#Rorke is not a good guyyyy

[bryhoney]

Recognisance Pt.6

Hello!! I hope you enjoy! Just wanted to say thank you for all the support this fanfic has received so far :) I'm also sorry in advance :((((

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AO3

I've got an interview coming up for potentially a dream job offer so I'm prepping for that all the time at the moment - hence the slight delay in posting updates! But fingers crossed that all works out and it should be regular again!!

You’re seated opposite Gabriel and you note that he’s irritated at the commotion around you. No doubt he wanted to seat you in some private room to interrogate you but with the aftermath of the Ghost’s infiltration of the base - there isn’t anywhere to go. 

You’re in an office that hasn’t been soundproofed, people are frantically ferrying their wounded colleagues or scrambling to gather information from each other. 

Gabriel will be called away soon, he will have to answer to someone or orchestrate the next steps the Federation will take. He’d likely take the brunt of the blame for this mishap. 

“Now, I’m only going to ask you nicely, once. You let them out, didn’t you?” He’s smoking, which you find unnerving. He’s doing everything he can to appear calm, but you’re sure he’s shaken by the breach and furious with your actions. 

You don’t answer immediately, you’re not sure what the best approach here is. Despite everything, he’s still the only constant you have in your life. 

“You didn’t tell me,” you’re oddly proud at how stable your voice is, you feel numb to everything other than the man opposite you, and you’re not even sure he’s an ally anymore. 

He sighs, moving to stand. You can tell he’s wrestling with himself to maintain his composure. He looks out the window at the flurry of soldiers outside the office. 

“I thought it’d be better this way, I’ll explain it all when this is over,” he sounds sincere, gesturing to the hallway to indicate that ‘this’ is the catastrophic impact of the ghosts.

“You killed my father,” you whisper, hating everything about this situation. You hate that your heart aches for a man you don’t know. You wished, more than anything, to remember the man whose voice you’d heard consoling you, who sounded like he loved you. 

He turns back to you, “He wasn’t your father in the end, he was a liar - a traitor,” his voice is cold and hard and the look he gives you is lethal. 

You’d also betrayed Rorke.

A soldier bursts into the room, “Sir,” his attempt to portray a calm indifference is admirable despite the heavy breathing that gives him away. 

“I’ll be back soon, I expect you to be in your room until we can secure the site again,” Rorke says calmly before turning his back to you. He strides out of the room, following the younger man towards the main control centre. 

It takes you a second to stand, hesitant to walk through the soldiers. Did they know who you were? Would they kill a relative of a Ghost? A Walker? 

You hold your head up high and turn towards the living quarters, trying not to look at the extent of the damage that just a handful of men wrought onto a base full of highly trained operatives. 

—

Time moves very slowly as you sit and wait in your room for Gabriel. 

You’re sure that outside your room, the base is still in chaos but it’s completely silent in here. You’ve shut out every thought and memory that tries to resurface as you quietly try to piece together what you know. 

Firstly, You’re a Walker. Your brothers are Hesh and Logan Walker. 

From what you can recall, your childhood had been a happy one with the Walkers. This fact is less concrete, just moments of a normal, if somewhat eccentric family. 

Secondly, you were tortured by them. The memories of your time in the room are hazy and interwoven with snippets of pain. But it was them - you’re not sure what drove them to do that to you. What had you done to turn them so far against you? 

Rorke had told you that you’d been tortured to get to him. Who were you to Rorke? You had more ties to the Ghosts in Blood alone. You can’t recall being field-trained or dangerous enough to pose a substantial threat to them. 

But Rorke insisted that they wanted to recapture you.

But you were out in the field, and you had tried to kill someone. 

You had been raised by the leader of the Ghosts. Was it so unlikely to think you hadn’t also been taught some basic self-defence? 

Your brothers were ghosts. 

You-

“Keegan,” that was your voice, it was breathy and- 

Oh God. 

Oh God. 

What the ever-loving fuck was happening. You knew next to nothing and Rorke had kept you in the dark. You had no idea who to trust. 

Why didn’t he tell you? 

Your memories would come back. They had to, you couldn’t stand this awful limbo of not knowing who you were and what had happened. 

