Tired Jack - Russian rescue

[moonshadows]

Reyes had gotten himself into a doozy this time. The dropship had been clipped on takeoff, and he thought it had gotten cleanly away until the beacon went off some 50 miles away. Instead of just rushing out, he ransacked a small outpost first. If history had taught him anything, it was never to underestimate Russian winters. When he followed the beacon’s signal, it was on a snowspeeder with two sets of thermal outerwear, a tent, rations, an entire first aid kit including some things that weren’t standard first aid supplies, and a signal amplifier.

The crash was easy to find. Reyes was even easier to find.

He hadn’t put on the outerwear, afraid Reyes wouldn’t recognize him, but it didn’t matter. Reyes was delirious at best. He bound the other man up and put him on the back of the speeder, covered with one thermal coat and protected from the wind as best he could manage. Then he bundled himself up in thermal outerwear, sighing as the cold ceased to touch him, and sped off.

He didn’t want Talon to find him if they came looking.

The speeder was down to a quarter charge before he stopped. It hadn’t been fully charged to begin with, but with what he’d used getting out to the crash, he knew he wasn’t going to make it back to civilization – even if civilization would have welcomed them. So he went deeper into the bleak landscape, stopping in the middle of a snow-covered field. The tent was the first order of business – shelter from the wind and cold. It expanded into a bright orange dome tall enough to stand in and big enough for six men, with insulated sides and a double-insulated bottom. He carried Reyes inside and laid him down before going back for his supplies.

Somewhere along the way, Reyes had passed out. He stripped the gloves and face mesh off and unrolled the emergency sled – a sort of sleeping bag on a reinforced bottom that laced up and could be dragged by a healthy comrade – and started stripping Reyes. His flesh was worryingly chilled, but he didn’t know how much of that was something his altered physiology could tolerate. He bundled Reyes into the other set of outerwear anyway, insulated pants and thick boots and hooded jacket, gloves to protect vulnerable extremities and the hat with detachable mesh to blunt the bite of the wind without making it too difficult to see or breathe. He left the mesh off for the moment. Once Reyes was protected, he laid him on the open sled and closed the flap. Then he shed his equally-incriminating gear, the jacket and visor, and shoved them in the empty tent case along with Reaper’s armor and the pulse rifle.

Time to set the beacon.

He was halfway out of the tent when Reyes said, “Jack.”

When he looked back, Reyes was watching him with unfocused eyes.

“Stay.”

“I’ll be right back,” he assured Reyes.

The signal amplifier looked like a big, orange baton. He affixed his beacon to the top, activated it, and then jammed the bottom into the frozen ground. The amplifier meant it would reach the Overwatch satellites easily; he just hoped someone was listening.

Reyes was watching as he came back in, sitting up with a heartbreakingly lost and vulnerable expression on his face. He was putting that down to hypothermia. He sat down beside the sled, mildly alarmed when Reyes leaned over onto him, but he wrapped his arms gently around the other man and just held him. Neither of them said anything.

When he heard the sound of a ship approaching, he stuck the fingers of his right hand into the left sleeve of his jacket and pulled out the sedative injector he’d stashed there. Reyes stiffened as it was applied, then went limp. He laid Reyes down again in the sled and tightened the crisscrossing laces all the way up, leaving only his face exposed. Then he fastened the facial mesh on both of their hats and went out to greet the ship.

Red cross on the side. Good sign. Ziegler hopped out almost before the pilot touched down, wings flared and staff at the ready. Even better sign. He plucked the beacon off the amplifier and pulled the mesh off his face.

“Commander! You’re alive!” Her joy faded into confusion. “You don’t seem injured,” she said with a hint of disapproval for having used an emergency beacon without a life-threatening emergency.

“It’s not for me.” He walked into the tent and came back out with his pack over one shoulder and the sled sliding behind him. “It’s for him. Hypothermia. I didn’t see any injuries when I stripped him.”

Two medics jumped out of the back to load Reyes; he tossed his pack in and then collapsed the tent. He’d get the coordinates later, but if he never came back…well…maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

The flight back was silent, but Ziegler’s unspoken questions sung in the air between them.

=

He was dozing in the chair of the private hospital room when Reyes woke.

“Jack.”

“I’m here.”

“You stayed with me all this fucking time?” Reyes scowled, but exhaustion sapped the strength out of it.

“You know the answer to that,” he said quietly, moving his chair over to sit next to the bed.

“Do they know…?”

He shook his head. “No one knows, for either of us.”

Reyes sighed and looked away. After a moment, he turned back and reached for the chain, tugging the dog tags out like he always did. This time, however, he didn’t wrap his fingers around them. “I just want to look,” he murmured.

He held still as Reyes nudged the top tag out of the way and read his own name on the bottom one.

“Even though I said no?”

He tucked the tags back under his shirt. “It didn’t change anything. Not for me.”

Reyes looked away for a long minute, staring at the wall. “Jack,” he said, not turning to look at him, “I lied. The answer was yes.”

Reyes was braced for his reaction, clearly afraid of what he might do or say. He took Reyes’s hand gently in his and squeezed reassuringly.

Reyes squeezed back.