Fic ~ One Fifth is the Whole
Title ~ One Fifth is the Whole
Fandom ~ The Losers (Movie)
Rating ~ PG-13
Warnings ~ Violence, language, the usual
Disclaimers ~ Disclaimers bore me. I claim Journey instead.
Notes ~ Set pre-movie. An episodic ficlet inspired by a conversation about who was the woobie in “The Losers”. It led to the following statement, “I don’t think it’s possible for Cougar to be the woobie.” I did my best to prove that statement wrong, and I still think Jensen comes off as the woobie in this.
One Fifth is the Whole
It was a risk they all took. Every time they went out, it could be any one of them, or all of them. That didn’t change the sharp knot that tightened in his gut at the silence on the comm.
“Cougar? Coug? Can you hear me?”
“Jensen.”
He looked up to find Roque there, frowning. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t raise Cougar.”
“Might just be equipment failure. In this fucking cold, I’m surprised anything works.” Roque thumped the door of the truck, which had already been stubborn to start twice. “We’ll be at the rally point in five. He’ll be there.”
Jensen didn’t argue, because he knew already, somehow. Roque did too, no matter what he said. Cougar wouldn’t be there.
And he wasn’t.
“What do we know?”
“They’ve got this building locked down tight. Way tighter than it was during the last surveillance. Lots of extra guns on the roof, at the doors.” Pooch turned the map around and traced a neighborhood with his fingertips. “But this is a bad place to store or process product. It’s too secluded. There’re no good routes in or out, and no way to blend in.”
“How many guards?” Clay asked.
“Lots.”
“So, we go in hard and fast,” Roque said. “Kill everything that gets between us and Cougar. If we don’t find him there, we find someone who can tell us where to look next.”
“Well, it lacks subtlety…”
“Yeah,” Jensen stood and began pulling on his gear. “But Cougar was the only one of us who was ever any good at subtle, wasn’t he?”
Clay looked at him for a moment, looked hard, but then he nodded. “True enough. Let’s go get him.”
The cold might have helped. They went in just before a rotation, when the outer guards had been out in it the longest. They were already thinking about going inside, working some feeling back into their extremities and a nice hot vodka with honey. They weren’t ready for four heavily armed and pissed off soldiers. They bullied their way into the warehouse and began to search. Anyone who didn’t drop their gun and run was taken down without hesitation.
Jensen didn’t feel even a little badly about that. Maybe later, he would.
As it was, he was the one who rounded the doorway and found Cougar, and he wished that he’d left more bodies behind him.
He was handcuffed to a chair, the outer layer of his uniform stripped off. His feet were bare, and his arms and chest were bloody. There was more blood on his swollen face…and he was smiling.
“Sorry I’m late. Couldn’t find the right boots to go with this gun.” Jensen let his assault rifle move from one of the armed men surrounding Cougar to the next. “Want me to kill these fuckers so we can get out of here?”
Cougar turned his head toward a man on his left and spat blood at his feet. He was wearing a familiar hat. “Except that one. He is for me.”
“Got that, guys?”
They did. Jensen stepped aside just as the other three barreled past him, already firing, then joined the fray.
“This is gonna hurt like a bitch,” Clay said, “But we’ve got three miles to cover, and you’re not gonna make that barefoot in this cold.”
Cougar only nodded. He had his hat back, and a gun in his hand. He looked better, even still covered in blood and leaning against the wall for support.
At the door, Roque said, “Clear.”
“Time to move,” Clay said.
He hefted Cougar easily over one shoulder and they plunged into the night. Jensen brought up the rear, providing covering fire when the last few guards on the roof decided to make themselves known. Then it was just running, sweeping corners and watching the shadows.
By the time they reached the truck, Cougar was out cold.
“Probably better off,” Pooch said as he opened the back.
They patched Cougar up on the way. At least three of his ribs were broken, and two of his fingers were dislocated. Clay gingerly removed his hat to examine a lump on the crown of his head, the hair around it crusted with dried blood. There were long, thin burn marks on the inside of his right bicep that made Jensen want to go back and kill somebody else.
“Pickup in twenty,” Roque called back to them. “How’s he look?”
“He’ll live,” Clay said. “But he might not be too happy about it for a few days.”
Jensen found an emergency blanket in one of the packs. Shaking it out, he spread it over Cougar and tucked it in around his shoulders. As he was leaning back again, he saw Cougar’s eyes open, just a bit, and he was smiling again.
They didn’t talk about it. That wasn’t their way. Four weeks later, they found themselves back in a helicopter, headed for a town on the edge of the desert. Sitting with Cougar’s shoulder pressed against his, Jensen looked forward to the change of scenery.
The End