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youngster-monster · 3 years ago

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Whumptober Day 25 & 31 - (as all things) lost and found

(title)

[escape | flight | hiding | disaster zone ]

When the sirens start to scream, Marc doesn’t recognize them immediately. He’s never heard that particular tone before. He doesn’t know what it means. He looks at Devrim — barely done hanging his rifle at the door after coming home from a shift with the militia — and finds his confusion mirrored in his husband’s eyes, although it quickly morphs into bright, wide-eyed pani

When the sirens start to scream, Mark doesn’t recognize them immediately. He’s never heard that particular tone before. He doesn’t know what it means. He looks at Devrim — barely done hanging his rifle at the door after coming home from a shift with the militia — and finds his confusion mirrored in his husband’s eyes, although it quickly morphs into bright, wide-eyed panic.

If Devrim — a soldier, used to dealing with Guardians — recognizes the tone and Mark doesn’t, then…

Devrim finishes the thought for him.

“Something terrible is happening.”

He throws his rifle back over his shoulder and wrenches the door open, bathing their entryway in reddish light and allowing the howl of the sirens to grow louder. The air smells like smoke. Mark recognizes the sound, now:

City-wide evacuation.

“Fallen?” He asks.

Devrim shrugs. He glances at Mark, then out into the street, shifting on his feet without quite daring to move.

Taking pity on him, Mark throws on the first jacket he can grab and adds, “I’m going to get the neighbors out.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No.” Grabbing his husband’s shoulder, Mark leans in to kiss him and silence his protests. “They’ll need you out there, coordinating the evacuation.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine. Go. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Planting a second kiss on Mark’s lips, Devrim jogs away. Mark watches his retreating back until he disappears around the corner. The smoke from some faraway fire swallows him whole. Mark can’t help the way his heart squeezes, the instinctual worry of letting Devrim go off into danger without him.

He can’t help protect the City, not like Devrim can. He can only do his best. So, resolutely, he slams their door and runs for Ms. Valor’s.

Ms. Valor is old even by exo standard but she’s by no means elderly. In many ways she’s in better shape than Mark himself. The two of them make quick work of ushering everyone on their block out of their house. It gets more difficult as the sirens grow louder and people realize this is an evacuation, not a mere run-to-shelter emergency. They start to want to bring things with them — precious possessions that would be no use out of the City. Mark has to carry out a child trying to pack all of her toys into a single bag. Her mother already has her arms full with her other daughter, and he ends up having to keep her with her face right next to his ear, crying. For such a small body she sure can be loud.

Valor, as a veteran scout for the City, always keeps a go bag ready by her door, and a few of the more paranoid among their neighbors carry their own duffels full of clothes and food. Mark envies them: Devrim has been telling him to prepare a bag for easy escapes for years and he’s been putting it off for about as long. Even the jacket he’s wearing isn’t his own: it’s a little big around the shoulders, marking it as Devrim’s.

Screams and crashes echo in the distance, covered intermittently by gunfire and the tell-tale sound of Guardians casting their Super. Mark holds the kid tighter. They cannot see any fighting yet but Guardians tend not to stay in one spot for long.

“Look!”

At the cry erupting from the crowd around him, Mark looks up and sees—

A colossal machine closing its limbs around the Traveler.

There’s a sound… No, a sudden absence of a sound, like all the air leaving the City at once, like a sudden void where some shrill sound used to be, unheard. Mark falters — then he starts running.

Who’s attacking them? Is Devrim fighting them, or is he running too? Where is he, is he safe? The questions flash in Mark’s head as he runs past empty houses and weaves around stampeding civilians. His heart is lodged somewhere between his mouth and his chest, beating too fast. Fear sits heavy on his lungs, but he pushes it aside, focuses on his immediate survival instead. Else he’ll go mad.

He can worry later, once he and Devrim are both safe. For now he has to believe that his husband will make his way back to him, as he always has before.

