Work Text:
“Identification, please?”
The guards look young, Marco finds himself thinking. Young enough to fight and die for their country, but still little more than kids.
One is on the skinny side, and doesn't appear to have grown into his uniform, while the other one has the opposite problem. His cheeks are still round with puppy fat; where his buddy’s fatigues hang loose on his lanky frame, his own are straining against a gut that even an intensive regimen of five-mile runs and an unappetizing diet of boil-in-the-bag rice and processed cheese on rye has done nothing to mitigate.
Marco remembers a kid like that when he was coming up through training. The DI’s had given him hell, naturally, but he’d persevered. Picked himself up out of the mud and staggered through the obstacle courses, heaving his ass up the ropes and under the barbed wire fences, sweating buckets and puking in the summer heat along with the rest of them, but he’d never once accepted the numerous offers he’d been given to take a walk down washout lane and back onto civvie street, no matter how many times the DI’s had made it. Even to the point where it wasn’t a suggestion, it had remained the one order he couldn’t bring himself to follow.
Hebe. That had been the kid’s name. Only reason he remembered that was because one particularly mean-spirited DI had taken to mispronouncing it as Heavy, and pretty soon every other mother’s son in the battalion had followed suit.
He remembers seeing the name on a list of prisoners they’d managed to recapture during the first counter-attack, but none of the gaunt, haggard, unshaven faces he can remember freeing from their bindings looked anything less than starved half to death.
Torture is a messy business. The more creatively vicious among humanity’s great minds have elevated it to an art form, expanding on the already innumerable disciplines of causing an individual pain, but one the most effective and efficient methods is one that has existed longer than any other: the simple deprivation of that which all humans crave at some point or another.
You don’t need knives, jumper cables or bamboo splints to torture a man. Deny him food, water, sleep and warmth, and the only thing he will be left with is hope. Given time, that will fade too.
One of the guards, the skinny one, tightens his grip on his rifle as Marco draws nearer. “Hey, excuse me- you can’t- hey-!”
“Let him through.”
The heavyset private is standing not quite to attention, respectful but wary. Marco wears no rank slide, no insignia, but his civilian clothes are as much an indicator of who and what he is as the soldiers’ unit patches.
The penny drops, and the skinny guard fumbles his rifle, almost dropping it in his haste to stand to attention.
“Oh- uh- excuse me, sir-”
“As you were,” Marco says evenly.
The heavyset guard’s uniform bulges slightly as he stops sucking in his gut.
“Can we help you, sir?”
“I’ve just come to check on the prisoner.”
The skinny one glances at his watch. He’s a little slower on the uptake than his buddy, it seems.
“Uh- sir, the next inspection isn’t due for-”
“Don’t worry, this isn’t official. I just wanted to know what he’s doing in there?
The heavyset guard answers without hesitation. “Reading, sir.”
“Reading?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What kind of reading?”
“Books, sir. Poetry, mostly.”
Marco’s mouth twitches. “Poetry, huh?”
“Yes, sir. He asked for a few books when they brought him in, and- uh, I guess the brass didn’t see the harm, you know?”
“He on suicide watch?”
This time, the skinny guard speaks up. “No, sir. He actually seems, uh…well, pretty relaxed, all things considered.”
“He’s been eating?”
“Yes, sir. Three square meals a day, sir.”
Marco remembers the malnourished prisoners, skin clinging to their bones like wet rags wrapped around a wireframe.
“I’m going to head inside.”
“Uh- I’m sorry, sir, but we’re going to need to secure that weapon before you-”
“Why don’t you boys take five?”
“…sir?”
“You been standing here long? How often do your shifts rotate?”
“The, uh- the next shift’s actually due to start at oh-nine-hundred, sir.”
“Why don’t you go grab yourselves a cup of coffee?”
“Is…that an order, sir?” the skinny soldier asks, as though half-convinced it’s a trick question.
“Sure. As of right now you’ve been relieved, alright?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Oh, and- one more thing.”
“Sir?”
“Anyone asks, you never saw me here.”
