Chapter Text
It was far from the first time H.M. Murdock had crashed a plane.
And he wouldn’t even use the word crash this time, per se, more like unplanned, gravity assisted landing. The problem was, the unforgiving, wild expanse that was the North Cascades mountain range was shockingly short on ideal runways… And the cute little Cessna 310R Face had scammed from God knows where was losing altitude under the insufficient power of her one remaining engine.
If B.A. had been awake, and not sedated in the back, he would have had some real choice curse words for the pilot, even though it was hardly his fault.
“What’s the plan here, Murdock?” Face said from the copilots seat through gritted teeth and a white knuckled grip on his seat.
“Ladies and gentleman, unfortunately we will have to suspend all beveridge and food service for the duration of the flight, pul-leaseeee prepare for landing!”
“Alright.” Face said, with a tight smile and a nod. Murdock grinned back at him, Face really did have a lot of faith in his abilities.
Below them, and approaching too fast, the land stretched in an expanse of evergreen trees and rocky knolls, the forest felt never ending for a minute. Except, there in the distance, the trees cleared around a long stretch of meadow at the base of a valley, where a sparkling stream of water snaked.
Murdock forced the plane in that direction. The tops of trees raced towards them, he stuck his tongue between his teeth.
“Buckle up, Boss!” Murdock yelled to Hannibal in the back.
The first trees clipped the bottom of the Cessna and Hannibal’s response was drowned out. The plane jerked and shuddered violently like it might rip itself apart and Murdock fought to keep the aircraft level.
They lost more speed, hindered by the trees as whipping foliage filled the view from the cockpit like a blizzard of green.
“Come onnnnn baby!” Murdock urged the Cessna, shouting over the horrible crashing of breaking trees, blaring alarms and screaming metal.
The windshield fractured, giving way under the unrelenting onslaught of trees.
Just when Murdock thought he was about to see him and Face be skewered like appetizers on a giant’s barbecue, the trees disappeared and the meadow was racing up towards them still impossibly fast. Murdock pulled back on the controls raising the nose of the plane in a last ditch effort to soften the landing.
The Cessna hit. Hard.
It skidded across the valley floor as the world around them dissolved into a blur or colors and flying dirt and grass. The plane spun as a wing caught on an obstruction and the world outside made little sense for what felt like an eternity but must have only been seconds. Murdock caught a glimpse of a wing, broken and detached sticking out of the earth behind them, before the plane hit something hard and jolted, rolling halfway up and suspending him in the air by his seat belt.
Murdock blinked through windshield shards and a lopsided horizon and, miracle of miracles, the world had stopped moving. He slowly lifted a hand to his face, dazed by the impact. It came away wet and red. Clarity seemed to come back slowly and Murdock found he wanted to laugh, a hysterical, half mad, gleeful sound. He cut himself off quickly enough though, the miracle of surviving the Cessna’s suicide wasn't a sure thing yet for the others. Fear clenched in his heart a desperate, animal panic. He couldn’t see into the back, but he did turn blurry eyes on Face below him as he fumbled for his seat belt latch. He noticed, distantly, that one arm felt useless.
“Face,” he croaked, “Faceman, you okay over there?” He blinked at Face, trying to get his eyes to focus the rest of the way.
Face didn’t answer, but he was moving. Picking his head up and pulling sluggishly at his own seat belt.
Murdock’s own came loose suddenly, and he dropped with a yelp, landing on top of Face. His shoulder exploded in pain from the jostling.
“Murdock…” Face groaned, sounding a little dazed and very disgruntled. “Ow. G’off me.”
He tried, he did, to shift off Face without shoving his dead-weight into the man’s ribs but it was more flop than finesse. Once he was off him he cradled his arm carefully to his chest, breathing through the sharp stabbing feeling. He turned his attention back to Face after a second of composing himself.
“You okay Faceman? How would you rate my landing?” Face had blood in his hair and down his cheek where he was pressed against the crushed side of the Cessna.
“Nine out of ten Murdock, I hate to be a critic, but it was just a tiny bit bumpy.” Face grinned, then started to cough, and Murdock realized with a start the cockpit was filling with smoke. He fumbled for Face’s seatbelt with his good arm.
“Come on, we gotta get the others out!” He managed to unbuckle Face and the two of them crawled awkwardly into the back of the sideways plane.
Murdock felt a rush of relief as he saw Hannibal attempting to unbury himself and the still unconscious B.A. from fallen luggage. “Boss! You alright?”
“Good landing Murdock.” Hannibal said with a grin, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he was sarcastic or not. “Look! You didn’t even wake up B.A.!”
