Did you know?
August 5 th , 2022
“I’ve been here before, Oliver. Had this gut feeling right from the moment we entered the hide-out, but I wasn’t sure. Now I’m sure. This is the hide-out I was held captive in. This is my fucking cell. My fucking cell!” Nate pointed into the holding cell and screamed towards his best friend, his emotions overwhelming his body.
He was hot and cold at the same time, his hands shaking, and he could sweat gathered on his forehead. Oliver on the other hand was unusually quiet. Too quiet for someone who heard this shocking information for the first time.
“Did you hear what I said, pal?”
Instead of answering him, Oliver lowered his head, the eyes locked with the floor underneath them. He was breathing heavily. His reaction was more than strange and suddenly Nate realized what was going on. His lips parted, his eyes wide and the shaking of his hands intensified so that he needed to clench both of them to fists.
“You knew that,” Nate hissed.
It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation. His voice was low and rough like gravel but with a lot of anger lingering in it .
Oliver was still avoiding his best friend’s gaze before he mumbled a defeated “yeah”.
“But you didn’t tell me?”
“I needed you to be functioning. I needed you for the operation.”
“I wasn’t even staffed for that operation,” Nate screamed back at Oliver.
“You are always my number one choice when it comes to operations, Butch. I just wasn’t sure if Lynn would clear you in time.”
Oliver finally looked into Nate’s eyes, seeing the terror that was swirling inside of them. His best friend had been confronted with his darkest moment. The three months that had almost destroyed his life. That had almost killed him.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you,” Oliver mumbled, tears brimming around his eyeline.
“You’re sorry? Sorry?” Nate leant forward, pointing his index finger towards Oliver.
“A little warning would have been nice. Something like, hi pal, just FYI this is the hideout you were held captive in. So that I wouldn’t almost suffer a panic attack,” Nate was still shouting.
“Listen, Butch. I’m sorry. Really. I thought it would’ve been the right decision to not tell you but I was clearly wrong.”
Oliver looked at him with a pleading look. Pleading to stop the shouting, pleading that this wouldn’t break their friendship.
“Is this a test?” Nate had lowered his hand and now looked at Oliver with his eyebrows knitted together.
“What? ”
“Is this a test? To see if I’m mentally stable again? Who’s idea was this? Yours? Marta’s? It was Lynn’s, wasn’t it?”
“Butch. Stop it. I have no idea what you’re talking about. This isn’t a test. This isn’t about you. Now stop shouting at me and let’s get back to the others, we're still on operation.”
It was now Oliver’s turn to scream back at his friend. He was in command and Nate’s mind was spiraling down so deep and so fast that Oliver knew it was the only way to avoid Nate freaking out in front of the others as well. He was able to handle this, he deserved his best friend’s anger, but he didn’t want Nate to look unstable in front of the SEALs and Peter.
Nate looked at him with his jaw on the floor but no words came out of his mouth. Instead he shook his head in disbelief, let out a loud huff, and turned around to head out of the hide-out and back to the vehicles.
Oliver looked after him, his urge to say something almost eating him alive, but he knew it wasn’t the right time. He turned to look into the cell once more, letting his gaze wander over the metallic bed, the broken wooden chair and the greasy toilet.
Although it had been over ten years since he’d found his best friend lying in this cell, almost dead, it felt like yesterday.
Oliver would never forget the moment he opened the door and looked around the cell. Full of hope, full of relief that they’d found Nate and that they’d made it in time. When he saw the huge puddles of blood on the concrete floor and an unconscious man right behind them, his hope was devastated .
He thought Nate was dead.
His body was frozen, like someone had poured liquid ice in his veins. He didn’t want to go and check for a pulse. He didn’t want to have the final evidence that his best friend was dead. That he was too late.
Oliver felt like he was stuck in a tunnel. He didn’t hear his SEAL colleague storm into the room to check for Nate’s vitals. He was still glued in the doorframe, only seeing the lifeless body of his best friend in front of his eyes until his eyesight was blocked by his colleague who shouted something at him.
“… to the hospital,” were the only fragments Oliver was able to understand when he crashed back to reality.
“What?”
“He’s alive, but we need to get him to a hospital asap.”
“Oh my god. You sure?” He couldn’t believe the words his comrade was saying, so he finally rushed to Nate and looked at him for the first time. Properly looked at him.