Driven by instinct more than conscious thought, Mark heads for the nearest evacuation tunnel, calling for any people whose path he crosses to follow him. Most fall into steps without questions, too panicked to doubt that he knows what he’s doing. By some miracle the little group does not stumble upon any enemy on their way.

The tunnels run under the whole city in a tight grid system that every child learns by heart in case of a situation just like this one. The militia is in charge of keeping them clean and well-stocked and Mark likes to tag along with Devrim when he has the time for it: he finds his way back to the armored door that marks its entrypoint easily enough.

Once underground, he slows down, mindful of those among them who cannot run as much as him. They’re relatively safe here, anyway: the tunnels, lit only by emergency lights, echo with their voices only. The din of battle is muffled by the door once it falls closed behind them.

Where’s the rest? Mark wonders. This branch of the evacuation route is flagged as the main exit for a few blocks, but he doesn’t find any sign of people going through before his own group. The dust hasn’t been disturbed and floats in peaceful motes in the rays of light cast by the emergency lights. Perhaps they’re the first to make it; someone has to be, right? Doesn’t mean they’ll be the last.

His arms are starting to tire from carrying a whole eight-year old but the girl is starting to drowse off, exhausted by her own fear, and he doesn’t want to wake her up and make her walk. Stopping for a second, Mark considers the situation. Shimmying to balance her whole weight on one arm, which frees his other one to go dig through his pockets for his comm. She sniffles a bit but doesn’t wake.

The device turns on without a fuss and Mark fiddles with it until the radio channels appear on the screen. The short-range emergency frequency is nothing but static; every other channel is dead silent.

No news is good news. Right?

“Anything?”

Shaking his head no, Mark puts his comm back in his pocket. Valor sighs, a sound like steel wool on cast iron, and jerks her chin towards the path before them. It splits off into three different tunnels, each labeled clearly.

One leads to the nearest bomb shelter. The next goes to the militia outpost for this sector of the City, and the last heads for the outskirts proper, beyond the wall.

“We should start moving again.”

Mark’s heart yearns to go for the second path. Devrim’s unknown status weighs heavily on his mind. Besides, they are in no way prepared to head off into the wilderness outside the City for any extended period of time. It’s still early in September and few among the group are wearing clothes adapted to walking through the cold and, apart from Valor’s trusty old Roderic-C, he doubts anyone carries a weapon. Even if they did, they have no plan, no directives. The outpost would be their safest bet…

But not their smartest. Whoever is attacking the City targeted the Traveler. Nowhere is safe; least of all the center of operations of one of the City’s main defensive forces.

“We need to get as far out as we can. There should be a few emergency caches along the way.”

And if there aren’t, it’s only September. It hasn’t started snowing yet: they can survive a few days out if they stay very, very close to each other for warmth.

Valor pats his shoulder companionably. She doesn’t bother with reassurances, but she does offer to help him carry the kid, which he takes her up on.

She hands him her gun in exchange. Its weight in his palm feels strange. For all that he’s learned to wield a pistol a few years back at Devrim’s behest, he’s never had to use one outside of a shooting range before.

They swap twice more before the group finds the first emergency cache. The girl has started to stir by then, and Valor puts her down with no little relief to go rifle through the supplies with Mark. The caches are kept stocked so that they’re always operational, but they’re also filled with the bare necessities only: water purification tablets, some ration bars, survival blankets, bandages. No clothes, though that was a long shot anyway. It’s still a relief. Mark starts distributing the supplies through the group, warning them as he goes that they’re in for a long walk.

Someone asks where they’re going and Mark, caught short, stutters: “The Farm.”

It’s a long shot. Suraya’s outpost is on the outskirts of the EDZ, a full week’s walk from the City for a single healthy person. A relatively large group with children, and elderly and disabled people will take twice that amount of time at least. Their rations will not hold up that long.

It might also very likely be their only shot. The Farm is the most secure location Mark knows of outside of the City. They’ll just have to hope that they find some help on the way, be it another outpost or some wildlife that Valor can trap for them.

No one protests the decision. Probably because most of them have no idea what or where the Farm is, but Mark takes it as a win regardless. It’s a wonder what one can achieve simply by appearing sure of oneself.

