I'm pretty sure the idea's been done to death, of what happened in the timespan between Epsilon getting sealed in the memory unit and the UNSC showing up, but I still wanted to have a go at it. Seemed like too good of an opportunity to waste. (I might only be slightly obsessed with Wash. ¬_¬ And Shannon McCormick.)

Feel free to point and laugh as Doc does everything he can to get his medical degree revoked.

Warnings: Language, gore, innuendos; the usual flair.

Doc naturally thought Sarge had been exaggerating when he'd said that Washington wouldn't make it. After all, the grizzled old soldier's native tongue was hyperbole (if you weren't counting his Southern drawl). Besides, he'd seen the ex-Freelancer take some rather impressive beatings in the short time they'd been acquainted. A few explosions should have been nothing. Honestly, he'd expected Washington to just shake it off and bounce back on his feet like it was nothing.

…well, maybe not "bounce," per se. Wash seemed a little too dignified for that.

Or maybe that was what his half-frantic mind had tried to convince itself of as he quickly (but not quickly enough for his tastes) trotted toward the small gathering. Tucker, Sarge, and Grif were huddled around the limp prone form, close enough to actually reach out and touch him but far away enough that the proximity didn't seem untoward and overly-familiar. Hearing Doc's boots kick up snow, the group turned to face him. The relief in their postures couldn't have been any more obvious if someone had drawn faces on their visors with a marker.

"What's wrong with him?" Doc demanded. He skidded to an ungraceful halt.

"How the fuck are we supposed to know?" Grif asked. "You're the medic. That's why we called you over."

"Well, I thought you guys would have had, you know, a really good reason for saying he's not going to survive."

The other man threw his hands in the air, looking unnaturally riled. Near death experiences had a tendency to do that to people. "He's lying on the ground and not moving! Is that a good reason?"

"Dude, you spend, like, three quarters of the day lying on your back and not moving, and no one's tried to bury your body," Tucker said.

"Says you," muttered Sarge under his breath.

"That's because I'm sleeping, not dead!" the orange soldier retorted. He jabbed a finger at Washington's body. "Does he look like he's sleeping?"

"Well if he is, fella sure chose a strange place to take a siesta." Sarge prodded Wash in the ribs with his foot. "Yep. Seems dead as a doornail to me."

With a chiding sigh Doc kneeled at the Recovery Agent's side and swatted away Sarge's boot. "Let me take a look at him. And would you quit touching him? You'll make it worse!"

"'Worse'?" Tucker repeated. "The guy's been shot, stabbed, blown up, knocked off a cliff, and kicked in the head at least a dozen times each. I don't think it can get any worse."

He could be bleeding out in his armor. The medic bit on his tongue to stop the errant thought from leaving his mouth. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the heavy gunmetal gray armor, and flipped Wash onto his back.

Doc fought the urge to recoil.

Sure, he'd seen a lot of nasty field injuries (his last residency came to mind) but this was topping them all in every respect. The exterior alone looked completely mangled. Spiderweb fractures splintered along the craters and dents in the armor on his arms. Persistent red droplets continued to bead along the cracks in the metal, dripping in a steady line down the limb and staining the snow. Even the black gloves were ripped, with tattered skin bleeding afresh into the fabric. Of the two the left arm was easily the worst.

More concaved plating along his thighs, hairline fractures across his visor, all that blood… He was a mess.

Behind him, he heard Grif give a low whistle. "Man, and just when you thought a guy couldn't get any more fucked up. All we need to do now is perform a bisection with a Warthog and he's practically in Guinness for 'Least Survivable Injuries.'"

"Grif!" Sarge couldn't have sounded more dramatic if he were following a stage cue. Which really wasn't a stretch, coming from the Thespian who believed in method acting.

Grif shrugged. "What? I'm just saying if I were Wash I'd be taking photos of myself in a mirror and texting them to Guinness before I pass out. I mean, hey, it's a pretty good way to get famous."

"Being a wanted criminal of the UNSC is a pretty good way too," Tucker spat.

Sarge cuffed his subordinate.

"Ow!" Grif hopped away from the abuse, pawing where he'd been whopped. "What was that for?"

"While most people would've hit you for disrespecting a dying man—"

"He's not dying!" Doc protested.

"—I used it to make up for a lost opportunity."

"'Lost opportunity'?" Grif spluttered. He flailed his arms, nearly smacking Tucker in the process. "For what?"

"For getting my hopes up and not accepting your ultimate demise." His tone was saturated with disappointment and blame, as if it were Grif's fault for not plummeting to his death like a good little private. "You literally checked off every box on the Top Twenty Fatal Clichés List and still didn't die. Even Mufasa didn't survive the hanging-onto-the-cliff scenario."

"I don't know what's sadder," Tucker marveled. "The fact that your CO's birthday candle wish is your death, or the fact that he admitted to watching a Disney movie."

