#and a bit of aypierre's backstory | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

factorialsotherfandoms · 5 months

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Hello to you all, and hope your Monday is going well, and your holidays are tolerable if you celebrate! Here's a little gift for people following the XCOM2/QSMP thing. It's messy, it's disjointed, we'll pretend that's a design choice for Forever's mental state. Things in brackets might be dreams, might be memories, might be stray thoughts, all in a jumble. Things out of brackets are in linear time, though each set of brackets denotes a timeskip of between hours and days. All accounted for, this fic follows between two and three weeks.

Tomorrow I'll see if I can bring myself to stop tormenting au!Brazilians enough to go stab my usual chew toy for you call. Also sorry this au!Forever, this doesn't even come close to the worst few weeks of his life, though this is the end result of 10 years of impending breakdown. He just... Memory scenes are either 10 years ago or very recent. There's a reason he won't think of in between. How old is everyone in this au...? Don't think about it and shhh.

The prompt is coma, and Forever is doing extremely mentally poorly this entire fic. In the flashback sections there's also extremely unethical governmental and military shit going on, near death experiences, explosives, etc.

There are no benches in Aypierre's lab, unlike Tubbo's, so Forever paces the floor, and he shakes. The adrenaline still needs burning off, and there's nothing to do but stress. Philza is perched on one of the counters, toast in hand as he gets to work on a report.

Forever doesn't know how Philza can even think about reports at a time like this - Felps could be dead, or could by dying, and until Aypierre and his assistant finish the surgery there's no way of knowing anything at all.

But then Philza never met Felps, either. He's seen the photos in Forever's office, of five Brazilians in botched together military uniform or casual wear, at the training range, at the bowling alley, sometimes just in ones or twos or threes or fours, back when life was great and hope meant something, but he's never met Felps.

Not until today, not until Forever had dragged them all across the world, and then dragged Philza specifically to a lab in the middle of nowhere, and maybe it's unfair when so many of the crew are missing loved ones to force them to put everything down for Felps, but god damn it Forever's in charge here, and it has to count for something.

Even if that something is a man thought dead for ten years, injured and starved and in some sort of stasis, with Federation wires inserted into his brain.

"Calm down," Philza calls, as he throws the crust of his toast at Forever's head. "You're no good to anyone like this."

Forever turns on him, meets his eyes. "I-"

Philza pats the counter beside him. Forever's a long study in losing battles, and some of them just aren't worth the principle; he hoists himself up, accepts the toast and the water bottle, and pretends breathing is something he does for himself.

"I know everything's a bit shit right now, and I can't promise it won't stay shit - can't even promise it won't get worse - but we're in this together. Pierre will get that shit out his head, and Toby'll work out what it was for, and then we'll go kick some Federation teeth in knowing exactly what we're doing it for. Sound good?"

If that's Philza's idea of a pep talk, Forever has no idea how the man commands the loyalty he does. Still, it makes him laugh, anxiety running off him with the slight pitch of hysteria in his tone.

"I don't think I'm cut out for kicking teeth in," Forever says, once he gathers himself. "Not then, not now, you know?"

"Luckily for you, I'm a dumbass, and it's what I'm best at," and, no, if you asked Forever that's far from Philza's greatest skill, even if it is certainly one of them.

Perhaps his greatest skill comes after those words, when Forever can make no reply, cannot keep up the banter. Philza pauses. He reassesses. He puts down his paperwork, and shifts to the side.

"Forever?" he asks, much gentler now. "Do you want a hug?"

Forever doesn't bother answering the question; he collapses against a waiting chest, is wrapped tight in waiting arms, and continues sitting, continues waiting for news.

There's no platitudes, no sympathies, no promises that can't be kept. There's just Forever, and Philza, a science laboratory, and the hope that, after so long, there's still enough left of Felps that he can be saved.

(There had been coordinates, hidden in a supply cache, with a note asking if he remembers that night in Rio. The handwriting was familiar - too familiar - and it was the next in a series lasting years. Every one has led to information, to allies, or to desperately needed resources - Forever has come to trust them, the little notes from an informant he never recruited or met but suspects that he knows.)

