(A/N) Welcome back to another Sunday upload from us here at The Freelancer Collaboration! Now I know what you're thinking: 'This isn't an update to Phase Two: Betrayal!' And to you, reader whose mind I have read so well, I shall offer a brief explanation!

Our regular update has been delayed by a week, both to give it more time to be polished up to where it should be, but also simply because for the sake of my own health, both physical and mental, I needed to give myself just a little extra time without running myself ragged to deliver to you all a climax that you deserve. So in the spirit of at least giving you all an update to sink your teeth into, I shall instead deliver a piece I wrote a while back that may or may not be eventually expanded into a series of shorts, giving a little more insight into some of my very own firebirds that have been plaguing the Freelancers for so long (or, in the case of a select few, befriending!).

Thank you all for your patience and I hope you enjoy!

Fire and Ice: The Spark

Aaron 'Firefly' Paul

Written by BrambleStar14

"Hold my hand, I can hear ghosts calling

Help me stand, even if the sky is falling

And I want you to know, I can't do it alone"

- The Fray, Hold My Hand

He'd nearly gotten himself killed again.

This must have made at least four times now and it was the same every time. Throwing himself into suicidal odds, losing his usual brutal efficiency for something more akin to dangerous, reckless viciousness that left him open for other attacks, for his opponents to turn the tables and get a good hit in. It was like he was grappling with himself, whether it was his instincts, or the desire that he kept hidden from the rest of them, that he thought nobody else noticed.

But one of them noticed. He'd always noticed. He'd seen it from the very beginning, but had never spoken to him about it, never brought it up, whether it was intimidation, the sheer hostility that the other man was able to radiate so easily, or was something else, something closer to fear of what he might find beneath the surface, waiting for him. He'd seen this kind of behaviour before, knew where it led, where it would inevitably take not only the injured idiot in the bed, but also the rest of the team.

He'd seen people go through this before, act like this before. This wasn't new behaviour if you had the appropriate experience with self-hatred. And he had plenty of that. Enough to share for several people, not that he did. Was it better to keep it all bottled up? Perhaps not, but the man in the bed was a testament to exactly what happened when they vented at precisely the wrong time, used the wrong moment and paid for it so dearly, even if the consequences made it feel so very right.

Perhaps this moment here, in the medical wing of the base, behind closed doors, sealed away from the rest of the world and so completely isolated, wasn't exactly the best place for it. But if they didn't talk here and now, in the aftermath of a suicide attempt so very public and yet so very hidden, then they might never talk about it.

And he wouldn't let the team be torn apart by that. Wouldn't lose anybody else to this kind of hidden, masked agony.

He was socially inept at the best of times and with quite literally no filter, but he wasn't a psychopath. Entirely. None of them were, despite the appearances that they put up to one another. They hadn't quite figured one another out yet, even after a few months of training. Soon enough, Harper would put his plan into action and Phoenix might actually earn their 'graduation'. But even now, they were figuring out just how one another ticked.

The man on the bed was an enigma that none of them had seemed able to figure out just yet. Well, none of them except the man sat next to him, letting the sunset light cast a burning orange light over the two of them, leaving the sterile white sheets aflame in the late evening sun. That sight alone was enough to have him grimacing at the way that his teammate looked like he was burning up.

It was bad enough that there was red at his side, dried into the sheets by now from when his wound had reopened, that cruel slice running down his ribs a mark to how close he'd come to death, literally riding the line between here and there, wherever exactly there was. He didn't know, he wasn't a philosopher. Hell, he wasn't even one to be this kind of worried about his teammates. But here he was, something clenching inside his chest under the burning sunset.

For once, that fire wasn't soothing. Not while it was flickering over the man lying in front of him, looking so very helpless in a sight so very wrong.

He'd sent the other four away, told them that he'd call them back once their injured colleague was awake. And he would. Once they'd talked. Once he'd made sure that this wouldn't happen again. Once he'd made sure that he could at least provide some kind of alternative to the dangerous streak of self-destruction that the man in front of him was on.

The two of them waited there, in the silence and the stillness, oddly appropriate for the occupant of the bed, only now, it felt just a little too quiet, a little too still. The Phoenix was lacking his usual edge of careful observation, of making sure he knew where the exits were, of assessing the mood of the room and the people inside.

It was strange to realise just how comforting that constant overwatch was only once it was gone, had nearly been gone forever.

It could have been only a matter of minutes, or a matter of hours, but he'd been transfixed by the sight of those flames skating over those white and red sheets, threatening to consume his… well. They weren't quite 'friends', but they were allies and that was what mattered in a place like this.

Rather suddenly, he felt the weight of eyes on him, eyes that saw all of him in mere moments, eyes that dug deep without judging, or at least reserving that judgement enough that he could pretend it didn't exist.

