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I am posting two more today.

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Pavs.


Chapter four:


Barney looked at Lee with an impatient frown as the man worked to get Tool's location from his cell phone.

"Still not answering?" Toll asked as he entered the office with coffees that were left untouched as they all looked at the screen.

Yang was still at Parish with Hale to look after Gunnar, following the whole fucking mess that had been Vilena. Hale was to get back to the shop as soon as Gunnar was checked in therapy.

"They're still in New Orleans." Stated Christmas and Barney rolled his eyes. "You know she couldn't even walk? I don't think she's a threat whatsoever. . ."

Lee paused as Barney turned the screen to him, neither of them noticing Hale coming in the office looking at Barney with a very concerned look. Ross rarely showed any emotions, so for him to go as pale as a ghost was quite the sight.

But Barney Ross was looking at a very secure apartment that shouldn't have been in function except for an emergency. A location that none of the current Expendables knew about, except for Tool, John Booker, Trench Mauser, Doc (if he was still alive somewhere) and himself.

Tool hadn't answered more than twenty-five times in a row now. He hadn't texted either. He had been so out of it that he hadn't seen them standing right beside him the night before. Now he was there, with a woman they knew nothing of.

"Take what you can and go." Barney said with a deadly calm voice that put them on very high alert.

"Barney what the. . ." Toll went to ask and Barney send him a very dark look that made the man do as ask without any more additional question or complaint.

.

"I killed John Booker, I had nowhere else to go." The woman Tool had called June said as tears were pouring down her cheeks. "I am so sorry. I tried not to."

Barney looked at Tool's sudden horrified expression, trying to ignore the pain in his chest as he realized that his friend only then seemed to notice where the fuck exactly, he'd been since the day before.

The bag. . . John Booker's bag.

How the fuck had she known to go there? How the hell did she have his stuff with her.

"Drop the weapons." Barney found himself saying with a hollow voice as June was moaning in pain between her sobs, telling them how sorry she was over and over again.

Toll and Hale did as asked as they noticed the wounds on the young woman arms that hadn't been hidden by bandages yet. Christmas stood speechless and slowly but surely withdrew his weapon as he looked at both Barney's and Tool's pained expressions.

"You should have let me die." June then said while looking at Tool. "It was so peaceful in the water."

The longing in her voice took their breath away and Tool hurried to take her in his arms. He looked at Barney again as they both shared an understanding look.

There was no way she had killed John Booker. Not with that reaction. She was definitely involved, but Barney could tell by now when someone had pulled the trigger or not. Being in this line of work for almost fifty years, you picked up easily on this kind of thing.

It didn't take long for her to fall asleep from exhaustion once Tool put her back on the mattress, this time covering her with the open sleeping bag. He then retrieved John's bag and went to join the others in the small living room, leaving the door open to check on her. Tool put the surprisingly heavy bag on the small coffee table, almost wondering if it would collapse under the weight of it.

"Barns?" Tool asked and the man nodded while the others looked at them both with a lot of questions in mind.

Tool opened the bag and felt a lump in his throat at the very first thing he saw. Tags, John's, to be exact. He took them in his shaking hands and kept looking into it. He found the man's old uniform, favorite knives and guns, pictures and letters that seemed older than the apartment they were in and finally, a file.

"Give it to me." Barney asked and Tool obliged before he passed a shaking hand through his hairs as tears were threatening to roll down his cheeks.

They'd known the man for more than forty years. The fact that he didn't work with them as much didn't make this any less painful. He was a friend . . . had been, for decades. More so, if there was a word that could describe John Booker, it would have been indestructible.

How the fuck had he died?

"Fuck!" Barney exclaimed as he threw the file on the ground and kicked the coffee table, sending the bag and its content flying on the ground.

He put his hands on his face, then hit the wall full force.

"Barney!" Christmas exclaimed trying to calm the man down.

Toll looked at June who was still knocked out on the bed and then turned to a helpless Hale.