The door clicked open, and Rorke stepped into the room before locking it behind him. You felt small, entirely defenceless with him in this space. 

“How you holding up, sweetheart?” his tone calm, reassuring as though nothing had happened. You furrowed your eyebrows. You’d allowed his enemies to escape and now he was calling you pet names? 

“I’m alright,” your voice is small and your knees are now tucked up towards you. 

He sits at the foot of your bed, looking towards you in the darkness, “Today was- it wasn’t what we expected,” he’s being honest, so you hope to keep him calm and keep him talking. 

“No kidding,” you try smiling through the darkness at him. You’re, entirely preoccupied with self-preservation - it’s as though you’ve cornered a wild animal. 

He smiles back towards you, “I suppose it’s high time you knew the truth.” You're taken aback, this was not the route you thought this military strategist would take. You had convinced yourself he would try something more calculated than the truth. But, that is assuming this was the truth. 

You bring your arms up to hold yourself, “maybe," you’re being soft, giving him no reason to see any threat in you. 

“You’re not a Walker,” he says it as though it’s obvious and it earns a physical, knee-jerk response from you,

“I am! I am a-”  You’re furious, he’s going to lie to you again.

“Let me finish,” his tone is violent, final. He softens as you flinch from him, never once has he yelled at you like this. He’s volatile, you’ve always known that and yet-

“You were a Walker,” he adds, he sighs and meets your gaze again, and you don’t expect it. You’re silent so he’ll continue. 

“You were a Walker, God knows what you were before the Walkers took you in.” He tries a smile at you, clears his throat and reaches towards his pockets, “You’ve been a Rorke for just under three years now,” his hand extends towards you, he’s holding a ring. 

You’re blinking rapidly, you feel yourself pale as your stomach drops through the floor. 

No. 

“What?” you whisper, heart in your throat.

“It’s yours,” he says, and you take the ring gingerly, inspecting it as though it might trigger some long-buried memory of your time with Rorke, your husband. 

No. 

This isn’t right. 

“I don’t- I don’t remember any of this?” your voice is level and calm, but internally you’re trying to stitch together even more fragments of your life. 

He laughs, “It was rushed, and they hate me all the more for it.” He places a hand atop your knee and you don’t shrug him off. 

“This doesn’t make sense, I wouldn’t have joined the Federation if I were a Walker, we’d have been enemies? How did we even-?” your train of thought is derailed by the constant theorisations forming and collapsing in your head. 

“It’s a long story, kid, but, I was a Ghost once, before-” he pauses, clearing his throat,  “I was close with Elias,” he replies, and God- it sounds honest. You don’t have any timeline to place this all on to verify anything he’s saying. 

He looks at you, sighing as he continues, “I don’t expect you to wear it, they tried to destroy every part of me from your memory when they took you. I was foolish, I didn’t think they’d hurt you because they were.” He stands, and you track his movements. You feel stupid, even less certain. But he was so much older, how did you even meet - and yet- 

You believe him. 

“Gabriel, I-” You’re not even sure what you were going to say but you felt the need to continue. It makes sense, why the Ghosts would want you alive, why’d they want to hurt you. 

But they’re home. They were home once. 

“I’m sorry," he says, “I should have told you from the start, I didn’t want to overwhelm you.” He moves towards you and kisses the top of your head. 

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” Is all he says before he leaves. 

And you almost hate him for it, he has ripped away the idea that you had a family that loved you. Of course, you didn’t have a family, you only had Gabriel. 

But he was so much older, how did you even meet - how?

The man who has been nothing but respectful and kind. Your husband. 

It explains why the Ghosts want you. It explains why a highly capable, violent man remained calm with you despite freeing his sworn enemies. You hate how much it makes sense. 

“He’s dangerous, and he knows exactly how to kill us,” It’s your father, a briefing before a mission. 

Likely against Rorke. Your husband. 

You don’t remember any of this. 

The Ghosts had taken so much from you. 

You had so many questions. Despite the answers Rorke had given you, you felt more in the dark than ever. 

