Anthills - Part Three of Three - Murdock
Dec. 3rd, 2011 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: none
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: 9/11
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
At the memorial, ten years later, Murdock still can’t quite shake the events of that day...
They’re standing in the memorial. By where the hole used to be. By where the hole is. The pile of rubble, steel girders ripped apart by thousands of gallons of burning JP8. The buildings, reaching to the burning blue of the New York sky.
No longer there.
Ripped away.
Tearing out, leaving a gaping negative space behind.
“There’s a ten year memorial service at the Pentagon next week. They’re inviting everyone who was there at the time...”
Hannibal says it quietly, dimly. From very far away.
He’s saying it from the here and now.
The there and then.
By the buildings that burned. That exploded and crumbled and fell and lay in ruin and were swept away again, their space taken up by chrome and glass and marble and and trees and nothing, nothing real...
Murdock’s not sure. Not sure if the buildings are going up or coming down. If they’re still there, yet to meet their fate, or if they’re gone forever already.
He can’t be sure.
He’s sitting in one of the social rooms at Walter Reid. There’s mold in the ceiling tiles. There are dust bunnies in the corners. The TV’s playing the static of Good Morning America in the corner. The Navy nurse who works here, captain’s bars on her lapels, looks tired as she brings him a comic book. But at least she’s still trying to smile.
“It’s Ultimate X-men. My boy says they’re starting a new run. Thought I’d start buying two copies when I have to take him to the store.”
He smiles back at her, even if Cyclops and Jean Gray don’t look like what they should on the cover. “Thank you pretty lady.”
She pats his shoulder, and moves off.
“I’m sorry, John,” Face says, and Murdock snaps back to the memorial. The buildings already gone. “I know you...do you want me to forge you an invite?”
“Temp, I can’t just...”
The two of them are walking ahead, Face with his cheek on Hannibal’s shoulder, an arm wrapped around his waist, the two of them slow, lost in some shared memory Murdock can’t penetrate. “You’re good with disguises, boss. You deserve to be there.”
“It’s too big a risk.”
Face pulls closer. “I thought I lost you that day, Hannibal. Lost you without being able to tell you...”
“Shh, babe, it’s okay. We got there eventually...”
The TV in the corner shudders as the world shifts. Responds to the fissures blown in the fabric of reality. In the security that the men around him lost their sanity to protect. Their sacrifice is rendered futile, because the entire world goes insane.
Murdock forgets all about why it’s a travestry that Cyclops and Jean Gray look different. He forgets, because he’s got a doctor’s coat on and he’s standing in the doorway of the nurses’ break room. Eight of them are clustered here, one of them sobbing uncontrollably, the nice one, who brings him comics, her cell phone slipping from her hand to clatter unnoticed on the floor.
“He...he says his flight’s been hijacked,” she’s saying in a whisper. “He says they’re going to do something about it. He said...he said to tell our little boy...that he loves him very much and he had to...”
But that’s later. Much later.
This is now.
Rising from his seat, walking towards the TV.
In shock.
Those towers have navigational aids on them. Navigational aids. The GPS systems are state of the art. Two pilots. The FAA, to guide their every movement. Plain, good old fashioned common sense. They shouldn’t be hitting the towers. Not again and again, in loop, more footage coming in, more footage playing, the deaths of hundreds of people being stretched from seconds to hours, to forever, by the miracle of modern technology...
The nurse comes in and shoves him back from the TV, switching it to Cartoon Network. Nobody else notices. Nobody else notices that the world’s been ripped, melted, it’s foundations torn away, its lofty goal shattered, negative space that nothing will ever fill again...
They stop now, right by the footprint of the North Tower. It’s surrounded in black marble, bearing the names of the dead. A waterfall cascades into the center, where once there was mud and twisted steel girders. Where once there was basement, and subway station.
“Where were you?”
Murdock blinks himself into the sunlight, and realizes Face is talking to BA.
BA’s been distant since they got here. He’s the one who suggested that they come, since they were pulling a job in New York anyway. But he doesn’t talk. Maybe he’s lost in the day, too, Murdock thinks. Or something. Whatever it is, the pilot knows it’s never good to push his lover.
“Mexico,” BA grunts. “And no, I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout it.”
Murdock stares at the waterfall.
