applesaucedream | [closed] When all turns out to be unjust, then I'll turn back and help you out

Definitely the wrong thing to say. Daniel doesn't mean to flinch when Seth rises but he does, a horrible reflexive motion mirroring the other man's thoroughly unfriendly disposition. It doesn't help that Seth won't even look at him, just prowls the room while violently discharging his pent-up aggression at the only person present to listen.

It's also rapidly becoming more obvious that however ragged a condition Seth might be in physically, it's probably nothing like the graveyard his mental state must be by now. There's anxiety, animosity, barely contained frustration in each movement, and it's all aimed directly at Daniel.

Daniel, who wants to help but has no idea how, who can only stand there with restless hands and useless sympathy, stripped of his words and his compassion and his fucking pointless understanding, the only weapons he can wield with any accuracy.

"Consider that this might not be a conventional offer," he says, a little too quickly and tersely and desperately and trying not to let any of it leak through.

This is tortuous to watch. And Daniel is so close to just saying fuck it to all of it and -

He can't.

Edited 2014-10-19 00:49 (UTC)

Seth shoots Daniel a warning glare at his words, Seth's own back to the camera now.

"Just--" Seth gestures jerkily, and turns to the wall next to the door, then kicks it out of frustration, breathing heavily. He presses his hands against the wall and leans his head against it wearily for a moment. Then he turns and leans against the wall in the corner, sinking to the floor.

"Just leave me alone," he says clearly, voice rough, but now it's his turn for the words not to match the expression, aggression giving way to desperation, only hoping Daniel won't be too surprised and give him away. He glances pointedly upwards at the camera in the corner above him. This is the only place in the room where they can't properly see him.

Easy enough to fake a tantrum - not like he doesn't actually feel all those things. Hands close to his chest, he gestures carefully for Daniel to come closer, to pretend to check on Seth.

Seeing him actually lash out is even worse than the bottled-down rage from before, but then Seth draws himself into the corner and his expression opens and he looks up at the camera and -

Oh.

Oh.

Daniel tracks the line of Seth's gaze partway but doesn't dare look back at it. He's trusting Seth's reasoning and knowledge of the place here, so he moves toward him with all the righteous authority and purpose of someone about to engage in forcefully corrective behavior. He drops into a slow crouch in front of him, lifting his eyes to stare back at Seth in bare and skittish relief but he's not sure he can vocalize just now. His breaths are shallow, heart thudding in the shock of realization.

His lungs don't feel muzzled in cotton any longer and the room temperature isn't as oppressively glacial and he can actually breathe without the tearing in his throat because he knows now, he's done it, he's gotten through, Seth knows and none of what he said before matters, none of it.

"I'm sorry." Daniel mouths it silently, as diminished and surreptitious as he can. That doesn't even begin to cover what he needs to communicate to Seth right now and it's not even a suitable starting point, but - fuck, it's something. And it's not the arctic distance and detachment he's been forced to display so far. At least.

Edited 2014-10-19 01:40 (UTC)

Seth tenses up when Daniel comes at him, and shit fuck he's made a mistake, he's fucked up. It was just a trick to make Seth reveal what weaknesses he's discovered in their system, and now he's going to pay, at a former friend's hand.

But then when Daniel crouches, there is just no way to fake the look on his face, and Seth breathes a shaking sigh of relief. It's amazing, to see a friendly, kind face.

He wants to reach out and grab Daniel, just hold onto him for a little bit, some physicality to reassure himself, but he resists. He's not sure just how much is hidden from the camera here. Instead he rubs at his knuckles, hands trembling a little.

"They can't hear us if we whisper," he answers in a low hiss. "Especially after I shouted."

It's almost worse seeing him now, with none of the empty defiance or hostility, just Seth and his tremoring, palpable terror and anxiety and panic. There's no reservation here, no barriers or avoidance or fronts for anyone's benefit, just naked dread and paranoia.

And relief. That's the important thing.

"I'm sorry," Daniel can say it aloud, whispered and horrified. "God, I - I'm gonna try and get you out, I promise, I, I don't even know how I - god, I'm so sorry."

He has to fight to keep it at a whisper, but even if his voice breaks by the second apology the volume never peaks. There is no way to transcribe all of it into words, even a linguist can recognize the limitations of human speech, and there wouldn't be enough time regardless. Going on like this in a futile attempt to console him verbally won't help, so he falls silent and reaches out with a discreet hand to grasp at one of Seth's, masking the motion as he shifts his weight from his heels to the balls of his feet. He just - needs for Seth to have tactility that isn't forced power transferals or blunt force trauma or whatever else he's been subjected to here.

Seth swallows at the apology, and his eyes are stinging. It's so good to find out that someone is trying to help him, but he also hates for Daniel to see him like this, and how upsetting it is for him, and paradoxically he wants to comfort Daniel.

