FIC: Those Who Wander 1/1 [DA/SPN, gen]
Title: Those Who Wander
Fandom(s): Dark Angel/Supernatural
Characters: Ben (DA), the Benders (SPN)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: People-hunting. Whumped little Ben. Wee!Ben + Benders should tell you most of what you need to know, I think. Not really a happy ending, but if you've seen Ben's fate in Dark Angel that shouldn't be too shocking. NOT a deathfic, though, for what it's worth.
Timeline/Spoilers: Pre-series for DA, anytime before The Benders for SPN. Handwaving the timelines; pretend they match up.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.
Words: ~3,384
Summary: They come barreling through the dead, black trees firing gunshots into the air and whooping like wild apes, gleeful and brazen in a way that says they aren't prey, but obnoxiously overconfident. Amateurs, Ben thinks.
A/N: Written for the 12 Days of Dark Angel challenge @ jam_pony_fic, and fills wish #2M: What happened pre-show with/to any of the other escapees? Um. Especially Ben. I know it's late so it doesn't count toward the challenge anymore. Still, that's what spawned it. Unbeta'd and written kind of quickly. Feel free to point out mistakes.
-:-
He's in the woods somewhere in the middle of what he thinks might be Minnesota, looking for a suitable place to go under, deep cover, like Zack said: that's an order.
He's cold, hungry, tired, snow everywhere, always so much snow, and the rags he stole back in Wyoming aren't much protection. He feels sick, he thinks, never been sick but the squirming, hollow feeling in his chest hasn't gone away since the escape, not once, and there's no other word he can find for it but sickness. He hasn't seen his siblings for days and days.
He's about ready to give up, go home and beg forgiveness, when she smiles down on him.
“Hello?” someone calls, and it's not Ben. Ben's not stupid enough to give away his position to any ear wandering by. “Is someone there? Hello, I need help.” The voice is wrecked and wet-sounding. “Please.”
Ben ducks behind a tree. He listens to the clumsy, dragging rasp of something wounded fumbling across the snow, crackling branches under feet trying to move faster than they're able.
“I saw. Saw something there,” mostly to himself now, panting hard. “Hello!”
There's the potent stench of sweaty panic and fresh blood, the racing pulsebeat of the hunted. Calling out, smelling like that, the man is practically begging for the attention of every carnivore in the county, and Ben understands instantly that this man is for him.
He doesn't question it, simply glad for the Blue Lady's mercy, that she gave him this chance to please her. With no time or energy to revel in the chase, Ben closes in fast. The man never catches a glimpse of what gets him, small hands around his neck before he even registers the intrusion.
A loud crack bounces around and off the trees. The ground spits up snow under the falling weight of the body. Easy, so easy, and Ben sends up a prayer of thanks.
He sets to work and, with the hunger tearing holes in his gut, bigger and bigger, finds himself hoping for a deer next, even a rabbit. But he has to get this right first.
That part's not easy, though. Not at all.
Ben's just finished pulling out the last tooth-he didn't escape with any weapons and his fingers ache and ache but he gets them, all of them, yellowed and bloody but whole-when he hears the others.
They come barreling through the dead, black trees firing gunshots into the air and whooping like wild apes, gleeful and brazen in a way that says they aren't prey, but obnoxiously overconfident. Amateurs, Ben thinks, easy enough to avoid. They're not worth his attention, but he's too valuable to draw theirs, and he silently chides himself for letting his eagerness distract him, for not even considering what the man might have been running from.
Ben gathers up his trophies and takes off. Scales a nearby tree without disturbing a single, creaking branch even though his feet feel like unwieldy blocks of ice, and he waits.
They come into view soon after: two men in thickly-padded fatigues, heavy boots and a small arsenal strapped to each of them. They don't have all of their teeth but Ben doesn't need them, anyway. He knows better than to be greedy.
They stop cold when they see the body.
A beat, and one of them circles it, examining the wrongly angled head and blood-spattered face, while the other looks around with his rifle up. Not completely incompetent, at least. They probably wouldn't have lived this long if they were.
“What in the hell?” the circling one finally says, stops to look around with his partner. He talks funny, words slow and his vowels dipping strangely. “Lee?”
The watchful one-Lee-grunts, eyes gleaming and skittish, and now he looks like prey. Ben doesn't let himself react to that.
