Fic: For a Better World to Live in (1/3)
Title: For a Better World to Live in
Fandom: Stargate/Leverage
Rating: K+
Genres: gen, apocafic (kinda)
Recipient: apinkpanthress
Prompt: Stargate/Leverage, Evan Lorne and Eliot Spencer, beneath a comfortable blanket of ongoing death and destruction
Summary: It's been five years since Eliot's team split up when the world changed for the worse. He's still not looking for a new one.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme. So. Anyone remember that I said I don't read apocafic when I published the Pandora's Box stories that were apocafic? Well. I did it again. Or I guess I did... anyway, the first of three this is *yoda Let's see how it works.
Edit: Also, that call sign in there? Totally mackenziesmomma's idea. And thus also her fault :D
For a Better World to Live in
„Und du rufst in die Nacht
Und du flehst um Wundermacht
Um 'ne bessere Welt zum Leben
Doch es wird keine andere geben.“
Witt / Heppner, „Die Flut“
It’s been five years today. They broke up as a team five years ago because the ground was getting too hot. Riots in the big cities were getting stronger by the day and spreading into the rest of the country. Government answered with tightening the net and they’d have been caught if they’d stayed together. Splitting up was the most sensible thing to do. Still hurts like hell.
Been hurting like this for five years so he got used to it, somehow. He got used to solo ops again pretty fast. He even got used to those solo ops not being about profit but about staying alive. He got used to being self-reliant again and finally giving up trusting people or asking for help… expecting help without asking for it.
But then came the day when he’d been caught back out in the Sahara, after everything having gone wrong that could have gone wrong, nearly dead from heat and dehydration and a helicopter had come swooping down like a mirage. He resists shaking his head. A rogue heli crew out here in the desert. He’s still not quite sure if he hadn’t been imagining that.
He still can’t believe that they haven’t yet killed him, either. He’d figured they couldn’t be one of those lose Al Qaeda remnants left over from an Israeli offensive against every element in the Arab world that could threaten them because if they’d been that, he’d be a rotting carcass in the sand now. And they probably wouldn’t speak English that sounds very much as if they’re from various parts of the good old US of A.
Took him another couple minutes or maybe days of just lying here in the tent they put him to wake up in after passing out onboard the heli before he realized there’s someone sitting next to the cot they put him on.
It’s a guy, mid-thirties, early forties, hard to tell with the deep tan and the lines in his face that could be age or sun exposure. There’s a web of very prominent scars across the right side of his jaw and similar scars on his right hand. He’s clad in something that looks like faded fatigues. Faded enough that it’s impossible to discern the camouflage pattern and there are no other markings, not even a name tag, as far as he can see. He takes care not to move so as to give the man no clue that he’s awake and so far it seems to…
“You can give up trying to pretend you’re still out cold now, buddy.” What… “Figured I should give you a fair chance to assess your surroundings before I started talking to you.” Slowly, he sits up and register that it’s indeed a tent he’s sitting in. It’s relatively light inside and the heat is slightly less oppressive than outside. His eyes dart over to the tent flap that’s open. There are no restraints on him. He blinks.
“In case you’ve been wondering: no, you’re not a prisoner. You’re our guest, for the time being.” A… guest. Uh-huh. “It would be nice, though, to know your name, Mr…”
The guy looks questioningly at him and for a moment he debates whether to give him an alias but further inventory of the tent let him see a heavily encased military grade laptop and what looks like a miniature satellite dish. They’d probably be able to expose the alias in a second, even out here in the desert. He resists the temptation to clear his throat. “Eliot Spencer.” The guy makes no show of recognition, even though they probably checked available information on him with that equipment over there. He also thinks it’s just fair that he asks, “And yours?”
The soldier - as of now he’s pretty sure that guy next to his cot is or was a soldier, very distinctive stance and diction and looks and all that - licks his lips. Then, “Fortune Cookie.” What? A shrug. “It’s an in joke.”
Or a call sign. There is a heli parked out there somewhere, if he didn’t hallucinate it. He frowns. “Figured as much.” Also, if he’s a guest and told them his real name, he can very well expect his host do to the same. And if that’s not his host but his jailor after all, he’s got nothing to lose, anyway. So he adds, “Got a real name, too?”
