Hello and welcome to another big BC day! Huge, huge thank you to BrambleStar14 for co-writing this massive beast of a chapter with me… four years ago. And huge, huge thank you to Minaethiel's beta reading. And, possibly most of all, huge, huge thank you for joining us once again.
Show Me Where it Hurts
Written by TunelessLyric and BrambleStar14
Make me a promise
That time won't erase us
That we were not lost from the start
-Digital Daggers, 'Still Here'
Don't leave me lost here forever
Show me your starlight and pull me through
Bring me back to you
-Starset, 'Starlight'
Her dreams were a haze of shadow and flame. Long strands of her guts hung out of the slashes shredding her side. Each step toward her teammates was a lifetime of agony, burning through her blood. Tearing her apart. She had to take another step. Just one more. Reach Dom, Lucas, White, Aaron, Jason before—
Her eyes opened as she shot up in bed, hands searching for the exposed bone, the jagged edges of the wound. Instead, her fingers brushed over the bumpy scars and smooth, whole flesh. Slick with sweat, not sticky with blood. But she still felt it. Inside. Deep where she had grown accustomed to seven men.
She stumbled to the door, pulling clothes on with a precision that would have made her ODST ambush drill instructor crack a smile. The practiced motions did nothing to soothe the stabbing needles in her heart.
Through the slender gap in her door, she saw that it was the middle of the night. All of the remaining Phoenixes were at roost, puddles of water tracking to each room the only indication of their search hours earlier.
She hoped none had left for their own midnight stroll. Better to face them in the daylight when they had all snatched a few restless hours of sleep.
Without even thinking about it, her feet led her to the only place she expected to see a sympathetic face. Not that she expected coddling or outright lies to make her feel better. She wasn't ready for relief. Didn't deserve it after what she'd done. For the public humiliation she'd put on that morning. Just… maybe to talk to the one person who could tell her how to really fix things this time.
Her eyes stayed on the floor as she walked. There wasn't anything worth looking at in the low light of the base's night cycle. Just grey walls and grey ceiling and rain-splashed windows. The storm had moved off some time ago, leaving the last weak drizzle behind.
She turned the final corner, feeling the corridor open up before her. All but one of the doors hung open, waiting like greedy mouths. There was a small part of her that wanted to slip inside a cell and hear the lock click. To leave her fate in someone else's hands. Anyone's.
And at the far end of the hall, wet and looking as if he'd been dragged backwards through a hurricane, stood Jason Shaw.
He was a wreck. Water poured from his slumped posture. He was turned so that she could only see one side of his face, but his eyes were cast low. Avoiding looking directly at the man in the cell in front of him.
Water that wasn't from the storm fell from the eye that she could see and his expression twisted. One hand was pressed to the door of Mark's cell as though trying to pass through and Jason wasn't speaking, just listening to whatever his brother was saying.
"They were looking for you," she said softly, without even thinking. "Phil and Harper and the others." Not her. Never her. She didn't get to look for him, for her own peace of mind.
Whatever the brothers had been saying, they fell silent immediately. Jason's shoulders tensed the moment she started talking, like the very sound of her voice set him on edge. But it wasn't the rage that he'd stormed away practically radiating. Not anymore. Now, he just looked like he was expecting an attack. When he spoke, his voice was shaky, uneven.
"I know. Needed time away from them."
Blue eyes ringed with deep purple bruises left by him darted all over, never resting anywhere long. She was looking for an escape. For evidence of any injuries to himself. For somewhere to just stare without being intrusive.
"I want to apologize, but everything I want to say is just…" She shrugged. "Didn't mean to interrupt you two."
She took a step back, hands hanging numb at her side.
Jason finally looked up, but not at her, instead eyeing Mark through the glass. The brothers seemed to be communicating silently as Jason's expression twisted through something like pain and regret, but mingled with something close to guilt. Stepping a little closer to the glass, words were breathed, so quietly that she might not have heard them if it wasn't for the absolute silence of the corridor.
"I'll come back."
Turning away, Jason let his hand fall from the glass. Hannah was able to see his knuckles briefly, raw and bloody. His eyes didn't quite meet hers as he took in the details of her face.
"I'm done here. You can talk to him, if you want." It wasn't disinterest, or emptiness in his tone for once. But she couldn't quite pin it down.
