Chapter Text
Gary “Roach” Sanderson died for the final time with the taste of gasoline and broken promises on his tongue.
It was not the first time he had met such a fate, left to the mercy of swirling flames and rising smoke. But he hoped it would be the last. This final death was so very reminiscent of the first time he had experienced the cold caress of nothingness
Gary had known this was coming.
He had known it would end up like this since the very first time he burned alive and opened his eyes five years in the past. That had been many lifetimes ago. Decades he had spent chasing after this very ending. How many years had it been since then? How long had he fought against the tide of time?
He didn’t know.
All he knew was the fire that consumed him.
Even now he welcomed the soft caress of blazing flames with a sort of familiarity that transcended nostalgia, a reminiscent agony in the burn that danced along his skin and crawled up his legs.
The fire curled ever so softly around Gary’s limbs, his lungs breathing in the ruined air as his tears evaporated upon his cheeks. The uniform that he had worn so proudly now burned from his very skin. The insignia that he had given everything to, seared itself into his flesh. His tattered uniform was now thick with the scent of burning fuel and death.
He had lived this life a hundred times and had died a thousand more.
Fire was both his beginning and his end.
Once he had thought himself to be a phoenix. Living the mythos as easily as he breathed, taking solace in those birds of legend that were born from and died in a fiery inferno. In their flames, he thought he could find recompense. In their flames, he thought he could be reborn, absolved from the countless deaths and sins that followed him into each loop he was thrown back into.
Instead, Gary had come to understand that he was Icarus.
A tragic being born from hubris and held together with melted glue as his very goal drove him into the sun. He died as he lived, fruitlessly fighting against a fate that had long since been written in the stars. An ending he steered himself to.
Time and time again.
You would think one would get used to death after experiencing it so many times. You would think one would not be as terrified of the oncoming gloom after they had learned what lived in the darkness between each life. But the truth was, Gary was scared.
It hurt to die. It was agony to feel the life drain from his soul. Death petrified him and he loathed the pain that would come when the torment began. A searing sort of anguish that settled into his very bones until the darkness granted him mercy.
Dying was not a beautiful thing. It was not gentle. It did not whisper soothingly in his ear, did not offer him a chance of respite. Instead, it took and took and took every single piece of himself until he no longer had anything else to give.
Death was impartial.
And it left behind only the vague visage of who he once was.
The truth was Gary “Roach” Sanderson was a ghost. A ghastly figure who could no longer recognize himself in the mirror. He did not fear the moment he would lose himself to the ever repeating days. Instead, he feared the day he would lose sight of his goal.
The one thing that had driven him to the thankless effort. Save them.
If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was anywhere but where he was. Gary could almost feel John’s lips against his own or Simon’s hands holding him close.
Because that's where it always started and ended.
John and Simon.
It was them.
(Simon–Ghost, reaching out to him before Shepherd’s bullet made its home in his chest. Burning in front of Gary’s eyes as they died together so close but so far.)
It was always them.
(John–Captain MacTavish, screaming as he bled out because Yuri was right there and he knew Makarov and goddamn it Yuri was right there.)
But it was also the rest of the 141.
(Gaz with Zakhaev’s bullet in his head and Griggs on the ground.)
And he would do it again.
And again and again until they all made it out alive. Every single one of them.
He would not see Nikolai and Yuri die. He would not see Price alone with everyone he knew and loved dead as Makarov hung for his sins far too late.
He would not let 141 fall. Gary would not let them be their own legacy.
(But he would willingly be theirs.)
And he had to do it. Because no one else could.
He had to do it. Because he was the only one with the ability to save them all.
“Flowers?” Simon’s voice was a deep, rolling timbre that ran over Gary’s shoulders and down his back like liquid gold. It nestled in his spine, a solid warmth that slotted perfectly in the spaces between each vertebra as his voice filled with a quiet sort of amusement.
'Flowers.' Gary replied, his hands drafting the signs as delicately as John’s fingers played with the strands of his hair.
John hummed under his breath, his eyes closed as the half asleep captain curled around the forms of his lieutenant and sergeant. His warm breath hit Gary’s naked skin, drawing a shiver from the smaller man and a smirk from the Scot as he opened his starkly blue eyes to gaze down at him.
