Five Birthdays - Birthday Two

Twelve months on, Face’s birthday again, and a very different set of circumstances.

 

Hannibal lets himself out of the sliding doors onto the deck and closes them behind him, needing the solitude, needing the privacy before he can break down. His back thumps against the side of the house and he slides down, his ass hitting the warm wooden deck with a thud he doesn’t even feel and lets the tears wash out of his eyes. He hasn’t slept in three days, but doesn’t know if he will ever be able to sleep again, not after seeing what he has these past days... not after knowing what he knows...

 

He remembers the phone call that started it all off. Their work in cracking ring after ring after ring had obviously come to the attention of the authorities eventually; fortunately, the FBI agent who realised who they were and what they were doing was much more interested in saving the lives of innocent people the world over than sending a few military fugitives back to jail. Hannibal didn't care much either way, as long as he was a free man he wouldn’t stop looking for Face, but he knew that search was driving him into the ground, that he couldn’t keep rubbing his own face into the depths of humanity for much longer without losing his sanity so what did he care if he was sent back to Leavenworth?

 

Agent Jack Dark, however, felt the fight was still worth fighting. So they pooled resources and information and their crusade became a joint one, too late, unfortunately for Dark’s sister, but maybe not too late for Face as he kept on reminding Hannibal; Hannibal just wished he could believe him. After six months of their shared efforts, Dark somehow managed to arrange for the remaining charges against them to be dropped. How he did it, Hannibal is still not sure, he’s never really asked. Finding out that Face was a free man somehow made it all the more painful to remember that he actually wasn’t.

 

So, back to the phone call. Hannibal had just got out of the shower when the phone was ringing, he could see that it was Dark and for a minute considered ignoring it, not really knowing of he could deal with walking into another one of those places again, seeing all those destroyed lives laid out in front of him. But the news wasn’t what he had been expecting. A house in Colombia had been raided on a drugs warrant, an unknown man had been found imprisoned in the cellar, the Colombian officials had fingerprinted him... Hannibal had grabbed for the sink to stop himself from collapsing in shock. Face...

 

Dark asked if Hannibal would be ready to travel in an hour, he was ready in twenty minutes, pacing outside his apartment building, waiting for the agency car to come and pick him up. Six hours later he was pacing again, this time in the waiting area of a rundown Colombian police station while Dark signed forms and filled in various sheets and conversed with other agents in a hushed voice that filled Hannibal with dread.

 

Then they were ready to go and see him and Hannibal was holding on to the contents of his stomach. He’d seen enough of these poor sods over the last year to dread what he was going to find on the other side of that door, he had deliberately kept all of this from BA and Murdock for that very reason, but the way the guards were looking at him, the pity and horror in their eyes... He just had to keep reminding himself that this was Face that they had him back, that no matter how bad the kid was, he was still better off than he was this time last week.

 

Dark pulled him to one side, made him sit down and Hannibal had expected this, but the bleak look in his friend’s eyes filled him with dread.

 

“Hannibal,” was that a tremor in the usually unflappable FBI man’s voice? “You have to prepare yourself for the fact that Face will be different from how you remember him...”

 

Hannibal’s fists balled, “I know. How many of these cases have we seen so far? You think I’m waiting for him to stroll out of there and ask to go for a beer?”

 

Dark’s brown eyes held onto Hannibal’s and the pity he could see there terrified the hell out of him. “John,” his voice was almost a whisper, “he’s in a bad way. They needed to sedate him to get anywhere near him back at the house and since then he’s not responded to anyone or anything.” Hannibal just nodded, not trusting himself to speak, “I think we’ll have to sedate him again, to get him out.” Again Hannibal nodded, he would agree to anything just to get Face home again.

 

So they had gone in, and Hannibal had thought he was prepared, but he wasn’t.

 

They were led into a bleak, empty cell, no windows, single light bulb, and huddled in the corner, wearing nothing but a straight jacket was a filthy, shaking figure. Hannibal stopped dead and stared in abject horror; there was nothing of Face recognisable in that starved, abused form. He was immediately taken back to the film reels he’d seen as a child of the service men liberated from Nazi Prison Camps, but at least in those reels the gaunt, traumatised faces had looked relieved, comforted even that they were being liberated, the figure in front of him looked terrified still, and unaware of anything other than the private hell of his own mind.

