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sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Lynch, Hannibal/Face
Rating: R
Warnings: Non-con, torture
Summary: Fill for this prompt over on the A Team Kink Meme.
I've seen plenty of Face non-con around here. Now I'd like to see Hannibal non-con.
How much would it take for the Bossman to go down? A street-gang ambush? A bad-guy holding his team hostage?
Either way, make it dark and painful and hurt/comfort-y (because for someone as strong and in control as Hannibal to be brought so low...yeah, that has the potential to be ugly.) and team-to-the-rescue-y (because they would take epic retribution!).
Can be slash, if handled well, but strong friendship probably works best.
Oh, and movie!verse would be preferred.
So, I wanted to see what, exactly, it would take for Hannibal to go down. Here’s what I came up with...
Lucidity's a moving target these days.
The man can’t figure out why they haven’t killed him yet. It’s a question that’s been bothering him since they threw him in here. He needs something to occupy his mind.
It’s sweltering inside the corrugated tin of the box. It's mean to torment, and more so for him, as tall as he is. Too short to stand up in, too tight to sit down, which means he’s been on his heels. The smell indescribable, years of misery accumulated on the battered, unmoving walls. Once a day, a guard comes around with half a bowl of something that’s only marginally edible. The bugs are better protein. It’s hard to think, hard to focus, hard to plan. But he needs to, or he might just go insane, like they want.
He doesn’t exactly remember who they are. He remembers faces, his men, uniforms, gunshots, blood. That’s all he clearly knows. Everything else...
Between the heat and the hunger, he thinks he’s slipping in and out of vivid nightmares about the Japanese POW camps during World War II. Or maybe he really was captured in invasion of Manila, and he’s just hallucinating a world where women serve in the military and rotary-wing craft are part of the inventory. He’s pretty sure he’s a colonel in the Army, here on some kind of mission, but he could hallucinating that, too. Civilian captured when the Japs took the city. Tourist. Reporter. Who knows? It’s hard to tell when he gets like this.
Time blurs. The waking nightmare, the disorientation comes and goes, like the rain, like the heat, like the waves of centipedes in the darkness, millions of feet like razor blades across numb skin.
Like the men who visit, yelling at him in broken English with hints of something that might be Tagalon or Thai or something else he doesn’t know. They ask him questions, sometimes, but he doesn’t ever really understand what they want. Maybe just to yell at him with voices bigger than the sky, too quiet to hear.
But he’s pretty sure that he’s a logical man, and that doesn’t make any sense to him. There’s a reason why he’s in here, instead out wherever he should be, instead of dead. He doesn’t think it’s always been this bad, but he can’t remember getting worse. That still sane corner of his mind wonders how long it’s going to be before he slips completely.
Lucidity’s still a memory as feet kick up dust outside the door.
“Told ya I’d get you an engagement present, sweetheart.”
“You only buy me things you want to use yourself.”
The voices are vague, tickling the edges of his fevered thoughts, refusing to connect. He strains.
“Christ, you let your little pirate fucks put him in the box?”
“It’s their island paradise, not mine. Package deal. ”
“He’s probably got jungle rot. Sitting in his own piss, goddamn bugs... seriously, who’s idea were all these fucking bugs?”
The door cracks open, and Hannibal raises his hands against the harsh intrusion of light that scatters whatever recognition was coalescing. A man’s grinning down at him, turns, yells.
“Oh, look at that cupcake. He’s fine.”
“Firehose him off.”
Men start dragging him out, the sudden change in posture after all this time causing him to scream in pain as nerves twist open. It’s a good thing, a new thing, almost clears his mind...
A gloved hand yanks his chin up. "Hannibal? How's civilian life treating you?"
"Pike."
And then he remembers.
+++++
Hannibal can’t see much from between the slats in the back of the truck. The sun’s beating down, the sky above gives him nothing. His vision swims with spots. All he can tell is there’s no suspension, and the road is shit. He doesn’t mind the bumps - no, every jar and jab is helping him crawl out of that hole he was in. But every inch of skin, every thread of muscle is screaming in protest.
Thank god he’s not bleeding anywhere. He’s dripping wet, he knows he reeks, his limbs won’t do what he tells them to, and there’s the creeping awareness that his stomach has been unemployed for far, far too long. The longest they could starve him in Ranger training was five days. He’s gone longer. This is worse.
The pain is clarifying, but it’s not enough.
Pike is sitting against the cab, knees up, grin plastered on a smug face, 9mm balanced easily in one hand, one of those little Asian mangos in the other. The man’s a killer, Hannibal saw it from the first, and there’s no way he’s strong enough to take him right now. Juice is dripping down his chin.
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it? The hunger? Makes a man base.”
“BA should have killed you...”
“Yeah, your big trained attack dog didn’t quite get the job done, did he? And don’t worry about them coming for you. It’s not happening.” A foil packet hits Hannibal in the side. It hurts. “They give this shit to famine victims in Africa. Babies, mostly, but you’re all about the improvisation, right?”
“You’re feeding me?” Hannibal hopes it sounds defiant, but he knows it probably doesn’t.
“Show some fucking gratitude. Another week or two of that, your body would have started eating itself.”
“Eat shit, Pike.”
“You think your team’s coming? For you? Should have heard the way your lieutenant screamed. Oh, it was sweet...”
Hannibal wants to kill this son of a bitch, right here. There’s nothing good about that tone. But it takes him ten minutes to pick the packet up. Probably not the best time.
Need a plan.
The sky gives way to rows of cracked concrete and rough wood rooves. Some town. Near the ocean, judging by the smell. His stomach hurts. Hannibal’s half-carried, half-dragged into a huge white house and dumped in a small, unfurnished room. Bars on the windows. He passes out.
Brought to by a doctor, a scared-looking Japanese man who’s clearly under no illusions about what kind of people he’s dealing with. Hannibal feels cleaner, the smell gone, an IV in his arm. He can feel his ribs. Everything hurts.
“I need your help,” Hannibal tells him.
The doctor ignores him. Hannibal tries again, in Japanese this time, but the man just shakes his head and leaves the room, Hannibal trying to shout out he phone number, collapsing in a coughing fit at the third digit.
