Absolution (Part Two of Four)
Dec. 11th, 2011 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Hannibal’s not sure what to expect when he finally has to come back to the States, as commander of the Second Ranger Brigade up at Fort Lewis. But when a drunken hook-up turns into so much more, he finds himself involved in trying to bring down one very corrupt Major Pike while coping for his feelings for Lieutenant Peck...
“Corporal Baracus?” he asks as the cops pull his unruly corporal out. The black man eyes him warily. He looks very much as if he’s been in a barfight face swollen, a huge bandage on his arm still seeping blood. His knuckles are torn up, scabbed in half a dozen places, and his yellow tank and BDU pants are torn and scuffed with dark stains. There’s growing stubble along his scalp, where he hasn’t reshaved his mohawk today, and . “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Smith. I’m here to take custody of you.”
“Fuck off,” Baracus growls back at him.
The police sergeant exchanges an eyeroll with Hannibal, and drags the sullen corporal out of the holding cell.
That fuck off is all the colonel gets for the moment. He’d hoped there’d be something more, really. Anger or embarrassment or hell, even a hang-over. But Baracus seems perfectly sober, perfectly aware, body language totally neutral. He doesn’t talk, or look at anyone, or do anything. Just sits in the chair the officer drops him in as Hannibal signs the paperwork to get him out.
“A report’s going to be filed with the MPs at Fort Lewis,” the trooper tells the corporal, as Hannibal hands back the clipboard and the pen. “You can’t afford to keep coming in here, Corporal Baracus. This is the fourth incident in the last two months. You’re damn lucky nobody’s pressing charges.”
“Self defense,” the big guy grunts, eyes on the ceiling.
“Yeah, I’m sure it was,” sombody pipes up. “Like the last time? When the woman got a beer bottle to the face? Self defense like that?”
Now Baracus looks agitated under that careful stoicism, shifting in the chair, and some of the other cops have stopped what they’re doing, watching the little scene heating up. Hannibal has the most uncomfortable feeling that this isn’t a one-time thing, that these guys know and hate Baracus. What the hell’s passed between them here?
“I done told you at the time, that wa’n’t me.”
“Twenty stitches, Corporal,” one of the other cops leers from his desk. “You almost got her eye. Fucked her up real good! You’re fucking lucky there wasn’t enough evidence to get you convicted on that.”
“Come on, Baracus, what kind of man do you have to be to hit a woman?” yet another taunts. The noise in the room’s starting to grow, and the sergeant, finishing up the paperwork, seems completely unworried about the escalating tension.
“Wa’n’t me,” Baracus growls, getting to his feet, balling up a fist, and Hannibal’s between him and the cops in an instant.
“Back your boys off,” he growls at the sergeant who got Baracus out of that cell, before anything else can happen. Last thing the corporal needs right now, Hannibal knows, is a confrontation on unfriendly ground. “This man’s a US Army Ranger, who the fuck are you to question his word?”
The cop sighs. “Listen, sir, this man’s nothing but trouble.”
“You let me fucking worry about him. You keep your own boys in line,” Hannibal says, and pats the sergeant’s shoulder, smiling a little. “We’re all on the same team here.”
“Tell me that the next time I have to haul his ass down to my jail,” the sergeant says, and waves them out.
They’re three blocks away before Baracus speaks again.
“You the new brigade commander?”
Hannibal ignores the lack of a sir, or a respectful tone, and nods back. “That I am, corporal.”
Baracus grunts, and stares out the window. “Then that why you come down here instead of Pike?”
“Should I go back and leave you there for him to come collect later?” Hannibal asks, genuinely interested in the answer.
Another few moments of tensing silence, and then Baracus shakes his head. “They only hold you 72 hours ‘fore they gotta let you go. I’d be fine.”
“So the answer is no?”
“Man,” Baracus groans, “what the fuck your problem? What you care what Major Pike does with me? I ain’t one of your men...”
“That’s where you’re wrong, corporal,” Hannibal tells him, and makes a right turn. He really should go straight, if he wants to take the young black man back to his house, but that’s the last place he needs to be right now. “I own every Ranger on Fort Lewis, your team included. Which means I get to decide whether or not you get to sit in jail until Tuesday, not Major Pike.”
Baracus laughs, short and bitter. “Don’t work like that...”
“What happened last night, corporal? I saw you when I brought Captain Murdock back to your place. You were home then...”
“Fight Night,” he grunts.
“Excuse me?”
“It, uhh, it Fight Night at my gym. We all get together, throw a few punches, get some tension out, then we go out.” He shrugs, like it’s obvious, which Hannibal supposes it probably is. “Fight Night.”
Obvious or not... “And you go out and gst in real fights? That sound like a good idea to you, soldier?”
Another shrug. “Face go out and fuck people every night of the week, and Murdock play with his damn action figures, least I do sumthin’ normal.” It’s flat, disinterested, but Baracus peels away from the window, looking over at him for the first time since getting in the car. “What you care, anyway?”
Hannibal has to think about that for a minute. What he can say here. What he should say. What’s going to get through, what’s going to matter to this young man. There was a time he was damn good at this, telling some young solider exactly what he needs to hear to help lift him up, put him back together after something as humiliating as getting heckled in a police station. But he can’t really figure it out, that skill atrophied and weak, so he says the first thing that comes to mind instead, hoping like hell it’s what he needs.
“Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger,” Hannibal recites slowly, remembering screaming the Rangers Creed in the mud at the Schoolhouse during training, remembering turning it over in his mind before his first live op, the thing he’s always clung to through the shit, “I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment. I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier...”
“Fuck that,” Baracus grumbles, and goes back to the window.
And that, that is something that Hannibal just can’t fucking stand. He cuts hard left, almost hitting the car in the oncoming lane, and slams hard on the brake in the parking lot of a convenience store. The chassis jerks forward and halts with a squealing protest.
Baracus is looking at him like he’s insane. “What you doin’, fool?” he demands.
But Hannibal’s not having any of it. After last night, Pike and Murdock and Face, Jesus Christ, after Face, he just can’t take it, and his anger at the whole fucking thing just come boiling out. “This,” and he jerks up his own sleeve, exposing the Ranger tag there, “this fucking means something, corporal. Your rank fucking means something. Just because you don’t put a fucking uniform on every day like the regular guys doesn’t mean you aren’t still a soldier. There are standards, goddammit! Standards you’re expected to uphold! And what do you do? Get drunk and get into barfights?”
Baracus swallows, the surliness starting to fall away now. Good, Hannibal thinks, at least he still has some respect for rank left in him. “Colonel, sumtimes I need...”
“You say you don’t hit women, corporal, I believe you. But you represent the apex of the US military, the fucking gold standard, one of the most highly trained soldiers in the fucking world. You think you can go out and get drunk and lose control and everything’s going to be okay? You’re going to kill somebody some day! You understand that? Kill someone, some civilian you’ve sworn to protect.”
“C-Colonel, I...”
“Goddammit, corporal!” Hannibal roars, hitting the steering wheel with and open hand, grabbing the leather wrapper tight, the last of his anger flowing out...
...regret flowing back in.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Where the fuck did that just come from?
For a moment, nothing in the car moves, speaks or breaths. And Hannibal’s hating himself for the short fuse he just blew, for the way Baracus looks pale under his dark skin, for how much he’s fucking lost from where he used to be, before...he never would have done this before...
But then Baracus interrupts the silence. “You don’t know nuthin’ 'bout me, Colonel Smith,” he says, the words defiant but his voice shaking.
Hannibal sighs, and shakes his head. Never, he never used to lose his temper like that. “You’re right, corporal. You’re right. I’m sorry, I’ve got no right to lecture you right now.” He turns the key in the ignition. “Where can I drop you off?”
“My van at the gym,” Baracus says, distant, like he’s far, far away. “You could...you could drop me off there.”
“Just tell me where to go,” Hannibal says.
It’s a ten minute trip to the gym, which is just some place built out of an old cinderblock garage. There’s a big black van with a red spoiler out front, which has to be the corporal’s, cause he smiles a little as he sees it. He doesn’t say a word as he gets out and carefully shuts the door behind him, but he does knock on Hannibal’s window before the colonel has a chance to pull out.
“Colonel?” he says hesitantly, as Hannibal rolls the window down. “You...you right, you know? I don’t wanna hurt nobody.”
Hannibal feels his eyes sting a bit, but manages to keep any tears far, far away as he remembers what he should have said in the first place. “You have to believe in what you are, Corporal Baracus. A non-commissioned officer in the United States Army Rangers. That has to matter. Does that matter to you?” Baracus nods, very slowly, and Hannibal nods back. “If you ever want to talk or need anything, the brigade’s there for you, you understand me?”
“Yessir,” Baracus says quietly.
It’s awkward and strange and uncomfortable, but Hannibal nods back, and keeps it together. “Good man,” he tells the young corporal, and rolls his window up.
He’s half expecting that Baracus is just going to go leave or something. But as he pulls back out into the growing morning traffic, in his rear-view mirror, Hannibal can see the corporal pulling out a ring of keys and unlocking the front door of the gym, and disappears inside.
And the colonel has the strangest feeling that the young man intends to stay there for the rest of the weekend.
Something about that, perhaps the fact that Baracus doesn't even feel comfortable enough to go back to where he lives, that he'd rather sleep on a cot or a couch in a gym than go back to Pike's, haunts Hannibal's thoughts for days after.
+++++
There’s a white board in Hannibal’s office, standard issue as his jump boots. The last commander left the damn thing when he left, along with a plethora of colored felt markers and erasers and magnetic strips and black electrical tape and every other accoutrement possible.
He’s been scrambling, all week, trying to get caught up. There are so, so many things to keep track of. Hannibal hadn’t realized how complicated everything was going to be, how much there was to keep track of. Fuck, it’s worse than anything he ever handled at Benning, and a hell of a lot more complex than anything he had to worry about in Asia.
He caps his marker and steps back from what he’s just spent the last half hour working on. It’s as neat as he can make it, but black writing covers nearly every inch of the board. Every weekly briefing, all ongoing projects, schedules for PT and range time and every other training function the boys go through, long-term taskers, short-term taskers, political interrelationships on the post he’s trying to get straight in his head, who’s on the shit list for disciplinary incidents...
Baracus is at the top of that list. Corporal Bosco Baracus. And Hannibal tosses the marker away, heading back his desk. He’d hoped, maybe, that the young NCO would come by the unit, talk to the first sergeant, be around, do...something. But he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the corporal since he disappeared into his gym Saturday morning.
Hannibal sighs, thinking about it again.
He fucked that up, didn’t he? Fucked it up like he’s fucked up with Face - fucked it up with Face twice now. And then holding Murdock in the parking lot, petting his hair...there are easier, less touchy ways of dealing with that kind of state, for god’s sake...
And where the hell did his better judgment go?
It shouldn’t matter, those three. Pike. A team that doesn’t really belong to him. His own boys need his attention. He has enough issues in the brigade that do belong to him, family problems and bad finances and disciplinary incidents and health issues and...
A knock on the wall makes him jump, and the Chief has a wry expression on his face, looking back at him from the half-open door. “You ready to head down to the range, boss? We’re late already.”
“Shit,” he groans, looking over at the clock. “Was this the day we were going to do that?”
His senior-ranking enlisted man grins back at him. “From what I hear, the boys have a pool goin’ on how good a shot you are.”
