Five Birthdays - Birthday Three

 

Hannibal bolts awake, his eyes flashing to the clock and realising that for the first time in a year, in the entire three hundred and sixty five days since Face moved into his house, he has woken up by himself, quietly and naturally, no screaming, no banging, no sobbing, just silence. He’s out of his bed in a second, padding quickly but silently down the corridor, past the locked metal door and out onto the deck. He flattens himself against the wall and sneaks a peak around the corner into the room, his heart pounding uncertainly in his chest, wondering what he will see. He remembers the day that Face had pulled the bed to pieces and used the slivers of wood to carve up his wrists. Then there was the time that he had twisted the bed sheets into a rope and managed to get it around both his neck and the light fitting before BA found him. And of course the time he’d had a fit overnight and almost choked on his own vomit; only Murdock’s quick thinking and use of the Heimlich manoeuvre had saved him that time.

 

So Hannibal hardly dares to look, and when he does, the sight that meets his eyes takes his breath away, makes him grab onto the window sill for support before he gives up and slides down onto the warm deck, tears flowing freely from his eyes, splashing onto the t-shirt he fell asleep in. Face is in bed, sleeping, under the covers and Hannibal can see that he is still wearing the t-shirt that Murdock dressed him in before putting him to bed last night. The hundreds of t-shirts that have bitten the dust in the last twelve months, this is the first one to survive more than an hour in Face’s company.

 

Today is Face’s birthday, but it may as well be Hannibal’s because he knows that, even on his twenty first birthday, he would never get a present as precious as that one.

 

Enjoying the feel of the sun on his face and the calm silence of the room behind him, Hannibal thinks back over the last twelve months, and if he can now finally dare to hope that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for them all.

