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

Current Location: Rebel apartments, Rebel Base
Current Music: September 9th, 2013

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

[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.

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Daine has other business; that's true enough. But it was Tim they came for, and she's going to make sure he's sensible and capable of moving before she just leaves Jay to take care of him. She slips into the cell in wolf shape, scenting the air. The smell of blood is old and stale, but not so faint as to be covered up by the fresher scents of chemicals and fear. She trots up to Tim and gives him a swift once-over with her heightened senses, satisfied that they haven't injured him. Nothing's broken, he's awake, and Jay ought to be able to handle him on his own.

She lifts a paw to Tim's other shoulder, rests it there for a solemn moment, then drops it back to the floor. Transferring her gaze to Jay, she reshapes her mouth and says, "Get him out of here. Quickly." Then, hackles raised and muzzle wrinkled in a snarl, she slips back out into the hallway. There are other doors that want opening.

He favors Daine with a curt nod, not taking his eyes off Tim. "They were waiting for me at the apartment," he says, quick and fevered. "I recognized them and I ran. Daine scared them off and now we're getting everyone out. Get up, we have to go."

He takes Tim's wrist and tries to pull his arm over his shoulders, tries to help him up to his feet. He fucked this up once because he wasn't using both hands. Not this time. No camera this time.

He starts a little - a wolf striding in and talking and putting a paw to his shoulder like some absurd canine benediction borders on the surreality that some of the flaring unrealities behind his lids tend to adopt - but the timbre of the voice is immediate and familiar.

Right. Right.

"Daine," he repeats, and everything's moving dull and sluggish, mired in that scattered fog that erupts before everything else erupts, but when Jay tries to haul him to his feet he tugs away.

"I can walk." He doesn't mean for it to break out so curtly, but the abraded skin of his knees and arms are superficial compared to the panicky surge of despair that accompanied being hauled out of Jay's apartment and tossed into a little cold gray cell. He needs to walk. He needs to be him again. He needs to establish the illusion that there's some kind of control in his life, that he's not the fucking puppet he's always been.

He can't walk if he's being steered around.

The curtness doesn't really register, it's to be expected, all things considered. Jay lets him go, making a beeline instead for the door and glancing out to make sure there's no one to obstruct their path out. There are a lot of people running around, but they're all freed prisoners themselves; nobody wants anything to do with them, they all just want out.

"Follow me," he says, and steps out. He doesn't want to pull too far ahead but he doesn't want to go slowly either, so he splits the difference by moving at a heightened pace and constantly turning to make sure Tim is still there.

"Daine's gonna tear this place apart," he says with grim, distant satisfaction. "So no one's gonna come after you."

Following Jay out is pretty implicit, he should think, but this is also the guy who telegraphed his every move over YouTube. Instruction must come naturally.

"Yeah, well, I'm all for that," Tim mutters mutinously, tamping down the snide internal monologue to follow. He hated it here the first time and he hates it even more now, the gray-walled sameness stretching on and on in all directions. The halls all look the same, and he knows Jay's sense of direction isn't particularly sharp. Jay's sense of anything isn't particularly sharp. Then again, this isn't an abandoned hotel, or Rosswood - it's chaos, and everyone spilling out of the cells seems to be heading one way.

Out.

One hand goes to his pocket out of instinct, like it has been for the past several hours, and Tim grinds to a halt when he remembers.

"My medication," he says grimly. "They took it."

"What?" Jay stops and turns, staring at Tim, his hand at his pocket. "Shit. Okay, I can - we could tell Daine to look for it, or her friend Seth, he's the one who unlocked the - goddammit." He kicks the wall with an furious grunt, of all things, of all fucking things. And it's your fault, never forget that, it's all your fault.

He yanks his phone out of his pocket and is halfway through a text to Daine before he remembers no, she can't do that right now, and she wouldn't be checking her phone even if she could.

"We can tell one of the animals," he says, gritting his teeth. "I don't know how else to... I'm sorry."

The apology sort of slips out, and his shoulders slump a little. He doesn't stop moving but he presses a hand to his face as he goes. "I'm so sorry, Tim."

He pushes a hand through his hair, bracing, grounding. He can't tell if he's shaking. It's cold. Maybe he is. Is he?

There's no heat shuddering up his spine, nothing prickling in the back of his mind. He used to be able to tell so easily. He hasn't coughed. He hasn't doubled over, lungs lurching and head on fire. Why can't he tell?

They'd dreamed of it, the both of them. It had felt real and there but maybe it - isn't. Jay seems torn, really genuinely torn, and a few days ago he would've ripped him a new one, launched into some passive aggressive fucking tirade, twisting everything so it was Jay's fault.