“Dead,” Hannibal replies absently, knowing that’s always been the answer, and then realizes it’s probably not the answer anymore. Fuck. He hasn’t so much as touched a gun in the last three years. Maggie managed to get most of his personal arsonal in the divorce - she managed to get most of everything in the divorce - and he’d sold the rest before he’d moved overseas. Just like his car. He couldn’t take it with him, and he hadn’t really planned on coming back...
“Boss?”
He shakes himself out of it, and covers by marching over and grabbing his hat off the huge, messy desk. “I’m fine, Bill,” he tells the Chief, and pats his shoulder, pushing him out of the office. “Let’s go show those young men what a lifetime of experience can do for you, yeah?”
The Chief laughs. “I’ll give you a ride, boss. We can talk on the way.”
But the other man doesn’t say anything, not a word, until they’re well around the edge of the neighboring McChord AFB airfield, on their way out to the shooting range. There’s a red light, a C-17 coming in, and the Chief puts the car in idle while they wait for it to touch down and taxi in.
“You don’t have to keep track of all of that, you know,” he says casually, cocking his head and looking over. “That’s what I’m here for, boss. Keep the unit running while you grab all the glory.“
Hannibal shakes his head. “That’s what some commanders do,” he says absently and his fingers, searching for something to hold onto, pulls a cigar tube out of his pocket. “You mind, Chief?”
“Not in the slightest, sir.”
The plane’s coming in, low and slow, wheels locking out of its squat body, and as Hannibal strikes a match, he hears the Chief chuckle. “What?”
“You ever wonder how those things stay in the air?” he asks, pointing. “Fat bitch don’t look like it's possible.”
Hannibal shrugs and cracks his window, the breeze sucking his smoke out and away. “I like to keep track what’s going on in my unit. I'm not comfortable not knowing the details.”
“When was the last time you had a unit, sir?”
“Three years and four months, one of the planning divisions at Benning,” he says. The plane’s wheels touch down. The acrid smell of industrial rubber fills the air, and he rolls the window back up. “Why?”
The Chief makes a little huffing noise, and puts the car back into gear as the light goes green, telling them they can keep going around the edge of the runway. “When was the last time you were in the field?”
“Longer than that, almost four years.”
“So you never saw Afghanistan? Iraq? Any of the GWOT bullshit? Anything in the sandbox?”
“No,” and Hannibal can’t bring himself to look at the man. He rolls his cigar between his fingers, watching the slow burn of the tobacco at the end. “It’s not that I didn’t want to go, but...”
“...but you were working staff positions in fucking PACOM,” the Chief says. “It takes a lot of work for a Ranger, even a FGO like you, to stick it out in staff jobs for three years. You worked at that, didn’t you?”
And Hannibal looks over at him now. It’s not accusatory, it’s not angry, it’s not even judgment. It’s a simple statement of fact. But it’s still crushing. “Bill, what are you trying to say?” he asks, trying not to descend into anger.
“My oldest boy was killed in Mosul back in April,” he says quietly, his tone not really changing any. “Twenty years old, got his left side blown off by one of those fucking IEDs, dead before they could get him back to base. I told the boy to go to college, smart boy, but he wanted to serve, so what are you gonna do? You don’t have any kids do you, John?”
Hannibal shakes his head, not wanting to think about that again. “No...”
“I lost one of my boys, my baby boy, my wife’s youngest child, to a war my new colonel’s been trying his damnedest to avoid,” the Chief continues, quiet, thoughtful, and they’re turning off the pavement down the dirt strip that leads to the shooting range. Hannibal can hear the guns already, the pew-pew that distance renders from automatic weapons fire. “There’s a lot of guys out there that would hate you for that. ‘Specially somebody who had a reputation for bein’ the hottest captain in the Regiment mid-ninties. Fuck, you’ve even got a Medal of Honor to your name, right?”
He takes a deep breath, pulling hot smoke into his lungs where it really shouldn’t be, trying to steady himself, wishing he had a cigarette instead. He really should have expected this. His biography went out to the whole brigade before he assumed command, and Fort Lewis posted it on the base website; everyone knows about the Silver Star, the Medal of Honor, his West Point education. All of it a reputation they’re expecting him to leave up to, and he has the sudden, overwhelming sense of failure.
“...yeah,” he whispers, remembering that mission. “Yeah, one of the few from Desert Storm.” He pauses, watching the plane for a few more moments, and his mouth feels cottony. Hannibal barely manages to get out a damn-near whispered response. “Do you...you hate me for that, Bill?”
The Chief doesn’t really react, except to shrug. “Whatever reasons you had for being where you used to be ain’t my business, sir. I don’t hold it against you. You’re the colonel, so you’ve got my respect. But I can see you’re strugglin’ with all of this. It’s tough, ain’t it, being back?”
Hannibal’s not really sure what to say - what he can say - in response to that little speech, so he just nods, hoping that’s enough.
And the Chief nods back. “It’s my job to keep your head above water. You gotta let me do my job. We’re a team, remember? You don’t gotta handle everything on that board yourself.”
They’re almost at the range, the sound of gunfire louder now, those bone-shaking vibrations that he hasn’t felt in far, far too long, and Hannibal laughs a little, relief rushing through him. “It all is a little overwhelming.”
“Doesn’t need to be. Tomorrow, after PT, we’re gonna erase all of that and work on it together. Okay, sir?”
He smiles back. “Sounds good, Chief.”
The Chief laughs. “So, what’s got you worried right now? Need you loose for shootin'. The boys are gonna expect the legendary Hannibal Smith to be fuckin’ good at this.”
And then it just slips out. Automatically. Without a second of thought.
“Pike.”
The Chief’s jovial demeanor vanishes, and he takes a deep breath as he pulls the keys out of the ignition. “I did see the police report on Corporal Baracus. That’s the first time he hasn’t spent the entire weekend in jail.”
“What’s the story with that team?” Hannibal asks.
“Respectfully, sir, Major Pike’s a grade-A asshole. His team keeps to themselves, stays away from even the other alpha team personnel. They’re the first chalk out the door on deployments, the last chalk back, and they’d probably be the highest decorated unit we’ve got here at Lewis if the major ever bothered to fill out the paperwork for anybody but himself,” the Chief replies, and shakes his head as he see Hannibal’s frown. “I wouldn’t let it bother you. It’s been like that since I’ve been here. You can’t do anything about it.”
“Has anybody tried?”
“We’ve got enough issues of our own, boss, without borrowin’ issues that ain’t,” the Chief says with some regret, and opens his door. “C’mon, sir, it’ll do the boys some good to see you out there today. And I’m sure it’ll feel good to have a weapon in your hand again.”
“Fuckin’ right about that, Bill,” Hannibal replies, and that’s the last of that for a while.
It is good to shoot again. Good to feel the click of a magazine up into the body of that M4, good to feel the balance of the stock against his shoulder, good to look through the site and breath through the shot and hear the ping a second later. He does worse than he remembered himself doing in the last ten years, but better than anybody seemed to think he would - his groups are tight, but low right of the bullseye. That’s pretty damn good for not holding a gun in three years.
He’s relieved. Didn’t embarrass the shit out of himself today.
It’s short-lived, though. As the Chief and a couple of the majors gather around to look at his target as its brought it, that’s when Hannibal sees it. When he catches the eye of one tall, handsome, uniformed, smiling Lieutenant Faceman Peck, over in a shadowed corner of the shelters in the center of a little gaggle of men, book in hand, nodding and scribbling notes as bills discreetly change hands. He smiles, biting his lip, and winks.
Hannibal feels his hackles rise. That little shit, taking bets on his performance...
But before he can over there, there’s Pike. Right in front of him. Arms crossed and head cocked, body language oozing disrespect.
“Hey,” he says. “I hear you’re moving in on my corporal, John. I don’t like that.”
All talk within ten feet stops. And Hannibal has to grab his right wrist behind his back to avoid just punching that fucker in the face.
“It’s Colonel Smith to you, major,” he growls back.
Pike just smiles, and one of those massive eyebrows pulls up. “I just don’t like it when people who aren’t in my chain go around me, colonel, dealin’ with my boys.”
“Like bailing him out of jail? You expect me to leave him there all weekend?”
Pike snorts, and tosses his head over his shoulder, over to the back corner where Baracus is carefully inspecting an M-4 he’s unpacking out onto a neat cloth, spread over the weather-roughed surface of a table. Careful and methodical, his big fingers surprisingly dexterous on the weapon, and what was it Face said about him? That he was a mechanic? He looks almost happy, working on that gun.
“His ass needs to sit in lock-up. How else is he going to learn his behavior’s unacceptable if he gets coddled all the time by well-meaning colonels like yourself?”
It’s spoken like Pike’s talking about a dog. Hannibal digs his nails into the skin of his palm and tries not to lose his temper. “It’s an embarrassment to Fort Lewis, one of our Rangers being arrested like that. You shame the whole post, leaving him in there.”
Pike grins wider, like some sadistic child pointing a .22 at a downed, helpless bird. Like he thinks he’s going to win this one. “Politics are your job, Colonel Smith. Running a mission-ready unit is mine. You should remember that.”
“Watch yourself, Major Pike,” Hannibal growls, taking a step forward now. “I’ve still got administrative control of you.”
“And what are you gonna do, Colonel Smith? Spank me?”
It’s taunting and rude and completely disrespectful, and Hannibal takes another step, feeling his blood starting to rise...
But Face is there in a flash, hand on Pike’s shoulder. “Boss, uhh, we’re set up, you know, if you wanna...”
Pike brushes that hand off his shoulder and turns. “Fine, el-tee. This isn’t going anywhere anyway,” he replies, and walks off to where BA is.
The people around move away as well, and pretty soon, it’s just Hannibal and Face in a bubble of other activities. Nobody’s firing right now, the younger guys cleaning up the sheel casings, and fuck, if that kid doesn’t make regulation earwear, hanging around his neck like headphones, look sexy.
Face smiles a little. “He’s gone to Benning about that, you know. You’re probably gonna hear about it.”
Hannibal shrugs. “It was as much my call as his.” And he looks over at where Pike’s talking to Baracus. The man’s confident, assured body language is gone, stripped away. Cowed by the very presence of his boss. “Where’s Captain Murdock? Doesn’t he...”
“You really think he should be around firearms?” Face sniffs. “He’s at home, in his jammies, probably playing video games or reading comics or something like that.”
“He’s still a Ranger, isn’t he?” Hannibal shoots back, wondering what the hell they actually let the man do. “Do you recognize that in him at all?”
“He’s fucking crazy.”
“He’s hurting, kid. And he’d probably hurt a lot less if you treated him with any amount of respect at all.”
Face sniffs again and frowns, uncomfortable, not answering. He kicks at a stray brass casing on the ground, hands grasping at his elbows, but whatever mental turmoil he’s going through gets locked down and hidden away fast, because when he lifts his eyes, he’s smiling.
“You have any plans for the evening?” he asks quietly, in French. “Same time, same place?”
Hannibal rolls his eyes, and turns away, deciding that maybe this is a case where the Chief’s right, where he doesn’t need this kind of trouble.
He tells himself that as the Chief takes him back to brigade headquarters.
As he drives himself home.
As he sits at his kitchen table, watching the news and eating a bowl of leftover spaghetti.
As he lights up his third cigar of the evening and tries to settle down with a book.
It doesn’t stick.
So the colonel finds himself going through half the shirts in his closet until he finds one that he doesn’t think the kid’ll make fun of, grabs his keys and heads to his garage.
