Chapter Text
Morning was oddly kind, even if the rest of the day didn’t stay that way.
The windows of this house were boarded up thanks to the broken-out glass, but the roof wasn't leaking and while there was a musty smell, there was at least electricity. And the bed was comfortable. No one pounded on the door to wake him up, so Arnie figured he hadn't overslept; he had enough time to let his brain reboot properly. Adala was up, though he could hear Tom snoring like a buzzsaw out on the couch in the living room; she gave him an upnod as he went to go and brush his teeth and shave and get his uniform on.
Early on, when things were more chaotic, it was said that they had succeeded in impersonating Fourth World soldiers and had gotten away with supplies that way. But it was pretty clear that had stopped working when they lost the two groups who had been deployed to pull it off, so now they were down to straight up thieving in the night. Which suited Arnie fine; he liked the more direct and shadowy kinds of subterfuge.
And he got a hell of a kick out of the outfit that went with it.
There was one way that this universe's ShadowKnights had exceeded his original team's gear and that was in the mission-specific jumpsuit. It absorbed so much light that it turned him into an actual, walking shadow from neck to boots, and there was only one word that applied to it: Badass.
Arnie could imagine any one of the original ShadowKnights agreeing with him, too. He had gaped like a proper idiot the first time it was handed to him; he'd known it was coming, because they had taken his measurements, but he hadn't been prepared for how amazing it was in hand. He'd already gotten the regular jumpsuit -- a near perfect match for his old one -- with the ShadowKnight patch on its left shoulder by then (and that had sent him to find some dark corner to hide in until he could breathe off the emotions enough not to break down in tears over it), but when he got the mission-specific jumpsuit--
It turned out that even being over a hundred wasn't enough to stop him feeling like he was an eighth of that age. It was that neat. Embarrassing as it was, he still got a bit giddy when he pulled it on, two years worth of missions later.
It didn't have the patch on the shoulder or any identifying marks at all, but he still pulled it on like armor. His tactical boots looked almost gray by comparison, though the gloves and the cap to cover his hair and protect his ears were almost as dark as the jumpsuit itself.
He wouldn't wear a hood over his face, though; he knew they had a few, but he refused to cover his face, not liking how it felt or how it acted as a distraction in his peripheral vision. He had a pair of stolen military night-vision goggles with him, so he made do with face paint.
Which was why, once he was squared away and dressed, he was sitting at the kitchen table with his eyes closed, hands folded between his knees, trying not to flinch as the Reverend painted him in gray and black camo. He couldn't remember a time in his life when he had been particularly easy with physical contact, even sometimes when he had really and desperately wanted it -- probably thanks to his early life -- but he always missed spots when he tried to paint himself up, so it meant letting someone else do it and trying to remember not to scratch his nose.
"I don't know how you do this," The Reverend was saying, dabbing the paint on and blending it here or there. At least his breath was minty fresh. "All three times we've been crew, and you never seem nervous going out there alone."
"Confidence in your own skills is just down to practice." Kitty, standing by the door of the Danger Room, reaching out to grab his arm and steady him after he was left trembling from a particularly intense training run. He'd beaten the scenario, but he was shaking like a leaf after, and that was what she had told him then. "It took me a long time to get that, it went against all of my own instincts, but--" Arnie shrugged, though he was careful not to move his face too much. "I know I have the skill to handle the mission. Getting wound up about it maybe going bad would only serve as distraction; if it does, I'll deal with it then. No sense worrying until then."
"A long time." The Rev gave a quiet snort. "You must have been training since you were in diapers."
That nearly made Arnie laugh. "Not quite. Seems like forever, though."
"Hm." It was a noncommittal noise, and Arnie opened one eye to make sure the Reverend wasn't looking suspicious. But the man didn't seem to be; just poked Arnie in the nose with a black-painted finger. "No peeking. I'm almost done."
It was pretty hard to ignore the urge to scrunch said nose up in response. But even though the paint job would hold well, especially once it was set with spray, there was no sense in messing it up when it had been such effort putting it on.