(So he'd asked Bad for a distraction, and taken just Philza with him, and slipped into the research centre.)

(Now they know what was there - Felps, in a stasis tube, a chip in his brain killing him slowly and with a function to kill him fast, alone and unconscious and bearing half-healed wounds - maybe he would have killed the scientist, not sedated her.)

The surgery doesn't kill Felps, though not doing so might have done. As soon as the implant is cleaned up and handed over to Tubbo, their chief engineer recognises a remote detonator on it. How it hadn't been used yet - perhaps it is just a defective one - Forever has no idea, but that's not really his concern.

Hours pass. The sedatives should have worn off, but Felps does not wake. Aypierre hesitates in a way the man rarely does, before reminding Forever he's a neuroscientist - occasionally a more general biologist - not a doctor.

But they don't /have/ a doctor, and Aypierre is the closest they have, so Forever clings to his words.

They don't have a medical facility either, just Aypierre's autopsy lab scrubbed down and seared with UV. Usually the recovering take one of the bunks in the common room, and everyone just works around them.

For this though...

Forever has a bed, in his office, an old thing with taunt canvas pulled over a metal frame. There's more space up there, and more privacy, and Forever has the excuse to stay close if Felps is sleeping where he works.

So they carry him over there, and Aypierre brings what medical equipment they have, and the back wall of Forever's office becomes a miniature ICU.

(The first time Forever met Felps, it was at an underground military base in the Serra da Mantiqueira. He was supposed to be a young and bright political aide on the path to a career in government. Instead aliens had decided to invade, and his boss had decided he was better suited to ensuring no misuse of public funds in the new task force set up to deal with it. She was unsure if it was worth it, in the early days, to mix washed out soldiers with career criminals with volunteers and undocumented scientists, and throw them to the aliens just to see if it would slow them down.)

(He was younger, he was stubborn, and he was put out by the assignment - he knows the force was made up of the disposable, the expendable, and people who wouldn't be missed, and he knew what it meant to be assigned there. Still he grit his teeth and smiled and went along with it, and in turn was introduced to a whirlwind of people. He barely remembers most of them these days, and certainly not the introductions. What he does remember is that, at the centre of it all, was Felps.)

(Not in a literal way - that was their commander - but off to one corner, hiding a smirk at the chaos behind a clipboard, was the equally young parole officer. Forever had always known the quiet ones in the corners know all the goings on.)

(So he brought him a coffee, and asked for his name, and the rest of what was said is lost to time.)

Forever spends the night on his couch. Come morning Felps shows no sign of waking, no sign of life but the rise and fall of his chest and the steady beat of the heart monitor.

He knows what it means, and he hates it - it's not just that Felps is more sensitive to the sedative, and the blood tests show it's not another drug in him system. Not a known drug, at least, but an unknown one they're equally helpless to act on.

And if it's not the sedative, and it's not Federation drugs... It means there's actual damage, it means something in Felps' brain or his mind is damaged, and only when it heals will he wake.

Forever's never cared much for the distinction, and neither did Felps. Cellbit, Pac, Mike - one of them would know, but they're not here to explain it. Aypierre is too technical; Bad once says it's the difference between meat and thoughts. It's something to do with psionics but, again, Forever's field was the purse strings, the PR, the morale, and in recent times has become decision making.

He's not a medic.

They don't /have/ a medic.

Not a real one. Field medics, kinda, people who can stop someone bleeding out long enough to get home, sure, but once they're home?

Aypierre is all they have, and he's the first to admit that dissection and surgery are not quite the same skillset.

He /does/ know brain surgery, however, or at least this specific one - he cut his own, similar implant using mirrors and less than half the tools he has now. He chose death over continuing to serve as the Federation's toy, and it was only Roier noticing that the Feds were hunting /something/ that lead to him being rescued before he was murdered in the sewers of Toulon.

