All I have is one last chance,
I won't turn my back on you,
Take my hand and drag me down,
If you fall then I fall to,
If I can't save what's left of you
10
What do you say, when all you stand for is gone. When all the beauty in the world has been sucked out and all that's left is a bleak grey wasteland, unforgiving no matter how much you want that color back. It doesn't matter how hard you fight, or how much you sacrifice, this desolate place will keep taking and taking till there's nothing left to give.
But is that really true? Emilia's mind wanders, yes, mostly anyway. Except for Soap and Price, all that's left of this shattered Task Force, laying broken and beaten down in a undisclosed location somewhere in Iraq, they're still alive, barely, but its something to hold on to.
She's laying her head down on the Scott's beside now, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. Studying the many wires and breathing tubes that are keeping this great man alive. A man who nearly killed himself to revenge his friends. Emilia shudders softly; every time her mind even eludes to Roach and Ghost its like another piece of her falls away. She's not crying now, but the tears are ever present, brimming around the swollen edges of her wide eyes, waiting for the damn to break.
This is all Emilia does now, over the past two days, when she's not wandering aimlessly through hallways crowded with Russian rebels seeking sanctuary from the storm, she sits in this room, watching Soap's wounded body mend its self. Price has tried to engage her in miniscule conversation, draw her out of the hole she's hiding in, but Emilia wont have it, the place that's outside of it is to much to take right now, thinking that much more of it at the moment will surely be her end.
She desperately wants Soap to wake up, to be able to look into those ice blue eyes and see life there, whatever state its that its in. She wants to know that he's really here with her and wont disappear where she cant reach him.
The Doctor is in here now, taking Soaps vitals, changing his band-aids, Emilia has been forbidden from standing watch, outcast to wander the halls again, to jittery with nervousness to sit still somewhere so she makes her way outside, to the small confining perimeter that the Russians who run this place have set up.
Price is leaning against one of the wooden barricades set up, puffing away on his seemingly endless supply of cigars, he turns and gives Emilia a weak smile when she stands beside him, pulling out her own cigarette, neither one says a word to the other, content in their own solitude, yet at he same time, a certain unspoken brotherhood exists between them, they know they will fight together, and die protecting the other; when this developed, Emilia couldn't say for sure, but has a pretty good guess it was the last few days that really cemented her place with them, as if through surviving Shepard, watching as Roach and Ghost where cut down has earned her a grim right of passage. Well, what ever it is, its stronger than any of them now realize.
A man steps out into the hot sunlight, his weary eyes searching, when they come across Prices bearded face the man walks over to him, clearing his throat as politely as he can. Emilia and Price turn together, wearing the same worried drawn expression.
"Come with me" he says, and its almost hard to understand with how thick his accent is.
She follows Price, ringing her hands together subconsciously, her heart wont stop its frantic beating as they near the room she's spent so much time in.
Once inside the Doctor walks over to the IV bag hanging next to Soaps still body and turns the valve on the tubing that's feeding the Scott whatever drip was sustaining him, when Emilia realizes that he's turned it off her heart leaps right to the back of her throat and she nearly throws the damned organ up.
"How long… will he be out" Price dares to ask, his voice strained, not from the same fear really as the girl peaking over his shoulder, but from his own pain, one hand always gripping his bruised ribcage, trying to sooth the broken bones underneath.
"Not out…uh, Captain is awake" the Doctor struggles, English was always a difficult langue to learn.
"He's awake?" Price replies edging closer to the bed, Emilia doesn't trust her voice, her feet having cemented her to the concrete beneath her, doesn't move.
"Fuck.. Off old man"
Her knees nearly give out when his voice hits her ears, its gravely, and ruff with thirst and lack of use, but its his, and that is more than she ever could have asked for.
The doctor smiles, removing the blue gloves from his hands and leaves, a strange silence filling in his absence.
"Its good to see you mate" Price says, emotion brimming where he never thought he'd here it, this really seems like an impossible miracle that they all didn't die out there. He looks behind him at Emilia whose staring almost like a child staring longingly at something that she wants but has been told not to touch; the old man smiles and bids his friend goodbye, well he pushes Emilia ahead with a wink, then leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
She's really nervous now, and doesn't know what to say, she's wanted this, does want it, more than anything, but her throat is closing and all that squeezes out is a soft almost inaudible 'hey'.
Soap's head twitches, and slowly opens his tired eyes, he sees Emilia right away and they just look at each other, reading what's so plainly on display on the others face. Its like a silent conversation passes, hurt clenches her face and her lips quiver, she's trying so hard to hold it in, to hold it all in, but when he looks at her, the piercing eyes telling her that its okay, he's hurting to, that he misses their friends, its to much, and a fissure cracks into the wall she's built up and a sob breaks free. Emilia's one good hand clamped tightly over her mouth as Soap beckons her closer with a nod of his head. It takes her a moment before she finds her feet again, walking carefully over to the chair that she's so often occupied.
"You ok there" he says with a wheeze, when she is seated safely beside him, its funny she thinks, he's the one whose almost died and he's asking her if she's ok.
Emilia's big doe eyes lock onto his face and she shakes her head 'no' that she's anything but ok, that she doesn't know how to get passed this one, there's no where to run to this time.
