"Call from the hospital, John," Bill Tawney said after the encryption had fallen into place. "McAllen and Yacoby have both stabilized and are recovering. They're keeping 'em sedated for the next week, though."
John Clark breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally, some good news."
"Tell me about it. The others were worried sick."
"The rest of the team coping okay with all this craziness?"
"As much as one could expect. You know Stanley's tracking another budding extremist organization with some of them. I expect that's why you're keeping mostly the same teams intact."
As if on cue, Ding's voice pierced through the headset Clark wore. "We're pinned down!"
Without hanging up the phone, he spoke into his microphone. "Alpha-2, Weber is inbound." He dialed the switch on his headset and spoke again, carefully. "Weber, this is Six. Chavez can't hear this transmission. If you fall back, the team will fail. Millions will die. I know the danger you're in, but they have to make it. This is where you make your stand. Rainbow Six, out."
"This is Weber," he heard the German say to the team, along with a refusal to retreat after the job was done, to the (rather predictable) protests of his team leader.
"You didn't tell him the good news," said Tawney over the phone, which was still held up to his face.
"Hmm?"
"Weber. You didn't tell him Yacoby's alive."
"So you know about them too?"
A snort. "John, I can't call myself the Director of Intelligence if I can't figure out these things about our own people."
Clark chuckled as much as his stress would allow. "Fair enough."
"So why didn't you tell him?"
He leaned back in his metal folding chair, a hand coming up to stroke the stubble that had formed since he left Hereford. "It's not relevant to him now. During the debrief... let me just say that you didn't need to see the look on his face to know what he was worried about." He pursed his lips before continuing. "This might distract him more than the thought of her dying already does. He doesn't need to think about more. We can tell him the good news when he gets back."
"I suppose so."
"Yacoby better still be alive by then."
Tawney laughed weakly. "She's a strong woman. I'm sure this information will still be true when you get back."
A pause. "Hey, Bill?"
"Yes?"
"You don't think this is bad for them, do you? Getting involved with each other like this?"
"John, this is Rainbow. These guys are the cream of the crop. So yeah, some of them like sleeping with each other — hell, some of them are ex-lovers. But if they can still work together flawlessly with that on their backs, then I don't know what else you're worried about."
Clark thought briefly of who those ex-lovers might be, but decided to keep things on topic. "I've just been getting concerned since Yacoby and Weber are both on these missions."
"It hasn't interfered with their professionalism," Tawney pointed out, "and if it did, I'm sure they'd be the first to know."
"Hasn't it, though? When they rescued Weber, Yacoby was spearheading the mission."
"Ding maintained it was his decision to go through with it. He had quite a few choice words for me, as well," he added, grumbling.
Clark chuckled. "He apologized, didn't he?"
"He did. He's a good kid. But my point is, I think they're fine." Clark didn't say anything, so Tawney continued. "I mean, take a look over at the CIA. Ed and MP don't let their marriage get in the way of work."
"That's true," he admitted, sighing.
"Let me guess. You asked Ding about this already?"
"Yep." He thought for a brief moment before landing on a decision. "Well, I guess it'd be too late to make a change in policy anyway."
There was a short laugh on the other end of the line. "It's better this way, John. They're all in this together."
-0-
There she was, lying there with a mask on her face, breathing mechanized, eyes closed. Weber took a breath before entering the room, as if plunging into water. The room seemed numb, deaf. It felt wrong to see her there, devoid of the temper and fire that gave her such a presence — that pained him more than any other kind of torture. He stood by the bed and took her hand. It felt cold, but he couldn't tell if it was actually cold or if his hands were just much warmer, as the case often was. Presently, he gave her hand a squeeze. There was no response, save for the slight movement of her chest as air was pumped into her lungs.
He let go for less than a minute, using that time to pull a chair in the room to her side. He sat and took her hand again, and stared at her face. Her hair wasn't pulled up anymore, as was to be expected, and it sprawled in wispy waves on the off-white pillow. His eyes followed a tube from a bedside machine that ran through her mask and down her throat. Just a couple more days, he reminded himself. Then they would check to see if she'd be able to breathe on her own, which was extremely likely given how well she was doing, then he'd finally be able to talk to her and tell her the bad guys all died and the good guys were all home. But that was for the future, really. He'd only barely escaped the castle tower without serious injury himself. He was sure she'd fuss over him if he told her. A wry smile crossed his lips as he thought about how she would have reacted if she had been on Chavez's team that night. She would probably have tried to find him, but he knew Chavez was a strong enough leader that she'd listen to him and stay with the rest of the team. He was lucky Chavez himself didn't go after him. He'd gone through a lot of trouble remembering how to be a sneaky son of a bitch just to get that rocket-propelled grenade, which, as it turned out, was extremely useful, not to mention extremely fun to use.