Sarge continued his monologue over the aqua soldier's commentary. "Well, I guess this situation isn't completely unsalvageable. We can always go old fashion. I'm thinking hemlock."

"Fuck you, you senile old man."

"Guys, please!" The sharp plea silenced their bickering. Doc glanced at them over his shoulder. "I can't concentrate if you keep talking."

Mercifully they went quiet.

Certain that they'd comply, at least for now, the purple medic swiveled back around. God, where to even begin? Just at a glance everything looked bad. What if he didn't have enough supplies to treat all of his injuries? There were probably dozens of surface wounds, and what if Washington had a fracture? Oh hell, who was he kidding? In the last hour alone he'd watched the ex-Freelancer get attacked in every conceivable manner possible by cars, people, glaciers, and guns. Honestly, Doc would have been more surprised if Wash walked away from this with only half of his bones broken.

The medic squared his shoulders. He was wasting time nattering over the what-ifs while Wash gushed blood like a ruptured hose.

Carefully, Doc reached for the latch at the base of the helmet, and began undoing the basic maintenance attachments.

"What are you doing?"

At some point Simmons had wandered over to join them, with a morose-looking Caboose in tow. The maroon soldier drifted behind Doc as he spoke, peering curiously over his shoulder at the red and white tie-dye mess before them.

"I need to remove his armor. How else am I supposed to treat him?"

Off to the side Tucker cocked his head in thought, catching on to Simmon's unspoken second question, the arguably more sensible one. "So wait, let me get this straight: The plan is to take off his armor, and fix his wounds, while simultaneously giving him hypothermia. Did I hear that right?"

"He's going to freeze without his suit's temperature regulation systems." Simmons repeated, again, this time for the sake of simply being right. "It's got to be, like, fucking negative thirty degrees out here."

At that Doc did pause, if only for a heartbeat. He dismissed the concern with a light shrug, his hand once again fumbling and pulling at the locks along the helmet. "Then we'll move him inside after I patch him up. He'll only be cold for a jiffy."

"Thank God Donut isn't here," Grif scathed from behind. "He'd probably start swooning."

"…You do remember that Agent Washington was the one who killed Donut, right?" Simmons' voice was somewhere between Are you fucking kidding me? and Oh god the mental images.

"And Lopez," said Sarge in a woeful drawl. "Poor, poor Lopez. All on his lonesome in the great junkyard of the sky."

Unsurprisingly the orange soldier didn't have a reply for that.

None of them really did.

Sans Tucker, who was understandably Not Okay with saving his best friend's would-be killer. "Why the fuck are we trying to help the douchebag who betrayed us to the Meta and had no problem using us as his personal shooting gallery?"

"We can't just leave him out here to die! It would make us no better than…well, him. And I technically can't turn away an injured soldier since I took an oath. Besides," he fussed, "I don't want to have his blood on my hands."

"Son, you already have Wash's blood on your hands!" Sarge gave an ominous chuckle.

Oh. Right. From coming into contact with the bloodied armor. The part of him not distracted with removing it fervently hoped that Wash didn't have AIDS, or space herpes, or any of the other spread-by-body-fluid diseases he'd seen in his medical texts. Inwardly Doc tried not to dwell on that fact as he pried off the damaged equipment with a pneumatic hiss, and tossed it into the snowdrift.

In the brief time the medic had been held hostage he'd never once seen Wash's face. Whether it was rampant paranoia or a Freelancer quirk, neither he nor the Meta ever removed their armor, even when settling down for the night. So naturally Doc had been a bit curious as to actually see what lay underneath the cold exterior.

Bright blonde hair had definitely been at the bottom of his list. It was an unforgettable wheat color, with gray fringing the edges near his temples. Overgrown and unkempt bangs outlined what must have been a once handsome, almost boyish-looking face. Time and the brutalities of Project Freelancer had stripped away a good deal of his youth, leaving a somewhat rugged appearance in its wake. Deep shadows pooled beneath his eyes, while cheekbones stood out sharply beneath freckled skin.

It was to Doc's immense relief that apart from a few shallow scratches and bruises Wash looked relatively okay-ish. At least he could cross brain damage off the list.

Unsteady hands skated across his torso and sought out the connections for the chestplate. With a soft click the damaged gear loosened, allowing Doc to slide it off the fibrous mesh undersuit. Shoulder pauldrons followed next, then the plating along his arms. Throughout it all Doc couldn't suppress the cold pinpricks in his stomach at the complete lack of reaction from Washington.

No muscle spasms. No noises of distress. Not even a twitch in his eerily slack face.

Doc didn't like how surreal it felt.

After what felt like an agonizingly long five minutes the last of the upper torso armor was dumped in the snow. With so many pairs of eyes watching him struggle to undo the body suit's connections, an uncharacteristic nervousness began creeping down his spine, far colder than the chill of the surrounding mountains. The oppressive silence was compounded by the roaring blood in his eardrums, the sickening beating of his own heart against his ribcage.

