(A/N) Hey all, getting the next update for Phase Two: Betrayal up now, featuring Agent Carolina in the wake of their last battle, and written by the fantastic RocketTortoise. Again, letting you know that we're looking for nominations for our upcoming Awards night in celebration of great RvB and RWBY fics, so if you can think of any worth celebrating, let me know! Finally, and this is more of a teaser, we'll shortly be looking for application for Agent Texas (I know, DAYUM, right?), so keep your eyes out for that!
Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Nine – The Interminable Waiting
Agent Carolina
Written by RocketTortoise
"Education is the mother of leadership." – Wendell Willkie
Carolina didn't move throughout the entire Pelican trip from the surface of Varaan to the Mother of Invention. Her eyes didn't even move from the injured form of York, slumped over in the seat opposite her. It wasn't the most beneficial position for York to be in for his condition but it was the only way to keep him restrained as the Pelican left the atmosphere towards the Mother of Invention.
She noticed Florida in her peripheral vision as he watched over the slumped figures of California and Maine. Just the two of us, Carolina thought. Five of them were sent to the surface for this mission but only two would return conscious. Carolina sighed. Good job.
Carolina decided not to count how many team members had been injured under her command. Nevertheless her mind flickered to some of the highlights: Florida taking a bullet for General Allen, Pennsylvania being taken down by a simulation trooper, Alaska suffering a mental breakdown, before returning, somewhat inevitably, to Michigan and Massachusetts. When you chalked up these three suddenly that list was starting to become worryingly lengthy. Carolina finally removed her helmet from her head and she rubbed her eyes in fatigue. Good fucking job indeed.
Carolina thought back to her studies back at the academy before all this. She remembered an eighteenth century king of France… King Louis the… Sixteenth. His subjects had grown so tired of his ineptitude and the continued decadence of the French aristocracy that they rebelled against their king. In the end, King Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on La Place de la Révolutionin front of his former subjects. Carolina shivered. It was said that as his blood dripped to the ground, his former subjects rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in the lifeblood of their deposed king. "This," her lecturer had said, "is what happens to leaders who fail their people."
The aqua Freelancer was shaken from her thoughts by the pilot calling out, through the radio, from the cockpit, "We are making our final approach to our destination. Medical staff will be in the hangar to assist you as we arrive and I hope that next time you fly Air Project Freelancer you won't leave so much mess on my seats. Thank you." Carolina sighed. Pilots never seem to be able to keep their comments to themselves.
As the Pelican slowed upon approach to the hangar, Carolina rose, fitted her helmet back on and started to unfasten York from the harness attached to his seat. She supported the tan-coloured Freelancer on her shoulder and she noticed Florida unbuckling California from his seat, California being the only one of the two remaining injured Freelancers that Florida had a chance of lifting. Carolina felt the Pelican touch down on the hangar floor and the light of the hangar flooded into the Pelican as the rear doors lowered.
Carolina only managed one step forward before medical staff surrounded her, two of them taking York from her. She instinctively reached out to grab him again but he was already being lowered onto a stretcher to be carried into surgery. Unsurprisingly it took a few more staff members to lift the unconscious Maine to the stretcher, but eventually all three Freelancers were on stretchers, being rushed off to the medical wing. Carolina saw Florida rushing past, holding California's and Maine's helmets in his hands and beckoned for Carolina to follow him with a swift movement of his head. Carolina grabbed York's Mark VI helmet and rushed after the blue Freelancer and the medical staff.
The two Freelancers quickly caught up to the stretchers as the convoy of medics charged through the hallways of the Mother of Invention. Anybody in the way was shunted to the side by angry looking medics and was left trying to figure out who the three lying on the stretchers were.
Before long the battering ram had surged up to the surgical rooms and quickly flitted inside. Carolina and Florida tried to follow but were strongly rebuffed by a worryingly familiar medic... what was his name… Killian Jay. Not everyone could stand up to two super-soldiers in heavy-looking battle armour and rebuff them like a force-field, but it seemed that Jay was well up to the task.
The medic moved back into the surgery room to work on the injured Freelancers leaving Carolina and Florida standing awkwardly outside the busy surgery room with three helmets in their arms. Once again after that brief explosion of noise and chaos, there was silence. Florida had his helmet on, so Carolina had no idea how Florida was physically responding to this trauma. It hadn't been all that long ago when he was the one in the wrong part of that surgery room.
Carolina's eyes wandered to her left and she saw the eight new Freelancers staring, shocked at what they had apparently just seen. Carolina turned towards them and approached, her face grim and her eyes betraying her irritation at their mere presence. The eight fresh faces hadn't even taken part in a field mission, let alone seen a wounded Freelancer battling for his life. Carolina sensed Florida on her five o'clock.
