Author's Note: This started entirely because at one point, I mentioned to my idea bouncer blazeofobscurity over on Tumblr that I had the head canon that Thomas and the others were declared dead thanks to Hannah, so that people wouldn't go looking for them and wouldn't go digging into why they were captured. Which meant that somewhere, Magnum and the others would have memorial flags of their own, and I wondered what would become of them. So this is a very, VERY short one shot about Magnum's.
She'd never actually stopped to look around the guest house since Magnum moved in. They weren't friendly enough to invite one over to the other half of the compound just to hang out, and other than having to borrow things from the main house, Magnum never came to bother her.
Mostly.
A thin line had been drawn in the sand between them – outside of the houses, the other was fair game, but they could have their 'safe' home base. And to be fair to him, unless it was for a case or another friend, Magnum didn't ask her for anything. Even when the guest house was being fumigated, when she'd come to tell him he was welcome to any one of seven other bedrooms, he'd already been packed with a seabag about to head for Rick's.
She waited in the living room, arms folded across her chest as she rocked back and forth on her toes. "Do you have any idea where you're looking?" she called.
"I feel like it's kind of obvious at this point in our relationship that I never know where anything is at any given point," Magnum shouted back. "Take a seat."
"At least time isn't of the essence," she muttered to herself. But standing in the foyer wasn't all that interesting, and knowing Magnum, they were going to be running around getting shot at for the rest of the afternoon.
It was kind of odd, she thought, wandering slowly around the living room. For all of his borrowing of Robin's stuff, Magnum had yet to properly move in to the guest house – even after two years. She didn't have anything personal in the main house – not the major living spaces, anyway, because Robin did come home occasionally – but her room was definitely her room. She had pictures and knickknacks and things she'd collected while traveling, shells from the beach, a ticket from the last museum art show she'd gone to, jammed into the corner of her mirror.
Thomas had nothing.
No pictures, no knickknacks, no nothing. Every military person she'd ever known had something from their service. A command picnic picture, a farewell frame that was signed by everyone in the unit, a sword…something.
She wondered if perhaps like her, he kept everything to his room, too.
Her gaze finally caught on something, just as she was about to turn around.
Shoved into a corner so that it was only visible if you were sitting in the couch on the corner, where she'd often seen Magnum sitting, nursing a black eye or a beer, was a triangular display box. In it was a folded American flag, the blue and white stars plainly visible.
It was a memorial box, that much she knew. Just like the British flag that was given to the survivors of fallen soldiers in England, the same was done in the United States. She idly wondered who it was for – it was an odd place and angle to keep something of emotional value. Like he didn't really want to see it, except when he was distracted by something else.
Magnum came around the corner just as she reached out a tentative finger to the glossy cherrywood casing, wondering at the fine layer of dust that was on it and nothing else in the room.
He stopped short, the broad smile he'd had falling slightly when he saw what she was looking at.
"Sorry," she apologized quickly, pulling her hand back. "I was just looking."
For a moment, he didn't react, staring at the display case. It wasn't wistfulness though. Or any sense of longing that she'd associate with a fond memory of someone dearly departed.
He looked…angry? Irritated?
But as quickly as the emotion showed, it was gone, replaced by almost casual indifference.
"It's fine," he said.
It was clearly not fine.
And she knew she shouldn't pry, but she couldn't help but be a little curious as to why he would keep a memorial flag for someone he didn't seem to like. Not from that reaction, anyway.
"Who is it for?" she asked. "I'm guessing not your father, since you always speak of him in such high regard."
Magnum shrugged. "No, his is in my room on the book shelf with his service ribbons and his wedding photo with mom."
That sounded more like Magnum.
"Then…." She left the question open, glancing back at the flag.
"That's mine," Thomas said. His tone was flat and disinterested, as if he'd just stated the sky was blue or that the living room needed vacuuming. "Are you ready?"
After the past few months, helping him out with various cases or the occasional barbecue – now that Kumu had the grill up and running – she'd gotten used to Magnum's two moods.
There was his general mood, which damned if she understood how he managed it, which was that of a human golden retriever. Magnum was one of the happiest-go-lucky people she knew. Even after getting kidnapped and dragged out to sea to be murdered by a corrupt fed, Magnum mostly just seemed annoyed he had to share the raft with him while waiting for rescue. Even after trashing Robin's vintage Ferrari trying some ridiculous stunt described in an equally ridiculous book and almost killing himself in the process, he just laughed it off.
The second mood was much less common. On the rare occasion it was brought up in a case, it was the sort of cagey and reluctant way he explained a piece of his past. At least, whenever it related to something particularly painful. Magnum had exactly zero hang ups discussing the innumerable stupid or foolhardy things he, Rick and TC got up to when they were still in the service, but prior to being captured. But the things that mattered…he always stopped short at first, and then, when she suspected he'd worked out in his head exactly what words he would use, he eventually told her.
This was neither.
And before she could think better of it, she blurted out, "yours? Don't you have to be…dead in order to get one of those?"
Magnum's eye twitched. "Well, at the time, they thought I was. All of us. Go down in a fiery wreck witnessed by a dozen people and they generally assume the worst. Let's go." He gestured towards the door.
