Code of Conduct (Part 1/2)
Nov. 15th, 2010 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Pairing: Murdock/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: dub-con (Murdock/Face), non-con (Murdock/OMC), violence
Summary: First half of a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Murdock went crazy after being held captive - raped, tortured and forced to watch his friends killed - for several months. He's gay but incapable of giving consent to sex because any instance of a guy coming onto him gives him a bad case of flashback. The only person aware of that is Hannibal.
Face and he are sharing a bed one night and Face finally gives in to UST and starts to make advances at Murdock. Initially Murdock says no but Face thinks he's just shy and doesn't stop, until Murdock gives in. They have sex. Except that while Face was having sex with Murdock, Murdock was, in his head, back in his cell, being used by one of the guards, making sure to give the said guard a good time in exchange for food and not being tortured that night.
The next day all hell breaks lose when Murdock is incapable of snapping out of his flashback, convinced that Face and the rest are his captors; he's broken, freakishly obiedant and respectful, begging for mercy and offering Face more sexual favors in exchange for food.
Lots of Murdock!angst, freaking out Face, Hannibal wanting blood. And don't have Murdock snapping out of it after 10 minutes, have it lasting for days.
Face can’t take it anymore, and he thinks Murdock’s on board with everything, until he and Hannibal find the pilot babbling in the bathtub the next morning. A CIA mission down in Colombia went bad and pretty soon, we're cutting back and forth between Murdock's past and his present, where Face is desperately trying to save his friend...
“Murdock?”
“Yes, Face?”
The lieutenant bit his lip. He couldn’t say it. But this was pure torture - Hannibal, making them share the hotel room that had the king-sized bed. Nope, they couldn’t take the one with the two doubles. BA always refused to share with the pilot on the grounds that Murdock snored. And Hannibal flatly declined, on the grounds that he did not sleep with his subordinates. When Face tried to point out that they weren’t in the Army any longer and that didn’t fucking matter, Hannibal had just fixed him with that look of his, and that was that.
So it was him, stuck here, under the covers with Murdock. A foot away from Murdock. Who slept in his boxers and nothing else.
“Nothing, buddy.”
“Naw, whadda’ya want to say?”
“Don’t want to wake you up.”
“I’m not asleep,” Murdock says softly, gently, and Face’s heart skips a beat. Was that... no, it can’t be. Can it? Isn’t it? “So, what’s up?”
Face rolls around, tugging lightly on Murdock’s shoulder until the other man rolls, too, and they’re staring right at each other in the half-light coming through cheap window curtains from the parking lot beyond. “Hey, HM, do you ever, do you ever think about us?”
“Sure, Face, all the time. I mean, you and BA and Hannibal are pretty much all I think about any more...”
“No, I don’t mean like that. I mean, like, us. You and me.”
“Together?”
Face nods. Murdock hides his face in the blankets. “No.”
“Come on, buddy, I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes. Don’t you know how I feel about you? Can’t you tell?” he asks, desperate, ashamed he’s doing this and unable to stop. It’s just been too long, far too long, living with all of it. Living with Murdock, never able to touch him the way he wants to, things so much tighter and narrower since the container ship blew. Now, it’s so close, too close...
He brings a hand up to rest on the other man’s cheek. He’s seen this shy side of Murdock before. Just has to work him through it, is all. His fingers brush smooth skin as he cups the pilot’s chin and urges him out of these fetal position. “It’s okay, please.”
“Don’t,” Murdock says, moving now, wrapping himself around Face like a scared child waking up from a dream and all Face wants to do is take the pain away, make it stop, give this man everything he deserves, let him feel everything that Face feels for him, make it all okay somehow. “Don’t ruin what we got.”
“We wouldn’t be ruining anything, buddy. We’d be building.”
“Gotta have a good foundation to work with, Faceman, and I’m nothing solid...”
“I don’t care. I love you like you are.”
“No, don’t, don’t say that...”
“You don’t love me?”
A little shudder runs through the pilot’s body, sheet clutched tightly to his chest. Something’s shifting. He’s making a decision, and if he sinks further down, Face promises himself he’ll stop. He’d never hurt this man. Couldn’t live with himself if he did. “Face, you know I love you, but...”
Face’s heart is hammering in his ears now. “There doesn’t need to be a but involved, Murdock. Nothing but us, me and you.”
“Me and you,” the pilot murmurs, his voice a little more warm, a little more sane, and Face knows he’s pulling back to reality. For him. He smiles when Murdock looks him in the eyes, clear and certain. “You want me?”
“With everything I am,” Face whispers, and places a soft, tentative kiss on his best friend’s soft lips. There’s still some hesitation there. “Will you have me?”
“Anything you want,” Murdock says with a breathy little sigh and lays flat in clear invitation. “Anything at all you want.”
“I want all of you,” Face replies softly, and moves over him, kissing him again and this time, Murdock opens up and lets the lieutenant in.
Clothes vanish, sweat forms, little cries and moans fill the still air of the motel room. Face can’t believe his luck, Murdock, willing, Murdock, moving with him, Murdock, smiling as Face buries himself deep in that blazing furnace of his body. The slight tears as he comes, and the way the pilot lets himself fall into sated limbs after, both of them drifting off like that, entwined, just the way it should be, just the way it always should have been.
But what Face doesn’t know, what Face can’t possibly know, is that while he’s sleeping in a warm bed in a decent part of America, Murdock’s lying exhausted on the hard basement floor of a Colombian mansion, bleeding from a re-opened cut running ear to shoulder, the feel of his tech sergeant’s hands in his hair, her lap beneath his head, holding him, the way she’s shaking, knowing he just took another one of those sessions to keep it away from her.
"Sir..."
"I told you not to apologize again," he says as calmly as he's able. "These jackasses don't get to fuck with my female to get everyone else to break. Ain't puttin' up with that shit."
She's quiet for a moment, and then..."don't bullshit me again, sir, not on this."
He closes his eyes for a moment. What the hell? They could all be dead tomorrow. "You got two baby girls at home and I ain't sendin' you back to your husband all broken up," he finally tells her, and even here, even after the last six weeks, she's still able to cry.
So can he. But he doesn't.
He can live with the rape. He's had rough sex before, it didn't kill him. These are the risks. He’s the ranking officer. He has to keep what’s left of his crew safe, no matter the cost. He can do this.
He can.
+++++
Face really isn’t sure what happened overnight, what he’s woken up to, what the fuck Murdock is doing, but Hannibal’s standing at the door, fingers drumming against the chipped wood, clearly demanding an explanation as to why the two of them haven’t made it out yet. He keeps it light, though, not knowing, Face realizes, and he knows he’s not going to like what’s coming.
“We’re on a schedule, Face. You forget about the...”
“Hannibal, he’s, um...I’ve never seen him like this.”
The boss’s face twitches a little, changing from its usual good humor to something else entirely, an expression Face has never seen before. “Like what, kid?”
Face steps back from the door, and Hannibal’s through it in a heartbeat, following his lieutenant’s pointing finger back to the bathroom, where the door is mercifully, horribly open.
Hannibal looks around. Face knows what he sees. The rumpled sheets, the pillows kicked off the bed, the broken lamp from this morning, the horribly guilty expression on his own face that matches the ache inside of him. The boss’s fist balls until the skin goes white. “Stay here, lieutenant,” he growls and makes for the bathroom
“Hannibal, please...” he begins, pressing in closer. He stops when Hannibal holds his hand up.
“Face, shut up and do what I tell you for once. Sit your ass down on that bed.”
And then the boss is gone.
Face buries his head in his hands. How in the hell did everything go wrong like this? Everything was fine last night, better than fine, better than he’s been in a long, long time, everything exactly how it was supposed to be, and then, this morning...
“Murdock?” he asked lightly, pressing a kiss to that forehead tucked against his chest. “Hmm, Murdock, you awake?”
“Don’t wanna wake up,” he mumbled, and Face laughed a little and ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t wanna go ‘gain.”
“We have to get back on the road, baby. You know how Hannibal gets on these missions...”
Then Murdock was awake.
Then Murdock was shoving, shoving Face away from him, just as hard and as fast a he could, which only made Face hold on tighter. He didn’t get it at first, thought maybe Murdock wanted to wrestle, like he did sometimes, but no, that fist swinging up, straight to his head wasn’t play. He let go immediately and ducked, the left hook barely missing him, and Murdock was on top of him in an instant.
Face was too stunned to react quick enough to stop it, and he ended up taking one to the jaw before he could gather himself enough to react, rolling up, trying to get off his back, anything. Still too late. Murdock’s momentum flung them both off the bed, Face landing hard, coughing, and Murdock was right there. Arms, impossibly strong and that could only have been adrenalin, had him pinned, a sloppy chokehold that got all the more threatening for Face’s attempts to get out of it.
So, instead he went limp, schooled himself to stop moving, felt his heart race in his ears. “Buddy?” he weezed, Murdock’s tightening down around his neck until he was seeing gray. Not windpipe, artery constriction, and for the first time that morning, Face felt very real fear.
“Don’t fuck with me, asshole,” the pilot growled, and slammed his head back against the floor. “You mother fuckers, trying to fuck with my head?”
“I thought you wanted...”
“Killing my crew not good enough for you? Mutilating my co-pilot? That not make you sick bastards happy?”
Face had no idea what he was talking about. Murdock had snapped. That much was clear. But why? Why now? “Murdock, Murdock, look at me. Everything’s going to be fine...”