So when Aypierre says the surgery was successful, Forever is inclined to believe him - or at the very least knows there's no better opinion to he had. The surgery was successful, but with the implant dug deep into the very depths of his brain, with the fact even a careful extraction will leave tissue around it damaged, to say nothing of the tissue it replaced... It is hard, then, to know how long the damage will take to heal.

If the damage will heal. Brains are tricky things, unpredictable like that.

No, not if - when - Forever refuses, he refuses to loose anyone again.

(The aliens breached the gate as the fireworks sounded for the new year. Within minutes they were overrun, bodies littering the floor. They fought back - of course they did. Forever hid in the command room, pistol in hand and crouched behind a filing cabinet. Cellbit and Felps were with him at first - Tazercraft were blessedly away at a conference - but quickly lost in the struggle.)

(The aliens came, and then the bombs, and Forever, already injured, ducked under a table to escape the falling rubble.)

(And then, the next he knew, there was blood on his hands and his face as he stumbled from the rubble, skin and clothes torn all over. Nobody came to help them, nobody came to save them, their little group who held fast in the fact of the threat, made of rejects and failures and those with nothing but each other to loose. There was no rescue operation, no hand or medical attention, just broken fingers clawing their way out of the rubble.)

(Because they were rejects and failures and the dregs of society. Having nothing but each other means that nobody else will save them - and by the time Forever wakes everyone's dead, or they're gone, or they're too far away to help. So, he claws himself from the rubble and saves himself in their names instead.)

(A month later, the government surrenders all power to the aliens - to the Federation. Forever thinks of a base turned home turned unmarked grave, steals a pistol, and leaves.)

Days pass in a blur. He shifts around his office, making sure he can always see Felps where he lies unmoving on Forever's ancient army bed. Every other report he reads he glances up, watching Felps' chest move, watching the heart monitor continue in a steady pattern, watching for the slightest hint of a twitching finger.

It doesn't come. Still, it doesn't come.

He receives Bad's report from the diversion mission - the man himself is injured, shot in the leg and demanding Forever brings him hot chocolate.

He can't, he can't - Forever can't bring himself to do it, to leave Felps alone in a strange place filled with strange people after having been tortured for so long.

It is Roier that brings the report - Forever has him fetch the hot chocolate instead.

Roier brings him a mug, too - it's only weeks later that Forever realises that the request was an attempt to drag him from his room.

(That night he dreams of their old base - their home - and as they celebrated some random victory. Pac and Mike had rigged up an ancient disco set in their laboratory, clearing the work benches to the sides. The two of them danced under sparkling lights - as did Forever, as did Felps - and Cellbit sat on one of those benches with a bottle of something alcoholic and laughed.)

(They were young, they were dangerous, but they were free. The war as going well enough to take a night to themselves, and so they did. There were so many things to worry about, so many stresses even then, but they were together, and together, and as happy as they knew how to be.)

(Two months later, Forever now knows, their worlds would be destroyed.)

Forever barely sleeps, or eats, his days spent between his desk and Felps' side. When he has to he sleeps on the tattered old couch, the slightest jolt of the ship waking him as it never has before.

He gets news from R&D - Tubbo managed to deactivate the self-destruct on the implant, and Aypierre has been working on decoding it. The data is too corrupted to be much use, but seems to have been forcibly connecting Felps into a psionic network. Like a soul-bond, but artificial, using his very brain as a processor to run combat simulations.

Draining his strength, his consciousness, his soul - even if the physical damage is limited, the damage to his psyche itself...

Felps will wake up. He has to.

The-contact-who-Forever-prays-is-Cellbit entrusted Felps to him, and Forever...

Ten years ago they were five, and they were family - Cellbit and Felps and Pac and Mike and Forever. He thought Felps died that day, when the bombs came down. Cellbit he hasn't seen since, either, though he heard rumours as he clawed his way through ruined cities and refused to give in. Pac, Mike - Tazercraft were with him for a while, then one day they went to retrieve some needed parts and just never came home.