There’s a look of something strange in Cookie guy’s face and he says, “Gave up using it when I gave up everything that made me who I was.”
A former soldier, then. And the faint look of… regret and loss that crossed Cookie guy’s face seemed genuine enough that he gives him the benefit of a doubt and still doesn’t peg him as a bad guy. However, “I gave you mine.”
Cookie guy raises an eyebrow. “How do I know it’s the real one?”
He’s pretty sure Cookie guy and whoever is with him - since this could never be the work of a one man army - know that already, so all he says is, “You’ll just have to trust me.”
After a second of seeming to think about it, Cookie guy shrugs and says, “Fair enough.” Then he gets up and tosses him a bottle of water. “Come on, get up. I’m sure you’re curious, Mr. Spencer.”
Curious about what, he wants to ask but knows it’s futile. He is curious about this tent and Cookie guy and the question what an American ex-soldier is doing so far away from home. Home where soldiers are used against the people. Have been used for four years now, ever since the government chose to curb the rioting not by reacting to the people’s demands but tightening the grip around the people. He gets up from his cot and takes a tentative sip from the non-descript water bottle Cookie guy threw at him. Tastes normal, if a bit stale.
“It’s drinkable, Mr. Spencer. We just… organized ourselves a new shipment of charcoal tablets.” Organized, huh, he thinks as they exit the tent to step back into the blazing heat of a Sahara afternoon, judging by the sun.
He takes a quick look around. They’re in an oasis. The palm trees around them and the pond only a few steps away from them are dead giveaways. It’s quiet here, as if the world weren’t covered by a blanked of death and destruction. It seems surreal.
He raises his eyebrows at Cookie guy. “We?”
The ex-soldier shrugs. “I’m not a one man army, Mr. Spencer.” Oh really. “Most of the team is sleeping currently. We’ve got a doctor who saw to you when you were unconscious during the last two days. A communications specialist, of course, a two man logistics team…”
“And a helicopter crew.” He half expects the man to deny the implication that somewhere around here a heli must be standing around. Which he still hasn’t seen, come to think of it. Weird.
But then the guy grimaces and nods. “That, too. Not… a full one, though.” There’s a lengthy pause in the man’s speech and he almost assumes Cookie guy won’t elaborate but then he adds, in a strangely strained voice, “Lost our door gunner ‘bout three months back.”
It’s just that and for a moment, Cookie guy seems to be strangely distant, as if he’s somewhere else in his mind. Back to where they lost the door gunner? Looking at Cookie guy in the afternoon heat, not even breaking a sweat - he wonders how long he’s been sitting out here - he debates whether to ask how it happened or not but in the end he decides to ask a far more important question. “So what are you doing out here?”
There’s a little motion going through Cookie guy’s body. Not a jerk, just a little… twitch and he’s back to that businesslike friendliness he displayed before the door gunner put him out of it. “Hiding.” Wow, that’s really elaborate… “But I guess that wasn’t your question, was it?” No. “Let’s just say that we… decided to leave government service a while ago and are more… freelance today.”
So not much different from what he used to do, after he liberated Croatia and came home to find the girl he wanted to marry had moved on from him. “Why here?”
That makes Cookie guy grimace again. “Because we’re not welcome anymore across the Big Pond.” That guy really likes to talk in mysteries and… “Remember when the government decided to use military force against the protesters?” Oh. Well. He nods. “We all swore an oath to protect those people. Not to shoot at them.” Okay, so that explains why they left military service but not why they’re hanging around an oasis in the Sahara desert. “Plus we were part of a secret government facility. People like us… we knew too much to be released from service with a lukewarm handshake and non-existent G.I. Bill benefits.”
That explains… a lot, actually. He can’t help saying, “So you ran away?” though.
Cookie guy doesn’t give him the satisfaction for a real reaction. Just a shrug. “Maybe. But even if we did, we brought along a bit of interesting… technology. After all, we wanted to keep protecting good people instead of shooting them and that’s what we’re doing here.” Interesting technology, huh? Is that why he can’t see a heli, no matter how hard he looks around?
“Sounds awfully much like the A-Team.” Or his own team, come to think of it. Which he just doesn’t want to do. Not now. Not ever.
