I'm Both the Killer and the Final Girl

by Wellitsmadeforme

Summary:

The question of who Virginia Victory Wilson is less a question and more a riddle.

She stands as an embodiment of the ideology while inherently being a person that contradicts it. After all, setting aside the person bit of her, Virginia Victory Wilson is a state, a goal and a president. She contains the history of the nation, the ideals of that country and the leader who both first kept his people out of war and then took them, gloriously and enthusiastically, into it.

She’s supposed to be a certain idea of America personified. And yet she is none of those things as a woman. Her history is not grand or lofty, though it is painful. Her femininity is not glorious or sexy enough to be victorious. She’s never had the power to stop violence and for all she has always been able to initiate violence, that’s less a choice and more of a harsh tug.

She’s a thing of contradictions, of expectations and divergences, but in those she’s never found who she is, only what she is supposed to be and what she can’t be. Then one day none of that mattered. Who she was, who she could have been, who she should have been, it was stolen by JT’s chains and touch and water and who she is becomes nothing but broken pieces.

Chapter 1

The question of who Virginia Victory Wilson is less a question and more a riddle, but aren’t all people?

 

She stands as an embodiment of the ideology while inherently being a person that contradicts it.  

 

After all, setting aside the person bit of her, Virginia Victory Wilson is a state, a goal and a president. She contains the history of the nation, the ideals of that country and the leader who both first kept his people out of war and then took them, gloriously and enthusiastically, into it. 

 

She’s supposed to be a certain idea of America personified. 

 

And yet she is none of those things as a woman. Her history is not grand or lofty, though it is painful. Her femininity is not glorious or sexy enough to be victorious. She’s never had the power to stop violence and for all she has always been able to initiate violence, that’s less a choice and more of a harsh tug.

 

She’s a thing of contradictions, of expectations and divergences, but in those she’s never found who she is, only what she is supposed to be and what she can’t be. 

 

Then one day none of that mattered. Who she was, who she could have been, who she should have been, it was stolen by JT’s chains and touch and water and who she is becomes nothing but broken pieces.

 

So who is Virginia Victory Wilson? In the aftermath of JT, she has the pieces but no idea what picture they make and she’s cutting herself trying to force them together. 

~~~

 

The problems start in the months after Caesar leaves for what will eventually be the last time. 

 

In the wake of the Desert Storm and Iraq’s failed invasion of Kuwait, things in the Middle East have come down to a simmer, everyone waiting for the next move and the next threat. Things settle into a routine, though she’ll realize much later they were just paving their personal path to hell. 

 

Virginia and Robert spend the days tracking supply lines, collecting the identities of members, and mapping their movements and traveling to sightings of AA. But with each day their intel gets more and more stale and instead of finding AA groups they find dead ends and quickly abandoned locations. The members they were able to track down are long gone leaving no hints as to where they went. 

 

Even worse they can’t find JT who seems to have all but vanished, even as his minions spread across the continent like weeds in a field. 

 

When they’re not doing that, they fill their time in other places. Virginia and Eric spar a lot. Robert and Virginia fight more often than not. Abigail and Oscar seem to be in some sort of on-and-off kind of thing and are constantly navigating whatever that means. Robert and Eric have their private meetings and snarling arguments. Abigail keeps patching them up. Virginia and Sydney exchange hellos and gossip whenever they run into each other in Abigail’s office. 

 

Virginia even takes up lock picking and practices almost daily with the gun Caesar gave her. 

 

She also writes letters, mostly to Caesar but also some to Desdemona. She receives short responses with quotes from War and Peace, Ronald Regan, and biographies of ‘real’ war generals along with bullets from the former and the local gossip, updates on her accounting classes, and demands for information about Caesar from the latter.  

 

She wishes she had asked Maya for her address, and the desire to write her gets almost strong enough to ask Eric for the address of the local Mexican place, but she doesn’t want to risk him asking questions and makes herself reread and mark up her beaten copy of Ms. Dalloway, stolen off the shelf of a pretentious poet who once dragged her all the way to her apartment and still refused to go down on her. 

 

Then before Virginia knows it six months have passed and it’s been a year since her escape/rescue. 

 

She dreads a letter or a note or something from JT, but she hasn’t heard a thing from him since their six-month ‘anniversary’ and even though a sign or any communication from him might help them out of the rut they’re in, she selfishly hopes nothing comes. 

 

She very deliberately ignores the year anniversary of her abduction or tries to. She ends up getting Abigail to write her a doctor's note so she can spend the day hiding in the closet while everyone celebrates Independence Day and trying to forget the feeling of chains around her wrists and the taste of water in her mouth. 

 

But the anniversary comes and then it passes. 

 

Virginia isn’t ‘better’ despite it being a year. Her nightmares are as vivid as ever. She sees stabbed-out eyes and murdered babies more often than a sane, good person should. She’s gotten her shower time down to three minutes with four whole seconds devoted to scrubbing her face as quickly as possible. Some nights she still finds herself sitting on one of Abigail’s patient beds clutching her pulse and counting her breaths. The scars have healed to a light red, but sometimes she swears she can still feel them bleeding. 

 

But despite all that, she is doing alright. Really. 

~~~

 

The day had already started shitty. Virginia had a nonsensical but terrifying dream about trying to save drowning babies, but every time she grabbed one they became too heavy for her to hold and they pulled her under, screaming the whole way. She’d only stop drowning when she let them go, but as soon as she surfaced she’d find herself lunging to save another one and the whole process started over. 

 

If she were smart she would have thrown in the towel then. Instead, she tried to muster some optimism and went to the cafe for breakfast only to find they were out of bagels and the only fruit they had left was some mushy strawberries. She grabbed a coffee and some pre-packaged cereal and settled by herself at a table as far away as possible from anyone else. 

 

It took her a few minutes to pick up on the tension; the whispers and angry grumblings, the aggressive shifting and sliding of the newspaper from one person to another, but once she noticed she saw it everywhere. 

 

The newspapers were always a few weeks late if they ever got them all, so most people didn’t bother with them. If they were that invested in the news or politics or whatever they’d talk about it on the phone or learn it from the magazines shipped straight to them. For the most part, soldiers weren’t ones for papers. So for the community as a whole to suddenly be capable of reading, something must be happening. 

 

She tried to sneak glances at the papers on her way out, but she might as well have been radioactive the way men duck and shuffle away from her. They used to see her as completely invisible, but being elevated to Eric’s team had made her not only visible but enviable, which of course in a group of men festered into resentment. Luckily the resentment had been restricted to ugly looks and ignoring her. 

 

She checked off her options. Eric was in a meeting with the higher powers all morning. Robert had disappeared pretty early last night and, as far as she had heard, has not returned. Which left her with the best option, Abigail. All the better since it was time for her monthly check-in anyway. Apparently extended, simulated drowning can fuck up your lungs if you’re not careful. 

 

“Do you have any idea what’s gotten everyone on base in a tizzy?” Virginia calls out as soon as she enters. 

 

“Gina.” Abigail chided immediately, not looking up from the patient she was helping. “What have I told you about barging in here?” After the fourth time Virginia had walked in on Abigail and Oscar, she set a firm knocking rule Virginia could just never seem to remember to follow, much to Oscar’s annoyance. 

 

“To do it.” 

 

Abigail sighed. 

 

“Hi, Virginia.” Sydney peeked around Abigail from the bed and waved.

 

“Nice to see you’re still alive,” Virginia said. It had been a few weeks since they had run into each other. 

 

“No thanks to me.” Abigail huffed as she began to pack up the medical supplies. Virginia caught a glance of some nasty green bruises all across Sydney’s back before she dropped her shirt. 

 

“I don’t think some bruising is going to kill me, but I appreciate your help.” 

 

“What’d you do this time?” Virginia asked. Sydney seemed to be the only other person besides her who made frequent trips to Abigail. 

 

“Nothing I can tell you.” 

 

Virginia doesn’t know anything about what Sydney does except that she works as emergency nurse on a special mission team and is close to another team member, Natasha, who she keeps insisting they need to meet. 

 

“Now what were you saying about a tizzy?” Abigail interrupted. 

 

“Something in the news has the boys all rattled. I was just wondering if either of you got a copy?”

 

Sydney laughed harshly. “Oh yeah, I know about that.” She handed a very crumpled front page. 

 

Clinton Signs Controversial ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ Bill Allowing Homosexuals in the Military. 

 

“Oh shit,” Virginia muttered, skimming the basics of the article; the military will no longer seek out information about members’ sexualities, no real changes, not encouraging their recruitment but not dissuading them, an important step for equality for the Gay Community, backlash from lots of military communities, etc. “That’s it?”

 

“What?” Sydney asked. 

 

“He’s passing a law that’s basically just don’t say you’re gay and you’re good? Based on the reaction I thought he was putting out incentives or something.” Virginia crumpled the newspaper. “All they’re changing is not asking about service member’s sexuality. I mean if you’re gay and caught I assume you can still be kicked out right?”

 

“I don’t know,” Sydney said, watching her reaction closely. “It didn’t say.”

 

Virginia, a second too late, realized she was probably talking too much. Sure Sydney and Abigail were women and they seemed liberal-leaning, but women could be just as hateful about queer people as any man. 

 

“Sorry, I guess I figured it would be something more based on the reaction.” Virginia awkwardly tried to smooth the newspaper out. 

 

Sydney watched her wearily, which was something. She didn’t seem disgusted or angry. “That’s what I was telling Abigail earlier. It’s a whole lotta of nothing.” She took the page from Virginia delicately. “It’s not really protecting anyone if you can’t acknowledge their existence.”

 

“Exactly.” 

 

The tension eases. They’re all on the same page. They won’t or at least Virginia won’t say anything more than general support, but that’s enough. 

 

“I didn’t take you as someone passionate about these kinds of things.” Sydney seemed to be reevaluating Virginia.

 

“I had friends at the Academy,” the truth but an obvious code. If Sydney was implying what Virginia thought she was she’d pick up on it and if she wasn’t there was no harm in having friends. “They were attacked after some cadets saw them kissing. They killed one of the girls and beat the shit out of the other one. She reported the attack and the Academy kicked her out for ‘deviant behavior’ and let the cadets off scot-free. They claimed the cadets didn’t do anything wrong. The girl who died was officially reported as a robbery gone wrong.”

 

Abigail shook her head and sighed. 

 

“What were their names?” Sydney demanded, looking grieved. 

 

“Willow and Jenny.” 

 

Sydney nodded and took a breath. She twisted the paper in her hands and looked up at the ceiling. “I had a best friend Marilyn. Her father caught her kissing a friend of ours. He kicked the shit out of her and kicked her to the curb. Then he told everyone so no one would help her. I was fourteen and my parents were nice but they weren’t kind, so we just left her. I don’t know quite what happened but she ended up with a girl who got her on opioids and she was dead within a few months.” 

 

“Whatever happened to the father?” Virginia asked, not sure why that part of the story sticks out to her. 

 

“He died right before I shipped out. Got too drunk and choked on his own vomit. They didn’t find him until a week later when the smell got bad.”

 

Virginia nodded. “The cadets got mugged a few months later. One died and the rest got beat so badly they had to be discharged.” She lied. Sydney didn’t know her well enough to catch it, but Abigail tilted her head. 

 

Virginia avoided her eyes. It hadn’t been random mugging any more than Jenny’s death was an ‘accident.’

 

A snippet of a memory comes forward unbidden, but always lurking. 

 

“It’s exactly what he deserves!” Virginia snarled to a still Alice. The blood was still on her hands and she knows if it weren’t for the black clothes, the rest of her would be stained in red. 

 

“But what did it help, Wilson?” Alice sounded hysterical. “Now there’s just two dead bodies and you’ve become a murderer before you could drink. This was not the fucking plan.” 

 

“Violence is the only language men like that understand. I’m not sorry he’s dead. It’s karma. It’s justice. It’s the bare fucking minumum.” 

 

Alice shook her head. “No matter what you name what you’ve done, it was wrong and it doesn’t bring Willow or Jenny back. It just makes your life harder to live.” 

 

“No, it makes it easier, because now I know with certainty they’ll never hurt anyone again.” 

 

Alice took a step back, reaching behind her to grab the bar. She looked at Virginia like she had never seen her before, like she was something monstrous. 

 

But she wasn’t monstrous, she was powerful. 

 

“Get out and don’t come back here, Virginia. I mean it. You’re not welcome here anymore.” 

 

Virginia stomps the rest of it down. She had done much worse things since then, things that she actually regrets. 

 

They stood in silence, thinking of karma, of the violence of hate, of a young life cut so unfairly short, of what happens when you can only hide who you are or die, of never asking and never telling, of the so-called justice that never seems to be granted to the right people.  

 

They stand in the silent, safe harbor they’ve seemed to have found in each other, in this moment of almost secret sharing. 

 

“It doesn’t really help though does it?” Abigail was looking at Virginia. “Revenge? Just leaves more dead bodies and broken lives.”

 

Virginia knows personally just how unsatisfying revenge feels after staring at her friend's names carved in stone. She had crippled those boys, deliberately stomping on their fingers and hands and ankles and legs. Even killed one, mostly by accident. Yet, she had felt nothing more than vague satisfaction of preemptive measures come too late. 

 

She looked away. Abigail hadn’t brought up the ‘baby incident,’ but she’s clearly thinking about it. She wondered what Abigail would think of all the other bodies in her closet. 

 

“No.” Sydney and Virginia said at the same time, but Virginia elaborated, “but it’s better than nothing.” 

 

She has that power now, to do onto others what they’ve done onto her. She’s still learning to use it, but it’s there, it’s more than anything she’s ever had. 

 

Sydney gives her a side glance but doesn’t agree or disagree. “And this,” she rips the crumpled page up, “just makes it legal to keep it secret like they aren’t already.” 

 

The thick grief that permeates the room is violently broken when Robert throws the door open. Virginia and Sydney jumped away from each other, though they had already been some feet away from each other. Sydney shoves the scraps of newspaper in the pockets of her uniform. 

 

“Giiiiiiinnnnn,” Robert draws out the letters of her name. He’s wearing the same uniform she had seen him in last night and Virginia has a suspicion about what’s got him in a chipper mood despite that. “I’ve been looking for you.” 

 

“You’ve seemed to have found me. Congratulations.” Virginia snapped. They had been going somewhere and of course, Robert had to interrupt. 

 

“It’s barely 8 am. How are you so bitchy?” 

 

“You’re the one who stormed into the middle of a conversation.”

 

Robert gave an uninterested side glance towards Sydney and Abigail. “I highly doubt it was an important one.”

 

Virginia opened her mouth to retort, but Robert very obviously fiddled with his holster. 

 

“What,” she snarled as soon as she recognized the distinct black, “are you doing with my fucking gun?” She stepped forward. 

 

“Hey, chill out,” he pulled it out and handed it to her, the end pointed straight at her, even though he knew how much she hated that. “I was just trying to help.” He shrugged, holding the gun out as if he wasn’t trying to deliberately piss her off. “I knew you wouldn’t have time to go to your room and grab it so I brought it along.” 

 

She took it, turning it away from all the people in the room she didn’t want to shoot and pointed it at the ground, because, unlike some men, she knew basic gun safety. 

 

Virginia was too busy putting her gun away to notice Sydney’s gasp. She patted her pockets and found the key to the safe she usually kept the gun was missing. 

 

Robert smirked when she glared at him and shrugged dramatically. He pulled the key out of his pocket and handed it over too.

Ever since Caesar had given Virginia the gun, Robert had decided it was the funniest joke to fuck with it or take it or hide it or whatever whenever he got the chance. She usually kept it locked up, but he had quite the talent of finding the keys or stealing them off her person. She thinks he’s just jealous. 

 

“Where did you get that?” Sydney demanded out of nowhere. 

 

“What?” Virginia asked. 

 

Sydney came stomping to her side, eyes locked on the gun. “The gun, where do you get it?”

 

Everyone in the room froze. “It was a gift,” Virginia said cautiously, not wanting to explain the extensive backstory. 

 

Sydney stared at it like it was locked and loaded and ready to go off. When she looked up and met Virginia’s eyes, she seemed…afraid. Whatever common ground they had found had fallen from beneath them and it was all because of what she held in her hand. 

 

Robert watched them almost lazily, but his eyes were sharp and Virginia knew for all he was pretending otherwise he was analyzing every second. 

 

Sydney seemed to realize this too, clearing her throat and stepping away awkwardly. “Sorry, I thought…” She glanced at Robert and didn’t finish the sentence. 

 

“No worries, I don’t usually go waving this thing around.” She pointedly glared at Robert, who shrugged. 

 

“I’m doing you the favor Gin,” Robert said, already dismissing the conversation. “And as fun as this is, we need to go. Apparently, the bigwigs got notice group S is heading towards the hometown.”

 

As he always did he didn’t bother to wait and see if Virginia was following before he strode off. 

 

“Guess you’ll have to do your check-up when you come back,” Abigail said, readjusting her sleeves and ready to move on to the next thing. 

 

“I should head off too,” Sydney said awkwardly, quickly gathering her stuff. She waved in Abigail's direction, and then paused near Virginia, leaned in, and whispered, “find me when you get back,” and then she was gone. 

 

Virginia watched her go, extremely confused. Then she shook her head and decided to ignore it for now. Whatever it was would just be a problem for future her if it was a problem at all

 

~~~

“I’m sorry what?”

 

It seemed Sydney had brought quite the problem for future Virginia who was now present Virginia, sweaty and dirty from tracking down another dead end. 

 

“Rodriguez guns exclusively use a bigger caliber bullet, one that’s been against the Geneva Convention since World War II.”

 

“Yes, I know that.”

 

“Those guns are not only illegal in war, but they are exclusively American made and should be American used. The last time soldiers were found with *whatever size bullet* was in Vietnam when guns were being leaked or stolen or whatever the propaganda ended up saying happened.” 

 

“Sydney, I know basic history.” Virginia interrupted trying to get her to the point. 

“So then why have I in the last three months pulled *whatever size bullet* out of multiple of our soldiers? On top of that, why have I seen a ton of the hostage takers we’ve been hunting down with a gun matching yours?”

 

Said gun hung in her holster, burning her side. 

 

Virginia opens her mouth to defend herself, but Sydney cuts her off. “And before you ask, I know it’s the same gun because I’ve had it waved in my face enough to recognize it. It’s a favorite because it’s distinct and intimidating and accurate.” 

 

Virginia nodded, not willing to argue. “Hostage takers?” She asked instead. 

 

“Abduction is big business for all sides in any conflict. Journalists, wealthy tourists, public figures, and even sympathetic civilians, make excellent leverage for anyone looking to make a quick buck from whatever side you think will pay. We save hostages and we don’t negotiate.” 

 

“And those groups have my gun?”

 

“Or you have theirs. The ones I’ve seen have the entire handle is silver with a stripe in the same color running along the barrel. It’s dark black everywhere else. Below the silver strip, along the chamber on the outside, something is usually scratched off or painted over. One time I found one and it felt like they had sandpapered the side off. It was black so you couldn’t tell anything was wrong until you saw it up close.”

 

Sydney is unfortunately describing the gun Virginia is holding to a tee. Except hers has the logo for Rodriguez Weapons engraved across the chamber, in stiff masculine red letters. Caesar also carved her initials into the bottom of the handle. 

 

“And you’re sure it’s the *whatever size bullet* you’re finding?”

 

The thing is, matching guns is easy enough to wave off as coincidences. Guns are guns, and at the end of the day they’re going to look similar enough that in a fire fight or whatever people see matches when they are none. 

 

The problem is the bullet size. 

 

Rodriguez Weapons was created to forge and sell bullets and guns in World War I and they were good at it. However they produced a specific kind of round, *a whatever size*, which was a bigger round meant to more painfully kill people and when it failed to do that, cause bad enough damage to kill them slowly instead. 

 

The rounds were used up until after World War II when Geneva Conventions mandated the use of a smaller round that decreased the severity of the wound and increased the effectiveness of medical treatment. 

 

However something as petty and inconsequential as the Geneva Conventions wasn’t going to stop Caesar Rodriguez. He just shifted to producing all kinds of other weapons to make up for the fact that they refused to make the right size bullet. Which is why it became so obvious their weapons, specifically the guns, were being used in Vietnam against American soldiers. 

 

“Very sure,” Sydney confirmed, “you don’t forget when you pull one of those giant rounds out of a man’s shoulder.” 

 

“Fuck.” Virginia muttered. 

 

This was not just a fucking problem, but a list of problems. Starting with the fact that Virginia is the only person on base with a gun that uses that size of round and ending with the fact that someone is providing her exact weapon to the enemy. 

 

No one needs to be Nancy Drew to see the very easy connection there.

 

“So either you’re moonlighting as one woman terrorist,” Sydney speaks her exact thoughts aloud, “armed with a single gun, or—”

 

“—Rodriguez Weapons are somehow ending up in enemy hands.” Virginia finished. 

 

Now if they’re correct about this, that means someone is a traitor and to all outside parties, the most and only obvious suspect is herself. 

 

“I’m taking your silence as a denial, so where did you get it?” Sydney asked.

 

Virginia weighed her options. Sydney would be stupid to not suspect her at least a little bit and if she lied, she would only further make herself seem suspicious, but telling her the truth would give her enough information to come to the same shitty conclusion Virginia was coming to. 

 

She decided. “Caesar Rodriguez.” 

 

Whatever Sydney was expecting wasn’t that. “I assume you don’t know some random Caesar Rodriguez?”

 

“I do not.”

 

“So do you think Caesar Rodriguez is double dealing?”

 

Not Caesar Rodriguez, but there is another Rodriguez who arrived only a few months ago, who just might have the access, resources and ability to do so. 

 

“I think a Rodriguez is. Caesar is too patriotic and after the weapons got leaked in Vietnam, he’s the one that cut the military off and had no problems.”

 

“So you think Oscar Rodriguez is selling weapons to American enemies?”

 

“Who else?” Virginia asked. “I mean besides me.” She tacked on with a bitter laugh. 

 

“So how do you want to play this? Who do we even begin telling?”

 

“What proof do you have?”

 

“What?”

 

“Those bullets you pulled out, what happened to them? I assume you don’t have any photos of the guns?”

 

“I…” She seemed to realize what Virginia already knew. 

 

From their perspective the pieces were obvious, but for everyone else—

 

I would be extremely careful of accusing people of being traitors, Virginia, especially considering the most likely subject of such an accusation is you.

 

—It’s her gun, after all, it wouldn’t be hard to turn the accusation onto her. 

 

“Nobody likes to hear the T word just tossed around, especially on proof as thin as ours.” Virginia said.

 

Sydney looked bewildered. “We’re not accusing him of being a traitor. This could be an accident or leak or something. We’re covering their asses.”

 

“Men don’t like to be told they fucked up, especially fuck ups like this. At best they’ll call us crazy bitches or worse they’ll turn the accusations on us.”

 

Sydney seemed shocked. “We didn’t do anything.”

 

“That doesn’t matter. It’s my gun and your belief. What we need to do is find real, irrefutable proof. You’re telling me hostage takers are using these guns, so grab one or get a picture or something. The next time you pull a Rodriguez round out of someone’s arm, keep it. I’m supposed to have one of the only prototypes so if we have real proof this gun is elsewhere or proof that Rodriguez bullets are ending up in American bodies, then we might have a leg to stand on or at least they’ll listen instead of laughing us out of the room.”

 

“Do you realize how difficult that is?”

“I know it won’t be easy,” Virginia said, meaning it. They’re fighting something steeper than an uphill battle. 

 

Sydney considers it, sighing. “I’m an EMT, I’m good at solving obvious problems, not this Nancy Drew investigation shit.”

 

“Unfortunately for you, you’re all I got.” 

“More like unfortunately for you, you’re the one depending on me.”

 

“Not at all. I trust you.” Virginia said easily. “The only reason we know any of this is because you noticed something was up and you told me. Most people wouldn’t care enough to do that.” 

 

Sydney seems touched. “So what’s the plan then?”

 

“You’ll keep an eye out, if you haven’t already you could write up any notes or observations or anything you think might be relevant and I’ll start at the source.”

 

“What source?”

 

“Just trust me, we’ll catch up in a few weeks or so.”

 

~~~

 

Virginia has a simple plan. For once she doesn’t need to fight or threaten or hurt anyone, she needs to talk to people, which for her might actually be more difficult. 

 

She starts with a list and a notebook. 

 

Caesar and Oscar are the obvious choices which makes them her last options. Virginia has learned from her mistakes. She might be in good graces with Caesar, but he’s not a man who will take kindly to accusations of being a traitor, and the less said about her relationship with Oscar the better. The two of them are no better than hissing cats when they get in the same room. 

 

So she’ll send a letter to Caesar. She’ll inquire about the history of the company, ask some questions about the gun, and maybe make up a problem she’s having. It’s all she can do with him so far away. 

 

Oscar is a nonstarter. The only thing useful about him is his last name and even that doesn’t mean much. She’s not sure of the extent of his official involvement in Rodriguez's affairs, but she knows it’s not a lot considering how closely he clings to Eric. He might know about the past leaks, hell he might be responsible for them, but that history doesn’t help much with her present problems. 

 

That leaves her with Robert, Eric, and Abigail. All of them with their long, complicated history with each other and the Rodriguez’s she keeps being told exists, but never gets explained. 

 

Abigail might be her best bet for whatever Oscar knows. They’re on an off period at the moment, so maybe she’ll be easier to charm into shit-talking him. Virginia didn’t witness their last fight, but the rumors of the screaming had made so many rounds it’s gone from some yelling to an outright brawl. 

 

Eric will be easy, she’ll just ask him about Caesar next time they spar. She’s been updating him on their letters and he’s usually more than happy to help her decode what Caesar actually means. 

 

Robert will just depend on the day. Some days he’s chatty, other’s he’s defensive and shitty. She’ll play the waiting game with him. 

 

She writes all this down in a mix of Spanish, Latin, and Arabic. It’s not a code per se, but it makes sure no one but her can read the notes if the notebook ends up somewhere it shouldn’t or if someone gets too nosy. 

 

Next, she unfolds the hand-drawn picture Sydney had given her. 

 

Sydney apparently is a free draw artist, and she draws to deal with her nightmares and trauma. She had a few pencil sketches of shadowy figures and desperate faces in which she had drawn in detail the guns they were holding. They looked a lot like Virginia’s, the faces and guns. 

 

She holds the one where the gun is the clearest and glances at the offending weapon, lying innocently in her open safe. 

 

If Rodriguez's Weapons were in the hands of their enemies, that meant someone was a traitor. Even worse if Virginia wanted to take a leap, she could assume Sydney’s enemies aren’t the only ones getting American guns. She knows intimately that JT had a lot of instruments that easily could have been Rodriguez made. 

