A/N: Just as a heads up, this one deals with some ugly subjects, I've tried to approach this one with grace, but it's not a pleasant chapter. This one combines elements of the original chapter 5, 6, and 7, so that should tell you about the content in this one.
What we do for love
Closing her phone in time with closing her red eyes, Brooklyn ran a hand through her long blond hair and sighed just as she knocks on a door in the dorm area. A few moments later, the door opens and Brooklyn hugs the girl while the girl asks, "Something wrong Brooklyn?"
She leans back and stands upright before looking around and asking, "Is Lou here?"
"In here, Brook, what's on your mind?" St. Louis asks from the couch in the living area.
Stepping inside and taking off her shoes, Brooklyn bounces her phone up and down between two fingers as she sighs, "I've lost the Commander."
"I'm sorry, what?" St. Louis asks as she puts her beer down and looks over the side of the couch.
"I've misplaced him. The last time I saw him was a few days ago when he asked about where the supplies land each month. Since then he hasn't been answering his phone and he hasn't been in his quarters." Brooklyn sighs as she sits down beside St. Louis and hangs her head, "North Carolina is going to kill me."
Reaching over and rubbing Brooklyn's back, St. Louis asks, "Need a beer?"
"Yes, but I need to find the Commander, I know you have a knack for finding things Lou, so could you please help me?" Brooklyn asks with her forehead against her knees.
St. Louis looks off to the side, "Brook, that was three days ago, I saw him at the container just after it got dropped, but after we parted ways, I don't know where he went."
"He wanted to go and find a simulator for something he found in the hangers." Brooklyn groans, "But that was three days ago."
"I don't know, Brooklyn." St. Louis starts to sigh.
"Please, Lou? I know you have a rough history with human commanders thanks to Braxton, but I really need your help." Brooklyn pleads.
"What kind of history?" Helena asks as she leans out of the kitchen.
St. Louis closes her eyes and looks up for a second before she opens them twists to look at Helena and smiles at her as she says, "Nothing you need to worry about."
"But if Brooklyn needs help, we should help." Helena states as she leaves the kitchen and wipes her hands on her apron.
"But," St. Louis starts to protest.
"No buts, Lou, she needs our help." Helena says with her hands going to her hips as she continues, "If you won't go and look, I will."
With a heavy sigh, St. Louis stands and says, "Fine, you pack some food and I'll bring some beer, he'll be hungry when we find him."
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"I don't like this place." Helena whines as she grips St. Louis; left arm and buries her face into the back of St. Louis.
"There isn't anything to be afraid of here, Helena, the only living thing here will be the Commander." St. Louis tells her sister in a calm, soothing voice.
"But you know I don't like the dark." Helena whines.
Stopping and turning to hug her sister before stroking her cheeks and smiling at her, St. Louis tells her, "I will never let anything hurt you, Helena, so you have nothing to fear here." St. Louis looks around, her reddish-purple eyes landing on a low bunker and she smiles, "Let's try in there."
Helena lets go of St. Louis and looks at the bunker, asking, "Why there?"
"I've got a good feeling about it." St. Louis says with a wink as she starts walking towards the doors.
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With two sets of heels clicking on concrete flooring after descending metal stairs, two women with blue hair, in blue and white dresses are walking down a corridor, a light at the far end, the hiss, and whine of old hydraulics protesting use. Walking into the room where the light was coming from, both women could see rows and rows of computing equipment, humming away, along with a row of screens above some windows that faced out to a room that showed a box held aloft on some kind of hydraulic platform. Looking up at one of the screens, St. Louis could see the Commander looking tired, and sweating, audio of him grunting in time with the platform moving in hard and quick motions.
"What's he doing?" Helena asks her sister as she moves closer to the windows.
Drifting her eyes to another screen, a readout of what is going on inside the simulator, St. Louis answers her sister, "Learning to fly."
"He knows how to fly, I saw him land a plane on Hornet." Helena says as her head tilts to the side.
"He's learning how to fly another plane." St. Louis says as she folds her arms under her bust.
"Can we get him out of there?" Helena asks.
Looking around and finding a microphone St. Louis walks over to it, bending at her hips and pressing a button with a faded label as she spoke, "Commander, you need to take a break."
On the screen showing his face, St. Louis saw his eyes blink a couple of times before his voice came over the speakers, "Lou?"
"Yes?" St. Louis asks him in return.
"What time is it?" he asks her as he lets go of the controls.
Taking out her phone from her top, St. Louis looked at the time as she told, him, "Almost twenty-two hundred."
