Chapter 25:

The pain and the feeling of solid wall as opposed to the thin metal of the shed brought him out of the flashback. He looked at his bleeding hand for a moment, then the arms that held him upright and it all came back. His eyes flashed.

"You of all people. I should have known. Colonel Hannibal Smith is special. He won't leave you like all the others did. No, the others sent me off without me playing an active part, but of course you will first get me to admit out loud to what I am. You want me to work it out of my system, talk about it? Fine, let's go straight to the conclusion and save some time. I'm a drug taking whore, not worth being kept around. I screwed up the only good place I ever had by running away. I'm useless, worthless, filthy scum. I deserved anything that ever happened to me as a punishment for running away, for not being satisfied with what I had but wanting more. And then I went ahead and destroyed the next family that had taken me in. I deserved anything that happened then and later and right up to today. Are you happy now? I said it out loud. You did well, you helped me to work it all out; what I knew in my mind for so long has finally been spoken out. Congratulations ,colonel, you are a hero. You can leave me right next to the waste on your way out. So much for being the son of your heart."

Face shouted it all at Hannibal, only the last sentence was a mere whisper, and the colonel was somewhat relieved that at least this wasn't all for nothing, he had managed to bring Face to the point where he faced and more importantly addressed his feelings, something he could work with. If he survived Maggie's wrath for getting Face yet another injury that is.

The moment Face had finished venting his anger the pain in his leg and hand hit full force. Even though, as he now realized, Hannibal had held most of his weight he had put some pressure on his leg and it was hurting like hell. He scrambled to the floor, supported by Hannibal who eased him down instead of letting him fall. Face buried his face in his hands, unable to take any more.

Hannibal gave him a moment to make sure he was able to listen when he started to speak. "So that was your clever idea of working this out for so long? Reminding yourself every morning that you are useless and worthless and deserve whatever you get so there's nothing to be sorry about because you are not even worth feeling sorry?"

"Kinda."

"Face, look at me. You were so wrong…so very wrong for all those years. You might be damaged, or let me say you are damaged from what happened to you because it left scars at your soul, but you are not worthless or useless and you certainly didn't deserve any of what happened to you. You ran from a place where you were not treated kindly, at least not by all the people and you ran because you were repeatedly treated unfair by foster parents. Nobody would blame you for this. These people didn't even look for you until Father Maghill returned. How can it be your fault? It fills me with anger that a nine year old child had to fend for himself for a whole year on the streets without anybody taking care of him. And it also fills me with pride to know that even at that young age you were able to do it."

Face looked down again, "How…how can you say you are proud of me? I took drugs, I drank and I…I let him….encouraged him even to touch and cuddle. I'm a whore and nothing to be proud of." In a whisper he added, "It felt so good to be wrapped up in someone's arms, to be held, even if I knew it was wrong."

"Oh kid, come here. Every child deserves to be held and protected. There's nothing wrong with you liking it." Hannibal drew Face into his body and held him tight, stroking his back with one hand."We just have to hug you more often to make up for lost times."

After allowing Face a moment to gather his emotions he went on," And never again think of having done anything wrong concerning these junkies. They were no family and sure didn't do you any good."

"That's not true Hannibal. They gave me food and shelter, they were good to me."

"You think giving you scraps of food and an old mattress in a shed qualifies as caring for you? Face, they used you; used you and your body to get more drugs. Nothing they did gave them that right. Even if they had built you a castle and fed you only with the finest things it would not give them the right to use you like that."

"But…but one of my foster fathers, about a year after I had returned to the orphanage, always told me if I woke up screaming and I didn't want to tell what it was about then it was something I deserved." Face was now crying into Hannibal's shoulder and Hannibal used the chance to wrap a towel that was lying within reach tightly around his hand to stop the bleeding.

"He probably wouldn't have said it if you had told him what the dream was about."

"He would have sent me away."

"He did so anyway, or?"

Face was sobbing. It had all made so much sense until now. And now nothing fit together.

"Just let it out kid. I'm here for you."

Hannibal waited until the sobs stopped. "Let's get you back on the bed, kid. Maggie will have my hide for causing you to injure yourself again." He helped Face up. The kid had lost so much weight since this ordeal started.

"Hannibal, I…I don't feel sorry for myself, I'm okay and I don't want any of you to pity me. Please promise me."

"We don't pity you kid, we grieve for a lost little boy, and you need to allow yourself to grieve for that boy too. It's the only way you can heal."

The door went open and in came BA, Murdock and Maggie.

"We're all here for you to help you through, Muchacho. We'll grieve for that boy and remember him."

Face was wiping at his eyes. " Murdock, how much did you hear?"

"Just about everything. We didn't mean to eavesdrop but we had to hold back one extremely pissed off Maggie when she heard you shouting. I have a feeling that when she is done we may have to grieve for our lost colonel too."

