Famous Last Words
Title: Famous Last Words
Fandom/ Pairing The Losers (comic 'verse, borrowing heavily from the movie), eventual Jensen/Cougar
Rating: R.
Summary: Cougar was bleeding all over the bomb in his lap, the last time Jensen saw him. But that was then.
Prologue
Chapter 1
"Heard Antigua's nice for anniversaries," Pooch grimaced, pulling up to Jensen's at the harbor, hand hesitating over the stick, but not shifting into park. Soon, he'd be heading for the airport, trying his luck with the identity Jensen had cobbled together for him with shoelaces and chewing gum.
Every ally they had was dead, now, and there was no guarantee that their enemies would be satisfied with their attempts to likewise disappear. Going by the odds, Jensen would never see him again.
"I hate Antigua, man," Jensen groaned as they shook hands, but he meant, yeah, if I make it, I'll buy the first round.
---
The first month, everything was too fucked to even think about going on a bender. It was just survival, then. Laying the groundwork to bury himself, then covering his tracks as he skates through seven countries in as many days.
The second month, though? The third? Jensen hadn't honestly believed he had it in him.
---
After the drunken binge of the third month, the fourth and fifth were-
No. Shit. They were more of the same. A thousand back-room bars, lonely bottles in lonelier hotel rooms. Occasional stumblings towards sobriety that only lasted long enough to procure what was needed. Money for the hotel. Food. More alcohol, to black himself out too deeply to dream.
The sixth, though, was the morning after that stretched on forever, and it was anticlimactic when it arrived.
Somehow Jensen had woken up without a hangover. That was all it took, really, but it allowed him the first three minutes of uninterrupted thought he'd had for months.
First, he took a minute to look around. Had to check the hotel's phone book to be sure he was still in Sydney, and realized that he wasn't even sure when he'd arrived, if he'd been there for a week or a month.
It was time to bail. On all of this. There were three bottles on the bedside table, and they all went down the drain.
---
Jensen headed off for Istanbul without leaving a note, because it would've just listed off all the things he'd suddenly realized he hated about himself, anyway.
Like the fact that he couldn't even pretend, really, that he was actually paying attention any more. At first, he'd genuinely forgotten that wasn't anybody there to watch his back. Afterwards, when he'd remembered? It was because of it.
Or the awareness that he'd lucked out so far, if you could call it that, but he wasn't probably slated to live much longer. He'd never told his sister he was still breathing, not after the last time, and it wasn't like there was any reason to, now, but. Shit, nobody in the world knew him, any more.
He turned on the television, flipped it over to the news, just to hear another human freakin' voice while he packed.
"… massive tidal waves that rocked the shores of Qatar , killing nearly four hundred people, and displacing thousands more, six months ago," the newscaster was saying, looking into the camera intently as he spoke. "And even now, experts say, the full extent of the damage caused by the nuclear accident that created the tsunami has yet to be seen."
The shot changed, then, nothing but sky and choppy water, and then down, lower. A school of fish, a brush of kelp straining towards the surface. "It seems, however, that though the ecology of the Persian Gulf may never recover, the fears of a dead zone being created in the Arabian Sea may have been unfounded. As you can see on this footage, taken a few miles off the coast of Oman, new marine life is once again finding its way into these waters…"
By the time Jensen knew what had happened, he was on the bed, screaming into the pillows. It wasn't until the innkeeper burst into his room, drawn by the sounds of his moment of clarity, that he realized he'd already ripped a chunk out of the flimsy headboard with his bare freakin' hands.
The innkeeper clicked her tongue over the damage, the bed and the lamp Jensen had apparently managed to knock over, and rolled her eyes at the bloody state of Jensen's hands. After disappearing for a moment, she returned with a stack of clean washcloths and a bucket of ice.
Jensen tried to calm down, promised to pay for everything, and decided that he'd chosen a shitty day to sober up.
And fuck his fucking hands, anyway.
--
See, it was stupid.
Pooch, when he'd flown from out of freakin' nowhere with the chopper to rescue everyone and found only Jensen, he'd been prepared. He'd picked him up, and after they'd made it several miles inland, and they'd blown the helicopter to smithereens-
and fuck, it was just a goddamned helicopter, but it had been one fucking explosion too many. It sounded like that other one that they'd heard, miles behind them, lonely in the ocean, and Jensen didn't stop shaking for three days, afterwards-
-they'd made it to the truck Pooch had stashed, and hadn't stopped driving until they'd crossed into Jordan. It hadn't been until they'd reached the hotel that Jensen realized that Pooch had managed to find everyone's gear, that he'd had it all in the truck the entire time.
Pooch's planning had looked like pathetic optimism, in retrospect. They'd brought it all inside, anyway.
Clay's bag hadn't had much. Enough cash to float on, for a while. Three burner phones and the medals he'd gotten back in Kuwait. Two changes of clothes.
There'd been three in Aisha's bag, and enough bandages to start a hospital. It had been unsettling as hell, seeing evidence that she'd known she was human, that she knew she could bleed. Stuffed down in the bottom had been three photographs, worn nearly to scrap. Jensen hadn't recognized any of the faces. One of them might've been hers.
He'd taken the bandages and set them on the bed, next to the phones and the cash.
Cougar's bag had only had one change of clothes, a gun cleaning kit, four empty boxes of ammo, and nothing else.
Pooch had found a knife in Aisha's jeans, and another one, ceramic, in Clay's jacket sleeve, once he'd started going through their clothes. There'd been nothing useful in Cougar's clothes, but in pocket of his shirt was a book of matches, from that crappy bar in Abilene where they'd all had their last good night. Before this had all started.
Charlotte's phone number was still written on the inside. She'd been funny, with awesome legs that were just this side of skinny and the wickedest laugh Jensen had ever heard. And of course Cougar had cock-blocked the hell out of him- it was the way of things, after all- and Jensen had been forced to move on to calmer waters. No harm, no foul, and she'd been pretty enough, but Jensen didn't have a matchbook to remind him of Calmer Water's name, though.
