FIC: Reversed Charges (1/1) Generation Kill
TITLE: Reversed Charges
AUTHOR: Laura Smith
PAIRING: Reporter, Nate
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: How do you sleep?
DISCLAIMER: Generation Kill and all the characters therein belong to people who are not me. I make no profit from this, I just like playing with them.
Evan wakes up sweating, his heart pounding. His sheets are off the mattress again, tangled around him like seaweed. The room smells like piss and fear and he’s afraid to open his eyes. He lies completely still, willing himself not to move, not to breathe, until the scent of the rest of the world filters in. There’s no sand, no heat. There’s the faint hint of hibiscus in the air. Missing is the stench of unwashed men and unwashed masses. He starts to breathe, to relax.
It’s okay. He’s home.
Home doesn’t mean much of anything anymore, of course. He came back from the war and spent two months crafting “The Killer Elite”. He ate, drank, slept, and breathed the Marines for longer than he’d known them and somewhere along the line, his girlfriend had left him. He forgot to have real food, subsisting on peanut butter, Pop-tarts and store bought Entenmann’s pound cake. Nothing else tasted right, tasted real. He drank instant coffee and Kool-Aid, supplemented with rum and vodka and more beer than he was willing to admit.
He thumbed through notebook after notebook, crafting and piecing together the story, molding it to be some semblance of what they were. He turned it in three days ago for the final edit. He’s had vivid, upsetting dreams since he’s been home, but since turning in the article, his nights have been shattered again and again by nightmares, by sounds, by ghosts held at bay by the sheer memory of a Marine at each sector, by the sheer stupidity that tried to get them killed and the dumb luck and smart men who kept them alive..
He sits up in bed and rubs his eyes, not bothering to turn on the light. Sometimes he has to snap it on, sure that he’s going to wake up and see someone in black pajamas at the foot of his bed, knife between his teeth, crawling up to slice Evan’s throat. Too many Vietnam movies and not enough sleep, too much booze and not enough food.
The red light of the clock is blurry when he drops his fists back down to his lap, but he can make out that it’s somewhere near three in the morning. Just a few hours of sleep then. His body aches, his eyes throb and he wishes he could make it stop. The only problem is that nothing makes it better - booze and staying up for hours on purpose and napping during the day. He’s tried it all and everything just seems to magnify the symptoms, make it all so much worse.
He’s done all the reading about PTSD and he knows the party line. Marines don’t get PTSD. Marines are trained to withstand all torture, all possible attacks on their body, their mind. Of course, Evan also knows that’s a lie. Marines are men. Hard men, strong men, brave men. He’s seen them in action and he knows what they’re capable of, but for all that, they are still just men. Not even men, some of them. Boys. Children with weapons going out to kill more children in a war they may or may not even understand.
He understands all too well. He knows that, as part of the liberal, dicksuck media conspiracy, they’re fighting a war under false pretenses. He’s talked to a couple of the guys now that more information has come to light, and the answers never vary. It doesn’t matter what the politics are. Marines go where they’re sent and they fight the enemy they’re told to fight. They don’t ask questions. He’s seen what asking questions does. Besides, the questions aren’t theirs to ask. They belong to people like him who have made a pledge to find the truth. They’ve pledged to fight for their democratic government and that means they do what they’re told when they’re told no matter which party is in the White House.
It drives Evan crazy though - crazier than whatever remnants of Iraq cling to him. There are notebooks he didn’t include, things that were too unreal even for him, even though he saw them. There are moments that he couldn’t talk about where tensions ran too high, where insults actually hurt, where the lines broke down and men broke with them. Moments out of time that he doesn’t remember, even as he reads his notes. Were they real? Were they dreams? Did anyone dream or was it just an excuse to get away with some of the things they all did. He held a gun on people, even though he didn’t shoot. He pointed it at the head of a man and could have simply pulled the trigger. Is the threat as bad as the action?
He picks up the phone without thinking, dials the number. He knows better. Knows he should get up and shower, go running, eat breakfast. Do anything similar to functioning and he’ll fall into the habits. Instead, he listens to the phone ringing, the hollow sound so common for long-distance calls.
“Mm.” There’s a soft smack of lips, the heavy breath of near-sleep. “’lo?”
“Nate?”
There’s silence except for breathing, shifting and then he can hear a door close followed by a yawn. “Reporter?”
“Fuck. Sorry. Did I…” He stops. Obviously he did - woke him, interrupted something. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Nate’s voice is thick and hazy, gruffer than Evan remembers. “What can I do for you?”
“How do I sleep?” It’s a stupid question and not the one he intended to ask.
“How do you…oh.” Evan can hear all the movement in the background from the refrigerator opening to the sound of something pouring. Where Nate is, the sun is probably already up, the day heading toward warm and humid. “Depends on what’s bothering you.”
“What isn’t?”
