aut_nihil | (no subject)

Good. Some of the tension drains out of Carver and he puffs out a breath.

"Thought I'd go be a cook or something when I got out," he admits. "Guess that was a stupid plan."

Wasted potential, Pope thinks. Carver is a warrior; he doesn't belong in a kitchen.

"You'll do plenty of cooking for us," he says instead.

"Mhmm. You'll keep me busy. The kids especially." He huffs. "Goddamn, do they eat."

A chuckle. "And that's them eating MRE's. You should see them with real food."

He entertains that notion a moment. "I want to do things different. Have us all together once a week, like family for Sunday dinner."

"Yeah?"

Carver brightens at the thought. He's exhausted and hurting, and so hungry it feels like his stomach is trying to dissolve his spine, but the thought of having a proper meal with everyone is enough to drag him away from the melancholy at least for a moment.

"That'd be nice. Think the others would like it, too."

"They will." They're all without families. They're all so alone without each other.

"I want you to keep that image in your head, son. When they come in and do what they're going to do to me, you stay back and you think about that future."

Oh.

Carver feels his fingers twitch. He exhales.

"Is that how you did it earlier?" he asks quietly. "When they did what they did? You were in control. You just....yelled, and didn't give an inch."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." He draws in a breath, lets it out slow. "The way we handle pain won't work here. They want us engaged. We go away in our heads I don't know what they'll do. We have to stay sharp. So I'm keeping my eye on the future."

They weren't trained for this. Weren't tested on it. Carver shivers a little before he can hide it. He went away at the end. The leader didn't like it.

"We got a good future," he murmurs. "You'll see."

"You gonna hold it together?" Without being able to use the main method Pope trained him to use to handle pain and humiliation.

"I have to."

He shifts to meet Pope's eyes.

"So I will. It's that simple."

He will. That's all he needed to hear, he thinks.

"I'll do better with the training from here on out. We get out of here...our people will be ready for anything. We'll figure out how to do that."

Carver swallows hard. It’s practical, he knows. He knows. But he feels sick at the thought of what that might mean. What Pope might have them do to each other.

“How?” he asks carefully.

"I don't know," he admits, and hates having to admit it. What good is a commander without a plan?

"But I can't let you all down again."

Carver curls into himself. Breathing slow, trying to stray present. Stay focused.

"Don't make us do this to each other," he murmurs. "We'll find a different way, just - not that."

He thinks of Austin, with his goofy grin, and Bossie with those soft eyes, Turner with his laugh, and Carver. Carver who is cringing beside him right now.

"No, I couldn't do that to you," he says quietly. "But there has to be a way."

"We'll figure something out," Carver insists, even as he pulls his hands to his chest. Curling into himself without realizing. It's hard not to remember being held down, those hands in his hair. Grinding his face into the sheets until he could barely breathe. He thought it'd be like the drowning tests but it wasn't, it wasn't at all.

He shivers. They can't do this to the others. They can't.

"Shaw. She'll have ideas." She has been in battle, has faced threat of being captured, has lived all her life with the risk of being abused sexually. She's overcome it all.

Carver takes a steadying breath, lets it go. "Big sister will know," he murmurs, even though he should call her Sergeant Shaw out of respect. But he feels so goddamn raw now, teetering on the edge of something brutal and new, and he misses her badly. Misses Delaney, and Riley, and not aching like this. Big sister will know.

"But we're not going to talk to her about what's happened here," he warns. "Are we?"

Oh. Carver hesitates. Earlier, he thought he'd die if anyone else ever found out. But maybe Shaw would understand, of all people. Maybe Riley would. Maybe they could make it easier to bear, like explaining combat scars to someone who'd survived the same, or close to the same.

He shakes his head. "No, sir," he replies very quietly. He doesn't look at Pope.

"I'm taking this one to my grave." He couldn't bear for Shaw to know what he was made to do to Carver. He gets up, paces in front of the window.

Carver just curls tighter into himself. He thinks, maybe, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to him. And then he wonders if he's weak for counting that against the whole of Korengal, where he lost people he knew. Saw them die in horrific, painful ways.

He shivers, watching Pope. He knows he can't say any of that.

"You okay, sir?"

He doesn't know where this anger is coming from but he bites down on it and wants to save it for later.

"I just- I should have fought harder." He failed Carver. They shouldn't even be here.

"I'm the one who got cornered."

Carver shivers, curling tighter into himself.

"It's just natural consequences, right? Like the sergeants say."