pridecroweth

[ It's an unceremonious end.

Sam gets the woman and kid back to basecamp. The man, ultimately, doesn't make it. But they do learn to communicate a little, bit by bit. He leaves it with the others, people who are better-suited for this sort of delicate work than he is. Instead, he sticks to patrols — solo, now. Lost his taste for the other kind, and anyway, this lets him be a bird more often. It's a lot easier to sleep tucked away somewhere high, beak tucked under one wing. He doesn't need to concern himself as much with food or supplies, though he takes care to build a few caches throughout the city.

He does make it to that battery, somewhere in the second week. It's mostly cleaned out, except for one storage container that was blocked off by debris. It takes him nearly three days to shift enough concrete and rebar out of the way to get into the container safely, enjoying the work just because it makes him sweat. He has to hunt down an angle-grinder just to get the door open — the box is half-squashed with the collapse of the building on top of it. But his efforts are rewarded with a dozen working firearms, and boxes of sealed ammunition in waterproof cases.

He takes what he can carry. Buries the rest.

He figures out where Carver's hiding somewhere into the third week. It's accidental, really — he's just enjoying a high flight in the cool morning air when he spots movement far below. Crows don't have the best static vision in the bird family, but their ability to discern movement is pretty high up the list, and no matter how well-concealed Carver is, he's not able to obfuscate movement. Sam spots him stringing tripwires across a sidestreet — way on the other side of town, away from the battery. The guy's paranoid enough that Sam's not sure he trusts him not to shoot a strange bird on sight, so he keeps tabs on him like that for a few days: the occasional lazy circle high above, playing in air currents enough that it ought not to draw suspicion.

He does make mental notes of where the traps are that he can see, and that there's likely a lot more in the building itself. He notes where Carver enters and exits, what floor he seems to have set up on. The rest is going to be a guessing game, but he's willing to take the chance.

Sometime into the next month, he packs up some of his liberated supplies. The hydroponic garden that weird-ass robot guy set up is starting to yield fresh vegetables, and between Stark and that electro-kinetic, they've figured out a way to make basic radios, so he takes one of those, his share of produce, and a box of the ammunition (Carver has enough guns, he's pretty sure) and sets out. Picks his way across the city until he's at the right street, and then he picks his way through the traps with deliberate care.

He doesn't make the mistake of trying to go into the building. He's not stupid — he watched Carver work outside enough to know that even his skills might not hold up a hundred percent against whatever traps the guy set inside. Instead, he just camps in the lobby. A small, smokeless fire, some roasting carrots. Let the guy come to him. ]

[ Life goes on. It always does. You live or you die and God might honor the dead but He doesn't linger on them. Carver slips away, further into the ruins. For a while, he operates at night, moving from hiding spot to hiding spot, gathering up what supplies he can. There's not much to take but he knows this life.

In that way, it's just like home.

Eventually he finds a building that looks wrecked from the outside but the interior structure is more or less sound, and the third floor has some protection from the elements. It's near a water source and he's got enough supplies to make filters, to scavenge scraps. He finds himself a place to sleep and stash some of his gear and conceals it carefully, traps the shit out of everything else. He goes hungry for a while and then he finds more food. Sleeps during the day, scavenges mostly at night.

He doesn't sleep much. He tries not to talk to the ghosts in his corners. One night, when he's restless and exhausted, he goes into the bowels of the building and lights a candle in a corner, where he takes a charcoal stick and writes down the names of all his dead. His grandma spoke Spanish at home and taught him about Day of the Dead, how their loved ones lingered if only the living remembered them. He doesn't have any photos now but he leaves behind flat stones and a few seeds he finds in the ruins, laid out ever so carefully beneath the names of everyone who loved him and who died before him.

It goes on like that for a while, the way God intended. A test. And then one day he's out and comes back to some asshole sitting pretty in the lobby. Roasting carrots over a fire.

Carver feels his eye twitch. He doesn't shoot Sam in the back of the head but he thinks about it real goddamn hard as he stalks up, quiet and quick. ]

The fuck are you doing?

[ He's thinner than before, Carver knows, and his hair is a goddamn mess. He found a razor but most days he doesn't bother shaving. It doesn't matter. He still has the body armor and good boots, he still has weapons. ]

Looking for you.

