Welcome back to another Interlude chapter. This one is not a guest spot, shockingly. But I hope you enjoy it regardless. Thanks a bunch to my beta readers, BrambleStar14 and Minaethiel, as always.
Confessions
Written by TunelessLyric
A classic case, I suppose
A haunted man who can't outrun his ghosts
They're in my skin and my bones
-City and Colour, 'Constant Knot'
Dusk was gathering in the valley's corners. Shadows crept and crawled the second his back was turned. But above, deep in the failing blue, the first tongues of green flame licked the icy cold stars.
The fires down in the dirt had all been extinguished. Bodies were being sorted by grunts in Freelancer grey. A few of the project's finest were yet inside, pawing through the ashy remains of Innie intel that may have survived the blazes.
As if Lucas and Aaron could have missed anything in their purge. No, all anyone would find was what had been intentionally left. Misinformation, outdated troop movements, Allen's endless, sprawling empire of lies was simply too complex for outside eyes to penetrate. Nobody in Freelancer could have unravelled it. Better to turn it over to ONI.
He stood, helmet dangling from forgotten fingers, gazing at the thing before him. To this day, maybe even his dying day, he couldn't figure out how it had gotten here. It seemed far too elaborate for Harper to have gone through the effort of transplanting it. Yet there was almost no chance of it naturally occurring in the valley floor.
Perhaps someone had left it here centuries before Phoenix made this base into a home.
He knelt, worming his free hand into the grass. Some part of him was disappointed when the earth beneath his armoured palm didn't move or breathe or speak. It just seemed like the sort of thing that would have happened here.
He had walked through the soot-encrusted halls, helping search for survivors. It was exactly as he'd remembered the base. Just not the same. There was the mess hall, tables cracked by the fires in the kitchen. And after it, the gym with crimson-soaked mats.
One of his fingers slipped into the long scar in the wall, tracing a familiar path between rooms he had once known, now property of the dead. Nothing remained to indicate the hours Lucas had logged in his workshop. No proof of Mike's hair treatment in the bathrooms. No whiff of gunpowder in Aaron's quarters.
Even Harper had left nothing behind for him to find. But then, neither had Hannah.
Phoenix must not have moved back in. They only came when Allen recalled them. An entire team of natural disaster, just passing through.
That hadn't stopped him from venturing into the armoury. None of Geist's whetstones were left tucked away. Each locker door was matte grey, a stranger's' name stencilled neatly on every one. It was as if those years hadn't happened.
He reluctantly forced himself through the hall of glass. It shouldn't have been a surprise to find no fault lines, no craters in the floor. No blood caught between the hinges. Just one reminder of the hall's former occupants remained. His cell was untouched. It was precisely the way he'd left it the night Hannah stepped inside, tempted him to lock her away for hurting him.
The night he had let himself fall for her all over again.
But it was also the way he'd left it the night Harper let him become Hunter.
Wherever Hannah went, Harper and Hunter were sure to follow with their poisonous cloud.
"Cal?" Strolling footsteps sounded behind him. "We're leaving soon and, uh, Carolina sent me to see what you were doing."
He sighed silently, thoughts fragmenting in Sota's wake. He shrugged, no explanation ready that his roommate, his friend, would understand.
"What is it? What's it mean?"
"It's a tombstone," murmured Cal, still unable to look away from it.
Seemed obvious, really, with the names and all.
"Did you… know them?" Sota's voice dropped to the same hush. He shifted his weight with a creak of armoured plates.
"Not really." Cal traced out a few letters idly. "Someone I know did."
"Ah." It was clear that Sota was still mystified.
For a few seconds, Cal debated how much to give away. Which parts of himself and Blizzard to protect.
"Hannah, she… well, she's my girlfriend," he said at last, eyes darting up to the sky.
Sota's hand landed on his shoulder. It was meant as a comforting gesture, but Cal couldn't help but wonder if the Freelancer would be sympathetic if he heard the whole story.
"What happened to her?"
Fuck it. They were already here, weren't they?
"I had to leave her behind. A couple of times," he admitted heavily, hand falling back into the grass. "Her team was killed in a freak accident. I found her. And Harper found her, but things were too complicated for a long time, Sota, so complicated. Hannah forgave me somehow and made everything fine for a while. We were happy, all of us, until… until I had to leave. She stayed."
It was like a leaden weight, like stones bouncing off his skin, like every word was the punishment, the price of Mark's heart still beating.
