I opened my eyes, blinking several times to try and bring the world into focus, or at least that part of the world I could see, which was basically a white ceiling.
I was in a bed, snuggled in amongst big, soft pillows and some nice warm blankets. I had a vague memory of Hannibal hauling me up some stairs – I'd know that smell of expensive cigar smoke and cologne anywhere – but after that it all got kinda blurry. I was surprised, and a little touched, to find out that Murdock had left me his jacket as well. I think I can count the number of times I've seen him without it on one hand. That time in the POW camp left him with a lot of scars on his arms and back; he's pretty self-conscious about them, even now.
"Face?"
I knew that voice. I couldn't quite remember who it belonged to, but I knew that I knew it.
"How you feeling, kid?"
'Half dead' was a good place to start in answering this question, I thought. I also felt warm, safe and like I could relax for the first time in ages (which was just as well considering my limbs felt like they'd been stuffed with sand) and my mind was better. The delirium was gone, although I still felt half out of it. Kinda like I had a bad head cold.
Somehow, I summoned enough strength to turn my head enough to see Hannibal – that was it; Hannibal! – sitting in an easy chair with a book. Slowly, I felt a grin spread across my face, a grin that split my parched lips but one I was powerless to stop.
"Hannibal. Oh man. You really have no idea how glad I am to see you." I winced as my voice rasped in my throat.
Hannibal placed the book down on the table – I tried to read the spine but couldn't make it out; my vision kept fluttering in and out of focus – and pushed a glass of water towards me.
"Here."
I stared at the drink, then shifted my eyes to Hannibal's amused expression.
"Lemme guess. Murdock?"
"How'd you know?"
"Call it a hunch." I used the paper umbrella to stir the three pink elephant ice cubes, then somehow managed to get close enough to slurp water into my mouth by means of the two crazy straws sticking out the top. Nothing on this earth had ever tasted so sweet and I bullied my hand into making a grab for the glass itself. Forget the straws; I wanted it all and I wanted it now.
"Easy. Easy." Reaching over, Hannibal pulled it away from me again. "You know better than that, Face; if you drink it straight down, all you're gonna do is throw it back up again."
I knew he was right, of course, but it was harder to convince my mouth and throat of that fact. The laws of drinking with grace and refinement shouldn't have to apply to a person who'd almost died of thirst.
"You know, you scared the living daylights outta me with that phone call, kid."
Phone call? What phone call? I didn't remember making any phone call to him.
Seeing my perplexity, Hannibal elaborated. "You know, from Trake, Arizona? Four days ago? You called collect, asked us to come pick you up."
"Four days?" I echoed. That...no. No, it wasn't possible. One day, sure. Maybe even two. But four?
"Yeah, you were pretty much out of it. I had to carry you from the van to here. You never so much as twitched. I managed to get you awake enough a couple times a day to pour some water down your throat, but that was it."
"Four days?" I said again, just in case repeating it would make it easier to believe. It didn't.
"Yeah. I was really starting to worry about you. If you hadn't woken up by tomorrow evening, I was going to get you to the hospital. BA and Murdock have been keeping an eye out for Decker, but so far there's been no sign of him."
Decker. There was something about that name that was important...something I had to tell Hannibal, but I couldn't remember what it was.
"Face...I don't want to push you if you're not up to it, but I need you to tell me what happened to you."
I grinned inanely. "Uh uh. No-o-o, no, no, no, Hannibal. No. You don't need me to tell you; you want me to tell you. You're just curious."
"What, about how I could send you out for Halloween costumes here in LA and have you vanish without a trace only to reappear a few days later in some one-horse town in Arizona? Yeah, Face, I am kinda curious about that. I mean, we both know your sense of direction isn't as good as mine, but still...that's what I call spectacularly lost."
My grin broadened and Hannibal grinned back before becoming serious again. Deadly serious.
"Face, if somebody did this to you, I want to know who."
I shrugged. "I don't know."
That wasn't a bluff, although I could see that Hannibal thought it was. I really had no idea who'd been behind it. I knew what people called him, but that was as far as it went.
"But someone did do it to you," Hannibal persisted.
"Ah...in a way."
