TOUCHED
Part 20
Rating: K+
Author: AlyshebaFan2
Some deep stuff, a bit of hanky panky and odd thoughts about legumes. At least it seemed deep while I was writing it. I was listening to music. One has to concentrate to write 'deep' while listening to 'Play That Funky Music, White Boy' and the Muppets' version of 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Next chapter will be the roughest one to write, as I plan a twist. But anyway...harrowing tales of the past, 'n stuff.
"I suppose we should go ahead and go downstairs and eat," Alexandra said, still lying in the bed and watching as her husband casually pulled on his jeans and buttoned them. She had finally stopped blushing about that, at least. She finally swung her legs out of the bed and stood, and caught his cocky grin, but she didn't even attempt to cover herself. Instead, she raised her arms and caught her hair up into a knot, pinning it with a barrette.
"I am kinda hungry," he told her, slipping one arm around her waist and pulling her close for a slow, deep kiss.
"You're a sex fiend," she said, slapping his hand away but melting when he kissed her again. "Mm…and thank God for that."
"You were yelling His name a lot a while ago," he said smartly before releasing her and giving her a smack on the fanny.
"Oh! You scoundrel!" She laughed and dashed away from him to search of something to wear. "You know, I've never walked around naked before." She found one of James's T-shirts (lime green, with a picture of Shrek and Fiona) and put it on, and modeled it for him. "How does this look?" she asked with a coquettish pose.
"Looks better on you than it ever did on me," he grinned at her. He pulled on plain white T-shirt and pondered putting on shoes, then decided against it. "But you still looked better about half an hour ago."
"Half an hour ago, I was rid-…oh…" She only pinked a little. "Well…I was having a rather delightful time." Alexandra found a pair of sweatpants and pulled them on, trying to look as dignified as possible. But her husband's smoldering look made that impossible. She moved into his arms again and kissed him, wreathing her arms around his neck, and rested her head against his chest.
"We should eat. We have a busy night ahead of us, y'know," he told her, reluctantly letting go of her.
"Oh? Are we going somewhere?"
"Yeah. The stables. I wanna finish what we started yesterday morning. But first…food!"
"Oh, God…that's…" She collapsed against his chest and sighed, still trembling. "…so good…"
"Be quiet. You'll scare the horses."
Alexandra giggled and slowly moved onto her side, stretching out in the hay beside Murdock, who yawned.
"Am I boring you?" she asked.
"Not at all. Just…tired." He was tired. The best kind of tired he'd ever experienced, actually. He looked at her, and she smiled at him. In all his fantasies, nothing came close to this. That in itself was a little frightening for him – of all the people in the world, he would never have imagined somebody like her even taking a second look at somebody like him, and even more, she actually seemed to like him. Bizarre. Yet here she was – lying barely dressed beside him in a box stall. She touched his shoulder, and he noticed that she was staring at him.
"What?"
"James…tell me about yourself."
There it was. She wanted to know. He looked up at the rafters above, and saw a pair of pigeons disputing over territory. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything," she said. "Not because I think I can fix everything. I can't. But all these scars…they didn't just happen, and I think I ought to know. I want to know."
"No…no, they didn't just happen, and yeah, I guess you should." He sat up, fighting off the nightmare. "Okay. Well…might as well start at the beginning, huh? My mother died when I was ten, and right after the funeral, some guy and his wife came along, claimin' they were relatives and took me away."
"Were they…relatives?"
"The guy was kin to us somehow, I think. Distantly. Not that anybody was gonna claim him, and his wife was…Countess Batthory reborn, lemme tell ya. Didn't give a damn 'bout nobody." He brushed a piece of hay out of his hair and grabbed his shirt.
"So they…were…abusive…" she said softly, but her gaze was steady.