"You should all take what you have just seen as a lesson to remember. I don't know what you may have heard about Project Freelancer and…similar operations, but we are not immortal. As hard as it may be for some of you to believe, we get shot like humans, we bleed like humans, we feel pain like humans and, most importantly, we die like humans."
She looked across the faces of the group and saw a mixture of emotions as they took in what she was saying, with some of them giving her condescending looks in return, apparently believing that she was patronizing them. Carolina let it go. They'd lose that arrogant attitude when Project Freelancer puts them through their paces, and if not then Carolina would have to find a different way of getting the message through their skulls.
Florida picked up where Carolina left off, "You guys may lose friends who are standing next to you right now. We certainly have." He was clearly referring to Michigan and Massachusetts. "That is why we all need to work together and watch each other's backs. That is why we are called a team."
Carolina picked up again, "So make sure you train to make yourselves the best asset to your team as possible, and with luck you might just get through this alive."
Carolina turned on her heel, striding away from the group of Freelancers and heard Florida's footsteps behind her again. She fell back into a chair outside the surgery room while Florida slipped into the chair to her left, removing his helmet. Carolina looked at York's tan helmet that was still trapped tightly between her hands. The tan was a lighter shade of brown than York's hair, though this wasn't helped by the scratches and marks that blemished the colour. Carolina could see her own reflection in the visor. She saw her blue helmet slightly distorted in it and she realised that she had missed the inanimate object, when she had been forced to become a civilian once more.
The helmet sort of represented Carolina's identity in Project Freelancer. When her enemies thought of the name "Agent Carolina", they would think of this helmet. When she killed those enemies, her helmet would be the last thing they saw. This was the face of her teammate's leader. This was what she wore as she strode into battle. This was the face of her team's leader, the leader who had already lost two teammates to two bullets, the leader who lost two more to betrayal, the one who had gotten three of her teammates sent to the surgery, including York. The same York that had been by her side since Day One at Project Freelancer, who had been worried about her when a UNSC official was executed by their former ally, who she had screamed at for wanting nothing more than her own safety!
Carolina dropped York's helmet from her hands and it bounced off her lap to the floor. She ripped her own helmet off and hurriedly placed it on the chair to her right out of her vision.
She noticed Florida watching her, his features concerned. Carolina quickly regained her composure. "Are you okay?" Florida asked, his normally cheerful tone composed and hesitant in the face of all that had occurred.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Carolina replied, dismissively, as though even the thought of her being upset was absurd.
Florida's abnormally cheerful mood returned, "Boy, if you asked me yesterday if three of the toughest guys on the team would get injured while I walked away practically unscathed, then I would have laughed you to shame. And yet here I am, sitting idly with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs, while those three battle away on the uncomfortable side of that wall." Florida took a deep breath and exhaled. "I guess I've spent a fair amount of time on the uncomfortable side of that wall myself."
Florida gave Carolina a warm smile that didn't seem like a facade at all, and, not for the first time, she felt a twinge of jealousy in how he could always see the brighter side in every situation. The eternal optimist. "I'm sure they'll be fine though, especially York. It's going to take a lot more than thatto keep York from watching your back."
Carolina wasn't really sure how to respond to that so she just nodded, before looking away. The two sat there in silence for a while before Florida rose, "I think I'm going to have a shower and hit the hay, as they say. It's been a long day." Florida looked at Carolina, a touch of concern blemishing his smile. "You should get some rest soon. You deserve it."
Do I? Carolina wondered. She didn't say that. Instead she said, "Thanks Florida, I'll see you later."
Florida waved one last time and headed off down the hall towards the showers, leaving Carolina sitting there alone. For an hour she just sat there, unmoving, unspeaking, staring at the wall that separated her from the three of her teammates hidden on the other side. They could be on the brink of death and Carolina would have no idea until one of the nurses came out and told her so. Was York dead? Was a nurse about to step through that door and tell Carolina that there had been nothing they could do? How was she supposed to react to that? Was she supposed to mourn? Was she supposed to stand silent and strong like she had always been taught a leader should?
Again, Carolina found her thoughts straying back to the academy and another example stood out to her. In 1935 – ancient history, really – an Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrödinger devised a famous thought experiment known afterwards as "Schrödinger's Cat". A cat was sealed in a box with no way to see inside. Also inside was a small flask of poison that could be shattered at any time releasing the poison, or it might not shatter at all. When shattered, the poison would kill the cat. Since the physicist could not see into the box and see if the cat was dead or not, then the cat could be considered as both alive and dead. Carolina didn't know why her mind had felt it was necessary to remind her of that particular piece of information as she stared at the wall, since considering York as both dead and alive didn't seem to make her feel better at all.