Adala's voice breaking in didn't help the need to keep still, though. "Oh, Rev. That's brilliant. Not very holy, but brilliant."
"You think so? Maybe I should have taken up art, instead of the collar."
One of Arnie's eyebrows inched up as he listened to them, now curious about what had been done to his face in the meantime. The last time the Reverend had done his paint, he'd looked like a damned treescape -- it was summer still -- and the time before that hadn't been anything particularly special, though they’d been in a hurry then.
One blast of setting spray, which made him sneeze, and the Reverend said, "All done, Arnie. I think I'm gonna take a picture of this one to upload to Nance, it's my best yet."
He opened his eyes and took in the two of them. "Have a mirror?"
Adala vanished and came back with a hand-mirror; Arnie took it and held it up and then sat back, blinking in surprise. "Oh."
"Right?" Adala asked, beaming, before she swatted the Reverend on the back. "You could make a living on this. Black ops face painting service, for all your military thieving needs."
It was an amazing paint job. Terrifying, but eerily, oddly pretty too; the Reverend had painted his face into a skull, jet black around the eyes and nose, hollowed at the hinges of his jaw and highlighted at his cheekbones, but what really made it was the way the Rev had used smudged and varied shades of gray to create the impression of moonlight through the leaves, of light and shadow.
Given that the entire point was simply to break up the outline of Arnie's face and make him blend into the late autumn woods at night, the effort and symbolism that had gone into it seemed rather extraordinary.
And he was sure he'd never looked so dangerous in his life.
"It's incredible," he said, sincerely, still kind of pole-axed at seeing himself transformed so thoroughly. He grinned a little bit at the reflection, even if that took the danger level down somewhat.
The Rev winked and clapped him on the shoulder with his clean hand, standing up and nudging the kitchen chair he'd been in back with a foot. "Finish getting geared up and try to remember that when you've got to fold yourself into the trunk of an old Jetta, Ghost. I’m grabbing the phone for a picture."
"Holy shit!"
It was startling how quickly the two young men plastered themselves against the wall when they came around the corner into the kitchen. For half a second, Arnie hiked an eyebrow in bemusement, before he remembered that they hadn't been there to see his face get painted up and therefore probably just got the shock of their lives.
Then he had to shove down a smirk. Not even a mean smirk, but he couldn’t deny being entertained by that reaction.
"Are you-- trying to scare ‘em to death or somethin'?" one asked, eyes wide as saucers, hand over his heart. “Spook ‘em out of their skins? Stop their hearts?”
Arnie huffed a laugh, shaking his head. "If I thought that would work, I would. I’d cross the line to legendary if I was able to kill with a look." He had a Glock on his right hip and two more magazines on the left; he wasn't exactly experienced in handguns -- much preferring a rifle, and even then, he was no expert marksman -- but it was the only ranged weapon he had any chance of carrying into the lion's den and was a weapon of last resort. Scaring them to death would be infinitely preferable to getting into a firefight.
"No way? What part of Canada is that accent from?" the other asked, already over the fright, perking up curiously. It looked like they were brothers, both brown-skinned and dark-eyed like Adala, though the resemblance to her ended there. And they couldn't have been too far out of their teens, if they were at all. Even with how lean things were down here, they were still rather baby-faced.
Before he meant to, Arnie wondered if the team ought to take them back to Canada. That they were still free and not conscripted, even in a long-taken town like Tawas City, was something of a real miracle.
Plus, the life expectancy of young rebels down here was heartbreakingly short. Up north, they stood a chance of surviving to see better times.
And something about the shapes of their faces and coloring--
"It's not, he's a Brit," Tom said, coming up and eyeing Arnie's face, answering since Arnie hadn't. "A posh limey, don't let the Halloween makeup convince you otherwise."
"British colonial," Arnie said back, shaking himself back to the moment, throwing a bit more haughtiness into his voice just because he could. "You just make sure you're at the rendezvous waiting after I go act all 'posh' sloughing through the damn woods."
Tom clicked his teeth and grinned widely; Arnie rolled his eyes and waved towards the Rev. "A word, Reverend? In private?"
Shoot me.