Blood had begun congealing in the fabric around his shoulder injury. Doc bit down on his bottom lip, gaze unfocused while his hands moved on autopilot with stripping down the suit.

Why did these stupid suits have so many zippers? A frustrated noise rose in the back of his throat. If they ever made it out of Sidewinder and not into a prison jail cell, Doc was going to track down the guy who designed the armor and file a complaint.

When he went to pull the final connection on the suit, it didn't budge. Nonplussed, Doc tried yanking on it a smidgen harder, only to feel a slither of incredulity when the zipper remained stubbornly in place.

It was stuck?

Scratch that; multiple complaints.

"Does anyone have a knife I can borrow?" Doc asked as he gave another fruitless tug on the uniform. No wonder Wash never took off his armor; he was probably trapped in it.

"Euthanasia!" Sarge unsheathed the combat knife fastened at his waist with a flourish, causing those closest to him (Grif and Tucker) to back up with an understandably healthy dose of fear. "Clearly it would be only humane to end his sufferings for him, instead of letting it drag out while we stand by and watch. If you'd like I could even do the honors for you, seeing as you're all into that wishy-washy pacifism hooey."

"What? No!" Doc resisted the urge to throw himself on top of the ex-Freelancer like a living meatshield. Instead he waved his hands frantically at Sarge, who was still poised and looking for all the world like he couldn't wait to "help" Wash. "We're not killing him!"

Sarge deflated. "We're not?"

"No. I need it to remove the suit. It's stuck." Boy, did that sound stupid.

"Dagnabbit." He visibly wilted, now twice disappointed with his lot in life; more accurately put, the lots in others' lives. "You sure there's no chance he won't make it?"

"I'm pretty sure there's a good chance he'll live," the medic replied, as he began methodically cutting along the seam, careful not to wedge the knife in too deeply.

"One hundred percent sure, or ninety-nine percent sure?"

"One hundred."

"Are you absolutely sure that it wasn't a decimal, and you just rounded up?"

"I don't think decimals are an accurate or acceptable way to measure someone's life expectancy. Also, I don't like how there's too much implied doubt involved. So no, definitely one hundred."

To be honest, Doc wasn't sure how we was able to keep up the inane conversation as he preoccupied himself with removing the suit. For a synthetic polymer-mesh fabric, it was surprisingly sturdy. Not unlike the soldier wearing it. That might have sounded overly optimistic on Doc's part, perhaps, as he struggled not to dwell on how to go about treating a Brute Shot wound. But a renewed flare of confidence had the purple medic certain that—as he removed the last layer—the odds were in everyone's favor.

That flare of confidence abruptly fizzled out like a wet firecracker.

Despite the fact that their armor was designed to negate the worst of combat damage, there was still a deep hole in his left shoulder. The wound was sheared and tattered, a canvas of viscera and pierced muscle tissue.

"That doesn't look good," Grif said.

"No shit, Sherlocke," Tucker snapped.

"That might actually be the single most underwhelming description in the universe." Nearby Simmons looked on with contempt at his teammate.

"It's okay," Doc hastily assured, voice cracking slightly as he stared through his visor at the hungry red ooze sliding over pale skin. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself of his words. He reached a hand out toward the bullet wound, only to snatch it right back. His insides were replaced with a vacuum in the pit of his stomach, its gravity slowly pulling him in. "I can fix this."

"Unless you've got a portable ER stashed in your pockets or an ambulance parked around the mountains, then I'd say ol' Wash is as good as kicked it," Sarge said, the sudden dip in his voice shooting back up with morbid glee. "Guess the only thing left to do now is make him comfortable while he dies. Ain't that what medics supposed to do?"

"You might want to reconsider your unhealthy fascination with killing things." As the medic spoke he began rifling through his armor in search of his first aid kit, his distress increasing by leaps and bounds when he couldn't find it. He didn't leave it back at Sandtrap, did he? "And would you quit saying that! He's not going to die!"

"Maybe we should say a few words?" Tucker ventured, though there was a suspicious undercurrent of amusement in his suggestion. "Like, 'thanks for killing the pink guy and evening the teams.'"

Grif jumped on the bandwagon. "How about 'thanks for contracting the Meta to hunt us down.'"

"Yeah… Or, 'thanks for using the green Christmas light on me to keep me alive,'" Caboose piped up for the first time.

Five pairs of eyes turned to him.

"Wait, wait, wait." Tucker held up a hand. "Go back a second. What did you just say?"

The cobalt soldier rocked back on his heels, head tipped to the side as he retreated into his head. "Oh, yeah, you weren't there for that. But there was this one time, at this place, where the scary guy shot me and Agent Washingtub used a Christmas light to make me better." He sounded distinctly proud of himself for being able to remember. "I always knew LED lights were good for your health."

"LED Christmas lights?" Simmons echoed. "You mean his healing unit?"

