Naval Academy Cache

Present Time

"Animals. Animals are smarter than us. We get a power outage or some factory gets blown up, and we fall apart. We need so much stuff. Animals – they just get up in the morning, find food, and carry on. No piped water supply – we drown in our own sewage, but animals just stay clean. If they've got white fur, it stays white. Imagine the state we'd be in if we had white fur.

- Dominic Santiago in dinner conversation to his wife Maria and friend Marcus Fenix, a year after his children were presumed dead.

I collapsed at Sam's side, hands outstretched and running uselessly over her still body. There were deep stretches of fresh blood pulsing out of her neck and rear leg, and I checked both wounds. Then I had to recheck them. Shock didn't allow any judgments I made to actually sink in to my mind. I could see the wounds, but I couldn't focus enough to actually see them. Blood loss, puncture wounds…none of it was sinking in. There was only one thought circumventing its way through my mind: If I find a single bullet in her, I'll gut every Gear in this room, family relations or no.

Dom pushed me to the side so he could examine Sam's wounds. Apparently he noticed that I was too stunned to be of any use to my best friend. Instead I resorted to stroking her head and speaking to her in a low comforting voice. My hands stuck to her fur, glued by blood. She was breathing heavily, each exhale accompanied with a small whine of pain. "I know, baby, I know," I comforted her. "You're going to be okay..."

She had to be okay. She was all I had left. Unbidden, tears began to stream down my face. "Oh God I'm so sorry…" Panic caused my voice to be a full octave higher than normal.

"She'll be alright," Dom finally said, wrapping her leg wound with a piece of white gauze from the medical kit all Gears carried. "She needs a doctor, though."

"Doc Haymen will take your head off if you bring an animal into her clinic," Marcus warned him.

Dom either didn't hear him or didn't care. He gently grabbed Sam up, folding her carefully over his shoulders in a way I wouldn't have been strong enough to do. "How did you get down here? Is there another way out?" he asked me.

"Y-yeah," I stuttered, still reaching uselessly towards Sam. "It's um…a vehicle entrance, I think. But I…I don't know…I don't-"

"It's this way," Bernie interrupted my useless stuttering. "I was marking tunnels as we came, until we were attacked. Follow the shell casings until you get to the white chalk marks. They'll take you to the surface."

Dom gave me a stern look and waited until I met his gaze before speaking. "I need you to lead the way. Keep an eye out for more threats; I can't hold my rifle and carry her at the same time. Can you hold it together until we get back to camp?"

Later, I would probably be annoyed with the slight patronizing current under his words, but for now I simply took a deep breath and refocused. Sam needed a medevac – the battle wasn't over until we were back in friendly territory. I pressed my hands to my face quickly, pushing back the tears, before I nodded. "I'm fine," I promised, my voice much steadier now. "Let's go."

I grabbed Dom's flashlight as I searched the dark tunnel walls for white chalk marks. I tried to ignore the heavy scent of blood in the air and the corpses of dogs at my feet. The tunnels felt twice as long as they did when Bernie and I first came down, but at least now I wasn't sprinting down them in terror. It made sense that it would take longer for Dom and me to jog their lengths. Finally I spotted the soft light of filtered daylight illuminating the end of the tunnel. "This way," I urged, speeding up just the slightest. When our boots hit forest dirt I took a second to scan our surroundings for threats before turning and heading towards the Port.

The medic bay in the Port was a repurposed elementary school building. Sharle and his crew had worked to get generators and heat into the building, but most of the wings were still closed off. Most of the patients were kept in the middle gymnasium: plenty of room to maneuver, the medics didn't have to waste time shuttling room to room, and it was easier to heat and insulate one large room than dozens of smaller ones. But despite the large area inside the building, there were still some people waiting outside in the cold expecting medical treatment. I forced myself not to look at them as Dom and I strode past them and through the front door.

"I need a doctor!" Dom yelled out over the din of the med bay. Everywhere was the sound of people groaning in pain, machines beeping, and the low buzz of conversation. I winced as Dom's gruff voice broke through all of it; his voice was one meant for a battlefield. But then, I supposed, that's exactly what an emergency room was.

