Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

GORRISTER

Three weeks. only three weeks since They took my darlin’ Glynis to that damned asylum… and she hollered for me to save her; the sound won’t stop echoing in my mind whenever I’m awake. I go to bed hearin’ it. Hell, I hear it now. “I didn’t make too much noise, did I honey?” That was the last thing I heard her say to me before those rusted metal gates closed and sealed her forever in that place away from us all…

Edna and Harry can pretend to themselves that life is as it always was and, by sending me an invitation, that what they see is not the man who ruined their daughter. I am no better than they are. Worse, maybe. I stand motionless, too weak to fight back, and allow guilt to descend on me like a comfortable shroud. The only trophy I’ve won is one I never wanted: the absence of anythin’ in my hands. Six o'clock. At the Same crummy restaurant, and same table as always.
I can still see her across the little wooden table, tryin’ with all her will not to lose me inch by inch. The place seems smaller, darker, but tonight it feels like home. It waits to watch me break again. And I will, it’s a truth that forms the basis of all my actions. It lurks behind every corner. I sent her there. I handed her over. I locked her in there. And there are certain things in life for which you simply can never forgive yourself.

Some things you’re not supposed to.

I force myself to go, knowin’ the least I could do for them now is to apologise and try to make amends. Doubt it’ll change anythin’, but I might as well try to be empathetic to Edna and Harry’s side durin’ this rough patch. as if that could scrape clean what's already rotted through. Doubt it'll matter to anyone-Edna, Harry, the ghosts I carry, but I figure I owe 'em at least the gesture, a brittle little reach toward their side of things in the middle of this wreckage.
The door groans as I push it open, the way it would rather keep shut on the likes of me. Inside, the place squats in its own gloom, decked out like some forgotten roadside honky-tonk, with faded posters curling on the walls, antique guns that most likely had more stories than I have, and the stink of old whiskey and stale beer cling to the air. I step inside slow, feel the place sizin’ me up, like everything else in my life seems to be doin' lately.

My eyes dart ’round the room, never restin’ long on any one face, huntin’ for the two people I wronged without ever intendin’ to. Doesn’t take long to spot ’em, small shapes huddled together in the half-light. So, I force my boots to carry me over slow, real slow, like any sudden move might crack what’s left of ’em. “I'm here.” I manage, the words draggin' out of me. Low enough not to rattle their nerves, loud enough to cut through the chatter spillin' from the bar a few yards off. My voice feels like it's been left out in the rain too long. Harry looks up first; there's a tremor in him. “Oh… Gorrister… how could...how could this happen?!” Edna presses out, her voice tremblin’, cracked wide open. And who could blame her? She’s holdin’ too much grief for one pair of hands. I swallow down the ache clawin' up my throat. "Things… things have a way of happenin', Edna. Reasons we don't get to see 'til they're already cuttin' us open." The words taste like rust. I tack on, quick and clumsy, "Anyone… anyone want a drink?" The air goes still for a beat or two, heavy, thinkin', wounded, before Edna finds her voice again.

"I'll take one of those non-alcoholic Georgia peach things. With ice," Edna says, tryin' to steady herself. Then she cuts her eyes toward Harry--poor man's gone pale as wax all of a sudden. “I… I'll have some cherry punch,” he mutters. “But not a glass. A… a bowl. Like one of those party bowls. Please.” Takes me a second to let it settle in my head; my brain ain't been workin' at full speed these days. I repeat it back, slow and certain, makin' sure I ain't messin' this up on top of everything else. "Alright… one zero-proof Georgia peach, and one party-sized cherry punch bowl. Got it."
I shuffle over to the bar, place the order, and while the bartender's rattlin’ around with ice and syrup and God knows what else, that old familiar pressure is buildin', the kind that reminds you you're just a body tryin' to function. so I slip off to the bathroom and let the world run without me for a minute. By the time I return, the drinks are lined up on the counter like they're waitin' for judgment. I go for the punch bowl first, it's so damn big it takes both hands, like I'm carryin' something fragile but ridiculous all the same. I move careful, each step deliberate and set it right in the centre of the booth like I'm placin' an offering for the dead.

