A/N: Just a bit of a drabble idea I wrote to get adjusted to Felix and Locus's characters. Set pre-RVB events. But if you do like it and have the time, drop a review and let me know what you thought!

Carrying Coffins

Nothing but death is certain.

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The emergency siren is blaring from inside the cockpit. His hands are shaking, not from fear but from adrenaline, from trauma. Because at some point he lost consciousness and at some point he regained control of his quaking body, and every lapse of time prior and between is a black void that might have welcomed him to death. As if to confirm his worry, there's warmth dangerously sliding down the inside of his armor. Blood, fuck, he knows it's his own blood but the pain hasn't registered yet. He can't pinpoint the wound. Can't feel his back or his legs.

"L-Locus! Locus!"

Felix's next reaction is to cry out for his friend, seeking some form of reality in the engulfing blackness around him. The emergency siren drowns his voice, drowns him in a light that occasionally flashes an eerie crimson and illuminates the air-tight compartment. None of this looks familiar to him. He barely recalls that it could be the inside of the escape pod from a deployment ship, and he wonders if he had been ejected at some point. And to really ice his cake there's a horrible screeching from somewhere outside the metal walls, like the weight of the deep ocean has compressed on the unit.

The abyss? The ocean? Fuck it, then there would be no one to hear him scream.

.

From the time one is conceived, their bodies have already prepared for their impending demise, yet humans act like they were never meant for death. Like if they ignore it, it'll claim someone else, or that if they invent concepts and medications and gods they can never truly die. We're obsessed with the idea that we can avoid death by simply turning our backs to its hideous reality and saying, "I don't believe in you."

.

"Goddammit! Locus, answer me! Can you hear me?" He slaps his helmet, hears the intercom crackle back to life. "Locus!"

There is no response. Felix registers that grinding noise again, that horrendous groaning as the pod pitches. He frantically glances around for some kind of fire ax hanging on the wall or his weapon or fucking something, he just needs the light to flash on the right angle, reflect off a usable object. As he strains in his seat he realizes that he's harnessed into the chair, and his arms are thick like lead, barely functional under his own weight, so the center buckles won't come undone so easily for him.

"Fuck, fuck! Locus? Anyone? Can you hear me?!"

The intercom is still silent on the other end. The incoherent sounds are becoming more and more of a bang, like the outer walls are collapsing under the ocean's weight, about to fully compress and collapse his head from inside this trap.

.

Death becomes less and less of an option. Suicide, murder, disease, accidents. Because we are world killers the worlds fight back, give us metals to make guns and chemicals to contract cancers. Offers us unexplored territories to soak in blood and animals to claw out our throats. Presents us with oceans that crumple bone to dust and storms that churn entire plains to ruin. Mountains of fire that swallow the sun, fields of ice that darken the moon.

.

He exhales, tries to move his legs but his hips are on fire. The pain is finally beginning to register in his lower torso, and as he glances down, a bar of red light bends over the shard of titanium lodged in his side. Simultaneously, he's both mortified and relieved by this. That means his unit is mangled and for that he cannot possibly be under the ocean, otherwise the weight would have imploded already, but holy fuck that's a big ass shard of metal. His blood loss might be severe depending on how long he's been unconscious.

"Might just be the death of me," he whispers into his headset, although he suspects no one can hear him.

.

And once we survive all of this, once we survive the homicidal tendencies in human nature and every force in the world that works against us, we can never escape time. Age. Crippling, rotting, collapsing, pleading –

.

He's losing consciousness again when the hatch above him launches open. Sunlight floods into the pod, the distant sonance of gunfire and screaming and explosions echoing in its wake. A familiar soldier in accented green armor drops down into the pit a split second later with a combat knife that he uses to carve open the straps of the harness. "Locus?" Felix mutters, grasping the tendrils of his reality. His head lolls forward as if his skull is pumped full of iron.

"I'm here. I heard your distress call through my radio."

Felix laughs wearily, but he wheezes in another breath. "About fucking time. You sure do know how to make a man wait."

Locus grasps the shard wedged in the other man's side and tugs it out with little more than a grunt. Felix is too exhausted, barely registers the acute jab of pain and barely manages to emit more than a quick hiss of displeasure. With what's left in the emergency aid kit on the wall, Locus digs out a silver canister and pops the top, utilizing the thin nozzle to pump the five-inch laceration with falsified proteins. The medicine seals the wound shut by rapidly clogging the damaged veins and burning itself into the flesh to keep it connected with the same strength as industrial grade cement.

This time, Felix almost screams. "Goddamn – shit – son of a motherfucking bitch!"

