Author's Chapter Notes:
Unbeta'd as usual. Contains graphic language and possibly disturbing images.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their various owners. All others belong to me.
She managed to squeeze a great portion of the moisture from her hair, and used the damp portions of the towel to do a cursory wipe of her melted face. She was beginning to wonder, these days, why she even bothered to wear makeup.
"What did you do with the kittens?" She asked off-handedly. He made a right turn onto Lakeview Circle.
"We kept them all. Plenty of mice wherever there's grain. Welcome place for a cat. Spite was all that was, throwing them in the pond like that. Could've just given them to us. I've no respect for a man that'll hurt an animal like that."
The rain beat a steady rhythm against the windshield, and she listened to the wipers thumping through arc after arc across the glass. With the roar of the heater and the warmth of the towel slung around her shoulders now, she began to feel heavy, very sleepy, and she began to be very much aware of how little rest she had gotten the night before. It wasn't long before things began to get curiously dark outside, and then suddenly she was awoken by a gentle shake. She started, for a moment unable to recall exactly where she was.
"Hate to wake you up, kid, but if I'm going to take you home, exactly where is home?"
"God, I fell asleep…" Harley muttered, reached up to move her glasses out of the way, sighed and rubbed at her face, cleared her throat and straightened up. "Where are we… where are we at right now?" Her voice cracked mid-way through.
"I just got off the ring road," he said, dismissively. She'd dozed off for only a few minutes, then.
"Alright. Go ahead and take a left up here at the light, stay in your right lane and just jump on 556."
"Like I'm going to the base?"
"Yeah, but you're gonna take the last exit before the main gate."
"I know where I'm headed then."
"Good." She barely succeeded in covering a yawn, and he laughed, glancing her way.
"You gonna fall asleep on me again? Back in the day, a guy was nice enough to give a girl a ride home, you made polite conversation with him even if you didn't like him but you modern girls… you always want something for nothing…"
"Gas, grass, or ass, nobody rides free?"
He grinned at her. She leaned back in the seat and lay back against the headrest.
"No, I think I'll try and stay conscious for a little while."
"How considerate of you. Regular southern bell, you are."
She laughed and glanced out the window.
"So, what, are you some kind of green-freak?"
"Huh?" There was nothing outside the window to hold her interest, just gray, rain-drenched streets. She looked back to him.
"No car?"
"Oh… no. I just don't feel like there's any use owning a car in a city like this."
"Except when the buses aren't running."
"Well, I could have hoofed it back into city limits and picked up the Metro at 123rd Street."
"If you didn't die of pneumonia on the way."
"Basically," she laughed.
He made a right turn and looked to her again.
"You're lucky I was running late today."
"Oh? What happened?"
He frowned softly. "Orderlies are short-handed today. Caruthers asked me to help him out in the morgue."
Harley's face twisted into a grimace. "Sounds like fun."
"Oh yeah," he said, shaking his head. "It was a real blast." He was quiet for a long time. "It's strange. Ain't nothing right with an old man being the one to put a young man on the slab. Seems like these kids just keep getting younger and younger. Eighteen doesn't seem to mean as much anymore. I remember the day I turned eighteen I thought I had the world by the ass and a downhill drag, and now? Now, here I am filling body bags with kids who ain't shaved more'n five times in their life, went off to war thinking it was all target practice and suntans, and all they get is a body full of bullets and a medal pinned to a chest that don't rise or fall no more. There's some poor Mama out there waiting to see their little boy home, and all they're gonna get is a pretty little speech about how he served his country well, and a folded up flag. There she is left wondering why his country didn't serve him better than it did."
"It's hard, I know. I don't like seeing death anymore than the next person. But there will always be death. People forget that the end result of war is always going to be that someone is going to end up dead. Sometimes it's us, sometimes it's them, but either way, some mother somewhere is crying, every single day of the year."
"The old shouldn't have to bury the young." He said, with a final shake of his head.
Harley pursed her lips, brushed at a piece of lint on her skirt that wasn't really there at all. The rain beat harder on the windshield as they picked up speed, and merged smoothly onto the interstate.
"Parents shouldn't have to watch their children suffer in hunger and sickness, but they do, even in our very own country. It's just a fact of life. We live and breathe, and then we die. Some just do it quicker than others."
He sighed, shook his head briefly before he glanced her way again. "You've got a rather bleak view of the world, Lieutenant."