John’s mohawk had lost its rigidity sometime during the night, leaving behind deep brown strands that framed his rugged face and the half grown stubble that covered it. It matched Simon’s golden brown, currently messy and sleep mussed hair in terms of disarray. A matching visage that had Gary struggling to hold back a grin.
He loved moments like these.
The short space of time when the base was still waking up and they had no responsibilities, no orders, and no life threatening missions to worry about. Here, in their room, they only had themselves and as much time as they could steal before the day started. Hidden from prying eyes, the trio was free to indulge in their own version of a morning routine. One that consisted of quiet conversations and sleepy but love filled kisses.
It wasn’t often they were spared these moments.
The search for Makarov had been a constant in their daily lives since the death of Shepherd. John, who was a captain in his own right, had far more duties than Gary or Simon could dream of. Often found conferring with Captain Price or some higher up over the ever illusive Makarov, Captain MacTavish was a name that everyone knew and had come to fear on base.
The same could be said for Simon. If it wasn’t Makarov, it was the remnants of Shepherd’s allies. That was where Simon came in. As Captain MacTavish’s second in command, it was Lieutenant Ghost who led the counter strike against the men who had very nearly taken their lives.
So when the sleepy mornings came and they were all together, Gary cherished them with a certain fervor that came from living a hundred lives taking them for granted.
“Are you sure about that, doll?” John murmured against the side of Gary’s neck, his lips tracing sleepy lines down the column of his throat.
Gary nodded as he signed again, 'Flowers.'
Simon’s response was a soft chuckle. His unspoken fondness curled the corners of his coffee brown eyes and softened the downturn of his lips, leaving behind the image of a man utterly in love.
“Alright, flowers.” Simon ran his calloused hands over Gary’s exposed skin. He continued softly, “What kind?”
John’s head tilted as he looked up to catch Gary’s response. The man gazed at his hands as Gary thought for a moment before he grinned at the two sleepy soldiers, 'Do you remember Rio?'
Their reactions were immediate and Gary knew that they did remember Rio, in fact. John let go of Gary as he rolled on his back with a booming laugh, his blue eyes filled with mirth as he shook his head. Simon was less vocal but just as exasperated as he rolled his eyes and sighed deeply. Though without his skull mask on, he wasn’t able to hide the smirk that curled the edges of his lips.
“For fuck’s sake, doll.” John laughed harder, running a hand over his face as he remembered exactly what Gary was referring to. “Those?”
The time Gary had almost gotten shot by a tiny old lady for picking flowers from her garden.
Task Force 141 had been in the middle of a covert operation to raid a supposed drug lab when Gary first saw the soft pink blooms in the darkness. It wasn’t a moment later that he ventured away from the unit to pick a few of the blossoms. A move that was rewarded with a sawed off shotgun in his face and Captain Price trying to smooth the ruffled feathers of the 80 year old woman holding it as she screamed profanities at Gary at three in the morning.
Not only had Gary woken up the entire block but he also had to deal with a pissed off Price for the next week. The only good thing that came from the operation were the pink flowers Gary had placed on Simon and John’s helmets. A handful of tiny blossoms that had stayed until they eventually wilted a few days later.
John continued to laugh as he struggled between joining Simon in his exasperation or holding Gary at the reference to how he almost died picking flowers of all things, “You want those at our wedding?”
Simon sighed but he nonetheless recalled the name of the flower that narrowly avoided ruining the entire operation, “They’re called Balsam.”
'They were pretty.' Gary signed with a grin as he held up his hand, the black gold band on his ring finger shining in the fluorescent lighting of their room. A band that matched both Simon and John’s.
“You’re ridiculous,” Simon grumbled fondly.
Gary smirked, 'And pretty.'
“And pretty.” John agreed with a smirk of his own, chuckling when Simon threw a pillow at them both.
'Do you remember?' Gary signed with a soft smile as he looked through the thick glass window that separated him from his unit.
The steady drip of gasoline from the metal barrel behind him rang out rhythmically into the heavy air that settled between him and the rest of the 141. He knew what it looked like to them. Gary, standing before them with Makarov at his feet while liters upon liters of gas soaked the bottom of his shoes. Idly, he wondered if he and Makarov would die from the toxic fumes before the blaze got the chance to start. The air was already curdling in his lungs, cloying at the tip of his tongue and heavy.