“Uh-”
The heavyset soldier’s watery blue eyes flicker skywards, then sharply back to Marco’s own, the only moving part of the his face besides the trembling jowls, the skin of his lip buckling guiltily under his teeth.
Marco smiles a knowing smile. “Oh, you know- it’s the damndest thing, but it just so happens that the cameras are having a malfunction right now. The system’s old, see. Needs to be updated.”
The soldier nods slowly. “Yes, sir.”
“Technology marches on, you know?”
“Yes, sir.”
The soldiers look torn between relief and apprehension, trying to reassure themselves that they won’t get in trouble for this. They’re not supposed to let anyone else in to see the prisoner, but he’s an officer. They can’t refuse a direct order. And anyway, the cameras are out. They can hardly be blamed for that, now, can they? They were just following orders.
“Alright, you can leave now. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.”
They hurry away with the stiff jaunt of those leaving behind a hissing fuse trailing from a bundle of dynamite they’ve elected not to notice in their wake, intending to feign ignorance for as long as it takes to become someone else’s problem, in true military fashion.
They carry on like that, they’ve probably got long and successful careers ahead of them, Marco thinks, and pushes open the door.
“We were seven, who now are one, Six in youth and one in age, finish’d as they had begun, Proud of Persecution’s rage; One in fire, and two in field, Their belief with blood have seal’d, Dying as their father died, for the God their foes denied; Three were in a dungeon cast, Of whom this wreck is left the last.”
Marco shuts the door behind himself. A single, echoing note of metal on metal is the only applause the recital receives.
“Do you like poetry, Sergeant Diaz?” the prisoner asks.
“Sergeant Diaz is on a coffee break,” Marco answers, addressing the back of his head. He doesn’t see the prisoner’s lips curl, but he hears the faint thump of the book being folded shut.
“Ah.”
A soft sigh, half relief, half disappointment. Like settling into a warm bed at the end of a long day, only to realize in the same instant that you need to go to the bathroom.
“It was only a matter of time, I suppose.”
The prisoner turns, regarding Marco with his one remaining eye, lips forming a thin line between the thick, luxuriant bristles of a mustache that has recovered tremendously from the last time it faced him.
“I did wonder who they would send to silence me,” Morden remarks. “But I’m a little surprised they chose you, Captain.”
Marco blinks. “What?”
“You needn’t act surprised. I may be short one eye but my ears still work just fine.”
Marco finds himself examining the details of that face, comparing it against the sneering, guffawing visage of the propaganda posters produced by both sides of the conflict it had engineered. The government forces’ depiction had him poised over a war-torn planet, ready to carve up the continents with a knife and fork; the Rebellion’s own likeness of him more akin to the square-jawed action hero of Hollywood myth, firing a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher at some unseen menace while the flag of the Rebellion, tempest-tost, flew resolutely in the stormy backdrop behind him.
Neither of these has very much in common with the man Marco sees sitting before him- placid and soft-spoken, neither smiling nor frowning, no slavering beast nor any Greek-operatic titan, crying havoc as the dogs of war are let loose.
“You’re going to have to be a little creative, I’m afraid,” Morden goes on, almost apologetically. “There’s nothing in here to hang me from but in any case, they've already taken the liberty of removing my shoelaces, and the bedding from my bunk.”
“And yet they give you poetry books.”
Morden permits himself the tiniest of smiles, as though rationing his good humor in expectation of shortages. “You could give me a particularly nasty paper cut, I suppose.”
Marco tucks his pistol into his waistband. “I didn’t come here to kill you.”
Morden arches an eyebrow. “No?”
“No.”
Marco pulls up a chair and sits without being invited to.
“You seemed eager enough to kill me the last time we met,” Morden recollects, sliding his tongue over his lips as though he can recall the taste of the gun Marco had stuffed into his mouth. “Had Sergeant Roving not stopped you, I suspect you would have followed through.”
Marco is too focused on Morden’s face to give much thought to what his own must be doing, but the words do register, dimly, and the ramifications shred his composure like a hollow-point.
“I wonder- is that look of astonishment mere theatricality for the cameras, Captain? Or are you simply providing me with further proof that the phrase military intelligence is an oxymoron?”