There’s a grin from Cookie guy now who doesn’t look a bit like Hannibal Smith. Still seems to have something of a Hannibal wave going on, under the seemingly relaxed attitude. “Guess it does, huh? Anyway… like I said, we’re down a door gunner. Interested in working with a team again, Mr. Spencer?”
Fuck.
That came unexpectedly. Like a punch in the gut and it doesn’t stop hurting. The implications of what Cookie guy just said… he’d like to say it’s the desert heat that just left him reeling but that would be a lie. “You didn’t think we wouldn’t put the gear you saw back in our main tent to good use, did you?”
Of course he didn’t. Like he said, he knew they probably checked out anything they could find on him but he never thought they’d find so much. He almost wonders… he almost wonders how much how they found him had been coincidence. If it was a coincidence at all. Ever since breaking up the team, he thought nothing could ever fuck him up like that but Cookie guy’s revelations… they did him in good. He swallows. “Your door gunner… how did he die?”
Cookie guy doesn’t wince. But there’s that… twitch again. Then he says, his voice strangely low and almost broken, “We don’t know if she died. We were helping a couple Bedouins against a band of what we think were Mauritanian raiders that had been harassing them and she…” For a moment, the pain in Cookie guy’s eyes mirrors his own when he thinks about his team and the fact that he never heard of them again after breaking it up. Then the eyes blank over, just like his own. “It’s not important what happened. We left camp with her at the gun and we came back without her. And we need someone to fill her place now. Interested?”
No, he’s not. All he’s interested in is being on his way again. It’s easier to be alone. A lot less hard to find, more escape routes, a lot less heartbreak. Easier. “I don’t think so, no.”
He doesn’t know what Cookie guy was about to say because they’re interrupted by a woman coming running towards them. As far as he can see, she looks Latin American and… and she’s tossing Cookie guy a helmet. “Sparks just got a radio transmission from those Bedouins from three months ago. The raiders are back and they need our help. Let’s get going, flyboy.”
Cookie guy catches it with surprising ease, rolling his eyes. “No one ever told you you don’t interrupt superior officers talking, Sergeant?”
The Latina grins. “No, sir. Now get your ass into the Hawk and bring pretty boy there. We need someone at the guns for this.”
A shrug now from Cookie, while the Latina runs towards the edge of the oasis although he wonders why. Still no heli. “You heard the lady, Spencer. And you owe us.”
He’d like to tell the guy that the hell he owes them but he knows the man is right. He frowns. “Just this one mission and we’re even.”
Cookie guy seems to contemplate that for a moment. Then, “Deal. Now come on, no one keeps Dusty Mehra waiting for long without serious repercussions.” For a moment he wonders if they’re all insane but then the guy pulls something from his pocket and aims it into the air in front of him… holy shit. There, after a weird shimmering in the air, a Black Hawk just materialized. He blinks.
“I told you we… liberated a few pieces of interesting technology.” He nods. With a stab, he realizes that Hardison would have a heart attack of geeky happiness from this and Parker have stolen the remote control from Cookie guy’s hands faster than anyone could look and Sophie would charm them all into giving them the Black Hawk as a farewell gift and Nate would know what to do with that beauty. Oh God, how he misses them. “Mr. Spencer?”
He doesn’t shake it off, just grunts and then adds, “Eliot,” before starting to jog towards the Black Hawk. When he climbs into it, he finds his place as easily as he did last time he boarded one of those. There’s no helmet but another guy - glasses, wild hair - hands him a headset and says something in a thick accent that he doesn’t get because the Latina - Dusty Mehra, he reminds himself - in the front seat just put the rotors to use.
What he does get, though, is that their pilot claps him onto the back before entering the cockpit and the words, “By the way, it’s Evan Lorne. But I still prefer Fortune Cookie when we’re in the air.”
Right, he thinks, as he tries to familiarize himself with the good old M240H machine gun, just one mission. He’ll go with them on one mission and then he’ll ask them to drop him off somewhere in the desert where he won’t get lost again. And then he’ll work on that whole not letting himself being roped into team work when he just got used to solo missions thing again. Didn’t work so well both times he tried it now. But there will be a day when he will get it right. He just has to.
~*~
“And you’re shouting into the night
You’re begging for some wonder power
For a better world to live in
But there won’t be one.”