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Well, either they did or they didn't, kid."
"No. It was more like...they put me in a position where...Hannibal, I don't wanna talk about this right now."
To my surprise, he didn't protest this; instead he just nodded and said, "Okay. What about this?"
He pulled the piece of fabric out of his pocket and held it out.
I grinned again. "You still got it."
"Well, you seem to have gone through hell to get it to me, and you were pretty determined for me to take it back in the van, so I figured it must be important. I just have no idea what it is."
"That, Hannibal, is the Halloween costume you sent me out to get."
"I see." He examined the scrap of cloth again. About the only thing it could be used for was an eye patch. "Face...I know I said I didn't want anything too big or cumbersome, but this is ridiculous."
My grin broadened into a laugh that verged on hysteria. When Hannibal started looking concerned, I managed to stop it, although it was a struggle. It felt good to laugh, like turning a valve to ease pressure.
"Yeah, well, sorry. I had to use the rest of it for something else."
"What was that?"
That was the one question I'd been hoping he wouldn't ask. Hannibal has something of a knack for that.
"Can we add that to the list of Things I Don't Wanna Talk About?"
Again, he surprised me by saying, "Alright. But this is just a postponement, kid; we are going to talk about them, so if you think I'm going to conveniently forget, you better think again."
I groaned. That guy knows me far too well.
"In the meantime," Hannibal added, "I picked up some stuff for that sunburn of yours. Think you can sit up a little more?"
Sit up? Man, if Hannibal had something to soothe the stiff inferno of my skin, I'd tap dance barefoot over broken glass for him.
I needed his help, of course – after the grueling procedure of taking a drink of water, my arms had joined my legs on strike – but once I was sitting upright, I managed to more or less stay upright.
"If you turn around, I'll do your back," Hannibal offered.
I turned obligingly, although rather slowly. Moving was agony; my muscles and ribs were screaming at me and I was so stiff with sunburn I thought I could hear my skin crackling and snapping every time I so much as twitched.
He touched my shoulder and the pain intensified, agony mixing with cool, blessed relief as Hannibal applied the salve. I knew him well enough to know he was being as gentle as he could, but gentle wasn't gentle enough and I winced.
"Sorry kid."
"It's okay." I tried very hard not to flinch again as he went over my ribs.
"You'll have to get those taped once the sunburn's gone down," he told me, then I felt him pause in his salving. "What happened to your arm?"
"Huh?" I lifted my arm and examined it. Bruised, sure, a couple cuts that I noticed someone – Hannibal, probably – had already cleaned for me, but nothing too serious.
"The other arm, kid." This in a nice try tone, although it had been an honest mistake on my part.
I checked the other arm and came face to face with a patch of gauze I knew hid a chemical burn.
"Acid." I remembered that one only too well, not least because of Decker's little stunt with the baseball.
"What?"
Too late, I also remembered the promise I'd made to myself never to breathe a word about what had happened, especially not to Hannibal. Not because I didn't trust him – about the only person I might have trusted more was Murdock – but because I didn't think he'd believe me. Hell, I wasn't sure if I believed me, and I was me.
"Uh. Did I, uh, did I say acid? Slip of the tongue. What I meant was, um..." I could feel the words there in my mind, but somehow all lines of communication between my brain and my mouth seemed to have shorted out. "Uh...that is..."
He relented. "Alright, kid, alright. Don't hurt yourself. You can make up something to tell me later."
I glanced around. The room looked vaguely familiar, but my poor, battered mind couldn't quite place it.
"Where am I, anyway?"
"In my spare room. I wanted to keep an eye on you until you were fully recovered. Murdock was here until about two hours ago, when I ordered him out to the couch to get some rest. He made me promise to give you that glass of water though."
"And his jacket." I pulled the flight jacket out from under my head; there was something hard in the pockets that wasn't too comfortable to lie on. Like I said, I was kinda touched. Murdock and his flight jacket are like BA and his gold, or Hannibal and his cigars. Separate them at your own risk. Hannibal grinned. "Well, you didn't give him much choice on that one, Face. It was all I could do to persuade you to give the guy his hand back."
