His palms are sweaty against the steering wheel.
A knock at his window makes him jump, and one look at the unimpressed border guard outside makes him think, crap. He forgot to roll down his window. This is already off to a brilliant start. Cool, David, you have to act cool, you have to not freak out, if you can face a really big genetically modified soldier you can do this—
He pulls away from his train of thought; it's not helping anything. He smiles his most charming smile and says, "Sorry," hoping that the Philistines don't have too many pictures of him smiling.
The border guard, a stern looking man, says, "Don't cross the border much, do you?"
David's brain is full of technicalities as it tries to figure out how many times he's actually crossed into Philistine territory with his unit on one of the many ridiculous missions that they were sent on. David's mouth, however, says, "No."
The border guard nods. "Passport?"
It takes David under thirty seconds to locate it. He thinks it's a pretty good time, for not being able to remember if it was still in the envelop (and how suspicious would that look?) or if he'd moved it.
When he passes it through the window to the guard, his hand is only shaking a little bit. Barely noticeable to the untrained eye.
The border guard goes back into his booth to scan David's passport, and even though David would really like to watch he manages to keep his eyes trained forward. He doesn't turn to look until he hears the door to the booth open, which is a small eternity later. "Where are you going today, Mr. Fava?"
"Sightseeing," David answers, and when the guard looks skeptical he says, "It's on my bucket list. Planning on coming back in a week, if everything goes according to plan."
That last part is a little bit of a lie. If everything goes well, David has no intent of coming back across the border. He's going to stay in Philistia until President Saul is no longer a problem or he gets found out and taken in as a political prisoner never to see the light of day again.
The border guard hands him back his passport. "Can you pop the trunk?"
David fumbles for the lever. It takes ten seconds.
He puts his passport away while the man looks in the trunk, praying fervently that he and Ahimelech covered up the sword knife well enough. He holds his breath and is just starting to get desperate for oxygen when a dull thump sounds and his car rocks just a little bit.
The border guard is back at his window. "Do you have anything with you that you're planning on leaving in Philistia?"
"No, sir," David says.
"Enjoy your trip, Mr. Fava."
David blinks as the border guard steps back into his booth. Is that it? He inches his car slowly forward and the border guard doesn't get out to stop him. No specialist team with automatic rifles descends to apprehend him. He keeps driving, picking up speed now, away from the customs building.
That's it.
He's in Philistine territory.
He's breathing only a little bit easier.
-
David remembers asking his oldest brothers what it was like in Gath back before he became a shepherd and when they were around more. Eliab had to commute there at least biweekly for meetings and negotiations and stuff, a rising star in his company that was entrusted with the wellbeing of the Gath office. Abinadab dated a girl from there once, when he was going through his rebellious stage, and it's where Shammah went to college before everything got irrevocably hostile.
Shammah, the youngest and still fascinated with life, eyes wide and not dulled by the realities of adulthood, gave the resounding review of, "It's alright. Really big, and busy. A little crazy in some parts, but if you know which parts those are you're okay. Better than this small town, that's for sure."
Abinadab, relentless in his rebellion, said, "It's the best place on the planet," within earshot of their father, who shot him a glare before shooing David out of the room.
Eliab, wearied by a long day of work, had simply said, "It's Gath. Just another city, except a little different because it's not in our country. Nothing special."
David's been in Gath for just over a day, and he supposes that all three of his brothers were right in their summaries and, at the same time, not right at all. It is big and busy and he's heard stories about the crazy parts from the radio and the front page of the paper. It is the best place in the planet in the sense that he's away from Saul and if the President starts to look for him anywhere it won't be Gath.
However, at the same time, it's nothing special because here isn't where he wants to be. The first thing he does when he arrives is find a hotel with a free room, which in and of itself took over an hour; after the last motel bed experience, he isn't too eager to repeat it. He's looking forward to a bed with awesome sheets and a shower with superb water pressure and he takes advantage of those two things as soon as he takes up residence in his room.
