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There’s a difference between not responding to a threat in time, and actively letting your teammate get shot― and, as C.T. realises, out there on the orange-glowing battlefield, smoke rising into the heat and haze, bullets zinging off overturned cars― the latter part of that was really not such a far cry from shooting them in the back herself.
Next to her, Wyoming shudders, leaning limply against the belly of the car, breaths laboured and shallow and agonising. The damage doesn’t show on his armour, but underneath, C.T. knows, would be a mess of blood and muscle and organs and bodysuit, raw and torn. Something had gone wrong, something had to have gone awry, because for all the work that C.T. had done for the Insurrection, she had never connected that one day, someone in the Project would get hurt because of what she had done.
The scan function on her HUD flashes her information, but it’s nothing that she can’t see already. Skin burnt away, muscle charred, organs glistening – ghastly, sickening, nauseating. He’d make it out, if he was lucky, and of course it's now that C.T.'s mind is all too keen to remind her that there’s also a difference between not liking someone, and voluntarily letting that person get hurt. And her chest clenches in horror as she watches each of Wyoming’s inhales getting shorter and shorter, until finally he’s gasping and panting for each breath, hand grasping at his rifle with the sort of desperation only a terribly injured man has, likely choking on his own blood inside his helmet.
He attempts, weak and panicked, to lift himself, and she jumps, scrambling to his side and fumbling with gloved hands until his helmet comes off with a hiss. Roughly she drags him upright and blood comes splattering out of his mouth even as he screams with the movement.
As his voice fades away into harsh and ragged breaths a shell bounces off the car not inches from Wyoming’s skull, and C.T. flashes over the edge to loose half a dozen rounds into the other side. At least one falls, and it’s not until afterwards that she realises that this, amongst the smoke and fire, was probably her first team kill, a nameless Insurrectionist who she had pledged already to side with.
‘Only took you forever, dear.’ Wyoming wheezes from the ground, teeth gritting. Frankly she’s surprised he still has the life in him to mock her. ‘…I shouldn’t like to die that way.’
‘Be quiet.’ C.T. says, and her HUD takes his pulse. The next bullet whizzes past. He clenches his fists, tenses every muscle in his body. 'Stay still.'
He has the audacity to laugh, quickly dissolving into hacks and coughs. ‘...please, dear, do at least be nice to me when I die.’
No, C.T. wants to say, you're a snake who feeds out of the Director's hand and I'd sooner kill you than give niceties to you, but somehow the poison that always came so easily drains all away because he's gripping her hand and looking at her with such a wretched and piteous expression on his dirt-streaked face, hair plastered to his damp forehead. And then his body seizes up in pain again and her mind races― how much could she do without taking his chestplate off? How would she even separate the bodysuit from the wound? How could she possibly―
The third flying bullet tears through the side windows of the car they're hiding behind, glass shards peppering their armour, and she pulls out a grenade, bites off the pin, and lobs it over. The resulting blast sends heat and debris rolling over the top of their shelter, and the first thing North says when he ducks in behind it is a grim, ‘Wow, hot.’ And then he looks taken aback, and C.T. can't make out the expression behind his visor. ‘Wyoming. Oh, god, look at that.’
C.T. bites her lip. ‘Will extraction make it?’
‘She’s a good pilot. We can hope.’ Peeking around the edge, he deftly aims his rifle and takes down at least another two, judging from the screams. But the return fire comes just as quickly, and once again they’re pinned. There is a crackle and North puts a hand to his radio. ‘Negative, get the package.’ – C.T.’s heart sinks, and Wyoming clutches at her hand hard enough to crush her fingers together, chest clenching and hissing at every movement.
‘God,’ Wyoming whispers.
‘It―’ It’s all my fault, C.T. wants to say. It’ll be alright, C.T. tries to say. And neither manage to come out as the words catch in her throat. Instead she raises Wyoming's head so that he's resting on her folded legs. The shift in position tearing a strangled noise from his raw throat. His eyes flutter shut and his hand tightens around hers again, panting, desperately gasping.
‘Breathe,’ She says, and hopes that it doesn’t sound as uncertain to him as it does to herself. 'Breathe, Wyoming.'