They stop for the night near the end of the tunnel, when the dusty air starts to smell like clean cold snow and pines. Still no sign of another living soul. Mark refuses to take it as a bad sign.

He chews on a ration bar half-heartedly, so tired he can barely swallow. Most of his attention resides on the comm in his lap. He got tired of looking at the dead channels a while ago and went to turn it off, but was stopped in his tracks by the home screen.

It’s set as a picture of Devrim and Suraya, grinning widely at the camera with bits of straw all over their clothes. Suraya is holding out a chicken and Devrim has two more, one under each arm looking like disgruntled baggage. Mark stares at the picture until his eyes sting and goes to sleep with his back to the wall and his nose buried in the collar of Devrim’s jacket. It smells like his aftershave; like home. He wonders how long it’ll take before the scent fades — if he’ll ever get to smell it again, after that.

The wide open air they walk into come morning has Mark shivering within minutes. He burrows deeper in his jacket, tucks his chin under the collar and wraps the survival blanket tighter around his shoulders. Walking will warm them up. That or they’ll die of exposure before next sunrise; either way this won’t last.

The reality of the situation sunk in during the night, leaving Mark cold, scared, and struggling to feel optimistic regarding their fate.

The City was invaded; the last he saw of his husband was while Devrim was running straight for danger. He longs for the warmth of a home he might never see again. There’s still no news of the Guardians, or of anyone else for that matter, and he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his days running for his life.

It’s not a great morning to say the least.

In the absence of a better option, though, he’ll just have to keep walking. Mark is too old to lay down and wait for death. Time grows more precious the less you have left; he intends to spend every single year of the decades he has left with Devrim. This requires that he survives, so he will. And he knows Devrim will do the same. He just has to have faith.

At least it’s not snowing, he muses. They walk that much faster for it, and the air warms up enough as the day advance that it’s almost bearable.

They stop when they must, and more than once Mark finds himself having to help carry someone needing more frequent breaks than they could afford to take. They eat on the go and try to liven up their march with scattered conversation and songs that struggle to lift the tangible weight of fear bearing down on them. They make camp at nightfall against a rock outcropping that protects them from the worst of the wind and crowd together in an effort to stay warm in the absence of fire.

In the morning they find the remnants of someone else’s camp on the other side of their shelter. The ashes have long gone cold and there’s blood sprayed over the stones surrounding the old campfire. Valor, scouting ahead, slowly shakes her head at Mark. When he makes his way to her he catches a glimpse of boots peeking from behind some dry brushes. A meagre cover that someone tried to drag themself behind before succumbing to their wounds. The boots look Guardia-grade, yet there are little to no signs of a struggle.

It looks like a one-sided slaughter.

Mark wonders what it means, that a Guardian would not fight — would die so easily — and worried at the explanations his brain conjures up. Valor and him share a look. They both remember the machine aimed at the Traveler.

She gestures at the ground. “See those tracks? That’s a whole Cabal squad. Look, there’s the hounds.”

“Are they still near, do you think?”

“Doesn’t seem like it. Looks a day old at least. Better stay low, though, just to be safe.”

Nodding, Mark goes to spread the word.

They’re quiet after that, what little levity they had managed to pretend their way into keeping snatched away by the gruesome spectacle of the ransacked camp.

The day passes slowly, silently; the next one goes by in a blur as fatigue starts to catch up with Mark. He’s not sleeping well. Even if he were, most of the civilians cannot keep watch at night, and he often forgoes hours of sleep to do it in their stead. What little rest he gets is fistful, waking up at every sound. The ration bars are not enough for his body to keep up with the energy demand of hours upon hours of walking, skirting around the fires they sometimes see burning in the distance. Soon there will be no rations left at all.

They have yet to cross paths with anyone else, living or dead, since the bodies glimpsed on the second day. They can only guess at human presence by the destruction visible from their vantage point. Mark keeps an eye on his comm at all times, but it stays stubbornly silent.