It wasn't like Charlotte needed to be notified, but the matchbook had made its way into Jensen's pocket, regardless, because there was nothing else in the bag worth taking.
---
And Fuck Jensen's hands, anyway, the way they'd go to his pocket, draw the matchbook out and fidget with it whenever he wasn't looking. The way they always put the damned thing back, afterwards, so damned carefully, always in the left hand pocket.
The matchbook was worn, now, soft and white around the edges, and he hadn't tried opening the flap in weeks, because he was pretty sure it would all fall apart, then, and he didn't honestly know what he'd do when that happened. He doubted that it would be cathartic, hat he'd actually stop thinking about it, because-
Fuck. Cougar.
Cougar hadn't wanted to go on that last run. Jensen hadn't, either, but. Aisha and Clay, they'd been balls to the walls for it, and even going in, they'd been down Roque and Pooch.
Not only would Clay and Aisha have died, they never would've been able to finish the mission before it happened.
But- and here was the thing. At that point, Jensen hadn't honestly given a rat's ass about the first half of that equation- about Aisha, or Clay, and he'd known, even then, that he probably should have. And maybe that had been why there'd been just enough guilt left to get him on board. Just enough to turn the away party into a ruling majority, and he'd been the one to ask Cougs-
Cougar hadn't wanted to go. He'd said it was his final gig, swore that he'd be done, afterwards, but Cougar had agreed. Jensen had done to Cougar what Clay and Aisha had done to him.
---
So no, it wasn't like Jensen's hands were entirely clean. At least this time, sitting here in the hotel room with an increasingly annoyed innkeeper shooting him wary looks, the blood was there where he could see it, where he could feel it under his nails.
---
Spain was a mistake. Slight differences, yeah, dialect and all that, but. Hearing people talking in the street, the couple who ran the hotel asking if his room was okay, the cabbies, the news.
Men were worse. Sometimes, they even sounded familiar, and it was impossible to fucking think, to plan, to move the hell on, when every time he left his tiny box of a room, his eardrums were assaulted with it.
Jensen lasted a week and then he fucked off to Ireland.
---
The weather suited him, here, dreary and gray. Without the heat frying into his brain, he could actually think, and once that started, the rest kind of followed.
He'd been sloppy for months, now. He'd taken cares, yeah, to take himself off the grid. No phones, no computers, no anything at all.
He'd cut himself off to lick his wounds, but really? It had been seven months, the world had been lurching steadily onwards, and so far, nobody had kicked his door down. If he'd been in anyone's sights, the trigger hadn't been pulled.
Jensen wasn't deluded enough to think that the world was a safe place, now, but it was still out there, and he was starting to miss it.
Next week was his niece's birthday, and Jensen found his eyes lingering, more often, on the duffel bag where Clay's burner phones were packed. They'd been paid for in cash, and were totally untraceable. But the phone at his sister's place wasn't. And her cell could be tapped from a computer in India, without her ever knowing.
So a computer it was, then. A cheap one, but he didn't need it for much, yet, though Jensen wasn't sure if the yet was just a habit of thought, or if somewhere, in his brain, plans were actually being made.
The netbook cost less than a week's lodging, a couple hundred euros, the café down on Dawson street had unsecured wifi, and he was good to go.
---
Fucking hell, his sister was on Facebook, of all bloody things. His niece, too.
His sister's posts were sweet, random. Funny videos her coworkers had forwarded her, and endless bragging about her daughter. She'd missed him on his birthday, and that had been, fuck, that was the second blind-drunk month, he hadn't even noticed, he'd been so far gone.
Attached to the post was a picture of the three of them, taken back before he shipped out the second time.
It was careless, he knew it was, but he downloaded the image and set it up as his desktop's wallpaper. Stared at it for a little while, just because he could. It was a better picture than the one in his wallet, the one in front of the house, when Jensen'd been helping her move in. His niece looked like a kid, now, not some amorphous blob in a blanket.
His niece's posts made no sense at all, cartoon images, cute boys, pictures of her soccer team and iokes with her friends. Pizza and ice cream and puppies, more cute boys, and she was still too fucking young for any of that, but. Shit. Thirteen, now, and-.
-None of this was telling him anything. At all. Just making him sad and miserable. He should've known better.
He was seven months out of practice, but it only took half an hour to write the code, and the program wouldn't harm much of anything. He copied some text from one of the more obviously dubious Viagra suppliers, and borrowed her friend Katie's email address to send it.
His sister would open it, mark it as spam, and probably call Katie up to make fun of her for having her email account hacked, and they'd laugh about it as Jensen gained access to everything on his sister's computer.
It occurred to him, as he was waiting for the files to download, that though hacking his sister's email account had been the most reasonable thing he'd been able to come up with under the circumstances, it was still probably kind of shitty.
On the other hand, as luck would have it, his sister checked her email ten minutes later, and her files were already beginning to transfer to his computer.
It would take a while, upwards of an hour on the café's shitty wifi, but Jensen hadn't been online in months. He had to catch up. Wars, cease-fires that wouldn't hold much longer, scams, taxes, unemployment. Returned soldiers complaining about their tours. Every lack of solution that every politician could possibly present. A new crop of pop stars he'd never heard of, and movies he hadn't seen. Hollywood cults and, hopefully unrelated, eight missing children. There were UFOs over Dallas, apparently, and a painkiller recall after ghosts had been seen running around on a Navy cruiser. There were too many breakthroughs in genetics research to count, and even more panicking about privacy rights. Some teenager had accidentally stolen his dad's computer when he'd taken his girlfriend out to the prom. The general had been pretty red in the face, by all accounts, but the footage of the soldiers storming the dance was kind of hilarious. And it was just as well that he'd missed the games leading up to the Super Bowl. He would've had cash down on the Vikings.
