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axreliono · 8 months ago

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climbing up the walls

Javier Peña & Horacio Carrillo & Steve Murphy

For the @narcosfandomdiscord's monthlong event, ft prompt #9 from Book of Fateful Conversations:

“You'd be surprised what you can live with.”

Warnings: Moral dilemma/mental breakdown discussing the ethics of various murders/violent events in canon, language, general angst no comfort

Word count: 3.1k

A/N: I wanted Peña to suffer. So he does.

AO3 link:

- fic under the cut -

The air weighed more heavily in Colombia.

They all knew it; it was undeniable once you’d been here long enough. Something about this place seemed to chip away at everyone who got rotated down here; slowly, like a repeating, nagging thought that wormed its way way into your brain. After long enough, it became background noise in amongst the chaos, almost quiet enough to ignore. Almost. But it was something Javier couldn’t ever truly hope to escape, especially tonight, especially after what he’d seen today.

Carrillo being back felt odd enough as it was. It felt like so much had happened since he’d been posted to Spain, and yet it had only been a year. Time seemed to move differently in this job. Days dragged on, and months blurred into one. And then, out of the blue, he was back, in all his sharp-jawed, sharp-tongued glory, a figure of hope.

But the man sitting before him now, still at his desk despite the imposing darkness outside, accompanied only by a dim lamp and a stack of files, was not the same man he’d watched leave a year ago. The last of his warmth had been worn away somewhere in the times between, leaving the concept of Carrillo behind rather than the man himself, a specter who seemed to haunt the base. An unstoppable, unfazable husk of himself, who only knew revenge, who didn’t seem to have an interest in finding another purpose outside of that. Or maybe he’d always been like this, and Javier had let himself forget, had filled in the gaps when he was alone with something more than what he actually was.

“You’re awake late,” He commented, snapping Javier out of his own thoughts. He hadn’t looked up from his file, eyes still scanning it meticulously. His Spanish sounded a little different; not enough for most to notice, but enough to set Javier on edge.

“Is it any wonder?” Javier wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing, coming here. But he’d been restless and sleepless for too many hours, and his aimless wandering through the halls of the Carlos Holguin military base had led him here. Maybe not so aimless, after all.

Carrillo finally looked up, holding Javier’s gaze. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft while I’ve been gone.”

Javier hadn’t thought so; everything here seemed to harden his skin more and more, to the point he often wondered if he would ever able to go back to what he was before. But what he’d seen today was different even to all of that. It scared him, and very little scared him nowadays.

“The kid,” He said, switching back to English, as if that would put any distance between him and the night’s events. “Was there any need to pull that shit?”

Carrillo stood up, slowly making his way around the desk. He wasn’t tall, but his presence seemed looming in the half-light. “And when he kills our children, our neighbors, our brothers and our lovers? Tonight was a small price to pay to get to him.”

“He was just a kid.”

“So are his victims,” Carrillo said simply, as if any of this was ever simple. “He was old enough to know better. If Pablo loses his spotter network, we have an advantage. If he’s rattled, he’ll make mistakes. We have to show him we have the upper hand this time around, or we end up in the shit like we did last time with La Catedral.”

Javier couldn’t bring himself to understand that reasoning, no matter how he tried. He wanted to take down Escobar more than anything, but something about this felt wrong. Like they were no better than he was.

“And you can live with the cost of that?” He asked plainly.

Carrillo paused for a second. A single beam of moonlight was streaming in through the window, hitting his cheekbone and trailing down his cheek and neck. The light didn’t reach his eyes.

“You’d be surprised what you can live with.”

“Another bomb in Medellín; this morning, at 10:40am, a car packed with explosives detonated, killing 10 and injuring dozens. The paramilitary group, Los Pepes, have claimed responsibility for this, reportedly targeting one of Pablo Escobar’s businesses in the area. This will be their third attack this month. More to follow at 9.”

Time really was a funny, fickle thing, more and more so with each day that passed Javier by. He’d lived lifetimes in the last few months, and it was starting to show in the way the bags under his eyes had become a feature, and how the crinkles in his forehead never seemed to leave anymore, even when he relaxed his face. It was all starting to wear on him.

Footsteps echoed against the concrete behind him, a long, lanky shadow stretching out across the step as the person approached. Javier kept smoking, not bothering to look up and see who it was.

“Can I join you?” Steve asked pointlessly, already lowering himself down to sit down.

Javier waved him over noncommittally, still staring out across the sports field. He could see Steve’s lighter burst to life beside him, the orange light reflecting off both their faces before dying and plunging them into the darkness of the twilight again. A cloud of smoke drifted past Javier’s face.

“So…” Steve started, coughing a little as he leaned back.

“So.”

“How’s it going?”

Javier could’ve laughed. They both knew full well how it was going. “We both eat, shit, sleep and breathe in the same goddamn building, Murphy.”

Steve sighed, taking another drag from his cigarette. He seemed to really think about it, brows furrowed even after he exhaled, watching the smoke catch the dim lights from the building behind them as it twisted and flailed through the air. “They’re starting to ask more questions, Javi.”

