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strangeandoff-putting · 3 months

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why I'm happysad that they let Numa be the narrator in Society of the Snow.

So if you, like me, have been more than a little obsessed with the story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 for a very, very long time, your stomach probably dropped like mine did when the narrator introduced himself as Numa Turcatti. (My immediate thought was, "why would you do this to us?!") If you went in blind, I feel for you!

But while the film gave us a version of Numa, since it's from his perspective what it doesn't really give us is the group's perspective on him. He comes across a bit like an outsider, and although, yes, his only surviving friend was Pancho Delgado, he wasn’t an outsider for long at all. On the contrary. So, here are a few excerpts from the books that tell you more about what he was like and how much they all loved him, because I feel like that’s important.

From Alive, Piers Paul Read:

Next to Parrado, Numa Turcatti was the most generally beloved of the boys. [...] Since he had known few of the boys before leaving Montevideo, it was proof of his strength, simplicity and complete lack of malice that he became so loved and respected by them.

On celebrating Numa's birthday while trapped under the avalanche:

The boys gave him an extra cigarette and made a birthday cake out of snow. [...] Many would have liked to give him a better time on his birthday, but instead it was he who improved their spirits. "We have survived the worst," he said. "From now on, things can only get better."

From Society of the Snow, Pablo Vierci:

‘When I talk about Numa, I can’t help but cry,’ says Coche Inciarte. ‘He’s the best person I’ve ever met in my life. However tenderly I cared for those who were losing heart, Numa did it much better because he never got tired. He was constantly aware of everyone else’s distress. He radiated peace, he never gave up, and when he came near me, I felt like Jesus Christ himself was among us, with such mercy and compassion in his eyes. I don’t know where he got his strength.’ ‘I could never imagine him living in everyday life, because I met him and I loved him in that torment of the Andes,’ says Coche. ‘He had a hard time eating, like I did. We ate the bare minimum in order to survive. I lost one hundred pounds, he lost more. And just like me, his leg became infected after the avalanche. We operated on our legs together with a razor blade. But he deteriorated more quickly than I did, because he had given so much more; he had been too generous.’

Moncho Sabella:

Numa taught us about the anonymous heroism of giving more of himself to others than he reserved for himself. In that balance between solidarity and selfishness, which decided whether you lived or died, he tilted the balance in favour of the others to the detriment of himself. [...] And when the avalanche came and covered the plane, the one who worked the hardest, the one who removed the most snow so that we could come back to life, was Numa. Again, he was exceeding his own limits. [...] In the end, his immune system was so devastated that he got one infection after another. We gave him antibiotics and the doctors on the mountain attended to him every day, but finally he left us. And with him, we all died a little more.

Gustavo Zerbino:

I always remember Numa up there, full of despair, when he told us that he would rather die watching the sky, walking, instead of ending life immobilised in a cave of broken metal. For that reason, after the avalanche, he kept digging and removing snow without rest until he burned himself out with exhaustion. He always thought that his time had come but he wanted to work until the final moment, doing whatever he could to help. I cared for him all those days; I saw how he was hurried to the brink of death, with no defences, getting one infection after another. I went up to him and first I gave him a kiss on the cheek to greet him and asked him how he was doing. He just stared at me with a kind of infinite peace. He never complained. But Numa was quickly deteriorating: from that physical strength and vigour he had had at the beginning, he finished as a skeletal dying boy. He held on to his characteristic qualities until the end though. He was that same stoic guy when he was strong and when he was wasting away.

‘Gustavo Zerbino didn’t tell us the whole truth [about the expedition] because he didn’t want us to be discouraged. When I asked Numa about it, he couldn’t lie and he told me: “As far as we went, all you could see were more mountains.” But even so, he always wanted to be an expeditionary. “I want to go,” he told me, even though I knew at once he could never go, he was too exhausted and too hurt.’ So Numa approached Daniel Fernández, knowing that he had influence over the others, and he tried to convince him: ‘I can do it, Daniel, please believe me. I can do it.’ Daniel recalls, ‘When I told him that his injury made it impossible, he started working even harder than ever, like a bull, shovelling snow to unbury the plane after the avalanche to show that yes, he could do it.’

