Authors note: This is part of sss979's series, but can be read as a stand alone. Takes place after "Soldier in the Mirror". The A-Team belongs to someone else, we just take them out and play with them.
BA glared at the almost-blank paper in front of him, his forehead wrinkling in determination. He was going to finish this if it killed him. And at the rate things were going, it just might.
He had been a Green Beret, fighting and killing in the jungles and rice patties of Southeast Asia. He had survived a death camp, prison, and living on the Southside of Chicago as a wanted man. By comparison, this should have been a walk in the park - something he could have done with his eyes closed and in less than five minutes. But somehow, even though he knew that, he was staring at the only two words he had managed to write in over an hour: Dear Mama.
Growling with frustration, he barley noticed as the pencil in his hand snapped. Not like he should have been using a pencil anyway. Mrs. Danvers had told him back when he was in third grade that grownups used pen and ink. They made your words permanent and bonding she had said. He could still remember the way she'd tilted her head to the side, speaking each word with a measured graveness. He had only been eight at the time, but those words had gotten stuck in his brain. Every word he had written since that cold Chicago morning was in ink. Knowing the words would last made him carefully consider everything he wrote before committing it to paper.
Looking at the now-useless pencil in his hand, BA shook his head. That's what he got for using it to start with. He had wanted to be able to erase his words this time - trying to cheat, trying to take some of the weight and importance out of it. Fact was, he had no idea what to say to her.
BA had left Chicago with out a word to anyone, including Mama. She had to have been worried when he disappeared. And he knew it wasn't right to make her wonder if he was alive or dead. He just couldn't face her. One look at him and she would have seen, would have known what he had done and become. She had already seen too much. One glance and Mama had seen how empty he had become. He would never be able to forget that look in her eyes and how she cried. Holding on to him like he was still a baby, telling him he needed people who understood, before he got lost for good.
At the time, that hadn't been an option. Hannibal had left them in New York, Face had split, and Murdock was locked in a prison they couldn't save him from, even if they tried. BA had been completely alone, destroyed in a way that even Charlie hadn't been able to do. Funny how the worst thing that had happened to them, they had done to themselves.
It was one month ago to the day that he had climbed into Hannibal's beat up, clunker of a car and left Chicago for points unknown. He hadn't cared where they were heading at the time and, the truth was, he still didn't care much. Just as long as they were there with him. Why that mattered so much, he couldn't say. He was still too busy trying to get used to what it was like to be able feel again. And trying to find some way to deal with what he had been in Chicago and who he was going to be, here in LA.
The sound of Hannibal lighting his cigar was starting. How had he forgotten Hannibal was waiting? BA knew the answer. He didn't want to remember. He didn't want to go to the VA to see Murdock in a cage. But he owed it to Hannibal and to the man Murdock had been... even if he was only a shell of that man now.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were stalling." Hannibal's low voice broke the silence, and BA immediately felt his chest tighten. He was stalling. Of course Hannibal would know that.
"Don't know what ta say."
"You don't have to come. Just give me your keys and you can take all the time you want."
Relief and shame hit him at the same time as he wordlessly held the car keys out to Hannibal. There was nothing else said as Hannibal took the keys and headed out to face what BA couldn't. The tightening in BA's chest subsided as he heard the door close behind him.
It was a few moments before BA walked over the wobbly, scarred end table with the phone on it and picked up the pen laying there. He may not be human enough yet to do right by his team, but he would damn sure do right by his Mama. BA was going to finish this.
By the time Hannibal came back, the letter was folded and in an envelope, ready to go. As soon as it was dark, BA would make his way to the post office down the street, where his own picture would stare down at him from a wanted poster.
In the end, the letter was short, simple even. But it said everything that mattered and everything Mama needed to know for now.
"Dear Mama,
Don't worry about me. I'm going to be alright. I'm not alone anymore.
Love,
BA."