And then Murdock had just released him, fallen off, did this backwards crawl towards the bathroom, and when Face had recovered enough to follow, he found the pilot, weeping uncontrollably, knees tucked into his chest, wedged between the toilet and the tub. He’d stayed there for a few minutes, not knowing what to do, until Hannibal knocked on the door.
He can hear the boss in there, talking in lone tones that still carried.
“... captain? It’s Major Smith. Boss sent me down to see how you’re doing.”
“They’re all dead, sir. I know that’s what you want to know.”
“I’m just worried about you, HM.”
“... you’re not gonna have much luck going back for the bodies...”
“HM...”
“... I don’t think there’s anything left...the dogs...”
And then everything descends into more sobbing, thick hiccups of air, and when Hannibal comes out, Face remembers that yeah, he has seen that expression before.
The boss is ready, absolutely ready, to kill him.
They stare at each other for a minute, and it’s like the crest of a tidal wave, Hannibal’s anger building behind his eyes, Face bracing himself, and then everything smashes to shit.
“What. Did. You. Do?” Hannibal asks, calm, collected, more fury in his voice than Face has ever heard. Worse than the Morrison thing last year. Worse...
He swallows. Hard. His mouth has gone completely dry and it takes him a few tries to get this out. “Umm... we slept together last night.”
“Be precise, kid. Sex? With Murdock on the receiving end?”
“What?” He’s still a little dazed.
“Did you fuck him? As in, did you perform the fucking of him?”
Face winces. It sounds so crude, so ugly, for what it had been. What he thought it was, he corrects himself, because now, he's got no idea what to think. “Yeah, um, I...”
“God-fucking-damn it!” Hannibal thunders, and it makes Face want to die, right there. He’s never heard the boss this... disappointed in him. “Did you stop to think, about what you were doing?”
“Are you saying that’s what set him off?”
Hannibal glares at him. “What do you think it was, kid?”
“I don’t...”
“What’s going on, Hannibal?” BA asks from the doorway, spare key in hand and concern in his eyes. “Where’s Murdock?”
Hannibal’s still staring at Face, who’s suddenly aware that he’s only got a pair of boxers, pulled hastily on when Hannibal knocked, and a flimsy excuse of but I love him between himself and the only people he cares about in the world. The shame of this...
“Hannibal, I didn’t know,” he pleads, and the boss’s shoulders lose some of that aggressiveness. “You gotta understand...”
“I know, kid,” he says quietly, and turns his attention to BA. “This is going to get worse before it gets better. We all need to be prepared for that.”
“What’s going on, Face?” BA asks, flicking his eyes over the lieutenant, who can feel the bruises starting to darken on his neck.
“Murdock’s snapped.”
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s much worse than that,” Hannibal replies, patting his jacket down for a cigar and his lighter.
“Worse?” Face askes, aghast.
“If this is what I think it is,” and Hannibal bites the end of the stogie, lights it up, “we’re dealing with the fallout from that mission back in ‘99.”
“What mission?”
Hannibal takes a deep puff. He’s acting cool, but Face can feel it. The anger’s already been spent. There’s nothing there but grief. “The one that put him in the nuthouse.”
And regret. There’s plenty of regret in that simple statement as well.
Face runs unsteady hands down his thighs and BA comes over to sit on the bed next to him, supportive hand on his shoulder. The conman can barely feel it. “Just what, exactly, are we dealing with here, Hannibal?”
Hannibal remembers that morning, a hot and sweaty day in Panama, when the call came across the switchboard, American man found in Belize, some wearied Peace Corps doctor still on the line after vein routed clear to the Pentagon and Benning and somehow back here.
Evidently, the injured man wouldn't give them anything beyond his name, social security number and rank. That was it.
Plus the screaming from the previous three nights.
"He one of yours, then?"
Hannibal didn't need to go check the database. It was his job to keep track of things for the colonel and this was one of them. One of the biggest. "He's been missing for over three months. God only knows how he got into your neck of the woods. I had him listed as AWOL," Hannibal lied and the doctor knew better than to call him on it.
"This man's in bad shape. He needs more care than I can give him here..."
"Anyone else with him?"
There was a long silence. "He's talking about people he knew?"
"The captain was on leave with friends," and Hannibal slid down a little in his ancient desk chair. "What's he been saying?"
"We had a medevac down there within the day." Hannibal continues explaining, and tightens his grip on his half-spent cigar. He wonders why it's burnt down so far. That's the way his office smelled that morning, old cigars and jungle and engine oil from the helicopters on their pads nearby. "He was running joint ISR ops, CIA stuff was the rumor, but he was a Ranger and the commander wanted us to keep an eye on him. CIA didn't do shit to get any of them back, after the plane was found, bombed out..."
"Hannibal, you ain't making any sense, man," BA interrupts, leaning forward a little. "He wasn't always crazy?"
"He hadn't, er, had his little break with reality yet, when we first got him back to Panama, either. I don't really know what it was..." but that's a lie, too.
Hannibal knows damn well what happened, getting a wake-up call from the first sergeant at damn near midnight, explaining that he needed Hannibal, the detachment's duty officer, to run interference with the pilot's boyfriend, a lieutenant from maintenance. He was panicking over what to do. The captain had locked himself in a closet, naked, babbling.
You know damn well we can't let this boy lose his bennies over this bullshit, not after what we put him through...
"Hannibal," and that's Face, isn't it, sounding like he's been punched in the gut, and looking a little like it, too. Those bruises, the placement...Murdock couldn't have recognized him. Those were absolutely intended to kill. "Hannibal, what are we going to do?"
Hannibal doesn't have an answer yet, not one they're going to like anyway. But he's the man with a plan, and an eighty percent solution is better than nothing right now.
"We're going to sedate him, get him out of here. BA, go get the little black bag out of my laptop bag..."
"Thought you said you weren't gonna pack that stuff no more, Hannibal," BA says automatically.
"Bosco, now is not the time," Hannibal warns and he's pretty sure BA gets what Face already knows, that this is different than all those other times. He nods and leaves, closing the door as quietly as he can.
Face is sitting up now. "Your narrative's all over the place, boss."
"It ain't a fucking bedtime story, Face," he grunts, and sags a little, the normally rich taste of tobacco ashen. "And I don't have all the details. Wasn't his commander, remember? Couldn't get the records."
"Just talk to me. What can I do about this?" It's whispered. Kid's desperate. It's been so obvious for so long, that desire; something should have been said before now. But it's too late for Hannibal to do anything but nod, and tell him what he knows.
"From what little we could gather after the fact, his plane went down over Colombia around zero-four-fifteen in the morning..."
+++++
Murdock can hear them talking. He’s not so far gone that he can’t hear them talking in the next room. He knows what’s real, he always knows what’s real. The cold tile behind his head, the smooth tub around him, his fingers and bare toes against the grip on the bottom, the way the cold air of the room seems to suck the moisture from his bare skin, that smell of cheap soap and the plastic of the shower curtains, which he grabs, trying to remember, trying not to remember, trying to tell himself what’s real.
Focus on that. Stay tuned in to that.
But there’s the noise from the next room, Hannibal talking, some half-forgotten man from his past, the major who’d come down and read to him at the hospital while his body was wracked with infection, the one who always used to come check on him before missions, who’d made sure his emergency data was up to date that afternoon before wheels-up.
He’s talking about it. “...in the morning after the tower lost contact. Couldn’t raise them on the radio, and this was a blacked-out flight. Instrument flying, low level, high risk. Who knows? The forensics team told us the wing had been shredded by AAA...”
...the way the controls went slack in his hand, hydraulic lines snapping under the force, his sergeant screaming orders back to the gunners as he desperately tried to get the MC-130 level, shoving down the panic, fighting as the plane started wallowing out of the sky...
Murdock tucks his knees into his chest, wanting to reach for a towel and block out those words. Too many words, too many, his lieutenant trying to get him to respond when all that mattered was that he just managed to land a beast of an aircraft and he needed and minute to recover from that and they had just been fucking shot down.
In this part of the world.
He remembers staring out the cockpit windows, the thick green jungle closer and tighter than it had any right to be to his girl, being so angry at the assholes that would take her out of the sky, knowing that any minute the drug dealers or gun runners or communists or whoever it was who fired those rounds into her were going to be get here and do the same to his crew.
“Murdock?”
It was no time to give in to panic.
“El-tee,” he said as calmly as he could, reaching over, switching the two operable props whine, running through the post-flight checklist as fast as possible before the main fuel tanks caught fire, “get the guys, get the axes.”
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Are you?”
“Yeah...”
Murdock peeled himself loose from the seat and managed to stand up without falling. His helmet got thrown somewhere and he pushed the kid into the cargo bay. “If you don’t go start helping them destroy the equipment, you won’t be.”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant was a tough kid for being as fresh as he is to this mission, but he looked rattled. Yelling at him or ordering him to pull it together wasn’t going to work, so Murdock slapped him on the back instead and grinned.
“We’ll get that combat landing requirement checked off your upgrade training when we get back. Go... smash shit.”
The lieutenant nodded once and vanished, leaving him alone.
The captain equivocated for a moment in the cockpit. He ran an apologetic hand over one of the panels overhead, letting his fingers trail down all those little controls, the switches and the buttons and the indicators, a web of light and movement he knew by heart, every wire and every process, where every electron goes, down to his knees, to the handle of the sledgehammer they’ve got strapped unceremoniously under the jump seat.
He never wanted to use it.
But he was the aircraft commander. He fucked up. Got them shot down. And now they were all going to pay for it. Starting with her.