Eventually, he had everything he needed copied to his hard drive, and too many things he didn't need filling his head, so he shut it all down. After stopping off for takeout on the way back to the hotel, he sat himself down at the desk and began to read.
It took less than a minute to know that he wasn't the only one who'd pulled this stunt on his sister. She didn't have an account, anywhere, that hadn't been under surveillance, but from the looks of it, it was all old activity.
About five months ago, all the eyes had wandered elsewhere. It made sense. Jensen probably wasn't the only dead asshole the US thought to keep an eye out for. Eventually, they would've had to move on. It was flattering, almost, to think that they'd looked for him as long as they did.
He stared at the wall for a while, the screen's light a distraction in the corner of his eye.
Apparently, he'd won.
---
Still, though, it took another month for Jensen to find the balls to go home, and another to figure out how.
It took two days for his sister to believe he was real, and another three to consider forgiving him. and if it hadn't been for his niece, or the fact that it was Christmas, and his sister was feeling like she ought to be charitable, it might not have happened at all.
It was all a little anticlimactic.
Friday night, late, after his niece was asleep upstairs, he finally got to sit at the kitchen table and explain himself to his sister, the photo he'd sent her years ago sitting out between them. He kept it down to two beers, because yeah, he'd made it this far, he was back in the states and back in her house, but he couldn't afford to tell her too much.
Still, though, it was more than he'd ever told anyone, and it was more than he'd actually said in months.
Mostly, he talked about Clay, who'd driven everything, and Pooch, the one stand-up guy out of all of them, the only other one to survive it all. It was harder to talk about how Roque had screwed them after years and years, or how Aisha, who his sister had never met or even heard of, had taken months to do the same.
Even so, it was a hell of a lot easier than talking about Cougar, how he'd gone down fighting and not fighting all at once. How he'd vaporized himself to save Jensen and the others, to get some rest. How Jensen had known, for years, how badly he'd needed it.
There hadn't even been a funeral.
"There wasn't one here, either," his sister pointed out, frowning to herself as she went to the fridge for another couple of beers. "Just. Some guy came by, offering condolences on behalf of the free world on a Tuesday night, and a memorial down at Aunt Bea's church that weekend, you know? Crap, that was," she squinted, apparently having to give it some thought. "That was ages ago."
She'd hit the nail on the head, only it wasn't the one she'd been aiming for. She'd thought him dead for a while now. And she'd moved on with her life. And maybe Jensen could- should do the same.
He could give it some thought, anyway.
Things were a little better after that, for a few days. But eventually, his sister had to go back to work, his niece to school, and there just wasn't room in their lives for him being so close, any more. It was time to move on, or at least move onwards.
And maybe that was why he saw it, when he was down in the guest room, packing up his things. Random, fleeting, and barely there, just a hint of something out of the corner of his eye, a sharp turn of a shoulder that felt familiar, and it was gone.
He didn't know why he'd decided so certainly it had been Cougar. It was a little ridiculous.
---
The second time he thought he saw Cougar, another month had gone by, and he was standing on a beach in Mazatlan feeling the sand grinding between his toes. There and gone before he'd known it.
There were kids playing in the wet sand a few yards away, and they had no freakin' idea, at all, what exactly was running through Jensen's brain, what he'd thought he'd seen, and it was just as well. Wouldn’t have taken a shrink to explain it, and he wouldn’t have wanted the opinion of a strange nine year old weighing in, anyway.
Because yeah, he was s thinking about Cougar a lot, these days, 'cause even though Mazatlan hadn't been his home- Jensen had never really known where Cougar's home had actually been- this was as close as anyone was ever likely to get.
This was where Cougar had gone on leave, every single time. He'd liked it here, he'd even told Jensen about this blonde surfer girl he'd hung out with, once, when he'd been trying to keep him distracted as he stitched up the gash in his leg. Cougar had talked about the bonfire, college kids and blaring stereos, pot and beer and none of them caring about anything at all. He'd talked about not leaving the beach for two days, and sleeping out on the sand.
Standing here now, watching the waves, Jensen could see why Cougar had liked it. He was starting to like it, too. And maybe that was the fucking problem.
Because it was insane enough that he'd come here on a carefully considered whim, that his plan-to lay this fucking ghost to rest, already- wasn't working as much as he'd hoped, and now, maybe, it was time to start worrying again.
If he could convince himself that Cougar was actually haunting this beach, then he could probably talk himself into anything, and his willingness to go off the deep end really only went so fucking far.
It was a little troubling, but he'd come this far already. The only thing left was to throw the matches into the water and go to the hotel.
---
The sheets were cool beneath him. Cool Hand Luke was playing on the laptop by his feet, but he'd stopped watching a while ago. Mostly, he was staring out at the sky through the open window, and making deals with himself in his head.
Tonight was his last night in Mazatlan. He was in the world's most comfortable bed. And yeah, no, he didn't feel like sharing it tonight, but. Fuck it, trying to force it out of his head hadn't worked. Maybe just this once, he could have what he wanted. He could let himself, and tomorrow, he'd figure out how the hell to move on.
He stroked slowly, at first. It felt a little bit like the first time, all over again. Like he had to work up the nerve. Allow himself to not staplegun images of Angelina Jolie over what his brain had taken to thinking about, lately. Allow himself to not feel guilty.
Fuck it, for all he knew, jerking off in a hotel bedroom, thinking about your dead best friend was all just part of the healing process.
Outside the half-opened window, the stars were coming out, fighting their way past the smog.
He could see his unbent leg reflected in the glass, and the swirling print of the blanket painted blue by the laptop's light.
If he listened carefully, he could just make out the sounds of water hitting the beach, but maybe he was imagining it. Somewhere, down on the street, a couple was arguing. The Spanish didn't hurt the way it used to. He strained his ears, tried to make the tones into something else. Something lower, quieter. Familiar.