Nate laughs and Evan smiles. It’s that same ridiculous laugh and Evan can see Nate in his mind’s eye. “Fair enough.” He’s quiet for a long moment and Evan can hear him swallow. He closes his eyes and wonders what it is - water, milk, beer, soda, juice? - and if Nate sometimes stares at it as if it’s a miracle that there is ice in the glass, that it stays cold and there are chills as it goes down. “How do you feel about what we did?”
“There aren’t any WMDs. The fact that this war was justified…”
“Evan.” Nate stops him with a word, and Evan tries to remember if any of them ever called him by name.
“What?”
“Not about the war. About what we did.”
“How is that different?” Nate’s quiet for a long time and Evan can’t hear anything in the silence except for the sound of his own heart beating. “I didn’t mean…”
“That’s the problem, Evan.” Nate’s voice is soft, quiet, and Evan knows he’s said everything wrong. “You keep looking at things through your eyes. You’re trained to ask questions, to dig deeper. Your job is to find the places where things like to hide and root them out. Our job is to follow orders. Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult but, when it comes down to it, you follow orders or you’re not effective and you will be removed from duty. It happened to Dowdy. It could have happened to me.”
“But…”
“We do our jobs and we do our best to minimize the fallout. My men are…were not trained for that kind of mission. That they did so well and survived is a tribute to their skill and intelligence. They are the best at what they do.”
“But that wasn’t what First Recon does?” He knows there’s a hint of laughter in his voice, he can’t help it. Hopefully Nate will take it for what it is.
“Not usually, no. But they did. And they likely will keep doing. Our questions start with ‘Orders, sir?’ and end in ‘Yes, sir’. We don’t have the luxury that you do. You can look for whole picture, see the scale. We only see whatever’s at the end our gun sights.”
“Do you sleep?”
There’s another laugh at the end of the line, but it’s not Nate’s typical release. A chuckle maybe, if even that. “Sometimes.”
“Would you…” Evan catches himself then shakes his head, starts again. “Would you like to read the article before it goes to press? See if there’s anything…”
“No, Evan.” Nate sounds tired, like he did so many times in the middle of nowhere, trying to be a good man in the middle of chaos. “I trust you.”
Nate hangs up and Evan stares at his phone for a long time. There are notebooks he never touched, notebooks he now knows for certain he never will. Sometimes the battle in front of you is all you need to see of the war. The men he rode with are all good men, and he can follow their lead.
For now though, it’s time to get some sleep.
AUTHOR: Laura Smith
PAIRING: Reporter, Nate
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: How do you sleep?
DISCLAIMER: Generation Kill and all the characters therein belong to people who are not me. I make no profit from this, I just like playing with them.
Evan wakes up sweating, his heart pounding. His sheets are off the mattress again, tangled around him like seaweed. The room smells like piss and fear and he’s afraid to open his eyes. He lies completely still, willing himself not to move, not to breathe, until the scent of the rest of the world filters in. There’s no sand, no heat. There’s the faint hint of hibiscus in the air. Missing is the stench of unwashed men and unwashed masses. He starts to breathe, to relax.
It’s okay. He’s home.
Home doesn’t mean much of anything anymore, of course. He came back from the war and spent two months crafting “The Killer Elite”. He ate, drank, slept, and breathed the Marines for longer than he’d known them and somewhere along the line, his girlfriend had left him. He forgot to have real food, subsisting on peanut butter, Pop-tarts and store bought Entenmann’s pound cake. Nothing else tasted right, tasted real. He drank instant coffee and Kool-Aid, supplemented with rum and vodka and more beer than he was willing to admit.
He thumbed through notebook after notebook, crafting and piecing together the story, molding it to be some semblance of what they were. He turned it in three days ago for the final edit. He’s had vivid, upsetting dreams since he’s been home, but since turning in the article, his nights have been shattered again and again by nightmares, by sounds, by ghosts held at bay by the sheer memory of a Marine at each sector, by the sheer stupidity that tried to get them killed and the dumb luck and smart men who kept them alive..
He sits up in bed and rubs his eyes, not bothering to turn on the light. Sometimes he has to snap it on, sure that he’s going to wake up and see someone in black pajamas at the foot of his bed, knife between his teeth, crawling up to slice Evan’s throat. Too many Vietnam movies and not enough sleep, too much booze and not enough food.
The red light of the clock is blurry when he drops his fists back down to his lap, but he can make out that it’s somewhere near three in the morning. Just a few hours of sleep then. His body aches, his eyes throb and he wishes he could make it stop. The only problem is that nothing makes it better - booze and staying up for hours on purpose and napping during the day. He’s tried it all and everything just seems to magnify the symptoms, make it all so much worse.