Finally, from Alive, after Numa died:

On this particular afternoon, Javier Methol lay at the back of the plane. "Be careful," he said to Coche as he rose and stepped over Numa's body. "Be careful not to step on Numa." "But Numa's dead," said Parrado. Javier had not realised what had happened, and now that he understood his spirits dropped completely. He wept as he had wept at the death of Liliana, for he had grown to love the shy and simple Numa Turcatti as though he were his brother or son.

I'm not sure the Numa we see in the film is quite the same person that he actually was on that mountain, but I'm so, so glad that he got a voice. He fought so hard for them all.

So, yeah. In the immortal words of Jake Peralta,

#numa turcatti #society of the snow #alive #andes plane crash #Uruguayan air force flight 571

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spooky-pomegranate · 1 year

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Pablo's Ghost (Part 1)

Colonel Carrillo x F Reader Word Count: 3.5k

Summary: Two nights after Horacio Carrillo is gunned down by Pablo Escobar the drug lord receives a phone call that makes him question everything he's ever known. Meanwhile, you and Steve Murphy attend the Colonel's funeral. (Part 2)

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It was mid-afternoon when the phone rang.

“Who is this?”

“Don’t you recognize my voice?”

Of course, Pablo did. But it couldn’t really be him. This had to be some sort of sick joke and he wasn’t interested in hearing the punchline.

“What the fuck is this? Who are you? What the hell do you want?” Pablo snapped angrily into the phone.

“Listen to me carefully Pablo. You may have thought you won but you were so wrong. You’ve made me into something worse than you could have ever imagined. I am a ghost now Pablo and I will haunt you and follow you wherever you go. You cannot escape me, not in this life and not in the next. And when we meet again in hell I promise you I will make sure you pay for every single sin you’ve ever committed, you vile disgusting monster.”

Pablo forced a laugh from deep within his chest. The sound was dark and cold, absent of the soft lilt his wife Tata could so easily draw from him. But the callousness was purposeful. Pablo wanted to scare whoever had called him tonight because whoever dared to provoke the drug king of Columbia needed to understand that he wouldn’t be frightened so easily. Pablo Escobar didn’t have nightmares anymore but he could dole them out.

“This is pathetic. Colonel Carillo is dead, and he will rot in the ground like the useless little worm he-”

“No Pablo. No, I won’t.” The voice interrupted, “But I will see you here soon where the fire is burning and your cousin is still screaming and choking on his own blood. Do you want to hear him, Pablo? Do you want to hear him cry and whimper? Should I put him on the phone?”

Pablo gripped the satellite phone tighter, turning his knuckles white with rage. Bringing up his beloved cousin Gustavo was a step too far. The prank caller had just unknowingly signed their own death warrant.

“Shut up! Shut up you motherfucker! Whoever you are I will find you and kill you. Do you hear me? You’re next. You and every single person you have ever loved. Dead! You’re all dead! I will kill you just like I killed him! You hear me!”

The voice on the phone scoffed. “You already returned my bullet, Pablo. How can you kill me twice?”

A stillness consumed Pablo, cementing his bare feet to the cool tile floor of the hacienda and quickening his pulse. How did the voice know what he had said two nights ago on that dark street? How did they know he had shown Carrillo the bullet before loading it in the chamber and firing it into his thigh?

Pablo turned his head away and looked at his shoes that were strewn by the door. They were still covered in dark maroon blotches of dried blood… Carillo’s blood.

He closed his eyes and returned to that night. He could smell the fire, the gasoline, and the burnt rubber. He could taste the gunpowder in the air and he could feel the sweat dripping from his brow. He could see so clearly the rivers of blood dripping out of Carrillo’s mouth and pooling onto the asphalt, soaking into his sneakers and turning their white fabric a deep red.

It was all so vivid. Too vivid to be a dream. It had been real. He had killed him. Colonel Horacio Carrillo was dead. He had to be. Because otherwise…

Pablo opened his eyes again and stared at his bloody shoes. He didn’t believe in ghosts and if they were real the logical part of him thought he certainly would have faced the wrath of one long ago. But deep down there was another part of him, a smaller part, that wondered if maybe he was wrong about the afterlife. Maybe he had doomed himself. Maybe he would be haunted for the rest of his living days by a vengeful spirit.

That small part of him thought it made sense…because how else could a dead man whisper “cobarde” before hanging up?