Gary knew that he must have looked crazy. Insane, for even entertaining the idea of what he was about to do. An idea that he could tell the exact moment it registered within Task 141’s minds.
If he had more time he would have studied the various degrees of grief that crushed the expressions of his teammates' faces. If he had more time he would have memorized the way Simon’s balaclava tightened around his mouth as he began to yell or the way John did not hesitate to open fire upon the glass that Gary trapped himself behind.
If he had more time he would have seared the traces of their love for him into his very soul.
But he didn’t.
'Do you remember?' Gary’s fingers quivered around the lighter in his hands, a token of affection that he had wrangled from Captain Price before the world went to shit. Before Makarov. Before Shepherd. Before now. 'Our promise.'
How many times did this make?
Makarov groaned a pathetic tune beneath his shoe.
A hundred? A thousand?
He had learned sometime in his 23rd loop that the head of the hydra must be incinerated rather than cut. Makarov had to die for everyone to live. There was no other way.
“Gary–” Simon, his Simon alive and breathing. So steadfast in his resolve and the way he loved. A near constant wall of solid rock in which Gary had taken refuge behind so many times. He would never know how much Gary had sacrificed to keep him alive. “Love, please .”
Never again would Ghost drown in gasoline the same way Gary had. Never again would he meet the head of Shephard’s bullets and choke on his own blood.
“Don’t –” Simon’s voice cracked as it filled with so much helpless anger and terror as he screamed and banged on the window separating them. “Gary, don't do this!”
Just one more time.
Every slam of Simon’s gloved hands against the glass sent shockwaves through his chest. Every rage filled scream fractured a part of Gary’s resolve.
He only had to do it one more time.
“Doll. Gary. ” John with his wild blue eyes and love that could fill an ocean, joined Simon in the fruitless effort of trying to break the glass. They wouldn’t. Gary made sure of that. “Goddamn it–someone get this fucking door open!”
John and his endless pet names for his loves. John who had seen him and Simon die in every timeline where Gary failed. John, who Gary had seen die. If there was one good thing about his off brand version of immortality, it was that they did not remember the countless loops like Gary did.
Only he was cursed with the knowledge of seeing the corpses of his friends and family. Only he would know what it was like to see the life drain from John’s eyes as he used his last breaths on everyone but himself.
“Bon.” John’s voice was broken. In his blue eyes was a desperation Gary knew well. After all, he had worn the same expression a thousand times when he failed to protect them the way they protected him.
Just once more.
And it would all be worth it.
Price, their old captain, weathered and weary as he bloodied his knuckles on the reinforced metal door and cursed violently. Gaz, not dead by Zakhaev’s bullet but alive and kicking as he could do nothing but stare in silence as Gary flicked his lighter.
Yuri. Griggs. Jackson. Vasquez. Alive.
Everyone was alive.
How many lives had he lived hoping to accomplish this very thing? How many times has he spent wishing for this moment to arrive?
A chance to end it all. The loops, the deaths, the endless heartbreak.
He only had to die just one more time.
So why the hell were his hands shaking? Why the hell did he want to abandon it all, to go back to Simon and John in the tiny room they had on base just because he knew they would be waiting because it was Simon and John?
Gary would throw away everything. Every single tragedy, every single night spent wishing he could die without waking up in the past, every single time he had to witness his friends and his family meet their untimely doom because he failed. Everything. For them.
But this was also for them, wasn’t it?
This would be the last time. He knew it deep in his soul. He had done all he could. All they had left to do was live the life he was going to sacrifice his own for.
Yet that still didn’t make it any easier.
(He was always a coward when it counted.)
'Our promise.' Gary signed with more urgency as the dripping of the now drained barrel rang as loudly as the trumpets that would signal the end of time. And he supposed in a way, that it did.
Makarov was waking up and it wouldn’t be long before the Russian realized what was soon to happen.
“Promise?” John’s blue eyes were wide and pained, his words coming out as mere whispers from the speakers that filled Gary’s tomb. “What promise, doll?”
