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lemonqii · 4 days ago

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OH MY GODDDDD GUN 😫😫

As One

Fed!Elias AU, part one. SFW (it’ll become nsfw though). Quite a bit of this first part is based off Devils Breath, which is intentional. Swear im not just copying it lol.

TW: blood, torture, vomit. it’s not too graphic but it’s there. Rorke is terrible, of course.

————————————————————————

The heat was suffocating.

Buzzing surrounded him, his head thick and cottony, pounding through his skull like a bass drum. Sticky skin and a dry mouth, Elias didn’t even need to open his eyes to understand what was happening.

He regretfully did so anyway, being greeted with the dim sight of some sort of hatch contraption, atop whatever hole in the ground he was carelessly thrown into. Every bone in his body ached, desperate to hold onto whatever strength he had left.

Mud coated his clothing, the heavy downpour soaking into the ground below, making his resting spot squish with every slight movement. Not that he wanted to move, but duty called. The deafening sound of a chopper whirled over his hole in the ground, a light that felt far too bright shining down on him.

Double checking, as he came to understand. Not searching. Not rescuing. Ensuring, that he was still in his place.

Merrick wouldn’t be obvious, not if he found me like this. They’d come quiet, he thought. Knew.

Elias also understood, in the back of his fuzzy mind, that he wouldn’t necessarily be getting out of this pit, not until he came and dragged him out. But he’d be out of sorts if he didn’t at least try. Why wouldn’t he try?

Bruised knuckles wrapped around the wet branches of his makeshift cell, eyes blinking to avoid being assaulted with the harsh rain. First trying a push method, only to fail once more as he fruitlessly tried to pull the hatch down toward his body instead, chains around his wrists clanking. Staked into the earth somehow, an initial wave of anxiety washed over him as he confirmed what he already knew.

He was stuck.

Stuck, but he’d been stuck before. He was a damn soldier. He gave it enough goes again until he realized that conserving his brittle energy would be the smarter option. His body was wracked with an ache of unknown origin, his mind not quite catching up to all that had happened beforehand. But he did remember pieces. Wasn’t as old as his boys liked to tease him for being.

Logan’s face was fresh in his mind. Twisted into an expression he couldn’t quite recognize, part of him felt fortunate for that. Bound to that chair above him, squirming and wriggling like it’d make anymore of a difference. He could hear the echoes of Hesh’s threats in the back of his head, vowing to kill Rorke. Crying out for the only two people he had left, clinging, like he did to his mother’s hip as a child.

Elias could feel the throbbing wounds on his chest burn from the bullets Rorke doled out, his hands trailing over them with a wince. They were no doubt on a fast track to infection, despite being shittily plugged and patched up between now and then. Who shoots you and then patches you up? A sick person, he decided.

His damned sick person.

He’d examine that lump in his throat another time. He didn’t have too long before the man in question showed up, he’d guessed. It was impossible to tell what time it was, the darkness of the sky above unrelenting. Impossible to tell how long he’d been here. Guessing by his wounds and his physical state though, not all that long.

He knew they had to be looking, though. That gave him an ounce of ease. The team looked for Rorke when he fell off the heli. For months. They searched for him, for their captain. He searched for Gabriel.

They had to be looking for him. Had to be. His sons would look for him. Merrick and Keegan would look. They’d all help.

Elias couldn’t remember what had happened after he passed out, though. Did Rorke hurt his boys? What happened to Merrick? Did Keegan make it back? Did they get out? Rorke was too unpredictable to gauge any of that comfortably.

The army had taught him how to keep his head on his shoulders. He wouldn’t dwell on the possibilities just yet.

He figured he might have time for that later.

—————————————————————-

Deep in the jungles of South America, Elias had little information to go off of as he found himself being manhandled out of the ground by two federation soldiers.

They looked more giddy than he’d liked.

Everyone had heard stories of what the Feds liked to do to their prisoners. Their victims. Hell, the proof was plastered all across the roughened skin of Gabriel Rorke. Branding him, the first of his kind to be taken to some place beyond hell, a space that transcended all others. Pure and utter terror.

The first of his kind. But not the last.

Elias’ head thudded on the soggy grass of the rainforest floor, groaning from the deep throb of his injuries. It was a split second decision he made, before he found his shackled feet kicking and twisting as methodically as they could out of the Feds grip.

“Perra reactiva, eh?” the soldier behind him chuckled, the man’s voice deeper than he expected to hear before a muddy boot landed against the side of his head, his vision blackening and taking over the burning white from the sun above.

The soldiers were younger, freshly trained and primed for the kill. Except Elias wouldn’t be killed by anyone. He hadn’t ever been all that lucky, he knew that much. His wife used to chastise him for saying it, telling him not to jinx himself, especially not in his line of work.

But it followed Elias around like a gray cloud, raining down on him without so much as a moment's notice. Bad luck it seemed, could alter the course of his life within the blink of an eye.

It was about twenty more seconds he counted until the two boys had him up on his sore feet, a balmy hand around the back of his neck, gripping tight as the muzzle of a gun sits itself on his lower back. Gnats swarmed his head, the blistering forest heat licking up his spine and drying his skin out already.

He didn’t argue their arrangement this time.