Despite Valor’s experience, it’s towards Mark that the group turns for guidance. They know of her, but they know Mark, because he’s spent the better part of his adult life trying to outshine Devrim in terms of community outreach.

Of course Yalerian will follow him: Mark helped fund the community kitchen that kept him and his children fed after Fallen killed his wife in action and left them without a paycheck besides the modest universal income the Consensus gives to every adult citizen of the City. Same goes for Mori, who slept on his couch for three months while her house was rebuilt after a catastrophic gas leak in her district. He worked closely with Porto to set up a community garden, and put Viel-1 in contact with Sam when she lost her Ghost.

He’s an incurable busybody, and all he’s got to show for it is a leadership role he’s terrified of. Even worse, he can’t ask Valor to take his place: without these new responsibilities occupying his every waking moment, he’d be making himself sick with worry over Devrim.

Instead he can make himself sick with worry over their dwindling food reserves and the cold one of the children caught that threatens to turn into pneumonia if it goes untreated for too long. Her miserable coughing keeps him awake at night; her mother is quite the same, according to the dark bruises under her eyes.

“Still nothing?” Valor asks on the sixth morning, jerking her chin towards the comm cradled in the crook of his arm as he shoves both his hands in his pockets to warm them up.

“No. Radio silence on all channels.”

He doesn’t have to tell her what haunts him — that they might not live to see that silence broken.

“How much farther until the farm?” He asks instead.

“Half a week at our current pace, but I don’t think we’ll be able to keep it up for much longer.”

They have two days of food left, at most — three if they ration it. Mark can go a few days without, but he’s healthy and hasn’t gone entirely grey yet. He can’t say the same for some of the people in their group. He’s considering telling Valor to go ahead of them and get help while they remain here, conserving their strength and praying like hell that no Cabal will find them, but the roar of an engine cuts him off just as he’s opening his mouth.

WIthout thinking, both him and Valor throw themselves into the underbrush, branches scratching Mark’s cheeks as he flattens himself against the ground. Just in time: a Cabal ship flies over their heads seconds later, screaming like torn metal and trailing black smoke. It disappears behind the treeline with a high-pitched whine of failing machinery.

Holding his breath, Mark prepares to jump out of hiding and run for the rest of the groupe,a little way off—

And nearly chokes on his spit as another ship flies by. A human jumpship, guns blazing as it gives chase to the Cabal fighter.

Mark doesn’t wait for it to disappear before he hits the ground running.

“Where are you going?” Valor whisper-yells after him.

“I know that ship!”

Glancing upward every few steps as if keeping the ship in sight would keep it from leaving without them, Mark bursts into the small clearing they made camp in the previous night. He rushes past alarmed refugees and throws himself at the bag of supplies they took from the evacuation tunnel. Digging through their meagre possessions, he finally unearthed a distress flare.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Valor warns as he aims for the sky.

“So do I.”

He pulls the trigger.

They all watch the flare rise into the sky, glowing bright red against the clouds, before slowly fading to nothing. For a long moment, nothing happens. Mark’s fingers twitch on the gun as he considers shooting another flare. He forces himself to be patient. They only have three total — well, two, now. Every signal counts.

Then, like music to their weary ears, the low hum of an approaching jumpship fills the air. Mark’s eyes start to water from staring at the bright white sky for so long. He blinks and does not look away until the ship makes a first pass above them. It flies high above their heads, zeroing on the flare, and then circles back to find its origin. Mark can’t help the pointless impulse to wave his arms. As if that small movement could make them more noticeable from such a large distance. The ship dips suddenly on its third passage, iron belly brushing against the top of the trees.

It stops above them, swaying with the force of its own arrested momentum, and hovers in place for one breathless, torturous minute before starting to lower itself to land.

Mark is running before the cargo door has fully opened.

He all but throws himself at the man who walks out of it. Sam catches him with a huff as all the air is punched out of his lungs by the impact. The hard shape of his assault rifle digs into Mark’s chest as they trade a brief, tight hug. Sam soon peels Mark away, although he keeps his hands on Mark’s shoulders and squeezes them companionably, and gives him a quick once-over. The Guardian’s eyes soften as he takes in Mark’s appearance.