A lot of people just never come home, in the end.

It's been four years since them, and there's been other people, but Forever hasn't heard a word from his family in that time.

Now it's just him, and Felps. Felps, returned beyond reason, rescued from beyond help, lying in Forever's own bed and nobody has any idea if he's slowly healing or slowly dying, or maybe even just slowly existing in the only way he has left.

(It was never him and Felps, before - him and Cellbit and Felps, him and Pac and Mike and Felps, but never him and Felps alone. They circled around each other, and they were friends - family - but they were not as close as the rest. Now its just them, them, them, and if Felps dies on them Forever doesn't think there's any salvaging his soul.)

(Felps must hold their souls in his hands - how else could he have sat in the middle of five and just smiled even as they tore down the world?)

It's four days before he breaks, sobbing at Felps' side. Philza finds him there, not too long after, and carries him to the couch.

He falls asleep on Philza's lap, and wakes up on a pillow, with a blanket for the first time in days.

After a moment panic sets in, after another moment he finds Philza sat at his desk, sorting through the requests for aid and reports, his Crow's eyes angled to record the heart monitor and keep him from needing to look up to see it.

"Phil?" he asks, and it's the first word in days.

"Go back to sleep," Philza says. "I've got you, king."

Forever doesn't do as he's told - he sits, and he twists, and he watches Felps breathe for himself.

Aypierre comes to check on Felps, an electrical engineer turned neuroscientist turned makeshift doctor after one too many alien brain dissections left him the closest thing to a surgeon they have. They need one - a real one - but human doctors are one of the groups that the Federation rounded up, disappeared, and left only technology in their place.

You still find a few, of course, but not many. Not very many at all.

The timing might be serendipitous, or it might be hell - as Aypierre is looking after Felps, Forever's pager pings.

So does Philza's - and, fuck, did he steal Philza from a shift?

Either way, there's a message, and it needs an immediate response. Summons are to the command centre, and Forever...

Forever doesn't know how to leave the room.

"Pierre will keep an eye on him," Philza promises, and maybe that's half of the problem.

But Forever doesn't know how to say that, so he lets Philza take his hand and pull him across the hallway.

It's the width of one hallway to the command room, then a set of iron stairs down from the observation balcony to the hub. They ignore the maps and the globe for the computers, Philza leaning on a nearby wall giving his silent support as Forever answers the call.

There's psionic transmitters causing problems under Tijuana, sending out bursts to incapacitate psionically sensitive civilians for moments at a time. Forever isn't sure why, but it sounds like hell - he thinks of Pac and Mike, natural, accidental psionics, heaven knows where, heaven knows if they're alive, dropped to the ground in debilitating pain for some alien's sick amusement.

He thinks of Felps, and the brain implant, and wonder if that's left him sensitive now too.

"Put Fit on it," Philza suggests. "He's demolitions, and as sensitive as a fucking rock."

It's not a lie, but it /is/ funny. For the first time in what feels like years, Forever smiles.

"Can you put together a team?" Forever asks of him. "I don't know if..."

He trails off, Philza looks curious, but nods, "That's... Mexico, right? I'll see if Missa's free."

"Thanks," Forever says, and he means it. "I need to get back..."

"To your paperwork, right?" Philza helps him save face, just like that. "Fucking dumbasses, you'd think by now they'd know you use E45-C not D14-Q for munitions requisitions, and yet!"

"And yet."

Forever hasn't seen that particular mistake, yet, and dreads what he'll find in the reams waiting for him.

It's only later he realises he shouldn't just be the paperwork he's afraid of. Reality crashes back in - Bad, still on crutches and confined to the common room after that hit, and the fact Philza never returned from assembling a team.

Which means Philza went out with them - of course he did, he's useful, and strong, and good at this, but Forever's not even at the comms if something does go wrong!

But Felps is here, and Aypierre left when Forever returned, and he just-

Forever feels his heart rate pick up, and twist, and mangle. He drops to his knees and holds them and tries his best to plan - they need resources, they need a doctor, they need labs and a medical bay and power hubs and... And so much.