He sleeps for twelve hours. It's one of the best nights of sleep he's ever gotten.
In the morning David is tempted to order room service, if only because it's a novelty that he's never experienced. He and his family never went traveling when he was a kid; too many children too far apart in age, plus the farm to look after, kept Jesse close to home and hearth. Then, of course, David started visiting the Presidential Mansion more and more, but that's as far as he got—they didn't take any detours or take the scenic route on the way there or back.
After that, he actually lived in the Mansion, and then he joined the Elite Forces and he was travelling all over the countryside, yes, but it wasn't like they were staying in hotels that offered room service while they did. And sure, the kitchen staff loved him and were okay with making him food, but the only person they actually brought food to was President Saul. Not even Jonathan could swing it, to his unending exasperation and David's unending delight.
He steers his thoughts away from Jonathan as he leaves the hotel and looks for a diner, a restaurant, a fast food joint, anything. Thinking about Jonathan still hurts, because David wishes that he could be here because maybe everything would be a little easier, hurt a little less, if he had somebody else to do this with. Heck, he'd take Benaiah at this point.
He doesn't know how long he's been walking around; he lost focus, started thinking too much about how lonely he is and how hopeless he feels and wondering if there was a way—any way—that this could've turned out differently. Because maybe he could've avoided it, y'know? If he hadn't picked up a guitar he wouldn't have become so good, so Nethanel wouldn't have felt compelled to film him and put it online. Maybe if he'd never picked up a guitar he never would've encountered President Saul in the first place. Maybe—maybe Jesse wouldn't have been compelled to give David the guitar in the first place if David wasn't out in the fields. But that would've meant he would've had to have not been a shepherd...
He doesn't notice the van that pulls up behind him. He doesn't even see the men that get out of it, eyes on him.
What he does notice, however, is that nobody in the flow of people that walk around the ensuing scuffle stops to intervene and, possibly, save him.
He's forced into the van.
-
When they finally take the hood off (after a really long car ride and getting marched into a building and forcibly sat down in a chair with his arms tied to said chair behind his back), David blinks hard, eyes on the floor. A voice says, hushed, "That's him."
A second voice, not as impressed, says, "Who?"
"David. Their war hero. The one that felled Goliath. You know." The first voice starts to sing, off key just enough that David has to suppress a twitch. "Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands."
"How do you know?"
"They flagged him at the border, had him followed. That's definitely him, I don't care what his passport says." Then, a little quieter but still loud enough that David can hear if he strains his ears, "Achish is coming."
Achish. The President of the Philistines.
Frick.
They continue talking but he doesn't pay attention to them. He's content to act like he's still out of it while his mind races, eyes still on the floor. If Achish agrees with them, discovers exactly what he has with David in his clutches, then it's very likely that David will never see the light of day ever again. But how to get out? How? He can't believe he thought he'd be able to find safety in Philistine territory in the first place, he must've been crazy to even entertain the idea—
That's it.
Crazy.
David slackens his jaw, his lips, refusing to cringe and swallow when spit starts to run out of his mouth and down his chin. He wants to wipe it away but he isn't able to, and wouldn't even if he could. Because, y'know what? He is crazy. And he's going to act it because his life depends on it.
The door opens. David sees his two guards snap to attention in his peripherals. "Sir," they say as President Achish walks into the room. David starts to hum one of the songs his mother used to sing him as a child very, very quietly and as high as his voice can possibly go.
Achish ignores their greetings and his footsteps get closer to David. He appears to be unimpressed, but David can't confirm it without looking at him and that would mean he'd have to look away from the floor, which he will not do. "This is David?"
"Yes, sir," they reply in unison.
"Has he been like this since you brought him in?"
"Well," the unimpressed one says, "he only woke up a few minutes ago. He hasn't really—done anything. We don't know why he's like...this. He was absolutely fine when he was at the border. The tapes prove it."
"You brought me a crazy man."
