Day 30 - Bridal Carry
Military setting, captivity, abandoned, implied past torture, fever, respiratory illness, carried, successful rescue
[Directly follows Finish Line]
Time crawled on, thick as molasses in that cold tomb. Harrison had expected it to slip away from him, like water between his fingers, but it didn’t. It was laboriously slow in its march, molasses on a cold day.
He couldn’t focus enough to count his breaths, not after 2059, when a cough wracked his fever addled brain. He was so fucking cold. How was he so cold? This was the desert, wasn’t it?
No matter how hard he tried to remember, he couldn’t quite pin down the country. Maybe it was Mexico, or France, or Georgia, or Poland, or Spain, or Canada - all that came to mind was the knowledge that he had been hot, and the sun had been bright.
Now he was cold, and the darkness was drowning him.
That, and the sickness rattling in his lungs.
He almost didn’t hear the distant scrape of metal over his wheezing, wet breaths. He was dimly aware it was a door that led to the primary holding cells. A selfish, irrational part of him hoped to hear another prisoner’s pleas. The terrified, desperate part of him knew there were no prisoners left to torture.
Save for him.
The door to the Box was heavy, a thick slab of stone without hinges. It took two men to pry it open enough to shove him in here. If he had been lucid enough to care, he could only hear a single set of footsteps.
He flinched at the sound of the stone being moved, eyes flitting around in panic. The Box was a small, sparse, space; two men could stand inside together, albeit in great discomfort. Harrison was alone, and had enough space to curl his knees to his chest where he sat on the cold ground.
A terrible place to be if his captors wanted to kick in his already broken ribs.
Strain as he may, he didn’t have the strength to stand - was he shivering again or were his muscles really trying to haul his skeletal frame from the floor? So he tucked his head down, hoping to at least protect his teeth from the blows.
He kept his eyes open, relief flooding his blood as light filtered into the inky darkness. The fear of pain and the joy of sight were a tangled knot in his chest, but the fear won as a hand grabbed his shoulder.
His eyes snapped shut, a ragged growl catching on his raw throat. He sank as deeply as he could into the shallow alcove, as futile as it was.
The person above him was speaking, words garbled and foreign to his ears. It wasn’t Arabic, or Spanish, or Russian - he wasn’t even sure if it was English, his muddled mind too tired to parse the sounds.
All he knew were the hands prying him from his corner of hell peace The Box to drag him to a fresh interrogation cell lined with the ghosts of his dead friends -
He cracked an eye open, surprised that they were letting him struggle against their hold for so long. Did they forget the cattle prod?
He blinked once. Twice. His body fell limp in their arms. It wasn’t a captor he recognized.
Were they new? New was bad. New meant they would try something new. Or go back to the old that hadn’t worked then, but might work now.
“Stay with me, Sargent.” The hand that cradled his head to their chest was firm but gentle, calloused and cold. “Fuck, you’re burning up.”
Their accent was thick, and the thought of a western cowboy rescuing him was enough to bring a bubbled of laughter from his heaving ribs. The stranger sighed, their frustration far less gentle than their hands. Harrison’s short lived outburst was silenced by a frantic coughing fit spurred by his attempt to be quiet.
“Breathe for me soldier, be a shame to come all the way out here for you to choke on your own spit.” There was a softness to their words as they loosened their hold on his shaking shoulders. He slumped forward back into their arms, legs too weak to hold his weight. “Christ - I’m gonna pick you up, alright?”
Harrison managed a wobbly nod before strong arms hoisted him into a bridal carry. His vision warped as they began to walk, the reality reeling in his fevered fears. He cautiously let his eyes drift to the soldier’s face.
They were angelic, haloed by the old, yellowed fluorescent bulbs of the compound. A clean shaven jawline chiseled from marble and clear, warm, brown eyes sharp as they scanned the path forward.
“W-wh…o?” The word was barely audible, wheezed from a throat hoarse from screams and lungs heavy with infection. Those sharp eyes fixed his own blurry gaze with a tenderness that rumbled from their chest as they spoke.
“Agent Walker. Let’s get you home, Sargent Harrison.”
[Directly before Alone]
(Part of my Freelancers: Swansong series)
14 notes
·
View notes