"Wanted to talk to you. Or tell Harper that you came back. Dunno what I want anymore, Jason." She did her best to meet his gaze, struggling to look at him without cowering. Without remembering how badly she had cut him where everyone could watch.
Taking a moment, he tried to find words, staring at the damage he had done to her with his own two hands. After those few seconds, his eyes met hers.
Pain. Fury. Betrayal. Disappointment. Guilt.
Then she knew. He'd tried to do exactly what he thought she'd wanted. He'd tried to cut her loose.
His voice shook. Clearly he hadn't quite succeeded. "What you wanted seemed pretty clear to me. Until it wasn't." He shrugged as though he wasn't in a great deal of pain.
She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek at that hopeless, helpless little gesture. Her eyes flickered to Mark's cell. To the closed expression that stared back at her, chasing her as she strode down the hall. Her hand went out, fingers passing over the glass and steel framing until she stopped before the one door that hung open. The one he'd spent the last night in, if she had heard correctly.
Hannah stepped into the cell, turning to face Jason again. "I miss you," she said. It sounded simple. Just three words. Three syllables. But it meant years' worth of emotions. It went deeper than someone wishing another was with them. It was a call across the lines of a war. Across the galaxy and the frozen wasteland that once had the potential to bloom into a green and beautiful landscape.
"And I hate what I've been doing to you since you helped save me."
He'd taken an involuntary step forward the moment she'd entered his former cell, something like concern in his eyes. He was looking at the cell as if there were ghosts in the walls that could spill secrets she wasn't meant to hear, hurt her in ways even he couldn't.
But he didn't stop her, even as he walked to the doorway. He didn't enter the room, the doorway separating them, but a hand came up, fingers that had been closed fists colliding with her face now so carefully cupping her chin, tipping her head back to stare at what he'd done in close proximity.
When he spoke, his voice was numb. "You still had me. Doesn't matter what I said. You had me."
She turned her head, letting her chin slip out of his gentle hold. She heard the past tense. The missed opportunities. "I get it. I'm not that ODST who walked into your nightclub back then. I'm just like him. I hurt you just like him."
"That was… all I had left. That song. I don't remember anything else about myself that was good. I wasn't alive, really. You showed it off. Like it was a competition. Like I was some prize." It didn't matter whether he knew what she'd intended. It was how it had looked. "Used it to lead me around. Like some pet."
He fell silent again, considering. For just a moment, his head fell back, fingers clenching into fists and a growl of frustration caught in his throat. He still didn't look at her as he shook his head. His voice, somehow, softened. "You're still her. You're also Blizzard." And whatever that meant to him, he didn't say.
She shook her head, not sure if he even saw it. Her instinct was to reach up and brush the blood from his skin. Instead she made her hands grip the edge of the glass door. To throw it open. To lock it between them. She didn't know. Not really.
"I wanted to show you that I understood your music thing. That I remembered the song, too." She didn't know why she was explaining it. Why it mattered. "Guess I was really wrong about it. Like you're wrong about me. That girl's dead, Jason. I killed her. I buried her under that rock out back. I thought she might have survived, but I was wrong about that, too. There's just me now. And I don't want you to have to see me like this."
Silence fell between them, a few seconds of utter stillness. Utter nothing. It was only broken when Jason's shoulders shook, just for a moment with helpless, miserable laughter.
For the first time since he'd forced himself to avert his eyes, ashamed of the injuries on her face, he looked at her. Really looked at her. He didn't speak, just tilted his head. It was a familiar gesture, but with none of the malice or the spite.
He just looked sad.
"I miss you too."
"I'm sorry," she answered. One hand slipped off the glass, brushing the backs of his knuckles. "I have to tell them that you're back. If you're ready to see them."
His hand turned, fingers catching hers. He hesitated, before his lips brushed her knuckles in a gesture that felt far too familiar.
He nodded.
Telling herself it was a terrible idea, that it would only hurt him more in the end, Hannah gave his hand the smallest squeeze. Then she slipped out of his grip. She passed between him and the wall without touching him again.
She walked away, back to the barracks. And she didn't glance back.
It could have been her imagination, but as she turned the corner, a familiar voice crooned something so quiet but so very familiar.
"So say the words and I'll be running back to find you…"
And then there was nothing.
Just silence as she left him with his brother. There was nothing but her running feet against the floor until she skidded to a stop in front of the one door she had been certain she would never be welcome at. She hesitated, staring at the metal. Smooth but for one hair-thin scratch that could have come from anything. Unyielding.