'Flowers.' Gary signed through the thick bullet proof window that stood before him.
John’s eyes flooded with tears as he choked, “Oh. Oh.”
“No.” Simon grit out. He continued to slam his hands against the glass window. “No!”
“You can have your fucking flowers at our goddamn wedding and not a second before,” Simon’s harsh British accent filled every inch of his statement with grief. “You hear me?! Not a fucking second before.”
Gary smiled.
If only that could have been true. If only they had more time. If only.
Gary’s hands stilled as he inhaled the gasoline laden air. There was a sense of finality in his actions as he raised the lighter, fingers flicking the metal covering off. Simon’s frantic banging grew louder. John unable to do anything but weep, slumped in his spot only held up by Gaz as the rest of the 141 flew into chaos.
“Gary!”
“Roach!”
“For fuck’s sake! Sanderson!”
One more time.
Makarov stirred by his feet, his eyes blinking open as Gary met the gaze of the man who deserved nothing less than the inferno held in his hands. One of his own creation. The hell they would die in. Together.
Just one more.
Because Gary would be damned if he let the man threaten the fragile timeline he had sacrificed his blood, sweat, and tears for.
'I want flowers.'
It would just be a shame that they were to be for his funeral rather than his wedding.
With burning tears, Gary let a pillar of flames consume him.
Gary “Roach” Sanderson woke up in a world that was not his own with the vivid sensation of being burned alive.
The flames were upon him. Merciless in their endeavor to burn him away. They were licking up his skin, his legs, and towards his lips. The heat bathed him in a warm caress that left burning agony in its wake. It was in his hair, his lungs, his very bones as he thrashed away from the phantom flames that burned him from the inside out.
Gary was dying.
Again and again and again.
He was dying.
He was screaming. Gary knew he was screaming. He could feel the vocal cords in his throat bunch up as his voice reached a pitch. Raw and unfiltered. He was choking on smoke. He was drowning in it. He could feel it in his mouth. A cloying, acidic taste that painted his lips with heartbreak and the heady scent of death.
It felt like ash and cinder filled his throat and were pushing the air from his chest.
He couldn’t breathe.
Gary tried to, inhaling in through his stuttering lungs, the need for air overriding the sheer panic that filled his shaking limbs.
Why couldn’t he breathe?
Hands clawed at his throat and nails pierced the top layer of his skin as heat filled lines were drawn over the unscarred skin of his esophagus. His own hands, bare from flames and as uncalloused as the day he was born. That in itself was the only reason Gary’s panicked mind was able to see past the fog that had settled upon his brain as his eyes snapped open.
'What?’
It couldn’t be.
Trembling fingers sought the crease of his neck in search of the thick scarred skin that he had sported since even before he went into the army. The long scar that marred his skin was a remnant of his time on the streets. A result of drifting into business that was not his own.
Even now he could remember the feel of the blade against his skin. Cold and unrelenting as his throat was slit by a man both older and larger than he was at 17.
“Kids like you could learn a thing or two about indiscretion.” It was the only warning he got before the blade drew a line of white hot agony in his skin and he was drowning in blood.
A would be murder attempt that turned into a warning of the depths of human malice. A symbol of everything he had escaped the moment he signed the papers that drafted him.
His throat was never quite the same after that. Nor his voice.
Gary’s fingers lingered hesitantly over his skin before they made the plunge to where the scar rested only to find…nothing. His throat was unscarred. His hands were unblemished. No longer did they hold the tiny nicks and discolored areas from years worth of working with his hands, whether it be from helping John with his old motorcycle or holding a gun.
There was nothing.
Gone. Like it wasn’t even there in the first place.
Gary’s eyes widened in horror and for the first time since he woke up did he bother to look around.
The walls of a dead end alley met him straight on. Around him, two thick concrete buildings boxed him in. To his left was a pile of cardboard boxes filled with what looked like trash. To his right was a series of pipes that ran vertically to the length of the building. Lined against the opening of the alley were a few dumpsters that blocked his sight to the street.
Now that he wasn’t choking on phantom smoke, Gary was able to take in the sour musk of the air around him. Instantly he was met with the smell of sewage. A sickly stench that sent him back to the long forgotten days of his youth living on the streets. A pungent aroma filled with the scent of garbage, puke and piss.