"I like to think of it as realism, Wilhelm, not pessimism." Outside the window, the sound-barrier walls gave way to barbed wire and chain link fencing as they drew closer to the base. "I struggle to maintain my faith in humanity. When I was young, I believed in the innate goodness of a person, but as I get older… I begin to wonder whether it's really goodness that thrives in the heart of each person, or whether it's something darker. People fight and kill for food, for land, in the name of money, of pride, out of a belief that they are better or stronger, smarter or more moral than someone else. People kill for fear, and lust, anger and jealousy, but how many people act out of love, compassion, understanding? How many people will do something that does not benefit them, simple because it's the right thing to do?"
"Not everyone's so bad," he said, and his expression was almost sad as he looked her way before staring straight ahead again. "If there's no good left in the world, then what's the point of fighting in the first place? If there's nothing left for us to fight for?"
She frowned deeply, shifted uncomfortably, and tucked one leg up beneath her.
"Because, Captain, war is an end unto itself. We fight simply to fight. We fight in order to know that we're alive: to stop a heart, and have yours beat all the harder for it. We kill to know that we're not dead ourselves. The dead can't fight back, but we still can, and we still do." She stared at her hands, saw warm brown eyes and a wicked smile instead.
That must be how just how Jack feels, she thought, how could I have ever feared him? I understand him so well…
"I'm sorry," he shook his head, and it seemed almost an answer to her thoughts. "I just can't understand that."
"I'm not asking you to," she replied quietly. "But you wanted to know. Without war, there would be no reason for us to exist."
"The Army?"
"Any of the branches of the military. I'm a third-generation soldier… I enlisted the day I turned eighteen, I've been in for nine years. This is the only job I've ever had. The Army is my life."
And now I'm thinking of leaving it…
"Thought you could only go as high as Sergeant when you enlist?"
"I qualified for Officer's Training, after the fact. Military life is all I've ever known. At this point, I'd be useless in the civilian world. I'm institutionalized."
He snorted. "You sound like some old felon up for parole."
"I might as well be," she laughed. "I've been up for 'parole' twice now, went back in each time. I'm in for life. I wouldn't know how to do anything else."
What will I do when I leave?
"You need to always keep that in mind though. I spent twenty-five years on the force, and then I up and had to start all over again."
She looked to him fully. "What happened?"
"Well… about six years ago, we've got this… 'posse' in town."
Six years, she thought, why is that familiar?
"They knocked over three or four of those check-into-cash places. Real bunch of cowboys, fancied themselves outlaws. They were good in the beginning, we had no leads on them at all, but they got cocky, got bolder and bolder, got sloppy. We cornered them down on the west side, they took off up at I-15, tear-assing up the highway, putting plenty of people in danger, six or seven cop cars in hot pursuit. They're pushing the engine hard as it'll go, but we got a couple of Mustangs in our pack, and they can't keep ahead of them. Three cars come together, force them off the road. They… flipped five times, ended up in the middle of a soybean field out there near Buxton. One guy, in the backseat, he wasn't wearing his seatbelt. He was thrown from the vehicle, got crushed, dead on impact, you know.
"The other little guy, he busts his head on the steering wheel, and he's out like a light when we get to him, he's bleeding all over the place. But the third guy… the big guy… He's up and running when the car stops, and by the time we get out to them, he's long gone. Field was newly plowed, so he left tracks. Field buts up against Breedlove Swamp on two sides, a housing development on the other, and the tracks are leading into the swamp. We set up a perimeter, surround the area as best we can, and call in our K-9 units, and let 'em loose. Dogs are going crazy, apparently the guys hurt, bleeding pretty well, but they lose the scent in the swamps. Guy's smart, he's cutting across the water, trying to lose the dogs, and all but one of them is thrown off. One dog, named Lucifer, he gets the idea he still knows where the guy is headed, so they set off deeper into the swamp, three cops and the dog. The two that are with her, big, heavy, clumsy fucks, they get bogged down in the muck, but Lorelai, she just keeps going. The dog's getting louder, they're getting closer, and pretty soon they lose sight of her."
Six years… "Lorelai was…" she trailed off, and he picked up the sentence as though she had never stopped.
"My wife," he nodded.
She shifted again, looked out the window. She was almost home.
"What happened then?"
"She… she shouldn't have been alone out there. She was this… tiny little thing. She had bones like a bird. I always felt like if I held her too tight she'd break to pieces in my arms. She should've had back-up more'n those worthless bastards she was with. They got loose, eventually, went to look for her. Couldn't hear no noise, no barking, no yelling, no gunshots. When they got to them, the dog was already dead… had blood all over his mouth, apparently he got the guy before he broke his neck but…. Lorelai was still alive. She was tough as nails that girl. She'd swallowed some of her own teeth, and she was… choking… on all the blood, drowning in it. He beat her to a pulp, broke every bone in her face. They said the only way they knew it was her for sure was her nameplate. She was completely unrecognizable, she couldn't open her eyes, couldn't breathe through her nose it was broken so bad, couldn't even talk.