He grabs onto Daniel's hand tightly, pressing it to his chest, as if he wants to keep it there, and he smiles weakly.

"Books," he says, whispered voice wavering. "If you lend me books, you can put messages in them."

He'll even behave, so they won't take them away as punishment. And so they'll think it's Daniel's doing that he's behaving too, so they will trust Daniel more. He knows they can't pull off a conversation like this more than once, maybe twice. Perhaps Daniel can find some other way for them to talk, but at least they'll still have a way to communicate until then.

Daniel nods fractionally, understanding. They have no time for extended discussion here but that doesn't mean they don't have a plan. As much as two sentences, one of which was a single word, can be defined as a "plan," anyhow. But it's something, and they can work with that.

The strength of Seth's grip just works to further augment Daniel's resolve. He returns the smile, pained and fleeting, and briefly increases the pressure of his fingers around Seth's hand.

"I'll get you out," he hisses, ironclad conviction punched into each syllable, the final word closed off with the satisfying snap of teeth as he rises, pulls roughly out of Seth's grasp to move away, all the while keeping his back to the camera.

"I'm sure there's something we can do," he says icily, clearly, acting for the camera, "to get your full cooperation. Without any of this."

He bites his lip briefly - he probably overplayed that - but hastily rearranges his expression into something more detached.

Even with the assurance that Daniel will get him out, it still hurts to have him pull away and speak to him so coldly, and Seth wipes at the sudden wetness on his face with his sleeve.

"Yeah," he answers, not bothering to hide how upset he sounds. It works in his favour. "I'm sure we'll be great friends," he says sarcastically. It's remarkably easy to slip right back into the guarded, hostile demeanor he's used to.

Edited 2014-10-19 05:03 (UTC)

It's a week and a half (he can keep track of the days but he realizes with a sickening twist in his gut that Seth has no such luxury) before Daniel can negotiate for Seth to get more books in his cell, employing the emotional sorts of arguments about how if one treats prisoners with humanity they will respond in kind. He's even able to get a message into one of them, something poorly hidden (he is not a cryptographer), by underlining certain letters.

He gets to deliver them by hand - another courtesy extracted through moral debate with a side of strategy after he explained that if he could form a bond with J-19, it might make him more receptive. Not complete bullshit according to most criminal psychologists, but Daniel doubts that sort of thing would work on Seth in actuality.

He spends the entire time expecting something to go wrong at every turn.

But the guard lets him into Seth's cell without a fuss so Daniel can stand awkwardly holding a very short stack of books, one thumb rubbing absently at the cover of the topmost one.

"Morning," says Daniel, glancing down at the books in hand and back up at Seth. "I brought you these. To, um, improve conditions."

It seems to both take forever and no time at all before he gets to see Daniel again. It's not as bad now he's got that little glimmer of hope. Something to look forward to, even if he doesn't know when the time he's waiting for will come. But he can focus on it, he can remind himself when things get bad, and he can keep his head down and do as he's told, even when it's horrible. And less acting out means less punishment.

He sits up quickly when the door opens, and he has restrain himself not to show the happiness and relief at seeing Daniel again.

"Is it morning?" he asks, doing his best to sound detached and unconcerned.

"Technically." His tone is light but not friendly as he moves to carefully put the books on top of those already present. "It's a quarter to noon."

Daniel has to work to keep his steps unhurried as he moves away, back to the door and hands in pockets. He's supposed to be the person in power here, and it takes an astronomical effort to keep everything from body language to facial expression as dispassionate and controlled as everyone else here.

"Have you given any thought," he asks after an indecisive pause, "to the possible advantages of your full cooperation?" Is he getting better at this? Should he be worried that he's getting better at this? Should he be worried that he's been able to play this part for so long?

It wouldn't matter, in any case; right now he's primarily worried about Seth.

Funny how time seems to lose all meaning when you can't see the sun and they always leave the light on.

He glances down at the books, taking a deep breath to keep his hands steady as he reaches to pick them up, under the guise of simply checking out which titles he's gotten. Not overly interesting, but he'll read them anyway - even if he weren't expecting secret messages.

"To be fair," he answers slowly. "I can't say I've been uncooperative lately. Soo..." Still treading the line between sarcastic bastard and willing subject. Well, alright, he still leans more towards sarcastic bastard, but it's still true that he's cooperated.

"I'm happy to hear that."

Daniel doesn't look at him directly but stays focused on a more distant point, specifically the section of gray wall just beyond Seth's left shoulder. He's afraid of what he might inadvertently communicate to Seth's captors if he meets the other man's eyes and can't tamp down the automatic emotional response quickly enough. He has to stay detached. He has to stay detached.

He has to stay detached.