Witt / Heppner, “The Flood”
~*~
TBC in With the Left Over You.
Fandom: Stargate/Leverage
Rating: K+
Genres: gen, apocafic (kinda)
Recipient: apinkpanthress
Prompt: Stargate/Leverage, Evan Lorne and Eliot Spencer, beneath a comfortable blanket of ongoing death and destruction
Summary: It's been five years since Eliot's team split up when the world changed for the worse. He's still not looking for a new one.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme. So. Anyone remember that I said I don't read apocafic when I published the Pandora's Box stories that were apocafic? Well. I did it again. Or I guess I did... anyway, the first of three this is *yoda Let's see how it works.
Edit: Also, that call sign in there? Totally mackenziesmomma's idea. And thus also her fault :D
For a Better World to Live in
„Und du rufst in die Nacht
Und du flehst um Wundermacht
Um 'ne bessere Welt zum Leben
Doch es wird keine andere geben.“
Witt / Heppner, „Die Flut“
It’s been five years today. They broke up as a team five years ago because the ground was getting too hot. Riots in the big cities were getting stronger by the day and spreading into the rest of the country. Government answered with tightening the net and they’d have been caught if they’d stayed together. Splitting up was the most sensible thing to do. Still hurts like hell.
Been hurting like this for five years so he got used to it, somehow. He got used to solo ops again pretty fast. He even got used to those solo ops not being about profit but about staying alive. He got used to being self-reliant again and finally giving up trusting people or asking for help… expecting help without asking for it.
But then came the day when he’d been caught back out in the Sahara, after everything having gone wrong that could have gone wrong, nearly dead from heat and dehydration and a helicopter had come swooping down like a mirage. He resists shaking his head. A rogue heli crew out here in the desert. He’s still not quite sure if he hadn’t been imagining that.
He still can’t believe that they haven’t yet killed him, either. He’d figured they couldn’t be one of those lose Al Qaeda remnants left over from an Israeli offensive against every element in the Arab world that could threaten them because if they’d been that, he’d be a rotting carcass in the sand now. And they probably wouldn’t speak English that sounds very much as if they’re from various parts of the good old US of A.
Took him another couple minutes or maybe days of just lying here in the tent they put him to wake up in after passing out onboard the heli before he realized there’s someone sitting next to the cot they put him on.
It’s a guy, mid-thirties, early forties, hard to tell with the deep tan and the lines in his face that could be age or sun exposure. There’s a web of very prominent scars across the right side of his jaw and similar scars on his right hand. He’s clad in something that looks like faded fatigues. Faded enough that it’s impossible to discern the camouflage pattern and there are no other markings, not even a name tag, as far as he can see. He takes care not to move so as to give the man no clue that he’s awake and so far it seems to…
“You can give up trying to pretend you’re still out cold now, buddy.” What… “Figured I should give you a fair chance to assess your surroundings before I started talking to you.” Slowly, he sits up and register that it’s indeed a tent he’s sitting in. It’s relatively light inside and the heat is slightly less oppressive than outside. His eyes dart over to the tent flap that’s open. There are no restraints on him. He blinks.
“In case you’ve been wondering: no, you’re not a prisoner. You’re our guest, for the time being.” A… guest. Uh-huh. “It would be nice, though, to know your name, Mr…”
The guy looks questioningly at him and for a moment he debates whether to give him an alias but further inventory of the tent let him see a heavily encased military grade laptop and what looks like a miniature satellite dish. They’d probably be able to expose the alias in a second, even out here in the desert. He resists the temptation to clear his throat. “Eliot Spencer.” The guy makes no show of recognition, even though they probably checked available information on him with that equipment over there. He also thinks it’s just fair that he asks, “And yours?”
The soldier - as of now he’s pretty sure that guy next to his cot is or was a soldier, very distinctive stance and diction and looks and all that - licks his lips. Then, “Fortune Cookie.” What? A shrug. “It’s an in joke.”
Or a call sign. There is a heli parked out there somewhere, if he didn’t hallucinate it. He frowns. “Figured as much.” Also, if he’s a guest and told them his real name, he can very well expect his host do to the same. And if that’s not his host but his jailor after all, he’s got nothing to lose, anyway. So he adds, “Got a real name, too?”
There’s a look of something strange in Cookie guy’s face and he says, “Gave up using it when I gave up everything that made me who I was.”
