The handoff to the spooks who will be taking the target to the Kraken is easy. In less than three seconds the target is out of the back of the van, into the arms of a few men dressed as natives on a fishing vessel who just as quickly sail off into the ocean.
The clicks in John's ear tell him team four makes contact with the joint unit in the keys, meanwhile he still isn’t hearing anything from team one yet, which makes his leg bounce with unease as he drives towards the local TOC in the resort he and his fake wife were meant to be staying at.
His mind fills with the image of Bronco’s body, split in half, spilling out into the floor in that grimy warehouse. Right now, everything about her is likely being scrubbed from the floor by Blackwood's cleaners, and that pisses him off. She deserved better than all this, deserved better than to die at the hands of some drug running kid with powers.
This shouldn’t have gone down the way it did. None of it.
John grinds his teeth together, knuckles going white around the van's steering wheel.
He had fucking words to say when he got back to Blackwood, and not just because of Bronco. Ordering the death of that family is unconscionable, it’s sick. They aren't threats, they aren't anything other than a loose end. A loose end that could just as easily be shipped out of country.
Why the hell is Kid so god damn willing to just go through with it too?
John knows Kid even if its only a little compared to the others. It's enough to know he’s reliable, and damn good at what he does. To be so young and on the team means a lot, but the fact that Kid and only Kid knew of the plan to dispatch the ‘packages’ means Blackwood is well aware of the fact that everyone else would take issue with it. At the very least, not everyone would let it go easy. Dropping kids is one fucking sick order.
John is a mercenary, yes, and what they do is already very illegal but that doesn’t mean he’s fine with pulling the trigger on a fucking eight year old girl because Blackwood doesn’t want loose ends.
A part of him, rather the majority of him, wants to drive straight through to the house. Fuck the cover, fuck the op, he wasn’t letting innocent children die on his watch—Spaz calls out to him, setting his mind back into the moment.
“John, come on, we gotta move man.”
John clenches his jaw and nods, driving the van as carefully as possible out of the city.
No more clicks come, nothing new on coms, and as they enter backroads to head off towards the compound's acreage they need to strip from their armor and weapons to return to their tourist disguises. At the very least he and Spaz do. Blackbeard gets to remain in the back of the van in full kit just in case anything significant happens.
As John takes off his helmet and sets it in the back with a dangerously quiet Blackbeard, his anxiety gets the better of him.
He taps his fingers on the steering wheel the whole drive back, hours of not knowing what the hell is happening, and it would likely be hours more before Bella and Kid, or at least one of them, returns.
John swerves the van through the winding road, blocked by staggered concrete barriers, forcing him to a crawl on approach. He shows his keycard and real ID to the gate guard, ignoring the fact that a 50 caliber turret and at least a half dozen rifles are watching them from around the compound. He rattles off the pass phrases disguised as answers to mundane questions about his evening before being allowed past the three foot thick steel roadblock and additional security to gain access to the motor pool where he parks his rental along with a half dozen others.
Luckily, Spaz kept quiet the whole way, not a single peep from the chatter box on account of Broncos death.
Truth be told, John wants to comfort the Spaz. He had known the woman the longest, as did Blackbeard, and another part of John feels guilty for not being nearly as broken up about it as they are.
Parking the car, they exit and head to the elevator up to the main hall.
It isn’t that John doesn’t care. Shit he cares a great deal. The woman prayed for him at his bedside. She was solid, a great fighter, a kind smile, a friend and family member just like everyone else on the team, but he couldn’t bring himself to grieve, not until he knew what was going to happen to that family. There is still work that needs doing as far as he is concerned, and no matter how badly he wants to bring Spaz into a hug or pat Blackbeard on the shoulder and share kind words, the muscles in his arms and legs burn with impending violence. His vision narrows to thin slits, tunneled into something dangerous.
Blackbeard doesn’t feel the same. The moment the doors open to the main hall, he takes three steps out and with a roar, swipes his hand across a table, sending glassware and pitchers of water crashing to the floor.
With another roar, he flips the table up on its end and kicks it, sending it smashing into the wall and filling the room with silence after.
The other mercs lingering in the space, know something has happened, and take the cue to get the fuck out of the way as Blackbeard storms through and away from them.
Spaz remains silent, offering a faint nod before disappearing back up the elevator.
John’s blood boils, he needs to find Blackwood, he needs to find him now.
He hunts through the compound until he reaches the elevator that leads to the TOC, taking him down to the airlock where two guards sit posted, blocking the final set of doors that separate him and Blackwood.
Both men raise their rifles at John's approach, making him stop in his tracks.
“You’re fucking with me...” A challenge, John doesn’t have time to deal with these ass holes.
“Stand down John, Blackwood’s orders.” One of the guards grinds out, finger twitchy on the trigger.