Murdock stares at the water in the bathroom, pouring feebly out of the faucet. It’s been an hour. An hour since somebody flew their plane in the wrong direction.
He’s not sure how he manages to get the doctor’s coat. It’s not important. He does it all the time, maybe, and the nurses don’t care. Or he’s never done it before and he just gets lucky. Or he hits the nice Navy Commander as he comes in to use the urinal, but Murdock doubts he’d be that mean. That’s spy-movie Murdock, and spy-movie Murdock only comes out on James Bond marathons with Face. And Face is standing at the memorial with Hannibal right now anyway, looking for somebody’s name.
Murdock clings to the coat and tucks his baseball cap away and hurries to the breakroom. Where one of the nurses is sobbing, because her husband is about to hijack a plane. Or a plane’s already been hijacked and they’re hijacking it from the hijackers.
How long has it been since he’s been in the air? Who would dare desecrate that sacred space with actions like that? What squadron do they have up, whose F-15s, patrolling the skies? He could help, he could help...
But it wouldn’t help. Because those aren’t Zeros or MiGs out there. They’re airliners full of people. Full of fathers and husbands, whose little boys won’t see them again.
All the nice ladies, military and civilian, are smearing their mascara as the TV cuts to the footage.
United Flight 93 down in Pennsylvania...
Black running down the face of the world.
He feels a touch on his shoulder, and Murdock jumps, cringes, because he knows what’s coming next. It’s the orderly, the angry, confused orderly, who drags him down the hall to his room and strips the jacket off and locks him in and doesn’t tell him, doesn’t tell him what happens next. When he gets drugged, stays drugged because he’s screaming, he’s screaming about the primordial sky goddess Nut and the slaughter of innocents and where was Langley, where were the F-15s, and drifts in and out of dreams, watching the earth meet his windshield, the side of the World Trade center, gimbals going to shit as everything shifts irreparably out of place...
“Buddy? You...you still with us?”
He looks up, at the sun, at the open air, so blue.
Where planes exploded ten years ago, where buildings were ten years ago.
“They should’a fixed it up again,” he says, staring up at what used to be there, where the sky was blown apart. “Should’a fixed the hole it left.”
BA puts an arm around his shoulders, pulling him back, anchoring him in time and space, and it’s then that Murdock realizes people are staring. Was he yelling? No, he’s yelling in his room at Walter Reid, ten years ago. Not here, not now.
“They did fix it, Murdock,” Hannibal says, his patient voice on. So yeah, Murdock figures he must have been yelling. It’s so hard to keep these things straight sometimes. He knows he should probably be embarrassed. But his team doesn’t judge and they’re what matters. Face is smiling sadly at him, unshed tears shining in his eyes. “They made this memorial.”
“They only fixed the ground, bossman,” he says, and keeps staring up at the space above them. It makes him sad. Nobody thinks in three dimensions any more. “But al Qaeda tore the sky, too. They should fix that, too. They should’a put the towers back up, just like they were.” And he thinks about that for a moment, how the steel twisted, the stairways collapsed. Old engineering, failing. “Well, make ‘em look the same. Fill the holes back up.”
For a moment, they all follow his gaze.
Then BA kisses him, gentle, easy, a big hand splayed on his cheek. “I agree, baby. Shoulda showed those bastards they couldn’t take us down. Put ‘em right back up,” he whispers, and kisses him again.
Murdock kisses him back, loving him, wanting to comfort him for whatever sadness is thrumming through him right now that he won’t give voice to, knowing that BA doesn’t really understand what he’s saying. But it’s okay. They never ever need to know what the other man’s thinking to know what he means. And isn’t that right as right should be?
“You boys ready to go?” Hannibal asks, and his voice is thick with emotion. “I thought maybe we could catch a cab to Central Park and grab a hot dog for lunch, or...”
“That sounds good, Hannibal,” Face says, picking up the slack as the boss trails off.
So right now, it’s very quiet. His lover’s holding him. His friend is holding his hand. His commander seems stronger than he did when they got here.
He doesn’t want to see the planes again, on the screen of the Walter Reid TVs, tearing their holes in the sky, sucking him back into their madness again.
They walk between the rows of trees, silent as soldiers in an open ranks inspection, out to the street and back into the crowded skyline of the rest of the city.
Exactly where it should be. The world reordered. All that negative space filled back in.