"She stayed… with Harper?" The gears were turning loudly as Sota attempted to make sense of everything. "Why?"
Cal tore up a handful of grass, squeezing the dirt in powerful fingers. He stared down at the green and brown and grey tangle, frowning. "Because she's better than me."
"That doesn't make any sense, mate."
"She has something important to do." Cal set his handful aside and ripped up another. A tinge of doubt crept into the dormant part of his heart.
He hadn't seen Blizzard today, but Sota's team had.
"'Has'? You mean, Hannah—"
"You've met. Yeah." He yanked out another fistful of roots and earth.
"Jesus, Cal. Any other Innie exes I should know about?"
"ODST," he corrected. It felt like a vital distinction. She was better than him.
"I hate to tell you this, but last I checked, Harper and Allen weren't ODSTs." But Sota patted his shoulder anyway.
"No, I mean, Hannah's an ODST." He pointed at the Orange monument. "They all were. She owed us for saving her, she thought. When she's done paying this debt of hers, she's going to be an ODST again. Like I went back to the Marines."
His fingers brushed against something far too smooth to be natural. Instantly, he snatched it up. In the final red rays of sun, Cal stared in shock.
"What did you find?"
"They were ODSTs," he repeated.
"Yeah, you mentioned that," sighed Sota, peering over his shoulder.
Seized by a feverish hope, a sickening desire more like, he pawed through the dirt for anything else buried with the ghosts. "No, no, there were more. Harper's idea. Then Circuit gave her this pin after she saved his life. It was their thing. She carried it everywhere. But she left it here. None of them left anything anywhere. I checked. This must have been here over a year. Since—"
He broke off. Since Phoenix left Byzantium. Since he left Phoenix.
"What are you going to do with it?" Sota's tone edged toward distaste.
"Keep it for now. I'll give it back to her next time I see her." Cal hadn't found anything else. Just cold earth and roots. He shoved away the disappointment threatening to snarl with his face.
"What if the next time you see her, Blizzard just shoots you instead? I don't think you've actually forgotten how Harper's opinion of you's changed." Sota's hand still lingered on his shoulder.
Now he truly did growl. "Harper's not like her."
Harper hadn't changed. He wanted to prove Jason hadn't either, to remind Cal who and what he was.
"Sorry, I just," he apologized quickly, "I just miss her. I wish I could have talked with her today about… about everything."
"Well, maybe someday," said Sota, not succeeding in sounding the least bit genuine, but he certainly tried.
"You'll like her, mate," promised Cal. He nudged the hand off of him and stood. He gave one last look at the obsidian monument before turning away. He curled his hand into a tight ball around Hannah's dice and put his helmet on.
It was uncomfortably weird to be leaving Byzantium again, never mind the knowledge that when he got back to the Invention, he would be sharing the ship with Harper while Hannah was so far away from him. It was all backwards.
He wondered what she was thinking, if she had seen his mad rush for Harper. He wondered what it was like for her, now free from the one Phoenix she had never truly accepted as one of her new family members. If she was happy, or if she worried for him, knowing Harper would haunt his shadow until some new confrontation.
This time there would be no icy buffer between the raging flames.
Cal just knew that he had to talk with her, and soon. Not just through email, but face to face. All he could do was hope Church would allow the Freelancers some shore leave now that the Insurrection had been dismantled from the top down. They had seen Allen's lifeless body, they had one of his most trusted lieutenants behind bars. This was the beginning of the end for all the URF.
Maybe, he thought while fighting back a shudder, even the end of Fireteam Phoenix.
Mike and Phil, Aaron and Geist, Lucas and Hannah—they could have peace. They could do other things.
He shook his head. That was only wishful thinking. He knew Phoenix. He knew they needed something to keep their hands busy. If not the URF, they would strike out on their own after collecting their intrepid leader. The Director alone wasn't enough to keep a man like Harper in a cell. It would take more to hold him.
Something like the influence of Irons.
Maybe he could include that in his next email to the spook's daughter. Maybe he would visit Harper himself and make the situation clear.
Maybe he would just ask Hannah when she could come home to him. They could face Harper together. Everything would start making sense again the day Hannah came back to him.
The three of them could figure anything out, let the world find a new, better balance that didn't throw the stars out of orbit. One that didn't tear the sky down.
Cal sighed, pinning the little worn gold dice to his belt. He just needed to speak to them both. They'd find their way forward.
They had to.