"That depends on what shape his leg is in. What did you think to get him into a physical fight? And what is this towel doing around his hand? We have stacks of sterile bandages lying in this room and you use a towel to stop his bleeding. You want him to end up with another infection?"

"He's so full of antibiotics I was rather afraid the towel would get holes than him catching something from it. And it was a clean towel."

The look he got from Maggie stopped any more comment. He knew when he had lost.

Hannibal positioned himself on the bed so that Face's torso was resting against his chest. "We're going to help you work through everything…I promise. But for now just try to relax and let Maggie check you over."

Face nodded and let out a shuddering breath. Hannibal had his arms wrapped around him and he felt safe for the first time in a long time.

"I'm going to look at your foot first," Maggie said. Face winced as she began to press on the sensitive flesh. "Well, you didn't tear any of the stitches. Good thing, too, because they are almost healed. Your foot is swelling quite a bit, however." She turned to B.A. and asked, "Can you get me some of the cold compresses I have in the freezer. Hopefully that will do the trick and reduce the swelling…I don't want to go in and drain it unless I have to."

B.A. set off, and Maggie turned her attention to Face's bloody right hand. She carefully unwrapped the towel and frowned at the sight before her. The cuts appeared superficial, but it was obvious just from sight that he had done some real damage. "Face, I want you to try and open and close your hand for me."

His color paled and his face contorted in pain, but his fingers remained still.

"Okay, I'm going to feel for any breaks. I'll try not to hurt you." Maggie ran her fingers across each joint as Hannibal tried to keep Face as still as possible. He jerked against her touch; the pain almost unbearable.

In the meantime, B.A. returned with the ice. "One more favor to ask of you, B.A. Can you get the portable x-ray machine we used a couple of weeks ago? It's down the hall in the closet."

"You got it, lil' mama," he said, shooting a worried glance in Face's direction.

The x-ray confirmed Maggie's suspicions…he had a broken hand. Three broken metacarpals to be precise. Face was still lying against Hannibal, except now he sported ice packs on his foot and his hand.

"I'm going to have to set your hand, Face. It's a procedure called reduction…which means I position the bones back to their normal position." She showed the team the x-ray and explained, "you have three fractures and, as you can see, the bone ends aren't lining up properly. I need to fix that so they can heal correctly. Usually this would be done under anesthesia in what is known as an open reduction, where I would make an incision and then go in and realign the bones. However, that isn't a viable option for us and I will have to perform a closed reduction."

Face was beyond comprehension at this point. Between his hand and foot he was in a world of pain and he just wanted it to end.

"What does that mean, Maggie?" Murdock asked.

"I'm going to manually manipulate the bone fragments back into position."

Hannibal, Murdock and B.A. were well aware by now of what they would have to do. Hannibal stayed where he was; B.A. grabbed Face's legs to stop him from kicking out in pain; and Murdock took a firm hold of Face's forearm.

"You ready?" Maggie asked, looking around at the men she had grown so fond of over the past month. One, by one, they nodded and she steeled herself for what was to come. She prayed that Face would pass out from the pain, but no such luck.

The first metacarpal went back into place rather quickly, but it was all downhill from there. The second one just didn't want to go to where Maggie wanted it and Face screamed out in pain as the fractured ends of the bone scraped together. He was bathed in cold sweat and delirious by the time she got to work on bone number three.

"Okay, all set. Let's take another picture."

"Crap, just what I feared. Look here." She pointed on two tiny spots to the left of the bone, one a little lower than the break, the other a little higher. "The bone splintered. I have to go in and get those splinters out. Damn, I so hoped I wouldn't need to cut him again."

Face only whimpered when she cleaned his hand to prepare him for the incision, there seemed to be no energy left in him. That changed the moment he saw the scalpel. Between the three of them they had big trouble holding Face who had gone rigid trying to break their grasp.

"No, no please, don't. Xin, không." Maggie saw him trying to curl his fingers inside and reached out to keep them straight before he snapped those bones out of place again. "No, không, please, don't cut my fingers off, I didn't take it, I swear, please, nooo…" Finally the strain of fighting mixed with the pain and the emotions of the flashback became too much and his eyes rolled back in his head.

"Let's get it done while he's out." Maggie removed the splinters and stitched him up as fast as she could. "Now BA, I don't have the supplies for broken bones here. I need something long and hard, about as wide as his hand. A piece of wood or something plastic."

"You got it. Moments later he reappeared with an assortment of chop boards and flat wooden ladles from the kitchen.

"The ladles are long enough but not wide enough."

"Just give me a minute." BA placed two of them side by side on a chop board, cut the rest of the board off and fixed it all together with duct tape."

