Welcome to another special guest spot in BC by editor/coauthor/Phoenix creator BrambleStar14 as we take a look at the atomic fallout of that last chapter. Tuney here with just a quick moment of your time to thank Minaethiel for beta-reading this one along with me. And another quick, but no less heartfelt, thanks for reading/favouriting/following and taking the time to review.

Last Embers

Written by BrambleStar14

"Last night I dreamt that they dropped a bomb

Oh the seas ran dry, the winds had calmed

Skyscrapers fell and crumbled to dust

And their skeletons of steel were covered in rust"

-City and Colour, 'Silver and Gold'

The sun had long since set in the sky overhead, not that you could tell just by looking above. It had become impossible to discern anything through the glow of the inferno that Phoenix had set, slowly hollowing the shell of the city out, leaving it nothing but a burned-out husk. It was swiftly becoming a mess of half-melted, warped steel that might one day be reborn and reconstructed into something beautiful again. For now, it was simply a monument to what Fireteam Phoenix could accomplish, would always accomplish, when unleashed on a target, righteous or otherwise.

Indeed, the entire sky above was a swirling ash cloud, a hurricane of gold and orange, reds pouring from the buildings to mingle with the clouds above, the heavens that Phoenix had reached up to grasp and forcefully pull down to the civilisation below, imbuing it with their own hellfire. Harper might have called it beautiful.

As embers rained down around him, Philip Blake found it poignant.

He wasn't an idiot. He knew that this mission hadn't just been for the benefit of giving Phoenix an outlet after their newest member had confronted her father and confronted each of them with their own particular secrets or private fears. It had been as much a test as it had been a punishment. As much a first true date as it was a reminder of loyalty.

They each had their own way of looking at the man at the head of Phoenix. Each of the various broken birds that Phil had needed to take under his own wing over the years saw Ian Harper in a different way.

In Aaron, Phil saw undying loyalty, the dedication of a man who'd found a cause, someone as chaotic as himself, someone that could indulge that particularly dangerous side when he needed the outlet and could understand those darker impulses.

Geist might have seen something approaching a rival, or possibly a man that was a warning. Phil rather thought that Ian's own reckless abandon, as precise as he could be, was an endless reminder to Geist not to allow his own almost supernatural skill with a blade to get to his head, to gamble with his own life in the same way. They'd all seen the injuries that Ian and later Hunter had acquired, and the way that Firefly had cast small half-glances at the Frenchman each time.

Phil had seen Geist the first few weeks that Phoenix had been together, had seen the way he had fought, the way he held himself. The others may not have noticed the difference, but he had seen something similar in the way that the man had held a blade. The assassin had been expecting to die on the job and had clearly not been intending to use his second chance.

The Phoenix second was glad that Firefly and Geist had found one another. They were anchors in a rather chaotic storm. He didn't know what Geist had been like before they had come together and he'd never asked, never needed to. Whatever had shaped the man, he'd left everything behind, but still been ready to die with a sword in his hand with no regrets.

Blake thought he rather might have regrets by now. Or at least, things he wouldn't want to leave behind. He blinked as a particularly bright ember caught his eyes, pausing in his unnecessary patrol of the streets, just to give himself time away from the others, a way to think, to keep himself thinking so that he didn't need to focus on his footfalls, keep an ear open to the conversations around him when it didn't seem like he was listening, always carefully attentive to whatever the others might need, might be feeling.

He'd been becoming too morbid. At the very least, he could trust Crosshair to keep an eye on the last dying embers of the temporary firestorm that Harper had invoked, the icy storm that had caught the fires around them, burning heat and frozen chill clashing together in a few minutes that had lasted a lifetime. Crosshair was just as attentive as Phil, if not moreso. He was one of the Phoenixes that could probably blend back into society seamlessly, without any hint of the trauma that weighed on each of their backs, dragging their wings down so that they couldn't ever again truly reach the heights they'd once been able to.

Of course, that didn't mean that the sniper didn't have his own issues, his own regrets, his own guilt and pain on his shoulders. In fact, if he had to weigh them up, Falcon might have called Mike Baxter the true tragedy of Phoenix. The man saw everything now, keeping his teammate's vital signs in one corner of his HUD at all times just to provide endless overwatch, never quite letting any one of them out of his sight even when gazing down the scope of his customised rifle.