No empty cold wilderness can numb her insides any longer because what's happened now has finally trumped her ability to bear it alone; Emilia needs him, and Price more than she's ever needed another human being in all her years. it's a terrifying thing, accepting that your no longer strong enough to tough it out by your self, when the only person you've been able to rely on is you.
"I'm not either" he says back, and smiles crookedly down at her.
Emilia sighs sadly, her eyes shifting between Soaps and her hands, wanting to say something, anything. But the words are to jumbled. The silence now is bridging on awkward, and she comes to the understanding that its different between them, the dynamics have changed, as if in their shared grief a stronger underlying bond has formed like scar tissue.
"Smoke?!" Emilia squeaks with such sudden enthusiasm that its nearly embarrassing, but she doesn't care, the need for a distraction was to great, so she pulls out the squished pack of Paul Malls and hands Soap one, lighting his before her own.
"What do we do now?" she asks after a moment, watching the plume of smoke as it exhales from her lungs.
"First I need to get out of this damn bed, then we find and kill Makarov"
Makarov, how could she have forgotten! This was all because of him, her 'brother'. The man Emilia had grown up with and had, for a brief while, had trusted. God what a ruin the world is now, Russia and America, a third world war, so many people dieing for nothing more than one mans personal vendetta. Ghost and Roach dead because of him, maybe not by his hand, but at the of the line, it all came back to Makarov, and she knew, that it would never stop till he was dead.
The next few days pass a little more bearably than the last, each day Soap pushes himself harder, desperate to feel like himself again. Working hard, exorcising slowly, gaining back the strength he'd lost with the blood that had spilt. Emilia had asked last night, what exactly had happened to him and Price out there, and after a few moments to put together his own thoughts, Soap recounted one of the hardest days of his life.
After hearing Emilia over the comm, learning that his best friends were dead, Soap nor Price could leave, knowing that the General was close by they're position, but they couldn't locate him in time. Price ingeniously, (whether Emilia will see it that way or not is debatable) had moved to reach Makarov over the com link, and it had worked, after gaining the Intel on Sheppard's position they moved in.
The General had stabbed Soap almost immediately, Emilia listens with sullen eyes, and a heavy heart, listened on how Price had fought him, and lost thinking Soap was dead along with the rest of them. But no, as Soap watched the brawl through blurring eyes, Sheppard's knife, sticking out of him throbbed like some dark beacon, it was the one last thing that he could do, the only thing before that black abyss took him.
Grabbing the handle of the blade with two hands, he pulled, his muscles spasaming almost beyond control as the worst most intense pain raked his body but Soap wouldn't stop, pulling the knife out with every last ounce of strength, its serrated edge cutting against bone, vibrating terribly through his body. Almost there, an he thinks he's going to pass out, darkness is encroaching and all he can here is his own deafening heartbeat.
Just when his last vestiges of strength are about to die the blade pulls free in a spray of his own blood, and he aims the weapon at Shepard, who is to preoccupied with trying to kill Price with his fists. Maybe it was a sixth sense or some perverted intuition, but Shepard looks up from his brutal task just in time to see his own knife come hurtling towards his eyes… and its over. God its over. Price is dead, Soaps dieing… Ghost and Roach are dead (he leaves out this bit, not ready for the girl to here it) and he thinks of poor Emilia then, how he's failed her to, and Soap in that moment regrets not kissing her when he had the chance with such a profound ache in his heart that it chokes of his breath and finally the Scott fades into an all consuming darkness.
Emilia is staring at him, her bloodshot eyes are leaking around the corners, his tale is so harrowing, a tragedy if there ever was one, but he's here, with her now, and in them, in the fight that will surly come, maybe Ghost and Roach will not have died in vain.
"We will kill Makarov… I want to see him suffer" she finally says, her small body trembling as if from a cold only she can feel, "and when its over, when he's dead and the war is over, I want to tell the world what Ghost and Roach did for them, and you and Price, the trueth, everyone will know it" Emilia trails off, her eyes searching out something that Soap can't see as she mindlessly chews a nail on her unmarred hand, but he knows what she's saying. Emilia has had a really hard time accepting that they are all traitors now, wanted dead or alive by the Countries they sacrificed everything for… Disavowed, the word alone left a bitter taste in the mouth.
"In time Emilia" the words roll off Soaps tongue smoothly and she looks back up at him, he's never actually said her name really, always lass or 'girl', and she likes it, the way his heavy accent changes it slightly.
The next day Soap was in physical therapy again, exorcising endlessly, and had his Doctor nearly pulling his hair out by the end of their session, raving about how he was pushing to hard, moving to fast, that the fucking stubborn ass wont listen to a word of advise. Emilia had found this amusing as she passed the small ramshackle excuse for a gym, smiling to herself. Right now she's on her way to the cafeteria to see what kind of barely edible brew is going to pass for food when something catches her eye. She does a double take as her poor bruised heart starts its thunderous beating inside her rib cage, and a growl rips from her throat as she tears her side arm from its holster and walks with hard fast strides down the narrow hallway. The man in her sights shouldn't be here.
Price just catches the look on her face when he turns the corner, his eyes quickly registering the gun gripped so tightly in her hand that her knuckles are white. He drops the book he was carrying and runs after her, just in time to see her take careful aim at Yuri's head.
*I went back and fixed some typo's that escaped me in the lat chapterJ hope you enjoyed this one*