And here he is, bathtub gone, the major’s voice faded to nothing, gone, a memory from yesterday.
He’s standing in the heart of his plane, the girl that’s been so good to him the last few months. It's not his decision. They all know what to do, what they have to do, how this works, what's on board. Classified above top secret. Worth a fortune on the black market for the damage it would do, for the technological advantage they would lose, for all the things he’s sworn to protect, so he closes his eyes and apologizes to his girl and brings the hammer up and over his head, straight down on the navigation controls, through those circuit boards, blinding her.
There are tears in his own eyes as shots are fired a few minutes later and he’s out of the cockpit and one of his men takes a round in the shoulder, fountaining blood, and there’s no way he can order them to hold positions, not with M-9s and M-4s still being fumbled loose and functional from the chaos of the bay - they’re all going to die if he makes that call. It’s a forced surrender and one he doesn’t like with half the gear still left to go, but Airman Rodriguez was off on perimeter patrol, so as they’re being driven away in muddy jeeps, he watches a tracer round find its way into a fuel tank and the whole craft explodes.
Half a dozen AK-47s fire at once into the treeline.
That's two out of twelve.
Screaming. He can hear it, sounds vaguely like his own. Thrashing. He can feel it. Even though he’s stuffed tight in the jeep, staring at the floor, talking in quiet Mandarin to their CIA agent, he still thinks he might be crying out for help that’s not going to come.
“Hold him down, BA,” he hears, that familiar voice he knows from before, and from later, too...
“Hannibal are you sure this is a good idea? He was okay, getting him down to the van.”
“We don’t have a choice, kid. How’s the scam for the house comin...”
He doesn’t like that. It’s ugly. He ignores it.
The sun’s rising over the carnage, and puts his face up into the dawn, just a little, thinking about missing coffee and doughnuts and easy morning kisses back at base with his man, thinking about the burning husk of the plane, thinking about what a glorious thing sunlight really and truly is.
There’s a hand on his forehead, some whispered thing that almost cuts the oily smoke of his girl as she burns, and he recognizes that as something that’s real, not a memory at all, or a moment that’s not a memory yet. He can’t decide.
But then it doesn’t really matter, cause Murdock feels a puncture in his neck and it all slides into oblivion.
+++++
“This place ain’t up your usual standard, Face. Losin’ your touch?” Hannibal hears BA joke ahead of him, the words falling out of the house, heavy and brittle in the garage.
Face isn’t having any of it. Sounds slightly dazed. “Hannibal wanted a house... out of the way.”
“What are we gonna do without that fifth bathroom?” BA tries again.
“I’m make sure to get that in for the next place, ‘kay?”
“Face, I’m sorry, man.”
“...just get the door open.”
It’s the first any of them have spoken in the last hour. Hannibal pauses for a moment before he goes in. Tells himself they’re going to get through this, like they get through everything else. But it’s a sad scene inside.
Face collapsed on the closest piece of furniture. He has Murdock in his arms, the pilot tucked against his chest where he been since they had to sedate him. The conman had injected him himself, a look of abject sorrow in his eyes, capping the needle and handing it back to Hannibal. That expression hasn’t left him. BA’s leaning against a far wall, uncertain, unable to help. They both look at him. They need something to do.
He nods. “I asked him to get it, BA. Neighborhood like this, we won’t be notice
“You mean, nobody’s going to call the police,” Face said, hollow. “When the screaming starts back up.”
“Shit, Hannibal...”
“BA, why don’t you go get supplies? Groceries, that kind of stuff,” Hannibal says, tossing him a roll of bills from one of the bags. “Get some jello. Get a lot of jello. Face, what’s Murdock’s favorite flavor?”
“He hates that stuff.”
“He associates it with hospitals.”
“You think that’s going to pull him out?”
“Face, I have no idea. Last time this happened, he was out for a day or two and when it passed, he wouldn’t let anybody in the room but me. Sat there, eating jello, for three hours, trying to explain something to me, but...” and Hannibal wants to forget that moment.
Going to visit this captain, a brilliant pilot, loved by every crew he’d ever flown with, fast burner, heading straight to the top, package already submitted for an early promotion, everything, everything going for him. Asking him how he was. Listening to Murdock spend five minutes babbling about geese and migration routes instead of the details of the crash, and when Hannibal called him on that his eyes went wide and face pale. He sunk under the sheet, turning away, breathing hard...
Panicking. Absolutely panicking.
Everybody’s dead, sir, gray static keepin’ everything apart, shifting around, focusing, I can’t, not right now with the tide comin’ in like this... it’s all over...
And while it wasn’t the first time Hannibal had been to a hospital room and watched a man weep for what he’d lost, this was somehow worse than any time before, any time after.
“But he’d snapped?”
“Like I said before, I don’t think so. He knew something was wrong, but...”
There’s a murmur from Murdock, a little shove, and Face looks to Hannibal. Again, looking for those illusive answers. “Should I let him go?”
“What’s he saying?”
Face puts his ear down by the pilot’s ear, listens for a minute, and then frowns, pulls up. “Sounds like, umm, I am prepared to give my life in their defense. That's..."
"Article one," Hannibal supplies.
"Motherfucker. I don’t even remember the damn thing...” and then, inexplicably, the kid starts laughing, humorless and sad, cradles Murdock closer, and Hannibal waits for the moment when he’s going to have to pull them apart.
+++++
I am an American...
They’re screaming at him, broken Spanish and worse English. He can live with that. He doesn’t like them screaming at his men, though. Catches a few words. The boss is here.
“Bout time, old chap,” he mutters in the direction of the man with the death grip on his arm. “I’ve been wondering when we’d kick this off.”
...fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared...
Murdock’s running through it in his head, feeling like an idiot for doing so. It reminds him of basic training, sweating in the hallways until everything stank so bad he could barely breath, screaming out knowledge until vocal chords failed, arms shaking from the effort of another hundred push-ups. God, he hated West Point. He hates it now, irrationally thinking back to the cadre telling him about being in a situation like this someday, about how he’d be thankful for learning this, all of them just little boys playing soldier.
Three days here already.
He hates them for being right.
will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command.... Screwed that one up, HM, he tells himself.
His hands are playing idly with a flight suit zipper that’s just been cut off him. There isn’t any rank on any of their uniforms, no flags or snarky little mottos or patches that the military’s so fond of. But they’ve all got tattoos, all of them, and there’s no way to hide what they are. And these guys, one of the local cocaine cartels? These guys know exactly what the US military’s doing in Colombia.
So there aren’t any illusions. That’s a good thing.
If I am senior, I will take command...
He got that, at least. His show, his men, his to keep together right now. That’s why he stood up when they started yelling for the boss. That’s why he barked an order for a few of his more trigger-happy folks to stay the fuck down and leave their hands where they were told to leave them. That’s why he doesn’t flinch as they prod him out of the shed into the blinding afternoon.
He’s fairly certain they’re going to kill him, right here, right now, in the mud and filth of a coca-processing facility, a hundred laborers standing around, watching, waiting for something.
There’s some asshole getting out of another jeep, this one clean enough to have driven out of a Houston showroom moments ago. Paramilitary type, the kind that wear non-descript camo with stars on their shoulders, seventeen year boys with dead eyes as bodyguards, pot belly.
I will continue to resist by all means available...
Murdock’s just got his boots on no as this asshole, probably the guy in charge but who could ever really tell with these butchers, and he crosses his arms, staring back. Don’t let them see it, he tells himself
The man takes one look at him and smiles, lighting a cigarette as he does so. “You crashed in my jungle.”
It’s English. Better to not break out the Spanish until he has to. He grins. “No sir, muchacho, I made a controlled descent from altitude. Your jungle crashed into me.”
That gets him a backhand to the face and a kick to the knee, which sends him toppling into the mud, both hands absorbing the shock of it and a fist in his hair, dragging him up, staring straight into the head honcho’s eyes. He’s seen men like this before, too many of them, sick inside, something dead, drowned in too much blood and sex.
Smoke's blown into his face. “What are you doing out here?”
He wants to tell this man where he can shove it.
I will make no oral nor written statements...dedicated to the principles...
But he doesn’t answer. That action movie bullshit of taunting the bad guy never works, only gets you killed faster. If they want something, they’re going to have to beat it out of him. He has no doubt they will. He braces for the next blow.
“What are you doing out here?”
The screaming gets louder, and he catches the word punta in the morass of noise, and he sees the tech sergeant who’s been so reliable, tough in that way all military women seem to be, hits the ground next to him, splattering the gray goop onto the honcho’s pants and a steel-toed boot from one of those fucking teenagers explodes her nose.
She screams, and he can’t tell if it’s anger or pain or fear. She’s been taking this harder than the rest, because she’s been expecting this. And Murdock’s been trying to figure out what he was going to do when it came up.
And here it is, coming up.
“Lynda, Lynda,” he says urgently. “Look at me.”
She doesn’t move.
“You’re going to be okay.”
They’re tearing her clothes off now. One of the others, one of the men who picked them up, runs a rough hand down her ass, between her legs. It sets off a frenzy.
“Bitches, punta, Americano good for only thing. And you bring them out here?”
She screams louder, the pain rolling her eyes back, blood running down the bare skin of her neck. His blood boils at the thought of them using her as leverage against him, knows if this works, it’s going to happen again. And Murdock doesn’t need a second look to know she’s not going to make it through this. But he’s probably still loose, so many times, like that last morning, so far away now, laying on the narrow dorm bed with Nick, his boy from Maintenance, laughing about the possibilities.
