一道

reeberry:

“How did you do it?” Simmons asked, leaning against the door. He had strolled into blue base, unopposed. He told Caboose, who was standing guard, that he was coming in to talk to Tucker. Caboose made him promise that he wouldn’t shoot anything, and after a vaguely skeptical “I promise,” Simmons had been allowed to proceed.

“What the fuck?” Tucker said, pulling his sheet closer to his neck as if it would protect him. “How-Why are you in our base? How did I do what?”

“When Church died,” Simmons said, ignoring the first two questions and finishing his sentence with a vague hand gesture. “You know. How did you cope?”

“Cope? I fucking hated Church.” Tucker relaxed slightly. He let the blanket fall down again as Simmons didn’t say anything.

“No, you didn’t.”

Tucker couldn’t argue this, not the way the other man said it. “Is this about Donut?” The silence confirmed it. “Is-is this the first time someone on your team has died?”

“I didn’t even know him that well,” Simmons said after a sigh. “I mean, I knew him well, but I know Sarge even better and Grif even more so and even Lopez and I had more common ground than Donut…”

Tucker sighed, which turned into a low whistle. Simmons looked at him with a frown. “Look, when Church died, I mean, yeah, I knew him. But it was a war, way before we’d done any of the shit we’ve done now. We just vaguely tolerated each other because command told us to. And Captain Flowers had died before that, too, so I guess you could say I was a little more used to it.”

Simmons gave him a look and Tucker took a deep breath and tried again.

“You want the truth? Come in and close the door.” Simmons did as he was told and he leaned against the door now, staring at Tucker, waiting for answers. “Yeah, it fucking sucked when Church died. He was kind of the leader, because I didn’t want to do it so he just stepped up. He liked bossing people around. Him dying meant I had to deal with Caboose, and the blue team, and with you guys. It was easy to shrug it off at first, but I didn’t have to deal with it, because by the time it sank in, his ghost came back.”

“He wasn’t a-“

“Whatever, man, will you let me finish?” Simmons nodded. “Truth is, it’s a fucking war. It sucks. People die all the fucking time and we’re lucky to have survived this long and formed actual friendship. You wanna know how to cope? Try actually appreciating the friends you still have left.”

He seemed to think this over, slowly. “So there’s no trick to it?” he finally asked, holding out hope for a magic word that would make grief easier to deal with.

“No. The only trick is to not let it eat you up.”

Tucker didn’t elaborate. He didn’t say how, when they all got reassigned, he was sure he’d never see any of them again. He didn’t say how he was relieved for a few days before the cold truth set in that they’d probably all die, that he’d probably die, because the only thing they had in common with actual soldiers was their armor. He didn’t say how it pushed him to throw everything he had into the army, into his missions and his work, it pushed him to be the better soldier so he could distract himself, and it pushed him to block out their good memories and focus on the bad ones to make it all easier to deal with. He didn’t say any of this because he’d been through grief enough to know that when someone asks you how to grieve, you don’t give them the crappy shit. You tell them the uplifting stuff so they can pull themselves out of their own pile of regrets and disbelief knowing there’s hope because other people have done it too, other people do it all the time.

“Thanks,” Simmons said after a while and turned to leave.

“Hey, man, if you wanna grab a beer sometime,” Tucker said hesitantly. It might be pushing a border, but who else would he get grief support from? Sarge probably thought the sacrifice noble, Lopez didn’t speak English and Grif was probably as emotionally healthy about this as Simmons. He obviously couldn’t ask Caboose, who was convinced all dead people were ghosts, and Wash, well, Wash was the one who shot Donut, so that was definitely out. Sister might not even remember who Donut was, as far as Tucker knew.

“Thanks,” Simmons repeated in that same dull, unsatisfied tone. Tucker recognized it and nodded in understanding as Simmons left his room. He briefly wondered if Grif would do the same, sometime in the next few days knock on his door and catch him completely by surprise because Caboose doesn’t understand the meaning of standing guard.

“Probably too lazy,” Tucker muttered to himself with a small smile and made a mental note to stock up on that fake beer that he heard Simmons likes, just in case.

Ughhhh I love this. I love stuff like this that never comes up in the series but fills in that hole so beautifully.