He met brown eyes, the rust-coloured hair out of place, for once left completely messy, some red still streaked in it, whether it was the man's own, or the Insurrectionist patrol he'd cut his way through so efficiently. He was taken aback for just a second by how steady the eyes formerly dulled by the painkillers were now, like he hadn't been fighting for his death in the field and his life in the surgery chamber mere hours ago.

"...hey," Aaron managed, rather weakly, but doing his best. His tongue felt like lead, no clever comments coming to mind, no jokes that could quite ease the tension in the room in that moment. This was something that had been building between them, even if only one of them had ever known it.

Geist watched him for another few long seconds, his eyes not leaving the redhead's, before responding, in a voice that wasn't quite as reserved as normal. It wasn't guilty, not quite, but it was something dangerously close to evasive.

"...hey." It was perhaps one of the most emotional outbursts that Aaron had ever seen from the other man and he wasn't sure how to feel that he was the one to be witness to it. He hadn't done anything to earn it. He'd just been here when the man woke up and not entirely for altruistic reasons. Not when he had something to confront him over, something as dangerous as the fight that Geist had been in mere hours ago.

"Before you ask, it's been five hours since you went under. They had to make sure your ribs hadn't splintered. Bastards got you good."

Geist didn't say anything, but a hand moved to his chest. His jaw clenched for a moment, possibly in pain or possibly in something a lot deeper as fingers deftly traced the fresh scar on his skin. Aaron didn't think it was fear, and it certainly wasn't shame, but it was still so very raw, just buried beneath the surface.

He knew the assassin (or at least he assumed that the man had been an assassin once) wouldn't speak for a little while, so he instead took the chance to glance over the man's torso, seeing the sheer number of scars that littered his skin. Until today, he'd never gotten a really good look at the patchwork that made up his body.

There were parts of Geist's body that had been left alone, an expanse of smooth skin, but in other areas… he was a mess of wounds. Knife wounds, a few bullets scars, something that might have been a trio of claws running from the back of his right shoulder and slashing diagonally to his spine.

Each of them told a story that only one man in the galaxy knew. It still didn't stop Aaron's burning curiosity, but he held himself in check. Maybe one day, he'd know. He somehow doubted it.

"It was a good move, that one. Spinning under your sword and getting you with their blade. Feinting an uppercut and turning it into a stab." He brought the wound back up almost nonchalantly and brown eyes flashed back to him in a heartbeat, peeling away the layers of his words like nobody else on the team would be able to. "Would have had to have incredible reflexes to dodge that one."

Still Geist said nothing. He was going to make Aaron say it outright, watching him impassively, giving nothing away. Sitting forwards in the chair, the pyro caught the swordsman's gaze intently, nothing like laughter in his gaze now. "Thing is, mate, you could have dodged that."

"Firefly-" Geist made to speak, but at the sound of the word, the accent catching at the syllables, the insistence on distance, on the idea that they were somehow a team when the assassin seemed determined to get himself killed before he could find a place with them, had him suddenly burning in white-hot fury and frustration.

"No." He leaned just a little closer, suddenly grimacing, fighting back the growl that he really didn't want to send the other man's way in that moment. "You like to stay quiet and listen, so let's stick to that for now. I'm going to talk and you're going to listen."

Geist blinked. He paused, then blinked again. Without another word, he settled back into the bed, watching Aaron as the redhead breathed heavily, his heart suddenly pounding, feeling rather as though he'd literally placed himself at risk of surgery just by cutting the assassin off when he'd already been cut down hours before. Taking a second to reorient himself, to push back any residual anger, he tried again, without the grin or laughter that usually accompanied his words.

"Good. Where was I? Right, yeah. I've seen you move faster than that. I've seen you save your own life against attacks far better than that. Your attention wasn't divided and you weren't distracted. You knew what he was going to do and you could have stopped it. You let the attack connect. Don't try to deny it. You put your life in the hands of fate, today, mate. You gave up."

The last three words hung between them, more of an accusation than anything else and for the first time, Geist shifted in the bed, though his eyes never left Aaron's. He wasn't going to show weakness, not now, not when he'd been confronted with this. Though, for once, that icy wall wasn't coming back up. He wasn't sealing himself off, just waiting.

"What the hell are you running from?"

And there it was. Immediately, a shutter came up behind Geist's eyes, the expression tightening up by a fraction to become just slightly more professional. Any chance that Aaron had to get through to him was becoming rapidly caught in ice, frozen over in a place that even his particular brand of wild fire couldn't reach.

"It's rhetorical, Geist. I'm not going to ask if you don't want to tell. I'm curious, sure, but it's your business. Your history. End of the day, we're all fuckups, you're just a little more private about yours." Blunt? Yes. Honest? Hell yes. Needed? Abso-fucking-lutely. "But whatever it is, Phoenix is your second chance and it's my second chance. You really think any of us are going to take you killing yourself with Insurrection-assisted-suicide well?"

