Content warning: suicidal thoughts, discussions of suicide attempts and discussions of self-harm.
Thank you to everyone reading, reviewing, favouriting and following. It means a lot to me. Special thanks to BrambleStar14 and Minaethiel's beta work.
Cut Me Open
Written by TunelessLyric
Life's a war, you pick your fight
I think mine picks me first most nights
If I should wake before I die
Then promise me you'll never get this sick inside
-Icon for Hire, 'Think I'm Sick'
Just two days since the mainframe went down and I'm still messed up
Room feels like a meat freezer I dangle in like cold cuts
Missed calls, answer phones from people I just don't trust
-Sleep Token, 'Take Me Back to Eden'
Byzantium seemed so much quieter than it had before.
They had only been gone for a total of three days, but to Hannah, it might as well have been years. She felt the way the balance had shifted beneath the team with the revelation of her father's identity. With the way Harper had pushed her. Things were different now, she truly was one of the guys. A UNSC-killer.
She didn't know what to do with herself. After stowing her equipment in the armoury, the female Phoenix tried writing her report in the barracks. And then she gave up when she realized she had typed the same sentence twice without noticing. Running hands through her growing hair, her feet brought her to the gym.
Voices floated out, taunting each other. Peeking in, she saw Shaw and Mike trading blows in the boxing ring. Icy grip on her heart, she turned away before they noticed someone was watching.
She wasn't hungry, so there was no reason to drop by the mess hall. She didn't want to go back to the cells, not ready to look Mark in the eyes after what she had done. Not ready to confess that sin to a UNSC soldier. Harper was on sentry duty on the roof for the afternoon, so she didn't go outside. It sounded like Lucas was busy in his workshop. Geist, Aaron and Phil were playing cards in the break room.
She wanted to be alone, but couldn't go anywhere. Felt cooped up in her room, but had to stay there or roaming the halls.
Dom would know what to do. If anyone could cheer her up, it would be him with one of his absurd schemes to glue the chairs in the mess hall to the floor or put dye in everyone's shampoo bottles. Something to make her laugh until sound came out again. Something that would remind her there was something inside her other than the cold killer. Something better.
But—her hand went to the mangled metal around her neck—he couldn't help her anymore. She was alone now. Reaching out had gotten her to this mess in the first place. Maybe being alone was a better choice.
In less than twenty minutes, she ended up right back where she had started, staring at the door to her quarters. Hannah let herself back inside. Shoving the data pad, cursor blinking accusingly at her, to the bare desk, she flopped onto her cot and fell into a restless sleep.
Arms bound to behind her back. Legs tethered to the wooden chair. Duct tape over her mouth.
"Scream."
Blinding pain in her side. Tearing flesh and leaking blood. The rage shaking that insistent voice. Familiar features over her, eyes burning down like coals.
Green eyes she knew, behind a sharp knife she remembered.
Thrashing, she strained against the leather belt around her wrists. Never going to escape.
A cherry red length of steel touched the top of the wound, right above her collarbone. Singing skin and melted ice. Oh God it hurt.
"Scream, Steele." Whisper soft and edged with emotion. "It's in you."
It was. The sound was trapped, pressing against her ribs, shoving against the torn muscle. It bled from her, slick and warm. It curled through the air with the stink of her burning body. It strained for freedom even as she did, writhing against the iron shackles and weight of ODST armour.
Begging to be let out.
A quick slice split the duct tape on her face. Metal scraped against her teeth, sliding between her lips harmlessly.
"Open."
She did. She breathed out, mouth desperately attempting to shape the word. Unable to get the signal from her brain. A disconnect somewhere. Anywhere. She couldn't find it. Just panted against the hurt.
"Let's go, Steele. No hiding behind Bliz."
The poker dragged down her side, just beside the wound exposing long coils of intestine. Vision blacked out.
Fingers on her cheeks, digging between her jaws to open her mouth wide. Eyes peered down her throat. For a moment she wondered if he was going to press their lips together.