Things come and go in flashes. The doctor again. Some cute girl, forcing something down his throat. Dreams of his team, lying dead in the jungles. He prays they aren’t memories. Pike was probably lying.
There's no plan, though. It makes him feel utterly naked.
He doesn’t figure out what they want for a couple of days. And then it’s as clear as anything else in the last few weeks.
Lynch is standing by the pallet they’ve got him chained onto. It’s almost funny. The disgraced agent is in a khaki linen suit, like he’s in a fucking Banana Republic ad, he’s been stuck in a box in the jungle for over a month, and the bastard actually looks nervous. Hannibal can barely stand, and they got him chained down.
“You sure he’s clean?” Lynch asks. They're ignoring him. On purpose.
Pike is in black. He really is a fucking cartoon character. “Scrubbed, inside and out.”
“I’m not getting...”
“He’s fine, sweetheart, for fuck’s sake. Think I’d give you something that would give you something.”
“You’ve got a sick sense of humor, Brock.”
“Would I give you something that would give me something?”
“Good point.”
Banter between assholes. Hannibal’s heard them arguing, loud, unguarded. He doesn’t know what they’re doing here - probably drugs, but who knows? - and he doesn’t really care. He tries to tone it out, go back to sleep, forget he’s stretched out naked on the floor of some strange house. He ignores it. They’re still scared of him, right?
Lynch is squatting down next to him. “Hannibal, how you doing today, pal?”
“It’s a good thing you’ve got friends in...”
“The lowest of places, right. Cut out the bullshit, Lynch. You going for this or what?”
“Absolutely.” A hand jerks Hannibal’s head up. “I think you’re really going to like this part of the rescue, you know, where you show me how incredibly grateful you are.”
Hannibal wants to say something witty, something biting and sarcastic and effective, show them he doesn’t care. But he’s stretched out naked on the floor of some strange house, chained down, still too weak to put up any kind of protest, and he doesn’t have a plan.
“Thank fuck,” and there’s the noise of a chair dragging across the floor. “Bout time we had some entertainment around here.”
“You know anything about taking it up the ass, Hannibal?”
“Course he does, being in the Army,” Pike says with a grin. “And Hannibal, I am really, really going to enjoy this.”
And, to his shame, for the first time in his life, everything locks up in Hannibal’s brain.
+++++
He’s yanked to his feet by an unyielding fist in his hair, the muscles in his legs screaming their protest, still not quite working right. The movement scatters pain under his skin, and white lights dance in his eyes. Lynch rotates his head around a little. Like he’s inspecting him.
“Wall?” he asks with a toothy smile, and twists Hannibal around, knocking him into the soft plaster. “You know, Hannibal, we really could have avoided all this.”
Hannibal doesn’t reply. There’s nothing to say. He doesn’t want to talk, that hand trying like hell to push his face all the way through the wall. Edges of the plaster scrape against him, hard and sharp across his ribs, his shrunken stomach, lower...
“You could have just stayed in prison. Or not taken the mission. But you’re so damn noble, aren’t you?”
“Disgusting character flaw.”
He tries to struggle, but abused joints won’t respond, start to fail. Lynch presses in close, stopping his fall.
“It’s a luxury you get, as far down on the food chain as you were, thinking that you’re doing something good.”
A hand brushes across his ass. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth. Wait for the right moment. There has to be a right moment. There’s always... The hand stops moving, settles.
“If you sat where I did, you’d understand it a little bit better.”
Pressure.
Adrenaline. It’s an automatic reaction. He can’t brace himself against the wall, his arms pulled viciously by the almost too-short chain, but that doesn’t matter. He throws his head back as hard as he can, connecting solidly with Lynch’s nose, a satisfying crack doing nothing to stem the sudden surge of red into his vision. He thrashes out with both hands, thinks he might have caught flesh, then the chain jerks tight and he stumbles.
Then there’s a gun, cold, heavy, on his temple.
“We do more business with guys like Pike here than we do with your military, Hannibal,” Lynch says, wiping his nose on his sleeve, cracking down hard with the back of his hand. The colonel tastes blood in his mouth. “Truth is, we’re the ones fighting your fucking war. You and your boys might have well been playing golf.”
Pike hauls him back up, tightening a hand around his balls as he does so. The gun’s still to his had, though, and the words rip into him. He doesn’t want them to, but it rips anyway.
“You’re a traitor. What would you understand?” Hannibal rasps, finding his voice again. It’s an effort to stay here, to not detatch, not to lose himself, lose focus, lose control of the situation. But he knows he already has, knows he can’t stop what’s coming.
“Well, you got your little cub scout troop killed in some Indonesia backwater to bring down a useless opium dealer who will be replaced the second you leave,” Lynch tells him. “All of them, probably rotted to nothing by now. Not exactly a burial at Arlington, is it?”
Arlington? Maybe fifty years from now. Not like this. Not for nothing.
Pike forces his face into the wall, harder this time, elbow on his neck.
“Remember,” the mercenary says casually, “I have ten bucks on them not being all...”
“See, Pike, that’s why I say you always give selfish gifts,” Lynch replies cheerfully.
There’s the sound of a zipper being undone.
There’s no right moment.
It’s his last coherent thought for a while.
Remnants of that fever ares till clinging to him, or his brain’s trying to block the trauma, or his nerves have finally overloaded with pain and refuse to register what’s going on, but Hannibal’s barely aware of the breach, a tearing sensation, choking, lungs barely inflating with each progressively frantic breath. It goes on, but he can’t keep track of the minutes. He doesn’t notice any of it at all, falling to the floor, lacking the energy to even curl up into a ball.
“Definitely not.”
“You better pay up, cupcake.”
“Doesn’t mean shit, Brock. You think Hannibal Smith would let some pissant lieutenant top him anyway?”
He’s staring up at them, laying on is side. He can’t move. He hopes they take it for defiance.
There’s no right moment.
+++++
It’s not as bad the second time around.
Hannibal never knows when they’re going to come in. Usually after dark, but that’s no hard rule. Once Pike comes twice in one day. Pike’s worse. Pike’s a lot.
A man comes in once a to day to feed him, change the bucket. Plastic silverware. The man’s got an uzi. Hannibal doesn’t argue with it yet.