“Why are you here? Maybe she lives.”
...responsible for my actions...
And even if he wasn’t, he’d still do this.
What was that they always told him about sarcasm and pissing off the captors? Might as well have given him a how-to manual.
“Tourists, man,” he says as casually as he can muster, laughing a little. “We were getting some really nice shots of the trees. Seriously, those coca plants you grow here? Very rare for us nature lovers, I just fucking love finding those things...”
The teenager kicks the tech in the face again and the other one, the little bastard who’s holding his head, wrenches up and tosses him forward.
Murdock goes limp, catching himself only slightly as he connects with the hood . The cigarette’s put out on his neck and his legs are jerked apart, and he grits his teeth.
“I think this will be more fun after all, no?”
He can smell stale air on his skin and he wants to hit this guy, but there are guns everywhere and blood’s in the air and something’s going to blow, and he’d rather it be this, him, than anyone else.
Filthy like he is, the hard initial burn is made worse by dirt shoved in along with and he bites back his scream by only the narrowest margin. Lets his forehead hit the hot metal, feeling it sear, glad for it. Glad his men don’t have to see this. Aware the sergeant can probably see everything. Then it starts, full force.
That hand in his hair changes for just a second, soft and warm, almost petting, like the way Nick would touch him, the way somebody who loves him would. He tries not to relax into that like he wants to, telling himself it's not real, and then it’s blessedly gone, he’s here, nowhere else, and he can’t get those words out of his head. Goddamn code.
If I am senior, I will take command...
Murdock starts laughing. Even here, under these circumstances, he’s still in control.
+++++
Face doesn’t look up, but he does loosen his hold as Murdock starts writhing again, a little laugh starting up and growing louder. It’s chilling, Hannibal thinks, after the last four hours of silence. “What do you think happened to him? What’s he remembering?”
“If he’s waking up, we should probably get him somewhere more contained, Hannibal,” BA offers. He hasn't stirred from the corner armchair since getting back from the store.
“Maybe it’s over?” Face practically begs.
It's hopeful and there's no way the colonel wants to squash that. Murdock's going to need somebody to wake up to. They'd had to get his boyfriend, that lieutenant, an early reassignment back to the States. Nobody was there for him the first time around, nobody but Hannibal, and there wasn't much he could do then. Just like there's not much he can do now.
Hannibal puts a hand on the kid’s shoulders. “Then there’s no harm in it, is there? Come on, let's get him comfortable.”
+++++
These people who own this house - drug dealers or college professors, Face can’t tell - have one of those cat clocks up in the kitchen. The kind where the face of the clock’s in the cat’s belly and its tail serves as a pendulum, ticking off the seconds. Almost twenty-four hours since they got here, according to this damn thing. Face hates it. He hates the cat clock.
“You doin’ okay, man?” BA asks. He’s already fixed the leak in the sink, something broken on the back porch and torn apart and rebuilt the lawnmower out in the garage. His hands are greasy as passes Face a sandwich. It reminds Face of Murdock’s motor oil chili. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” Face grumbles and take the plate. Ham and cheese. Does he like this? “When did Hannibal say he was coming back?”
“Had to go cancel our job, man. He’s trying...”
“... to find a replacement, I know.” They’re suposed to be up north, Oregon, helping out this logging company right now, something that Hannibal seemed to be pretty adamant about doing after they’d heard the particulars. Except Face had fucked up and Murdock is comatose in one of the bedrooms, muttering to himself, like he had been all day, like he was last night after he woke up from the drugs, crying and sweating, and they can’t do anything about...
“Afternoon, chaps.”
BA and Face look at each other, trying to decide who was going to speak first, and Face nodded a little back. “Hey, buddy. How’re you feeling?”
“I’ve had worse,” Murdock said, giggling slightly. “Buddies, huh? That’s funny, coming from you.”
The words weren’t lining up right and there was this edge to how he was talking, the hunch in his shoulders, completely Murdock and yet somehow too... raw. Like those familiar gestures hadn’t quite jelled into normal patterns yet, and Face felt his stomach turn over.
“Well, that’s...”
He grabs BA’s arm, stopping him from moving forward in relief and giving the pilot a hug. “He’s still in it.”
“What d’ya mean?”
This was how it had started, Face thinks to himself, and cautiously approaches the pilot. “Murdock, where’d you go?”
“Askin’ me the same stuff they always do,” Murdock said, still hunched, and he looks over at BA. “I don’t think we should talk about this in front of the guys, Lynch.”
The look on the big guy’s face is nothing but pain, and Face tries to keep himself from lashing out verbally. Was that asshole involved with this too, somehow, all those years ago? Or did every CIA agent go out calling themselves that? Hannibal had mentioned it had been Company ops, not DoD... He takes a risk and puts an arm around his best friend. “There’s a corner over here.”
“Hannibal said not to encourage him,” BA warns.
“Just let me try,” and bless the man, but BA doesn’t even attempt to follow as Face pulls Murdock into the living room.
When they get there, Murdock’s legs seem to give out and he collapses down against the sofa, seemingly oblivious to any of it, lost in whatever holding cell or shed or lock-up they had him stowed in. A hand goes to hie forehead, propping him up against a knee, and Face sits across from him, cross-legged, not wanting to touch him again.
“I know you’re curious,” Murdock says without looking. “What I told them.”
“Who?”
“Nothin’ yet. Amateur motherfuckers,” Murdock says, slamming his head back up against the arm of the couch. “I can’t keep it up, you know that.”
“Can’t keep what up?”
“You gone dense, Lynch? We had this conversation already,” and this was Murdock sounding, well, sane again, which chills Face to the core. “Dying in a war is one thing, country and all that shit, but this drug interdiction. It’s bullshit, half my guys don’t even think we need to be here in the first place. I’m not going to be able to hold them together on that. I don’t think I can hold myself together on that.”
“What do you mean?” Face honestly can’t figure this out.
“Lynch, I know you probably don’t give a shit about my guys, just your precious mission down here, but they’re my responsbiliity. I have to...”
And then Face realizes something. It’s Murdock talking, his Murdock, except it’s not. This is the old Murdock, the Murdock from before, the Murdock that somehow doesn’t exist anymore, and he’s never met him. He understand what he’s talking about, that thing the instructors used to try to beat into him before he commissioned, that need to lead, that desire, that depth of purpose. Like Hannibal feels towards them. Like any good officer has. Face hadn’t ever really felt it, not for the Army and not for anything they were fighting for. He liked the job and he liked working for Hannibal and he’d never given much thought to all the normal shit lieutenants were supposed to care about.
But maybe Murdock had. Despite being a pilot. Some kind of idealism down there, long lost, stripped away? He feels something crack in his chest. So much about this man he doesn’t know.
“You have to get them out safe,” he supplies, and Murdock’s empty gaze meets his own. There’s no recognition there at all.
“CSAR’s going to be limited out here, your people won’t risk it... no, Lynch, we’re all gonna die here. If we’re lucky, we can go out with some pride left intact...” and Murdock starts giggling again, a real Murdock giggle, one Face has heard before, when he’s going into something, and then his head snaps up as keys scratch in the lock of the front door.
“Wait, no, wait are you doing?” he asks urgently, getting to his feet. “Don’t you fucking think about it...”
“Murdock?” Face asks.
“Put ‘im down!” he yells, loud, using a tone Face has never heard out of him before. “For god’s sake, don’t you fucking...”
In his mind’s eye, where he’s trapped, Murdock doesn’t see BA race out of the kitchen and he doesn’t see Face rush to stop him and he doesn’t see Hannibal standing, stunned, in the entrance. He doesn’t see the old house or the walls or the clock behind him in the ktichen, ticking out the seconds.
He’s in the basement holding room where they’ve got him and his men, torn and bloody, the light from the newly opened door painful in the dim room, the shapes of two of the goons holding up one of his men’s between them, and a gun’s presed to his own head, like the guns trained on his crew, like the one that’s pressed to the navigator’s chest.
“Are you going to give us the flight patterns?”
He looks at the younger man in front of him. The kid’s eyes are huge, and he’s sucking air, but he’s not panicking. Two years out of school, barely twenty-four, girlfriend back home who sends him cookies sometimes. Kid? Murdock’s not much older, twenty-seven, and the gun barrel’s cold on his temple.
I will evade answering further questions to the upmost... and he tries to shake the words loose. He’s not interested right now.
“Will?” he says softly, trying to keep his own fear out of his voice. “Will, look at me...”
“Who’s Will, Hannibal?”
“Lieutenant William Harker,” Hannibal replies, shutting the door as quietly as he can. “Murdock’s navigator on that mission.”
And of course Hannibal would have memorized the flight roster. Of course he’d still know it, Face thinks. Because Hannibal was a good officer, and that’s what good officers do.
The door clicks shut and Murdock starts screaming again, and Face is up and off and catches him before he hits the ground, puddling into a mess of hands, knees and tears, body shaking, crying out.
Face holds him for a minute, but Murdock doesn’t feel it. He just sees the door shut and a laughing warning about what he can expect tomorrow, and nobody in the room knows what to say, so it’s his job to get up and walk over and shut the kid’s eyes, fumbling in the near-darkness. Like he’s okay. No space to show weakness here. They’re going to fall apart if he does that.
From a great distance, he hears a familiar voice asking if there’s anything they can do, and an equally familiar one replying that he might just be needing to work his way through this and there’s nothing that can stop it. But Murdock pushes that away and takes up the limp hand in his and licks his lips a few times before the halting words will work.