“Let me in, now.” He takes a single step forward and both rifles shift to aim at his torso.
He still has his soft armor on... but that wouldn’t do fuck all against the Williamms' rifles at this range.
“John, let's not do this alright?” The second guard pleads, and it looks like he is going to say more but the door opens and Blackwood appears at its threshold.
“It’s alright gentlemen, let him in.”
Blackwood stands tall, head held high. John takes several quick steps to meet the man, bearing down on him.
“John, why don’t you and I-”
John punches Blackwood in the mouth, sending the man's head reeling as his legs try desperately to catch him from falling.
They don’t need to, John does that for him by grabbing Blackwood's suit jacket by the collar and driving him forward onto the table in the TOC’s center, slamming his fist down into the table next to his head, cracking the wooden desk and splitting his knuckles.
“Call off the fucking hit on those kids or I will fucking kill you.” John spits the words into Blackwood's face. Ignoring the guns trained on his back and the wide eyes of the spooks in their chairs. "You wanna ice the adults? Then ice the adults. We are not killing kids."
“Do you think this is acceptable, John?” Blackwood asks coolly, his expression never dropping from its level, commanding presence.
John wants to hit him again.
“I’ll say this once, and only once.” Blackwood narrows his eyes, and every ounce of command pours from the man in a wave that sends a familiar shiver through John’s body, one that comes with the promise of something worse than violence.
Blackwood drops his tone, just the way he did before telling John his orders to get out had been denied, and that he would be going back to hell one last time.
“Remove your hand from me.” Blackwood continues, and John’s ears ring with rage.
He wants to rip his head off and toss his corpse into a pyre, but no amount of violence will save those kids, no amount of blood spilled here will sate his appetite for revenge. Blackwood knows this, and is using it against him. John knows this, and is helpless to stop its pull on his psyche. Like a beat dog, returning to a master. If John bites the hand that feeds now, then there is no telling the lengths Blackwood will go to. He bit that hand once before, and it cost him nearly everything.
John finds himself pulling backward, releasing Blackwood's collar, lifting his fist from the table.
Blackwood hauls himself off the wood, adjusting his suit and wiping the blood spilling from his split lip, spitting two teeth to the ground in the process.
“Now... as a show of good faith John, I'll consider everything that happened just now a moment of weakness. One moment should not define a man.” Blackwood squares his shoulders, and in that moment towers impossibly tall over John.
His tone is a promise, his eyes command incarnate, despite being a full head shorter than John and half his size. In this moment, Blackwood is more a demi-god than Cesar could ever be, looking down upon a subject who just thought to spit in his face.
“But you only get one... let's make sure this never happens again,” Blackwood whispers.
It takes every ounce of strength to not explode, to keep his rage contained, to stuff it down and pack it tight into his chest. John had been trained to play a covert operator, a tactician, a strategist. He fiddled with his toys in the shop but at the end of the day he’s a soldier, he’s the man who kicks in doors, rescues hostages, defuses bombs, and puts bad guys in the dirt.
Blackwood is the opposite of him. All cold calculus, a psychopath wearing the mask of a man. His words ice, his gaze utterly paralyzing. John can snap this man in half but Blackwood can ruin a nation with the snap of his fingers, and now that promise aims John's way.
John hates this man, he hates Blackwood with every fiber of his being but no matter how much hate he has, John knows he can never win against him, especially not here.
John wants to beat him into submission, but Blackwood would never submit, no... Blackwood would turn around, and deliver all that pain one hundred fold back in ways John couldn’t even imagine.
He finds his body pulling him to attention, his eyes straight ahead, unable to look this monster in the eyes. “Yes sir...” He grinds the words out, each one more painful than the last.
“Good, I am glad you came to your senses John.”
“Now, I will kindly request you leave my TOC. I’ll debrief you later, John.” Blackwood turns on a heel and looks over the eyes that still linger on him from the others in the room. “This op isn’t over yet, eyes back on mission gentlemen,” He commands, and everyone obeys.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“John...” one of the guards motions towards the door, and John leaves Blackwood behind, his heart in his throat and his knuckles bone white.
He walks in a haze back through the compound and out the door, his feet carrying him until his boots sink into the sandy beach outside.
The sky is bright overhead despite the sun having long since dipped beyond the horizon, the clouds parting to give way to the stars that reflect off the ocean as he trudges forward until the water laps at his shins.
John stares out over the sea, letting the salt water soak through his boots and pants, listening to the sound of it and nothing else, trying to focus on the wind instead of the nagging feeling in the back of his mind telling him to get the fuck up and go back out to get Bella.
It’s too late now though. Whatever happened would have already happened, and there is nothing more to be done. All he can do now is wait.