“Well,” the first guy speaks again, disappointed. “This ain't much fun.”
The wind picks up and Ben tries not to shiver. He's built to withstand a lot but he's been in the cold so long; he swears his bones crackle like splintering icicles when he moves. Maybe they do and maybe they don't, but the thing that matters is that the branch holding his weight does make noise. Ben hardly notices it, though, so surely...
“No. You're looking at it wrong, Jared. What we have here-“ Lee grins, big and crooked, and instead of using the rifle, a pistol hidden at his side is yanked free, snaps up and fires. Caught off guard, Ben doesn't react quickly enough to avoid it. Pain blooms huge and bright in his shoulder. He grunts and tumbles down out of the tree, and the frozen wetness of the snow stabs all over when he crashes down. “-is a challenge.”
Ben is up and in the wind before the man can finish his sentence. They let out more excited whoops and give chase.
His shoulder's gone from burning to numb too quickly, not bullet pain but something he knows a lot better. He tugs at the pink fluff of the tranquilizer dart and tosses it away, doesn't look back.
He didn't get to finish, he thinks frantically. He did it all wrong, let the men interrupt him and the body wasn't positioned right, underestimated them like an arrogant rookie, and now she's angry. Tears burn cold on his face and he's sorry. He's so, so sorry, knows he deserves to be punished but he can't submit himself to it like his training says because Zack said, and these men aren't approved personnel anyway.
Ben breaks out of the trees and hits a dirt road, but he doesn't follow it. Too open and not well-traveled. He needs to put as much distance as he can between them before the tranquilizer knocks him down for good, find a bolthole and recover. He blurs into the trees on the other side and keeps going, looking, looking everywhere but there are only more trees. His feet have disappeared, hands too, he can't feel them at all, but somehow he's still moving. He passes a pile of corroded lumber that used to be a shack-too obvious and he'd freeze to death before ever waking up again-and the drug in his system conspires with a root to have him tumbling head over heels through dead brush and down into a ravine.
His head cracks hard against a rock. Something in his skull gives and lights his vision up like white fire.
Ben pushes up onto his elbows, shaky and soaked to the bone, plops belly-first right back into the frigid water. Everything's gone wobbly and colorful; he can feel his brains leaking out. His gut rolls and bile scorches a path up his throat.
No. No, he's not done yet.
Ben doesn't understand the tranq gun. They used them at Manticore to keep from damaging little soldiers gone over-excited; the bullets were only for when they wanted to prove a point. These men are hunters, hunters are supposed to kill, not subdue, and Ben isn't going to lay here and wait around to see what they do to prey caught helpless but alive.
Needles and little knives, he thinks unwillingly, and lifts his face up and to the side to spit muddy water out of his mouth. His heart is kicking too hard, loud in his ears, gonna cave in his chest and deafen him all at once. His hand flails out and catches on the side of the bank. It's too steep.
Numb fingers hook into hard, frozen mud. Ben pulls out big clumps of it, sloppy and desperate, more and more and more, taking too long and the skin of his hands scraping off, until there's a hole big enough to crawl into. He folds himself to fit and kicks clumsily at the roof of his small cave. Mud tumbles down over the opening, but he can still see daylight. He won't suffocate. That's not saying much, though. It's slimy and cold, cold, cold. If he doesn't freeze, he'll drown when the water rises, or his brains will keep pouring out and his head will go empty. They won't find him, though. They won't, and that's something.
He can't fight the dark coming down, so he doesn't waste energy trying. Digs the teeth out of his pocket and clutches them in a shivering fist.
-:-
Awareness comes and goes.
Ben's eyes blink open to darkness and a crack of graying light, and he figures out the drugs are different than what he's used to, not the right cocktail for something like him and he won't stay down long, or go too deep. The hole in his skull complicates things, though. He throws up bile and more bile and then dry-heaves for a long time.
When the black recedes again he's forgotten all of that and only knows cold, dark, pain and voices. He doesn't remember why or where or who, but he understands on some basic level that he doesn’t want the voices to come closer.
“Ain't no point now,” someone says, all blurry speech. “Kid's long gone. You see that little bastard move?”
“I saw.”
“We should head back. He's probably tucked away at the police station by now, Lee. Cops'll be all over the place in a hot minute. We need to go 'fore they get here.”