Phil knew that the man kept them all tagged in his visor at all times and checked that they were all still marked at least three times a mission, just so that he'd never mistake friend for foe again, pull the trigger that he could never un-pull.

Whatever Baxter saw in their team leader, Falcon didn't know. He just knew that Crosshair felt a debt to Ian, a sort of unspoken apology that they all knew Ian would never allow him to make, never let the full burden fall onto the sniper's shoulders. There was that unspoken name between them all, but guilt was something that wasn't hard for Mike to find in himself.

That unspoken, unacknowledged, unwanted and unneeded debt between the team leader and the sniper kept the two of them bound together in their own way. Falcon had never forgotten when he'd come across Maverick and Crosshair on one of the hills near the ONI base that they'd graduated from, the very same sniper that still sat in Mike's arms to this very day set up on a tripod, taking it in turns to coach an uninitiated and yet-to-be-named Spectrum on the weapon.

He could remember the way that Isaac's eyes had shone with every successful shot, the boy a born natural, truly gifted. Ian's own laughter and grin had been infectious even at a distance, the picture forever immortalised on the hard drive that Lucas had backed up for him in a secure corner of the extranet where he could always recover it, years later. He'd made it a habit to capture the good moments, even then, never knowing that they were grains of sand in an hourglass, trickling faster and faster away without any of them realising.

What really stood out to him in the memory and the photograph itself was the easier expression on Mike Baxter's face. It had been easier for the man to smile, before that Covenant ship that had exploded like the artificial supernova and blazing wildfire that they'd turned this city into in turn, but true, open happiness was still rare for the sniper. It was a familiar smile, that edge of encouragement in his eyes, his hand resting between the boy's shoulders to steady him, the gesture familiar, like he'd had practice teaching somebody else before.

The smile on his face was that of an older sibling, or almost a proud parent. He never smiled like that anymore.

Though, when Crosshair gave their newest member particularly long looks, in the fleeting moments that she let her guard down, wasn't eyeing them with the expression of somebody seeking a threat, his expression was something else. It was something between protectiveness and worry. And perhaps something very sad at the edges, just creeping into his features when he in turn thought that Falcon wasn't looking.

There was a bench ahead of him, glowing orange in the light shining down from what had been an office building. One of the legs was twisted and melted, but Falcon took his chances, carefully taking the middle of the metal seat and hearing the protesting groan. Warped and twisted steel bent, melting under the pressure and sinking a few inches. The bench remained intact, taking his weight even through its protests, remaining sturdy under pressure.

The thought made him chuckle humourlessly, setting his rifle down at his side, hands folding into his lap as he silently counted the members of Phoenix off in his head, making sure, as he always did after every mission, that each of them was as close to okay as it was possible for hurting, damaged soldiers to be.

There was never any doubt in how Lucas saw Ian. There hadn't been any doubt in Phil's mind since he'd seen the marks on Lucas's arm, standing out stark red against pale skin in a hospital bed, since he'd heard the words spoken in a delirious state of blood-loss, but pumped from him like the red he'd willingly spilled in Isaac's name. And he'd had no doubt since Ian had left Lucas's room in that private week-long apology tour he'd made of each of their rooms, his eyes shining and expression set, like he'd been trying to reform a mask over whatever lay underneath.

Of course, it was hard to place a shattered illusion over something equally broken beneath. The faces had just merged together on Ian's features, leaving him aching and painful and angry and twisted and empty all at once.

Lucas looked at Ian with pain and guilt and loss and something a little like regret in the quieter hours, when they didn't talk in the lounge but just sat there, not quite drowning in unspoken words and unsaid names but choosing instead to remain in one another's company, to avoid acting on their darker impulses or twisted coping mechanisms, using the other pieces of the jigsaw that made Phoenix to keep themselves feeling as close to whole as they could.

Thorpe looked at Ian like he would at an older brother. Or brother-in-law.

A heavy sigh left Phil, forced from him, the air in front of him filled with fire when, at this time of year, it should have been a fog of warmth caught in the chilly winter air, suspended and a testament to the heat of his persisting lungs, even now. Instead, it was lost amidst the fire he'd helped bring here. The same fire that Ian had ignited inside of Hunter, stoked the fires of Jason Shaw into what he called a beautiful, burning creature.