"He wasn't crazy!"
David switches to another song from his childhood, singing very quietly but in his highest falsetto. Achish backs away, like David's condition is contagious—which, for all the man knows, it might be. "Don't I have enough crazy people to deal with?" Achish asks, wiping his hands with a handkerchief. "Get him out of here. Bring him back to where you got him. He's of no use to me when he's like this at all."
"Yes, sir," they reply, and Achish leaves the room, and David's still alive.
He's still alive.
They take him back to where they found him, as ordered, sitting him on the sidewalk and leaning his torso against a building. He stays there, completely still, until he can't see them any longer, waiting an extra half an hour just to make sure, and then gets up and walks unsteadily back to his hotel to gather his things.
David moves to a run down motel on the edge of the city after that confrontation. It's easier to act like he's insane there.
-
Two weeks later, he's sitting outside his motel when he hears talk about a place called Adullam. It's an abandoned mine site from what David overhears, the pit dug deep but not producing anything valuable and the workers houses abandoned long ago. It's back in his own country, near where he defeated Goliath, and David doesn't even hesitate; the longer that he acts crazy, the more tired of it he gets, and the closer he gets to slipping up and acting sane.
That night, he packs up all his meagre belongings and buys a map at a nearby corner store he's become familiar with where the cashiers are always high. It's close enough to walk to, though it will take most of the night, but he doesn't hesitate in beginning the trek to Adullam.
-
It's abandoned.
It's empty.
It's perfect.
And since David is still "crazy David", his reputation preceding him, all of the locals in the small town nearby stay away.
-
He settles in one of the houses near the edge of the workers village. It's very sparsely decorated, the family or people that had shared this house taking most of the furniture and decorations, but it has a bed with a few dusty blankets on top, running water, and electricity. He won't be able to stay long if he takes advantage of the running water and electricity—bills have to be paid, after all, and he doesn't want to get arrested when he refuses—so he resolves to use both only in the most dire of circumstances.
It's a quiet life, but a good life. He contents himself with rereading the two books still in the house; one is a classic novel that runs about two hundred pages too long, and the other is the care manual for a vehicle that's no longer in circulation. He prays and he sings and he misses his guitar, a lot, because it's easy enough to write the lyrics but all he ends up with are a bunch of half finished songs.
Loneliness, when he thinks about it, curdles in his gut. He misses his family, Jonathan, even Michal. He misses his men and hopes, prays, that Saul's not taking his anger over David's disappearance out on them.
He stays away from the papers whenever he goes to town to get food, lets his hair grow long.
If it ever becomes safe enough to go back, David will never find out.
-
Too early.
David opens and eyes and stretches, looking around, and he's not entirely sure why that's his first thought and actually goes to roll over and go back to sleep before the doorbell—sharp and loud and annoyingly melodic—sounds again.
Nobody knows that he's here. Nobody that would care, anyways. Why is somebody ringing his doorbell at—he checks the alarm clock on his night stand and groans. Quarter after three in the morning. It could be some kids on a dare, maybe, or somebody trying to be cute and playing a practical joke on the crazy man.
He lays still and keeps his breathing steady, sleep addled mind reasoning that it will be enough for people to think, regardless of their motive for visiting, that he's not home if he's not moving. It makes no sense, and the more awake part of his brain demands that they can't see him through the walls anyways, but there's a long enough silence that David starts to relax again, closing his eyes.
The doorbell goes off again. Not only that, either; somebody knocks on the door.
He rolls out of bed, almost collapsing on the floor, before tugging on a pair of sweats and a hoody. He grabs the Beretta before he leaves his room; somebody here at quarter after three can only mean that it's somebody who knows he's the one here, somebody who's looking for him, and the chances of it being somebody friendly are about the same as it being somebody who's not.
He takes a deep breath, then slowly cracks open the door.
There's a bright eye looking at him. He recognizes that eye.
"David," Jesse says, voice weary and worn and relieved, and David's dreaming. He must be.
