Jacinto Military Base
Present Day
"We will never forget. We will never forgive."
— A card left on a memorial to the veterans of the Pendulum Wars
Our scars remind us that our past is real.
They are simple reminders of pain, of sacrifice, of truth. They are permanent and unyielding, just like the passing of time. They may be hidden, covered with clothing and lies. They may fade slightly until they are difficult to see…but they are always, always there. And it only takes one jarring incident, one reminder, to bring back the memories, the emotions, the pain of receiving those scars.
I had tried to cover my scars with lies and time, tried to protect myself from the pain of my past. A simple facade was not enough, however. Despite how much I longed to forget everything, to sink fully and wholly into the 'Bri' persona, we are never fully freed from our past. The scars will always be there.
It was as if seeing the entire world in a new light; as if reality had shifted. In truth, in was only I who was changed - wholly and completely. My eyes were wide open as I stared at this stranger. At my father...
How accustomed to Dom's face had I become in the past week? But with new information came new light…and a new way of seeing. It was…difficult to compare his rough, ragged face with the kind memories I now possessed. Some things were the same: the scraggly beard that I knew would tickle my cheeks, the whiskey-colored eyes, and the slightly-too-wide nose centered in his face. Others were not so familiar. There was a haunted look to his expression, a secret agony deep within his eyes. He looked weary and exhausted - exhausted with war, with death, with pain and hatred. He was my father…and he was not. He was not the strong bastion of love and happiness from my childhood, but he was alive. Wasn't that all that mattered?
No. No, it was not. How many nights had I laid awake - shaking and crying in pain and fear - begging some great force to deliver me from Bane? Begged for the protecting figure who chased away nightmares in the dark and cleansed closets of monsters, for he who had rescued me from nightmares in the middle of the night. But…it was hard to stop having nightmares when you lived in one. Over time I had stopped begging for deliverance and started looking for someone to blame. For someone to hate…
A thousand different emotions pulled me in a thousand different directions, paralyzing me. Whatever neat and tidy emotion I'd felt when regrouping with Cole and Baird was gone. Seeing him again…it flooded me with so many emotions that I could barely think straight. And none of them were clean, or good, or even easy. I didn't even have a name to give half of them. My throat ached with barely-contained tears while my hands clenched into a tight fist.
I wished I felt like racing over to him and flinging my arms around his neck. I wished I felt like telling him I loved him, and that all was forgiven.
I wished I felt a tiny bit glad to see him…but I didn't.
Not that my feelings seemed to matter one bit to him, however. He continued to stare off into space with that half-dead, half-disbelieving look upon his face. His eyes were sunken with pain and misery and even I could tell he wasn't focusing on anything. It was the shell-shocked expression of someone who had lost everything…
"That's enough," Marcus' rough voice interrupted, and suddenly he was all I could see. His tight grip replaced Cole's worried grasp on my arm as he steered me away. I stumbled along after him, finally free to tear my gaze away from my father. I had no idea how long I had been staring; whether it had been seconds, or minutes, or even hours. "Cole, you, Baird, and Dom get inside with Hoffman. I'll be there in a minute."
I vaguely heard Cole's hesitant affirmative, and then the muffled sound of boots walking away. Slowly, the real world started filtering back in. The first thing I noticed was the loud 'pump, pump, pump' of artillery fire and then the added cacophony of small arms fire. Smoke - both from burning buildings and spent gunpowder - filled my lungs; just one more detail that kept me rooted to the here and now.
Marcus steered me into a protective alcove, only letting go of my arm when he was sure I wasn't going to bolt. "Alright," he said roughly, staring at me with those startling clear blue eyes. "Let's have it."
With those three words all the anger and hatred I had felt in Nexus came swirling back in droves. My fist and jaw clenched tight against the fury I felt. We were like fire and ice standing there; his cool equanimity not the least bit shattered while I trembled like a feather in a hurricane. "You knew…"I spat accusingly. "You knew, and you didn't tell me!
"Do you even…can you even comprehend…I just-" I stuttered in absolute rage, letting the anger run through me. A vision of my dead mother flashed through my mind again, mingled with Bane's words: 'A life for a life'. "I should have killed him when I had the chance," I growled menacingly, not quite sure if I meant it or not.
"I know you don't mean that," Marcus answered, feeding the fire inside of me.
"My mother is dead because of him!" I roared.
"And killing your father won't bring her back."