It wasn't hard to see the two were infatuated. It also wasn't hard to see the way that Jason looked at their latest addition, when he stumbled in his forced indifference, the pain and regret that he couldn't mask. A single night was caught in those eyes, one that Phil hadn't been there for but that he could picture, club lights catching in the reflections of embers in blue eyes, the ghost of a grin on those features when nobody else looked.

Of all the people in the universe, they'd saved and picked up Hunter's unspoken anchor, that final link to who he was. To who he could still be. A better man. Phil had never said the words, especially not to Harper or Hunter himself. He wouldn't turn back time, if he could, not when Ian's smiles were more genuine, when he made a habit of checking in on the other Phoenixes now instead of leaving their rec room whenever he wasn't going to drag one or more of them into anarchy. Not when he cared again.

But he knew that Jason Shaw couldn't let go of Hannah Steele, just like he couldn't let go of Ian Harper. He didn't know how the situation was going to resolve itself, but he knew that however the rubble settled, he was going to be needed.

Harper's trick with the ODSTs had been cruel. It had been cold. It had risked a Phoenix for the sake of proving a point and it had hurt another Phoenix. Blizzard hadn't spoken since she'd shot the man wearing armour that she wore, armour that might as well have been worn by White, or Dominic, or any of Fireteam Orange. It had been designed to hurt in every way that it could.

It was unmistakably Ian Harper to the core, because the man couldn't help himself. He couldn't care about anything now without hurting it to see if it could make him feel in turn. The blonde could claim it was cruelty for the sake of a lesson all he wanted. Phil could examine his leader's trauma, even if the man himself couldn't ever face that particular mirror.

But it was Blizzard that took the brunt of the attack. Blizzard who had sealed herself away. Blizzard that he had left alone with Crosshair, who could take Phoenixes under his wing in a way that only Falcon seemed otherwise able to, able to empathise and support and care for them in a way that wouldn't leave scars, or hold hidden barbs, or hide lost and damaged memories.

Phil trusted Mike in a way that he trusted nobody else. He trusted him with Phoenix's souls when he couldn't try to heal them himself.

While the sniper attended to their newest puzzle piece, Phil had caught Ian's shoulder before the man could stalk after the retreating and grinning Shaw like a jackal stalking injured prey, ready to move in for the kill. Leaning in close, his words had been fierce, perhaps the fiercest he'd been with Ian for years, and he knew by the silent glance of the visor in his direction, that the man had listened.

"She isn't Hunter. Don't treat her like him. She's a Phoenix, Ian. Act like it."

Ian had heard, most definitely. He had no idea if the man had listened.

Glancing at the corner of his HUD, the Phoenix second let out another heavy sigh as he realised just how much time had passed, sat on this bench, alone and isolated, taking the weight of what they had done here onto his shoulders because none of the others would carry this particular sin with them, their consciences clear of this city, but heavy with what had brought them all here to vent that hellfire.

He'd left Hannah and Mike alone long enough. Time to bring Phoenix back together and leave this place behind. Even if he privately suspected that it would be difficult to leave the memory of that line of ODSTs in the past where it belonged. Leave the corpses in the graves where those bodies belonged.

Slowly, but just as methodically, his feet began to carry him back the way he had come, retracing his steps with a sense of long-suffering, even if he was already anticipating seeing those faces again. It had been an hour at most and he already couldn't bear to be away.

Separation anxiety was not something he needed to self-analyse. Not without opening a whole other can of worms that was far deeper on the inside than it had any right to be at first glance.

His thoughts hadn't drifted to himself, and he chose to keep it that way. He didn't need to look inwards, as long as he was looking outwards to all of them. That was the way he preferred things. The line of duty was easier for him when it included looking after his friends, those damaged but beautiful people that would tear themselves apart without the others there in their lives.

Philip Blake wasn't their anchor. But he could help them.

That was enough for him.

The embers were falling fewer and fewer now, the fires in the city beginning to slowly but surely die away, the chill of the planet once again taking hold and snuffing out the inferno that Phoenix had set in their wake. Not that the gradual loss of heat bothered the smaller armoured form picking through the wreckage of the mass grave, whether it was the grave of the inhabitants of the city or the city itself. He didn't know what he was looking for, just that he was looking for the scraps left behind, the small relics that might carry meaning. To the team, if not to him.

