(A/n: Enyo this one is for you)
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-10-
A scream filled his mind as his mind opened the door to a closed section of his past.
She was screaming. John tried furiously to calm her as he clamped her wound. It was a wonder she was still alive. The bastard had ruined her face!
"Shhh…" He caught her small writhing body and tried his best to establish and IV line. She wouldn't stop struggling.
"Fuck!" He cursed as she scratched his face.
"It's okay! It's okay! You're safe! I'm with the good guys, here sweetheart."
She wouldn't stop. He doubted if she could hear him.
So he did the only thing he could. He grabbed her small body and held her close to him until she stopped struggling.
"Shh…it's okay." He said as softly as he could, stroking her blood-matted hair "You're safe. I promise. It'll stay that way."
Slowly her struggling subsided into sobs…and her body went limp. She had fallen unconscious.
flash
John didn't remember how he got to the corridors that led to the galley. He walked unseeing a thing in front of him. He didn't even feel the chill of the air – though he walked bare-chested.
Was it possible? Was it really her? After all these years?
flash
It was a sight that would horrify any man.
"Goddamn it!" Buckley cursed, turning his eyes away from the scene. They all heard the sickle strike.
John watched helplessly as the girl fell to her knees in a pool of blood.
If only they had managed to keep her with them…in the goddamn radiation room. He knew there was no point blaming themselves. She had taken them by surprise. They all closed their eyes as her screams filled their ears.
"What do we do?" Lance whispered furiously. "We can't let them just mutilate her."
John watched as the bastard circled the girl like a vulture with a sadistic grin on his face. He grabbed her by the hair and hauled her writhing body to the experiment table. The profuse spurting of blood followed her as he yanked her up and slammed her face onto the table.
Besides him Buckley nearly sprang out – Sgt. Finnigan grabbed him. "No, we'll risk killing her."
"You see your pretty face, little girl?" They heard his sick voice. He was forcing her to turn her head and look at her reflection on the table. "You bear my mark now."
"Sergeant, we can't just do nothing."
"The way I see it," John said, agreeing with Buckley. "She'll die, if we don't help her."
"She'll die faster if we get their attention, Private! You think I like being a sitting duck here?"
"She'll bleed to death, if we do nothing!" John hissed.
"That might be a better death for her." Lance whispered, pointing to the horrid sight.
They looked as the psychopath they had been sent to get, flung the girl to the other side of her room, her body ramming into instrument trolleys. A flurry of needles, scalpels fell toppled over and fell.
Mackey Snakeeyes walked over to her and used his boots to flick her skirt over her waste as she limply tried to protect herself.
"Damn it, sir. He'll rape her in front of us and we do nothing?" It took all his energy not to scream at the sergeant.
"You think I'm enjoying, this Private? I have a daughter that age!"
They didn't need to argue any further. A roar that came from Snakeeyes' throat alerted their attention. They saw the girl had jabbed a thick pointed object – right through his boot. Snakeeyez had doubled over, grabbing the lance that had him fixed to where he was. His cronies rushed to his side – one tried to get Donnovan's daughter as she struggled to scramble up – she flung a thick cylinder on his face and swaggered to her feet.
"Fuck it! GET THE BITCH!"
"That girl just gave us our cue! MOVE IT!" The sergeant screamed his orders. John leapt out of his position – he ran for the girl firing a round of bullets into the swine that had just caught her.
She fell back as the man fell dead. John caught her just in time as her flaccid body sank to hit the floor.
She was as cold as ice.
He heard the bullets, he even felt them whiz past him as the pandemonium ensued. He flung her over his shoulder and blew the head of another of Mackey's men.
"Reaper! Get her to safety!"
He didn't stick around to play hero. He flung a grenade at a blocked exit and ducked, shielding her from the flying shrapnel. He couldn't see through the smoke – nor did he have time to wear his infrared goggles. He just ran – guided by instinct – she lay like a rag doll over his shoulder.
Fuck! Was it even possible to be that cruel?
Yes it was.
It had been longer than ten years, since he joined the marines, and he had seen cruelty to the worst accord.
John paused as he leaned against the walls. It was too much to take in.
He remembered everything about the Philadelphia mission. A distress call from an army funded private research facility had resulted in the dispatch. He was just Private in the search and rescue squad – six months before being inducted into RRTS.
Giligan Donovan, her father's name. Now he remembered it.
He was an Irish scientist; him and his wife had moved to America only a few years prior when and was working on bio-phasic translucence. Human invisibility. His research was extensively set up under their farm. It was private in name only. The project was protected by the army. Rogue corporations wanted his research – there had been two attempts to breach his lab.
Mackey Snakeeyes was an internationally wanted for drugs and human trafficking, civil war, weapons dealing, murder and rape. He was often employed as an assassin and bounty hunter – so to speak. The title seemed too sophisticated for a cold-blooded homicidal maniac. His modus operandi was simply enter-destroy-take.
Their team had landed to find the fields stained with blood – guards assigned to protect his family led a dead trail down to the facility.
Snakeeyes had killed her parents, her elder brother and younger sister.
John remembered every detail of that mission. It was first time he had been faced to the darkest side of humanity. He remembered the will of the fiery young girl that barely escaped with her life. He remembered how she fought against her body's weakness as fiercely as she fought the bastard who had permanently disfigured her face – any closer and he would have blinded her one eye.
