29. 101
Angst, referenced past captivity and character death, vaguely implied past noncon
AU Masterpost / Previous / Next
Harrison felt like he woke in a dream, the blue glow of a nightlight softened by the first grey light of morning seeping through the blinds.
He wasn’t in a concrete cell where he could smell wet dog and blood and death. He wasn’t in the cramped chilly Dark of the Box. He wasn’t in the Red Room held under cruel hands.
He knew it wasn’t a dream because he wasn’t home, but he was happy to remember he wasn’t in Hell either.
The soft snoring to his right came from Wolf, propped up against the side of the bed with his chin tucked to his chest. Harrison’s sleepy brain connected the dots and his gaze softened, careful to get out on the opposite side of his cot.
Maybe Wolf would be more comfortable on the cot tonight? God knew he had a good enough reason to hate the bed. And Harrison would be lying if he wasn’t a little jealous of the soft mattress and plush pillows.
Wolf shifted as Harrison crept from the room, but he didn’t seem to stir. Harrison hoped he got some of the rest he clearly needed to heal.
Harrison for his part felt stable. The sickness in his lungs still rattled, but his fever had broken. His stomach had kept down the water and mild meal Dan had provided the night before, and now the hunger in his gut was alive and well.
It was still early, Dan’s bedroom door closed and the kitchen dim. Harrison didn’t want to ransack the poor man’s fridge and pantry or make too much noise getting himself food at this hour. Any amount of time with a clock he could watch was a luxury compared to the maddening Dark of the Box.
(It was 5:30 - Harrison used to get up around this time to go for a run with Elias and Orson. Elias was always the fastest son of a bitch on the team.)
Some rummaging in the kitchen drawers produced a pad of paper and a pen. The perfect weapons in his shaky fingers.
The tangle of dog tags from his coat pockets rattled softly on the table. He wrote down his own squad’s first, along with rough estimates of their deaths.
(Harrison had met Merrick’s wife before. They had a toddler named Alex - she was Deaf but learning sign just fine.)
He choked down the sob in his throat, taking a breath to steady himself. He couldn’t drown in nostalgia and grief now. He had work to do.
The tags weren’t detailed: name, rank, and ID number on one side, blood type and religious affiliation on the other. Harrison tried not to keep track as he wrote them down, but he could tell they were mostly low rank officiers. Greenhorns and fresh faced recruits - often minorities based on the names and religious affiliations. The rage curdling in his gut was addictive.
For a moment, he didn’t care what consequences his family could face; he needed justice for these people. For Luca Karim, for Riley Siebert, for Mahmoud Al-Bashir -
He flinched at the creaking of a door, looking up as Dan wandered from his bedroom to the kitchen. The old man’s thick white eyebrows were furrowed above curious eyes. Harrison went back to his task. He was nearly done.
“Christ alive…” His accent was thick as he muttered. The table was all but covered in tags, neatly lined up in rows. Harrison finished writing and sat back with a sigh, Dan hovering over his shoulder. “How many?”
“Too many.” Harrison’s eyes skimmed his list, taking up two pages of the college ruled paper. “Hundred and one. Like the Dalmatians.” That was all that came to mind as a her wrote an circled the number. It was too many.
“They won’t get away with this, son.”
“I think they kinda have.” Harrison scoffed, carefully collecting the tags, his own burning against his chest.
“A hundred odd soldiers don’t just go missing.”
“A squad here, a patrol there…they add up. And it’s easy to lose track of bodies, especially these days.”
“Could there be others?” There was a thread of Crazy Dan’s intensity, that sharp and focused mania that Harrison had been on the receiving end of when Wolf was bleeding out in his garage. “Others still alive?”
“Not where we were at.” Harrison rubbed Elias’ tags between his fingers. “It wasn’t very large - not where we were being held.”
“Then all of these…they were before you?” Dan had the same question in his eyes Harrison had been asking himself as he ran through the names.
Was one of these dead men Wolf?
“I assume so.” Harrison held the tags in his hands. How many families buried empty caskets because the government they were sworn to serve stabbed them in the back? He scrubbed a hand over his face with a sigh. “Wolf…might know more. Maybe.”
“He still asleep?”
“Think so.” Harrison nodded to the door, though he was unable to hear the soft snoring that had woken him. “Didn’t like the bed - his neck’s gonna be killing him later.” Dan huffed, tossing old grinds from the coffee maker.
“Well, if you’re up for it, I was thinking of taking you two down to the diner for breakfast. Get some good food in ya.”
“I would kill for some decent coffee.”
“Diner it is then. Assuming Wolf’s up for it as well. Mer and Tom’ll be down there.”
Harrison’s gaze flicked to the bedroom door as he nodded, running his fingers over the names on the notepad. These folks wanted answers. Harrison did too - and if anyone had been in the bunker long enough to know it’s dirty secrets, it would be the Wolf.
AU Masterpost / Previous / Next
(An AU of my Freelancers series)
Taglist: @i-eat-worlds @whumpy-daydreams
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