September 11th

Mild concussion.

If this is mild, I would hate to feel what a severe one is like!

My head is pounding and I damn near collapsed in the hallway, but Lifeline insists its nothing a little bed rest won’t clear up. From the look on Flint’s face I can tell he is as skeptical about the diagnosis as I am.

I am not one to show pain. I am not one to show weakness…so when Duke and Flint saw me stumble in the hall they immediately became worried. So much so that they stopped arguing for the first time since our team exited the helicopter half an hour ago. I was about to physically put myself between the two of them in order to end their bickering when it hit. It was only Roadblock’s quick reflexes that prevented me from falling.

Sure…I hadn’t felt myself since we finished up our job on Cobra Island…but I figured it was just exhaustion and stress. God knows I have felt that before…but the searing pain that ripped through my skull told me that the B.A.T who hit me with his gun had done more damage than originally thought.

Its times like these that I really miss Doc. I am not very comfortable around medical personal, and try to avoid the infirmary as much as possible. But Doc always made me feel safe and well cared for. Its not that Lifeline isn’t a good medic, I am sure he is one of the best or he wouldn’t be here. But Doc…he was special.

Loosing him was a blow…he was so young. He was such a good man. He devoted himself to healing, to saving the lives of others. How ironic that someone dedicated to saving lives should lose his own so tragically.

It’s never easy losing a teammate, and the Joe team has had its share of losses, but some just hit you harder than others.

At any rate…its about 3 am and I am still up. Actually, I am not allowed to sleep! Some cruel form of punishment disguised as medical observation. At least the pain has lessened to a dull throbbing, giving me the opportunity to actually sit up and write. I need to stay occupied or else I will end up snoring before you can say Rapid Eye Movement.

Dash is fast asleep in the chair next to the bed, the book he was reading hanging precariously on his lap. Poor guy looks really uncomfortable, and he is certainly going to be stiff tomorrow when he wakes up.

Stubborn man! He insisted on staying in the infirmary to help keep me awake despite Lifeline’s insistence that the nurses were going to do just that. You should have seen the look on his face when the medic told him that he had nothing to worry about…he got all blustery and began to vehemently deny that he was concerned…

I think I rolled my eyes then, which caused him to glare back at me while Lifeline tried unsuccessfully to hide a smirk. He wiped it off quickly enough when Flint swung back to him and fixed him with one of his patented bad-ass glowers.

Oh Flint…that macho self image of yours is starting to crack under pressure…

I just leaned over to grab the book off his lap before it could fall to the ground and wake him. ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. Who would have pegged Flint as a reader?

I would…because I know him now and he trusts me enough to read something like that in my presence.

I guess it’s time I talked a bit about Flint. I have been avoiding it I know…but it seaps out every so often. How could it not? He has become such a big part of my life…our lives have become so intertwined that I am having trouble distinguishing where mine ends and his begins.

I know more about him than most people, as he rarely shares personal information with anyone despite his big mouth. I certainly know more than Duke or Roadblock even with their long history. Over the years that we have been together he has shared things with me…and the puzzle that is Dashiell Faireborn is starting to come together in my mind piece by quiet piece.

Goodness…he is such a complex character; I don’t know where to start! I certainly don’t want to share too many details…who knows will end up reading this and I have no right to betray his secrets, even to Psych Out who is bound by his oath to keep what I say to him or what he may read here to himself.

I guess the most important thing to know about Dash…the thing that has defined his life more than anything else…is his mind. Now, I have always considered myself ‘smarter than the average bear’…straight A’s, Honor Role…but I worked at it. The languages came naturally for certain…but nothing else came easy.

Dash, on the other hand, would have MENSA clambering for him to lead the organization. He is a genius…pure and simple. I have never seen anything like it…his mind works so quickly and with such a deep and profound understanding of the most difficult subjects that it is almost frightening to watch.

According to his eldest brother, his ‘gift’ was apparent at a very early age…and although his parents were obviously proud of their son’s ability and certainly encouraged it, they couldn’t possibly have foreseen that his talent would end up isolating him.