“You go. Tell Pa what's happened. I'mma keep lookin.'”
“By yourself?”
“I can handle him better'n you, can't I? Got the shot off while you were busy with your head up your ass.”
“Bullshit-“
“Head's still up your ass. That dart was fit to take down a rhino. Little thing like that didn't get far without fallin' flat on his face. Probably passed out under a pile of snow somewhere.”
There's more argument until one of them stomps off in a huff. Ben stays quiet, fights the dizziness and tries to make his limbs move around a little. He's covered in something slimy and sour-smelling, thumps his ringing head against dirt that is too close-walls and walls so close and tight around him, no sense of up or down or sideways-and when he opens his eyes again it's all dark, all over.
His ears are infected with a sickening buzz, icepicks still chipping busily at his brain. He wishes for Zack to appear and tell him what to do. Wishes for Max to hug him and make things warmer for a little while. For the comfort of his thin, uniform mattress and itchy sheets. The reassurance of heavily-armed Manticore guards keeping everyone in their place. He blacks out and wakes up and does it all one more time, and wishes he could wake up dead already.
Water splashes nearby in a way that's not natural, things carelessly sloshing around out there like nothing would dare hurt them. There are two of them again, and it makes Ben so mad he can't think straight for a second. He's mad at himself for running scared and digging himself into a rabbithole like so much quarry. Mad at them for turning him into this useless, quivering thing when he's never been that, never been taught and never been allowed because he's so much better.
Never settle for less than what you are, Lydecker always told them.
Ben settled. Ben is less. Ben's not happy about it.
A huge, wet snout pokes through the crack of his hidey hole. There's a low growl, and Ben's iced-over muscles lock up even tighter, coiled and shaking too hard and his anger vanishing as quickly as it came.
Not the dogs, not the dogs. He hates the dogs, yapping and biting and running his brothers and sisters into the ground in a flurry of screams and tearing flesh.
Ben doesn't think, just lashes out to get it away, get it away, and his fist connects so hard there's a terrible crunching sound. The dog yelps and backs off in a hurry, hollering and hollering and splashing around wildly in pain.
“The fuck? Killer! Lee, what'd you do to my fucking dog?”
“Well, hell,” the other man mutters, way too close and seemingly unconcerned with the bawling going on next to him. “Smarter than you are tall, ain't ya?”
The dirt blocking out the world takes a hit and crumbles away. Cornered and wounded, Ben shrinks back instinctively, lip curling in a snarl at the face that appears in the opening.
It smiles at him. “C'mon outta there, brat. Jig's up.”
“Is he in there? Is that little shit in there?” Splashes from further away, closing in. “What'd he do to my dog? I'll do it right back to him, swear to fucking God.”
The man in front of Ben starts to twitch at every pained howl and thrash of the injured animal, irritation compounded by his partner's endless griping about his broken pet. He breaks eye contact, but he's too close to the hole, practically crouched right inside with Ben so he can't get away. “Shut the hell up about your goddamn mutt, Jared!” he snaps, and fires off a shot.
The dog shuts up.
“Lee! What the fuck?”
“Thing's useless without a nose, anyhow.” Lee turns his attention back to Ben, and there's a flash of silver in his other hand, sharp-edged and giant. The look in his eye assures Ben he'd rather be thrown to 'nomalies because that's when he gets it. They want to do it up close, get the blood all over their hands and watch his lights burn out.
Brain damaged beyond repair or not, Ben doesn't accept that.
He strikes out in blind panic, fists and feet and even his teeth all in a lethal frenzy before he's finished clearing the hole. Maybe he'll get away and maybe he'll die but either way it will be brutal and quick, preferable to being held down and slowly chopped to bits.
Ben doesn't stop long enough to notice what kind of damage he causes to the cussing, thrashing body he's clinging to, but he does register the sudden change in momentum when Jared rushes them both from the side.
“You trigger-happy son of a bitch!” Jared's face is purple with fury and his fists swing erratically as they all go tumbling back into the water. “That was my dog. Mine, goddammit! You had no right!”
Ben lets the violent fall toss him away, his arm twisting and popping when he lands. He cries out but he keeps moving, stumbles up and further away. The landscape tilts, wavers, drops from underneath him. Ben goes down. Gets back up.
