I AM GOING ON VACATION. So, I decided that I should update before I leave so I can just enjoy myself as I pretend to be the only person on the planet in the middle of the woods for the next five days. This is likely how the descriptions are going to be from here on out - skipping over parts instead of play by play, with a few scene exceptions. We'll see. Many thanks to gaelicspirit again for being a sounding board and telling me when things don't make sense (I think I fixed them). Anyway. ONWARDS.
Time flies when you're having fun.
Or, in a Taliban prison camp.
Time blurred. Days became weeks. Weeks became months.
Or so they guessed.
No sunlight. No clocks. Temperature ambient and unchanging. The closest thing they had to guessing was just how much their scruff had grown. At least, until the Taliban caught on.
Rick had no idea a haircut could be what one would call 'traumatic' until he was on the receiving end of one, his face forced under the stale and filthy water of a bucket he refused to think about the original purpose of, his hands zip tied behind his back and a boot on his neck, holding him under. The rough hands that fisted in his too long hair, yanking at it while they used one of their own knives to hack at it.
The first time it happened, Rick was convinced he was about to be scalped, or at the very least, get a Columbian necktie.
The second time wasn't any better, because he knew enough about the Taliban to know that one of their favorite tactics was to 'practice' executions until their victims were so dulled by the repeated exposure to the blinding panic of OhgodohGod, this is it, this is how I die, that they just stopped resisting. And that was when the machete came down for real.
When they wrenched his head down until his chin touched his chest, and as soon as the blade of the knife skimmed the surface of his skin, he was shoving backwards as hard and as fast as he could, bare feet scrabbling against loose stone and dirt until he slammed them both into the wall, hard enough to knock the wind out of the other man so that he dropped the knife at Rick's feet.
There was a heart stopping moment when all Rick could do was stare blankly at the weapon, partially registering 'oh hey, that's my knife' and yet somehow frozen to the spot, his feet unwilling to move. Because diving for the knife with three other guards in the room, with his hands tied behind his back and half blinded by the water in his eyes and the dim lighting overhead wasn't an escape plan.
It was suicide.
And a part of Rick hadn't quite relinquished its death grip on the will to live.
Not yet.
He didn't reach for it. But God, he wanted to.
That didn't seem to matter to them, because they kicked the shit out of him anyway, and it was a solid three days before Rick could finally open both eyes again, and another four before he could see more than shapes and shadows. He lost a tooth.
As much as it hurt to try and chew around the empty socket of raw nerves where one of his molars used to be, Rick would tell himself over and over again that it was worth it. That it wasn't the worst thing they could do to him. He had 32 teeth, he told the others. What was one less? If he could survive South Side Chicago for twenty years, he could survive this, no problem. Really, that tooth had been a little loose anyway. He owed the Taliban a favor - they weren't any less gentle about it than Marine Dental.
Because if he told himself he was fine, he was okay, he could take it, then he could make himself believe they all could.
It was the mantra he told himself over and over, every time Thomas was gone.
We can make it.
When Thomas was first taken from them, they tried their damnedest to make sure it didn't happen. The Articles in the Code of Conduct said nothing about having to let the enemy take your friend without protest.
Amidst the shouting and the threatening, Rick's grip white knuckled on Thomas's arm even as he braced his feet against the cell door, refusing to let him go, Thomas grabbed Rick by the back of the neck, bringing their heads together so close so fast that Rick almost bounced off of him.
And he pleaded for Rick to let go.
"Rick - I am asking you, I am begging you, let me go. Let me do this. This is my job. My job is to protect you. All of you. And I can take this. I can take this. But I can't take it if it was you. I'll come back. I'll be right back, okay? Just wait for me."
Rick was so stunned that Thomas could be that stupid, he almost let go out of shock. But when he didn't, Thomas twisted impossibly in their captors' grip, braced his feet against the cell's frame, and pushed off with all his might, ripping his arm out of Rick's hands.
The door slammed in their faces before they could reach for him again.
Rick tried to tell himself that he survived last time. That despite being thrown from a helicopter, tortured and left alone in the rain, Thomas lived. Thomas came back.
I'll be right back.
Like he was just stepping outside for a smoke.
Rick clenched his fists and dug his nails into the palms of his hands until they bled so that he could not longer feel the memory of Thomas ripping himself away.
Just wait for me.