He gets to the motel almost half an hour late, and as he heads up to the same room they used last time, Hannibal tries to tell himself that he’s an idiot, that Face isn’t waiting around for him, that the only thing the kid wants is his abnormally large cock, just like every guy he’s ever slept with wanted, and he's not going to wait around in some shitty place just for that...
But Face is at the door before he has a chance to knock twice, a smile on his lips that’s too small and too fragile to not be real, and Hannibal feels his own smile rise sad in response to that, as long fingers loop under his belt and pull him into the room.
“Can I call you John?” the kid asks, working on the buckle. “If you’ll call me Templeton, can I call you John, sir?”
“Anything you want,” Hannibal murmurs back.
“Good,” Face breaths, and licks him through straining white briefs. "Love your cock, John."
See? That’s all he fucking cares about from you, that voice whispers to Hannibal, but as he wraps his hands in those soft, short, caramel locks, he tells himself it's enough for right now.
Last thing he wants is a repeat of what happened with Maggie. Last thing he wants is to fall in love with somebody who's just going to leave him when the Army decides to make life tough again. And then damp white cotton is pulled away and all his concerns about what this shouldn't be disappear into the sinful heat of that talented, beautiful mouth.
+++++
The interior of the C-17 cargo bay is loud and cold, the outer skin of the plane reverberating with the force of its flight, and the jump seats that fold down from the bulkheads are not made for six-foot-four men. Hannibal’s walking around instead, listening dimly to the chatter of the air crew on his headset, watching his men.
Maneuvers.
They’re headed to the drop zone in the Washington wilderness, where they’ll do a static-line jump down into a heavily forested area - precision being the key here - and head through a series of objectives that the boys in the training shop have worked up. They’ll be gone for the next three days, extraction 0900 Friday morning.
The packs are light. The parachutes are hooked up. The boys are joking and talking as best they can over the roar of the engines.
Pike, and one of the other teams under Major Pierson, are playing the aggressors. They’re already on the ground up there, dropped off earlier this morning.
Three days of no Pike. No Baracus. No Face...
Hannibal can still smell the distinctive scent of that beautiful, sexy, infuriating kid on his skin. Face had left a note on his desk yesterday afternoon. I’ve got three hours tonight. He’d gone, and it hadn’t disappointed, Face practically throwing him down on the bed and ripping his clothes off and swinging a leg over him and sinking right down onto him...
It’d been good. Hell, it’d been better than good. This thing with Face is the best sex Hannibal’s ever had, and he doesn’t think that’s just because of where he’s been or how long he’s been doing this. The kid’s got skill, and enthusiasm, and youth, and beauty...so, so much beauty, even if he doesn’t seem to notice it himself.
He should, though. Hannibal wants him to. Wants Face to know how he sees him, how he really is, wants to show him what kind of beautiful man is under all those layers of indifference and sarcasm and cocksure arrogance...
But the kid wouldn’t want that from, he knows. He’s got no right to say it to him. Hell, they aren’t in a relationship. Nothing about this is a relationship, nothing about this should be a relationship, no matter how much Hannibal might want it to be.
Look at what you did to Maggie, he keeps hearing. You made her nothing but miserable. Face deserves somebody who’s going to make him happy...
Turbulence bounces him on his feet, and Hannibal shakes himself, grabbing out for the railing of the steep stairs that lead up to the cockpit. The Chief flashes him a smile, and Hannibal shakes his head in reply.
The boys jump, after he shakes hands and exchanges nods with his officers and out they go, off the tail, into that crescent of perfect sky. Watches them go. Wishing he could be with them, be doing this with them, and he could be, will at some point in the future, but they had a deployment tasking come down yesterday and he’s got too much stuff to do this week to manage it...
~All away, chaps!~
That’s when he realizes. That English accent on the intercom?
It’s Captain Murdock.
As he heads up the ladder to the cockpit, Hannibal nods to the Chief, who’s over in the corner, plugged into the load master’s station, talking on a private intercom with the tech sergeant who’s in charge of the bay and a couple of the airmen, who look tickled. The Chief gives him a thumbs up and goes back to his conversation.
The door slides open easy enough on its hinges and back behind him again, cutting out the worst of the engine noise, and Hannibal can hear himself think again.
The pilots turn around to look at him. A few of them, the one on the left, one in the jumpseat, another lounging off to the side, all with Air Force insignia on flight suit name tags and those tell-tale black shirts on under their drab green. They smile. And then there’s Murdock, in his Army tan, in the left co-pilot’s chair, hand on the yoke, blue-green eyes wide.
He doesn’t smile. In fact, he’s actually gone pale.
Hannibal frowns as he pulls his helmet off - no need for it in the cockpit - and taps the talk button on the VOX of the intercom.
~Captain Murdock, can we talk?~
~Colonel, we’re in the middle of a flight here and...~
~It’s okay, Murdock, we’ll let one of the el-tees up in the driver’s seat for a while.~
That last one’s delivered by the pilot to the left, a major who’s looking at Murdock as he shakes his shaggy black head in protest, and pats him on the shoulder.
~Go on, captain. She’ll still be here when you’re done.~
Reluctantly, Murdock climbs out of co-pilot’s chair, the lieutenant replacing him grinning as he slips in, and Hannibal beckons him back to the relative private of the rear of the cabin. The captain comes over, but doesn’t so much as look Hannibal in the eye. There’s a sleeping bunk there, recessed into the bulkhead, that Murdock flops down onto instead, staring up at the ceiling of the tight space, boots crossed, wiggling his toes, and that’s when Hannibal realizes he’s singing to himself.
The colonel sits down on the ground, elbow on the bunk. He turns off his comm unit and slides the headset off his ears, then reaches over and does the same to Murdock’s. The pilot’s tuneless little song stops, but he doesn’t look over. His hands dig at the thin blanket covering the bed, itching to leave, to get away from him.
But Hannibal waits, just watching.
And when it finally comes, it’s nothing more than a whisper, barely audible.
“Sorry, sir.”
He shakes his head. “What?”
“Sorry,” Murdock says again and folds his hands up on his chest. “The other night, in the parkin’ lot. I took you away from your O-Call. Sorry.”
Hannibal pushes up, so he’s sitting on the edge of the bunk now. Murdock’s not moving, but the colonel think he sees those eyes flick over to him and back again, fast. He’s sharp, Hannibal realizes with a start, a deep intellect in there somewhere. And for some reason, that makes this all more horrible.
“It’s not a problem, captain,” he manages to reply. “It’s my job.”
“No it ain’t,” Murdock sighs up at the top of the bunk. “It ain’t your job to deal with me, sir. I know how this works, and it ain’t your job. Faceman was gonna...”
“Major Pike doesn’t have the right to order you doped stupid,” Hannibal tells him, not sure what to say. “That’s what Lieutenant Peck was going to do, wasn’t he?”
The captain shrugs, wrinkling the blanket beneath him, and lolls his head over, smiling a little. Manic and stressed and happy, all at once. It’s strange. “If you ain’t mad, sir...can...can I go back to flyin’?”
Hannibal stops him with a light tough to his shoulder as he starts to wriggle out. “In a minute, captain. I wanted to ask...” and he stops for a moment as that expression hollows out. It reminds the older man of a puppy whose favorite toy’s just been taken away. Like he’s just done something horribly wrong.
He’d intended to ask about the team, or him, or how he was doing, or something cliche and stupid like that. But he can’t. Not now. Not with that look on the pilot’s face. Not with... and he groans, realizing.
“Does Major Pike ever let you fly, son?”
Murdock shoves up on his side, picking at fuzz on the blanket. He’s still smiling that hollow smile. “I stay current,” he says vaguely, and that weird expression on his face broadens a little into something that might be a real smile. “Days like this, if I’m flyin’ with the Air Force boys, I even get to hold the stick for a while.”
And Hannibal knows what that means.
Current means hours logged overall. Not hours in the seat, not necessarily. All four of the pilots on the aircraft today get credit for the entire length of the flight, not just the parts where they’re touching controls.
Which means that Murdock probably does nothing but ride for the minimum number of hours he’s required to be in the air.
Never actually getting to fly.
He shakes his head again. “Captain Murdock, are you not getting training?”
“Don’t need the practice when you’re the best thing since the Red Baron,” Murdock tells him, and those eyes sparkle. Hannibal thinks it might be him picking up, but no, but then everything slips. “I mean, I always liked Snoopy, but it was just a doghouse, so you gotta figure, I’m way better than a dog with his little doghouse in his yard...”
“Murdock, focus on what I’m saying to you right now,” he says, and touches the younger officer’s knee. Murdock stares at his hand but Hannibal doesn’t move it away, not yet. “Are you getting the training you need on this airframe?”
“Or any of the other plane, or choppers, or anythin’ else, sir,” he confirms, and that smile falls away as he sits up, right next to Hannibal and digs the heel of his palm into his forehead. “But Major Pike don’t want some incident on his hands, his nutso pilot crashin’ a bird on his watch.”
“But you’re cleared to fly? Medically?”
He shrugs.
“Do you know?”
He shrugs again. “Faceman keeps all our records. I don’t see ‘em. I...I don’t think he wants me flyin’, either. He and I...not since the orphanage in Charikar, we ain’t been...but I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose, sir, or nuthin’ like that.” His eyes flash back to the front, to the wall of glass and shining chrome controls. “I...I don’t blame ‘im for it, sir. He’s just doin’ what Major Pike wants.”
Hannibal feel his blood start to rise again, but manages to keep it down. “And what about what you want, Captain?”
“Hell, I’m lucky Major Pike lets me fly at all. He pulled me outta psyche ward down in Mexcio, took me on as his team’s pilot. Not too many fellas’d take a guy like me.” He’s smiling now, watching as clouds slide off the wide, bright windshields, really smiling, and something in Hannibal aches for the pilot. “Least I get to fly sometimes, when the Air Force boys can swing it for me.”
“Not with the Army?”
Murdock bites his lip, and those keen, sad eyes slide shut. “Can I see if Major Bates’ll let me back in the seat? We’re gonna do some low-levels over the ocean. Might even get to pull a few gees, sir.”
Hannibal nods slowly, still trying to process all of this.
Doesn’t really matter. He’s not going to get any more time. Murdock’s already up, tapping the Air Force major on the shoulder, the two of them talking, and he points at the lieutenant who took his seat. The major claps him on the shoulder, standing up, and Hannibal catches his eye as Murdock slips back down into the plane.
Hannibal makes to summon him over, but the Air Force officer’s coming over anyway.
“You his new boss?” the major asks.
“I’ve got the Second Ranger Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel John Smith,” Hannibal replies. “Took over about a month ago.”
The Air Force pilot whistles and offer his hand. “Tim Bates, DO for the 4th Airlift Squadron. Nice to meet you, Colonel Smith. How’s command treating you?”
Hannibal glances over at Murdock. Looks like he’s laughing. Looks like those lieutenants are laughing with him. That’s a good thing, right? “It’s a lot of work.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” the major grins.
Hannibal’s used to Air Force levity after all that time in joint staff positions, but for some reason, he’s just not in the mood for it right now. “Look, Tim, do you fly with Captain Murdock often?”
The younger officer gives him a strange look, and them switches off his comm unit, leaning in a little bit. “When I can fit him in my schedule, and not as much as he needs. I’ve got a lot of kids to keep trained.”
