Men of Steel
A Man from UNCLE/Mad Men crossover
This is meta thinly disguising itself as a commentary ficlet about Napoleon and Don Draper. I swear I'm working on a few ficlets right now that actually have plots. Any feedback is appreciated – the muse definitely wandered in unexpected directions when writing this.
The war severed their future from their fragmented youth, but the break happened prior to deployment on their native shore. The hasty training they had received in the Kansas barracks was the army's tabula rasa, a perversely naïve meritocracy providing each man with an equally random chance of death. The drills would become second nature all too soon in combat, but most importantly the sergeants regimented these green recruits into models of all-American manhood, ready to prevent the Iron Curtain from creeping further.
Along with their weapons, they took the hard-earned lesson that honor could be extracted from any chaos so long as they knew what story to tell while the world fell apart around them. Comrades, enemies, themselves -- consistency was key when narratives were the only things available to keep themselves together. No longer blunt instruments clumsily maneuvered by boyish officers with more old money than brains, they came to forge new lives from the bloody, muddy aftermath, lives worth fighting tooth and nail for.
Their uniforms these days consist of spit polished loafers, someone else's old school cufflinks and suit jackets tailored to keep secrets close to the chest. Each morning before heading off to work, they look into the mirror one last time to shrug the persona into place. The gesture has become less self-consciously symbolic with time.
They are men of steel, their rough edges precisely honed to pierce the heart of whatever mission they've been assigned. Organizational politics are the new minefields, where they deftly navigate the danger kept behind closed doors; the stakes of misjudgment are as high as they ever were. At their core is an impenetrable hardness, disguised by the slickness of brilliantine and a magnetic charm weighted down by an invisible gravity accrued from unspeakable experiences.
They destroy lives to forge the course of the future, but they do not what the final derivation of this moral calculus will be. Balancing the existential equations keeps them awake at night in someone else's bed, where they bankrupt whatever is left of themselves and rely on empty promises to pay the debt. Solace is in the arms of a cool blond(e) who knows the value of not asking the unanswerable. Only there can they enter that dream haven, that shadowless void away from the maddening crowd.