“I’m sorry.”
Continue to Part Two
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: dub-con (Murdock/Face), non-con (Murdock/OMC), violence
Summary: First half of a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Murdock went crazy after being held captive - raped, tortured and forced to watch his friends killed - for several months. He's gay but incapable of giving consent to sex because any instance of a guy coming onto him gives him a bad case of flashback. The only person aware of that is Hannibal.
Face and he are sharing a bed one night and Face finally gives in to UST and starts to make advances at Murdock. Initially Murdock says no but Face thinks he's just shy and doesn't stop, until Murdock gives in. They have sex. Except that while Face was having sex with Murdock, Murdock was, in his head, back in his cell, being used by one of the guards, making sure to give the said guard a good time in exchange for food and not being tortured that night.
The next day all hell breaks lose when Murdock is incapable of snapping out of his flashback, convinced that Face and the rest are his captors; he's broken, freakishly obiedant and respectful, begging for mercy and offering Face more sexual favors in exchange for food.
Lots of Murdock!angst, freaking out Face, Hannibal wanting blood. And don't have Murdock snapping out of it after 10 minutes, have it lasting for days.
Face can’t take it anymore, and he thinks Murdock’s on board with everything, until he and Hannibal find the pilot babbling in the bathtub the next morning. A CIA mission down in Colombia went bad and pretty soon, we're cutting back and forth between Murdock's past and his present, where Face is desperately trying to save his friend...
“Murdock?”
“Yes, Face?”
The lieutenant bit his lip. He couldn’t say it. But this was pure torture - Hannibal, making them share the hotel room that had the king-sized bed. Nope, they couldn’t take the one with the two doubles. BA always refused to share with the pilot on the grounds that Murdock snored. And Hannibal flatly declined, on the grounds that he did not sleep with his subordinates. When Face tried to point out that they weren’t in the Army any longer and that didn’t fucking matter, Hannibal had just fixed him with that look of his, and that was that.
So it was him, stuck here, under the covers with Murdock. A foot away from Murdock. Who slept in his boxers and nothing else.
“Nothing, buddy.”
“Naw, whadda’ya want to say?”
“Don’t want to wake you up.”
“I’m not asleep,” Murdock says softly, gently, and Face’s heart skips a beat. Was that... no, it can’t be. Can it? Isn’t it? “So, what’s up?”
Face rolls around, tugging lightly on Murdock’s shoulder until the other man rolls, too, and they’re staring right at each other in the half-light coming through cheap window curtains from the parking lot beyond. “Hey, HM, do you ever, do you ever think about us?”
“Sure, Face, all the time. I mean, you and BA and Hannibal are pretty much all I think about any more...”
“No, I don’t mean like that. I mean, like, us. You and me.”
“Together?”
Face nods. Murdock hides his face in the blankets. “No.”
“Come on, buddy, I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes. Don’t you know how I feel about you? Can’t you tell?” he asks, desperate, ashamed he’s doing this and unable to stop. It’s just been too long, far too long, living with all of it. Living with Murdock, never able to touch him the way he wants to, things so much tighter and narrower since the container ship blew. Now, it’s so close, too close...
He brings a hand up to rest on the other man’s cheek. He’s seen this shy side of Murdock before. Just has to work him through it, is all. His fingers brush smooth skin as he cups the pilot’s chin and urges him out of these fetal position. “It’s okay, please.”
“Don’t,” Murdock says, moving now, wrapping himself around Face like a scared child waking up from a dream and all Face wants to do is take the pain away, make it stop, give this man everything he deserves, let him feel everything that Face feels for him, make it all okay somehow. “Don’t ruin what we got.”
“We wouldn’t be ruining anything, buddy. We’d be building.”
“Gotta have a good foundation to work with, Faceman, and I’m nothing solid...”
“I don’t care. I love you like you are.”
“No, don’t, don’t say that...”
“You don’t love me?”
A little shudder runs through the pilot’s body, sheet clutched tightly to his chest. Something’s shifting. He’s making a decision, and if he sinks further down, Face promises himself he’ll stop. He’d never hurt this man. Couldn’t live with himself if he did. “Face, you know I love you, but...”
Face’s heart is hammering in his ears now. “There doesn’t need to be a but involved, Murdock. Nothing but us, me and you.”
“Me and you,” the pilot murmurs, his voice a little more warm, a little more sane, and Face knows he’s pulling back to reality. For him. He smiles when Murdock looks him in the eyes, clear and certain. “You want me?”
“With everything I am,” Face whispers, and places a soft, tentative kiss on his best friend’s soft lips. There’s still some hesitation there. “Will you have me?”
“Anything you want,” Murdock says with a breathy little sigh and lays flat in clear invitation. “Anything at all you want.”
“I want all of you,” Face replies softly, and moves over him, kissing him again and this time, Murdock opens up and lets the lieutenant in.
Clothes vanish, sweat forms, little cries and moans fill the still air of the motel room. Face can’t believe his luck, Murdock, willing, Murdock, moving with him, Murdock, smiling as Face buries himself deep in that blazing furnace of his body. The slight tears as he comes, and the way the pilot lets himself fall into sated limbs after, both of them drifting off like that, entwined, just the way it should be, just the way it always should have been.
But what Face doesn’t know, what Face can’t possibly know, is that while he’s sleeping in a warm bed in a decent part of America, Murdock’s lying exhausted on the hard basement floor of a Colombian mansion, bleeding from a re-opened cut running ear to shoulder, the feel of his tech sergeant’s hands in his hair, her lap beneath his head, holding him, the way she’s shaking, knowing he just took another one of those sessions to keep it away from her.
"Sir..."
"I told you not to apologize again," he says as calmly as he's able. "These jackasses don't get to fuck with my female to get everyone else to break. Ain't puttin' up with that shit."
She's quiet for a moment, and then..."don't bullshit me again, sir, not on this."
He closes his eyes for a moment. What the hell? They could all be dead tomorrow. "You got two baby girls at home and I ain't sendin' you back to your husband all broken up," he finally tells her, and even here, even after the last six weeks, she's still able to cry.
So can he. But he doesn't.
He can live with the rape. He's had rough sex before, it didn't kill him. These are the risks. He’s the ranking officer. He has to keep what’s left of his crew safe, no matter the cost. He can do this.
He can.
+++++
Face really isn’t sure what happened overnight, what he’s woken up to, what the fuck Murdock is doing, but Hannibal’s standing at the door, fingers drumming against the chipped wood, clearly demanding an explanation as to why the two of them haven’t made it out yet. He keeps it light, though, not knowing, Face realizes, and he knows he’s not going to like what’s coming.
“We’re on a schedule, Face. You forget about the...”
“Hannibal, he’s, um...I’ve never seen him like this.”
The boss’s face twitches a little, changing from its usual good humor to something else entirely, an expression Face has never seen before. “Like what, kid?”
Face steps back from the door, and Hannibal’s through it in a heartbeat, following his lieutenant’s pointing finger back to the bathroom, where the door is mercifully, horribly open.
Hannibal looks around. Face knows what he sees. The rumpled sheets, the pillows kicked off the bed, the broken lamp from this morning, the horribly guilty expression on his own face that matches the ache inside of him. The boss’s fist balls until the skin goes white. “Stay here, lieutenant,” he growls and makes for the bathroom
“Hannibal, please...” he begins, pressing in closer. He stops when Hannibal holds his hand up.
“Face, shut up and do what I tell you for once. Sit your ass down on that bed.”
And then the boss is gone.
Face buries his head in his hands. How in the hell did everything go wrong like this? Everything was fine last night, better than fine, better than he’s been in a long, long time, everything exactly how it was supposed to be, and then, this morning...
“Murdock?” he asked lightly, pressing a kiss to that forehead tucked against his chest. “Hmm, Murdock, you awake?”
“Don’t wanna wake up,” he mumbled, and Face laughed a little and ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t wanna go ‘gain.”
“We have to get back on the road, baby. You know how Hannibal gets on these missions...”
Then Murdock was awake.
Then Murdock was shoving, shoving Face away from him, just as hard and as fast a he could, which only made Face hold on tighter. He didn’t get it at first, thought maybe Murdock wanted to wrestle, like he did sometimes, but no, that fist swinging up, straight to his head wasn’t play. He let go immediately and ducked, the left hook barely missing him, and Murdock was on top of him in an instant.
Face was too stunned to react quick enough to stop it, and he ended up taking one to the jaw before he could gather himself enough to react, rolling up, trying to get off his back, anything. Still too late. Murdock’s momentum flung them both off the bed, Face landing hard, coughing, and Murdock was right there. Arms, impossibly strong and that could only have been adrenalin, had him pinned, a sloppy chokehold that got all the more threatening for Face’s attempts to get out of it.
So, instead he went limp, schooled himself to stop moving, felt his heart race in his ears. “Buddy?” he weezed, Murdock’s tightening down around his neck until he was seeing gray. Not windpipe, artery constriction, and for the first time that morning, Face felt very real fear.
“Don’t fuck with me, asshole,” the pilot growled, and slammed his head back against the floor. “You mother fuckers, trying to fuck with my head?”
“I thought you wanted...”
“Killing my crew not good enough for you? Mutilating my co-pilot? That not make you sick bastards happy?”
Face had no idea what he was talking about. Murdock had snapped. That much was clear. But why? Why now? “Murdock, Murdock, look at me. Everything’s going to be fine...”