Something that matched the face he'd almost seen earlier, at the beach, with that same pull at the corner of the mouth.
His spine curled into it even as he began to forget, again. The fantasy was hard to maintain, it was muzzy, far away, distracted and vague, but suddenly, plain as day, he managed it, almost without trying.
Cougar was standing there, naked, at the foot of his bed.
Jensen's eyes slammed shut as he came, hard, all over his fingers, and they didn't open when he heard the computer crashing to the floor. They didn't open when his heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest, or when the aftershocks hit his spine like lightening.
Damn. Just. Damn.
He coughed, once, grinning, and opened his eyes, but he hadn't thought he'd be surprised to find himself alone. Hadn't been ready for it to rip through him so fucking badly, but there wasn't even the hint of a shadow, of a movement of air. There was nothing there to convince him that Cougar had been real. Of course not.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
There wasn't anything to disprove it, either.
Jensen was losing his fucking mind.
By the time he got his breathing back under control, he'd pulled on his boxers and recovered his thankfully unbroken laptop, and was hacking his way onto yet another flight.
He had to get the hell out of here. Right freakin' now.
---
He arrived in Antigua almost a full month early, his eyes never straying far from the calendar. It was going on one year, now, and in a few weeks, maybe, if he was lucky, Pooch would show. In the meantime, he kept himself busy, moving.
It didn't hurt that Carnival was happening, right in the middle of it. He spent ten days straight, just wandering through the crowds. Took some photos with a cheap camera he'd bought, even mailed his sister a postcard that he signed George, out of habit, more than anything else.
It was easy to stay distracted. Impossible, actually, to concentrate with the calypso music blaring off of every corner. He was pretty sure the steel drums would be ringing in his hear for at least another month, maybe two, if they didn't make him deaf first.
The cricket games were calm, by comparison, if only just barely, but after catching several matches over the course of a few days, he was no closer to understanding the rules of the game than he'd been at the outset. He was going to point it out to Cougs-
-but Cougar wasn't there. He still forgot about that, sometimes.
He missed most of the game, after that. Just went back to the hotel bar, where he met this girl, Bethany, with red hair and freckles. They hit it off for a while, right up until she scrunched her nose, laughing, to ask, "So let me get this straight. You've been here for two weeks and you haven't even gone out on the water. Not even a boat ride?"
And it wasn't like he could explain it to her without explaining everything to her, and really? She didn't have the freakin' clearance.
He went back to his room alone and crossed another day off the calendar.
---
Jensen hadn't honestly imagined that they'd both make it, but he'd been keeping an eye on the Observer and, almost a year to the day, there it was. Some guy selling a Jen387Sen computer for cheap. Ports new, monitor not included. Inquiries to be made at the Hotel Hawksbill, up in Five Islands.
Pooch was out on the patio, a beer already in his hand, shouting his name. His real name, which would've been unthinkable a year ago. It was kind of awesome.
"Thought I said I'd catch the first round," he said, by way of greeting, grabbing Pooch in a quick hug.
"You should've gotten here earlier, man" Pooch said, waving him into a seat with one hand and looking around for a server. Attention drawn, he turned back to him. "Please tell me this isn't actually the first daylight you've seen all year. You look like shit."
"Thanks," Jensen grinned, rolling his eyes, because this? This was familiar, and he was totally down for riding that for a while, but halfway through the second beer, midway through Pooch's description of the horrible orange Jolene had insisted on painting the kitchen, he got thrown the fuck off.
The others should've freakin' been there.
There'd never been time for a funeral, let alone a memorial. Not even a wake, unless you wanted to count Jensen's season long bender, but this was as close as they were likely to get.
So they toasted Cougar, Clay, even Aisha's scary ass with sweating beer bottles and for a minute, there, it had felt like he was finally doing something right.
And then Stegler fucking found them. Crept up out of the woodwork towing the company line, even offered them their jobs back. Security. Backup. A lot of promises that Jensen wished he could believe in.
It wasn't too hard to tell him to fuck off.
---
Down on the beach, because Pooch hadn't been here long enough to get tired of it, they thought it through. Stegler'd always had their backs, when he could. He was a standup guy. And fuck, Jensen could see Pooch's point. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to knew where he stood.
"That's just dreamin', man," he had to say, though, and it wasn't just habit, but. "I mean. How'd he know we were here? He says nobody else knows, but how do we know he wasn't followed?"
Pooch didn’t have an answer for that. Truth was, the world wasn't as big as it used to be, and Stegler's promises hadn't changed anything.
Both of them had fallen quiet, thinking it over. Pooch had to be at the dock in just under an hour anyway, and there really wasn't much else to say, or at least Jensen thought. Heading back in the direction of the hotel, though, Pooch cleared his throat.
"You ever see him?" Pooch asked, not looking at him as he spoke.
"Huh?"
"Cougar."
Jensen sighed, dimly aware that he'd known, the moment Pooch had opened his mouth. He shrugged, not wanting to commit. "Yeah. Maybe. You?"
Pooch, for his part, didn't seem to want to talk about it any more than Jensen did. "A few times. More, lately. It's weird."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, I know it's just dreams, or whatever, but. Well. About a week ago, he showed up again. Actually spoke. Asked me where you were, can you believe that? I wound up waking up Jolene when I told him I didn't know." Pooch smirked, shaking his head. "It's weird, right?"
"Yeah." Jensen rolled his ankle, trying to dislodge some of the sand from his shoe. "You ever see Clay?" he asked, because he didn't want to ask the thousand questions he had running through his head. Did he say anything else? Does he seem okay, or is he miserable? Was he dressed when you saw him? Why didn't he ever talk to me?
"Nah, man. Not once."
Jensen nodded, swallowed some guilt. This was Clay they were supposed to be talking about, anyway. "Me neither."
---
One hour later, Pooch was gone again.
Three hours after that, Cougar arrived.