And Murdock can finally relax.
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: 9/11
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
At the memorial, ten years later, Murdock still can’t quite shake the events of that day...
They’re standing in the memorial. By where the hole used to be. By where the hole is. The pile of rubble, steel girders ripped apart by thousands of gallons of burning JP8. The buildings, reaching to the burning blue of the New York sky.
No longer there.
Ripped away.
Tearing out, leaving a gaping negative space behind.
“There’s a ten year memorial service at the Pentagon next week. They’re inviting everyone who was there at the time...”
Hannibal says it quietly, dimly. From very far away.
He’s saying it from the here and now.
The there and then.
By the buildings that burned. That exploded and crumbled and fell and lay in ruin and were swept away again, their space taken up by chrome and glass and marble and and trees and nothing, nothing real...
Murdock’s not sure. Not sure if the buildings are going up or coming down. If they’re still there, yet to meet their fate, or if they’re gone forever already.
He can’t be sure.
He’s sitting in one of the social rooms at Walter Reid. There’s mold in the ceiling tiles. There are dust bunnies in the corners. The TV’s playing the static of Good Morning America in the corner. The Navy nurse who works here, captain’s bars on her lapels, looks tired as she brings him a comic book. But at least she’s still trying to smile.
“It’s Ultimate X-men. My boy says they’re starting a new run. Thought I’d start buying two copies when I have to take him to the store.”
He smiles back at her, even if Cyclops and Jean Gray don’t look like what they should on the cover. “Thank you pretty lady.”
She pats his shoulder, and moves off.
“I’m sorry, John,” Face says, and Murdock snaps back to the memorial. The buildings already gone. “I know you...do you want me to forge you an invite?”
“Temp, I can’t just...”
The two of them are walking ahead, Face with his cheek on Hannibal’s shoulder, an arm wrapped around his waist, the two of them slow, lost in some shared memory Murdock can’t penetrate. “You’re good with disguises, boss. You deserve to be there.”
“It’s too big a risk.”
Face pulls closer. “I thought I lost you that day, Hannibal. Lost you without being able to tell you...”
“Shh, babe, it’s okay. We got there eventually...”
The TV in the corner shudders as the world shifts. Responds to the fissures blown in the fabric of reality. In the security that the men around him lost their sanity to protect. Their sacrifice is rendered futile, because the entire world goes insane.
Murdock forgets all about why it’s a travestry that Cyclops and Jean Gray look different. He forgets, because he’s got a doctor’s coat on and he’s standing in the doorway of the nurses’ break room. Eight of them are clustered here, one of them sobbing uncontrollably, the nice one, who brings him comics, her cell phone slipping from her hand to clatter unnoticed on the floor.
“He...he says his flight’s been hijacked,” she’s saying in a whisper. “He says they’re going to do something about it. He said...he said to tell our little boy...that he loves him very much and he had to...”
But that’s later. Much later.
This is now.
Rising from his seat, walking towards the TV.
In shock.
Those towers have navigational aids on them. Navigational aids. The GPS systems are state of the art. Two pilots. The FAA, to guide their every movement. Plain, good old fashioned common sense. They shouldn’t be hitting the towers. Not again and again, in loop, more footage coming in, more footage playing, the deaths of hundreds of people being stretched from seconds to hours, to forever, by the miracle of modern technology...
The nurse comes in and shoves him back from the TV, switching it to Cartoon Network. Nobody else notices. Nobody else notices that the world’s been ripped, melted, it’s foundations torn away, its lofty goal shattered, negative space that nothing will ever fill again...
They stop now, right by the footprint of the North Tower. It’s surrounded in black marble, bearing the names of the dead. A waterfall cascades into the center, where once there was mud and twisted steel girders. Where once there was basement, and subway station.
“Where were you?”
Murdock blinks himself into the sunlight, and realizes Face is talking to BA.
BA’s been distant since they got here. He’s the one who suggested that they come, since they were pulling a job in New York anyway. But he doesn’t talk. Maybe he’s lost in the day, too, Murdock thinks. Or something. Whatever it is, the pilot knows it’s never good to push his lover.
“Mexico,” BA grunts. “And no, I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout it.”
Murdock stares at the waterfall.
Murdock stares at the water in the bathroom, pouring feebly out of the faucet. It’s been an hour. An hour since somebody flew their plane in the wrong direction.
