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there will be a solo here someday

The worst missions were the ones where it wasn't clear whether they had succeeded or not. If they did, hey, great, they had done something right for a change; if they didn't, they could at least tell where they could improve for their next time out. This one was neither despite s**t very obviously hitting the fan, because s**t always hit the fan. The clearest thing they could say about it was well, at least no one died this time. For some, that was reason enough to call it a win. For Evan, it was an abject defeat.

But you should be used to those by now.

Evan's eyes narrowed, his hands twitching restlessly, almost violently with the need to wrap around something to anchor himself. He wasn't wrong. He'd failed Tuck by letting him get dragged off. He failed Stormy by not keeping a better eye on her--and he hadn't even known she was home, and that was on him, because it had to be on him because it couldn't be on her. He failed the two living people who were closest to him because he hadn't been paying attention long enough to notice that Tuck wasn't with them, and he'd failed Tuck again when he had needed to be put out of his misery. Stormy, of all people, had had to do that for him. It was his job to protect her from that, not the other way around.

Shameful.

He watched impatiently as his friends and teammates--/pack,/ Gir insisted before once more wrapping himself around the tattered edges of Evan's psyche--made it safely through the portal. Tuck, with Heidi trailing after him. Stormy and her little friend. Milo comforting a tearful Noemi. Nora, Sasha, Cee. Chel. Everyone was, at the very least, okay enough to walk out of there under their own power. There may have been a few close calls, but they made it in the end.

Until the next time.

Evan brought up the rear. He left the lab behind him but kept the memories, saving them to reflect upon later. They knocked him down a peg whenever he felt too proud about anything. After all, he hadn't done something well--he just hadn't ******** it up for a change. "There won't be a next time," he muttered.

Really? You got off easy this time. What would have happened if it had just ripped his ******** throat out instead of given him a love bite?

It didn't even bear consideration. Humans or not, Evan would have carved a bloody, grisly swathe through them to get to Tuck. He should have done that anyway. He could have written it off as neutralizing a threat. He was a Sun, just doing his job; he probably could have gotten away with it. "I don't know."

I know. It hurts. It feels like getting hit with shrapnel, only it explodes out, too, and takes chunks of you with it--

"Stop," Evan whispered, unsteady on his feet as he left the lighthouse.

You try to breathe and there's nowhere for the air to go, and it's a race to see whether your heart will stop from lack of air or whether you'll bleed out first.

Evan staggered behind the lighthouse and vomited into the sand, narrowly missing his own boots. He coughed and leaned against the wall, letting it support him for a few minutes.

I don't think I need to tell you what it looks like.

Evan shook his head numbly and spat the last remnants of his breakfast onto the sand. He knew what it looked like. He had been there when it had happened, after all, and had replayed it in his dreams nearly every night since. "I'll do better by them than I did by you," he croaked.

Because you're doing such a great job so far.

Evan didn't need this right now. The others were getting away from him. His mouth tasted like metal and scrambled eggs but the air around him smelled like blood and death. He focused on the soothing sounds of the nearby waves to drown out the echoes of terrified screams of the dead and dying. The sunlight glinting off the water looked like sharp and mocking teeth. He wanted to find a dark, quiet corner and sleep until his head no longer felt like it was going to explode. "I don't know what you want me to say," he admitted.

I don't want you to say anything, Roberts. Words don't mean s**t to the dead. I want you to stop being such a ******** failure. You're going to get someone killed someday. Someone else, I mean.

It hadn't been so long that the mockery had lost its sting. If anything, it was salt in a raw, gaping wound. Evan hadn't been able to save Runt and the others. He hadn't been able to save his friends--his family-- today. But no one else was going to die on his watch. He was determined to redeem himself to all of them.

And if he couldn't, he would be happy to die trying.

Slow cooking was just that, but Evan had been looking forward to the day he could do it in his own room--in his very own kitchen, such as it was--since he learned that that was a thing that could happen. The day after he'd moved in, he had taken a day of liberty to go to the mainland to get himself some dishware, some pots and pans, utensils and knives, and the nicest roast he could find in half a dozen grocery stores.

He was technically still on liberty, but rather than wasting his time barhopping or sightseeing, he was back in his room, comfortably ensconced with the quiet, persistent ticking of the oven timer, the taunting smell of slowly-cooking meat, and some books he had picked up from one of the libraries.

It wasn't that he didn't read so much as he usually didn't have time to, and while he usually couldn't stand being idle, he could deal with it as long as it was for a good cause. Besides, he liked history, even the made up kind. He liked reading about the exploits of heroes too fantastical to possibly be true, appreciating it for the fiction that it was.

But was it? He had gone through too much these past two years to be able to discount anything from the realm of possibility, no matter how improbable it seemed. He knew now that monsters and demons of all sorts were real, and so many of them had come from stories, too. He knew that artifacts existed not only as rumor, but as reality. Treasure hunting wasn't a futile quest anymore; now it was a necessity to make sure that objects of power didn't get into the wrong hands.

Evan flipped through the pages of the book on Greek mythology he had picked up, giving fresh consideration to the crude drawings of the adventures of heroes like Heracles and the vaguely drawn maps that indicated where their old stomping grounds would have been--or used to be. He was too grounded in reality to give himself over to flights of wonder and fancy, and he knew it was more ridiculous than not, but still--what if?

This was Life work, to be sure. He put the book down and checked the timer on the stove, wondering what Ami--and, he supposed, her a*****e boyfriend--were doing for dinner. He couldn't eat the entire roast himself, and it would be such a shame to let it get cold--and if the evening's discussion turned towards things no longer outside the realm of possibility, well...