Title:
Not Taken
Prompt:
072. 'Fixed'
Word Count:
200
In the first few days, when they are holed up in a decrepit cabin as far from Fort Bragg as possible, Hannibal wonders if he should have done something differently.
If he should have questioned Morrison's orders. If he should have led the Guys on a mad dash back into the DMZ once he realized they'd been set up. If he should have bargained with that greasy lawyer, instead of breaking his jaw. If he should have settled in, learned to deal with his sentence – and led the Guys to do the same by example.
None of those choices feels right, in retrospect: they don't Jazz, which is why he didn't take them to begin with. What Jazzed was taking the mission, coming back to America, clocking the lawyer, hopping the wall at Fort Bragg – so those were the things he did.
But he knows, even in these first few post-escape, what-now days, that the Jazz choices have let all of them in for a long, difficult haul – for running, hiding, never quite relaxing. It won't be easy, and maybe another way would have been.
But now, of course, it doesn't really matter.
Because now their course is already fixed.