"What the hell is going on?" an answering voice yelled back – just as loud and twice as angry. Doc Hayman emerged behind a nearby curtain hung up between two IV stands. Her grey hair was tied back in a tight bun that did nothing to soften the sharp angles of her face. When she saw the dog in Dom's arms her face – already pissed off and severe – contorted with absolute rage.

Dom cut her off before she could really get going. "This dog was injured while exploring an underground cache with twice the medical supplies we have now. You owe us. Save her."

There was no way I'd have the pull or the guts to talk to Haymen like that. Her reputation of being a gruff hardass spread far beyond Jacinto's medical staff. Soldiers joked that they'd rather pull bullets out of themselves by themselves than brave Hayman's ire. Pain made some people soft, others hard. Haymen was as hard as they came.

Haymen looked like she was so angry that words escaped her. She glared daggers at Dom – at least her gaze was aimed at him, and not me – but Dom refused to back down. He faced grubs on a daily basis; evidently one pissed off doctor wasn't going to make him budge. Eventually she decided that it would be quicker to examine Sam than to convince us to leave. She motioned Dom towards a clean counter as she donned a fresh pair of gloves, muttering the whole way. "Didn't go to damned veterinary school for a reason. Every half-baked farmer bringing me their damned livestock, now I'm patching up mangy mongrels." Despite her harsh words her hands were gentle as she examined Sam's wounds. Sam's bright eyes never left my face and I skirted around Dom to press a hand to the top of her head – the one place she wasn't covered in blood. Most of it was from other dogs, but still…

"Something got its teeth into her, all right. What did this?"

"A dog fight," I answered her. Thankfully my voice didn't tremble. "We were attacked by a pack in the tunnels. She ran forward to protect Sergeant Mataki and me."

"She's lucky," Haymen answered. "They're not deep. Doesn't look like the other dog tore muscle. I'll rinse 'em out and give a few of the longer cuts a stich or two. Keep them clean so they don't get infected. And if you bring this mutt back to my hospital I will personally shoot you both myself and save the Locust the trouble. Understood?"

"Yes Ma'am," Dom answered as I nodded mutely. Haymen gave us both one last glare before turning around and fetching some medical supplies. She shouted for a nurse to get a dose of rabies treatment, and Dom gestured at me. "Might as well make that two doses. She was bit too."

Because of my panic over Sam, I had completely forgotten about my own wound on my arm. I gently brushed up my sleeve to examine the bite marks that was still weeping blood. "Oh, for the love of-" Haymen cursed, returning to the examine table. "Did your whole damn squad decide to act like a chew toy?"

She rolled up my sleeve and grabbed my hand to extend my arm. "Yep, it's deep. Any reason you weren't wearing armor?"

"I'm…I'm not a Gear," I confessed as she dumped an alcohol solution over my arm to clean the wound. It stung, but I refused to give her the satisfaction of watching me wince.

"Of course you're not. Just a civilian with a lancer. Because that makes perfect damn sense."

She squeezed to encourage more blood flow from my arm. The wound wasn't severe enough that bleeding out was a real risk, but bacteria was. "Air's best for this wound. I don't want to close it atop of something nasty. I'll dress it to keep it clean, but it doesn't need stitches. I'm assuming you know to look for signs of infection?" She waited until I nodded to continue. "Then when I get those extra medical supplies I was promised you'll get your extra bandages and maybe a course of antibiotics if the damn things aren't from the silver era. You're lucky that rabies vaccinations are the one thing I don't have a pressing need for."

The nurse returned with a small vial of clear yellow liquid and two syringes. Haymen grabbed them from her hand and then snapped at the nurse to get moving again when she hesitated by the doc's side. Haymen measured out two different amounts of the vaccine and then injected one into Sam's front leg and the larger one into my upper arm. "There. If you start frothing at the mouth we'll know that it didn't work. Until then, stay the hell out of my clinic." As she turned around she jammed a finger into Dom's chest plate like another needle: "Go get me my damn medical supplies."

"Yes Ma'am. Thank you." Haymen strode off without another look back. She'd probably be working until the small hours of the morning to save as many wounded gears and civilians as possible. Hell, a dog bite might have been a refreshing change of pace from the bullet wounds and cases of exposure.