Lucas did this when he could, in the aftermath of battles that weren't chaotic enough or violent enough to send Phoenix into a retreat that they'd never undo, leaving behind a relic of their journey that the redhead could never document in his own way. He wouldn't quite call himself a scavenger, but he was enough of a kleptomaniac to take what he could, anything that could serve as a reminder, or a memento, or even a warning.

This particular mission felt like it needed a warning, with the way that Blizzard had looked after Harper's little trick with the ODSTs. A reminder not to damage their teammate further, to drive her closer to taking the kind of plunge that she was accustomed to, but without the drop pod to at least provide the illusion of safety. To keep her as part of the team, to show her that losing her now, to write her off as a lost cause or to have her cut herself off from them forever would be its own pain, its own lasting scar.

Circuit wasn't sure he could handle more scars on his heart, or his body. He wasn't sure he wanted to find out what could make him add to them.

Setting the body down in the hastily dug grave, he glanced down at the reflection in the visor of the ODST helmet gazing back up at him, the cracks running through the glass warping the image of the smaller figure in reinforced URF black and vivid fluorescent green, showing him a broken and shattered reflection. He wondered if it was the flames still trying to burn around them making his reflection tremble, or if it was his own body betraying him, like it tried to do on nights where the memories and the thoughts that accompanied them became just a little too much.

He'd been the one assigned to take the bodies here, out of the way. When Harper had given him the order, he rather suspected that the team leader expected him to dump the bodies and be done with it. He knew that Falcon knew that he was going to at least give them the graves they'd earned. His arms were soaked in shining fluid, fluid that shone red when they caught the light of the fire, red rather than the dark stains of oil, red that was fresh rather than the faded, rusted stains that he could see when he slept, the images that woke him in screams that Mike had to hold him through.

Lucas hadn't needed to see Hannah's face to imagine that she might be fighting back those same screams, even if she hadn't spoken since. He'd seen the tenseness in her posture, the rigid and controlled way that she held herself, the furious iciness that she'd held, railing silently against Phoenix, against Harper, against Hunter, against those ODSTs for being there, against her team for being where they'd been, against the universe for constantly dealing her a pair of mocking jokers that shouldn't have been in the deck to begin with.

The engineer knew the trembles that he'd seen as he'd left to dig the graves. He'd experienced them himself, every night since he'd lost Isaac before he'd ever really had him.

He hoped that she came to him. He hoped that she would understand why he would show her what he intended to. He hoped that she wouldn't try the same before she visited.

He hoped that Harper hadn't driven her over the same edge that he'd nearly driven Shaw.

Glancing down as the flickering light caught something shining on the corpse beneath him, he leaned down, spotting something slotted into the underweave of the armoured woman silently staring up at him. He wondered for a moment if she'd known that he'd have the respect to dig her a grave, whether she'd still watch him with judgement beyond the grave.

Lucas had enough judging eyes watching him from there. Waiting for him.

Reaching out, he plucked the pin from the underweave, holding it up to the light. It had been tarnished by fire already, one half of it long since burned and faded, but he could still tell what it was. The metal pin bore the image of a pair of dice, rolled in the hopes of a lucky throw. One of the two dice was scorched away entirely, faded and blackened, the result forever unknown, the risk taken but no way of telling if it had paid off.

Beneath his helmet, his lips twisted into a small smile, bitterness and genuine appreciation warring inside of him. After a split-second of hesitation, instead of rising from the crouch at the woman's side, he reached out, his fingers finding those of the corpse, closing his eyes and beginning to murmur.

He didn't know many prayers. It was embarrassing, really, for a boy raised by a Catholic. But the ones that he did know, he could remember to this day. He'd never forgotten them, and rarely found a use for them.

But he hoped that the woman beneath him had rolled the dice right, that she'd found herself some semblance of peace.

When his prayer was finally finished, the man clambered to his feet, the pin sliding from her fingers one final time to his, before he pocketed it, the reminder of this place forever with him now, the aftereffects still to come, but just as painful.

Blinking back tears that he couldn't blame on the thick ash that his customised helmet filtered out, Circuit began to make his way back to the rest of his team, his arm itching at his side.

By now, the embers had stopped falling through the air around them, the fires that had surrounded them in smoke and orange and flickering light that served as something more intimate than any candlelight dying out, the winter chill returning to the air around them. The two of them stood there, side by side, gazing out over the chaos that they had wrought, their armour back in place, if a little less orderly than it had been when they'd found their way up here. Neither of them spoke, not quite knowing what to say.