 

It could also be connected to the same person reporting her movement to JT. If it’s not a Rodriguez leaking the weapons, it’s got to be someone with access to them and their resources. 

 

Unfortunately, her traitor theory was becoming more and more right each day. 

 

Don’t trust the traitor. 

 

She resists the urge to roll her eyes. She’s heard this one before. It’s familiar even if the voice isn’t one she recognizes. Usually, the voices are more helpful or urgent, but this is a warning she does not need, and even if she did, what use was it now? She’s been watching her back since she escaped JT. 

 

Virginia traced the gun in one of the pictures. The enemy was more shadow than person, the most detailed part of him was his gun. It was dark like Sydney had pushed as hard as she could with the pencil and colored it, but in the middle of the barrel, there was an eraser mark, slightly lightening and smudging the dark to represent the scratches out/sanded down logo she had mentioned.

 

Virginia looks away and folds up the pictures. She tucks them all in between the back pages. 

She flips to and heads five empty pages with each person’s name and then closes it. She grabs the gun, holsters it, and puts the notebook in its place. She closes the safe and locks it. 

 

She inspects the key and considers a more drastic way to keep Robert out of her shit. 

 

Then she leaves to find a hammer and some answers.

 

~~~

 

Virginia finds the area near Abigail's office devoid of anyone, but specifically, Oscar, which means their off period must be really off. 

 

When they’re getting along, no one on base can come to her office without Oscar skulking around in the background (which is how Virginia knows that Oscar’s role on base is not much of one). 

 

When they were off, how off they were could be determined by Oscar’s proximity to Abigail. If he was outside the office or nearby they’d be reconciling any day, but if he was spending most of his time near Eric’s office they wouldn’t be speaking for the next week. 

 

Right now it seemed to be somewhere in between. 

 

Virginia finds Abigail wrapping her wrists up. 

 

She expected Abigail to hear her footsteps and look up, but when she finally notices Virginia she startles so hard she drops the bandages. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

 

“Just me actually.” Virginia frowned, looking for any reason Abigail would need bandages. “Can I help?”

 

Abigail frantically focuses on gathering the roll of bandages unraveling around her feet. Virginia gets down to help her, but Abigail snaps at her, “I got it!” She backed away with a wince, halfway between her knees and feet. 

 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Virginia stands up straight. 

 

That’s when she notices what Abigail is wrapping up. She was wearing a t-shirt showing her arms and the bandages hadn’t been tightened so they slipped off, showing vivid bruises of different colors up and down her arms, but most prominently around her wrists.

 

They’re not the kind of bruises a nurse should have. They’re the kind of bruises Virginia is all too familiar with. The kind that Abigail shouldn’t be in a place to receive.

Virginia finally processes what she’s seeing. “What the fuck?” She could feel those bruises and the rough uncompromising grips of the hard hands that had more than once given her near-matching ones.

 

She reaches out as if she can help and Abigail flinches. Virginia feels bad and stills.

 

“Abigail.” Virginia took a breath and deliberately lowered her voice. “Where did those come from?” She got down slowly to be at Abigail’s side. 

 

Abigail yanks the bandages out of Virginia’s limp grip and gets up. “Just an accident.” She said, beginning to wrap up her wrists, covering the bruises. But no amount of white bandages are going to hide what Virginia knows now. 

 

Someone is hurting Abigail. 

 

The pieces click into place slowly; the little idiosyncrasies and brush-offs and quirks and coverups, all disguising this. 

 

“You don’t get those kinds of bruises, accidentally, Gail. I would know.” Virginia got back to her feet slowly, careful to not tower over Abigail as she usually does.

 

Abigail tightened the bandages. She very firmly refused to look at Virginia. “Some men reacted badly when I tried to give them treatment and they grabbed me. They didn’t mean it. It’s nothing more than that.” 

 

It’s bullshit and Virginia knows it’s bullshit and she knows Abigail knows she knows it’s bullshit. 

 

And still, Abigail won’t look at her. 

 

“Come on Gail,” Virginia tried a more casual tone, but no matter how she tried she can’t disguise the anger, “you sound like my mom saying she got a black eye from falling into a doorknob.”

 

“Virginia, drop it.”

 

The use of her full name makes her flinch. “Are you serious? Someone on base is obviously hurting you and you just want me to ignore it?” 

 

“Yes, because no one is hurting me.” Abigail turned her back, trying to signal the end of the conversation. “It’s a military base with extremely dangerous and violent people, bruises and bumps are expected. You know that.” 

 

“That is a lot more than bumps and bruises. That is malicious and deliberate.”

 

“It is not worse than some of the things Eric does to you when you spar. Imagine if I was this dramatic every time you came in with some minor injury.” Abigail tried to scoff. 

 

“That’s different and you know it.” Not totally true, but not the point. Virginia in most situations can hit back or at least try to.

 

“What I know is,” Abigail waved a dismissive hand, “you are overreacting.”

 

“And I know you’re lying to me.” Virginia mimicked her tone. “I’ve had similar bruises and they did not come from sparring or an accident or whatever. They came from my father grabbing and shoving me around.”

 

Abigail winced but she didn’t look back. She glared at some of the medicine cabinets instead. 

 

Virginia followed after her but kept her distance. “You know me, Gail. You know I’m not just going to let this go.”

 

“Yes, you are.” Abigail turned to glare at her. 

 

Virginia froze, caught off guard by Abigail’s cold fury. 

 

“All I want to do is help, Gail.” Virginia offered tentatively. “This isn’t something you need to be ashamed or afraid of. Whoever’s doing it…” She starts and stops, trying to find the right words to get Abigail to trust her, “I can help… I could stop…”

 

“Whatever happened is none of your business.” Abigail snapped. “You are my patient and I don’t owe any of my patients personal details about my life. We are not friends.” 

 

Virginia recoiled. The words feel like a slap. 

 

She had been careful to not put a name to their relationship, but she knew it was more than just a doctor and a patient. Ever since she had gotten back, from the beginning Abigail had been her anchor, her lifeboat. She was the one who helped Virginia get her breath back. 

 

They had to be friends at the bare minimum. Their relationship was too much to be as cynical as mere patient-doctor. It hurts just like this to think otherwise. 

 

“I understand you have your own history with what you think is happening, but your opinion and perceptions and offers of help are inappropriate and not wanted here, Title Wilson. There is nothing happening I need your help with and in fact, there is nothing I will ever need your help with.”

 

This time Virginia flinched, the words sliding under her ribs into her heart along with all the other words that haunt her. She was so caught off guard she couldn’t even try to hide her hurt.

 

Everything had been just fine barely days ago, how had Abigail turned so quickly on her? 

 

“Abigail…”

 

“Abigail,” Oscar interrupted. He seemed to take in the scene, giving Virginia his usual look of toothless judgment, before realizing he was walking into the middle of something. “Is everything okay here?” 

 

Abigail flinched just barely, but Virginia saw it and suddenly, she knew. The pieces were all there, she just hadn’t been looking; Abigail’s slow withdrawal, her wardrobe change, and her defensiveness about the relationship all painted one picture.

 

You’d never know how hard I tried to beat the follower out of him.

 

Like father, like son. 

 

“Everything is fine. In fact, Title Wilson was just leaving.” Abigail lied. 

 

“Yep.” Virginia agreed, gritting her teeth. “I was on my way to the range. Caesar sent me some new bullet prototypes he’s working on to try.” The mention of his father makes Oscar scrunch his face like he’s sucking on a lemon. Virginia wants to break his nose. 

 

The one thing she’ll say about Oscar Rodriguez is he’s not easy to provoke. She catches another glimpse of Abigail's bandages and her nervous shifting and amends the statement, not easy to provoke, unless you’re his girlfriend apparently.

 

The thought makes her clench her fists. It’d be easy to give Oscar a taste of his medicine, but just like everything else in her life, she lacked any proof to back the actions up. Because Abigail wasn’t telling, so Virginia didn’t have any (valid) reason to beat the shit out of a civilian consultant. 

 

She had to bide her time. She had to wait to talk to Abigail, really talk to her. She had to investigate and find evidence. 

 

“If you’ll excuse us then Title Wilson,” Oscar said, easily stepping into Abigail’s space. 

 

Virginia gave Abigail one last look and when she refused to meet her eyes, she turned away and stormed out

 

~~~

 

Eric seems to have a way of finding Virginia right when she’s bristling. 

 

“I have been looking for you.” He said as soon as he saw her storming down the hall. He frowns when he notices her barely concealed temper. “You alright?”

 

She considers for a minute telling him everything, even asking if he’s noticed something. Maybe his distaste for the relationship is really a recognition of its toxicity. But old habits die hard, and Virginia doesn’t tell men about ‘domestic disputes,’ especially one Abigail insists on denying. 

 

“Just fine.” She tried to wave her fury off as a mere annoyance. She shifted a bit, trying to get rid of her angry energy. “Abigail’s getting on my back about some stuff.” Eric gives her a look. He clearly doesn’t believe her. “And Oscar was there too.” She finally adds. 

 

“Ahh.” It’s close enough to the truth that he believes her. “It’s funny. You get along just fine with the Rodriguez that no one can stand, but can barely have a conversation with the half-decent one.”

 

“Half decent is doing a lot of work there,” Virginia muttered.

 

Eric laughed. “Some days that’s true, but Oscar isn’t too bad once you get to know him.”

 

“How did you even become friends with that family?” Virginia asked. The Rodriguezs are working very hard to be at the forefront of her mind these days. 

 

“It’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you some other time.” Eric shifted in a way that indicated that wasn’t totally true. “But I did want to catch you before you and Robert went off. I saw the one-year anniversary of the… JT incident was last week and I wanted to check in.”

 

‘Incident’ was a small word to describe the series of events that shattered the person Virginia Wilson was. If only the aftermath was so small; her fears would be mere inconveniences, the scars covering her body would be nothing more than scratches long healed up, and the pieces of who she had been would have easily slot back together. 

 

Maybe if she used the right words, small ones, to describe it, JT would be a mere encounter instead of an apocalypse in her life. 

 

“Nothing to check in about, just business as usual.” Nothing besides the recent increase of nightmares and panic attacks, but these days those are business as usual so she wasn’t even lying. 

 

“You haven’t heard anything from him?”

 

“If I had I would have told you.”

 

Eric looked at her. “I know, but I just wanted to make sure. Anything from Caesar?”

 

“Nothing for you. He spent the last letter bitching about Clinton’s cowardice withdrawing from Somalia. I think his exact words were ‘if we’re going to be over there, we shouldn’t retreat like cowards when it gets hard.’ I’m wondering how he would take it if I wrote back, maybe if he donated some bombs to the cause Clinton wouldn’t retreat.”

 

Eric laughed. “Maybe that’ll be what finally convinces him.”

 

“If only. Even worse, he didn't send me any new bullets.” 

 

“Asshole.”

 

“Tell me about it.” 

 

“You’re really doing alright, Virginia?” Eric sounded almost earnest. It was weird. “It’s a lot to have on one day, the Fourth, your birthday, JT…”

 

“I’m impressed you know my birthday.” Virginia cuts off that wonderful little reminder. She had laughed herself sick when she first found out about the incredibly sick timing of it all and had not thought about it since. “Doesn’t feel like something you’d care about.”

 

“It usually isn't, but…”

 

“So that means no cake?”

 

Eric shook his head, amused. “Maybe if you and Robert bring back something useful from this next mission, I’ll talk to the kitchen about it.” 

 

“Just make sure it isn’t red, white, or blue, that was done to death growing up.”

 

“Unfortunately, I think that’s the only kind they can make in July. Let freedom ring and all.”

 

Virginia laughed awkwardly. This jokey Eric was a little weird, or maybe she was in an off mood considering her encounter with Abigail. She almost wanted to ask him to spar so they could throw some punches at each other and go back to normal. 

 

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing well considering the circumstances.”

 

“Thanks.” As much as she appreciates this conversation, she wants it over. 

 

He continued. “You’ve come a long way since your recovery. I think some people are surprised you managed to bounce back so well.” He clearly means it as a compliment, but it feels like a jab. 

 

“Oh?”

 

“Not me, of course.” Eric laughed. “I knew you’d pull it together. If there’s one thing I’m certain about it’s that you’re a fighter, to the last breath.”

 

“We can only hope it doesn’t get that far.” 

 

“Of course.” He patted her on the shoulder, giving her something close to a smile. “I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll see you when you get back.”

 

Then he was gone, leaving Virginia a little less sure of her footing.

 

What was in the air that was making everyone so fucking weird?

 

~~~

 

It became an unofficial rule that Robert would drive on these missions. He made plenty of jokes about it initially, but once it stopped being a sore spot of Virginia’s, he gave up poking at it. 

 

Now, they drove in silence; him driving and her scanning the horizon. It was one of the few times they existed almost peacefully.

So of course she should have expected the breach of that peace.

 

Robert cleared his throat and looked over at Virginia. “I found out the funniest thing this morning.”

 

“Oh?” Virginia answered, absentmindedly, not at all interested in this conversation. 

 

“Your birthday is the Fourth of July.”

 

She wondered if Eric told him or if he found out and mentioned it to Eric. “Yep.”

“That’s funny considering your name. A president and a state.”

 

“Hysterical.” Virginia deadpanned. 

 

Robert didn’t seem to care for her lack of reaction. “You want to know what’s even funnier? You went missing on June 30th. We found you on July 4th.” 

 

“You mean I escaped on July 4th.” 

 

“Tomato, tomato. Regardless, a hell of a birthday day gift, don’t you think?”

 

“I think it’s funnier as an Independence Day celebration,” Virginia had always liked the 4th of July more than her birthday anyway, her father had made it very clear growing up her existence was not worthy of a mention, let alone a celebration, “literally breaking free of shackles of tyranny and all that. Very American.” 

 

Robert huffs a laugh but otherwise moves on. “I only point it out because it is now July 7th.” 

 

He finally makes it to his point. 

 

“Yes, I can read a calendar. So it seems can you.”

 

“Why didn’t you say something? We could have done something. Maybe Eric would have given us special permission to go beat up some AA members or something.” 

 

“I’ve never been one for birthdays.”

 

“Or your freedom apparently.”

 

“Are you going somewhere with all this?” Virginia finally snapped. 

 

“I’m just commenting on how long you’ve been with us; a little more than a year with so many ups and downs. What are your highlights?”

 

“Being forced to endure your attempts at conversation,” Virginia said, tone near acidic with dismissal. 

 

Robert rolled his eyes. “I was personally impressed by your achievement of finally being the one who charmed Caesar, considering your general lack of charm. I spent all these years trying to get a bullet out of him and within months, he’s giving you a gun.”

 

“Oh,” Virginia remembered why she needed that hammer, “that reminds me.” She dug through her pockets and found it. 

 

She tossed the smashed key onto his lap. He showed remarkable restraint in not looking down. 

 

“It’s not my birthday.” 

 

“It’s not a gift. I figured since you kept stealing it, you might as well just have it.” 

 

Robert finally looked down. “And what I am going to do with a fucked up key?”

 

“You’re going stay out of my fucking locker and keep your hands off my gun.” 

 

“I knew you were a bit self-destructive Gin, but this just feels stupid. How are you planning on accessing the gun yourself?” 

 

Her lockpicking skills had moved past standard handcuffs into most basic locks, specifically the lock on her safe. “That’s not for you to worry about.”

 

“Wow, getting that gun from Rodriguez really gave you an ego boost huh?”

 

“Considering you’ve had years and,” she adopted his cadence for the quote, “couldn’t get a bullet. I think I deserve a little ego. How long have y’all known the Rodriguezs anyway?” Virginia asked, thinking about Eric’s nonanswer.

 

“I met Eric like early 1987 when I first got deployed and Oscar shortly after, so six years give or take.” He grabbed the key off his lap and tossed it in the back. 

“You met the Rodriguezs through Eric then? Or did your family have some sort of connections with them too?”

 

Robert scoffed. “Hell no. The closest thing to weapons my family ever touched was a knife with our family motto and crest. All their power and wealth and all they wanted to do with it was increase their stock prices. So, I joined the military because it was the last thing they wanted their son doing.” 

 

Virginia rolled her eyes, only Robert would answer a simple question with a monologue about how hard growing up rich and spoiled was. “So you met the Rodriguezs through Eric which means they’ve been friends a long time.”

 

“I wouldn’t call it friendship. They’ve known each other a long time, sure, but knowing doesn’t mean really much. Look at Abigail. She’s known Eric for decades and he can barely tolerate her some days.”

 

While there might have been some tension between Eric, Oscar, and Abigail, left over from the whole accidental voyeur thing, Virginia wouldn’t go so far as to say they weren’t getting along at all. She took his ‘observation’ with a grain of salt.

 

He’s also avoiding her question. “So how long have they known each other?” She asks again. 

 

“No idea.” He lied. “Why would I care?” 

 

“I don’t know, you’re the people person. Isn’t it important to understand people’s history with each other?”

 

“History doesn’t mean shit with Eric.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “I mean look at you. You come out of nowhere, barely do anything and you’re added to the team. Do you know how many men have spent months vying for that role? How many joined and lasted mere weeks before Eric got rid of them again? We tried out dozens.” 

 

“Robert, you’re acting like I didn’t literally save your life.”

 

“You’re right, maybe that was the best thing you did in the last year.” 

 

They sat in silence for a minute, Virginia tracking the weird turns this conversation was taking. 

 

“Why are you being so weird about how long you’ve known the Rodriguezs?” She finally asks again, straight out. “I’m just curious. Everyone goes so far back, y’all are like your own little cult with Eric at the center.”

 

Saying it out loud makes her realize it; the Rodriguezs keep leading her back Eric and he keeps leading her back to the Rodriguezs. If she could get Eric to talk maybe he’d…

 

“I’m not being weird.” Robert interrupted. 

 

Virginia redirected her attention to their conversation. He was being so weird. His poking about her birthday and Independence Day was his usual button pushing, but these clumsy redirects and distractions don’t make sense considering the blandness of the topic. 

 

Then she remembers, He's never liked the long history we all have, it makes him feel excluded. 

 

“Oh,” Virginia realized, “are you jealous or something?” 

 

Robert scrunched his face up in disgust. “Why would I be jealous?”

 

“Because Oscar’s had the honor of being friends with Eric longer than you? Oops, sorry I meant knowing him.” 

 

“I’m not jealous of anyone, Gin, because I have no reason to be. I have everything I want. I got the career, the mentor, the power, the money. There’s nothing I want more than what I already have.”

 

“You’re missing the girl.” Virginia couldn’t help but add. She can’t imagine looking like Robert, being Robert, and not wanting the many women who, no doubt, threw themselves at their feet. He really had everything she wanted and yet, he wanted none of it. 

 

“What?”

 

“The power, the money, the girl. That’s the list I believe.”

 

“I don’t need a girl. I don’t want a girl.” He sounded defensive. 

 

“Really?”

 

“Of course.” He sounded angry. 

 

“You really don’t imagine finding the right girl and settling down with her? Ever?” Virginia asked. 

 

She pushed those daydreams away with ease. The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ thing was getting to her when it shouldn’t matter. That kind of ending was never a possibility for her. She refused to think about Maya or Sydney or anyone. 

 

“Are you offering?”

 

“Over my dead body.” 

 

“That’s fine. You’re not my type anyway, too mannish.” Robert wrinkled his nose. 

 

Virginia rolled her eyes. “And you’re too pretty to be mine.”

 

They sat in silence, not an awkward one though. It was never awkward between the two of them, just simmering with distaste.

 

“Then you really have everything you want.” Virginia finally said. “Except my gun of course.”

 

“Yeah I do,” Robert glared out into the sand. “Lucky me.”

 

~~~

 

The mission goes as it seems like it’s always going, they find nothing but little hints AA had ever been in the location.

 

Everyone is frustrated when they get back. Eric dismisses them with tight eyes and a frown, Robert stalks off to go god knows where, ignoring Eric’s offer of a drink, and Virginia can’t even go see Abigail because she heard Oscar’s voice when she walked by. 

 

So she finds herself in the mailroom, holding the letter she drafted to Caesar asking about the history of the company and his thoughts on the Vietnam war. She even drops a reference to Oscar, implicitly trying to tie them all together. 

 

“How can I help you?” An innocent low-ranking Title boy asks. He smiles like he hasn’t been corrupted by Title Bird’s long-running grudge against her. 

 

“I just need to drop this off.” She waves the letter. 

 

“That’s what we’re here for!” He takes the letter and goes to log it in whatever monstrosity of a system they’ve implemented to make sure no eyes show up out of nowhere again.

 

“Wilson?” He said after a minute. “I think we have some letters for you too.”

 

“Oh?” 

 

He finishes doing whatever he’s doing and then retrieves some envelopes. 

 

 “Title Virginia Wilson.” He pronounces handing two letters over. 

 

The first one has Desdomana’s familiar writing with a little heart next to Virginia’s name and a fitting Fourth of July fireworks stamp. She can’t help the small smile.

 

“You getting love letters ma’am?”

 

“No.” Virginia blushes and drops the envelopes to her side. “Thank you.” She leaves before the soldier can comment on anything else. 

 

She almost forgets the second letter until she’s back at her bunk. 

 

She sets Desdamona’s letter aside and stares at the familiar handwriting on the second. It’s not Caesar’s, but she still recognizes it, the squished S’s, the diagonal crosses on the T’s, the way her name is written in swooping letters, but the rest of the letters are messy and lazy. 

 

There’s a return address this time though. It came from the hospital she was born at. 

 

She ripped the envelope open. 

 

Dearest Virginia, 

 

I have no doubt this letter is making its way to you a little late, but hopefully not so late you’d worry that I had forgotten. I would never forget you, pet, in such a short time you’ve become one of the most important things in my life. 

 

I figured I was a bit dramatic for our six-month anniversary, so I toned it down for the one year. I hope you’ll forgive me. I do promise to really go all out for the next one though. 

 

I bet you’re wondering about the lateness though. I bet it kept you up imagining what I would do especially after my last gift. Lucky you, it just took me extra time to prepare it. Finding everything I could about you has taken more time than I thought possible. 

 

You see some of the fruits of my labor on the envelope. I have no doubt you noticed the return address immediately. You’re so observant, pet. 

 

They won’t let me sneak in anymore (or I couldn’t find anyone to bribe or my minions got ferreted out), so I couldn’t leave it blank again. 

 

You’re special, but not so special it wasn’t hard to track you down. All it took was finding the right place and saying your name and I found all sorts of interesting things. 

 

I bet you’ve noticed my lack of absence in the beautiful, deadly desert of ours. It’s because I’ve been compiling this list, a list of all the things I know about you. 

 

Here’s the most relevant things I’ve found so far. 

 

 

• You’re a fighter (this one’s obvious I think, but sometimes you have the state the obvious to realize what you should know)

• Your name is Virginia Victory Wilson (did you know they keep a copy of your birth certificate on base? Or maybe it’s actually in your Mother’s lockbox that your Father is too drunk to know about.)

• You were born on July 4th, 1967. Let freedom ring! The irony, the poetry; a president and a state on Independence day, it could be the start of a bad joke. 

• You’re Catholic (though not a very good one, I think. It’s okay I’m the same) and your patron saint is Joan of Arc (did the angels warn you of me as they warned her of the flames?).

• You have a distaste for Rodriguez weapons, which is good taste. Men like that…Well we’re good friends, which says more than enough. 

• You’ve inflicted so much pain. I admire you. Poor Soloman. I doubt his mother will ever forget. I know I won’t and you won’t either. 

• You’re trying to hunt me down and you’re faaaaaaaiiiillllliiiinnnnnggggggg

 

 

My personal list is, of course, longer, but I thought in honor of our first anniversary you’d love to know how closely I pay attention to you, and the time I’ve devoted to get to know you, especially since you were so quiet at our initial meeting. 

 

You’ll have to compile a list of your own, though I doubt it’s as long as mine, but then again bitches don’t usually know anything about their master, except to obey them. You’ll see being a good bitch isn’t on the list. Maybe that’s why I love you, pet. 

 

I also thought you’d like to know, you won’t find me anytime soon…Unless you come home, but I don’t think you’ll be doing that anytime soon, pet. The leash won’t allow it. 

 

Until then I will keep on my mission; finding out exactly who you are. 

 

All my unasked for, but freely given love and devotion and obsession, 

 

Could be your beloved, 

Judas Thomas

 

Virginia crumpled the letter as soon as she read it.

 

She had been hopeful and stupid, to not see this coming. 

 

Of course, he’d find a new way to terrorize her. Of course, he wouldn’t let her forget. Of course, he’d give the intel she had been waiting for wrapped up in a ticking bomb she could theoretically hand over and destroy her life with or throw away and lose the much needed lead. 

 

The letter was shaking, which meant her hand was shaking, which meant she was shaking, but it wasn’t fear or at least it wasn’t only fear. She was furious. She was insulted. She was completely unsurprised. 

 

She curls her fists into a punch, making the shaking stop. She feels the edges of paper dig into her palm. 

 

She holds it like that for just a minute, reminding herself where she stands, how she escaped him.

 

Then she released her fist and uncrumpled the letter to read it once more, memorizing the relevant parts and having the parts she wished she could forget burned into her brain with all the other words.

 

JT was in America, stalking her, but maybe also recruiting and despite that, he’s still keeping up to date on what they’re doing across the world. His traitor is present and active. Most importantly, there are stories about Rodriguez's Weapons that a terrorist knows, that she needs to know.

 

Don’t trust the traitor.

 

Judas is the most famous traitor in history, but she knows there must be another one, helping him. 

 

Virginia sets the letter down gently and goes to her safe. She pulls out one of her picks and opens the lock. 

 

Sitting there just as she left it is her Rodriguez gun, Sydney’s drawings, and her notebooks.

 

 She picks up a notebook and flips to the headed pages she so innocently filled out previously. Apparently, everyone was going to have tighter lips than she imagined. They must if her suspicions are correct.

 

This whole time she had been looking her traitor in the face. 

 

She flipped to Oscar’s page. 

 

She picked back up the letter and tore it into pieces, except for one phrase. You have a distaste for Rodriguez weapons, which is good taste. Men like that…Well, we’re good friends, which says more than enough. 

 

She took the scrap and folded it into the page. Under it she wrote all the evidence she had; eyes appeared after Oscar joined them on the base, all the letters from JT contained details he could have observed or gotten from talking to Eric or Abigail, he’s a ‘consultant’ giving him plenty of free time and access and he shares his last name with the company. 

 

It was so obvious in retrospect. 

 

Sometimes you have the state the obvious to realize what you should know. 

 

Oscar had the motive, access, and ability, not only to double deal but to also work with AA specifically. He wants attention from his abusive father who has no time for him. He wants power and hitting his girlfriend is not enough. 