A former soldier, then. And the faint look of… regret and loss that crossed Cookie guy’s face seemed genuine enough that he gives him the benefit of a doubt and still doesn’t peg him as a bad guy. However, “I gave you mine.”
Cookie guy raises an eyebrow. “How do I know it’s the real one?”
He’s pretty sure Cookie guy and whoever is with him - since this could never be the work of a one man army - know that already, so all he says is, “You’ll just have to trust me.”
After a second of seeming to think about it, Cookie guy shrugs and says, “Fair enough.” Then he gets up and tosses him a bottle of water. “Come on, get up. I’m sure you’re curious, Mr. Spencer.”
Curious about what, he wants to ask but knows it’s futile. He is curious about this tent and Cookie guy and the question what an American ex-soldier is doing so far away from home. Home where soldiers are used against the people. Have been used for four years now, ever since the government chose to curb the rioting not by reacting to the people’s demands but tightening the grip around the people. He gets up from his cot and takes a tentative sip from the non-descript water bottle Cookie guy threw at him. Tastes normal, if a bit stale.
“It’s drinkable, Mr. Spencer. We just… organized ourselves a new shipment of charcoal tablets.” Organized, huh, he thinks as they exit the tent to step back into the blazing heat of a Sahara afternoon, judging by the sun.
He takes a quick look around. They’re in an oasis. The palm trees around them and the pond only a few steps away from them are dead giveaways. It’s quiet here, as if the world weren’t covered by a blanked of death and destruction. It seems surreal.
He raises his eyebrows at Cookie guy. “We?”
The ex-soldier shrugs. “I’m not a one man army, Mr. Spencer.” Oh really. “Most of the team is sleeping currently. We’ve got a doctor who saw to you when you were unconscious during the last two days. A communications specialist, of course, a two man logistics team…”
“And a helicopter crew.” He half expects the man to deny the implication that somewhere around here a heli must be standing around. Which he still hasn’t seen, come to think of it. Weird.
But then the guy grimaces and nods. “That, too. Not… a full one, though.” There’s a lengthy pause in the man’s speech and he almost assumes Cookie guy won’t elaborate but then he adds, in a strangely strained voice, “Lost our door gunner ‘bout three months back.”
It’s just that and for a moment, Cookie guy seems to be strangely distant, as if he’s somewhere else in his mind. Back to where they lost the door gunner? Looking at Cookie guy in the afternoon heat, not even breaking a sweat - he wonders how long he’s been sitting out here - he debates whether to ask how it happened or not but in the end he decides to ask a far more important question. “So what are you doing out here?”
There’s a little motion going through Cookie guy’s body. Not a jerk, just a little… twitch and he’s back to that businesslike friendliness he displayed before the door gunner put him out of it. “Hiding.” Wow, that’s really elaborate… “But I guess that wasn’t your question, was it?” No. “Let’s just say that we… decided to leave government service a while ago and are more… freelance today.”
So not much different from what he used to do, after he liberated Croatia and came home to find the girl he wanted to marry had moved on from him. “Why here?”
That makes Cookie guy grimace again. “Because we’re not welcome anymore across the Big Pond.” That guy really likes to talk in mysteries and… “Remember when the government decided to use military force against the protesters?” Oh. Well. He nods. “We all swore an oath to protect those people. Not to shoot at them.” Okay, so that explains why they left military service but not why they’re hanging around an oasis in the Sahara desert. “Plus we were part of a secret government facility. People like us… we knew too much to be released from service with a lukewarm handshake and non-existent G.I. Bill benefits.”
That explains… a lot, actually. He can’t help saying, “So you ran away?” though.
Cookie guy doesn’t give him the satisfaction for a real reaction. Just a shrug. “Maybe. But even if we did, we brought along a bit of interesting… technology. After all, we wanted to keep protecting good people instead of shooting them and that’s what we’re doing here.” Interesting technology, huh? Is that why he can’t see a heli, no matter how hard he looks around?
“Sounds awfully much like the A-Team.” Or his own team, come to think of it. Which he just doesn’t want to do. Not now. Not ever.