It was ironic, really, that Ian Harper didn't know what to say, that words failed him, now of all times. This had been, in a sense, the first true date that he'd been able to take Hunter on, not that he'd ever repeat the words, mentally or verbally. It had been a mission. A fun mission, granted, but still something born out of necessity rather than a willing desire to go somewhere, just the two of them.

But, still, it had been perfect, in its own way. Hunter, his mad, brilliant Jason Shaw, arm wrapped around one pillar at the corner of the rooftop, swinging himself in wide and dangerous circles above a fall that would surely kill him if he let go, his grip loosening as though daring himself to fall and daring Harper to catch him. The two of them, caught in that dance through the embers, eyes refusing to leave one another, as physically close as they could possibly be in that moment, able to feel Jason's heartbeat against his chest, ribcage empty but imagining for just a brief moment that he might be able to have something that could beat back.

What worried him now was the expression on Jason's face as he gazed out over the city. It had been the same look on his face when Ian had thrown those three hapless soldiers into the cell with him, told them to beat the prisoner until he broke. But not until he died. Never until then.

Jason's eyes were wider than normal, gaze rather fixed into the middle distance rather than admiring the destruction they'd wrought, his mouth a tight line, swallowing every few seconds like he wanted to speak but never quite daring to.

This was unusual, for the two of them. They didn't do hesitation, or anxiety, or concern. Harper's actions over the last few weeks, the way he'd been a little more tentatively careful with the man, had been protective in the face of Blizzard and the tether she'd reminded the dark-haired defector of. It was only protectiveness and territorial displays of possessiveness. It didn't matter that he needed to keep reminding himself of that fact every time he stepped up behind Jason to place his chin on the man's shoulder in a way that he'd never done before, every time their hands brushed in front of the other Phoenixes, every time he practically flopped bonelessly over the couch and into Jason's lap to beam up at him while Falcon's all-seeing eyes that overanalysed everything bored into them.

So to see Jason so disturbed, especially in the afterglow, was never a good sign. Normally the man looked like he'd rather go for another round or two by now, hunger in his face and fire in his eyes. But much like the pyres around them, it had all gone out, replaced by something charred and deadened.

He chose to risk it.

"So… that bad, huh? Was it the open rooftop? Not feeling it out in the wild?" There was nothing in response. He forced the humour to stay in his voice, to hide everything underneath. They didn't do concern. "I mean, you sure seemed to be enjoying yourself. You looked pretty into it, I mean. And that was before the armour came off!" Still nothing, no signs of fire or interest or even life at all.

"...Jay?" Definitely not small. Definitely not concerned.

"Didn't realise it was a thing." It was blunt and quiet but most significantly, it was cold. It was almost icy. It reminded Ian of Steele, in a way that he really didn't think he liked or wanted. It was like the woman was inhabiting his… his partner's skin for a brief moment.

"What was a thing?"

Now, Jason grinned, something empty in the expression, looking remarkably like Ian when he found a joke particularly bitter. Ian decided that the look didn't quite suit Jason. Shaw was like him in a lot of ways. But he definitely shouldn't be entirely like Ian. Not completely. He wasn't sure what the rest of Hunter should have been, but he wasn't sure that the empty, lifeless form of Blizzard suited the man. Not when he thrived on warmth and energy and life.

"The whole 'throw the enemy at you and hope you snap enough to be a Phoenix' thing. I didn't realise you had standard initiation. Thought the cell was… wasn't something that everyone went through." Now, there was definitely bitterness and Ian started rather abruptly, staring at Jason without even bothering to mask the concern.

"...the cell was just you. Everything that we went through was just you." He didn't expect this. He couldn't have expected this. He'd been trying to fix the problem! He'd been trying to… "You're unique, Jason. We're unique. I'm not trying to replicate you. She's not you!" Not where it mattered, at least. Not to Ian.

"I know!" It was a low growl, feral and angry and bitter all at once. Without warning, hands were catching his shoulders, pushing him against the concrete barrier at the edge of the rooftop, pushing Ian so that he swung backwards, gravity reaching up and trying to pull at him like it was trying to drag him back into hell, like he wasn't already living it every day. Shaw's eyes were wild, his expression suddenly twisted as he held Ian's life in his hands, just as Ian had held his so recently. "I know she's not me, Ian. She shouldn't ever be like me, but you gave her the same test! You're trying to treat us the same and you're going to break her." Something splashed onto Ian's cheek from above, those blue eyes suddenly wet and hurting, old wounds that Ian had made and then healed over himself open once again to bleed salt rather than red.

