The wrought iron bars of his wartime era cell were as sturdy now, as when they had contained prisoners hundreds of years previously. His hands caressed the bars absentmindedly. They would surely come for him soon, for the last time, and it would be over.
It was a mere fifteen meters to the spot where he would be executed.
Then again, maybe they might just shoot him where he stood.
His eyes flickered around the stone walls, limp with dampness. Scratch marks of the desperate men before him were still evident in the unforgiving flanks. His eyes darted away.
He would not add to those marks.
He would die with the dignity he maintained, whilst everything else of him had been stripped in successive, unyielding blows.
For several months, at least, he thought they were months, he didn't have the luxury of a calendar, he had held onto hope.
He had cherished it.
As he loped back to the plank of wood masquerading as a jailhouse bed, he sat with a reflective sigh.
He was still young.
Still so much to do, so much to see.
Now, he never would.
The thin sliver of moonlight that danced through the bars protecting the window from liberty was almost friendly in its presence. Everything else about this non-governmental prison was so harsh, so rigid.
He watched the light flicker off the walls, its gentle gate illuminated in his sunken eyes. Those eyes that had once held so much mirth, so much light, were now watered down versions of their former selves.
It was as if the shutters had been drawn on them, they could now only take in the horror that surrounded him, projecting it back through his faded irises. His ears caught the tell-tale sounds of a scuffling in the corner, and he instinctively drew his bare, bloodied feet upwards.
The horrifically large and bloodthirsty jailhouse rat whom he'd pragmatically named Curtis was with him now. He could tell.
His eyes flickered to the small boulder like rock he'd managed to pry from a crack in the stoned walls. It was his only line of defence between his flesh and Curtis' insatiable appetite. Plucking it up half-heartedly in abused hands, he held it in a loose grasp.
Either his immune system was still working to the fullest of its abilities, or Curtis didn't carry any life threatening diseases. He had hoped, perhaps in his darkest moments, that the many bites adorning his person would become festooned with disease and he would simply pass onto whatever awaited him in his sleep.
It wasn't to be.
The scurrying continued as he sat rigidly still on the creaking iron bed. His hair, once pristine in nature, now tickled his shoulders when he moved his head. Its greasy, lank form a stark illustration of the transition from his previous to life to…well, his current predicament.
A tail could now be seen under the jutting rock of the far corner, and he held his home crafted weapon a little tighter.
As his eyes strained to make out the creatures form in the semi darkness, he felt the uncomfortable pulling around his eyes. His skin had become dry and cracked during his…stay, and the slightest of natural movement irritated the grossly dehydrated organ.
He ran a dry tongue over cracked lips and wondered if the twenty millimetres or so of water remaining to him would be his last drink.
He smiled slightly at that, slivers of skin piercing in protest at the movement.
He'd always thought his last drink would be the finest of liquors, consumed in the midst of the finest of surroundings.
A throaty, rasping chuckle reverberated around the freezing cell.
How wrong, how very, very wrong he had been.
A clawed paw was inching further into view, and the rock was clutched tighter still.
Leaning his head against the wall, he felt his mind wander involuntarily. He'd tried so hard to train it, to control his subconscious dwellings but they still happened.
…happened all the time.
A haze of faces swum in a reeling haze before his eyes. Memories attaching to those faces spread throughout his mind, distributing a warmth that was cruel in its fleetingness. He knew, from bitter experience, that as soon as he allowed himself to be comforted by those images, they would be snatched from him.
Another Curtis owned appendage crept closer into his peripheral view, and he swallowed hard. The rat seemed to have a particular fondness for him. There were other prisoners to choose, but no, his skin had seemingly proven to be the more luscious.
Rubbing a hand roughly over his scarred face, he winced at the result of his stupidity.
A boil, the size of a moderate to small golf ball erupted at his touch, sending forth a mixture of green pus and fresh blood down his face. He gasped at the biting pain, even though his tolerance for pain had grown exponentially, and rubbed delicately at the open sore.
Holding up a ragged sleeve to stem the onslaught, he sighed to himself.
He had been slightly more contented over the last week or so, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. Since he had firmly and irrevocably given up hope of rescue, the nerves and the terror that had taken up residency in his stomach seemed to have dampened somewhat.
Since he'd banished any positive thinking about the people who owned the faces that had swum in mind's eye despite himself, his senses had been at somewhat more of an ease.
They weren't coming.
Hell, they didn't even care.
So he'd resigned himself to this state of affairs, in the full understanding that he would be more miserable, more battered internally than ever before.
…but he was not.
He was as uncaring as it was possible to be in the situation he was living. The much fed insecurities of times gone by told him that this was because they had never really cared. That he had merely told himself that so many times over the years, that he had foolishly, stupidly, really come to believe it.
They were one of the most elite teams housed on American soil, and if they had not found him by now, it was simply because…they weren't looking.
Curtis was now in full view, and the boulder was raised high.
A carefully aimed, perfectly executed throw sent the rat scurrying for the hole he had crawled through, repeating the same dance he and the cell's occupant danced every night. Except…when the occupant lost the dance that was, and Curtis decided to stick around.
His oddly vitriolic and semi catatonic thoughts were free to swirl around in his mind once more as the tail whipped out of view.
They didn't care, so logically, he shouldn't care.
He shouldn't care and…he should answer…their questions.
The scars, the burns and every other laceration nestling on his body were born from the opinion that loyalty was a constant concept. That fidelity was a two way street upon which the good and the righteous marched, to the exclusion of the unscrupulous, the disloyal.
He exhaled slowly, lost in the irony of misconceptions formed in childhood and carried into adulthood.
Loyalty…what a laugh, what an infant's creation.
He stood abruptly and ignored the answering protests of his battered and abused muscles, and made his way back to the iron bars, replacing the absent minded hand that caressed the stout metal.
Leaning a borderline unrecognisable head upon the cool bars, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the all consuming darkness.
The almost crooning words that fell from his mouth, spoken to no one, were so coated in dripping sarcasm that they seemed to ease the stiff lips from which they dropped.
Semper Fi….
….
TBC
….
A/N: This story isn't at all related to my other NCIS stories. This idea has been rattling around my head for a while, and I've decided to see where it goes!
Thanks for reading.