Higgins considered what she knew about the rules for her own country's death declarations. In order to be officially declared dead in combat, remains had to be recovered and properly identified. It wouldn't be enough to just witness an accident. The military would have made every effort to retrieve whatever remains they could from the wreckage to return for burial by the family.
"All of you…?" she echoed. "You weren't MIA while you were prisoners?"
She watched as Thomas carefully flexed his fingers, audibly popping every joint, biting the inside of his lip as he slowly exhaled through gritted teeth before he opened his mouth to answer.
Abruptly, she realized this was an absolute hard no for Magnum. Not an 'ask me later', or 'when I have the time', it was a 'stop talking, or this ends badly', and it wasn't until she saw that look in his eyes just then that it occurred to her what must've happened.
What had to happen for him to have a flag of his own.
Someone had to provide enough convincing evidence that they were dead.
And only one person would've been able to make that happen.
"Sorry, I don't mean to pry, that was quite rude, wasn't it…" Juliet felt herself flush crimson from embarrassment. "Don't answer. I'll just…shall we?" she gestured towards the door.
Magnum's eyes narrowed suspiciously at the abrupt change, and his dark eyes flitted from her back to the memorial flag in its dusty box.
She could see the exact moment when he realized what she just worked out, and she wondered if Magnum had always been so transparent, or if it was a recent development.
He would make a terrible spy, she thought.
For a moment, she thought he wouldn't take the olive branch of misdirection and tell her to leave without him. That he didn't need her help anymore and wouldn't any time soon. That she could butt well the hell out of his affairs that he clearly didn't want to discuss when he'd been nothing but respectful of her memory of Richard.
"After you," he said instead, and instantly, his entire demeanor changed. The tension in his shoulders, the rigidity of his stance, the dark warning in his eyes gone. That funny little quirk of his head that was his version of bowing, the crooked grin that made him a poster child for the phrase 'who, me?' – back like they'd never left.
Scratch the thought of him making a terrible spy.
Magnum would make an amazing one.
)*)*)*
It was almost a week later when out of nowhere, Magnum said, "You want to know why I keep it, don't you?"
It was so out of the blue it took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. And then she followed his gaze up to the flag pole at the gates where the American flag hung quietly from the top in the mild mid-afternoon sun.
"It's clearly not something you want to discuss," Juliet pointed out. "You don't have to explain it to me."
"It's been pointed out by more than one person I should learn to talk about the things I don't want to," Magnum replied. He didn't look at her as he spoke, but his tone remained his normal, puppy-everything-is-a-game self.
"Magnum –"
"Robin wasn't talking about Hannah when he said 'handle with care'," he cut in. "I was in the hospital in Germany for nine weeks after Afghanistan. The guys got me out of the Valley but…" he shrugged. "The doctors told them it was unlikely I would survive, and they should plan my funeral. My immune system was shot to hell. I had temperatures spiking to 107 and I was down to 30 percent lung capacity. I had malaria, pneumonia, and my arms…" he didn't finish the thought. "And the doc told the guys that if I lived, I would be blind or a vegetable."
Juliet recalled the YouTube video of their interviews after they'd rescued themselves. His hair had been a little longer, but that was about the only difference in him then and the man before her today. She'd assumed it was filmed immediately upon their self-emancipation, and thought it was odd that four men who'd spent the last year and a half as prisoners of the Taliban looked…fine. Better than fine. But if what Magnum was true…it must've been filmed months later, and filmed to make it look like it was recent? Which would only make sense if…
If the military wasn't sure they were going to survive, or they hadn't wanted anyone to know that they were alive.
She suddenly wondered exactly when Hannah's true allegiance was revealed to someone besides the four POW's.
"Well, despite my original misgivings, you hardly seem vegetative," she pointed out, and almost immediately winced. Her mother always did warn her that she swung her thoughts with all the sensitivity someone swung a pillowcase of bricks.
"I am a walking, talking, living testament that miracles exist," Magnum said. "But before the miracle, when they were still convinced I was going to die, someone mentioned that I already had a memorial flag given to my mother – did they just use the same flag, or did I get another one?"
Oh, wow. Someone worse at tact than her. That was saying something.
"I don't remember any of it. Nuzo had to tell me later. But the flag you saw…that's the one they gave my mom before –" he trailed off, staring up at the hanging flag. It fluttered gently as a cool wind kicked in from the sea. "It's a reminder."
"Of her?"
"No. I have her pictures for that."
"Then…?"
He finally looked towards her, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe. Until that very moment, she hadn't realized just how much of Thomas Magnum was a carefully constructed mask, and for the very first time since meeting him, she finally caught a glimpse behind the curtain.
And oh…
"On my bad days…the really bad ones…it reminds me I already tried dying. Maybe I should try living."
Author's Note: I have this head canon that Thomas actually suffers from chronic PTSD related depression, and he's basically come up with this complicated way of keeping himself from doing anything drastic. Like living in poverty, constantly owing money and he can't die when he owes a debt, or that he takes on cases that no one else will because he can't die when someone needs him. Anyway. I *guess* you can read this as shippy, but I didn't write it with that in mind as I am not a fan of ships. Anyway, love it, like it, loathe it, curse me for putting such an awful thought in your head...lemme know! Feel free to come say hi over on Tumblr disappearinginq!