Chapter Twenty

The warm body pressed against him only added to the oppressive heat of the cell, but Face didn't move. He wouldn't. Even as his legs cramped and his arms begged for motion, he kept still.

Nearby, BA stood as a quiet sentinel over the group, his gaze directed anywhere but at their sleeping comrade. The big man should've been resting, but Face wouldn't try his hand at making that an order. Callaghan too kept busy, prepping strips of ripped fabric for makeshift bandages from a discarded shirt. For now, it was a needless task, but it kept the medic's hands working, his attention on something other than the patient he'd been tending to earlier.

Face watched them both for a moment longer before looking down at the man laying beside him.

Murdock had shifted onto his side, pressing his bruised forehead into Face's hip. His lanky body was curled into a fetal position, maneuvered as close to Face as possible. Quiet murmurs escaped from the pilot as he slept, his brow creasing, his tight frown trembling. The nightmares seemed to be getting worse.

Callaghan and BA had tried taking turns comforting the pilot, letting him curl up next to them, but whether it was due to their discomfort or Murdock's, the captain couldn't relax. He'd just laid there, eyes open, shifting restlessly, seeming to fight back his small swells of panic. Finally, Face could stand no more and had returned to his position beside Murdock.

It should've been a burden, something Face dreaded, but it wasn't.

"If we make it out..." Face asked in a whisper, not looking up at the medic seated a few feet away.

"When." Callaghan corrected, though the doubt in his tone was still evident enough.

Face ignored that, choosing instead to continue on. "What will happen to him?" He dipped his head, giving a nod toward Murdock, though it would've been clear without the gesture who he meant. Really, he hadn't needed to ask the question at all. He'd a good idea already of the answer, but, for some reason, he wanted to hear someone else put a voice to it.

Callaghan shifted, looking up from the stack of frayed cloth to the sleeping pilot. He stole a moment of pause, locked in thought before he spoke again. "I guess it depends on him...and on Hannibal."

That was the same conclusion Face kept returning to and one that he didn't yet find comforting. The threat of a section eight loomed too heavily in Murdock's future. That, on top of everything that had already happened, would ruin the pilot.

"If Hannibal asks you..." Face trailed off for a moment, unsure if he had any right to make a request. This couldn't be a demand made by an officer—that wouldn't work. Cal wouldn't respect him or the order. Face could ask as a friend, but, in the end, he let the favor on the tip of his tongue morph into a harmless question. "...what will you tell him?"

Cal shrugged. "Dunno."

Dunno? Face frowned. What the hell did that mean? After everything they'd been through together? He damn well wasn't going to let that answer sit as it was.

"You don't know?" The question came out with a bitter twist, which surprised even Face, even though the words were his own. "Care to elaborate on that?"

Again, a noncommittal shrug. "No."

Face shot BA a glance, expecting the large man to be conveying the same disbelief he, himself, felt over Cal's answer, but that was not the case.

It was a sad, faint scowl that greeted him. A slow shake of the head, a sign of his disagreement with Face's questioning, and that was all BA gave before his dark stare roamed back to the cell door. He would say no more. He clearly didn't want to be a part of the conversation.

"He'll be fine," Face snapped, turning back to Cal. He was surprised by the force in his own words, but he needed them to be true. Oh hell, how he needed them to be true.

"I hope so." Cal returned to ripping the strips of fabric. It had become a meaningless task almost, as the pile grew. "Only time can tell for sure. Just like every other damn thing around here, we need to wait for this. And when I know, one way or the other, I'll let Hannibal know. But, I think, by then, he'll already have decided for himself."

"So you'll just turn on Murdock? You'll sell him over? Section eight him?" Shit, Cal would, wouldn't he? A slow panic started to mix with Face's anger. This was too much.

A brief nod. "Hell yeah. Man's a pilot. If he's lost his head, I can't let him keep flying." There was a pause, a tight frown pulling at Cal's lips before he managed to ease it away. "Wouldn't want to, but..." He glanced up at Face, his eyes bright, intense. "...if I let him take a bird up and something went wrong, if he couldn't handle it, that would be on me, that would be on Hannibal and that would be on you. Just think about that, ok?"