 

She never trusted him in the first place, but now she had just to prove he was the traitor.

 

~~~

 

All she can hear is breathing. 

 

She is running. Her feet slap against the floor, the wood, the marble, the carpet, it changes too often to do more than adjust her footing. She sprints down hallways and maneuvers around furniture. Open doors are alluring dead ends and closed doors send her the other way. She pumps her arms. She sucks in breath and expels it. 

 

Where she is doesn’t matter. She’s where she always is. This fucking house. She knows that and doesn’t waste time looking around. 

 

She has to get out. 

 

She’s done something, something irredeemable, something evil. She has every reason to run because if she’s caught…They’ll punish her the way she deserves. 

 

Your pain and suffering is a lesson you must learn, Virginia. It will bring your redemption.

 

She runs away from the words. 

 

The walls rush at her and she twists to avoid them, sliding around a corner into a hallway with too many doors. They’re all close so she doesn’t waste a glance. She checks behind her again and then looks down just in time to jump the first half of the staircase and then skip every other stair after that. She gets to the bottom and barely glances up before she’s looking behind again. 

 

Someone doesn’t want her to get out and she can’t let them catch her. 

 

She is sucking in air, but there is the sound of someone exhaling. 

 

She runs harder. She can hear the breathing and her body moving forward. Another fifty feet, one hundred. She takes an abrupt turn off the hall into a small bedroom and dead end. 

 

She looks around wildly, trying to find an escape. She exhales, something else inhales. She turns around and peeks outside the room to see a shadow just around the corner. She pauses and the shadow, a figure, pauses too, just out of sight. 

 

She can’t see the figure and she imagines the figure can’t see her. They’re both breathing heavily, but out of time; when she inhales, the figure exhales, when she shifts one direction, the figure shifts the other, when she makes a noise, the figure repeats it like an echo. 

 

What are they doing? What she is doing? Who is she?

 

The voices crash in a chorus. 

 

You’re a fighter. 

 

You’re JT’s little pet, off leash

 

You’re pathetic. 

 

You’re a fighter. 

You’re something else.

 

You’re a fighter. 

 

You’re an evil, god damn fucking cunt. 

 

You’re a monster.

 

YOU’RE A FIGHTER.

 

You’re a force.

 

What does that make you? The pet or the master?

 

She remembered. She wasn’t running from something. She’s chasing it. This is her home, and the figure is the interloper. 

 

The remainder is sing songy in her head; You’re trying to hunt me down and you’re faaaaaaaiiiillllliiiinnnnnggggggg

 

She spins on her toes and takes off towards the figure, her enemy, because she is the one that suffered the evil, unforgivable things that happened here and she has to protect her home from them happening again. She clips her side on the corner, leaving a smear of red on the pale white wall. 

 

Her enemy is quick, but she can hear their inhales inbetween her own breaths and their footsteps, slapping against the floor, barely touching before she lifts her own. 

 

Now her gaze stays locked on the figure and with every step, every breath she inches closer and closer. Her quick glances of movement turn into an unrelenting gaze on her enemies retreating back as she advances. 

 

They twist their way through the house, ducking through rooms, running down hallways and sliding down staircases. 

 

Then the figure trips on the grand staircase under the gaze of the masters and tumbles to the ground. She jumps over it and lands on top of the figure, setting her foot on their back and holding them down, like a victor. 

 

It is dark, but somehow the eyes in the portrait watch, devouring the picture she makes. 

 

Even though she can feel the figure under her, they feel more like a shadow than a person. She can only see the outline of them and feel even less. Her fingers claw at something like fog failing to pretend to be flesh. 

 

The figure whimpers come after or just before her laugh of triumph, but they are muffled by the marble floor. 

 

She bends just enough to grab her victim by the back of their neck and lifts them to see their face. 

 

She meets her eyes. She is looking at herself. 

 

Virginia gasps. 

 

Their breathing matches, they inhale, exhale at the same second, their chests rise and fall in tandem. Her victim, herself, has tears in her eyes and she feels the same tears on her face. 

 

She stares at herself. Predator stares at Prey. Hero stares at Villain. Master stares at Pet. Fighter stares at Loser. They are twins. They are both and neither and they’re holding each other. 

 

Yet the Victor holds the Victim.

 

The figure that is her, but is the victim has her head bent back awkwardly and she is forced to look up at herself who is the victor. The angle exposes the collar around her neck and the leash is held in the victor's hand. 

 

“So what are you?” The victim asks the victor, her tears dripping down her face.

 

 Blood dips from somewhere, but she doesn’t know from which of her many wounds or from which self. She seems to bleed regardless of what she is, good or bad. 

 

“What are you?” The victor asks the victim. 

 

“The same as you.” The two say in-sync. One is Victim, one is Victor, but they are the same as the other. 

 

She, the Victor, does not like this. “No, you’re not.” She tries to deny. Then the Victor slits the Victim’s throat. 

 

The Victim laughs and laughs until their breath goes out of sync and then stops completely. 

 

“I’m the victor.” She, the Victor, declares, even though somewhere she knows just declaring it is rarely enough. 

 

She stares at her face and then sets herself down gently. She won, the fight is finished. The blood doesn’t stain, it just adds a layer to the foundation. This place is made of it, it’ll barely provide an inch. 

 

There is movement at the top of the stairs, under the portraits glare. She prepares to take off after it, because she is the victor and not prey or loser or enemy and this is her home. 

 

“You’re not listening and it’s killing you. You’re not seeing and it’s cutting pieces off of you. You keep choosing wrong” Whoever is talking is nothing but a familiar whisper. 

 

Virginia turns to face the voice but instead finds a chain is in her hand and feels a pressure that must have been there the whole time. She drops the chain in shock and her hands go to her neck to check…to see if…

 

Someone pulls on her leash towards the stairs and the movement makes her stumble and she falls to her knees. 

 

She snarls and tries to run, she’s only feet from the front door, half open like an invitation, but she’s pulled into another direction, across the foyer and up the stairs. She fights it until she can’t breath, until she must give in. 

 

“What are you, Virginia Victory Wilson? Master or pet? Villain or victim? Fighter or loser?” A chorus of voices ask. 

 

The chain drags her to JT’s feet, he stands above it all in her home. She kicks and screams and struggles, but every movement seems to only bring her closer. He towers over her like the monster she knows he is. He grins, showing off his sharp teeth and bright eyes. 

 

He turns her leash over in his hand. “I know what you are. And you’re not going anywhere.” 

 

The front door slams shut. 

 

Virginia wakes clawing at her throat.

 

~~~

 

“Have we thought about looking for him in America?” Virginia volunteered, after a frankly exhausting rehash of the very stale information they had. 

 

She covered her yawn so Robert wouldn’t have a reason to snap at her to stop because it was distracting him. A real actual argument they almost came to blows about yesterday.

 

She hadn’t slept well, finding it better to spend the rest of her night bloodying her knuckles rather than consider a question she can’t answer and think about how she knows what it would look like if she slit her own throat. 

 

It seemed everyone else had just as good a night based on the sullen sips of coffee and snarling replies. 

 

“What?” Robert demanded, immediately offended. 

 

“I don’t think what I said was so complicated.” Virginia snapped back. 

 

The two of them have been at each other’s throat for the last few weeks, the lack of leads ratcheting up the tension. It doesn’t help that she knows he was out as long as she was up beating the shit out of a punching bag. He always got extra intolerable when he didn’t get his beauty sleep. 

 

At Eric’s look, she took a breath and tried to keep the annoyance of her voice. “He’s American, a lot of his team is American and right now they’re little more than tourists here, maybe because he’s elsewhere and they’re in a waiting mood.”

“You think a terrorist, with the resources to wreak whatever havoc he wants in a less than lawful land, is just going to go home where it’s much harder to blow up jeeps and shoot people?” Robert asked. 

 

“I think you’re forgetting the annihilator part of their name. They’re end goal is to take down America, which means they’ll have to take the fight there eventually. Maybe he’s scouting or setting up future attacks or recruiting. Who knows? Not us.” She tacks on spitefully.

 

 Eric gives her a look, but doesn’t chastise her, probably because she’s right. 

 

Robert shook his head. “No way he’ll ever be able to touch America.”

 

“Considering we had a terrorist bombing in New York earlier this year that killed more people than some of AA’s attacks here. I don’t think it’s unreasonable.” Virginia said. 

 

“The World Trade Bombing was something else entirely.” Robert waved his hands dismissively. “Religious extremism or something. It was an aberration. And six people in the scheme of things is barely anything.”

 

“Yeah, religious extremism rooted in hatred of America, that’s right up AA’s ally. Maybe his roving band of followers are a distraction while he fucks around back home. And also have we made sure AA has nothing to do with the bombing or this group they’re alluding to? Maybe JT is working with Iran and Egypt or Sudan even. God knows we’ve caused enough damage over there to create a lot of people and groups that hate us.” Virginia argued. 

 

“You cannot be serious.” Robert shot back. “All the people in those countries could hate us but they don’t have the power to do anything about it and there is no fight back home, which is why we’re here—”

 

“That’s enough, Robert,” Eric cut him off. 

 

Robert snapped his mouth shut hard enough to make his teeth click. He looked at Eric almost betrayed.

 

“What brought up this train of thought Virginia?” Eric asked, deliberately ignoring Robert. 

 

Robert’s shock and betrayal disappeared and he turned to give her a judging look. Clearly, he thought Eric’s question was more accusatory than inquiring. 

 

“I’ve been going through some of our files on the members.” It’s not a lie outright, JT’s taunt had certainly sparked the idea, but she did do the research and she certainly had evidence of the possibility without his letter, which must be why Eric doesn’t seem to catch it. “We know they’re from America, but have we ever tried to figure out how they got here or how they were recruited? Have we looked at any sources in America that could be funding them? We’ve been so focused on the present movements, we haven’t bothered looking at where they’ve come from.”

 

Neither answer. Typical. Fighting men were never patient enough for the research. All the cops she worked with were so busy rushing in and pulling their guns and shouting orders they could never gather the evidence they needed to put criminals in jail. 

 

But then again, that might be one of the reasons the county had one of the highest arrest fatality rates in the country; easier to shoot than convict, her father always said. 

 

“I mean JT must spend some time in America finding potential s and then recruiting them. He’s not finding these men in the desert. So maybe we’re in that phase? We’ve killed fourteen members just over the last year plus the seven or eight at the base they were holding me at. That’s twenty losses for a group that has to find its members abroad and ship them over.”

 

“Seriously?” Robert demands. “You think twenty dead people is a big enough loss to send their leader running home?”

 

“Robert.” Eric chided. 

 

“Eric, come on.” Robert ignored Eric’s glare. “She’s just taking shit and throwing it at the wall. I mean who would question the leader of a terrorist group not leading it’s group in the place it’s trying to do violence? It’s ridiculous and a waste of our time.” 

 

“Virginia would and she makes a compelling point.”

 

“I do?” Virginia says at the same time Robert scoffs, “she does?”

 

“I don’t know if I buy the whole JT being in America, considering all the places here he could recruit members. We're after all a mere stone throw from who knows how many groups that would like to see America fall. ” Eric said skeptically, making Virginia duck a bit and Robert look smug, “but you are right.” 

 

Robert’s face fell and he glared at Virginia. She sat a little straighter. 

 

Eric continued. “We’ve been ignoring an avenue that could provide us with valuable information. If we could find out how these members make it over here, we could track it all the way to JT. And considering we don’t have any fresh intel, it’s not a bad idea. At least until they’re back in action again.” 

 

“You’re going make us go all the way home to do research?” Robert demanded, offended. 

 

“No of course not, but everyone keeps telling me we have all this cutting-edge technology, let’s use it. We can order files and backgrounds and whatever exists about all the members, talk to family members, and see what we can find. See what ties they have to what countries. I know some intel guys who could help track down relevant information back home.”

 

Robert scoffed. “My job isn’t research and paperwork. If I wanted to do that I would have stayed stateside.” 

 

“No,” Eric said, his tone tight, “but you kept telling me how much you want to fight, well this is the fight, figuring out who to kill.” 

 

Robert seems like he’s raring up for a much more personal fight and Virginia braces herself. 

 

Robert and Eric could go at it for hours if either of them felt that strongly about the argument. And the two of them have been fighting a lot recently. It’s gotten so bad the whispers of the seasoned soldier and his golden boy were growing some rust. 

 

There seemed to be a divide between everyone these days, in fact; Eric and Abigail, Robert and Oscar, Oscar and Eric and Virginia kept finding herself in the middle. 

 

As soon as Robert opens his mouth, Eric cuts him off. “Title Richardson, you’ll review the files of all our members and catch up on the research Virginia has done.” He glares at Robert, an expression she’s never seen him direct at him. Even Robert flinches back, surprised by the hostility. “I’ll talk to some of the intel people and see if they can help us track them down and we’ll go from there.”

 

“Are you grounding me, sir?” Only Robert could infuse that amount of disrespect in a word and not get immediately kicked out. 

 

Virginia glanced between the two, horrified. 

 

Eric just looked unimpressed. “For now, it seems I am and if you were anyone else I’d be putting your ass on a plane home with a dishonorable discharge in hand, understood?” 

 

Robert laughed disbelievingly. “Yeah right.” 

 

That pushed Eric over the edge. “Get the fuck out of my office Robert and don’t even look in my direction until you fix your attitude.” He wasn’t yelling, but it might have been better if he had, because now Robert was swinging for a reaction. 

 

Robert stood up, livid. “You know ever since you’ve let her on, you’ve lost sight of what matters. All I hear these days is Virginia this, Title Wilson that, Virginia is a fighter maybe you could learn something from her, maybe if you were more like Virginia…” He trails off with a scoff and laugh. “It’s like you’re obsessed with her. You let her boss you around and tell you where to go and what to do. And if she were actually pretty or smart, maybe that would make sense, but no pussy can be worth letting a woman like her run your life and this operation.”

 

The insults and complaints are so absurd that Virginia can’t help but laugh. Only Robert would find a way to call her an ugly slut who slept her way up the ladder. She’d give him points for creativity.

 

Neither acknowledge her. Eric is so blank she can’t tell what he thinks. Robert is shaking with fury and satisfaction with finally saying what he must have been thinking since their trip home. 

 

She feels like part of her should have seen this coming. Robert had never been subtle in the way he resented her, but she had never imagined it to be this kind of jealousy. 

 

“Title Richardson.” Eric finally stands. He doesn’t jump up, he just slowly gets to his feet, which makes it all the worse. “If the next words out of your mouth are not an apology, I will be speaking to the higher ups about discipline. I will of course bring up this disrespect, but I think I will also report where exactly you’re spending your time off base,” Robert froze, but Eric didn’t stop, “or should I say with who.” 

 

Virginia wasn’t sure quite what Eric was implying, but it seemed to fall like an ax on Robert’s head. He actually flinched. Then he looked afraid, afraid in a way Virginia could recognize anywhere, even on her own face. 

 

Dirty dykes have bad blood. 

 

Suddenly Virginia knew exactly what Eric was saying. 

 

The pieces came together; Robert’s jealousy of her and Eric’s relationship, the way he’d disappear with men and come back with fussed hair and a certain smugness, his defensiveness when she mentioned the people he was sleeping with, the rumors of what he did off base and in private’s rooms, the hatred of the people that didn’t have to hide. 

 

Robert was fucking gay. 

 

She wanted to laugh. She bit her tongue instead. Looks like she didn’t need to follow up on any of those rumors. 

 

“Yes Robert, I’m not stupid.” Eric said, his tone bland. “I am more than aware of your excursions. I thought you’d be a little more subtle, but it’s almost like you’ve been waiting for me to notice. Is this what these fits are about? Misbehavior to gain attention?”

 

Robert bit his lip, not moving or reacting. Virginia prayed that he didn't argue. 

 

“Well I’m noticing now.” Eric hadn’t even raised his voice, but the words were explosive. “Are you happy?”

 

Eric sat back down, just as cooly as he got up. He nodded to himself and then reached out for the glass of water on his desk. He took a sip and considered Robert, who seemed frozen in fear or maybe fury. Virginia couldn’t tell. 

 

“I can notice even more.” Eric added casually. “I have no doubt if I go to the addresses you’ve been frequenting, a few dollars in the right pockets, maybe a gun, I can notice a lot, maybe more than you want me or anyone to know.” 

 

“You’ve made your point,” Robert finally forced out between gritted teeth. 

 

“Have I? I just think if we’re mentioning completely unsubstantiated and irrelevant rumors, I can tell you some of the ones I’ve heard.” 

 

Virginia tensed. 

 

“I don’t…”

 

“That friend of yours in F bunk, what’s-his name?” Eric prompted. He wasn’t even looking at Robert, just swirling the water in his glass. “I had a few drinks with him last week and let me tell you, he was a lightweight and quite the chatterbox.” He drew the words out painfully. 

 

“I’m sorry.” Robert interrupted, sounding pained. 

 

“Oh?” Eric pretended to be surprised. “For what exactly? I think you said quite a number of untrue and disrespectful things.” 

 

“I’m sorry for what I said about you and Gin. It was inappropriate, cruel and untrue,” Robert didn’t even look in her direction for his ‘apology,’ “Sir.” 

 

Virginia rolled her eyes. Neither noticed. 

 

“Title Wilson is your teammate. I don’t care what her gender is and you will treat her with the respect she deserves. She is here because she is good at what she does and has more than earned her spot, which is more than I can say for you these days.”

 

She appreciates the sentiment, but likes less the way they are speaking like she isn’t actually in the room. Maybe they have really forgotten she was sitting there watching. 

 

“Yes, sir.” Robert agreed through clenched teeth. 

 

“And you will treat me with the respect I deserve. I am your superior and your commander. I shouldn’t have to point that fact out, but it seems like you need a reminder.” 

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“If you were anyone else, I would have sent you packing months ago, Title Richardson. Do you understand that? But, maybe against better judgment, I’ve kept you here, despite these tantrums and this behavior. I’ve tried to help you and you have repeatedly ignored my advice. I’ve looked the other way until you forced me not to. So if you really want to stay and fight, like you keep saying, you will get your shit together and make sure we never have this conversation again.” 

 

Robert inhales sharply, but somehow keeps his face blank. “Yes, sir.” 

 

“You will get started on those agent portfolios tonight and you are grounded and confined to base until I say so.”

 

“Yes, sir.” He looks like he’s physically biting his tongue. 

 

“Get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to see you for the next week. If I hear you’re doing anything but sleeping, eating and researching, I will send you home.”

 

Robert gives one last defiant stare though thankfully he keeps his mouth shut and leaves. He doesn’t even glance in Virginia’s direction. 

 

She sat frozen in her chair. What the fuck did she do now? She wondered if Eric forgot she was there or if he let her stay so Robert could serve as an example as what not to do.

 

Eric sighed. All the fury seemed to drain out of him. “He has so much potential, but he’s short sighted and impulsive and sensitive.” He stared at the door. 

 

“Yeah,” Virginia agreed for lack of saying anything else. 

 

Eric shook his head and looked at her, like he was remembering she was still here. 

 

“I am sorry about that even though it's been a long time coming. He can’t stand not being the center of the world and you’ve proved yourself competition for that spot. I should have known he’d grow some resentment towards you.”

 

The acknowledgement and concern made Virginia deeply uncomfortable and incredibly giddy. Is this what it was like to have people care about you, to have someone notice the way others hurt you and to say that hurt was real and valid?

 

She tried to play it cool. “It’s not your fault. He’s an adult.”

 

“Yes, he is but it’s also my job to make sure he acts like one.” 

 

“I don’t envy you the impossible task.” 

 

Eric laughed and then he shook his head. He took a sip from the glass, looking like he wished it had something besides water. 

 

After a minute, he says out of nowhere, “he’s sleeping with prostitutes, you know. Young ones, just off the streets.”

 

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure if Eric was trying to cover up for Robert or she assumed too much. I

 

“He’s been taking some of the newer guys out and introducing them to the girls. I don’t even think he likes it, he just knows it’ll piss me off, which it does.” 

 

That sounds a little more convincing. Maybe she is the one projecting and jumping to conclusions. It would be too much of a relief to know perfect, sexy, charming, asshole Robert had the same secret she did. She sets it aside for follow up. Now that she knows it’s a possibility, she knows better what to look for. 

 

“It does seem like he makes a lot of his decisions based on getting your attention.” 

 

Eric’s gaze sharpens. “I suppose that’s one way to think about it.” He agrees slowly. 

 

“You know, I…” Virginia is not quite sure what exactly she wants to say, she’s upset about Robert’s words and she’s thankful Eric seems to be defending her. Part of her even wants to tell him about JT’s letter, if they’re sharing secrets, maybe…

 

“Well,” Eric interrupted instead, clearly wanting to change the conversation, “I think your idea to focus on research is a good one. It wouldn’t hurt to regroup and look for new ways to track these people back home. You can get started and once Robert catches up, I’ll have one of my intel guys come and help you out, teach you the basics.”

 

“Oh, um,” Virginia agreed on instinct, feeling like she’s being hurried off, “okay. Sounds good.” 

 

Eric nodded at her and turned away. Virginia took the movement as a dismissal and got up. She paused and took a shot. “I do appreciate you shutting him down though, those kinds of rumors—”

 

“—are false.” Eric cut her off, looking away. 

 

“Obviously, yes, of course,” Virginia stumbled, she thought that was obvious, “but they don’t have to be true to make…”

 

“You can’t get upset about those kinds of things, Virginia. It gives them and the people like Robert who spread them too much power. It’s not true and thus irrelevant.” Eric’s tone is harsher than she expected. “And all the time you spend fretting about it makes them seem truer. So let it go.” 

 

She wants to for a minute argue with him, but she bites her tongue. Eric, for all his support of her, will never get it. 

 

“Of course. I’ll get started on a preliminary report.”

 

Eric nods and she leaves. 

 

Virginia is not surprised when Robert tries to lunge at her as soon as the door shuts behind her. 

 

She doesn’t have enough time to completely sidestep him, but she slams her shoulder into his incoming chest and hooks her foot around his ankle, unbalancing him. She grabs his shoulders and uses his forward momentum to pin him against the wall.

 

He laughs even when she presses her arm into his throat. 

 

“I really hope you weren’t expecting to win that one.” Virginia said, pressing down just enough to hold him in place. 

 

“I’m exactly where I need to be.” He smirks, all that fear and embarrassment long gone. 

 

“Vulnerable to me?” She digs her heel into his foot to prove her point. He rolls his eyes. 

 

“This is the only power you have, Virginia Victory Wilson. You might have Eric convinced you’re more than this,” he gestures down at her hold, “but you and I both know all you are is a snarling, stupid bitch who swings before she thinks. You can rip your enemies throat out and fight, sure, but you’re useless for anything else.”

 

“You’re really sinking low for those insults today.” Virginia tried to sound nonchalant. 

 

“You’re nothing more than a weapon, useful but disposable. You might have Eric convinced you’re something more, that you’re worth something, but I see right through you. I know what you are.”

 

“And what am I, Robert?” 

 

What are you, Virginia Victory Wilson? Master or pet? Villain or victim? Fighter or loser?

 

He smirked and then verbally lunged at her jugular. “A pet we let off the leash when we need someone dead.”

 

Bitches don’t usually know anything about their master, except to obey them.

 

Virginia couldn’t help it, she releases him just enough to push him harder against the wall. She wants to see his head spilt on the wall, but restrains herself to just giving him a concussion. 

 

Robert’s groan of pain turns into a laugh, “you’re just proving my point, Gin. You can shake me around like your chew toy and pin me all you want, but what can you really do? Are you going to kill me? Torture me like that poor AA fucker? Threaten me like that poor, little baby and its mother?”

Virginia sucks in a breath. She loosens her grip just enough.

This always seemed to be the problem with Robert. He was right. He could easily needle and insult and provoke her to violence. All he needed was a few words to take her down and even like this, his breath in her hands, all she could do was posture or throw a few half-hearted blows, until he walked away with the victory. 

 

The only time she ever came close to winning against him was when Eric intervened. So much for her not relying on a man. 

 

“I warned you. I told you we’re playing a game.” He pushed himself against her grip, his eyes glittering, her bruises just beginning to darken around his throat. “I even went so far to tell you to find a new method of play and you didn’t listen.”

 

Virginia stumbles for a denial. “Like politics mean anything here. This isn’t home. This isn’t a fancy gala you can charm politicians at.” 

 

“And yet, we’re still on the board.” 

 

Virginia wanted to roll her eyes, but there was a crazed look in Robert’s eye that reminded her a little too much of JT. She doesn’t look away from him. 

 

“We’re always in the game, Gin and right now you might have the protection of the Queen, but after I’m done with you, you won’t even be on the board.” 

 

It’s the oddest threat Virginia has ever faced down, but that didn’t make it any less intimidating. 

 

She had long known she was in over her head in certain areas, specifically areas that Robert excelled at. How many times has she considered just how easily his words could destroy her? And here he was threatening, in a roundabout way, to do just that.

 

She let him go. He nodded and dramatically smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles of his uniform.

 

They stand there, Virginia sizing Robert up while he pretends to not notice her gaze. 

 

“What have I even done that’s pissed you off so badly?” She finally asks. She wants to ask what she did to deserve this but even in her head it sounds pitiful.

 

He scoffs. “The fact that you don’t know highlights just how bad you are at this.” 

 

“Robert, seriously.” She is not going to beg.

 

“I’d tell you to watch your back, Gin, but it won’t help because I’ll be coming at you from all sides.” He gave her a lazy salute and walked off. She could only watch him go. 