"Yeah, Thomas. Wait for you. 'Cause what the fuck else am I gonna do…?" he muttered under his breath.
He was prepared, he thought, to wait for days for Thomas to come back to them. They'd waited before. They could wait again.
Except now his nightmares had actual memories to feed on. It wasn't just wondering, trying to convince themselves that maybe Thomas was just sitting in a different cell, alone but relatively unharmed, like they were.
Instead, now he dreamed of Thomas's cold, unmoving body thrown into the cell next to them. And in the nightmares, they couldn't reach him.
Less than a week (they thought) later, though, Thomas was returned.
He wasn't soaking wet, or cold to the touch, but he kept his legs pulled up, close to his chest, and his feet off the ground as he was roughly carried, one hand under each arm with bruising force.
When they threw him in, he curled up further, hissing as his feet hit the dirt. Rick pulled him upright, but only just, his recently rough-shorn scalp slick and damp with sweat pressed against the underside of Rick's chin.
"Shit, Thomas," Nuzo cursed, looking at Thomas's feet, rubbing a hand across his head. "What did you do?"
Thomas's teeth were chattering, but while his skin was cool and clammy, it wasn't like touching a block of ice like last time. "It-it's f-fine," he protested.
Rick turned to look and Thomas's hand latched onto his, squeezing painfully tight.
"D-don't t-touch," he protested, pulling his feet away from TC and Nuzo as they tried to take a look. "It'll be f-fine."
"Oh, kid, you are hell and gone from fine," Nuzo whispered. Even TC looked faintly green.
It was then that Rick noticed the blood.
It seeped, dark and red from underneath Thomas's feet, pooling alarmingly quickly in the dirt. Rick blinked. It wasn't just in the dirt. It was covering TC's hands as the bigger man yanked off the outer pocket of his BDU pants, pressing the torn fabric against Thomas's feet even as he tried to pull them away. It was seeping into the fabric of Nuzo's pants.
There was so much blood…
Something short circuited.
Rick saw more than his fair share of blood. Growing up, witnessing the ugly half of his family's 'business', more than a few fights and being a scout sniper - he thought he was mostly immune to it now.
It'd never been someone he cared about.
And never one that he couldn't do a goddamned thing for.
He didn't even notice his grip on Thomas was tightening until he felt Thomas's fingers on his arm.
"It'll be fine," Thomas said, quietly enough Rick doubted the others even heard him, but slowly and pronounced, forcibly talking around the stutter from his still chattering teeth. He gave a wan smile, a fraction of his normal grin, and it took a moment for Rick to really connect the visual with what Thomas said.
"Who are you trying to kid?" Rick snorted. "Hope you don't expect me to fucking carry you when we escape."
When. When we escape.
Because the alternative didn't bear considering.
There could be no if, or he would only think of all the ways that was more likely than when.
"Nice to see you're taking your self-preservation seriously."
Thomas laughed, a puff of air from cracked and bruised lips, "Stole a radio."
For a moment, Rick's heart soared. It was the closest thing to hope they'd had in weeks. If Thomas managed to get a message through…
As suddenly as hope soared, it plummeted back to Earth, and Rick swallowed back a sob. Even if Thomas managed to steal a radio, then what? There was no signal inside the caves. He would've had to get out, by himself, and somehow get a call through on an open channel that he didn't know who was listening in on, and convey a position he didn't know to people who may or may not believe him.
"Sorry," Thomas whispered, ducking his head away and breaking eye contact with Rick. "I just…I didn't have time…"
Rick could've kicked himself, and made a mental note to concentrate on his own reactions. Thomas took on guilt and responsibility like sinking ships took on water. He didn't need a reason to think he needed to. "No. Don't worry about it. But what'd you steal it for if you knew you couldn't call anyone? Nothing could have been worth this."
"Yeah," agreed TC, who forced his tone lighter, as if they were just ragging on one another on the mess decks. "The hell were you thinking?"
"It was Rabbit's."
Well, shit.
"I didn't steal it to use it, I broke it."
Rick almost laughed. He kinda did. He pressed his forehead against the top of Thomas's head, smothering a near hysterical giggle against his hair. "'Course you fucking did."
Because it's pretty fucking hard to use a radio against the enemy if it's in pieces.