[ He's not going to pretend he wasn't. It's too suspicious on its own. Sam nods to the other side of the fire. If he notices the changes, well — he says nothing. ]

Sit down. Santa Claus came early this year.

[ Carver tilts his head, not bothering to hide the suspicion. The fact that Sam managed to track him down without Carver noticing is worrying; he must have made a mistake somewhere. Gotten sloppy.

Stupid, the commander hisses. Don't do that again.

Carver feels his fingers twitch and stills them. He doesn't sit down. ]

Go home. I'm not in the mood for entertaining.

Good thing I'm not here to be entertained.

[ He turns the skewered carrots over so they roast evenly on the other side. ]

You can either listen to what I have to say, shoot me, or leave. Take your pick.

[ Carver gives Sam a narrow look. He deliberately ignores the food; it doesn't matter. It's a bribe.

He unholsters his pistol. He doesn't aim it but he has it in hand. An obvious, unsubtle warning. ]

I got no sense of humor today. And I'm tired of your bleeding heart bullshit. I liked you for a minute back there and that's the only reason your brains aren't splattered all over the fire. But I don't like you that much.

[ Sam snorts. The carrots get another prod. ]

Do you know what Mitákuye Oyás'i means?

[ He knows the guy won't. It's Lakȟótiyapi. ]

[ Carver just stares at him. The almost angry silence is answer enough. He wonders if he's being mocked. ]

[ Well, he hasn't gotten shot yet. So: ]

It's translated a few ways. The one I tend to use is: 'All are related'.

[ He lifts the skewer off the fire, sets it aside to cool on a plastic dish he's been using as a plate. He rummages around in his duffel briefly, coming up with a small pan. He hasn't found decent oil to cook with, but he has dough, wrapped in wax paper, carefully unrolled. ]

You want to say following that creed is being a bleeding heart, that's fine by me.

[ Almost against his will, Carver finds himself committing the phrase to memory. It's not his heritage, has nothing to do with him, and yet -

And fucking yet.

He stares at Sam, anger bubbling up in his chest like a new wound. The bruises he got from being goddamn shot have healed but he remembers the mark. He remembers taking it like the punishment it was for his own goddamn stupidity. And here he is letting this moment play out, beat by beat, inch by inch, knowing he ought to end it. That he should've killed Sam back in the atrium or at least put a bullet in the back of his skull here, while he was still watching the fire. Packed up and moved on. Why didn't he? It was a sin.

It was a fucking sin and now Sam's pulling out a pan, of all things, and something Carver recognizes almost immediately as dough.

Something twists in his soul. It wants to die.

He wants to scream. He tightens his jaw instead, jerking his head to the side. ]

Get out. Get out!

[ This is a sin. The part of him that wants to step closer and see the dough, to make goddamn fry bread, is sinning against Pope and all the others. It needs to fucking die before it ruins him. ]

No. Shoot me or sit down.

[ Leaving, apparently, is off the table for now. Sam breaks the dough apart, rolling a piece into a ball between his hands as the pan warms. He's no stranger to the effects of PTSD. He lived like a drifter for almost five years after Al-Hajarah. He spent more time as a bird than a man. There were days he would've preferred to be a crow, because it meant he didn't have to think, to feel, to hear his friends dying, and taste phantom blood on tongue because one of the bullets hit him in the lung and every breath pulled lifesblood to his lips. But he got out. Piece by piece, bit by bit. It cost him his marriage, but he got out. Carver's still in it. Haunted, hunted, half-crazy, but Sam isn't going to write off a brother that easily. ]

[ That's the thing about threats. Eventually, you gotta commit or someone's going to call the bluff. And Sam is so goddamn calm about the whole thing it makes Carver even angrier to be balanced against it. Like there's a rational answer to the question of the moment. Some common ground to be dredged from the ashes of this place and whatever fucking broke it.

He wonders if the little boy is dead. He wonders why he cares.

What're you waiting for, son?

Carver shakes himself. Trying not to look to the corners because he can see boots there, black uniforms massing, and he can't get lost right now. He can't.

Nor can he waste a bullet on this nonsense.

He holsters the goddamn gun. But he draws a knife and he swears he feels the commander's hand on his shoulder, going tight as he advances. ]

[ He flattens out the dough. Drops it into the pan. Sees the knife, and only says: ]

All right.