 

~~~

It’s odd to suddenly feel like the world is against you. 

 

In a matter of days, Virginia has lost pretty much all the people she had any sort of positive relationship with, a fact that made her realize just how small that number was and how iffy her definition of ‘positive’ is. She was still not speaking to Abigail. Robert’s had all but declared war on her. Caesar is millions of miles away and not responding to her letters. Desdomona’s just as bad. 

 

Even worse, among the nightmares of buckets of water, roaming fingers and hands, the slick sound of a whip, the buzz of electricity, Virginia finds herself killing and being killed by herself over and over and over.

 

Some nights she’s the victim, broken and bleeding after days of torture and almost grateful when she’s finally caught because she can get one final gasp of air before there’s nothing but blood in her mouth. 

 

Other nights, she’s the victor, the snarling, vicious bitch they keep saying she is and she kills everyone in her way and slits her own throat and always, always finds herself facing JT’s smirk and her leash in his hand. 

 

She hates being both and she hates even more how her brain makes it seem like it’s her only choice.

 

What are you, Virginia?

 

So instead of facing herself, metaphorically or in reality, she finds herself in an abandoned gym in the dark hours just before dawn, punching a bag until the blood she keeps seeing is real. It stains her hands and the bandages she puts on only after the stinging of her knuckles against the tough fabric becomes real pain.

 

“Research that bad?” Eric’s voice echoes across the room, startling Virginia so badly she sideswipes the bag, upsetting her balance.

 

“Fuck.” She mutters. She brushes a sweaty strand of her hair out of her face and in doing so smears blood over her cheek. “You surprised me.” She half-heartedly tries to wipe it away, but based on Eric’s look she doesn’t do a good job. 

 

“Clearly.” Eric paused some feet away. She steadies the bag and glances around it to look at him. 

 

“What are you doing up?” She asked, awkwardly. They hadn’t spoken much since the fight. Dealing with the fall out with Robert had put him in a perpetual bad mood, so Virginia had made herself scarce. 

 

He sighs, looking annoyed at the question. “You’re not the only soldier with nightmares, Virginia.” 

 

She looks closer at him. He looked actually human for once, complete with the rec wear, unshaved scruff and dark bags under his eyes. If she were the slut Robert claimed she was, she might even think he’s handsome in his clear humanity. 

 

“Sorry to hear that, sir.” 

 

“Heavy is the crown and all that. I am human at the end of the day, and it’s always bound to catch up.”

 

Nothing ever needs to catch up to Virginia, because it’s never that far off. It’s always there, the past, the present, the pressure of it all, nipping at her heels, no matter how fast she tries to run. She’s killed or kills herself. 

 

“You can only run so far.” Virginia mutters, mostly to herself. The sweat dripping down her back feels like JT’s hand in her hair. She wipes the back of her neck and shakes her hand out, blood and sweat flicks off her fingers. 

 

The words must come across as weakness, because Eric’s gaze sharpens. “And what are you running from tonight Title Virginia Wilson?” 

 

“The past, the present, I suppose.” Virginia tried to keep her answer as brief as possible. No need to expose any more weakness. “What about you? What keeps the great Eric Rouse Jackson up at night?” 

 

“Not the past for sure. What’s the point of running from something that happened and is done? You have to learn to live with it or allow it to unsettle you, just like this.” Eric gestures at her, clearly disappointed. She looks away ashamed. “You’ve been free of JT for over a year, so you should stop acting like he still has you.” 

 

Virginia tries not to wince at the remainder. She forgets sometimes how quickly Eric can shift. One day he’s checking to make sure the memory of JT’s not bothering her and the next he’s chastising her for it. “You’re right, but…”

 

“No exceptions, Virginia. You can have sleepless nights, but you cannot let the past unravel you like this. You’re better than that. You let the past control you, you lose your grip on the present and you fuck up your future. Do you understand?”

 

If only it were that easy. “Yes, sir.” She muttered. It’s clear he’s not in a place to hear any sort of disagreement. 

 

“Now what is it about the present that’s keeping you awake? That’s something we can actually do something about.” 

 

Virginia looks for the words to explain the way the walls seems to be closing in on her, how she feels as surrounded on base as she does on a battlefield, how tight JT’s grip feels around her throat despite the miles of distance, how all her allies are starting to feel a lot more like enemies, how the gun in her hand feels like a bomb waiting to go off. 

 

But that’s just the weight of the past and she can’t keep being weak. 

 

She settles on vague complaints. “It feels like we’re in a race and we’re falling behind, but as we try to regain ground, nothing is moving.”

 

Eric nodded, knowingly. “I hate to tell you Virginia, but that feeling is incredibly normal for where we are and what we’re doing. War is a lot of hurry up and wait and see.”

 

Virginia is not unfamiliar with ‘hurry up and wait’. She survived the Academy’s hazing and many tests of her stamina and endurance and patience. What she is unfamiliar with is the enemies waiting with her. 

 

“I know that. It’s just different. Things feel different.”

 

“Only because you’re new to it.” Eric brushed her off. “You’ve had a lot of action over the last year. It was about time we hit a wall.”

 

“Is that why everyone is so weird? Is this just how everyone gets in the waiting mode?”

 

“I’m surprised you’ve noticed.” 

 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Virginia asked, more offended then she probably should be.

 

“You’re not particularly aware of other people, Virginia. That’s why we have Robert after all.” He said dismissively. “Even when he’s being an asshole, we can trust that he will talk to people.”

 

“Thanks.” She scoffed, slightly hurt, even if he’s right. 

 

“A good soldier is aware of his strengths as well as his weaknesses.” He began to lecture. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s why you and Robert make a good team. His strengths are your weaknesses and your strengths are his weaknesses.” 

 

Virginia fiddled with the bandages around her fists and does not think about what it’s going to look like when their strengths go up against each other.  

 

Eric ignores her clear lack of interest in the topic of Robert. “Have you spoken to him since his little outburst?”

 

“Briefly, but not about anything important.”

 

Eric sighed. “I don’t know what his deal has been these last few weeks, but he’s been a special sort of irritating.” 

 

“If you don’t know then I definitely don’t.” Virginia said. 

 

“True enough, I suppose.” 

 

Virginia considered for a moment asking him about Robert, maybe he’d have something helpful in dealing with him, but Eric shifts and seems to move on. 

 

“Well, I didn’t come down here to talk and neither did you it seems.” Maybe a fight would do Virginia good. “How about a spar then? Let us both put the past where it belongs, as far away from the present as possible.”

 

They move into the ring and go at it with as much ease as two people fighting the other could.

 

Maybe it was just who she was, but she would always be most comfortable here with him, fighting. 

 

Eric still bested Virginia more often than not, but she was getting better. She lasted longer, avoided more blows, and landed almost all her hits. 

 

This was where they were at their best. He was her opponent but not her enemy. He was her teacher and mentor and she excelled and improved under his fists. 

 

There were always moments when he might go too far or push her too hard, but as she improved those moments got fewer and further in between and they were always were worth it for times like this, where they were electrified moving in sync yet in opposition, gaining and ceding ground to the other, circling, going back and forth, putting her loss off longer and longer. 

 

The sun finally came up and lit the gym in a bright, vivid orange, when Virginia hit the mat for the third time. 

 

Eric loomed over her, his knee on her chest. “You *some fighting advice*”

 

“Wow, what a surprise to find the two of you together in the early hours of the morning. Did y’all spend the night together?” She could feel the smirk in Robert’s voice. 

 

Of course he had to walk in when she was literally under Eric. It didn’t matter that it wasn't like that, but she felt the embarrassment regardless. It didn’t help that Eric was taking his sweet time letting her up.

 

“Robert,” Eric said unbothered, “how nice to see you up on time for once.” He finally got up, releasing Virginia. 

 

She tried to imitate his indifference, but she could feel the flush on her cheeks. She took a few, probably too quick steps away from Eric. 

 

“I’ve taken your warnings to heart. Now I’m your best soldier.” Robert craned his neck dramatically to look at Virginia. “Besides Little Ms. Perfect over there.” 

 

Eric rolled his eyes. “What did you need, Robert?”

 

“Your intel guys are here and they’re looking for you. They refuse to talk to me until they have clearance or permission or whatever from you.”

 

“Wonderful.” Eric slipped out of the ring. “Both of you, plan to meet with me and them at 1300 in the planning room.” He looked at Robert, “make sure you have all the reports read.” 

 

“Yes, sir.” Robert doesn’t even sound sarcastic. 

 

Eric eyed him skeptically, clearly unnerved by this suddenly pliant and cheerful Robert. “I’m not sure you have anything to be cheerful about right now, Title Richardson, so I’d take some pep out of that step.”

 

Robert ducked his head in agreement, “yes sir.” Once again sounding much too obligating.

 

Eric gave him one last look and a nod in Virginia’s direction and left.

 

Robert watches Eric’s departing figure and then laughs, “you couldn’t have made this easier for me you know?” He finally looks at her. 

 

Virginia glared at him. “What does that mean?”

 

Robert smirks. “I knew your first step would be kissing his ass, but I didn’t know it would be so quickly or so literally…” He trailed off suggestively. 

 

“I can show you exactly what my first step is if you want to come in here.” As soon as she said it she knew the wording was bad, but she refused to stumble over a clarification.

 

“I already told you Gin, you’re not my type.” He turned to leave, only pausing to call over his shoulder. “I appreciate the offer though. I will let others know just how accommodating you are and also about all the time you spend under Eric.”

 

“Go fuck yourself.” The words echoed uselessly across the room. “Fuck.” She muttered to herself.  

 

~~~

 

After that, Robert doesn’t waste any time making his threats a reality. 

 

Virginia had never been a favorite on base. Men resented her for being a female solider and they hated her for not being one that would fuck them. So Robert’s whispered rumors then quickly became a spark that turned that simmering resentment into a wildfire. 

 

Where before men would ignore her, they would now shoulder check her in the hallways and try and grope her ass or chest as they did so. Their once annoyed, but indifferent gazes had taken on a new viciousness and deliberateness, finding her no matter where she would go and not leaving her until she left. They’d stop in the halls just to watch her and mutter among each other and whisper about her, making sure all the insults were just loud enough for her to hear; ‘stuck up bitch,’ ‘frigid cunt,’ ‘kiss up,’ ‘stupid slut,’ etc. 

 

Along with that, the rumors about her and Eric take on a new viciousness. 

 

There had always been a few, just mentions in passing about their ‘closeness’ or implications she was only on his team because she sucked his dick, but now it was loud and on everyone’s lips. The tamest one is limited to that her and Eric are regularly fucking in the gym and the more explicit imply things about her sex life and her abilities make her incredibly grateful she has no desire to touch a dick. 

 

The women ask her for details and judge her taste. The men demand similar treatment and deride her abilities. And no amount of denial and disinterest changes their minds. They smirk and roll their eyes and leer and judge and murmur. 

 

It doesn’t just stop with verbal harassment and rumors. 

 

Everything but the things in her safe have gone missing. Rotten food keeps finding its way into the office she works in. Her sheets are stained with suspicious looking substances so often the linen people have banned her from getting any more sets and she’s resorted to sleeping on couches in empty offices. She finds her missing bras and underwear in every hook up spot across the base. 

 

Creatively, some write insults into her food, pressing ‘slut’ into the surface of her slice of bread and giving her special servings where the vegetables spell out the varying, ‘bitch,’ ‘cunt’ or ‘whore.’ She gets notes too, complete with the cut out letters, under her door and left in the files she reviews. 

 

It all builds up like endless papercuts, small and subtle but sharp and bloody. To make it all the worst, it’s everywhere and everyone. 

 

Even the few women she knows on base go quiet when she appears in the bathroom or the showers and deliberately avoid eye contact with her everywhere else. And she knows at least one of them is letting people into her room or maybe just doing the damage herself. The men that used to tolerate her are lunging for her throat and the ones that had it out for her now have the excuse and the resources to make it all the worse. 

 

It made that choking feeling of being surrounded even worse, because her comrades, strangers even, suddenly seemed not only to be against her but out to get her. 

 

And she knows it goes back to Robert. Whatever war he has decided to wage, this is how he fights it, he’d have everyone else burning her before he’d even need to throw a punch. 

 

Even worse it’s a war she’s long lost. After all, how would she fight against whispers? How does she defeat words and attitudes? How does she confront every look of disgust or cruel prank without looking sensitive? How does she stand against the collective?

 

The answer is she fucking doesn’t. She just endures. 

 

She ducks her head and hides and focuses on research and forces down her resentment and anger. 

 

She ignores how even in the dry air she feels like she’s choking, how she feels like two different people and not a person at all, how the walls seem to be closing in, and how everyone is watching her now. 

 

She settles into a routine, she sleeps until she wakes up screaming, beats the shit out of a bag or spars with Eric until the sun comes up, does her research, finds a place to sleep and repeats. It keeps her distracted and it (mostly) keeps the whispers out of her ears. 

 

She avoids everyone else, seeing nothing but enemies. On really bad days, she sees JT in the profiles of the guards, in the smirks and judging looks of the enlisted and has to find a storage closet to do breathing exercise. On good days, she makes eye contact and imagines knocking their teeth out. She has no doubt they imagine much worse when they look back at her. 

 

She avoids Robert. She avoids Abigail. She doesn’t check her mail. The only person she speaks to regularly is Eric, who these days is getting less and less chatty, and the intel guys. 

 

The intel guys are decent, or at least one of them is, which is somehow a silver lining in the mess that’s become her life. They bring her profiles and evaluations and histories of every member they have a name for and they show her how to find what matters and read inbetween the lines of the lies and indifference that seems to find its way into every report. You can tell by the lack of detail and care her terrorists are some man’s checked to-do box. 

 

Unable to fight the war on the homefront, she turns all her attention to building a picture of AA and the people that make it up. 

 

The pieces she finds are not clear cut or so easily put together but are instead shards of glass broken off scenes of tragedy and death and forced together and binded by the blood that drips from them all. 

 

And in that image, she finds a collection of characters who wouldn’t be out of place on base. 

 

A whole family burned to death the only survivor, the seventeen year old son, all tears when the police show up but long gone by the time they discover the accelerant in the carpet. Police included in their report an unknown party had picked him up while the firefighters tried to stop the flames. 

 

A cop that was posed to make sheriff until it was discovered he was stealing the confiscated drugs and selling it to pay for strippers and his gambling debt. The night before he stopped showing up to work, his co-workers saw him on the security footage sharing a cigarette with a man dressed in all black. 

 

A star quarterback who loses his scholarship after an injury, is a suspicious party in the death of his girlfriend, a cheerleader who dared to keep going to games after he was benched. Her friends had reported mysterious bruises on her wrists and black eyes multiple times.  He was last seen just before her body was found, talking to a military recruiter that no one could find records of. 

 

A retired Marine who had a bad habit of going to protests and beating the shit out of the ‘so-called deplorables’ that frequented them, claiming they were traitors to the cause he spilled his blood for. After he was arrested for knocking out the teeth of a civil right protester, a random man bailed him out of jail and he hasn’t been seen since. 

 

A factory owner who was fired after he threatened a co-worker with a half finished hammer because he believed the co-worker was sleeping with his wife. The co-worker had been missing for four days when people began to complain of a smell from the worker’s apartment. The police found both the co-worker and wife inside with their heads smashed in. The neighbor told them she had last seen the worker arguing with a pretty man in a suit outside her door three days before. 

 

A rich kid newly accepted to Harvard was rejected by a girl on the Softball team and days later he beats her head in with her bat. During the search for the murder weapon, a couple of walkers report seeing a handsome man and the kid, who they assumed to be his son, dump a bag in the creek near the school.

 

It’s just a few of the pieces Virginia has. Yet in all of them it’s clear that JT liked to recruit different versions of the same men; violent, broken and entitled. 

 

They’re all men who have something going for them, until their own hubris, stupidity, indifference, cruelty, all the bad things men are allowed to be, upends their life. Then walks in an opportunity and a new target for their resentment and bitterness. 

 

No one cares for these men, they’re just tragedies scattered across the giant country that is supposed to be her home, but ignoring them might be her homeland’s first mistake. That indifference just makes it even easier for them to point fingers and say it’s the slowly transforming America and it’s the government and the Democrats and the liberals that forced their hands and made them so unhappy. 

 

It becomes everyone else's fault they were not granted what they deserved and forced them to go to desperate measures to regain it. 

 

The only thing is, she can’t tell what’s manufactured and what is fate. If JT sets off the tragedies or finds the men in the aftermath to offer an out. Either way the men make a choice and they keep choosing wrong. 

 

There’s nothing obvious about what JT wants from these men, except their bodies and their anger. None of them have any special connections or access to resources that would entice JT to take them in. At least as far as she can tell. 

 

She wonders where Oscar might fit in. A history of abuse and the lack of acknowledgement could lead to Oscar snapping and killing Caesar? Oscar gets tired of waiting and finishes his father off in exchange for the company. He gets too furious at whatever poor girl marries him and he pushes her down the stairs.

 

Virginia remembers Abigail’s bruises and shakes that last one away. 

 

All that to say, Oscar would slot in very nicely with her group of terrorists, tragedy pending. Maybe that’s what JT’s waiting for, maybe it’s already happened and Oscar has been in his pocket the whole time. 

 

She reaches for one of the more detailed reports about the Marine. While she’s checking AA ties, it wouldn’t hurt to see if any of them had any connections to Rodriguez weapons. The two might be tied together more than anyone likes to admit. 

 

“Wilson!”

 

Virginia glances up. Carl, the more nerdier and awkward of the intel guys, immediately ducks under her gaze when they make eye contact. 

 

“Sorry,” his voice goes up an octave, “Title Jackson is looking for you.” 

 

That’s weird, they had sparred that morning and Eric didn’t have much more to say then gritted out feedback. It hadn’t been a good morning for either of them. The bruises on her stomach were already turning blue. “Did he say what for?” 

 

In fact due to her lack of updates, they hadn’t talked at all outside the few words they exchanged pre and post sparring. 

 

Going through the mess of intel was taking so much time she hadn’t even begun to try and sort it into anything useful besides putting each member's movements on a timeline and Eric was getting impatient. 

 

It didn’t help that Robert spent most of his time flittering around base, poisoning everyone against her instead of helping her. 

 

Carl glances nervously at James, the resident asshole nerd, before answering uncertainty, “he didn’t say, just that he needs to see you as soon as possible.” 

 

“You just seem to spend a lot of one on one time with Title Jackson, Title Wilson.” James interrupted snidely. 

Virginia rolled her eyes at the implication. “Maybe if you had anything useful to tell him you would spend a lot of time with him too.”

 

Carl lets out a surprised laugh and then immediately bites his lip when James glares at him. 

 

Virginia refocused on finishing her notes. She’ll have to ask Carl about inventory logs on the cop and the Marine. It could at least connect JT and Rodriguez weapons. 

 

When she’s finished, she gathers her notes, gives Carl a nod, which he awkwardly returns, ignores James completely and leaves. 

 

She makes her way to Eric’s office, taking the long way in order to avoid any other people. 

 

Weirdly, it’s closed when she arrives. So she does the sensible thing and knocks. 

 

“What?” Eric snapped, even through the closed door she can hear the annoyance. Robert must have been by. 

 

She cracked the door and leaned in, “James said you were asking for me.” 

 

“What? Virginia what the hell are you doing?” Eric looked up from whatever he was working on. The fury in his eyes made her think she had fumbled her way into a trap. 

 

“The intel guys,” Virginia hovered awkwardly in the doorway, “they said you needed me.”

 

“And what would I need you from you right now Title Wilson? Besides for you to finally find me something that proves your presence here isn’t a waste of resources or my time.” 

 

Oh shit. “I don’t know, I was told…” 

 

“Do you have something useful for me then?” He got up from his desk and marched towards her. She repressed her instinct to flinch. She had clearly woken the sleeping bear and now she had to face it. If she showed any weakness he’d rip her into smaller pieces. “The addresses of the terrorists we’re trying to track down? The locations of their bases? Literally anything that would be worth the oxygen you’re wasting by standing here?”

 

What the fuck had happened? He had not been in a great mood this morning, but this harshness, this fury aimed at her seemed so random and unfair. She hadn’t done more than knock on his door, the pettiest of offenses. 

 

“No… I…”

 

“Then why the fuck are you here wasting my time instead of doing something useful?”

 

Virginia must have looked stupid, opening and shutting her mouth trying to figure out what to say. She was as baffled as she was embarrassed. After too many strained seconds she finally said, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t…”

 

“Didn’t what, think?” His voice echoes in the hall. He’s yelling at her. He’s yelling at her, in public. Robert had never been so publicly scolded. “Why does it seem like you don’t do much of that anymore? Did you lose all your sense in all that paperwork you’re failing to find anything in?”

 

She bit her tongue. 

 

Eric stepped forward, looming over her and getting into her face. She forced herself to meet his gaze head on and not back away. “I give you resources. I give you free reign. I give you simple orders to fucking track down and kill terrorists. Yet you’re here begging for my attention,” his voice gets louder with every word, “instead of doing your fucking job, Title Wilson. Do I need to be worried about your priorities or your abilities?”

 

“No, sir.” She mutters, resigning herself to just enduring the lecture. Out of the corner of her eye she can see the crowds gathering. 

 

She stares ahead. A superior screaming at her is not the end of the world. It’s not. 

 

“Do I need to hold your hand through everything? Pat you on the head and tell you you’re a good girl when you review a file or do the bare fucking minumum? Do you think you deserve special attention, Title Wilson?”

 

She can’t even properly survey the onlookers, because she can’t risk looking away from Eric. But she can feel that she’s surrounded on all sides and they’re all watching her public humiliation at the hands of the single ally she had left. 

 

“No sir,” she gritted out. 

 

“Based on your presence in my doorway, I don’t believe that. So I’ll ask again, why the fuck are you here wasting my time?”

 

“I’m sorry, sir.” 

 

“Did you lose your hearing along with any brain cells? That was not my question.”

 

“I was told you asked for me, sir. There must have been a misunderstanding. I’m sorry.”

 

“Yes, a misunderstanding that I would want anything to do with a soldier who is failing to do her one job. Unless you have some new conspiracy theories you’d like to share? Are you going to tell me Oscar Rodriguez is a traitor too?” 

 

“No, sir, of course not.”

 

“I can’t help wondering if your incompetence in this area is more deliberate than stupidity.” 

 

The implication takes a second to sink in and once it does the muttering is loud enough that Eric glances away for just a second to see the crowds her humiliation has attracted. 

 

Virginia feels like JT has dunked her head underwater and is not letting her up. All she can hear is her shallow breath and the crash of the world around her. 

 

Somehow she still manages to get the words out. “It’s not, sir.” 

 

Eric looks down on her. He’s only slightly taller than her, but he’s made her feel so small he might as well be seven feet. 

 

“I would then like to make it very clear, as long as you continue to fail at your job, you are nothing to me. You are useless to me. You are not important enough to barge into my office whenever you’d like. You are not smart enough for me to want to hear whatever opinion or nonsense you want to waste my time with. Do you understand that?”

 

“Crystal clear, sir. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

 

“Get the fuck out of here. I better not see you until you have a list of people we can kill.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Virginia spins on her heel and leaves. The crowd doesn’t even bother to part for her.  There’s not even that many numbers wise, but it feels like a wall of hostility. She has to force her way past their judging looks and snickers. It takes everything in her to keep her head high and her breathing normal. 

 

She wonders if they’ll call her a traitorous slut or a slutty traitor or maybe that bitch, the traitor. 

 

Once she gets away from the crowds, she finds the first empty room she can and leans against the wall, looks to the ceiling in order to stop the sobs that feel like they might choke her. 

 

It’s not even the worst dressing down she’s ever gotten. Her father had spent her childhood being much crueler. Drill sergeants found every creative way possible to insult her tits and ass or lack thereof. Even some of Robert’s comments were harsher. 

 

But it was the set up of it all; the public humiliation, especially to a crowd that was already baying for her blood and the sudden, practically neck snapping switch of it all. Eric has lectured her before, he had insulted her and made his jabs, but this time, nothing about her presence should have triggered an anger in him she had only felt in those early days of sparring, when they both knew she wasn’t enough. 

 

It had been embarrassing and cruel, but if it were only that she’d be fine. What has driven her near tears is the fact that she had never even expected it. She had gotten too comfortable, too used to his consideration and care and admiration and didn’t prepare for the inevitable disappointment he’d feel about her. 

 

Her forced exhale sounded a little too close to a whimper. 

 

She sucked in a breath and blew it out. She was better than this. She shouldn’t be letting a lecture affect her this badly. She had been tortured, she had survived much crueler words. 

If this had been basic they would have kicked her out for this reaction and they’d be right to. 

 

So, she held her breath and counted to ten, feeling the ache and hurt and embarrassment. Then she exhaled. 

 

Eric was right. She needed to find something useful about AA. 

 

Virginia made her way back to the office she and the intel guys have been working in. She forced herself to be as normal as possible. They had clearly set her up, but confronting them would only fuel rumors about how badly Eric had gotten to her. She didn’t need to show more weakness.

 

They didn’t say anything when she arrived, only exchanging glances they must have thought she didn’t notice. 

 

She sat back down with the report she had been halfway through and picked up where she left. 

 

“You’ve been gone for a while.” Carl tried to initiate. 

 

Virginia ignored him. 

 

“A half an hour.” James added, smugly. “What did Title Jackson have to say then?”

 

“Nothing much.” 

 

You are nothing to me. The snarl and disgust echoes in her ears. She inhales and holds it. 

 

“Oh really?” 

 

She exhales. “Yep.” Then she scribbles the relevant dates from the report on her hodgepodge overall AA timeline. The end of 1991 is getting crowded. 

 

“That’s not what I heard.” James taunted. 

 

She wonders if she should be impressed at the speed these rumors are going around. She turns her back on James to look over at Carl. “Do we have any inventory reports from the Marine’s arrests?”

 

“Um…” Carl glances at James, uncertain.

 

“You know,” James interrupted, annoyed Virginia wasn’t reacting the way he wanted, “I didn’t believe Richardson when he said you’d go off just at the mention of Title Jackson’s name, but you really go running whenever he calls don’t you. You’re the perfect little trained bitch.” 

 

Of course it was him. He set her up and she had taken the bait like a good, stupid little fish.

 

Virginia’s pen snaps in her hand. She doesn’t even realize she broke it until the ink is all over her hand and dripping onto her timeline. “Fuck.” She throws the pen away, dripping ink on the ground and scrambles for the box of tissues. 

 

She blots the paper fruitlessly, but the ink has already soaked through and covered every event from 1987 to 1991. Three weeks of work and dozens of reports all destroyed because she can’t control herself. 

 

She inhales and holds it a few seconds too long. James might be talking, but all she can hear is static. 

 

Then she collects the stained tissues and the paper and throws them away. 

 

She pauses above the trash can, finding the same black covering her hands. She feels the stain all over her body. She’s just like the paper marked and ruined and useless. 

 

 You are useless to me. 

 

How could everything fall apart so quickly? This breakdown wasn’t even her fucking fault. 

 

If Robert had behaved like a decent human being, Eric never would have been so pissed off. If JT hadn’t fucked off to America, they wouldn’t be hitting dead end after dead end. If men could just fucking stop making their hurt feelings everyone else’s problems, she wouldn’t have this endless stack of terrorists. If she didn’t have the audacity to try and be something beyond the labels they slapped her with, she wouldn’t be here and none of this would be happening. 

 

If, if, if, if, if, they echoed in her head. 

 

James watched her, smirking in victory at getting a reaction from her.

She took another breath and turned to face him. She wishes she had some sort of snide comment or insult, but she’s hurt and raw and exposed and she’s always found silence the more effective weapon when she knows her words won’t mean much. 

 

She looks to Carl instead, “Since James here seems to have other priorities, I need you to find if we have any inventory lists from the Marine, I want to know what weapons he was using. If there’s enough information we can track them down.”