“God, Sam, I’m glad to see you.”

“Me too.” Sam glances past him to the refugees huddled together with a kind of smile that says Of fucking course. “When we heard about the City—”

“What happened? We started running as soon as they sounded the alarm, I don’t know—”

“The Guardians have lost their Light,” Sam says in a tone meant for them alone. “It’s… It doesn’t look good. We’ve been leading the ones we can find to the Farm, Suraya’s working on repairing the radio relay, but— it’s been real ugly.”

“The Guardians… damn.”

Mark rubs his face with two hands and sighs. With the terrible weight of fleeing blindly forward taken off his shoulders, he suddenly feels shaky, unmoored, and very, very old. “Have you heard from Devrim at all?”

“I haven’t been anywhere long enough to hear much of anything,” he says apologetically. “I’ve been pulling double duty making rounds around the EDZ, keeping Cabal off our trail. But I’m sure he’s fine. You know Devrim, he’ll bury us all.”

The worst thing is, this isn’t Sam lying for his sake. The man can’t sit still when there’s work to be done: he probably hasn’t set foot on solid ground for any longer than strictly necessary to pick up and drop off survivors. Mark would be surprised if he and Suraya have exchanged a single word since the beginning of this week.

As if to prove him right, Sam pats him awkwardly and steps back, his one good eye jumping from Mark to the group of survivors. “Listen. We should get y’all to safety as soon as possible. I can’t take everyone aboard, but I’m gonna go get help before more Cabal start heading this way, okay?”

With a weary nod, Mark tucks the flare gun in his belt and goes to corral the most vulnerable members of their group towards Sam’s ship.

“What if he’s shot down before he gets there?” Someone asks. “We would just be sitting ducks, waiting for help that will never come.”

Mark hands the last of the children to Sam, who buckles them into their seat. This is a true early-City age dropship, meant to carry multiple fireteams around active combat zones, and the kids look comically small in the seats made for heavily-armored Guardians.

“Sam is one of the best covert pilots I know. We have nothing to fear.”

The group settles with no more protests, although they all look deeply worried. Especially the parents who could not embark alongside their children for a lack of space. Mark can’t imagine how it feels to leave your child in the hands of a stranger who’s about to fly a military vehicle through hostile territory.

Still, they trust him enough to let it happen. He won’t forget that.

“Be careful,” he tells Sam before the man seals off the cargo door.

“I always am,” he replies sincerely. “See you in a bit, Mark.”

They watch him fly off and settle in for a long wait.

The next few hours are excruciating, passing by slowly as they huddle together, out of sight from passing ships. Everyone is shivering, both from the cold that sinks into their bones with their lack of movement and from fear as Cabal ships fly past them throughout the day. Mark does what he can to keep the group calm, no matter how on edge he feels. The flare gun sits heavy between his legs, his two hands wrapped around it the way one would hold a beloved stuffed animal for comfort.

Keeping himself occupied proves to be a challenge. Counting clouds and clumps of grass only goes so far and he soon finds himself having to herd his thoughts away from pointless worries. No one has heard from Devrim since the initial attack. What if he’s—

No. Back to the scenery, or what little he can see of it with night falling quickly. What would he do if a Cabal soldier found them right now? He has no idea, but thinking up possible disaster scenarios keeps him from working himself into a panic over his husband’s unknown fate.

And then, because the universe loves nothing more than to grant wishes in the worst possible way, the air once again fills with the roar of Cabal machinery — heralding the approach of more than one ship. This is not a mere patrol. A convoy, perhaps, passing by on their way somewhere else?

Huge searchlights cut through the night like knives. Mark drags in a breath of painfully cold air and peels his back from the boulder he has been leaning against for hours. Crouching close to the ground, he watches as Cabal ships circle them. Their trajectory is easy to track against the black backdrop of the night sky: their lights draw their path as easily as paint on a canvas, a wide circle slowly becoming smaller and smaller.