[ He shifts a little on the chair he'd scrounged up, squares off so he's fully facing Carver on the approach. But he doesn't try to get up, doesn't reach for a weapon. Keeps his hands visible. ]

You wanna stab me, you come here and look me in the eye while you do it.

[ Rangers, by and large, aren't really all that much saner than anyone else at the end of the day. ]

[ Carver doesn't smile. Doesn't offer out a joke or a line, or anything at all except a vague regret that he left his mask stashed at the museum. He'd woken up with it hooked to his belt and known instinctively that it'd mark him as a freak by the others. No one worth trusting. He didn't need that nonsense and so he hid the mask and didn't bring it out scouting.

A mistake. He could've used it now. That distance. He shouldn't have talked to Sam, shouldn't have said any of that shit to him. They know things about each other now. They aren't strangers and they should've been. It's easier killing strangers.

He rolls his shoulders and just advances. And when he attacks, he doesn't swing wild. He fights sharp and controlled, every move calculated.

He goes for the throat. And then he goes to knee Sam in the goddamn balls because this isn't the time to play fair. ]

[ It's not like Carver hasn't had training. But so has Sam — and he has the benefit of being well-rested, decently fed, and a shifter. He's never done exact calculations on how much stronger or faster he is than others, but he knows there's a difference. Carver wields a knife like a surgeon, and Sam recognizes that he's not going to stop just by the way he moves.

You wanna know the best way to fight someone with a knife? his old instructor used to say. You fucking run. That was delivered with a sharp jab to the sternum, and Sam knew even then it was because, given his size, he tends to default to fight rather than flight. But he's not stupid, and he knows he's going to take damage — it's just a matter of choosing what gets hit.

Not his balls, thank you. He sees that coming, twists to the side in the chair so the knee glances off his thigh, standing up as he does it. The chair is knocked over backwards, and as for the knife? Well.

He grits his teeth for that one. And then, when Carver draws back to find a new angle, Sam follows him and puts his hand right against the tip of the blade, fully intending to take it through the palm all the way to the hilt if he has to. Can't disarm your opponent, the least you can do is control the blade. ]

[ Sam's acting too calm about this. At first, Carver defaults that Sam doesn't really think he'll do it. That the knife and the posturing is just a game. All for show. That Carver won't really go for him.

Then Sam twists away from the knee Carver throws at him and shit escalates. Carver breathes slow and steady, controlling himself. Sam's got a hand up against the blade like that's going to fucking matter and Carver realizes a second too late that Sam won't flinch.

Trap, he observes, almost from a distance, as the blade punches in. You feel for it, you moron. ]

[ He grunts as the blade slips between metacarpals with a sick, wet punch of sound. Hurts like a bitch, but not so much that he doesn't close his fingers — shakily — over Carver's, holding him there.

It takes him a few seconds of winded breathing, adrenaline-dulled pain spiking along every nerve, and the sudden burst of shock-sweat across his skin before he's regulated enough to speak again, and then: ]

You done?

[ He leans right into Carver's space as he says it. Forcing eye contact as a matter of course. Because he knows that Carver doesn't actually want him dead — he wants a fight, for the same reason that Sam used to pick them in bars all over Europe — because it feels good, it feels right and it's easier than facing whatever demons live in your head. ]

[ Okay, Carver thinks, and something inside his chest twists and aches. Okay. You wanna play it like this? Sam's leaning in close, forcing contact. They're almost touching. He can see the way that Sam's pupils contact with the pain and still the other man doesn't bow. Doesn't falter. Just watches him.

Carver twitches like a horse shaking a fly. He headbutts Sam because he can't think of anything better to do. It'll bloody both of them. They deserve to be blooded. ]

[ Carver headbutts him, and Sam feels the crunch of a broken nose even as he jerks back, not quite losing enough momentum to blunt the impact. That's the moment his anger surges up, and he just sees — fucking red. Discipline wars with fury, clear-minded enough to fall back on Hapkido — using the grip on the man's hand for a grapple, shoulder tucked down towards centre mass. The knife jars in his hand, but he's not feeling it any more beyond a dull, distant acknowledgement that it's going to be a nasty fucking wound. And then Sam's bracing his back foot against the ground, doing his best to flip Carver down onto the ground. ]

[ Stupid, Carver thinks, right before he feels Sam's hand going tight around his own. You stupid fucking moron, you let him get in close. He realizes what's going to happen with an almost clinical detachment right before it does. Gravity and leverage. Physics. Sam knows what he's doing and doesn't blink from pain. And Carver's slow, distracted, getting sentimental all over again.