 

Before he thinks to argue or James can say something, Virginia leaves. 

 

Too focused on her simmering resentment, muscle memory leads her to the outside of Abigail's office. 

 

She stares at the door, considering. If they hadn’t had such an awful fight, Virginia would have gone running to Abigail weeks ago. In fact, she probably would have been in there bitching about Robert the day he threatened her.

 

She took a step towards the door. 

 

Things might not have been so bad if they had been talking, if they had kept being whatever they fuck they had been, if Abigail had kept being her safe space. 

 

You are my patient and I don’t owe any of my patients personal details about my life. We are not friends. 

 

A aching feeling of loss blooms in her stomach. She ignores it. 

 

If she had simply not allowed herself to feel, none of this would hurt so much. It would just be another lecture, another rejection, another low, another shift of the winds.

 

If, if, if, if, if, they echoed in her head. 

 

Virginia had to stop this. She had to stop thinking love and care would last. She had to stop thinking people actually cared about her and not whatever use she served. Because whatever it was about her, she would always do something to make people turn against her and she had to prepare for that inevitability instead of pretending like it wasn’t going to just be the ultimate response. 

 

She knew better about having these feelings, she knew too well how harshly love retracted felt and here she was falling for it not once, but twice. Eric and Abigail and all those other people she had deluded herself into thinking had positive feelings about her didn’t and she needed to accept that.

 

“Oh my god, Virginia!” Virginia flinched, tensing for whatever attack was coming. Instead she found an incredibly dusty Sydney, coming around the corner. “I’ve been looking for you for like forever. I’ve been waiting around with Abigail hoping you’d show up but you haven’t been by.”

 

Virginia can’t believe they had only talked a few months ago. So much had changed since their conversation, most of it bad. “Um, yeah. I have been base bound, so no injuries meaning no reason to come by.”

 

“That’s good, I suppose,” Sydney was watching her closely. “You don’t have to be injured to visit Abigail though, god knows I drop by just for some peace and quiet and gossip.” 

 

Virginia shifted under her gaze, uncomfortable. She tried to change the topic. “Is there a reason you wanted to see me? Any updates on our issue?” 

 

“The guns, no and lucky we haven’t had any major injuries. We haven’t seen much action, everything’s been kind of quiet the last few weeks.” 

 

“Then why are you looking for me?”

 

Sydney’s smile seemed strained. “Can’t someone just want to see how you are?”

 

“Sure, I’m fine. How are you?” Virginia lied. She liked Sydney, which made it all the more important to get the fuck out of this conversation. 

 

“Pretty good.” 

 

They stood awkwardly, looking at each other. The silence stretched. Virginia looked for the words to try and excuse herself.

 

“Are you really fine?” Sydney finally asked. 

 

“Absolutely.” Virginia lied. She was learning her lesson. No more vulnerability for her. 

 

Sydney tilted her head like she doesn’t believe her. “You know if you weren’t…”

 

“I’m really fine,” Virginia said again, not liking wherever this is going.

 

“I just heard…”

 

“Heard what?” Virginia snapped.

 

Sydney winced. “Just some concerning rumors.”

 

“Oh which ones? God knows they’re a number going around. I’m keeping track of which I wish were true and which ones are the most unrealistic. It might surprise you but there is not a single one I wish were true and they’re all completely false.” 

 

“Virginia, I’m not trying…” Sydney trailed off. She glanced around suspiciously and then leaned forward. “I just want to make sure no one is taking advantage of you.”

Virginia scoffed. Of all the concerns to have, that is not one she considered. “What does that mean?”

 

“The rumors about you and Title Jackson—”

 

“—are not fucking true.” She snarls and then immediately bites her tongue. She’s being too defensive and sensitive. 

 

Sydney deflated under Virginia’s glare. “Okay, but if they were…”

 

“They’re not.”

“He’s the one in the wrong.” Sydney rushed out. “If he’s treating you poorly, or pressuring you or whatever, no matter what everyone wants to imply, it’s not your fault and it’s wrong.”

 

Virginia stared at her blankly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

 

“Virginia, I’ve seen first hand what Jackson’s done to you and with these rumors, it all paints a certain picture and I’m worried.”

 

A picture of what? Virginia’s failure? Her attachments to people who didn’t have the same interest in her? 

 

“No CO should be putting their subordinates in the hospital and that’s not even considering…”

 

“I don’t want to hear this anymore.” Virginia interrupted, embarrassed that Sydney must have seen her those months ago. Even her long ago displays of weakness were coming back to bite her in the ass. “The rumors are bullshit and whatever you think you know is wrong. If you don’t have anything useful to tell me, I need to go.”

 

For a minute Virginia thinks Sydney is going to push, say whatever she’s implying more explicitly, but then it passes and she sighs instead. “Alright, but if you ever change your mind, please, let me know. I know we don’t see each other often, but I care about you.” 

 

“Alright.” Virginia only agrees out of a sense of obligation. “I’ll see you around then.” 

 

“Okay,” Sydney's hand hovered near Virginia like she wanted to touch her, but stopped herself, “just take care of yourself.”

 

Virginia nodded and left.

 

She tried not to think too hard about the encounter. It was bizarre, but she also felt like she was missing something. Sydney had obviously heard the rumors, everyone must have at this point, but her reaction was so startlingly different, Virginia didn’t know how she felt. 

 

She decided instead of unpacking it, she compartmentalized it and moved on. After all she had to find terrorists for Eric to kill if she wanted to fix any of the nightmare Robert had created. 

 

~~~

 

Eric’s rejection spurs a new kind of hell. 

 

Where before Virginia (apparently) had a sort of elevated place as a slut, but a specific man’s slut, now she had fallen from grace which meant everyone had decided she must be looking for a new way back up. 

 

“You know Wilson,” a cocky *specific* pilot sidled up to her in the lunch line, “I might not be a *Eric’s Title* but with the right persuasion I bet we could find somewhere to put your hands to use. God knows you’re not using them for anything useful right now, right?”

 

Virginia grit her teeth and shifted away from his wandering hand, clenching her fists around the tray instead of punching him. “Touch my ass again and I will put my fists to good use in knocking your teeth out. I bet all the girls back home would love that.” 

 

The pilot laughed. “Mm hm, Wilson, better be careful or I’ll report you to your CO for threatening language and we wouldn’t want another lecture would we?”

 

Virginia rolled her eyes, trying to seem unbothered.  

 

There was a chorus of jeers from his three or four friends. The way they had her surrounded on both sides made her hackles rise, but she tried to act normal and focused on grabbing something to eat. 

 

She didn’t get far before one of the pilot's friends standing on her other side, reached out and smacked the plate out of her hand. She managed to step away and avoid getting food on her uniform, but there was nothing salvageable from the floor.

 

“Oops, sorry,” the friend smirked. Too many people laugh at such a pitiful show of power. 

 

How the fuck did she end up back in high school? 

 

She considered her two options, clean the food up in a bid for grace from the servers on duty to give her seconds to make up for the loss or just leave. She was hungry enough to consider enduring the humiliation of cleaning the food up, but the cruel gazes watching her indicated there would only be trouble if she made herself so vulnerable by bending down. 

 

She glances around to measure what kind of crowd is around and sees Robert’s smirk in the corner of her eye. She turns to meet his eyes and she can see the smug satisfaction in his gaze. 

 

What a show she’s giving him. What an obviously lost battle she’s waged. Every second she stands here is victory for him. 

 

So she makes the only decision that leaves her with any dignity and turns on her heels and leaves, ignoring the lecture from whatever poor fucker was on clean up duty. 

 

“You probably did everyone a favor wasting that food, it’ll make her a bit more fuckable. The dyke haircut combined with her fat figure…” Virginia was gone before she could hear the rest of the insult. 

 

Her whole body shakes, with rage, with hunger, with humiliation, with resentment. Her heart is pounding in her ears, she grits her teeth to bite back a snarl of fury. She can hear every exhale. 

 

She shakes her hands out a few times desperately trying to get all these feelings out. 

 

It doesn’t help.

 

She stops in the middle of the empty hall and feels the anger coursing through her body. 

 

She’s always been angry, but not this kind of angry; the kind that seems to burn her blood and vibrate her bones. She wants to set herself on fire just so she can make damn sure the place and everyone in it burns down with her. 

 

It’s irrational and borderline crazy, but it’s all she can feel and it’s not fucking fair she’s the one who has to feel it. It’s not fair, a pitiful complaint, but the only thing that kept circling in her head. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair! 

 

She has to hold herself back from punching the wall. 

 

Things had been just fine. She had her enemy. She knew her traitor. All she had to do was prove Oscar Rodriguez was a double dealer and continue the hunt for JT. Now she was in the midst of a civil war, abandoned by her allies and surrounded by her enemies, a faceless hoard desiring nothing but to rip her apart.

 

She would never understand what it was about her that incited such fucking strong, negative feelings in people. Her whole life her very existence drove people mad. She had tried every way to avoid it; keeping her head down, lashing out against it, ignoring it, allowing it, eradicating it, appeasing it, but none of it ever made the hatred stop. 

 

She could never stop being whatever it was that made people feel that way about her. 

 

JT had said there was something special about her and something broken, maybe it was this; an innate ability to make people hate her and want to hurt her. 

 

Unable to stand her traitorous feelings any longer, she takes a detour towards her favorite gym. She technically had half an hour of breakfast left, meaning she had some time to try and beat herself back into shape before she had to go back to piecing her destroyed timeline together. 

 

Thankfully the gym is empty when she arrives. She doesn’t waste time with stretching or warming up. She doesn’t even bother wrapping her hands up. 

 

She splits her knuckles immediately on the punching bag and the warm, stickiness of the blood on her knuckles feels like a release.

 

Whatever is wrong with her must go down to her very blood and while she can’t drain herself of it, she can do this. She can sacrifice this little bit. Maybe it’ll make a difference. 

 

She counts the minutes down in punches, bloodying the bag and making her fists sting. Four seconds to lunge, feel the bag on the fifth second, savor the pain and hear the thump on sixth and seventh, bring the fist back, eight, step away, nine and ten, rest. Repeat. 

 

Punching is easier than breathing some days. 

 

Once she makes it to twenty-four minutes and hundred and six punches, she stops and looks. 

 

It’s not bad the horror show in front of her, just some smears of blood and she has good enough aim to keep it all in one area. 

 

The sacrifice isn’t totally cleansing, but she no longer feels like she’s burning from the inside out. 

 

She tracks down some wipes and bandages she should have been using the whole time and cleans up. The wipe is more rusty than white when she’s done, but she only needs the one. 

 

She throws the wipe away and wraps her knuckles up. This is her first mistake. She turns her back to the door to do it. 

 

“What are you doing here, Title Wilson?”

 

“Fuck,” she cursed, fumbling the bandages. She turns to find Eric standing in the doorway. She bits down another curse. Humiliation fills the place she had drained of her anger. 

 

“Not an answer.” Eric doesn’t sound as loudly furious as when they last talked, but it’s still there simmering under each word.

 

Virginia tries not to wince. “Sorry, sir. I was just leaving, sir. I have to report at 0800.” 

 

Eric checks his watch. “And it’s 0755.”

 

“I know, which is why I was leaving.” 

 

Eric takes a few slow steps inside the gym, still firmly blocking the door, but coming closer to her. She straightens and tries not to fidget. 

 

“You still haven’t answered my question, Title Wilson. What are you doing here?”

 

“Um, I was just getting some energy out.”

 

“No, not in here,” he gestured broadly, “here.”

 

“I’m here to try and stop AA and hunt JT down.” It sounds more like a question than an answer. Then again, these days she feels like all she can do is just survive. Everything else is just secondary. 

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes.” She answered more sure. She edged her way around him, towards the door. “And I should get back to it.”

 

“Prove it.” Eric moves, unblocking the door. 

 

Virginia paused in her retreat. “What?”

“You’ve lost focus these last few weeks. It’s obvious. The lack of fight, the lack of attention has caused your eyes and attention to wander. You’re locked up in an office deluged in history with no mind for the present.”

 

It must be the embers of anger that spur her, because instead of nodding her head in acceptance like she should, she argues. “History is the only place we can track AA’s movements right now and these men he picks up, there’s a type he targets and a process in recruiting them, if we understand it we can stop future members from joining and maybe track his movements.” 

 

“See,” Eric shook his head in disappointment, “you’re stuck in the past and daydreaming about some future. You’ve lost sight of the fight which is confronting JT and AA here and now, not worrying about where the members have come from and where he’ll get more and any of that.” 

 

“But their talents and history can give us clues and locations.” She pushed on. “He’s recruited a young hacker the CIA was eyeing, who has ties to Germany, specifically the same place we have multiple reports of members meeting at. There’s also the possibility that some of the younger ones have family business connections JT could exploit or use.”

 

“This is not what I brought you in to do, Virginia.” He interrupted. “If I wanted intel, I’d have brought more intel guys. There are dozens of paper pushers and readers and researchers and agents that could have figured out exactly that. That’s not what you’re here for.”

 

“Then what am I here for then, Eric?” She snapped. “Because last I checked this is what you told me to do until we find a lead.”  

 

“You’re here to fight.” Eric stepped into the ring. “So prove to me you’re still worth at least that.” 

 

Virginia eyes the ring skeptically. There is too much fury in her right now for any kind of real fight. Either she’ll be clumsy and reckless and get hurt or she’ll be the violent bitch Robert keeps calling her and hurt both of them.

 

Eric seems to sense her disagreement. “Virginia, now.” He ordered in a tone that brokered no argument. 

 

Virginia finds herself following the order instinctively, even as her brain screams she doesn’t want to fight, that she’s tired, that she’s sick of having to prove herself over and over.

 

She knows she’s made a mistake when Eric is lunging at her as soon as she’s in the ring. 

 

She just barely ducks his swing to her face, and tries to get her bearings in order to fight back. He doesn’t waste any time, throwing two, three punches she backs away to avoid. She’s stumbling more than dodging. 

 

 He looks as furious as she feels, which simply isn’t fair. What does he have to be so angry about? 

 

They do this for too long, him a continuous assault of blows and her just narrowly avoiding most of them. Even so, some of the land, on her shoulder, chest, stomach, cheeks but not enough to stop her retreat or completely disable her. 

 

She knows she can’t just play keep away forever and already she can see the frustration in his face at her lack of action. 

 

She ducks another blow to her head and then steps around him in order to try and punch back. She’s too slow, and he catches her arm and her punch doesn’t land. He grabs her wrist and twists her arm behind her back. He pulls her parallel to him. 

 

“A few weeks of research and you’ve become soft.” He snarls her ear. “I expected better.” He twists her arm painfully, making her whimper. 

 

The move triggers a memory.

 

She twisted the arm she held behind his back until it snapped. It only took a harsh, upward movement. The sound of his arm snapping echoes in her ears. It sounds like freedom. It sounds like it fucking hurts. 

 

Suddenly, it doesn’t matter who's holding her, all that matters is she can’t be the victim.

 

Instead of trying to twist away, she turns into his chest just enough to elbow him in the side of his face, potential permanent injury be damned. The blows loosens his grip just enough that she can elbow him in the stomach and twist away. 

 

He lets her go with a groan. 

 

She backs away from him, shaking her head, trying to separate the past from the present. The dawning sun creates shadows that make the dirty gym walls look like the stone walls of her prison. 

 

She can’t breathe. Her whole body is shaking. Blood from her fists drips on the floor. 

 

“Is that it?” He taunts her, quickly recovering from her blow. “Come on, Virginia, stop cowering and fucking fight back for once!”

 

She’s lunging at him before she even thinks about it. It always comes back to this. She can cower or she can punch back. Those are the only two options. He wants her to fight, so she’ll fight.

 

He dodges her furious punches easily, clearly playing with her. He ducks and backs away with ease, a smirk on his face. In this light, his teeth glint like JT’s.

 

He sidesteps her next punch and hooks his elbow around her outstretched arm and uses her momentum to unbalance and force her forward. He stops her fall by twisting her arm completely behind her and pulls it above her head, holding it against his chest, leaving her bent over awkwardly and pressed against him. He jabs his other elbow into her back, pushing her down further and holding her in place. 

 

She struggles but her free arm is too far to touch him and every movement makes his hold tighter and more painful. It’s a hold she’s never been able to escape. 

 

Usually at such an obvious and painful defeat, Eric lets her go so they can start over. Instead he presses harder, making the position more and more painful with every second. 

 

Finally, she just stops struggling, hoping an acceptance of her defeat will force him to let her go. 

 

They’re both still. All she can hear is her frantic breathing and Eric’s exhales of exertion as he holds her in place. She can only imagine the rumors that will swirl if anyone walks in with them in this position. 

 

“You know, maybe Robert is right. I made a mistake taking you on. Maybe you don’t belong here.”

 

The words hurt more than any punch. 

 

Eric lets her go, but only to adjust his grip on her arm and shoulder and throw her over his shoulder and slam her into the ground. 

 

She hits the ground with a groan, her back and side taking the worst of the fall. It still knocks the breath out of her. She resists the urge to curl up in a little ball and hide from the pain. 

 

She only manages to roll over and get to her hands and knees when Eric kicks her in the side, sending her sliding across the ring. 

 

She hits the ground again painfully, her shoulder aching from being twisted and ribs screaming. She tries to get up faster this time, but Eric beats her to it, kicking her solidly in the stomach and sending her sliding another few feet. 

 

He kicks her two, three more times, to her chest, her stomach and her head, until she gives up trying to get up. 

 

Virginia’s been here dozens of times before. She sees the shadow of her mother cowering in the corner. Her father looms above her, not a man but a monster. The dozens of Jesus’ on the wall watch her from his cross. She worries about getting blood on the carpet

 

The blows stop for a second and she puts her hands down in order to push herself up out of instinct rather than actual desire. 

 

The longer she stays down the more opportunities he has to kick her and keep her down. Her hands rested on the floor, her fingers splayed. She doesn’t feel any carpet, so her mom must have finally taken it out. She takes a breath and then…

 

She screams when Eric stomps on her hand. 

 

It’s the sound of snapping that pulls her out of the memories. It is not her father or any of JT’s minions hurting her like this. It’s Eric. 

 

Something like surprise fills her. It’s not that he’s hurting her. He’s always been capable of this kind of violence. She’s already endured this kind of violence from him. It’s that he barely gave her the chance to fight back. 

 

The realization hits her. This is not a lesson or a test. It is a beating and that’s it. He’s just another angry man taking his fury out on her body. Beginning and end of story. 

 

And she knows exactly what to do during a beating. 

 

Eric’s blows have put her on the edge of the ring, so instead of trying to get up, she rolls out of the ring. She doesn’t cower or fight, she retreats. 

 

With the ring barrier between her and Eric, she forces herself to her feet and faces him. Her ribs burn with every breath. She can feel the beginning of bruises across her torso and stomach. Her nose and lip are bleeding. Any movement of her hand shoots sharp pains through her fingers. Logging and prioritizing the injuries is a well worn process. 

 

He pauses, watching her wearily. His knuckles drip blood, making a quiet pitter-patter sound as each drop hits the ground. 

 

“I’ll tell you what I’m not here to do.” Every breath, every word aches, but she has to say it. “I’m not here to be your punching bag or any man’s punching bag.” 

 

There’s something dawning in his expression, but she can’t tell what. Regret? Remorse? She meets his eyes and glares. “I’ll let you know if I find someone for you to kill.”

 

Then she leaves with her head held as high as she can. 

 

~~~

 

Virginia has no choice but to see Abigail.

 

All the injuries she could handle, but potentially broken bones, especially ones in her hand were too important to risk with her attempts at half assed first aid. 

 

It still takes her a few hours to work up the nerve. 

 

Abigail is alone with her back to the door when Virginia skulks in, cradling her hand to her chest. She doesn’t say anything, just waits for Abigail to notice her. 

 

“I was wondering when…” Abigail trails off when she finally turns to see Virginia. “What the fuck happened to you?”

 

“Something that needs a nurse to fix.” 

 

Virginia has no idea how bad she must look. One of the girls had broken the mirror on the compact she used to inspect injuries and she didn’t want to risk running into anyone in the bathroom, so she had to clean up completely based on feeling. 

 

She can, however, feel the busted lip, a swollen eye, a cut on her head and a variety of bruises everywhere else. 

 

Abigail stared at her in horror. “You haven’t even left base in weeks, Gina. Who the fuck did this to you?”

“Who gave you those bruises on your wrists?” Virginia barely had to crane her head to see the hints of nearly healed yellow under Abigail’s long sleeves. 

 

Abigail scowled and adjusted her sleeves. “That is not relevant.” 

 

“Then neither is mine. You said we were patient and nurse and that’s it. So fucking do your job or I’ll wrap up my hand by myself.” 

 

Abigail huffed, the debate on whether she should push clear on her face. “Fine.” She seemed to settle on not pushing. “What happened to your hand?”

“I think my fingers are broken.” Virginia held out her right hand for Abigail to inspect. It had been too swollen and painful to clean off the clear imprint of a boot on her hand. 

 

 Abigail took her hand gently, glancing between it and Virginia’s face. “Who stepped on your hand, Gina?” She asked softly. 

 

“Accident. You shouldn’t put your hand where people are walking.” Virginia lied, meeting Abigail's eyes and daring her to argue. 

 

Virginia could hear Abigail grind her teeth. “Okay, fine. Don’t tell me.”

 

“Thanks, I won’t. Can you just fix it?”

 

“Yes, fine.” Abigail moved Virginia to one of the beds and then took her hand. “I’m going to check to see what’s wrong.” 

 

She held Virginia’s hand gently, turning it around and carefully inspecting each of her fingers, but no matter how careful she was, each movement made her hiss in pain. 

 

After an agonizing few minutes, Abigail finally let her go. 

 

“Lucky you, it looks like fractures and really bad bruising and swelling.”

 

“None of them are broken?” The sound of snapping might have been in her imagination. 

 

“Nope. You won’t even need a cast, just a splint.” Abigail went to her medical cabinet to grab the supplies. “You won’t be able to use this hand for a bit. Probably four to five weeks, just to be cautious.” 

 

Thank god Virginia is ambidextrous then. She’ll have to cool it on the boxing, but after today she’s not sure she wants to be anywhere near a gym anytime soon. 

 

They sit in an awkward silence as Abigail assembles the supplies. Finally she breaks it. “So what have you been doing the last few months? As terrible as it sounds, I expected you to show up needing help much sooner than this. I’m almost proud it took you so long.”

 

“That doesn’t feel like a question a nurse should ask a patient.” Virginia said petulantly, looking anywhere but at Abigail. 

 

Abigail huffed a laugh. “You’re really taking that to heart.” She reached into one of the cabinets. 

 

“Considering how strongly you seemed to mean it, I figured it was important.” 

 

“I…” Abigail paused, her hand halfway between the open cabinet and the pile of supplies she’s assembled on the counter. “I might have mishandled that.” 

 

That was not at all what Virginia expected her to say.

 

“No, I did mishandle it.” Abigail took another breath and turned to look at Virginia. “I’m sorry for how I snapped at you and I’m sorry for telling you I didn’t care about you. I had been having a bad day and things with Oscar are…” she waved her hands like it didn’t need an explanation, “complicated. And you were asking questions I didn’t want to answer. So I took all that out on you and that was wrong, I’m sorry.” 

 

Virginia stared at her. In the face of something that wasn’t anger or disgust or judgment or dismissal, she had no idea how to respond. 

 

Part of her resents the ease of which Abigail acknowledges the hurt she caused and just apologies for it because how can Virginia then continue to feel rightfully indigent about it? 

 

Abigail was not supposed to apologize. No one ever apologized to Virginia, because no one ever cared that they had hurt her. 

 

After all, what is Virginia supposed to do now? Her anger is meaningless. Her resentment is pointless. Avoiding Abigail had only extended her misery. And after the few weeks she’s had what did she have but those feelings? 

 

“Gina?”

 

Yet, here was Abigail apologizing to Virginia. Something foreign filled her chest. She felt relieved and hopeful. Maybe she wasn’t completely alone, maybe things weren’t as bad as she feared. Maybe not all her ifs were so terrible. 

 

It was a breath of fresh air and giving up all the other negative feelings that had been fueling her was worth it in exchange. 

 

“Thank you.” Virginia finally said, unfamiliar gratitude filled her. “I appreciate it. And for what it’s worth I’m sorry for pushing. I know demanding answers doesn’t always help with those kinds of things.”

 

“I appreciate that.” Abigail began to clean the dirt from her hand. “Now this split will take a little bit, so why don’t you catch me up on what you’ve been up to.”

 

It doesn’t take long for everything to come out. She had been holding back everything so tightly all it takes is Abigail’s apology, question and open ear to crack the walls and have it all come spilling out. 

 

She doesn’t tell the worst of it, or the overall hopelessness and fury Virginia has been burning with, but Abigail seems able to read between the lines. 

 

Through it all, she doesn’t even seem that surprised or shocked, like the events are unfolding exactly as she would have thought. 

 

“I know it doesn’t help to hear it,” Abigail said once Virginia finished, “but Eric and Robert just get like that. They have their really high highs they don’t like to share and their really low lows they like to make everyone else’s problem.”

 

“I just don’t understand what I have to do with it. All I’ve done is follow orders and keep my head down, but for some reason Robert has declared me his moral enemy or something.” 

 

“Gina,” Abigail said slowly, staring at Virginia like she couldn’t be more oblivious, “Robert is jealous of you.” 

 

Jealous of her? Robert Richardson? Gorgeous, intelligent, well spoken, rich, Robert Richardson is jealous of her? The very idea is absurd. “What?” 

 

“It’s the same reason he’s hostile to me and dislikes Oscar. He doesn’t like people that take Eric’s attention away from him. He never has. There’s a reason a lot of people don’t stick around, Robert has ways of driving them off.”

 

Virginia considers this in the light of everything Robert’s told her. All his shittiness has seemed to have ebbed and flowed whenever he and Eric weren’t getting along. He’s also the most cruel to her when Eric is paying attention elsewhere whether that be to Virginia or the mission or whatever. 

 

“Well, he’ll be happy to hear just how well Eric and I are getting along these days. Maybe if I tell him Eric hates me, he’ll back the fuck off.”

 

Abigail sighs. “You can’t take it personally with Eric. He gets in these moods where he lashes out and thinks the whole world is out to get him, until he doesn’t. You just have to wait it out and stay out of his way.” She finished wrapping the splint. “Which you clearly need some practice at.”

 

“Clearly.” Virginia inspects the splint. It still hurts, but simple movement doesn’t aggravate it as much. “You really think Robert is jealous of me?”