His skin was pale, the beard long and wild and his hair messy and curly. It had been really short when they left for Pakistan. Blood was all over his body and the tattered clothes that he was wearing. He was in black boxers and a dark gray shirt that was torn apart around Nate’s middle. He did look dead but thankfully he wasn’t.
Now that Oliver was standing in that exact same door frame he could see the scene in front of his eyes again. Saw Nate lying on the floor on his back, himself kneeling next to him while their colleague tried to find the nearest hospital, mumbling into his comm about which obvious injuries Nate was suffering from .
Tears started to fall down his face, blurring his vision. After a few blinks, the scene was gone. His mind was back in 2022 and, although it was the same place, the entire situation was all different. Nate was better, right?
With a last shake of his head, Oliver started to get out of the building so that they were able to go home. He also needed to contact Marta to let her know that Atef was able to flee and that they’d found plans for attacks in New York City and Washington. He couldn’t even imagine what rumble would go through the heads of the CIA, the military, and the government when they told them that there might be an attack soon.
August 6 th , 2022
The flight back home was the most uncomfortable flight in Oliver’s life. Nate gave his report to Hyena and talked to Peter about the operation but avoided speaking to Oliver as much as possible. While talking about what they had found in the hide-out he added stuff to Oliver’s verbal report, but neither of them mentioned their fight.
“Are you okay?” Peter asked Nate as he took a place next to him.
“Yeah. How about you?”
“I’m fine. Happy to be home soon.” Peter smiled, but Nate didn’t return it.
Oliver’s seat was on the other side of the plane, easy to avoid another confrontation and make them look unprofessional. His mind spiraled between the scenes from 2011, his fight with Nate, and the fear that he had driven a wedge into their friendship. He grabbed his phone and texted Marta.
Oliver
On our way back home.
Atef was warned so he could flee before we arrived.
We found plans about potential attacks in NYC and Washington, the SEALs are currently preparing the report.
You should have it soon.
Marta
Oh shit. Sounds like a lot of work…
Oliver
Had a fight with Butch
Marta
What? Why?
Oliver
He found out about the hide-out and freaked out.
Marta
Is he okay?
Should I let Lynn know?
Oliver
No, please don’t tell Lynn.
He’s fine, he’s just super pissed.
Don’t know if I ruined our friendship with this.
Marta
It will be okay. Your friendship survived worse.
Let’s talk about this when you’re back home.
Te quiero.
Oliver
Te quiero también.
While Oliver was texting Marta, one of the SEALs, Gorilla, approached Nate and Peter and took a seat on the other side of the aisle. He gave the two Agents a smile before he said,
“Agent Sheppard, I just wanted to tell you that you have my full respect. Returning to the place you’ve been tortured is more than brave. I don’t know if I’d be able to do that. Good to see you back in the field.”
Nate just looked at him with a blank stare until he realized that the man was waiting for an answer. He cleared his throat and tried to ignore the uncomfortable silence in the plane. He was sure the other men around them had heard Gorilla’s words as well.
“Thank you.” He nodded and Gorilla gave him another smile before he turned his attention to the phone in his hand.
Peter gave Nate a side-eye but wasn’t brave enough to say anything .
Nate wasn’t in the mood to talk about this topic right now. There was a thunderstorm passing through his heart and mind right now. It was dark, it was depressing, and all his thoughts were swirling around. He couldn’t finish a single one, while his mind drifted off towards the holding cell and all the memories he connected with it.
BBeing lost in his mind meant he didn’t even realize when the plane landed and they had returned to Washington.
“Butch, are you coming?” he heard Peter say and turned his head in confusion.
The young Agent was standing next to him, his backpack hanging off one shoulder and his eyebrows raised towards his colleague.
“Yeah, sure.” Nate quickly jumped to his feet, grabbed his own backpack, and sprinted after Peter to leave the plane.
Standing on the runway next to the plane they said goodbye to the three SEALs before another soldier led them out of the base and towards the car that was already waiting for them.
The car ride towards headquarters was quiet. Peter tried to engage in some conversation but both Oliver and Nate only gave him single word answers leading to every conversation falling dead after only a few seconds. After the fourth try Peter just huffed and stared out of the window, watching the trees pass while they drove closer and closer to Langley.
They passed the gate and Oliver parked the car almost right in front of the main entrance. All three Agents left the car and grabbed their backpacks out of the trunk before they entered the foyer. They passed the memorial wall and the front desk, crossed the first building and the small green on their way to the main building, and entered an elevator to head to the third floor and directly into Marta’s office. She had sent a message to all of them as soon as they had arrived back in Washington. They needed to talk about the operation.