There’s a grin from Cookie guy now who doesn’t look a bit like Hannibal Smith. Still seems to have something of a Hannibal wave going on, under the seemingly relaxed attitude. “Guess it does, huh? Anyway… like I said, we’re down a door gunner. Interested in working with a team again, Mr. Spencer?”
Fuck.
That came unexpectedly. Like a punch in the gut and it doesn’t stop hurting. The implications of what Cookie guy just said… he’d like to say it’s the desert heat that just left him reeling but that would be a lie. “You didn’t think we wouldn’t put the gear you saw back in our main tent to good use, did you?”
Of course he didn’t. Like he said, he knew they probably checked out anything they could find on him but he never thought they’d find so much. He almost wonders… he almost wonders how much how they found him had been coincidence. If it was a coincidence at all. Ever since breaking up the team, he thought nothing could ever fuck him up like that but Cookie guy’s revelations… they did him in good. He swallows. “Your door gunner… how did he die?”
Cookie guy doesn’t wince. But there’s that… twitch again. Then he says, his voice strangely low and almost broken, “We don’t know if she died. We were helping a couple Bedouins against a band of what we think were Mauritanian raiders that had been harassing them and she…” For a moment, the pain in Cookie guy’s eyes mirrors his own when he thinks about his team and the fact that he never heard of them again after breaking it up. Then the eyes blank over, just like his own. “It’s not important what happened. We left camp with her at the gun and we came back without her. And we need someone to fill her place now. Interested?”
No, he’s not. All he’s interested in is being on his way again. It’s easier to be alone. A lot less hard to find, more escape routes, a lot less heartbreak. Easier. “I don’t think so, no.”
He doesn’t know what Cookie guy was about to say because they’re interrupted by a woman coming running towards them. As far as he can see, she looks Latin American and… and she’s tossing Cookie guy a helmet. “Sparks just got a radio transmission from those Bedouins from three months ago. The raiders are back and they need our help. Let’s get going, flyboy.”
Cookie guy catches it with surprising ease, rolling his eyes. “No one ever told you you don’t interrupt superior officers talking, Sergeant?”
The Latina grins. “No, sir. Now get your ass into the Hawk and bring pretty boy there. We need someone at the guns for this.”
A shrug now from Cookie, while the Latina runs towards the edge of the oasis although he wonders why. Still no heli. “You heard the lady, Spencer. And you owe us.”
He’d like to tell the guy that the hell he owes them but he knows the man is right. He frowns. “Just this one mission and we’re even.”
Cookie guy seems to contemplate that for a moment. Then, “Deal. Now come on, no one keeps Dusty Mehra waiting for long without serious repercussions.” For a moment he wonders if they’re all insane but then the guy pulls something from his pocket and aims it into the air in front of him… holy shit. There, after a weird shimmering in the air, a Black Hawk just materialized. He blinks.
“I told you we… liberated a few pieces of interesting technology.” He nods. With a stab, he realizes that Hardison would have a heart attack of geeky happiness from this and Parker have stolen the remote control from Cookie guy’s hands faster than anyone could look and Sophie would charm them all into giving them the Black Hawk as a farewell gift and Nate would know what to do with that beauty. Oh God, how he misses them. “Mr. Spencer?”
He doesn’t shake it off, just grunts and then adds, “Eliot,” before starting to jog towards the Black Hawk. When he climbs into it, he finds his place as easily as he did last time he boarded one of those. There’s no helmet but another guy - glasses, wild hair - hands him a headset and says something in a thick accent that he doesn’t get because the Latina - Dusty Mehra, he reminds himself - in the front seat just put the rotors to use.
What he does get, though, is that their pilot claps him onto the back before entering the cockpit and the words, “By the way, it’s Evan Lorne. But I still prefer Fortune Cookie when we’re in the air.”
Right, he thinks, as he tries to familiarize himself with the good old M240H machine gun, just one mission. He’ll go with them on one mission and then he’ll ask them to drop him off somewhere in the desert where he won’t get lost again. And then he’ll work on that whole not letting himself being roped into team work when he just got used to solo missions thing again. Didn’t work so well both times he tried it now. But there will be a day when he will get it right. He just has to.
~*~
“And you’re shouting into the night
You’re begging for some wonder power
For a better world to live in
But there won’t be one.”
Witt / Heppner, “The Flood”
~*~
TBC in With the Left Over You.