 

The thought still doesn’t fit right in her head. No one’s ever been jealous of her. She’s never been the kind of person people are jealous of. 

 

“It wouldn’t surprise me. Not only are you a competition for Eric’s attention, but unlike Robert and Oscar and any other man on base, you’re a woman who could marry him.” 

 

“Marry him? What? No. Ew.” Virginia scrunches her nose in disgust. 

 

“Gina come on,” Abigail laughs. “Think about it from Robert’s perspective. You’re everything he is to Eric; a comrade, a fighter, intelligent, resourceful, but you’re a woman. There’s a possibility for a…” she pauses to try and identify the right word, “connection that’s impossible for Robert to have. No wonder he’s mad with jealousy.”

 

“I don’t get that, being a woman makes all this harder.”

“Sure, but you’re the only one who could ever marry Eric and take him away from Robert. It’s not about you really, it’s about what Robert can’t have and it’s something not even his sharp and clever tongue can change.”

 

“Yeah, instead it can cut me down to pieces pretty quickly.”

 

“You’re much stronger than any words, Gina. Even Robert’s.” 

 

Virginia blushed and looked away. The kind words after weeks of nothing but slung cruelty felt like sunbeams on her face.

 

Abigail began putting her supplies away. 

 

“Okay, wait, what about you?” Virginia asked, thinking about what Abigail said about Robert’s dislike of her. “The same connection is possible and you’ve known him longer than we’ve all been alive.”

Abigail froze. Virginia worried she landed on another sore spot. 

 

“Well,” Abigail finally starts, trying to seem nonchalant, “if Eric wanted me that way, he would have asked a long time ago.” She deliberately relaxes, even though the words are pained. She turned back to Virginia, “that’s why I think Robert is being especially ridiculous. Eric doesn’t care for that kind of thing, his first and real love is America and always will be. He has no time or attention for any sort of bride or woman or whatever Robert is so afraid he’ll get.”

 

It’s a simple revelation that clicks into with all the pieces Virginia has gathered over the months; Abigail loves Eric.

 

The weight of history seems to settle on the room. It’s one thing to know Abigail and Eric have known each other for a long time, it’s a different thing to reckon with just how long those years must really be. How many conversations and questions and requests and denials and fights and reconciliations must have made up the time. 

 

What are the two of them to each other, really? She follows him across the world and he regards her occasionally for medical health and judges her choice of partner. She endures the violent hands of another rich, connected man and he ignores her.

 

If Eric wanted me that way, he would have asked a long time ago.

 

How long had she waited for him to ask? When did she stop hoping? Did Abigail experience the same kind of fear and jealousy Robert did then? Was she afraid she was losing Eric to them, to Oscar, to the fight, to America? 

 

Virginia looks at Abigail, taking in her graying streaks in her black hair and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Experience lines her face, but what experiences? 

 

Eric keeps telling her she’s getting stuck in the past at the cost of the present, but it feels like things keep forcing her to look back. All her answers seemed to be trapped in history. 

 

“Will you let me look at your chest and ribs?” Abigail interrupted Virginia’s train of thought, through where it was heading she had no idea. “I know you said you had it handled but I can tell by your breathing you’re struggling.” 

 

Virginia wants to ask questions. Suddenly she wants to know everything about Abigail. She had wasted these weeks and suffered when all her answers could be right here if she just asked. 

 

The things Abigail could tell her, about Eric, about Oscar, about the things that drive them and make them mad, if she could only find a way to ask.

 

Virginia opens her mouth, but Abigail meets her gaze and there’s something in her eyes that makes the questions die in Virginia’s throat. 

 

There is history here, a dangerous and deep and clarifying one that Abigail has no interest in telling her. 

 

“You know me and breathing.” Virginia jokes instead.

 

You’re not listening and it’s killing you. You’re not seeing and it’s cutting pieces off of you. 

She shakes the phantom words away. 

 

What would she do with the answers anyway? Abigail’s experience with Eric has nothing to do with Virginia’s. They’re different people, with different roles. What help would her history be anyway, except to dig up unpleasant memories and old hurts? 

 

Eric was right, leave the past where it is; long gone. 

 

Abigail laughed, a hint of relief in it.  “I probably know it better than you do.”

 

They sat quietly as Abigail inspected Virginia’s chest with a stethoscope, the only sound being her careful and deliberate inhales and exhales. 

 

“I know it doesn’t help to hear in the midst of it, but you’ll come out of all this. Eric will get out of whatever mood he’s in and Robert will get bored. It might take some time, but in the end it’ll be fine. You just gotta endure.” 

~~~

Brett Paper.

 

The name in blocky, black letters fills the far corner of a wall Virginia has siphoned off just for this. She steps back to look at the lines that make up a person and considers how to define him.

 

You’re here to fight. So prove to me you’re still worth at least that. The thought, unbidden and random, makes her flinch. She can’t think about that right now. 

 

She shakes the memory and tries to forget about herself and Eric and Robert and Oscar and every other problem in her life. She ignores the long familiar aching pains of her healing body and viciously pushes down any thoughts about what caused that pain. 

 

She focuses only on this; Brett Paper. She fingers the file with the matching name, squished and messily forced into the corner of the folder. The intel people had been so lazy and rushed gathering all this information and it shows. 

 

She picks it up and holds his entire life in her hands; his school transcripts, therapist notes, class assignments, airplane tickets, travel itineraries. Every paper a person leaves in the paper trail of their life. 

 

His entire history lies in the dozens of papers in her hand and in the folder on the desk. He was barely seventeen when he disappeared in the aftermath of the fire that killed his parents and burned down his family’s mansion. The police declared it arson and murder, but with Brett’s sudden disappearance the investigation stalled and then was closed. End of story. 

 

Virginia is not sure why she keeps coming back to Brett Paper. Maybe it’s the sordid details of the story. Maybe it’s the ease of which he sold his family out. Maybe it’s the complete lack of motive. Maybe it’s the way JT creeps in, the devil in real life, whispering and entreating a violent, unhappy boy.

 

But looking at the papers he didn’t always seem that way. 

 

To start with, the family was incredibly well off. Brett’s grandfather was in the Air Force and deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1953 to help train the pilots out there to face the Soviet threat. As far as Virginia can tell while over there he met the right person and got into the oil business just before it took off in the country, making his family millions. 

 

Based on the records he had a helicopter mom, a father who took him camping once a month and no siblings to compete with. There were no hidden signs of abuse or neglect of any kind. He was well off, but not spoiled. 

 

He was involved in various extracurriculars; marching band, theater, choir, history club. He had some basic, dumb kid discipline stuff; juvenile graffiti on the football stands, getting caught hiding in the locker-room or skipping class completely, usually with his friend Derek.

 

Brett seemed perfectly happy until October 1990 and something shifted.

 

There’s records of Brett dropping out of all those extracurriculars and his name begins to appear on a roster for the JV Football team. The one picture she found of him in his uniform, he was looking off to the side, something like shame and anger on his face. 

 

He starts getting into trouble, real trouble, like petty larceny, threats of arson, actual property damage and bringing guns to school. His friend Derek disappears completely, leaving Brett a lone wolf in increasingly concerning criminal enterprise. 

 

She even finds an essay, a short story he wrote in response to a free write prompt around the word ‘want’ a few weeks after whatever happened in October occurred. 

 

The essay is about a boy living in a mansion with everything he could ever need, he spends his time wandering and touching and using everything he has, completely content. He’s never felt want in his life. Why would he? After all, he has everything.

 

Then one day he looks out the window and sees it; the only thing he’s never had. He tries to leave the house to get it, but he can’t leave. All the things he needed, all the things he had blocked his way and prevented him from what he really wanted. 

 

So he ends the story, standing in the doorway, holding a lit match and watching what he wants get further and further away. 

 

It’s a little too similar to Citizen Kane and the prose isn’t great and the theme is simplistic and Paper never identifies what it is that the boy wants so badly that he can’t have, but she can read the genuineness of it, a real ache that motivated the words.

 

Whatever happened in October took something away from him, and the loss hurt him so badly he burned his house down, killed his parents and took off with a terrorist.

 

Virginia’s known all sorts of men, mostly bad ones, some decent ones and the ones in between. She’s met men like Paper, who after a life of being given everything they wanted finally break when something for the first time doesn’t go their way. 

 

Coming back to her original question, what happened to Brett Paper in October that made him so unhappy that he killed his family and became a terrorist? 

 

Finding no more answers in this particular assignment, Virginia pins the paper with her one working hand just below his name on the wall, carefully not aggravating her splint. She’s trying to take Abigail's advice more seriously. She’d like the use of both her hands. 

 

She steps back, exactly right where she started. With little actual intel she keeps wrapping around to these questions. What has driven these men to this kind of violence? 

 

There’s nothing that special about the members they’ve gathered. Their kind of indignation and violence comes dime in dozen in America when you really look. Many men beat their wives and resent their bosses and hate the deplorables of society and complain about the government. They own guns and get in fights and rail against the so-called unfair world that has allowed them the privilege to do those things. Some stick to words, but many lash out violently. 

 

Yet this stack of folders are the ones who took the actual step towards whatever the fuck AA is trying to do. Becoming an international terrorist is not an easy thing to do, even for the most angry, resentful man. After all, why bother joining a dangerous terrorist organization when it’s perfectly easy to get away with simple violence at home or follow her path and do violence abroad?

 

You know, maybe Robert is right. I made a mistake taking you on.

 

The memory jolts, making her lose her train of thought. Her wrapped up fingers ache. She shakes her head, trying to redirect her attention back to the board. 

 

It’s frustrating working through these philosophy problems herself. A whole year dedicated to fighting AA and she really knows nothing about them and why they do anything that they do. 

 

They never talk about why AA is the American Annihilators. Hating America is not a special or unique belief. One need only look at the Middle East to see that. It’s not even that powerful of a sentiment, considering America’s massive and violent influence over the world. In fact, if anyone were to put in the slightest bit of effort, they could find any number of people who want to destroy America. 

 

But it’s not a strong enough or coherent enough sentiment that would drive people terrorism. Annihilate is a strong and specific word and all the members being from America, seems to imply something personal. 

 

Even as she wonders, it's not hard to find the obvious but unsatisfying answer. 

 

All her members have turned to AA because they hate what they think America is or is going to be or they’ve done something that results in America in some form rejecting them, so they reject it back. 

 

In the first camp, the Marine who rails violently against progressive social change, a farmer fighting the local government about zoning laws that threaten his land, all kinds of white supremacists and neo-nazis and KKK members who never moved past their loss in the Civil War. 

 

In the other camp, a cop who loses his status for acting like a criminal, a quarterback who is crippled and incapable of playing and a long list of men who are cheated on or abandoned or have their heart broken by women with other opportunities.

 

All these grudges and indignities and hurt feelings have somehow made a terrorist organization. 

But what do they want to annihilate? The American way of life, whatever that it is? The government? The military? The very concept of America? Their own inadequacies? 

 

That’s where she keeps hitting the wall. All she can find is these men didn’t get what they want, so they want to ensure no one else does either, which feels like flimsy reasoning for a group who claim to want to be annihilators. 

 

Sure these men want some violence, some destruction, some retribution but complete and utter oblivion of their home feels like an overreaction. 

 

Virginia skimmed the essay again, knowing she won’t find the answer. 

 

These men don’t have everything, but they have something, even their losses don't end all be all, but it seems they’d still rather kill everything off, then allow themselves to face any sort of negative treatment or consequences or loss, deserved or not. 

 

You’ve lost sight of the fight which is confronting JT and AA here and now, not worrying about where the members have come from and where he’ll get more. 

 

Virginia shook her head. She was getting lost in the abstract. Eric did not care about why they were killing people. He did not care what made a boy like Brett Paper so unhappy he wanted to kill people. He just wanted to know where Brett was. 

 

She turned away from the wall and picked up a folder of Brett’s travel records. She skimmed it more out of obligation to check than any belief she’d find something. 

 

She tags trips to a *small town* in Saudi Arabia four separate times, before she pauses and doubles back. Of course Brett’s family would have some contact with Saudi Arabia, they’re entire fortune was wrapped up there, but…

 

Virginia throws aside the papers to dig out the travel itineraries for the trips. She finds the four plus five other trips to the same location the next year. She pins them all up side by side and compares. 

 

There’s differences, but every single trip has one stop in *small town* right near the border of Kuwait and Iraq. A place where civilians, especially American civilians should not be. Unlike other events on the itinerary, there are no details about where exactly the family stays there and what they do. 

 

Virginia knows she’s seen this location before. She digs up one of her many timelines of all the dates and locations they know JT or any of his members have been to. It takes her much too long with only one hand, but finally she finds it.

 

Only six months after Brett’s family dies, member TX reports that he and JT stopped in that town to speak to some executives about investments into one of the many oil start ups. 

 

They had long shrugged off the location as non-starter because it seemed to be a temporary stop but now with concrete connections of American civilian with property in the area and the fact that Paper is from Texas, well she’s fucking got him. 

 

The plans whirls in her head. This was more than enough evidence to get more details about the Paper’s business, including the addresses of any property or locations they own, specifically in Saudi Arabia. 

 

After all, if Virginia was a unhappy, impulsive, intelligent kid who just killed her family and burned down her family home, she’d find a new one in a place the American government can’t get to. And how convenient for JT, to get some built in hiding spots in an area the American military can’t just go poking around without serious consequences. 

 

The realization lit something up in Virginia. Weeks of endless toil and dismissal and hundreds of headaches and papercuts all finally meant something. Her search through history wasn’t just a pointless look back.

 

Maybe Abigail was right, things were finally looking up. 

 

~~~

 

Virginia works through the night putting together a memo about Brett Paper and getting together a more formal request for all the records from Paper’s business. 

 

She doesn’t realize just how long she’s been working until she leans back in her chair and catches a glance of the clock on the wall. It was 3:33am. 

 

“Fuck,” she mutters to herself. So much for getting any sleep. With Abigail back on her side, she had been planning on swinging by and sleeping on one of the available beds, but now it was way too late to wake her  up. She’d have to settle for one of the empty offices.

 

She stretched in the seat and stared up at the ceiling, just existing. To be this still and unbothered was a privilege she didn’t get all that often these days. 

 

What are you doing here, Title Wilson?

 

Virginia jolts back up and looks around. She feels silly when she realizes she’s alone. 

 

She scrubs her face with a sigh. She really needed to sleep. She already hears too many voices to add in sleep deprivation hallucinations too. 

 

She locks her nearly completed memo and the more important paperwork in one of her desk drawers. She doesn’t need to risk any ‘pranks’ destroying her work. She’ll have to type it up tomorrow. Then she leaves.

 

The halls are as empty as they get on a military base with only the men on night duty out and about. Luckily the few she passes by lean more dismissive then antagonistic towards her so they leave her alone. 

 

It’s not until she turns the corner to meet a trio of men who must be coming back from the bars off base, laughing and talking, that she has a problem. She recognizes them immediately as the pilot and his two friends who harassed her a few weeks ago in the cafeteria. 

 

She immediately spins on her heel, hoping they’re too drunk to notice her or she can get away before they try and engage her. 

 

“Boys, look who it is!” The pilot croons, making Virginia freeze. “Title Wilson, in the flesh.” 

 

Come on, Virginia, stop cowering and fucking fight back for once. 

 

Virginia stops. Her one good hand tightens into a fist. She really shouldn’t do this. She should really duck her head and retreat, but she’s fucking exhausted of just enduring. 

 

“You up doing the rounds? If I had known I would have stuck around instead of settling for some dumb whore off base.” 

 

Virginia turns around to face the trio. She inspects them. The pilot looks like a discount Tom Cruise and even shabbier with the dirt of the desert and the grime of the bar all over his rumpled uniform. Right hand man is short and squat, with flat blonde hair and a patchy five o’clock shadow. Left hand man is the tallest of the three and is as skinny as a pole, but hunches in on himself. 

 

“You may not look like much,” the pilot continued, “but at least I know you speak English. The whores out there might be cheap but you gotta be hands on to make sure they do what you want.” He mimes out what he means. 

 

Right hand man cackles loudly, slightly swaying on his feet, clearly the drunkest. Left hand man chuckles a little bit, but looks everywhere besides Virginia. 

 

Virginia just gives them an unimpressed look. “Considering that’s the only way you’ll get any woman to touch your dick, I would be a little more grateful for their willingness to do so. I hope you tipped them for the displeasure.”

 

“No, I had to save a few dollars for you.” The pilot jeered. “I bet that’s more than what most people give you.”

 

Virginia scoffed. “My actual job fighting terrorists pays me just fine, thanks, though I’d take the money to make up for the seconds I’m wasting standing here enduring your presence.” 

 

The pilot clearly did not like that. “Who’d you stop by now that Title Jackson has cut you off? I highly doubt you’re anyone’s first choice, but you know what they say, a hole's a hole.” 

 

They all laugh again. 

 

“Unlike you three, I’ve been working.” 

 

“Your knees must really hurt then.” Right hand man jokes badly. 

 

Virginia rolls her eyes instead of responding. 

 

“You know Wilson,” the pilot takes a few steps closer to her, “this standoffish, frigid, pretend bad ass look is silly. We all know why Jackson keeps you around, you don’t need to lie.”

 

Virginia refuses to back away. She meets his leer head on. “Oh and why is that?”

 

“What?”

 

“Why exactly does Eric keep me around? I know everyone has their theories. I think it’s the seven confirmed kills I have, as well as the massive amounts of intel I’ve gathered.” 

 

The trio stares at her confused. 

 

“I mean if I’m fat and ugly and annoying and stupid and whatever other adjectives Robert has fed you why keep me? I have no doubt there’s plenty of other pretty girls who’d happily suck his dick and be better at it. So why waste time with me?”

 

None of them seem to have an answer. 

 

“Wow,” Virginia laughed at their silence, “it seems my incredibly basic logic has broken your brains. What a surprise.” 

 

The pilot seems to catch up. “Whatever value do you have otherwise? What value do bitches like you have if not to be fucked?” The insult barely landed, he’s just saying aloud what’s been implied for weeks. 

 

“Strong words for a pilot who has been grounded for the last month.” She may not connect well with people, but she’s observant and it’s clear the pilot hasn’t been much of one lately. “Maybe you’re the one sucking dicks to be kept around.” 

 

“You fucking…” The pilot lunges, clumsily. Virginia doesn’t even bother stepping back. Even with a messed up hand she could have this fucker on his face in half a second. He just needed to swing first and she’d have all the excuse she needed. 

 

The drunk guy hollers in encouragement. 

 

“David!” The taller guy grabs him, half pulling him back and half keeping him on his feet. “Jesus, man, chill out.”

 

“That little bitch is calling me a fag. I should knock her teeth out.”

 

“I’d like to see you try.” Virginia taunted. 

 

David tries to lunge again, but the tall guy holds him back, glancing at Virginia and then leaning in close to mutter something in his ear. The very drunk right hand man watches stupidly. 

 

She watches them wearily. She should have known this was the natural conclusion of the kind of rumors Robert has been spreading. It only takes one man to try and prove the truth of the rumors and get angry when she doesn’t spread her legs. 

 

“Fine, fine.” David agreed, nodding. The tall guy seems to double check for agreement and then lets him go. “I can wait.” 

 

“Wait for what?” The drunk man interrupts, clearly annoyed at the lack of fight. 

 

“You’ll see.” David cuts him off and turns to leer at Virginia. “You’ll have to watch your back, Wilson. As I said, this frigid bitch act is getting old real fast and people are getting impatient. It won’t be too long until we stop asking and just…take it.” 

Something sharp jumps in her chest, but it’s not fear. It’s fury. It’s a burning desire to see their blood on her knuckles and their faces under her feet. They’ve been playing a game of words and insults, and suddenly Virginia wants to prove while she’s not a slut, she is a crazy bitch. 

 

She considers just for a second, attacking. She’s been so beaten down and abused these last few weeks, that suddenly all she wants to do is make them hurt like she’s been hurting. It’d be easy, too easy. 

 

Her wrapped up fist won’t curl though, so the idea gets snuffed like a match light. Instead she snorts in dismissal and says, “if you’re what I’m supposed to be afraid of I’m not too worried.” 

 

And before Virginia could overthink it, instead of retreating she forces her way past the men. Surprisingly, they move out of her way.  

 

It’s odd, she’s not afraid of them for all the ways they remind her of Brows and Nose. Maybe she should be, three on one odds aren’t great for whatever they’re planning, but after the things she’s done, the things she survived, they’re nothing. 

 

“Have a good night, gentlemen.” She calls over her shoulder and doesn’t look back. Whatever they’re planning, she can more than handle it. 

 

~~~

 

The worst thing about her home was the way it screamed. At all times, daylight, night time it sounded like people were in the walls and the floors struggling to escape. The ghosts of history shook the boards and the foundation and all the living could do was ignore it. 

 

Virginia had given up sleeping or maybe she had never tried, because right now she was standing at the window of her small room and watching the surrounding desert. 

 

It was cold, the oxymoron of the desert. It oppressed you with heat in the day and froze you to death at night. So dependent on the sun it was completely shaped and defined by those forces outside. An observation that felt…

 

“I had everything, but that just meant I could never be what I was.” 

 

Virginia turned around. A sixteen year old boy stood in the room, watching her. His black, greasy hair hung in eyes and his clothes were too big for him. 

 

“What?” Virginia asked, not sure what to do with this stranger who isn’t a stranger. 

 

“It was there in the distance. I could see it.” The boy flicked open a lighter with blue and red stripes. The tiny flame somehow lit up the whole room. “The thing I most wanted.” The shadows were as oppressive as the light. 

 

“Brett Paper? What are you doing?” She realized. 

 

“All that was in the way was everything I had.” The words sound rote in his mouth, like he’s reading his story aloud. 

 

A man steps out of the shadows and rests his hand on Brett’s shoulder. “Let’s annihilate it all then.” The reddish light bounces off JT’s gorgeous white teeth as he cackles. 

 

Brett Paper drops the lighter and the room explodes in flame. 

 

The heat hurts and Virginia’s not sure how she manages it, but the window opens into a door. She throws herself out and tries to shut it on the fire, but it’s gone as soon as she tries to slam it and all she can hear is JT’s laugh. 

 

Facing retreat or death, she turns and runs, the fire hot on her heels. 

 

She slides down the neverending halls, crashing into walls and clipping her shoulder on corners. The fire nips at her heels and everytime she looks back all she sees is red, so she just keeps going. 

 

Virginia looks back and accidentally takes a corner too sharp and cuts her shoulder on a bent panel. Blood keeps staining the white walls. She doesn’t stop. She can’t cry out and risk choking on smoke. She leaves a path of blood behind her and the flame takes to it like its gas, accelerating its pursuit of her. She can hear her blood sizzle in the flame. 

 

Your pain and suffering is a lesson you must learn, Virginia. It will bring your redemption.

 

She wants to scream a denial, but she knows it’s useless. The words will never change. Her mother’s advice will always attempt to make her pain mean something, even when it’s only meaning is pain.  

 

She makes it to the center staircase, the Jackson family portrait looking down on her in judgment. She stumbles down the stairs. 

 

“Is that it?” She jerks back to look at the portrait. Eric stares out at her, immune to the flames. “Come on, Virginia, stop cowering and fucking fight back for once.”

 

Flames come from every direction. Every window, every doorway, the fire blocks her. She stands in the middle, surrounded on all sides. She wants to fight, but there’s no enemy, there’s no way. You can’t fight this kind of utter destruction. 

 

So she runs from Eric, his expectations, his disappointments, his judgment. 

 

She bursts through the front door, not an escape, but a path to another door. She scrambles for the door knob and twists it open even as it burns her hands. She goes in and slams the door behind her. 

 

Virginia turns to find the trio all dressed like the members of AA she’s been investigating. 

 

The tall one wears a factory uniform and clutches the hammer to his chest, but he cowers in the corner, just watching. 

 

David wears a football jersey and swings a bat. “You think we’ll help you?”

 

“You think we want you saved from the flames?”  The drunk one aims Caesar’s gift at her and wears the wrong military uniform. 

 

“We all want you annihilated.” There’s only three people speaking, but she can hear dozens of voices. The same ones that whispered about her, that muttered the rumors, that say she’s nothing. 

 

They take a step towards her. “And we’ll do it ourselves.” 

 

But Virginia is tired of being afraid. She’s tired of being prey. She’s tired of pretending the men surrounding her aren’t as dangerous as her enemies.

 

So, she charges at them. 

 

They scatter before she can hurt them and suddenly she is the one falling through a window, into the murderous river that surrounds her home, that keeps her trapped. 

 

Virginia is underwater. For a second it’s relief from the heat and the flames, but when she tries to  breath and chokes on water instead, she remembers. She can die just easily down here as she could up there.

 

Both sides are trying to kill her. 

 

Virginia drowns. She can see nothing but shadows in the water above her. She kicks and scrambles, but the water presses her down. She can’t quite reach the surface. She reaches for nothing. She’s never had anything to hold onto. 

 

Then there’s a hand reaching out and someone pulls Virginia out of the water, she dangles shaking and gasping, held up only by intertwined fingers. 

 

Virginia looks up. Eric looks down. 

 

“I know what you are.” He said, but it’s Robert’s words. 

 

It’s like reading a script. The question with a million answers. The question everyone but her seems capable of answering. “What am I?” 

 

“You’re not fighting hard enough,” Eric lets her go.

 

It’s no surprise she falls back into the water. 

 

She can hear the crashing of the waves and a familiar whisper she knows she will know, but doesn’t now. You’re not listening and it’s killing you. You’re not seeing and it’s cutting pieces off of you. Then the water engulfs her. 

 

Her question echoes. 

 

Virginia knows what she is. She’s surrounded. She’s alone. She’s furious.  

 

Her allies are her enemies. Her enemies are lying in wait. Her supposed home is besieged. She’s not good enough to figure out whatever mystery is dogging her. She’s let herself be held down by mere words. 

 

She’s nothing but the next fight and so far she’s failed to fight it. 

 

She’s defeated and she only has herself to blame. 

 

~~~

 

Virginia snaps awake just as she twists off the couch and crashes onto the floor. She wakes too late to do anything but brace. “Fuck,” she curses. Her bruises are going to have bruises after that fall.

 

She reorients herself to whatever office she found and gets up. The dream is already fading, but the feeling of flame and fury simmer in her chest. 

 

Her dreams, when she remembers them, have never been anything but obvious. This one is especially on point. She’s stuck in between two worlds and people that equally want to kill her. JT burns her and her allies drown her. Everyone else just wants to watch her die. 

 

Thanks subconscious. 

 

Eric is right though, she’s lost sight of the fight. Specifically the one she’s been pretending isn’t on the homefront. Because she was supposed to be fighting one on base, against the trio and Robert and all those gossiping bitches and all the men who think she doesn’t belong here, but instead of fighting it, she’s surrendered. 