Inhale. Exhale. The explosions sound louder. She can feel the heat on her face.
‘Hold on, yeah?’ North calls from a yard away over the noise, glancing at them for a moment before turning back to fire more shots. ‘Just hold on, don’t die.’
‘Excellent advice,’ The man in her arms rasps in reply.
She'd smack him, but he'd probably die. ‘Shut up. Just, don't talk.’ C.T. settles on, half-heartedly.
He holds her hand and breathes.
C.T. was an Insurrectionist. Had decided to be one, had decided her place in this war already. Freelancers should have been collateral damage. But in the end there’s still a difference between caring for a person’s life, and just not wanting them to die because of you. She distinctly feels like she's justifying something to herself, but to make this― to make all this, even just a little bit easier― to each their own, right?
‘God,’ She thinks, and as the guns keep chattering and the fires keep raging, can’t help but to will for extraction to arrive, already. And when it does, the aircraft soaring in and dropping from the sky, C.T. sticks Wyoming’s helmet back onto his head, slings his arm around her shoulders and supports him, step by heavy step, into the hull of the Pelican.
Wyoming’s passed out by the time C.T. drops him onto the seat, and lowers the safety bars over him. It works because she doesn't want to hear another word from him. Can't bring herself to, anyway.
North is all pieces in his relief, falling into his seat, dropping his face into one hand and exhaling a long, shuddering breath.
'Can't believe we made it out.' She notices that he still hasn't let go of his gun. 'I don't know how they were so prepared. There were so many of them.'
'It's okay,' C.T. murmurs, with as much earnestness and reassurance as she can muster. 'We made it out.'
Next to her, Wyoming's head lolls in his helmet.
---
His surgery is touch and go. A flurry of medics try their goddamn best to keep him with them, keep him alive. His armour is carefully removed where it can be and sawed away where it can't. His bodysuit they have a harder time with because the blast fused it to his wound, hard even to visually distinguish from each other, let alone surgically separate.
The surgery is gruelling, but after hours upon hours of frantic instructions and steady instrument-wielding hands, Wyoming survives.
C.T. visits him in the med bay once, and once only. Standing at the door, at night, when she could be sure no one would be milling about, wandering about and seeing her here, of all places. Staring blankly at his form, swathed in white bandages, propped up on pillows, connected to all manners of dripping tubes and beeping machines, and all that comes to mind in that moment is I couldn't let you die, not like that. I could have left you, but I couldn't let you die. Not as collateral. Not because of something I did.
She finds him vile. Or at least, found him vile, in the days of the Project, so soon to be behind her. She can't pinpoint the emotion.
She thinks it's ironic that of all the people in the Project that she sought to save, it had been him, the one she would sooner shoot than trust, would sooner maim than allow a single moment with her back turned to him. She can do all the saving she wants now, succumb to guilt all she wants now. But when she's found to be gone, she can already imagine the Freelancers swarming after her, under the orders of the Director.
And then, when that time came, she'd readily shoot to kill.
Wyoming begins to recover. Slowly, but surely, he wears down at the anaesthetics and finally tips the balance between wakefulness and sleep, sitting up in his bed, hoarsely and cheerily greeting anyone who'll listen. She makes a point of not going to see him. And some weeks later, when he's finally up and about again, still in hospital gown and on crutches, she leaves, quietly and secretively, telling no one.
The gaping holes in the confidential data files and network security system aren’t discovered until hours later.
---
Sandtrap. Digging, day in, day out. They have a perimeter alarm, but they may as well have had nothing.
It's been years, and he's the last person she ever expected to see. Told her half an hour that Agent Wyoming would be dropping by this sorry excuse for a desert dig, and she would have laughed her bitter laugh and thrown it back in their face.
The sand blows around their feet, and the wind in the air is as dry as the heat of the orange sun beating down on them. He has a gun pointed unerringly at her head, and all she can really say is, ‘Why don’t you shoot?’
He pauses for a second before lowering it and saying, ‘Because you spared me, back then.’
His gaze is still steely. Long past hurt, of being saved by the traitor when she should have murdered him.
He has it all wrong. C.T. feels that same unrecognisable emotion wrap coldly around her heart, and hates Agent Wyoming all the more for it.