 

~~~~~~

 

BA had been devastated when he saw Face. Hannibal had explained to him as best he could what the big guy could expect, but he obviously had not been thorough enough. And how could he be? BA had not been to the house where Face was imprisoned for all those months like Hannibal had. Dark had taken him despite his best efforts to persuade Hannibal that it was a bad idea. But Hannibal had wanted to go, he’d needed to know where Face had been; have at least some idea what the poor kid had been through. But BA of course hadn’t seen the dark cellars that ran the length of the house. He hadn’t seen the cages and the metal boxes, the chains on the walls and those hanging from the ceilings. He had been spared touching the blood soaked webbing and the nets that were attached to pulleys operated by a switch in a hi-tech control console, he hadn’t frozen in horror at the whips and paddles and spiked balls, all the straps and harnesses, the collars and leads; he hadn’t stood and stared in disgust at the restraint table with its chains and shackles, stains of blood and other bodily fluids. But even Hannibal had drawn the line at the racks of DVDs carefully organised by date, at least one for every day going back two years before Face had even gone missing. The last one had been filmed the very morning of the raid, but Face had been the only occupant of the cellar when the police stormed it, and despite everything that he had seen or been told, Hannibal realised with a sudden icy chill, that at least his boy was luckier than some.

 

So, no. BA only knew about a fifth of what Hannibal did, and since those were the thoughts that tormented every minute of Hannibal’s life now, waking and sleeping, that’s all BA would ever know. And by the time they got around to telling Murdock, the Captain knew less still. Hannibal had just wished that he could protect Face the same way...         

 

But BA had soon shaken off his horror and risen admirably to the challenge. A month or so into their attempts to rehabilitate Face, Hannibal was beaten down, the state that Face was still in, the things he had seen and the stuff he had had to go through to get the kid home with him, they had all piled on top of him until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

 

He called BA out of desperation and the big guy had come over, taken one look at his CO, strung right out on the edge, and sent him off to get some sleep, but Hannibal had had other ideas.

 

“I’m not leaving him with you!” he’d yelled, his red rimmed eyes full of tears, “You were supposed to be with him the night those bastards took him! If you’d been looking after him properly then, none of this would have happened to him!”

 

BA barely flinched at that. He and Hannibal had been over and over this in the months after Face disappeared, and Hannibal had been the one who had eventually helped BA throw off his guilt. If those guys had wanted Face as much as they seemed to, then they would have had no worries about popping a bullet through BA’s head to get him, BA couldn’t have saved him, they would have gone down together.

 

But, exhausted and depressed as he was, Hannibal had lost sight of that fact. “Look at him BA!” he yelled, pointing to the corner where Face was huddled, still refusing clothes, skinny arms wrapped around his knees, eyes unfocussed and staring at the wall as he rocked himself slowly backwards and forwards. And as they both looked, the sight seemed to tear every scrap of anger from Hannibal’s frame as he just sagged onto the floor, collapsing in a way that BA had never seen before, not in the ten years he had known the man. Everything just leeched out of him and he started to sob, broken, empty sobs, staring all the while at Face who was still oblivious to everything but his own mental anguish. “Look at him!” Hannibal sobbed, “They’ve taken him, BA, my boy, my beautiful, beautiful boy... All that he was, all that life, all that spark, he’s gone, there’s nothing left!” He picked up a shoe from the carpet next to him and threw it hard against the wall where it shattered a picture frame.

 

“All he’d fought through in his life! All pointless! All worthless because they’ve taken everything he was away from him!” BA just stood and stared, as lost as Hannibal in how he should deal with this, “And I still love him...” Hannibal folded in on himself, sobbing harder now, not realising the part of himself he had revealed to his corporal, “But he won’t let me near him, hasn’t said one damn word, looks at me like he hates me, and maybe he does, after all I never found him did I? All that time I know he was waiting for me, I’ve always promised him I would find him, and I never did...”

 

Eventually the words ran out and Hannibal knelt on the floor, his hands in his hair, his face in the carpet, sobbing for him and his loss, and for BA and his guilt, but mostly for Face and for all the horrors that he hadn’t been able to save the kid from in these last sixteen months.

“Hannibal,” eventually it was too much for BA, “come on, boss.” He sank down onto the carpet next to his CO and pulled him into his arms, “don't do this,” he whispered as Hannibal just clung to him, sobbing uncontrollably, “we need to be strong, right? For Face. We need to help him out of this hole he’s in.” Hannibal just squeezed his eyes shut even tighter; he couldn’t see Face getting out of that hole ever. “Come on, boss,” BA pleaded, “you’re scaring him.”

 

Hannibal let out an ironic ‘humph’. All the time that he’d spent with Face this last month, talking to him, getting him to eat, trying to persuade him to wear clothes, tending to his injuries, and never once had Face even acknowledged his existence; hadn’t even tried to attack him since that very first day. It was just like he didn’t see, hear, feel or even notice that Hannibal was there with him. And even though Hannibal tried to convince himself otherwise, that hurt him so, so much. So the thought that they were scaring Face now? No, Hannibal was sure the kid would be in his own little world still, painfully oblivious to everything.

 

But then he had looked up, and looked straight into piercing blue eyes staring right back at him and he had frozen in shock. And BA was right, Face did look frightened, but unlike all the other times he’d looked frightened in the past month, this time, he looked frightened for Hannibal, not for himself. Without even thinking, Hannibal reached out an arm to him and Face scuttled like a crab straight across the carpet and threw himself into that arm. Hannibal couldn’t believe it, he yanked his other arm away from BA and used it to draw his boy in, feeling all the bones and the tight skin as the cold, thin form pressed itself into his body and for one glorious second he began to think that Face was back.

 

And then the moment was gone and so was Face, back into his corner and his own world, all life gone from his eyes again, but left in his wake was a hope that Hannibal and BA hadn’t felt in a long, long while.

 