He’s not sure how he manages to get the doctor’s coat. It’s not important. He does it all the time, maybe, and the nurses don’t care. Or he’s never done it before and he just gets lucky. Or he hits the nice Navy Commander as he comes in to use the urinal, but Murdock doubts he’d be that mean. That’s spy-movie Murdock, and spy-movie Murdock only comes out on James Bond marathons with Face. And Face is standing at the memorial with Hannibal right now anyway, looking for somebody’s name.
Murdock clings to the coat and tucks his baseball cap away and hurries to the breakroom. Where one of the nurses is sobbing, because her husband is about to hijack a plane. Or a plane’s already been hijacked and they’re hijacking it from the hijackers.
How long has it been since he’s been in the air? Who would dare desecrate that sacred space with actions like that? What squadron do they have up, whose F-15s, patrolling the skies? He could help, he could help...
But it wouldn’t help. Because those aren’t Zeros or MiGs out there. They’re airliners full of people. Full of fathers and husbands, whose little boys won’t see them again.
All the nice ladies, military and civilian, are smearing their mascara as the TV cuts to the footage.
United Flight 93 down in Pennsylvania...
Black running down the face of the world.
He feels a touch on his shoulder, and Murdock jumps, cringes, because he knows what’s coming next. It’s the orderly, the angry, confused orderly, who drags him down the hall to his room and strips the jacket off and locks him in and doesn’t tell him, doesn’t tell him what happens next. When he gets drugged, stays drugged because he’s screaming, he’s screaming about the primordial sky goddess Nut and the slaughter of innocents and where was Langley, where were the F-15s, and drifts in and out of dreams, watching the earth meet his windshield, the side of the World Trade center, gimbals going to shit as everything shifts irreparably out of place...
“Buddy? You...you still with us?”
He looks up, at the sun, at the open air, so blue.
Where planes exploded ten years ago, where buildings were ten years ago.
“They should’a fixed it up again,” he says, staring up at what used to be there, where the sky was blown apart. “Should’a fixed the hole it left.”
BA puts an arm around his shoulders, pulling him back, anchoring him in time and space, and it’s then that Murdock realizes people are staring. Was he yelling? No, he’s yelling in his room at Walter Reid, ten years ago. Not here, not now.
“They did fix it, Murdock,” Hannibal says, his patient voice on. So yeah, Murdock figures he must have been yelling. It’s so hard to keep these things straight sometimes. He knows he should probably be embarrassed. But his team doesn’t judge and they’re what matters. Face is smiling sadly at him, unshed tears shining in his eyes. “They made this memorial.”
“They only fixed the ground, bossman,” he says, and keeps staring up at the space above them. It makes him sad. Nobody thinks in three dimensions any more. “But al Qaeda tore the sky, too. They should fix that, too. They should’a put the towers back up, just like they were.” And he thinks about that for a moment, how the steel twisted, the stairways collapsed. Old engineering, failing. “Well, make ‘em look the same. Fill the holes back up.”
For a moment, they all follow his gaze.
Then BA kisses him, gentle, easy, a big hand splayed on his cheek. “I agree, baby. Shoulda showed those bastards they couldn’t take us down. Put ‘em right back up,” he whispers, and kisses him again.
Murdock kisses him back, loving him, wanting to comfort him for whatever sadness is thrumming through him right now that he won’t give voice to, knowing that BA doesn’t really understand what he’s saying. But it’s okay. They never ever need to know what the other man’s thinking to know what he means. And isn’t that right as right should be?
“You boys ready to go?” Hannibal asks, and his voice is thick with emotion. “I thought maybe we could catch a cab to Central Park and grab a hot dog for lunch, or...”
“That sounds good, Hannibal,” Face says, picking up the slack as the boss trails off.
So right now, it’s very quiet. His lover’s holding him. His friend is holding his hand. His commander seems stronger than he did when they got here.
He doesn’t want to see the planes again, on the screen of the Walter Reid TVs, tearing their holes in the sky, sucking him back into their madness again.
They walk between the rows of trees, silent as soldiers in an open ranks inspection, out to the street and back into the crowded skyline of the rest of the city.
Exactly where it should be. The world reordered. All that negative space filled back in.
And Murdock can finally relax.