There was a stunned silence following his words. They were hard to swallow, and completely, absolutely true. Killing him wouldn't bring her back. Hurting him wouldn't undo the pain in my past. Punishing him wouldn't get rid of the guilt I felt. I deflated as quickly as I had riled up. "You've already lost one parent," Marcus continued, an eyebrow slightly cocked. "Do you really want to lose another?"
I couldn't answer him. I didn't know how. I closed my eyes, fighting my emotions for some semblance of the icy calm Marcus always possessed. I curled one injured arm around my chest, letting the other carry the weight of my lancer. "He didn't say anything," I realized suddenly, inadvertently voicing the thought out loud.
"He doesn't know."
That caught my attention. My eyes flew open to stare at Marcus, to try and see if he was lying. "How can he 'not know'?"
It may have been my imagination, but he looked slightly frustrated when he answered. "When you figured it out, he was a bit…indisposed. He's got a lot on his mind right now."
That may have been the understatement of the year.
His eyes flickered to the command center and back again. It was probably killing him to be away from Dom when he was so obviously in a fragile state. Too friggin' bad. He let out a breath - not quite a sigh, just a release of frustration and nerves that have been held too taunt for too long - before he continued. "Believe it or not," he said, "This was never designed to hurt you."
Now, I didn't usually think of myself as a particularly mean person, but suddenly the words were shooting out of my mouth as sharp as bullets. "What I can't understand, Uncle Marcus, is why you're so worried about me being hurt now, when you haven't given a shit about me for the last fifteen years."
He looked like I had reached out and smacked him. He opened his mouth to say something else, but suddenly we were interrupted by the booming voice of Colonel Hoffman. "Fenix!" he barked in his infamous, raspy tone. "Get your ass in here!"
Marcus did a slow blink, rotating his eyes between me and command. Another barking command from Hoffman sent him rushing past me. Suddenly, I was all alone. Smoke from burnt gunpowder and burning buildings teased my nostrils and made my eyes water. I focused on the echoes and crashes from artillery fire, trying unsuccessfully to drown out my thoughts.
The reaver, standing completely forgotten until now, gave a big huff of air like he was annoyed to be sitting idle before he took off from the ground in a great rush of speed. I turned to watch him as he flew away. I expected him to head straight into battle and return to his brothers in arms, but instead he took off over the water and into the sunset. Maybe, after a life of endless war and fighting, he'd decided that it was time to strike out on his own for a life of peace. Maybe it would take him years, but eventually he'd be able to but the chaos behind him and settle into harmless tranquility.
Or maybe I was insane, and the reaver was going out to attack to boats in the harbor…just like he was doing now.
"Shit," I growled, yanking off my sniper and setting a few shots his way. He was too far out for me to kill him, but hopefully the three or four rounds I sent his way encouraged him to buzz off. Throwing my sniper over my shoulder, I headed for command. Even if I didn't like it - and believe me, I didn't like it- there came a time when you had to set aside past grudges and focus on the task at hand.
Opening the door revealed a hectic group of COG officials running around like a headless chicken. Everyone had a headset and was yelling about some crisis or another. Paperwork floated in the air as harried interns tried their best to decide what was most important and how to save it. I ducked around a young woman in a grey uniform who was carrying a box and barking orders into her headpiece. She didn't even see me as she vanished into the sea of uniforms. A quick search of the room revealed Delta at the other side of the room, standing a head taller than all around them. Biting down a grimace, I headed over.
"So what's our status?" Marcus growled to a blond woman wearing a familiar grey uniform. She was staring at a map of Jacinto that was spread on the table in front of her. Hoffman looked over one of her shoulders, and on her other side stood Chairman Prescott. He was wearing a dark grey COG uniform - no doubt intended to reinforce his position of head honcho - while his hands were layered behind his back. His feet stood a chest length apart as he loomed over the table and all around. Even though Marcus was a good five inches taller than him Prescott appeared larger somehow.
"We have a plan," answered the blond woman in a strangely familiar voice. It took me a second to remember where I knew her from. Oh, yeah. Nexus. She had been the one attempting to get me out of Nexus before I could kill Dom. She must be Anya Stroud. "But," she continued, "It's not going to be easy."
Prescott moved closer to the table, running his hands over the map. His right thumb stopped next to a red mark on the map. "We've identified an underground cavern near the Locust sinkhole. We believe that a strategically placed Lightmass Bomb can give Jacinto its final push."