I cringed, already painting the worst, most humiliating picture in my mind that I could manage.
"I held his hand?"
"No, but when he put his jacket under you, he didn't quite manage to pull away in time." Hannibal's grin broadened. "You just rested that weary little head of yours on his wrist as well as his jacket."
I winced. I couldn't quite decide whether this was better or worse than holding hands, but I didn't much like either.
"Oh man. What'd Murdock do?"
Hannibal shrugged. "Murdock's Murdock, Face. What do you think he did? He just lay right on down next to you and didn't move until we were back in LA."
I winced again. I could easily imagine Murdock doing just that, but it didn't make me feel any better.
"And on the subject of sleep, Lieutenant, I think you need a lot more."
"Hannibal, I'm fine." Sleep was the last thing on my mind just then...well, alright, no it wasn't, but I didn't want to drop off again yet. My dreams hadn't been too good lately, and besides, I couldn't shake the irrational fear that the instant I closed my eyes, someone would grab hold of me and my nightmare would begin all over again. I didn't want to say any of that to Hannibal though, and so I settled for, "What if someone shows up?"
He gave me a long look that said he knew full well what had been passing through my mind.
"Face, anyone who wants to get you, whether it's an old girlfriend, Decker and his goons, or even the President of the United States, they're gonna have to come through me first."
That was Hannibal all over: loyal to the point of recklessness. Kinda like Murdock, only not always as sane. Sometimes he could be a little too reckless and demanding, but I will say this for him; he never asked anything of us that he wasn't willing to do himself. Usually with a lot more enthusiasm, particularly with regards to Colonel Decker.
Thinking of that name suddenly brought something back to me with a burst of clarity and I acted on it before it could vanish again.
"Decker!"
Hannibal raised his eyebrows. "No, Face. Hannibal. Remember?"
"What? No! No, it's...it's...Hannibal, would you say Decker is a guy who keeps his promises?"
I could see the confusion bubbling around inside him at my question, but he answered it anyway.
"Well, if you're enough of a miracle worker to pin him down into making one, then yeah. He's honest."
I nodded. "Okay. Okay, good. Then we got until January before he starts hunting us again. So long as we keep our heads down a little, we can relax."
Hannibal sat back in his chair, staring at me. "Face, you're not making any sense. You didn't make much sense while you were talking in your sleep either. I guess that's only to be expected, but now..."
"I talked in my sleep?" I stared at Hannibal. There was nothing he didn't already know about me, so I didn't think there was much I'd be afraid for him to overhear, but still, I couldn't help being curious. "What did I say?"
Hannibal ground his cigar out in an ashtray and grinned again. "Well, you only really did it once and that was an hour or two after I got you up here. You sat up and looked at me and said, Guess I'm not a squirrel after all."
I let my head fall back onto the pillow and laughed until I choked.
"You're kidding!" I managed as soon as I could speak.
"Nope. I just said, No, Face, I guess you're not and you went right on back to sleep, and don't try and change the subject, Lieutenant. What did you mean about Decker?"
I glanced at him and smirked, trying not to look too pleased with myself. "Oh...nothing much. Just that he promised me he'd leave us in peace until January."
That concerned look was back in his eyes almost as fast as I regretted answering him.
"Face...did Decker make you this promise when you were wandering in the desert, by any chance?"
I stared at him, no longer smirking. "I'm not crazy, Hannibal."
Hannibal tapped ash into an ashtray – he keeps one in every room, including the bathroom – and answered, "Sane people can hallucinate too, kid. Especially when they're half dead with dehydration."
I shook my head. "Oh man, that's it. You know what, Hannibal? Forget it. Just...forget it, okay?"
"Face, you have to admit it does sound pretty unbelievable."
I heard myself laugh as if from a long way off. "Well, gee, Hannibal, if you don't believe that part of what happened to me, there's no way I'm telling you the rest!"
He studied me in silence for a long time, then said, "Let me get this straight. Decker – Colonel Decker, the guy who's been trying to hunt us down for months – promised that he was just going to take a vacation until the new year...and that's the most plausible part of your story?"
"I said forget it, Hannibal! If you're not gonna listen, I'm not gonna talk!"