A combination of putrid odors that made his stomach lurch.
Gary heaved.
Why was he still alive? Why was he still in this god forsaken world?
It should have worked. It should have worked. Dying alone with Makarov in that bunker in the middle of Russia was meant to be his final death. He had saved everyone that he could in Task Force 141. He had stopped Griggs and Gaz from dying by Zakhaev’s bullets, he had kept himself and Simon from dying at Shepherd's hands, and he had saved Captain Price from watching the entirety of his unit get picked off one by one until there was no one left.
Dozens upon dozens of time loops Gary had spent getting every single detail right. He had stopped so many things from happening, things that had been seemingly written into fate. He had stopped the deaths of so many people. Gary had done everything.
So why? Why was he still here? Why hadn't it worked?
It was supposed to be the last time loop. His one perfect run.
So why? Why did he wake up alone in an alley that smelled of his own demise? Why hadn’t it worked?
Gary wanted to cry. Had he sacrificed everything for nothing?
Had he given up everything just to be back where he started? He couldn't do it. He couldn't do it anymore. It was too much. The images of John and Simon's pleading faces were seared into the space behind his eyes. Their screams for Gary rang in his ears even now.
Tears pricked his eyes.
Gary… Gary was tired. He was so tired. He just wanted to go back to Simon and John. He wanted to see their faces again, to lay back down in their bed. But if he truly was back at the beginning of a loop? God, he didn't even want to think about it. Because if he was at the beginning of a loop, there would be no John and Simon. At least not at the beginning. Instead, they would be Ghost and Soap, or Captain MacTavish, depending on where in the timeline Gary was.
It was funny, in a heartbreaking sort of way.
In every single timeline, in every single loop, they managed to find each other again. But it wasn't always the same. They never fell in love the same way twice. Once, at the very start of when all this began, Gary would have hated that. But now? Now Gary was just glad that no matter the situation, no matter how much he changed, how long it took him to make his way to 141, even if it was different they would always find their way back to him. And he to them.
For the longest time that was the only thing that kept him going. They were the only thing that kept him going through the countless deaths, through the harsh nights spent out in the cold, through all the similar days. Without Simon or John, Gary would have long since given up.
He choked back a sob as his hands found their way to his face. He had hoped and prayed to any fucked up entity that would listen that the last loop would be the end. Turned out, Gary had long since been abandoned by the gods.
No one would answer his cries. At least not anymore.
There was just one thing he didn't understand.
Gary always woke up in the same place and at the same time for every single loop. And that was always five years before he and Ghost were originally supposed to die at Shephard’s hands. He consistently woke up in 2011 back in the barracks of some random base for the SAS as he got ready for unit selections.
He supposed that was where everything started. Not just for him. But for John and Captain Price and everyone else who would eventually be influenced by Task Force 141.
This should have been no different. In fact, this was something that had never happened before.
If this was a loop, Gary should have woken up back in his bed. If this was a loop, Gary should have still had the scar he had gotten before he joined the army. His hands should have still been worn because while he hadn't been in the army that long then, it was still enough for the daily wear and tear to mar his skin.
But instead, he woke up in an alley.
While it had been a long, long time since Gary had thought about his days on the streets, he knew he wasn’t anywhere near where he used to live before he joined the army. He didn’t even recognize the place. So where in the hell was he? And why the hell didn’t he have his scars?
He didn’t know what the hell was going on but he’d be damned if he spent another waking moment in a dirty puddle with the smell of shit and piss around him. He needed to move. And now before he ended up throwing up what little stomach bile his body held. A breakdown could come later.
Gary shoved his still trembling hands beneath his body and heaved as he shakily got up. It was only then that he realized he was dressed in tattered clothes that had obviously seen better days. A stained jumper with more holes than swiss cheese seemed to swallow his frame while a pair of loosely fitting jeans slipped down his hips as he stumbled to his feet. As he stumbled to his bare feet.
He had no shoes. Only damp socks.
It was this above all else that reminded him most of his days living on the streets.