Dom looked at me, confirmed to himself that I wasn't about to die, and then looked anxiously towards the door. "Look, I need to go report in to Hoffman. They need to know where that cache is and get people to empty it out as soon as possible. Those supplies will save lives."

"Its fine," I told him and motioned vaguely towards the hospital exit. "Go."

Now that Dom had left I had to find a place for Sam and me to spend the night. I wouldn't return to the barracks, especially without Delta in tow. They were reserved for COG soldiers and the looks I had gotten within the last hour in the clinic made it clear that I was not included in that club. Apparently word had gotten around about my argument with Anya this morning, and now I had a reputation for bitching out a senior officer. The cold stares and hushed whispers made it very clear how they felt about that. If I had tried to pull that shit with any other officer I would have been thrown out of the Port so fast I'd have left skid marks where my body hit pavement. Just another reason I owed Anya the biggest apology I could think of.

I also simply didn't have the energy to hunt down another place for a comatose Sam and me. She was currently snoring on the silver exam table next to me, doped up on pain killers. I didn't have the strength to drag her anywhere – not that there was any where left to go. The paltry amount of calories I had eaten this morning had long been used up, and my stomach was far too tender to tolerate anything else. I probably wasn't going to sleep that night anyway. I was one big ball of tensed nerves, running over the attack in my mind. Locust and other Stranded played by a certain set of rules. A pack like that was pure fury and animal instinct. They didn't resort to fear, or tactics, or common sense. They simply kept coming, jaws snapping. It shook me to my core.

I ended up pulling Sam into an abandoned hallway that the medical team either hadn't claimed or Sharle and his crew hadn't cleared for use. There was just enough light oozing in from the hospital to keep the shadows at bay. Sam was lying between my legs, her head pillowed on my pelvis. I slowly stroked the soft fur on the top of her head, and every few minutes she would make a soft sort of whimper until I quieted her down again.

I sat against the wall and I cried. I let go; I let the tears fall without ever wiping them away. What would have been the point? More would just fall in their stead. Others around me were lost in their own world - looking for their loved ones, finding their loved ones dead and gone, not finding their loved ones - that no one paid me any mind. That was alright. I needed to be alone right then. I needed to be alone to cry, to get all the sadness and fear out of my chest before it poisoned me. I used to think that tears were for the weak - the ones who allowed others to prey on them. I still thought tears for the weak; I just didn't consider myself to be strong anymore.

I was a mess when I got done. I felt tired but I also felt empty, which is what I needed. Empty is a lot like numb, and feeling numb is better than hurting. My stuff - my long shot, my lancer, my pack - was spread out in a little fence in front of me, separating me from the rest of the world. I stared at the teeth of the chainsaw bayonet; I looked at how strong and fierce they look. I hid behind the teeth of the lancer, and the long shot, and the sarcasm and anger because if I allowed my façade to drop the world would see how broken I really was.

And I was broken. Physically, emotionally…Hell, I just had to run my hands down my midriff and I could count every single rib standing out in sharp contrast from my hollow stomach. Momma's death still weighed on me like a lead weight around my heart. And I could hardly close my eyes without feeling Darvish's hand around me, inside of me…tasting him like a lock of rotted meat. The nightmares left me halfway afraid to fall asleep – and passing out drunk didn't count. I couldn't believe how soon I had almost lost Sam – my best friend - so soon after everything else.

It was some time later that Dom came back to the hospital; I recognized his voice as he asked after the girl with the injured dog. Someone who had seen me duck down this hallway pointed him my way and I heard his heavy boots come clunking in my direction. His metal armor was like a manufactured exoskeleton, like a scorpion. After everything he had been through, maybe a man like my father needed to grow a hard protective shell. Maybe if he had a shell he wouldn't hurt so much. I wondered if I could figure out how to grow one of my own.

"Hey," he greeted me before mimicking my position on the opposite side of the hallway: back against the wall, legs sprawled outwards. Instead of a sleeping dog lying between his legs, however, he let his lancer fall between his thighs, muzzle pointing safely at the floor. "How's she doing?"