Locus discards the can, grasps his friend by the front of his chest plate. "Come on, I'm getting you out of here."

.

What're you babbling about, Locus?

(The soldier beneath the sheets can feel Felix tracing his every scar like connecting the dots in a children's coloring book, disinterested in just about every point Locus has made about their deployment into the battlefield tomorrow.)

We all die at some point, Felix.

I'm not scared of death.

Neither am I. But that doesn't mean I like the idea of losing you.

.

.

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It's not that easy to kill me, you know.

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Locus adjusts Felix on his back as he sprints across the craggy terrain, barely dodging the bullets that whiz by from both sides of the fallout. Their guys had come to set up base on this mountainous planet aptly named Alpine, only to discover that the original Alien inhabitants weren't as thrilled with the idea. War had been inevitable at that rate, which initially annoyed Locus upon being told he was going to be enlisted for deployment, but he had never been in a firefight this intense before. So now, more than anything, Locus is downright fucking pissed with their government.

Felix groans, gradually regaining consciousness.

They were the second wave deployment platoon, but was their carrier pulled over the warzone a banshee shot out the right wing, sending them into a downhill spiral. Some of the pods had been destroyed or damaged, one of which included Felix's, and Locus's first priority was to find the crash site. And, of course, it had been to the eastern hemisphere of the canyon, where the battling was most intense. Locus was goddamn lucky he had gotten there unscathed, let alone in one piece, and knew there was someone watching over them when he had found Felix still alive.

Or, in this case, not quite dead.

Locus weaves towards the back lines of the army. Their soldiers are gradually regaining grounds despite the chaos – (despite the bodies splayed across the dirt that Locus narrowly manages to avoid) – and he focuses on transporting Felix to safety. It's dangerous to have his arms occupied right now, especially now.

"After this is over," Felix mumbles into his headset, shifting his weight upwards to ease the tension on Locus's back, "I'm dropping from this stupid army."

"And what do you think you'll go back to? You were cast from the family, remember?"

"No one asked you to bring that up."

"But you do realize how ridiculous your notions are."

"Ugh, I dunno, whatever. Maybe I'll take up some opportunities as a mercenary or something. Heard the pay's ten times better than this shit." Felix slides his sidearm out of the holster on his thigh and fires at an alien converging on them from their left, the first two shots going wide, the other three puncturing the exposed sections of the creature's neck. It slams into the ground, twitches, doesn't get back up.

To their other side, a soldier's chest is blown apart by a plasma grenade and shards of bone and armor rocket in every direction. Blood splatters across Locus's visor, obscuring his vision.

He jumps the incapacitated body, continues, doesn't dare look back.

.

It doesn't matter what you think, Felix. The only outcome to war is death.

.

Locus sets Felix down on the flat of the plateau's edge overlooking the battlefield, a small inlet that branches into a series of cave networks their army has been using to navigate under the alien army and corner them on all sides in the canyon. "We'll stick it out here," Locus says, turning back to the ridge ramping down the side of the cliff. "I'll be right back."

"Where the hell are you going?"

"To find a sniper rifle and some ammunition. I also noticed some stray weapons that might do us some good."

Felix leans back against the eroded wall, clutching at his searing wound. It's become inflamed with irritation and the possible infection from a metal poisoning; not the worst he's ever felt, but it's definitely cutting close on his top ten list. "I'm assuming that if you don't return and this whole battle goes to shit, I should just save the last bullet in this gun"—he raises the sidearm to his forehead, presses it dangerously close to his temple—"and do myself a fucking favor."

Wordlessly, Locus takes his leave.

In the wake of death, Felix closes his eyes. Exhausted, spent, he readily sleeps. He dreams of death on the battlefield.

.

.

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The worst part about when it's all over, when the war is subsided and the sun is dyed red with blood, is the quiet.

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"So, about the mercenary thing…"

Locus stares absently at the coffins being loaded onto the carrier for their departure back home. Felix is leaning against him to exchange body heat as the bristling evening air seeps cold into their suits. That could have been us in those boxes, Locus thinks, but there'd be no one to claim our corpses.

"Hey, did you hear me? I'm being serious."

"Yes, I'm listening."

"I think I found someone needing some hires on a planet called Chorus, not too far from here. Gonna offer us the deal of a fucking lifetime. Doesn't sound all that dangerous either, we could be in and out without a scratch."

("Are you afraid of death, Locus?" the coffins jeer.)

"...Now you have my attention."

.

It's a quiet I could not bear without you. This is a war I cannot handle without you by my side. Death is something I'm afraid to face because I cannot, will not, survive without you.

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