"Her mouth was a mess, broken teeth, and her lips all torn up and swollen. Shock was setting in, but they couldn't move her, she was in too much pain, just screaming hysterically every time somebody touched her. They called in an ambulance crew, and they set out on foot to carry her out, but they never got to her. She lay right there in that swamp and died, twenty-five years old. We'd been married for two years that past week. If it would've happened three days later, she wouldn't have been in town at all. We would've been in St. Lucia for our anniversary, but instead… Instead she just bled out into the mud, lay there and suffered and died, all alone. They wouldn't let me see the body afterwards, funeral was closed-casket. They told me she wouldn't have wanted me to remember her like that… but all I saw it as was I never even got to say goodbye to her."
"I'm sorry," she said softly.
"If I had a dollar for every time somebody said that to me I could build a Taj Mahal in her honor."
"Did you ever…"
"Get him? Yeah. He was arrested. Never let me near the case, though. Probably for the best. He never would've made it to court if I'd gotten my hands on him. It was too much… after that, I couldn't walk through the precinct without seeing her… smelling her… she was everywhere, and it just drove me crazy… so I quit, and I fell back on Security… like most ex-cops do… He… uh… he got his in the end though, I guess. See, even prisoners, they got their own code of honor. Turns out the reason the guy was running so hard was he had outstanding warrants three counties over… Raped and murdered a little five year old girl. Those guys… The prisoners call them Baby Killers… Word got out, I guess… They found him in the bathroom in county lock-up in a pool of his own shit and blood, with a plunger shoved so far up his ass it tore through his guts."
Another grimace creased her forehead, but when he glanced her way her eyes seemed more sad than judgmental. "He suffered before he died… but I'll never shed a tear over what happened to him. He'd gotten enough tears from me. Now... now you know why I say the old shouldn't have to bury the young..."
The silence stretched between them.
The engine quieted and slowed as they took the exit ramp onto Fifth Street. Harley straightened in the seat, and pointed out into the gray.
"Take a right. It's the big building up here. You'll take a left onto MacArthur Place, the first parking lot's fine."
He nodded, and did as she said, guiding the truck into an empty spot marked RESERVED, and placing it in park. He reached into the back and withdrew her purse and briefcase. She exchanged them for the damp towel, which he tossed back where he had found it.
"Do you usually carry around towels for soggy passengers?"
"I was a Boy Scout," he quipped, but the joviality in his voice seemed forced, his smile hollow.
"Thank you for the ride home." She looked down into her lap, before glancing up to him again. The hand that reached for his arm was tentative and slow. He stared at it for several long moments as though he didn't know what to make of it. He looked up to her, finally. She opened her mouth, but found herself to be at a loss for words. She squeezed his forearm lightly, before letting go. "You're a good man, Wilhelm," she said, and opened the passenger door. Her soles tapped on the concrete before he spoke again.
"I still don't know what I'm looking at."
She looked back to him. "What?"
"The notebook. Still doesn't make any sense to me. I'm working on it… s'all I mean."
"Thank you," she said softly.
He shook his head dismissively, waved her off with a single hand. "Get inside before you drown, little girl."
She smiled weakly and nodded. The rain plastered the hair to her forehead.
"Thank you," she said again, and shut the heavy door firmly. Her shoes squelched again as she climbed the sidewalk and jogged toward the front entrance. Inside now, she felt miserably cold, and she huddled into a ball as she trudged resolutely to her mailbox.
"That you, Quinzel? You look like a drowned rat."
"So everybody keeps saying," she snapped, turning to face the middle-aged man behind the front desk before jamming her key into the lock.
"You in some kind of trouble?"
Her stomach dropped. She froze, turned slowly around to him again.
"Why would you say that?"
His eyebrows were raised. "Had two MP's show up here about an hour ago. Wanted in your apartment. Told him they could have the keys when I had a warrant. They didn't like that too much, though. Said they'd be back."
Her eyes darted up the hallway. Empty. She looked back to him hurriedly.
"I never came home, Jake."
The older man peered at her suspiciously. "You are in some kind of trouble, aren't you?"
"You never saw me," she repeated slowly, stressing each word. He frowned for a moment, before he gave a curt nod.
"Yeah. You better take off, kid." He threw a thumb at the door quickly.
She wrenched the key out of the lock again, left her mail, and sprinted for the elevator.