---
Chapter 2
Fandom/ Pairing The Losers (comic 'verse, borrowing heavily from the movie), eventual Jensen/Cougar
Rating: R.
Summary: Cougar was bleeding all over the bomb in his lap, the last time Jensen saw him. But that was then.
Prologue
Chapter 1
"Heard Antigua's nice for anniversaries," Pooch grimaced, pulling up to Jensen's at the harbor, hand hesitating over the stick, but not shifting into park. Soon, he'd be heading for the airport, trying his luck with the identity Jensen had cobbled together for him with shoelaces and chewing gum.
Every ally they had was dead, now, and there was no guarantee that their enemies would be satisfied with their attempts to likewise disappear. Going by the odds, Jensen would never see him again.
"I hate Antigua, man," Jensen groaned as they shook hands, but he meant, yeah, if I make it, I'll buy the first round.
---
The first month, everything was too fucked to even think about going on a bender. It was just survival, then. Laying the groundwork to bury himself, then covering his tracks as he skates through seven countries in as many days.
The second month, though? The third? Jensen hadn't honestly believed he had it in him.
---
After the drunken binge of the third month, the fourth and fifth were-
No. Shit. They were more of the same. A thousand back-room bars, lonely bottles in lonelier hotel rooms. Occasional stumblings towards sobriety that only lasted long enough to procure what was needed. Money for the hotel. Food. More alcohol, to black himself out too deeply to dream.
The sixth, though, was the morning after that stretched on forever, and it was anticlimactic when it arrived.
Somehow Jensen had woken up without a hangover. That was all it took, really, but it allowed him the first three minutes of uninterrupted thought he'd had for months.
First, he took a minute to look around. Had to check the hotel's phone book to be sure he was still in Sydney, and realized that he wasn't even sure when he'd arrived, if he'd been there for a week or a month.
It was time to bail. On all of this. There were three bottles on the bedside table, and they all went down the drain.
---
Jensen headed off for Istanbul without leaving a note, because it would've just listed off all the things he'd suddenly realized he hated about himself, anyway.
Like the fact that he couldn't even pretend, really, that he was actually paying attention any more. At first, he'd genuinely forgotten that wasn't anybody there to watch his back. Afterwards, when he'd remembered? It was because of it.
Or the awareness that he'd lucked out so far, if you could call it that, but he wasn't probably slated to live much longer. He'd never told his sister he was still breathing, not after the last time, and it wasn't like there was any reason to, now, but. Shit, nobody in the world knew him, any more.
He turned on the television, flipped it over to the news, just to hear another human freakin' voice while he packed.
"… massive tidal waves that rocked the shores of Qatar , killing nearly four hundred people, and displacing thousands more, six months ago," the newscaster was saying, looking into the camera intently as he spoke. "And even now, experts say, the full extent of the damage caused by the nuclear accident that created the tsunami has yet to be seen."
The shot changed, then, nothing but sky and choppy water, and then down, lower. A school of fish, a brush of kelp straining towards the surface. "It seems, however, that though the ecology of the Persian Gulf may never recover, the fears of a dead zone being created in the Arabian Sea may have been unfounded. As you can see on this footage, taken a few miles off the coast of Oman, new marine life is once again finding its way into these waters…"
By the time Jensen knew what had happened, he was on the bed, screaming into the pillows. It wasn't until the innkeeper burst into his room, drawn by the sounds of his moment of clarity, that he realized he'd already ripped a chunk out of the flimsy headboard with his bare freakin' hands.
The innkeeper clicked her tongue over the damage, the bed and the lamp Jensen had apparently managed to knock over, and rolled her eyes at the bloody state of Jensen's hands. After disappearing for a moment, she returned with a stack of clean washcloths and a bucket of ice.
Jensen tried to calm down, promised to pay for everything, and decided that he'd chosen a shitty day to sober up.
And fuck his fucking hands, anyway.
--
See, it was stupid.
Pooch, when he'd flown from out of freakin' nowhere with the chopper to rescue everyone and found only Jensen, he'd been prepared. He'd picked him up, and after they'd made it several miles inland, and they'd blown the helicopter to smithereens-
and fuck, it was just a goddamned helicopter, but it had been one fucking explosion too many. It sounded like that other one that they'd heard, miles behind them, lonely in the ocean, and Jensen didn't stop shaking for three days, afterwards-
-they'd made it to the truck Pooch had stashed, and hadn't stopped driving until they'd crossed into Jordan. It hadn't been until they'd reached the hotel that Jensen realized that Pooch had managed to find everyone's gear, that he'd had it all in the truck the entire time.
Pooch's planning had looked like pathetic optimism, in retrospect. They'd brought it all inside, anyway.
Clay's bag hadn't had much. Enough cash to float on, for a while. Three burner phones and the medals he'd gotten back in Kuwait. Two changes of clothes.
There'd been three in Aisha's bag, and enough bandages to start a hospital. It had been unsettling as hell, seeing evidence that she'd known she was human, that she knew she could bleed. Stuffed down in the bottom had been three photographs, worn nearly to scrap. Jensen hadn't recognized any of the faces. One of them might've been hers.
He'd taken the bandages and set them on the bed, next to the phones and the cash.
Cougar's bag had only had one change of clothes, a gun cleaning kit, four empty boxes of ammo, and nothing else.
Pooch had found a knife in Aisha's jeans, and another one, ceramic, in Clay's jacket sleeve, once he'd started going through their clothes. There'd been nothing useful in Cougar's clothes, but in pocket of his shirt was a book of matches, from that crappy bar in Abilene where they'd all had their last good night. Before this had all started.
Charlotte's phone number was still written on the inside. She'd been funny, with awesome legs that were just this side of skinny and the wickedest laugh Jensen had ever heard. And of course Cougar had cock-blocked the hell out of him- it was the way of things, after all- and Jensen had been forced to move on to calmer waters. No harm, no foul, and she'd been pretty enough, but Jensen didn't have a matchbook to remind him of Calmer Water's name, though.