She used to fall from low orbit for fuck's sake. Gritting her teeth, she scraped together some of the ice and twisted it into some backbone. Pulling herself up to her full height, meagre as it was, Hannah knocked on Ian Harper's door.
He didn't answer right away. In fact, she nearly knocked again, cutting through the regret and embarrassment. Just as she had lifted her fist again, the door slid open.
Harper's normally tousled blond hair stuck up in a thousand directions from his attempts at sleep. His shirt was buttoned wrong, half of it tucked in and the other half hanging free. He didn't have any words for being bothered by his least-favourite team member at some awful hour of the night. He simply glared pointedly at the bruises. As if he was doing all he could to not add to her collection.
"He's back," she offered blankly.
Before she could even step out of his way, Harper shoved roughly past. Slamming into the wall, she spun and watched him all but sprint down the hall. She went back to her own quarters. If he wasn't going to ask for a location, or even wait for one, then she figured it wasn't worth shouting one at his back.
This time, she made sure her room was securely sealed before climbing back into bed.
Sleep still didn't come easy. But at least it came again.
Hannah woke the next morning to sunlight across her face. It was watery at best, the entire valley drenched from yesterday's storm. But it was warm and soothing to her battered face.
She could stay in bed, she thought. Avoid everyone. Pretend they didn't exist. Given the choice between Fireteam Phoenix and a squad of Covvies, she knew which she would take first.
In the end, the knowledge that she wouldn't be able to hide forever drew her to the mess hall. For once, none of her teammates were there first. She grabbed a couple pieces of toast and dropped into her usual spot, resigned to waiting.
As expected, Geist was the first to appear. With not one hair out of place, it was easy to think he hadn't spent several hours soaking in the thunderstorm yesterday. The only hint of his hard night were the dark circles under his eyes. He joined her with a cup of tea, plate of fruit and a muffin. He settled into the chair across from her, leaning his forearms against the table.
"Ian and Jason aren't joining us this morning," he said, peeling the paper from his muffin.
"Why not?" she asked, hearing how absolutely stupid the question was given the events of yesterday. What she had done.
A shoulder lifted. "They left an hour ago. Didn't say anything to anyone."
Hannah chewed her toast, not sure what to even say in response. In the months she'd been on Byzantium, this was the most Geist had said to her. It was probably the first time they'd been alone together.
"I don't know how to make it up to you, but I'm going to try," she said, swallowing.
Cool blue eyes caught her. Saw through her. "Keep personal life personal. Unless it involves the whole team, the whole team doesn't need to know about it."
The sarcastic response didn't make it out of her mouth. Facing down a Hunter pair was one thing. Talking back to the assassin over breakfast was another. Instead of her biting quip she said, "Makes sense."
Apparently satisfied, Geist turned his focus to his food.
She finished eating and went to the gym. With yesterday's training interrupted and the bitter discomfort clear between her and the rest of the team, she figured it would be easier on everyone to leave them alone. Give them more time.
With the weight room to herself, Hannah gave herself a long workout. She didn't have the energy to be around others, but sitting around in her room all day made staying still too hard. Better to just forget about her mental exhaustion. Lose herself in the familiar routine.
Phil let himself in as she was finishing up. He looked pale. Just as tired as Geist and Hannah. But his jaw was set, determined.
Sitting up from the bench press and leaning her arms on her knees, Hannah watched him. Panting, sweaty from her workout, she didn't rise from her spot to have whatever talk the team second clearly came to have. She resisted the urge to snap at him.
"I know you've already spoken with Geist about things, so I'm going to keep this short and sweet." None of his usual patience was present in his hard tone. This wasn't the kind and fatherly Philip Blake. This was second-in-command to Lieutenant Ian Harper talking. This was the Insurrectionist. "Air personal grievances on your own time. We're your teammates, even though we all like to joke and have fun. Let's have some sort of professionalism with one another. If you can't do that, there's no place for you here."
She probably should have felt cowed into obedience but for the two things that stuck in her throat and made this hard to swallow. Technically she didn't have to take any order delivered by Phil. Or Harper. The only reason she considered Harper her CO was because of her obligation to the individual team members. And secondly—
"Tell that to Harper."
Her breath back, Hannah slid back down on the bench.
In a flash, he had both hands on the bar, pressing down with his own weight. "I did," he growled. "So cut the attitude."