And then Murdock had just released him, fallen off, did this backwards crawl towards the bathroom, and when Face had recovered enough to follow, he found the pilot, weeping uncontrollably, knees tucked into his chest, wedged between the toilet and the tub. He’d stayed there for a few minutes, not knowing what to do, until Hannibal knocked on the door.
He can hear the boss in there, talking in lone tones that still carried.
“... captain? It’s Major Smith. Boss sent me down to see how you’re doing.”
“They’re all dead, sir. I know that’s what you want to know.”
“I’m just worried about you, HM.”
“... you’re not gonna have much luck going back for the bodies...”
“HM...”
“... I don’t think there’s anything left...the dogs...”
And then everything descends into more sobbing, thick hiccups of air, and when Hannibal comes out, Face remembers that yeah, he has seen that expression before.
The boss is ready, absolutely ready, to kill him.
They stare at each other for a minute, and it’s like the crest of a tidal wave, Hannibal’s anger building behind his eyes, Face bracing himself, and then everything smashes to shit.
“What. Did. You. Do?” Hannibal asks, calm, collected, more fury in his voice than Face has ever heard. Worse than the Morrison thing last year. Worse...
He swallows. Hard. His mouth has gone completely dry and it takes him a few tries to get this out. “Umm... we slept together last night.”
“Be precise, kid. Sex? With Murdock on the receiving end?”
“What?” He’s still a little dazed.
“Did you fuck him? As in, did you perform the fucking of him?”
Face winces. It sounds so crude, so ugly, for what it had been. What he thought it was, he corrects himself, because now, he's got no idea what to think. “Yeah, um, I...”
“God-fucking-damn it!” Hannibal thunders, and it makes Face want to die, right there. He’s never heard the boss this... disappointed in him. “Did you stop to think, about what you were doing?”
“Are you saying that’s what set him off?”
Hannibal glares at him. “What do you think it was, kid?”
“I don’t...”
“What’s going on, Hannibal?” BA asks from the doorway, spare key in hand and concern in his eyes. “Where’s Murdock?”
Hannibal’s still staring at Face, who’s suddenly aware that he’s only got a pair of boxers, pulled hastily on when Hannibal knocked, and a flimsy excuse of but I love him between himself and the only people he cares about in the world. The shame of this...
“Hannibal, I didn’t know,” he pleads, and the boss’s shoulders lose some of that aggressiveness. “You gotta understand...”
“I know, kid,” he says quietly, and turns his attention to BA. “This is going to get worse before it gets better. We all need to be prepared for that.”
“What’s going on, Face?” BA asks, flicking his eyes over the lieutenant, who can feel the bruises starting to darken on his neck.
“Murdock’s snapped.”
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s much worse than that,” Hannibal replies, patting his jacket down for a cigar and his lighter.
“Worse?” Face askes, aghast.
“If this is what I think it is,” and Hannibal bites the end of the stogie, lights it up, “we’re dealing with the fallout from that mission back in ‘99.”
“What mission?”
Hannibal takes a deep puff. He’s acting cool, but Face can feel it. The anger’s already been spent. There’s nothing there but grief. “The one that put him in the nuthouse.”
And regret. There’s plenty of regret in that simple statement as well.
Face runs unsteady hands down his thighs and BA comes over to sit on the bed next to him, supportive hand on his shoulder. The conman can barely feel it. “Just what, exactly, are we dealing with here, Hannibal?”
Hannibal remembers that morning, a hot and sweaty day in Panama, when the call came across the switchboard, American man found in Belize, some wearied Peace Corps doctor still on the line after vein routed clear to the Pentagon and Benning and somehow back here.
Evidently, the injured man wouldn't give them anything beyond his name, social security number and rank. That was it.
Plus the screaming from the previous three nights.
"He one of yours, then?"
Hannibal didn't need to go check the database. It was his job to keep track of things for the colonel and this was one of them. One of the biggest. "He's been missing for over three months. God only knows how he got into your neck of the woods. I had him listed as AWOL," Hannibal lied and the doctor knew better than to call him on it.
"This man's in bad shape. He needs more care than I can give him here..."
"Anyone else with him?"
There was a long silence. "He's talking about people he knew?"
"The captain was on leave with friends," and Hannibal slid down a little in his ancient desk chair. "What's he been saying?"
"We had a medevac down there within the day." Hannibal continues explaining, and tightens his grip on his half-spent cigar. He wonders why it's burnt down so far. That's the way his office smelled that morning, old cigars and jungle and engine oil from the helicopters on their pads nearby. "He was running joint ISR ops, CIA stuff was the rumor, but he was a Ranger and the commander wanted us to keep an eye on him. CIA didn't do shit to get any of them back, after the plane was found, bombed out..."
"Hannibal, you ain't making any sense, man," BA interrupts, leaning forward a little. "He wasn't always crazy?"
"He hadn't, er, had his little break with reality yet, when we first got him back to Panama, either. I don't really know what it was..." but that's a lie, too.
Hannibal knows damn well what happened, getting a wake-up call from the first sergeant at damn near midnight, explaining that he needed Hannibal, the detachment's duty officer, to run interference with the pilot's boyfriend, a lieutenant from maintenance. He was panicking over what to do. The captain had locked himself in a closet, naked, babbling.
You know damn well we can't let this boy lose his bennies over this bullshit, not after what we put him through...
"Hannibal," and that's Face, isn't it, sounding like he's been punched in the gut, and looking a little like it, too. Those bruises, the placement...Murdock couldn't have recognized him. Those were absolutely intended to kill. "Hannibal, what are we going to do?"
Hannibal doesn't have an answer yet, not one they're going to like anyway. But he's the man with a plan, and an eighty percent solution is better than nothing right now.
"We're going to sedate him, get him out of here. BA, go get the little black bag out of my laptop bag..."
"Thought you said you weren't gonna pack that stuff no more, Hannibal," BA says automatically.
"Bosco, now is not the time," Hannibal warns and he's pretty sure BA gets what Face already knows, that this is different than all those other times. He nods and leaves, closing the door as quietly as he can.
Face is sitting up now. "Your narrative's all over the place, boss."
"It ain't a fucking bedtime story, Face," he grunts, and sags a little, the normally rich taste of tobacco ashen. "And I don't have all the details. Wasn't his commander, remember? Couldn't get the records."
"Just talk to me. What can I do about this?" It's whispered. Kid's desperate. It's been so obvious for so long, that desire; something should have been said before now. But it's too late for Hannibal to do anything but nod, and tell him what he knows.
"From what little we could gather after the fact, his plane went down over Colombia around zero-four-fifteen in the morning..."
+++++
Murdock can hear them talking. He’s not so far gone that he can’t hear them talking in the next room. He knows what’s real, he always knows what’s real. The cold tile behind his head, the smooth tub around him, his fingers and bare toes against the grip on the bottom, the way the cold air of the room seems to suck the moisture from his bare skin, that smell of cheap soap and the plastic of the shower curtains, which he grabs, trying to remember, trying not to remember, trying to tell himself what’s real.
Focus on that. Stay tuned in to that.
But there’s the noise from the next room, Hannibal talking, some half-forgotten man from his past, the major who’d come down and read to him at the hospital while his body was wracked with infection, the one who always used to come check on him before missions, who’d made sure his emergency data was up to date that afternoon before wheels-up.
He’s talking about it. “...in the morning after the tower lost contact. Couldn’t raise them on the radio, and this was a blacked-out flight. Instrument flying, low level, high risk. Who knows? The forensics team told us the wing had been shredded by AAA...”
...the way the controls went slack in his hand, hydraulic lines snapping under the force, his sergeant screaming orders back to the gunners as he desperately tried to get the MC-130 level, shoving down the panic, fighting as the plane started wallowing out of the sky...
Murdock tucks his knees into his chest, wanting to reach for a towel and block out those words. Too many words, too many, his lieutenant trying to get him to respond when all that mattered was that he just managed to land a beast of an aircraft and he needed and minute to recover from that and they had just been fucking shot down.
In this part of the world.
He remembers staring out the cockpit windows, the thick green jungle closer and tighter than it had any right to be to his girl, being so angry at the assholes that would take her out of the sky, knowing that any minute the drug dealers or gun runners or communists or whoever it was who fired those rounds into her were going to be get here and do the same to his crew.
“Murdock?”
It was no time to give in to panic.
“El-tee,” he said as calmly as he could, reaching over, switching the two operable props whine, running through the post-flight checklist as fast as possible before the main fuel tanks caught fire, “get the guys, get the axes.”
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Are you?”
“Yeah...”
Murdock peeled himself loose from the seat and managed to stand up without falling. His helmet got thrown somewhere and he pushed the kid into the cargo bay. “If you don’t go start helping them destroy the equipment, you won’t be.”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant was a tough kid for being as fresh as he is to this mission, but he looked rattled. Yelling at him or ordering him to pull it together wasn’t going to work, so Murdock slapped him on the back instead and grinned.
“We’ll get that combat landing requirement checked off your upgrade training when we get back. Go... smash shit.”
The lieutenant nodded once and vanished, leaving him alone.
The captain equivocated for a moment in the cockpit. He ran an apologetic hand over one of the panels overhead, letting his fingers trail down all those little controls, the switches and the buttons and the indicators, a web of light and movement he knew by heart, every wire and every process, where every electron goes, down to his knees, to the handle of the sledgehammer they’ve got strapped unceremoniously under the jump seat.
He never wanted to use it.
But he was the aircraft commander. He fucked up. Got them shot down. And now they were all going to pay for it. Starting with her.
And here he is, bathtub gone, the major’s voice faded to nothing, gone, a memory from yesterday.