"Come on, Hannah, just for me. We both know you were loud enough."
Pounding on her door shattered her dream. Her head jerked back, away from the ghost of her dead teammate's lingering image.
"Up and at 'em, Bliz, your turn up top!" Harper sounded way too cheerful for this late at night.
The groan died somewhere near her lungs. She pulled a sweater over her head and opened the door to blink up at him.
He grinned back without hesitation. "Looks like you need a walk or something. Take your mind off whatever that was."
Her brows twitched together. Had she managed to make sound in her sleep?
Harper pointed at her dishevelled hair before swaggering away to his room.
Rapidly finger-combing her bedhead, Hannah hurried up to the roof. It was a cloudy night, dark and thick. Summer was finally releasing the Innie base, the air cooler than it had been a week ago.
Rifle safetied and laid on the cement beside her, she dangled her feet over the edge. Squinting, she could barely make out the black of the pines against the black of the sky. How different things were from that night beside the campfire. The heat soaking through the team before she had confronted Shaw about their history had been delicious. It had curled through her, comforting and warm without melting her cold core.
Now the heat of Phoenix had blazed away her voice. She wondered if it, like Jason, would ever come back.
The clouds, blown by a wind too far overhead to be felt, shifted. They threatened to break up and reveal the dancing colours and silver stars. Reveal the ground a good forty feet below.
She considered it for a long moment. The rush of adrenaline she always got during a drop. Knowing it was going to jar her bones and rattle her teeth, and there was going to be a hell of a fight ahead of her. Not for the first time, she wondered if she was a masochist. If there had always been something just a little wrong with her to even sign on to be an ODST.
All it would take was enough of a lean to compromise her balance. The gravel impact would do it. They could never put that many pieces of her back together again.
Hannah stood up, brushing her palms against her fatigues. She wondered about veteran suicides. How many chose to do it with their sidearms, thinking they were familiar enough with the weapon to work up the gumption to pull the trigger against their foreheads. That required nerve. Stepping out into nothing… now that was a comforting thought. A stride and then there could be no going back.
Just air as she fell, then the collision that would jar her bones. Rattle her teeth. And silence.
She waited, searching for the defiant roar of thunder. A whirling storm of ice and rain. A bluster of cold. Anything other than the numbness spreading through her veins. The words that sounded through her head with each slow beat of her heart.
I should be dead.
There was nothing but that thought endlessly rolling through her. She saw it as it truly was for the first time. Survivor's guilt. She wasn't special. She had no edge over Orange. Over those six trussed-up ODSTs Harper served up to her. There was no reason for her to have lived to this point other than cruel, dumb luck. She was nobody they weren't.
She couldn't even say the words aloud. Admit it to the darkness that tried to cradle her. Couldn't say their names or that she was sorry or even that she really didn't want to do this anymore.
Taking Mike's hand had seemed so simple at the time. A lifeline against the chaos. Now he was safe and snug in bed, totally oblivious to her raw side leaking blood all over the base.
Fingers absently drifted under her sweater, prodding the edges of the wound. When had it healed over? Why?
Would somebody change her epitaph in the morning? Maybe Shaw would. Mark said he was still holding on to her, even after everything. If anyone would correct her mistake, change that M she had bled for, it would be him.
She stared down into the darkness, thinking about that step. Her toes were out over the nothing, heels firmly planted. Would she scream? Finally release all of it hiding somewhere even she couldn't reach?
Or had she delivered her famous last words already? I'm one of you now. Gotta treat me like one of the guys. Not the best, but it could have been worse, she supposed.
Silver light poured down on her through a break in the clouds. Weak, but changing the landscape in a second. It threw shadows across the yard, tall pine trees and a short ODST-turned-Innie who didn't know why she hadn't walked over the edge yet. The indifferent light poured over her head like frigid water.
It broke out of her as a gasping sob, shaking her entire frame. Stumbling over her own feet, Hannah backed away from the edge. Her nerveless fingers twitched as tears spilled down her cheeks. She couldn't do this. It. Not anymore. Not alone.
