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Snake Eyes, the Most Precious Kind

Summary:

The Deputy was charged with finding Jacob Seed and ending his reign over the Whitetail Mountains. But Jacob is charming, in his way - not with Joseph's golden tongue or John's allure, but with strength and loyalty - and the Deputy is far from unaffected. She has her own wit, however, one Jacob never anticipated, and they have more in common than they realize. These two old soldiers might wage war against each other, but how much longer can they pretend they don't see themselves in one another's eyes?

Notes:

This chapter has some basic violence - probably less graphic than that of the game itself - and some swearing. Fun times! Please enjoy and don't hesitate to leave me a review here or a comment on my tumblr page if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback! <3

Chapter 1: Game of Survival

Chapter Text

The deputy wakes up with a sore back and an aching head. As she tries to bring her hand to her pounding forehead, she realizes her wrists are bound to the arms of a lawn chair with zip-ties. She stomps her foot and the chair clatters against the ground with a wobbly leg.

It’s only then that she looks up and comes face to face with the grotesque face of a mutilated buck, and she groans in disgust.

Another battered face, a human face slips into her field of vision and she startles, shaking the chair hard. Warm hands cup her immobile wrists and she blinks the darkness from her eyes just enough to make out the name embroidered on the person’s jacket.

S. Pratt.

“You should’ve left, Cooke,” he whispers frantically as he tightens the deputy’s restraints. “You shouldn’t have come for me.”

She reaches her fingers out toward him, but he folds them back down against the chair.

“Just… be strong.”

There is another in the room, dressed in Army green. Cooke would know it anywhere. He’s the one holding the remote for the projector, and each slide he introduces is worse than the last. He meets Cooke’s eyes with a wicked grin and walks toward her even as the projector bathes him in bloody light.

The name on his jacket says J. Seed - not that it helps Cooke any, since she can’t keep any of the Seeds straight anyway. It isn’t Joseph, she knows, because God forbid Joseph ever wears a shirt, but, hell, she isn’t even sure how many Seeds are still running around out there. This one doesn’t have John’s insufferable confidence, however, so it’s a good bet that it’s Jacob.

“Now the Collapse is upon us,” he’s lecturing, voice low and gravelly in the gloomy back room. “And this time the lives of the few outweigh the lives of the many.”

“And you’re the few?” Cooke only realizes she’s gagged after she speaks, but her sardonic tone is not unrecognized, even if her words are muffled. Seed’s eyes narrow, and he reaches for a small box on the projector table.

Movement to the left flickers in Cooke’s peripheral vision and she glances over just as the slide changes and the room is plunged into darkness. By the time the next one loads, the movement has stopped, and Jacob is winding up… a music box?

Cooke laughs at it. She regrets it as soon as the first note hits her ears.


When Cooke finds that she can move her hands again, she’s ecstatic. It comes at a price, however, as the glaring red light in the room and the haunting, distorted melody in her head send her right to the floor as soon as she tries to stand. Either the room is spinning or she is, but she doesn’t have time to make out which as a bullet whirrs past her ear.

She looks up, brows furrowed, and sees two other empty chairs like the one she was sitting in - and their angry occupants aiming pistols right at her face. Unthinking, she wraps her fingers around the edge of the table and yanks it over as she rolls behind it for cover. The projector crashes to the ground beside her and showers her hands with broken glass, but a pistol clatters next to her and she cocks it before holding it tight to her chest.

“Fuck,” she whispers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

When she pokes her head above the table, already splintering apart, she recognizes one of the shooters as a policeman.

“Hey!” she shouts at him, ducking back behind the table as he fires a few rounds at her head. “You! Uh… Tom? Thomas? That’s your name, right? I think we met!”

Two more rounds burrow into the table. To her right, the squashed tip of a bullet pokes daringly out of the wood.

“Tom! Buddy! We’re on the same side! Just breathe and think!”

The other one rounds the table, and Cooke shoots him in the chest - only to be met with a puff of red smoke and a small pile of ash. She cocks her head to the side, half-frowning, before shrugging and emerging from behind the table to shoot the policeman.

The same thing happens to him: a plume of smoke and nothing but ashes to prove he was ever there. That damn song from Jacob’s music box keeps playing in Cooke’s head, and by now she’s realized this has to be in her mind, but when she looks down at her hands and sees blood from the broken glass, she shakes her head and sucks in a deep breath.

“This is such bullshit,” she spits angrily. “Why does the weird stuff always happen to me?”

A voice, deep and smoky, whispers from every direction at once. Go faster. Cull the herd.

And God help her, she listens. A semi-auto calls to her from a box by the doorframe and she snatches it up as she crosses the threshold. The halls are crimson and decorated with scrawled commands like Train and Fight. Each time Cooke encounters another person, they start shooting at her, and after the fourth one she starts shooting first. After that, the voice in her ears starts praising her.

Good. You’re doing well. Keep moving.  

She starts running. More weapons are scattered through the twisting halls and she picks each new one up as she finds it. She doesn’t see any more officers, but she isn’t looking anymore, either. The voice in her head says “go,” so she goes. It feels good to be acknowledged, for once.

After a while, the song doesn’t sound too bad. She falls into a sort of rhythm between the gunfire and the music, and things that should hurt barely tickle. She’s shot in the shoulder once, and she half expects herself to disappear like everyone else. But she doesn’t. She just feels a soft throbbing in her arm, all the way down to her fingers, and she pushes through until the last person in her way is nothing but dust.

And when they’re all gone, she closes her eyes, and the voice in her head tells her she’s strong.

No one’s said that to her in… too long.


 

She wakes up again in a hard bunk, not unlike the ones in the police station. Her eyes narrow as she glances around the room, and she reaches for a gun she doesn’t have when she sees movement in the corner.

The source puts their hands up and steps slowly out of the shadows. “Easy now,” he says, a burly man with unkempt hair and a thick beard. “Easy, rookie.”

Cooke braces herself up on her elbows. “Who are you?”

“Eli. That’s all you need for now. Just… try to relax. The first time Jacob Seed gets ‘em is always the worst.”

When her head throbs painfully in response, she understands why.