For a long moment, she glared up at him. Debated yanking the bar down off the rest just to see him collapse into a heap. "Fine," she said, knuckles white.
Some of the anger drained from his face. "I don't know what's going to happen with you three moving forward. I hope you can figure things out, but I thought you would on your own. Clearly that isn't going to happen. So you're going to talk to them. You're going to apologize and—"
"I did," she echoed just as forcefully. "I apologized to Jason. It's up to him how things move forward. Besides, I fail to see how our personal matters are your concern. Thanks for the friendly advice, Blake. Take some time to unwind. You're a little tense."
This time she did stand. She looked at him, at the way he slumped and sighed.
"I understand why you're upset," she went on, more gently. "But I already feel like shit over this. You don't need to make me feel worse."
Leaving him leaning on the weights, Hannah went in search of one of her other teammates. If it was going to take a little one-on-one time to patch this over, then it was time to corner a few Innies.
Lucas was hard at work. He didn't even look up from the workbench when she let herself into his workshop. But then, he was so intent on the soldering that he may not have even heard her come in. She located the spare stool beneath half of a UNSC helmet, three quarters of a coffee maker, several SMG magazines and what looked like a scavenged plasma pistol with a dead battery.
"Hey," said Hannah, sitting near him.
The soldering iron switched off. "Hi," he said, cautious. Shifting in his seat.
She sighed. "I fucked up. Many people have informed me that I have."
Lucas chewed on his lip, finally meeting her gaze. "I—Hannah, I just…" He shrugged.
"Look, it's fine if you're mad at me. Be mad at me. I'm mad at me. Phil is. Harper and Jason are. I'm not surprised. I promise that it won't happen again. For better or worse, you're all my family now and I care about you. You're one of my best friends, Lucas. It's going to take time for you to forgive me and that's fine. Be disappointed. Be upset. Take whatever time you need."
He nodded, looking so very young for this war. Like he had already given too much away for it.
Standing, she tucked the stool under the workbench. As she turned to go, he wrapped fingers around her wrist. Hannah looked back, watching him offer her a nod. "See you later."
His hand dropped away and the engineer returned to his project.
Aaron had a water bottle in hand when she met him near the showers. Still sweaty from both of their respective workouts, obviously they had the same goal in mind.
He crossed his arms and gave her a hard look.
"Let's hear it," she invited.
"You look like shit," he answered instantly. "I'd punch you one more time if I didn't think it would tear your lip back open."
"Thanks, Aaron."
He shrugged. "If you have a problem with someone, with one of us, just say so. Don't jerk him around. I hate it when Harper does it to him. I hate seeing you like the Boss. We…" For the first time since they had met, Aaron was actually at a loss for words. "You're supposed to be better than us. Holier-than-thou ODST who got her justice from ONI. We're just a lot of Innies following Harper out of habit because he accepts us. We all know you're going to leave us and go off to do amazing things when you figure you've repaid us for saving you."
That cut. In ways Phil's anger and Lucas' discomfort hadn't.
"I'm just someone trying to make her way in the galaxy, same as you," she said softly. "I'm just like you. That's why I'm still here. Just like Harper."
Aaron shook his head. "No. You're not, Hannah. This isn't you. You're my friend. You can talk to me whenever you want. About anything. Just… Don't do that to my other friends."
All she could do was nod.
"Good. Go shower. You stink." He disappeared into the mens' showers without another word.
After she had gotten clean and into a fresh set of fatigues, it was time to grab some lunch. Unlike at breakfast, she didn't linger in the mess hall until teammates showed up. She put a few snacks into a pack and left the base. Wandering in the fresh air felt good. Better than a hike with a destination, surrounded by her team. Just her and the sharp breeze funneling through the valley.
Her feet took her along the trail up the side of the valley. About halfway up, she sat on a rock growing from the path just to soak in the sunlight. She dangled her feet over the drop to the next switchback and ate the food she had brought.
With her meal finished, she was about to continue her climb when she spotted a figure leaving the base. Silver hair reflected in the sun as the sniper picked her figure out of the landscape. Rather than keep working her way up, Hannah reluctantly turned back downward.
They met near the valley floor, his long legs swallowing ground faster than she descended.
"Nice day," she said, trying to head off whatever lecture Mike might have worked himself up to. "Thought I'd get out of the base and spend some time away from you guys. Let you get away from me for a while. That sort of thing."
