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

more brutality

[deadeyedchild]

Between his stipend and Tim's job they're technically making enough money to survive, but technicality sort of goes out the window on Manhattan prices, jesus h how do people live like this? It's almost enough to make him miss home. Almost.

Not much to go back to, and nothing he wants to remember. But lower rents.

Either way he's been toying with being an adult and getting a real job. Not that he has marketable skills. Not that he's worked since college, so, so long ago. This is the third time he's gone to a place to inquire about the window's "now hiring" sign and ended up bolting. How the hell is that even gonna go. 'Hi, does your business need someone to stand here awkwardly and point a camera at the floor and occasionally at people? I am your man.' Hey, he can use Tim as a reference!

That's almost funny enough that he laughs.

Almost.

He returns to the Rebel apartments, trudging, mopey, carrying a cheap six-pack he's realized he's going to have to drink on his own, Tim can't drink with the meds, so great, Tim will so appreciate that. Stupid piece of shit, forgetting something so basic. He rides the elevator up staring glumly at his warped reflection, steps out into the hallway, up to his door, drawing his keys from his pocket and thinking about very carefully nothing-

The door is open.

"Tim?" This is not something Tim would do.

He sets the beer gingerly on the carpeted hallway floor and gives the door a tentative push. It swings open slowly. "Tim..."

His stomach drops. Everything is torn up, in violent disarray. The rug rumpled, table kicked, blood ont he floor blood on the floor, not much but enough, something from a bloody nose maybe.

There's someone else there standing in the corner, he sees the suit and startles so badly he jerks back past the threshold straight across the hall to the opposite wall, a tall figure in a suit staring, staring, no, okay, this one has a face, he has eyes and hair and features, he's a clean six feet, not - not-

The man is stepping toward him slowly, holding a hand out placatingly, like approaching a rabid dog. He's holding a camera. Jay's camera.

It takes him only a moment.

He remembers this guy now, he realizes, one of the Rebel recruiters he talked to before getting his place, and he remembers the camera too even though it looks just like all the others (now strewn across the floor), it was less than a centimeter long at the time but Jay got bigger and it got bigger and they found it and heard everything, saw everything, everything he forced Tim to say-

"Jay," the man is saying. "Don't be alarmed. I'll explain."

Jay twitches violently, taking a step to the left, still pressed against the wall - the man halts, not wanting to give him a reason to run.

"Where's Tim," says Jay. His voice is shaking, but it's low, insistent. He sounds like someone. Alex. Pinning Brian in his sad little cabin, demanding, where are they, where are Jay and Tim. Like Brian this guy isn't answering. "Tell me!"

"Please come inside, Jay," says the man. "Let's not make a scene."

No, let's. He pulls his hand into a fist, keys between his fingers. "What did you do with him?!"

The man pitches forward, makes a grab at him, and Jay evades him narrowly and bolts, throwing himself down the hall, into the stairwell, down, down. He can hear shoes hitting the steps above him, closing on him. Jay's good at running. He's run from worse.

He bursts into the main lobby, out of breath, heart hammering, but he still hurls himself into the street and skids down the sidewalk. To the park. Get to the park.

Everything always leads back to the park.

The man's too close now, Jay can feel fingers brushing his hoodie, he unzips it frantically and wriggles out of it, he's off the path but there's people close, if he can just get-

Someone else jumps him, another man, not in a suit, some kind of undercover fuck, wraps an arm around his throat and brings him to a crashing, strangled halt.

"No!" he snarls, twisting and struggling as the other one catches up. "Where's Tim, what did you do to Tim?! Let me go!"

Hand over his mouth, he bites it and kicks someone in the shin, slashes his fist across someone's face and the keys bite into it; there's an enraged yell and then he's thrown to the ground. Weight comes down on him, winding him, holding him down. There's no one near, they're too well tucked between the trees. Pressed into the dirt and the grass, he sees a big black bird, a crow, staring at him with one eye, and for a fevered moment he thinks Zero.

"Daine," he chokes out. "Daine, tell, find Daine, help me, please-!"

An elbow jams into his back and he breaks off with a breathless grunt, but the bird has taken flight. Please, oh god, please let it have understood, and let her be nearby.

[later]

[deadeyedchild]

The doors all come unlocked at once - whatever Seth was planning to do seems like it worked. Jay plants his hand on the door and pushes it open further, shouldering his way in. He doesn't bother waiting for Daine, she's got her own business to attend to no doubt. "Tim," he says, breathless, sliding to his knees and planting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I'm here. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

[stronglikebear]

They're working on it, Yuri tells himself. The more he pesters the people going through ROMAC's records, the longer it's going to take them to finish going through the things. He's antsy, though, and not because of next week's full moon. He searched that building from top to bottom, or near enough to, and his little brother wasn't anywhere. He knew he should have acted on his own months ago even if it meant going in as a prisoner just in the hope that they'd put him in a cell near Erik's, and now it's too late. Now Erik has vanished into thin air again just when the downfall of ROMAC should have reunited them.

He spends much the day trying and failing to pound out a few hundred words of lifestyle article before finally giving up. He'll just head to the kitchen, he decides, and get something to eat, and then he'll maybe just...check in. Not pester, but check in. They have to have found something.

Almost as soon as he steps out of his room, though, Yuri can sense that there's something wrong. The sounds are faint at first from the hall outside his door, but as he makes his way closer to the offices and labs at the heart of the base he can hear -- crashing? Shouting. Screaming. Yuri breaks into a run, faltering when a fellow rebel comes haring past the other way and clips his shoulder as she goes by. "What's --?" he starts to ask, but she's already off around the corner, leaving him standing alone as something continues to thump and crash nearby. Palms sweaty, Yuri gulps and edges closer to the source of the noise, pressing himself against the wall and shuffling near enough to peek around the door frame.