Other than that, they leave him alone.
The days pass slowly. His arms are fine, his legs returning to working condition through determination and time and many, many falls. That hurts worse than the visits. He’s getting better, even tries to fight sometimes, but that only ends in more bleeding, more chance of infection. He’s willing to bet that even the three-page cocktail of vaccinations he's got isn’t going to save him from everything here.
He has that nightmare again. The one of his boys, of Face, out there in the tropical darkness, alone, vanished, gone. The one where he’s standing over their bodies, bodies he’s seen a hundred times in too many countries to count, broken and twisted and empty. Promises, both explicit and implied, broken, shattered, ground to dust. The dream where he’s the one who’s dead, and Face is standing over him, asking why, asking...
“Hannibal, Hannibal... jesus fucking christ, boss...”
A hand touches him, and he jerks away from it, crumpling back into the corner. His wrists feel lighter, nothing dragging them down.
“Face?”
“Hannibal, what the hell’s going on?”
The colonel, despite himself, almost starts laughing. Face sounds like a little boy who just found out Santa doesn’t exist. That’s how Face would sound.
“Hannibal?” the dream asks him, trying to reach out and touch him again. But he won’t let it, it feels too real, too solid, too much like the kid.
He lashes out, hits skin, and something slaps him. Hard. Grabs his wrists, holds them together. He freezes.
In the fading light of the afternoon, from the broken window, he can see worry in those blue eyes, and smell the damp rot and gasoline of the streets outside, and feel the thumb slowly rubbing over the short hairs on his hand, and he draws a deep and uncertain breath. “Face?”
“In the flesh, sir.”
“BA and Murdock?”
“Waiting out at the landing strip. We need to get out ...”
“Liars,” Hannibal mutters, and really does start laughing.
Face is staring now.
“You got a gun, kid?” Hannibal asks him, and holds out his hand. Face hands it over. Mute. Hannibal can’t really afford to know what he’s thinking right now. “Now we wait.”
“What...”
But Hannibal fixes him with that stare that’s always so effective, and Face settles obediently in beside him, not questioning with anything but his eyes. There’s no need to go anywhere, to go hunting, and they don’t have to wait very long anyway. Hannibal figures it’s a good plan, a feeling that's confirmed when the door pushes open, and there’s that smug bastard and the other one.
"We thought we'd try something a little diff..."
Face tenses up in recognition, looks at Hannibal, but it’s too late. He’s already on his feet, safety off. Hollow-points already bursting in contact with bone, shrapnel tearing wormholes through gray matter. Concussive shockwaves. Brain failure.
One, two soft thumps.
Hannibal hands Face back the gun. “Now we can go.”
The conman stares down at the still-hot weapon in his hands until Hannibal barks at him, and even then, he moves more unsteadily than the colonel himself, stepping over the bodies, out into the hot night.
+++++
They’re almost at the airfield, and Hannibal’s enjoying the feel of wind on his face. How long’s it been, since he felt that? Really, truly felt that? It’s distracting, and Face has the jeep almost to the small plane before Hannibal remembers.
“Face?”
His hands are glued to the steering wheel and he doesn’t look over. “Yes, sir?”
That’s not a good sign, any time the kid starts falling back on his customs and courtesies. “Murdock and BA.”
“I won’t say anything, sir.”
“Thank you, lieutenant.”
BA isn’t drugged. He’s waiting, with Murdock in the main cabin of the small plane. The captain’s got his headset down around his neck. Face disappears and comes back with a space blanket, and only then does Hannibal remember that he’s naked, bruised, at least thirty pounds under what he’d normally be, but there’s nothing to do but accept the silvery thing and take a seat. Pretend it doesn’t hurt. Pretend that it’s not strange to have something touching his skin.
BA spends the flight up in the cockpit with Murdock. Face offers Hannibal a bottle of water.
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“Do I look sick to you, Face?”
“Colonel...”
“Out with it, kid.”
The conman turns away, curling into the window, watching the dark ocean roll by below them. “Not my place, sir.”
Hannibal can’t get the bottle cap off; the seal’s not budging for his shaking hands. He gives up and lets himself fall into the cushion of the chair and the comfort of knowing his team’s with him now. He doesn’t dream.
When he wakes up, they’re on the ground in Taipei, refueling. The cap’s off the bottle. Face is nowhere to be seen. Hannibal wants to lie down, but can’t do it. He just can’t do it. It’s a nice plane Face has scammed. Doesn’t feel right right now.
“I think I remembered your size, but then, you know...” Face says, tossing a bag ahead of him as he steps up the narrow door ladder. “I improvised.”
“That’s fine, kid.”
Face holds up a package of anti-bacterial wet wipes, doesn’t quail when Hannibal stares at him. Either the kid’s growing up or he’s lost his touch. He’s not sure which one is worse. He throws it in the clothes bag.
“BA’s gonna sleep the rest of this out when he gets back from the terminal, and Murdock’s on the radio.”
What Face means is that they’re free to talk. “Not in the mood, kid.”
“Boss...”
“You’ve killed, too, Face,” Hannibal says, level and steady, grabbing for the insult that will shut face up, desperately trying to keep this from going where he knows it will. Wouldn’t be right, showing that, admitting to that. He can’t show it. He can’t let them know, no matter what Face suspects. Can’t let the troops see the weakness. The unit depends on his strength, and no matter how long he’s been gone or what’s happened, he can’t take that away from them.
No matter how much it hurts them.
His lieutenant slams the cockpit door hard. Hannibal can feel the reverberations in his teeth.
+++++
They’re back in LA, and a week goes by before Face says anything else. Well, it’s not so much a statement as it is a demand, and not so much a demand as it is an ambush, and the look on the kid as Hannibal rounds the corner into the kitchen is almost enough to earn his forgiveness.
Almost.
It’s almost midnight, and BA and Murdock have long since passed out in a pile on the living room rug, the PS3 still softly whirring, the TV dark and still. Hannibal stares at it for a long moment. Face got a place with hardwood floors, it’s cold under his feet.