"I think you should start weighing your options. You've been here for a while." Like Seth needs reminding. But he needs to work in his point - "There's no reading between the lines here."

Daniel's composure slips as he says it, barely. He folds and his eyes dart to lock with Seth's and then back again, but the words are dull and patient and spoken without inflection, the model of obedience. And the mother of all subtle signals. All right, so it was a poor job, but it doesn't matter if Daniel got the message across.

"Right..." he answers slowly. It's hard to miss the meaning of the words, when he's focusing so completely on Daniel. He gives a small nod, his grip tightening a little on the books. He can tell Daniel is just playing a part here, same as him, but it's still uncomfortable.

"I will. ...I am," he answers, intentionally letting the hostility drop for the moment. As an admission that he's going to cooperate. Even if there's nothing he'd like to do less. But if he makes it seem like Daniel is making progress with him in the way the rebels want him to, then surely Daniel will have more leeway.

Seth wonders how Daniel got here. Did he only join to get Seth out and it's all for his benefit, or does Daniel really think they're going good works? Is Seth just the exception, or is Daniel trying to improve things for all of them, whoever else is locked up in here? When Daniel says he'll get him out, what does he mean by that? Free to go anywhere in Manhattan perhaps, as long as Seth still works for them, like it used to be? Or will he be able to leave for good?

He looks down at the books, unable to look at Daniel anymore, his chest tightening.

"Well, you did work for us before." Us, right, Daniel has to lump himself in with the faceless organization keeping Seth here against his will. An uncomfortable self-depersonalization he'll have to live with. He has to respond to Seth's lack of aggression logically and push that agenda he hates.

"Do you think you could get to the point where you'd be willing to do so again?" He's going to have to maneuver his way to the point very slowly. Progress in general will be achingly glacial if it's going to be in any way believable to the outside parties, and Daniel will have to play his cards with extreme care. If he can just bargain for Seth to get more personal freedom, get it to the point where they feel they can trust him again, even slightly, everything he's had to do will be worth it.

In the long run. In the short term, he'll have to settle for hating himself, and hating them for doing this to Seth at all.

Seth swallows, fiddling with the topmost book, not opening it, just running his thumbs over it nervously. He wonders if he should wait to say anything until he's read them. For all he knows, Daniel might have a fully fleshed out plan that involves Seth not cooperating. But then it's hardly unthinkable Seth could change his mind on just how helpful he wants to be. He's done it often enough before.

"You're new here, aren't ya?" he asks, not a hundred percent sure where he's going with this yet. "You weren't here when they brought me in, right?" He glances up for just a moment. He has trouble looking at Daniel when he's like this, and he doesn't want to cause him to break his cover.

"You know, I was happy working here. I didn't mean to hurt anyone," he says bitterly, clenching his jaw. The latter is true, the former, not quite. But it's what he wants them to think. And by now at the very least, Daniel will have heard the charges against him, and Seth needs Daniel to know that he really meant no harm.

"Only they didn't believe me. Thought I was gonna do something bad, so they locked me up. Don' exactly make someone likely to want to cooperate, does it?" he continues.

The implication of course being, yes, he might actually be willing to work for them again, because the reason he stopped had nothing to do with not wanting to work. It was just a reaction to the way he was treated. And, well, they haven't exactly been falling over themselves to give him a choice in the matter.

Seth seems to catch on to where Daniel's been trying to guide the conversation, what he's been mentally preparing himself to hear for the entire week-or-so, but it's still not easy to take in. And it's an incomplete explanation, but he already has access to one side of the story. He just needs the other.

"I think you'll find we're trying to keep an open mind here," he begins patiently, "though a good starting point for both parties would be forgiveness."

Daniel lingers a little too long on that final word, not for any tactical purpose but for purely selfish reasons. He locks eyes with Seth for a second but quickly finds a section of floor to be infinitely more interesting.

"And if we can work out the point where things started to go wrong," he continues, verging on thinly-veiled double meanings, "we might be able to prevent it from happening again."

That, paired with the message left in the book, should be enough. Theoretically. Definitely. The message - assuming the way Daniel hid it makes any sense to Seth at all - asks for limited information on his attempts to get out of here. Daniel just needs to know how they failed so he can circumvent those same mistakes.

Seth lets out a breath when Daniel mentions forgiveness, his shoulders slumping a little. Good. Okay.

He frowns a little at Daniel's next words, not entirely sure how it applies from the rebels' point of view. Which must mean Daniel's trying to inject meaning into that as well. Seth is practically sitting here memorising every word.

"Sounds good," he answers quietly.

"I'm working to change your accommodations," he says a shade too quickly in an effort to not make everything he says sound suspicious and multilayered. And that's not strictly speaking a lie - Daniel is working to change Seth's accommodations, just not to a nicer cell so much as someplace far away from the base and everyone in it.