That was what they did. Well, mostly Oliver did. He gave Marta the best possible verbal report to add to the report from the SEALs that she’d already received a few hours ago.
Peter made a few additions to Oliver’s report and Nate remained silent.
“Thank you, Oliver, Peter. Butch, do you have anything to add?” Marta asked and looked at him demandingly.
Nate was still completely lost in his own mind, he hadn’t even listened to Oliver and Peter so even if he had something to add, he wouldn’t know what had already been reported so he quickly shook his head and continued to look at his combat boots.
“Okay. I gave the SEALs report, the pictures, and the other scanned material to Liam. He’s trying to get as much information as possible. Unfortunately the SEALs refused to give him the found laptop or the burner phones. They want to do their own research first, but I hope we get our hands on them soon,” Marta explained.
“Let us know as soon as Liam finds something,” Oliver said and Marta gave him a smile.
“Sure. You three go and get some sleep now and we can have a meeting with Liam tomorrow. I’m pretty sure he will have something for us by then. ”
Oliver smiled back at his girlfriend, Peter nodded, but Nate remained in the same position as before.
“See you tomorrow then,” Peter said and left the office first.
Marta shot Oliver a concerned side-eye before she looked at Nate. The brunet man was still staring at his shoes and it seemed like he didn’t even notice the world around him.
“He’s been like that since I saw him again on the plane.” Oliver mouthed to Marta in the lowest possible voice.
Nate seemed to be stuck in his own mind but they weren’t sure.
“Butch?” Marta asked with a commanding voice.
The Agent raised his head and looked at them with empty eyes. Oliver’s heart ached when he saw the extent of his friend’s mental breakdown. The weight of making the wrong decision by not telling him about the hide-out was almost crushing his shoulders.
“We’re done here. You can go.” Marta smiled at Nate, who raised to his feet and left the room without saying another word.
Nate shambled along the hallway, entered the elevator, and left it again on the second floor. A moment after he passed the med-bay the automatic door opened and Lynn exited her working area. When she turned left to head to her room she saw a familiar man walking along the hallway. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized it was her boyfriend. But why didn’t he text her?
“Honey?” she asked loudly but Nate didn’t turn around.
“Nate?” she repeated, thinking that he might not have heard her the first time but he still didn’t react and continued his walk towards his room. His shoulders were hanging low, as if the weight of the backpack was pulling them down, but she knew that he only had a few clothes in it as the operation had not been planned as a longer stay. Lynn turned her head around to see if she could see Oliver but she couldn’t see anybody else at all. The doctor furrowed her brows and deep lines appeared on her forehead. Nate’s behavior was weird.
She decided to follow him and ask about the operation. Whilst she had been looking for Oliver Nate had already entered his room and closed his door. Lynn stood in front of it and connected her knuckles with the cold wood.
One knock. No answer.
Another one. Still no answer.
“Nate? Are you okay? It’s me. Can you let me in?” she asked through the closed door, hoping that Nate was only in the bathroom and hadn’t heard the knock on the door.
She knocked one more time. Still no answer.
Something in her gut started to feel off. Maybe there was a logical explanation for Nate’s behavior but with every second the panic within her body started to grow. Tiny hot stones moved in her gut while she tried to figure out what was going on. This wasn’t one of her usual panic attacks, this felt different. Something really was off right now but she didn’t understand what.
“Nate. Please open the door,” she demanded. Pleaded. She needed to see him. Needed to know that he was alright.
She needed to feel his strong hands on her waist, calming down the panic inside of her. Last time she had seen him like that was in May, right after he had found out that Lynn was working with Az-Zawahiri in order to save her sister’s life.
That time he had hurt himself by hurting his freshly operated knee. Lynn didn’t understand why he had done that back then but she knew that he was always in danger of falling back into the rabbit hole of his mind. Listening to the demons again that she was able to silence over the past few months with their therapy sessions.
“Nate. Please,” she partly screamed, partly sobbed.
She hadn’t even realized that she was crying, only when her tears started to drop off her chin and soak her scrubs.
Suddenly she heard a female voice say her name. She turned her head towards the sound and saw Marta and Oliver standing only a few feet away from her.
When did they arrive? She hadn’t heard them.
