fandomtownies | In and Around the Woods, Sunday Afternoon

Hernando did his best to keep the shirt pressed against the wounds but the fall jostled him. He scrambled, shaking the forest smut off of it before crushing it against Kaidan's chest with both hands this time.

He saw what Kanan was trying to do, block the view, so he added what measure he could. Working himself in a straddle over Kaidan's knees, he pushed the shirt harder against the bleeding.

"Kaidan, don't look at that. It's not real. I promise, it's not real. You're in a forest. Kaidan, please look away."

Kaidan didn't look away. He wasn't even blinking, staring at the horror show playing out again.

Licking his lips, Hernando took two quick breaths to steady himself. Kaidan had known he might be in a bad state when he came back from Coruscant. He'd told him how to deal with it. Hernando wasn't sure if this was the right time but.. if there were any right time..

"'Sometimes all you need to know about a man comes down to how he answers just four words'.." Hernando took another breath and stared right into Kaidan's eyes.

"Kaidan, I need your help."

He wasn't prepared for his friend to burst into blue fire, for the eyes in front of him to turn from brown to an electric, icy blue.

Well.

Frak.

Kanan was aware of the flash of light behind him only from the reflection in the shards of glass that he was holding at bay, but he knew what it was immediately, knew enough to know that Hernando almost certainly hadn't predicted that particular reaction.

"Hernando, you're going to want to get back!"

He kept one hand up toward the glass, shielding against the rain of shards. With the other, he reached for Hernando and he pulled, dragging him bodily away from Kaidan, from that electric blue danger that was writhing around him.

Poor Hernando was going to get manhandled a bit, because now Kanan had one hand to the glass, and the other wrapped around his waist, holding him away from Kaidan.

"Kaidan, snap out of it!"

Kaidan very slowly got to his feet. The world wavered a little and he cataloged it: pain, blood loss, dehydration, fatigue. Then he shoved it all away and his stance firmed up. Battle stamina. The taste of burned metal filled his mouth. He could feel the dark energy boiling under his skin. His implants felt like they were on fire, his brain a molten, liquid mess inside his skull.

His eyes flickered as he took stock.

Rahna saying "You're a monster, Kaidan!"
"I know."

A man. He recognized the man. He had to focus. The taste of burned metal grew and his mind snapped into sudden clarity. Hernando Fuentes, 86 kilo, no combat training - not a threat: friendly.
"Kaidan, I need your help."

There was only one answer to that plea. Only ever one. He took a breath and tried to speak. Dry throat. He forced saliva, forced himself to swallow. Voice a painful rasp, he breathed out, "Whatever you need."

Struggling against Kanan's iron grip was futile but Hernando did it anyway, and when he couldn't squirm away he tried to kick his way to freedom.

Then Kaidan spoke and all the worry and stress boiled right into a tiny little rage froth. "WELL RIGHT NOW I NEED YOU TO STOP BLEEDING EVERYWHERE!"

Choking down a sobbing breath, Hernando added, "Kaidan, snap out of this! It's not real! You're in a forest with your friends and this thing, this.. nightmare or memory.. it's not real! Please stop!"

He didn't realize he was echoing the words of the young girl in the image behind him.

Well, Kanan's shin was going to have a good time of it. Possibly not as good a time of it as Kaidan, who was looking...

Kanan hissed between his teeth.

Rough. He was looking rough.

Another volley of glass shards. He caught those, too, his brow knit in concentration as he tried to pick out the immediate threats, to figure out what to do from here.

"We need Kaidan right now. Not the shadows, not the guilt."

You're a monster.

"You're our friend. We need you."

He'd kick his ass later. Right now, it was true enough.

Edited 2018-08-12 16:13 (UTC)

The words echoed like they'd come from the other end of a tunnel, bouncing and warping on the very air.

Bleeding? He looked down at himself. Right. Bleeding. Blood seeping out, biotic bleed all up in his everywhere. Making a fist, he powered on his Omni and triggered the MediGel. He hissed a little between his teeth as it deployed and the healing properties raced through his tissue. The seeping slowed to a trickle, then bare drips, and then it stopped.

He watched the cycle begin again behind Kanan, face impassive as the memory unfolded.
"You're a monster, Kaidan!"
"I know."

