Set during 4x14 Day Game. Greg Parker doesn't know who he is, but he knows he's not a hero.
Warning: The following contains HEAVY Spoilers for 4x14 Day Game. I would highly recommend watching first. If you have yet to see the episode and need to please PM me. Enjoy!
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Who Are You
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He is drowning, the world wet and slick beneath knees the sink gratefully into some semblance of ground. It's not as solid as it looks. It rock and shifts slightly, a pitching boat in an ocean of air, vibrating with their weight.
In. Out. In. Out.
Sweat pools at the base of his spine, dripping off his face, something to show just how weak he truly is. Just a man, not even a man. His mask lays in shred around him. He can't even summon the strength to keep pretending.
In. Out. In. Out.
The vest closes so tightly and the air feels unbearably cold and thin. There isn't enough here.
In. Out. In. Out.
It's so much harder than it use to be. He used to know this part, used to play it all too well. That's why he has the stripes, that's why he is the last to leave every night. That's why he is the boss. He gets to play God with people's lives. Send them in, let them rush head first into danger. His friends, his family. Let them step on a landmine, let them be shot by an armor piercing bullet. Line them up and stand behind them.
A general that preaches peace and service and loyalty and honor.
Like he knows anything about that.
He wasn't even fit enough for his own family. They had to move over a thousand miles away to get far enough from him. His sentence was measured in years. Honestly he deserved worse.
He doesn't deserve what Dean is offering. Not yet. Hasn't done enough to earn it.
How he got here he doesn't know. Put him in command. Give him a surrogate family. Why? Because he did such a bang up job with his real one?
He knew the drills. He knew the answers they wanted to hear. That's all. He knew what they wanted and played his part.
"Miranda was right." The admission is single gun shot, scorpio.
"Gil!" Greg's voice is pleading, desperate. Greg just needs a mirror, needs to show him they are the same.
Gil's a little too honest, that's all. Too eager to please, he doesn't know how to play along, how to act assure when inside you are trembling. They are the same, someone just didn't look too hard at Greg, that's the only difference. That's all.
He knows how to pretend to know what he is doing. That's all.
He doesn't have a clue.
Look at his team, look what he did to them. Couldn't do his job, couldn't trust himself. Never could, can't even have mouthwash in the house. Who knows when he will hit bottom again. They paid the price. Toth came in and broke them down and he can't fix it. They don't have meetings for that sort of thing. Ruining your friends careers, shining a light on the skeletons in their closets, like he doesn't have his own. They don't have twelve steps to make that right.
In. Out.
"Parker, you're right."
No, no he's not.
He is making it up as he goes. Some great leader. Who was he to tell someone they weren't worthy? That they weren't cut out for the cool pants?
Hollaran made a mistake, should have never let him in. He can't do this.
Who is he to tell any of them what to do? To tell Jules to give up the only real relationship he has known her to have after eight years of watching her go home to the same fate as himself, an empty home and a frozen meal? She didn't deserve that, she's not serving some sort of penance. Who was he to tell her to give up what he wanted the most? Someone to love, someone that would understand?
He doesn't have the right to cast those stones.
The anger is ebbing, he can feel it receding, a tide gone out to sea.
No.
"No. Gil, please, no. Just stay here with me." He pushed too far, Greg knows he pushed too far. Gil is practically lying in pieces around him.
Gil moves and they sway slightly. The pendulum swings and Greg knows he is not the good guy here. He is not the hero. He pushed too far. He is suppose to be better than this, better than to let anger and fear cloud over his training.
It's what he asked of them. Wouldn't test the water transfer, wouldn't let Sam tell SIU to go to hell. Greg thought he was levelheaded, cool under enormous pressure. Turns out his trigger is just a bit more selfish. Save his own skin, make sure some uniform doesn't end up at his door tonight to tell his son that after finally getting a dad he was gone again.
"No, I.. I see it now. It's okay."
It's so cold, so quiet.
Greg had grown accustom to the sound, a deafening reminder he was alone.
Now Dean blasts the stereo so loud he can feel it is his teeth. Greg sort of loves it, even the pounding in his head. He loves that his grocery bill has doubled and that he can no longer live on frozen TV dinners, has to at least spring for take out or pizza. He loves the socks he finds all over as if Dean is attempting to leave a trail, Hansel looking for a way out in case he needs it.
Greg is pretty sure at some point Dean will.
It's too quiet again. His mind drifts away and then back. The drill, putting Raf through his paces. Seemed so important this morning. Teach him, break him- another child to send out to war.
Introspection. It's not a warning shot, it's the sierra shot.
Get too far inside your head you can't get out. Greg knows the feeling. Hemmed in with too many fears, too many responsibilities. Too many lives in his fumbling hands.
"No. You made the right choice, Gil." Basic training, focus on the positive, get them to focus on anything but what comes after. SRU doesn't do follow up, it's out of their hands and passed along. In the moment, that's all they have. It's all he has to reach him- this moment. "You focus on that, buddy. Focus on that."
A step and a sway and Greg is pleading now, "No! No!" This man is him, this man is him if providence hadn't intervened. If Hollaran hadn't taken the risk with him. Maybe even worse. Maybe he wouldn't have even tried, a bullet of scotch to the head.
"There is a way through this."
There has to be a way through this. To put it all right, for Gil, for him, for his team. A way to make them whole again.
"You gotta build from this moment. You gotta, you gotta move forward from here."
It's all he can do. Make it right from here. There is no going back. You do penance and move on. It's all he can do.
"You work through it from here."
Rock bottom and it's a hard climb. Greg's done it. He knows. You bleed and brake but you move, onward, upward until you at last reach the surface. He wishes he explain that to Gil, wishes he could make him see that it gets better. It's hard, so hard, but it gets better.
Greg remembers his sponsor, a man that changed his life with four simple words. Gave him faith, made him think that buried beneath the craving for Jack and coke, beneath a failure of a marriage there was something still there. Something worth fighting for- a chance.
"You're a good man." It chimes out against the sea of nothing, falling on ears too submerged to hear.
Greg screams as Gil falls, diving into a ocean of space. His cries inhuman and guttural. They bounces across the arena to reverberate in his ears. He never even hears the body hit the floor with a sickening smack, a ghost of a voice filling his own head.
You're a good man.
He just wishes he could actually believe that.
-End-
A/N: Okay this is my first Greg Parker centric Flashpoint fic and it makes one a little anxious. So far I have attempted to crawl into Sam's mind and Jules and now Greg. I am toying with taking on Ed next, though that makes me very nervous. I have said it before but I will say it again- Readers are powerful. Reviews, critiques, corrections, everything matters so much more than you can imagine. It means that for a moment someone read this and connected to it and that is beautiful. So please drop me a line and let me know your thoughts, good or bad. Reviews are love. ~Delysia
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