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You are taken on a Tuesday. It had been a standard patrol route around base, in a war-torn country. You had taken a private with you, not expecting anything to come of it.
The private had been killed on the spot and a hefty hit landed to the back of your head. You’re not sure what part of it you had blacked out for and what part of it you had been blindfolded, but you are taken for hours in the dark until they rip the bag off your head and throw you into a chair.
They yell at you in Azerbaijani, then in Lezgian, then finally, in Russian. You don’t understand a single word, but you understand what they want.
You spit in a man’s face and he backhands you with such force that you think you might need medical attention.
Then they throw you into solitary. No food, just water that drips from the ceiling, and absolutely nothing for you to even make out in the darkness. You understand the principle of sensory deprivation, but holy shit, you’ve never experienced it in person before. You swear a study you had read back at home had talked about everything being stark white, but the black darkness is worse.
You don’t even know if you’re in there alone, or with someone else. Or a corpse. You don’t trust any of your senses, because at least a couple of days in, you know you’re hallucinating because Kyle sits opposite you in the darkness.
You can’t see him, but you sense him. His presence is warm, grounding, and you gravitate towards him.
“Kyle,” you whisper.
The door is yanked opened. “What?” one of your guard yells at you, hauling you up. “What did you say?”
You shut your mouth and close your eyes. You take in a deep breath, and then say, “Fuck you,” very calmly.
He toss you back in the cell with such vigour that you’re surprised your head didn’t crack open on the concrete flooring. The door shuts behind him as he leaves, and you’re left in nothing but black again.
“You look like shit,” Kyle says sympathetically from his corner.
“Yeah well,” you cough, “fuck you too.”
The guard grumbles something outside, before it is completely silent as the soundproofing seal of the room clicks shut. You hope he’s going to tell his superiors that you’ve gone raving mad, because maybe they’ll dispose of you instead.
“You don’t want to die,” Kyle says, gently.
You imagine yourself replying without saying anything aloud. An imaginary you pops up in the corner beside you, opposite Kyle who sits diagonally from you in the tiny cell. “Of course I don’t want to fucking die,” imaginary you snaps. “But do you have any bright ideas?”
“You’re the one that comes up with all those bright ideas,” Kyle replies, and you can imagine him shrugging, “I’m the one that follows. God, do you remember that time in Kosovo?”
“Fuck Kosovo,” you say out loud. You think you hear the door move, but no light peeks in. You’re still encased in the shadows.
“Yeah,” Kyle agrees, “I hated Kosovo. But you do know the one thing I liked about it? Spending time with you.”
“Okay,” imaginary you says, “I draw the line there. You’re definitely made up.”
“A guy can’t say he likes spending time with you?”
“Not you,” imaginary you corrects, “never you.”
Kyle shifts, and you can hear the scraping of the bottom of his plate against the concrete flooring and the thumbs of his combat boots moving around. “Let me comfort you. As a figment of your imagination, of course.”
You consider it. Imaginary you says, “Can you tell me bad jokes like Ghost does? Or else you can fuck off and let me go crazy in peace.”
“I can do that.” Kyle clears his throat. “Do you know why melons have to get married?”
“Why?”
“Because they cantelope.”
You frown. “But eloping means getting married.”
“Shut up. I”m trying to help out here.” Kyle moves, and suddenly you feel his heat next to you. When you turn to look, there’s nothing there. To make sure, you reach out. There’s nothing but air.
“Why can’t dinosaurs clap?”
Imaginary you still humours him. “Why?”
“Because they’re extinct, you moron.”
“I’m about to go extinct now,” you say aloud. “Do you think one of you could like, just shoot me and get it over with?”
There is no movement from outside. They’ve officially deemed you loco.
“You don’t want to die,” Kyle repeats, and his voice is so close to you. Just against your ear. Maybe if you turned your head just right you would be able to brush your lips against his. “Stay with me, Chuts.”
“Don’t call me that,” you whisper. “I hate it.”
“C’mon, Chutney. Stay with me.”
Your head lulls to the side. “I’m just…I’m just going to take a nap, real quick…”
Kyle brushes a thumb against your cheek gently. “I’ll be waiting when you wake,” he whispers gently, and a little sadly. You wonder why he’s so sad. You’re not even sad, and he’s a part of your mind, for fuck’s sake.
“Will you wait for me?” you murmur, half-asleep.
“Always.”
—
They bring in a man who can speak English, and that’s the first time you see daylight in days. It blinds you, literally, and you have to walk with your eyes permanently shut just so you don’t get a searing migraine. The light penetrate through your eyelids anyways, and you have to force yourself not to whimper in front of your captors.
They tie you to the chair again, but this time looser. You can’t fight back, because you’ve been denied food for days and you’re losing muscle mass, fast. It’s your precious muscle mass too, because unlike the boys, you’ve always had to fight a little harder than they did to bulk up. Soap had even been nice enough to share protein powder.