"She shouldn't be me, Ian. Not to you. Not to me. I don't want her to be like me. Nobody should be like me." The unspoken 'except you' hung between them. "We're…" Neither of them had a word for it, deep down, that silence that hung between them, dragged out and filled with bitter regret for what they couldn't say or see.

Carefully, very carefully, Ian reached up, his fingers brushing over Jason's cheek, collecting those tears in a way that he never normally tried; Jason had a tendency to hide these from him, even in the moments where they weren't fuelled by passion, where things were slow and if Ian could handle the word 'sweet', he might have used that too.

"She's not you, Jay. Never like you, not to me. She's a Phoenix. Wasn't trying to break her, or you." This wasn't jealousy, he knew that much. This was something much deeper, much more inherently panicked at the idea of Ian ever turning his attention onto Hannah Steele. He wondered who the panic was for, before deciding he didn't want to take the risk of asking the question. Keeping green on blue, he very obviously leaned back, his body weight entirely under Jason's control, the fall stretching below him, above him if he turned his head upside down, but he didn't.

This wasn't a moment to enjoy the sensation. This was all about Jason Shaw. "I promise, Jay. Never again."

Hunter was silent for a long few seconds, holding Ian's life in his hands, and holding something much more important to Ian at the same time, something that he could snap forever with just a few words and shatter Phoenix all over again.

Instead, lips met lips, hungry and desperate and begging in a way that wasn't about passion.

It was loneliness.

The embers had long since settled over the city by now, even as the Pelican lifted from the ground, kicking up ash and dust around them in a storm that was grey and cold and bleak rather than orange and fiery and blazing. By this point, the city was consumed by ash, like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, waiting for the magma to cool and forever immortalise what was left behind, like a natural disaster had wiped the civilisation from the map in a moment of rebirth.

Mike Baxter's eyes weren't on the city below him as he stood on the ramp of the Pelican, his boots magnetised in place and his fingers curled around the handrail above him. They were on the armoured woman at his side, watching Hannah Steele gaze down at the city, her back to the rest of Phoenix so that she didn't have to look at them for a few minutes. Soon enough, he knew, the damaged woman would return to her seat, try and force the pain beneath the surface down deep where nobody could see it.

But he would still see it. He saw all of their pain, even now. And he could see the way that she was tearing herself apart, screaming silently even if she couldn't even let out the sound. It was a scream of body language, of faceless agony and expressionless pain, using that reflective visor as a shield.

And yet, her fingers were closed around his other hand, perched on the exit ramp with him to stare down at the place that had been a site of life and death, for the inhabitants and for Blizzard. She'd held his hand tightly for the entire duration of the flight so far, a few minutes that lasted for an eternity as he watched her, watched the pain in her posture, the tension that every Phoenix had noticed but had left him to deal with because it had been his shoulder she'd been leaning on when the others came back to find them, to see if he'd talked her down from the ledge she'd been walking up to slowly from the moment Ian had pulled those ODSTs out like a magician conjuring his cruellest trick.

Mike didn't think she'd been talked down from that ledge, not yet. But she might have made the first step away. She could relapse, but she knew that they were there. That people cared. That she wasn't alone.

It had to be enough, for now. He didn't know if he could handle the third angel sat on his shoulder. Two was already more than he could take.

He didn't let her hand go for a long time.

Aaron could see the embers in the air every time he closed his eyes. He could feel the weight of the metal blade, Harper's metal blade, rest against his throat every time he swallowed hard. He could see blue eyes through a reflective visor gazing back at him every time he wanted to look behind him, to see whatever was in the eyes of the only other man in the room with him. It wasn't fear that kept him from turning around. He knew what he'd see in there. He was confident enough in what the two of them had to know what was there.

He just didn't know if he wanted to see the private fear on top of everything else.

"You know I knew that she would come through and save me, right?" It was hesitant, hopeful, desperate for some kind of response, that the other man could understand why he'd done what he'd done, the way he'd sat there so defencelessly and allowed an ODST to count down, to cut his throat and snuff his own flames out in a moment of gushing crimson heat.

