For Tullyfan :)
BTW, just and a/n, read all the way to the end before you make a judgement. It gets better, I promise.
Disclaimer: you know the bit
"We're leaving at oh-'six hundred. Be ready."
Tully hid a yawn in his arm as he ducked out the door. It was four in the mourning, and they'd been called to a mission, urgent and without another team to take it. In all honesty, thought Tully, there probably was another team. Just not the Rat Patrol. That was the difference. The other guys were good- they were great- at what they did. But the Rat Patrol had one thing they didn't, and that was a reputation. A guarantee that if the plan didn't work, although it probably would, at least they wouldn't lose men senselessly; a promise of a second shot.
Moving out into the pale desert morning, Tully caught Hitch in the middle of his own lion-sized yawn, and a quick smile passed between the two.
As they were downing powdered eggs and dried out sausage that tasted months old, Tully couldn't help but catch the looks in Moffit and Troy's eyes. Hitch kept shifting in his seat, swinging the stale water nervously, seeming to feel the effects of the radiating discomfort. It wasn't like the casual college boy, who was forever blowing bubbles with his chewing gum and reclining in the seat of his jeep, even on patrol. He wasn't the nervous type. None of the Rat Patrol was, come to think of it.
Even out in the jeeps, spinning sand out in fan-like trails from their back tires, the men moved with a renewed speed and urgency, but for what, Tully couldn't fathom. It was almost like they were trying to get moving before they lost the nerve. But they'd been on hundreds, maybe thousands of raids. They'd picked up POWs and rescued Generals from stranded convoys. They'd stopped private wars and started revolutions, even if mental. To give any one a fighting chance was enough.
Why weren't they briefed on the mission?
Tully felt the tension of the British sergeant's eyes, seeming to watch him from behind.
Maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe because Moffitt was new. All those raids and rescues were with their lost comrade. Moffitt was foreign, and stiff, and a little too smart for Tully to hold a comfortable conversation with.
Maybe they were just breaking in this new member of the famous war-tuned quartet.
He hoped that was all.
…
They stopped at high noon, when the sun was crashing down on Tully's head. He'd had a thought to whip off the helmet, because his head felt like an oven-top, but his basic training and the voice of his commanding officer screaming in his ear wouldn't leave him alone. Through the metal, he could feel the rays of piercing sunlight. Thankfully, they found a place in some old ruins with a well and some sparse shadows to sit in. Tully was still picking sand out of his pockets when the coffee was done, and they all gathered around. In the heat, he barely wanted to drink it, but somehow sensed that the urgency called for caffeine. Moffitt had no trouble downing the gritty black liquid, Tully noted.
"I know you're wondering why you weren't briefed." Troy said, swooping off his hat and squinting at the sun. The sweat on his face made it glint. The sight made Tully feel even warmer. He shuddered away the sensation of sand trickling down his torso as he shifted his weight.
"The truth is, we had a hunch it wouldn't be easy to convince you to go."
"What do yah mean Sarge? We've seen it all. You thought we'd chicken out?" Hitch smiled, pulling his glasses off his face.
"No." Moffitt stepped in. "The truth is…" he faltered a little.
"The truth is we're giving up. We're deserting. Defecting. And we want you to defect with us."
"Sarge!" Tully laughed tightly, "Is this some kind of joke? I'm mean… no, course we won't. Right Hitch?" He tried to smile jestingly, but the looks of sorrow on their leader's faces seemed to dim the moment.
"No. We aren't joking. The war is going downhill, and we aren't about to go down with it."
"And you got permission- no, you got an order- to defect?" Hitch stood straighter, a frown deepening the lines of his face.
"Truth is," Moffitt shook his head, "They're all defecting. We've lost the war, or we're going to, any day."
"And you roped everyone into defecting?" Tully asked in disbelief. He'd heard that the British were hard to sway, but he never thought of them as the ones who swayed others... But then he also knew that he didn't like Moffitt from the start. This confirmed the strange sensation of misplacement whenever he was around. And he was around a lot. The feeling hadn't left Tully for the longest time, and now it seemed to coagulate in his mind, like a chunk of concrete hardening as so to never be moved.
Moffitt didn't look guilty, but Troy's sideways glance made Tully's gut clench. So the Brit was a bad seed.
As they stood there, from over the bright pale hills came a familiar rumbling, one that could only mean a German column. Tully and Hitch ducked down, but the Sergeants stayed standing. Moffitt looked a little haughty, standing there all stony-faced. This made-up heroism of desertion didn't spread onto Troy, but the leader tried to keep his back straight and his face solidly blank. Instead he looked like a lion torn between the sharing of a fresh kill and the excitement of the hunt.
Tully glanced at HItch, and they took off before the Sergeants could do or say anything, crawling further back into the maze of broken walls. The ruins seemed to shake when the massive armored vehicles stopped. German voices could be heard.
Tully trembled with confusion.
The Germans were spreading out, searching the ruins for the missing two members of the infamous patrol.