Lee's head snaps to one side and blood flies from his mouth. He rolls to his feet and starts kicking at Jared until he stops trying to get up and decides the water is a good place to rest.
Lee's eyes catch Ben's, then, who's in the process of throwing himself at the bank, fretful glances over his shoulder. Going at it one-handed, he slips and slides but makes steady progress climbing up, heart crazy and painful against his ribs, breaths punching out ragged and loud. He's going to puke again, only there's nothing left but internal organs to give up.
“Were you born this stupid or did you hafta work at it, Christ!” Looking around for his lost weapons, Lee kicks Jared one more time, finds the knife and makes a beeline for Ben just as he scrambles over the top.
Ben is mildly satisfied to see him limping, chunks torn out of his face and neck and bleeding sluggishly, clumps of hair missing. Not good enough, though, not enough to keep him down, so the satisfaction is short-lived.
Ben spins to face the woods and almost falls backwards into the ravine again.
The land is screaming. Blazing shafts of morning sunlight stab through the gaps in the trees, ground so dazzlingly white it's bleeding fiery rainbows into the air and melting his eyeballs right out of his head. And it's still tilting every which way. Ben's shivery legs and twisting gut aren't up to the task. It's impossible.
Manticore was never like this, he thinks. There was that one thing, that one sickness no one could predict or prevent, and Ben doesn't have it yet, if he's ever going to. The uncertainty of that was nothing compared to what he's found outside. Ben never starved, or hurt this bad for this long. He knew the terrain better than anything, knew who his enemies were, when and why and how to behave to keep them at bay. He never wondered were he'd sleep or if he'd be able to. There was pain and fear, sure, but there was order to it, a purpose. It wasn't chaotic and senseless. There were hardly any surprises. Not that they didn't try, of course: reassessing and adjusting to a new challenge in record time was part of the training, and changing things up was just a sensible security practice, but Ben had learned to read Manticore personnel a long time ago. And on the rare occasions he messed up, he knew what he'd suffer. He hates it out here.
Anger rises up again, and this time it's because he knows he's failing. Real-life missions wouldn't have had those cheats, this one certainly doesn't. Ben's a good soldier, one of the best in his class, he doesn't settle. He's not going to let them make him less.
He turns back around, watches Lee give up following in his footsteps and opt to walk along the bank to where it's not as steep. He must figure he's got the time with Ben just standing there, waiting to be gutted. Jared is still crawling dazedly in the water, looking chagrined but still pretty angry, probably groping for their guns. Ben doesn't really care.
He keeps his busted arm tucked close, and uses the short wait to kick some rocks free of the snow. Bends down and picks one up, fairly hefty.
Lee makes it to higher ground, lips pulled back to bare his teeth and looking like a drowned, rabid ape. “That's it, brat. You just wait right there and-“
Ben hurls the rock before Lee can blink. It smashes into his kneecap and the man goes down with a yelp not dissimilar to the dog's when Ben broke its nose.
Ben picks up another rock. Tosses it up and catches it, tosses and catches. It's not hard, even when the rock multiplies and shimmers mid-air. It falls back to the same place every time. Blood trickles from his hairline and down into his left eye.
Lee hisses more curses through his teeth and glares up at him, eyes narrowed and watery. He looks so worthless and stupid down there on the ground, muddy and wet and bleeding everywhere as he clutches at his hurt leg like he's never known an injury that couldn't be fixed with a band-aid. Ben is a little appalled at himself.
The guns are probably long gone with the current, but Ben chucks the rock into the ravine and smacks Jared square between the eyes, anyway. Splash, and he's a nonentity.
“You wanna play, is that it?” Lee grunts, tough guy, but the effect is ruined at the pained hitch to his words. “We'll play, you little shit.”
Ben does want to play, yes sir. There was this game once, back at Manticore. One of the nurses told Tinga about it, and Lydecker-when he had been in one of his rare, generous moods-let them turn it into a training exercise. Ben remembers the whole thing being a lot of fun until someone lost an eye because everyone was clamoring for the wrong goal. Well, it was still fun then, but Lydecker wouldn't let them play after that. He changed the rules and it became Escape and Evade, the coveted position of “it” no longer available to them.
He can play again now, though. No one around to stop him.