He forcibly walked toward a small structure a few paces away, to a hut like contraption that looked more flimsy and dingy than anything. Four pieces of aluminum, topless, so the sun can reflect off the walls he guessed. It housed a little metal bed, and some other nonsense he couldn’t quite make out from the outside view.

The soldiers talked over their comms only for a moment, before Elias heard that laugh. That deep, rumbly, godforsaken laugh. A shot of poison into his veins, souring his spirit immediately.

“Lieutenant…welcome!” Rorke swanked out. Out from the foliage, not making a sound otherwise. Phantom like, appearing out of nowhere as he locked eyes with Elias, a wicked little smirk on his scarred face.

Elias couldn’t miss the way Rorkes eyes roved over his ragged body, stripped of all his gear and weapons, the lieutenant looked more aged than usual. Chained and grimacing, he didn’t look nearly as threatening as he might have hoped in this situation.

“I see you’ve met my friends, haven’t ya?” Rorke taunted right off the bat, the two soldiers standing parallel to Elias with twin smirks of their own plastered on their faces. He didn’t speak to Rorke, not even when the henchman behind him dug that muzzle deeper into his back.

“Cat got your tongue, Lieutenant?” Rorkes smile dropped within the blink of an eye, his large form finishing its walk and stopping in front of Elias, arms crossed and eyes unreadable. Elias wasn’t afraid, no, he wasn’t sure what exactly it was he felt. Anger, frustration, disgust, a looming sense of anxiety? It was hard to pinpoint with the jungle heat weighing on his senses and the pain coursing through him.

And the lack of a game plan he had.

“That’s alright, Elias…I know just the thing to get ya talkin again” Rorke said, a dark satisfaction lacing his tone as he motioned his soldiers toward the hut behind him.

Elias wanted to fight, wanted to let the primal rage he felt unleash. Let the dam break and flood Rorke's jungle. But he knew better, knew better than to fight a losing battle. So he made his steps less defiant, figuring there was no use in arguing what was about to happen.

Rorke would give it to him regardless.

The older man almost enjoyed Elias’ uncharacteristic silence, as much as it irritated him. He followed his men into the hut, calling out for some other trigger happy little soldiers to bring their tools with them, to join the rest of the party.

Elias was stripped of his uniform and another piece of his dignity, strapped to the searing metal bed by two fed soldiers. His body was weak, covered in scratches and bruises of varying colors. The three gunshot wounds on his chest were inflamed and oozing, nasty fuckers that were slowly poisoning his bloodstream. It wasn’t too long before he could smell his skin singeing on the metal beneath him.

One soldier pried his jaw open, two helped shove a plastic tube down his throat and into his gut. Blood trickled hot from the corners of his mouth, sputtering on it as he uselessly fought against the restraints. His body was on fire and his head spinning.

What felt like a gallon of dirty water rushed down the tube and into Elias’ stomach, bloating him up and making his body go into panic mode. But he fought it, training kicked in like second nature, and he withstood it. Even with the soldiers laughing around him, mocking the gurgled noises he made.

Even with Rorke watching from the side, watching Elias lie unclothed and useless on the makeshift bed. The same one he’d been placed on, changed and transformed on. The one that still showed the receipts of his own body, skin and blood stewing with Elias’s now.

Bonding them.

——————————————————————

It was a cycle that survival and resistance training didn’t quite speak for. Tier ones are still human, after all.

Gabriel Rorke hadn’t been taken as a POW. No, he was the Federation's own toy. Theirs to create a brand new make and model of. With no one looking for the captain, he, in a manner of speaking, had become a real life ghost. No need for following the Geneva Convention when you weren’t handling a civilian or a soldier. Or a Marine, or a man.

No need for humanity when you’re no longer considered human.

Elias fell victim to this cycle. Pints and pints of water pumped into his stomach, punched out by Rorke’s henchmen. Filled back up and then thrown back up while his throat convulsed around nothing. Skin molded and burnt against searing metal, blood leaking from more than one orifice by this point. He hadn’t eaten in god knows how long, and the water forced in and then back out of his body wasn’t quite as hydrating as one would hope.

He was only able to wonder how it must’ve felt for his Captain. How Gabriel felt enduring the same treatment. Everyone breaks, the man had told him.

Water, spew. Water, spew. Cough up blood. Black out a little, but not fully. Not yet. Let the echoes of the Fed soldiers yelling knock more screws loose in his head. He was better than this. Stronger.

Until he wasn’t.

Until his body started to degenerate and his brain followed suit happily. Mind bouncing around various points of his life. He saw his boys, his men, in the distance. Then the sand sticking to the bloodied bodies of his brothers during Sand Viper. His wife, his boys again, infants in the hospital this time. Hesh’s head of thick hair, Logan’s insistence on not latching during a feeding.

His training was proving friable after all. Tripping around decades and wandering to stretches of his brain previously uncharted. Elias was thrown back into the pit as unceremoniously as possible, his wounds left to fester, his mind left to shrivel.

Rorke would not show him mercy. He didn’t expect any. That didn’t stop him from pitying Gabriel, though. Wondering what could’ve been, between every flashback his mind provided, every memory, good and bad.

Days went by, and he savored every rotten glimpse he got of the man.

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