He doesn't open the door further. Actually moves to close it, because this can't be real. It can't. Nobody knows where he is. He's all alone. It's him and God and nobody else and that's been messing with his head but—
A hand smacks on the other side of the door, the side that his father's eye is on, halting the doors progress. David looks through the crack to see if it had been his dad but Jesse isn't that strong anymore; David opens the door a little bit wider so that he can follow the hand on the door up the line of the person's arm to—
"Jashobeam," David breathes.
"This isn't a dream," he says, like he knows what David's been thinking, which despite his words puts another point on the "dream" side of the competition. "Let us in."
"How many of you are there?"
Jash smiles. "Your entire family, plus me and Eleazar and Ben and Uriah. Let us in, David. We're exhausted."
"I don't have room."
"We'll fit somewhere. You'll need us wide awake in the morning."
"Why?"
Benaiah's voice sounds. "Because there's more coming. Let us in, bossman."
Bossman. It's been so long since somebody has called him that, dream or not. David, too tired to fight and wanting this to be real, lets them in. His mother's hug is the best thing that he's felt in a really long time.
-
When David wakes up the next morning, it takes him fifteen minutes to get out of bed. The mattress is comfortable and he's just the right temperature underneath the covers and he had a really weird dream last night where all the people he's close to, except for Jonathan and Michal, had shown up at his doorstep. After he'd let them in he put out some food, trusting them to figure out sleeping arrangements on their own, and he'd gone back to bed. Just when his head had hit the pillow, however, there was a rhino that came barrelling through his wall and talking birds were telling him to go to the North Pole and that's how he knows it was a dream.
It'd been nice, though. The bit before the rhino and the talking birds, that is.
When David goes to the kitchen in search of coffee he's still mostly asleep. The sun is too bright and the birds are singing their praises loudly and David wants nothing more than to go back to his bed and crawl under the covers but he can't, can't just sleep his life away even though he is doing nothing, so coffee it is. He doesn't register the smell of food until too late, right before he turns the corner into the kitchen, and now that his mind is engaged and racing he hears the quiet voices and the cackle of grease and, yes, the churning of a coffee machine.
He left the Beretta in his room, on the night stand. One of the voices in the kitchen starts to get closer; it's too late to run upstairs and grab it.
David's always been good at hand to hand combat. Not better than Benaiah, but he can definitely beat him. It's that thought that takes him around the corner, and—
"I'm still sleeping," David says.
"Good morning," Eleazar replies, tending to a frying pan full of bacon. "What are you doing here?"
"We heard a rumour," an old, tired voice says. "We decided it would be worth looking into."
David turns around, sees Jesse sitting on his living room couch beside his wife. It's not just Jash and Eleazar and Uriah and Benaiah that's here (and girls with them oh man), it's his entire family as well, and last night wasn't a dream because they're really here and he's really awake and they're all here, from Ozem right on up to Eliab, who's looking every bit the middled aged man that he now is.
Abishai, Joab, Asahel, and Amasa are all sitting on the floor, conceding the couches and chairs to those older than them, but they stand up when they hear David's voice. The most striking visual difference is in Amasa, his youngest nephew, whose face is getting thinner and who is a good half a foot taller than he was at David's wedding to Michal, and there's muscle starting to make an appearance on that wiry frame. It's striking, the difference between eleven and thirteen.
It's striking, the difference between the last time David saw his family and now.
David stares and directs his question at his two oldest nephews, who could be said to be towering over him but it's not true if he doesn't say it, or something, so he won't. "When did you two get so tall?"
Joab shrugs. Abishai says, "You saw us at your wedding—"
"You weren't this tall then," David interrupts, because they weren't; Amasa might have grown the most but Joab and Abishai have gained three inches each, at least.
"That's what you miss, uncle," Joab says and yeah, David supposes that it is.