What is he going to do? What is Blackwood going to do? John feels like a moron for having been dragged this far by that monster. The story Bella told him rings out through his mind. Staying with a person who has time and time again put his hands around his throat and choked him till he saw stars... How many more times was he going to let it happen? Wasn’t once enough?
Memories flood back to him, as the warm night air whips at his face and the salt spray of ocean water fills his nose. The memory of the first time this happened, the first time John saw Blackwood's true colors.
John had tossed the stack of papers down on Blackwood's desk, sending the other gathered collection scattering around the room.
“What the fuck is this?” He had growled with so much hate in his eyes the only thing he saw when he looked at the Colonel was red.
“This is your deployment.” Blackwood picked up the stack and pushed it off to the side.
“The fuck do you mean my deployment? I’m out Blackwood, I am fucking out.”
“No, Marine, you are not.”
“I put in my goddamn papers! YOU signed them!”
“You put in your papers, and I signed your exit date as July 30th, 1986.”
“I’m out Blackwood!”
“For the next 11 months, you are in, and for the next 11 months you are in Iraq.”
“You’re fucking me, this deployment is a god damn suicide mission Blackwood. You're cleaning house!”
“I assure you I am doing no such thing. Orders are from the top, and for the next 11 months you’re going to follow them unless you want to kiss your pension goodbye. We are already pulling a lot of strings to get you that money, Marine, and I doubt Evelyn will make it far without it. I take no pleasure in leveraging her name John but you and I both know the facts.”
John wanted to kill the man, he wanted to grab his head and smash it into the wall until he made a paste, just like he did in the TOC.
“How is she by the way? Well I hope?”
John couldn’t conjure any words, his body was shaking, his mind was a screaming mess of rage, it took every ounce of strength to not lunge over the table.
“Shut the fuck up, and cancel this deployment.”
Blackwood stood, shoulders back, eyes as cold as ever.
“You may be in our special operations unit, but I don't believe I need to remind you about the chain of command.” Blackwood's voice lowered, so low John could barely hear it. “You will show me my due respect, Marine.”
Blackwood grabbed the papers from the table, and handed them back to John. “And you will continue to show me respect for the next 11 months, and do as you are damn well told, and I will forget this conversation happened, and ensure you and your wife get the money you need when all of this is over.”
John had grabbed the papers, snapped a perfect salute, and walked out of the office.
He laughs now, shaking his head and looking down at the water that tugs the legs of his pants.
He was weak and spineless. For all his bravado and brains he was still Blackwood's dog, following the man around because it was better to be given direction at the cost of a beating than left to drift.
It was a shitty comparison, not at all equal in form but he thought he could understand Bella a little better now, understood the mindset that would lead a person to stay with a man who has only ever wronged you.
Comfort... that was the key. Was being beat comfortable? Absolutely not, but when a person spends their entire life in routine, they get comfortable. They embrace it, come to rely on it. Being led around, told where to go and what to shoot was the only life John knew, from the moment he was born to the moment he could work to the moment he could pull a trigger. Every waking second was someone giving him the orders.
He thought for himself moment to moment but never when it came to the big picture. He never had plans, never had a goal, not until he finally had the courage to propose, to make the woman he loved his wife. She gave him purpose, but even then, wasn’t that more of the same?
Once again John had found comfort in being led, in her, his wife, giving him direction. He became a marine because that was the only option he had to get direction, he became part of the special forces because that is what Blackwood wanted, he would become the perfect husband because that was what she wanted.
Someone else kept deciding his fate, kept making the calls, and he was happy to do it, because without them...
When his wife died he was directionless, there was no one there to give him purpose, nothing to fight for, nothing to follow, nothing to do, and so what was his solution? Drink himself nearly to death and make work by saying yes to every single person who asked him for help.
He loved doing it, he loved helping people but not because he was a good man, because the need to be wanted was more powerful than anything else. He needed a purpose, so of course he latched on to anything and anyone that would give it to him.
Fuck that was the whole reason he latched onto the team. Blackwood pointed him in a direction but the team gave him purpose. He was needed, he was wanted, he was useful...
A splashing in the water next to him brings him on edge. He whips around, only to spot the moonlit face of a woman whose expression looks nearly as pitiful as his own.
The way the pale light arcs over the bridge of her nose and across her high cheeks, up to those narrow eyes and down to her perfect jaw, where the ends of her shoulder length hair tangle in the ocean wind.
He blinks, following the bags under her eyes to the blood that still platters against her neck and hands, all long since dried.
She stays quiet for a time, looking straight ahead, eyes lingering on the horizon.
John tries to look away, but he can’t bring himself to do it, his eyes are locked on her, a million questions spinning through his mind but unable to voice a single one.
A breeze rolls through, cold this time, whipping at his skin and stinging his eyes.
“I... am so sorry John,” is all she says, and in that moment John knows.
She looks like she wants to speak more but her jaw tenses, the muscles in her neck work and a stray tear makes it down her cheek.