“He talk much while he’s up here with you?”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“Whatever you can.”
The major stares at him for a moment, and then starts talking.
When he’s done, Hannibal doesn’t know what the hell to think. He hadn’t been expecting...that.
James HM Murdock, as a lieutenant, had been one of the best pilots in the Army. One of the very, very best. Pulled off some truly impossible missions. Decorated out the wazoo. Loved by everyone he worked with. Headed straight for the top.
Until he made captain and vanished.
“What happened?”
“We went the CIA pulled him up. MC-130s, civilian birds, that sort of thing. He went off the grid in ‘96. We went to UPT together, stayed pretty close, so he doesn’t email for half a year, I know something’s wrong. But I didn’t see him again until he showed up here about three years ago, broken.”
“Broken?”
“Kinda. PTSD, we all thought. He was doin’ okay, though, until after that first Afghanistan campaign. And then...”
“And then Pike got him?”
“I think Pike’s the fucker that broke him. Or at least, he’s making it worse. But...it’s all just rumor from there, Colonel.”
It’s a lot to digest. So it’s not until later, not until after Murdock pulls some crazy shit over the water that has the pilots howling and the load master screaming over the intercom, after they touch down at McChord and Hannibal takes the crew officers out for a late lunch on him, after he takes a very quiet Murdock to the base hospital, where Pike’s evidently requested he spend the next three days in the psyche ward until Face comes to collect him, after a miserable figure passes out of his sight, that the colonel remembers.
A problem with Face.
An orphanage.
Charikar.
Afghanistan, the Internet tells him.
Sitting on his couch, staring at the painful blue light of his laptop in the darkness of his living room, Hannibal wonders, and makes a note to start going through mission reports tomorrow.
+++++
For the rest of the week, while most the unit is out doing its Army-sponsored camping trip in the Washington State woods, Hannibal shoves the paperwork aside and doesn’t even bother opening his email, and goes to work in the record rooms.
This, records research, is a skill the colonel more or less honed while at Diego. Too much turn-over, not enough personnel to handle the paperwork load, slow and unreliable Internet connections, and a general lack of concern for even the most basic of tasks by the enlisted men who ran Records Management a completely bizarre hodge-podge of filing that never got organized in any kind of coherent manner. He got good at finding just about anything.
Still, even with the help of his secretary and the Chief, who insists he’s too goddamn fat to go along on maneuvers and sure boss, whatever you’re doing, I’ve got time for, and a number of other people around base and back at Benning and out in the AOR he was able to get in touch with to pass him certain information, even with sleeping his office and going at this eighteen hours at a clip, even with every trick he knows how to play to find what he needs, Hannibal finds pinpointing anything on Pike impossible.
After three days of searching the basement and the base and Benning’s classified repositories, Hannibal can’t find anything. Nothing. Not a single sentence out of place, not the slightest hint that anything’s amiss. Pike’s a clever bastard with manipulating the paperwork; if he’s been doing anything wrong, he’s very, very good at hiding it.
But, at the same time, there’s something wrong. Something omitted, that’s omitted to such a degree that it stands out like a tourist in Tokyo.
There’s no record of a mission happening anywhere near a place called Charikar, sure. No after-action report from Pike, no flight plan from Murdock, no aircraft control transcripts, no record of them leaving or returning to the FOB, no note in the logs from the Mission Control, nothing. But then, that means there’s a completely blank space in the A-Team’s timeline. A glaring three day space.
“It’s like they vanished for three days,” Hannibal says to the Chief, tapping his pen on a makeshift flowchart he’s ginned up on the back of a set of ancient blueprints he found in a flat file down here in the basement. He’s fairly certain he’s gleaned every shred of information available from that deployment, and he’s got it all annotated out here. Except for a big fucking hole where he can’t so much as account for the boys using the chow hall. “Like the entire team ceased to exist. So, unless they fell down a black hole...”
“Naw,” the Chief drawls, leaning back in his chair, grinning in a way that still makes him look dead serious somehow, “there would be a record of them goin’ missing like that.”
Hannibal draws a little box around the open hole in his timeline. What the fuck is that all about. “So what are you thinking, Bill?”
The Chief replies instantly, without hesitating. “Somebody pulled the records.”
“At this classification, Bill?” Hannibal asks, raising an eyebrow. “That would leave a record in and of itself, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” and his senior enlisted man doesn’t miss a beat. “On the military side of things, it could be a request from Benning...”
The colonel really, really wishes he could have a cigar in here. “There’s no way General Morrison would allow something like that. He’s a stickler for that sort of thing.”
“His staff?”
“I worked for him. Believe me, he would notice, and he would not be pleased.”
“Then, and this is going to sound a little nuts, sir, but the only other options you’ve got for people who could pull this much information out of this many different databases, without leaving any trace of it being removed...”
“Headquarters SOCOM?” Hannibal guesses, hoping like hell the Chief isn’t about to say what he thinks he is. At least SOCOM he can still dig into through Russ if he needs to.
But the sergeant says it anyway.
“NSA, boss. NSA or CIA. Maybe CIA, actually, Afghanistan’s more of a CIA war than anything else. Fuckers have been there since the Eighties.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Hannibal stares down at the table for a moment, and then hits it with his palm, hard, in frustration, pushing up and away. “Fuck.”
There’s no way he can do anything with the CIA. Those fuckers are compartmentalized to the extreme. Even if he had a contact there, and he does have one of two classmates who were rumored to have gone in after their West Point committment was up who might be willing to help him, they probably wouldn’t be able to reach the information he would need. They wouldn’t have any insight into that kind of records deletion.
“Oh, yeah,” the Chief agrees. “My next question would be who the fuck does Major Pike know over there...”
“...and how,” Hannibal growls. Pike, a twelve-year major, is way too young for the Afghanistan campaign against the USSR. “And why. And why the fuck he’s being helped like this around everyone’s backs.”
A heavy silence descends over the room, each man left to his own thoughts, Hannibal’s mind chewing on the questions it has absolutely no way to answer, until the Chief stands and tells him to go home, get some rest, sleep in his own bed, and Hannibal has a sudden, flashing image of Face waiting for him there, spread out or cuddled into the pillows...
“Thank you, Bill,” he tells him. Belated; by the time he gets out of his own head to say the words, the Chief is already gone.
Hannibal sighs, and looks around. The basement records room is small and cramped and depressing suddenly, but he can’t just let this go. Not right now. Not with his boy on the line.
He’s not your boy, you asshole, that voice whispers to him, but Hannibal tries to ignore it.
Wonders if maybe Captain Murdock might know something.
+++++
Murdock’s lying on his bed, sprawled out like a cat across the flimsy pad that serves as a mattress, reading a comic book upside down, when the doctor shows Hannibal in. The colonel has all these questions right now, about whether or not Pike knows somebody in the CIA, if he’s ever heard about Pike maybe knowing somebody with the last name of Lynch - all those CIA motherfuckers are called Lynch - but he can’t.
Seeing Murdock here in a pair of threadbare pyjamas, reading a worn book that looks like it’s seen better days, in a room that’s full of his own posters and books and toys, that Donkey Kong arcade game in the corner that obviously cost him some big money, like he’s at home, drives all of that from Hannibal’s mind.
It’s sad in a way he can’t even start to quantify to himself. Sad, and tragic.
“Hey, sir!” Murdock says, and scrambles up around, his body doing some weird thing where it just seems to move around his head. Eager like a kitten, too, Hannibal thinks, and suddenly feels ashamed of himself for only coming over here to ask about Pike. “Whatcha want?”
"I wanted to come see how you were," Hannibal says, awkward, not knowing what else to say. "I know how much you must hate this place, and..."
"Hate the hospital?" Murdock says this like it's never occurred to him before. "I don't hate it, colonel. Had m'self a lot of okay nights in places like this."
"But, then..."
"What's worse is worryin' if you're gonna hurt somebody. If this time, when you lose your marbles, somebody's gonna get crushed by one of 'em rollin' away from you, like you gonna do something or something gonna happen cause you're too busy tryin' to chase yourself down to catch it. You know what I mean?"
Hannibal thinks about that for a moment. What it must be like to prefer being locked up to being free, caging yourself up just to keep your teammates safe. "You deserve better than what Major Pike gives you, son. You deserve a commander that cares about you enough to work through those spells with you, rather than lock you up..."
"Maybe...but I've already done 'nuff damage. Never know when Ima just gonna snap an ruin som’thin’," he says quietly, and then, inexplicably, grins wide. "And 'sides, I like the jello in here. The cafeteria does it real nice."
Sensing he's prodded a little too deep here, Hannibal just nods, and pats Murdock's shoulder again as he heads to the door. “You need anything, want anything, want to go home, whatever, you call me. You understand?”
"Roger that, sir."
It doesn't sound too optimistic, though, and Hannibal frowns. "I mean it, captain."
"Sir, I've been gettin' along fine, you don't hav'ta.."
"You shouldn't have to be afraid of yourself, captain, of your mind not working right. Not ever. You understand me?”
Murdock blinks at him. “Then...then can I go home?”
The eagerness in those few little words... Hannibal doesn't know what the hell to do about it other than nod.
“Sure, captain. I’ll even give you a ride.”
On his way out of the hospital, Hannibal takes the back route, down through the hardly-used ER ambulance doors. There are a couple of mothers down there with sick kids, one youngish enlisted kid who's gray and clutching at his arm, blood on his shirt, a female nurse in camo scrubs checking a clipboard of information somebody's just handed her, but that's about it. Besides from the other woman in scrubs, bright turquoise scrubs, the same color Maggie always went for, back to him, talking to one of those kids as she leads both mother and daughter back to some exam room.
Hannibal watches for a moment, thinking about his ex-wife, about how sweet she had always been with her pediatric patients, the little kids who came in with broken arms and lacerations from playing in the yard, how she'd always sit at dinner at talk about them, laughing if the day had gone well, crying a little if it hadn't. How she'd always balked at the conversations about them having their own, just a bit at first, and then later, more and more, saying she was getting older, that it wasn't as safe, that she had her career to think of, and then, when things started getting bad, that he'd get himself killed on some stupid op and then where would that leave her, leave their children... He's never really understood why she'd refused, all those years. Why she refused him
And Hannibal thinks again about their arguments and their dinners together and the smell of her, that lightly floral undertone to her shampoo, the lavender dryer sheets she used to use, the faint musk of her skin, the barest traces of antiseptics...and for a moment, watching that doctor, he thinks he can almost smell it again.
“Colonel?”
The sound of Murdock’s voice brings him back to the present, and Hannibal shakes it off.
“Sorry about that, captain,” he replies, and doesn’t offer any other explanation for why he stopped, why he’s staring down the hall.
It’s no use anyway. Maggie was a civilian, never really understood why he'd gone into the service himself, always supportive but never encouraging, and there's no way he's going to find her here, thousands of miles from her native Georgia. And what would be the point, if he did? He honestly doesn't know what he'd do if he ever saw her again, and he doesn't want to.
So Hannibal stuffs his hands in the pockets of his uniform, taking a sudden, perverse pleasure in how out of regs that little action is, and tries to think about Murdock, getting Murdock home, following up the scant information Murdock was able to get him.
But all he can see is Face. Face in his home, Face in bed with him, the two of them cuddled together, washing dishes, taking showers, lounging on the couch in the evenings, touching, making love...
Impossible, he tells himself as he and Murdock head out into the parking lot, wishing it otherwise. Impossible.