He goes back to the kitchen, and his eyes flit over the familiar faces and their—wives now, maybe? Three of them were his friends' girlfriends when David left, but it's been awhile so things might've changed, and only when he glances over hands for rings do his eyes land on the ring belonging to the unfamiliar face next to Uriah.
"This is my wife, Bathsheba," Uriah says when he notices, proud, and David spares her a glance before fixing his eyes on Uriah so that he doesn't get caught staring at Uriah's wife— Bathsheba. She's possibly the most beautiful woman that David's ever seen and he's got work to do, never mind the fact that Bathsheba is taken. By one of his closest friends.
Bathsheba laughs, and David feels a shiver run up his spine—he is not fourteen anymore, why on earth is he reacting this way? "Don't listen to him," she says. "My parents are the only ones who call me Bathsheba. Everyone, even this lug, calls me Babs."
Uriah rolls his eyes, pulls her close. "I'm not a lug," he says, and David carefully looks at the wall as Uriah kisses B—his wife, ignoring the tug in his stomach that wishes, maybe, that it wasn't Uriah kissing her but—
David you just met her get a grip, his thoughts say.
There is no possible way that this can end well.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," David says when they break apart; newlyweds, must be, but he can't remember Uriah ever bringing up the fact that he had a girlfriend, never mind a fiancé, never mind a wedding day (because David invited Uriah to his so why wouldn't Uriah return the favour?), and Uriah sees the confusion on David's face and mouths, we eloped, looking vaguely proud of himself.
Ah.
There's a hand on his shoulder. David turns and sees Benaiah. He's holding out a guitar. Ethan's guitar.
David stares.
Benaiah says, "We figured you'd like to have it around. Jonathan snuck it out to us when he figured out what we were doing. Apparently the President wanted all your stuff to be burned, and he mostly succeeded too, but Jonathan still has some sway. He's got your song notebooks hidden in his rooms somewhere. Michal hid the few that were in the house, too."
Davids fingers curl around the neck of his guitar. The weight of it is familiar, his hand twitching in acknowledgement and recognition, and he wants to just go up to his room and play it for a few hours. The people most important to him are here, yeah, but it's been such a long time since he's been able to sit and play and write and just—let everything fall away and breathe.
Benaiah sees it written on his face. "Before you go," he tells David, because he knows that there'll be no stopping him, "you should probably know something."
David's mind is already upstairs. "What?"
"There'll be more than us coming. But they'll have tents and stuff, so—"
"There's room," David replies, not hearing him at all. "It's okay."
He doesn't hear Benaiah snort; he's already halfway up the stairs.
-
It's getting dark out when David finally puts his guitar down, becoming aware of everything around him once again. It's—it's a lot louder, that's the second thing he notices, and he's about to go downstairs and ask what all the racket is about when he glances out his bedroom window and freezes.
A tent city has come into being around his house.
David flies downstairs, ignoring everyone that calls out for him and searching for one person. His hand grips Benaiah's shoulder and Benaiah turns to raise an eyebrow at him, pausing the conversation he's having with Uriah. Both of them look amused.
"Benaiah," David says, keeping his voice steady. "When you said there'd be more than you coming—"
"Four hundred other men, bossman," Benaiah replies, and David still hates the nickname but he's missed it. "Four hundred men, plus their families."
"I don't—I don't have enough food for them."
"It's okay," Benaiah says. "They brought supplies, and it's not like we can't run to a town close by."
That's true, but David's having a hard time figuring out... "Why?"
Benaiah raises an eyebrow. "Why, what?"
"Why are they all here?"
"Why else?" Benaiah asks. "They're not happy with Saul. They want to follow you. They're either distressed or in debt or discontented or something. They want a change, and they think you're the one that change is gonna follow."
"Oh," David says.
He doesn't want to fight Saul, that's never been one of his prerogatives, but he still prays a quick, thank you, to God for providing, again, because there's no way he can be lonely now and if President Saul does find him—and if this group did, then he definitely is able—at least David will have an army of sorts.