Doc's head snapped up at that. "Wash has a healing unit? Why didn't somebody say so?" He glanced about his surroundings, half expecting said healing unit to materialize from the ether like a godsend. "Well, where is it?"

"Um, it might or might not be inside his armor…which is really, really broken…so it might be broken too." Caboose paused. "Do we have any duct tape?"

"Duct tape? You can't fix a sophisticated piece of equipment with duct tape!" Simmons barked. There was a brief pause, then: "…Can you?"

"You could always use some good old fashion percussive maintenance," Sarge offered, watching in bemusement as Doc began frantically examining the armor suit pieces he'd tossed aside into the snow. "Whacking the crap out of any malfunctioning doodad always fixes it up! After three or four karate chops Lopez always ran at a faster capacity."

"He was running faster because he was trying to run away!" Grif shouted.

"I think I found it!" Doc's cheer interrupted the would-be argument between commander and soldier. There was a grating clank as he managed to remove the battered equipment from the gray-yellow chestplate. Wash was still doing a decent impression of a wooden plank. "Okay," he began. "Okay, I think we can still use this. Like Caboose said, it's damaged, but it's still functional." Doc illustrated by gesturing to the faint yet steady glow in the equipment's seams. "It should help stabilize him."

"But…?" Tucker, sensing the hesitation, prodded.

A brief flash followed his question. Chartreuse light illuminated the skin on Washington's face and neck from the phosphorous orb suspended over his chest.

Questing hands managed to locate the errant med kit. A deep sigh escaped the medic as he popped open the container and began rummaging through its contents. "But I still need to patch up the wound. He's losing a lot of blood. The healing unit can help staunch the flow, but it's not strong enough to do all the work on its own."

"Don't those health kits have that weird biofoam shit or something like that?" Grif asked.

The fact that he even knew what biofoam was made Doc glance up in surprise. "How did you know that?"

At that Grif took a step back, looking uncomfortably put on the spot. Clearly, he hadn't meant to reveal that piece of information. "Oh, um, I read…about it…somewhere?"

"You mean you mistook it for toothpaste and ate nearly half the tube before you started choking on it," Simmons remarked bitingly.

"Wow, dude. That's even dumber than the time Caboose tried to substitute a grenade with Mentos and Diet Pepsi." Tucker snorted.

Instead of sounding offended Caboose merely continued to stare at the healing unit—and consequentially, Washington—with a sort of intensity that had Doc's hackles up. "The splash damage was even better than a regular grenade. It managed to splash fifty percent more stuff, and get one hundred percent more wet!"

"Well, we don't have any biofoam." A shade desperate now, the medic began digging through the pathetically small kit, tossing things over his shoulders. "Oh come on, there's got to be one in here!"

"Can't we just substitute?" Simmons spoke, painstaking and pointed. "You know, like apply pressure to the arm?"

A sensation akin to being blindsided by his own stupidity hit Doc full force. What was he doing? He was a medic, albeit a bad one, but still. Basic training, DuFresne, he berated himself. Come on, you can do better than this. "Tucker, Caboose, can you please go into the base and see if you can find any fuel to get a fire going? We'll need a way to regulate his body temperature."

"Got it."

"Okay!"

The two Blues took off in the direction of the dark compound.

"Sarge, Simmons, I need you two to go salvage pieces from the jeep that blew up. Hopefully there's a piece big enough that we can use as a makeshift toboggan, so we can transport Wash without jarring him too much."

"What about me?" Grif demanded, watching as his teammates' silhouettes were swallowed up by the blizzard. "What am I supposed to do?"

"We're going to prep him and get him ready for transport." As he spoke Doc began removing the armor along his right arm. Once the final piece of gear was detached from his suit the frigid cold drove into his skin. Icy needles bit into the exposed limb, sending shocks down the nerves in his arm. Teeth grit, Doc wielded the knife from earlier, made a fine cut into the undersuit's sleeve, and carefully used his fingers to tear a fine strip from the fabric. "I'm going to need you to elevate his legs while I start making a tourniquet so he won't bleed out."

"Uh…" The orange soldier's gaze slid toward Wash's lower torso, before darting back to Doc. "Can't we trade places?"

"Unless you know how to make a tourniquet, then I really need you to get between his legs and—"

"And that's where I draw the line. Look, I know that you were trained, so getting all close and personal with patients is no big deal. But when you've lived with Donut for the past few years—"

A nerve near the back of his head popped.

"Donut is dead," Doc cut across, "and Wash is going to be dead in the next five minutes if you don't help!"

Tense silence lapsed between the two men. Apart from the haunting moan of the wind and the thunder of glaciers sliding together, the air was unnaturally still.

This time the Red complied and hoisted Wash's legs ups, bitching up a fantastic storm under his breath about "Donut holes" and "traumatic memories."

Doc nodded once in approval before redirecting his attention to the still-bleeding shoulder, strip of cloth and combat knife in hand.