"Listen, I don't like talkin' about it. It's…I spent four years with 'em, and the whole time, I was wonderin' what I'd done to have deserved that, and how come my grandparents didn't come an' get me." He shook his head. "'Course, I didn't know they were travelin' all over Texas, tryin' to find me, but they were as poor as snakes, so progress was slow, what with the police not havin' a clue where I was. But I was ten years old – a ten-year old doesn't consider those things, y'know? I just knew I was alone and I didn't know why."
"Why did they take you?"
He shrugged. "They never said. I guess they just liked havin' somebody they could push around. So they locked me up with the cats. Seemed like hundreds of damn cats. I don't hate cats – I'm sure not fond of 'em - but I sure do hate the smell of ammonia…they didn't put forth much effort with regard to cleanin' up. It took somebody from the local ASPCA to notice – they just happened by 'cause they saw a bunch'a cats everywhere, and next thing I know, there's cops everywhere and the Beasts are bein' hauled off the prison."
"Did they hurt you…aside from the…the cats?" she asked, in a soft whisper.
Murdock shrugged. He hadn't even been able to talk to the psychiatrists back at the VA about that. "They were not…uh…very…humane…there were…was…beatings, yeah, and…" He looked at her, hoping he wouldn't see tears in her eyes, or pity. But she was just sitting there, watching him, listening. "My grandparents came and got me, and they were good to me. Real good – took me back to Llano and they had enough presence of mind to put me into…you know…counseling…but…er…the damage had been done, I guess. I graduated from school and went to Austin, and joined the Army almost on a whim. Figured I could do something useful with my life, y'know? They did all these tests on me, and I already knew how to fly – learned from an uncle who had a crop duster – and so they threw me into the Airborne Rangers and made me do all these tests an' stuff, and said I had an IQ of two-sixty-five and next thing I knew, I was in officer training. Good God, that was scary, and not too long after I got out of that, I had a…you know…breakdown."
"Are your grandparents still alive?"
"No. Grandpa died not long after I graduated from high school, and Granny died about two weeks before I had the first…episode. That probably set it off."
She moved to him, and slowly slipped her arms around his shoulders. He drew in his breath and forced himself to go on.
"So I spent a month in an Army psych hospital, and then they released me and I was sent to South Korea, and they found out I was good at languages. Snapped up one after the other. So easy – it was as if I had slots in my head for stuff like that. Slots for languages – start out simple, with Spanish, then it's French, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, Korean, Tagalog, Mandarin, Japanese…it just went on and on. They'd throw a book and some tapes into my room and say 'Learn that one', and so I would. Not like there was a lot of excitement going on there, so I gobbled 'em up. My Russian is a little shaky for some reason, but I can get by fairly well, and hell, once you learn Polish you can talk to a Montenegren. Learn Russian well enough, you can talk to a Croatian. Learn Latin, you can bluff your way through anything. Arabic was a bitch, let me tell ya, but I learned it. Proved to be useful, too, later on, when I tackled Portuguese. I even learned a few African languages – Swahili, and then I hopped over to the Scandinavian languages, and then I determined to learn Welsh and Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, and so I went for Cherokee and Navajo for the hell of it, and…what?"
She was laughing, shaking her head in amazement. "How many languages do you speak?"
"Oh, God, hundreds. I lost count. It's like switchin' gears, y'know? I hear somebody speakin' some foreign language – and they're thinkin' I don't understand 'em – and I'm hearin' 'em say some wild stuff, and I only have to switch the gears. So the Army wasn't just usin' me for flyin' and testin' choppers and jets – I've got a big slot in my head for flyin', after all. Bigger'n the language slot. I was translatin' and listenin' in on stuff all the time, by then, and was up to second looie before I turned twenty-two. So when Desert Storm started up, off I went to the Middle East. Flew so many sorties I lost count'a that, too. Precision-bombin' – you had to be able to drop that bomb on a pin, and I got pretty good at that – blow up the target only, but not the building next door, y'know? So I did. I remember havin' to blow up train tracks that had been placed between a coupla major landmarks in Bagdad, with them thinkin' we'd never go for 'em, but they sent me in to destroy 'em, and I didn't even get dust on the buildings, but the tracks were kablooied all over God's creation. Night bombings and then during the day, I was sittin' in tents with generals, translating while some Kuwaiti general or prince yammered at 'em. I can read those languages, too, mind you, so they had me readin' and translatin' all kinds of transcriptions. I started havin' trouble then. Started seein' stuff, and hearin' things, so it was off to Germany for another stay in the booby hatch."