~~~~~

 

Sitting out in the deck in the sun, Hannibal thinks back to how those tiny flashes of Face started to come more and more often. How they would sometimes catch him looking at them as if he knew them, how his eyes would occasionally track around the room as one of them busied themselves with dusting or tidying up or making a meal. But he never spoke, never responded to any attempts to engage him in any non-verbal conversations, still seemed to spend most of his time wrapped up in his own world, a world that would leave him shaking and convulsing on the floor, that wouldn’t let him sleep in a bed or wear clothes, a world that would sometimes consume him so entirely that he would be left screaming in terror over something only he could see, and it still broke Hannibal’s heart.

 

It was another four months before the first real breakthrough came.

 

~~~~~~~

 

They had told Murdock that Face was back after six weeks. It had taken that long for Hannibal to realise that they would not be getting the Face they knew back anytime soon, and despite how hard they knew this was going to be for their pilot, both Hannibal and BA knew that letting Murdock think Face was still missing for any longer was just damn cruel.

 

So BA had volunteered to tell him, had assured Hannibal that he would make sure Murdock understood, that he wouldn’t let the pilot anywhere near Hannibal’s house before he was sure that there was not going to be any horrific shocks going on. In the end, it seemed that no one should have worried. Murdock listened to BA’s account of everything that had happened and everything that he knew, shed a few tears of relief that Face was alive, then asked if he could go and see him. BA took him over and Murdock spoke to Face like the terrified child he was, then simply sat down in the same room as him and started reading a comic book.

 

Hannibal and BA had stared in surprise, and even Face had looked over from his space on the floor near the window, but Murdock had surprised them all and just carried on reading.

 

Over the next few weeks, Murdock came over every day with a new comic book which he sat on the floor in the same room as Face and read in silence. Hannibal took that time to shower, to make food that Face wouldn’t eat and eventually to go to the store or catch up on some sleep, and every time Murdock came over, Face settled down a little closer to him. Eventually, after a whole month of this new daily routine, Murdock had started reading his books aloud and Face sometimes looked like he was actually listening, he was also close enough that Murdock could have touched him. He didn’t though, and for that Hannibal was eternally grateful. He had no idea if Murdock was just incredibly intuitive, or if BA had told him of his inadvertent slip up that day right at the start, but Hannibal would have found it so hard if Face had let someone into his space before Hannibal...

 

So, after watching the pilot at work, putting Face at ease with his no pressure approach, Hannibal started doing the same thing on a night after the others had left for the day. He would change into his sleeping shorts, sit on the floor as close to Face as he dared, pick up his book and start reading aloud. The choice of story had proved challenging, at first he hadn’t wanted to read anything with any subject matter that Face might find upsetting, but he soon found out that that ruled out almost every book ever written. Even The Wind in the Willows had found the reject pile once Hannibal remembered how Toad was thrown into jail. But then he’d thought of the stories that Murdock had been reading, of Spider Man and Spawn, Judge Dread and Captain America, none of them pre-teen reading, so he had shrugged his shoulders and picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone smiling in affection as he remembered the way that Face used to carry it around on missions with them, ‘just in case I ever feel the need to read one day, then I’ve got something handy!’ And within a week, the kid was curled at his side, naked back pressed along the length of his thigh as he read chapter after chapter. By the time Hannibal had started The Chamber of Secrets he’d even managed to rest his hand on the stubble of Face’s slowly re-growing hair, noticing the almost-not-there twitch that the kid did every time his palm came down to rest in place.

 

The next breakthrough came months later after a visit from Agent Dark. He’d kept in touch with Hannibal, was probably still hoping that they would get to work together sometime soon, but wasn’t stupid enough to suggest it while Face was still struggling back from hell. He didn’t come into the house, Face couldn’t cope with strangers at all, even a glimpse of someone new sent him into a complete panic for reasons that Hannibal did not like to think about. So Hannibal met him at the end of the drive, making sure that Murdock and his comics or BA and his quiet ways were there to sit with Face while he went out to stretch his legs and catch up on the news of Face’s abductor.

 

