A few hours later, I find myself in front of Steph's door. Freshly showered, contemplating again, if this is the right way of doing this. Showing up unannounced.
I know from Tank that she is home today, but maybe I should have called first, ask her to meet me somewhere, but what I have to say cannot be heard by anyone else, which would only leave her apartment or mine as the only options. Depending how this will go, her apartment is the better choice. Somewhere she feels safe and comfortable.
I take a deep breath and knock.
When she opens the door a few seconds later, I release a breath I wasn't aware I was holding. "I was wondering how long it would take you to knock," she says at the same time as I tell her "You are a sight for sore eyes." Her smile widens and relief floods every corner of my body while running my eyes all over her. Babe looks good. The Bruises are gone and so are the bags under her eyes, now that she no longer gets called out at all hours of the night. Her hair is longer and she has put on a little weight in all the right places.
"You want to come in?" Steph asks and steps aside.
"Thank you." I nod and walk past her. Looking around, I see nothing has changed in her flat. It still looks the same as the last time I was here. Only that she doesn't know that I know her place. It is something I have kept from her and I don't know how she will react to that piece of news. "You knew I was in front of your door?"
"Reception called that I had a visitor." She shrugs.
"Ah" I nod. "How are you?"
"I am good. And how are you?" She leans back against the door that is now closed, while running her eyes all over me. "You look good. When did you get back?"
"This morning and how I am is still to be determined." I reply honestly. Despite feeling ready to come home, it is a little unnerving being back. When I drove down, it was the uncertainty I was facing that made me a little unsettled. Would my friends see that I am better and still let me run my company or would they declare me unfit, after everything that has happened? Now that that part is cleared up, it is the uncertainty I face in regards to Steph. Never in my life have I been this unsure. I have always been someone who knew what he wanted and went for it, consequences be damned. Join the Army and become a Ranger, done. Quit the Rangers and start Rangemen, done. Open up multiple Rangemen locations, done.
"Would you like some coffee?" Babe asks, walking past me to the kitchen.
"Yes, please" I answer and follow her, taking a seat at the kitchen table. "I brought your car back" I tell her and place the keys on the kitchen table."
"That is very much appreciated" She smiles over her shoulder and once the coffee is ready and she has fixed her cup the way she likes it as well, with a mountain of sugar and milk, Steph joins me at the table. "Thank you for loaning me a car."
"I wasn't about to let you drive around in Big blue again." I shrug and then admit honestly "I don't know how to start this."
"Just start at the beginning" She shrugs.
I nod and take a few moments to think of the right words. For months I had the chance to think of what I would say to her and none of it seemed right in my head. I hear Trainor telling me 'You trusted her before with sensitive information, so trust her with this and tell her the truth.' "Les and I grew up not far from each other and did pretty much everything together. We got in a lot of trouble, because we were always out and about, because my home life wasn't a happy one. My parents worked really hard their whole lives to give us better opportunities than they had, but that also came with a lot of pressure and expectations for my sisters and me.
My father was a drunk, he never hit us or anything, but he wasn't nice. He hated his life and counted on me to set an example for my sisters. So the more pressure he put on me, the more I acted out. Got in trouble with the law as well and the judge gave me the option, Military or prison. I choose the Military." I shrug. "It gave me a chance to get out of my house. Les joined as soon as he could, much to his parents' dismay. In Basic Training we met Tank. The three of us pushed each other through and decided we wanted more. We signed up for Ranger School and that is where we met Bobby. The four of us became a team, did many missions together and then formed Rangeman when we got out, as you know."
I pause to take a sip of my coffee and then continue. "But we needed more money, so we signed a two year contract with the Military, Special Ops. I liked it, I was good at it and it provided me with a lot of money to put back into Rangemen, which is why I kept extending my contract, when the others had had enough. Someone had to run Rangemen in my absences anyway.
But this job….this job demands so much and it damages so many, and I am one of those people." I swallow hard, take a sip of my coffee and then look back at her. "The wars I fought have no finish line. There will always be another dictator to take down, another warlord to make a deal with or a place to blow up. All in the name of the United States of America."