"She um…the Doctor said she'd be alright. The biggest risk is infection, so we – I mean, I – need to keep the bandages fresh and wounds clean." If he noticed my slip, he didn't draw attention to it. Funny how easily it was to misuse the word 'we', when it had only been 'I' for all of my life.

"Right, yeah…" He trailed off but I could feel his gaze upon my face. He looked like he was mentally weighing whether or not to ask me something, but before I could tell him to go ahead he did. "Where'd you get a dog, anyway?"

Normally a question like that was easy to answer, but today it felt like a kick in the gut. I tried to hide it, but I had no idea if he saw my face twist before I answered. "Um…I got her from Momma, from the camp?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I remember her. How'd you two meet?"

Apparently Dom wanted to have this conversation now. I knew it was coming eventually, and I guessed from his perspective there was nothing wrong with now. There were no locust attacking, it was relatively quiet, and we were free from listening ears. Unfortunately my nerves were frayed and my patience was shot, so I cut straight to the questions he really wanted to ask. "Look, I know you really just want to know what happened to me after E-day. So quit pussy-footing around and ask."

Okay, there were probably a dozen better ways to put that, but to Dom's credit he didn't bat an eye. "Okay, what did happen to you?"

Damn it. He called my bluff. Now I was put in the interesting situation of answering to his satisfaction, but without revealing enough information to actually devastate him. I had a feeling he wouldn't take it all too well if I told him I was essentially sold into child slavery at the age of four. "There was a…man who took me in."

"Like a father type figure?"

"Not…quite."

"What do you mean?"

Err…he kinda abused me for several years, I thought blithely. And was an alcoholic. And tried to kill me once. But besides that, oh, yeah, he was a great guy. A real stand up character. Instead I simply sighed. "Bane was his name. There was a loophole for men who had children to get out of serving frontline as long as they were the only ones available to raise the child. So that started a…black market of sorts, for children who had no one to claim them. So…he claimed that I was his child. I lived with him for a number of years until I…didn't."

To his credit, Dom was taking this like a champ. No clenched jaw or fisted hands to be seen. Of course, I had glossed over the abuse and the alcohol, but he could probably guess what I wasn't saying by my uncomfortable squirming and shifting eyes. People who shrank from their duty weren't altogether the most upstanding individuals. "So then what happened?"

"Well, I ran away. Lived on the streets with a gang for a while, until I got picked up for stealing a loaf of bread. That was when I met Ace."

"The boy with the longshot?" his eyes flickered over to my sniper.

"Yeah. He was 16 and had just enlisted. Instead of getting me arrested he gave me a job at the base and an opportunity to earn a living. I lived in a broom closet on base, but I loved it. I had friends, purpose, opportunities. He taught me how to shoot and to survive."

"What happened to him?"

I winced again. Ace's death was something I hadn't shared with anyone – not even Momma. It was still too raw a nerve, even after all of these years. "Look," I finally said, "There's a lot in my past that isn't going to be pleasant for either one of us to rehash. You're not going to like what I have to say, and I'm not going to like having to tell you.

"I've done a lot of thinking lately about why being back with you bothers me so much," I confessed, not looking at him. "I've worked hard to forget everything about my childhood, and when I'm with you…I can't think of anything else. There's not a lot of good in my past. Just bad and worse."

Instead of killing the conversation, however, I simply killed Dom's mood. His face plummeted and the guilt that emanated from him was almost palpable. "I'm sorry," he said in a hushed voice. "I didn't mean to make you relieve all of that. I just feel like I need to know, so I can have some idea of how to atone for everything…I missed you, you know. I may not have shown it the way Maria did, but with your mother both her joy and sadness were extreme. She couldn't hide either – she never could. Me, well, I guess I'm different. I tend to…" he trailed off for a moment. "But it broke me, too. When I thought you were dead, and your brother…I just…I missed you too. Not a day passed that I…I know it's hard, Sylvi- Bri," he corrected. "Damned hard. But I'm so thankful I have you now. Every day, I thank God for you. Every single day. I feel like you're all I have sometimes."