"Sounds like you were more exhausted than anything else."
He shrugged again and began twisting a piece of straw into a knot. "I just got worse. Nightmares when I did sleep, but I usually had insomnia. Night terrors and…you know…all that. I never got dangerous, really. Only to myself. They had me on suicide watches a lot, but I never had any thought of killin' myself."
"I'm so glad to hear that," she said softly, kissing his Ranger tattoo.
"But I kept gettin' worse. Seein' and hearin' things, and talkin' to inanimate objects. But after a while, they threw me back to Iraq and put me back in a chopper, so I'm transportin' troops and pullin' 'em outta tight spots, and the bullets'd be flyin' all around me and I didn't even flinch. But I was shot down near Bagdad and got tore up pretty good, so I got send Stateside for a while. Walter Reed, then a psych hospital in North Carolina. After that, I was off and on with the Army – long periods of bein' able to cope and doin' all kinds of black ops kinds of things – classified stuff – and then I had a really bad…meltdown in Chile and got scuttled off to Mexico, an embarrassment to the Army by then. That's where Hannibal found me. I flew 'em outta Mexico in a chopper that, now that I think about it, was about as airworthy as a can of Spaghettios, but by God, I got 'em outta there."
"Face told me you flew the chopper upside down," she said, laughing softly.
He smiled for the first time in quite a while. "Yeah. I don't recommend that. Even in moments of great clarity."
"And then…?"
"Nine-eleven, of course. Off to Iraq again. I had a reputation by then – people were either terrified of me or thought I was so crazy that I was more or less harmless. I made more than a few of the bad-asses the Army managed to stuff into my chopper toss his cookies, anyway. You know – zoom in, to the rescue, and zoom out again. I was flyin' a roughed-up old Apache out of Mosul one day, and the unwashed little creeps used a rocket launcher to knock me out of the sky, and hell, I was barely up there anyway, and so I survived the crash…barely."
"And so you were captured?" she asked him, and he looked at him. He nodded. "And tortured?"
He drew in his breath again, slowly releasing the air from his lungs. "It was…it was pretty bad. Worse than the Beasts. I was able to sort of switch gears in my head, back then, when I was a kid, to get through it. But not then. Not in Mosul. When Face and Hannibal and B.A. finally found me, I was barely even alive, and…" He indicated the scars on his back. "Covered with blood and…"
Gently, her fingers touched his lips. "It's all right."
"I still have nightmares sometimes, baby. I'll have 'em now and then, for the rest of my life, I guess. They said I had PTSD from when I was fourteen. I guess the Army didn't help much, but then again, the Army didn't do the torturin', it was the enemy did that. I nearly gave up in Mosul. Didn't think I'd get out and finally started prayin', first time in years, askin' God to forgive me for all the dumb-ass things I'd done. I remembered my grandmother sayin' Christianity ain't about bein' perfect, but that it's about bein' forgiven, so I just hoped God would forgive me before I finally wasn't able to keep goin' and stay alive. But then they all came for me, so I figured maybe God had forgiven me, and was givin' me another shot. I remember Face shootin' the leader of that little group right in the head. Shot 'im deader'n a hammer. It's a wonder he wasn't court-martialed over that one, but…"
"They love you so much, James," Alexandra told him gently. "I have no doubt they'd all die for you."
He laughed. "Don't say that around B.A.!"
