One-Shot: Long Past Gone

It wasn't always like this.
That was what Vincent Rousseau used to remind himself.
It wasn't always like this, and one day it will be different.
He never realized that different could be worse. Death was better than the stress of a constant stalemate and the pain of being shot in a different place every day. Anything else, he figured, was probably better than death.
He was wrong.
It felt like years since he'd been on 2Fort's battlements, a lifetime since Dustbowl's. He never quite grasped how much the team meant to him until now, now that he was alone in the dark cell, alone aside from the dead soul that used to be the sniper. The spark of maddened fear that shot through him when he first realized Hutch had finally cracked was still deeply imprinted in his mind. After a couple weeks of agony, a sort of haze came over the sniper. At first, he simply couldn't look Rousseau in the eye. When the spy questioned it, he just replied with a shake of the head. Over the days, he began taking a longer and longer time to react to anything until he just stopped altogether. No matter how hard Rousseau shook him, hit him, or threw him, he would just sit in the same spot, gazing at the floor, dead. He still breathed and his heart still beat, but Rousseau knew that inside his friend was long gone. That's still how he sat – in the corner of the rank room, loosely hugging his knees and gazing off at the floor. When the men came for him, he complied, and he would come back and sit in the same position afterward, no matter his condition. TF Industries had shown Rousseau they were the ultimate power.
They'd shown him something else, too, during his time in the bowels of the building. They'd shown him that he could be afraid. Hutch, lethargic and lifeless, was proof to him that anyone could be broken. It wasn't even out of the realm of possibility for himself – the tactics TF used for torture were horrifying. So far he'd been hit, cut, shot, whipped, and insulted. He'd been given three broken ribs and a crushed arm. He was wasting away from lack of food and sleep. Once a day, now, he'd had concoctions forced down his throat that made every inch of him burn and threw him into states of nightmarish hallucination. He desperately wanted to give up, but he had to hold strong for the sake of the remaining members of his team. Even Hutch's state, quiet and immovable, was better than admitting to a crime the team had never intentionally committed. There was nothing that could make him confess to breaking the fine lines of contract, no nightmare or truth serum that would loosen his jaw, no cut could hurt enough to change his mind.
He nursed a particularly nasty slash across his collarbone. It was something Arthur would have fixed, normally, but not now. Now there was no medic to heal him or soldier to make amusing, superfluous "sense" of everything. Bill's amiable disposition, so rare among battlefields, was long, long gone. He missed Lev's food; the heavy could make anything exotic and delicious, but Rousseau was literally starving and just thinking about it shot pangs of hunger through his stomach. He forced his mind to turn to something else. His wounds – no, they wanted him to worry about those. He looked around the room, trying to find something else. Almost out of habit, he looked back towards Hutch. There was something about him today...perhaps he'd slightly changed position to cover a wound or broken bone.
"They're interrogating you today, Vince."
Rousseau would have jumped had a smashed rib not stabbed him first. Hutch hadn't spoken to him for a week, now. He stared agape at the sniper a few minutes, wondering if the hallucinogen they gave him the day before was still in his system, giving him a cruel delusion.
"Promise me you won't tell him anything."
"Cameron, wait," he began, "a-are you—?"
The sniper looked him in the eye. "Promise me?"
He paused, avoiding the sudden stare, then returned the look. "Cam?"
There was no answer, but a slight sheen in his eyes that hadn't been there before told Rousseau he was listening.
"Cam, get out of that corner and I'll promise you damn near anything."
Slowly, weakly, Hutch stood and limped to the bench. It was immediately obvious whose wounds were worse. Hutch's shirt was stained with dried blood, and when he coughed, crimson coated his hands. It took effort for him sit rather than fall into the spot beside him on the bench. Rousseau would say he was dying, but death meant escape and the industry would never allow it. He was just glad to have his friend back.
"Thank God," he gave a weak smile, "I thought you were gone."
"Was I?" Hutch replied bleakly. "Probably better off gone. Probably still gone. I don't know anymore."
"But at least you can talk, now."
The sniper didn't reply to this. Rousseau worried for him. If he fell into another trance, he might not come back. It occurred to him that it must have taken a boatload of will, and then some, just for Hutch to warn him of tomorrow.
"We need to talk to each other, Hutch," he said. "If nothing else, it will help our sanity. The more rational we can keep, the harder it will be to get anything out of us."
Hutch looked up at him, silent aside from a bloodied cough.
"If not for yourself, than for me?"
"Aye," he whispered, though he knew Rousseau didn't mean it for himself at all.