This time, it wasn't rhetorical, and he knew that Geist knew. The taller man seemed so much smaller now and not because he was sitting up in bed. He looked somehow a little less rigid than normal, confronted with the heated truth that he tried to keep at bay with impenetrable frost.

Eventually, he spoke, so very carefully. "...I keep my distance. It won't come as a massive blow."

"Bullshit." Their eyes remained locked together as Aaron almost snarled it at him. "What did I literally just say? We're all fuckups, Geist. We're all failures and we're all broken. How many of us do you think would still be here without this team? Without this mission? Without this place we can be ourselves? I'm not going to be a motivational speaker and tell you that it gets better, because it probably won't. I'm not going to pretend I haven't seen the other three attempts and that I don't think they've noticed. But I'm going to tell you that you have a chance here to be you. To be Geist. Whatever you want him to be."

The Frenchman gazed at him, his brow furrowing just a fraction, no longer quite as impassive as before. Still, there was no guilt, no shame, no visible indication that he might have let Aaron's words take root inside of him. For all the pyro knew, Geist had frozen them out before they could sink in, and something snapped inside of him.

"Fine. I'll keep talking. We'll do this your way." Without warning, his shirt, stamped with the UNSC logo and sleeveless (because A. it was a good gym shirt and B. what was the point in having damn good tattoos if you weren't going to show them off?) was pulled up and over his head, exposing his own scars, his own brands, personally selected and deliberately inflicted. He showed them to the other man without caring what he saw when he looked at the burn scars, the chain of names around his throat, the prison tattoos and serial numbers on one arm or the dragon coiling down his other arm towards one of the worst patches of burns.

These were his story, his defiance to the rest of the galaxy. Have a good damn look, they said, he said, every time he added a new one, this is what you did to me. And I've made it beautiful.

Rotating his torso to allow Geist's eyes to find his spine, he reached behind him to trace fingers down the letters that ran vertically down his spine.

CAT 9. Discharge on the grounds of mental insufficiency.

"You collect scars. I collect these. Pieces of myself that I don't want to forget because they make me into me. But this one right here? This one almost killed me. It killed several of my friends, the ones that didn't succumb to the burns that I gave them. There was this one mate of mine. Austin. My best mate. You remind me of him."

Geist blinked again as Aaron turned back to face him and in the split-second before that blink happened, he thought he might have seen something in the assassin's eyes. But then the man shut his eyes for that fraction of a second, enough to freeze whatever was inside them. Shaking his head, he continued.

"Not personality, or even looks. But what you did today. After we were discharged, I felt aimless for weeks. I was drifting, drinking, fucking, you name it, my way through life. It was hollow and meaningless and the only times I felt alive were the times that I stood at the side of busy roads and considered stepping in front of a particularly fast car. You know what stopped me?"

Geist shook his head mutely, fixated on Aaron in a way that he hadn't been before. There was less tension in his frame now.

"Austin. Him and the rest of my old squad. They needed me and I needed them. We were all broken after the grenade and it was my fault for setting it off. I fucked their lives up forever. I owed them something else. Something better than misery and alcohol and pointless days. So, I got us all back together. We all had our gear and our skillsets. Wasn't too hard to fall back into old habits. Hit the streets. Take up a bit of wetwork. Take out a few targets. Rob a few banks. We lived like kings, Geist." For just a moment, he sounded wistful, but it was as hollow and empty as he'd sounded when he'd been describing his own brushes with despair.

"But Austin was the proof that we were fucked from the start. He couldn't handle what we'd lost. The jobs got more violent and so did he. The alcohol tasted worse and worse and he drank more and more of it. He started opening fire at the cops and staying behind longer and longer when I pulled us out of jobs. Didn't take a genius to figure out what he wanted." It wasn't hard to figure out the parallels and his eyes moved back to Geist's, his expression so very sad as he watched the assassin sit up just a little. "You know what I did?"

Geist shook his head, as mute as ever, but certainly far less emotionless. The icy calm had melted in the face of the flames of Aaron's past, freely given, willingly offered. His own mouth was twisted down, eyes shadowed now.

"Got him a passport offworld, a place in a clinic that could work with him, help him. Gave him the money to start a new life when he was better. No idea if he made it through. If I'm honest, I'm terrified that I'll find out he put a gun in his mouth. As long as I don't know, I get to imagine that I helped him. Better than drowning myself in alcohol when I know the truth." Grinning rather painfully, he settled back into his chair, still shirtless but the tattoos feeling like they were glowing under the sunset.

"We all got busted a few months later, anyway. Crane found me in prison another year after. Said he'd get the others out of jail if I went with him. Honestly, I've got a bad habit of fucking people up when I try to help, so if this makes you feel worse, that's probably why. At least I'll know you're feeling something, man."

