Word count: 1667
Because it's fun to make friends suffer with sad Carwash siblings right? 8)
Your vision is dim, blurred with pain and by the blood gushing from the cut above your eyebrow. Your head is aching - one of the fuckers knocked you out and took away your weapons. Epsilon is silent. You can't even feel his presence anymore. If you were fully lucid, you'd deduce that the blow damaged your implants. Instead, you feel lost and abandoned, the voice in your head suddenly quiet. Church was - is, you force yourself to think - annoying as hell, but you grew to like him. It was almost like having a family again.
And now, for the first time in a long time, you're alone.
It takes you a few minutes of obliging yourself to breathe steadily for your vision to clear up, and you realize you're not as alone as you thought you were. There's a shape on the ground in front of you; at first, you think it's one of the pirates' body, but you can see it move slightly and hear a series of short, painful intakes of breath. Your first instinct is to reach for your gun, and you swear between your teeth when your hand doesn't find it on your thigh. The guy seems to be in a pretty bad state anyway. There's blood on the cement floor. He doesn't have his helmet on, and you can see messy blonde hair. He's too far away for you to catch sight of his face. He's just an anonymous mercenary in black armor who ran out of luck.
That's when you notice the accents.
The lights are barely bright enough to allow you to figure out the details of the armor, let alone the exact color of it, but the contrast reminds you too much of…
"Wash?" you croak. Hoping to be wrong.
The sound of laboured breathing pauses. You can hear metal scraping against the floor as the man shifts to take a look at you. Groan, wheezing huff of breath when he stops moving and squints at you.
"Carolina? What…"
Voice hoarse, frail and broken. Your throat tightens painfully. You instinctively reach out for him. Too far. There's only a few step between you two, but when you're reduced to crawling, it feels like miles. You start moving, pushing on your forearms, dragging yourself on the dirty ground. Your legs trail behind you, useless. They became nothing but a burden when the gun-for-hire in a green-and-steel armor - Locus - put two bullets in your knees. The injuries hurt like hell, but you've been through worse, and it's not nearly enough to keep you away from Wash.
Your progression is slow, so slow. Wash is staring at you, not saying a word. You can't tell if it's because he's just too exhausted to talk or if he's questioning whether you are real or not - he looks really badly hurt, and you learned from experience how blood loss can cause hallucinations. For a couple of second, you wonder if you're not imagining things yourself, because the more you progress, the further he seemed to be. It reminds you uncomfortably of some dreams you had after you discovered York's files - running after a shadow long gone, just a memory of better times, only to have him vanish before you could touch him or die between your arms. Wash can't die, you decide, clenching your teeth. You let him down too many times already. Not this one.
"Not this time, Wash," you tell him. "It's going to be fine."
You can see him smile weakly in the shadows. He doesn't believe you, you can tell.
"You were always bad at lying, 'Lina."
He tenses up, coughs. There's blood on his lips, sweat on his forehead. This is bad, you think - but don't say. Wash keeps a hand pressed against his right side. You can't see it from here, but you know that his wounds are the source of all the blood on the concrete floor. How much did he loose already? Epsilon could tell.
You miss him.
You extend a hand; surprisingly, Wash manages to reach back, fingers trembling. You can almost touch him. Just a little more-
Wash is looking at you - hair sticking to his face, skin abnormally pale. Eyes wet. A distressed noise comes out of his throat. A sob. You haven't seen him cry in more than twenty years, and it's enough to make what little composure you still had shrink away fast. He coughs again, cries out in pain.
"Stay with me, Wash! What happened? Where are you hurt?"
Your voice is steadier than you expected. Good. He doesn't need to know exactly how much the situation is out of your control.
He doesn't answer, just moves his hand away to show the damages. The chest plate is pierced in two spots, and you can only guess that the bullets went through the undersuit as well. Punctured lung and open wound. Explains the difficulties to breathe and the coughing up blood. If you are to trust your basic medical knowledge and experience, you'd give him five minutes to live. Maybe ten.
You can't die, you think. Tell him.
"We're gonna get out of there, okay? Remember Spiral? Situation's seemed a little desperate back then, but we all made it, yeah?" Except for Maine. The Sarcophagus mission pretty much signed his death.
You can almost touch him-
"Nana."
The nickname makes you freeze. During the Project you were "Carolina" or "Boss". York tried to call you "Lina" once, and it didn't end well for him. But hearing this - childish nickname, pronounced on a plaintive tone - sends you back to the place you called home when you were eight.
A woman in a military uniform and a solemn face knocked at your door, talked to your dad - to the Director. You still used the title as a joke back then. You both came to observe them - two blonde kids who didn't have enough distractions and missed their mom. Then the woman left and your dad - voice shaky, eyes watery - told you your mother wasn't coming back. He promised you that he'd do his best to replace her.
It didn't work.
At fourteen David ran away, somehow managing to leave the planet. You dyed your hair blood red and joined the UNSC ; you were seventeen at the time. Your father didn't try to search for your brother or to forbid you to enroll; maybe you were two painful reminders of the woman he lost. Maybe he just didn't care anymore.
It had been a shock to discover the new addition to the Alpha team - surprise, relief, anger when you saw his face and recognize him. You could have refused to accept him in the team. He wasn't experienced enough, strong enough, sharp enough. And, above all things, he abandoned you when you only had each other left.
Had you refused then, he wouldn't have been there now, agonizing on a planet at the edge of colonized space and suffocating on his own blood.
"Nana," he calls out again. Your chest feels too tight; breathing is a struggle. Your fingers brush against his, and you whisper:
"Yes, Dave. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. We're going to stick together now."
But it already feels like a lie already. Wash coughs again; the sounds of his gasps become even more difficult, intakes of breath short and erratic. His gaze goes off focus, comes back on you again.
"Sorry," he mumbles.
You manage to grimace a smile.
"Don't worry, Wash. You did good. I'm going to take care of everything now, okay? Wash?"
No answer. You breathe heavily in the silence for a moment. From outside, you can still hear gunshots and yells. It doesn't matter, now. You are waiting for the sound of Wash's respiration.
It doesn't come.
Tears are rolling on your cheeks before you even allowed yourself to understand what it means. Crawling the last centimeters separating you from his body - and you choke on a sob at the thought - you finally grab his hand, squeeze it convulsively. He doesn't squeeze back.
It hurts. Hurts more than your mother's death - you were too young, and she wasn't home often enough for you to truly get attached to her. Hurts more than finding York's logs, because he was a soldier and it was bound to happen. Giving your father the gun he was asking for only felt like closing a dark chapter of your story. But losing Wash? It's losing your entire family, losing your brother and the last of your teammates. It's being truly alone.
You let yourself cry. Your regret. You think about how it could have gone another way.
Wrapped in your mourning, you don't notice the sound of steps behind you until they stop near your head.
"Aww. Already dead? Aren't Freelancers supposed to be tougher that than?"
You look up. It's the mercenary in the black-and-orange armor. He's holding an assault rifle in his right hand, barrel directed at the ground, lazily swinging back and forth. You do your best to recover an neutral expression, and throw him the coldest look you can manage. He chuckles, not believing in your act one second.
"Are you trying to intimidate me? You're the one on the ground, honey. You're in absolutely no position to scare anybody."
An armored boot crushes your left wrist - the one who was holding your brother's hand. You stifle a yelp. Another mocking laugh, as the gun steadies and points at your head.
"Locus wanted to try and make a deal with you - you help us blowing up the world, we let you live - but you caused us too much troubles. So I'm just going to shoot you."
Shrugs. You grunt, look frantically around the room for something - anything - that could save you.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I don't make the rules."
He fires.