There was a single sound behind him, a hum, one that most people wouldn't have had a hope in hell of understanding, but a sound that he could understand fluently without even trying. He knew an affirmative when he heard one, resigned and weary. His heart lifted, just a little. It was the first sound that the assassin had made since he'd seen Aaron sat on the concrete, surrounded by shattered glass and the reflection of an impassive, steely expression that focused only on Blizzard.

"And I knew Ian wasn't going to let me die. He had a plan. He wouldn't risk me unnecessarily." This time, the answering hum was a little less certain, something closer to possessiveness in it that had him smiling broadly, basking in the attention as he always did when the other man could show it to him, when eyes were no longer on them and the walls of privacy could be discarded. He knew that his boyfriend didn't distrust Ian. But he knew that Harper's reckless tendencies were uncomfortably familiar to both his own, and to the man behind him.

"If it helps, I didn't mean for you to see." Aaron didn't know what comfort that provided, but he still felt the goosebumps rise along his bare flesh as fingers returned to trace over his back, finding ink and deliberately running over every individual line. He didn't know if it made it better that he was prepared to so casually risk his life and never tell the assassin what he had done so recklessly, what he had risked for the sake of mad green eyes that understood his dangerous side in the same way that his boyfriend's understood the pained and broken side of him where nobody else could.

There was silence, those fingers pausing, before Geist spoke for the first time since he'd come across Aaron with Harper's knife to his throat.

"You're an idiot."

Aaron beamed, tilting his head back far enough to meet Geist's eyes. "I know. Your idiot."

Geist hummed again, but a very small smile quirked his lips, more than he ever showed anybody else, before gently pushing Aaron's head forwards again. "You're in my light." The two of them were sat in Aaron's room back at the base, the pyromaniac's shirt cast aside to expose his torso and upper body, to show off the displays of ink over his skin, a literal canvas to his past. Every line of his pain and every line of his soul was displayed on his body. They weren't crude cave drawings. They were the holy art decorating a temple.

This was their ritual, for when they got home safely, home being any room that had both of them in, uninjured. Though the pose was new, Geist sat against the wall and Aaron sat between his legs, facing the far wall, the way that fingers ran over his skin was comforting, familiar, Geist long having since memorised his body but more than prepared to learn it all over again just to confirm that the redhead wasn't injured.

He felt something comfortable in the posture, longer legs curled around his body to tangle with his own. It wasn't anything like the desperate clinging of the ODST. It was softer, gentler, but stronger without physical strength. It was a reminder that Aaron was Geist's, and that Geist was Aaron's.

Falling silent, he allowed Geist to trail fingers over his body, to find the large wings that spread across his back, the feathers wicked sharp and every single one of them aflame in a brilliant display of red and orange and purple at the edges. Once, those wings had just been the sharp burning display of a Phoenix, spreading defiantly over the burn scars at his shoulder blades. Later, but not too much later, he'd had the sword added, running vertically between the wings and along his spine so that the words CAT 9 were held within the blade itself, protected by the steel of Geist's sword, the strongest part of him.

Lips found his collarbone, where names ran in a circle like a chain around his throat, the reminder of men and women that he'd pulled from a burning building forever with him every time he looked into a mirror. Warm breath ghosted over his skin, that warmth that the mistral-cold Frenchman could summon only for his pyro leaving Aaron almost swooning.

As always, Geist barely touched the ONI symbol he'd added at the base of his spine, instead running over the cracks he'd later added in the symbol, finding every fragment that had shattered and splintered from the logo that Firefly couldn't wait to physically destroy after Isaac's death. Instead, they found the barcode at Aaron's right wrist, the name of a prison above, the number of his cell and his inmate code both trailing up his right forearm like winding black snakes.

As Geist slowly circled around to the front of Aaron's body, he tugged the redhead back so that his spine was to Geist's chest, his head tipped back to stare up at the expression of concentration with the sarcastic smile he used for most Phoenixes, the quip already burning at the tip of his tongue.

"Are you going to punish me, Geist?" The codename was all they needed, most of the time. He saved the other name for those few moments where it mattered most.

Almost nonchalantly, the assassin flicked his nose, and Aaron blinked, his sarcastic smile melting into something deeper that he knew Hunter would rip into if he saw it. Not that the defector could talk, when he'd started giving Ian the same smiles in public now that the Boss seemed ready to actually show that affection off.

