Chapter Text
The first couple years on Earth were an adjustment, when put mildly. Breathing went from an effortless undercurrent of life to a ragged, desperate battle for oxygen for starters. Everything seemed heavier; the sky, the clouds, the rain, as if an anvil pressed down on every speck of you. It took months to adjust to natural sunlight, though you never quite got used to grass. Everything went from sterile,shined and polished to makeshift, clunky piles of rubbish within a matter of months. You’d once had the fortunate task of replacing a computer that had been waterlogged by blood. Earth was untouched by the invasion, at least, but perhaps the uncertainty was worse than an actual attack. People hunkered down, started building bunkers, farms. They quit their jobs, abandoned their kids, drank and danced like the world would end in the morning. It never did, of course. These people had no idea what was coming. It wouldn’t be quick and easy, like a coming of age film kind of end. It would be slow, suffocating- and it wouldn’t even be the end. More like a strain, like twisting a towel.
On Mars, you were a passed fad, an experiment that proved very little. One of the first humans born and raised on Mars. Your childhood sacrificed for a slogan, a selling point. There was no such thing as a family in the Mars base. There was the corporate kind, where you did team-building exercises and left passive-aggressive notes on fridges, but blood, love, it simply wasn’t on the cards. Everyone was just an individual, appearing from thin air. There was no context to them, no background. They were just there, just their jobs, the name badge a simple formality, a suggestion of an identity wasn’t there.
Life on Earth was lonely, gruelling, hot, cold and miserable for a very long time. There was a small, fleeting glint of something good with Clara. Beautiful, beautiful Clara. And yet in those nights whilst you were wrapped in her arms, you always thought of him. His rough eyes under that battered visor. The way his arm strained out towards your hand as the tether twisted his body. Clara thought it was a scholarly interest- of course she would, he was your entire purpose on the Mars base. So did everyone else, who seemed to harbour a tangible fear of the roaming slayer, and by extension, you, for your queer hope in him. Hayden’s metal mug always seemed to hesitate when your colleagues discussed their conspiracy theories about the missing Slayer, an uneasiness you refused to share, only fuelling your co-workers' distrust of you. The only one that seemed to understand you was Elena, but even her care verged on borderline obsession.
“Do you expect me to defend your decision or something?” you’d asked Hayden one night, after everyone had retired for some scarce sleep. You’d given up the concept long ago, slouched over your desk clutching a vat of iced coffee tightly.
“I don’t expect much of you,” Hayden replied.
“You know what I mean.”
“You know the reasons behind my decision-making. He was dangerous, uncontrollable. He would destroy humanity to save it. It was a recklessness I couldn’t abide by.”
“He’ll find us,” you said. “He could wipe out ARC to avenge himself.”
“You think so low of the man’s temperament,” he droned. “Yet you still defend him.”
“I think we could’ve worked together just fine,” you reasserted. “Just because you butted heads doesn’t mean you had to doom humanity out of spite.”
“Don’t flatter yourself into thinking you had a bond. To him, your life was nothing more than a consequence of his violence. Saving humanity has never been his motivation.”
“You’re telling me he just kills and kills for the sake of it?” you laughed humorlessly.
“That I am,” Hayden said. “The Sentinels survived longer than they should’ve precisely due to his classification and use as a weapon, not a man. Don’t flatter him with humanity. He barely fits the criteria.”
“So the robot lectured,” you murmured. Hayden’s metal fists tightened. You glanced up, the bright blue glow of his visor the only suggestion of light in the dark room.
“We need more time with Argent,” he said, pretending to ignore your point completely. “That is what he did not understand. Do you see why he could not be trusted? He destroyed the Earth’s power supply in mere minutes, simply because he could not bother himself to extract the filters gently. It would’ve cost him a minute of time, and yet he chose brutality over reason. All he cares about is the next thing to kill. The consequences of his violence matter little, as long as he gets to shoot something.”
For that, you never had a retort. All you had was a feeling, a nagging thought that he had something buried underneath those layers of armor and flesh. The smallest hint of feeling. An empathy. But what is a feeling against statistics?
“Fuck,” you mumbled, your face planted in something wet. Slowly, you crawled onto your knees, your body nearly buckling with every movement. Tethering, as always, really fucked you over. Standing up wasn’t an option. With a defeated grunt, you flopped onto your back, your bloody face facing the grey sky. The Maykr had promised you Earth, but she must’ve missed the small, tiny detail of putting you somewhere you actually recognised.
Cold hugged your shivering body tightly as your hands danced around some cold thing. Snow? Snow. Real snow, not the white paper stuff they sprinkled around the base at Christmas. Though you could feel its icy gnaw through the exposed holes in your ARC suit, the coldness felt heavenly against your burnt and bruised hands, cooling your throbbing body slowly but surely as you desperately caught your breath. When the ache had ceased, you began to think. The snow had smothered your soreness, but now the cold was seeping into your bones, making movement almost impossible.