“Stop talking about protein powder,” the man with the Russian accent hisses in your face, “I want to know how many people are on your base! Where it is! The exact location, and how many heavy-armoured vehicles you have!”
“Honestly,” you say, “no one could tell you. I don’t even think Soap could tell you how many vehicles there are, even when he’s such a nerd and he has to get a look—”
Someone slaps you. Your teeth rattle, and one of your molars are loose. “Look at me,” someone grabs at your chin, forcing your head up. “ Look at me .”
Your eyelids are peeled open forcefully, and your eyes are assaulted by even the smallest sliver of light coming from the lightbulb in the interrogation room. You look away instinctively, but then a knife is shoved between your ribs. It cuts your skin superficially, blood rolling down your abdomen.
“Tell me.” The man sneers at you, practically spitting into your eyes. “Who’s in charge on your base?”
You pause. Then man digs the knife in a little deeper.
“Tell me!”
You frown, recoiling. “Look, man, you have a serious problem with your mouth there—first of all, it stinks, and secondly, I really don’t want an indirect kiss of any sorts, sorry, but—”
Someone kicks you square in the kidney, and you gasp for air. Then they go straight for your solar plexus, and you spend a minute trying to figure out if you’ve gone up to heaven between those split seconds.
“Take her away,” the interrogator orders, “close her up for a few more days.”
When you’re back in your cell and your head comes back around, Kyle is waiting, in the corner, patiently. Your eyes adjust much faster to the darkness, and now you can kind of make out vague shapes in the shadows.
Maybe you’re just seeing things, whatever, but now you can actually make out Kyle’s shoulders in the small cell.
He gently wipes some drool off your chin and blood off your temple. His touch is so soft, so gentle, you could wrap yourself up in it and die happy. “They really did a number on you,” he says, almost anguished.
Imaginary you is uninjured, back flush against the furthest wall. Imaginary you scoffs. “I don’t even know why they took me,” it admits, “I mean, really? Did they think torturing a woman would be easier?”
Kyle’s touch freezes. “Don’t say things like that,” he warns.
“I mean, there were two of us. Did they somehow know that I was a sergeant or something? Taking the higher rank?”
“You know what they do to women,” Kyle hisses. This is the first time he’s been angry with imaginary you.
“I don’t know why they haven’t done it already,” it says, and you have to agree. You had prepared yourself to fight during the early hours, but now you’re so weak that it would be a miracle if you could even be conscious if it happens.
“They still think you’re a soldier,” Kyle says, firmly, and you’re not sure who he’s trying to convince. “They treat you like you, and you better hope it doesn’t change.”
You moan, feeling pain in all areas of your body. You bury your face into the concrete, and cry. “I want to go home,” you whisper.
Kyle rubs a soothing hand up and down your back. “I know,” he breathes, and you think he might be crying too. “It’s okay. They’ll be here soon.”
“They’ll be here soon,” you repeat. “They’ll be here soon.”
The door opens. The interrogator is back for round two.
—
It has been six days since you were taken. Gaz thinks it’s a miracle how he hasn’t bitten off someone’s head yet, although it was in no small part due to Soap physically holding him back every time someone does something even as small as flicking away a cigarette butt.
Ghost had just clasped his shoulder when he got into the face of a corporal, the sergeant that comes out of his mouth enough to still Gaz on the spot. “Walk it off,” he had ordered, and Kyle had walked it off the entire night. He hadn’t even noticed it was morning until Soap found him on the roof and guided him back down.
“You should get some sleep,” Soap suggested.
“Fuck off,” Kyle had replied.
“Okay,” Soap had held his hands up in mock surrender, “breakfast it is.”
Now, Kyle sits on his bunk, facing yours. It is clean, like everything is about you, and only a few photos are stuck up. There’s one of your family, one of your old childhood dog, and one of the team. Your eyes are thin with how wide you’re smiling, and Kyle is right beside you. Ghost has his mask off, a rare occasion, and Soap has his arm slung around the man’s shoulder, an even rarer occasion. Price had taken the photo, but you had gotten him to sign it.
There’s another photo, just a solo one, of Price beside it. If Kyle reaches out to flip it over, it would have your handwriting on the back.
You promised! is what you had written. Kyle can’t even bear to step over the unofficial border between your side of the room and his. It just feels like if he does, he would have destroyed your sanctuary, and you won’t ever come back.
“Gaz,” Soap appears at the door, “it’s dinnertime.”
Kyle stares at your bed. “D’you think she knows what time it is?”
“She knows we’re comin’,” Soap confirms. “That’s all there is to it, righ’?”
“But we’re not,” Kyle points out, “we’re still here. At base. We haven’t moved one fucking inch.”
“Laswell’s on it,” Soap frowns, “now what you can do is eat proper, flex some muscles, and prepare for the day when we go get her. And we will go get her.”
Kyle shakes his head. “I’m not hungry.”
Soap is uncharacteristically silent, and even more uncharacteristically lenient when he just nods in response. “Okay. I’ll see you around?”
Kyle lies back on his bed, flipping around so his back is to the door.