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Hannibal’s not sure what to expect when he finally has to come back to the States, as commander of the Second Ranger Brigade up at Fort Lewis. But when a drunken hook-up turns into so much more, he finds himself involved in trying to bring down one very corrupt Major Pike while coping for his feelings for Lieutenant Peck...
“Corporal Baracus?” he asks as the cops pull his unruly corporal out. The black man eyes him warily. He looks very much as if he’s been in a barfight face swollen, a huge bandage on his arm still seeping blood. His knuckles are torn up, scabbed in half a dozen places, and his yellow tank and BDU pants are torn and scuffed with dark stains. There’s growing stubble along his scalp, where he hasn’t reshaved his mohawk today, and . “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Smith. I’m here to take custody of you.”
“Fuck off,” Baracus growls back at him.
The police sergeant exchanges an eyeroll with Hannibal, and drags the sullen corporal out of the holding cell.
That fuck off is all the colonel gets for the moment. He’d hoped there’d be something more, really. Anger or embarrassment or hell, even a hang-over. But Baracus seems perfectly sober, perfectly aware, body language totally neutral. He doesn’t talk, or look at anyone, or do anything. Just sits in the chair the officer drops him in as Hannibal signs the paperwork to get him out.
“A report’s going to be filed with the MPs at Fort Lewis,” the trooper tells the corporal, as Hannibal hands back the clipboard and the pen. “You can’t afford to keep coming in here, Corporal Baracus. This is the fourth incident in the last two months. You’re damn lucky nobody’s pressing charges.”
“Self defense,” the big guy grunts, eyes on the ceiling.
“Yeah, I’m sure it was,” sombody pipes up. “Like the last time? When the woman got a beer bottle to the face? Self defense like that?”
Now Baracus looks agitated under that careful stoicism, shifting in the chair, and some of the other cops have stopped what they’re doing, watching the little scene heating up. Hannibal has the most uncomfortable feeling that this isn’t a one-time thing, that these guys know and hate Baracus. What the hell’s passed between them here?
“I done told you at the time, that wa’n’t me.”
“Twenty stitches, Corporal,” one of the other cops leers from his desk. “You almost got her eye. Fucked her up real good! You’re fucking lucky there wasn’t enough evidence to get you convicted on that.”
“Come on, Baracus, what kind of man do you have to be to hit a woman?” yet another taunts. The noise in the room’s starting to grow, and the sergeant, finishing up the paperwork, seems completely unworried about the escalating tension.
“Wa’n’t me,” Baracus growls, getting to his feet, balling up a fist, and Hannibal’s between him and the cops in an instant.
“Back your boys off,” he growls at the sergeant who got Baracus out of that cell, before anything else can happen. Last thing the corporal needs right now, Hannibal knows, is a confrontation on unfriendly ground. “This man’s a US Army Ranger, who the fuck are you to question his word?”
The cop sighs. “Listen, sir, this man’s nothing but trouble.”
“You let me fucking worry about him. You keep your own boys in line,” Hannibal says, and pats the sergeant’s shoulder, smiling a little. “We’re all on the same team here.”
“Tell me that the next time I have to haul his ass down to my jail,” the sergeant says, and waves them out.
They’re three blocks away before Baracus speaks again.
“You the new brigade commander?”
Hannibal ignores the lack of a sir, or a respectful tone, and nods back. “That I am, corporal.”
Baracus grunts, and stares out the window. “Then that why you come down here instead of Pike?”
“Should I go back and leave you there for him to come collect later?” Hannibal asks, genuinely interested in the answer.
Another few moments of tensing silence, and then Baracus shakes his head. “They only hold you 72 hours ‘fore they gotta let you go. I’d be fine.”
“So the answer is no?”
“Man,” Baracus groans, “what the fuck your problem? What you care what Major Pike does with me? I ain’t one of your men...”
“That’s where you’re wrong, corporal,” Hannibal tells him, and makes a right turn. He really should go straight, if he wants to take the young black man back to his house, but that’s the last place he needs to be right now. “I own every Ranger on Fort Lewis, your team included. Which means I get to decide whether or not you get to sit in jail until Tuesday, not Major Pike.”
Baracus laughs, short and bitter. “Don’t work like that...”
“What happened last night, corporal? I saw you when I brought Captain Murdock back to your place. You were home then...”
“Fight Night,” he grunts.
“Excuse me?”
“It, uhh, it Fight Night at my gym. We all get together, throw a few punches, get some tension out, then we go out.” He shrugs, like it’s obvious, which Hannibal supposes it probably is. “Fight Night.”
Obvious or not... “And you go out and gst in real fights? That sound like a good idea to you, soldier?”
Another shrug. “Face go out and fuck people every night of the week, and Murdock play with his damn action figures, least I do sumthin’ normal.” It’s flat, disinterested, but Baracus peels away from the window, looking over at him for the first time since getting in the car. “What you care, anyway?”
Hannibal has to think about that for a minute. What he can say here. What he should say. What’s going to get through, what’s going to matter to this young man. There was a time he was damn good at this, telling some young solider exactly what he needs to hear to help lift him up, put him back together after something as humiliating as getting heckled in a police station. But he can’t really figure it out, that skill atrophied and weak, so he says the first thing that comes to mind instead, hoping like hell it’s what he needs.
“Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger,” Hannibal recites slowly, remembering screaming the Rangers Creed in the mud at the Schoolhouse during training, remembering turning it over in his mind before his first live op, the thing he’s always clung to through the shit, “I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment. I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier...”
“Fuck that,” Baracus grumbles, and goes back to the window.
And that, that is something that Hannibal just can’t fucking stand. He cuts hard left, almost hitting the car in the oncoming lane, and slams hard on the brake in the parking lot of a convenience store. The chassis jerks forward and halts with a squealing protest.
Baracus is looking at him like he’s insane. “What you doin’, fool?” he demands.
But Hannibal’s not having any of it. After last night, Pike and Murdock and Face, Jesus Christ, after Face, he just can’t take it, and his anger at the whole fucking thing just come boiling out. “This,” and he jerks up his own sleeve, exposing the Ranger tag there, “this fucking means something, corporal. Your rank fucking means something. Just because you don’t put a fucking uniform on every day like the regular guys doesn’t mean you aren’t still a soldier. There are standards, goddammit! Standards you’re expected to uphold! And what do you do? Get drunk and get into barfights?”
Baracus swallows, the surliness starting to fall away now. Good, Hannibal thinks, at least he still has some respect for rank left in him. “Colonel, sumtimes I need...”
“You say you don’t hit women, corporal, I believe you. But you represent the apex of the US military, the fucking gold standard, one of the most highly trained soldiers in the fucking world. You think you can go out and get drunk and lose control and everything’s going to be okay? You’re going to kill somebody some day! You understand that? Kill someone, some civilian you’ve sworn to protect.”
“C-Colonel, I...”
“Goddammit, corporal!” Hannibal roars, hitting the steering wheel with and open hand, grabbing the leather wrapper tight, the last of his anger flowing out...
...regret flowing back in.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Where the fuck did that just come from?
For a moment, nothing in the car moves, speaks or breaths. And Hannibal’s hating himself for the short fuse he just blew, for the way Baracus looks pale under his dark skin, for how much he’s fucking lost from where he used to be, before...he never would have done this before...
But then Baracus interrupts the silence. “You don’t know nuthin’ 'bout me, Colonel Smith,” he says, the words defiant but his voice shaking.
Hannibal sighs, and shakes his head. Never, he never used to lose his temper like that. “You’re right, corporal. You’re right. I’m sorry, I’ve got no right to lecture you right now.” He turns the key in the ignition. “Where can I drop you off?”
“My van at the gym,” Baracus says, distant, like he’s far, far away. “You could...you could drop me off there.”
“Just tell me where to go,” Hannibal says.
It’s a ten minute trip to the gym, which is just some place built out of an old cinderblock garage. There’s a big black van with a red spoiler out front, which has to be the corporal’s, cause he smiles a little as he sees it. He doesn’t say a word as he gets out and carefully shuts the door behind him, but he does knock on Hannibal’s window before the colonel has a chance to pull out.
“Colonel?” he says hesitantly, as Hannibal rolls the window down. “You...you right, you know? I don’t wanna hurt nobody.”
Hannibal feels his eyes sting a bit, but manages to keep any tears far, far away as he remembers what he should have said in the first place. “You have to believe in what you are, Corporal Baracus. A non-commissioned officer in the United States Army Rangers. That has to matter. Does that matter to you?” Baracus nods, very slowly, and Hannibal nods back. “If you ever want to talk or need anything, the brigade’s there for you, you understand me?”
“Yessir,” Baracus says quietly.
It’s awkward and strange and uncomfortable, but Hannibal nods back, and keeps it together. “Good man,” he tells the young corporal, and rolls his window up.
He’s half expecting that Baracus is just going to go leave or something. But as he pulls back out into the growing morning traffic, in his rear-view mirror, Hannibal can see the corporal pulling out a ring of keys and unlocking the front door of the gym, and disappears inside.
And the colonel has the strangest feeling that the young man intends to stay there for the rest of the weekend.
Something about that, perhaps the fact that Baracus doesn't even feel comfortable enough to go back to where he lives, that he'd rather sleep on a cot or a couch in a gym than go back to Pike's, haunts Hannibal's thoughts for days after.
+++++
There’s a white board in Hannibal’s office, standard issue as his jump boots. The last commander left the damn thing when he left, along with a plethora of colored felt markers and erasers and magnetic strips and black electrical tape and every other accoutrement possible.
He’s been scrambling, all week, trying to get caught up. There are so, so many things to keep track of. Hannibal hadn’t realized how complicated everything was going to be, how much there was to keep track of. Fuck, it’s worse than anything he ever handled at Benning, and a hell of a lot more complex than anything he had to worry about in Asia.
He caps his marker and steps back from what he’s just spent the last half hour working on. It’s as neat as he can make it, but black writing covers nearly every inch of the board. Every weekly briefing, all ongoing projects, schedules for PT and range time and every other training function the boys go through, long-term taskers, short-term taskers, political interrelationships on the post he’s trying to get straight in his head, who’s on the shit list for disciplinary incidents...
Baracus is at the top of that list. Corporal Bosco Baracus. And Hannibal tosses the marker away, heading back his desk. He’d hoped, maybe, that the young NCO would come by the unit, talk to the first sergeant, be around, do...something. But he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the corporal since he disappeared into his gym Saturday morning.
Hannibal sighs, thinking about it again.
He fucked that up, didn’t he? Fucked it up like he’s fucked up with Face - fucked it up with Face twice now. And then holding Murdock in the parking lot, petting his hair...there are easier, less touchy ways of dealing with that kind of state, for god’s sake...
And where the hell did his better judgment go?
It shouldn’t matter, those three. Pike. A team that doesn’t really belong to him. His own boys need his attention. He has enough issues in the brigade that do belong to him, family problems and bad finances and disciplinary incidents and health issues and...
A knock on the wall makes him jump, and the Chief has a wry expression on his face, looking back at him from the half-open door. “You ready to head down to the range, boss? We’re late already.”
“Shit,” he groans, looking over at the clock. “Was this the day we were going to do that?”
His senior-ranking enlisted man grins back at him. “From what I hear, the boys have a pool goin’ on how good a shot you are.”