Hannibal sat on the fence post and listened to the news that four bodies had been dug up in the orchard at the back of the house. DNA tests had linked them to four missing men, a Colombian soldier, a Mexican thirty year old father of two, a US college student who went missing in San Francisco and a British backpacker who disappeared on his gap year in Costa Rica. All the men matched the descriptions of those in the DVDs, plus Face of course. He seemed to be the only one who had had a starring role in these productions who had made it out of that house alive. For that small fact, Hannibal was eternally grateful.

 

Then Dark explained that the agents who had watched the DVDs had watched how the owner of the house, one Carlos Ortiz, had brain-washed his captives, threatening to kill their friends and families unless they submitted to his orders. Stripping them of their independence and free will by coercion and torture until they were unable to do anything for themselves without an order, how one of the men had simply starved to death once Ortiz stopped ordering him to eat. Hannibal tried to put the thoughts of those detested DVDs out of his mind and instead considered what Dark was telling him. “So you think the reason that Face is talking, isn’t doing much of anything really, is because he has no free will and no one to order him around?”

 

Dark shrugged, “Could be. What have you got him to do so far?”

 

Hannibal had rubbed his head tiredly, “Not much really, he will eat and sleep a bit but only when we-” he stopped short, “Only when we tell him he has to...”

 

The two men looked at each other and Dark sighed, “Doctor Tony Morrell,” he said, getting to his feet and straightening his obligatory suit, “he’s a world expert in the removal of free will. I’ll get him to call you.” Hannibal shook his hand and started walking home slowly, pondering over his conversation.

 

Dr. Morrell called the next day and arranged to meet Hannibal at the end of the drive the day after. He was keen to meet up with Face, but was also willing to wait as Hannibal was reluctant to spring anything on his lieutenant just yet. Instead the two men talked at length, and Morrell felt that what had happened to Face was exactly as Dark had suspected, that through threats and coercion and torture, Ortiz had removed the will and the ability to think of for himself. Hannibal started at the Doctor in horror. “Will he get it back?” he had asked in a quiet whisper, and Morrell had shrugged.

 

“Maybe, maybe not. I am sorry Colonel Smith, that is as clear as I can be.”

 

Hannibal scrubbed his face with his hand and looked at the doctor intently, “So what do we do?” he’d whispered, dreading the answer he knew was coming.

 

“You need to take over the role that Ortiz had in his life,” Morrell held his hand up as he saw Hannibal start to violently protest, “No, you misunderstand me, you don't need to hurt him or terrorise him, but he is waiting for someone to tell him what he can do, what he must do. He’s probably been told he can’t speak, eat, sleep, anything without express permission, and that fact that you are leaving him to do all of these things whenever and wherever he wants is probably confusing and stressing the hell out of him.”

 

Hannibal let out a dark laugh, “Face has never liked doing what he was told...”

 

But Morrell didn’t share his humour. “I imagine he was hard for Ortiz to break down. But men like Ortiz are not easy to thwart, and I have seen some of the DVDs...” Hannibal swallowed hard at the look on the doctor’s face, “The fact that your man made it out of there alive I think speaks volumes about his strength, Colonel Smith. But what made him so resilient to Ortiz’s attacks in the first place, will make it even harder for him to return to normal now. I can’t stress how much he needs you all here to help him...”

 

Hannibal had only nodded. 

 

But Morrell’s idea had proved more popular with Murdock and BA than Hannibal had thought it would. He’d explained everything the doctor had said as the three of them had huddled out in the hallway, leaving Face alone in the lounge for a few rare minutes.

 

“It makes sense Colonel,” Murdock had agreed, “If Face has been told he can only do what he is told to do or there will be dire consequences, stands to reason that it will take a while to reverse that thought in his head.”

 

“But do you really think us ordering him around is the way around it?” Hannibal had asked.

 

“Maybe it’s a way a way into his head...” BA had offered and that had been the end of that.

 