He can’t quite remember why he’s down here, just that he couldn’t sleep, that he can’t, that he’s back in that room every time he closes his eyes and he doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t really want to be here, either, but there’s nowhere else to go. Even when he was in the Army, even when he was stateside, it was dorms, living quarters, base housing, nothing solid, no home. He hasn’t been back to his hometown in twenty years - he’s not from there anymore. He’s not from anywhere.
Things haven’t been right. Not with Murdock, who’s almost scared of him right now, and not with BA, who spends most of his free time keeping Murdock away from Hannibal, or Hannibal away Murdock, depending on how he wanted to think about it. And then, there's Face. He can't quite reach them.
Sensation seems to have shifted. Lights are too bright, the darkness too dark, everything hiding sharp corners that want to scrape and rip and grab. Things seem to move if he’s not watching them. Nothing is still. He can’t stop moving.
The light’s on in the kitchen. Did he eat dinner? Murdock’s been making a lot of soup lately, but no matter how much he thins it out, it still hurts his stomach.
Face is sitting at the island, a bottle of Johnny Walker between him and a cute thirty-something-year-old in Army-issue glasses. They’re talking.
“Fishing a little close to the sharks these days, Face?” Hannibal asks, going for a glass and Face mutely hands the bottle over. It’s starting to unnerve the colonel, how quiet Face has been. Nobody’s asked any questions.
She coughs politely and rises from her stool. “Mr. Smith? Face here’s been...”
“Mister?” Hannibal says, arching an eyebrow at Face and pouring himself what’s probably a triple, but who’s keeping track? Face doesn’t dare say anything.
“You can call him Hannibal...”
“I thought you normally use your own apartment for this kind of thing, kid.”
“Boss,” Face says in a pleading voice.
Hannibal leans up against the opposite counter, wincing a little at how thin the skin still is over his hips. The bruises are fading, and the worst of Pike’s knifework from that one night is under his shirt, but he’s not as young as he used to be. His joints still hurt. “What?”
“She’s not, I’m not... she’s a friend, from training.”
“I’m not talking to one of your friends, Face.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking in your condition, sir...”
“And what condition is that?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Cute, Face,” Hannibal growls, but Face blocks his exit from the small kitchen, and his fist is about two inches away from the kid’s nose before he knows what he’s doing and redirects, slamming into the wall inside. Drywall flakes away on blodied knuckles. Blue eyes narrow.
“You were in a fucking torture box for six weeks...”
Six weeks? That long? “I’ve had worse vacations...”
“And you haven’t had a yellow fever booster, or hep, or smallpox or anything, in three years, according to what I’ve got here,” the woman interjects from behind him. Hannibal can’t see her, and that’s a good thing. “Miste... Hannibal, you were in the jungle under what your friend, Mister Peck here described as hellish conditions. I just want to take some...”
“Blood?” Hannibal’s staring at Face. All he sees is defiance. “You trust an Army doc?”
“They don’t have our DNA on file, boss.”
“Yet.”
“She’s gonna keep it off the books.”
“You fucking her, Face?”
“She’s an old friend, Hannibal,” Face sighs. “You want to trust my fucking judgment for a change or be a stubborn son of a bitch and let you feet rot off?”
She’s got a little black bag on the counter, unpacking vials and packages. Hannibal picks up his abandoned glass and sits down, holding out his left arm, watching her tie on the rubber band, unable to suppress the bone-chilling shudder as the needle comes out. He’s never been afraid of these things.
Face is there, squeezes his hand, as it slides in. Hannibal can’t feel it at all.
She fills her little mismatched collection of hollowed plastic, and Face kisses her on the cheek as he escorts her from the house.
“Did you hear that, Face? She called me...”
Face pours them both another round. “Me too.”
They continue on in silence like that for a few minutes, until Face reaches for the bottle again. “She said the results will be back in a few days.” When Hannibal doesn’t say anything, Face keeps going. “She gave me some motrin, said you can take that for a while...”
“The horse pills?” Hannibal asks, feeling a smile, a real and true smile, creeping on.
“Standard issue cure-whatever-the-hell-we’re-not-giving-you-meds? Remember that time BA got walking pneumonia?”
“And they just gave him those things ...”
“... and you got so pissed off the med commander had to drag you out the clinic...”
“... and you went back with that pillow stuffed under your sweater, impersonating some fucking specialist from downtown...”
Face has to put his head down on his table, he’s laughing so hard. Hannibal’s laughing too, deep and hard, light, his stomach hurting by the time they both trail off. Face lifts up, tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes, and he looks happy for the first time since that day...
“What I did...”
“Hell, Hannibal, I don’t give a shit. Those bastards,” and Face makes a disgusted noise in his throat, settling again. “Rotting in some shit town in the jungle. I like it.”
Hannibal has a sudden flash of that dream, Face’s face, eyeless, decayed, staring up at him. The damn thing seems to be aging every night, rotting to bone and then maybe to nothing. He wonders if he ever came back at all, if he’s still there and this is some coping mechanism...
“They raped me, Face. Sometimes other stuff, along...nightly, more often, I don’t really know.” He finishes his shot and wonders at his own detatchment from the statement. There should be more emotion, right? Shouldn’t there be more?
He’s never seen that expression on Face before. Something beyond the standard range, something worse than that time Murdock was shot in Venezuela or BA was knifed in Afghanistan, worse than the bullshit with Morrison or the trial or the time he showed up, drunk and sobbing, over Sosa’s first rejection of him.
Hannibal watches the lieutenant get up, lean with white knuckles over the sink, raise his glass as high as he can and let it fall, shattering. Glass shards bounce, graze his chin, slice his hand, and he wraps a paper towel around it as he goes for another glass.
Hannibal shakes the bottle on the kitchen island. “We’re gonna need more booze,” he observes.
Face hits the liquor cabinet before he sits back down, breaking the seal.
The white paper around his hand is rapidly turning red, and Hannibal realizes that that wound hurts him more than the needle did, but there’s nothing that can be done now, nothing at all, except pull out the fragments and hope it heals up, understanding that it’s going to scar.
But in their line of work, that’s the way things go sometimes, and as Face covers Hannibal’s hand with his good one, he thinks he might be able to live with this one after all.
Rating: R
Warnings: Non-con, torture
Summary: Fill for this prompt over on the A Team Kink Meme.