Walking back to the castle in the moonlight, they stopped by the decorative pools, sitting down on a stone bench and splashing their feet in the water. She slipped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. "So what happened to you?" he asked her quietly.
Alexandra swallowed and looked at the water, the moon reflected on the now-still surface. "I don't guess I have any right to refuse to talk, do I?" She looked at him, and saw that he was just waiting, watching her. The intimacy they had shared, and the painful story he had just told her, had certainly knocked down what few barriers remained between them. She screwed up her courage and looked right into his eyes. "He raped me."
There was only a slight catch of his breath, but he didn't pull away from her, as she half expected. He only nodded. "Go on."
"I was a virgin, and…well, I had convinced myself, like the empty-headed nitwit I was back then – bloody hell, in many ways, I still am – that I was in love with him, and he was very handsome…very charming, and dashing, and attentive, but I suppose the money must have been his main motivation. But grandfather knew all about him – I know he did, as he vetted every man I ever dated. I didn't find out about that until later, but Simon had a reputation with women, and it wasn't for romance. Anyway, I thought I was in love, and I thought I'd be swept into paradise with him that night. That it would be so beautiful and romantic, but instead…I just got abuse. He liked the kinky, sick stuff…and when I wouldn't do any of them, he beat me." She took a shaky breath, not quite believing she was spilling out this story, after four years of keeping it bottled up. "Beat me senseless, until I guess I lost consciousness, and when I woke up, the bloody bastard was asleep, drunk on the couch. So I ran. Just ran – I was wearing nothing but a silk nightgown, but I didn't care. We were on the Isle of Wight, and it was so cold, and I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I wanted to be away from him. As far away as possible. But he woke up, and…" She looked at James and was relieved to see that he didn't look disgusted. He was just sitting there, watching her, listening. "He caught up with me, and threw me into his Jeep and off we went into the night. God, it was pitch black. No moon, no stars – I could barely see anything, and I prayed for him to die. I prayed for him to die, and he didn't see curve in the road until it was too late, and he hit a tree. I was thrown out, and he hit his head on a tree trunk. I prayed for him to die and I was so glad when he did." She wiped her eyes and was stunned when she found she was crying. "The coroner decided that however Simon died, whatever I did or didn't do was a matter of pure speculation, as there were no witnesses but me and I wasn't talking, so they could only say 'not proven', and I couldn't sit there and talk about what he'd done…not with his mother sitting there…the poor woman was widowed, and I've no doubt Simon's father did her pretty dirty, too…and I was a basket case anyway, so…I ran. I left England as soon as I was allowed to. The only good thing that came out of the whole bloody disaster was Nick."
James took her hand in his, and looked down at her wedding ring – the ring his mother had worn – and noted how it shone in the moonlight, and how perfectly it suited her. "So I guess we've both been whacked around a bit, huh?"
"Yes, I suppose so," she said with a hiccupping laugh. "Damaged goods."
"Good thing he's dead," he said softly. "'Cause I'd kill 'im myself." He looked down for a moment, and she watched him, nervously chewing on her lip until he looked at her again. "I guess we're just lucky to've found each other, huh?" He seemed to ponder something for a moment before he smiled at her.
"He's not worth killing. He's not worth anything. And I'm extremely glad we found each other." She smiled at him, blinking through her tears. "Or actually, you found me."
"Well, even a blind hog finds an acorn every now an' then."
She smacked his arm, and he grinned. "Calling me an acorn, Captain?"
"Well…pecan then. No, wait. I hate pecans. Only Texan alive who does, I s'pect. Cashew. Even a blind hog can find a cashew."
"So now I'm a cashew!" she giggled as his arm slipped around her, pulling her to him, ridding her of her clothes as he moved her down into the moist grass.
"One nut knows another, baby. So…shall I introduce you to my can of Planters?"
She screamed with laughter, but that was muffled a few moments later, and was soon replaced by sounds that startled the horses down at the stables, and likely woke most of the servants in the ancient castle rising behind them.