“They must be tracking the ship your Guardian friend shot down,” Valor whispers from a few feet away. In the space between the passage of searchlights, she is only visible as three points of green light floating in the void. The one at mouth level turns diffuse and soft as her exhale fogs up in the frigid air.

Mark swears quietly. She’s right, of course. Worse, he knows he’s to blame for that. Sam was a covert operative before he lost his Ghost: he knows better than to leave anything behind to track the wreckage by. If Mark had waited just a little bit longer for his ship to fly back over them instead of firing the flare immediately, the Cabal would never have known to come sniffing around here. And now they might find them all.

No matter. There isn’t time to throw blame around now. He can berate himself later, once they’re safe.

He wonders what Devrim would do in his place. Probably something cautiously bare and clever involving that beloved sniper rifle of his.

The flare gun weighs heavy in his hands.

“They’re getting closer.”

Someone whimpers at Valor’s words.

“I have an idea.”

“Famous last words, Mark.”

He smiles, humorless and unseen. “Don’t move if you can help it. I’ll be back.”

Ignoring her protest, Mark takes advantage of a moment of darkness to dart out of cover.

He moves blindly through the trees, navigating only by the glimpses he gets from the Cabal spotlights. Once he’s far enough from the group, he aims the gun sideways and pulls the trigger.

The flare flies through the underbrush and bounces off trees in a way he hopes can be mistaken from gunfire at a distance. Then, praying for this to work, he starts running.

The sound of engines grow louder as one of the ships pick up on the source of light and zeros in on it, tracking human presence by its fading glow. Mark veers sharply left, trying to make his position as confusing as possible. One flare left; he’ll have to make it count.

The ship flies overhead, so close its passage ruffles the hair on his head. No other follows: they must still be scouring the mountain flank, getting closer to the group.

Panting from exertion, lightheaded with fear and fatigue, Mark skids to a stop in a vaguely open area and loads his last shot.

That one he aims straight up.

“Come and get me, bastards,” he whispers to himself. He grins at how silly it sounds.

Still. Pretty cool, he thinks as the flare flies straight up.

It explodes near instantly — shot mid-air by Cabal artillery as the first ship backtracks his way. More ships head his way. Lit starkly by the burst of red light and sitting still on open terrain, Mark is a perfect target.

He hits the ground running.

Downhill, with stones and trees in his way, he’s as likely to break his neck as he is to get shot. He runs sideways instead, letting the Cabal’s blind firing light his way and weaving between obstacles as they become visible to him in brief bursts of fire. More than once he avoids head-on collision by sheer animal instinct, ducking before his eyes have fully processed the visual information of an obstacle in his way. At least they’re not aiming directly at him yet; that luck won’t last though.

It’s a root that does him in. He doesn’t see it in time to avoid tripping on it. His foot gets stuck and he falls flat on his face, feels the flare gun fly out of his grip. Without ammo it was useless anyway but he already misses the comforting weight of it.

The ground shakes. Cabal troops, Mark’s mind supplies before shutting down in terror. They transmated to the ground to better hunt him down.

A bullet buries itself a foot away from his hand. It gets him moving at least. Mark crawls away and scrambles to his feet, wavering only a second before starting to run again.

Devrim took him hunting, once, and he remembers spooking a hare and watching it run just like this — zigzagging between trees, blind with terror. The hare certainly didn’t have bullets flying all around it. A few come a little too close to hitting for comfort. Mark veers left, right and backtracks around his pursuers so many times he can barely tell up from down, let alone where he comes from.

His lungs burn and his legs shake and he doesn’t want to die here.

The air whistles — a sound so sharp it cuts through the chaos of engines, gunfire and marching troops calling out to each other. A weightless moment follows it, and then—

A conflagration as a Cabal ship goes down in flames.