“Tag,” Ben says, picks up another rock and smiles wide. “I'm it.”
Fandom(s): Dark Angel/Supernatural
Characters: Ben (DA), the Benders (SPN)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: People-hunting. Whumped little Ben. Wee!Ben + Benders should tell you most of what you need to know, I think. Not really a happy ending, but if you've seen Ben's fate in Dark Angel that shouldn't be too shocking. NOT a deathfic, though, for what it's worth.
Timeline/Spoilers: Pre-series for DA, anytime before The Benders for SPN. Handwaving the timelines; pretend they match up.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.
Words: ~3,384
Summary: They come barreling through the dead, black trees firing gunshots into the air and whooping like wild apes, gleeful and brazen in a way that says they aren't prey, but obnoxiously overconfident. Amateurs, Ben thinks.
A/N: Written for the 12 Days of Dark Angel challenge @ jam_pony_fic, and fills wish #2M: What happened pre-show with/to any of the other escapees? Um. Especially Ben. I know it's late so it doesn't count toward the challenge anymore. Still, that's what spawned it. Unbeta'd and written kind of quickly. Feel free to point out mistakes.
-:-
He's in the woods somewhere in the middle of what he thinks might be Minnesota, looking for a suitable place to go under, deep cover, like Zack said: that's an order.
He's cold, hungry, tired, snow everywhere, always so much snow, and the rags he stole back in Wyoming aren't much protection. He feels sick, he thinks, never been sick but the squirming, hollow feeling in his chest hasn't gone away since the escape, not once, and there's no other word he can find for it but sickness. He hasn't seen his siblings for days and days.
He's about ready to give up, go home and beg forgiveness, when she smiles down on him.
“Hello?” someone calls, and it's not Ben. Ben's not stupid enough to give away his position to any ear wandering by. “Is someone there? Hello, I need help.” The voice is wrecked and wet-sounding. “Please.”
Ben ducks behind a tree. He listens to the clumsy, dragging rasp of something wounded fumbling across the snow, crackling branches under feet trying to move faster than they're able.
“I saw. Saw something there,” mostly to himself now, panting hard. “Hello!”
There's the potent stench of sweaty panic and fresh blood, the racing pulsebeat of the hunted. Calling out, smelling like that, the man is practically begging for the attention of every carnivore in the county, and Ben understands instantly that this man is for him.
He doesn't question it, simply glad for the Blue Lady's mercy, that she gave him this chance to please her. With no time or energy to revel in the chase, Ben closes in fast. The man never catches a glimpse of what gets him, small hands around his neck before he even registers the intrusion.
A loud crack bounces around and off the trees. The ground spits up snow under the falling weight of the body. Easy, so easy, and Ben sends up a prayer of thanks.
He sets to work and, with the hunger tearing holes in his gut, bigger and bigger, finds himself hoping for a deer next, even a rabbit. But he has to get this right first.
That part's not easy, though. Not at all.
Ben's just finished pulling out the last tooth-he didn't escape with any weapons and his fingers ache and ache but he gets them, all of them, yellowed and bloody but whole-when he hears the others.
They come barreling through the dead, black trees firing gunshots into the air and whooping like wild apes, gleeful and brazen in a way that says they aren't prey, but obnoxiously overconfident. Amateurs, Ben thinks, easy enough to avoid. They're not worth his attention, but he's too valuable to draw theirs, and he silently chides himself for letting his eagerness distract him, for not even considering what the man might have been running from.
Ben gathers up his trophies and takes off. Scales a nearby tree without disturbing a single, creaking branch even though his feet feel like unwieldy blocks of ice, and he waits.
They come into view soon after: two men in thickly-padded fatigues, heavy boots and a small arsenal strapped to each of them. They don't have all of their teeth but Ben doesn't need them, anyway. He knows better than to be greedy.
They stop cold when they see the body.
A beat, and one of them circles it, examining the wrongly angled head and blood-spattered face, while the other looks around with his rifle up. Not completely incompetent, at least. They probably wouldn't have lived this long if they were.
“What in the hell?” the circling one finally says, stops to look around with his partner. He talks funny, words slow and his vowels dipping strangely. “Lee?”
The watchful one-Lee-grunts, eyes gleaming and skittish, and now he looks like prey. Ben doesn't let himself react to that.