Firstly, your location. Secondly, the Slayer. Thirdly, survival. Your cranial implant would (hopefully) take care of all three, depending on whether VEGA’s system had survived the jump. Frowning, you just stared upwards at the bleak sky, engrossed by the boring grey smothering the sun.
“Doctor, I have been attempting to contact you for hours.”
“VEGA,” the sound of your faltering voice choked you into silence. It was not the assertive demands of a commander. It was the snivelling drabble of some terrified bystander.
“Your vitals are in alarming territory. I will commence internal medical functioning to combat this,” VEGA drove on. “There is an opening in your abdomen.”
Tentatively, you placed your hand on your stomach, praying to feel that strange, burned tissue you were sure you’d causterised. Your fingers came back dripping in blood. The force of the tethering must’ve ripped that laser wound wide open again. No matter. Could be patched up easy. You sat up, except you didn’t. You couldn’t. Panic pooled in every nerve as you tried to move your arms again, digging your wrists into the snow only to slip and thud back on the ground. You couldn’t tell whenever your body was faltering, or you’d slipped on your own blood.
“Is he alive?” you managed, sparing the little hold of oxygen you had. In the long term, your survival is not of utmost importance- his is.
“The mission was a success,” VEGA spoke. “Doctor, I cannot ascertain your coordinates for safe transport. Could you-”
“No shot, VEGA,” you coughed. “I think…yeah…I think this is it for me.”
“Doctor, describe your environment.”
I could, you thought, staring up at the blank grey sky. I could pull through again, die another day.
“I’m too tired now,” you said to yourself. . It was strangely comforting- a blanket of ice was still a blanket.
“Please, Doctor.”
With the little strength you had, you pulled your other hand over to rest on you bleeding abdomen for the heat. Tears pricked at your unwilling eyes as you tried to decide whether or not you wanted to die here.
“Tell him I said good luck,” you mumbled, barely able to chalk up anything more than a whisper. To die here wasn’t so bad. The sky was pretty. Snow felt nice. It was a lot better than the barrages of fates you’d slipped from. To die peacefully in this world was a gift, a privilege to be savoured. Grimacing, you squinted your eyes shut and tried to die.
But like all things you wanted, it wasn’t coming easy. VEGA was still going on and on, but you could barely hear a thing as you opened your eyes in defeat, sighing. Not even death was going to come easy to you. As you were contemplating drowning yourself in the snow, something snarled behind yourself. Cautiously, you eyed for its source; a small imp had gotten itself stuck in the branches of a pine tree above you, wailing about frantically. The smell of your blood must’ve been as enthralling as it was delicious, though obviously its pursuits were soon punished. Those thin wooden sticks weren’t going to hold it for long.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. With a huff, you flexed your fingertips, then your toes, then your forearms until eventually, you gathered the strength to pull yourself up. Your wound seared in agony, forcing a sudden cry as you stumbled onto your knees, rejoicing in your new found will to live. The adrenaline wasn’t enough to mask the pain of it, but it was enough to shake your body into motion, forcing your legs forward sluggishly through the thin snow. You could just make out an opening squeezed between the trees, a promise of escape, or at the very least, some time bought before that imp could snatch you away to an even crueller fate.
You kept pushing forward, even when you heard the twigs snap behind you. If you were going to die, you were at least going to make an effort against it, right? You ignored every snarl, every thud against the snow until the thing was at your ankles. It’s claws dug straight in. You braced. Expecting the roar of a shotgun, you threw your hands to your ears. Instead, you were sprayed with a sickly warm substance against a chorus of thuds and punches. Frozen still, you clenched your eyes shut, shivering as blood spattered your body until a hand held onto your shoulder. He was here. How?
“What are you doing here?” you said, your voice trembling with your body. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“Your wound is open,” he said, as if you hadn’t just insulted his very presence. Biting your lip, you took a deep breath. You turned around to face the Slayer. Only his legs remained armoured. He was wearing some dumb, faded band t-shirt, his right arm wrapped in a thick wad of bloody bandages. Funny. You’d worked in that lab for months staring at nothing but his dumb face, but the difference between a sleeping man and a raging god bent over a mashed up corpse of an Imp is that the raging man is alive, heaving, raging. His eyes were a dark brown, his skin tan and rippling with muscle as always, his blonde hair shaved into a messy buzz. He was staring at you, completely dead-eyed, his fists dripping with blood and guts as he rose what remained of the imp.
“You need to go,” you said. “Please don’t waste your time fixing my mistakes.”
“You did this?” he asked. The circumstances of your sudden departure were obviously unknown to him.