Dash was a quiet boy…a bit of a nerd in school. His scholastic aptitude made him the target for bullies and more often than not he came home bruised and battered from a schoolyard tussle. His brothers were all much older and wanted to protect him but his father was of the mind that he needed to fight his own battles.

His father the retired colonel.

His father the war hero.

His father who raised three strapping young men, and was now faced with something he didn’t quite understand. A sensitive, introverted little boy who would rather read than skateboard…rather hide than fight.

I think his quiet disappointment hurt Dash more than any classroom bully.

His father needn’t have worried. Being smart and quick on the uptake, Dash learned very quickly what it took to be accepted at school. As he grew he discovered that his abilities translated relatively well to the athletic arena…and that excelling at Rugby made him more of a star than any scholarship. Then as his body developed he realized that he was good looking, and that those looks got him more attention than any profound analysis of Byron…especially in the eyes of the opposite sex.

His sharp mind turned people off…he learned to hide it. His love of literature somehow made him less masculine in the eyes of his peers. He learned to read only in private.

He learned what it took to be popular. He learned what it took to make his father proud. He became the ultimate man. The arrogant adonis, the brash soldier, the macho lady-killer.

Flint was born…

Not that his intellectual abilities suffered. He still managed to earn a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He was still an honors student…but it came to him with very little effort. He is the type that should have been in university when he was 10 years old. Everything else was too easy.

Needless to say, that ease made didn’t help his cockiness…

In any case he joined the army soon after finishing up his degree in English Literature, following in his father and brothers footsteps. With his background he could easily have been an officer, but instead he chose to go in as enlisted. To be one of the boys. To be in on the action. The man feels he constantly has to prove himself…

All four Faireborn boys are in one branch of the military or another…two are in the Navy and one is a Marine. And yes they are all just as hard- headed and arrogant (one is a f-14 pilot, it comes with the territory with those flyboys), but Flint is by far the worst of the bunch.

You know, its funny…for all the macho bravado…for all the testosterone fueled pride, he is really a very insecure person. I think whatever he went through as a child really affected him, and because of it he no longer trusts anyone enough to let down his guard.

He certainly would never be caught dead reading Milan Kundera in the rec- room near the others. I know deep down he realizes it isn’t that big a deal, and although he would probably be teased he can certainly handle himself. Nevertheless…he still hides his taste for the ‘intellectual’…he still masks his genius with party-boy ramblings…

At least he tries to hide it. It’s impossible to do so completely. It seeps out every time he plans a mission, every time he advises his CO. He is a master tactician, and everyone knows it. There are very few people who can out think Flint on the battlefield.

I’m no psychologist, and I hate it when friends try to analyze my behavior like some armchair Sigmund Freud. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe he is just so used to being this way that it really is his true self…

…No I am sure it is…’Flint’ is as much as part of what makes him ‘HIM’ as ‘Dashiell’ is, and for all the headaches he has caused me I wouldn’t change him for the world.

“…you may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.”

I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but those quiet words uttered with such feeling on a rainy night outside our destroyed headquarters held so much meaning to him. In an eloquent quote from Shakespeare, Dash summed up the one fear, the one uncertainty that has defined him for most of his life.

I can’t help but wish that the others knew the introverted scholar, the quiet Dashiell that lies inside the warrior. It would show him once and for all that he needn’t hide, that none of the guys would think any less of him for being a poet, a philosopher, a thinker. That he would not be a pariah…

On the other hand…I admit to wanting to have this side of him all to myself. Selfish? Maybe…but it makes me feel special, trusted…and dare I say it…loved.

I am going to have to stop here. The nurse is here for another ‘check’. It’s my last one, so that means I can go to sleep now. Good, because I am just about at the end of my rope and no one is going to want to be with me tomorrow if I haven’t had enough sleep. I am pretty crabby when I’m overtired.

Oh, he’s awake and is watching me carefully through sleepy eyes…

I wonder if there is enough room in this hospital bed for both of us?

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