I pause and take a deep breath. "When I joined the Army, hell even when I joined the Rangers, I thought I had this Idea of what and who I was fighting for, but in the end…" I shrug "everything got a lot more blurry." I take another sip of my coffee to stall. "What I am about to tell you isn't pretty and shouldn't be repeated to anybody. Like I told you months ago, it is highly classified and I shouldn't be telling you this in the first place, but I need to be more honest with you and with my friends. If you want me to stop at any point you need to tell me, I won't force this on you, but I want you to understand what happened."
Steph only nods in consent and I take another deep breath to start the long and sordid tale. "It wasn't just this one mission that made me lose my head, but it certainly was the drop of water that made the tub flow over. One year ago I was called out on a mission to the middle east. It was only supposed to be for two months, as you know, and I really didn't want to go." I admit. "You and I were finally in a good place. I wanted to make a go of it, for real this time. So when this assignment came along, I wasn't thrilled, but I had signed a contract, which meant I had to go or be court martialed."
I remember the day I arrived in Kandahar like it was yesterday. It was hot, humid and the wind was whipping up sand that stuck to my sweaty forehead. I was met at the airport by Tom Ford, a CIA agent, instead of a representative from Base Command like usual. Ford's reputation preceded him and it wasn't a good one. Even though I never had the pleasure to work with him before, I had heard rumours. Off the book's missions gone wrong, prisoners escaping on his watch and manipulation of Base staff and the fact that he was picking me up, should have given me a hint on what was to come. "The mission changed once I got there. The CIA received Intel that a high level player was coming to town, but their sources in the region were too afraid to talk about the meeting or when it would happen, so they needed someone to go undercover."
I take another sip of my coffee and Steph guesses "because of your complexion and the fact that you speak Arabic, you were sent in."
I sigh again and nod. I remember the annoyance I felt when Ford told me this on the way to the base. "My contract stated I was a hired gun, not to be used for lengthy undercover missions, but the CIA made it clear that if I didn't comply, they would throw me into a hole and lose the key. To say they were desperate is an understatement. They didn't have anyone else capable close by and for some reason Base Command had signed off on it. I didn't have a choice, if I wanted to make it home to you, so I told them I would do it under two conditions: more money and I would be released from my contract without penalty after the mission was complete." Ford couldn't sign off on it quickly enough and my CO had to let it happen, much to his dismay, since this was above his pay grade. He didn't want to lose me before my contract was supposed to end.
"Why did you choose the latter?"
"I thought back to all of the shit jobs I did for the CIA and I was just done. Them bullying me into this job was the last straw." Every single time I worked with the CIA, shit went FUBAR. I had had enough. "Besides, I wanted a shot with you." I admit honestly and a small smile slips over Babe's lips. "I have done many things, but that undercover job, it fucked with my head. Somehow, a few weeks into the mission, the organization found out who I was and I was then held captive for months." Bile rises within me as the memories come up one by one. In a blink of an eye, I am back there in that cellar, strapped to a chair. Despite it being underground, it was hot as hell. When they brought me to the compound, I was stripped down to my birthday suit and given a thobe, a white long shirt like the locals wear, and it was still too hot. Suddenly a hand grabs mine and squeezes it tight, effectively bringing me back to the present. I smile gratefully at Steph before I continue. "There wasn't much physical pain, but psychological. They knew I would never break from physical pain… they would bring in these young women...no, not women...teenagers with older men who would…" I take a deep breath and look down at our joint hands, while trying my hardest not to let my mind jump back there. "They would cut and rape these girls right in front of me. I will never get their screams or the look on their faces out of my head….I wasn't allowed to look away, or the girls would suffer the consequences. In the beginning I would make something up in my mind that would push out what was happening in front of me, but eventually I couldn't anymore. The noises were just too much to block... Once they gang raped one of them… I was sick to my stomach for days after that."
I chance a look at Steph and find tears running down her face. She squeezes my hand again, assuring me that I should keep talking. So I do. "Then there was this young man they brought in. They told me they discovered him with another man. The Organisation made him have sex with girl after girl, claiming it was to re-educate him."
"I thought they punished gay people by death?" Steph blurts out.
"I overheard the guards talking. He apparently was the son of one of the local leaders. The guards wanted the young man dead, but feared the wrath of the leader, so they did this to him and beat him every time he couldn't do the deed." I know that the boy will become like them, raping and punishing women and girls, like he was taught in that cellar, because his survival depends on it.