Hannibal caught hold of my shoulders as I attempted to push myself to my feet and pinned me down again. This was a lot easier than it would normally be, since – despite the salve – my sunburn was still excruciating, and all he had to do to get me to move in the opposite direction was to breathe on me.
"Alright, kid. Alright. I'm sorry. But you gotta admit it's hard to believe. I mean, Decker?"
"You weren't there," I told him in a monotone.
"No, Face, I wasn't. I was here, calling in all the favors I could manage to try and find out what the hell had happened to you."
I aimed my best glare at him. "Hannibal, I didn't exactly ask for this to happen to me, you know? It's not like I went and got myself kidnapped just to inconvenience you!"
Hannibal stared at me, shock warring with anger. "Kidnapped?"
I looked away, cursing. He'd done it to me again. Every time we have a discussion about something not related to our current mission, I always wind up telling him more than I meant to.
"Yeah." I bit the word off at the end, letting him know that I didn't much want to talk about this either, and swung my legs over the side of the bed.
Distracted just as I'd hoped, Hannibal grabbed my ankles and swung them back again.
"And just what do you think you're doing, kid?"
"Getting up," I informed him, in defiance of current evidence.
"Lieutenant, when we found you, you had heat exhaustion, you were sunburned to a crisp and you were pretty much out of your mind with delirium. There is no way I'm letting you overexert yourself by moving around until you're fully recovered."
"I know, but you could at least let me get fully recovered on the couch so I can watch TV!"
He studied me for a few minutes and I gave him my best smile. Considering the state I was in, it was a pretty pathetic best smile and so I bolstered it up with, "C'mon, Hannibal, please?"
Hannibal took a long, deep breath, and I knew him well enough to know that I'd just won.
"Yeah, okay. C'mon."
It was just as well he was there, since I was aching in every muscle and my legs were still on strike, which meant I had to stop and rest after every couple of steps. It took ten minutes for us to get to the lounge from the spare room (my heartless commander refused point blank to carry me) and even that left me exhausted. Despite my claims that I was okay, the relief from my sunburn was making me feel deliciously sleepy all of a sudden, and I could feel my eyelids trying to drag themselves closed.
Hannibal made me some soup and a sandwich, but I was already dozing by the time it was done and he had to wake me to get me to eat. Once that was done, I drifted off into sleep again and this time he left me alone.
"NO!" I sat bolt upright, gasping for breath, a tight pressure across my lungs. I felt someone put a hand on my shoulder and promptly freaked out, swinging my fist wildly through the air to punch them on the jaw.
"Face! Face! Face! It's okay! It's okay! It's me!" Murdock caught hold of my wrists, pinning me to the couch. "It's just me."
I didn't have the strength to struggle for long, but it took several more seconds before I'd calmed down enough for him to let go.
"Oh man, Murdock, you scared the hell outta me!"
"What d'ya think you did to me?" Murdock demanded indignantly. "Faceman, are you tryin' to steal my thunder? 'Cause there's only room for one crazy guy on this here Team, an' you're lookin' at him!"
"Are you okay?"
Murdock gave me a rather strange look. "Shouldn't I be askin' you that, Faceman?"
"I'm not the one who got punched in the face," I pointed out, although I couldn't help thinking that he'd got the better end of the deal. The attack had sapped my strength and my sunburn and ribs were now screaming at me.
Helping me to sit upright, Murdock asked, "Did you punch me in the face? I jus' felt a kinda gentle, affectionate, brotherly pat."
That was probably all he had felt as well, I thought. I'd been running on pure adrenaline, but that wasn't enough to do any serious damage.
The door to the lounge crashed open and I jumped out of my skin, snapping my head around to come face to face with Hannibal.
"What in the world is going on in here?"
"Faceman had a nightmare." Murdock patted me on the shoulder, then threw himself backwards into an armchair, grinning. "Got kinda spooked."
"I did not get spooked, Murdock." I fell back onto the couch again, running trembling hands over my face. I wasn't too surprised to find I was sweating.
Hannibal sat down next to me. "But you did have a nightmare, right Face?"
"Only a little one!"