But he's tired, and Jay's ragged and worn to the quick, and the only people he has to blame are the faceless oh, poor fucking choice of words fuckers that built this place, and it's all about to come tumbling down.

Good. It had better.

"It's fine," he says, an easy lie as he brushes past. "It's been hours anyway. Anything that could have happened already would've."

Would it? Would it really?

Well, he thinks dully, they'll find out soon, in any case.

It's not fucking fine, but who is he to argue, and he can't exactly blame Tim for just wanting to get out of here. The full nuance of his apology seems lost on him, which is just as well. They can have that out when they're in relative safety.

He keeps moving, quiet and determined, through the tide of people. He'd been paying much better attention to the route this time but it's moot either way, since everyone is pretty much streaming toward the exits. Some of these people must be employees, he realizes, evacuating.

"Almost there," he murmurs, rounding the corner to the last big hall, at the end of which is the exit into Columbus Circle.

"Good."

Is it nerves or jitters or something worse. Is the swelling thickness pressing over his chest anxiety or the precursor of an end result he doesn't want to imagine.

He sucks in a rattling breath, and another. Pull yourself together, Tim. Goddamn. You're not the boy in the hospital anymore. Fucking act like it.

There's noises behind them, distant crashes and muffled yelps and a rumbling that seems to work its way right to his bones. Maybe it's Daine. Maybe it's something else, something trapped in those cells that just found itself free and wanting to raise a little hell. Well, let it. The Rebels deserve it, as far as he's concerned. ~~Just like he did.~~

"Where, uh." A horrible thought occurs to him and he doesn't stop dead but his feet slow, worried and halting. "Where are we gonna go?"

"Uh-" Shit, didn't think about that, did you? "I - I don't know." He leads them to the door and follows the tide of people out, then banks a sharp right aiming for the stairs up and out to the street. He turns back compulsively, every few seconds, like if he loses sight of Tim for one second that'll be it, he'll disappear.

Things have a way of disappearing, after all.

"We could go home," he says faintly. "I think it'll be safe there, what with... all that." He waves a hand vaguely back toward where they just came from. "Or, I dunno, somewhere. I dunno."

Why doesn't he know. What fucking good is he.

"Daine'll come back," he says softly, wishing he didn't sound so pathetic. "She'll make sure we're okay."

"Maybe," he says, shooting a skeptical look over one shoulder. Daine's got kind of a lot on her plate at the moment, what with a base-wide destruction to fit into her schedule, and all. It shouldn't be her job to look after them; they're fucking adults. Supposedly.

"Hotel." He settles on it with the air of finality, and for a minute it's like how it was. Tim was always the lead, the tool, the instrument, but he also lent the decisive sweep to their next step that came from knowing the area, knowing himself, being the one with the most experience in what they had to deal with. "Think maybe we should lay low. I've got enough to pull us through a couple nights."

Logically it's safer and, unnervingly, it feels safer. 'Home' is kind of an abstraction at this point, but he feels like hotels are the closest thing he's got to it. They're familiar, even if they're breachable.

"Yeah. Okay." That old chestnut. Fair enough. He leads them above ground, up and out, and it's overwhelmingly open and loud and bright but they can't afford to falter. He slows down a little, keeping step with Tim.

"There's a bunch around here, or do you wanna get further away," he says, glancing over repeatedly, nervously. Does Tim know why they took him? Does he know it all leads back to that day Jay betrayed him (again)?

He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter." It's not like he and Jay are particularly traceable, provided they don't draw any attention to themselves.

One hand draws into a fist, his shoulders pulling up around him in a protective hunch, waiting for the tremble of his arms and fingers that'll herald the inevitable.

Maybe they should invest in - handcuffs or something. He doesn't know. Will that hold it? Will that work if that - part of him gets loose?

God. He doesn't even want to think about it.

Jay leads him quietly across the street, taking a fairly random route to put a few blocks between them and the park, before finally picking a hotel at random. He fishes out his own wallet in case they need to split the cost. The concierge is way too polite, neither he nor Tim are equipped for it, and what must they look like, two miserable looking boys getting a room together in the middle of the day. Well whatever, he doesn't care. Can't afford to care.

Finally they're in the room, quiet and isolated at last; he slips the do-not-disturb sign on the door and latches it shut.

He takes a moment to just lean his forehead against the door, breathing, trying to pull himself together. Then he turns around.

"You okay?" he murmurs.