"It's final push into what?" I asked stupidly. All eyes jumped to me, and I realized just how much I liked being anonymous. I scanned the faces in from of me, looking for someone who wasn't about to jump down my throat for interrupting. Instead, I found Dom next to the window.
He looked completely unaware of what was going on, his face contorted in pain. I felt a pang of…something…before Hoffman thankfully interrupted again in his gruff bellow. "Who the hell are you?" he snapped, staring down his nose at me.
I had to fight down a snort at his question. It was one I'd been asking myself all day long. "Does it matter?" I retorted. "I have a gun and I'm willing to fight. What more do you need to know?"
There was a startling silence while Colonel Hoffman deliberated upon my fate. I tried to ignore the pressing feeling of de-ja-vu. I had stood before Hoffman only once before while he contemplated either allowing me to join the COG or to tossing me into a farm. He'd made the wrong decision once before; hopefully he'd come through for me now. If not, there wasn't much he could do. I was going to stay, and I was going to fight, whether they liked it or not.
Hoffman turned to Marcus. "You know her?" he demanded more than asked. Marcus nodded once without looking at me. Hoffman, somehow mollified by Marcus' poor excuse for an answer, gave a curt nod and signaled for me to stay. He also, however, ignored my last question. My mouth pitched downward in aggravation as I tried unsuccessfully to figure out what the leaders of the COG were planning.
Someone grabbed my elbow gently and started tugging me away from the table. I yanked my arm out of the stranger's grasp, my hand already clenching into a fist before I realized it was only Baird. He stepped away from the small group, just far enough that a side conversation between him and I wouldn't be heard by the others. I followed his steps, curious despite myself. He gestured back to the map on the table before speaking. "Prescott's going to send a Lightmass Bomb at the intersection of the sewers and Locust tunnels. They think that they can flood the tunnels and drown the locust in their hollow by collapsing and filling the tunnels with water from Jacinto Bay."
I quickly ran over the plan in my mind, scavenging it for loopholes and mistakes. A jarring error pounded at my consciousness. "But...if we collapse the tunnels, there goes Jacinto's foundation. Jacinto will sink!"
Baird stared at me like an impatient teacher waiting for a pupil to come up with an obvious answer. Well...duh, his expression seemed to say. "They're going to sink Jacinto..." I repeated through numb lips. To be honest, I wasn't all that shocked. My nerves had already been pulled and strained and tested so much today that I just felt numb. After all, you could only say 'Holy shit' so many times in one day.
Actually, the plan made sense. The grubs were already planning on flooding Jacinto and the hollow - it was just a matter of time. If we sank it first, with all the grub forces underground and our people out of Jacinto, we would win the war. The grubs would drown in their homes, and humans would survive to build another Jacinto. Technology and factory-made equipment would take a huge hit in the years to come, but we could do it. That is - if we got moving right now.
I ignored Baird as I stepped back up to the table to hear the rest of the plans. I could feel him re-position himself behind me to look over my shoulder, and somehow his strong, tall frame was comforting. Marcus' eyes were narrow as he stared at Prescott. "What's the catch?"
Anya answered him hastily before Prescott could get a word out. Somehow I got the feeling that Prescott and Marcus play well together. I filed that bit of information away for further use. "Due to Seeder and Nemacyst infestation, we're unable to get a chopper down there to deliver the bomb. We need someone to clear the target area."
"And by 'someone', you mean us," Marcus answered. He straightened up from the table and checked his weapon as he spoke. "Baird, Cole, I want you two to assist with the Lightmass bomb. Dom," he said Dom's name almost gently, his worry evident in his voice. "Looks like we're going back underground."
Dom straightened up from his perch at the window and nodded to Marcus without saying anything. Just then, a huge explosion rocked the command building on its' foundation, reminding us all of the danger ahead. I now had to make up my mind - stay here with Baird and Cole, or go out and fight.
It wasn't even a tough decision.
I turned around from the table and got an eyeful of Baird's chest-piece. He was still standing behind me. Apparently he could see my decision in my eyes, because all of a sudden he looked pissed. "You're going out there, aren't you," he accused me.
I didn't even have to nod. I just dropped the empty magazine from my lancer and slammed in a full one from the cache next to me. He shook his head as he stepped back, clearing my path. "If you die, I will kill you..." he growled before following Anya into the back room with the other engineers. Cole, who had seen the whole exchange, just scoffed and shook his head with disbelief.