A weak smile twitched at his lips. "Thanks for that. I know everybody's been on edge. I think Phil most of all."
Hannah could only grimace.
"I just wanted to say that you still have a place here. The others will come around. I did." He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because you meant well." Mike sighed. "And because you're good for him. We all know it. I think he does most of all and that's why he's fought it so hard. Idiot doesn't think he's good enough for you."
"That means a lot." She laid her hand over his, returning the squeeze. "No lecture?"
"No lecture. Figure you've heard enough of them by now."
Looking back up the trail, she nodded with her chin. "Come on, I want to see what it looks like with the leaves changing."
So he followed her up to the top, measuring his strides to avoid outpacing her. They climbed in comfortable silence. He'd soothed some of the dark disappointment eating through her heart.
The forest surrounding the base was stunning. Deep green pockets stubbornly resisted the advance of fall. Some were the familiar pine stands, crowding around her current home. But the rest of the valley floor was a beautiful patchwork of red and orange. Yellow and amber and brown. As the late afternoon sun sank beyond the far slope, long shadows stretched across the ground. A lone river branched into the thin strings of streams they had camped alongside when the weather was nicer.
"Wow," she breathed.
"Yeah," agreed Mike. "I'm going to miss this place when we leave."
She spun, surprised. Unable to ask the question. Unable to hear it, make it real.
"Not anytime soon, but eventually. UNSC will come sniffing too close one day and we'll pack it all up. Relocate," he explained.
As Hannah looked out over the valley a final time, she thought it was a shame to make Phoenix leave the forest awash with their colours. The night sky that burned purple and green and blue and red. Mike was right. She was going to miss this place when the day came.
The place where she had buried her last family.
Jason and Harper weren't back for the evening meal.
The rest of the team were present. Everyone made an effort. Even Phil. To laugh and treat each other with the same respect as before. Lucas was still awkward, second-guessing himself each time he addressed Hannah. But he spoke to her. Asked her about her walk with Mike. It was more than the rest of the team.
After, they moved to their usual break room. The one they had been relaxing in back when Hannah and Jason first met. Where she had asked if they had killed him as well.
She curled up in one of the armchairs with her data pad, reviewing some reports on the war with the Covvies. The rest of her teammates clustered around the coffee table. From the accusations flying, they must have been playing poker again. It sounded like Aaron was losing.
When she finished the last news story, Hannah stood and stretched. Geist looked up from his chips.
"Didn't sleep much last night," she explained. "Going to hit the hay early."
Lucas nodded and returned to his cards. Aaron murmured a soft, "Night, Hannah."
Concentrating, Mike offered a brief wave.
It was more than she expected.
She nearly made it to the doorway when it was filled by two figures. Blue eyes smudged with dirt and soot widened. Fingers slicked with red let go of their match as Jason stepped forward. A scowl darkened Harper's face at his partner's reaction.
Hannah squeezed past them both, mouth drying up at the thought of that much blood. Their clothes were dark with it. Dripping with it. It was streaked through their hair as if they had been running their soaking hands through it. But what really made her teeth grind were the bruises circling Shaw's neck. They looked like they fit perfectly to Harper's fingers. She'd bet a lot of money that they did.
Nobody stopped her escape.
True to her word, she went straight to her room. Putting the data pad in its place on the bare desk, she got into her bunk and tried to forget the wild grin on Jason's face. In an effort to relax her mind, she plucked her dice pin from the windowsill. Her thumb circled over and over its smooth surface. Hypnotic. The motion soothed her as little else could anymore. There was too much weight hanging from the mangled tags around her neck some nights.
Sleep began to creep in. It fuzzed the edges of the world until the divide thinned between reality and dream. The surface of the dice turned into a distant sensation.
A knock at the door brought her consciousness snapping back. She padded through the darkened room and released the locking mechanism on instinct.
The door slid open and there he was, caught somewhere between drifting and drowning as she stared up at him.
He didn't meet her eyes, staring at the floor near her bare feet instead.
"Sha—" She broke off when his eyes snapped to her face, the uncertainty there as she frowned. "Jason?"
The things they had said to each other the night before night hung like a curtain between them, the apology and confessions and the kiss left on her hand.
The frown smoothed away. "Jason," she said, confident that was the version of the Phoenix dripping gore on her threshold. "Whose blood is that?"
He swallowed hard, trying to push down the tears misting across his eyes. "Do you think…" he tried, barely more than a whisper.