"What happened?" Tool asked with a hoarse voice.

"A shitstorm happened." Barney replied before he took a deep breath to try and calm down. "A human trafficking organization that was targeted by Booker. One known as the Sangs."

"They're all-over eastern Europe and North Africa, well at least used to be. Booker took care of the most part of it before he. . ." Christmas explained as he was going through the file he had picked up from the ground.

He'd stopped when he'd seen the picture. John Booker had been an Expendable. The bag had Vietnam tags on it. Barney had blanched at the location, not at the girl. Tool had known the man, fought with him and Barney in the mess that had been that war. The girl had a sliced number tattooed on her arm. Toll and Hale looked at Christmas, then at Tool and Barney as they all seemed to understand what was happening a whole lot better.

"We're in an old emergency safe house." Toll stated as Barney nodded absently.

"I am sorry for your loss." Hale added as Christmas got off the couch to put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"I'll make sure the location is still secure and I'll call Yang for a background check on her. I'll tell him to look out for the shop too." Christmas said before he excused himself to go to the bathroom for more privacy while Barney nodded his consent.

.

June woke up to the quiet rumbling of a truck and opened her eyes as she felt the adrenaline kicking in.

"Calm down, you're fine." A bald guy with a British accent told her from the front seat.

She looked beside him and saw another one, more muscular and with a weird ear, and recognized them both from when Barney had entered the apartment. She couldn't help but feel the panic rising right up until she felt a hand taking hers.

She turned to look at Tool, who was sitting beside her, looking like his whole world had shattered. She felt what was left of her heart break for him all over again. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she pictured the water again.

Tool could feel her squeeze his hand slightly and kept looking at her. It was so clear to him how much in pain she was. No matter what had happened with Booker, he had no doubt that she had cared for his friend.

He felt conflicted about that. A part of him wanted to be relieved that John had been cared for in the end. It was rare for a mercenary to die beside a loved one. Another part of him was in a lot of pain from losing a friend, yet again. Especially an old one like him. They'd been through literal hell times and times again. The last part of him was confused by the pain it brought him to see June broken about John as much as she was.

Who was she?

Who had she been to him?

Yang had reported back with information that seemed to include more questions than answers. The girl had virtually not existed in their world before 2005. There was nothing on her before that except a file that had been on Booker's computer at his house, crypted by the man himself. Which meant that it had erased itself after his third unsuccessful attempt.

At least they weren't compromised, so they were on their way back to Tool's after hours of uncomfortable space sharing in an apartment that wasn't meant to house so many people, especially big guys like them. June had slept all the way through it.

She hadn't witnessed Tool's pain as he'd explained how he did find her. Nor had she seen Barney's sadness had he then understood Tool's chaotic behavior. She hadn't heard their surprisingly good theories on how she came to meet John Booker.

She had just woken up in an anxiety attack in the back of Tool's truck as the man was questioning all of his life choices.

"We're here." Christmas said while looking briefly at both June and Tool while he pulled up in the shop's parking in the back of the building.

Barney, Yang and a now much calmer but still on edge Gunnar were waiting for them. June got out on her own, but waited until Tool was beside her to move. She was on edge as she didn't know yet what had transpired while she was asleep.

She was getting sloppy; it would get her killed. She felt a sharp pain in her chest as she thought about how it had killed John too . . . and her brother. She hadn't been careful enough. . .

"Do you need water?" Barney asked her as she entered the shop and she froze at his concerned face.

She looked around to try and read the other's expressions and found herself facing a new face. They all seemed to wait for her reaction carefully and so she nodded before Barney gave her a bottle of water.

" You don't have to play good cop, bad cop, I'll talk. Then you can kill me after." June finally said and Gunnar's eyes widened at the relief that slipped through her voice at the mention of her imminent death.

He'd fucking shit himself when he'd thought his hour had come. Then again, he'd heard Yang and Barney talk about Tool saving her from drowning.