Smoke clawed stubbornly at the inside of the fuselage. The air felt thick, and Murdock’s first instinct was to draw a deep breath, but his nose and lungs screamed in protest and he coughed instead. There was no time for assessing injuries or debriefing on their current situation, they had to get out of the plane incase the whole thing decided to burst into flames and go out in a real blaze of glory.
There was a hole in the side of the plane where the left wing used to be, but it was straight up above them and too difficult to climb out of. Instead, the clambered awkwardly back into the cockpit, Face and Hannibal dragging B.A., Murdock through broke through more of the glass with his boot, and then tossed his leather jacked over the lowest point. One my one, they tumbled out onto the wet marshy grass put hasty distance between themselves and the smoking Cessna, retreating to the tree line. Face, being the last through the windshield had retrieved Murdock’s jacket, and he handed it to him as they huffed for breath. Murdock cradled it to his chest reverently, shooting Face a grateful expression as he traced the embroidered tiger. Face just gave him a wink as he zipped up his own jacket against the brisk mountain air.
They all watched solemnly as the Cessna did in fact burst into a raging torrent of flames.
Murdock gave the plane a salute with his good arm before flopping down with his back against a tree trunk.
With B.A. still asleep (how high of a dose had Face given him exactly?) the three of them assessed their injuries and took stock of the situation.
Face reset Murdock’s dislocated shoulder, a highly unpleasant experience, although it did feel marginally better afterwards, besides that, he just had some superficial cuts on his face and arms. Hannibal had at least one broken rib, for which not much could be done. Face, besides the nasty cut on his brow making him look like an extra in a horror film, insisted he was fine. B.A. as far as they could tell with some careful poking and prodding, seemed unharmed.
Hannibal was tying a strip of his shirt sleeve around Face’s head by the time B.A. began to stir.
It was a moment Murdock was both anxious for and slightly dreading.
“What the hell you done now fool? One minute I’s in my van, now I’m waking up in the damn mountains?” B.A. bellowed, making them all jump. Nobody had even noticed him stirring back to wakefulness.
“Now, B.A. we hiked here! You were just so tired you took a nap!” Hannibal insisted, turning away from Face, who ducked cautiously behind Hannibal. “You really don’t remember?”
“You can’t fool me with that nonsense anymore, that’s an airplane wing right in front of us!” B.A. launched to his feet, rounding on Murdock, who held his injured arm in front of him protectively and did his best kicked puppy look.
“Face found the plane!” Murdock shouted hurriedly, tripping over his feet in a hasty retreat.
“Where? At a damn junkyard?” B.A. turned to Face, who Hannibal stepped aside helpfully to reveal.
“Well, uh, B.A, you see—” Face scrambled to his feet, hands placating and smile his classic disarming expression.
“It was at a junkyard, wasn’t it!”
“I didn’t have a whole lotta time and—”
B.A. grabbed him by the front of his leather jacket, and Face tried a new tactic.
“—Junkyard is such a pejorative, B.A., let’s call it a surplus depot, an—” Face yelped in wide eyed alarm as B.A. shook him hard, shoving him into a nearby tree.
Hannibal, seeing things escalating to actual violence that rarely manifested between any of them, chose that moment to intervene.
“Hey now,” Hannibal’s voice cut through, as even and calm as always, somewhere between authoritative and bemused “Ease off, Sergeant. That’s enough.”
B.A. released Face’s jacket with a disgusted shove that left Face stumbling to regain his footing. He straightened his jacket with a sheepish, slightly shaky look. As much as he might talk the talk, B.A.’s true anger was a rare thing… but his genuine anxiety around flying combined with waking up to find they’d crash landed in a remote mountain range without his knowledge was certainly enough to trigger it. Murdock found himself both surprised and selfishly glad to not be the target. He shot Face an apologetic look and got a slightly reproachful one in return.
“Now B.A., apologize to Face, you’ve hurt his feelings. He was very proud of that junkyard plane.” Hannibal continued, using his best kindergarten teacher impression.
B.A. glowered, jaw clamped so tight Murdock thought he’d snap a molar. Face braced himself, looking wary, but B.A. turned away from him, kicking a stray rock into the undergrowth.
“I ain’t gonna apologize, we coulda died Hannibal! Maybe you ain’t as good a conman as you think, pretty boy!” That was a little far, Murdock thought, judging from the genuinely hurt expression Face took on. He opened his mouth to defend himself or say something, but Murdock stepped in first.