Kaidan stepped forward, hands curling into fists. The glass shattered, but this time, Kanan wasn't needed to hold it. Kaidan crushed it into powder and threw it away.

"I'm a monster." Another step forward. A step past his friends. The table imploded on itself, crushed by the force of Kaidan's wrath. He threw it to the side with a negligible flicking motion.

"But they aren't."

In the memory, Kaidan threw himself off the table and into Vyrnus' path. Kaidan superimposed himself with the image of his younger self and echoed the words, "Leave. Them. Alone."

He smiled into the face of his oldest teacher. The man who had made him everything he was. Lips compressed and angry, eyes blazing with old and new hate, Kaidan stepped into the image.

"Hello, Vyrnus. Let me show you what the monster can do. Let's roll, you son of a bitch."

His friends were behind him. The target was in front of him.

Kaidan finally began to fight.

Hernando started to relax as the bleeding stopped. Then Kaidan began to speak and the cold acceptance in his words was terrible. He made a low noise of denial and struggled again, trying to catch Kaidan as he passed and to stop him. He couldn't even reach him.

"Kaidan, stop! Kanan, stop him! What is he doing?! He's on fire! He's hurt! You can't let him fight that man!"

But then Kaidan did begin to fight that man and Hernando stopped shouting, stopped moving, and almost stopped breathing.

He'd never seen Kaidan fight before. He'd never seen biotics deployed before. He'd never seen Kaidan angry before. There was a fluid and lethal grace to it that was almost hypnotic.

All Hernando could do was stare.

And all Kanan could do was stand there with Hernando, his grip on him loosening only enough that he wouldn't accidentally hurt him by holding him back.

"He's a soldier, Hernando," he said, softly. "This is his war to win."

The blue misty flames snapped into the twinkle of a full body Barrier when Kaidan stepped forward to trade blows with Vyrnus. The Turian might have been terrifying to a half-grown and newly implanted kid, but Kaidan was long past that. He dodged a punch and came up with a haymaker in Vyrnus' face.

His voice was low and eerily calm. "I'm a monster? So be it. You're a teacher who failed the children under his care so badly that some of them died. You killed children. You broke Rahna's arm like it was nothing. You tried to kill me."

He spun and dodged a kick, returning it with a hammerfist to the side of Vyrnus' head. "That moment made me everything that I am."

Leaning back, Kaidan kicked him in the chest and knocked him back. Advancing, he asked quietly, "Do you know what I am now, Vyrnus? Could you even have imagined what I'd become? 'A half-decent biotic', you said. I am so much more than that."

Vyrnus swooped forward in a Vanguard rush. Kaidan's hand flew forward, like it had in the memory, but this time he had a double-decade more experience and a whole lot more raw power at his command. Vyrnus hit a wall in the air and went flying backward.

"I am Commander Kaidan Alenko of the Alliance Navy."

Vyrnus charged. Kaidan stepped forward and threw him in one motion.

"Crew of the Normandy. Heroes of the entire damn galaxy."

He advanced and when Vyrnus threw a punch, Kaidan caught it and kicked him in the armpit. A move Kanan had seen before, with the same effect. The Turian's joints came out of socket and snapped back, chitinous plates folding in on themselves.

"I'm a monster. I'm a hero. I'm a biotic. I'm a soldier. I am all of that. But that's not everything."

Sweeping a leg, Kaidan dropped Vyrnus and stepped on his chest.

"You're just the son of a bitch who liked to beat up on human children."

He kicked Vyrnus in the face.

"I'm a SPECTRE. My job is to rid the galaxy of people just like you."

Kaidan reached behind him and pulled out the Eagle. He sighted it on Vyrnus' left eye. "I killed you once. I lost everything for you once. You will never cost me another single thing in this life."

Kaidan stared into Vyrnus' hate-filled eyes. "Die twice, asshole." His finger tightened on the trigger twice in succession. Always double tap.

"You're a monster, Kaidan!" came Rahna's voice. Kaidan turned to face her. He stared at her face, looking down into the face of his first - but no longer only - friend. He saw the fear behind all the other emotions she'd thrown at him that day.

Kaidan broke the cycle. "You're wrong, Rahna." He closed his eyes briefly for a moment, "Goodbye."