He really hated improvising.

As he set to work with securing the material around Washington's bicep his thoughts moved on replay, his shout echoing in the recesses of his mind with painful clarity. Since when did he ever yell? Guilt churned in his gut, made worse by the red on his fingertips as he fastened the knife to the cloth strip and began twisting clockwise. The knife was hardly a standard replacement for a stick, but it was the closest thing he had to a baton.

Doc never lost his patience with, well, anyone. It wasn't logical. It wasn't helpful. It wasn't nice. Being passive-aggressive was pushing it most days, but actually resorting to shouting to get something done? The impulsive reaction weighed heavily on his conscience, leaden on his conflicted emotions, at war with every measure Doc took to ensure his own composure. The last time he'd acted so out of turn had been when O'Malley had taken up residency in his head, back at Blood Gulch. And even then the aggression had always been a byproduct of the A.I., not something Doc chose to do of his own volition.

Even now he could feel the phantom impression of indiscriminate malice, like a bad aftertaste. Mental muscle memory.

Take your eyes off them and they'll kill you, you fool.

It was easy to recreate the oft-uttered warning, down to the venom O'Malley spoke with. Even easier to subconsciously act on the advice, and look at Wash.

In the last two weeks alone he'd been threatened, hit, dehydrated, yelled at, dragged halfway across the continent in a slab of stone, and forced to ignore his ethics to further the agenda of a homicidal mute. And throughout it all Wash had been there, micromanaging the Meta and their pursuit of Epsilon. The distant, sarcastic ex-Freelancer, who alone held Doc's life in his hands.

And now…now their roles were reversed.

With the rapid pace of events that had unfolded around him, up until then Doc hadn't found much time to analyze his situation. But somewhere in the clean snowfall and scarlet blood and shuddering lights of the healing unit, he found the time.

Tucker had already hit the nail on the head: Washington did try to kill them. Directly and indirectly. Multiple times. Why help the man who'd thought nothing of attacking his friends and taking hostages? Why bother trying to save a man who couldn't even save himself?

Who probably didn't even care if he was saved.

Again, Doc's visor fell to the slack and somewhat pained-looking features of the unconscious agent. Monsters were made, not born, he had come to realize as he'd watched the aggressive and obsessed former Agent Maine hunt down A.I. Circumstances beyond his control had stripped him of all options but one. Maybe Wash had been no different.

Desperation did things to people. Fear caused people to change.

And right then and there, Doc was afraid.

Besides, Wash had spared him. And for all of his faults, he really wasn't a bad guy, per se. He was almost decent when he wasn't under pressure and letting his frustration get the better of him. Certainly no worse than any of his friends.

"Are you almost done?" Grif whined. "My arms are getting tired!"

"Just about," Doc answered, surprised by how even his tone sounded. With one hand securing the tourniquet, the medic reached into his meager first aid kit and began fishing for a needle and sutures.

They heard approaching footsteps.

Sarge's and Simmons' red armor could be picked out, their colors emerging wraithlike from the intensifying storm. Behind Simmons trailed a large, flat strip of metal with charring along the edges.

"Come on, Simmons!" Sarge barked. "Put your back into it!"

"If I put any more of my back into it I'm going to dislocate my spine!"

"Over here!" Doc waved the pair over, and not a second later the two Reds stood behind him with their "sled." "Once I'm done stitching him up I'm going to need you two to help move him."

"Wait—you're stitching up the wound with the bullet still in it?" Grif asked. "He's gonna get lead poisoning."

Simmons sighed. "Bullets haven't been made out of lead since the twenty-first century, dumbass."

"The human body is pretty resilient." As he spoke Doc threaded the needle through the bloodied skin. The repetitive slide of metal through flesh was strangely hypnotic. It amazed him how easily he lost himself in the rhythm, considering what happened the last time he'd tried applying sutures. He still had the scars. "It's actually considered more dangerous to try and remove the foreign object than it is to leave it in."

"But what about all those Hollywood movies where the hero gets shot with an arrow and has to courageously pull it out with his own hands?" Sarge asked.

As Doc continued to stitch the wound closed (all the while immensely grateful that Washington was unconscious for this part), he heard Simmons explain, "Think about that sentence. Hollywood movie. They never prescribe to real-world logic."

"Simmons is right, guys." With a deep sigh Doc rocked back on his heels, and purely on reflex went to wipe the sweat from his brow. Only when his unarmored hand managed to smear a long streak of blood on his visor did he remember, belatedly, that he was still wearing his helmet.

Grif made a retching noise.

"We can move him into the base now." Doc stumbled to his feet, picking up his shoulder armor and med kit in his hands as he did so. He turned to face Grif, and one look at the blood-smeared visor had the orange soldier flinching, nearly pulling too hard on Wash's legs in the process. "Be gentle! Be gentle!"

