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indigo_angelsMy first ever Murdock-centric fic! Be kind...! TV!Verse and set in the winter of 1973. Murdock is in the VA and missing the rest of the team... Warnings for sugar and sap (seriously!). 1704 words. For AussieBones x.
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Murdock sighed and looked up from his bare feet to the bare walls in his bare room, and then back to the bare bed, the only sheet having been removed forty minutes ago when he had threatened to fashion himself a rope out of it and escape through his third floor window. It had been an idle threat at that, just a way for him to vent some frustration over the whole stupid incident, because, really what was the point in even trying to escape unless he knew where the guys were? And since his telephone privileges had been removed, he hadn’t been able to talk to them in days.
He sighed again. All this because of the disappearing act he pulled last week when the team wanted him to jolly over to Dallas with them while they tracked down an errant son who had disappeared with the family jewels and a rather older woman. They’d thought he’d like a trip back to his old stomping grounds, see the sights, feel the heat, and they were right, but it was seeing the guys that had been the real thrill of the week. Four days and four nights where he didn't feel like a patient or a vet or a crazy guy, when he just felt like one of the team, old HM Murdock, back in the fold. It had been great.
Not so great when he got back though. The three months that he’d so far spent in this particular VA hadn’t taught him that it was impolite to disappear for a few days without squaring it with them first. He’d got that message loud and clear though when they threw him into solitary the day he wandered back in off the streets and then took away privilege after privilege until all he had left were his pyjama bottoms. And it was cold; it was December, and even in LA it was damn cold. He sighed again. He shouldn’t have fought them, shouldn’t have let them get a rise out of him.
It was just like it had been in the camp, when the guards would try to get under your skin just to see you explode. Hannibal always told him to let it go, that it wasn’t worth it, that he shouldn’t play their games. But he couldn’t there and he couldn’t now, it was just the way he was made up, and it’s not like Hannibal ever practised what he preached either...
But no, he wasn’t going to think anymore about that tonight. It was Christmas Eve for goodness sake, he should just be grateful that they hadn’t shot him up with something and concentrate on thinking about the guys and what there were doing for Christmas and how much better it all would have been if Hannibal had listened to Face’s constant whining and let Murdock stay with them over the Holiday.
He looked at the dark patch of sky visible through his window and tried to see if he could make out a sleigh zooming through the stars, but he couldn’t. When he was a child he’d lost count of the Christmas Eve’s when he had been certain, completely certain with no shadow of a doubt that he had seen a tiny little sleigh flashing across the sky above him – but comments like that only got him laughed at by everyone he told, until he told Face of course.
He thought of that night now, the heat of the jungle dark, the sounds of the insects and the frogs and he and Face laid on the bonnet of a jeep, sharing cigarettes and seeing Christmas Day in together.
“You ever seen the red guy then Face?” Murdock could remember the whole conversation in his head as if it had happened only yesterday not over two long years ago.
Face had laughed, that bitter, cynical laugh that he used to use all the time back then and taken a long drag on the cigarette.
“Father Christmas doesn’t come to poor orphan children Murdock, I thought you knew that?”
Murdock had turned, and looked at the handsome, fresh faced officer at his side and wondered how life had managed to turn someone so young into a soul so very old. “No?” he said instead. “You never got presents left at the end of your beds?”
“We got presents,” Face’s eyes were so very far away as they stared into the muggy, starless sky. “But it’s kind of hard to leave them surreptitiously at the end of every bed in a forty bed dormitory. You can bet your last candy cane that someone is awake at any point of the whole night.”
Murdock studied him for a moment, watching the way his eyes softened at the memories he was guarding so very zealously in his head. “So?” he prompted.
“So we got them after mass, if we’d been good enough, sat still enough, joined in enough,” he shrugged. “I have to admit I missed a couple of presents over the years, but generally, yeah, I got something.”
Silence fell once more as Face kept the cigarette to himself and his eyes on the sky, and if it wasn’t for the way his hand shook ever so slightly as he drew on the nicotine stick, Murdock would have thought the conversation was easy for him. “What was your best present then?” he asked, his own eyes alight at the thought of the little crossbred puppy he’d found at the end of his bed the morning of his seventh Christmas.
Face sighed as he exhaled and for a minute Murdock thought he’d pushed too far and that Face would retreat, turtle like, into his hard and impenetrable shell once more but then he shrugged and said, “I dunno, Murdock, you get one geometry set, you find it hard to get excited about another right? But anyway,” he continued smoothly before Murdock had chance to respond, “we were talking about Father Christmas, you seen him then buddy?”
Murdock turned back to the flat black sky and allowed Face his deft switch of topics before smiling up at the heavens, lost in his own treasured memories, “Yeah,” he said, his voice drifting, “three or four times actually. I think the farm was on his flight path or somethin’, ‘cos he flew right over head more than once. Even waved at me one night when I was twelve.” And then he froze because this was the point when people laughed at him and if he was lucky, he was able to pass it off as a joke, but if he was unlucky, well, that was never nice.