“You’re infuriating, you shouldn’t even be in that room, anything could-” You cut the man with the deep voice off by kissing him. He doesn’t hesitate - his hands reach for you. One hand on your waist pulls you towards him, the other holding the back of your head fingers in your hair as he devours you. He kisses you with such intensity your knees feel like they’re about to give out from beneath you. You whisper, “Shut up, Keegan,” against him as you lose yourselves in each other, he’s pushing you backwards until your back hits the wall. You gasp at the impact, and he raises one of your legs to his waist before he pushes his hips against yours, you moan into his mouth-

No. No. 

How could a Ghost, Keegan, do those things to you in your memory and then so easily carve a knife into your skin? 

You’re sobbing. Utterly frustrated at your inability to remember anything that could help you put your life back together. 

You weren’t a Walker after all.

[bryhoney]

Recognisance pt.2

previous

TW: Torture, Kidnapping, Drugging

This is shaping up to be looonggg.

Also on AO3

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The control room is a hive of activity; Men and women speaking frantically to one another as they crowd around screens. There are people running messages back and forth across the base, each one seemingly vital for the Federation's continued success. 

You find yourself standing alone, staring up at one of the boards in the command centre that is regularly updated with anything even remotely related to the Ghosts. It's dedicated to the most recent images and reports of the task force, some of the notes tacked onto the wall are just simple descriptors. 

It always takes you a second to muster up the courage to look at the board. It's Gabriel's shrine to them, and recently you'd adopted his mission; To understand these men to the best of your ability and hunt them down. You know you should hate them, fear them after what they did to you. But the memories of your time with them were mostly in the dark, their faces were blurry and secondary to the pain they inflicted. 

You'd read every file that Gabriel gave you regarding the ghosts. Most of them were heavily redacted or had large portions missing, individual pages torn away from the document. You had thought that going over these files would jog something in your memory, but as of yet, nothing. As such, you must have read every piece of information on the board in front of you several times over, you've made it a ritual since being allowed back to work. 

You recite the information silently. 

Two of the Ghosts are brothers, the Walkers. There was a third Walker amongst the Ghosts, Elias Walker, but Gabriel had killed him over two years ago. They -

They're ------. 

"----! You're school re----, your brot--- --- -----! -----! Leave h-- -l---" It's a voice you recognise, but from where? An older voice-

You turn to the other images, Merrick and Keegan. 

"Look at ---"

You're kissing someone, holding their head against the crook of your neck. You hear them whisper "mine," before you feel his teeth move against- it's that deep gravelly voice, it's-?

You audibly gasp at the memory and quickly cover your mouth, shaking the thought away. Inappropriate, incomplete. Shut up. 

Looking back towards the board, you take a shaky breath. These men hurt you and took everything from you and yet you hardly even remember them. A part of you worries about what damage it'll do to remember everything they inflicted upon you. 

"Oh ---" is it your name? A callsign? It's fuzzy and sounds-?

Your head is pounding. 

"NO! -----! I'll kill you! LOGAN! LO-"  It's another male voice, do you know who it is? It sounds so far away and yet...

Your feet are bleeding but you stalk forwards anyway.

Your feet are bleeding. 

You know that name, you know that voice. 

"Logan!" you're screaming, you can hear the panic in your voice.  

Your eyes flit upwards, towards the pictures of the Ghosts. 

LOGAN WALKER - M - 2001

Oh God. 

Your heart sinks and suddenly you dread the idea of remembering. You hate that one of the Ghosts is now more than a name on the wall. You suppress a sob, steeling yourself momentarily before moving towards Gabriel and the commanding officer. Despite being engrossed in their conversation, Gabriel must sense your discomfort as his hand moves to hover over the small of your back. His eyes never leave the man in front of him. 

Had you hurt Logan Walker? Is that why the Ghosts wanted you? The man's voice was furious, sincere, and threatening.

"Did you get that?" Gabriel asks, disturbing your train of thought. 

You shake your head, "I-" 

"There's been a sighting of them, New Mexico, we'll be flying out towards the border in three days, you're with me," he repeats. His tone is hard and unwavering, you know better than to argue but you can hardly help yourself. 

"With-? I don't have any field training, Sir," you stutter, taken aback at his proposition. Rorke was a man who almost exclusively lured his prey on foot, out in the open. He had told you that you were involved in the intelligence-based side of operations once upon a time. 

