Work Text:
Silence is the scariest thing on the battlefield. Is it the calm before the storm or the desolation afterwards? The latter is always worse, Wei Chen can speak from experience. Is that what this is now? It must be but he can barely think, trying to hold onto consciousness that seems to slip through his mechanical fingers like sand. His head hurts, mind wrung out like an old dish towel, everything feels wrong. Where did the rest of the world go? Here there is only the quiet and claustrophobic darkness. Is this what death feels like?
Get it together, soldier.
Words spoken by some asshole commander whose name he can’t remember. Only he can remember it's just not important. Focus.
Assess the situation.
Alive. Hurt. Badly. But that's nothing new, little toy soldiers can be put back together again. There's a bitterness in his mouth that's not just blood. He tries to move but the armor is locked in place. Maybe that's a good thing, no way to assess the total damage. There's something wet and coppery in his eyes, not that they do him much good, night vision and thermal must have gone out with the rest of the power. Emergency oxygen should last about an hour, so long as he doesn’t hyperventilate.
What happened?
Remembering feels dangerous in a way he can’t process. Focus on the immediate. The airstrike. His call. He should be dead. Is that what he wanted?
They should all be dead.
Were they?
Anathema might have made it out, they’re invulnerable. Sidestep…Sidestep is dead. Even if they managed to survive the fall there's no way they would have survived the building collapse. His call. That thought sits heavier than he thought it would and something saline joins the copper in his useless vision.
Ortega?
Focus. He remembers grabbing him, if for no other reason than to stop him following Sidestep out that damned window. He remembers the screaming and the lightning. The smell of smoke and scorched metal.
Where was Ortega? Wei is not a man to panic but nothing else in the world seems to matter. Not his own life. Or his death. Not anyones.
A single sound cuts through the oppressive silence, a soft ragged breath. Ortega, underneath him, shielded from the rubble by his armor. Another miracle for the man with nine lives.
Wei’s laugh is a mirthless sound and he thanks the god he doesn't believe in before succumbing to the darkness.