John nods once, not sure what to say either.
Her hand shakes slightly, as she brings it up to cover her mouth to suppress her voice, to stop it from cracking. “I know I promised... but—” she wavers, her back arching in the beginnings of a sob.
John pulls her in close, wrapping his arms tight around her body and feeling the strength and anger in her own as she squeezes him too. He can feel her teeth clench as she presses her head into his neck and shoulder, fingers grabbing at his shirt.
An impossible number of thoughts cascade through his mind like the breach in a dam. John's guts sink, bile rises in his throat at the thought of what she must have seen. For all the fury in his bones at the mere thought of Blackwood's orders, he can’t begin to comprehend the agony Bella must feel for having seen them carried out.
“It’s alright, you tried, you tried god damnit and that matters more than you could ever possibly know.” John tries to stop himself from crying as well, but he can’t bring himself to burn away the memory of those children's faces. Their wide eyes, sobbing, the calm when Bella told them it would all be okay, the fear they must have felt when they realized that was a lie...
Rage and sorrow and regret all crush his chest, and he can feel it rise in Bella as well. He tightens his grip around her, his eyes turned now from the sea, to the compound—to the spot in the ground that houses the TOC, where Blackwood still works.
The tears that run down his cheeks soak into Bella's shirt, the red hot wrath that poisons his blood reaching its boiling point.
Bella strokes a single hand down his back, and he feels his eyes flicker.
She shifts her weight, resting her forehead against his chest, as she brings her other hand around to rest the palm of her hand on him, and he can feel that wrath subsiding.
Bella shakes her head, and then lifts it to meet his eyes.
“No... we need to play his game John.”
“What are you talking about?” confusion and anger fight for dominance in his tone, his eyes searching hers for an answer and seeing only conviction instead.
“I am with you John... I am with you.” She spares a glance at the compound. “But we can’t do this your way, we cannot rip and tear our way to Blackwood, we cannot put a gun to his head... Blackwood needs to be brought down for this and for as many other times as its happened that we don't know about. In order to do it, we have to be patient.”
John wants to snap something, wants to protest, wants to charge back in there, but Bella’s hand calms him so much. She rubs the center of his chest, her eyes searching his own now, and he feels the comfort in her touch, sees the direction.
“You trusted me, and I... I failed, you thought of me as an equal once, and you did it again today but today I couldn’t do it,” she admits, her voice wavering slightly. “But this is my fault. I... should have asked you to help me. I should have known I couldn’t do it alone. I couldn’t stop Kid, not by myself.”
“I thought about it, I thought about coming back...”
“I am so very glad you didn’t... I was not able to save that family but if you were there, if Kid had tried to stop you and you tried to stop Kid, someone would have died... no, you made the right decision in not coming, but still I am sorry I broke your trust....”
“You didn’t… But you should learn not to make promises you can’t keep.” John realizes he is still holding her then, his hands around her waist, hers still on his chest, and where he would normally expect that familiar pang of guilt, instead he finds a profound comfort, a strength, not just in her body but a strength in the way she lifts him up as well.
“All the same... I will never forgive myself for this day.” her eyes drift to the blood on her hands, under her nails, staining the sleeve of her shirt. “But what I can do now is atone... by making sure this monster is stopped. I can’t even imagine how many times he must have done this, the years I have been working for him, how many times has he given these orders without our knowledge? How many innocent lives is he responsible for ending?”
John nods, swallowing hard. He doesn’t blame them for not noticing, he doesn’t even know how many of the team members are aware of these decisions being made, but clearly Blackwood had kept it all tight under wraps. The only reason it is out now was because John knew Blackwood better than most, and Kid slipped up. He thought John, as one of Blackwood's oldest dogs, would have known, would have been aware of these orders.
Kid was wrong, and Blackwood was an arrogant son of a bitch for believing he could continue to get away with it.
“What’s the plan?” John asks, staring Bella in the eyes, his intensity now matching hers.
“I am not sure... not yet, but I know one thing for certain, I know that we can do this.”
John nods, feeling his face get closer to her own, feeling her hand ball the fabric of his shirt into a fist.
“I’m with you Bella, I’m with you.”
“I do not know if we can trust any of the others... it will just be you and I,” She insists, an out, an escape hatch in case he had any second thoughts, any hesitation.
“You are all I need.” John pulls her close, and kisses her lips, feeling the instant invigorating reciprocation as her own mouth works around his.
John's body floods with a fire he thought he lost a long time ago. There is no more guilt, as her hands pull at his hair, or his own caress the small of her back and work in the tangle of her hair at the base of her neck.
There is no more guilt, because every part of him, mind, body, and soul knows this is right.
He can take on the world with this woman, which means he could sure as shit take on Blackwood too, when the time is right.