Marta’s face was furrowed and she looked at her friend with worry behind her honey-colored eyes. Oliver’s gaze was fixed to the floor and Lynn couldn’t interpret his expression.
“Lynn,” Marta repeated, reaching out one hand in order to touch her but Lynn flinched back.
“What did he say?” Marta asked. Lynn needed a moment to regain the ability to speak.
“He… He didn’t say a word. I called his name a few times, knocked on his door, but there was no reaction. Is he okay?” Lynn felt her heart rate increase, her mind drifting off to possible injuries that could have been the reason that he didn’t respond.
“He’s fine. No injuries. They didn’t get Atef but the operation went without any other complications.” Marta tried to calm Lynn’s nerves .
“Okay but why is he like that?”
Lynn let her eyes wander to Oliver, who was still looking at the floor. Marta followed her gaze, looking at her boyfriend before sighing. It was his story to tell but he had been in that devastating state since they arrived at her office. She had only gotten him down here so he could have something to eat before they went to her room to have a long conversation about what happened.
“The hide-out they were going to… it was the hide-out where Butch was held captive,” Marta said with a low voice.
“What?!” Lynn exclaimed, her mouth open and her eyes wide.
Marta stepped towards the doctor, grabbed her arm and carefully guided her towards the communal kitchen so they didn’t have to talk in the middle of the hallway. Lynn turned her head around the entire way to the kitchen in a desperate hope Nate would open the door and tell her that everything was okay. Marta placed Lynn on the couch and took a seat next to her.
“That’s not all,” she started, carefully watching her boyfriend taking his own seat on the other couch.
He was still silent, avoiding Marta’s and Lynn’s eyes with a lot of effort. Lynn just stared at Marta with pure shock on her face. She needed a moment to process the words, but Marta didn’t give her a chance to drift off.
“We knew that it was this hide-out. We’d known it for weeks. But as we weren’t sure if you would clear him for this operation, we didn’t tell him about it and when he was cleared we kept on with the same strategy and didn’t tell him. We weren’t sure if it would trigger him and risk the mission. He’d only been in a few rooms in the entire hide-out so the risks of him realizing that he’d been there before were very low.”
“But he found out…” Lynn’s eyes filled with tears while she imagined how shocked Nate must have been.
“Yes. He and Oliver had a huge fight about it.”
Both women looked at Oliver and saw that tears were streaming down his face. Marta immediately rose to her feet and crashed down next to her boyfriend, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him close. Oliver continued to cry silently while Lynn didn’t know what to say or do. All she wanted was to take her ID card, enter Nate’s room and pull him into her arms the same way Marta was doing with Oliver.
“I didn’t know it would send him down a rabbit hole again. I expected him to be angry, but not this. I’m so sorry,” Oliver sobbed.
“What do you mean?” Lynn asked and finally Oliver raised his gaze to look at her.
“He didn’t say a word to me the entire time. Not in the plane, not in the car. At first I thought he was pissed and he has every right to be but when he looked me in the eyes, I saw that his mind had drifted off and he was listening to his demons again. It’s always easy to tell by his eyes. They were completely empty.”
Oliver was hard to understand as he was mumbling in between sobs. Lynn had never seen him so emotional before. She should feel sorry for him but she was so overwhelmed by Nate’s weird behavior, the information she was still processing, and Oliver breaking down in front of her, that she only panicked. Panic about her boyfriend’s mental health, him hurting himself as result of his devastating state, and that he might never let her come near him again.
“Oliver…” Lynn started but needed another moment to figure out her feelings and thoughts, “…I’ll check on him again. To make sure he’s okay. Physically.”
Oliver looked at her, his eyes swollen and with so much sadness in them. Lynn wanted to be angry at him. Angry about the tremendous amount of stupidity that led to him not telling Nate about the hide-out. She knew how hard Nate struggled to trust people and how insecure he still was. He had improved so much, but he was still like a little seedling that needed love and comfort to grow into a big plant. He was still so fragile. Lynn had worked so hard over the past few months to make him feel better, to make him forgive her about the betrayal, but this whole situation had thrown him back. The demons of his past had caught up with him and thrown him to the mat like an MMA fighter.
“I don’t like that you kept that secret from him but right now we should focus on making sure he isn’t spiraling down even further,” she added and rose to her feet.
She would deal with Oliver and his stupidity later. Marta was there to comfort him and make sure he was okay.
Lynn’s focus was on Nate now.