He turned away from Rahna the way she had once turned away from him. The image from his memory began to fade.

Edited 2018-08-12 17:29 (UTC)

Hernando flinched when the gun went off. The noise was loud in the clearing. He didn't look at the body of the man Kaidan had been fighting, didn't look at Kaidan until the image had faded completely.

Pushing himself away from Kanan, he took a shaky step toward his friend. "Kaidan, please put the gun away." After a moment, searching Kaidan's eyes for the brown behind the eerie blue glow, "Are you back?"

Kanan let Hernando go, this time, his arms falling to his sides.

He wanted to run up to Kaidan and hug him, yell in his face, shake him, wanted to tell him that he was proud of him for standing up and saying those words.

You're wrong.

But all he could do was stand and watch, his throat tight, his head spinning as the past few days joined forces with the rest of the week and threatened to drown him.

"He's back," he whispered.

That was what he had.

Kaidan looked at the gun in his hand when Hernando spoke. Hearing the need behind the words, he smacked the release and popped the thermal clip out of it. Catching the clip in his hand, he snapped it onto his belt. It wasn't fully spent but he could hear the tension in Hernando's voice and knew this would help. The gun went back onto the mag lock.

"I'm back." Even he wasn't sure which of them he was agreeing with - probably both.

Both?

He looked up and saw Kanan - really saw him for the first time that day. He'd heard Vega. He should have known what that meant. The sight of Kanan's face felt like falling - that wasn't hate. It was a whole lot of things, but hate wasn't one of them. He'd take it.

"You're here," he said, leaving the 'I'm glad' off the beginning. Knowing Kanan would hear it anyway. Then he gave his friend the most vulnerable smile he'd thrown anyone in years. "Don't be. I'm tapped out. It's your turn to go be a hero. Go show the crap in here why it shouldn't fuck with a Jedi."

He slung an arm around Hernando's shoulders, because if he didn't, he was going to just sit down. Maybe lie here for a few days. Take a nap. "Hernando can get me home."

Hernando stooped to grab Kaidan's backpack before becoming a human crutch. "Hernando," he said with a small snap to his voice, "Can get you to a hospital. You have lost much blood and you need stitches and possibly a tetanus shot."

He leaned into Kaidan almost as much as Kaidan was leaning on him, just letting the solid weight of him reinforce that Kaidan was alive, he was here, and he was present. He'd take it.

Kanan looked between the two of them for one long, silent moment.

And then he nodded once, firmly, stepping forward to clap his hand on Kaidan's shoulder.

"Go drink some water, take some more of that gel-poodoo of yours, and sleep." He glanced at Hernando. "Watch him. Let him call the shots, but watch him."

They'd had that talk before.

He didn't wait for a reply before he turned on his heel and ran to see if he could find more survivors.

Kaidan nodded. He watched as Kanan took off, and then brought his attention back to Hernando. "No hospitals, no doctors. Just get me home and let me hydrate and dump medigel into myself every four hours. I'll be fine."

"You," Hernando said frostily, "are not going home. You are coming to my room at the hotel, where you will stay quietly and restfully as long as it takes you to heal. If you will not have the sense to go to a hospital where they can replenish the blood you lost, then you will deal with me being your nursemaid until you are fully healed and on your feet again."

"Fine, just.. no hospitals," Kaidan repeated. The world was starting to blur and go fuzzy around the edges. He staggered along with Hernando, keeping his feet moving by sheer force of stubbornness alone.

"Fine," Hernando said and hauled his friend along, "While you are on the bed recovering, you will have plenty of time to tell me why you did not have that talk with Kanan that I told you to have, and I will have plenty of time to tell you just how stupid you are."

He glared, "You will eat every single thing and drink every single thing I put in front of you and if you so much as think of looking at alcohol, I will call your friend Peter and I will tell him to do something magical that will ruin your entire week. Do not push me on this, Kaidan. I was very worried and very scared and you are very hurt and being very stupid, so you will do this. Or else!"

"Fine," Kaidan repeated. If these were the lumps he had to take from Hernando, so be it. There were more coming later, but for now - time to heal.

He kept putting one foot in front of the other and followed Hernando home.

[/fin for here, tbc Kaidan's journal.]

In and Around the Woods, Sunday Afternoon

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