 

After all, she’s spent the last few weeks acting like a kicked puppy, ducking her head and hiding behind corners. She’s let Robert win whatever war he’s waging on her by failing to fight back. She’s allowed all the poisonous words and cruel rumors to fly and pick her apart. She assumed everyone on base was playing for the same team and forgot no one was ever really on her side.

 

She’s enabled her suffering as much as she’s endured it. She’s let men like the trio think she’s easy prey and let Robert say whatever he wants with no pushback or disagreement. 

 

So, Virginia shakes the dream off, she stops simmering, steels herself and braces for the fight.

 

Virginia finds Robert in the cafeteria, surrounded by two young fawning girls in uniforms. 

 

Her first step is this, try and stop it all at the source. This war has been escalating and she’s ignored it. The trio’s threats were the most obvious sign. Robert was never going to end with insults and cruel rumors, his words are directing people towards a target. 

 

Robert doesn’t even glance in her direction when she enters, just keeps muttering to the blonde girl on his right. The other girl, a brunette, leans in desperately trying to stay involved. 

 

The blonde laughs obnoxiously loud when Robert finishes whatever he is saying, making Robert smirk and the brunette force a laugh. The brunette tries to say something, but Robert and the blonde ignore her. 

 

“You know no matter how loud you laugh, he’s not going to fuck you right?” Virginia interrupts. 

She knows it’s a low blow and a dangerous one, but Robert has been playing much dirtier. 

 

She’s never been one to weaponize someone’s sexuality against them but this is Robert and if she’s going to do this she’ll take whatever ammo she has. 

 

The blonde and brunette swivel so quickly to look at her, she wonders how they don’t break their necks. “What?” They ask in sync.

 

Robert finally looks at Virginia, unimpressed. 

 

“You’re not his type. Neither of you.” Virginia explained. There’s a flash of fear in Robert’s eyes. She leans in close to them, but stares at him. “You’re too old.” She’ll stick to Eric’s story, at least for now. 

 

Both women burst into denials. Robert frowns, shifting his hands from where he must have been resting them on their thighs and such. 

 

“Right Robert? We were just talking about it with Eric, remember?”

 

Robert goes stone cold. “Alright ladies. As nice as this is, it seems Title Wilson really needs my attention.” 

 

The women seem posed to argue, but Robert slides out from in between them without any other kind of acknowledgment. “Well Gin, you wanted my attention.” He stands in front of her. “Want to go somewhere a little more private?” The implication is loud and everyone is pretending not to watch.

“Actually, no. I’ll say what I have to say right here, in public. Everyone can get it straight from the source instead of the whispers.” 

 

“Oh?” Virginia might have been imagining it but there was a spark of nervousness in Robert’s eyes. 

 

“Whatever problem you have with me being Title Jackson’s so-called favorite, you don’t need to worry about it anymore. I know you’ve been jealous, but I think if you talk to him, you’ll be much more warmly welcomed than me.”

 

Robert seems shocked. This is what Virginia should have been doing this whole time.  She’s never been good at slippery silent social conventions and implications, but the blunt truth was her one weapon she has so far failed to utilize. 

 

“I don’t know…”

 

“Also the rumors you’ve been spreading about the two of us sleeping together are inappropriate and false. I’m sleeping with Title Jackson as much as you are,” she lets the words sit for a bit, “which is not at all of course.” 

 

“Of course.” Robert agrees instantly, glaring at her. 

 

“I would also ask you to stop talking about my sex life generally. I don’t sleep with men I work with and unlike many of the men on this base, I don’t have time or the ability to go off base and find pleasure there.”

 

Robert glances around nervously. “I…”

 

“Maybe you could talk about yours instead,” Virginia tried to sound helpful, “I imagine those women you keep flirting with would love to know what you’re looking for.” 

 

Robert grits his teeth instead of answering. She wonders if he would take a swing at her in the crowded cafeteria. 

 

“Now if that’s settled, I have a lead that might result in something. So I better get back to that.” 

 

Virginia turns around to leave, but Robert reaches out and grabs her wrist, making her freeze. He leans into her ear and hisses, “this is not how you win the game, Gin.”

 

Virginia scoffs. He’s been making her life hell for the last few weeks and the minute she fights back there’s rules.

 

“I am not playing a game, Robert.” She mutters back. “What you’re doing, it’s going to have consequences. The things you whisper and imply, they’re not just words. They’re going to spill blood and right now, I’m making sure it’s not mine.” 

 

Robert smirks. “Who knew it only takes a few words to scare you Gin. Guess you’re not as strong as Eric seems to think.”

 

“And either you’re stupid or you know exactly what you’re doing telling everyone I’m a slut.”

 

“Oh?” Robert looks curious. 

 

“You know what men do when you keep telling them they can have something when they can’t?” Virginia yanked her wrist out of his grip. He lets her go. “They take it.” 

 

“Words are just words, Gin.” Robert shrugged. “A little bit of gossip is just that.” The knowing gleam in his eye indicates he does know what she’s saying. He knows just how he’s setting everyone up against her. 

 

“Well, spread this word; don’t fuck with me, because I’m done turning the other cheek.” 

 

 “Will do, Gin.”

 

Virginia nodded and then turned and left. It was all she could do. 

 

~~~

 

Virginia’s fervent and loud denial is finally taken seriously, but instead of tamping down the whispers, it elicits new ones. She has to give Robert credit, ‘Title Wilson is actually a dyke’ makes the rounds much quicker than those of her being a slut. She wondered if she should be worried about the speed of it. 

 

She rounds the corner, ignoring the way a group of her roommates go silent at her appearance. Thinking she’s a lesbian must be a lot less fun then thinking she’s a slut. Based on their glares they must be counting up all the times they had changed in front of her. 

 

Lucky for them, her Catholicism holds strong and self preservation always has her averting her eyes and keeping her head ducked anytime she’s in the proximity of a woman in a sports bra. 

 

And none of them are her type anyway.

 

She gives them all a polite nod that has them scrambling away. She sighs once they’re gone. 

 

She can’t help but feel Robert planned it this way. Spread the rumors she’s a slut who will open her legs not just for a promotion but for any scrap of attention she can get and when she starts denying the offers, use the denial as a jumping point to brand her a dyke. Because if she’s not a slut, she must be a lesbian.

 

Unfortunately her name and dyke has made its rounds enough times that it’s mostly lost its sting, though that’s never made it easier for her to deny it. 

 

“Gina,” Abigail greets as soon as Virginia opens the door, somehow knowing she’s there even with her back to the door.

 

“Virginia!” Sydney leans around Abigail and waves from where she sits on the bed. “Hi!” She waves. It’s a familiar, nostalgic scene. For a minute Virginia can pretend these last horrible few months haven’t happened and the three of them are just hanging out, shooting the shit. 

 

“Sydney, it’s been a bit.” Virginia cringes a bit at the memory of their last meeting. She had been a bit of a mess.

 

“A bit, yeah.” Sydney just smiles, seeming to remember as well. “You look like you’re doing better though.” 

 

“I am. I’m actually here to get this off.” Virginia waved her wrapped up hand.

 

“Yikes, how’d you do that?” 

 

Virginia wondered for a minute if Abigail put Sydney up to asking the question, but realized she was probably just being paranoid. “Don’t put your hand where people walk.”

 

Sydney laughed, but it sounded fake. 

 

“What are you doing here?” Virginia asked, before either could try and follow up.

 

“Just the usual, filling up my first aid kit and getting the gossip from Abigail. She’s refusing to tell me what is up with her and the weapons heir.” Both Virginia and Abigail tense. Sydney doesn’t seem to notice, continuing obliviously, “Nat and I have been off base dealing with insurgent groups in ***, so I’m behind.”

 

“Oh, heard anything good?” Virginia regrets the questions as soon as she asks it. The only new gossip is which gender she sleeps with.

 

Abigail and Sydney both seem to think this, exchanging looks and then grimaces when they realize Virginia noticed. It pisses her off that they couldn’t even pretend they hadn’t heard.

 

“Ah,” Virginia nodded, she tried to ignore how much it hurt that the two people she liked on base were talking about her, “so you’ve heard. Honestly it’s better than rumors that I'm sleeping with Eric, so I’ll take it.”

 

Abigail winces at the reference. Sydney jumps to reassure her, “Virginia, I’m sorry, we weren’t…” 

 

“It’s fine.” Virginia cut her off. 

 

Sydney continued to push it. “We were just worried…” 

 

“Worried I’m a lesbian or sleeping my way up the chain?” Virginia snaps. 

 

“Neither.” Sydney paused and reconsidered. “Well more the second one. The first is…” Sydney trailed off. 

 

Virginia picks up for her. “Is not as bad as saying I’m sleeping with my CO, which I’m not, in case you were wondering. I’m not sleeping with anyone, man or woman and it seems to be pissing a lot of people off.”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian.” Sydney suddenly snaps. 

 

Virginia startles back, surprised by Sydney’s admanent and random defense of her kind. Even Sydney seems to realize she said too much, snapping her mouth shut. Abigail glances between the two of them wearily. 

 

“I know.” Virginia shrugged, trying to seem casual. “Better a lesbian than a slut in my book, means they can’t accuse me of sleeping my way up, considering the lack of women in the upper ranks.”

 

Virginia notices no one in the room, including herself, denies the accuracy of the word. She wonders if she should, but she sees the way Sydney is fidgeting awkwardly and Abigail is watching her carefully and decides to save the denials for people she needs to convince. She's an awful liar after all. 

 

“Better neither.” Abigail interrupted. “It’s shitty what Robert is saying and I’m sorry we decided to further his bad behavior by discussing it.”

 

“I appreciate that and I would like to not discuss it again, if that’s alright. I’m having a hard enough time dealing with everyone else.”

 

Abigail and Sydney agree immediately. 

 

The conversion goes a little smoother from then on, focusing on Abigail’s more harmless anecdotes about other patients and Sydney’s updates about the insurgents she and Natasha have been tracking down. 

 

Virginia doesn’t have much to say considering she’s spent the last few weeks confined to base rifling through documents and maps and reports and memos, but it’s nice to talk about something besides AA.

 

Then Abigail leaves to grab the supplies she needs to dismantle Virginia’s split and Sydney is moving from the bed she had settled onto Virginia’s side.

 

Virginia tenses, the sudden, close proximity freaking her out just a bit. Especially considering their previous discussion.

 

“The insurgents we’ve been tracking,” Sydney leans in close to mutter in her ear, “they have your gun. I can tell. Even worse though, they have shitty aim so I couldn’t get any casings. Any updates on Oscar?”

 

Fucking Oscar Rodriguez. Virginia tried to remember if she knew what he had been up to while they had been digging through and sorting intel. Besides terrorizing Abigail, no answer came to mind. In fact, she hasn’t seen him since her discovery of Abigail’s bruises, weeks ago. She only knows he’s still on base because of the rumors about him and Abigail. 

 

She cursed herself for not being more observant and proactive. She had the perfect opportunity to watch him and instead she wasted it hiding and moping. 

 

“Not really” Virginia scoffed, as angry with Oscar as she is with herself for not even keeping an eye on his movements, “I’ve been dealing with some other stuff.”

 

Abigail came back into the room, muttering about bandages and supplies before Sydney could answer. She shot Virginia a look before going back to her bed. The movement catches Abigail’s attention and she eyes them suspiciously. 

 

“How long does it take to find something to cut this?” Virginia asked, waving her wrapped up fingers and clumsily trying to redirect her attention. 

 

Abigail doesn’t buy it, but seems to let it go. “Considering it’s been a bit since I’ve had a patient whose fingers had been stomped on I had to dig through storage for it.”

 

Virginia repressed a wince at the memory her words evoked. 

 

“Well as wonderful as it is to catch up, I was supposed to meet Natasha about fifteen minutes ago.” Sydney grabbed the first aid she had long since packed up. She held it up in a clumsy salute in Abigail’s general direction. “Thanks.” 

 

“Don’t use it all at once.” Abigail warned good-naturally. 

 

“I’ll make it last a week at least. See you!” Then Sydney was gone. 

 

Abigail focused her attention on Virginia. “Now, let’s get this off. I’m surprised you tolerated it as long as you did. The full five weeks.” She took Virginia’s wrapped up hand and began preparing it for removal or whatever nurses did. 

 

“I can do paperwork with one hand, so no reason to push it.” 

 

“Hm. Five weeks without a fight, I’m impressed.” 

 

“I’ve become a pacifist.” Virginia said solemnly. 

 

Abigail snorted. 

 

They sat in silence, Abigail slowly taking apart the splint.

 

“You know,” Abigail started carefully, “if any of the rumors Robert is spreading are true, I’d be the last person to judge you.”

 

Virginia tensed, not liking the direction of this conversation. She can only imagine what it would be like for Abigail, who is clearly in love with Eric to hear about him sleeping with some young, random girl when he hasn’t so much as patted Abigail’s arm.

If Virginia were in the same boat, she’d certainly alternate between judging the girl and despairing as to why she is not good enough. 

 

“I’m not sleeping with Eric,” Virginia decides to clarify. 

 

“I know, I meant if any of them were true. It’d be fine.” 

 

Virginia side-eyes her. Abigail clearly believes her about Eric. She’s not how she wants to address the other one. “Any of them?” 

 

“Any of them,” Abigail affirmed, pausing long enough to look up and meet Virginia’s eyes. “I’d also hope if you’re sleeping with anyone, you’d trust me enough to tell me.”

 

“I’m not. I’m not sleeping with anyone. That’s not a lie.” 

 

“I know. You’re a shit liar.” Abigail pulled off the splint, exposing Virginia’s fingers. “But you haven’t denied the other one.” 

 

“The one calling me…” Even ten years later the word gets stuck in her throat. 

 

It had driven Willow insane, Virginia’s inability to refer to herself as dyke. It was what she was after all and treating it as a dirty word, as an insult was only doing a disservice to all the women who proudly claimed it. 

 

But most of those women didn’t have it almost carved into her skin by a duo of psychopaths. So she thought she deserved a little hesitation with the word. 

 

Abigail made a noise of acknowledgement, making Virginia realize exactly what perilous ground she was walking on. 

 

“What happened to don’t ask, don’t tell, Gail?”

 

“I’m not asking anything, and you’re not telling me.” Abigail shrugged, taking Virginia’s now exposed hand. She massaged each finger, feeling Virginia’s bones. “I just wanted to tell you how much I care about you and that you can trust me with anything.”

 

It’s clearly an invitation to share, to pour her secrets out to Abigail and as much as Virginia longs to share, she bites her tongue, mostly by instinct.

 

Abigial is asking for the one thing Virgina hasn’t been forced to give up to her. After all, Abigail already has JT, she has Virginia’s nightmares, her inability to breathe, her drama with Eric and Robert and everyone on base. She can’t have everything. Especially this. She already has too much. What’s left of Virginia’s heart can’t take the risk.

 

And with Oscar in the picture, Virginia can’t totally trust her. 

 

“I trust you, so trust me when I say it’s just Robert grasping for straws.” It’s not a lie outright or even a denial, but it’s what she can give. 

 

Abigail inspects her and Virginia meets her eyes as steady as possible. After a minute she nods and lets Virginia go. She can’t tell if Abigail believes her or not. 

 

“You’re all good to go then.” Abigail declares, backing away. “Take it easy on the fingers, but you’ll probably want to start using them to rebuild the muscle up.”

 

“I guess I can start writing memos with my right hand again.” Virginia flexed her newly freed hand. 

 

“That’s one way to do it.” Abigail turned away, packing up the remains of the splint. “Now get out of here, I got things to do.”

 

“Thanks Gail. For everything.” Virginia tries to embed all her feelings in the words. She can never tell how much Abigail means to her, how much she already has of her, but she can thank her. She can do this. 

 

Abigail smiles and she seems to understand. She reaches out and squeezes Virginia’s shoulder. “Of course, stay out of trouble, Gina.”

 

“Me? Trouble? Never.”

 

~~~

 

“Title Wilson, how nice of you to finally stop by.” Title Bird, the menace of the mailroom, called as soon as Virginia walked through the door. He seemed to have decided the newer guys in the mailroom were too nice to Virginia, so the last few times she had stopped by he made sure to inconvenience her as much as he could. 

 

His hovering and bureaucracy had been one of the many reasons Virginia had not checked her mail in the last month at least. But Sydney’s new discovery about a certain weapons company reminded her of the letters she had been waiting on from Caesar. 

 

So here she was, suffering Bird’s clucking and lectures for some letters. “Title Bird, I didn’t know you missed me. No eyes today I hope?”

 

He goes white at the remainder of that delightful package. “No,” he scuttles off to presumably gather her mail, “just multiple letters that have been sitting here for weeks while you’ve been busy cavorting around base.” He yells over his shoulder as he sorts through stacks of paper, 

 

“Cavorting?”

 

Bird eyes her suspiciously over a stack of letters. “I don’t need to tell you what you’ve been up to in the night, Title Wilson.” 

 

Virginia bites her tongue, telling herself picking a fight in the mailroom will only end with who knows how many papercuts. 

 

Finally, Bird seems to have gathered her a whole stack of four letters and comes back to where she waits at the counter. 

 

Virginia reaches out for them, but Bird keeps them out of her reach. He reaches for a clipboard instead. “Before I hand these over I need you to confirm who these are from and that they are addressed to you and contain no treasonous and inappropriate content.”

 

“Doesn’t every letter have to go through a censor?”

 

“Sure, but if the letters are not going through proper channels they’re not being checked.” 

 

Virginia stared at him in disbelief. “So you want me to open my mail right here and describe the content?”

 

“Yes ma’am, begin by identifying the sender, your relationship, and then tell me a brief summary of the contents of the letter.” Bird picked up a pen and held it over the clipboard, eagerly awaiting. 

 

“Are you fucking serious?”

 

“Title Wilson,” Bird sighed, “you got eyeballs in the mail we couldn’t track anywhere. I’m sorry our precautions are inconvenient.” 

 

“I got eyeballs months ago and I’ve picked up mail before this without interrogation.”

 

“It’s a procedure Title Jackson implemented himself.” 

 

The mention of Eric pisses her off. They haven’t spoken since he fucked up her hand. She knew they both probably needed a few days of cool off, but five weeks was ridiculous. She knew an apology from him was probably an impossibility, but a complete lack of acknowledgement after what she’s done for him, what she’s endured for his cause, is just cruel. 

 

And now, he won’t speak to her, but he’ll force her to disclose the contents of personal correspondence. 

 

“Well,” Virginia reached over and grabbed the stack of letters from Bird’s hand, “I’ll tell him personally he can fuck off.” 

 

“Title Wilson!” Bird squawked.

 

Virginia ignores him and leaves, her letters clutched in her hand. 

 

She very deliberately ignores thoughts of Eric, because stewing on their last interaction is only going to make her more mad and she’s exhausted from being angry all the time. Especially at the man who she had caught herself thinking of as her savior. 

 

She finally makes it to her bunk and is too busy simmering to notice that her key is not fucking working. When it doesn’t twist the first time she sticks it in, she pulls it out and flips it trying the other direction. It doesn’t work.

 

She tries it a few more times, shoving it into the lock in every direction and twisting, and nothing. Then she realizes, the key half in the lock, her roommates had locked her out. 

 

She’s almost impressed. The woman must have moved quickly to get the lock completely changed in the few hours she’s been gone. 

 

“Title Wilson,” a smirking brunette Virginia has barely exchanged two words with, appears almost out of nowhere. 

 

“Hi,” Virginia tries to not make it look obvious she’s checking the woman’s name tag, “Title Fern, when did they change the locks to the dorm?”

 

“This morning. You didn’t hear?” She asks in a tone that conveys she knows Virginia didn’t hear because she was deliberately not told. “We were supposed to pick up new keys at 1000.” 

 

“Why did they change the locks?” Virginia asked, trying not to sound too interested or surprised. 

 

“I don’t know, some of the girl’s keys have gone missing and they’re worried about perverts.”

 

Virginia ignores her emphasis on ‘perverts.’

 

“Wonderful,” Virginia mutters. God knows the hours she’s going to have to waste getting a new fucking key and the lectures she’s going have to endure, especially since she’s missed the assigned time. It’s just another night on a couch somewhere. 

 

Fern seems to want to continue whatever conversation they’re having but Virginia just doesn’t have time for whatever mean girl games she wants to play and she knows if Fern opens her mouth and starts spouting homophobic nonsense about her being predatory and dangerous, she’ll prove her dangerousness has nothing to do with her sexuality. 

 

So Virginia turns on her heel and goes. She’ll find somewhere else to read the letters. Maybe the walk will help, but the thoughts just simmer as she strides down the halls, avoiding the looks she gets. 

 

Why is it that she can’t go anywhere without someone questioning her, without someone implying she’s some kind of secret monster or traitor? 

 

The answer isn’t hard to find. Because that’s Robert’s real game, making everyone believe Virginia is not a person. She’s an insult, a slur, a danger. She is something bad and thus deserving of bad treatment.

 

They want to pretend she’s the enemy when all she’s ever done to anyone on this base is do her fucking job and keep her head down. There are people who should be scared of her and none of them are here, except maybe Oscar, which is a whole other ballgame. 

 

The anger is back and it’s making her hands shake. She had curled up her fist and crushed the letters without realizing. 

 

Even Abigail and Sydney were in on it. People that were still treating her like a person were more than aware and participating in this active campaign to destroy her life. 

 

Virginia shook her head. She was angry and she was spiraling. She needed to focus. 

 

Finally, she made her way to her office and looked over the office, finding it blissfully empty except for her work. 

 

Her murderboard had slowly filled out the last few weeks taking up most of the far open wall. She had made every connection she could to Paper and his family’s properties in Saudi Arabia and anything else she could find. She even had a promising lead on a financial advisor who had been caught embezzling even though they couldn’t figure out where the money went and he disappeared in the night with a new customer when the police came knocking on his door. 

 

She tossed the letters on the desk and closed the door, even going as far as to lock it. 

 

Once she’s sure she won’t be bothered, she flattens the letters out on her desk, all a little worse for wear from her fist, and then picks them up. 

 

The first one is from Desdemona. She discards it until she’s in a better mood to read it and respond. 

 

The second one is an update from the financial advisor Eric had insisted she hire to do something with the small sum she’s collecting, instead of just letting it sit in savings or whatever. She skims it and finds the advisor is once again questioning her judgment in sending so much money to her mother with no accountability. She rips it up and throws the pieces in trash. 

 

The third one is from Caesar and it is multiple pages long, so she sets it aside for the moment. She’ll need the focus to go through it with a fine comb, especially if he’s decided to acknowledge some of the hints she had been dropping. 

She’s so busy thinking about Caesar, it takes a second to turn her attention to the last letter. 

The handwriting hurts to look at; the squished S’s, the diagonal crosses on the T’s, the way her name is written in swooping, careful letters, but the rest of the letters are messy and lazy. 

 

She knows exactly who this is from. She swears she feels his fingers caressing her shoulders. 

 

The return address is her childhood home.

“Fuck.” She mutters, ripping the letter open. 

 

Surprise Ginny Gin! I bet you weren’t expecting to hear from me so soon, especially with how quiet we’ve been on the other front. 

 

I know you’ve been busy with research and combing through all the intel you’ve stolen from us. You clever pet. I bet it’s been so interesting and by interesting, I mean tedious and boring. After all, I know you’re most at home in a fight, not sorting through papers. Sorry to take that from you, but I’ve had my own research to do. 

 

Research is boring though. I’m as unhappy as you must be. I don’t usually even do it much these days, except when it comes to you. I’d walk the end of the earth to find out your favorite colors. Is it blue? Signs point to blue. Your bedroom was blue, but I can’t tell if that’s because your parents wanted a boy or if you requested it. You wear a blue uniform, but that’s not a choice. You don’t seem like the type to like red, even though you like to spill it. Maybe that means blood is your favorite color.

 

 I know so much more about you these days, but it’s not enough. It’s not fresh, it’s not direct. It’s whispers and deductions and implications. It’s not you in the way I want. 

 

Sorry tangent, you’re just so interesting, pet. Anyway, I was talking about research and who does it. I don’t do mine, but I bet you know that already, if you’re doing yours properly you probably know best whose doing my research don’t you, pet?

 

I like to think about all the things you’ve been learning about AA. I know you’re not getting much about me, but all those files and papers and member files must be forming some image of me and my cause in your head. 

 

Which brings me to the purpose of my letter. I know I’m early for our eighteen month anniversary, but I figured you’d appreciate the gift regardless. Something you’d actually want this time. The eyes were creative, but I highly doubt you appreciated the work I put into them. I was trying to remind you of what you’re capable of, but I feel like that’s not what you took from it. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m still learning you. 

 

Anywho, my gift. Did you know that the Civil War was the war with the highest amount of American casualties? More Americans died in the Civil War than any other war, including the big ones. I bet you’re thinking though, because I know you’re smart, pet, of course it has the highest number of dead Americans, it’s Americans fighting and killing Americans over people they had deemed property. The bodies pile up when the opposing sides are the same blood.  It’s a civil war; both sides are Americans and both sides are murderers and killers of their kind.  

 

But I’m telling you this so you can understand what I’m trying to do. I never liked history, but the one thing I learned from all those US history lessons is that the only thing that will destroy America is America itself. 

 

I have no doubt you noticed the pattern of my members. All Americans who want to annihilate America. They’re the strongest soldiers I can recruit, because unlike all these foreign groups and cells and organizations that hate us, that wish violence on us, their fight is personal and they know their enemy the only way a traitor who was once a part of it can. There is no stronger anger than the hate of the things we once loved that betrayed us. There is nothing more motivating than taking down the thing that broke us apart. 

 

Look around you and you’ll see what I mean. After all, how many monsters have we fostered in our homeland? How many enemies are in your ranks? Surrounding you on base? Sleeping in the bed next to you or even sleeping in your bed? How many of our politicians are the ones slowly poisoning their constituents with bad air, bad water, bad policies? Who has done the most amount of violence to you, Ginny? It’s none of those foreign groups we pretend not to be at war with. It’s me and many American hands.

 

Another fun fact about the Civil War is that it was that spilled blood that finally fused us into a whole country or that’s what the historians say.

 

“The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots.” Not a civil war quote, I’m pretty sure one of the founding fathers said it, but relevant all the same. Regardless, I have my patriots and we’re making the soil nice and wet. 

 

I hope my words grant you some clarity, pet. We’ll just have to wait and see what you do with them.

 

Love always and yours completely, 

 

Judas Thomas. 

 

There’s too much in the letter. The words and hints and references spin around her head, bumping into each other and bouncing off into oblivion. JT is recruiting in America because he believes that’s the easiest way to destroy it, but as to why it needs destroying still seems to be an open question. 