Tripping and staggering, she shoved her way back inside, not trusting herself to carry her rifle without dropping it. The dim halls were haunted, shadows jumping on the walls in the corner of her eyes. The gym was silent, Aaron safe in bed and sleeping soundly after slaughtering UNSC soldiers. Nobody was in the mess, roaming the corridors, the break room. Everyone was settled and relaxed tonight.
She knocked on the door hesitantly. Maybe she should just go back to her room. Maybe she was overreacting and only needed to get sleeping pills from the infirmary. A two-minute trip. This was stupid. Why should she disturb a much-needed rest? She wasn't special. Just damaged. A burden to the other damaged soldiers who made this their roost.
Indecisive, she stood woodenly still, ready to turn away. Ready to knock again.
The door slid open. Lucas rubbed his eye, stifling a yawn. "Time's it?" he murmured. Exhausted. Must have had Phil's special spiked coffee at lights-out tonight.
Hannah took a shuddering breath, desperate for sound to come out. Just a whisper of a number would do.
Groping blearily for the light switch, the engineer bathed them in hard blue-white light. He took one look at her before grabbing her wrist firmly and pulling her into his room. The door shut behind her, closing her in with the half-built machinery and pulled-apart mechanisms.
"Sit down," he invited, pointing at the stool beside the cluttered workbench. He dragged the blanket from his bed, wrapping it around her shoulders before sitting on the edge of the mattress. "Need some water?"
Clutching the blanket on reflex alone, she shook her head. Frowning, Lucas dug through layers of metal and tools on his bedside table. Oddly enough, the glass of water was spotless and clear. He pressed it into her other hand.
"Drink," he commanded, helping lift it to her lips.
She did, only because she didn't want him to force it down her throat.
"Now. What's all this about? Thought you were supposed to be up on guard tonight. Can't have seen anything, you'd still be out there." He was already more alert, thinking out loud without even waiting for a response that couldn't come.
She let him talk, watching the thoughts as they crossed behind his eyes.
Lucas sighed heavily, pushing a hand through rumpled red hair. "We're all so stupid. Should have seen this coming, honestly. We've all been here before. Not like Mike could make it all go away in half an hour."
So the sniper had told them about what he'd said to her. That wasn't surprising, the amount they shared. Less like friends and more like a family that way.
"Drink," he prompted again, eyes unfocusing.
Mechanically, she did. Her mouth was dry from the salt, from having to breathe through her mouth as her nose ran. She wiped it on her sleeve before taking another tiny sip.
They sat in near-silence for a time. Mike had suggested that she talk to Lucas, they all did. But she couldn't even speak. How was she supposed to translate anything she felt, the muted colour of everything, even if she had words?
Movement caught her eye. Lucas pulled his pantleg up, rolling it only when it gathered too much to bare his thigh. She took in the razor-thin lines of scar tissue. Too even to be made in combat. Too regularly spaced to be accidental. Deliberate. He traced their mirror image across the material of his other pantleg.
"Isaac was my best mate," he murmured. "Mike always blamed himself for not keeping an eye on his battle buddy. Isaac was his spotter, so it really wasn't on him. It was on me to look out for him. And the next thing I know, the kid's bleeding, being left behind. He knew what was happening. He knew we weren't taking him with us. I—" Lucas swallowed hard, hands clenching into fists. "I think he knew we all wanted to stay. Part of us did stay. He was the best of us. Not the UNSC scraps we are, picked up by ONI for expendable dependables."
Hannah wondered, as he stared unseeing at the floor somewhere between them, if he had ever told anyone about this. That he felt this way once.
"After, Ian took off. Think he needed to be away from us, anything that reminded him of Isaac or who had done that to us. He was never the same afterward. We all went our separate ways for a while. Phil tried to keep in touch, but it was too much of an effort. Pretty sure Aaron and Geist were the only ones to stay together."