"You're not funny." It was said with a smile, and Aaron practically preened, head thrown back like a proud bird of prey, eyes glinting.

"You love my jokes."

Geist leaned down, just enough so that all Aaron could see were the unguarded eyes staring back into his, open and filled with so much emotion. He was awestruck for the briefest moment, gazing at something that nobody else got to see, the sheer affection in those eyes driving the breath from his lungs. So focused was he, he almost missed Geist's next words.

"You. Not your jokes."

He swallowed hard, blinking several times rather rapidly so that he didn't lose control, so that he didn't ruin the moment with his tears, fighting them as he always did when Geist said those words, when he admitted that what he felt for Aaron was the same that Firefly felt for him.

Letting Aaron have his moment, Geist continued to trace the emblems on his body. At his stomach, where a name, rank and serial number shone in green, brown and black camouflage paint. At his left arm, where the scars at his forearm were particularly nasty, where one of the fellow burnouts that he'd picked up on the streets had tattooed an entire sleeve, a brilliant green and red dragon with its open mouth encircling the top of his forearm, so that the Geist-cold blue fire it breathed over his burns immortalised the wound.

His stomach was littered with clumsier images, names of streets, what looked like part of a map of Chicago, the edges of what was clearly gang territory highlighted in deep red, what could be read as the kind of street nicknames that Aaron found, in hindsight, extremely embarrassing, even if he wasn't remotely frightened to show his scars and memories to the world.

Above those lay the yin-yang circle of red and orange, occupied by the normally yellow flame of the Hellbringers. He'd changed it to a deep, icy blue, the nitrogen cold-white at the edges added later, when the flames inside of him had been stoked by the assassin at his back.

It was his chest that took the most time, where the right hand side of his ribcage was occupied with a list, one that had taken careful application and could always continue to grow.

Ian 'Maverick' Harper

Philip 'Falcon' Blake

Aaron 'Firefly' Paul

'Geist'

Mike 'Crosshair' Baxter

Lucas 'Circuit' Thorpe

Isaac 'Spectrum' Harper

Jason 'Hunter' Shaw

There was space left for another name underneath, and he grinned as Geist traced it for the first time against his skin.

Hannah 'Blizzard' Steele

How he'd managed to find somebody that knew him so well, that could predict exactly what he'd add next, could read him like a book and could still want him, with all of his pain and his hangups, he had no idea. But he never stopped appreciating this and he hoped that Geist could feel even a fraction of what he was feeling.

It was the space directly over his heart where a single word lay, one that wasn't in English. Luciole. The handwriting that had applied it wasn't Aaron's. It was the inexpert hand of someone that had never before held a tattoo gun, but he didn't care about neatness. What mattered was who had written it.

And beneath that, an empty space, one that he would wait a lifetime to fill if he had to, until Geist finally felt comfortable enough to let him have it inked on his skin. The Frenchman traced the name there in that space, the name that only Aaron knew, or was at least the only person who mattered that knew.

One day, he'd have Geist's name forever etched into his heart. However long it took.

Only when he was finished with that name did Geist finally pull the packet of cigarettes from his pocket, sliding one out and frowning as he tried to find his lighter. Gently, patiently, letting the other man try and find the tool that Aaron had swiped hours ago, the grinning pyro leaned up to take the cigarette between his teeth, holding it patiently and waiting for the other man to realise what had happened, where exactly his lighter had gone.

The smirk vanished from his face as Geist suddenly stopped searching and plucked the lighter from his own pocket. Aaron's hand went to his jeans, finding the pockets empty and cursing under his breath, watching as Geist had the audacity to wink at him, before plucking the cigarette from his mouth to light it up.

Aaron had never been bothered by the cigarette smoke. He'd been setting fires all his life, ash and smoke was nothing new to him. Perhaps it was just another piece of why Geist felt so right to him, that even the taste of him was familiar and ashy and could steal the breath from his lungs.

Watching with awe and appreciation as Geist took a long drag, one of Firefly's hands came up to wind into rust-coloured hair, dragging the man down just enough so that their faces were almost connected, a hair apart.

"I wouldn't leave you behind, Geist. Ever. I promise."

There wasn't even a hesitation. "I know."

Lips met lips and Aaron could taste the cigarette, laughing and crying at the same time into the kiss, sharing in this moment with the man that he'd never thought he'd find.