“I…I ran away from you. I tethered myself back to Earth. To get away from you. Yeah,” you mumbled, trailing off as you slowly sounded less and less convincing. “You’re a maniac, you’re unsafe. Hayden was right about you.”
He wasn’t budging.
“Go back to the Fortress and let me die for once,” you spat blood into the snow, trudging forward slowly. You don’t know what you expected. “What are you doing here?”
He seemed pissed. God knows why.
“VEGA said you weren’t speaking,” you said.
Silence.
“Oh, so it’s selective depending on the difficulty of the question.”
“You need to back with Hayden,” he said, flicking off the gristle left on his knuckles nonchalantly.
“Since when are you two besties again?”
“You aren’t in a position to take sides.”
“I’m siding with my people,” you quickly snapped, trying to hide the hurt in your voice. “Earth.”
“Hmpf, I thought you were a Martian.”
That’s it.
Growling in frustration, you grabbed a handful of snow and lobbed it at the Marine. It struck him right in the middle of his square head. He froze. You froze. You froze and you quickly realised you’d thrown a snowball at the Doom Slayer’s head.
“Can you stop being such a dick? I get it, okay! You have been through a whole lot of shit, so much so I’m not even sure I even want to know! But it doesn’t give you a right to treat me like this! Like some lost damsel in distress that needs to be monitored and protected!” you shouted. “I have lost everything! have lost everything, and I have risked everything to bet on you! I am on a planet half-dead, working with a man who goes from a normal guy to a manic god in the blink of an eye, who has entered in some kind of pact with my three metre tall robot boss who betrayed him, who, as a matter of fact, was dead up until two days ago! My life has been nothing but an array of misery, and loss and death and you expect me to keep fighting like we actually have a chance here? Because we don’t! Because our only chance is you, and you are an unreliable, unthinking selfish asshole who only cares about killing shit rather than the people who are supposed to be saving!”
He just stared at you again, without a flicker of acknowledgment or sympathy. He’d been through aeons of suffering, and there you were, complaining about being alive. You must’ve sounded pathetic.
“I saved you, didn’t I?” he said.
“You didn’t even bother to let me know you were alive,” you said before he could murmur another word. “I found out because the interns were gossiping. Turns out the guy who I’d lost all my cards on had been fucking around on that Fortress for God knows how long.”
“You’re gonna freeze to death in that thing,” he said.
“You have to stop fucking ignoring me,” you shouted again. “Go find some young thing on the ARC base who will kiss the ground you walk on. I’m fucking done with you, Hayden, everything. I’m…I’m going start a farm or something stupid.”
It was your turn to shut up as you tried to manipulate your way through the snow, grimacing in pain at practically every movement.
“I expect you to listen,” you snapped, though your words soon lost their ferocity as your body gave into your emotions. “What the fuck am I doing?”
“You’re good,” was all he could manage, straight-faced. “People are relyin’ on you.”
“They’ll find someone new,” you shrugged.
“Not like you,” he shrugged.
“I’m not going to be lectured on reliability by you of all people,” you snapped. “I heard what the Maykr said. I knew the Sentinels’ age came crashing down. I just never knew it was because of you.”
He didn’t respond, his eyes still fixed on your bloody body. Something in his eyes had switched. They were as dead and lifeless as the landscape that swallowed you. Was this what victory felt like? Congratulations, you win? Here’s your free serving of guilt?
“You don’t know a thing about me,” he grunted, stalking towards you rapidly. “Not a single fuckin’ thing. We ain’t friends, we ain’t anything. You’re just another one of those UAC idiots who got yourselves into this mess. You’re just like the rest of them. Just like Hayden. Don’t flatter yourself into thinking you’re any different just because you got a lick of sense. You’re gonna go to the ship, you’re gonna help me get rid of this mess you made, and then you’re free to do whatever you fuck you want.”
“The mess I made?” you scoffed, almost smiling. “I was born on that fucking facility. I had no choice.”
“You never stopped Hayden.”
“How could I have done that?”
“I stopped my boss when I was your age,” he said, raising a thick eyebrow. You’d read his file over and over until the words blurred together. Sent to Phobos UAC facility- attacked a superior on Earth disagreeing with orders. Beware- issues with leadership are prevalent, engage with care.
“And look where it got you. Sent to the middle of nowhere, all your friends killed and your family dead,” you spat.
Fuck. You’d never been truly afraid of the Slayer. Maybe it was because you’d spent a year of life chatting to his comatose cadaver. But when his eyes snapped up to yours, a chill invaded your nerves like a tsunami, crashing every danger receptor, every pit in your stomach. For a few seconds, you thought the Slayer would kill you. For a few seconds, you stood, trembling, as his eyes glared like daggers through your very soul, your being.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”
The next few days were spent pacing around the Fortress of Doom fixing various issues caused by the Khan Makyr’s blackout while the only thing in your mind was a severe, near crippling guilt. He was right. You didn’t know a thing about him. You knew the Slayer, but you didn’t know a thing about Flynn. He hadn’t said a word, not even a grunt of acknowledgement, stalking past you in the hallways and corridors as if you were just a speck of dust in his way.