Murdock's grin broadened. "A little one. He's too modest, Colonel. Faceman freaked out; you shoulda seen him!"
"Murdock." Hannibal shot him a look that I could read all too easily as not now, then looked back at me. "Are you okay?"
You know how it is when something serious strikes you as funny? You don't understand why, but it does, and before you know it you're giggling like a lunatic? Yeah, well...that's pretty much what happened to me. I stared at Hannibal for a few seconds, then something inside me snapped like a rubber band that had finally been stretched too far and I started to laugh.
I was still laughing when I felt something like a bee sting my neck and slithered into darkness.
"...What?" I managed.
I was back in bed, nestled in among those same big pillows and tucked up underneath those same warm blankets.
"How you feeling, kid?"
It was such an overwhelming sense of deja vu, right down to Hannibal's question, that I found myself wondering if my waking up and cracking up in the lounge had all been some kind of dream.
"What...?" I said again.
Understanding my confusion, Hannibal tapped the familiar looking bottle next to him and I frowned.
"Isn't that what we use on BA?"
"Yeah, but it works just as well on you." This with a touch of humor, although I couldn't help noticing that Hannibal had a syringe on standby, just in case I lost it again.
"Oh man, Hannibal, I'm sorry. Guess I freaked you out, huh?"
He shook his head. "You didn't freak me out, Face, but you didn't look like you were going to stop any time soon either. I had to do something to calm you down."
"How long—"
"Only about eight hours or so. How's your sunburn?"
"Painful," I admitted. In fact that was something of an understatement; the blankets felt like sandpaper against my skin and my cracked ribs were now singing grand opera.
"I'll get some more salve on in a minute. You still want to recuperate on the couch?"
I managed a grin. "Yeah...translation, you just wanna keep an eye on me to make sure I don't go permanently insane."
Hannibal rolled his eyes and helped me to my feet. "Face, you're overdramatizing. You're in shock, you got a little hysterical back there, but that is not the same thing as insanity, even if you did have a particularly bad attack. C'mon."
My legs felt a little better now, although it still took a long time to get into the lounge and down onto a couch, even with Hannibal's help.
"How much longer am I gonna be this way?" I demanded as Hannibal started salving my back again.
"I'm not too sure, Face. At least a few weeks, I would have thought."
"A few weeks?" I tried to turn around, failed and almost spilled myself sideways onto the floor.
Hannibal caught hold of my sunburned arm and pushed me upright again, ignoring my yelp. "At least. Longer if you keep trying to push yourself."
"But a few weeks?" I couldn't help it; I hate being ill and/or helpless. That's a hangover from my days at the orphanage, when it was constantly being drummed into us to smile, be polite, be nice, healthy Stepford kids, don't cry, don't complain, keep your troubles locked up deep inside you and never mention them to anyone; after all, adoptive parents don't want damaged goods, do they? In my case it made no difference, but even so...it's a hard lesson to unlearn.
"Lieutenant, you almost died out in that desert. You can't shake that off in a couple days. Now hold still unless you want me to leave you to your sunburn."
I held still obligingly. My sunburn was slightly better now – I guess the past few days I'd spent here asleep had helped some – but I had a long way to go yet.
Hannibal's hand brushed against my side and I sucked in my breath. With the sunburn and heat exhaustion in the desert, I'd almost forgotten about my ribs.
"I'll get you some painkillers in a minute, Face." I felt him pause, then he said, "What did you do to them?"
I tipped my head back and grinned at him, a little inanely. "Well, Hannibal, let's just say that in future I'm going to be tying my bootlaces very securely, hmm?"
"...Right." That same concern was back in his eyes. "Because I noticed a slight indentation in your chest, and it looks like something or someone tried to crush you."
I was still a little muddled from the sedative, otherwise I'd never have been stupid enough to say what I said next.
"Yeah, that was pretty much it."
"What?"
"Oh. Uh." I looked away, mind racing. "Did I say—"
Hannibal caught hold of my jaw and turned my head back to face him. "Yes, Face, you did say that, and don't even think of telling me you didn't! You've got acid burns, cracked ribs, not to mention who knows how many other scrapes and bruises. Add that to the fact that you were wandering half-naked in the desert for who knows how long and frankly, I'm amazed you're alive at all."