"When they killed us," he tried again, "do you think there's anything left? Can we ever… Is there a way back for things like us? Do you think?"
Because she was like them, she knew that now. No matter how desperately she wished otherwise. She could see it in the way Phoenix moved on the battlefield, like they had been born to it, like they could see the safe passages through the dance of death. Her instincts were as good as Harper's—better, maybe, when it came down to it since each of them had survived way too much that should have killed them.
"Come in." It was soft, like it had been last night when she had given him the chance to lock her away, deep in the base, where few would bother to look for her.
She stepped aside, reaching for his hand and pulling him into her room. The door shut behind, a comforting promise of safety. Jason just stood there, rooted to the spot just inside the door. He had never seen her quarters before and that seemed to give him pause. Or maybe it was the blood still dripping periodically from his clothes.
The only things out of place, it felt, was Jason.
Hannah's had drifted to her pocket, drawing out a small gold shine that passed between her fingers with practiced motions while she looked thoughtful.
"I'm not going to ask what happened to you today," she said at last, hand fisting around her dice pin. "That's not my business. I just want to know if you're going to be all right."
He shrugged. Would he be okay? It seemed like such a loaded question.
Her eyes darted over his face, searching for something. For some remnant of the Jason Shaw she had met one night so very long ago now, or if she was looking for evidence of the Innie she had come to know, absent tonight.
The sob just escaped. A hand flew to his mouth, trying to shove the sound back in, as if he could keep her from hearing it. There were fresh red lines on his face, warm and sticky and usually no big deal to him, but as he touched them, Jason gagged.
She gently pulled the hand from his face, taking it in her own without flinching away from the mess. That was a military career. It left her desensitized to violence and the evidence it left on a soldier's body.
"Let's get you cleaned up," she said. The tiny ex-ODST pulled the shambling Innie along beside her, through the barracks where anyone could have seen, without hesitation.
They went straight to the showers. The room was dark, a few lights flickering on as they entered, though Hannah left the bright main lights off, preferring the gloom in the pristine white room.
Jason stopped short on the tiles. Shining surfaces stretched as far as the eye could see, clean floors and frosted glass stalls and white walls all around them that one touch from his hand would have contaminated.
She got part of the way to a shower stall before realizing he wasn't following. Turning, she tried to catch his eye, to ask what was wrong. Her disgust at what Harper had done must have shown. Jason's fists clenched.
Rather than back away or walk out, Hannah held out a hand, waiting. After a painful beat, he took her hand and allowed her to guide him into one of the far showers. She never yanked or forced or even coaxed, simply letting him shadow her in the half light.
Still he balked when she stepped into the last stall to reach for the tap. This was personal, something Harper would do if he hadn't been asleep, dreaming wherever Jason had left him. And there Jason was, all of the proof he and Harper had been together, with one another, and Hannah was the one waiting on the other side of the glass.
This certainly hadn't been the way everything had worked out in her mind.
Eventually, Jason stumbled forward. The water that hissed down over them was warm. Still, Jason shivered.
"C'mere," she encouraged, fingers still strong and resolute around his.
He had been standing under the spray with his head tipped back, basking in the warmth. At her request, he closed the last distance between them, letting the space, the time and grief and pain collapse until it nearly didn't exist.
The Jason Shaw who gazed up at Hannah looked so very much like the DJ she had met in a crowded nightclub.
She put a careful hand on the hem of his shirt. "Your choice," she said, only loud enough to be heard over the rush of water.
It took both of their efforts to peel away his soaked shirt, abandoning it in the corner of the shower. Blood streamed down from Jason's hair and arms, over each scar until every single one looked fresh. Hannah's fingertip brushed over a ragged edge. He let out a long breath under her soft touch. She started to map each raised line, not stopping until each one had been inspected, crease between her brows.
"Not what you were expecting?" It came out less bitter than Hannah had been prepared for. Quieter, rougher, soothed.
"Neither of us are," she pointed out, eyes lifting to his. The familiar hard dislike had melted, leaving thoughtful blue where a storm usually lurked.
"I know. Not sure what I was expecting. Don't think I can go back."
Her hand flattened over his chest, feeling his heart pound. "Do you want to?" she asked.
For a moment, he just watched her, evaluating. At last he answered, "I wish I could go back and know you before I became this."