I've seen plenty of Face non-con around here. Now I'd like to see Hannibal non-con.
How much would it take for the Bossman to go down? A street-gang ambush? A bad-guy holding his team hostage?
Either way, make it dark and painful and hurt/comfort-y (because for someone as strong and in control as Hannibal to be brought so low...yeah, that has the potential to be ugly.) and team-to-the-rescue-y (because they would take epic retribution!).
Can be slash, if handled well, but strong friendship probably works best.
Oh, and movie!verse would be preferred.
So, I wanted to see what, exactly, it would take for Hannibal to go down. Here’s what I came up with...
Lucidity's a moving target these days.
The man can’t figure out why they haven’t killed him yet. It’s a question that’s been bothering him since they threw him in here. He needs something to occupy his mind.
It’s sweltering inside the corrugated tin of the box. It's mean to torment, and more so for him, as tall as he is. Too short to stand up in, too tight to sit down, which means he’s been on his heels. The smell indescribable, years of misery accumulated on the battered, unmoving walls. Once a day, a guard comes around with half a bowl of something that’s only marginally edible. The bugs are better protein. It’s hard to think, hard to focus, hard to plan. But he needs to, or he might just go insane, like they want.
He doesn’t exactly remember who they are. He remembers faces, his men, uniforms, gunshots, blood. That’s all he clearly knows. Everything else...
Between the heat and the hunger, he thinks he’s slipping in and out of vivid nightmares about the Japanese POW camps during World War II. Or maybe he really was captured in invasion of Manila, and he’s just hallucinating a world where women serve in the military and rotary-wing craft are part of the inventory. He’s pretty sure he’s a colonel in the Army, here on some kind of mission, but he could hallucinating that, too. Civilian captured when the Japs took the city. Tourist. Reporter. Who knows? It’s hard to tell when he gets like this.
Time blurs. The waking nightmare, the disorientation comes and goes, like the rain, like the heat, like the waves of centipedes in the darkness, millions of feet like razor blades across numb skin.
Like the men who visit, yelling at him in broken English with hints of something that might be Tagalon or Thai or something else he doesn’t know. They ask him questions, sometimes, but he doesn’t ever really understand what they want. Maybe just to yell at him with voices bigger than the sky, too quiet to hear.
But he’s pretty sure that he’s a logical man, and that doesn’t make any sense to him. There’s a reason why he’s in here, instead out wherever he should be, instead of dead. He doesn’t think it’s always been this bad, but he can’t remember getting worse. That still sane corner of his mind wonders how long it’s going to be before he slips completely.
Lucidity’s still a memory as feet kick up dust outside the door.
“Told ya I’d get you an engagement present, sweetheart.”
“You only buy me things you want to use yourself.”
The voices are vague, tickling the edges of his fevered thoughts, refusing to connect. He strains.
“Christ, you let your little pirate fucks put him in the box?”
“It’s their island paradise, not mine. Package deal. ”
“He’s probably got jungle rot. Sitting in his own piss, goddamn bugs... seriously, who’s idea were all these fucking bugs?”
The door cracks open, and Hannibal raises his hands against the harsh intrusion of light that scatters whatever recognition was coalescing. A man’s grinning down at him, turns, yells.
“Oh, look at that cupcake. He’s fine.”
“Firehose him off.”
Men start dragging him out, the sudden change in posture after all this time causing him to scream in pain as nerves twist open. It’s a good thing, a new thing, almost clears his mind...
A gloved hand yanks his chin up. "Hannibal? How's civilian life treating you?"
"Pike."
And then he remembers.
+++++
Hannibal can’t see much from between the slats in the back of the truck. The sun’s beating down, the sky above gives him nothing. His vision swims with spots. All he can tell is there’s no suspension, and the road is shit. He doesn’t mind the bumps - no, every jar and jab is helping him crawl out of that hole he was in. But every inch of skin, every thread of muscle is screaming in protest.
Thank god he’s not bleeding anywhere. He’s dripping wet, he knows he reeks, his limbs won’t do what he tells them to, and there’s the creeping awareness that his stomach has been unemployed for far, far too long. The longest they could starve him in Ranger training was five days. He’s gone longer. This is worse.
The pain is clarifying, but it’s not enough.
Pike is sitting against the cab, knees up, grin plastered on a smug face, 9mm balanced easily in one hand, one of those little Asian mangos in the other. The man’s a killer, Hannibal saw it from the first, and there’s no way he’s strong enough to take him right now. Juice is dripping down his chin.
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it? The hunger? Makes a man base.”
“BA should have killed you...”
“Yeah, your big trained attack dog didn’t quite get the job done, did he? And don’t worry about them coming for you. It’s not happening.” A foil packet hits Hannibal in the side. It hurts. “They give this shit to famine victims in Africa. Babies, mostly, but you’re all about the improvisation, right?”
“You’re feeding me?” Hannibal hopes it sounds defiant, but he knows it probably doesn’t.
“Show some fucking gratitude. Another week or two of that, your body would have started eating itself.”
“Eat shit, Pike.”
“You think your team’s coming? For you? Should have heard the way your lieutenant screamed. Oh, it was sweet...”
Hannibal wants to kill this son of a bitch, right here. There’s nothing good about that tone. But it takes him ten minutes to pick the packet up. Probably not the best time.
Need a plan.
The sky gives way to rows of cracked concrete and rough wood rooves. Some town. Near the ocean, judging by the smell. His stomach hurts. Hannibal’s half-carried, half-dragged into a huge white house and dumped in a small, unfurnished room. Bars on the windows. He passes out.
Brought to by a doctor, a scared-looking Japanese man who’s clearly under no illusions about what kind of people he’s dealing with. Hannibal feels cleaner, the smell gone, an IV in his arm. He can feel his ribs. Everything hurts.
“I need your help,” Hannibal tells him.
The doctor ignores him. Hannibal tries again, in Japanese this time, but the man just shakes his head and leaves the room, Hannibal trying to shout out he phone number, collapsing in a coughing fit at the third digit.
Things come and go in flashes. The doctor again. Some cute girl, forcing something down his throat. Dreams of his team, lying dead in the jungles. He prays they aren’t memories. Pike was probably lying.
