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It is early one morning in nineteen-eighty that the two men meet.
It is not hot yet, but there is already a dry bite to the air that promises another sweltering day in the desert. Eventually, even the shade in this well-tended garden will evaporate and the officers will be forced inside. There is a young man pacing, fingers touching the rough trunks of captive trees and the stone that has yet to cool from the day before. Every once and awhile he circles around back to the map he has spread out on the table, staring at it, scowling at it as if one intricately marked piece of paper is the most complex problem he has ever been presented.
It is.
He is twenty-eight-years-old: old enough to have some idea that the world does not always work out, that problems are not always solved, but young enough still to not really believe it in his heart. Already there are lines around his eyes, his work having aged him prematurely. There are a few grey hairs, but he will not find them until several years later. His eyes are the same color as the desert sky, sunken into his face like shadows along the dunes that have become such a major part of the landscape of his life.
There are fifty-two American hostages. He has not slept for fifty-two hours, coming up on hour fifty-three, running on what feels like cup of coffee one-hundred, fifty-two. Possible courses of action dance at the edge of his consciousness, taunting him with their nearness, and its like he’s swallowed a ball of hashish and gone on his own vision quest, but nothing, nothing is coming to him and introducing itself as a real solution. The sleep deprivation strengthens the illusion, and he wants nothing more to just grab the map with its esoteric markings and tear it to pieces, let them flutter through the air like snow. Snow in the desert.
A plan. If he could only find a plan.
It is nineteen-eighty-five, and Hannibal lets out a bitter sound that might be a laugh. His contacts have passed the news that Eddie Blake, code name “The Comedian” is dead. Murdered. So, in the end, he never did have a plan, never did find a good punchline, did he? Hannibal rubs the back of his neck, remembering, and though he feels like this death is the symptom of some major disease, he certainly doesn't mourn the man.
It is nineteen-eighty-six, and the world has no need of fighters like Hannibal. He is retired, given enough of a pension to live on and told to go remake himself. He is thirty-four years old. There is some work in aid missions for a man like him, and that’s the closest he can find to being regular army again, so he takes it. He keeps up the physical training he learned while serving, even though he is told remembering to fight is useless in this day and age.
It is nineteen-ninety-nine, and Hannibal is reinstated as colonel. The world that does not need fighters has evaporated in the face of what it means to be human in a world of other humans, a phenomenon that can be witnessed on any playground, only scaled up to six billion people. There is no end to being human. Rumors that were shot and killed in the beginning of the Pax Terrae resurrect: there was no monster from outer space, it was a hoax, an elaborate decoy for people to shoot at instead of each other. The world that never got Watergate gets a kick to the teeth that is much, much worse.
It is nineteen-eighty, in a quiet, well-tended garden. The smell of cigar smoke drifts lazily on the nearly stagnant breeze, tastes of trouble. The young man steps away from his work, dressed in the fatigues of a regular soldier but weighed down with something much heavier than his desert uniform. It is before he becomes a surrogate father to three fuck ups, before he really starts smoking like a chimney, but the shade of the man he is to become lingers about his young face and the cigarette behind his ear.
“Smith, right?” The young man nods, expression blank. He does not know this man, not personally, but he has heard of him. He isn’t dressed like a soldier. He’s dressed like a Mexican wrestler, with a fat cigar sticking out of his mouth, jammed between his teeth like he’s grinning death’s grin. “Lynch --” That would be the second one he’s met in his life: he will meet thirteen in total “-- said you liked to go by Hannibal. If you’re going to play soldier, you might as well give yourself a flashy nickname, right?”
Hannibal knows he shouldn’t respond. This man is twice his age and mean, nasty mean, like dogs that should have been put down. His CO warned him specifically. Warned him that they might not get along and if shit went down, well, Washington would be on the Comedian’s side. “I’m not playing with lives, sir,” he says, feeling like the temperature has dropped half the length of the thermometer, but the Comedian’s grin widens as if Hannibal has set him up for the best joke in the world. He says his lines anyways. “You wanted something?” The Comedian's cigar bobs to the side when he talks.
“They told me you were funny. Army officer, not playing with lives. That’s a good one, kiddo.”
It is nineteen-eighty-six and Hannibal and his men are sent to help clean up and patrol New York City. He has never seen so many people staring blankly at some point a thousand million yards away. He organizes some of the youth, orphans most of them, and they play army while he is there, working in squads to clean, to salvage and to aid. The decaying biomass, human and otherwise, smells sticky-sweet. Of all the things to be thankful for, Hannibal is thankful it is not summer. What a joke.
It is nineteen-eighty, and Hannibal stands stiff as a board as the Comedian circles around the table to jab a finger into his chest. They are somewhat similar in build, big, strong men, but even though the Comedian is older, Hannibal knows it would be a poor fight for himself. Besides, he isn’t an animal: you don’t swinging punches just because you don’t like the way people talk to you. You fight because there is no other option. “I’m thrilled,” he says, deadpan. Under the fabric, the Comedian’s eyes are grey-blue and his skin is leathery from the sun of multiple tropical battlefields. The bump of a nasty scar disappears under the tiny mask he uses around the soldiers. “I joined the army just to work on my comedy routine.”
The Comedian picks up the map, ignoring Hannibal as he whistles. Little figures of men and helicopters drizzle erratically off the sides. “Lotta info. Your spies find you this?” he says, as if critiquing a finger painting. Fucking CIA. This wasn’t a pissing contest between branches, this was about saving lives. The Comedian tears once down the center, then again and again. He opens his meaty hands like a goddamned stage magician and the scraps rain from his palms. Abra-fucking-kadabra. “Playtime’s over, kid. Daddy’s home.” Tiny pieces of paper, the remains of hours’ work, litter the ground with the plastic causalities. “You’re relieved,” he adds when Hannibal doesn’t move. “Go take a nap.”