Hannah stepped closer, very nearly pressing against him, though the shower was gone. She was in the dark, coloured lights strobing across her face. She smiled. "You remember? How it felt to be us?"
"Every time I look at you," he said.
"Then why do you hate me so much?"
"I don't hate you. I couldn't hate you. You should be better than us." It came out softly, quietly, as he put a hand over hers, pressing her fingers to his skin. "I wanted you to see me at my best."
She rested her head against his chest, not caring that they were both soaked. "Seeing you would have been enough. It is enough."
"I could have been something else for you." Jason leaned down, putting his forehead to hers.
There was nothing but the sound of water wiping away any trace of the Insurrectionist. For this moment, with her, he was simply Jason Shaw. And Hannah felt her heart beating as fast as his.
"And I'll think of you each time I watch from distant skies," she sang quietly.
There wasn't the response she had expected, banked on. There wasn't any response at all.
She stiffened, opening her eyes and starting to pull away. Before she could, his mouth was on hers. It felt real. Like searching and finding what she had always been looking for.
She felt it in the air between them. A charge, some current flowing from him to her and back again. Shining with a life she had never experienced before. There was a pull on her. A tug like gravity, keeping her caught up in that other heavenly body. Solid. Indestructible despite their best efforts.
Strong fingers held hers like an anchor in a storm. He was drenched, black hair flat against his head for once. And her own had been smoothed down from a last wave of water from the shower in an attempt to fix the treatment Jason had given it, losing his hands in the choppy mess her hair had grown into.
A comfortable heat washed over her, calming the blizzard that had twisted wildly under her skin since yesterday.
She would never forget the anguish in Hunter's eyes. The distaste levelled at her with nothing but Mark's cell between them. Nothing but that reminder of the connection each had cradled carefully in their hearts. But overwriting that was the tentative hope scrawled all over Jason's face as she had taken his red-soaked hand. Or the relief, the gentle affection when he cupped her face and leaned down to kiss her.
Now she brought him back to her quarters. The barracks were still, unnaturally silent, as each member of their team finally slept after the blind panic and receding hostility toward Hannah. She let them into her room, drawing him along after.
He let the door shut. Lock. He spun her around to trace her shape with eyes alight with blue fire. "I'm not…" he said softly, slowly. "There isn't much I can even offer you."
She took his other hand and gave both a squeeze. "Just tell me to stay with you," she said, hearing the echo of her song in the request, barely keeping her tone from slipping into pleading.
"Stay." It was a command. An answering plea. A drowning man's desperate grab for a lifeline. "Hannah, please. I know our life expectancies are probably closer to months than years, but I—if that's what you want?"
"Whatever we have left," she said. "Even if this had worked out before, I was an ODST. You still would have enlisted. We never would have had a chance at forever."
He collided with her. His burning heart was a balm against the ice in hers, taking the edge off them both as he resumed tracing her mouth with his. She lost herself in his taste. In his feel as long fingers landed on her waist to pull her close.
"Jason," she breathed, pressing his name to his lips like a gift. "My Jason Shaw."
He let out a soft sound. Like relief. Like he heard everything she couldn't find the words to say. The apology for everything.
They kissed without any rush or urgency. It was all simply the way they breathed together. How fingers ran over raised lines of tough scars like acceptance. His palms slipped beneath her shirt to skim over the claw marks that should have killed her. That maybe had, but she had found some way to come back from it.
Pulling back, she met his steady gaze. His uneven breath warmed her face, asking the question reflected in his eyes.
"I don't, um," she stammered, feeling embarrassed without any idea why, "have anything."
Jason let out a ragged laugh. "Neither do I. Didn't really expect to need it."
She couldn't help it. She laughed, too. "We'll have other chances, I promise. Tonight I'm all right with just being with you. Next time we go to the city…"
His thumb ran over the marks scrawled across her collarbone, eyes still on hers. "I can wait," he said.
Feeling her lips curl into the start of a smile, Hannah pulled her shirt over her head. "Get out of your wet things and under the covers. Before we freeze."
Jason peeled off his soaking clothes, laying them over her bare desk and helping arrange her own dripping fatigues over the chair. There wasn't much room for two people in her bunk, but curling into his chest, Hannah was grateful for being so small.
"Go to sleep," she whispered, drawing soothing lines on his skin.
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Good night, Hannah."
"Night, Jason." Her eyes were already shut, taking comfort in the feel of him.
They slept through the night, undisturbed by nightmares.