There's no plan, though. It makes him feel utterly naked.
He doesn’t figure out what they want for a couple of days. And then it’s as clear as anything else in the last few weeks.
Lynch is standing by the pallet they’ve got him chained onto. It’s almost funny. The disgraced agent is in a khaki linen suit, like he’s in a fucking Banana Republic ad, he’s been stuck in a box in the jungle for over a month, and the bastard actually looks nervous. Hannibal can barely stand, and they got him chained down.
“You sure he’s clean?” Lynch asks. They're ignoring him. On purpose.
Pike is in black. He really is a fucking cartoon character. “Scrubbed, inside and out.”
“I’m not getting...”
“He’s fine, sweetheart, for fuck’s sake. Think I’d give you something that would give you something.”
“You’ve got a sick sense of humor, Brock.”
“Would I give you something that would give me something?”
“Good point.”
Banter between assholes. Hannibal’s heard them arguing, loud, unguarded. He doesn’t know what they’re doing here - probably drugs, but who knows? - and he doesn’t really care. He tries to tone it out, go back to sleep, forget he’s stretched out naked on the floor of some strange house. He ignores it. They’re still scared of him, right?
Lynch is squatting down next to him. “Hannibal, how you doing today, pal?”
“It’s a good thing you’ve got friends in...”
“The lowest of places, right. Cut out the bullshit, Lynch. You going for this or what?”
“Absolutely.” A hand jerks Hannibal’s head up. “I think you’re really going to like this part of the rescue, you know, where you show me how incredibly grateful you are.”
Hannibal wants to say something witty, something biting and sarcastic and effective, show them he doesn’t care. But he’s stretched out naked on the floor of some strange house, chained down, still too weak to put up any kind of protest, and he doesn’t have a plan.
“Thank fuck,” and there’s the noise of a chair dragging across the floor. “Bout time we had some entertainment around here.”
“You know anything about taking it up the ass, Hannibal?”
“Course he does, being in the Army,” Pike says with a grin. “And Hannibal, I am really, really going to enjoy this.”
And, to his shame, for the first time in his life, everything locks up in Hannibal’s brain.
+++++
He’s yanked to his feet by an unyielding fist in his hair, the muscles in his legs screaming their protest, still not quite working right. The movement scatters pain under his skin, and white lights dance in his eyes. Lynch rotates his head around a little. Like he’s inspecting him.
“Wall?” he asks with a toothy smile, and twists Hannibal around, knocking him into the soft plaster. “You know, Hannibal, we really could have avoided all this.”
Hannibal doesn’t reply. There’s nothing to say. He doesn’t want to talk, that hand trying like hell to push his face all the way through the wall. Edges of the plaster scrape against him, hard and sharp across his ribs, his shrunken stomach, lower...
“You could have just stayed in prison. Or not taken the mission. But you’re so damn noble, aren’t you?”
“Disgusting character flaw.”
He tries to struggle, but abused joints won’t respond, start to fail. Lynch presses in close, stopping his fall.
“It’s a luxury you get, as far down on the food chain as you were, thinking that you’re doing something good.”
A hand brushes across his ass. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth. Wait for the right moment. There has to be a right moment. There’s always... The hand stops moving, settles.
“If you sat where I did, you’d understand it a little bit better.”
Pressure.
Adrenaline. It’s an automatic reaction. He can’t brace himself against the wall, his arms pulled viciously by the almost too-short chain, but that doesn’t matter. He throws his head back as hard as he can, connecting solidly with Lynch’s nose, a satisfying crack doing nothing to stem the sudden surge of red into his vision. He thrashes out with both hands, thinks he might have caught flesh, then the chain jerks tight and he stumbles.
Then there’s a gun, cold, heavy, on his temple.
“We do more business with guys like Pike here than we do with your military, Hannibal,” Lynch says, wiping his nose on his sleeve, cracking down hard with the back of his hand. The colonel tastes blood in his mouth. “Truth is, we’re the ones fighting your fucking war. You and your boys might have well been playing golf.”
Pike hauls him back up, tightening a hand around his balls as he does so. The gun’s still to his had, though, and the words rip into him. He doesn’t want them to, but it rips anyway.
“You’re a traitor. What would you understand?” Hannibal rasps, finding his voice again. It’s an effort to stay here, to not detatch, not to lose himself, lose focus, lose control of the situation. But he knows he already has, knows he can’t stop what’s coming.
“Well, you got your little cub scout troop killed in some Indonesia backwater to bring down a useless opium dealer who will be replaced the second you leave,” Lynch tells him. “All of them, probably rotted to nothing by now. Not exactly a burial at Arlington, is it?”
Arlington? Maybe fifty years from now. Not like this. Not for nothing.
Pike forces his face into the wall, harder this time, elbow on his neck.
“Remember,” the mercenary says casually, “I have ten bucks on them not being all...”
“See, Pike, that’s why I say you always give selfish gifts,” Lynch replies cheerfully.
There’s the sound of a zipper being undone.
There’s no right moment.
It’s his last coherent thought for a while.
Remnants of that fever ares till clinging to him, or his brain’s trying to block the trauma, or his nerves have finally overloaded with pain and refuse to register what’s going on, but Hannibal’s barely aware of the breach, a tearing sensation, choking, lungs barely inflating with each progressively frantic breath. It goes on, but he can’t keep track of the minutes. He doesn’t notice any of it at all, falling to the floor, lacking the energy to even curl up into a ball.
“Definitely not.”
“You better pay up, cupcake.”
“Doesn’t mean shit, Brock. You think Hannibal Smith would let some pissant lieutenant top him anyway?”
He’s staring up at them, laying on is side. He can’t move. He hopes they take it for defiance.
There’s no right moment.
+++++
It’s not as bad the second time around.
Hannibal never knows when they’re going to come in. Usually after dark, but that’s no hard rule. Once Pike comes twice in one day. Pike’s worse. Pike’s a lot.
A man comes in once a to day to feed him, change the bucket. Plastic silverware. The man’s got an uzi. Hannibal doesn’t argue with it yet.
Other than that, they leave him alone.