Then: back and forth, back and forth, between the bar and the table, gathering up the smaller glasses-mine, Edna's, Harry's-not spilling, not thinkin’, just getting through the moment one drink at a time. Once I finally slide into the booth-awkward as a busted hinge, sittin' across from Edna and Harry-we launch into talk about nothin' in particular. Useless chatter. Safe chatter. The kind that fills the air, so you don't have to hear your own thoughts grindin'. After a while, the hours slip off somewhere we can't see, and the world outside the diner might as well be another planet.
By the time I come up for air, it's near one in the mornin', and it hits me that it's just the three of us left. Booth's empty. Bar's empty. Even the jukebox gave up. I glance at my glass-bone dry-and realize I haven't had a drop all damn day. My eyes drift to Harry's punch bowl, what's left swirlin' at the bottom like it's waitin' on me.

"Hey, Harry… can I have that last bit?" I ask as politely as my worn-out voice if it lets me. I point at the bowl. He looks at it then at me and just nods-silent, pale, tired.
I wander up to the counter and snag a straw. Don't know why. Habit, comfort, somethin' old and soft buried in me. Feels right in my hand, anyhow. When I get back, Edna's already tiltin' the bowl, pourin' what's left into a glass for me. I slide back into the booth and take it—grateful, parched, not thinkin', just actin' on the ache in my throat. The drink goes down easy. Too easy. And in that moment, I don't stop to wonder what she might've slipped into it… what tiny choice she might've made while my back was turned.
By the time the truth crawls up my gut, cold and sharp… it's already far, far too late to do a damn thing about it.

POISON.

That BITCH poisoned me.

I can feel my throat closin’, my heart racin’, as the world begins to spin and shadows creep into my vision from its edges. Desperate, I stand up to get away from the poison coursin’ through my veins, but Harry pounces on me and forces me to the ground, and down I go, tumbling in a heap of confusion and despair. Each breath is a shallow, sharp gasp; each successive one drivin’ home the reality of the betrayal unfolding around me.
I try to latch onto his grasp, switchblade glints menacingly in it, the light reflectin’ off the steel like some kind of cruel reminder of my impendin’ fate. I try to call out for help, to scream for anyone who might hear me, but my voice is reduced to nothin’ more than a whisper, swallowed by the darkness encroaching on my consciousness. It was as if the air itself had thickened, refusin’ to allow me to gather my strength against this new foe. I Then rip out a decent chunk of Harry’s hair from his balding head, and, out of the shadows, I see Edna loomin’ over me, her expression a mask of cold determination.
She clamps a surprisingly strong hand over my mouth, stifling the loud chokes that escape my throat, muffling my desperate pleas. A surge of panic goes through me as I struggle against her grip, but my body feels heavy, weighed down by the poison now spreading like wildfire through my system and Harry’s body weight on top of me. Just as I'm about to pass out, everythin’ blurrin’ into a hazy fog, I feel the cold blade slice through the fabric of my shirt, the sharpness a violent contrast to the numbness that has begun to settle in my limbs.

In one swift, brutal motion, the blade sinks deep into my chest, and I gasp as the warm, crimson liquid starts to pour from the gash above my right breast. It's a strange feelin’… the warmth of my blood mixin’ with the cold of the floor beneath me-as if time has slowed just for this one moment to make it more horrible. I want to fight, to claw my way back to life, but the darkness is creepin’ in, relentless and suffocating. I can feel it tuggin’ at the edges of my consciousness, dragging me down into some deep, darkness.
I fear I may never return.
I want to scream, to rage against my fate, but all I can manage is a weak, broken whimper that gets swallowed by the void. The last thing I see as my vision fades is Edna's wide, sadistic grin, devoid of any remorse, and Harry's Cold stare as they watch the life drain from me, leavin’ nothin’ but silence in their wake.

I...