"Keep safe, lil' sis," he said to me just before chasing after Baird.
I grabbed a few more mags from the ammo cache before me, replacing them with the blanks from my pack as a diversion from what I was about to I seriously about to go plunging headfirst into battle with Marcus and Dom - the same two people I'd been hell-bent on killing just hours beforehand? The irony was almost stifling.
I didn't have long to think about it, however. After I stuffed the last magazine into my pack the ground shuddered again with an ominous echo, sending me scuttling out the door to join Marcus and Dom in the fight.
I sprinted out the door into a flock of COG armor and young soldiers. Another squad was there, already preparing to move out. I vaguely recognized them as Sigma squad; I had shadowed them a time or two when they were on their missions. They were a highly used part of the squad, only one tier down from Delta. They were known for being able to get the job done.
There was no way Hoffman was going to let his second-best squad sit out of the biggest fight in mankind's history. They'd be a part of the fight, just as much as Dom and Marcus. The only difference was I was reasonably sure that I didn't have any deep, dark relations with any of them. A plan began forming in the recesses of my mind. There was no way I'd sit out a fight this big, but perhaps I didn't have to play on the same team as Marcus and Dom.
"Hey, you!" I called out to the soldier closest to me. "Where's you sergeant at?"
The soldier – a tan-skinned male with green eyes and a buzz cut – turned around in confusion and gave me a surprised look, as if he couldn't quite believe I was addressing him. He cocked an eyebrow before gesturing at a slightly taller and slightly older man.
"Who wants to know?" the sergeant answered me – sergeant Gardelli if I remembered correctly.
"Today's your lucky day," I said instead of answering the proposed question. "You just got another soldier in your army."
I had to give him credit; he didn't immediately start laughing in my face. "And who exactly might you be?" he growled.
"You know, I've been asking myself that very question all day." I studied the blade on my lancer thoughtfully. "But, really, who are any of us? A name? A title? Does the world judge us by who are parents are, or by what we stand for and the actions we perform?"
"What the hell are you-"
"Talk to him," I interrupted, turning at pointing the Lancer at Marcus' retreating back. "I dare say the very least he owes me is a recommendation."
The very least…I thought to myself as the sergeant turned to look where I was pointing. He ordered one of his men to intercept Marcus. I watched dispassionately as Marcus retraced his steps and spoke with Gardelli. Marcus' cerulean gaze flickered over to me. I returned his gaze with one of my own as he tried to explain to the sergeant why I would be joining his squad. Not that Gardelli put up much of a fight, however. Once he saw that he was speaking with the infamous 'Marcus Fenix' he backed right down.
Marcus pushed past Gardelli and made his way over to me. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" he growled, glaring down at me.
"Just being a good little soldier," I answered, my voice practically dripping with acid. "Because, apparently, that's all I'm good for, right? Don't ask questions, don't look too closely, just play along and follow orders. Isn't that what you wanted?"
There was a moment when Marcus and I stared each other down; his gaze was cold and calculating, mine fiery and tempered. He blinked first and looked away. "Sigma's orders are to distract the Nemacyst and Seeder infestation above the drop-zone so Dom and I can deliver the bomb. I can't stop you from going, so at least try not to get yourself killed?"
"But of course, Uncle Marcus." My lips lifted in a smile that was almost a snarl. He delivered one last, evocative look before turning around and jogging back over to where Dom waited. I watched him go. Dom still had the slightly lost look upon his face, but he became more focused once Marcus met up with him. I turned away from the pair and back to my adoptive squad.
"Let's go, boys," I said, cycling the bolt on my lancer and chambering a round. "We got a city to sink."
So...long time, no see, right? I'm really sorry for the accidental hiatus on this chapter; life decided to pull hard to port and writing took a backseat for a while. Plus, I wasn't actually sure how I wanted to end this chapter, so I'm sorry if it feels a bit rushed. Hopefully it'll get better.
And don't worry; the actually father-daughter reunion is coming soon! Very, very, soon! After all, Dom was a bit busy shooting Maria to notice Bri's little breakdown in Nexus. And I don't think he'd let his newly-found daughter participate in a battle for humanity's survival if he knew who Bri really was.
Hopefully there are people still out there reading this! If you're there, send me a review to let me know there's still some interest in this story! It'll help spur me on to writing the final bit of this fic! :D