"Oh relax," Sarge rumbled, "it ain't like the guy's made of fine China." He wandered toward the Freelancer's head and crouched in the snow adjacent from Simmons, who had taken over for Grif, much to the orange soldier's immense relief. "All right, let's do the old heave-ho and get him on."

"Gently," Doc stressed.

"What are you, his mom?" Grif asked. "It's like it's his first day at school and you're packing his bagged lunch for—"

None-too-gently the medic shoved the healing unit into Grif's hands.

"Walk alongside him so the equipment still works as he's transported." Doc watched Grif slink off next to his teammates, taking up a hunched trudge alongside them as they began propelling the toboggan over the snow.

Tsk'ing, more to himself than anything, Doc hitched his tools and armor plating more firmly in his arms before sprinting after them.

Five minutes of painstaking walking later and they were greeted by the sight of Tucker and Caboose sequestered at the entrance to the compound. Both were taking in turns to toss pieces of whatever had been lying around the abandoned facility—old crates, a traffic cone, some pieces of paper, a propane tank—into a fairly impressive bonfire.

"…for the last time, no!" Tucker slammed the piece of cardboard into the fire. Embers leaped up in the air in a shower of orange pinpricks, their glow fading as they drifted toward the blackened snow. The aqua soldier glared at Caboose from across the leaping flames. "We are not doing it! Just because you have a death wish doesn't mean I have one, too!"

"But he needs our help," Caboose replied. The two Blues were unaware of their encroaching audience "Think about what will happen if we don't help."

"Dude, I am thinking about what'll happen: even more of those crazy soldiers will show up looking for him." With a haughty snort he leaned against a nearby wall, dragging a hand down his visor as he did so. "Besides, what do we look like? An orphanage for unwanted dickheads? We already have enough problems with the ones that got dumped on our doorstep."

"To be fair, Doc is only a partial dickhead," Grif chirped.

The medic hung his head while blowing out a long sigh through his cheeks. "Thanks, guys."

"What are you arguing about anyway?" Simmons asked, meanwhile dragging the comatose Freelancer the last few feet into the shelter of the base. With synchronized groans of relief the Reds pushed him to a standstill a safe distance from the blaze. Immediately Doc dropped to Washington's side and began checking his pulse for signs of shock. So far he was okay—at least, by the loosest definition possible. Well, he wasn't dead. Progress was progress.

Tucker glared in Caboose's direction. "Blue boy over there wants to keep Wash."

"Are you out of your mind?" Grif yelped. "He's a fucking psychopath! He'll slit our throats in our sleep!"

"And what if the UNSC finds out that we helped a former wanted criminal?" Simmons objected. "We'll get arrested, too."

"Like hell they're dragging me off to some Freelancer dungeon to hang dry!" Sarge all but visibly bristled at the thought. "They might try and punish us by using us in their convoluted experiments. Turn us into lab rats! Guinea pigs! Throw us in the stockades!"

"Sarge, you do know that unethical treatment of POWs was outlawed by the Third Geneva Convention in 1949…" Mutual stares of hostility and disbelief met Doc's attempt at levity. "…Right."

"These guys were more than content with torturing their computer programs and soldiers," Tucker pointed out mulishly. "We're just cannon fodder to them. Sim troopers. What's going to stop them from doing the exact same thing to us?"

"But—"

"Maybe we can use Washington as a bargaining chip," the maroon soldier proposed, though he didn't sound overly thrilled about their ordeal. "Like, in exchange for getting them off our backs."

"Guys—"

"God damn it, Caboose!" The aqua soldier had leaped to his feet and was now pacing in an agitated line in front of the fire. Doc pulled Washington's body a little closer to his own. Pensive eyes warily regarded Tucker through his blood-smeared visor as he stopped, and whirled around to square off with his teammate. "Do you even realize what you're asking of us? It'd be like waving a giant neon target over our heads."

Nearby Grif had taken up a seat on an old tire. Judging by the size, it probably belonged to a Mongoose. "We already fixed him up; I don't see why we should go the extra mile."

"The only thing stopping you from going the extra mile is your laziness, dirtbag," Sarge grunted.

"With all due respect, sir, this really isn't the time," Simmons piped up.

His gaze moved from visor to visor as Caboose silently implored them. "But Church—"

"Is that what this is about?" With the fire casting auburn shadows on his aqua, and his arms crossed over his chestpiece, he eerily looked and sounded like his former CO. "Look, I get it. Church is gone. That sucks." To Tucker's credit he did sound genuinely upset by the recent loss. Interestingly, the Reds looked unsettled by the namedrop, too. "If you want I'll let you babysit Junior on weekends, or hell, we can get a goldfish or something. But inviting Wash is out of the question."

"Not to mention the goldfish isn't an ex-Special Ops guy with years of deadly military training." Grif propped his hands behind his orange helmet.

"And the little fellas only have three second memories. Look! You two already have something in common." Sarge chortled.

Little by little Caboose's shoulders sunk in defeat against the overwhelming refusal.