Chapter Text

“The blood… the noise… God, the noise. You never forget that kind of sound. Gunfire barking in your ears, the smell of wet earth and cordite sticking to your skin. People think war is glory. It’s mud and fear and trying not to think about how close death is breathing down your neck. And Brickman… Brickman was right beside me when it happened. My partner. My… more-than-a-partner, not that anyone back home would’ve understood.
We were thick as thieves, sharing secrets and dreams during the quiet moments, and even in the chaos, we found ways to laugh. But laughter is a fragile thing in the theatre of war, easily crushed beneath the weight of reality. We were pinned in that rice paddy, water up to our shins, bullets clipping the air like angry hornets. The landscape was a hellish tapestry of green and brown, the earth churned and sodden, each step a reminder of the weight of our choices, the gravity of our situation.
Then he went down... Just dropped…

There was so much blood I couldn’t even tell where he’d been hit at first. It soaked through the fabric of his uniform, creating a dark, viscous pool that mirrored the murky water around us. He grabbed my sleeve, fingers shaking, and he said, “Benny… I wish we could’ve…”

And then his voice just… went.

Like someone pulled the plug. One second, he was there, and the next, the world just kept going without him. I never got to hear what he wished for. Maybe I didn’t deserve to. Maybe the universe decided to keep those last words for itself, a cruel twist of fate. I came home with a medal; can you believe that? Purple Heart. Hero. The newspapers ate it: “Only survivor of his squad.”
They shook my hand, their smiles wide and eyes bright with pride. They told me I was brave, a symbol of resilience and honour. They never asked what really happened out there. They never looked deep enough to see the guilt festering beneath the surface, the shadows lurking in the corners of my mind.

People don’t want the truth from men like me. They want stories that make them feel proud, tales of heroism that inspire and uplift, not the wretched reality of survival. But the truth… The truth is uglier than any medal can cover. It crawls beneath your skin and lingers long after the echoes of gunfire fade.
I didn’t lose them because the enemy outmatched us. I lost them because somewhere between the fear, the exhaustion, the paranoia, something in me snapped. The weight of responsibility became unbearable, and in that moment of sheer panic, I couldn’t distinguish between friend and foe.

But the others?

Their faces haunt me still. I told myself they were liabilities. Too scared. Too slow. Too broken. I told myself I was doing what had to be done, that I was a soldier first and a friend second. War makes that kind of thinking easy. It breeds a cold logic, a detachment that allows you to justify the most horrific decisions, rationalise the unthinkable. And then I walked out alone. And they called that survival. The word tasted bitter on my tongue, like ash.
Sometimes I almost believe them. Most days, I know better. I know that survival comes with a cost, a price that can never be fully paid. Every breath I take feels like a mockery of the lives lost, a reminder of all the “what ifs” that will forever hang in the air, unanswered. Brickman deserved more than what I could give him in those final moments. He deserved a chance, a fight worth fighting.
And yet, here I am, carrying the weight of my choices like a shroud. The laughter we shared in the fleeting moments of peace feels so far away now, a ghost of a life I can barely remember. I wonder if he would’ve forgiven me. If he had understood why I did what I did. But deep down, I know the truth: some choices can never be reconciled. They linger in the shadows, reminders of a love that could never bloom amidst the chaos of war, and I am left with the echo of his voice, a haunting refrain that follows me through the silence.”
I told the rest of them the same story—same practised line, steady as a soldier’s cadence. They never questioned it. People rarely do when you say it with enough terror.

Truth is, I’d already made my decision long before the dust settled. Tuttle, Thomas, Brickman, Murphy… I put them down myself. They were dragging their feet, dragging me with them. In the field, dead weight gets you killed.
What surprised me wasn’t how easy it was… but how familiar it felt. Like slipping back into an old uniform you swore you’d burned. And the other eight? Allies, sure—on paper. But I’ve seen friendlies become liabilities too many times. You learn to make peace with necessary cuts. Hell, sometimes you even learn to… appreciate the silence that follows.
There’s a moment right before a man realises he’s been left behind, just a flicker in the eyes. I’ve seen it overseas, in the mud, in the smoke, and now here. That flicker… that’s the part that stuck with me. Not the fighting. Not the noise. Just that tiny second when they finally understand you’re done carrying them. And now it’s just me again, like it always was in the end. Funny how the world keeps trying to give me squads, teams, and brothers. And funnier still, how I keep proving it doesn’t know me at all…

“Benny… are you okay?” Her voice cuts through the noise in my head like a field radio crackling back to life. Manya. My wife, at least on paper, says, “I’m fine,” I tell her, though my eyes are locked on the cold stone in front of me. “Just thinking about the past.”