Immediately my eyes welled with tears again. "I don't blame you, okay?" I needed him to know that. "I don't blame anybody. It's just something that happened. And now that it has…we just have to deal with it." My words were never as eloquent as Dom's, but hopefully he knew that I meant every word with all of my heart.

We feel into embarrassed silence for a long moment. These conversations weren't easy for anyone, but especially not for me. I was accustomed to problems that you could shoot or punch, not talk through. But I still had one more thing to clear up.

"I didn't mean for yesterday to happen," I said. "With the whole vanishing act, and then coming home in that…state. I wouldn't do that to you, you know? Drop who I am in your lap one night and then take off the next morning." Jesus; had it really only been three days since I revealed to Dom who I was? It felt like an eternity had passed between now and then. "I was going back to the Stranded camp to pick up Sam, and then…there was…I mean, I was…distracted." Unbidden, more tears filled my eyes. I ducked my head to keep him from seeing, but of course he did anyway.

"Baby," he said in a voice so soft it almost made the tears in my eyes start to fall, "You can tell me."

Could I? Trust this man who was truly still just a stranger to me with the deepest darkest parts of me? Even Baird, who I had spilled almost everything to last night in his truck, didn't know about Momma and how much her death was actually affecting me. I felt like a moon that had lost its planet, and was now orbiting a black pit of nothingness.

Try, the memory of Momma's last words echoed in my mind. Try Bri, for me.

"You remember Momma from the camp? She was trying to help you find…well, she um…she died. Some kind of explosion, internal bleeding, shock…whole bit."

"God, I'm so sorry, Syl-Bri."

I shrugged, not drawing any more attention to his slip than he to my own. "It's okay. I mean, it's a miracle she lived as long as she did outside the wire. It's just…I'm having some trouble convincing myself that it's not my fault, you know?"

"Yeah," he said gravely, "I do."

"But um…there was some…some guy there with some booze, and I wasn't thinking straight, and I drank too much." I purposefully edited out Darvish's sexual assault. That was something nobody needed to know about. I couldn't tell if it was shame that kept me from telling Dom, or the need to protect him from the truth. Either way the effect was the same. Darvish was gone now; for good or ill. And hopefully – with time – the tight knot of anger that resided within me since his attack would alleviate soon. "Before I knew it, it's dark out and Baird's picking me up and dumping me in his truck."

Dom had kept his expression carefully schooled into the perfect mask of concerned nonjudgement. "I understand," he reassured me. "I'd prefer if it didn't happen again, though."

"It won't," I told him, but who the hell was I to promise anyone anything? The muted din of chatter and hospital equipment from the clinic down the hallway had quieted some. Apparently most of the patients – the ones who would be spending the night in a gurney – had already fallen asleep. The combination of space heaters and people just on the other side of the wall kept the hallway decently warm. Sam was lying between my legs, snoring so softly that there was no way I could bring myself to wake her. "I'm probably just going to crash here tonight," I told him. "If you want to go back to the barracks…"

He shook his head whilst examining the dimly lit hallway. "Nah. I've spent more than my share of nights sleeping in places worse than this, with worse company. I'll stay, if you don't mind."

I gave him a small smile and shook my head. "In that case, goodnight then."

"Goodnight, mija."

My eyes – so close to closing with exhaustion – popped open again. "Mi-who?"

Dom chuckled lightly. "It's Spanish. Means 'daughter'."

"Oh…'kay," I said sleepily. "Goodnight…padre."


Author's note: So Bri and Dom finally have a conversation! Without yelling, alcohol, or bullets! Maybe there's hope for them being a functional family yet?

Don't worry, there will be plenty of more bonding in the chapters to come when someone unexpected makes a return visit. Also, I've finally figured out where I want to take this story, and let me just say: it is awesome! Seriously, I'm so excited to write it! I promise you guys will be impressed!

Also, thank you so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. It really means a lot that there are still people out there taking the time to read and review this piece. I know this fic is literally years old, but I haven't given up on it! I probably should have ended it a while ago, but it's too much fun playing with these characters. So please, if you're still out there, I love getting feedback and comments. It really does make a difference in how motivated I am to get the subsequent chapters written and posted.

Thanks again for reading!