ella

I am so sorry! I was putting together a story of Hesh's emotional aftermath.

The roar of the extraction choppers usually sounded like salvation, but to David, it sounded like a funeral dirge. The downdraft from the rotors whipped the sand into a blinding frenzy, stinging his eyes, but he didn't blink. He couldn't. If he closed his eyes, the image of Logan’s fingers trailing through the dirt would be scorched into his eyelids forever.

"Hesh! Talk to me, kid!"

Merrick was the first one to hit the sand, his boots heavy and rhythmic as he sprinted toward the treeline.

He skidded to a stop, his shadow falling over David’s crumpled form. He looked around wildly, his rifle raised, scanning the dense green wall of the jungle for the younger Walker.

"Where’s Logan? Hesh, where is he?"

David didn't answer. He couldn't. His throat was a mess of salt and raw grief. He just kept clawing at the dirt, his broken nails digging into the shallow ruts where Logan had fought to stay.

Merrick knelt, grabbing David by the shoulder to roll him over. "David, look at me! Where is your brother?"

The touch snapped something inside him. David didn’t see a comrade; he saw the world that had failed to protect the only person he had left. He swung a weak, clumsy fist, catching Merrick in the side of the head. It lacked power, but it was fueled by a jagged, hysterical fury.

"Get off me!" David shrieked, the sound tearing out of his chest like a physical wound. "Don't touch me! Go get him! He’s right there! He’s right there!"

He tried to lunge toward the trees, his body spasming in a grotesque crawl. He was lashing out at everything, Merrick’s hands, the medics rushing over with a stretcher, the very air itself. He kicked his good leg, spraying sand, snapping his teeth like a cornered animal when a medic tried to pin his shoulders down.

"Easy, Hesh! Easy! You’re into shock!" the medic shouted, reaching for a sedative.

"He’s not dead!" David screamed, his voice cracking into a high, thin wail that made Merrick flinch. "Rorke has him! He took him! You let him take him! Why weren't you here? Where were you?!"

David’s fingers curled into the front of Merrick’s vest, bunching the fabric, pulling the older man down into his orbit of agony. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, darting toward the dark treeline and back to Merrick’s face.

"He broke his arm, Thomas," David whispered, the anger suddenly collapsing into a fragile, terrifying whimpering. "I heard it break. I heard him scream for me and I just... I just watched. I watched him go."

"Medics, now!" Merrick barked, his own voice thick with a rare, trembling edge. He looked at the jungle, then back at the broken boy in the sand. He realized with a sickening hollow in his gut that the ruts in the sand weren't just tracks; they were the last moments of the Walker bloodline being torn apart.

"Let me go!" David started up again, his struggle becoming more frantic as the sedative began to prick his skin. He thrashed against the straps of the stretcher, his eyes fixed on the green abyss where Logan had vanished. "Logan! LOGAN!"

The scream was cut short as the drugs hit his system, his head lolling back against the nylon. But even as his eyes drifted shut, his fingers remained hooked like talons, clutching a handful of the sand where his brother had last been whole.

Merrick stood up, his face as hard as stone, staring into the trees as the choppers began to lift. He knew Rorke. He knew what was coming for the boy in the jungle. And he knew that the man currently unconscious on the stretcher would never truly wake up from this beach.

The door to the medical bay hissed open, a sound that usually signaled the arrival of a nurse with another round of dulling sedatives. But the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots on the linoleum told David exactly who it was. He didn't move. He stayed curled on his side, his gaze fixed on a microscopic scratch on the bedside rail.

Merrick didn’t say anything at first. He pulled over a metal stool, the screech of it against the floor sounding like a serrated blade. He sat down, his large frame hunched, his gloved hands resting on his knees. The silence between them wasn't the comfortable quiet of two soldiers who had survived a war; it was a vast, yawning canyon filled with the things they both knew but couldn't fix.

"The doc says your lungs are clearing up," Merrick said, his voice unusually low, stripped of its usual command-deck authority. "A few more days, and they’ll move you to a recovery ward."

David’s jaw tightened. "Get out."

Merrick didn’t flinch. He didn’t even sigh. He just sat there, a steady, unwanted presence. "Hesh. You need to eat something."

At the sound of his nickname, David snapped. He bolted upright, his ribs firing a warning shot of agony that made his vision swim, but he pushed through it. He shoved the tray of untouched food off the bedside table. The plastic bowl of broth shattered, splashing against Merrick’s boots.

"I said get out!" David’s voice was a jagged glass edge. "What are you even doing here, Merrick? Coming to check on the survivor? Coming to tell me we did a good job?"

Merrick looked down at the mess on his boots, then back up at David. There was no anger in his eyes, only a weary, hollow understanding that infuriated David even more.

"I’m here because I’m not leaving you alone," Merrick said quietly.

"I am alone!" David roared, his good hand fisted in the thin hospital sheets. "My dad is dead. My brother is... he’s in the dark, Merrick! He’s with that monster because you weren't fast enough! Because I wasn't strong enough!" He choked on the last word, his chest heaving. "There’s no 'us' anymore. There’s no Ghost team. It’s just me. And I’ve got nothing left to say to you."

He wanted Merrick to yell back. He wanted a fight, a reason to vent the poisonous grief that was rotting him from the inside out. He wanted Merrick to tell him he was being out of line, to act like a commander.

But Merrick just looked at him. He saw the way David’s hand was shaking. He saw the hollowed-out look in the kid’s eyes, the look of a boy who had watched his entire world get dragged into the trees. Merrick remembered Elias. He remembered a younger, greener Rorke. He knew that some holes were too deep to be filled with platitudes or military honors.

"You're right," Merrick said, his voice thick. "I wasn't fast enough. And there isn't a single thing I can say that's going to make that beach go away."