It's bitingly familiar, those tired motions, and he's ready to weather the raised-eyebrow stares and sidelong looks of the hotel staff that never come. Right, he remembers dully. Rift weirdness probably makes them used to all sorts of bizarre shit. At least that works in their favor. There's nothing notable about either of them. Not even luggage.

As soon as he gets in he starts rinsing his hands in the bathroom sink. The red over his knuckles and palms has scabbed over by now, but they still feel dirty. Unclean.

But he's always felt unclean, so maybe there's not much point.

"Yeah," he says, flipping off the sink. The lack of any aural buffer in the hiss of running water leaves the room drenched in uncertain silence. He inches out of the bathroom to one of the beds, sinking onto it with a low noise of discomfort. His knees feel like a mess, probably worse off than his hands. He hasn't dared look yet. It's an old feeling - what got fucked up while he was 'out'. The thought of reliving that now makes something in his chest constrict.

Jay stands there for a moment before settling down on the other bed, sitting opposite, his elbows braced on his knees and his head dropping into his hands. The bandage Seth put on his arm has started to come off in all the mayhem, and he reaches out to smooth it over, running his fingers up and down it, a little nervous tic.

"I'm sorry," he says again, tired and destitute. He laces his fingers together under his chin and looks away, scared to look at Tim as he says, "It was my fault."

Everything sharpens. He fixes Jay with a suspicious look beneath lowered brows. Jay doesn't simply shoulder the blame for things, he knows how the guy's head fucking works, at least when it isn't being hijacked by that thing that pulls at the corners of their eyes. Did he sell Tim out? Well, fuck, wouldn't be the first time, that fucking -

It takes him an uncomfortably long time to realize, no, that wouldn't make sense. Why would he? And why bother getting Tim out if that were the case?

"What do you mean?" he asks, drawing the words out slowly, warily.

He buries his face under his hands, pressing bony fingers against his eyes.

"I had a camera," he says, muffled through his palms. "The day we went there and met that - those fucking cats. I made a camera out of the lint in your pocket, it was recording, I was just bored, I didn't know it would... I didn't mean to..."

He doesn't want to open that up again. He keeps his face hidden, feeling his skin burn, feeling the really deep bite of shame, it was always so easy to just blame his shit on other people, wasn't it? This fucking hurts and he hates it.

"I dropped it," he says, his voice hoarse. "And I thought it would... I mean it was like microscopic I didn't think anyone would - but when I got regular sized again, I guess..."

He rubs his hands roughly over his face and looks away again, staring hard at the wall, his hands folded together so hard his knuckles are white. "I'm sorry," he whispers again, as if that even matters, as if that will change anything. He's fucked up so much now, what possible reason does Tim have to keep putting up with him.

It's fucking ridiculous, that this is what their lives are like. Somehow it went from late night abductions to miniaturized cameras made out of lint, and there's no way to streamline the transition.

Jay was dead.

And then he wasn't.

I'm sorry, Jay's snapped out roughly before, prickly and guarded and not the least bit sincere, to which Tim snorted, bitter and contemptuous, paradoxically both understanding the reasoning and refusing to accept it.

And now Jay's admitting this, straightforward. Cutting right through the layers of his typical bullshit. The memory kicked up isn't a good one - Tim's arms fold over his chest in that automatic reflex, pulling deeper into himself like he did when Jay launched question after question at him, knowing he couldn't lie, traitorously digging up the lies Tim told to protect whoever was left. He hadn't even sounded accusatory. That had been the worst thing, besides the fact that he'd gone ahead and done it at all.

"Wouldn't have changed anything," Tim says dully, staring numbly at the wall. "There was a guy, um." He scrubs a hand through his hair, guilty at the recollection. He'd said way too much, more than he did usually - but then again, he hadn't really been in his right mind. "In a dream, the one with the trees and shit. He figured it out. Said I should've told someone I was staying with the Rebels. So I thought, y'know." He shrugs tiredly. "He went ahead and told 'em."

It's cheap. It's the worst kind of willful ignorance, casually disregarding everything because it's just - easier to tear into Jay when he's defensive, that scrappy little asshole with his camera and his self-righteous indignation. But this is just - too different. Too weird and open and sincere.

Jesus. As if he could get pissed about that.

Jay looks up slowly, finally looks at Tim. He's just - shrugging it off. Not acting pissed at him, not bitter or angry like he should be, just... like it doesn't even make a difference.

For a moment he just doesn't say anything, not sure what to do. Is Tim letting him off the hook here or what? Should he try to argue no, it was my fault, you should be mad at me? How does he even proceed here?

"Oh," he finally says, stupidly. "I mean, yeah, I guess, but..."

But would they have abducted you for that? Locked you up, treated you like an animal, like something dangerous?