"So, it had been a suicide then" He thought to himself as he looked at her with a frown.

He looked at Barney who brushed him off with a small movement of his hand.

Right, he still wasn't trustworthy. Not that Gunnar would blame him now that he was clean and sober. It had been a day, but his fuck up had been quite obvious to him once he'd woken up at the hospital. He guessed they all dealt with guilt their own way. He had gone ape shit from the meth; she had tried to kill herself.

Their world was fucked up like that.

"We won't kill you." Barney stated and the man could see the pain in Tool's eyes as she scoffed.

Then she got closer to Barney and pushed him, ignoring the pain in her forearms.

"I fucking killed John Booker. I felt his blood pouring from his body directly into my hands. He begged and I walked away. I left him to his own fucking death!" She snarled at him with rage in her voice and pain in her eyes.

Barney tensed as he felt the anger built up. She was riling him up, he knew it. But fuck did it hurt.

"Stop." Barney told her with a warning tone. "I won't kill you."

"WHY THE FUCK NOT!?" She screamed and Tool took her in his arms from behind, preventing her from hurting herself by pushing Barney again.

"Because he begged you to save yourself." Yang said as she turned to him, the pain shinning in her eyes. "I presume it has to do with the fact that an eighteen years old had nothing to do in our world to begin with. Even less one that come's from a politician's family that is well respected in Washington."

"Stop." June said, clearly taken aback, but Yang continued on.

"No matter how well your father was doing, you were not. Got caught doing drugs, alcohol and then no matter how well you seemed to be doing after that, it kept affecting your family, so you left." Yang continued as he read the file he'd put together in the office. " Right up until your younger brother came to see you, and you had a relapse. Then it got back downhill. Your father found your brother beaten up three weeks after, made the front page too. You, however, were not mentioned even though you disappeared, as you hadn't been for two years prior to that. Then he committed suicide about a week ago, a day before you got back from North Africa after ten years of being M.I.A. A week after John Booker died. You found your brother, didn't you?"

"Shut the fuck up!" June snarled at him and Yang got closer, closing the file and looking at her with sadness in his eyes.

"But you never took drugs, didn't you?" Yang asked her as the anger was replaced by tears as Yang put the file on Tool's work table, getting the pictures out for her and the others to see. "Nor did you just vanish. You offered a trade to save your brother. That's how John found you. He was in a hard spot and you helped him . . . and you stayed with him too. You didn't come back until. . ."

Yang put out the last picture of the file, a screenshot of the surveillance video that was taken from the burning building they'd been in while in Chad. Their last mission together.

The moment John Booker had died.

Tool and Barney, who had been observing June's reactions to the pictures and to Yang's words, looked at the last image of her and Booker and felt their hearts lurch.

"He was my family and I let him die." June finally said with a broken voice. "I followed him into hell and I couldn't bring him back. I couldn't bring any of them back. I can't get back."

Tool felt her words echoing in his soul has he felt the pain becoming too much and he cried silently at her words as he kept looking at the picture. Barney put a hand on her shoulder hesitantly as she was shaking from the pain.

"We can't let you die." Barney said to her as Tool was struggling not to lose it.

June turned to him, then to Tool as she saw him looking at her with watery eyes. She didn't like seeing him sad. Especially not now that she knew she had failed them too by failing John.

"Because he would have died for nothing." Barney finished as he noticed the way June was looking at Tool.

''Ok." June whispered as she saw Tool looking at her with something resembling hope.

"Come, I'll help you settle in." Tool told her and he felt the sightless bit of relief as she followed him without question.

The bridge in Bosnia seemed farther to Tool now that she accepted the fact that they wouldn't let her die.

John Booker seemed that much closer to Barney now that she would be staying with them.

Barney went back to his truck, quickly followed by Christmas, who knew that his friend wouldn't want to talk, but shouldn't be left alone, while the others went to settle Gunnar into a spare apartment at Tool's, knowing that they'd have to check up on him more often than not for the next few weeks.