Reaching forward and off-screen, Aidan hits something and the box stops rocking around and settles down to the ground before he starts to undo the buckles. A few moments later, the side of the box opens and he steps out of it, stretching up before walking down a ladder and towards the room that both women are in.
The door opens and the noses of both women wrinkle in unison, his head tilts to the side and he asks, "What?"
"When was the last time you had a shower?" St. Louis asks.
Taking his phone out of his pocket, trying to turn it on but it stays blank and he asks, "I don't know, when did we meet at the supply container?"
"Three days ago, Commander." St. Louis tells him.
"Three days?" he asks as he looks back at the box.
"Three days, Brooklyn is concerned that she's lost you." St. Louis says to him.
"I uh, can you give me twenty minutes? I saw a locker and shower room back there." He says as he starts to leave the control room.
Keeping back from him both women nod as Helena mumbles, "Please do."
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Cleaned and in a fresh-ish uniform Aidan made his way back to the control room, but lights were coming from a different room, turning and heading to that room, he sees St. Louis sitting at a table with Helena fast asleep at it, resting her head on her folded arms, softly breathing in and out.
On the table, he could see folded wax paper in squares, tilting his head to the side; St. Louis says to him, "We brought dinner. And I've already called Brooklyn, telling her that we found you."
Taking a seat across from Helena and unwrapping a sandwich, seeing again some kind of fried filling he asks, "Thanks, so what is on the menu?"
"Fried locally caught fish. Do you want a beer tonight?" She asks as she slides a beer along the table.
Sliding the bottle back he laughs, "I think I had a quarter of one last time and was out cold, better not tonight."
St. Louis shrugs and takes the beer, putting it into a basket beside her as she looks around the room and asks, "So, it's been three days, what have you been eating?"
"I found some emergency rations in a storage locker down here, so, that, and I've been resting on a bench I found in the locker room." He tells her as he goes over to the sink to fill a cup with water.
Sitting back down and sipping the water between bites of real food he asks, "So, thanks for coming to get me, I had no idea I'd been going at this so hard for so long already."
St. Louis shrugs as she says, "To be honest, I didn't want to come and find you, but Helena told Brooklyn she'd go and I know how much she hates being out at night, so I came with her."
Sighing and sitting back against his chair Aidan asks, "So, I get the idea you don't like me very much, is there something I've done in the three weeks I've been here?"
She shakes her head and brushes her side ponytail, looking off to the side as she sighs, "You? No, I just have an unpleasant history with human base commanders."
"You hinted at that before, can I ask about it?" he asks her.
Pressing her lips together, her reddish-purple eyes land on Helena, St. Louis sighs, "The last base commander didn't see us as women, he saw us as hardware. He was very," she pauses looking for a word, "unkind, and he had a special interest in me."
Aidan understood the meaning almost instantly and he reaches across the table to try and touch her right arm, St. Louis instinctively recoils from the contact as she says, "He was never gentile."
"Why didn't you report him, or stop him?" he asks her.
Closing her eyes before looking up and blinking St. Louis says, "He held something over me, something that was very important to me."
Looking at Helena, Aidan whispers, "Helena?"
St. Louis nods as she confirms, "Braxton kept telling me if I let him do what he wanted, he would bring Helena back, but it kept getting put off and I kept letting him do what he would do." She pauses and wipes her eyes, "But in the end, I got the last laugh, when Braxton disappeared, I was able to get Helena summoned back from the depths, and I will never let anyone hurt her, like Braxton hurt me, Commander."
Pulling back and looking at his food, Aidan frowns as he says, "I'm not like that guy, I'm not looking at any of you girls like that, and knowing you had to put up with that makes me sick."
She gives him a sideways look as she tells him, "Brooklyn and Yorktown have said you tried to avoid looking at her when she was summoned from the depths, that you made the effort to not ogle her, so maybe you are, maybe you're just saving it for when you get one of us into that kind of position."
Sighing and pushing himself up from the table, Aidan admits, "Do I find a lot of you girls attractive? Yeah, yeah I do. Am I going to try and abuse my position as your commander? Not a chance. Anyway, it's late and I know my quarters are close by, you two can crash there if you'd like, it's a pretty big place."
"No games?" she asks him as she starts to pack up.
"No games, you have my word." He tells her.
With a sideways look before she turns her attention to Helena, St. Louis sighs, "Fine, you carry the food and drinks, I'll carry Helena."
"Deal." He grins at her.