“Dead,” Hannibal replies absently, knowing that’s always been the answer, and then realizes it’s probably not the answer anymore. Fuck. He hasn’t so much as touched a gun in the last three years. Maggie managed to get most of his personal arsonal in the divorce - she managed to get most of everything in the divorce - and he’d sold the rest before he’d moved overseas. Just like his car. He couldn’t take it with him, and he hadn’t really planned on coming back...
“Boss?”
He shakes himself out of it, and covers by marching over and grabbing his hat off the huge, messy desk. “I’m fine, Bill,” he tells the Chief, and pats his shoulder, pushing him out of the office. “Let’s go show those young men what a lifetime of experience can do for you, yeah?”
The Chief laughs. “I’ll give you a ride, boss. We can talk on the way.”
But the other man doesn’t say anything, not a word, until they’re well around the edge of the neighboring McChord AFB airfield, on their way out to the shooting range. There’s a red light, a C-17 coming in, and the Chief puts the car in idle while they wait for it to touch down and taxi in.
“You don’t have to keep track of all of that, you know,” he says casually, cocking his head and looking over. “That’s what I’m here for, boss. Keep the unit running while you grab all the glory.“
Hannibal shakes his head. “That’s what some commanders do,” he says absently and his fingers, searching for something to hold onto, pulls a cigar tube out of his pocket. “You mind, Chief?”
“Not in the slightest, sir.”
The plane’s coming in, low and slow, wheels locking out of its squat body, and as Hannibal strikes a match, he hears the Chief chuckle. “What?”
“You ever wonder how those things stay in the air?” he asks, pointing. “Fat bitch don’t look like it's possible.”
Hannibal shrugs and cracks his window, the breeze sucking his smoke out and away. “I like to keep track what’s going on in my unit. I'm not comfortable not knowing the details.”
“When was the last time you had a unit, sir?”
“Three years and four months, one of the planning divisions at Benning,” he says. The plane’s wheels touch down. The acrid smell of industrial rubber fills the air, and he rolls the window back up. “Why?”
The Chief makes a little huffing noise, and puts the car back into gear as the light goes green, telling them they can keep going around the edge of the runway. “When was the last time you were in the field?”
“Longer than that, almost four years.”
“So you never saw Afghanistan? Iraq? Any of the GWOT bullshit? Anything in the sandbox?”
“No,” and Hannibal can’t bring himself to look at the man. He rolls his cigar between his fingers, watching the slow burn of the tobacco at the end. “It’s not that I didn’t want to go, but...”
“...but you were working staff positions in fucking PACOM,” the Chief says. “It takes a lot of work for a Ranger, even a FGO like you, to stick it out in staff jobs for three years. You worked at that, didn’t you?”
And Hannibal looks over at him now. It’s not accusatory, it’s not angry, it’s not even judgment. It’s a simple statement of fact. But it’s still crushing. “Bill, what are you trying to say?” he asks, trying not to descend into anger.
“My oldest boy was killed in Mosul back in April,” he says quietly, his tone not really changing any. “Twenty years old, got his left side blown off by one of those fucking IEDs, dead before they could get him back to base. I told the boy to go to college, smart boy, but he wanted to serve, so what are you gonna do? You don’t have any kids do you, John?”
Hannibal shakes his head, not wanting to think about that again. “No...”
“I lost one of my boys, my baby boy, my wife’s youngest child, to a war my new colonel’s been trying his damnedest to avoid,” the Chief continues, quiet, thoughtful, and they’re turning off the pavement down the dirt strip that leads to the shooting range. Hannibal can hear the guns already, the pew-pew that distance renders from automatic weapons fire. “There’s a lot of guys out there that would hate you for that. ‘Specially somebody who had a reputation for bein’ the hottest captain in the Regiment mid-ninties. Fuck, you’ve even got a Medal of Honor to your name, right?”
He takes a deep breath, pulling hot smoke into his lungs where it really shouldn’t be, trying to steady himself, wishing he had a cigarette instead. He really should have expected this. His biography went out to the whole brigade before he assumed command, and Fort Lewis posted it on the base website; everyone knows about the Silver Star, the Medal of Honor, his West Point education. All of it a reputation they’re expecting him to leave up to, and he has the sudden, overwhelming sense of failure.
“...yeah,” he whispers, remembering that mission. “Yeah, one of the few from Desert Storm.” He pauses, watching the plane for a few more moments, and his mouth feels cottony. Hannibal barely manages to get out a damn-near whispered response. “Do you...you hate me for that, Bill?”
The Chief doesn’t really react, except to shrug. “Whatever reasons you had for being where you used to be ain’t my business, sir. I don’t hold it against you. You’re the colonel, so you’ve got my respect. But I can see you’re strugglin’ with all of this. It’s tough, ain’t it, being back?”
Hannibal’s not really sure what to say - what he can say - in response to that little speech, so he just nods, hoping that’s enough.
And the Chief nods back. “It’s my job to keep your head above water. You gotta let me do my job. We’re a team, remember? You don’t gotta handle everything on that board yourself.”
They’re almost at the range, the sound of gunfire louder now, those bone-shaking vibrations that he hasn’t felt in far, far too long, and Hannibal laughs a little, relief rushing through him. “It all is a little overwhelming.”
“Doesn’t need to be. Tomorrow, after PT, we’re gonna erase all of that and work on it together. Okay, sir?”
He smiles back. “Sounds good, Chief.”
The Chief laughs. “So, what’s got you worried right now? Need you loose for shootin'. The boys are gonna expect the legendary Hannibal Smith to be fuckin’ good at this.”
And then it just slips out. Automatically. Without a second of thought.
“Pike.”
The Chief’s jovial demeanor vanishes, and he takes a deep breath as he pulls the keys out of the ignition. “I did see the police report on Corporal Baracus. That’s the first time he hasn’t spent the entire weekend in jail.”
“What’s the story with that team?” Hannibal asks.
“Respectfully, sir, Major Pike’s a grade-A asshole. His team keeps to themselves, stays away from even the other alpha team personnel. They’re the first chalk out the door on deployments, the last chalk back, and they’d probably be the highest decorated unit we’ve got here at Lewis if the major ever bothered to fill out the paperwork for anybody but himself,” the Chief replies, and shakes his head as he see Hannibal’s frown. “I wouldn’t let it bother you. It’s been like that since I’ve been here. You can’t do anything about it.”
“Has anybody tried?”
“We’ve got enough issues of our own, boss, without borrowin’ issues that ain’t,” the Chief says with some regret, and opens his door. “C’mon, sir, it’ll do the boys some good to see you out there today. And I’m sure it’ll feel good to have a weapon in your hand again.”
“Fuckin’ right about that, Bill,” Hannibal replies, and that’s the last of that for a while.
It is good to shoot again. Good to feel the click of a magazine up into the body of that M4, good to feel the balance of the stock against his shoulder, good to look through the site and breath through the shot and hear the ping a second later. He does worse than he remembered himself doing in the last ten years, but better than anybody seemed to think he would - his groups are tight, but low right of the bullseye. That’s pretty damn good for not holding a gun in three years.
He’s relieved. Didn’t embarrass the shit out of himself today.
It’s short-lived, though. As the Chief and a couple of the majors gather around to look at his target as its brought it, that’s when Hannibal sees it. When he catches the eye of one tall, handsome, uniformed, smiling Lieutenant Faceman Peck, over in a shadowed corner of the shelters in the center of a little gaggle of men, book in hand, nodding and scribbling notes as bills discreetly change hands. He smiles, biting his lip, and winks.
Hannibal feels his hackles rise. That little shit, taking bets on his performance...
But before he can over there, there’s Pike. Right in front of him. Arms crossed and head cocked, body language oozing disrespect.
“Hey,” he says. “I hear you’re moving in on my corporal, John. I don’t like that.”
All talk within ten feet stops. And Hannibal has to grab his right wrist behind his back to avoid just punching that fucker in the face.
“It’s Colonel Smith to you, major,” he growls back.
Pike just smiles, and one of those massive eyebrows pulls up. “I just don’t like it when people who aren’t in my chain go around me, colonel, dealin’ with my boys.”
“Like bailing him out of jail? You expect me to leave him there all weekend?”
Pike snorts, and tosses his head over his shoulder, over to the back corner where Baracus is carefully inspecting an M-4 he’s unpacking out onto a neat cloth, spread over the weather-roughed surface of a table. Careful and methodical, his big fingers surprisingly dexterous on the weapon, and what was it Face said about him? That he was a mechanic? He looks almost happy, working on that gun.
“His ass needs to sit in lock-up. How else is he going to learn his behavior’s unacceptable if he gets coddled all the time by well-meaning colonels like yourself?”
It’s spoken like Pike’s talking about a dog. Hannibal digs his nails into the skin of his palm and tries not to lose his temper. “It’s an embarrassment to Fort Lewis, one of our Rangers being arrested like that. You shame the whole post, leaving him in there.”
Pike grins wider, like some sadistic child pointing a .22 at a downed, helpless bird. Like he thinks he’s going to win this one. “Politics are your job, Colonel Smith. Running a mission-ready unit is mine. You should remember that.”
“Watch yourself, Major Pike,” Hannibal growls, taking a step forward now. “I’ve still got administrative control of you.”
“And what are you gonna do, Colonel Smith? Spank me?”
It’s taunting and rude and completely disrespectful, and Hannibal takes another step, feeling his blood starting to rise...
But Face is there in a flash, hand on Pike’s shoulder. “Boss, uhh, we’re set up, you know, if you wanna...”
Pike brushes that hand off his shoulder and turns. “Fine, el-tee. This isn’t going anywhere anyway,” he replies, and walks off to where BA is.
The people around move away as well, and pretty soon, it’s just Hannibal and Face in a bubble of other activities. Nobody’s firing right now, the younger guys cleaning up the sheel casings, and fuck, if that kid doesn’t make regulation earwear, hanging around his neck like headphones, look sexy.
Face smiles a little. “He’s gone to Benning about that, you know. You’re probably gonna hear about it.”
Hannibal shrugs. “It was as much my call as his.” And he looks over at where Pike’s talking to Baracus. The man’s confident, assured body language is gone, stripped away. Cowed by the very presence of his boss. “Where’s Captain Murdock? Doesn’t he...”
“You really think he should be around firearms?” Face sniffs. “He’s at home, in his jammies, probably playing video games or reading comics or something like that.”
“He’s still a Ranger, isn’t he?” Hannibal shoots back, wondering what the hell they actually let the man do. “Do you recognize that in him at all?”
“He’s fucking crazy.”
“He’s hurting, kid. And he’d probably hurt a lot less if you treated him with any amount of respect at all.”
Face sniffs again and frowns, uncomfortable, not answering. He kicks at a stray brass casing on the ground, hands grasping at his elbows, but whatever mental turmoil he’s going through gets locked down and hidden away fast, because when he lifts his eyes, he’s smiling.
“You have any plans for the evening?” he asks quietly, in French. “Same time, same place?”
Hannibal rolls his eyes, and turns away, deciding that maybe this is a case where the Chief’s right, where he doesn’t need this kind of trouble.
He tells himself that as the Chief takes him back to brigade headquarters.
As he drives himself home.
As he sits at his kitchen table, watching the news and eating a bowl of leftover spaghetti.
As he lights up his third cigar of the evening and tries to settle down with a book.
It doesn’t stick.
So the colonel finds himself going through half the shirts in his closet until he finds one that he doesn’t think the kid’ll make fun of, grabs his keys and heads to his garage.
