soldiers would mean certain death, but they still tried to help whenever they could. Isabelle began to leave tips carved into trees and scratched into rocks: infrared vision, watch out for trees, do the unexpected, and THEY BLEED.
So then it was almost a surprise when the last of three Predators died during the third drop of the fifth year (Royce had shot him in the face with a rocket launcher). It was a surprise, because after the Predator died, a fourth one decloaked in front of them. The tri laser dots from her shoulder cannon hopped from Isabelle's forehead, to Royce's, and back again. The message was clear: you move, you die. You may die anyway, I haven't decided yet.
There was no time to make a rush for weapons; they'd barely defeated that last Predator by the skin of their teeth. They were both exhausted, and Royce was keeping his weight off of his left leg due to the Pred trying to hamstring him. Isabelle's hand snaked into his and she rested her head on his shoulder. They'd had a good run. Not nearly as long as Noland, but certainly more interesting. They'd killed every Predator that Hunted them.
For a long time, the Predator considered them. Its dress was much more elaborate, the armor was inscribed with symbols and there was more of it. Instead of the usual metal loincloth and helmet, this Predator was outfitted in a full suit of armor. It carried a shield made from the head of a large alien monster. The monster must have been huge, because the head was massive and slightly fan shaped, with an inner mouth-like tongue.
Royce's had squeezed hers. "It's been a wild ride, Isabelle. Thanks for sticking with me."
She smiled up at him, completely ignoring their looming death. "I'm glad I met you Royce, circumstances be damned."
"Likewise."
The Predator huffed, and they both looked back at it. It was holding out a ceremonial knife that was the size of a small sword. Royce finally reached out and took it, gingerly, as though it might explode in his hand.
The Predator turned and stalked towards the ship that decloaked in front of it. Royce and Isabelle watched it walk away, not understanding what was going on. Was this some new battle? The Predator turned and roared at them, mandibles flaring. It jerked its head towards the ship.
"Does it want us to get on the ship?" Isabelle murmured. "This could be a trap."
"Maybe so, but at least it's off this damn rock," Royce replied. He tugged on her hand. "C'mon, anywhere else is better than here."
Isabelle followed him, not wanting to say it, but she was thinking it. Maybe they're taking us home.
.x.
And when she woke up later in the desert outside Beersheba with Royce unconscious next to her, and a curious vulture jabbing her in the butt, she still could hardly believe it.
They were home. And still alive.
Fin