~~~~~~

 

The theory had been easier than the practice however. Hannibal had offered to start as he was the one who had the most practise at ordering Face around anyway, but when the push came to the shove he just couldn’t do it. He and Face were in the house alone and Hannibal had made a chorizo and bean stew that Face was refusing to have anything to do with. He was still only drinking build up shakes, and the hospital staff that Hannibal phoned said that he really should be back on solid food by now. So he’d brought him into the kitchen and sat him at the table, placed the tiny plate of food in front of him and told him to eat.

 

Face had looked scared to death and instantly slid off the chair and onto the floor, sinking back into the corner and huddling there, looking at Hannibal with huge fearful eyes. Hannibal dropped his head into his hands and thought. If Doctor Morrell was right then Face was too scared to eat without an order, worried about the repercussions if he did. What Hannibal needed to do was to make him more scared not to eat; make the order that came from Hannibal more terrifying to buck than the original one from Ortiz. And then he realised that he just couldn’t do it, couldn’t make Face any more frightened than he already was. But then if Morrell was right, following Hannibal’s orders should make Face feel less frightened rather than more... God, he was so confused.

 

He decided to give it one more go. Ignoring the use of the table for now, Hannibal decided that the one thing he wanted above all others was for Face to start eating and drinking normally again, so that’s all he would work on, the rest could wait for now. He picked up the plate of food and a cup of water and placed them on the floor just out of Face’s reach. He saw Face’s eyes, full of fear and trepidation watching him as he moved back onto his chair. He took a deep breath, “Lieutenant!” he bawled, trying to pretend that he was simply reaming Face out for coming back in after base curfew one night.

 

Face jumped out of his skin and his eyes flew up to Hannibal’s face, all the years of conditioning back in the early days paying off, “Eat that food now!” Hannibal barked, hating himself as he spoke, “All of it, and drink all the water! And that is a direct order soldier! Now move!”

 

Face jumped again and Hannibal watched in open mouthed shock as he scrambled to get to the plate, wolfing the food down almost in one mouthful, scraping the sauce from the grooves in the design and then downing the water, looking up at Hannibal with hunger obvious in his expression for the first time since he’d come back. Hannibal dropped to his knees next to the empty plate, his hand out and Face moved into it, letting Hannibal stroke through his re-grown hair, stroking and petting him, wanting to pull him in for a hug but not daring to. “Oh, good boy...” he whispered feeling the words choke on the lump in his throat, “You are such a good boy, I’m so proud of you.”

 

And then Face looked up at him again, that clear look in his eyes that Hannibal knew meant he was here and listening and so he decided to push his luck a little further. “Lieutenant!” he barked again and this time the flinch was not so pronounced, “I order you to talk to me! Whenever you think of anything you want to say or you think I need to hear, I am ordering you to tell me! Is that clear?!”

 

Face continued to stare at him with his clear blue eyes and then nodded slowly.

 

“I can’t hear you!” Hannibal yelled.

 

There was a long pause, Hannibal could see the struggle on the kid’s face and then he blinked, seeming to shake something from his mind, “Yes, sir...” he whispered, and this time Hannibal couldn’t stop himself from grabbing on and pulling him in.

 

“Oh, Face,” he whispered, petting his hair and stroking his hands over cold skin, “Thank god, thank god, baby, you’re coming back, oh, thank god, I’ve missed you so much.”

 

And Face even held on back. Pushing his body up into Hannibal’s lap, trying to meld himself into his CO’s warmth.

 

“I missed you too...” came the quiet whisper and Hannibal found himself crying tears of joy.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

And then just as quickly, Face had disappeared again. He would respond to orders, would eat and drink when he was told to, would even wear clothes around the house during the day and sit at the table or on the sofa. But he didn't speak, even when he was directly ordered to and as much as he got into bed at night when he was ordered and wore a t-shirt and shorts to go to sleep as he was told, by the early hours of the morning after nightmares and screaming and waking up in terror more times than Hannibal could count, he would find Face naked and on the floor again, shaking and back in the grips of his demons.           

 

 

Which is why, Hannibal thinks as he finally pushes himself up off the decking to go and make Face his birthday breakfast, this is the very best present he could ever desire. 

Birthday Four