“Message received,” Soap replies cheerfully. “Lt.’ll check in later.”
“I’m going to sleep now,” Kyle says.
“Night night!”
The door slides shut behind him, but sleep doesn’t claim Kyle for a very long time. He just turns back around, and stares at your photos instead.
—
“Food,” your guard sneers at you, kicking in a tray. It smacks you in the nose, but you don’t even make a noise at the pain.
You let the food sit there, and rot. The smell permeates the room, but it’s the only thing that you know is real, because now Kyle is sleeping beside you, front pressed against your back. Imaginary you is now reciting the Shakespeare you had to memorise back in high school, constantly reciting that one sonnet that you fucked up in front of the entire class over and over, the one sonnet you went home and memorised until your eyes went blood red and you passed out in the middle of class the next day.
Sometimes, you really can’t tell if Kyle is real or not. But then he’ll press a kiss to your forehead, and you’ll relax, kowing that he’s fake.
—
The rats come in the next day.
—
Ghost is the next person to check in, holding a tray of food.
“I’m not hungry,” Kyle repeats, squinting up at his massive stature as Ghost flicks the lights on.
“You’re goin’ to eat,” the lieutenant says in that voice that Kyle knows he can’t disobey, “and then you’re gonna to gear up. There’s a debriefin’ in ten.”
Kyle shoots up, almost hitting his head on the top bunk. “A what?”
“A D-E-B-R-I-E-F-I-N-G,” Ghost spells out like he’s in kindergarten. “The missin’ twelve meals makin’ you lose some marbles?”
Kyle accepts the tray and scours it down in record time. “You counted how many meals I missed?” he says in between bites.
“Johnny says he’s packed extra ration bars,” Ghost says, completely ignoring the question. “So if you can’t finish eatin’ right now, you can eat on the plane.”
Kyle is already finished with the tray, just shy of licking the whole thing clean. “When do we go?” he asks eagerly.
“Now.” Ghost seems satisfied, taking the now-empty tray back. “Price’s office.”
“Rog.” The lieutenant turns away, tucking the tray underneath his arm, heading for the exit. “Ghost?”
The man pauses.
“Thank you,” Kyle says.
“Yeah,” Ghost grumbles, “thank me by getting your fuckin’ shit together. Ten minutes, sergeant.”
“Yessir.”
—
At first, the rats had come for your rotting food. Although the guards had cleaned it up to stop it from clashing with your sensory deprivation torture, they must’ve done sloppy work because the next thing you know there is scratching that is definitely not a part of your hallucinations.
Now you sleep with your face in Kyle’s chest, his warm body keeping you alive. His hands card the back of your neck, brushing through your hair and drawing patterns that keep you somewhat lucid. Your legs are tangled together, and you think distantly that it’s got to be funny that the only time the two of you have been in this position together is in a delusion.
The rats explore the space around you, first. But then they eat up all the scraps, realise that there’s nothing else in here other than your probably-already-decomposing body, and they start nibbling at what remains of your clothes.
It’s weird. They haven’t touched you in a sexual way at all, which points towards them actually doing their job. They’re not doing this because they enjoy hurting other people, they’re doing this because they need the intel you have. Not that you’ll ever consider giving it to them, not until you’re dead in a ditch and they have some convoluted way to upload your brain into a server and hack into it without the annoying obstacle of your stubborn personality.
The rats eventually eat through your clothes. Then they eat at your dead skin.
This is when you realise that Kyle really isn’t there, and that your team might not make it in time. Where his knee bumps against yours is where a rat chews at your flesh, and where his hands wind behind your head is where another rat sniffs at your hair.
He’s not real. You’re alone.
“It’s the end of the road for me,” you whisper.
“It’s okay,” Kyle whispers back, “they’ll be here soon. It’s okay.”
Imaginary you has long dissipated. It probably went with a snigger, long since it came to terms that you weren’t going to make it. It must’ve thought you had a serious case of idiot syndrome, thinking there was a chance you’d be saved.
In a country like this, where you don’t have any friends and even less familiarity with the terrain, the chances of you surviving were low. You shouldn’t have gotten your own hopes up in the first place.
“Chuts,” you say, barely audible. “Call me Chuts. One last time.”
“It’s okay,” Kyle is chanting, over and over, “they’ll be here soon. It’s okay, they’ll be here soon. It’s okay, they’ll be here soon.”
Your call sign is actually Mustard. Kyle thought it was funny to call you Chutney instead.
“Chuts,” you breathe.
“It’s okay, they’ll be here soon. It’s okay, they’ll be here soon. It’s okay, they’ll be here soon.”
Your eyes slip shut.
“It’s okay, they’ll be here soon. It’s okay, they’ll be here soon. It’s okay, they’ll be here soon. It’s okay, they’ll be here soon. It’s okay—”
“—they’ll be here soon—”
“—it’s okay—”
It’s okay.
They’ll be here soon.
“I love you, Kyle,” you say. You want them to be your last words, even if no one is there to hear them.
Then everything blacks out.