Who: Faol What: Playing the good boy Where: Around When: Currentish Warnings/Rating: Mentions of violence, drugs, good times with a Mexican drug cartel.
Debriefing wasn't like having his brain picked. Having his brain picked would have been a summertime picnic under a tree and on a grassy knoll, a nice cool breeze stirring that swept away the worst of the heat. He'd been under for too long, too many memories had to be dragged to the surface, things better off forgotten and left in the dank rotting pit at the bottom of his soul. Instead those things were brought forth and though the room was dark, it was sterile operating room light, too bright and blinding for him that they were examined under. Whatever color those memories had faded further under the light, the hands of his peers turned surgeons pulling and prodding at the tissue of his memories, talking between them in a language that was once his own as they considered what they looked at.
Instead they were dropped off into a pretty metal kidney dish and more of his innards were dragged out. Say thank you. Be grateful that you got to come in willingly instead of having them blow your pretty head off your goddamn shoulders -- that's what he was told. The words were barked up, coughed out hairball clog in his throat. Oh, yes, he was supposed to be grateful as they picked and poured over every word issued up. Yes, that was how he got involved with the cartel. How many of the motorcycle gang he was originally assigned to made it in? How many were still alive? How were they moving drugs? Did he know names? Dates? Routes? (Five, two, land sea and air, a few yes, he knew the days they moved on and which routes they took. He even drew them on the map he was presented with.)
Was it any wonder that his darkest memories had been etched into his skin, burned into flesh like brands into cattles at the party? It wasn't for him, yet he still gave up everything, his fingers hooked up a pulse oximeter, two different video cameras watching him, monitoring his expressions, analyzing his body heat on the thermograph, leads attached to his chest to measure his heart rate and respirations. Yes, he was lucky to do this.
The words sat bitter in the back of his mind, poisonous and crackling like lightning. Believing that was to fall down the path of obedient dog - yes, Master, yes, Master, thank you, Master, may I have a treat from your scraps? - and he'd rather just roll over and die than do that. He'd been obedient once, toes walking narrow lines of acceptability, every move coordinated, designed to be unremarkable to the casual eye.
Now he wanted to put his fist through the face of the guy across the (operating) table between them. Violence had found a leash in the service, but the cartel had taken the collar off and set firecrackers at his hindquarters to make him go. Now the collar was back, threatening to strangle him, choke until he was red faced and raspy and he still answered their questions, unflagging, just let the words tumble out and tumble out, tumbleweed on the barren streets of his mouth.
No, he did not know about the name sale. Yes, he knew where they went to pick up the drugs. Yes, he knew who picked up the guns. Yes, he knew what days they made the drop, but never the time of the drops. It varied. Did he know where the head of the family was? No. Did he know about the massacres? Yes. Some of the guys had been bored one Friday night, high on new product and whores weren't going to be enough to sate them. A town had done so instead and Faol hadn't eaten for two days straight after he heard about it. He hadn't been there (thanks whatever God exists that he hadn't been there) but they'd talked about that. Bodies buried in oil drums and pushed into the Pacific. Mass graves. Beheading as a way to say 'Hi.'
By the end of the day, he could barely feel the leash on his ankle, the little black box that mocked him every morning. The only way to get it off was to keep playing the game, to let them shred up his memories, analyze every move he'd made without orders. Because the orders had stopped coming because he'd been presumed dead, no body recoverable and he'd done the one thing that most beings had the sense to do and survived. Changed his stripes. Blended in. Became one of them until he was left with the option of really being one of them heart and soul or finding someway for his tarnished being to come back home.
And here he was, choices made. For all that he had snarled at Bo while he was in the hospital room, he was quiet in the evenings, piecing together what tattered fragments existed of his psyche. His life was out of the question, not while he was living with Bo, subjected to the demands of HQ and a leash that barely let him get to the front door of the apartment without "supervision". Bo didn't want him talking anyway, not really, not unless it was what he wanted to hear -- and while Faol could be a consummate liar when he wanted to be, it took too much out of him on those days when they carrion picked his memories. And as for Bo, Faol told him what he wanted to hear without lying, without tripping up the suspicions and the alarms on monitors, he didn't stray outside the range of the little trapping box on his ankle, or make any more calls to Gabe. Do not call list.
It was situation normal, all fucked up. And it would start again tomorrow.