It wasn't like Charlotte needed to be notified, but the matchbook had made its way into Jensen's pocket, regardless, because there was nothing else in the bag worth taking.
---
And Fuck Jensen's hands, anyway, the way they'd go to his pocket, draw the matchbook out and fidget with it whenever he wasn't looking. The way they always put the damned thing back, afterwards, so damned carefully, always in the left hand pocket.
The matchbook was worn, now, soft and white around the edges, and he hadn't tried opening the flap in weeks, because he was pretty sure it would all fall apart, then, and he didn't honestly know what he'd do when that happened. He doubted that it would be cathartic, hat he'd actually stop thinking about it, because-
Fuck. Cougar.
Cougar hadn't wanted to go on that last run. Jensen hadn't, either, but. Aisha and Clay, they'd been balls to the walls for it, and even going in, they'd been down Roque and Pooch.
Not only would Clay and Aisha have died, they never would've been able to finish the mission before it happened.
But- and here was the thing. At that point, Jensen hadn't honestly given a rat's ass about the first half of that equation- about Aisha, or Clay, and he'd known, even then, that he probably should have. And maybe that had been why there'd been just enough guilt left to get him on board. Just enough to turn the away party into a ruling majority, and he'd been the one to ask Cougs-
Cougar hadn't wanted to go. He'd said it was his final gig, swore that he'd be done, afterwards, but Cougar had agreed. Jensen had done to Cougar what Clay and Aisha had done to him.
---
So no, it wasn't like Jensen's hands were entirely clean. At least this time, sitting here in the hotel room with an increasingly annoyed innkeeper shooting him wary looks, the blood was there where he could see it, where he could feel it under his nails.
---
Spain was a mistake. Slight differences, yeah, dialect and all that, but. Hearing people talking in the street, the couple who ran the hotel asking if his room was okay, the cabbies, the news.
Men were worse. Sometimes, they even sounded familiar, and it was impossible to fucking think, to plan, to move the hell on, when every time he left his tiny box of a room, his eardrums were assaulted with it.
Jensen lasted a week and then he fucked off to Ireland.
---
The weather suited him, here, dreary and gray. Without the heat frying into his brain, he could actually think, and once that started, the rest kind of followed.
He'd been sloppy for months, now. He'd taken cares, yeah, to take himself off the grid. No phones, no computers, no anything at all.
He'd cut himself off to lick his wounds, but really? It had been seven months, the world had been lurching steadily onwards, and so far, nobody had kicked his door down. If he'd been in anyone's sights, the trigger hadn't been pulled.
Jensen wasn't deluded enough to think that the world was a safe place, now, but it was still out there, and he was starting to miss it.
Next week was his niece's birthday, and Jensen found his eyes lingering, more often, on the duffel bag where Clay's burner phones were packed. They'd been paid for in cash, and were totally untraceable. But the phone at his sister's place wasn't. And her cell could be tapped from a computer in India, without her ever knowing.
So a computer it was, then. A cheap one, but he didn't need it for much, yet, though Jensen wasn't sure if the yet was just a habit of thought, or if somewhere, in his brain, plans were actually being made.
The netbook cost less than a week's lodging, a couple hundred euros, the café down on Dawson street had unsecured wifi, and he was good to go.
---
Fucking hell, his sister was on Facebook, of all bloody things. His niece, too.
His sister's posts were sweet, random. Funny videos her coworkers had forwarded her, and endless bragging about her daughter. She'd missed him on his birthday, and that had been, fuck, that was the second blind-drunk month, he hadn't even noticed, he'd been so far gone.
Attached to the post was a picture of the three of them, taken back before he shipped out the second time.
It was careless, he knew it was, but he downloaded the image and set it up as his desktop's wallpaper. Stared at it for a little while, just because he could. It was a better picture than the one in his wallet, the one in front of the house, when Jensen'd been helping her move in. His niece looked like a kid, now, not some amorphous blob in a blanket.
His niece's posts made no sense at all, cartoon images, cute boys, pictures of her soccer team and iokes with her friends. Pizza and ice cream and puppies, more cute boys, and she was still too fucking young for any of that, but. Shit. Thirteen, now, and-.
-None of this was telling him anything. At all. Just making him sad and miserable. He should've known better.
He was seven months out of practice, but it only took half an hour to write the code, and the program wouldn't harm much of anything. He copied some text from one of the more obviously dubious Viagra suppliers, and borrowed her friend Katie's email address to send it.
His sister would open it, mark it as spam, and probably call Katie up to make fun of her for having her email account hacked, and they'd laugh about it as Jensen gained access to everything on his sister's computer.
It occurred to him, as he was waiting for the files to download, that though hacking his sister's email account had been the most reasonable thing he'd been able to come up with under the circumstances, it was still probably kind of shitty.
On the other hand, as luck would have it, his sister checked her email ten minutes later, and her files were already beginning to transfer to his computer.
It would take a while, upwards of an hour on the café's shitty wifi, but Jensen hadn't been online in months. He had to catch up. Wars, cease-fires that wouldn't hold much longer, scams, taxes, unemployment. Returned soldiers complaining about their tours. Every lack of solution that every politician could possibly present. A new crop of pop stars he'd never heard of, and movies he hadn't seen. Hollywood cults and, hopefully unrelated, eight missing children. There were UFOs over Dallas, apparently, and a painkiller recall after ghosts had been seen running around on a Navy cruiser. There were too many breakthroughs in genetics research to count, and even more panicking about privacy rights. Some teenager had accidentally stolen his dad's computer when he'd taken his girlfriend out to the prom. The general had been pretty red in the face, by all accounts, but the footage of the soldiers storming the dance was kind of hilarious. And it was just as well that he'd missed the games leading up to the Super Bowl. He would've had cash down on the Vikings.