"Did you contract X-Ray vision on your last mission or did it say something bad about your mother?" Carolina looked to her left and saw North Dakota walking up to her with a smile on his face. More people smiled constantly here than what you'd expect from a special-ops program. Guess they were just compensating for her own well-documented seriousness. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was the former, you're the closest thing we have to a superwoman around here."
"You come here to see York?" Carolina asked, knowing the answer, but at the same time, not able to think of anything else to say.
"Of course, he's my friend. I'm also here to see Maine and California. I figure not a huge amount of people are queuing up to check on those two."
"Well I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing them. They're still in surgery," she replied, looking away.
North didn't seem too put-off by her mood, taking the seat that Florida had vacated an hour before. "Yeah, that seems about right. If they're in surgery then why are you still here? After that mission I'd have thought you would be getting some rest."
Carolina shrugged. Why was she still here? Sitting here, her worries gnawing away within her, wasn't going to help York, or Maine, or Cal. But still, she couldn't bring herself to get up and leave them. After all, this whole mess was her fault. She should have seen the ambush coming.
North sighed and shook his head, his smile fading slightly. "I don't suppose I've ever told you about the time when South took me hiking, have I?"
Carolina shook her head so North continued; "Back when South and I were kids, South used to lead me into all kinds of situations that – perhaps – we shouldn't have been in,"
North looked over at Carolina who gave him the sceptical look he must have known was coming. "Ok, maybe she still does, but that's beside the point. One day she took me hiking. I didn't want to go, but somehow I still found myself trekking through some forest following South. She led me up a steep hill and, unsurprisingly, I lost my footing. I tumbled down a hundred and fifty feet of hillside and could easily have broken my neck. Luckily we hadn't hiked too far from the edge of the forest, and South managed to get me to a hospital. She beat herself up about it for quite a while."
Another sceptical look.
"Look, she may seem a little self-centred now but deep down she cares a lot about people," he replied, waving away her disbelief. "Anyway, South blamed herself for my accident and felt plenty of guilt and regret. Eventually I recovered, and the first thing I did was drag South back out hiking. However, this time when we were climbing, we learnt from our mistakes and together we easily scaled that hill."
North smiled to himself. "Afterwards, I told South that she didn't have anything to be sorry for. Even though I had taken a hit, we were able to come back and climb that damn hill. That fall strengthened me and South as a team. I've never regretted going hiking with South that day. It's helped make me who I am."
Carolina nodded thoughtfully. "Thanks North. South's lucky to have you as her brother."
"Thanks." North rose but kept his eyes on Carolina. "Look, you're the best leader this team could hope for. This is Project Freelancer, we're sent on the most dangerous missions, so therefore people we like will probably die. Things happen that you can't control, Carolina. We aren't immortal."
North started walking away then, remembering something he turned back to Carolina, "York will want what's best for you, Carolina. You sitting in that chair moping will definitely just make him worry about you." With that, North turned around again and walked off.
Carolina watched him go then glanced back at that wall. Her vision lowered and dragged back until it hit York's tan helmet, still lying on the ground where Carolina dropped it. She picked it up and looked in the visor. Now looking at her face without her helmet on, she finally saw what the others saw. Even with her face distorted in the visor, she looked tired. Really, really goddamn tired. Seemingly just to back that point up, she took that moment to yawn, and decided to go and have a shower. She needed to get away from this place for a little while. If, after her shower, she came back, it would be because she wanted to, not because she felt she owed it to York or something stupid like that.
Carolina first went to her room to pick up some clothes, then walked down to the locker room and threw her armour, along with York's helmet, into her locker. She took off the black under-skin that she wore under her armour and stepped into the shower, starting it with a wince as blistering cold water rained down on her. She quickly heated up the shower and felt the temperature rise. As she stood there, Carolina felt her muscles loosen and her breathing gradually take on a more relaxed tone, and her hair stuck to her skin as steam billowed around her. She lost track of how long she had been standing in that shower, and when she eventually stepped out her hands and fingers were wrinkled from the water, but she felt infinitely better. Carolina dried herself with a towel and then put on the clothes she had picked up from her room, before finally walking back to the surgery room to wait for York.
She sat down in a random chair and waited. She soon felt her eyelids grow heavy and, at some point, drifted off into a dreamless sleep. Eventually, she was awoken by the sound of a door opening, and her eyes flashed open as she saw a nurse emerging from the operating theatre. So what had happened to Schrödinger's cat?
"Agent Carolina?" she asked. Carolina stood and walked up to the nurse, and if the nurse was intimidated she sure as hell didn't show it. Medical staff were made of pretty strong stuff, Carolina thought idly, her brain trying to uncover the news the nurse had to deliver by the look on the her face. "You can see Agent York now."
Despite herself, Carolina smiled. The vial hadn't broken. All was well, once more.