"What do we do?" Tully whispered, realizing only now that he had started to shake. The sergeants were standing on the German's side, facing the ruins.
"Run."
The voices were too close; Tully agreed, so they sprinted out of their hiding place, making for the open desert. But the sound of machine gun fire tore away the hope of escaping. Tully felt his chest expand with the sharpness of the pain a multitude of bullets caused. He didn't feel himself falling onto the sand- it didn't even feel hard or abrasive, like sand usually does. He just sort of floated above it. He could hear Troy screaming something, voice laced with regret. Hitch was leaning over him, blood dripping from his hairline.
"Don' give up on me sarge, don' give up on me," Tully kept mumbling. He searched for the two men who had the answers. They always had the answers, didn't they? His hand grappled with the air. He felt himself choking as Hitch swayed a little. German feet treaded the dune closer, and closer, and closer. "Don't give up on me Sarge!"
"Tully! Don't give up on me Tully. Hang on. Stay awake!"
The voice was British. The weight was immense. The day was… night? Tully squinted as the pressure on his chest increased. He almost cried out, but a strange thought came into his head: I'm too tired.
He started to close his eyes.
"Tully, stay awake! Don't give up now!"
He almost sat straight up, or he would have, if there wasn't a jeep flipped on its side, on top of him.
Wait. The Germans were gone. Where was the ruins? Hitch, and Troy? Jeep? What was happening?
"Dietrich is gone." Moffitt told him. He must have seen him glancing around. But the Captain hadn't been there to pick up the Rat Patrol earlier.
That didn't make sense. If they were losing, the first person to pick up the four would be that very man. He wouldn't pass up that chance for anything.
"'r'ins?" he gasped.
"What?" the British man leaned closer, "Ruined? No, it's alright. The jeep isn't ruined. The mission went well. Except for this stunt. You've got Hitchcock and Troy on a wild goose chase to catch up to that medical base that's moving out."
Tully tried to wrap his mind around the fact that he'd been supposedly dreaming, but he couldn't. That was so real- he was cut off when he tried to cough the metallic sensation of blood out of his throat. He couldn't move his chest enough to do so, and his whole body tensed in pain when he tried. Moffitt's hand was on his shoulder, "Easy, easy Tully."
"Wh't about defectin'?"
"What?" the Sergeant made a face Tully had never seen a person make. A mixture of incredulousness, amusement, worry, and a plethora of unorganized emotions still trying to be identified. He put a hand on Tully's forehead. "I think you're a little feverish. Just lie still, I'll be right back."
A moment later, Moffitt returned with a canteen and some clean bandages. He soaked them and gently laid them on Tully's forehead and neck. Normally, he would have liked the coolness, but they were in the desert at night. The chill seemed to sweep low over the ground. It filled what little room his lungs had with a wretchedly small amount of freezing air, which in turn, made him shudder. The heat from the blood on his arms, and everywhere really, was quickly fading. He started to shiver anew, and Moffitt noticed. He pulled a blanket out from the salvaged supplies, and folded it over Tully.
"Hey, don't go out on me," he heard the accent ringing through the lonely silence.
But Tully was already falling asleep.
When he next woke the jeep wasn't anywhere he could see. Hitch and Moffitt were standing nearby; he could hear Troy talking to someone.
The two sergeants and his buddy all circled around him. And a stranger in a medical officer's uniform.
"Good to see you awake," the doctor said, tapping his IV.
Tully glanced around weakly, trying to clear his head and organize the confusion of sounds and sights and smells.
After the doctor left, and Hitch and Troy were assured that Tully wouldn't drop dead any minute, they both wandered off to go get some food for them all.
Moffitt stepped forward, closer to Tully's bed. "It's been bothering me all night- I hope you don't mind me asking this- what were you saying, Tully, when you woke up under the jeep?"
"What?" he honestly couldn't remember.
"You said something about ruining something, and defecting. Are you alright? If you want to talk to someone…." Moffitt looked genuinely concerned.
Tully would have laughed if the sudden crashing of memories of the dream, and the confusion hadn't come back. "Nothing Sarge. I just had a dream."
"What about?" Moffitt shook himself, "If you don't mind my asking, that is."
Tully put a hand to his head, smiling a little. You might think it's strange… irrational, or illogical, as you Brit's say... I thought you'd given up on me." He cocked his mouth into a half-sarcastic, half reassuring grin. But he didn't feel the effect it was supposed to give.
Moffitt's dark eyes glinted a little, like he was remembering something, or trying to sort out what kind of statement that was. He sat down suddenly and looked Tully in the eye, "Well that's one thing I can promise I'll never do."
And to Tully, that wasn't a Sergeant reciting his duties. It was a man telling another man that he cared- that now Moffitt wasn't just part of the Rat Patrol. He was the Rat Patrol. They all were.
Hope you guys liked it. Sorry I have so many unfinished works, but school and everything has been crazy. I'm hoping to write a lot more this summer. Drop me a review if you get the chance. If you bug me enough, I might even write something for you ;)