we will drag you from where you are to where you belong [closed]

[postictal]

[tw: some brutality and beating, later some panic and flashbacking to hospitalization]

Keep your head down, stay off the radar, just act like the normal person you aren't, and everything will be fine.

That was the general idea.

Was.

But then, he should've expected something like this. When you come home from work and the door's not been open a minute before a couple ominously stone-faced guys come striding in, it generally throws up a few warning flags. And when opening your mouth to ask um sorry, but what the hell incites one of them to bring you down in a hard tackle that sends your cheek stinging against the carpet and your knees scraping along the ground, pure fight-or-flight impulse kicks in. Fight and flight, actually, and Tim manages to crack one of them a solid right hook across the jaw that leaves a darkening bruise before they wrestle him into submission. Maybe if he wasn't him right now - fuck.

In the end, there isn't much he can do against two guys who look to have something like six inches on him, and a few minutes of hopeless thrashing and several well-placed kicks to his ribs later, it's pretty much a lost cause. The apartment interior's a wreck; Tim definitely heard something shatter on his way to the ground, and he feels the distant, bizarre urge the apologize to Jay for being responsible for fucking things up yet again. He's sorry, Jay, really he is. He didn't mean to this time, honestly.

And that's when one of the guys sinks a fist into his stomach, and Tim loses track of things for a little while as his entire respiratory system promptly goes to shit.

He wakes in a little square room of concrete walls and windowless gloom.

Fuck. Fuck no. He lurches to his feet, all dizziness and nausea, and pounds at the door that looks more solid than any locked hospital door fuck, and he screams let him out and is anyone there? and please I need help please until his voice rasps into hoarseness and his vocal chords feel wet, as if they're torn and bleeding. His fists sting from banging against the door, its impassively hollow tone drumming against his ears. His jacket's gone. His medication. They fucking took it off him, they took everything, they took him away, and if there's anything he can do to help his situation, it's think and be calm and be compliant and be cooperative and not panic right now, which he isn't, who would even think that?

Because he's not a scared little kid anymore. He's not, he swears he's not. There's nothing tall and specter-like in the room with him, and he's not curled in the corner with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them and he's not huddled like he's eight years old again, because he's not the lost little boy crammed into a hospital room with a plethora of confusing and contradictory symptoms. He's not.

It's just a dream, and any moment he's going to wake up.

Comments

[powerdealer]

Seth nods in agreement at the plan, leading the way towards the underground and the appropriate train. It'll take almost half an hour to get to the appropriate entrance, and Seth expects a rather tense train ride. But at least they'll have a little time to hash out the most important details, and for Seth to inform them of the layout.

"What are you gonna do once you're up?" he asks, glancing over at Daine. He doesn't really know the extent of her powers, so some sort of fore-warning would be nice. He's got a few other things in mind besides letting people escape. He'll need to know the easiest way to incorporate that.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine pockets her phone and frowns, small and pensive. She wishes she had a bone army to work with, but the tunnels would be too cramped for most of them, anyway. There's no Graveyard Hag to help her - if 'help' was even the right word for it. She doesn't have any of the things she had in Carthak.

But as they descend into the underground and a familiar, whispering itch brushes against her mind, she thinks: well, I still have the rats.

Table that for the moment. She looks back up at Seth. "I s'pose I can't actually tear the place down." That might collapse the ground above, and the city's too busy for that, too many folk would get hurt. "But I'll smash up as much as I can. Expensive things. Records. Enough so they won't be able to put themselves back together in any kind of hurry."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay swipes his way through the turnstile, following Seth toward their train, eyes on both of them. This is all getting very serious very fast, and all he can think is a bitter sort of good. Let them destroy it all, rid themselves of the last remnants of danger posed toward Tim and himself. Destroy all the records, all the evidence of the two of them, the information gathered when he betrayed - well let's not think about that shall we.

"Sounds good to me," he murmurs, just in case anyone wanted his opinion.