The mission had gotten complicated – Mackey was as intelligent as he was ruthless and he had reduced their squad of 12 to a petty 3 people, including himself. He had survived because she had led him through the path around the woods to the abandoned mines, adjacent to their fields. The other two escaped – with parts of their body remaining behind. He and she were trapped in a maze. They were the mice and Mackey and his bastard gang of murders, the cats.
At the end of the ordeal, Reaper had blown Mackey's sick brain to pieces – a sight he regretted that she had to witness.
He remembered the mission down to every second and every emotion he had experienced in those two weeks. In those days she had become his comrade – despite the trauma and weakness, she had as much gotten him through that mission as much as he had saved her.
He also remembered the desire he felt – inexplicably – which he denied for too long a time, until it exploded within him. The internal fight he had put up with himself – for her sake, she was so young. She's a child. She's a teenager for fuck's sake. He had told himself.
He never trusted himself after that. He kept his emotions closely guarded and never let any girl get to him – Donovan's daughter – child, as she was, she had been enough.
Was it possible? He asked himself when he found himself in the galley. Poet and the o'Rileys were cracking up on some joke. Phoenix gave a bleak smile and stood up, turning around to fill her plate with the canned shit they ate. Her eyes met his briefly before she turned.
Was it possible this cold marine; was the same fierce soul whom he had met so many years ago?
It couldn't be. She didn't look remotely like his little friend, but he wasn't one to judge. He had only seen half of her face in the entire mission. When her bandage was removed it was one swollen, bloody side. He couldn't compare the steely grey eyes he saw now to the soft grey eyes he had seen then.
But that scar was in place of the exact wound…
It could not be – he told himself as he drifted into the galley. She did not have that innocence - that fire. He could never imagine that fire dying out from the soul. But was it really possible for her years since to draw out the fire from her eyes?
flash
"Am I alive?..."
"Yep! You're a real fighter!"
"I thought I died…"
"You sound disappointed…"
One grey swollen eye met his own. He knew what she wanted to say. She didn't have much to live for. Not after this.
"Maybe I did die." She whispered.
"Maybe you did…guess you rose up from the ashes. Like a phoenix."
flash
"What's up, Reaper?" He heard Poet say. "Couldn't sleep?"
He shook his head, half-conscious of what they were talking about and slowly walked around the table to get a beer. He kept his eyes fixed on her body. She wore the same tank top, her back was too him as she cut open a can. On the back of her right shoulder, he saw her tattoo.
flash
"Let's pretend you're a marine…we gotta give you an ID?"
"I'm not a child, ye know. Ye don't have to cajole me."
"Do what?"
"Cajole! Oi! Didn't ya learn any ainglish?"
"Na-ah. Not much. I grew up on Mars."
"Yer lyin'."
"No I'm not. Stop stalling…let's give you a nickname."
"Ye gotta give me a tattoo, too."
"A tattoo?"
"Yeah – all ov' dem soldiers have it, right?"
He laughed. "Most of us do, yeah. Okay…where'd you want it?"
She shrugged.
He took the marker in his pocket and pulled her closer. The easiest point of access was her right shoulder.
"I want that bird you told me about…phoenix"
"Okay."
She giggled as he doodled on her shoulder.
"I wanna see!"
"Hold on, I'll give you a reflector – there! See that?"
"That's no phoenix! Looks like one ov' me uncle's chickens!"
flash
He smiled to himself. Looks like she got a proper artist to give her a proper tattoo. He couldn't have thought of a more appropriate one himself.
If it was her.
If it wasn't – then the eyes, the scar – Phoenix. Her knowledge of Homer and twentieth-century classics. One too many coincidences.
"Man!" said Gryffin, said to him. "Aren't you feeling cold?" Quinn turned around, once again – not looking at him, she set the can for Gryffin.
She went to the side where her gun lay and nodded her head towards the door.
"Get some sleep Phoenix!" Gryffin ordered affectionately. "You need it."
No, John thought, she couldn't be. This one barely opened her mouth. The girl he knew couldn't keep her mouth shut.
…I only talk when I need to…
Her words echoed in his head.
Maybe she was right. She had needed to talk, then. So had he – at the time. He had opened up to her as much as she had opened up to him. Was that why she was always so protective of his sister? Because of what he had told her about Sam, then? Or was it just women-bonding?
John did not say a word as he watched the interaction between Gryffin and Phoenix. Gryffin talked with his mouth, Phoneix by her actions and eyes. He was aware that she knew he had his eyes fixed on her. He was also aware that Poet was looking at him curiously.
"Reaper."
John turned his head to Poet.
"Stop staring at her, or I'll kill you." Poet said, coolly. John knew he meant every word.
Phoenix gave him one look – a brief frown and then turned around to head outside.
"I think you pissed her off." Gryffin said.
John kept staring after her retreating form. He heard Poet say. "What is your problem, man? Is there something on her shift you can't stop staring at?"
John got up. "Sorry guys, gotta go, I just remembered something." He said, hastily and started after her.
Did she avoid him so much because she knew him? Why wouldn't she tell him? The girl he knew would have surely told him.
But after so many years, would she still be the girl he knew?
The girl he knew wasn't Kelly Quinn.
"Kaellen…Interesting name?"
"Tah – in Irish it means… 'mighty warrior'."
She was just about to turn towards the corridor that led to the airlock when he spoke – softly, not soft enough for a whisper, but loud enough only for her to hear the name. Not Kelly – not even Kaellen – but the name only he called her.
"Kaela."
She froze.
John closed his eyes.
