#peoples loveddd armchair psychology in the mid to late 2000s in my experience

[whumpacabra]

29. Agent

Past captivity and trauma, past torture, past character deaths, guilt

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Merrick was writing the mother of all mission reports and trying to do it in one sitting was going to make him sick. Six months. Six months, three good men, and a hell of excruciating detail to comb through for anything that could bring their captors to justice.

The early days, when Orson and Thatch were still around, those were oddly fuzzy. Hazy, faces obscured by time. Back then, Harrison was the only one who knew Arabic, so he was translating demands and orders to them in urgent whispers. Merrick and Elias knew enough by the time Orson died it wasn’t a problem when they took Harrison away.

Away to the Box.

Harrison didn’t talk about it much, and neither Elias nor Merrick knew exactly what happened in that coffin shaped space. So Merrick could only report what he knew: Harrison’s screams.

(He always wondered if Harrison could hear their screams over his own in there.) 

Merrick knew the Red Room - the furnace room - intimately. It was where they were most often dragged to be tortured. Sometimes strung up by their wrists, sometimes bound to a chair, sometimes blindfolded with their hands bound behind their back.

He wasn’t sure they ever washed the floor - it was always sticky with old blood and gritty from broken glass. At least he assumed it was broken glass - he never remembered seeing any.

Merrick was trying to recount one of the last few sessions they had with Goldtooth (Smith, he knew now). He remembered Elias strung up and whipped, Goldtooth stalking around him with saccharine promises to treat him well if he just agreed to…something. Those demands got blurry and vague the harder Merrick tried to think about them.

But he could remember Goldtooth in crystal clear color. His blue eyes were hungry when they watched Elias flinch under the blows, a smile drinking in every sob and scream. And when he remembered Goldtooth cutting Elias down, cradling his bare, broken body with far too much tenderness, Merrick couldn’t write anymore for the day.

Knowing what Smith did to Wolf, he wondered if they ever came close to his monstrous bloodlust.

Merrick stepped out of his office (a cramped closet cubicle, his old office had been given to a different soldier after all this time). He made his way to the restroom to splash some cold water on his face. The bruise from the Wolf’s solid right hook was starting to show through his dark skin, even though the tenderness had faded to an occasional ache.

He glanced to the mirror as Agent Anders stepped out of a stall, scrubbing his hands with soap and water.

“Captain Merrick.” He nodded in acknowledgement, quirking a brow at the water droplets still damp on his face. “Rough report to write, I assume?”

“Rough is right.” He huffed before sighing. “I keep…thinking of what could have happened.”

“That’s a good way to go insane, Captain.” Anders’ smile was sympathetic. “I’ve seen it happen. You’ll drive yourself crazy. Best not to dwell on it and move on.”

“I just…we could have ended up like the Wolf.”

“You’re not the torturing type, if I may make a naive assessment.”

“Neither was he.” Merrick snagged a paper towel from the dispenser. “Broke some bones, burned some skin but at least he never…he could have done worse.”

“Careful Captain.” Anders voice still had a lilt of friendliness veiling his cold, calculating eyes. “A little close to Stockholm Syndrome to be sympathizing with your torturer.”

“He saved our lives.” Saved them from whatever horrors Smith would inflict when he came to the forefront again. “Puts things into perspective.”

Anders hummed, dark eyes sharp and narrowed in thought. 

“That it does. That it does…”

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