Perhaps I should start focusing on demolitions instead, he thought with an absent-minded chuckle. He'd tell her about that too, and she'd be sure to laugh like a maniac. Dieter Weber, their big German rifleman, trying to sneak around a castle with an RPG strapped to his back? It was something out of a spy comedy, a real blockbuster. By all accounts, it shouldn't have worked. Yet he did it, and he couldn't but help feel a measure of pride.
He reached out to touch her face with his free hand, his callused thumb brushing lightly over her cheekbone. He was proud of her too, in a way, for making it through this, though he didn't know whether this had to do with willpower or divine intervention or whatever her body decided to do with the wounds it sustained. Price had been talking about her and McAllen an awful lot, praising their abilities in a firefight even as he diminished his own leadership. He kept making it out like it was his own fault that two of the soldiers under his command had been critically injured — not so much indicative of a bad leader as a good one. Price cared enough that he blamed himself for their wounds. A sign of a good man, if a little on the self-deprecating side.
Weber glanced around, and, upon seeing no one near, moved forward to place a gentle kiss on Yacoby's sleeping face, lingering there for a few seconds. Then he leaned back in his chair, swiveling it so he was facing the foot of her bed. His hand took hers again. Outside, the sun had already set. It was dark. He shut his eyes, the beeping in the room a constant reminder that they were both alive.
This is enough.
-0-
Clark stepped into the now dimly-lit hallway. There wasn't really much use in checking on these two since they were going to be unconscious for the next few days, but though they'd stabilized, anything could happen. The uncertainty of the human body's reactions to outside stimuli made sure of that. A nurse passed him to enter the room he'd just left, and he looked in after her. At least McAllen was doing fairly well, he thought, watching the nurse check and record his heart rate, blood pressure, and medications. He sighed involuntarily. Roger McAllen was always a lighthearted, easygoing lad. Losing him would have hurt the team badly.
He shook the thought from his mind and walked down the corridor. Only a few doors down from where McAllen lay was where Ayana Yacoby was sleeping, having also been medically induced into unconsciousness. He knew Yacoby was, at the very least, someone who got the job done, even if some people didn't really like her that much. Though he also knew that every single person on the team wanted her to survive. A good soldier was a good soldier, after all, and they were a family, weren't they?
He reached the entryway to her room and his heart nearly stopped. He hadn't been expecting anyone to be in the room, since it was late and most of their people were at home or hanging out in the NCO club. The room was dark, but there was a distinctly male shape next to the hospital bed.
Clark stepped in to acclimate himself to the darkness so he wouldn't give himself away by tuning on the lights. Was it...? Yes, of course, he realized after peering at the man's face. It was Dieter Weber, uncharacteristically slouching in his seat, which Clark found the reason for shortly. His head rested on the back of the chair he sat in, eyes closed, one arm extended so that his hand could comfortably close around Yacoby's. The slow, steady rate of his chest moving up and down told Clark that the man had fallen asleep here.
He glanced at Yacoby. She'd be none the wiser, of course, but he figured she probably wouldn't have minded this setup. It was something special to sleep beside someone you loved, since sleeping was a time when you were ultimately at your most vulnerable. You placed massive trust in the person next to you because you had to. The fact that Weber, a man with an iron constitution and an iron will, so easily slept next to her was indicative of how deeply he trusted her. Clark could respect that.
Suddenly he felt rather intrusive. They were both sleeping, so there was no one to be embarrassed in front of, but he felt his ears grow hot regardless. He stepped out of the room, sparing one last look at the two soldiers, holding hands and sleeping side by side, as if reminding himself that policy really didn't need any changing at all.
-0-
a/n "Weber's face during the debrief" is actually mentioned in the game, but not specifically. For those of you who haven't played, after the mission where Yacoby and McAllen are seriously injured and may die, Clark tells him, "Weber, I know how bad this is, but I need you at one-hundred percent. Stay focused. Make me proud."
One could take that as meaning he realizes how dangerous his sniper perch looks. However, given his and Yacoby's previous in-game interactions, my interpretation of Clark's line was that Weber's worry for her is much more likely.
There will probably be no more updates on this story. Leave a review if you like it or have something to add. Thanks for reading.