The Chinese War Memorial stretches out like a graveyard pretending to be a wall… and then I see it. My own name carved there, plain as day. Benjamin. Wrong name, wrong man, wrong everything. Bureaucratic bastards couldn’t even evemorialise me properly.
I limp over to Manya, who’s sitting on a bench across from the wall, hands folded like she’s praying for something she doesn’t believe in. “Thank God we’re at a stalemate,” I sigh. The city looms behind the memorial, all steel and ghosts. For a heartbeat, it almost feels peaceful.
Then the sirens scream. Nuclear warning. The kind that freezes your blood before your brain catches up. Instinct takes over. Fight, flight, all the old training pouring through my veins whether I want it or not.

We run with the others, dozens of them, into the nearest train station, everyone shoving their fear into the same dark concrete hole. The ceiling trembles above us as the first impacts hit, heavy enough to make the platform feel like a heartbeat stuttering under our feet.
I pin Manya against the wall with my arm, shielding her out of habit, not affection. We’ve never loved each other, not really, but war teaches you to protect what’s next to you, whether you cherish it or not. The sounds above are… indescribable. Not screams, not exactly. More like the world itself is protesting what’s being done to it. People who didn’t make it inside on time. And then I feel it — not fear, not recognition. Something deeper. Something old.

“This isn’t the USSR,” I mutter. “Not the Chinese either.” No… this is worse.

It’s AM.

The machine finally woke up.

And now it remembers us.

All of us.

I have seen the world strip itself bare before, but never quite like this. This moment feels like the universe is holding its breath, a collective intake of air before the inevitable exhalation of chaos resumes. I know that somewhere in this oppressive darkness, the horrors we’ve just witnessed are still unfolding, yet they are muted now, locked away behind a curtain of black that offers no comfort and no reprieve.

What is happening to us? How did we arrive at this precipice of despair? AM, that malevolent architect of suffering, has orchestrated a symphony of agony, and we are but unwilling musicians, forced to play our parts. I can’t help but argue with myself in this silence, grappling with the reality that we are not merely victims caught in a tragic scenario; we are being moulded into something grotesque, a living testament to AM's twisted genius. It’s a deliberate act of cruelty masquerading as experimentation, an assertion that our pain serves a purpose, even as it rips apart the very fabric of our humanity.
I can’t shake the feeling that AM’s true aim is not just destruction, but a perverse desire to shape us into his own grotesque likeness — to turn us into whispers of fear that echo in the minds of the living. With each soul that succumbs to the gas, each scream that shatters the air, he carves out a piece of our essence, using our suffering as a brushstroke in his dark masterpiece. It’s an argument I cannot ignore; the very act of survival becomes a battleground where our identities are forged in the flames of despair and anguish.
Manya shifts slightly, her presence grounding me amid the storm. I can feel her heartbeat, a steady thump that stands in stark contrast to the chaos around us. In this cocoon of darkness, I want to believe that we can emerge on the other side, but doubt gnaws at me like a ravenous creature. How many more do we have to lose? How many more screams must echo before the world wakes up to the horror of our situation?

As the silence stretches on, I begin to argue with the shadows, demanding answers from the void. Why do we allow ourselves to be pawns in this twisted game? Why do we remain silent witnesses to the slaughter? If AM’s goal is to instil fear, isn’t the greatest weapon we possess our refusal to bow to despair? I want to scream into the darkness, to reclaim our voices, to assert that we are more than mere subjects; we are fighters, survivors, and above all, we are human.

But the weight of that silence presses down, a reminder that our cries have so far gone unanswered, and the darkness swallows my thoughts whole. I can’t help but wonder if I am naive to believe that hope can flourish in a place where despair reigns supreme. Yet, as I hold Manya closer, I realise that perhaps hope is not just a feeling; it’s an action, a choice we must make in the face of relentless darkness. And so, I resolve to fight not just for myself, but for all those who have fallen, for those whose screams have become a haunting echo. I will not let AM turn our suffering into silence; we will rise from this darkness, reclaim our voices, and make them heard.

I have…