Javier didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. He mostly wished Steve hadn’t asked it in the first place.

“Well, good luck to them.”

Steve shot him this look, somewhere between concern and disapproval. Javier wished he could unsee it, wished he could go back to smoking in the dwindling light by himself, uninterrupted.

“Why did you get involved?” Steve was still watching Javier. He wasn’t sure he would stand up long under the scrutiny.

“You want to win as much as I do,” Javier said simply, flicking his cigarette as if the issue didn’t bother him in the slightest. As if neither of them knew the toll this place was having on them both. “And I was left with no other choice. Someone had to take the fall. At least this way, I can try and keep it under control.”

Steve laughed, a bitter, twisted sound. “You call this control?”

“Don’t act like you’re doing any better.”

“I’m fighting for justice,” Steve insisted.

Javier curled up his lip into a half-sneer, finally making eye contact with Steve. “You and I both know we’re past that point now.”

As much as it hurt to say it out loud, it was true. He’d watched the humanity slowly drain from his partner with each year they chased down Escobar, with each dead sicario and police officer alike, with every step that only left them further away from an end to the madness. The once-naïve newbie was long gone, and a brazen murderer had taken his place. It was nothing more than the nature of the game they were in now. It didn’t matter whether it was with a badge and gun or an envelope under a table. They’d both signed away their souls long ago. Both of them were running out of room on their mental list of loved ones lost in the crossfire. And with Carrillo gone, the only one who’d seemed able to handle any of this, there was nothing left to do but push forward to fill that hole. They both knew that.

Steve finally slumped back down into a hunched-over position, giving up. “When it’s over, it’s over. Just don’t get yourself into too much shit in the meantime.”

“When it’s over, we have to go back,” Javier reminded him, having to force the words out. It was a truth better left unacknowledged most of the time. “And we have to live with what we’ve seen and what we’ve done down here.”

“You’d be surprised what you can live with once the victory’s under your belt,” Steve said, exhaling slowly. “I’ll be able to sleep at night knowing he’s dead.”

Javier just stared at him, breath catching in his throat. All at once, he was back in Carrillo’s office, staring down a man he didn’t recognize anymore, sick to his stomach and homesick for a place he wasn’t sure was real. He’d since become the very same husk he’d condemned that night; hunting a win at all costs, reasoning his way out of a black hole of his own making. And to compound the problem, he’d managed to drag Steve down here with him, too. Steve, who’d come into the country with a wife, a lopsided, optimistic grin and a dream, and would leave it bloody, scarred and haunted. Steve, who had fallen apart once already and had put himself back together wrong.

Javier couldn’t bear to see him like that. He’d helped pull him out of his alcohol-fuelled spiral, only to help him wade deeper into the bloodbath Javier now called home. Now, neither of them could return.

“I think it’s too late for that,” Javier said slowly. “I’m not sure any of this is living.”

“What else would you call it?” Steve stubbed his cigarette into the step, getting up. “There’s only so much I can do. I’m sorry. You got yourself into this mess.”

It was like he couldn’t hear Javier, like nothing he said could ever translate properly across the gap between them. Javier didn’t bother to keep trying to make himself understood. He just nodded. He knew their paths had diverged beyond repair. Whatever had been before, when Steve had felt like the only person he trusted, the only one who could’ve ever hoped to understand, was no more. Something like this was bound to change them. He never should’ve expected anything else.

Steve patted him on the back, the contact brief and jolting before he disappeared down the pathway and back into the building somewhere. Javier kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, on the view that had become more familiar than his own two hands recently, and wondered absently if he really could find a way to live when it was all over, not moving from his spot until his hands had started to go numb from the cold and his cigarette had all but dissolved in his grip.

Washington DC had never felt as gray as it did tonight, as Javier sat in some nameless, soulless bar alone, sipping on his whiskey as everyone around him watched the football match, cheering and shouting with more energy than was necessary for such a small space. The board meeting tomorrow was hanging over his head like an axe ready to fall. At best, he’d be assigned to some windowless filing cabinet for the rest of his years. At worst, he’d fucked up beyond repair. Not knowing only made it all worse.

“Hey, can you put on the news?” Some guy shouted across the bar, leaning far too far over into the bartender’s personal space. “Just until halftime is over.”

The bartender grabbed the remote, the little screen in the corner of the room flickering as it jumped to the weatherman in front of his map, discussing cold fronts and rain levels. Javier turned back to his drink, the chatter once again fading back to background noise. He’d probably have to go back to Texas. He wondered what his family would have to say about all this; nothing good, he imagined.