“‘We coulda died’ If not for my fantastic, legendary, once in a generation skills?” Murdock asked, attempting to take some of the heat off of Face. After all, B.A. and Face bickering was quite unnatural. “You think the plane landed itself, B.A.? You think the air currents wrapped us in a big, fluffy cloud and tucked us into the dirt like a baby burrito? I’ll have you know, it takes years of expertise and a lion’s heart full of courage to pull off a landing like that.” He boasted grandly, giving B.A. an exaggerated bow at the end.
“Whatever fool, I ain’t ever flying with any of you again!” Nobody pointed out that they’d all heard that one before. B.A. stomped a little ways off, out in to the meadow, presumably to cool off.
“What’s the plan, Hannibal?” Face asked after watching B.A. storm off to a safe distance. He brushed some tree bark off the sleeve of his leather jacket with exaggerated indignation.
Hannibal took his time answering, he pulled a cigar out of his chest pocket and lit it, which was such a reassuringly Hannibal thing to do that Murdock found himself relaxing a bit of tension he didn’t realize he was holding on to. After all, they’d been in worse situations. If Hannibal was still smoking, things would probably be just fine.
To his surprise though, it wasn’t Hannibal that spoke next.
“Hey!” B.A. called from where he was standing, a little ways beyond the charred scraps of the Cessna. “Get over here!”
He was looking upwards at something Murdock couldn’t see through the trees, shielding his eyes against the noon sun.
They exchanged looks then trudged towards him, back into the soggy meadow.
Murdock took a minute to admire the majesty that was the North Cascades. Everything was so green. The trickling stream was crystal clear and sparkly and was banked with mossy rocks and high alpine plants like the heather, adorned with little purple flowers. On either side of the valley, evergreen trees dotted the rolling hills, and beyond them, craggy, snowcapped mountains rose like sleeping giants high above. He could even see some glaciers, deep blue even in the full sun. And it smelled wonderful too, nothing like the air in L.A.
He could fully understand how in some books mountain air healed sickly victorian children. He was so distracted that he walked straight into B.A., thankfully not with his still sharply aching shoulder. Perhaps the mountain air would heal that faster than normal too.
“Hey, watch where you going fool.” B.A. grumbled, but there was no real heat in it. It seemed he still felt strongly that Face was at fault for their current predicament.
Murdock fixed B.A.’s shirt with exaggerated showiness and turned to look at what the others were staring at.
High up on the hill nestled between too peaks was a teeny, tiny cabin, built nearly into a cliffside.
“It’s a fire lookout!” Face said, from where he stood carefully positioned to put Hannibal between himself and B.A.
“They’ll have radios and supplies.” Hannibal said, grinning through a puff on his cigar. “There’s the plan, fellas.”
“This is the best camping trip ever!” Murdock said gleefully, clapping his hands together, and then wincing as it sent a shockwave of pain up his arm and into his shoulder. “Ow.” He whispered, and Face gave him a concerned look.
“That’s still a long hike.” Face noted dubiously, craning his neck back at the cabin. As the crow flies the cabin wasn’t far, but they’d need to take an arduously winding and steep trajectory to get there.
“Boss’ got broken ribs and even the fool’s gotta jacked up arm, what you complaining about Faceman?” B.A. glowered, and Murdock realized they must have caught him up to speed while he had been admiring the majesty of the nature around them. B.A. was taking his bad attitude a bit too far, after all, Face probably was thinking about Hannibal and Murdock and how hard the hike would be. He nearly opened his mouth to tell him that, but Hannibal interjected first.
“Complaining? Face? He never does that.” Hannibal grinned, putting out his cigar on a large rock and tucking it back in his chest pocket for later.
He patted Face on the back heartily, making him wince and cringe away abruptly like a shy, twice-scalded alley cat. Murdock gave him a curious look, even for Face, he was laying the drama on just a little thick.
Face straightened his jacket and gave him a reassuring smile back, but it came across a little wan and pinched, his face a shade paler than normal.
B.A.’s wrath could make someone pretty nervy, he supposed, and chalked it up to that. Murdock was used to it, and even found himself making a habit of ‘poking the bear’ for entertainment, but for an inexperienced subject of B.A.’s ire, it was an acquired taste. And he had to admit, this was far more than a healthy beginner’s dose, like going to a Thai restaurant for the first time and ordering 5/5 spice.
Murdock sighed.
Now he was thinking about Pad Thai, and that really made him hungry.
“Let’s get hiking! I bet they got Pad Thai up there!” He grinned despite himself, and spun on his heel. Secretly, he hoped the mountain air would start working its miracles on his sharply throbbing shoulder, or it really would be maybe not the most fun camping trip he’d ever had. “Hi-ho, hi-ho, up the mountain we gooooo.”