Feeling a pang of sympathy for the addled soldier, Doc turned to face him. "Why are you so set on saving Wash?"

Caboose stared unflinchingly back. "Because we couldn't save Church."

A numb sort of sensation spread throughout his midriff.

Tucker froze with an arm outstretched, while Simmons had stiffened and Grif drew himself upright. Sarge remained impossibly still, like a coiled spring.

"We crashed a plane and made things explode and got rid of the evil astronaut that not even the Freelancer guys could get rid off," the rookie rattled off. Loss and grief pervaded every inch of his posture, of his voice, a low noise that made the hairs along Doc's arms stand on end.

Caboose was mourning.

It made the medic feel cold inside, cold in a way that the snowstorm could never hope to touch, as the cobalt soldier continued to ramble, words so fast they clipped into each other: "But in spite of all of that stuff we still couldn't help Church or the mean scary lady. We can't have come this way for nothing."

Caboose turned toward them, pleading.

"I do not want to fail someone else."

A long, uncomfortable silence descended upon them.

"…Damn it," Grif swore, feelingly.

"He'll need a cover story," Sarge began in a low, disgruntled murmur.

"Easy." Tucker nodded outside toward the expanse of snow and ice. "We'll just give him Church's old armor."

"What about the recovery signal?" Simmons worried aloud. "Aren't all Freelancer armors rigged with those homing beacons that go off when one of them gets injured?"

A groan crawled its way out of Doc before he could fight back the sound. "You're right." All previous elation at having cheated Wash's fate vanished, as he recalled their brief tryst in the desert and the seemingly endless pursuit of said beacons. Even over long distances the signal could be tracked, and quickly, too, if his time spent chasing them down was any indicator. Within seconds of Church's injury the implanted beacon had shown up on Wash's radar.

Never mind the fact that the military, unlike them, had access to fast-travelling Pelicans and Hornets.

If the UNSC was actively hunting down those recovery beacons…

"We'll have to act fast." The medic once more turned toward the two teams assembled around the fire. "Can you guys go find Church's armor and bring it here?"

"Nose goes," Grif called.

"Nose g—damn it!" Simmons shot his friend a cool glare beneath his helmet, before spinning around and marching off into the snowfall. Sarge muttered something under his breath before he strode out after his second.

"Wait for me!" Caboose gave an ecstatic shout as he bounded after them.

"So what now?" Tucker asked, sitting cross-legged to Doc's left. Completely at ease, Grif slouched back on his tire. His newly-acquired Brute Shot served as a footrest.

From his med kit Doc removed a small rag and began wiping the blood off his visor. "The wound's sealed up and the healing unit is doing its job, so really there's not a lot I can do. I mean, I could always give him a full-body physical—"

"Pass," they both said.

Doc frowned. "Really, guys. What is up with you? There's no need to get so embarrassed over the human physique! I'm pretty sure there's nothing Wash has that you don't."

"Did you find that out for yourself while Wash took you prisoner?" Tucker asked.

Thankfully the purple helmet did a good job of obscuring the heated flush spreading across his cheeks. "It wasn't like that," he stammered out.

"Now who's embarrassed?" Tucker taunted.

"No wonder you were so obsessed about making sure he didn't lose blood circulation," Grif mused. "You were just afraid that he wouldn't be able to get it up again."

"Come on, guys, that's not—"

A low, pained groan interrupted their conversation.

Three pairs of eyes homed in on the still but not-quite-so-still form.

For a moment nothing had changed apart from the shallow rise and fall of Washington's chest. Then, after what felt like an eternity, his lips twitched. Another soft moan left the Recovery Agent as his eyelids fluttered open. Storm gray eyes groggily stared up at the two men who had crept closer to investigate. Something about the bizarre setting seemed to finally register in Washington's mind, and his eyes widened, all traces of delirium rapidly fading out of his expression.

Hardwired instincts had the Freelancer struggling to sit up before he could finish processing his surroundings. Alarmed, Doc scrabbled forward and placed both palms on his chest, pushing him back down.

"Easy, Wash. You're badly injured. You need to lie back." In any other case it should have been like an oxpecker trying to wrestle a water buffalo. Thankfully Wash was too injured to put up much fight, and it was more fatigue than compliance that had him settling back down.

"How—what—when did I—?" His exhausted features darted between the Red, Blue, and medic, trying to make sense of his situation. Wash made to prop himself up on his right elbow, only to break off into a harsh coughing fit.

"Grif, go see if this base has a running bathroom. See if you can find him some water."

Looking glad to have an excuse to leave, the orange soldier got up and left.

With endless patience Doc unhinged Washington's arm and straightened it back out, guiding him into a horizontal stretch. Dark, haunted eyes widened at the contact, but he didn't struggle as Doc went about resetting his uninjured arm.

"What happened?" His voice was gravelly and rough.

