Chapter Text
The door to Calisto’s office looks heavier than usual, though it’s made of the same plain oak wood. Horangi straightens his jacket, knocks twice, and walks in.
She’s sitting on the window sill with an espresso cup next to her thigh. The moment Horangi opens the door, she turns to him.
Horangi knew they need to have this conversation sooner or later, but he thought she could buy him more time to fix the problem himself. And now it seems that he has been stalling for too long.
“You know why I called you here, n’est-ce pas?”
“I suppose…yes.” He tried to appear casual but failed.
Calisto gestures him to take a sit, which Horangi waves off. He doesn’t want to give her any impression that he’s going to be in this office for long.
“You must know I have tried everything I could to convince them, but that’s before. With what happened…”
“I know what happened.”Horangi cuts her off. Being reminded of his own misdoing makes him feel like a child being reprimanded, though the matter is much more serious here.
He shot a teammate in the arm.
“Ben, then you should know there’s no excuse this time. We’re going to put you on leave until you pass your psych eval.”
Horangi grits his teeth, “But…”
“No ‘but’. This is for your own good, too. I was responsible for underestimating the gravity of your situation. So, I will personally make sure you do not report to your duty until you’re in good condition.”
Calisto’s features are soft: almond-shaped eyes, elegant brows, exquisite nose, and full lips. But her expression is always stern, which makes her look sharp. And sometimes Horangi thinks he might be a little afraid of her.
“Calisto,” He tries again, softens his tone, “I just need some rest. Give me a week and I’ll prove it to you. No eval. You know that bullshit doesn’t work for Asians.”
“This is not the time and place to discuss the efficacy of modern psychology with me. The eval is the bottom line you must pass before we entrust our lives to you again. Passing it doesn’t guarantee anything.”
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are they threatening to kick him out?
“You can’t be serious.”
“Uh-uh, I’m not finished. You will report to Dr. Brown this afternoon to discuss your rehabilitation program. And you should know she will send me weekly reports regarding the progress you make,” She pauses and gives him a good stare in the eyes, “if you choose to put in an effort and make any. Any questions?”
Horangi tightens his lips to stop himself from saying anything that’ll potentially put himself in worse conditions.
“…….No.”
“Bon. You’re free to go.”
Horangi almost slouched his shoulders in relief, then he remembers another thing he came for.
“Oh, just one thing, do you know where I can find König?”
Calisto throws her hands up in disbelief, “I’m not your babysitter. Go look around by yourself, now that you have free time to kill.”
Horangi says dryly: “You do know how to rub salt into the wounds.”
She finally relaxes her knitted brows and speaks to him as a sister instead of superior: “Listen, if you truly feel sorry about what you did, the best thing you can do for him is to get yourself together and avoid the same mistake. We were worried about you.”
And it threw him off guard.
“I……yeah, I understand.”
Horangi escapes from her office and closes the door behind him with a heavy sigh. He thinks back on the problem that got him into that conversation.
It wasn’t anything serious at first. Just nightmares. He had nightmares all the time.
When he’s ten it was about his father coming home, smashing everything into pieces. When he’s fifteen, it was about stabbing his boss at the place where he took a part-time job. Oh and the stabbing part was not bad, it was really being on the run that woke him up in cold sweats. Those nightmares of being wanted by the police smoothed into his reality, only he was wanted by loan sharks for his gambling debts. And for a couple of years, opening the door to gangsters at his doorstep dominated his brain TV, until he joined the military.
They never had an effect on his life.
He eats, he sleeps, he trains, and repeats.
When he goes on missions, those nightmares are behind him. A good dose of adrenaline injected by his survival instincts washes all the bad things down the drain along with blood and dirt. Occasionally, he still dreams of his creditors. Putting on a mask helps chase them away.
Until his nightmares started to take a different shape.
The first one was of him being discharged because he failed his first mission—his rifle stuck in the nick of time. When he dragged his duffle bag home, the gang was waiting for him with wicked smiles on their faces. He woke up screaming and the leader of his squad scolded him for making scary noises during sleeping hours.
He paid it no mind at the time, took it to be mere anxiety before his first mission. But looking back, it was probably the beginning of many more that followed.
And the beginning of everything that led him to put a bullet in König’s arm.
A week ago, his team was sent to handle a hostage situation.
The negotiator failed to bring kidnappers around, couldn’t blame the guy since they were dealing with a bunch of drug dealers. Those scumbags most likely didn’t plan on letting the hostages go in the first place.
Per their protocol, König, their Austrian insertion specialist on team, were sent in with a small squad to secure the hostages and neutralize the targets. Horangi was their backup with a sniper in the building across the street.
The mission was going according to plan every step of the way until the showdown.
König was struggling to subdue the last target. Horangi had a clear shot.
“Now!” König shouted over the comms.
He had a clear shot. A shot that he would never miss in the training ground.
But he missed it. It took him a second shot to put the target down
He heard a repressed groan on the other side of the comms after the first bullet left the barrel and he knew he fucked up. Like he did in his nightmares.
“You need to work on your aim.” was all König said to him after they wrapped up the mission.
Horangi is a bold man. But to confront someone who had to bear the consequences for him because he couldn’t do his job right is not something that he’s particularly courageous at.
Nonetheless, he owes König an apology. Because he was too humiliated by his own mistake to say anything to him that day.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hopes König could punch him so that he could feel better.
A truly coward thought.
He takes a walk around the base after lunch. He doesn’t know the Austrian man well enough to have a clue as to where to start. Might as well just promenade and give his stomach time to digest before another gut-wrenching moment of the day. Definitely not stalling.