That set me off giggling again, although this time I managed to stop myself after a few seconds. "Yeah, Hannibal. So am I."
"What happened to you, kid?" Hannibal asked very quietly. I knew that tone: it meant trouble. Not for me; for whoever was responsible for doing this to me.
I opened my mouth, shut it, then opened it again long enough to say, "Hannibal...no. I can't. Not to you."
"Why not?" A casual observer wouldn't have heard anything out of place, but I knew him well enough to know that he was a little hurt by such a flat declaration.
"Because you'd never believe me. No one would."
He shrugged. "So?"
I have to admit, I didn't have an answer to that.
"Face, it doesn't matter whether I believe you or not. I'll listen and I think it'll do you good to get it off your chest."
I couldn't argue with that, but I still thought Hannibal would toss me into a straitjacket as soon as I told him. And I couldn't handle that idea; he's one of the very few people in the world (the others being Murdock and, to a slightly lesser extent, BA) whose opinion matters to me.
"Oh, and by the way," Hannibal added, "I think this belongs to you."
He reached into his pocket and passed me a familiar looking spark plug.
"You didn't seem to like the idea of giving it up, so I figured it might be important," he added as I grabbed for it, snatching it out of his hand so fast my fingernails scratched his palm.
Yeah, yeah, I know it was pathetic. I also know that if BA found out, he'd make my life hell about it until the day I died (at least if his treatment of Murdock was anything to go by) but I couldn't help any of that. If I was going to relive what had happened to me, I wanted a source of comfort and security. I wanted my spark plug. If nothing else, it was a kind of flimsy proof that I hadn't dreamed it all, that it really happened. And, I suddenly realised, I wanted something else.
"Hannibal, where's Murdock?"
Hannibal shrugged. "Last I saw him, he was trying to roast peanuts. Why?"
"Can you get him in here? Right now?" Not because I wanted him to hear, but because I wanted someone around who sounded even more crazy than I was about to.
He looked a little surprised, then nodded. "Sure, kid."
Murdock came willingly enough (apparently the experiment to see if you could roast peanuts by soaking regular ones in salt water and blasting them in the microwave wasn't going too well) and promptly set about poking my feet until I moved them up enough for him to sit down.
At least I still had my spark plug. It seemed crazy now how much store I'd set by that one little thing, and yet the part of me that could still remember being delirious in the desert also remembered how and why.
Well, we all had our little items. Murdock had his flight jacket and/or baseball cap, BA had his gold, Hannibal had his cigars and now I had my spark plug.
Oh god, maybe I really was crazy.
"Whatever you tell me, kid, you're still a member of the Team," Hannibal added.
"Yeah, exactly, Faceman." Murdock edged closer and patted me on the knee, which was one of the less sunburned places on my body. "I mean, c'mon, if they let me stay, they gotta let you hang around. Even if you are Looney Tunes."
I really could have done without that little addendum, but that was beside the point. At least Murdock wasn't likely to bail on me. Hell, if the colonel did decide I was nuts, maybe I could bunk with him in the VA.
"I...it just...it sounds too crazy. Like the plot for a low-budget, tacky horror movie."
Murdock shook his head, clicking his tongue. "Face, you are sittin' in the same room as the Killergator, the Gila Monster and the Aquamaniac. Hannibal here knows all about low-budget, tacky horror movies, so I doubt anythin' you gotta say is gonna shock him."
Hannibal gave Murdock a long look but – for once – didn't rise. Watching him, I thought for a horrible moment I was going to get the giggles again.
"An' I got crazy covered," Murdock added, "so really, Faceman, you ain't got nothin' to worry about."
So I told them. I started right at the beginning, when I first woke up in that damn cellar, and continued right on through until I got to the point where Decker and I parted company. I even told them about Nadia, and everything that had happened with her. That took some doing. I seriously didn't like to dwell on that – who would? – but if I was gonna tell them, I was gonna tell them everything.
I only hoped they wouldn't have me committed at the end of it.
So, next up, Face's story begins ;-) In the meantime, hope you liked this so far and if you read, please review!