“…And this just in, the infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was fatally shot in a gunfight with the Colombian National Police mere minutes ago-”

Javier choked, coughing uncontrollably and missing most of the rest of what was being said, the whiskey burning at the back of his throat and nose. Through the blurry haze of tears, he could see videos and pictures of his body being carried away. Pablo Escobar, right there on the tiny screen in this bar, beard scraggly and grown out, gut hanging out of his shirt, covered in blood and unmoving. He was pretty sure the other people around him were cheering, but he couldn’t be sure, feeling just a little like he was spinning away from his own body. A single glimpse of him propped up on a rooftop, surrounded by smiling policemen with guns slung over their shoulders, flashed past before the images continued coming. Javier froze. He could’ve sworn he recognized the red polo stood on his right.

Abandoning the final few sips of his whiskey, he was throwing on his jacket and running out of the bar before he could even think properly, the image of Escobar’s dead body held aloft by his colleagues burned into the back of his eyes, flashing across his vision with every step he took as he ran through the street, past flickering neon signs and lit-up shopfronts to the payphone down a dark alley nearby. He fumbled to insert as many quarters as he could scrounge from his jacket pocket, and was dialing the number before he could really consider it, before he could doubt himself and change his mind.

“Hello?”

Just hearing that voice was enough to overwhelm him. It hadn’t exactly been long since he’d left, but the longer he was here, the worse the ever-present ache in his side seemed to get, tugging away at him like a loose thread ready to unravel him entirely.

“Hey, it’s me,” Javier said, keeping his tone as even and cool as possible. The sound seemed almost alien to him.

“Javi!” Steve said, with all the affection of someone Javier had thought was long lost to him. It broke his heart to hear it.

“I saw the news.”

“Yeah,” Steve said simply. The tinny echo of cheering was just about audible across the line, maybe from around him. “I’m still on the roof.”

Fuck. Javier could barely believe it was real; he was half-expecting for him to wake up any minute in his hard, cold hotel bed, and for all of this to have been a dream. The floor seemed to list and sway underfoot.

“Congrats, Murphy.” He couldn’t find anything else to say.

It felt bizarre to even consider a victory. They’d been fighting for years, every day a slow trudge towards a goal that never seemed within reach, a permanent stasis, a never-ending loop of fighting and losing. And just like that, it was over on a random Thursday, with a single bang, and then silence. Everything they’d built, everything they’d sacrificed, leading to just one moment that was over and done already.

“You should’ve been here, man,” Steve said quietly.

Javier could feel his throat closing up. He wasn’t sure he’d ever really left, mentally. Home didn’t feel like home anymore. He ached for what had been, but could barely breathe when he had been there. It all felt turned on its head.

“They better give you a medal,” is what he said instead, voice heavy and choked. If Steve noticed, he was gracious enough to not mention it.

“Fucking right, they better.” He laughed.

“What now?” Javier asked. He wasn’t sure it was the right question to ask. He just needed to know what this meant for them, when their entire purposes had become nothing more than defeating Escobar and living to see another day. He didn’t have his own answers.

“I’m going home. Gonna try and patch things up with Connie, see Olivia again.” Steve sighed. “It went too far. I went too far. I just want things to go back to the way they were before now.”

Javier could barely remember a before. He’d seen too much, done too much, dragged his way through a drug war by sheer force alone and barely come out the other side intact. There was no way back through something like that. And yet Steve was moving forward while he was stuck, tethered to a phone box in the dark, the world racing past him at a terrifying speed whether he liked it or not.

“I hope it goes well.”

And he meant it. Even if it cut deep into him to say it.

“Thanks. Hey, look, I better go. Trujillo is calling me back. Look after yourself, yeah?”

Javier nodded, as if Steve could see through the phone and the distance between them, and the line went dead. Just like that, that was it. He hung up the phone slowly, feeling like his body was thousands of miles away, head foggy as he tucked his hands into his pockets and started the slow walk back to his empty hotel room like nothing had ever even happened.

He got ready for bed in silence, hands moving on autopilot as he washed his face and brushed his teeth, brain still stuck on the image of a man and an empire felled all at once, bloody and battered and mortal at the end of it all. It stayed with him even as he lay awake, wondering how the fuck he’d got here, how he’d lost those years of his life in the blink of an eye. How they all seemed so squandered now it was over. Because, at the end of the day, when Escobar’s coffin would be carried through the city to the spot where it would lie forever, surrounded by flowers and security personnel alike, it would be broadcast to the whole world what a fucked up job they’d done. The deep scars they’d left behind, marring both the country and their own lives, would only serve as a reminder of the great sacrifice this victory had cost for years to come.

But, regardless of the choices made and never-ending list of things lost along the way, everyone who’d got tangled up in this mess would keep going. What other choice did they have, did he have? The only way past this was to keep moving through life, hiding the devil he’d become during his time there in the walls, sweeping his past mistakes and the lives they had cost under the rug. He’d live with the weight of it all, with having to look into those two tortured eyes that stared back at him in the mirror in the dark, haunted with the knowledge that there was more to the story than what he would end up carefully piecing together to tell at parties. That was all there was left to do.

He did not dream. When he woke up again, it was still dark.

#narcovember #narcovember prompt roulette #narcos #javier peña #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena narcos #narcos fanfiction #day 9 #book of fateful conversations #very very rambly and pretentious #but enjoy

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