He wonders if the dough was any good. If Sam made it himself. And then he goes down hard, unable to stop it.

He yells even as the breath gets knocked from his lungs and tries to twist, to get Sam off balance. Knock him down too so they'll scrap on the ground. Make it fucking ugly. ]

[ Except that submission holds are a whole thing in his style of choice — and Sam has no intention of staying on his feet, so when Carver tries to knock him off balance, Sam turns it into all the momentum he needs to drop down on him, one knee planted firmly in the middle of his chest, the other pinning his elbow — controlling the hand that doesn't have the knife.

He hauls his free hand back like he's about to punch this idiot right in the face, and instead he just strikes the ground beside his head, not hard enough to do anything more than bruise up his knuckles. ]

I'm not going to kill you. [ He says that flatly. Empirical truth. ] But I'm not above breaking your arms if you don't quit being a bitch before my adrenaline wears off.

[ Look what you did, the commander whispers. Look what you fucking did, son. You let him get you on the ground. You deserve what's gonna happen now.

You can't let the enemy get you on the ground. That's where the bad shit happens.

Carver yells, not caring about the noise. Ready to tank the blow that Sam's about to land on his face. Pulp his nose. He's ready for it, almost wants it. Anticipation sings with the adrenaline. Sam's on top of him, got the leverage, got the better angle. What happens next is just going to happen.

Except, Sam doesn't hit him. Just strikes the ground. Says what he says.

Carver makes a brittle noise. Almost but not quite laughter. ]

You fucking pussy.

[ Do it, he thinks, fucking do it. ]

[ Sam forces their entwined hands down to the ground so he can lean in close. His nose is dripping blood, he has to twitch his head to one side so he can rub his face down against his shoulder. It hurts, and he feels the cartilage grind. Then: ]

The fuck happened in Korangal that made you think killing someone, or getting killed, is better — easier — than sharing a meal?

[ Said meal, or at least the bread component, is starting to burn.]

You aren't the only person that's seen or done fucked up shit. Or are you just pissed that I made you face a part of yourself you're afraid of?

[ Are they still talking? Carver feels his breath hitch as Sam leans in close and that's as good as flinching, or maybe worse. They're too close like this, hands entwined - an intimacy. It makes him think of drowning and Pope's hands going tight on his shoulders. Steadying him for the test. A kindness, Carver knows, a kindness, because who else would hold him through that shit? Who else would care enough to bother? But Sam's bleeding and he won't let go, hasn't put the knife through Carver's eye or his throat and the anticipation of whatever's coming next makes him feel sick. Because it'll be bad, won't it, and Carver knows he'll have to take it.

You let the enemy get you on the ground, you deserve what's done to you. It's as natural as gravity. And what's the point of being scared of gravity?

Carver takes a rattling breath. Sam's saying things but the words almost drift; Carver can't really make sense of them. His gaze flicks to the shadows massing in the corner just beyond Sam's shoulder. Boots and black. Masks in the dark. The shine of the commander's glasses. Don't make a fuss now, son.

He stills. It's better not to thrash for this part. Makes it go faster. ]

[ He sees it happen. The splintered fracture into disassociation. And Sam knows, nothing he says is going to get through now. He pins Carver's arm — the one with the knife — with his other hand and pulls his right hand back until the knife comes free, glistening wetly along the blade. That hurts too, blunted only a little by adrenaline. His vision goes black at the edges in a surge of pain as he tucks the hand in against his chest and sucks a breath in through gritted teeth.

He has the presence of mind, at least, to take the knife and throw it to the other side of the room. The holstered gun. Then he gets up. He needs to tie the hand, because the blood loss is going to hit him like a truck now that the blade's not stoppering the flow — but first, instead, he steps sideways towards the fire and flips the flat bread over onto its other side with his good hand. The top is black and charred, and Sam just gives Carver a hard, disappointed stare. ]

You're eating this one.

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