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St. Louis' eyes open in time with the sun creeping in the window, the soft snoring against her chest getting her to look down at the blue-haired head of her sister nestled against her. Smiling at her little sister and then around the room, true to his word, the Commander had let them use a guest room on the first floor, the room being a little Spartan, but still furnished with a bed and bedding. Looking at the door, St. Louis whispers, "Are you being honest, you're not going to be another Braxton?"
Helena starts to stir, her face rubbing against St. Louis' bust before her eyes open and she looks up at her older sister smiling at her as she forces herself up to look around and ask, "This isn't our quarters?"
"No, no it's not." St. Louis tells her as she rolls onto her back to look up at the ceiling and continues, "The Commander's quarters were closer so he let us take a guest room."
Helena covers her face as she groans, "Oh no! I didn't do anything uncool right?"
Smiling at her sister St. Louis asks with a bit of a teasing tone, "Well you did moan his name on the walk here while you were on my back."
Helena covers her face with both hands as she moans, "Oh no!"
St. Louis laughs before hugging her sister close to her, "I'm teasing you, you were out cold, though you did drool on my shoulder during the walk."
Tapping her fingers together, Helena mumbles, "Sorry."
"It's alright, but we should get going though." St. Louis tells her sister as she starts to gather up their stuff.
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Opening the outside door to Nimitz House, St. Louis finds herself face to face with Brooklyn who has her hand reaching for the door, a key in her hand. The blond tilts her head to the side as she asks, "Lou?" Making a shushing gesture, St. Louis and Helena slip out the door and close it quietly before gesturing to Brooklyn to follow them.
Once the three of them were on the stone stairs, St. Louis says, "We got in late, a little after the twenty-three hundred."
Brooklyn waited till Helena was ahead of them before asking, "Did he?"
St. Louis shakes her head as she says, "No, he didn't even try, I even opened up a little about Braxton and it seemed to make him mad. If anything, it seems to line up with what you told me about how he acted at the summoning."
"That's good; maybe we can actually trust him." Brooklyn shrugs as they move to follow Helena.
St. Louis looks off to the side, "Maybe, I honestly get some mixed feelings about him."
"How so?" Brooklyn asks with interest in her voice.
"I get the feeling he'd like to get his rocks off in one or more of us, but he doesn't want to force it." St. Louis tells her with a shrug again. Snapping her fingers, St. Louis asks, "Oh hey, were there any new entertainment files in that last shipment?"
"No, but we should get them with the next shipment, why?" Brooklyn asks with a head tilt.
"Just wondering that last set was a little strange, a little too predictable, you know?" St. Louis says as she places her arms behind her head.
"Sometimes they are like that; you can always go back and look at older files." Brooklyn says with a shrug, "I know I do."
"Yeah, but I guess I was just hoping for something new." St. Louis sighs.
Looking over her shoulder at the hill to Nimitz House, Brooklyn says, "I don't know, the Commander has been providing me some entertainment. I mean the other day I did kick him out of the porch swing and let it clock him in the back after he mumbled out your name in his sleep."
"He mumbled my name?" St. Louis asks with a head tilt.
"Yeah, after you two sat outside eating and drinking before I collected him for the summoning." Brooklyn confirms.
St. Louis stops and turns to look up at the top of the hill, as she makes a thoughtful sound, "Huh, I guess I left an impression on him."
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Putting the paddle back in the ridged hull inflatable boat he had found in the storage locker near the docks, Aidan got out of the boat, the water lapping at his legs as he starts to pull the boat onto the sandy beach by what was left of the bridge to Ford Island. Taking the pistol out of the holster he had from the command center of the Hickman Field, Aidan checks the charge on it before slipping it back in and starts to climb the rusty ladder up the side of the ruined bridge. As soon as his feet touch the ruined asphalt his right chest pocket starts to ring, hanging his head he takes the phone out and sees Brooklyn's face on it, lifting to his ear he answers, "Webb."
"Where are you now?" Brooklyn's voice sounds exasperated.
Looking around he says, "The Ford Island side of the Admiral Bernard Chick Clarey Bridge."
"The what?" she asks in confusion.
"It's what I knew the bridge as, no idea what you call it now. It goes from Pearl over to Ford Island." He says with a shrug.
"Why are you over there?" She asks surprise in her voice.
"A little sightseeing, a little exploration, and a healthy dose of curiosity, I had quarters on this island." He tells her as he starts walking along the ruined roadway towards where he used to live.
"We can't help you if you get into trouble there." She warns.