Still, the mental lament had no teeth. Just a hefty dose of fairly good-humored exasperation.
Folding yourself into the boot of a Jetta circa the 80s when you were just shy six feet tall was a job better suited for a contortionist than a covert ops agent. Arnie was plenty good at sticking himself into tight spaces in order to hide -- had been good at that since he was a child, actually -- but that didn't mean he had to like it. Occasionally, the sound of the engine's exhaust lightened up enough that he could hear the boys up front trying to mimic his accent. If they were older, or there was any malice in it, he might have been annoyed.
He had been sort of surprised to find he couldn't be.
They drove too fast, and they cornered turns hard enough to knock the top of his head against barely-carpeted steel; they were brazen and raucous and goofy and instead of wanting to strangle them slowly with his own bare hands, he wanted to take them to Canada because he didn't want them to lose those qualities.
It wasn't that Canada was some paradise, or that people didn't regularly almost starve through the winters up there. But it was out of Green's reach. There was still something of a loose education system in place, though it was on its knees and never more than a season from collapsing. Nance could probably arrange some kind of employment for them, or a place to sleep. They wouldn't end up dead too young.
The Reverend had been surprised at Arnie asking if they could smuggle them back north. And worryingly sympathetic. But he'd also been frank about the chances of that happening. "I'll ask, and if they agree, we'll figure out some way to get them over the border. But I wouldn't get your hopes up. This is their home. This is the world they were born into."
It was uncharacteristic for Arnie to even have that kind of thought, and he knew it. He treated these excursions like business, because that was what they were; he certainly didn't get attached to random rebels below the border. Hell, he didn't even let himself get attached to the ShadowKnights above the border. They were colleagues, and he would work hard to make sure they stayed alive and got home in one piece, but he wouldn't -- maybe couldn't -- call any of them friends. He got on okay with them, but ShadowKnight wasn't a social call.
So, the sudden hope of convincing a pair of proto-adults to come back was out of left field, even for him.
Nance needs younger ops; they'd probably make good ones with some work, he thought, but even he could see through the transparent attempt at justification, wrapped as pretty as it was in a veneer of altruism.
Up front, one of them must have said something funny, because the other started howling with laughter. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed like that. If he ever had.
But he could remember hearing a laugh like that.
Stop flinchin' from it.
The trunk of a smegging Jetta wasn't a good place for soul-searching; in fact no place was, he hated doing it. Search too deep and you found your ghosts.
This is not the time. I have an objective, I can't afford to be doing this right now, he thought, not quite sure if it was to himself, teeth locked together. Getting distracted means getting dead and I'd like to avoid that, thank you muchly.
That might have worked, if not for the fact that one of his ghosts tended to talk back to him.
Stop flinchin' and just admit it: They remind you of the twins.
It would have been more of a bomb if Arnie hadn't already been skirting around that epiphany, trying to get around it like a mongoose on ice and just about that successfully. Hearing it, though -- or dreaming it or imagining it or whatever the hell -- still made him wince, baring his teeth silently in the dark like something that had been backed, wounded, into a corner. That wasn't an unfamiliar feeling and he knew he'd survive it because he had in the past; still, it was never any fun. He might be half-mad, but he didn't go looking for pain. In fact, he tried to avoid it whenever possible.
At least, that was what he kept telling himself.
Right, acknowledge it, then put it away, he thought, this time firmly to himself. It was his go-to. If it hurt, put it somewhere it wouldn't, then stick a lock on and forget the key. It wasn't nearly as successful a strategy as he wanted it to be, but maybe with practice it would be. It wasn't like he didn't have time to get good at it.
They weren't the twins. He knew that; hadn't crossed that particular bridge into delusion yet, and had no plans to if he could help it.
But they could have been in another world, another time; loud and amiably obnoxious, spending their lives in a flash of reckless courage and hope.
"Leave it alone," he whispered, as he shoved that door closed and put his metaphorical back against it, while the sharp ache faded into something more dull and tired and sad.
The sorrow still reflected from the other side of it: Hope's not a sin, guy.
This time, he didn't answer.