Most inconveniently, the Fortress only housed one bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living area. The Slayer had his own man-cave which you didn’t dare to step foot in, but the rest of the ship was shared. The bedroom situationship was easy enough- the Slayer either didn’t sleep or covered up his tracks real good in the morning. Like everything, the living spaces were of Sentinel design, speckled by Flynn’s human tastes as well. The bed was based on a circular stone pedestal, covered in scavenged sheets and weird man pillows (limp). It was cold, univiting. Functional. Not that you slept well anyway.
Biting your lip, you stood in front of the room’s mirror, which you’d pulled away from behind the drawers. Almost every reflective surface in the ship had been scratched or stashed away, making your reflection a rare commodity. Yet another embarrassment inducing necessity of your work was clothing, which you lacked. You were roaming about in XXL band shirts and boxers like an ill prepared hook-up, though you had to admit, it was a little comfier than your bodysuits. Your brush with death had left you a little pale, but you looked a little better. Rolling up the hem of the Slayer’s shirt, you peeked at your bandaged abdomen curiously. Funny. The worst injury you’d gotten in the demonic invasion was from the hands of a human. Something inside nagged it would not be the last. The singular interaction you’d had with the Slayer had been an awkward encounter earlier in the day whilst you were crouched over one of his many guns.
You’d never had to apologise to someone with no tangible emotions left before. Well, you’d ‘apologised’ to Hayden plenty. Maybe it was the first time applying sincerely. And what better way to work your way back into the Slayer’s heart than a weapon attachment? Like the majority of your interactions in the last few days, the room was thick with tension, but your proximity in the workshop couldn’t be avoided.
You’d designed a grappling hook, resilient enough to pull out a demon’s thick flesh but strong and sharp enough to pierce it. If you got it right, it could provide a whole other plane of movement, a new horizon. You leant over, forgetting all about your open gunshot wound. Instinctively, you yelped in pain, buckling over and clutching the pain with a strained sigh. Panting, you stayed put whilst the pain subsided. A thud behind you attracted your eyes- he was stood there, eyes straining, his hand outstretched naturally. When you looked up, his hand retracted. He scanned you like a machine, and stood back, returning to his strung up suit.
You rolled the shirt back down and grasped the hook carefully in your hands. Knowing him, he’d probably call it something gross and metal. Maybe you knew him a little better than he’d assumed. Sighing, you crept out the bedroom and poked your head out it’s arched door. The Slayer was fiddling with his shotgun, helmet to his side. Carefully, you stalked over. He ignored your presence until you sat down next to him. The Earth dominated your view amongst a blanket of black sky and splatters of white stars.
“God,” you gasped. “You can see it from here.”
The Earth once looked so peaceful from Mars. The scars of the invasion had ripped the globe apart into red strips and brown, raw rock.
“I didn’t come here to pretend to talk to you,” you said. His gaze didn’t avert from his shotgun. “I…I am sorry. Genuinely. I had no right.”
Nothing.
“I know words don’t mean much to you,” you mumbled, pulling out the hook. “It’ll attach to your gun. You can pull them to you, or pull yourselves towards them. It’ll help. Especially if you want to get them real close range.”
Tentatively, you dropped it in his hands.
“I am sorry. You deserve better than what they gave you,” you said, knowing your words were hitting a blank wall. Nothing you could ever say would ever penetrate that armour. Not bullets, not fire, not apologies. Words were futile devices. He inspected it with a professional air, flicking it up to prod the attachment. With no hesitation, he latched it onto his shotgun easily, fitting on the barrel like a glove, just as you’d anticipated. Glancing up at you, he rose. You didn’t follow. Becoming an unnecessary victim of your creation felt like too much of a Frankenstein re-telling for your liking.
Head in your hands, you stared at the scarred, bloody Earth.
When you were a kid, you’d spend hours just staring at the peaceful Earth. It’s warm blues, lush greens, desert yellows, white clouds. It was, quite literally, a different world. Something you’d longed for. You had inherited its mangled corpse, weeping and bleeding, dropped in your unprepared hands, it’s only hope was a shell of a man who could barely call himself human.
Was this worship? Something like it, at least. Bargaining for your life with the Slayer. Your relationship has always been, no matter how much you wished otherwise, almost purely transactional. And yet the dregs of silence, awkwardness, tension in the ship suggested so much otherwise. He was a soldier, a weapon. Feelings weren’t a part of his equation. You, well, you were abundantly aware of your sufferings, but he could barely manage smiling, let alone talking.
What had you done to him?