They bickered while Nuzo tried his best to patch up the lesions across the bottom of Thomas's feet, and it seemed to distract Thomas - and if he was honest, Rick himself - and for a moment, the bars were gone. They weren't in cages, they were at Greenie's, listening to Nuzo bitch them out about something stupid they'd done. The more they ragged on one another, the more Thomas's grip lessened on Rick's sleeve. The inanity of the argument even had him joining in at parts, and it served to divert Thomas's attention away from anything Nuzo might be doing with their limited supplies.
It was a small moment of normalcy in their shared Hell.
The weeks passed slowly by.
Thomas's injuries healed, though slower than before.
They slept in shifts, two on, two off. Circadian rhythm was shot to hell, and no one knew if it was day or night. The lights were always on. Even exhausted, sometimes Rick couldn't sleep for days under what had become their artificial sun. A thousand times worse was when the power went out, the generators having run out of fuel, or just some new form of white torture by their captors. The dark so thick and absolute, it was impossible to tell if his eyes were open or closed. It was thick and oppressive, pressing in from every angle. Rick had never been what one would call claustrophobic, but he would swear the darkness made the air thicker, the cage smaller, and until he reached out blindly for his friends, only managing to breathe again when his fingers closed on familiar skin and ragged material, he felt like he was completely and utterly alone.
As bad as the dark was for Rick, it was worse for Thomas. Thomas, who spent wherever he was when he wasn't with them in a space so small and dark that the cages were considered 'roomy and bright', refused to let go of them in the blackness. Nightmares had him bolting upright, latching onto them with bruising force. He didn't scream. He hardly made a sound. And the silence of his panic made it worse, because Rick didn't want to imagine why Thomas's nightmares were without sound. It was hours before his mind would stop racing, his pulse was no longer in his throat, convinced that the moment he shut his eyes, he would be somewhere even worse.
It was then that Rick started up their language lessons, joking that for all of Thomas's worldly languages, the two of them only shared one, and that just wasn't right.
The lessons were soothing, a back and forth ease that sounded like they were merely reading off cue cards for a vocabulary test in school.
They started off harmless enough - 'estoy como una cabra', or an idiom that translated 'I'm a little crazy' even if literally it compared one to a goat, and 'ke manu pū!' which was the Hawaiian version of 'May the Force be with you'. As the days dragged by, each of them getting slowly more proficient in the other's language, the sentiment changed.
No longer were the questions 'where is the library', but 'quiero ir a casa' - I want to go home.
They were quiet admissions that neither would ever voice aloud for the others to hear, but the privacy afforded by a foreign language made the confessions easier. Sometimes, Rick wondered if Thomas was even aware of what he would say aloud in the dark.
Rick wondered if he did the same.
Thomas never mentioned it, and neither did he.
They got sick. All of them. They didn't need mirrors to know how badly they were faring. They could see it in each other's faces. Nuzo and Rick's pale skin sallowed to a sickly yellow. Their appetites waned. The little food they were offered made Rick's stomach roil like he was trying to swallow something alive, and eating became another form of torture. Fevers came and went, along with bouts of nausea so fierce they couldn't keep water down.
TC was the first to point out their vision was beginning to fade, and Rick could hear the fear just under the mildly irritated tone. If TC lost his vision…how was he ever going to fly again?
The longer it went on, the less they could keep to shifts. It felt like as soon as one took over, the other was being shaken awake for their turn. They were cranky and irritable and snapped at one another more than once for things they immediately apologized over. Everybody knew. Everybody understood. It was hard to have a positive outlook when your clothes no longer fit. When you had a headache and a stomachache and even your bones seemed to turn against you.
Thomas was taken again.
This time, when he was returned, he shook and coughed and wheezed as his lips turned blue and his fingertips whitened as he fought for air through the pneumonia that settled in his chest, soaked through from the rain outside.
Every night, Rick stayed awake while Thomas slept, willing every rattling breath to not be his last. The cells were too small for anything to resemble privacy, and they slept pressed in close against one another like rats in cages, and for the first time, Rick was almost glad. The warmth of the others pressed in close was sometimes the only reminder that they were still alive.
We can make it, he repeated to himself. Over and over. Because if he stopped for even a moment, he would drown in all the reasons why they wouldn't. His fists tightened in the back of Thomas's threadbare and too loose t-shirt and pressed his forehead against Thomas's now prominent shoulder.
We can make it.
::insert Loki sound clip:: Ta daaaaaaaa! Anyway, as always, let me know what you think, and feel free to come find me on Tumblr disappearinginq.