He looked over to Face, wondering how this was going to go, wondering if this was one foray into crazy too many for his rather flighty best buddy, but Face had only turned to face him and smiled, not a hard, cynical smile, but a wistful, gentle one, one that took years off him and made him look like the little boy he still was inside. “Yeah?” Even his voice was wistful. “You are one lucky dude there Murdock. Fuck, I would have done anything for a chance to see him like that...”
And that had been the moment over. Just after that, the heavens had opened, and as much as it didn’t force them back indoors, the pounding of the water put a stop to conversation right up until the point that Hannibal came looking for them and ordered them back to their hooch with a scowl on his face that they both knew was mainly put on.
Murdock smiled. He would give anything to be back on that jeep now, sweating and covered in mosquito bites, knowing that every day could be their last, just to be able to spend it with Face. He smiled and looked back at the square of night sky wondering if Santa was going to make an appearance for him tonight and wondering if Face was looking up at the same bit of sky too.
Suddenly, the whole sky lit up. Murdock frowned as the thick black dark was flooded with orange, then blue, then green, then white and he got up off the bed, guessing that there were fireworks off in the distance somewhere. The sky was empty though, and it was only when he looked down that he froze, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest.
There beneath him, where the grass of the gardens should be, it was white, a real life marshmallow world. If Murdock didn't know better, if he didn’t know that it never, ever snowed in downtown LA, he really would have thought it was a genuine winter wonderland; the white fluffiness was fairly convincing, but the three snowmen standing there would have tipped the balance for sure. The flashing fairy lights strung from every tree suddenly caught his eye as music boomed out from a hidden sound system and Murdock smiled as ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ abruptly filled the night air.
He smiled and his eyes fell on the scene below as the doors from the rec room flew open and swarms of patients and staff alike fell upon the white stuff with a mad glee, making snowballs and snow angels and walking up to the three snowman, laughing and pointing. Murdock followed their stares and looked hard at the snowmen for the first time, noting the cigar in the mouth of the first, the bristly hair running down the head of the third and the beaming smile on the face of the third. He laughed out loud and settled in at the window to watch the fun below, perfectly content in his own company now, perfectly happy to sit this one out and wait, perfectly convinced that his three closest friends were thinking of him just as he was thinking of them on this one special night of the year, perfectly prepared to moan at the colonel until he agreed to take them all skiing somewhere for a weekend in the New Year.
Perfectly aware that he didn’t actually need to be with them to be any closer to them than he already was.
_____________________________________
Murdock sighed and looked up from his bare feet to the bare walls in his bare room, and then back to the bare bed, the only sheet having been removed forty minutes ago when he had threatened to fashion himself a rope out of it and escape through his third floor window. It had been an idle threat at that, just a way for him to vent some frustration over the whole stupid incident, because, really what was the point in even trying to escape unless he knew where the guys were? And since his telephone privileges had been removed, he hadn’t been able to talk to them in days.
He sighed again. All this because of the disappearing act he pulled last week when the team wanted him to jolly over to Dallas with them while they tracked down an errant son who had disappeared with the family jewels and a rather older woman. They’d thought he’d like a trip back to his old stomping grounds, see the sights, feel the heat, and they were right, but it was seeing the guys that had been the real thrill of the week. Four days and four nights where he didn't feel like a patient or a vet or a crazy guy, when he just felt like one of the team, old HM Murdock, back in the fold. It had been great.
Not so great when he got back though. The three months that he’d so far spent in this particular VA hadn’t taught him that it was impolite to disappear for a few days without squaring it with them first. He’d got that message loud and clear though when they threw him into solitary the day he wandered back in off the streets and then took away privilege after privilege until all he had left were his pyjama bottoms. And it was cold; it was December, and even in LA it was damn cold. He sighed again. He shouldn’t have fought them, shouldn’t have let them get a rise out of him.
It was just like it had been in the camp, when the guards would try to get under your skin just to see you explode. Hannibal always told him to let it go, that it wasn’t worth it, that he shouldn’t play their games. But he couldn’t there and he couldn’t now, it was just the way he was made up, and it’s not like Hannibal ever practised what he preached either...
But no, he wasn’t going to think anymore about that tonight. It was Christmas Eve for goodness sake, he should just be grateful that they hadn’t shot him up with something and concentrate on thinking about the guys and what there were doing for Christmas and how much better it all would have been if Hannibal had listened to Face’s constant whining and let Murdock stay with them over the Holiday.
He looked at the dark patch of sky visible through his window and tried to see if he could make out a sleigh zooming through the stars, but he couldn’t. When he was a child he’d lost count of the Christmas Eve’s when he had been certain, completely certain with no shadow of a doubt that he had seen a tiny little sleigh flashing across the sky above him – but comments like that only got him laughed at by everyone he told, until he told Face of course.