A wave of vertigo hit him once he stood to his full height. One that very nearly sent him back on his knees. It felt as if his body wasn’t his. Or rather, that he wasn’t used to moving in it. It was a disconcerting feeling he was forced to discard as he slowly and cautiously made his way to the mouth of the alley. Years of military experience instilled in him a certain paranoia that he was walking unarmed, into an unknown situation that he had to be prepared to face. At all costs.
But he had no guns or knives or even something to act as a weapon. The alley only offered a box of old trash and dumpsters. And a pile of piss. A few, actually.
Gary slowly but surely followed the trail of beer cans and vomit to the opening of the alley. His socked feet cautiously avoided an indiscreet wetness. As he got closer, noises from the world outside of his alley began to filter in. Car horns and the sound of people laughing reached his ears before the sights did. His shoulders tensed at the crowds that were sure to meet him, decades of espionage forcing his lithe body into the darkest shadows of the alleyway as the street lights and shops came into view.
His breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened unknowingly at the scene before him.
A pair of drunken party-goers passed by the lip of the alley without a care in the world to the man that hid beneath the cover of darkness. What looked to be a family of three was staring into the window of a toy shop at Gary’s right, the small child pointing to a toy in the shop's window. To his left was much of the same. Children and their parents walked along the sidewalks that they shared with the couples and groups that were more interested in the nightlife. Restaurants, shops, bars and everything in between filled the square that he had somehow found himself in.
Bright LED signs filled the square and large screens ran up and down the tall buildings that surrounded the area. Ads covered their screens with images of smiling faces and products. Directly in front of him was a road with backed up traffic. It held cars, cabs, and also the occasional tram. Familiarity burned into his skin at the sight.
Somehow he knew now where he was.
London.
A sign on a nearby bus stop confirmed it.
Piccadilly.
Though Gary didn’t remember Piccadilly ever being so…loud? The Piccadilly he was familiar with was much more subdued. Less vibrant and certainly more retro in a way. In the timelines where the third world war happened, Piccadilly always somehow ended up destroyed. In the timelines where it wasn’t, Piccadilly had never been as modern century as it currently was in front of him.
It confused him.
Gary had visited the square multiple times back at the beginning of his SAS career and a few times with the 141. But it was never like...this.
The confusion flooded his body, driving him to move further out from the shadows and onto the sidewalk itself. The family he had been watching saw his emergence from the alleyway and the father of the small child immediately ushered away his family with a disgruntled face. The crowd seemed to have the same sentiment as the father, for they too made a wide berth around him.
Not like Gary could blame them.
A strange man in dirty clothes exiting from a darkened alley did not bode well for those in gentle company. Still, it was disorienting to be held at arms length when he was standing in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Oi, bastard. Get out of the way!” A man dressed in a business suit called out to him as he walked past.
Gary blinked at the passing figure but his gaze was soon drawn to the nearest shop window. A pair of amber colored eyes stared back at him from within a tangle of short but messy dirty blonde hair. There were bruises around his eyes. And they were his eyes, more amber than the darker brown he was used to. The tips of his hair–a darker blonde than it normally was–curled ever so slightly around his sunken cheeks, framing the face of what looked to be a young adult.
He couldn’t have been over twenty. Maybe a couple years older if he was being lenient. Regardless, he was much younger than he was supposed to be since he had been twenty-seven when he died. Now, his skin was pale. Dirty but unblemished. His body was a good few inches shorter than he was used to. But what caught Gary’s attention the most was the expanse of skin beneath his jaw. Unmarked. Pale. Plain.
The evidence of his silence taken from him.
His eyes–and those were his eyes, that was his reflection, that was him –shuttered closed as he scrambled away from the image like he had been burned.
What the hell was going on?
That man in the reflection was not him. It couldn’t have been. It looked so much like him but it also didn’t. It made no sense. First not waking up in his own bed, then Piccadilly being different and now this? It was as if Gary had awoken in a world that was not his own and that scared him.
Because what did it mean? For himself and the timeline he left behind? If this was the punchline of some kind of cosmic joke, he sure as hell wasn’t laughing.
