Chapter Text

Angela doesn't want to the one to clean out Ace's bunk. But she also can't bear the thought of anyone else doing it. Angela has been stuck in this sort of stasis since she found out Ace was dead. General Vargas had asked her into his office personally.

Usually, he sent some ranger or another, or just requested she stop by over the radio. She knew how he hated letting the other Rangers see the way the years had started to weigh on him; in his limp, in the way his joints had begun to creak, all the ways he'd begun to slow. But mostly, it began to show in his face.

The bags under his eyes, permanent features on his face, whether from age or nightmares, likely in equal measure. Ang knew she was no spring chicken herself. After Cochise, they all had more than a few gray hairs. But since then, out of all of them, Snake had changed the most.

Which was why, the first thing she noticed, after Vargas coming to her personally upon her return to base on that day was how the Snake of all those years ago stood before her once more. She couldn't pinpoint why at first, until it suddenly all fell into place: Vargas had fallen back into all his old nervous ticks.

That had been the first thing she noticed about him; boyishly charming leadership and the way he refused to admit he was afraid. The day he earned his nickname was the closest she remembered to seeing him now. Then, he had a tourniquet tied below his left knee, and in the middle of his right bicep.

Stupid asshole, too proud to ask for help and getting bitten twice trying to remove the snake latched onto his calf. Too proud to cry but the way he kept running his tongue over his lips, biting the skin there until it bled, and over and over, spinning the barrel of his revolver, snapping it into place, and dry firing.

"Snake, you've got some helluva case of nervous hands."

Angela half laughed, trying to hide her concern, no more successfully than Vargas, she supposed.

Just like he had as their medic searched through his bag for the bottle of antidote,Vargas was tapping his fingers on against the barrel of his gun. His lips were bleeding. Something had happened. She knew it. Everyone in the room could sense something was off, and whatever the news, the whole damn Citadel would know soon enough.

People talk. Angela knew that. Vargas knew that. Every ranger shooting furtive glances between Angela as she tried her best to nonchalantly leave her seat and Vargas framed in the doorway, buzzing fluorescent lights of the hallway creating a hallow around him in the dim light of the mess hall.

The phrase, "Do not be afraid" is the most spoken phrase in the bible. Angela remembered reciting verses of Angels appearing unto lowly citizens of the earth while kneeling on grains of rice until her knees bled. Back then, she had tried so hard to believe the way her parents had.

She wanted the kind of passion that could raise men from the dead, but she couldn't understand when she was a child why anyone would be afraid of an angel. But she did now. Angels never appeared to people like her without some kind of tragedy.

Mary never really had a choice, did she? Autonomy in the face of something as powerful as God is impossible. She understood why the M.A.D. worshipped a fucking atomic warhead and called it Titan. Every God Angela had ever encountered was synonymous with tragedy.

The phrase "an act of God" was never followed by anything but pain in the wasteland. Natural disaster, plagues of biblical proportion, unfathomable death. God simply happened and you dealt with the fallout, whatever it might be.

People do not have time for miracles when they're trying to survive. Which is why what Ace brought into her life was so unexpected. He crept up on her, the same way he had become a part of the Desert Rangers. He was there and it was wonderful. And then he wasn't.

"Angie...", Vargas said, in that all too soft voice he saved for this sort of tragedy, "I'm so sorry."

When your world collapses, you never expect it. It is simply there one moment, and in shambles the second. Grief tastes metallic but regret leaves your throat too dry to swallow the lump which has taken up residence there.

At first, she didn't believe it. Ace was the one consistent part of her life that she could depend on. The way he'd look up at her from whatever he was working on, face streaked with grease, cock his head and say with that lopsided grin of his, "My Angel".

When she was a child, she hated her name. Growing up in a cult means inevitable heavy-handed religious metaphor and she, Angela-fucking-Deth was no exception. But the way Ace and spoken it was less like the prophecy it was intended to be and more like revery. The idea of worship had always made Angela uneasy.

She should have been there. She knows that. Why the fuck had she listened to Vargas? Everything in his bunk is the same as when he left it. Military corners on the bed sheets, his wrench sitting on the workbench against the other wall. Almost like he was coming back.

Almost like he’d never been there at all.