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Dark clouds pushed over the mountains and consumed Medellin, blocking out the sun and shrouding the valley below in a despairing and muggy gloom. It was a rather fitting setting for a funeral. One surely to be played up by the reporters who had gathered by the dozens at the miserable affair. The incorruptible and unrelenting Colonel Horacio Carrillo’s death had made for dramatic headlines and the papers printed about his murder flew off the shelves.

But that wasn’t surprising. Carrillo’s name wasn’t unknown to the people of Columbia. For years it seemed like everyone in the country had held their own opinions on the man.

Many Columbians had supported Carrillo’s efforts, believing that no matter the cost, Escobar needed to be stopped. While others had disagreed, feeling the Colonel had crossed too many lines. But today, as a soft rain started to fall on Carrillo’s casket, both sides were united in mourning. Without Colonel Horacio Carrillo on the front lines who would stop Pablo Escobar? What man would willingly step into a job where death was surely the only outcome and more importantly, who would save Colombia now?

That last question had kept you up more nights than you cared to admit when you first arrived in Columbia. As a young DEA agent the blood and destruction you had come to experience in Latin America was unparalleled to that which you had witnessed at home. But as the months passed you started to believe Carrillo was going to be the country’s savior. His drive and effort were unmatched by any man you had ever met and truthfully it inspired you.

Yet, despite your admiration, you never told him how you felt. In your mind, there was something unprofessional about sharing your feelings with the Colonel and Horacio Carrillo certainly wasn’t a man who needed praise to do his job well. So you held your tongue and kept your faith in him private. But today, watching his casket being lowered into the ground, you couldn’t help but wonder how he would have responded if you had just been honest.

“Hey,” an American-accented voice called out in your direction, snapping you out of your spiraling thoughts.

You stared down at the wet earth as your DEA partner Steve Murphy placed a warm hand on your shoulder. You kept your eyes glued to the muddy graveyard dirt as he came around to face you. You hoped he would confuse the tears on your cheeks for raindrops. Probably a fat chance, considering your eyes were bloodshot beyond belief.

“I’m meeting Peña for a drink. Come with me,” Murphy said. His voice was softer than you were used to. It drew your face upwards and he offered you a small fleeting smile. For as tough as Steve could be interrogating and chasing down narcos, you knew he also had a softer side. You had seen it when he adopted his daughter Olivia or when he talked about his beautiful wife Connie. You were thankful for his invitation but truthfully there was only one place you wanted to be and it wasn’t at a bar with him and Peña.

“No thanks. I just want to go home.” You said, voice a little shakier than you would have liked.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Murphy gave you a nod and started to walk back to his wife.

“Hey, Murphy.” He paused looking over his shoulder, “Thanks for asking though. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, see you then.” Murphy walked off and you headed to your car. Neither of you noticed the small boy hiding behind a tree confirming on radio that Colonel Carrillo’s body had been placed 6 feet under the ground.

—————————————————————

It was just a door. A mundane bedroom door painted an ordinary white and accented by a dull black handle. There was nothing abnormal or alarming about it but that didn’t seem to matter because right now you were terrified by it. The abject fear was so consuming that small droplets of water splashed out of the glass in your hands and landed on the hallway floor by your bare feet. Shootouts with sicarios you could handle, but this… this was something entirely different. Your body continued to shake as your chest tightened.

“Come on, it’ll be alright,” you whispered to yourself in a weak attempt to conjure up some courage.

You had only been gone for an hour or so. The funeral had been a shorter ceremony than you had expected, but in that time you knew anything could have happened. Turns for the worst were never prolonged events. They happened quickly and at the worst times. You prayed that this wasn’t the worst time.

Pushing open the door, you found your room looked exactly the same as you had left it. Machines on either side of your bed hummed and beeped softly, while dozens of small wires and tubes connected them to a huddled mass lying in the center of your bed. You stepped closer and saw the sheets gently rise and fall. A small breath of air came back into your lungs.

“Carrillo?”

“Mmmm.” The huddled mass quietly hummed in response and relief washed over you. He was still alive. Breathing, conscious, and alive.

“I brought you some water,” you said softly stepping around the side of your bed before taking a better look at the man lying in your sheets.

Carrillo might have been alive but he looked entirely dissimilar from the man you had come to know. The Colonel you saw every day ruthlessly fighting for his country had beautifully tanned skin that was kissed by the Columbian sun. He had strong muscles that constrained tightly against his clothing and he wore his hair short and kept his face clean-shaven in fashion with his strict military discipline.

