xp_logs | Cecilia & Wade | Early Saturday Morning

Wade grills steak, they talk Honduran politics.

Wade glanced at Cecilia as he flipped their steaks. This was becoming something of a tradition, their midnight steak eating thing. A delicious, medium-rare tradition - in his case. Cece liked hers medium, which Wade remembered because he really did have a mind like a steel trap. Sometimes. "So - I'm sure you've been asked like a billion times why you're back at the mansion. I'll skip that bit and ask what you were doing before you came back."

“Thanks.” Cecilia sipped from a mug of hot tea she’d brought outside. “I appreciate it.” She watched Wade handle the meat, trying not to think about how much longer her workouts would need to be to compensate for semi-almost-regular midnight steaks.

“I was in Honduras,” she finally answered, “working for Medecins San Frontieres. You know, Doctors Without Borders? I was in the field, doing surgeries and helping with rural healthcare and stuff. Enjoying the weather.” She shivered reflexively and gave him a side eye. “Can’t believe you got me out here,” she muttered.

"You're out here cause I cook steak - like a boss," Wade said. "Also, because I'm awesome. I've winged it in Honduras, though - some nasty Kick cartels down there. Or there were back in the nineties. And the early two-thousands. And... well. Y'know. For a while. How are the good Doctors sans Borders doing down in Honduras?"

"They're not," Cecilia fired back with a bitter edge she hadn't expected. "Sorry," she shrugged apologetically. "I just... we were doing good work. I was, anyway. But the drug cartels started getting more violent down there, and rumor was they'd start turning the guns on the docs, so MSF pulled us. Kind of an emergency evacuation situation. And now," she gestured to their surroundings, "here I am."

"Now I think about it, I did hear about that. Didn't realize you'd been caught in it," Wade said, frowning. "One of my buddies, guy by the name of Alejandro. He runs protection details down there. That area's not as bad for kidnappings and ransoms as, say, Colombia. I know things have gotten worse since I left, but if Doctors Without Borders pulled out - they've only ever done that, what? In Africa?" He shook his head, eyes still on their steaks. "Bastard cartels, gangs, and wannabe government rebels fucking everything up for everybody else." Then he looked right at Cecilia, didn't blink or flinch, and said, "That's why I killed them, you know? That's why I went out of my way to kill the ones who deserved it most."

Cecilia shivered again, but she couldn't be sure whether it was the winter chill or how matter-of-factly Wade had just acknowledged taking other human lives. Cecilia understood justice, and it wasn't like she had much sympathy for the folks that had been shooting just outside her door while she'd been trying to administer medical care. But her whole life had been focused on the preservation of life, and to hear someone treat death with such gravity still bothered her.

Though, being back in Salem Center, maybe she ought to have expected it.

"Somalia," Cecilia said. She adjusted the zipper on her coat. "But it's a crazy world these days, for whatever reason. Lots of guns in the wrong hands, lots of poorly motivated people." She sighed. "It's a shame we had to leave. I feel for those people."

"Yeah," Wade agreed, testing his steak carefully before taking it off the grill. He left Cecilia's on for a bit longer but sat his aside, keeping an eye on it to make sure it didn't get cold while he waited for hers to finish. "Somalia, though - it's rough. Did some work over there, too. Not as much." Pulling her steak off the grill, Wade plated it and handed it to her before turning off the grill and grabbing his own plate. "Depressing if you think about it too much."

"Yep," Cecilia nodded, looking down at her steak. Her head snapped back up. "Tell me about your friend Alejandro."

"Alejandro? Worked with him on and off for several year. He's based out of San Pedro Sula now. Kind of fighting a losing battle, but working mostly protection details means he's mostly in the better off parts trying to keep people from getting kidnapped. There's always the ransom option, but most of the time they just get offed. What, you want like contact info?" Wade cut into his steak and took a bite, eyebrows raised.

"I don't know," Cecilia shrugged, "maybe." She cut into her steak, pointedly ignoring Wade for a moment. "I have questions about things. Just... thinking maybe he'd have answers."

"What questions?" Wade asked, leaning back against the counter behind him. "I might be able to answer them. Or get the answers for you, at least."

Cecilia popped some steak in her mouth. "Just where things stand. Who's winning the fight? Things like that."

"That's not really the kind of fight people win," Wade pointed out, raising his brows. "I mean, between Honduras and Guatemala, you've basically got the highest impunity rate in the world - almost none of the violent crimes there are actually solved and with Kick being such a massive money maker, there's virtually zero chance of rooting out the gangs or cartels. It's worse than Mexico, almost, and that's saying something where cartels are concerned."

"Well, that's a damn shame," Cecilia crossed her arms. "So many lives - innocent ones, even - hang in the balance because people need to get their high? How is that acceptable? How do we lose sight of what's actually important so quickly?

"Dude, we don't. But try having a conversation with somebody from MS-13 or 18th Street. They don't care. Why should they? They've been fighting since Los Angeles in the '80s. They don't get better - they just get dead. Sometimes that's the only way. Not that the government's having any luck with that, either. It's weak. It can't afford to wage the war it needs to wage - so it doesn't.

"Alejandro told me like, last month - the best thing anyone's been able to do so far as peace is concerned is set up this agreement with the gangs so kids can play soccer on a soccer field during the day. One soccer field." Wade shook his head and cut off another piece of his steak, chewing it slowly. "Kick and cocaine, Cece. They're hot commodities. There's nothing you and I can do about that. There'll always be demand for them. And Central America will likely always be the route used to get them up here."

"I know," Cecilia said quietly. She stared at her steak, but she'd apparently lost her appetite. "That's why I hate that I had to leave. Because it's not going to stop, and I... I can't help those people. Not from here."

"Tell you how you help people," Wade said, mouth still half-full of steak. "You cripple the gangs - cut them off at the knees. Raze their fields, blow up their storehouses, make examples of their leaders, put somebody in charge who'll be able to handle things after the bulk of your support's gone, and then leave. You break the infrastructure in half and toss both pieces in opposite directions as hard as you can."

Cecilia raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? That sound like me to you?" She drained the rest of her tea. "First do no harm, remember?"

"People like you don't do the harm. People like me do. You make sure people who get caught in the crossfire don't die. And, y'know. That the people like me don't, either, cause that'd suck," Wade said, swallowing his steak. "You're not gonna fix all the stuff that's going on down there with an apple a day, doc. That's not how drugs and gang wars work."

"Fair point," Cecilia conceded. She was trying not to look as rattled as she felt. What Wade had said really gave her pause. Accompanying some guerrilla gang-busting operation to Central America felt against her healing ethos. On the other hand, Army docs often served a similar function: accompanying professional killers and piecing them back together. Despite her insistence otherwise, Cecilia knew morality wasn't really as black and white as she wanted it to be.

"Yup," Wade said, finishing off his steak and moving toward the refrigerator to grab a beer. "Want one?"

"Nah," Cecilia waved him off. "One vice might be more than enough for tonight." She glanced down at her barely-touched steak.

"Yeah, that vice doesn't seem to be doing much for you," Wade commented, using the edge of the counter to pop the top on his beer off before taking a sip. "But hey, I can put you in touch with Alejandro, if you want."

"Let me think about it." She picked up her knife and fork and started cutting into the meat again. "Not entirely sure whether I want answers to the questions I'd need to ask."

"You probably don't," Wade said, almost philosophically, "But that doesn't mean you shouldn't ask them."

"Yeah," Cecilia said. "Okay," she stuck a forkful of steak in her mouth. "Set it up."