“Alright,” Marco sighs, exhaling through his nose. “I’ll bite. How do you know who I am?”
“I've been following your exploits since well before Villeneuve, Captain. That was when Sergeant Roving and yourself first came to my attention, but I always knew the government forces would entrust their finest with the task of killing me. They underestimated me before; it is not a mistake they will repeat again.”
Marco’s brow furrows beneath his headband. “What do you mean, before Villeneuve?”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten that I used to be a Vice Admiral of the government forces?”
Marco hasn’t forgotten. There’s not a soul among the government forces who has, for treachery is an excellent motivator. Nothing like the supposition of trust, shattered, to turn a one-time friend into a lasting enemy.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
“…and if you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat,” Marco says. “Yeah, I read The Art of War too.”
“Then you know the third part of that maxim: if you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Marco leans back, folding his arms. “Don’t really see how that part’s relevant right now.”
“And that is precisely why you people will never win this war,” Morden says flatly.
“We’ve already won,” Marco retorts. “The Rebellion is finished. The war is over.”
Morden shakes his head, slowly. “Wrong on both counts. The Rebellion has been around for as long as the government you serve, and it will continue until inevitable victory- ours. Not yours.
“Not without you, it won’t.”
Morden laughs softly, humorlessly. A pitying sound. “You really think the Rebellion needs me? I only gave them someone to rally behind. The soldiers in the field, laying down their lives for a cause they believe in- that is the Rebellion.” He spreads his arms, rolls his shoulders. “I’m just a figurehead.”
“That’s bullshit,” Marco grunts back. “Without you, the Rebellion was nothing but a nuisance- a bunch of low-level terrorists causing trouble in Third-World cesspools. You turned them into a threat.”
“No,” Morden corrects him lightly, arms still spread, inclining his head at Marco. “You did that.”
At this, Marco scoffs. “Excuse me?”
“I made the Rebellion what it is today. You made me what I am today.”
Again, Marco finds himself temporarily stunned into silence. Morden takes this as an invitation to talk.
“The Rebellion was directionless until I gave it the direction it needed, but we have always had strength and conviction. All it took was a little push from me, and that bunch of low-level terrorists became an army that brought your government to its knees.”
“All it took was two soldiers from the PF Squad to bring you down,” Marco reminds him. “And your Rebellion came down with you.”
“You’re getting dangerously close to the point, Captain,” Morden says, keeping his tone cordial even as his lip curls at the accusatory use of your rebellion. “Your government is mired in corruption and institutionalized stupidity, bloated with the cancer of bureaucracy, and that is precisely why they folded when the Rebellion struck at their heart.”
“So it’s David and Goliath, then?”
“After a fashion. You’ll recall that the Rebellion dominated the early stages of the war, but the Peregrine Falcons changed the playing field. Prodigious size makes you slow. It makes you a target. The hammer’s weight means it hits hard, but it is an arduous and clumsy weapon. The scalpel cuts meat and bone with surgical precision. The Rebellion is vast, but our attacks were direct enough to cripple your government’s bloated army in conventional warfare. We could just never mount an effective response against yours and Sergeant Roving’s exploits. You moved too fast for us to respond. A two-man team, armed with knives, pistols and grenades…how many of our soldiers did you kill, between the two of you?”
“I don’t know,” Marco admits. “I wasn’t keeping count.”
“Of course not. You just did your job like a good little soldier.”
Marco balls his fists beneath his armpits, but decides not to give the smug son of a bitch- or himself- the satisfaction of punching him in the jaw just yet.
“The sheer audacity of it almost made it impossible for me to believe until Sergeant Allen reported to me firsthand about the extent of the devastation you caused.”
“Allen O’Neil? I hate to break it to you, General, but he’s dead.”
Morden’s mouth twitches at that, as though he’s fighting the urge to laugh. “You’re quite sure of that, are you?”
“Oh, yeah. Quite sure. I dumped two boxes of seven-six-two and three pistol mags into him.”
Morden’s eyebrows arch skywards. “Really? That’s all it took?”