He huffs out a breath. Tim isn't fooling either of them with that, but if he doesn't want to get into it, who is Jay to force the issue. "Seems like it's about time someone took them down," he says. "If this is how they deal with squatters. Kinda overkill."

Really, really weak fucking joke, but hey, he's trying, okay.

What the fuck would compel anyone to take someone's obviously important medication? For what, safekeeping? Study? That's not - what's the word - humane. And Tim's definitely earned the right to bitch about his captivity as much as he goddamn well pleases, thanks.

He offers a one-shouldered shrug, one hand curling around the opposite elbow. He doesn't just wanna brush it off but - fuck, what does he even say? Thank Jay for owning up to his shit for once? It's not like Tim ever got gold stars or applause for acting like human beings are expected to act. Or if he just shuffles past it, no big deal, maybe that's the reward in and of itself. Congratulations on your newly acquired sense of empathy, Jay, don't fuck it up and maybe this time Tim won't yell at you.

God. No wonder he never had friends in high school.

But whatever, he can shift the subject to something they're both a little comfortable - a little less uncomfortable, maybe - talking about. It's something they're really gonna have to talk about, like it or not. Mostly not.

"Maybe they had the right idea," he answers darkly. With his medication gone now, it's only a matter of time. They both know it.

Jay's expression hardens, slipping from bewilderment to indignation. "No," he blurts. "What are you - no. Nobody's locking you up, Tim, jesus."

He still feels sick when he thinks about Entry 66. He can't even imagine, doesn't want to, wants to avoid thinking about it as much as he can, Tim curled up in the corner losing his absolute shit drowning in that fucked up childhood, trapped in those little rooms.

And all Jay could say about it was you're not like Alex, at least not entirely.

"Look, if you - if that happens, then we'll deal with it," he says. "Somehow. But you don't deserve that."

He feels weird, strangely exposed, speaking so vehemently about this. He draws a breath and shrinks a little, curling inward. "We'll figure something out," he murmurs.

"Yeah?" The amount of effort it takes to keep his voice from rising in pitch and volume and outrage is damn near impossible, and he doesn't quite manage it. Sheer incredulity still skews the word too high, too sharp, the you've got to be joking more than implicit.

"It was in our heads." They both know, even if they never really talked about it. "It was in our dreams. We both saw it, in the trees. You know what that means." Because if that's not confirmation, then Tim doesn't know what is. He'd lied to push them ahead in the moment - and it's what he does, and it's what they say about roads to hell being paved with good intentions, what totheark always said, LIAR LIAR LIAR. He's not gonna be okay, he's never gonna be okay, and insisting otherwise is the same pointless, optimistic bullshit the doctors fed him his entire goddamned life.

We'll find a way out of this, Tim.

Normal life's just around the corner, Tim.

Just hang in there, Tim. Hang in there, because everything's gonna be fine.

He got so good at distinguishing the right tone of voice for a lie. All the little signs and twitches and darting of eyes. And they kept insisting, and there came that point, he's not exactly sure when - that he just stopped believing it.

"So what?" he says, head snapping up, vehemence flowing right back because it's better than this. "It's always been that way. Alex tried to fix everything and he couldn't, I tried to fix everything and I just made it fucking worse. You're the only one that made it, Tim!"

Other than Jessica.

Let's not talk about that.

"You stood up to it, you saved my fucking life that night." Has he ever acknowledged that? Ever thanked him? Probably not. "You did all of that without being locked up like some kind of freak so just - yeah, they took your pills and it's still there but that doesn't change anything, it doesn't mean you should just give up."

Jay never gives up.

Not ever.

He goes until it kills him. That's fine. That's probably what he deserves. Asking for it, charging headfirst into so much bullshit. Tim was always the one who deserved to fucking make it, he feels like he's seeing that clearly for the first time.

And just like that, it's easier to slide back. To flare up, incensed, teeth gritted against the fierce sense of optimism Jay's so stupidly good at.

It's just weird that this time, bizarrely, the argument is in Tim's favor, spat out like the angriest compliment he's ever received.

"We have no idea what it's capable of here," he insists from under lowered brows. "The Rift might make it stronger. The Rift might make it worse. You might be okay risking it - I'm not." A muscle in his cheek twitches as he unclenches and reclenches his jaw, glaring. "And it's my body that thing uses to wreak havoc wherever it feels like it."

Does that justify him, at all, to apply any kind of unilateral reasoning to it? It's his body, sure - but once that thing steps inside, that question kinda goes up the air.

Maybe he would be better off, they both would, if he left that little freak in Jay's hands whenever he? it? takes over.

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

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