"Perfect, now wrap some more duct tape around to get a clean surface and then wipe it with some disinfectant for me and hold it up." BA did as told and Maggie wrapped the whole thing in clean bandages. Then it was placed under Face's hand and lower arm. She wrapped his fingers tightly on it to immobilize them, made sure to not apply too much pressure to his scraped open knuckles and around the incision and then continued to immobilize his wrist. After that she wrapped another thick bandage around to cover everything. As soon as she was done she put her fists into her hip and glared at Hannibal.

"Colonel John Smith, care to explain what the hell got into you? You were in here to stop him from injuring himself and instead you get him so angry that he stands on his leg and breaks his own hand on the wall."

"Sorry, I pushed a bit too far but he needed to vent some anger out of his system before it eats him alive. Too many bad memories are surfacing right now. And with his childhood memories it's always difficult to predict his reaction."

"That's why me and the big guy here prevented you from coming inside until they finished talking. The damage was done by then and Face really needed to let it out."

"And I held him up by the waist to stop him from putting too much weight on that leg of his."

Maggie exhaled loudly."Was it something I should know?"

"Maybe that he was given Marijuana and alcohol at a young age."

"That would be part of the reason why he has such bad reactions to medication."

"I want to remove the stitches in his leg once he's out. I wanted to wait for tomorrow, but it's healed enough. If you promise to watch him and keep him from moving around it will spare him some pain."

As she worked she asked "What was that flashback about?"

Hannibal stroked some hair out of Face's forehead as he remembered. "It was in Nam…in the camps. Somebody had stolen food and a guard accused Face. Said he saw him with food he wasn't supposed to have. They dragged him from our cage; he had been returned not long before and was in a bad shape. We pleaded with them that it could never have been him, he was with them for over 24 hours, but they wouldn't have any of it. They threatened to cut off his fingers one by one until they were all gone or the real thief stepped forward. They prepared getting a table to the place before the cages and put his right hand on it, then brought out a knife and got ready. Face was screaming and begging and just when the knife was placed on his little finger the guard that had accused him started laughing and saying something in Vietnamese that we didn't understand. The others joined in his laughter and instead of cutting off his fingers kicked and beat him until he was just a lifeless heap in the middle of the open space. They left him there and we thought he was dead. It was hours later that we heard a low moan and the guard in charge called to some others to drag him back to us. We really thought we had lost him that day. Later on the guard that had accused him came leisurely walking over with a piece of bread in his hand and said in broken English "Sorry, slipped my mind that I took it." BA almost tore the cage into pieces.

When Face woke up hours later he was still propped up against Hannibal with his leg resting on a pillow and his right arm on an even bigger one.

"Is the pain bearable?"

"It's okay." After some silence Face spoke again, "You must hate me now, I'm sorry I disappointed you."

"What are you talking about?"

"I know how you hate junkies and how you thought I was so strong, but I wasn't strong enough to say no to the drugs offered to me."

"Face, you were just a boy."

"But still I knew it was wrong. But, I just…just…"

"Just what? It's okay, kid, you can talk to me."

"I just didn't want to hurt anymore…and the drugs took away the pain."

"It wasn't your fault, Face."

"But you don't understand, Hannibal. It wasn't that I couldn't stop…I didn't want to stop. I'll understand if you want to leave me." Face moved to lean forward, to let Hannibal out from under him. He gasped and saw stars as he jostled his hand slightly and he fell back.

Hannibal held Face still encouraging. "Breathe, kid, breathe. That's it…in through your nose…out through your mouth."

Once his breathing had stabilized, Hannibal said, "I'm not going anywhere, so just get that right out of your mind. I'm not disappointed in you…quite the opposite."

"But…but…I used drugs."

"Yes, which is sad. It's sad that you had nobody else to turn to and that you had to turn to drugs. I hate drugs for what they can do to people, but I don't hate the person doing the drugs. Can you understand the difference?" Face nodded his head; a difficult task as it was starting to feel heavy. "When did you stop?"

Face's voice was growing weaker, the pain starting to intensify. "Father Maghill found me smoking behind the dormitory when I was about 16. By that point I had slowed down a lot anyway. The father's influence on me I guess. How I managed to hide it from everybody all those years, I'll never know. It never stopped me from playing sports or doing my school work."

"No, instead it just masked all of your feelings and emotions."

"A small price to pay to forget."

"But look at what you are going through now."

"I thought I had everything under control…really I did. Then Leslie came back and it was like everything started to come back and hit me at once. Guess I'm not as strong as I thought."

"No, you aren't," Hannibal said. Face's shoulders slumped at his response. "You aren't as strong…you are much stronger."

"Th…thanks. But I…I'm not…feeling very…strong right now," he muttered.

Hannibal could hear the strain and feel the trembles. "You doing okay, kid?"

"Hand…hurts," Face moaned.

"God, I'm sorry kid. I shouldn't have pushed you so hard, but you needed to talk."

"I know…it feels good talking to you. But do me a favor?"

"Anything, kid."

Face smirked in spite of his misery. "Next time…don't duck."