Standard disclaimer: no recognizable characters are mine.
Please thank and congratulate danang1970 for this. With her encouragement, I succumbed to my natural inclinations of angst. Also, I'm feeling mean due to various, unrelated things going on in my life (being attacked by hornets twice this week, and gnashing my teeth during a stalemate regarding my brain absorbing new information). So here we are.
This, the end of the team as they know it, is the result. It is set in the future, and is not in anyway connected or has any continuity within the story arc I've posted on this site previously.
(For more to read, head on over to danang1970's stuff on this website fanfiction (dot) net/u/2659383/danang1970. If you've not already read her works, shame on you. Now's your chance to be blinded by brilliance.)
Enjoy.
The smell made him sick. How's come all hospitals smelled the same—even the loony bins?
B.A. signed the appropriate papers, made sure his visitor's badge was secure, and opened the inner door after the orderly buzzed it unlocked.
Now he was in the hospital proper. Either the antiseptic smell was diminishing, or his nose had grown accustomed to it. The people who lived or worked here probably never noticed it anymore.
Quickly he made his way through the hallways. He tried to ignore the nonsensical ramblings he overheard. He tried to pretend the moans from some of the rooms didn't freak him out. But deep down, he couldn't truly ignore or pretend, and he thought if he were ever in a place like this as a "resident", he'd probably find a way to end his existance.
He stopped in front of door #42. There was a window in the door, but he thought it rude to peer in; even the 'lifers' here were people, right? They deserved some semblance of respect. He served and worked with this man for too many years and even though he routinely called him "crazy fool" to his face, he knew Murdock's capabilities. The ex-pilot may be clinically insane, but he was a good person.
B.A. squared his shoulders and knocked.
He waited. He knocked again.
A very faint shuffling came from the other side of the door.
"Murdock?" B.A. asked.
No response.
"Captain Murdock?" The nurse told him sometimes he reacted to the title.
The doorknob rattled, and the door opened.
Murdock stood to the side of the doorframe, looking out of his room warily.
"War," he whispered in horror, and shrunk back.
B.A. sighed, although quietly and mostly to himself. He'd also been warned that Murdock hadn't let go of that particular delusion, but man, he had hoped.
"Can I come in?" Fool, he added silently.
"War is patient, War is kind. It does not envy or boast. It is not proud . . ." Murdock said with his eyes closed.
The verse parodied from Corinthians was creepy.
The black man sighed again and shook himself. He had promised Face he would do this.
Walking into the small room seemed to make Murdock less afraid of him. He straightened and watched B.A. keenly. B.A. noted there was no chair, so he stood by the bed.
He also saw Murdock was still in the hospital's soft, standard issue pajamas—the ones with no drawstrings in the pants! Only elastic waistbands!—instead of his street clothes. The orderlies were supposed to have made sure he was changed and ready to go.
What the hell.
"Murdock, man. It's good to see you." Making small talk with him wasn't as hard as pulling teeth, but almost. "How've you been?"
"Good, good. Sometimes the nurses forget and we get extra TV time in the rec room. They had to take the ping pong balls away—one guy kept trying to eat them. Thought they were eggs! So we have to make do with the ping pong balls in our minds.
"And you, my burly friend! World been treating you okay? Not taking any wooden nickels? No pookas trailing you?"
Scratch the Corinthians-parody creepiness. This, the almost normality of the conversation, was worse by far.
B.A. dismissed the questions. "Face asked me to come. He's . . . not doing so hot, Murdock, and he wanted to see you again."
Murdock's too bright eyes bore into him. "He couldn't come . . . here? To visit?"
"No," B.A. told him with a slow shake of his head. "He can't get up no more."
Murdock's eyes flicked from side to side as he processed the information.
"You're taking me out," he decided.
"Yeah. You 'n me, just like old times. I got a van. You gotta get dressed, though. You think you can handle that?"
"Out, beyond the walls. Beyond the reach of the jaws that bite, the claws that catch—beware the Jubjub bird and shun the fumious Bandersnatch—"
"Can you get dressed, man?"
Murdock cut himself off and saluted, then looked confused, as if somewhere passed the Jabberwock he remembered he shouldn't be saluting a subordinate officer. The befuddlement didn't last long however; he hurried to change into the clothes the orderlies had left out for him but hadn't advised they would be needed.
B.A. stepped out of the room to allow him some privacy.
"Where War goes, Death follows! When Famine calls, Death answers!" Murdock called to him. His voice alternated loud and muffled as shirts were pulled over his head. "Death will soon be ready!"