For a moment, they held that stalemate of a stare. Cal trying to get his point across and Face too stubborn to back down. Finally, Callaghan caved and looked away, returning to his busy work.

Face kept watching the medic a few minutes longer, letting the man fidget under his heated glare. He could tell Cal kept stealing glances back from the corner of his eye, but the little man wouldn't look up, wouldn't let the argument continue.

When he was satisfied that the man had squirmed enough, Face turned away. The problem was, the more he reflected on what Cal had said, the more he had to agree with it. If things got bad, they couldn't let Murdock fly. Face knew that, but...

Shit. Assuming they managed to get out of this hell-hole, why'd Ray have to be leaving now? One more month and this could've been sorted out without any of it falling on Face's shoulders.

The thought was petty. Face knew it, but the shame that came to him was weak, stunted by his own want to be unburdened by the tasks to come. Ray had served two tours. He had a fiancée waiting for him at home. Murdock wasn't Ray's responsibility. Pretty soon, none of this would be.

Of course, maybe it wouldn't be Face's either. Maybe Hannibal's plan wouldn't work. Maybe they'd all die, rotting away in these shitty prison camps. There'd be no section eights, no one would be sent home. That had a strange, defeatist sort of comfort to it.

Face shook his head, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand as he did so.

No, he wouldn't let himself fall into that pitfall of thought. Hannibal could be a smug, cocky bastard with crazy-ass plans that never worked quite like they should, but they worked. They'd get out, and Face would have to figure out what to do with the pilot.

Internally, Face had already wrestled with the fact that Murdock probably did have ties with the Agency. Discovering that, and that the man had kept it so well hidden from him, hurt. Still, he found it changed little between them. Murdock had risked his life to save him. No aspect of the man's history could change that.

No matter what, this was Murdock. Agent or not, crazy or not, this was his friend—one of the few true friends Face had ever had, and he wouldn't turn his back on the man.

Again, the slow train of memories from that last trip to the shack started filtering back through Face's thoughts. He'd try to stave them off, but the image of Murdock strapped to that chair, helpless and weak with that crazed, haunted look in his eyes kept burning into Face's brain.

The smell, the bodies, the things that had happened in that shack before Face had come to witness the madness—how could any man keep his sanity after that? Having only seen the aftermath of what Murdock had endured, Face already had nightmares.

He looked down and watched Murdock twitch in his sleep. He couldn't begin to fathom the horrors the man's subconscious was putting him through. Fortunately, every time the captain woke, whatever troublesome dreams that plagued him seemed to evaporate. But the dark lines under his eyes, the drag of fatigue clinging to him, were proof they had been. Still, he said he couldn't recall any dreams at all, he'd thought his sleep to be a blank canvas, and Face believed him. If he could remember, those odd, lopsided grins wouldn't still be able to ease their way onto his face.

And the memories themselves, the worst of them, still seemed to be evading the pilot. The holes in what he could remember bothered the man to no end, Face could see that, but, all the same, he was thankful for the loss.

As long as the memories were gone, buried, lost, there was still hope for Murdock, but if they came back...

The pilot would turn into that feral, wailing thing that flung itself about without care, without reason every time the guards had hauled him down the halls. Frothing and yowling like a wild animal, seemingly incapable of coherent thought. Face couldn't bear that. Whatever that creature was, it wasn't Murdock, and yet, sadly, it was.

That grief sent a shock-wave through him, something that took his breath away. It was like plunging into a river on a summer day and realizing only too late how cold the glacial waters were. It was all consuming, clouding over him, threatening to sweep him away.

Face made himself a promise. If they got out, if they made it out intact, he'd never tell. Murdock never had to know. More than that. He couldn't know. What had happened in those interrogations had to stay in that shack. That was a burden Face was willing to carry.

After a few moments of strained breath, worked into a calming rhythm only after deep concentration, Face was able to gather his thoughts again.

At least Lo's threat had been a bluff. Murdock had woken up and no one had come for them, not yet anyways. They still could though.

With his memories lost, Murdock wouldn't know what to be prepared for—not that there was any way to prepare for that sadistic shit Lo pulled. Going in with a blank slate, cracking all over again, that would be the last straw for the pilot. There would be no coming back from that. And Face?

He was lucky. He'd just be dead.