The days pass slowly. His arms are fine, his legs returning to working condition through determination and time and many, many falls. That hurts worse than the visits. He’s getting better, even tries to fight sometimes, but that only ends in more bleeding, more chance of infection. He’s willing to bet that even the three-page cocktail of vaccinations he's got isn’t going to save him from everything here.
He has that nightmare again. The one of his boys, of Face, out there in the tropical darkness, alone, vanished, gone. The one where he’s standing over their bodies, bodies he’s seen a hundred times in too many countries to count, broken and twisted and empty. Promises, both explicit and implied, broken, shattered, ground to dust. The dream where he’s the one who’s dead, and Face is standing over him, asking why, asking...
“Hannibal, Hannibal... jesus fucking christ, boss...”
A hand touches him, and he jerks away from it, crumpling back into the corner. His wrists feel lighter, nothing dragging them down.
“Face?”
“Hannibal, what the hell’s going on?”
The colonel, despite himself, almost starts laughing. Face sounds like a little boy who just found out Santa doesn’t exist. That’s how Face would sound.
“Hannibal?” the dream asks him, trying to reach out and touch him again. But he won’t let it, it feels too real, too solid, too much like the kid.
He lashes out, hits skin, and something slaps him. Hard. Grabs his wrists, holds them together. He freezes.
In the fading light of the afternoon, from the broken window, he can see worry in those blue eyes, and smell the damp rot and gasoline of the streets outside, and feel the thumb slowly rubbing over the short hairs on his hand, and he draws a deep and uncertain breath. “Face?”
“In the flesh, sir.”
“BA and Murdock?”
“Waiting out at the landing strip. We need to get out ...”
“Liars,” Hannibal mutters, and really does start laughing.
Face is staring now.
“You got a gun, kid?” Hannibal asks him, and holds out his hand. Face hands it over. Mute. Hannibal can’t really afford to know what he’s thinking right now. “Now we wait.”
“What...”
But Hannibal fixes him with that stare that’s always so effective, and Face settles obediently in beside him, not questioning with anything but his eyes. There’s no need to go anywhere, to go hunting, and they don’t have to wait very long anyway. Hannibal figures it’s a good plan, a feeling that's confirmed when the door pushes open, and there’s that smug bastard and the other one.
"We thought we'd try something a little diff..."
Face tenses up in recognition, looks at Hannibal, but it’s too late. He’s already on his feet, safety off. Hollow-points already bursting in contact with bone, shrapnel tearing wormholes through gray matter. Concussive shockwaves. Brain failure.
One, two soft thumps.
Hannibal hands Face back the gun. “Now we can go.”
The conman stares down at the still-hot weapon in his hands until Hannibal barks at him, and even then, he moves more unsteadily than the colonel himself, stepping over the bodies, out into the hot night.
+++++
They’re almost at the airfield, and Hannibal’s enjoying the feel of wind on his face. How long’s it been, since he felt that? Really, truly felt that? It’s distracting, and Face has the jeep almost to the small plane before Hannibal remembers.
“Face?”
His hands are glued to the steering wheel and he doesn’t look over. “Yes, sir?”
That’s not a good sign, any time the kid starts falling back on his customs and courtesies. “Murdock and BA.”
“I won’t say anything, sir.”
“Thank you, lieutenant.”
BA isn’t drugged. He’s waiting, with Murdock in the main cabin of the small plane. The captain’s got his headset down around his neck. Face disappears and comes back with a space blanket, and only then does Hannibal remember that he’s naked, bruised, at least thirty pounds under what he’d normally be, but there’s nothing to do but accept the silvery thing and take a seat. Pretend it doesn’t hurt. Pretend that it’s not strange to have something touching his skin.
BA spends the flight up in the cockpit with Murdock. Face offers Hannibal a bottle of water.
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“Do I look sick to you, Face?”
“Colonel...”
“Out with it, kid.”
The conman turns away, curling into the window, watching the dark ocean roll by below them. “Not my place, sir.”
Hannibal can’t get the bottle cap off; the seal’s not budging for his shaking hands. He gives up and lets himself fall into the cushion of the chair and the comfort of knowing his team’s with him now. He doesn’t dream.
When he wakes up, they’re on the ground in Taipei, refueling. The cap’s off the bottle. Face is nowhere to be seen. Hannibal wants to lie down, but can’t do it. He just can’t do it. It’s a nice plane Face has scammed. Doesn’t feel right right now.
“I think I remembered your size, but then, you know...” Face says, tossing a bag ahead of him as he steps up the narrow door ladder. “I improvised.”
“That’s fine, kid.”
Face holds up a package of anti-bacterial wet wipes, doesn’t quail when Hannibal stares at him. Either the kid’s growing up or he’s lost his touch. He’s not sure which one is worse. He throws it in the clothes bag.
“BA’s gonna sleep the rest of this out when he gets back from the terminal, and Murdock’s on the radio.”
What Face means is that they’re free to talk. “Not in the mood, kid.”
“Boss...”
“You’ve killed, too, Face,” Hannibal says, level and steady, grabbing for the insult that will shut face up, desperately trying to keep this from going where he knows it will. Wouldn’t be right, showing that, admitting to that. He can’t show it. He can’t let them know, no matter what Face suspects. Can’t let the troops see the weakness. The unit depends on his strength, and no matter how long he’s been gone or what’s happened, he can’t take that away from them.
No matter how much it hurts them.
His lieutenant slams the cockpit door hard. Hannibal can feel the reverberations in his teeth.
+++++
They’re back in LA, and a week goes by before Face says anything else. Well, it’s not so much a statement as it is a demand, and not so much a demand as it is an ambush, and the look on the kid as Hannibal rounds the corner into the kitchen is almost enough to earn his forgiveness.
Almost.
It’s almost midnight, and BA and Murdock have long since passed out in a pile on the living room rug, the PS3 still softly whirring, the TV dark and still. Hannibal stares at it for a long moment. Face got a place with hardwood floors, it’s cold under his feet.
He can’t quite remember why he’s down here, just that he couldn’t sleep, that he can’t, that he’s back in that room every time he closes his eyes and he doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t really want to be here, either, but there’s nowhere else to go. Even when he was in the Army, even when he was stateside, it was dorms, living quarters, base housing, nothing solid, no home. He hasn’t been back to his hometown in twenty years - he’s not from there anymore. He’s not from anywhere.