Eventually, he had everything he needed copied to his hard drive, and too many things he didn't need filling his head, so he shut it all down. After stopping off for takeout on the way back to the hotel, he sat himself down at the desk and began to read.
It took less than a minute to know that he wasn't the only one who'd pulled this stunt on his sister. She didn't have an account, anywhere, that hadn't been under surveillance, but from the looks of it, it was all old activity.
About five months ago, all the eyes had wandered elsewhere. It made sense. Jensen probably wasn't the only dead asshole the US thought to keep an eye out for. Eventually, they would've had to move on. It was flattering, almost, to think that they'd looked for him as long as they did.
He stared at the wall for a while, the screen's light a distraction in the corner of his eye.
Apparently, he'd won.
---
Still, though, it took another month for Jensen to find the balls to go home, and another to figure out how.
It took two days for his sister to believe he was real, and another three to consider forgiving him. and if it hadn't been for his niece, or the fact that it was Christmas, and his sister was feeling like she ought to be charitable, it might not have happened at all.
It was all a little anticlimactic.
Friday night, late, after his niece was asleep upstairs, he finally got to sit at the kitchen table and explain himself to his sister, the photo he'd sent her years ago sitting out between them. He kept it down to two beers, because yeah, he'd made it this far, he was back in the states and back in her house, but he couldn't afford to tell her too much.
Still, though, it was more than he'd ever told anyone, and it was more than he'd actually said in months.
Mostly, he talked about Clay, who'd driven everything, and Pooch, the one stand-up guy out of all of them, the only other one to survive it all. It was harder to talk about how Roque had screwed them after years and years, or how Aisha, who his sister had never met or even heard of, had taken months to do the same.
Even so, it was a hell of a lot easier than talking about Cougar, how he'd gone down fighting and not fighting all at once. How he'd vaporized himself to save Jensen and the others, to get some rest. How Jensen had known, for years, how badly he'd needed it.
There hadn't even been a funeral.
"There wasn't one here, either," his sister pointed out, frowning to herself as she went to the fridge for another couple of beers. "Just. Some guy came by, offering condolences on behalf of the free world on a Tuesday night, and a memorial down at Aunt Bea's church that weekend, you know? Crap, that was," she squinted, apparently having to give it some thought. "That was ages ago."
She'd hit the nail on the head, only it wasn't the one she'd been aiming for. She'd thought him dead for a while now. And she'd moved on with her life. And maybe Jensen could- should do the same.
He could give it some thought, anyway.
Things were a little better after that, for a few days. But eventually, his sister had to go back to work, his niece to school, and there just wasn't room in their lives for him being so close, any more. It was time to move on, or at least move onwards.
And maybe that was why he saw it, when he was down in the guest room, packing up his things. Random, fleeting, and barely there, just a hint of something out of the corner of his eye, a sharp turn of a shoulder that felt familiar, and it was gone.
He didn't know why he'd decided so certainly it had been Cougar. It was a little ridiculous.
---
The second time he thought he saw Cougar, another month had gone by, and he was standing on a beach in Mazatlan feeling the sand grinding between his toes. There and gone before he'd known it.
There were kids playing in the wet sand a few yards away, and they had no freakin' idea, at all, what exactly was running through Jensen's brain, what he'd thought he'd seen, and it was just as well. Wouldn’t have taken a shrink to explain it, and he wouldn’t have wanted the opinion of a strange nine year old weighing in, anyway.
Because yeah, he was s thinking about Cougar a lot, these days, 'cause even though Mazatlan hadn't been his home- Jensen had never really known where Cougar's home had actually been- this was as close as anyone was ever likely to get.
This was where Cougar had gone on leave, every single time. He'd liked it here, he'd even told Jensen about this blonde surfer girl he'd hung out with, once, when he'd been trying to keep him distracted as he stitched up the gash in his leg. Cougar had talked about the bonfire, college kids and blaring stereos, pot and beer and none of them caring about anything at all. He'd talked about not leaving the beach for two days, and sleeping out on the sand.
Standing here now, watching the waves, Jensen could see why Cougar had liked it. He was starting to like it, too. And maybe that was the fucking problem.
Because it was insane enough that he'd come here on a carefully considered whim, that his plan-to lay this fucking ghost to rest, already- wasn't working as much as he'd hoped, and now, maybe, it was time to start worrying again.
If he could convince himself that Cougar was actually haunting this beach, then he could probably talk himself into anything, and his willingness to go off the deep end really only went so fucking far.
It was a little troubling, but he'd come this far already. The only thing left was to throw the matches into the water and go to the hotel.
---
The sheets were cool beneath him. Cool Hand Luke was playing on the laptop by his feet, but he'd stopped watching a while ago. Mostly, he was staring out at the sky through the open window, and making deals with himself in his head.
Tonight was his last night in Mazatlan. He was in the world's most comfortable bed. And yeah, no, he didn't feel like sharing it tonight, but. Fuck it, trying to force it out of his head hadn't worked. Maybe just this once, he could have what he wanted. He could let himself, and tomorrow, he'd figure out how the hell to move on.
He stroked slowly, at first. It felt a little bit like the first time, all over again. Like he had to work up the nerve. Allow himself to not staplegun images of Angelina Jolie over what his brain had taken to thinking about, lately. Allow himself to not feel guilty.
Fuck it, for all he knew, jerking off in a hotel bedroom, thinking about your dead best friend was all just part of the healing process.
Outside the half-opened window, the stars were coming out, fighting their way past the smog.
He could see his unbent leg reflected in the glass, and the swirling print of the blanket painted blue by the laptop's light.
If he listened carefully, he could just make out the sounds of water hitting the beach, but maybe he was imagining it. Somewhere, down on the street, a couple was arguing. The Spanish didn't hurt the way it used to. He strained his ears, tried to make the tones into something else. Something lower, quieter. Familiar.