Rage. Blinding rage. You had shrugged your water-logged shoes off, stalking quickly towards the broad back in front of you. You held your knife tightly in your hand. You had the singular goal of eviscerating and killing -----. In the last few feet you launched -- ----- and -- -o---- --"

The memory is interrupted as Gabriel laughs, "Oh, don't you worry, we just want 'em to see you". 

It's dark. It's always dark. 

Someone had drugged you, you kept repeating this under your breath, trying to remind yourself that the shadows and noises you can hear moving around in the room aren't real. They're just hallucinations. 

Not real. Don't look at them. 

It becomes harder to ignore the bright eyes that blink at you from across the room sporadically. Figures would move in front of you, at inhuman speed. They weren't real. They weren't real.

You yell into the abyss, "Hey! I can see you! You're not real! You. Are. Not. REAL!" your voice is hoarse. It hurts to scream but you do so anyway.

Your chair spins and suddenly you're face-to-face with a skull.

No. A man wearing one of the Ghost masks. You couldn't make out which one they were. The stains on the mask were moving and shifting.

He grips your face hard between his gloved fingers, his voice sounds warbled and is almost static-y in quality. Colours shift around him as he moves, creeping into the holes of his mask. It's beautiful and terrifying all at once. 

Which one was he? 

His voice is cruel, "I'm real though, ain't I?" A hand creeps over your shoulder, digging into your skin before vanishing in the next second. You flinch at the sensation and the hand holding your jaw tightens. 

"AIN'T I?" He yells against the shell of your ear, a scream erupts from your chest. Your bones are shattering and knitting themselves together all at once. His voice is underwater and it's drowning you. 

The air around you splinters into blinding flashes. You're blinking rapidly, trying to adjust to the onslaught of light.

"Yes. You're real, you're real," you whisper, trying to draw all the air you can into your lungs. Your broken ribs prevent a full inhale. 

He's behind you, you hadn't seen him move. His mouth pressed against the shell of your ear and you sob at the sensation. 

"Oh, sweetheart," he whispers, the vibrations are needles of sound that pierce you, "are you afraid of the Ghosts now?"

You hear his laugh echo around the room, as a knife carves its way through the flesh of your sternum.

You hear someone screaming, it sounds like you. 

You wake up screaming, drenched in sweat. You launch yourself across the room and hit the wall hard, scrambling for purchase. You crumple to the floor, sobbing into the darkness as you rapidly assess the room around you. You're not in the hole. You're not back with the Ghosts. 

You're safe. You are safe. Safe.

Your hands come up to your chest, checking for open wounds but all that remains are the silvery, raised scars. It's the middle of the night, you've likely woken someone up. 

Your door crashes open and you throw yourself backwards once again, sliding across the wall. A cry leaves you and you hate how pathetic you sound. 

"It's okay, I've got you, baby. Daddy's always got you," your heart ached, your dad loved you. 

You wanted your Dad. You wanted to go home. You wanted to remember.

Gabriel stands in front of you for a moment before rushing to your side, assessing you. 

"Ssh. Ssh, I've got you" he whispers, pulling you towards him and you finally break, crying into his arms. Your hands rush to cover your face, legs tucking themselves closer to your body. 

"What did you see?" His voice is soothing, he runs a hand over your head, holding you close to him. 

"It was them - I was back in the room with-" You're sobbing freely, grateful he's here. 

"I know, I know. You're safe now. You're with me" He easily lifts you and places you gently on the bed, tucking you under the covers as he continues to hold you. 

You're uncomfortably warm in his embrace but for once, you're being held tenderly. Whilst your time in the hole isn't always clear, you can always remember the pain. 

That's how you fell asleep that night, in Gabriel's arms. 

You don't dream again for the rest of the evening. 

—

You’re terrified to be in the air, to be flying towards the conflict. Towards the ghosts. 

You’re doing all you can to not physically shake at the thought. You want to lash out and scream at Gabriel and yet you're relying on him to get you through this. How could he do this to you? He knew what this must be costing you, but he trusted you and saw your value. 

Fuck. 

“Sir, 10 minutes out” the pilot states across the comms. 