He stood up slowly, the metal stool scraping again. He didn't offer a hand or a pat on the shoulder; he knew David would probably try to bite it off. He reached into his pocket and placed something on the edge of the bed. It was a small, blackened piece of fabric, a charred Ghost patch from the wreckage.

"I can't fix it, David. I won't even try," Merrick said, turning toward the door. "But when you're ready to go get him back... I'll be waiting by the birds."

The door hissed shut behind him.

Logan woke not to a sound, but to the crushing weight of his own ribs. His heart was a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone, hammering a rhythm that predated his time as a Ghost, predated the uniform, and predated the war. The sedatives Rorke had been pumping into him were supposed to turn his mind to gray sludge, but tonight, the chemistry misfired. Instead of a fog, the drugs created a strobe-light effect. Sharp, jagged flashes of reality interspersed with the terrifying, distorted gravity of a nightmare.

The overhead light hummed. It was a low, visceral vibration that crawled up his spine. He stared at the ceiling until the porous surface of the concrete began to move, bubbling and dipping like the surface of a dark sea.

Too small. The room was exhaling, the walls inching inward with every shallow breath he took.

“No,” he whispered. The word felt like a marble in his mouth, cold, hard, and difficult to swallow. He tried again, his voice cracking into a dry splinter. “No.”

Then came the boots. The sound wasn't the rhythmic, disciplined march of Federation soldiers. To Logan’s fractured mind, it was the sound of giants. It was the sound of the world coming to an end. His pulse spiked so violently it blurred his vision.

When the heavy steel door groaned open, the light from the hallway spilled in like molten gold, blinding him. Three silhouettes stood there. They weren't men; they were shadows, tall and faceless, reaching for him.

"Stay back," Logan hissed, though he wasn't sure he’d actually spoken. He backed away until the freezing bite of the concrete wall hit his shoulder blades.

One of the guards spoke. The Spanish was melodic, routine, a butcher talking to cattle. They stepped into his space, their gloved hands reaching out to facilitate the nightly "session."

In that instant, Logan the soldier died. The tactical minded man who had survived a plummeting space station and the depths of the ocean vanished. In his place was something feral, driven by a primal, white-hot terror. The adrenaline didn't just mask the sedatives; it burned through them like thermite.

Logan exploded.

He lunged with a scream that tore the lining of his throat. He caught the first guard in the neck, his fingers locking onto the tactical vest as he drove the man back into the doorframe. The second guard moved in, but Logan swung a wild, heavy fist that connected with a sickening crunch of cartilage. He wasn't aiming for pressure points or soft tissue; he was fighting to keep the dark from swallowing him whole.

"GET OFF ME!"

The room became a blur of motion. He felt the sting of a baton across his ribs, a sharp, electric flare of pain, but he didn't feel the injury. He felt the memory of it. He wasn't in a cell; he was back in the ruins of San Diego, buried under the weight of a collapsed ceiling. He was a boy again, trapped in the dark while the world screamed outside. This wasn't truth, this never happened at the same time… but the mind cares not when the heart is frantic.

"Mom!"

The name ripped out of him, unbidden and raw. The guards hesitated, the sheer wrongness of the cry giving them pause. Logan’s eyes were wide, the pupils blown into black voids. He wasn't looking at his captors. He was looking through them, seeing a kitchen light, a warm hand, a safety that had been stripped away decades ago.

"Mom, I can’t breathe," he gasped, his lungs seizing. "Mom, Mom, help!"

They swarmed him then. Three men, then four, pinning his limbs. They forced him down, his face pressed against the grit of the floor. A knee drove into the small of his back, crushing the air out of him.

"Dad! Dad, please!"

The desperation in his voice was a physical thing, a jagged edge that sliced through the room. He was regressing, falling through the layers of his own life like a man dropping through floorboards. He was searching for a protector, reaching for the ghosts of a family that had already been broken by the very man who owned this cell.

"HESH!" he shrieked, his voice breaking into a jagged sob. "David, don't let them! H-help me! Hesh!"

He wasn't calling for his commanding officer. He was calling for the older brother who used to check under his bed for monsters. He was calling for the boy who had promised they would always be together. The one he walked in the footsteps of.

The struggle suddenly went quiet. Not because Logan stopped, but because the air in the room changed. The guards didn't release him, but their grip shifted, their postures stiffening.

Slow, deliberate footsteps clicked against the floor.

Gabriel Rorke entered the circle of light. He looked down at the shivering, broken thing on the floor with the detached interest of a scientist watching a moth struggle in a jar. He crouched, his shadow falling over Logan like a shroud.

Logan’s eyes flickered, trying to find focus. "Mom..." he whimpered, the fight finally draining out of his muscles, replaced by a cold, hollow trembling. "I didn't mean to leave. I'm sorry."

He wasn't talking about the mission on the beach. He was back in a childhood memory, some made up conglomerate of sin of a ten-year-old boy, bleeding into the present.

Rorke reached down, his hand massive and calloused as he gripped Logan’s jaw. He forced the younger man’s head up, staring into the watery, unfocused eyes.

"You don't get to go back there, Logan," Rorke said, his voice a low, comforting venom. "There is no 'Mom.' There is no 'David. No Elias. There’s just the hole. And there's me."

"Mommy..." Logan breathed, his voice a tiny, fragile thread.

Rorke didn't hesitate. He delivered a short, brutal hook to the temple.

Logan’s head snapped to the side, and his body went instantly limp. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the heavy breathing of the guards and the distant drip of water somewhere in the facility.

Rorke stood up, smoothing the front of his uniform. He looked at the tear tracks glistening on Logan’s pale, bruised cheeks.

"Good," Rorke whispered, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "Now we know where the foundations are. Tear them down. I want nothing left but the dirt."