Unseen in the night, two more jumpships fly by, trackable only by the way the air moves around them. Their shots are lost among the Cabal’s but they hit true, sparks and smoke bursting from the enemy ships after each rattle of mounted guns. Mark sees another ship explode in the distance and hears screams as another spray of bullets find their mark in his pursuers.

The jumpships make two more passes, spinning out of the way of retaliation from the Cabal. The enemy cuts their losses eventually, ships peeling away in an effort to escape total destruction. Mark slows to a stop, heaving, and hears—

Nothing. No one is after him anymore.

He’s alone.

With no idea which way to walk to rejoin the group and no flare left, he doesn’t know how to signal his survival, let alone his position. It’s too dark for anyone to see him. Maybe he should head for one of the crashed ships, but the chance of meeting a surviving legionnaire instead of investigating Guardians is too high. If only the radio frequencies still worked—

His comm, of course.

The trusty old solar-powered communication device glows a blessed, gloriously bright blue as Mark turns it on and starts waving it above his head. He stares at the sky, hoping they haven’t landed yet, hoping someone will see him before leaving for good.

His hair whips around his face as a ship flies above head. A beat, and the wind kicks up again — the violent, sustained agitation of a hovering aircraft right above him. Lights pierce the night as the pilot prepares to land.

Mark’s arm drops at his side, exhausted. His legs shake, threatening to give in. Whole parts of his body throb and burn from taking falls on sharp rocks or clipping trees.

Finally the air stills, the wind falls. The ship opens with a hiss of depressurized air. A Guardian leans against the edge of the opening and peers into the night.

“Are you alone?” They call out, puzzled.

Mark gives them a thumbs up and promptly collapses.

He doesn’t pass out, thank god. The Guardian is quick to come help him up and he manages to walk to the ship more or less under his own power, although she nearly has to carry him inside. She carefully lowers him in an empty seat and fastens his seatbelt for him when his hands prove to shake too badly to manage it.

The rest comes to him in glimpses as the adrenaline crash and more than a week’s worth of exhaustion work together to pull him under.

Dimly, he notes people being brought aboard, the lights of more ships forming a protective perimeter around the survivors, then he blinks and they’ve lifted off, the sky passing them by through the tiny viewports of the ship.

The low rumble of the aircraft finishes to lull him into sleep, and he drowes the rest of the way, too wired to succumb to unconsciousness but too weary to stay fully awake.

Mark only truly wakes up hours later when somebody shakes his shoulder. He blinks furiously, frowning when he finds a face peering down at him.

“What…”

“We’re here,” Valor says simply.

She helps him up and stays close as he wavers on his feet. His whole body feels like one giant bruise.

Together, they stagger out into the light, into the Farm.

Mark drinks it in like a man coming out of the desert straight into a river. He takes in the tents scattered around the open field, what looks like a triage area with people walking through rows of prone, groaning forms, a few shell-shocked Guardians sitting huddled together and others keeping watch with their weapons held tight against their chest. His heart squeezes as he sees the wounded and grieving refugees.

Then he sees Suraya, tall and proud as always as she gesticulates at a bunch of people he assumes to be Guardians. She glances up at the newly-arrived ships and does a double take as she notices him. He takes a step forward, hands lifting unconsciously towards her. One of the people she was talking to looks up as well, and—

Oh.

Mark’s heart beats harder as his eyes meet those of Devrim. His husband’s lips move but he’s too far to hear anything. He doesn’t need to, anyway: he can guess from the expression on his face that the nearly-unbearable relief choking him is felt in equal measure by the man still separated from him by too great a distance.

It’s impossible to tell which one of them starts running first; it feels as if suddenly, they’re colliding halfway, not moving as much as being brought together by the same gravitational pull that keeps them orbiting each other. Arms wrap themselves around Mark as he does his best to squeeze the life out of Devrim, to fuse them together.

It’s good to be home.

#whumptober 2021 #no. 25 #no. 31 #escape #flight #hiding #disaster zone #destiny 2 #writing #long post #devrim kay #marc kay #yes this is late in my defense - i finished writing it on halloween #but then had to type all of it on a computer #anyway it's done now!!

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