He’s done all the reading about PTSD and he knows the party line. Marines don’t get PTSD. Marines are trained to withstand all torture, all possible attacks on their body, their mind. Of course, Evan also knows that’s a lie. Marines are men. Hard men, strong men, brave men. He’s seen them in action and he knows what they’re capable of, but for all that, they are still just men. Not even men, some of them. Boys. Children with weapons going out to kill more children in a war they may or may not even understand.
He understands all too well. He knows that, as part of the liberal, dicksuck media conspiracy, they’re fighting a war under false pretenses. He’s talked to a couple of the guys now that more information has come to light, and the answers never vary. It doesn’t matter what the politics are. Marines go where they’re sent and they fight the enemy they’re told to fight. They don’t ask questions. He’s seen what asking questions does. Besides, the questions aren’t theirs to ask. They belong to people like him who have made a pledge to find the truth. They’ve pledged to fight for their democratic government and that means they do what they’re told when they’re told no matter which party is in the White House.
It drives Evan crazy though - crazier than whatever remnants of Iraq cling to him. There are notebooks he didn’t include, things that were too unreal even for him, even though he saw them. There are moments that he couldn’t talk about where tensions ran too high, where insults actually hurt, where the lines broke down and men broke with them. Moments out of time that he doesn’t remember, even as he reads his notes. Were they real? Were they dreams? Did anyone dream or was it just an excuse to get away with some of the things they all did. He held a gun on people, even though he didn’t shoot. He pointed it at the head of a man and could have simply pulled the trigger. Is the threat as bad as the action?
He picks up the phone without thinking, dials the number. He knows better. Knows he should get up and shower, go running, eat breakfast. Do anything similar to functioning and he’ll fall into the habits. Instead, he listens to the phone ringing, the hollow sound so common for long-distance calls.
“Mm.” There’s a soft smack of lips, the heavy breath of near-sleep. “’lo?”
“Nate?”
There’s silence except for breathing, shifting and then he can hear a door close followed by a yawn. “Reporter?”
“Fuck. Sorry. Did I…” He stops. Obviously he did - woke him, interrupted something. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Nate’s voice is thick and hazy, gruffer than Evan remembers. “What can I do for you?”
“How do I sleep?” It’s a stupid question and not the one he intended to ask.
“How do you…oh.” Evan can hear all the movement in the background from the refrigerator opening to the sound of something pouring. Where Nate is, the sun is probably already up, the day heading toward warm and humid. “Depends on what’s bothering you.”
“What isn’t?”
Nate laughs and Evan smiles. It’s that same ridiculous laugh and Evan can see Nate in his mind’s eye. “Fair enough.” He’s quiet for a long moment and Evan can hear him swallow. He closes his eyes and wonders what it is - water, milk, beer, soda, juice? - and if Nate sometimes stares at it as if it’s a miracle that there is ice in the glass, that it stays cold and there are chills as it goes down. “How do you feel about what we did?”
“There aren’t any WMDs. The fact that this war was justified…”
“Evan.” Nate stops him with a word, and Evan tries to remember if any of them ever called him by name.
“What?”
“Not about the war. About what we did.”
“How is that different?” Nate’s quiet for a long time and Evan can’t hear anything in the silence except for the sound of his own heart beating. “I didn’t mean…”
“That’s the problem, Evan.” Nate’s voice is soft, quiet, and Evan knows he’s said everything wrong. “You keep looking at things through your eyes. You’re trained to ask questions, to dig deeper. Your job is to find the places where things like to hide and root them out. Our job is to follow orders. Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult but, when it comes down to it, you follow orders or you’re not effective and you will be removed from duty. It happened to Dowdy. It could have happened to me.”
“But…”
“We do our jobs and we do our best to minimize the fallout. My men are…were not trained for that kind of mission. That they did so well and survived is a tribute to their skill and intelligence. They are the best at what they do.”
“But that wasn’t what First Recon does?” He knows there’s a hint of laughter in his voice, he can’t help it. Hopefully Nate will take it for what it is.
“Not usually, no. But they did. And they likely will keep doing. Our questions start with ‘Orders, sir?’ and end in ‘Yes, sir’. We don’t have the luxury that you do. You can look for whole picture, see the scale. We only see whatever’s at the end our gun sights.”
“Do you sleep?”
There’s another laugh at the end of the line, but it’s not Nate’s typical release. A chuckle maybe, if even that. “Sometimes.”
“Would you…” Evan catches himself then shakes his head, starts again. “Would you like to read the article before it goes to press? See if there’s anything…”
“No, Evan.” Nate sounds tired, like he did so many times in the middle of nowhere, trying to be a good man in the middle of chaos. “I trust you.”
Nate hangs up and Evan stares at his phone for a long time. There are notebooks he never touched, notebooks he now knows for certain he never will. Sometimes the battle in front of you is all you need to see of the war. The men he rode with are all good men, and he can follow their lead.
For now though, it’s time to get some sleep.