 

Hannibal had got down on his knees and crawled forward, soft, reassuring nonsense coming out of his mouth as he inched closer. All the while his keen blue eyes were flicking over Face’s body, taking in the old, deep gouges around his wrists and ankles, the wasted limbs, knees, ankles and elbows jutting out at sharp unnatural angles, the bruises everywhere, everywhere, blue, black, green, yellow, red. The beautiful hair was gone, shaved down to white, scabbed skin and there were other marks in with the bruises, burns, scars, lacerations, welts, a scabbed and weeping wound that ran right round his neck in a ring. Hannibal found it hard to see past the sudden tears in his eyes.

 

He reached out with a shaking hand, “Face,” and was shocked by the tremor in his own voice. Gently his fingers reached the bent head, touching just ever so softly, “Kid, look at me...” and the figure moved, lifting its head, sunken eyes rising to meet Hannibal’s but there was no recognition there, there was no Face in there. Hannibal had jolted back automatically even as the figure sprang at him, the speed alien in such wasted muscles, the fury and the rage in the dead blue eyes truly terrifying. If it hadn’t been for the straight jacket and the speed that Dark moved with the sedative, Hannibal knew his neck would have been snapped. As it turned out he ended up flat on his back on the floor, semi-naked and unconscious lieutenant sprawled on top of him and Dark’s look of pity shining in his eyes.

 

So started three days of hell. The FBI had wanted to commit Face to a mental institution, Dark had tried to persuade Hannibal that it was for the best, that experts were needed to care for him now, help him get better, but Hannibal refused. Face had spent most of his life in institutions, and Hannibal had promised the kid that from now on he had a home with him. There was no way he was going back on that promise. He’d also seen the terror in the kid’s face as he had launched himself at him, and he knew, instinctively, that Face needed to be with people he knew, he needed to be with Hannibal. Plus, he was no fool and he knew damn well that once Face was in that mental care system, there would be no way on earth he would ever get him out again.

 

Hannibal had come home, entrusted Face to a private medical unit for forty eight hours, advised they kept him sedated and worked around the clock to prepare a room for his lieutenant, no furniture apart from the bed, toughened glass in the windows, reinforced door with deadbolts. Filled the kitchen with food and the fridge with sedatives and then went to collect his boy.

 

Face had looked better since the staff at the medical unit had cleaned and stitched and treated him the best that they could. They gave Hannibal a copy of his notes which he kept sealed in their envelope for now, and pots of medication, anti-biotics, anti-inflammatories, anti-depressants, sleeping tablets, plus strict instructions of the danger signs to watch out for and how to feed him up without sending his gastric system into shock. Then Hannibal had taken him home.

 

From his seat on the floor of the deck, Hannibal looks down at his watch and realises that he has had Face back in this house with him for eleven hours. Eleven hours where his lieutenant, best friend, protégé and the object of his most private and devout love, has tried to kill him no less than eight times. He has ripped off and ripped up three sets of clothing that Hannibal has tried to get him to wear, thrown the build-up milk shake mixture that the hospital recommended at the wall twice, and apart from sobbing as he tried to jam himself under the bed every time Hannibal walked into his room, hasn’t uttered a sound.

 

He lets out a bitter laugh – today is the kid’s official birthday, some way to celebrate. But Hannibal remembers the empty painful day up in the mountains last year and forces himself to realise that they at least have more hope than that. He pulls himself up to his feet and wipes his sore, exhausted eyes before walking over to the window to Face’s room, the room he gave him that looks out over the hills all the way down to the sea, the room Hannibal has been forced to lock his lieutenant in for his own safety. He can see him now, curled up on the floor like a dog, naked, not sleeping, he is shaking too much to be asleep. Hannibal can’t tear his eyes away from the dark black bruising that spreads out from between his boy’s thighs in a stain of pure evil and for a second wonders if Dark was right, if Face needs more than Hannibal can give him.

 

But just as quick he pushes that thought away. No. He won’t give up on the kid, too many people have done that already and Hannibal Smith sure as hell won’t be the next. Instead he pulls his mobile out of his pocket and takes a deep breath before he hits the speed dial for BA’s number.  

Birthday Three