Things haven’t been right. Not with Murdock, who’s almost scared of him right now, and not with BA, who spends most of his free time keeping Murdock away from Hannibal, or Hannibal away Murdock, depending on how he wanted to think about it. And then, there's Face. He can't quite reach them.
Sensation seems to have shifted. Lights are too bright, the darkness too dark, everything hiding sharp corners that want to scrape and rip and grab. Things seem to move if he’s not watching them. Nothing is still. He can’t stop moving.
The light’s on in the kitchen. Did he eat dinner? Murdock’s been making a lot of soup lately, but no matter how much he thins it out, it still hurts his stomach.
Face is sitting at the island, a bottle of Johnny Walker between him and a cute thirty-something-year-old in Army-issue glasses. They’re talking.
“Fishing a little close to the sharks these days, Face?” Hannibal asks, going for a glass and Face mutely hands the bottle over. It’s starting to unnerve the colonel, how quiet Face has been. Nobody’s asked any questions.
She coughs politely and rises from her stool. “Mr. Smith? Face here’s been...”
“Mister?” Hannibal says, arching an eyebrow at Face and pouring himself what’s probably a triple, but who’s keeping track? Face doesn’t dare say anything.
“You can call him Hannibal...”
“I thought you normally use your own apartment for this kind of thing, kid.”
“Boss,” Face says in a pleading voice.
Hannibal leans up against the opposite counter, wincing a little at how thin the skin still is over his hips. The bruises are fading, and the worst of Pike’s knifework from that one night is under his shirt, but he’s not as young as he used to be. His joints still hurt. “What?”
“She’s not, I’m not... she’s a friend, from training.”
“I’m not talking to one of your friends, Face.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking in your condition, sir...”
“And what condition is that?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Cute, Face,” Hannibal growls, but Face blocks his exit from the small kitchen, and his fist is about two inches away from the kid’s nose before he knows what he’s doing and redirects, slamming into the wall inside. Drywall flakes away on blodied knuckles. Blue eyes narrow.
“You were in a fucking torture box for six weeks...”
Six weeks? That long? “I’ve had worse vacations...”
“And you haven’t had a yellow fever booster, or hep, or smallpox or anything, in three years, according to what I’ve got here,” the woman interjects from behind him. Hannibal can’t see her, and that’s a good thing. “Miste... Hannibal, you were in the jungle under what your friend, Mister Peck here described as hellish conditions. I just want to take some...”
“Blood?” Hannibal’s staring at Face. All he sees is defiance. “You trust an Army doc?”
“They don’t have our DNA on file, boss.”
“Yet.”
“She’s gonna keep it off the books.”
“You fucking her, Face?”
“She’s an old friend, Hannibal,” Face sighs. “You want to trust my fucking judgment for a change or be a stubborn son of a bitch and let you feet rot off?”
She’s got a little black bag on the counter, unpacking vials and packages. Hannibal picks up his abandoned glass and sits down, holding out his left arm, watching her tie on the rubber band, unable to suppress the bone-chilling shudder as the needle comes out. He’s never been afraid of these things.
Face is there, squeezes his hand, as it slides in. Hannibal can’t feel it at all.
She fills her little mismatched collection of hollowed plastic, and Face kisses her on the cheek as he escorts her from the house.
“Did you hear that, Face? She called me...”
Face pours them both another round. “Me too.”
They continue on in silence like that for a few minutes, until Face reaches for the bottle again. “She said the results will be back in a few days.” When Hannibal doesn’t say anything, Face keeps going. “She gave me some motrin, said you can take that for a while...”
“The horse pills?” Hannibal asks, feeling a smile, a real and true smile, creeping on.
“Standard issue cure-whatever-the-hell-we’re-not-giving-you-meds? Remember that time BA got walking pneumonia?”
“And they just gave him those things ...”
“... and you got so pissed off the med commander had to drag you out the clinic...”
“... and you went back with that pillow stuffed under your sweater, impersonating some fucking specialist from downtown...”
Face has to put his head down on his table, he’s laughing so hard. Hannibal’s laughing too, deep and hard, light, his stomach hurting by the time they both trail off. Face lifts up, tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes, and he looks happy for the first time since that day...
“What I did...”
“Hell, Hannibal, I don’t give a shit. Those bastards,” and Face makes a disgusted noise in his throat, settling again. “Rotting in some shit town in the jungle. I like it.”
Hannibal has a sudden flash of that dream, Face’s face, eyeless, decayed, staring up at him. The damn thing seems to be aging every night, rotting to bone and then maybe to nothing. He wonders if he ever came back at all, if he’s still there and this is some coping mechanism...
“They raped me, Face. Sometimes other stuff, along...nightly, more often, I don’t really know.” He finishes his shot and wonders at his own detatchment from the statement. There should be more emotion, right? Shouldn’t there be more?
He’s never seen that expression on Face before. Something beyond the standard range, something worse than that time Murdock was shot in Venezuela or BA was knifed in Afghanistan, worse than the bullshit with Morrison or the trial or the time he showed up, drunk and sobbing, over Sosa’s first rejection of him.
Hannibal watches the lieutenant get up, lean with white knuckles over the sink, raise his glass as high as he can and let it fall, shattering. Glass shards bounce, graze his chin, slice his hand, and he wraps a paper towel around it as he goes for another glass.
Hannibal shakes the bottle on the kitchen island. “We’re gonna need more booze,” he observes.
Face hits the liquor cabinet before he sits back down, breaking the seal.
The white paper around his hand is rapidly turning red, and Hannibal realizes that that wound hurts him more than the needle did, but there’s nothing that can be done now, nothing at all, except pull out the fragments and hope it heals up, understanding that it’s going to scar.
But in their line of work, that’s the way things go sometimes, and as Face covers Hannibal’s hand with his good one, he thinks he might be able to live with this one after all.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 05:40 pm (UTC)Oh this was horrible. In a good way, you know, brilliantly written but maaaan. God so dark and horrible and sad.
... ouch.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 05:55 pm (UTC)