If they can get a radio relay set up... If the can do that, maybe they'll have an easier time finding an actual doctor to recruit. Maybe Fit - no, he's out - or Wilbur - no, Fit did his radios for him - know something... Forever makes a note to ask, scrabbles for waste paper, and starts making lists of what they'll need.

He's still making lists when, hours later, a muddy Philza knocks and sticks his head around the door.

"All sorted," he says. "Got the transmitters taken out; I'll get you more paperwork in the morning, but nobody's hurt. Nothing even had time to shoot at us. Clearly weren't expecting us, the idiots."

"Thank you," and finally Forever feels like he can breathe.

"It's what you-" Philza pauses. "Wait, you don't pay me. It's what you feed me for, though; need anything before I go shower?"

"Go, go," Forever shoos him away. "I'll call if I need you."

They both know he won't.

(That night, Forever dreams of a screaming heart monitor, of being pushed aside to make room for compressions and electricity and a last ditch effort to save Felps' life. He dreams they try for so long, but they fail, Felps' body just too weak to carry on.)

He wakes the next morning with a scream, panicking as he looks, as he checks, as he sees.

Felps is alive, still alive, still unresponsive but still alive. He lies unmoving on the bed, but for the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Forever grabs his hand and clings to his wrist, not trusting the monitor right now.

No work gets done that isn't already in motion - Forever spends the day clinging to Felps' wrist, measuring his pulse with every step, and begging him to survive.

(Felps warned him about Cellbit, and indirectly about Tazercraft, but Forever couldn't stay away. What makes a man tick, what drives someone to murder, what is the scum of the earth but human at the end of the day?)

(It's an addiction, maybe, to dangerous people. To Cellbit, whose danger is obvious with so many murders to his name and a reputation for making death hurt, to Mike, who creates world-ending weapons in his sleep and picks your pockets while he thinks, to Pac, who seems innocent enough until you find yourself pranked with a glitter trap, and three days later he uses the same concept to set an entire alien squad on fire.)

(To Felps, who looks like just a person, but somehow the world orbits around him - or at least those three, and by extension Forever, do.)

(/Wa/s. Creat/ed/. Seem/ed/. Look/ed/.)

(They're gone now, stolen from him. Dangerous people who became friends, who became family, and now are gone. Even Felps, now returned, might never wake again. Even now, they are family. Even now, they mean the world to him.)

(And Forever doesn't know if he'll ever speak to any of them ever again.)

Forever does his best to refuse sleep again. After a short while of that, Bad escapes bed rest, and immediately comes to find him - the man has a sensor for Forever's bullshit, he swears.

Soon enough Forever is wrapped up in a blanket and tucked up on the sofa while Bad plays ancient movies, DVDs salvaged from ruined cities, on an equally battered tv. They both have not chocolate, and Bad rests his injured leg on Forever's battered coffee table.

They don't speak, but Bad leans against Forever's arm. Forever leans back, their heads pressed together.

It feels like he can breathe, for the first time since they brought Felps home Forever feels like he can breathe.

(Once upon a time there were enough beds for everyone. The five of them had pushed their bunks together and slept arm in arm. They'd usually ended up in a knot over the three middle beds, pulling everyone and their blankets together. It had taken months to grow that close, and it had raised the eyebrows of their comrades - two scientists, a cop, a serial killer, and a political aide sharing a bed - but once they were family and the winter drew in... Well...)

(Once upon a time there were enough beds for everyone, but Forever isn't sure he ever remembers there being enough blankets to keep out the chill.)

In the morning Bad is gone, and there's a fresh stack of paperwork on his desk. Forever files it, attends his meetings, begins planning a meeting between the Deserters and the Reapers, and knows that's only another headache to come. Aypierre promises to stay with Felps, because there's some things Forever cannot avoid.