But this man, the one lying below you now, looked nothing like that Colonel Carrillo. This man was so pale that you could clearly see every blue and purple vein through the skin of his neck and hands. He had a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his brow that stuck his messy and thick dark hair to his forehead and his strong jaw was covered with a dark and coarse stubble that made him look messy and unkempt. If you hadn’t brought him to your bed yourself you would have never guessed this was the fearsome leader of Search Bloc.

“Garcías,” Carrillo murmured weakly after taking a sip of the water you held to his lips. You offered him a small smile in turn and grabbed a bottle of pills off the bedside table.

“For the pain,” you said showing him the bottle. For a brief moment, your thumb brushed over his chapped lips as you gently placed one of the pills in his mouth. He closed his eyes and swallowed. You felt your chest constrict again when he looked up at you with his tired chestnut eyes.

It was difficult seeing Carrillo like this. He had been a pillar of strength during your time in Columbia and even though you both knew how dangerous this game was that you played with the cartel, you never expected to see him like this. You thought he would be strong and alive or dead and gone. This middle ground was more painful than you could have ever imagined.

You tore your eyes away from Carrillo’s face and looked around the room. You were searching for something, anything, to distract yourself with while the air slowly worked its way back into your lungs. It was then you noticed that something was out of place.

You had left a satellite phone by Carrillo’s hand before heading to the funeral. You had gently explained to him that if anything happened he should call you. It might have been a stupid idea, if he needed you that badly he probably wouldn’t have even been able to dial a phone, but you had left it there just the same. Strangely now though you realized the phone had moved. It currently sat precariously on the edge of the bed.

“Did you try to call me?” You said concernedly looking back again at Carrillo.

“No,” he answered staring at you, his face inscrutable.

“Did you call someone else?”

“No importa.”

A swell of rage consumed you as you picked up the phone.

“It’s not important? Are you serious right now?!” You didn’t understand how could Carrillo think that it wasn’t important. For every person who knew he was alive his chances of survival dropped. You both knew that Pablo’s tentacles were long and deadly.

“Look at yourself! You are barely alive and you’re holed up here in my apartment just fucking patched together. If someone else knows you are alive you need to tell me right now! I need to know so I can take care of it. You can’t… I can’t… Fuck Carrillo!”

The words to express your outrage were difficult to find, especially considering it had been several days since you last slept. You had spent every single moment since the ambush trying to do two things: keep Carrillo alive and keep it a secret. Neither task had been simple.

After the attack, Trujillo had ridden in the ambulance with Carrillo. He had wanted to protect his Colonel’s body from any potential desecration. It was a sickening thought, but one that was entirely possible when anyone could be on Pablo’s payroll.

Trujillo didn’t notice the small breaths Carrillo took as his body was loaded into the ambulance. From the bloody scene on the street, no one could have thought the Colonel survived. But if Horacio was anything he was a fighter. And when the paramedics did finally realize, that despite the rivers of blood Carrillo had lost he still had a faint pulse, Trujillo directed them away from the local hospital. He knew sicarios would come to finish the job if anyone matching the Colonel’s description were to arrive. So instead, he ordered the paramedics to the home of a surgeon and close friend he trusted.

But before the doctor could dig the bullets out of Carrillo’s body, the Colonel miraculously opened his eyes. He desperately grabbed Trujillo by the collar of his shirt and whispered your name over and over and over again, repeating it like it was a prayer. Trujillo promised his friend that he would call you and while the doctor tended to Carrillo, he did so.

Over the next hour, you and Trujillo developed a plan. You both would find and execute a low-level sicario that matched Carrillo’s physique, dress him in the Colonel’s bloody uniform, and deliver the body to the morgue in his place. The paramedics would each be paid handsomely and driven to the airport the following morning with American visas in hand and when Carrillo was stable, or stable enough, you would move him to your apartment along with some equipment the surgeon would “borrow” from a hospital. It was a bold gamble, reckless with low odds of success, but the two of you were willing to roll the dice for a chance to save the Colonel. So far, maybe by the grace of a higher power, your plan had worked.

It exasperated you to hear that now Carrillo could have upended everything you and Trujillo had done for him over a single stupid phone call.

“I’ve done everything I can to make sure no one knows you are here and I’m trying my best to keep you alive. So what is it… do you have a goddamn death wish Carrillo?!” Your voice was loud, echoing off the barren walls and tall ceilings of your room as you waved the phone around erratically.