He’s standing in the heart of his plane, the girl that’s been so good to him the last few months. It's not his decision. They all know what to do, what they have to do, how this works, what's on board. Classified above top secret. Worth a fortune on the black market for the damage it would do, for the technological advantage they would lose, for all the things he’s sworn to protect, so he closes his eyes and apologizes to his girl and brings the hammer up and over his head, straight down on the navigation controls, through those circuit boards, blinding her.
There are tears in his own eyes as shots are fired a few minutes later and he’s out of the cockpit and one of his men takes a round in the shoulder, fountaining blood, and there’s no way he can order them to hold positions, not with M-9s and M-4s still being fumbled loose and functional from the chaos of the bay - they’re all going to die if he makes that call. It’s a forced surrender and one he doesn’t like with half the gear still left to go, but Airman Rodriguez was off on perimeter patrol, so as they’re being driven away in muddy jeeps, he watches a tracer round find its way into a fuel tank and the whole craft explodes.
Half a dozen AK-47s fire at once into the treeline.
That's two out of twelve.
Screaming. He can hear it, sounds vaguely like his own. Thrashing. He can feel it. Even though he’s stuffed tight in the jeep, staring at the floor, talking in quiet Mandarin to their CIA agent, he still thinks he might be crying out for help that’s not going to come.
“Hold him down, BA,” he hears, that familiar voice he knows from before, and from later, too...
“Hannibal are you sure this is a good idea? He was okay, getting him down to the van.”
“We don’t have a choice, kid. How’s the scam for the house comin...”
He doesn’t like that. It’s ugly. He ignores it.
The sun’s rising over the carnage, and puts his face up into the dawn, just a little, thinking about missing coffee and doughnuts and easy morning kisses back at base with his man, thinking about the burning husk of the plane, thinking about what a glorious thing sunlight really and truly is.
There’s a hand on his forehead, some whispered thing that almost cuts the oily smoke of his girl as she burns, and he recognizes that as something that’s real, not a memory at all, or a moment that’s not a memory yet. He can’t decide.
But then it doesn’t really matter, cause Murdock feels a puncture in his neck and it all slides into oblivion.
+++++
“This place ain’t up your usual standard, Face. Losin’ your touch?” Hannibal hears BA joke ahead of him, the words falling out of the house, heavy and brittle in the garage.
Face isn’t having any of it. Sounds slightly dazed. “Hannibal wanted a house... out of the way.”
“What are we gonna do without that fifth bathroom?” BA tries again.
“I’m make sure to get that in for the next place, ‘kay?”
“Face, I’m sorry, man.”
“...just get the door open.”
It’s the first any of them have spoken in the last hour. Hannibal pauses for a moment before he goes in. Tells himself they’re going to get through this, like they get through everything else. But it’s a sad scene inside.
Face collapsed on the closest piece of furniture. He has Murdock in his arms, the pilot tucked against his chest where he been since they had to sedate him. The conman had injected him himself, a look of abject sorrow in his eyes, capping the needle and handing it back to Hannibal. That expression hasn’t left him. BA’s leaning against a far wall, uncertain, unable to help. They both look at him. They need something to do.
He nods. “I asked him to get it, BA. Neighborhood like this, we won’t be notice
“You mean, nobody’s going to call the police,” Face said, hollow. “When the screaming starts back up.”
“Shit, Hannibal...”
“BA, why don’t you go get supplies? Groceries, that kind of stuff,” Hannibal says, tossing him a roll of bills from one of the bags. “Get some jello. Get a lot of jello. Face, what’s Murdock’s favorite flavor?”
“He hates that stuff.”
“He associates it with hospitals.”
“You think that’s going to pull him out?”
“Face, I have no idea. Last time this happened, he was out for a day or two and when it passed, he wouldn’t let anybody in the room but me. Sat there, eating jello, for three hours, trying to explain something to me, but...” and Hannibal wants to forget that moment.
Going to visit this captain, a brilliant pilot, loved by every crew he’d ever flown with, fast burner, heading straight to the top, package already submitted for an early promotion, everything, everything going for him. Asking him how he was. Listening to Murdock spend five minutes babbling about geese and migration routes instead of the details of the crash, and when Hannibal called him on that his eyes went wide and face pale. He sunk under the sheet, turning away, breathing hard...
Panicking. Absolutely panicking.
Everybody’s dead, sir, gray static keepin’ everything apart, shifting around, focusing, I can’t, not right now with the tide comin’ in like this... it’s all over...
And while it wasn’t the first time Hannibal had been to a hospital room and watched a man weep for what he’d lost, this was somehow worse than any time before, any time after.
“But he’d snapped?”
“Like I said before, I don’t think so. He knew something was wrong, but...”
There’s a murmur from Murdock, a little shove, and Face looks to Hannibal. Again, looking for those illusive answers. “Should I let him go?”
“What’s he saying?”
Face puts his ear down by the pilot’s ear, listens for a minute, and then frowns, pulls up. “Sounds like, umm, I am prepared to give my life in their defense. That's..."
"Article one," Hannibal supplies.
"Motherfucker. I don’t even remember the damn thing...” and then, inexplicably, the kid starts laughing, humorless and sad, cradles Murdock closer, and Hannibal waits for the moment when he’s going to have to pull them apart.
+++++
I am an American...
They’re screaming at him, broken Spanish and worse English. He can live with that. He doesn’t like them screaming at his men, though. Catches a few words. The boss is here.
“Bout time, old chap,” he mutters in the direction of the man with the death grip on his arm. “I’ve been wondering when we’d kick this off.”
...fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared...
Murdock’s running through it in his head, feeling like an idiot for doing so. It reminds him of basic training, sweating in the hallways until everything stank so bad he could barely breath, screaming out knowledge until vocal chords failed, arms shaking from the effort of another hundred push-ups. God, he hated West Point. He hates it now, irrationally thinking back to the cadre telling him about being in a situation like this someday, about how he’d be thankful for learning this, all of them just little boys playing soldier.
Three days here already.
He hates them for being right.
will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command.... Screwed that one up, HM, he tells himself.
His hands are playing idly with a flight suit zipper that’s just been cut off him. There isn’t any rank on any of their uniforms, no flags or snarky little mottos or patches that the military’s so fond of. But they’ve all got tattoos, all of them, and there’s no way to hide what they are. And these guys, one of the local cocaine cartels? These guys know exactly what the US military’s doing in Colombia.
So there aren’t any illusions. That’s a good thing.
If I am senior, I will take command...
He got that, at least. His show, his men, his to keep together right now. That’s why he stood up when they started yelling for the boss. That’s why he barked an order for a few of his more trigger-happy folks to stay the fuck down and leave their hands where they were told to leave them. That’s why he doesn’t flinch as they prod him out of the shed into the blinding afternoon.
He’s fairly certain they’re going to kill him, right here, right now, in the mud and filth of a coca-processing facility, a hundred laborers standing around, watching, waiting for something.
There’s some asshole getting out of another jeep, this one clean enough to have driven out of a Houston showroom moments ago. Paramilitary type, the kind that wear non-descript camo with stars on their shoulders, seventeen year boys with dead eyes as bodyguards, pot belly.
I will continue to resist by all means available...
Murdock’s just got his boots on no as this asshole, probably the guy in charge but who could ever really tell with these butchers, and he crosses his arms, staring back. Don’t let them see it, he tells himself
The man takes one look at him and smiles, lighting a cigarette as he does so. “You crashed in my jungle.”
It’s English. Better to not break out the Spanish until he has to. He grins. “No sir, muchacho, I made a controlled descent from altitude. Your jungle crashed into me.”
That gets him a backhand to the face and a kick to the knee, which sends him toppling into the mud, both hands absorbing the shock of it and a fist in his hair, dragging him up, staring straight into the head honcho’s eyes. He’s seen men like this before, too many of them, sick inside, something dead, drowned in too much blood and sex.
Smoke's blown into his face. “What are you doing out here?”
He wants to tell this man where he can shove it.
I will make no oral nor written statements...dedicated to the principles...
But he doesn’t answer. That action movie bullshit of taunting the bad guy never works, only gets you killed faster. If they want something, they’re going to have to beat it out of him. He has no doubt they will. He braces for the next blow.
“What are you doing out here?”
The screaming gets louder, and he catches the word punta in the morass of noise, and he sees the tech sergeant who’s been so reliable, tough in that way all military women seem to be, hits the ground next to him, splattering the gray goop onto the honcho’s pants and a steel-toed boot from one of those fucking teenagers explodes her nose.
She screams, and he can’t tell if it’s anger or pain or fear. She’s been taking this harder than the rest, because she’s been expecting this. And Murdock’s been trying to figure out what he was going to do when it came up.
And here it is, coming up.
“Lynda, Lynda,” he says urgently. “Look at me.”
She doesn’t move.
“You’re going to be okay.”
They’re tearing her clothes off now. One of the others, one of the men who picked them up, runs a rough hand down her ass, between her legs. It sets off a frenzy.
“Bitches, punta, Americano good for only thing. And you bring them out here?”
She screams louder, the pain rolling her eyes back, blood running down the bare skin of her neck. His blood boils at the thought of them using her as leverage against him, knows if this works, it’s going to happen again. And Murdock doesn’t need a second look to know she’s not going to make it through this. But he’s probably still loose, so many times, like that last morning, so far away now, laying on the narrow dorm bed with Nick, his boy from Maintenance, laughing about the possibilities.
“Why are you here? Maybe she lives.”
