Title: Kinship
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making any money. Sigh.
Author's Notes: This is just a short little fic. Hayes POV. Incidentally, in my world, Hayes isn't dead.
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What people don't understand about MACOs is that we're not emotionless robots. Sure, we're trained to kill, and we're damn good at what we do. But that doesn't mean we don't feel anger or remorse or sorrow or fear.
Some nights, I barely sleep at all. Either I can't doze off, or the nightmares wake me up. The faces of my kills—my victims?—parade through my mind like ghosts, reminding me that I'm a soldier, a soldier at war.
It's on those nights that I walk the halls of the Enterprise. Sometimes, I wander down to the cargo bay. It's quiet there, and I can think. Other nights, I go to the mess hall for a leftover piece of cake. Most nights, however, I wind up at the armory.
The late night crew of the armory is used to seeing me appear off the lift in the wee hours of morning. They think I'm checking up on them, making sure that security is up to par.
That's as good an excuse as any.
But I have ulterior motives for my "late night security checks." You see, I'm not the only insomniac onboard the Enterprise.
I don't know what ghosts keep Lt. Reed awake at night, but I suspect they're as unrelenting as my own. It seems like whenever my ghosts keep me from sleeping, and I wind up at the armory, Lt. Reed is waiting there for me.
"I can assure you, Major," he always says, "that my armory is more than secure."
"And I intend to keep it that way," I always reply.
He usually humors me and lets me run a low-level check. Then, knowingly and undoubtedly from experience, he says, "So, can't sleep again, Major?"
"No, sir," I say, "I'm turning into a regular night owl."
"You're not alone in that, Major," he says, "I wouldn't know what to do if I got eight hours."
"No, sir," I say.
"Well," he always says, "Try to get some sleep. A couple of hours is better than nothing."
And so, on those nights, I go back to my quarters and collapse into bed. And I draw some small comfort, some fleeting kinship from Lt. Reed. And then, my ghosts at bay, I ease off to sleep.