"We totally kicked the Meta's ass," Tucker jumped in, before Doc could explain. "Sent him flying right off the cliff!"

He blinked, as if he couldn't quite believe it. "He's…dead?"

"Yep. And we saved your life." Tucker tilted his chin up a fraction, tone oozing smugness. "Feel free to start bowing whenever you feel like it."

This time Wash looked up at Doc. "What about Epsilon?"

Tucker and Doc swapped looks.

Neither of them was keen on telling him the truth, but… "The memory unit failed," Doc said softly. "He's stuck in there."

Washington cursed and tipped back his head, throat arched. "Great. My one way out of this fucking mess."

"Actually, we think we have a plan to keep you from becoming someone's prison bitch," Tucker crowed. "We're gonna hide you on our team as one of us! They'll never see it coming!"

There were only so many surprises a man recovering from severe physical trauma could handle, and witness protection clearly wasn't one of them. This time Doc couldn't stop Washington from bolting upright.

"What do you mean you—shit!" The agent doubled over at the waist with a sharp hiss of pain.

"You can't strain yourself! What did I just say?" With a chastising glare aimed at Tucker, Doc scooted next to Wash and physically maneuvered him into a recline, wincing every time his patient let slip an unintentional grunt.

"What happened to me?" Wash bit out through clenched teeth.

"You got shot through the shoulder and you might have a few broken ribs," Doc rattled off, inwardly flinching when Wash groaned. "The healing unit is speeding up your natural recovery, but it can't numb the affected areas."

A half-spasming hand reached across the space separating him from the medic's first aid kit. "Give me some morphine."

He reached into the container and pulled out the syringe in question, but refrained from administering it. "But if I numb you then I won't be able to monitor you for any changes in pain severity. You're not supposed to completely neutralize it, because the patient still needs to be able to feel any muscles spasms…"

Dumbfounded silence was his only reply. Then he screamed. "That's for contractions during labor, you idiot! DO I LOOK LIKE I'M GIVING BIRTH RIGHT NOW?"

"That depends," Tucker answered. "Have you had any recent contact with aliens?"

Doc squared his shoulders. "I'm sorry, Wash, but I don't feel safe with giving—"

Before he could finish his sentence the ex-Freelancer lashed out and snatched the syringe from his hands, and then jammed the needle into his arm. The clench of his fist eased as he let the empty syringe roll out of his palm and onto the ground.

"I…hate…you," Washington rasped. His head lolled back.

"I know." Doc sighed. He placed a soothing hand on the unstitched shoulder, and while Wash did growl at the contact, he didn't jerk away.

"Hey, Tucker!" From somewhere deeper in the building Grif's voice echoed. "I need your help! The sink's clogged!"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" the aqua soldier shouted back. "How the hell did you do that?"

"I don't know! Just come help me!"

"Fine." Sighing, Tucker hauled himself to his feet and strode off down the hall.

Leaving just the medic and Freelancer by themselves.

For once the sarcastic man had no witty remark. His sharp, angular features drifted to the left, taking in the stark contrast of the sutures against his bloodied skin. Calculating, intelligent eyes studied the wound, a vestige of some unknown emotion glinting in their storm-gray depths. Nervously Doc bit down on his lip. Much as he didn't like the silence, he was too ill at ease to try and make small talk.

Finally Wash craned his neck, just enough to place Doc from his periphery to the center of his vision. He lingered longest on the exposed, sleeveless arm that still bore traces of Doc's hasty tear-job.

"Why are you doing this?" The question was so weak that Doc nearly missed it.

"I took an oath." He shrugged.

Clearly that wasn't the answer Wash wanted, because he balled his fists. "I kidnapped you," he said in a low tone. "I held you hostage. I hurt you." He gave a pained cough, but his focus never wavered from the medic's visor. "Either you have the worst self-preservation instincts I have ever seen, or I'm missing something."

"Uh…nope. I think you got it all," Doc informed him warily, still not sure what to make of this development.

Wash furrowed his brow. "By all rights you should have either left me to die, or at the very least handed me over to the UNSC."

"That's still an option, you know. Do you want us to turn you in?"

"No." His nostrils flared. "And that's not the point." He fixed the medic with his piercing gaze. "I don't understand: why are you helping me? And don't blame it on Stockholm Syndrome."

Doc hesitated.

"…Well, I couldn't let you die. What would that have proved? Besides…" Doc cleared his throat. "You don't deserve any of the stuff that happened to you. I may not be a good medic, but at least I know I could do one thing right."

If anything, those words seemed to hurt him more than his injuries did. The muscles in his throat worked, Adam's apple bobbing as the agent regarded the figure crouched beside him. He looked like he was in pain.

It wouldn't be easy, but maybe, given enough time, they could fix this.

"…We're still not friends," he murmured, his tone suspiciously dry. Wash continued to frown at the medic, but this time his features softened.

"I know." Doc smiled under his helmet. "But it's a start."