“No.”

“No.” You scoffed, “No, says the man who was shot 6 times.”

“Mírame cariño.” You were so caught up in your own indignation that you couldn’t register the term of endearment that had rolled so sweetly off his tongue. But you met his dark eyes just the same and nothing could have prepared you for the way he looked up at you.

His eyes were solemn and their beautiful hazel color had shifted to a duller shade of burnt umber. He looked emotionally drained, like maybe Columbia, the war, and Escobar had already taken too much from him. It dawned on you that maybe you were just prolonging the inevitable. Maybe this sad ending was his only way out.

“Horacio…” He blinked heavily and his eyes softened as you quietly called his name. Tears began to swell in the corners of your eyes. “Please tell me this ends another way,” you whispered faintly.

“What?” Carrillo’s eyes widened slightly in surprise as he switched to English.

“Tell me, how does this end? Because standing in front of your casket today was the worst pain and I don’t want to do it again. I won’t do it again. I can’t. I don’t know why you told Trujillo to get me the other night, but I… I…” The tears were streaming down your cheeks now and you struggled to speak. You wanted him to sit up, grab you by the shoulders, and tell you what to do. If he could just find the strength to lead one more time maybe everything could be okay. Maybe you both could get through this in one piece.

“I don’t know how this ends,” he said wearily. His brutal honesty cut into you like a hot knife, sucking the oxygen from the room and forcing you to your knees beside the bed.

“But I need you… I need you alive because… because who else can I trust? You have to understand please, Columbia needs you alive. You’re the one who’s going to stop him. I know it. So you need to get better. You have to get stronger. You need to fight okay. Promise me that you will.” Your voice wavered as you begged him desperately and reached for his hand, squeezing his calloused palm in yours. You needed him to understand just what he meant to Columbia but a prolonged silence filled the room and you started to wonder if he had already given up. Maybe he was finally done fighting.

But then after an eternity, he whispered two simple words.

“I promise.”

And it was enough to crumble you. You let go of Carrillo’s hand and sobbed, slumping forward and burying your face into the edge of your bed. You wept there, eyes drenching your sheets, for so long that your body finally succame to exhaustion and for the first time in several days you fell asleep.

Horacio had never seen you cry before. As tough and steadfast as he was, he knew you were equally so. But when he looked over at your sleeping face, red and puffy from tears, he wondered how he could have broken you like this. Perhaps, he let himself dream, there was a part of you that felt the same way he did.

He hesitantly reached his hand over to your tear-stained cheek and brushed his thumb against your soft and warm skin. He didn’t want to wake you but he couldn’t help himself. He had thought about what it would be like to touch you for so long. In truth, there were countless late nights where his mind had wandered and you had crept in.

Sometimes he dreamt about you when he was at home and he could act on his most lustful urges and groan your name in his empty and lonely bedroom. Other times, more inconveniently, he thought about you when he was in his office and he would struggle to keep his composure for the rest of the evening. But no matter where he fantasized about you he always imagined the same moment, his skin intimately touching yours for the very first time. He spent hours thinking about it. He dreamt about how soft you might feel under his fingertips and how sweet you might taste on his tongue.

And he imagined all the places he wanted to put his hands on you first. Sometimes he envisioned it would be against your neck, other times your chest. His favorite indulgence was dreaming about his hands on your plush and beautiful thighs.

He also dreamt of the different ways in which he could touch you. He sometimes thought about being rough, digging his hands into your body, and leaving his mark behind so that everyone could see what he’d done. Other times he imagined being soft and gentle, caressing the intimate places you had only ever allowed a few others to touch. Most often though, he thought about worshipping you and giving you anything and everything you wanted.

But in all his wildest fantasies, Carrillo had never imagined getting to touch you for the first time like this. Because this, wiping your tears away as he laid too broken to sit up and hold you like you so desperately deserved…this was too sad and too bleak for those sweet dreams. As warm and as soft as you were, he never wanted this. You were worthy of so much more.

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(Part 2)

#narcos #colonel horacio carrillo #colonel carrillo x reader #colonel carrillo x you #maurice compte #narcos fic #horacio carrillo x reader #horacio carillo x you #horacio carrillo #steve murphy #colonel carrillo #boyd holbrook

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