He gets to the motel almost half an hour late, and as he heads up to the same room they used last time, Hannibal tries to tell himself that he’s an idiot, that Face isn’t waiting around for him, that the only thing the kid wants is his abnormally large cock, just like every guy he’s ever slept with wanted, and he's not going to wait around in some shitty place just for that...
But Face is at the door before he has a chance to knock twice, a smile on his lips that’s too small and too fragile to not be real, and Hannibal feels his own smile rise sad in response to that, as long fingers loop under his belt and pull him into the room.
“Can I call you John?” the kid asks, working on the buckle. “If you’ll call me Templeton, can I call you John, sir?”
“Anything you want,” Hannibal murmurs back.
“Good,” Face breaths, and licks him through straining white briefs. "Love your cock, John."
See? That’s all he fucking cares about from you, that voice whispers to Hannibal, but as he wraps his hands in those soft, short, caramel locks, he tells himself it's enough for right now.
Last thing he wants is a repeat of what happened with Maggie. Last thing he wants is to fall in love with somebody who's just going to leave him when the Army decides to make life tough again. And then damp white cotton is pulled away and all his concerns about what this shouldn't be disappear into the sinful heat of that talented, beautiful mouth.
+++++
The interior of the C-17 cargo bay is loud and cold, the outer skin of the plane reverberating with the force of its flight, and the jump seats that fold down from the bulkheads are not made for six-foot-four men. Hannibal’s walking around instead, listening dimly to the chatter of the air crew on his headset, watching his men.
Maneuvers.
They’re headed to the drop zone in the Washington wilderness, where they’ll do a static-line jump down into a heavily forested area - precision being the key here - and head through a series of objectives that the boys in the training shop have worked up. They’ll be gone for the next three days, extraction 0900 Friday morning.
The packs are light. The parachutes are hooked up. The boys are joking and talking as best they can over the roar of the engines.
Pike, and one of the other teams under Major Pierson, are playing the aggressors. They’re already on the ground up there, dropped off earlier this morning.
Three days of no Pike. No Baracus. No Face...
Hannibal can still smell the distinctive scent of that beautiful, sexy, infuriating kid on his skin. Face had left a note on his desk yesterday afternoon. I’ve got three hours tonight. He’d gone, and it hadn’t disappointed, Face practically throwing him down on the bed and ripping his clothes off and swinging a leg over him and sinking right down onto him...
It’d been good. Hell, it’d been better than good. This thing with Face is the best sex Hannibal’s ever had, and he doesn’t think that’s just because of where he’s been or how long he’s been doing this. The kid’s got skill, and enthusiasm, and youth, and beauty...so, so much beauty, even if he doesn’t seem to notice it himself.
He should, though. Hannibal wants him to. Wants Face to know how he sees him, how he really is, wants to show him what kind of beautiful man is under all those layers of indifference and sarcasm and cocksure arrogance...
But the kid wouldn’t want that from, he knows. He’s got no right to say it to him. Hell, they aren’t in a relationship. Nothing about this is a relationship, nothing about this should be a relationship, no matter how much Hannibal might want it to be.
Look at what you did to Maggie, he keeps hearing. You made her nothing but miserable. Face deserves somebody who’s going to make him happy...
Turbulence bounces him on his feet, and Hannibal shakes himself, grabbing out for the railing of the steep stairs that lead up to the cockpit. The Chief flashes him a smile, and Hannibal shakes his head in reply.
The boys jump, after he shakes hands and exchanges nods with his officers and out they go, off the tail, into that crescent of perfect sky. Watches them go. Wishing he could be with them, be doing this with them, and he could be, will at some point in the future, but they had a deployment tasking come down yesterday and he’s got too much stuff to do this week to manage it...
~All away, chaps!~
That’s when he realizes. That English accent on the intercom?
It’s Captain Murdock.
As he heads up the ladder to the cockpit, Hannibal nods to the Chief, who’s over in the corner, plugged into the load master’s station, talking on a private intercom with the tech sergeant who’s in charge of the bay and a couple of the airmen, who look tickled. The Chief gives him a thumbs up and goes back to his conversation.
The door slides open easy enough on its hinges and back behind him again, cutting out the worst of the engine noise, and Hannibal can hear himself think again.
The pilots turn around to look at him. A few of them, the one on the left, one in the jumpseat, another lounging off to the side, all with Air Force insignia on flight suit name tags and those tell-tale black shirts on under their drab green. They smile. And then there’s Murdock, in his Army tan, in the left co-pilot’s chair, hand on the yoke, blue-green eyes wide.
He doesn’t smile. In fact, he’s actually gone pale.
Hannibal frowns as he pulls his helmet off - no need for it in the cockpit - and taps the talk button on the VOX of the intercom.
~Captain Murdock, can we talk?~
~Colonel, we’re in the middle of a flight here and...~
~It’s okay, Murdock, we’ll let one of the el-tees up in the driver’s seat for a while.~
That last one’s delivered by the pilot to the left, a major who’s looking at Murdock as he shakes his shaggy black head in protest, and pats him on the shoulder.
~Go on, captain. She’ll still be here when you’re done.~
Reluctantly, Murdock climbs out of co-pilot’s chair, the lieutenant replacing him grinning as he slips in, and Hannibal beckons him back to the relative private of the rear of the cabin. The captain comes over, but doesn’t so much as look Hannibal in the eye. There’s a sleeping bunk there, recessed into the bulkhead, that Murdock flops down onto instead, staring up at the ceiling of the tight space, boots crossed, wiggling his toes, and that’s when Hannibal realizes he’s singing to himself.
The colonel sits down on the ground, elbow on the bunk. He turns off his comm unit and slides the headset off his ears, then reaches over and does the same to Murdock’s. The pilot’s tuneless little song stops, but he doesn’t look over. His hands dig at the thin blanket covering the bed, itching to leave, to get away from him.
But Hannibal waits, just watching.
And when it finally comes, it’s nothing more than a whisper, barely audible.
“Sorry, sir.”
He shakes his head. “What?”
“Sorry,” Murdock says again and folds his hands up on his chest. “The other night, in the parkin’ lot. I took you away from your O-Call. Sorry.”
Hannibal pushes up, so he’s sitting on the edge of the bunk now. Murdock’s not moving, but the colonel think he sees those eyes flick over to him and back again, fast. He’s sharp, Hannibal realizes with a start, a deep intellect in there somewhere. And for some reason, that makes this all more horrible.
“It’s not a problem, captain,” he manages to reply. “It’s my job.”
“No it ain’t,” Murdock sighs up at the top of the bunk. “It ain’t your job to deal with me, sir. I know how this works, and it ain’t your job. Faceman was gonna...”
“Major Pike doesn’t have the right to order you doped stupid,” Hannibal tells him, not sure what to say. “That’s what Lieutenant Peck was going to do, wasn’t he?”
The captain shrugs, wrinkling the blanket beneath him, and lolls his head over, smiling a little. Manic and stressed and happy, all at once. It’s strange. “If you ain’t mad, sir...can...can I go back to flyin’?”
Hannibal stops him with a light tough to his shoulder as he starts to wriggle out. “In a minute, captain. I wanted to ask...” and he stops for a moment as that expression hollows out. It reminds the older man of a puppy whose favorite toy’s just been taken away. Like he’s just done something horribly wrong.
He’d intended to ask about the team, or him, or how he was doing, or something cliche and stupid like that. But he can’t. Not now. Not with that look on the pilot’s face. Not with... and he groans, realizing.
“Does Major Pike ever let you fly, son?”
Murdock shoves up on his side, picking at fuzz on the blanket. He’s still smiling that hollow smile. “I stay current,” he says vaguely, and that weird expression on his face broadens a little into something that might be a real smile. “Days like this, if I’m flyin’ with the Air Force boys, I even get to hold the stick for a while.”
And Hannibal knows what that means.
Current means hours logged overall. Not hours in the seat, not necessarily. All four of the pilots on the aircraft today get credit for the entire length of the flight, not just the parts where they’re touching controls.
Which means that Murdock probably does nothing but ride for the minimum number of hours he’s required to be in the air.
Never actually getting to fly.
He shakes his head again. “Captain Murdock, are you not getting training?”
“Don’t need the practice when you’re the best thing since the Red Baron,” Murdock tells him, and those eyes sparkle. Hannibal thinks it might be him picking up, but no, but then everything slips. “I mean, I always liked Snoopy, but it was just a doghouse, so you gotta figure, I’m way better than a dog with his little doghouse in his yard...”
“Murdock, focus on what I’m saying to you right now,” he says, and touches the younger officer’s knee. Murdock stares at his hand but Hannibal doesn’t move it away, not yet. “Are you getting the training you need on this airframe?”
“Or any of the other plane, or choppers, or anythin’ else, sir,” he confirms, and that smile falls away as he sits up, right next to Hannibal and digs the heel of his palm into his forehead. “But Major Pike don’t want some incident on his hands, his nutso pilot crashin’ a bird on his watch.”
“But you’re cleared to fly? Medically?”
He shrugs.
“Do you know?”
He shrugs again. “Faceman keeps all our records. I don’t see ‘em. I...I don’t think he wants me flyin’, either. He and I...not since the orphanage in Charikar, we ain’t been...but I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose, sir, or nuthin’ like that.” His eyes flash back to the front, to the wall of glass and shining chrome controls. “I...I don’t blame ‘im for it, sir. He’s just doin’ what Major Pike wants.”
Hannibal feel his blood start to rise again, but manages to keep it down. “And what about what you want, Captain?”
“Hell, I’m lucky Major Pike lets me fly at all. He pulled me outta psyche ward down in Mexcio, took me on as his team’s pilot. Not too many fellas’d take a guy like me.” He’s smiling now, watching as clouds slide off the wide, bright windshields, really smiling, and something in Hannibal aches for the pilot. “Least I get to fly sometimes, when the Air Force boys can swing it for me.”
“Not with the Army?”
Murdock bites his lip, and those keen, sad eyes slide shut. “Can I see if Major Bates’ll let me back in the seat? We’re gonna do some low-levels over the ocean. Might even get to pull a few gees, sir.”
Hannibal nods slowly, still trying to process all of this.
Doesn’t really matter. He’s not going to get any more time. Murdock’s already up, tapping the Air Force major on the shoulder, the two of them talking, and he points at the lieutenant who took his seat. The major claps him on the shoulder, standing up, and Hannibal catches his eye as Murdock slips back down into the plane.
Hannibal makes to summon him over, but the Air Force officer’s coming over anyway.
“You his new boss?” the major asks.
“I’ve got the Second Ranger Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel John Smith,” Hannibal replies. “Took over about a month ago.”
The Air Force pilot whistles and offer his hand. “Tim Bates, DO for the 4th Airlift Squadron. Nice to meet you, Colonel Smith. How’s command treating you?”
Hannibal glances over at Murdock. Looks like he’s laughing. Looks like those lieutenants are laughing with him. That’s a good thing, right? “It’s a lot of work.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” the major grins.
Hannibal’s used to Air Force levity after all that time in joint staff positions, but for some reason, he’s just not in the mood for it right now. “Look, Tim, do you fly with Captain Murdock often?”
The younger officer gives him a strange look, and them switches off his comm unit, leaning in a little bit. “When I can fit him in my schedule, and not as much as he needs. I’ve got a lot of kids to keep trained.”
“He talk much while he’s up here with you?”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“Whatever you can.”