“Well,” the first guy speaks again, disappointed. “This ain't much fun.”
The wind picks up and Ben tries not to shiver. He's built to withstand a lot but he's been in the cold so long; he swears his bones crackle like splintering icicles when he moves. Maybe they do and maybe they don't, but the thing that matters is that the branch holding his weight does make noise. Ben hardly notices it, though, so surely...
“No. You're looking at it wrong, Jared. What we have here-“ Lee grins, big and crooked, and instead of using the rifle, a pistol hidden at his side is yanked free, snaps up and fires. Caught off guard, Ben doesn't react quickly enough to avoid it. Pain blooms huge and bright in his shoulder. He grunts and tumbles down out of the tree, and the frozen wetness of the snow stabs all over when he crashes down. “-is a challenge.”
Ben is up and in the wind before the man can finish his sentence. They let out more excited whoops and give chase.
His shoulder's gone from burning to numb too quickly, not bullet pain but something he knows a lot better. He tugs at the pink fluff of the tranquilizer dart and tosses it away, doesn't look back.
He didn't get to finish, he thinks frantically. He did it all wrong, let the men interrupt him and the body wasn't positioned right, underestimated them like an arrogant rookie, and now she's angry. Tears burn cold on his face and he's sorry. He's so, so sorry, knows he deserves to be punished but he can't submit himself to it like his training says because Zack said, and these men aren't approved personnel anyway.
Ben breaks out of the trees and hits a dirt road, but he doesn't follow it. Too open and not well-traveled. He needs to put as much distance as he can between them before the tranquilizer knocks him down for good, find a bolthole and recover. He blurs into the trees on the other side and keeps going, looking, looking everywhere but there are only more trees. His feet have disappeared, hands too, he can't feel them at all, but somehow he's still moving. He passes a pile of corroded lumber that used to be a shack-too obvious and he'd freeze to death before ever waking up again-and the drug in his system conspires with a root to have him tumbling head over heels through dead brush and down into a ravine.
His head cracks hard against a rock. Something in his skull gives and lights his vision up like white fire.
Ben pushes up onto his elbows, shaky and soaked to the bone, plops belly-first right back into the frigid water. Everything's gone wobbly and colorful; he can feel his brains leaking out. His gut rolls and bile scorches a path up his throat.
No. No, he's not done yet.
Ben doesn't understand the tranq gun. They used them at Manticore to keep from damaging little soldiers gone over-excited; the bullets were only for when they wanted to prove a point. These men are hunters, hunters are supposed to kill, not subdue, and Ben isn't going to lay here and wait around to see what they do to prey caught helpless but alive.
Needles and little knives, he thinks unwillingly, and lifts his face up and to the side to spit muddy water out of his mouth. His heart is kicking too hard, loud in his ears, gonna cave in his chest and deafen him all at once. His hand flails out and catches on the side of the bank. It's too steep.
Numb fingers hook into hard, frozen mud. Ben pulls out big clumps of it, sloppy and desperate, more and more and more, taking too long and the skin of his hands scraping off, until there's a hole big enough to crawl into. He folds himself to fit and kicks clumsily at the roof of his small cave. Mud tumbles down over the opening, but he can still see daylight. He won't suffocate. That's not saying much, though. It's slimy and cold, cold, cold. If he doesn't freeze, he'll drown when the water rises, or his brains will keep pouring out and his head will go empty. They won't find him, though. They won't, and that's something.
He can't fight the dark coming down, so he doesn't waste energy trying. Digs the teeth out of his pocket and clutches them in a shivering fist.
-:-
Awareness comes and goes.
Ben's eyes blink open to darkness and a crack of graying light, and he figures out the drugs are different than what he's used to, not the right cocktail for something like him and he won't stay down long, or go too deep. The hole in his skull complicates things, though. He throws up bile and more bile and then dry-heaves for a long time.
When the black recedes again he's forgotten all of that and only knows cold, dark, pain and voices. He doesn't remember why or where or who, but he understands on some basic level that he doesn’t want the voices to come closer.
“Ain't no point now,” someone says, all blurry speech. “Kid's long gone. You see that little bastard move?”
“I saw.”
“We should head back. He's probably tucked away at the police station by now, Lee. Cops'll be all over the place in a hot minute. We need to go 'fore they get here.”