“Oh, cut the crap,” Marco snaps, his tone raised to a couple of notches below a shout. “The name Allen O’Neil might have all the regular grunts pissing their pants, but I met the guy. He was tough, but he wasn’t anything special. Just a meathead with a big gun and an even bigger mouth.”
“He certainly killed enough of your men in the Käthehirt Valley, didn’t he?”
Marco lunges. Before he’s even registered what’s happening, he’s got a fistful of Morden’s shirt collar in one hand and a fistful of his sidearm in the other. Safety on, finger outside the trigger guard, but even if he’s got the wherewithal not to shoot Morden in his smug goddamn face, it’s becoming increasingly hard to think of reasons not to pistol-whip him.
Marco takes his hand off of his pistol, and jabs his finger at the air underneath Morden’s mustache. “Shut up. You shut your goddamn mouth.”
Morden blinks mildly. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to be crass. I simply meant that you underestimate Allen O’Neil at your peril.”
“Allen O’Neil is dead,” Marco snarls, punctuating the last word with a rough shake of Morden’s shirt collar. “I saw him die. I don’t know how much clearer I can make that.”
Morden shrugs again, or tries to. “We’ll see.”
Marco doesn’t so much let Morden go as throw him back into his seat, easing back into his own with his fists balled so tight that the cartilage in his knuckles crackles mutely.
“It’s a shame, really,” Morden says, after a moment of eyeing him. “The Rebellion could use someone like you.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” Marco spits back. “I’m not a terrorist.”
“Irony, thy name is Marco Rossi.”
Marco clenches his jaw, ready to crack his own teeth before he gives Morden the satisfaction of knowing he got under his skin again. “And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Morden shakes his head, gazing at him with what appears to be disbelief.
“You really don’t get it, do you? Even after all this time, you’re still so convinced of your own righteousness- or perhaps it’s just easier for you not to think about it. Before the war, before all this, the very government that you swore allegiance to, the government that you’ve fought and bled and killed for- they made a choice to deliberately ignore intelligence that could have saved lives.”
Marco lets out a ragged exhale, and now it’s his turn to look at Morden with disappointment and pity rather than simple contempt.
“So that’s what this is about? Central Park?”
“Oh, it goes deeper than that,” Morden mutters. “I was like you, once. A good little soldier who followed orders and never questioned authority. I had faith that the higher-ups knew what they were doing, but Central Park was just the wake-up call I needed.”
“What happened to your family-”
“-could have been avoided.”
“…doesn’t justify what you’ve done,” Marco finishes, as though he hasn’t been interrupted. “It doesn’t justify what your people- your soldiers did in Gerhardt City.”
He’s loathe to use that word to describe the Rebels. It has an unpleasant familiarity to it, bridging the gap across the ideological ridge that the devil sits on the other side of.
Modern no longer looks smug, now. He just looks tired. “I’m not so arrogant that I won’t admit I haven’t made mistakes in the application of military force, Captain. My men were overzealous, but the fault lies with me for failing to keep them in line.”
“Like you give a shit. Take away all that phony self-righteousness, and at the end of the day you’re still a war criminal, just like all the rest of your Rebel buddies.”
“We are all of us war criminals, Captain, for all war is a crime, no matter how justified.”
“You can spout Hemingway at me all you want,” Marco tells him. “It doesn’t change a thing.”
“No,” Morden agrees, wearily. “It doesn’t. Both of us have made wives into widows and children into orphans. I have ordered men into battle, good men, and you have killed those same men. The only difference between your side and mine is that your side won the war.”
The legs of Marco’s chair scrape the floor with a horrible sound as he rises, stalking for the door.
Stupid. What the hell was he thinking, coming here? What was the point?
“Go to hell, Morden.”
What was the point of any of it?
“You know,” Morden remarks, gazing curiously at the pistol tucked into the back of Marco’s waistband, “Jean-Paul Satre once remarked that Hell is an eternity spent with one’s friends.”
Marco stops at the door, and looks back at the prisoner.
“Yeah, well…all his friends were French.”
The door slams shut. Donald Morden waits until he hears the heavy, booted footfalls fade into silence in the hallway outside, and then rations himself another small smile before returning to his book of poetry.