It is nineteen-eighty-six, and Hannibal watches the remains of his discharge letter flutter out the window, mimicking the images of the ticker tape parade they’ve thrown for Adrian Viedt in the newly cleaned out city. He can hear the muffled sounds of celebration from the TV one room over.
It is nineteen-eighty and Hannibal is staring at the Comedian. “Do you have a plan?” he blurts out, suddenly surprised and ecstatic. He’s got an ego, of course, because he’s damned good at figuring out how to solve ridiculous problems, but his ego can go suck floppy donkey dick if it means fifty-two American hostages survive. The Comedian laughs.
It is nineteen-eighty, two days later. Hannibal and his men are sent in after the Comedian. There is blood everywhere in the foreign offices building, so much and so new that he nearly slips but it is drying fast. There are bodies. Bodies everywhere, most of them Iranian but a number American, bodies split open, their innards emptied like luggage at a custom’s office, slick, red organs instead of pantyhose. Fifty-two hostages did not come out. Thirty-six did. The news says that the Comedian is a regular ol’ hero, shows pictures of him standing in front of the flag. The blood everywhere, vivid, grisly writing on the wall, says he is a monster. Hannibal stands in the middle of one room, breathing heavily, taking in the massacre. The heat of the day starts to bake the gore, the smell of blood and shit and piss like a nightmarish marinade.
It is nineteen-eighty-six. Wrapped in his hazmat uniform, his face covered in a shiny, black, insectisiod breather, Hannibal carefully maneuvers himself through the biological wreckage, stepping over the bloated stomachs and soggy limbs of the bodies illuminated by the light on the end of his gun. Something organic shifts, tears, breaks, falls, startling him, and if he were any other man, he would be screaming. He doesn't have the energy for it these days, not when he's coming across dead kids in this fucking human goop. Not when he can barely recognize human forms in the mess.
It is nineteen-eighty. Hannibal confronts him later that night. It is at a bar where the servers speak mostly English and the servicemen have claimed it as their own. He is no longer in his uniform, dressed instead in his dull civies and his sharp anger. “That was your plan?” he says, baring his teeth at the Comedian in something that’s only relation to a smile was the teeth. “What the fuck where you thinking? They were willing to negotiate.”
The Comedian untangles himself from the woman he has around his neck like an accessory. The noise of the bar is just that: noise in Hannibal’s ears. He swings at the Comedian, angry, without forethought, because sixteen Americans and fifty-two Iranians are dead, their blood being hosed down off the walls. The fight is over before it even begins: a large hand, covered in the callouses of guns and machetes, grabs his wrist, twists painfully. Hannibal feels something tear and a flame of pain burns up his arm. “C’mon, kid. So they didn’t get to die in the big nuclear fuck fest we’ll get,” the Comedian rumbles, smelling of cigar and death and sweat. “Big fucking deal, eh? Worth your arm?” Hannibal tries to twist away, but that only makes it worse. The bar has gone deathly quiet.
“I’m gonna give you a tip, kid.” The Comedian punctuates the word “tip” with the end of his cigar, leaving a period on the nape of Hannibal’s neck and the younger man hisses, grits his teeth but doesn't do much else. “You want to get anywhere in the army, you learn that people are fucking animals. Your enemy will kill you if you don’t kill him. And he’ll fucking love doing it.” He’s wrong, Hannibal thinks as the man wrenches his arm, applying more force. He’s wrong. This could have been solved with less bloodshed. I could have solved. They were willing to talk. “You’re lucky I’m teaching you now. You might have spent your whole life missing the punchline. And the fun.” There is a sudden lack of pressure on his arm, and that hurts just as bad, then the thud of a whiskey glass hitting the counter top and the clink of ice. Hannibal’s arm hangs uselessly at his side as the Comedian grins at him. “See you in the next war,” he says cheekily.
It is nineteen-eighty-four, and Hannibal is outside of the mobile HQ, working through a few cigarettes, a few ideas. He doesn't like the silver Orbit tobacco holders, preferring the feel and stain of paper-rolled ones in his fingers. The Comedian joins him outside. They are working on toppling the same gov't, and Hannibal is one of the best tacticians in the army. The Comedian is one of the best fighters the feds have. That they meet isn't so surprising. “It still calls to you. All the fucking violence,” the Comedian says cheerfully, as if they are friends, as if they are fighting for the same thing. Hannibal keeps his mouth shut this time. “The American fucking Dream. It's what we're fighting for.” This time, they do the mission Hannibal's way, because he is five steps ahead of even the Comedian and has four years of successful missions. None of his team die. The number of casualties on the enemy's side is shockingly low. Hannibal is promoted, the Comedian comes as close as possible to retirement since the US gov't won't ever really give him up. It's loyalty, of a sort.
It is nineteen-ninety-nine. Hannibal signs up with the army once more not because he wants to fight, or because he is washed along with human instinct that calls out to kill and maim and hurt, but because he can do some good. And in a world gone dark with madness, well, it’s better to light a candle, even if it is tiny and imperfect, than curse the darkness. He considers this as he steps out of the office building, striking a match for the cigarette sticking of his mouth, the light flickering in the evening breeze. Before it can go out, he cups a hand around the weak flame, sheltering it. This is what the Comedian never understood, he thinks. This is what it means to be human.
And he's fighting for Democracy,
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide,
Who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.-Universal Soldier, Donovan