He thought of that night now, the heat of the jungle dark, the sounds of the insects and the frogs and he and Face laid on the bonnet of a jeep, sharing cigarettes and seeing Christmas Day in together.
“You ever seen the red guy then Face?” Murdock could remember the whole conversation in his head as if it had happened only yesterday not over two long years ago.
Face had laughed, that bitter, cynical laugh that he used to use all the time back then and taken a long drag on the cigarette.
“Father Christmas doesn’t come to poor orphan children Murdock, I thought you knew that?”
Murdock had turned, and looked at the handsome, fresh faced officer at his side and wondered how life had managed to turn someone so young into a soul so very old. “No?” he said instead. “You never got presents left at the end of your beds?”
“We got presents,” Face’s eyes were so very far away as they stared into the muggy, starless sky. “But it’s kind of hard to leave them surreptitiously at the end of every bed in a forty bed dormitory. You can bet your last candy cane that someone is awake at any point of the whole night.”
Murdock studied him for a moment, watching the way his eyes softened at the memories he was guarding so very zealously in his head. “So?” he prompted.
“So we got them after mass, if we’d been good enough, sat still enough, joined in enough,” he shrugged. “I have to admit I missed a couple of presents over the years, but generally, yeah, I got something.”
Silence fell once more as Face kept the cigarette to himself and his eyes on the sky, and if it wasn’t for the way his hand shook ever so slightly as he drew on the nicotine stick, Murdock would have thought the conversation was easy for him. “What was your best present then?” he asked, his own eyes alight at the thought of the little crossbred puppy he’d found at the end of his bed the morning of his seventh Christmas.
Face sighed as he exhaled and for a minute Murdock thought he’d pushed too far and that Face would retreat, turtle like, into his hard and impenetrable shell once more but then he shrugged and said, “I dunno, Murdock, you get one geometry set, you find it hard to get excited about another right? But anyway,” he continued smoothly before Murdock had chance to respond, “we were talking about Father Christmas, you seen him then buddy?”
Murdock turned back to the flat black sky and allowed Face his deft switch of topics before smiling up at the heavens, lost in his own treasured memories, “Yeah,” he said, his voice drifting, “three or four times actually. I think the farm was on his flight path or somethin’, ‘cos he flew right over head more than once. Even waved at me one night when I was twelve.” And then he froze because this was the point when people laughed at him and if he was lucky, he was able to pass it off as a joke, but if he was unlucky, well, that was never nice.
He looked over to Face, wondering how this was going to go, wondering if this was one foray into crazy too many for his rather flighty best buddy, but Face had only turned to face him and smiled, not a hard, cynical smile, but a wistful, gentle one, one that took years off him and made him look like the little boy he still was inside. “Yeah?” Even his voice was wistful. “You are one lucky dude there Murdock. Fuck, I would have done anything for a chance to see him like that...”
And that had been the moment over. Just after that, the heavens had opened, and as much as it didn’t force them back indoors, the pounding of the water put a stop to conversation right up until the point that Hannibal came looking for them and ordered them back to their hooch with a scowl on his face that they both knew was mainly put on.
Murdock smiled. He would give anything to be back on that jeep now, sweating and covered in mosquito bites, knowing that every day could be their last, just to be able to spend it with Face. He smiled and looked back at the square of night sky wondering if Santa was going to make an appearance for him tonight and wondering if Face was looking up at the same bit of sky too.
Suddenly, the whole sky lit up. Murdock frowned as the thick black dark was flooded with orange, then blue, then green, then white and he got up off the bed, guessing that there were fireworks off in the distance somewhere. The sky was empty though, and it was only when he looked down that he froze, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest.
There beneath him, where the grass of the gardens should be, it was white, a real life marshmallow world. If Murdock didn't know better, if he didn’t know that it never, ever snowed in downtown LA, he really would have thought it was a genuine winter wonderland; the white fluffiness was fairly convincing, but the three snowmen standing there would have tipped the balance for sure. The flashing fairy lights strung from every tree suddenly caught his eye as music boomed out from a hidden sound system and Murdock smiled as ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ abruptly filled the night air.
He smiled and his eyes fell on the scene below as the doors from the rec room flew open and swarms of patients and staff alike fell upon the white stuff with a mad glee, making snowballs and snow angels and walking up to the three snowman, laughing and pointing. Murdock followed their stares and looked hard at the snowmen for the first time, noting the cigar in the mouth of the first, the bristly hair running down the head of the third and the beaming smile on the face of the third. He laughed out loud and settled in at the window to watch the fun below, perfectly content in his own company now, perfectly happy to sit this one out and wait, perfectly convinced that his three closest friends were thinking of him just as he was thinking of them on this one special night of the year, perfectly prepared to moan at the colonel until he agreed to take them all skiing somewhere for a weekend in the New Year.
Perfectly aware that he didn’t actually need to be with them to be any closer to them than he already was.