You might see them in just ten minutes and you hate how vulnerable you feel. You're absently thumbing at the sleeves of your dress, some thin grey thing that went passed your ankles. The rest of the team were in their uniforms, armed to the teeth whilst you sat there idly, entirely dependent upon them to protect you. Gabriel had disarmed you, made you weak. 

He argued that you were there for intel and behind-the-scenes work, so civilian clothes were appropriate. You wished that this was the only reason he'd given you, he'd gone on to explain that you were going to be used to draw them out. Gabriel wanted to entice them to act irrationally, apparently, they were furious you had gotten away from them. He was going to lure them out, and you didn't need weapons for that. 

You weren’t sure why he thought you’d be that important to them, or why they’d go against all their training to take you and Gabe down. But you trusted him, he was the Ghost Hunter, the best of the best. 

He was also your commanding officer. So, what he said was law. 

—

The landing pad was out in the open, in front of the base that overlooked the dry mountainous region it was nestled within. Gabriel wouldn’t tell you anything, not why he thought they might be overlooking the base at that time, why he didn’t want to engage with them face to face. How was he so sure they'd see you as you alighted the helicopter? How could he be so blase about the situation? They might just decide to fire some RPG as soon as you ste-

Shut up. 

You suppress a yelp as the helo touches down, taking Gabriel's hand as you move to step off the aircraft. Your stomach turns as his hands move to your waist to help you down.

Your dress whips around your ankles as the helo thrums back to full power, taking off almost immediately after the last soldier's boot touches down. 

“Dad’ll kill you – he catches you —eaking out – meet some b—-. Let al—- if Hes- ca—-- you —. You’re still the ba—-. Quick! Go– I’ll co—-” A kind voice, muffled still but there was laughing, smiles, comradery. Your teenage years? Your brother? Your father? 

You had a brother?

A family? Why couldn't-

You didn’t like how frequently these memories were coming back, how they were less fragmented and easier to understand. What else would come back-?

Before you could properly dissect the new memory, Gabriel had a hand on your shoulder, urging you to duck slightly as the helo took off. He began leading you to some of the men who’d been waiting for your arrival. They were smartly dressed and flanked by men on both sides. 

“Higher!” It was your voice, happy, laughing, young.

“You’ll fall!” A boy laughed at you, his voice deeper, older. 

“I’ll catch you!” another boy, younger, arms raised. 

The sun is in your eyes. 

You shook your head, dispelling the tears that rose to your eyes and you greeted the men alongside Gabriel. His hand had slid from your shoulder to your lower back.  

You smiled and nodded politely, thoughts torn between piecing together the revelation that you had a brother, someone else who called the same man, “Dad” and the uncomfortable feeling of Gabriel's hand on you, as though he was all that anchored you to Earth. 

After what felt like a lifetime, you felt yourself being manoeuvred across the landing pad, towards the very edge of the rooftop. It was a sheer drop, this base carved into the side of a mountain. He pushed you until your toes were over the edge, hovering over nothing. Your arms moved to grip him, "Gabriel?" You didn't plead with him to stop, you trusted him. His hands tighten their hold on you. 

You trusted him. You trusted him? 

“One of us” 

His voice was low as he whispered, “Can you feel them?”

“What?” you whispered, unable to understand his meaning. You felt completely out of your depth and terrified of the drop in front of you. 

“They’re out there, can’t you feel their eyes on you?” His hold tightens even further before he leans forward, over the edge. Your heart plummets and you gasp at the sight, whipping your head skywards, as though you could counterbalance him. You were leaning over a drop of at least 10 floors. It wasn’t his actions that terrified you though. 

He’s talking about the Ghosts. He was saying they were right there, watching you. 

“Sir, please - what if-” your heart rate is frantic. You were out in the open. They were out there. Watching you. 

“You’re good, they ain’t gonna shoot us out here, they’ll want to get closer for that”. His voice reverberating from your collarbone where his chin was resting. It was inappropriate, wrong.

“Only I get to —-” a hand was around your throat, his mouth was- 

He laughs at your breathy inhale, slapping his arm onto your shoulder and roughly turning you back to the compound. His change in demeanour was startling, but you realise that the Gabriel you know at the base and the Gabriel who thrived during the hunt were two very different people. 

He was right though, you could feel their eyes on you.

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