Eventually, after a full tour of the base that he already knew like the back of his hand, he has to ask around. But it seems that no one whom he’s buddy with knows König better than him, which is nearly nothing except that he’s a tall, wacky loner who eats in his room and talks to himself when he gets excited on missions.
He tried to befriend König like he did everyone when the man first joined, yet all he got was polite refusals and nervous laughters. Being a sensible human being, he knew when to back off when he’s not welcome.
With a defeated groan, he texts Calisto to ask for the man’s room number. Calisto sends the number to him fairly quickly. He tries not to picture her face when she saw the message.
Standing in front of König’s door feels oddly familiar to Horangi, until he recognizes this deja vu from his visit to Calisto’s office this morning.
Two knocks.
No response.
Two more.
Silence.
Horangi gives it about a minute.
Two more.
“Who is it?”
So he is in there. Just pretending not to be so that whoever knocks can leave on their own.
“Hi, it’s me. Uh, Horangi…your teammate. Do you have a moment?”
Wow, that was dumb. As if König wouldn’t remember someone he has been working with for months and who also fucked his arm.
Silence.
He was about to come up with an excuse to get König to open the door when the voice inside the room speaks again.
“Just a second.”
Thirty seconds has passed, Horangi leans his ear to the door and hears some ruffling and heavy grunts.
As soon as he hears footsteps, he backs away and straightens his posture.
The door opened…a crack, just enough for König’s head to pop out. He’s wearing his usual sniper hood, a stitched-up old t-shirt with some dry paints on it. His large frame is hidden behind the door and Horangi can’t see his injured arm.
There was a couple of times that he saw König grabbing meals from across the mess since the mission. He hadn’t figure out a proper apology then so he didn’t approach.
From afar, Horangi could only see König’s right arm wrapped in bandage as expected, but he didn’t know how serious it was except for what Calisto told him. Said that it would take him at least two weeks and some tests to report to duty.
“Can I help you?”
König asks, because Horangi has been standing in the hallway like an idiot.
Horangi hesitates. In his mind he rehearsed this scenario to happen in a place where they could both sit down. But he miscalculated the fact that König is a very private person, which he should have known from how he acted daily. Asking to go into his room could be a little rude.
Fortunate for him, there’s not many people around the barracks at this hour.
Screw it, there’s no point hiding.
“I…uh, I owe you an apology, from that day.” Horangi vaguely gestures at König’s arm, which he can’t really see.
“I’m sorry that I screwed up and caused you harm. I’ll make sure it never happens again.”
Now that he actually says it, those words sound too official for him. Probably because he rehearsed too many times. And he had to rehearse because he doesn’t remember having sincerely apologized to anyone growing up. He usually bounces until shits die down and people forget. And yeah he apologizes to superiors a lot but that’s a whole other deal.
“And you were right about the fact that I needed more training. I don’t know why it happened, but I’m sure more training will help.”
He does. If he can’t stop panicking when he takes a shot then he’ll train until he can hit the target even with his hands shaking.
“Actually, they just suspended me. I’ll be quite free. So let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”
This part he didn’t rehearse, but he feels like he needs to say something because König is staring at him quietly.
“Like laundry…or if you need booze…oh wait you shouldn’t drink with the…never mind. Just let me know, okay? I’ll do whatever I can.”
Horangi ponders on whether that’s a good enough sentence to end the conversation when König suddenly speaks.
“Are you okay?”
This is probably the first time that König actually looks right at him when he speaks. Before, when Horangi tried to initiate a conversation, he would lay his eyes on his own hands or something behind Horangi.
His voice is softer, too. Calm, and if Horangi dares say, concerned.
But he doesn’t know where all of this is coming from.
“What? What do you mean?”
“You don’t look good.”
No one has ever said that to him. Plus he only took his sunglasses off, his mask is till on, König thinks he doesn’t look good just by looking at his eyes?
“Are you saying I’m ugly?”
König pulls himself back a little into the door.
“No. Your eyes. You didn’t sleep enough.”
König’s draws a crescent in the air with his index finger, pointing at the dark circles under his eyes.
“Ah— that.” Horangi looks away, “Yeah…forgot my Americano today. But I’m good.”
“You don’t feel good to me.”
“I don’t follow?”
“Is it why you missed?”
He speaks in such a genuine tone, with no sign of ridicule in his drooping eyes, which makes it more offensive.
Horangi cools his head and clears his throat: “König, I’m sorry but I don’t understand. I think I have bothered you long enough, have some rest. Text me if you need anything.”
He turns to leave without waiting for König’s answer. According to the little knowledge he does have about the Austrian, he probably doesn’t enjoy this conversation either.
But König raises his voice behind him.
“You don’t sleep enough. Is it because you can’t? Or you don’t want to?”
Horangi turns around and gives him a cold stare.
“It’s none of your business.”
As if he hasn’t gotten enough surprises today, König walks out of his door. His bandage is a bit loose with light blood stain on it. He must have been cleaning his wounds, why didn’t he take it to the medic?
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” He gets quiet once he meets Horangi’s eyes, but his words are firm, “You don’t need to compensate me. Injury is normal. But you need to sleep better to be on my team.”
For a moment, Horangi lost his usual quip. His eyes move between König’s face and his arm. He has a feeling that he has done something wrong, again. Except that this time he didn’t.
König can mind his own damn business before he starts asking Horangi questions about his sleep.
He replies in a flat tone: “The medic will handle that.”
König nodded, “Let’s hope so. If they can’t help you, come and see me. I should have something for you.”
And now he’s a psychiatrist?
Horangi sneers: “What? You’re gonna give me your sleeping pills?”
Finally, König doesn’t have more opinions on what’s wrong with him.
The door slams shut with a thud.
Wonderful, he came to apologize and all he accomplished was making things worse. Lekker job, Hong-jin. Lekker job.