“You go. Tell Pa what's happened. I'mma keep lookin.'”
“By yourself?”
“I can handle him better'n you, can't I? Got the shot off while you were busy with your head up your ass.”
“Bullshit-“
“Head's still up your ass. That dart was fit to take down a rhino. Little thing like that didn't get far without fallin' flat on his face. Probably passed out under a pile of snow somewhere.”
There's more argument until one of them stomps off in a huff. Ben stays quiet, fights the dizziness and tries to make his limbs move around a little. He's covered in something slimy and sour-smelling, thumps his ringing head against dirt that is too close-walls and walls so close and tight around him, no sense of up or down or sideways-and when he opens his eyes again it's all dark, all over.
His ears are infected with a sickening buzz, icepicks still chipping busily at his brain. He wishes for Zack to appear and tell him what to do. Wishes for Max to hug him and make things warmer for a little while. For the comfort of his thin, uniform mattress and itchy sheets. The reassurance of heavily-armed Manticore guards keeping everyone in their place. He blacks out and wakes up and does it all one more time, and wishes he could wake up dead already.
Water splashes nearby in a way that's not natural, things carelessly sloshing around out there like nothing would dare hurt them. There are two of them again, and it makes Ben so mad he can't think straight for a second. He's mad at himself for running scared and digging himself into a rabbithole like so much quarry. Mad at them for turning him into this useless, quivering thing when he's never been that, never been taught and never been allowed because he's so much better.
Never settle for less than what you are, Lydecker always told them.
Ben settled. Ben is less. Ben's not happy about it.
A huge, wet snout pokes through the crack of his hidey hole. There's a low growl, and Ben's iced-over muscles lock up even tighter, coiled and shaking too hard and his anger vanishing as quickly as it came.
Not the dogs, not the dogs. He hates the dogs, yapping and biting and running his brothers and sisters into the ground in a flurry of screams and tearing flesh.
Ben doesn't think, just lashes out to get it away, get it away, and his fist connects so hard there's a terrible crunching sound. The dog yelps and backs off in a hurry, hollering and hollering and splashing around wildly in pain.
“The fuck? Killer! Lee, what'd you do to my fucking dog?”
“Well, hell,” the other man mutters, way too close and seemingly unconcerned with the bawling going on next to him. “Smarter than you are tall, ain't ya?”
The dirt blocking out the world takes a hit and crumbles away. Cornered and wounded, Ben shrinks back instinctively, lip curling in a snarl at the face that appears in the opening.
It smiles at him. “C'mon outta there, brat. Jig's up.”
“Is he in there? Is that little shit in there?” Splashes from further away, closing in. “What'd he do to my dog? I'll do it right back to him, swear to fucking God.”
The man in front of Ben starts to twitch at every pained howl and thrash of the injured animal, irritation compounded by his partner's endless griping about his broken pet. He breaks eye contact, but he's too close to the hole, practically crouched right inside with Ben so he can't get away. “Shut the hell up about your goddamn mutt, Jared!” he snaps, and fires off a shot.
The dog shuts up.
“Lee! What the fuck?”
“Thing's useless without a nose, anyhow.” Lee turns his attention back to Ben, and there's a flash of silver in his other hand, sharp-edged and giant. The look in his eye assures Ben he'd rather be thrown to 'nomalies because that's when he gets it. They want to do it up close, get the blood all over their hands and watch his lights burn out.
Brain damaged beyond repair or not, Ben doesn't accept that.
He strikes out in blind panic, fists and feet and even his teeth all in a lethal frenzy before he's finished clearing the hole. Maybe he'll get away and maybe he'll die but either way it will be brutal and quick, preferable to being held down and slowly chopped to bits.
Ben doesn't stop long enough to notice what kind of damage he causes to the cussing, thrashing body he's clinging to, but he does register the sudden change in momentum when Jared rushes them both from the side.
“You trigger-happy son of a bitch!” Jared's face is purple with fury and his fists swing erratically as they all go tumbling back into the water. “That was my dog. Mine, goddammit! You had no right!”
Ben lets the violent fall toss him away, his arm twisting and popping when he lands. He cries out but he keeps moving, stumbles up and further away. The landscape tilts, wavers, drops from underneath him. Ben goes down. Gets back up.