 

Virginia had been spending a lot of time thinking about AA and why they’re doing what they’re doing, but JT’s letter for all he seems to imply he’s explaining does little to help her figure out that little mystery. 

 

She resists the urge to crumple the letter and rip it pieces like all the other ones, but something stops her. The letter isn’t as patronizing or possessive or creepy as the other ones had been, though it has its moments (her favorite color is blue and she painted her room in high school to cover up the faded blood stains that would never quite scrub away). And if she entertained the thought, she might actually consider that JT was being as helpful as a man like him could be. 

 

He couldn’t tell her outright anything useful and he clearly enjoys watching her puzzle through things, so this is what she gets. A letter of history anecdotes as clues and shadowed warnings. 

 

Who has done the most amount of violence to you, Ginny? It’s none of those foreign groups we pretend not to be at war with. It’s me and many American hands.

 

Virginia thinks about Eric and Robert and the trio and the women who lock her out of the bunks and the men who insult and leer at her and the personnel that question her. All the AA members they’ve faced directly were American and every single one Virginia has looked into is American. And if her suspicions about Oscar are true, then the bullets are just as American. 

 

After all, how many monsters have we fostered in our homeland? How many enemies are in your ranks? Surrounding you on base? Sleeping in the bed next to you or even sleeping in your bed?

 

It scares her to think of JT plucking the thoughts right from her head and inking them to paper. Has that not been the thought that’s haunting her? She's spent the last few weeks feeling like there’s nothing but enemies in the ranks and surrounding her on base. She knows some of the more brutal of her monsters are sleeping under the same roof. 

 

Virginia carefully folds the letter up. She can’t unpack this right now, but she can’t get rid of it. 

 

Wanting to get rid of any thoughts of JT, she picks up Caesar’s letter instead. She could use some off topic ranting and complaining about the state of things and how much better everything used to be before soft-hearted liberals were in charge of it. 

 

And that’s what she gets for most of it. She skims extensive complaints about Clinton signing a law that requires buyers to pass a background check to buy a handgun that is supposedly going to crash sales for Rodriguez Weapons. Apparently all the lobbying Caesar and his lawyers had been doing failed to pay off and he’s pissed about the attorneys fees, though he’s saying they can still sue. The Supreme Court might be useful. 

 

She skips over updates about the recent fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia and considers not even bothering further reading when she sees Caesar has a whole page dedicated to Rodney King. 

 

Everything always seems to come back to Rodney King for Caesar. She’s not sure if it’s good old fashioned racism or the ability to watch the rioting on TV, but it clearly haunts Caesar. 

 

It’s an odd sticking point and one that no matter how many pages Caesar writes about the injustice of it all, Virginia can simply not agree. So she says nothing. 

 

It’s so clear the rot is coming from within. Men like Rodney King become heroes by refusing to follow the rules. The news probably wasn’t all that important, but King was arrested on a DUI just a few months ago. You figured the beating would have put any smart man on the straight path, but the enabling and encouragement afterwards has seemed to undo any lesson it could have taught him and now he’s out menacing the streets. 

 

We used to hold men like King accountable, now we give them millions and send the cops protecting people from him to jail. Weak juries hear a sob story and let any monster go free. Criminals burn down the city because things are unfair. The immigrants are flooding the borders, bringing their drugs and political problems here, while the liberals call for tolerance and beg to protect them. 

 

The president and Jackson and all their sycophants like to pretend the war is abroad, in foreign countries, but the real enemies are within. The real enemies are Rodney King and men like and people who support him. The real enemies are Americans who refuse to be American. 

 

Virginia has had enough of that word; American. What the fuck does it mean to be an American? What makes a good American? What makes a true American? 

 

Americanness is driving AA and its members to global destruction. Americanness makes everyone on base hate her for her gender, her sexuality, her existence. Americanness spills blood, its own and everyone who has the misfortune of facing it.

 

Virginia pushes away her disgust and annoyance and keeps reading.

Those people are taking over our country and making it weak. They’re diluting and giving up our power, our influence, our way of life in exchange for softness and pacifism and bullshit ideals of equality. You think the violence you see abroad is bad? Imagine an America whose own people bleed it dry and then devour the pieces. 

 

That’s what I’m fighting against here, Virginia. That’s why I can’t give you the resources you want. The war isn’t there or anywhere abroad. The war is here against our so-called people and I plan on winning it.

 

The grandiose and certainty of the words make Virginia snort. Caesar is, if anything, a drama queen. She skims the rest of the letter and finds nothing else interesting. She folds it just as she did JT’s and puts them together and considers. 

 

The parallels of Caesar’s letter to JT’s, make her a bit uncomfortable. Even worse is how much their beliefs share with her own; the war is here and the enemies are her own people, that’s been true since she put on a uniform and it’s only gotten worse because of Robert.

 

But they both had it wrong. The real enemy were the Americans that claimed they were the true victims. It’s the AA members and the people Caesar opines as so oppressed that are the ones to blame for the violence. 

~~~

 

The funny thing was Virginia had never considered she hadn’t already hit rock bottom. You’d think being a prisoner of war and being tortured for four days would be the worst things could get, but God must have thought it would be funny to let her fall past rock bottom, straight into hell. 

 

It starts with the women in her dorm. It’s such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but she knows now it was a warm up for everything else. 

 

Because she got distracted by JT and Caesar’s letter and then promptly threw herself into work to ignore all the mixed and terrible feelings their words caused, she forgot to deal with the whole being locked out thing. So when she arrived at her dorm to find she was still locked out, she did the simplest thing and picked the lock. It wasn’t hard. 

 

When she opened the door though, the women looked like she had walked in on all of them naked and having an orgy. Every scandalized and offended face turned towards her and the room went dead silent as she came in. 

Virginia sighed, already fucking exhausted and simmering with an anger that never seemed to go away these days. She gave the group a nod and then decided ignoring them was in all their best interests. She went to her bunk which is the furthest one away from all of them and turned her back on them, hoping beyond hope they’ll just leave her be. 

 

“Virginia,” Little Ms. Title Fern said, getting up from where she was in the middle of the group, holding court, “you’re not supposed to be in here. You don’t have a key.”

 

Virginia inhaled and exhaled, her fingers twitching. She very deliberately spreads them so they don’t curl into a fist. “Unfortunately,” she turns to face them, “I didn’t get a chance to grab it, but that doesn’t change the fact that my possessions are here.”

 

“Not for much longer. Someone was supposed to move them, but there doesn’t seem to be any keys that fit in your lock.”

 

“What?”

“They’re transferring you.”

“To?” She asks as calmly as possible. 

 

“I have no idea. I just know with all the rumors going around, some of the women are uncomfortable with sharing a room with you and all our superiors agreed. I think they’re moving you to one of the old bunks. Lucky you, you’ll get your own room.”

 

“The old bunks that were shut down because of shoddy construction and the lack of basic necessities, like running water and heat and air conditioning?” 

 

Fern shrugs. “I think they’re working well enough for one person.” 

 

Virginia’s hands curled into fists. “My CO didn’t mention this.”

“We didn’t think it was appropriate to bring it to him, considering, ” Fern paused and eyed her wearily, “your relationship. All the other CO’s though…”

 

“Are you fucking serious right now?”

Fern seems surprised to be questioned. “Well we didn’t…”

 

“Which one is it then? Am I sleeping with my male CO or am I lesbian?” That makes all the women shift uncomfortably in their seats. “Come on! Are y’all incapable of answering a simple question?” She moves her gaze from each woman and they all cower away instead of answering. “Which is it that has y’all exiling me?”

The women exchange more looks, all looking upset, like they’re the ones being attacked. 

 

Fern seems to find her bearings. “Virginia…”

“It’s Title Wilson, thank you.” Virginia interrupted, making Fern flinch. “God knows you wouldn’t be referring to any other superior that way and we are not friendly enough for you to have my name in your mouth, Title Fern.” 

 

That seems to get Fern riled up. “Regardless, Title Wilson, you’re being reassigned and no longer have a place here. Your entrance and presence are then violating the rules. None of us want to call a superior, so it would be best if you leave and we won’t have to.”

 

“Yeah, fine,” Virginia turns away to jimmy the lock on her safe open, it takes a few tries because her hands are shaking so bad. “I’ve never had a place here anyway.” She mutters to herself, not really meaning to say it aloud.

 

“No you didn’t.” Fern interrupted, clearly having heard it. “I don’t think there’s any place for you.”

 

Virginia fights back a flinch. The words are harsh and true and she knows that, but it hurts to hear her rejection so clearly spelled out. 

 

She looks at the very few possessions she has left, the stacks of letters, her gun, the crosses her mother gave her growing up and decides collecting them can wait until she’s sure she has a safe place to keep them. She wouldn’t be surprised if these backstabbing bitches tried to destroy her stuff instead of allowing it to be moved. 

 

Grab the gun. Her second sign things were going to go badly. The whispers were always a warning and they were never wrong. So on instinct, she grabbed her gun and slammed the locker shut. 

 

Virginia leaves, gun in hand and pride stinging. 

 

The whisper lingers over her, making her paranoid and jumpy. She goes back and tries to work. She tries to puzzle through JT’s warnings and Caesar’s ramblings. When she gives up on that, she swings by Abigail’s office and finds it empty.

 

She just wanders after that, her hand twitching towards her gun despite the fact that she’s alone as she ever is. 

 

After all, how many monsters have we fostered in our homeland? How many enemies are in your ranks? Surrounding you on base? Sleeping in the bed next to you or even sleeping in your bed?

 

I don’t think there’s any place for you. 

 

You know, maybe Robert is right. I made a mistake taking you on. Maybe you don’t belong here.

 

At some point, she finds herself standing down the hall from Eric’s office, debating, his words ringing her ears. Maybe if she could just explain, he would help her, with Robert, with the women kicking her out, with Caesar. If he could just be on her side, all of this would be okay. It could all be fixed if Eric just…

 

The realization of the solution she wants fills her with shame. Look at how low she’s fallen, waiting around for a man to fix her life, hoping that a man would take care of her, relying on a man to protect her. She was supposed to be better, she was supposed to be smarter then her mom and here she was having stupidly allowed herself to lean on a man for support and then had the floor pulled out from under her as result of it. 

 

She’s been so angry at everything, but she hasn’t been this angry with herself in a long time. She didn’t need Robert to ruin her life, she had done that herself when she put her trust and her career in a man’s hands. 

 

Unable to stand her own desperation and pathetic need, she turned on her heel and stomped away. 

 

Lack of options takes her to that gym from so many weeks ago. It’s empty and she admires it, taking in the space and trying to imagine who she had been here before that confrontation with Eric, before she had killed and tortured people and threatened children, before JT had ripped her apart and she forced the pieces of what was left of her into whatever was standing in the doorway now. 

 

Everything has always been heading this way. Virginia had just deluded herself that things weren’t that bad, that things wouldn’t always be like this, that she was supposed to be here. She had ignored the cracks under her feet and here she was lying in the destruction. 

 

What are you doing here?

 

What is she doing here? There are dozens of answers. She’s hunting JT down. She’s rooting out AA. She’s trying to destroy AA. She’s getting revenge. She’s getting justice. She’s fighting because that’s all she is, it’s all she has. She’s trying to survive. She’s trying to be a person. 

 

None of the answers fit comfortably in her mouth. There are all the justifications and demands and answers she’s been fed. Not once has she ever really considered the answer for herself, she just clung to all the answers other people could give her, because deep down she doesn’t know. 

 

All those months ago, almost eighteen to be exact, Abigail had asked her a question. 

 

What do you want Gina?

 

And she had answered. For none of this to have happened. How is her answer months later still the same?

 

Is that what she keeps coming back to? Is that why she can’t get over this anger? Is that why she can’t get her hands to stop shaking? Because she’s never been able to accept this is what life is? That this is what her life is? Torture and violence and abuse wherever she goes. 

 

Fighting AA was supposed to make her feel better, it was supposed to fix her, but instead it’s only made her worse and it’s made everything around her worse. 

 

The question then comes unprompted. What would happen if she just pretended? If she packed her shit up and left AA and JT and all this behind her? She went home and pretended none of this ever happened. She leaves him and them and everyone else here and finds a future with no connection to this part of her history. 

 

The very consideration of such a possibility, feels like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff and she can back up, stay where she is, stuck and furious and simmering, and not take the risk, or she can jump and maybe finally feel free or risk smashing into the ground.

 

Smashing on the ground, can’t be worse then how she is now. She’s in pieces already, broken by JT, hastily forced back together by rage and glued together by spite.

 

The logistics are easy to sort through. Her contract is nearly up. She’s nearly done her five years and her tours. She could find anywhere to do inactive reserves. They need Spanish speaking translators at home as much as they need Arabic ones out here. They always told her women didn’t belong out here anyway. They’d have plenty of places to hide her away. 

 

Suddenly she sees a future in front of her. She had never been one to think about the future, so bogged down by the past and barely scraping by in the present never gave her the time or desire to think of something so out of reach. But she sees it, she could find something besides the desert and blood and politics and ideals that feel so beyond her. 

 

She steps forward, past the entry way she was standing in, almost reaching for it. 

 

Turn around.

 

Virginia spins around, already pulling her gun from the holster. 

 

The warning saves her. She hears the whistling of a weapon winding up seconds after she hears the whisper and manages to twist around and bring her gun up to stop David’s shortest minion from smashing the back of head with a wrench. 

 

If he had hit her, she would have been their captive, easily. She was barely in the gym, so easy access to sneak up on her and it only had one exit that they could block off once she was disoriented if not knocked out. 

 

The block and the banging of metal on metal surprises her assailant enough that he falls back, losing momentum and power of his swing. 

 

Virginia doesn’t hesitate. She steps aside, sliding her gun out from under the pipe, causing the short man to lurch forward, his balance thrown off by her sudden stopping and then release of his weapon.

 

Virginia slams the butt of her gun on his head, knocking him out cold. He doesn’t even get a chance to cry out. She spends one second kicking him away and backing into the room, not liking the bottle neck of the door. 

 

“You fucking bitch!” David lunges at her from the left side of the doorway where he must have been hiding. They were trying to knock her out and surround her. Now what would three grown men want with one incapacitated woman? 

 

Virginia knew better than most. This was their plan then, their revenge. She wouldn’t open her legs to them, so they’re were going make her. Just like she told Robert. The realization of what they were going to do her fills her with the kind of fury she hasn’t felt since she snapped Brow’s neck. 

 

Virginia meets David’s desperate lunge with a whip of her gun across his face. He screams and collapses, his hands clutching at his now bloody face. A quick glance indicates she got his nose. 

 

The third is quicker and quieter than his friends, so she barely manages to punch him and get a kick to his knee, before he catches her with an arm around her throat and squeezes. He pulls her into his chest and holds tight. She struggles hard, scratching with one hand and trying to break his grip, but he’s got the advantage of size. She tries to stomp on his feet, but he just backs away dragging her with him. 

 

With the other hand he grabs her wrist and squeezes, trying to get her to drop the gun. Her fingers still weak from Eric’s attack give in too easily. 

 

“Just calm down,” he pants in her ear, “we’re not going to kill you or anything.” He continues to squeeze. “This is just a… misunderstanding.”

 

“Knocking me unconscious in order to gang rape me is misunderstanding?” Virginia snarls through gasps. His grip isn’t tight enough to completely cut off her oxygen intake, but she’s definitely seeing stars. She gives up clawing and drops her hands to see if she can reach anything useful in her pockets. 

 

“It was just a joke. We wouldn’t have done anything.” He sounds more desperate than she does. 

 

“If you weren’t such a crazy bitch, you’d be blacked out for it all. You wouldn’t even know it happened.” David interrupts, slowly getting to his feet but not moving his hands from his now crooked nose. “But after that fucking stunt, I think we should keep you awake. Now Paul…”

 

“David shut up!” The man holding her, Paul apparently, is too busy yelling at David to notice Virginia ducking her chin in his just slightly too loose grip and leaning forward far enough to bite his arm. He screams and she holds his flesh and uniform in her teeth until he lets her go. 

 

“She fucking bit me!” Paul staggers away, scrabbling at the fabric to examine the injury.

 

David rights himself to face her, snarling. Along with his crooked nose, there’s a bloody stripe across his right cheek. “I knew you were crazy, but this…”

 

“You knew I was a crazy bitch and you still thought this was a good idea?” Virginia turned towards David, crouching just low enough to pick up her gun. He glares at her, attempting to get to his feet. 

 

She aims her gun at his head and clicks the safety off. He doesn’t flinch. 

 

She could shoot him right now. She could kill him. Put her bullet in his forehead, his heart, except that would be too fast. Maybe instead she’d aim for the stomach or his knee so then he could live and suffer. 

 

The desire itches and her fingers twitch towards the trigger. 

 

Yet, David dumb as bricks doesn’t seem to realize her intention and it’s that lack of fear that stops her. He’s not afraid of her, he doesn’t know what she's capable of, what she’s done to men like him. He’s just fumbling to his feet, glaring, completely unaware that she’s the one allowing him each inhale, each exhale.

 

Virginia clicks the safety back on, holsters the gun, steps forwards and punches him. She feels the cartilage reshape under her fist. She feels his skin break under her fist. The blow knocks him back, but not off his feet. She punches with her other hand, it hurts and she hears his bones crack. 

 

He falls. She kicks him on the way down. 

 

She follows and straddles his chest so she can keep punching. She does it again and again. His crooked nose is barely noticeable in the pounded flesh of his face. 

 

David is saying something, but she’s not listening. No one ever listens to her during her beatings. They just expect her to bleed and endure, so David will do the same. 

 

Never let anyone say Virginia isn’t fair. 

 

Eventually David stops twitching, his face more blood than flesh. She leans back, inspecting her handiwork. “Please. Stop.” His voice is garbled and choked. He coughs blood. 

 

“What was that?” Virginia mocks, leaning in as if she couldn’t hear him. 

 

“That’s enough!” Paul has seemed to finally get his bearings or maybe the pause in David’s beating prompted his action. 

 

Virginia turns to face him and gets a wrench across her shoulder for her effort, knocking her off David. She moves with the momentum of the blow and rolls up onto her feet. The pain makes her gasp but that’s it, it hurts but nothing like she’s felt before. She twists to check the injury and finds it’s not even bleeding, just the start of a big, beautiful bruise. 

 

Injuries examined, she focuses back on Paul. She steps around David’s body slowly and carefully. There’s a lot of blood and she wouldn’t want to slip. 

 

“Stop, you’ve made your point.” Paul’s voice is shaking and he holds the wrench loosely in his hand, like he’s shocked it’s still there. 

 

Virginia cocked her head. “And what’s my point, Paul?”

 

She wonders what he sees. She must have David's blood on her face, she must have Paul’s on her lips. She can taste it, bitter and metallic on her tongue. Whoever said revenge was sweet? 

 

Paul backs away from her, like she’s the one holding the wrench. She takes a step towards him and he drops the wrench, it clatters and the room goes silent besides David’s whimpers. She flicks blood from her fists and Paul darts away.

 

He doesn’t make it far. Virginia easily catches up and pounces on him. She knees him in the stomach and shoves him back into the wall, her forearm pressed to his throat. He stares up at her terrified, totally at her mercy.

 

“What’s my point, Paul?” She asks again, louder. 

 

He whimpers instead of answering.

“That you shouldn’t knock women unconscious and rape them?” Virginia answers for him. “You think David’s learned that’s not okay, yet? Have you?”

 

“Please,” he begs, “I didn’t…It was all…”

 

“You weren’t going to rape me?” Virginia asked sweetly. “You weren’t going to force your dick in whatever part of me David let you?”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

She looks down at his terror and wonders if this is how she looked all those months ago under JT’s hand. No wonder he’s mad, to have this kind of power over someone…

“Do you know what it’s like to be violated?” She finds herself asking. 

 

Paul shakes his head desperately. 

 

“To have someone tie you down and restrain you and then do whatever the hell they want to you? Put you in a position where you can’t move, you can’t run, you can’t escape,” she slams him further into the wall on each point making him choke and his head ache, “you just have to take it, you just have to feel every humiliating and painful and violating thing anyone wants to do to you.”

 

“Please.” 

 

Virginia ignores him and continues. “They can rip your skin apart, they can force anything into your mouth, your eyes, your ears, any place you can think about, they can shock you and beat you and stab you. And all you can do is feel it. There’s no choice but death or endurance and either way it breaks you, makes you a different person.”

 

“Please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” He cries, not listening. 

 

 You should do unto others what they have done to you. Robert’s words echo in her ears. 

 

Virginia is tired of being the only one who keeps getting fucking hurt. She’s tired of being the victim. She’s tired of being a kicked puppy. She’s tired of enduring abuse for no reason but to endure it. She’s tired of being told her suffering is the only thing that can redeem her. 

 

Using her hand not holding Paul against the wall, she slides the gun out of the holster. She waves it in front of his face. He struggles harder, gasping for breath between sobs.

 

“Of course you don’t know what that's like, men like you never do. So why don’t I show you.” She forces her gun between his lips and hears it clack against his gritted teeth. His eyes bulge and he finally quiets, watching her with disbelief and finally fear. 

 

What is she then? Well she’s not a victim anymore. She’s the one holding the power. 

 

She clicks the safety off, Paul’s scream is nothing more than a pained exhale. 

 

Virginia leans in to mutter in his ear. “This is what you wanted to do to me, isn’t it? One of things I imagine.” 

 

He looks up at her with watery eyes. She adjusts her grip and presses directly on his airway, choking him until he has no choice but to open his mouth to gasp and the gun slides into his mouth between his teeth and down his throat. Her trigger gets caught on his chin. 

 

She does not look away. He goes cross-eyed trying to look at the gun. 

 

“It doesn’t feel great does it?” She mutters into his ear. She knows exactly how her breath and words feel on his face. “It’s a little different because it’s metal and it could kill you, but the intrusion, the feeling of degradation, the violation is the same.” She shifts the gun making him whine.  

 

Virginia holds it there for a few seconds and Paul finally meets her eyes, his own bulging and desperate.

 

“This is what you would have done to me. This is what you were going to let them do to me.”

 

There’s some sort of realization, some shame and paralyzing fear. He’s drooling, his mouth forced open. He tries to swallow and the movement shifts the gun. He whimpers. It must have moved and scratched his throat. 

 

“If you ever even think of touching another human like you tried to do to me tonight, I want you think about this moment, remember the cold hardness on the back of your throat, how it felt for the gun to go through your teeth, the taste of metal death, the crawling feeling of violation and consider again. Stop and think about what it’s like to be the victim.”

 

Paul nods as much as he is able. Virginia pulls the gun out, not bothering to be gentle or careful. Neither of them look away from the other. 

 

“Has my point been made now?” Virginia asked. 

 

“Yes!” He sobbed, cowering away. 

 

Virginia lets him go and Paul slides to the ground and curls into a ball. She steps away, watching his shaking body indifferently. Maybe this is the only way for men to learn, forcing them to endure the effects of their choices on their bodies. 

 

David groans from across the room. Virginia leaves Paul to answer. 

 

“You crazy fucking cunt,” David forces out between bloody coughs and gasps, “we shouldn’t have wasted time fucking you, we should have ripped your throat out the second we got the chance.”

“Well you didn’t,” Virginia shrugged, standing over him, “and here we are.” 

 

“You think you’ll get away with this? No one on this base likes you. They think you’re a slut or a dyke or a crazy bitch and everything in between so no one will believe a word that comes out your mouth, especially against an upstanding soldier like me. You’re not sucking your CO’s dick hard enough, which means there won’t be anyone to protect you from the hell I’m going to raise. You’ll be lucky if you’re dishonorably discharged after I tell people what you did.”

 

Virginia can’t help but laugh. Who fucking cared anymore what everyone thought. They can do what they want, she was fucking done. 

 

If he gets his way, maybe this time the rumors will be fucking right and everyone will leave her the fuck alone. 

 

“We were just trying to talk and you lost your mind and you attacked us!” David muttered, sounding half crazy himself. Somehow he got his arm under his shoulder and was holding himself up on his side to confront her. She watched the blood drip off his face onto the floor, wondering if he’ll slip. “You knocked Jeff out, you attacked me…” Virginia tunes out his ramblings, planning her next move.

 

He’s made a mistake, splaying his fingers out on the floor like that. She circles him, considering the angle.  

 

He gets more comfortable in his delusion. “Then when Paul tried to protect me you lashed out like the crazy bitch you are and you tried to kill him. You’re the monster. You’re no better than the savages out there.”  

 

“As good as that story sounds,” Virginia cuts him off. She stops, close enough to nudge the arm he’s using to hold himself up on. He loses his balance and collapses, landing in a puddle of his blood, his arm useless by his head. “I think you’ll have other things to be worried about.”

 

She looks down on him. He glares up at her, his distaste clear even with all the blood. Somehow even beaten to hell with her towering over him, he’s still not afraid of her. Another mistake, another lesson he needs to learn. 

 

Virginia picks her foot up and angles her boot to perfectly stomp on David’s vulnerable fingers. 

 

He screams and nearly yanks his arm out his socket trying to get away from her. She drops the rest of her boot on his hand, shifting to press all her weight on his hand. He falls to his back and wiggles trying to get away, but he’s very firmly trapped under her foot. 

 

This is so much better than just shooting him in the head. 

 

It takes too long for him to realize struggling is only going to make it worse. “Stop! Please!” He howls, his swollen face and sobs making him barely comprehensible. 

 

“The Air Force doesn’t have much use for a pilot with fingers that don’t work.” She digs her toes into the joints of his fingers starting with the pinky finger and turning on her heel to break the others. It’s not as loud as she thought, but then again David’s screaming might have been drowning it out. 

 

His pleas devolve into incoherent begging. She digs her heel into the back of his hand, his fingers well taken care of and rolls the boot in order to maximize bone breakage. She knows personally a single stomp won’t do the job. 

 

Finally, she figures his hand is as broken as it’s going to get and she steps off. 

 

Virginia considers for a minute saying something, trying to impart some great wisdom or advice, like she had done Paul. But looking down at the mess of what was once a man, she finds there’s nothing to say. 

 

David did not see her as a person, so she will not waste air on words she knows he won’t hear. If the violence doesn’t teach the lesson, then the lesson is unteachable. 

 

“Any of you,” she turns to announce to the room at large, Paul eyes her wearily from his wall, a hand protecting his mouth, and David continues to sob, “touch me again, I will kill you. This was your warning.”

 

She walks past them both and kicks their co-conspirator out of the doorway where she left him. 

 

She pauses and then adds, “feel free to let anyone else who had similar ideas know of the consequences. Let’s get some true rumors out there for once.”