Something that matched the face he'd almost seen earlier, at the beach, with that same pull at the corner of the mouth.
His spine curled into it even as he began to forget, again. The fantasy was hard to maintain, it was muzzy, far away, distracted and vague, but suddenly, plain as day, he managed it, almost without trying.
Cougar was standing there, naked, at the foot of his bed.
Jensen's eyes slammed shut as he came, hard, all over his fingers, and they didn't open when he heard the computer crashing to the floor. They didn't open when his heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest, or when the aftershocks hit his spine like lightening.
Damn. Just. Damn.
He coughed, once, grinning, and opened his eyes, but he hadn't thought he'd be surprised to find himself alone. Hadn't been ready for it to rip through him so fucking badly, but there wasn't even the hint of a shadow, of a movement of air. There was nothing there to convince him that Cougar had been real. Of course not.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
There wasn't anything to disprove it, either.
Jensen was losing his fucking mind.
By the time he got his breathing back under control, he'd pulled on his boxers and recovered his thankfully unbroken laptop, and was hacking his way onto yet another flight.
He had to get the hell out of here. Right freakin' now.
---
He arrived in Antigua almost a full month early, his eyes never straying far from the calendar. It was going on one year, now, and in a few weeks, maybe, if he was lucky, Pooch would show. In the meantime, he kept himself busy, moving.
It didn't hurt that Carnival was happening, right in the middle of it. He spent ten days straight, just wandering through the crowds. Took some photos with a cheap camera he'd bought, even mailed his sister a postcard that he signed George, out of habit, more than anything else.
It was easy to stay distracted. Impossible, actually, to concentrate with the calypso music blaring off of every corner. He was pretty sure the steel drums would be ringing in his hear for at least another month, maybe two, if they didn't make him deaf first.
The cricket games were calm, by comparison, if only just barely, but after catching several matches over the course of a few days, he was no closer to understanding the rules of the game than he'd been at the outset. He was going to point it out to Cougs-
-but Cougar wasn't there. He still forgot about that, sometimes.
He missed most of the game, after that. Just went back to the hotel bar, where he met this girl, Bethany, with red hair and freckles. They hit it off for a while, right up until she scrunched her nose, laughing, to ask, "So let me get this straight. You've been here for two weeks and you haven't even gone out on the water. Not even a boat ride?"
And it wasn't like he could explain it to her without explaining everything to her, and really? She didn't have the freakin' clearance.
He went back to his room alone and crossed another day off the calendar.
---
Jensen hadn't honestly imagined that they'd both make it, but he'd been keeping an eye on the Observer and, almost a year to the day, there it was. Some guy selling a Jen387Sen computer for cheap. Ports new, monitor not included. Inquiries to be made at the Hotel Hawksbill, up in Five Islands.
Pooch was out on the patio, a beer already in his hand, shouting his name. His real name, which would've been unthinkable a year ago. It was kind of awesome.
"Thought I said I'd catch the first round," he said, by way of greeting, grabbing Pooch in a quick hug.
"You should've gotten here earlier, man" Pooch said, waving him into a seat with one hand and looking around for a server. Attention drawn, he turned back to him. "Please tell me this isn't actually the first daylight you've seen all year. You look like shit."
"Thanks," Jensen grinned, rolling his eyes, because this? This was familiar, and he was totally down for riding that for a while, but halfway through the second beer, midway through Pooch's description of the horrible orange Jolene had insisted on painting the kitchen, he got thrown the fuck off.
The others should've freakin' been there.
There'd never been time for a funeral, let alone a memorial. Not even a wake, unless you wanted to count Jensen's season long bender, but this was as close as they were likely to get.
So they toasted Cougar, Clay, even Aisha's scary ass with sweating beer bottles and for a minute, there, it had felt like he was finally doing something right.
And then Stegler fucking found them. Crept up out of the woodwork towing the company line, even offered them their jobs back. Security. Backup. A lot of promises that Jensen wished he could believe in.
It wasn't too hard to tell him to fuck off.
---
Down on the beach, because Pooch hadn't been here long enough to get tired of it, they thought it through. Stegler'd always had their backs, when he could. He was a standup guy. And fuck, Jensen could see Pooch's point. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to knew where he stood.
"That's just dreamin', man," he had to say, though, and it wasn't just habit, but. "I mean. How'd he know we were here? He says nobody else knows, but how do we know he wasn't followed?"
Pooch didn’t have an answer for that. Truth was, the world wasn't as big as it used to be, and Stegler's promises hadn't changed anything.
Both of them had fallen quiet, thinking it over. Pooch had to be at the dock in just under an hour anyway, and there really wasn't much else to say, or at least Jensen thought. Heading back in the direction of the hotel, though, Pooch cleared his throat.
"You ever see him?" Pooch asked, not looking at him as he spoke.
"Huh?"
"Cougar."
Jensen sighed, dimly aware that he'd known, the moment Pooch had opened his mouth. He shrugged, not wanting to commit. "Yeah. Maybe. You?"
Pooch, for his part, didn't seem to want to talk about it any more than Jensen did. "A few times. More, lately. It's weird."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, I know it's just dreams, or whatever, but. Well. About a week ago, he showed up again. Actually spoke. Asked me where you were, can you believe that? I wound up waking up Jolene when I told him I didn't know." Pooch smirked, shaking his head. "It's weird, right?"
"Yeah." Jensen rolled his ankle, trying to dislodge some of the sand from his shoe. "You ever see Clay?" he asked, because he didn't want to ask the thousand questions he had running through his head. Did he say anything else? Does he seem okay, or is he miserable? Was he dressed when you saw him? Why didn't he ever talk to me?
"Nah, man. Not once."
Jensen nodded, swallowed some guilt. This was Clay they were supposed to be talking about, anyway. "Me neither."
---
One hour later, Pooch was gone again.
Three hours after that, Cougar arrived.
---
Chapter 2