Forever's fingers twitch and shake, every moment he can slip away he goes and checks on his friend. There's never a change, he's not really expecting one now - just for Felps to sleep and sleep until he gets an infection or they run out of ways to feed him or someone with a better chance of survival needs the machines keeping him alive.

Forever can't loose him - he can't, he can't, he can't - but with every day there's no change... Every day there's no change, it becomes more likely he'll die.

(Felps was never a great combatant, a bit like Forever himself. If Cellbit had decided to fight his leash, he almost certainly would have won.)

(Somehow, that never happened. Instead, when they were sent out into the field, even Forever, even Felps, not supposed to be combatants but the situation was dire... Even Pac and Mike were sent out, experienced in /something/ physical, but supposed to be confined to research and the lab. Maybe predictably, Felps was shot. When he was left bleeding and dying on the ground... Pac had been right there with a medkit, and Mike covering them both, and Forever had been able to do little but watch as Cellbit ripped his attacker apart with his bare hands, screaming bloody vengeance as he did.)

(But Felps hadn't died that day, and they hadn't lost him, and this time it's Forever who is left to cradle his head while they wait for help that will never come.)

(They'll pick up the pieces all the same. It's what they've always done, isn't it?)

Some days are harder, some are easier, most are grim. Forever cannot bring himself to leave for more than a few minutes, and Tubbo ends up wiring the video calls into his office. Let's him stay even more, stay closer even so.

Maybe it's bad for him, maybe he should get out more as Philza and Bad both try to say, but here is Felps and Forever will not leave him alone again.

He's been alone for ten years - whether he wakes or he dies, Forever will not let him be alone when it happens.

(He dreams of Rio, of the place hopefully-Cellbit asked him about in that note, in that note which led to Felps. Tazercraft were heading off to some research convention, so the five of them took the night off to party. They'd used the flights an excuse to be in the city overnight rather than the base, booking out hotel rooms and spending the night at the hotel bar. It wasn't anything special, except that they were together, and away from the base, and it never happened again.)

(Felps had passed around bracelets, made of cheap plastic beads, with their initials scratched into the plastic with scissors then coloured with marker pen. Forever still has his, still wears it every day. He's had to replace the string a few times, and while working keeps it safely under his gloves, but it's still there - it's still there, and it always will be.)

"Felps" Forever whispers to him, one night when it's late and he's tired and he knows he should sleep but he doesn't think he can. "Felps."

He isn't sure what to say, he doesn't know what he can do, he can only run his thumb across Felps' cheek and pray tomorrow's negotiations does not go so wrong as to need to take the medical equipment away.

"I miss you," Forever ends up saying. "I miss all of you. You're right here, but you're not really company."

"Did you know the world has changed?" he continues. "It's not for the better - perhaps it's better for you to stay asleep, to remember a better world and imagine maybe we could have won... We didn't. We lost. We lost... We lost everything... The world, our home, each other... It's just you and me, now. I... I wish the others were here, too."

His voice breaks. Forever swallows it - it will do nobody any good to cry.

"Do you remember Rio?" he asks the question maybe-Cellbit asked of him. "Do you remember the last time we were all together?"

Forever takes a deep breath, and bows his head.

"I hope you do," he says. "I hope you remember us. I hope... I hope you are happy, whatever you are dreaming of."

He might not be dreaming at all. He might already be dead, nothing left but the automatic motions to survive.

And Forever knows... Forever knows his chances aren't good.

"I miss you," this time when his voice breaks, Forever does nothing to end it. "Please, Felps... Please, wake up soon... I know you love to sleep, but hasn't it been long enough?"

He knows it won't work, he knows Felps' body will wake or it will decay, that begging does nothing but waste his breath.

He begs anyway.

"It'll be okay," he promises, broken smile through the tears. "I'll make sure you're okay - you just need to wake up, that's all."

He'll burn the world, if it means Felps would be okay.

"I'm scared, Felps, I'm so scared you'll never wake. I'm scared I can't give you the time you need, that'll I've fucked up somehow."

The tears flow freely now.

"I miss you."