Suddenly, he felt so very tired, his shoulders slumping a little, eyes closing for a few seconds and reaching up to rub fingers at the bridge of his nose, feeling the phantom pain of a mindless haze of carnal pleasures and mindless violence in an attempt to feel alive again.

"...I'm sorry."

His eyes flashed back open to stare at Geist as the man met his stare, looking almost astonishingly uncomfortable for a few moments, but he'd still spoken, still said the words, his accent a little thicker than usual.

"What?" He almost croaked the word out, aching, burning, desperate relief roaring into life as a breath that he hadn't even realised that he'd been holding throughout the entire conversation seemed to escape him.

"I'm sorry." Geist tried it again, watching all of those reactions in the redhead. "I… I can't help it. What I do." He still didn't say the words. "I never want to, I think. After, I keep saying it's the last time. But I can't stop." He sounded, for a moment, as empty as Aaron remembered feeling before Phoenix, before being offered the chance to be something again, to be Firefly.

"Hey." Reaching out, fingers grazed against Geist's wrist, still so very careful of not doing any more damage to the man. Then again, damaging his friends and allies was something he was very, very good at. "If you… you know. Feel that way, I'm not going anywhere. Just come and talk to me. Or sit there and let me talk, if that's your thing. You don't have to be so far away from the rest of us, okay?"

For a moment, that hand turned, fingers brushing against a wrist that was coated in burn scars. "Okay." It was a quiet breath, Geist releasing an exhale of his own. He seemed to hesitate, before asking a question of his own. "Why you? Of all of them, you're…"

He couldn't help himself. He laughed, feeling that uncontrollable urge and unwilling to fight it. He laughed until he was almost crying with the strength of it, letting Geist watch him in bafflement, so very open and plain on his face that it only made Aaron laugh harder every time he looked at him. But there might have been just a little reluctant amusement in those eyes and it made ripping that old wound open entirely worth it.

When he regained control of himself, he managed to work his way through a reply, still grinning. "I know. I'm not normally the guy that does this. I'm not like Phil or Ian. I'm not as carefully deaf at certain hours of the night as Lucas. I'm not protective like Mike. But I think I'm the only one that noticed you. So… here I am."

There was another long silence as Geist watched him, weighing up his words. Aaron didn't know what he decided to make of them and even those small little responses were so very profound coming from the Frenchman.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it. I mean, really don't mention it to the others, if you don't want to. But if you want to thank me…" Reaching down, he plucked up something that caught the sunlight in gleaming silver from the floor at his side. That lengthy sword flashed in the sunset, almost burning, looking like it was on fire in Aaron's hands as he offered it out to Geist. "It was a bit chipped in places, a little bloody. I figured I'd get it back to where it should be. I've seen you do it enough times."

Geist seemed stunned as he took the blade, rotating it in front of his eyes, taking in every detail, the chips filed away and the metal shining, reflecting something dangerously bright in those brown eyes for a moment, before he glanced back up at Aaron. His lips caught into a very small, very grateful smile.

He didn't speak, but it was enough.

"Hey, I needed something to pass the time, man. Has it got a name? The best ones have names, right?" Well, some people might have told him that only idiots named their swords, but he had a keen belief in the personal touch.

For a moment, Geist looked at him as though he was mad, that familiar ice wall falling back into place so easily and Aaron could have sworn the room darkened for a just a moment, as though a cloud had passed in front of that setting sun and dimming the fiery glow over the both of them, caught in the shining light of the sword.

Then, the man in the bed dropped those defences again and for the first time, he sounded like he might have been embarrassed, just a little.

"Mistral."

Aaron didn't laugh, or mock, or judge, or even ask about the name. He just grinned, standing back up and watching Geist follow him with his eyes. He didn't know if anything he said would stick. He had no idea if the other man would seek him out. Aaron was a stubborn bastard, though. He'd keep letting the man know that he was there, that Geist wasn't alone, that he didn't have to resort to the worst ways of feeling alive, for just a few brief moments, to pay for whatever sins he wanted to privately atone for.

If Geist survived even a few more months, Aaron Oliver Paul did his damn job here today.

"Like I said, mate. If you need me to stay, tell me to. I'm not going anywhere." He paused for a moment, waiting to see if Geist would speak, but the man just watched him, his expression unreadable, though not because it was void of emotion. Quite the opposite.

When nothing came, he turned to leave.

"Aaron." It was immediate, a reflexive response to the merest idea of Firefly leaving the room in that moment. He froze, caught in the ice that wasn't biting and bitter for once.

"Stay?"

It was hesitant, but so very hopeful. It was all he needed.

Sitting back down was easy. And when he said with the widest of grins, "Absolutely," that too was easy.