Yeah, Hannah could understand that. Wanting some form of comfort even if it made the guilt harder to carry.
"Spent a lot of time on my own, thinking about that day. Thinking about what I should have done differently. How I should have died instead. Even if I couldn't save him, I should have been there with him when that Covvie ship went up." He shook his head. "I can never redo that, no matter how much I wish I could. After a couple of months, it got to me. Ate at me. Every moment, every breath, was one more between him and I. I'd wake up screaming, knowing that I'm never going to see him again. Never going to hear his voice or laugh. We're not destined for the same place, he and I."
He unrolled his pantleg and instead shoved his sleeves past his elbows. Hesitant, wet eyes fell on her at last. "Eventually it was too much. Nothing made it easier and I decided I'd lived too long without him. So I started working myself up to following him out."
These lines were thicker. Less measured. Longer. The stories of deeper, more desperate cuts. One ran against the rest, up the left forearm from palm to elbow.
"I almost let myself go," he confessed. "I wanted to. Then the phone rang and I heard Mike's voice when I didn't pick up. We hadn't seen each other in sixty-seven days, but he called on the anniversary of the original team coming together. I told him everything. How hard it was for me to keep living."
Hannah couldn't let him sit there, choking through each sentence. She felt the same pain deep in her heart, festering into hopelessness. Sitting beside Lucas, she ran a fingertip up the longest, widest line.
His mouth twisted. "Pressure, biofoam and a trip to the emergency department. A crisis counselor and antidepressants and mood stabilizers and keeping myself too busy to think about it." A nod towards the half-organized debris strewn across his room. "Too much caffeine to fall asleep for long and face the demons when I get weak."
Face crumpling, Hannah gestured at her chest. Something caved in as he looked at her.
"Come here."
He set the glass aside and wrapped an arm around her. Limp, she fell against his shoulder.
This wasn't the Circuit she had seen dismantling entire squads of soldiers. This wasn't the bright-eyed Innie who had proudly set his loot down in the Pelican and watched the sun set in a wash of cinder-coloured clouds. This was Lucas Thorpe, Isaac Harper's grieving best friend. And he let her sob into his shoulder for a very long time.
He held her hand the entire time.
As the tears slowed, her ragged breathing subsided, he said, "I can't promise you that the urge will go away. It might always be there. But you're not alone, Hannah. You have me. We have Mike and Phil and Aaron and Geist and Jason and Ian."
She didn't have the energy left to scoff at the last two. Only to squeeze his hand.
"They're gone. Orange and Isaac," he admitted. "They left us behind. But they died for us. We aren't thanking them by joining them. We aren't using their last wishes properly by wasting their sacrifice."
She nodded once.
Lucas offered a thin smile, doing her the courtesy of not faking a grin. "I'm glad you didn't do it. Whatever you tried. I… It'd be very hard for me."
She nodded again, letting go of his hand just enough to twine their pinkies together.
"Thank you," he said, warmth bursting through the simple words.
"Thanks," she whispered back.
He hugged her close. "My door's always open, Hannah. To everyone, no matter what they need to say." His lips twitched into that thin attempt at a smile again. "Or what they need to hear."
A finger tapped her bottom lip, then the top of her scars, before finally resting over her heart. Brow furrowed, she was clearly asking something.
His shoulder rose under her head. "That's Phil's area, not mine. I don't think any of us are expecting you to talk our ears off by lunch tomorrow, but he might be able to get you started again."
Shrugging back, Hannah gently pulled away and yawned.
"If you need help sleeping, Phil can help with that, too. He doesn't think I know he puts something in my coffee. I don't want him to stop." The ghost of his humour returned. "Get some rest, Hannah. I'll cover for you with Ian. Come find us when you're ready."
She felt her mask of dull pain melt into gratefulness. She mouthed thank you, unable to find the sound again.
He waved as she picked her way back to the door. Turning toward her room, Hannah felt lighter. Not like she had been before. That feeling might never come back. But the weight was bearable now.