"I'll be careful. And my phone has a full charge so, you should be able to call me." He tells her.
"Commander!" she protests on her end of the phone.
"Bye, I'll let you know when I'm done." He says before hanging up.
Putting his phone away, he lets his feet guide him along the road.
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Standing at the corner of a pair of roads, the signs long since faded from sunlight, the ruins unrecognizable to him, Aidan started to walk around them as he said, "I used to live here, but the house was different then."
Continuing to walk around to the back, looking for something, anything familiar, he soon finds himself standing before a large palm tree, the base of the tree having his initials carved into it, touching the letters with his left hand he spoke to himself, "I really did live here, I really am in the future." pausing to look around as he stands up and places his hands on his hips, "I wonder if I'm the last man on earth now?"
Taking his cap off and rubbing the top of his head, Aidan looks around again before musing, "Well, nothing I can do about that right now, but I should try and find this Braxton guy's place, who knows, maybe he left a keycard I can use."
Taking one last look at the old palm tree, he sighs, "So many memories of this place, and a lot of them bad."
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After what felt like hours, Aidan found himself standing by the door to a large rundown-looking house with a clear view of the port, looking up at the top of the house Aidan pressed his lips together as he said, "If I wanted a place to hide from them but still watch them, I'd go here."
Twisting the door handle the door refuses to give, backing up a little, Aidan gives a hard kick just below the door handle, a cracking sound just before the door flies open, the jam broken where the lock ripped out of the rotten wood. Walking into the house, Aidan looks to his left and sees a painting of a heavy-set, balding man with a pockmarked face, his nose slightly upturned like a pig's snout, on the breast of the uniform in the picture the name Braxton on full display. Aidan's lips compress as he says to the painting before ripping it down, "Aren't you an ugly fucker."
Moving around the house, the smell of damp rotting wood filling his nose, luxurious furniture moldy and rotting, on a table in a side room, he finds datapads. Picking one up and trying to tap it a few times only to find the power has been depleted. Sighing, Aidan swings his pack off of his shoulder and puts them inside of it as he sighs, "Maybe they can be salvaged."
Up on the second floor, he finds a bedroom, stepping inside Aidan comes across a notebook, rotting away, the pages brittle, but it is full of notes about kansen, letter and number combinations for them, sometimes there were detailed drawings, but when he came across the one labeled two-five-four-nine, his eyes go wide, photographs of St. Louis, nude, with lots of notes about her. Closing the book, Aidan stuffs the book in with the datapads as he keeps moving through the second floor.
Opening the last room, the room that would be facing the port, he saw a chair facing away from the door, on the desk, what looks like a laptop sitting on it. Hurrying over to the desk, out of the corner of his left eye he sees a skeleton dressed in rags, pants around its feet, the right hand curled around like it had been gripping something at crotch level in its last moments. Shivering and making a noise of disgust, Aidan tapped the trackpad on the laptop, before hanging his head and sighing, "Of course it wouldn't have a charge."
Pulling open drawers, he comes across a charging cable, plugging it into the wall before the computer, he waits for a few moments before hitting the power button. The screen flickers to life with a prompt to put in a four-digit PIN. Looking back at the skeleton Aidan sighs, "You really were a sick fucker, weren't you?"
Hitting the numbers two, five, four, and nine the screen changes to a welcome screen, that reads, 'Welcome Captain Braxton.'
A quick file search shows Aidan the last file accessed, three seconds into it, he slams the lid shut, takes his pistol out, and shoots the skeleton, obliterating it and the chair as he yells, "What kind of sick fuck keeps videos like that? She's a person, not a sex doll!"
Sighing to himself, he unplugs the laptop and adds it to the satchel along with the charging cable before going back through the desk to find a keycard and leaving the building.
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Putting the stuff into the boat and pushing off, just before paddling back across to the port, Aidan calls Brooklyn, "I'm on my way back, I know what happened to Braxton."
"What?" Brooklyn asks, her voice low and full of venom.
"He died, likely quickly and instantly as he was pleasuring himself." Aidan pauses, before whispering, "to a video of him abusing St. Louis."
"Oh." Is all she says, her tone of voice low.
"Anyway, can you have St. Louis meet me at my office? I got the laptop that has the videos on it, along with a book he kept with notes on all of the kansen under his command, I'd like her there to see the stuff that has to do with her be destroyed." He says to her.
"How about we meet you at the boat ramp?" Brooklyn asks.
"That works, see you in a bit." He says before hanging up and starting to row away from Ford Island.
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