He slips down and down, until his head rests on the metal bar a the side of the old camp bed. His hands move, too, from cradling Felps' face to holding his hand, cling to it like it's the last lifeline on earth.

It might as well be, at least for Forever.

"I really, really miss you."

He sobs into the fabric on which Felps lays, and continues sobbing until he falls asleep.

(Forever dreams of an angel with Felps' face, or perhaps of Felps in another time, finding an excuse to sneak him from meetings, to bring food to his desk, to just sit in the offices and chat while they worked.)

(He dreams of a thousand tiny interactions which happened, and others he imagined, in a world long dead but that he fights for all the same.)

(He dreams of that angel holding his hands, and promising that this isn't the end, that there's still something to save, that they can be whole again.)

(Forever doesn't know when he stopped believing him.)

Forever wakes to a gentle touch on his face, a hesitant, slack finger tracing across his face.

He opens his eyes, and blinks, and traces the fingers to an arm, and an arm to a shoulder, and a shoulder to confused eyes.

"Why are you crying?" Felps asks, the movement of his lips an almost silent whisper.

"Felps?" Forever whispers, grabbing back the hand and holding it close.

"Hi Forever," he sees the way ta smile grows from Felps' eyes to his lips. "What... Happened?"

"So much," Forever runs a hand over his face. "My God, so much has happened - but you're safe now. I- I've got you, you're safe now."

And, it's true, or as true as it can possibly be when they're hunted on all sides and the world is on fire.

"You're safe," the tears begin spilling, faster and faster. His fingers twitch to cuff Felps' shoulder, to press against his arm, to call him an idiot, to scold him for scaring them - for scaring him - but he's so fragile on the old bed, with wires and machines and papery skin, and Forever is terrified if he is anything but gentle he'll shatter his friend. "You... You're actually here. You're /alive/."

Forever barely remembers to summon Aypierre - there are tests to be done and checks to be made and Forever doesn't even know where to start, he just puts a non-emergency summons through before he breaks into a sob the tears become too thick to see.

"Don't cry," he hears that whisper from Felps. "Please, don't cry!"

But Forever cannot handle that - he smiles through the tears, lifts Felps' hand to kiss his fingers, and presses it to his forehead once he has. There's laughter in his sobbing, and a flicker of joy in his heart; Felps is weak, so weak, he's missed so much and has been so hurt, but he's alive, he's alive, he's alive!

Forever's never lost someone and found them alive before. He's lost and he's lost, his friends have vanished and they've died and they've been taken, and sometimes he's even found the bodies; he's never had one come back to him before. Just as they've lost ground, and allies, and every stationary base they've ever made, he's lost his friends. Loss, loss, loss, years without a victory, without anything better than a bittersweet win - just getting the Avenger livable and flying cost them Tazercraft, and he's never believed it was worth it.

To be honest with the world, he'd stopped believing victories were even possible at all.

So despite what Felps asks of him he sits there and cries, and cradles his hand even while Aypierre works, and maybe, just maybe, with Felps at his side it might someday be okay.

#qsmp fanfic #qsmp x xcom #qsmp au #qsmp felps #qsmp forever #not sure how many of the others are worth tagging #angst #hurt/comfort #qsmp favela5 as family #it would be 6 but bagi hasn't been introduced yet #merry christmas y'all enjoy this monsterous angst fest #which out of order and in piecemeal explains forever's backstory #or at least some key pointers #and the nature of the favela and what they mean to each other #mostly forever and felps #but forever and all of them #and also bits of forever and philza or bad #and a bit of aypierre's backstory #the details here of aypierre's are ripped wholesale from a canon character #including the stuff about being a scientist forced to doctor by circumstances #sorry for the long top i needed to ramble #this entire fic is ramble #but i needed to intro-ramble too #this - rescuing felps and getting data from his brain implant - is actually the start of the plot #oops lol #i need to make lunch and I'm out from 2 so it miiight be a while before it gets to ao3 #tumblr's also being a shit about me copy-pasting atm #so its time out

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