The major stares at him for a moment, and then starts talking.
When he’s done, Hannibal doesn’t know what the hell to think. He hadn’t been expecting...that.
James HM Murdock, as a lieutenant, had been one of the best pilots in the Army. One of the very, very best. Pulled off some truly impossible missions. Decorated out the wazoo. Loved by everyone he worked with. Headed straight for the top.
Until he made captain and vanished.
“What happened?”
“We went the CIA pulled him up. MC-130s, civilian birds, that sort of thing. He went off the grid in ‘96. We went to UPT together, stayed pretty close, so he doesn’t email for half a year, I know something’s wrong. But I didn’t see him again until he showed up here about three years ago, broken.”
“Broken?”
“Kinda. PTSD, we all thought. He was doin’ okay, though, until after that first Afghanistan campaign. And then...”
“And then Pike got him?”
“I think Pike’s the fucker that broke him. Or at least, he’s making it worse. But...it’s all just rumor from there, Colonel.”
It’s a lot to digest. So it’s not until later, not until after Murdock pulls some crazy shit over the water that has the pilots howling and the load master screaming over the intercom, after they touch down at McChord and Hannibal takes the crew officers out for a late lunch on him, after he takes a very quiet Murdock to the base hospital, where Pike’s evidently requested he spend the next three days in the psyche ward until Face comes to collect him, after a miserable figure passes out of his sight, that the colonel remembers.
A problem with Face.
An orphanage.
Charikar.
Afghanistan, the Internet tells him.
Sitting on his couch, staring at the painful blue light of his laptop in the darkness of his living room, Hannibal wonders, and makes a note to start going through mission reports tomorrow.
+++++
For the rest of the week, while most the unit is out doing its Army-sponsored camping trip in the Washington State woods, Hannibal shoves the paperwork aside and doesn’t even bother opening his email, and goes to work in the record rooms.
This, records research, is a skill the colonel more or less honed while at Diego. Too much turn-over, not enough personnel to handle the paperwork load, slow and unreliable Internet connections, and a general lack of concern for even the most basic of tasks by the enlisted men who ran Records Management a completely bizarre hodge-podge of filing that never got organized in any kind of coherent manner. He got good at finding just about anything.
Still, even with the help of his secretary and the Chief, who insists he’s too goddamn fat to go along on maneuvers and sure boss, whatever you’re doing, I’ve got time for, and a number of other people around base and back at Benning and out in the AOR he was able to get in touch with to pass him certain information, even with sleeping his office and going at this eighteen hours at a clip, even with every trick he knows how to play to find what he needs, Hannibal finds pinpointing anything on Pike impossible.
After three days of searching the basement and the base and Benning’s classified repositories, Hannibal can’t find anything. Nothing. Not a single sentence out of place, not the slightest hint that anything’s amiss. Pike’s a clever bastard with manipulating the paperwork; if he’s been doing anything wrong, he’s very, very good at hiding it.
But, at the same time, there’s something wrong. Something omitted, that’s omitted to such a degree that it stands out like a tourist in Tokyo.
There’s no record of a mission happening anywhere near a place called Charikar, sure. No after-action report from Pike, no flight plan from Murdock, no aircraft control transcripts, no record of them leaving or returning to the FOB, no note in the logs from the Mission Control, nothing. But then, that means there’s a completely blank space in the A-Team’s timeline. A glaring three day space.
“It’s like they vanished for three days,” Hannibal says to the Chief, tapping his pen on a makeshift flowchart he’s ginned up on the back of a set of ancient blueprints he found in a flat file down here in the basement. He’s fairly certain he’s gleaned every shred of information available from that deployment, and he’s got it all annotated out here. Except for a big fucking hole where he can’t so much as account for the boys using the chow hall. “Like the entire team ceased to exist. So, unless they fell down a black hole...”
“Naw,” the Chief drawls, leaning back in his chair, grinning in a way that still makes him look dead serious somehow, “there would be a record of them goin’ missing like that.”
Hannibal draws a little box around the open hole in his timeline. What the fuck is that all about. “So what are you thinking, Bill?”
The Chief replies instantly, without hesitating. “Somebody pulled the records.”
“At this classification, Bill?” Hannibal asks, raising an eyebrow. “That would leave a record in and of itself, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” and his senior enlisted man doesn’t miss a beat. “On the military side of things, it could be a request from Benning...”
The colonel really, really wishes he could have a cigar in here. “There’s no way General Morrison would allow something like that. He’s a stickler for that sort of thing.”
“His staff?”
“I worked for him. Believe me, he would notice, and he would not be pleased.”
“Then, and this is going to sound a little nuts, sir, but the only other options you’ve got for people who could pull this much information out of this many different databases, without leaving any trace of it being removed...”
“Headquarters SOCOM?” Hannibal guesses, hoping like hell the Chief isn’t about to say what he thinks he is. At least SOCOM he can still dig into through Russ if he needs to.
But the sergeant says it anyway.
“NSA, boss. NSA or CIA. Maybe CIA, actually, Afghanistan’s more of a CIA war than anything else. Fuckers have been there since the Eighties.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Hannibal stares down at the table for a moment, and then hits it with his palm, hard, in frustration, pushing up and away. “Fuck.”
There’s no way he can do anything with the CIA. Those fuckers are compartmentalized to the extreme. Even if he had a contact there, and he does have one of two classmates who were rumored to have gone in after their West Point committment was up who might be willing to help him, they probably wouldn’t be able to reach the information he would need. They wouldn’t have any insight into that kind of records deletion.
“Oh, yeah,” the Chief agrees. “My next question would be who the fuck does Major Pike know over there...”
“...and how,” Hannibal growls. Pike, a twelve-year major, is way too young for the Afghanistan campaign against the USSR. “And why. And why the fuck he’s being helped like this around everyone’s backs.”
A heavy silence descends over the room, each man left to his own thoughts, Hannibal’s mind chewing on the questions it has absolutely no way to answer, until the Chief stands and tells him to go home, get some rest, sleep in his own bed, and Hannibal has a sudden, flashing image of Face waiting for him there, spread out or cuddled into the pillows...
“Thank you, Bill,” he tells him. Belated; by the time he gets out of his own head to say the words, the Chief is already gone.
Hannibal sighs, and looks around. The basement records room is small and cramped and depressing suddenly, but he can’t just let this go. Not right now. Not with his boy on the line.
He’s not your boy, you asshole, that voice whispers to him, but Hannibal tries to ignore it.
Wonders if maybe Captain Murdock might know something.
+++++
Murdock’s lying on his bed, sprawled out like a cat across the flimsy pad that serves as a mattress, reading a comic book upside down, when the doctor shows Hannibal in. The colonel has all these questions right now, about whether or not Pike knows somebody in the CIA, if he’s ever heard about Pike maybe knowing somebody with the last name of Lynch - all those CIA motherfuckers are called Lynch - but he can’t.
Seeing Murdock here in a pair of threadbare pyjamas, reading a worn book that looks like it’s seen better days, in a room that’s full of his own posters and books and toys, that Donkey Kong arcade game in the corner that obviously cost him some big money, like he’s at home, drives all of that from Hannibal’s mind.
It’s sad in a way he can’t even start to quantify to himself. Sad, and tragic.
“Hey, sir!” Murdock says, and scrambles up around, his body doing some weird thing where it just seems to move around his head. Eager like a kitten, too, Hannibal thinks, and suddenly feels ashamed of himself for only coming over here to ask about Pike. “Whatcha want?”
"I wanted to come see how you were," Hannibal says, awkward, not knowing what else to say. "I know how much you must hate this place, and..."
"Hate the hospital?" Murdock says this like it's never occurred to him before. "I don't hate it, colonel. Had m'self a lot of okay nights in places like this."
"But, then..."
"What's worse is worryin' if you're gonna hurt somebody. If this time, when you lose your marbles, somebody's gonna get crushed by one of 'em rollin' away from you, like you gonna do something or something gonna happen cause you're too busy tryin' to chase yourself down to catch it. You know what I mean?"
Hannibal thinks about that for a moment. What it must be like to prefer being locked up to being free, caging yourself up just to keep your teammates safe. "You deserve better than what Major Pike gives you, son. You deserve a commander that cares about you enough to work through those spells with you, rather than lock you up..."
"Maybe...but I've already done 'nuff damage. Never know when Ima just gonna snap an ruin som’thin’," he says quietly, and then, inexplicably, grins wide. "And 'sides, I like the jello in here. The cafeteria does it real nice."
Sensing he's prodded a little too deep here, Hannibal just nods, and pats Murdock's shoulder again as he heads to the door. “You need anything, want anything, want to go home, whatever, you call me. You understand?”
"Roger that, sir."
It doesn't sound too optimistic, though, and Hannibal frowns. "I mean it, captain."
"Sir, I've been gettin' along fine, you don't hav'ta.."
"You shouldn't have to be afraid of yourself, captain, of your mind not working right. Not ever. You understand me?”
Murdock blinks at him. “Then...then can I go home?”
The eagerness in those few little words... Hannibal doesn't know what the hell to do about it other than nod.
“Sure, captain. I’ll even give you a ride.”
On his way out of the hospital, Hannibal takes the back route, down through the hardly-used ER ambulance doors. There are a couple of mothers down there with sick kids, one youngish enlisted kid who's gray and clutching at his arm, blood on his shirt, a female nurse in camo scrubs checking a clipboard of information somebody's just handed her, but that's about it. Besides from the other woman in scrubs, bright turquoise scrubs, the same color Maggie always went for, back to him, talking to one of those kids as she leads both mother and daughter back to some exam room.
Hannibal watches for a moment, thinking about his ex-wife, about how sweet she had always been with her pediatric patients, the little kids who came in with broken arms and lacerations from playing in the yard, how she'd always sit at dinner at talk about them, laughing if the day had gone well, crying a little if it hadn't. How she'd always balked at the conversations about them having their own, just a bit at first, and then later, more and more, saying she was getting older, that it wasn't as safe, that she had her career to think of, and then, when things started getting bad, that he'd get himself killed on some stupid op and then where would that leave her, leave their children... He's never really understood why she'd refused, all those years. Why she refused him
And Hannibal thinks again about their arguments and their dinners together and the smell of her, that lightly floral undertone to her shampoo, the lavender dryer sheets she used to use, the faint musk of her skin, the barest traces of antiseptics...and for a moment, watching that doctor, he thinks he can almost smell it again.
“Colonel?”
The sound of Murdock’s voice brings him back to the present, and Hannibal shakes it off.
“Sorry about that, captain,” he replies, and doesn’t offer any other explanation for why he stopped, why he’s staring down the hall.
It’s no use anyway. Maggie was a civilian, never really understood why he'd gone into the service himself, always supportive but never encouraging, and there's no way he's going to find her here, thousands of miles from her native Georgia. And what would be the point, if he did? He honestly doesn't know what he'd do if he ever saw her again, and he doesn't want to.
So Hannibal stuffs his hands in the pockets of his uniform, taking a sudden, perverse pleasure in how out of regs that little action is, and tries to think about Murdock, getting Murdock home, following up the scant information Murdock was able to get him.
But all he can see is Face. Face in his home, Face in bed with him, the two of them cuddled together, washing dishes, taking showers, lounging on the couch in the evenings, touching, making love...
Impossible, he tells himself as he and Murdock head out into the parking lot, wishing it otherwise. Impossible.