...responsible for my actions...
And even if he wasn’t, he’d still do this.
What was that they always told him about sarcasm and pissing off the captors? Might as well have given him a how-to manual.
“Tourists, man,” he says as casually as he can muster, laughing a little. “We were getting some really nice shots of the trees. Seriously, those coca plants you grow here? Very rare for us nature lovers, I just fucking love finding those things...”
The teenager kicks the tech in the face again and the other one, the little bastard who’s holding his head, wrenches up and tosses him forward.
Murdock goes limp, catching himself only slightly as he connects with the hood . The cigarette’s put out on his neck and his legs are jerked apart, and he grits his teeth.
“I think this will be more fun after all, no?”
He can smell stale air on his skin and he wants to hit this guy, but there are guns everywhere and blood’s in the air and something’s going to blow, and he’d rather it be this, him, than anyone else.
Filthy like he is, the hard initial burn is made worse by dirt shoved in along with and he bites back his scream by only the narrowest margin. Lets his forehead hit the hot metal, feeling it sear, glad for it. Glad his men don’t have to see this. Aware the sergeant can probably see everything. Then it starts, full force.
That hand in his hair changes for just a second, soft and warm, almost petting, like the way Nick would touch him, the way somebody who loves him would. He tries not to relax into that like he wants to, telling himself it's not real, and then it’s blessedly gone, he’s here, nowhere else, and he can’t get those words out of his head. Goddamn code.
If I am senior, I will take command...
Murdock starts laughing. Even here, under these circumstances, he’s still in control.
+++++
Face doesn’t look up, but he does loosen his hold as Murdock starts writhing again, a little laugh starting up and growing louder. It’s chilling, Hannibal thinks, after the last four hours of silence. “What do you think happened to him? What’s he remembering?”
“If he’s waking up, we should probably get him somewhere more contained, Hannibal,” BA offers. He hasn't stirred from the corner armchair since getting back from the store.
“Maybe it’s over?” Face practically begs.
It's hopeful and there's no way the colonel wants to squash that. Murdock's going to need somebody to wake up to. They'd had to get his boyfriend, that lieutenant, an early reassignment back to the States. Nobody was there for him the first time around, nobody but Hannibal, and there wasn't much he could do then. Just like there's not much he can do now.
Hannibal puts a hand on the kid’s shoulders. “Then there’s no harm in it, is there? Come on, let's get him comfortable.”
+++++
These people who own this house - drug dealers or college professors, Face can’t tell - have one of those cat clocks up in the kitchen. The kind where the face of the clock’s in the cat’s belly and its tail serves as a pendulum, ticking off the seconds. Almost twenty-four hours since they got here, according to this damn thing. Face hates it. He hates the cat clock.
“You doin’ okay, man?” BA asks. He’s already fixed the leak in the sink, something broken on the back porch and torn apart and rebuilt the lawnmower out in the garage. His hands are greasy as passes Face a sandwich. It reminds Face of Murdock’s motor oil chili. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” Face grumbles and take the plate. Ham and cheese. Does he like this? “When did Hannibal say he was coming back?”
“Had to go cancel our job, man. He’s trying...”
“... to find a replacement, I know.” They’re suposed to be up north, Oregon, helping out this logging company right now, something that Hannibal seemed to be pretty adamant about doing after they’d heard the particulars. Except Face had fucked up and Murdock is comatose in one of the bedrooms, muttering to himself, like he had been all day, like he was last night after he woke up from the drugs, crying and sweating, and they can’t do anything about...
“Afternoon, chaps.”
BA and Face look at each other, trying to decide who was going to speak first, and Face nodded a little back. “Hey, buddy. How’re you feeling?”
“I’ve had worse,” Murdock said, giggling slightly. “Buddies, huh? That’s funny, coming from you.”
The words weren’t lining up right and there was this edge to how he was talking, the hunch in his shoulders, completely Murdock and yet somehow too... raw. Like those familiar gestures hadn’t quite jelled into normal patterns yet, and Face felt his stomach turn over.
“Well, that’s...”
He grabs BA’s arm, stopping him from moving forward in relief and giving the pilot a hug. “He’s still in it.”
“What d’ya mean?”
This was how it had started, Face thinks to himself, and cautiously approaches the pilot. “Murdock, where’d you go?”
“Askin’ me the same stuff they always do,” Murdock said, still hunched, and he looks over at BA. “I don’t think we should talk about this in front of the guys, Lynch.”
The look on the big guy’s face is nothing but pain, and Face tries to keep himself from lashing out verbally. Was that asshole involved with this too, somehow, all those years ago? Or did every CIA agent go out calling themselves that? Hannibal had mentioned it had been Company ops, not DoD... He takes a risk and puts an arm around his best friend. “There’s a corner over here.”
“Hannibal said not to encourage him,” BA warns.
“Just let me try,” and bless the man, but BA doesn’t even attempt to follow as Face pulls Murdock into the living room.
When they get there, Murdock’s legs seem to give out and he collapses down against the sofa, seemingly oblivious to any of it, lost in whatever holding cell or shed or lock-up they had him stowed in. A hand goes to hie forehead, propping him up against a knee, and Face sits across from him, cross-legged, not wanting to touch him again.
“I know you’re curious,” Murdock says without looking. “What I told them.”
“Who?”
“Nothin’ yet. Amateur motherfuckers,” Murdock says, slamming his head back up against the arm of the couch. “I can’t keep it up, you know that.”
“Can’t keep what up?”
“You gone dense, Lynch? We had this conversation already,” and this was Murdock sounding, well, sane again, which chills Face to the core. “Dying in a war is one thing, country and all that shit, but this drug interdiction. It’s bullshit, half my guys don’t even think we need to be here in the first place. I’m not going to be able to hold them together on that. I don’t think I can hold myself together on that.”
“What do you mean?” Face honestly can’t figure this out.
“Lynch, I know you probably don’t give a shit about my guys, just your precious mission down here, but they’re my responsbiliity. I have to...”
And then Face realizes something. It’s Murdock talking, his Murdock, except it’s not. This is the old Murdock, the Murdock from before, the Murdock that somehow doesn’t exist anymore, and he’s never met him. He understand what he’s talking about, that thing the instructors used to try to beat into him before he commissioned, that need to lead, that desire, that depth of purpose. Like Hannibal feels towards them. Like any good officer has. Face hadn’t ever really felt it, not for the Army and not for anything they were fighting for. He liked the job and he liked working for Hannibal and he’d never given much thought to all the normal shit lieutenants were supposed to care about.
But maybe Murdock had. Despite being a pilot. Some kind of idealism down there, long lost, stripped away? He feels something crack in his chest. So much about this man he doesn’t know.
“You have to get them out safe,” he supplies, and Murdock’s empty gaze meets his own. There’s no recognition there at all.
“CSAR’s going to be limited out here, your people won’t risk it... no, Lynch, we’re all gonna die here. If we’re lucky, we can go out with some pride left intact...” and Murdock starts giggling again, a real Murdock giggle, one Face has heard before, when he’s going into something, and then his head snaps up as keys scratch in the lock of the front door.
“Wait, no, wait are you doing?” he asks urgently, getting to his feet. “Don’t you fucking think about it...”
“Murdock?” Face asks.
“Put ‘im down!” he yells, loud, using a tone Face has never heard out of him before. “For god’s sake, don’t you fucking...”
In his mind’s eye, where he’s trapped, Murdock doesn’t see BA race out of the kitchen and he doesn’t see Face rush to stop him and he doesn’t see Hannibal standing, stunned, in the entrance. He doesn’t see the old house or the walls or the clock behind him in the ktichen, ticking out the seconds.
He’s in the basement holding room where they’ve got him and his men, torn and bloody, the light from the newly opened door painful in the dim room, the shapes of two of the goons holding up one of his men’s between them, and a gun’s presed to his own head, like the guns trained on his crew, like the one that’s pressed to the navigator’s chest.
“Are you going to give us the flight patterns?”
He looks at the younger man in front of him. The kid’s eyes are huge, and he’s sucking air, but he’s not panicking. Two years out of school, barely twenty-four, girlfriend back home who sends him cookies sometimes. Kid? Murdock’s not much older, twenty-seven, and the gun barrel’s cold on his temple.
I will evade answering further questions to the upmost... and he tries to shake the words loose. He’s not interested right now.
“Will?” he says softly, trying to keep his own fear out of his voice. “Will, look at me...”
“Who’s Will, Hannibal?”
“Lieutenant William Harker,” Hannibal replies, shutting the door as quietly as he can. “Murdock’s navigator on that mission.”
And of course Hannibal would have memorized the flight roster. Of course he’d still know it, Face thinks. Because Hannibal was a good officer, and that’s what good officers do.
The door clicks shut and Murdock starts screaming again, and Face is up and off and catches him before he hits the ground, puddling into a mess of hands, knees and tears, body shaking, crying out.
Face holds him for a minute, but Murdock doesn’t feel it. He just sees the door shut and a laughing warning about what he can expect tomorrow, and nobody in the room knows what to say, so it’s his job to get up and walk over and shut the kid’s eyes, fumbling in the near-darkness. Like he’s okay. No space to show weakness here. They’re going to fall apart if he does that.
From a great distance, he hears a familiar voice asking if there’s anything they can do, and an equally familiar one replying that he might just be needing to work his way through this and there’s nothing that can stop it. But Murdock pushes that away and takes up the limp hand in his and licks his lips a few times before the halting words will work.
“I’m sorry.”
Continue to Part Two