And fuck if he wasn’t cold. The jumper and jeans he had woken up in weren’t making for the best attire now that he was out of the alley. The evening breeze drifted through his clothes like they were nothing.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” The voice of a newscaster reached Gary’s ears next, playing from the TV within another window of a shop down the street. While he loathed to leave the near vicinity of his alley, he wanted to check it out. And wasn’t that sad. It was his alley now.
(So much for leaving that part of his past behind.)
“As some of you may know, the recent attack on a subway station in central London–” But he wasn’t paying attention to the newscaster anymore. Instead, his eyes were drawn to the text that filtered across the bottom of the TV.
'It can’t be.’ Gary thought as he stared at the big blocky numbers that were pasted in white on a red background. It wasn't possible.
A date.
October 25th. 2019.
But Gary “Roach” Sanderson almost always died in 2016. Sometimes before but never after.
A joke. That’s what it all had to be. That was what everything was, wasn't it? Some big fucking joke to make him lose his mind and look like an idiot.
It couldn’t be 2019. He couldn’t be alive. Not when he remembered the flames so vividly. Not when the ring fingers of his hand burned with an invisible weight he no longer had.
John. Simon.
Gary wished he would just wake up. Or maybe succumb to the darkness.
Was this some poor sod’s attempt at an afterlife? Did he actually succeed and die? Was he actually dead?
Or was he thrown into the future? Was this even his future?
No. It couldn’t have been. His future was left behind the moment he decided Makarov had to die. His future was John and Simon. His future died the moment he sacrificed his life for theirs. And now? Gary had no idea where he was or how he got there.
All he could do was hopelessly hope that John and Simon got the ending they deserved.
(One that was painfully without him.)
Gary looked up from the building he had taken refuge against after learning the harsh truth that he was three years in the future. The crowds around him had begun to thin out as the night went on. It had only been a couple of hours since he had woken up, at least as far as he could tell. What little of the sunlight and the warmth that had been present when he woke up slowly was fading the longer he sat on the sidewalk near the mouth of the alley.
To tell the truth, Gary didn't know what to do. For the first time in his life. Or rather for the first time since he had woken up all those countless loops before, he didn't know what to do. It had always been save Task Force 141. Save John and Simon. Save Price and Yuri and Gaz and Griggs and everything he could. And now? Now what was he supposed to do?
What the fuck was he meant to do?
Gary watched the slow moving traffic before him with lifeless eyes.
There had always been a mission. There had always been something to distract him from the gaping wounds in his chest. A new lead to follow. A death to prevent. A choice to make. But now? He had never been good at sitting around waiting for things to happen.
But unbeknownst to him, he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
The traffic that he had been so intently watching almost slowed to a stop as a black jeep pulled to a stop right before the intersection to Piccadilly. It caught his interest. Not because of the commotion that was beginning from the lack of movement but rather the people that began to exit the jeep. A handful of armed men exited from the vehicle, drawing Gary to his feet as he saw the guns in their hands and insignias on their uniforms. The tac vests they wore blended in with the falling night and the handguns at their sides were a mere standard issue. SAS?
‘No.’ He thought.
Not quite. But close.
A police unit? Possibly.
“White van. Left side.” The man leading the unit, one with dark eyes that matched his skin, barked out sharply to his cohorts as the street began to flood with concerned citizens at the sight of armed officers.
Gary immediately turned to look at the van in question, hearing the officers throw a man to the ground as the stranger yelled, “They’re here!”
Because he was watching the white van, he saw the exact moment the back door slammed open and the people within it trickled out onto the streets. He counted a handful of them, all unassuming and dressed in what seemed like normal clothes. Yet he could tell something was wrong. Decades in the military told him how to read even the slightest of body movements.
Nervous. The men who had come out of the van were nervous.
But why?
He ventured further into the street to gain a clearer view, the hair on his skin prickling with untold intensity at the quickly unraveling situation.
“Get your hands up now!”
“Get down on the ground!”
Gary watched as the same man leading the unit leaned in to speak into the walkie-talkie with his kit just as one of the men from the vehicle moved back towards the white van. Within the next second, it was moving again except this time it had no driver and he was suddenly aware of the dryness of his throat as he screamed a wordless warning once he caught sight of what was in the van when the rear doors swung open.
But it was too late.
The world exploded.