"That's awful" Steph exclaims. Her voice strained, tears still running down her face. But there is fury burning in her eyes. "How did you make it home?"
"One of the young girls helped me get loose. She was a French girl, named Farah, whose parents send her there to marry one of the locals, but instead, because she wasn't pretty enough, was sold into slavery. Farah was the one who fed and washed me, because I was always shackled to a chair." Over the time she cared for me, she kept expressing how sorry she was that she could not do more for me. Farah spoke in French to me, but when the guards overheard her, they beat her for not speaking Pashto. Shortly after that she set me free. "We got to know each other and one day, somehow, she got a key for my restraints."
"I had to lean on her heavily when she got them off me and helped me up. After months of no exercise, my legs didn't work." I shake my head, pull my baseball hat off my head in frustration and run my fingers through the long strands. "Those last few days there, it was clear to me that no one would come to rescue me. I thought I would die in that cellar, my body would never be shipped home for you to bury and you would always wonder what happened to me. And to be honest I was ready to die..."
At that Steph breaks out in a full sob. She tries to withdraw her hand from mine, but I hold on while I walk around the table, lift her out of her chair and carry her to the couch in the living room. With her on my lap, I sit down and let her cry, while my hand is running circles up and down her arm. It is breaking my heart to hear that she is crying on my behalf. Eventually her sobs quiet down and I continue.
"When Farah freed me, I told myself I would make it back to you, even if I had to walk and swim all the way to Trenton." I remember the feeling that rushed through me when the shackles came loose. That sense of freedom. The joy of knowing that I would see Steph again. "Farah got me out of the compound and into a car, but was then fatally shot when we made our escape" I close my eyes and a picture of a dying Farah in the passenger seat pops into my head. I begged for her to hold on, but she just closed her eyes and told me to let her go. "So many things she will never get to experience. To me she was a hero and I made sure to bring her back with me. I made sure she was returned to her family, so they could bury her, because she didn't deserve any of this, she was just a girl...but I also wanted her family to see what they did to her. She should have been out with her friends, talking about boys, not dying in a POS car in the Afghan desert. When I called her parents to advise them that she had died and her body would be returned to France, they were distraught. They thought they had sent her there to be married to a distant cousin, who had a lot of money and could give her a great life."
"She didn't deserve any of this and neither did you." Steph brings her head up to look at me. Her nose is red, her eyes puffy and her cheeks tear stained, but she has never been more beautiful to me.
I push a lock behind her hair and then wipe away a couple of errant tears. "No, but it was my job. She was an innocent girl who got caught up in a world of evil." I answer grimly and then let the silence envelope us.
Steph's POV
Listening to Ranger's heartbeat, doesn't make the thoughts running through my head stop. While I am happy to be here with him, I am hurting for him. The things he just told me, I cannot fathom going through that. It is no wonder he tried to escape into drugs and alcohol. "I am sorry this happened to you."
"I have many past missions that are stuck in my head in a loop, but this mission was what broke the camel's back. I am sorry I let this come between us. I should have gotten help and talked to the guys. Instead I tried to erase these memories."
"But it didn't work."
"No, it did not" He sighs and pulls me closer. His cheek is now lying on the top of my head and I can feel him take a deep breath.
"Did you just smell my hair, you creep?" slips out of my mouth before I can stop it and I grimace, but then I feel him chuckle silently. Suddenly I don't feel as guilty anymore.
"You smell great." He states. "I have a confession to make."
"Yeah?"
"I loved that you stole my shirts from me, so I left them out on purpose for you." I push upright, so I am able to see his face. My face must say it all, because he shrugs and adds "You looked great in them and I loved that you wanted to take a piece of me with you."
"Like the picture and letter you took with you." Even six months later I am still reeling from the fact that he carries it around and looks at it so much.
"Yeah exactly." He nods and then pulls me back down to lie on him.
His smell, the constant, reassuring beat of his heart and his hand running circles up and down my back eventually lulls me to sleep.
Author's Note
The sentences 'this job demands so much and it damages so many' and 'The wars I fought have no finish line.' belongs to the writers of Seal team.