Lee's head snaps to one side and blood flies from his mouth. He rolls to his feet and starts kicking at Jared until he stops trying to get up and decides the water is a good place to rest.
Lee's eyes catch Ben's, then, who's in the process of throwing himself at the bank, fretful glances over his shoulder. Going at it one-handed, he slips and slides but makes steady progress climbing up, heart crazy and painful against his ribs, breaths punching out ragged and loud. He's going to puke again, only there's nothing left but internal organs to give up.
“Were you born this stupid or did you hafta work at it, Christ!” Looking around for his lost weapons, Lee kicks Jared one more time, finds the knife and makes a beeline for Ben just as he scrambles over the top.
Ben is mildly satisfied to see him limping, chunks torn out of his face and neck and bleeding sluggishly, clumps of hair missing. Not good enough, though, not enough to keep him down, so the satisfaction is short-lived.
Ben spins to face the woods and almost falls backwards into the ravine again.
The land is screaming. Blazing shafts of morning sunlight stab through the gaps in the trees, ground so dazzlingly white it's bleeding fiery rainbows into the air and melting his eyeballs right out of his head. And it's still tilting every which way. Ben's shivery legs and twisting gut aren't up to the task. It's impossible.
Manticore was never like this, he thinks. There was that one thing, that one sickness no one could predict or prevent, and Ben doesn't have it yet, if he's ever going to. The uncertainty of that was nothing compared to what he's found outside. Ben never starved, or hurt this bad for this long. He knew the terrain better than anything, knew who his enemies were, when and why and how to behave to keep them at bay. He never wondered were he'd sleep or if he'd be able to. There was pain and fear, sure, but there was order to it, a purpose. It wasn't chaotic and senseless. There were hardly any surprises. Not that they didn't try, of course: reassessing and adjusting to a new challenge in record time was part of the training, and changing things up was just a sensible security practice, but Ben had learned to read Manticore personnel a long time ago. And on the rare occasions he messed up, he knew what he'd suffer. He hates it out here.
Anger rises up again, and this time it's because he knows he's failing. Real-life missions wouldn't have had those cheats, this one certainly doesn't. Ben's a good soldier, one of the best in his class, he doesn't settle. He's not going to let them make him less.
He turns back around, watches Lee give up following in his footsteps and opt to walk along the bank to where it's not as steep. He must figure he's got the time with Ben just standing there, waiting to be gutted. Jared is still crawling dazedly in the water, looking chagrined but still pretty angry, probably groping for their guns. Ben doesn't really care.
He keeps his busted arm tucked close, and uses the short wait to kick some rocks free of the snow. Bends down and picks one up, fairly hefty.
Lee makes it to higher ground, lips pulled back to bare his teeth and looking like a drowned, rabid ape. “That's it, brat. You just wait right there and-“
Ben hurls the rock before Lee can blink. It smashes into his kneecap and the man goes down with a yelp not dissimilar to the dog's when Ben broke its nose.
Ben picks up another rock. Tosses it up and catches it, tosses and catches. It's not hard, even when the rock multiplies and shimmers mid-air. It falls back to the same place every time. Blood trickles from his hairline and down into his left eye.
Lee hisses more curses through his teeth and glares up at him, eyes narrowed and watery. He looks so worthless and stupid down there on the ground, muddy and wet and bleeding everywhere as he clutches at his hurt leg like he's never known an injury that couldn't be fixed with a band-aid. Ben is a little appalled at himself.
The guns are probably long gone with the current, but Ben chucks the rock into the ravine and smacks Jared square between the eyes, anyway. Splash, and he's a nonentity.
“You wanna play, is that it?” Lee grunts, tough guy, but the effect is ruined at the pained hitch to his words. “We'll play, you little shit.”
Ben does want to play, yes sir. There was this game once, back at Manticore. One of the nurses told Tinga about it, and Lydecker-when he had been in one of his rare, generous moods-let them turn it into a training exercise. Ben remembers the whole thing being a lot of fun until someone lost an eye because everyone was clamoring for the wrong goal. Well, it was still fun then, but Lydecker wouldn't let them play after that. He changed the rules and it became Escape and Evade, the coveted position of “it” no longer available to them.
He can play again now, though. No one around to stop him.
“Tag,” Ben says, picks up another rock and smiles wide. “I'm it.”