"You'll only get a transfer if you continue to be agreeable." In other words, sit tight and don't draw negative attention, but that much is fairly obvious, so it all just sounds redundant at this point. Daniel's reluctant to leave as he has no idea when they'll be able to communicate again.

Seth nods silently. Keep his head down, he knows.

He doesn't want Daniel to leave, but he also can't really do or say any of the things he wants to, so he bites his lip. He's been doing this for months, he knows how to keep out of trouble when he wants to. And while the hope gives him strength, it also makes every minute feel like an eternity.

He closes off with a brusque nod, then turns and knocks for the guard to let him out before he can change his mind.

Stare at the door. Stare at the door. Stare at the door.

Stare at the door and don't turn around.

Stare at the door until it opens and walk out again, shaking hands buried in pockets to muffle the anxiety, and Daniel can't stop wetting his lips nervously as the door clangs shut behind him, terrified that someone will call attention to him, convinced that someone's suspected something.

But everything remains dismal and gray and silent, and no one accuses him.

Daniel hopes Seth can arrange a way to respond and that he can get back to him quicker than before and that the thousands of things that could go wrong don't, and he should not have redirected his worry to Murphy's Law because now it's in full effect, it's been invoked, he's certain of it.

Breathe. Everything's been going fine - as fine as things can go anyway, their circumstances considered. Seth will respond. The message is simple, a patchwork of underlined letters that spell out quite clearly:

"escape attempt

what went wrong?

I'll fix it"

Seth watches Daniel leave out of the corner of his eye. Then he swallows and takes a deep breath to steady himself, to pretend like nothing is wrong - or at least nothing related to Daniel.

He forces himself to open the first book calmly, gently flipping through as if merely checking it out. The message is surprisingly easy to find, which makes him worried - what if they had taken the book? It would've been no effort at all to notice the hidden message.

Seth picks up his pencil - thank god they let him have one. And he values it enough that he hasn't tried to use it as a weapon, though perhaps that's mostly because the few times he was stupid enough to attack someone, he wasn't really in his right mind.

He underlines letters at random, obscuring the original message, in case someone decides to check it. At least him scribbling in books isn't unusual behavior for him.

Then he has to wonder what to answer. He's not sure any of his escape attempts went remotely far enough that he could pinpoint just a few things that went wrong, things that could be fixed. But... he's got all the time in the world, and one of the books was pretty thick, a lot of room to plant code into. Might as well tell as much as he can.

And since he's got all this time, he's also able to come up with a better way to hide the message. Same basic principle, just underlined letters, except if you tried to read it regularly, it'd be nothing but gibberish. He writes down instructions for decryption at the front of the book, but anyone who tries will still need the password to know how exactly to decode it. Something no one but Daniel will know, and that he hopefully won't have forgotten.

And as the hint for the pass phrase, he writes; "How to summarise Gödel's ontological proof in Arabic."

It takes him a while to write down what he can about possible escape attempts, probable obstacles, secrets and paths that Daniel might not be aware of. He knows there's a way to get to the subway tracks one level up, that's what he'd been aiming for, but there's a lot standing between him and that.

And then when he can't think what else to write, and Daniel still hasn't come by, he starts treating the book almost as a diary. It becomes simple to write without even having to think much about which letters correspond to which as he slowly marks everything down. Having a one-sided conversation with Daniel.

How he took someone else's power, what it was, and who he had to give it to. How he wonders what the weather's like, what month it is, because it seems to be getting warmer, and is it spring already? How there's a hole in his sock and it's annoying him. How he had a dream where he knew he could fly, except instead he was weighted down with chains and sunk to the bottom of the lake. How much he wishes Daniel would come back soon.

It's only three days this time before he can return to Seth's cell, but it feels like it's been a month. And once he does he barely has enough time to swap out the encoded book for another, let alone have any kind of extended, stilted conversation. Daniel doesn't bother trying to be discreet about it, just treats the whole thing like an exchange between friends. That's what he's been telling them - that he's been making significant progress in establishing a more personable bond.

It's not entirely a lie, and they've believed him.

Daniel gets no sleep the night he shuffles through the book and starts picking apart the code. It takes longer than it should, but not as long as he thought it would; Seth picked a good pass phrase that might have elicited a smile were Daniel not so frenetic in deciphering whatever message he might have left.

He finds...a lot of unrelated information. It might have been three agonizing days for Daniel, but for Seth it well could have been weeks upon weeks, with no way to mark the passage of time. It's no wonder he filled the book with whatever he could. It must have been the only way he could occupy himself.

The stuff in there that is applicable to their current situation, however, gets put to good use. Daniel already has a half-formed map with the best routes to the surface on paper (still working on transposing that into his head, a slightly more difficult task), and has done his best to commit guard shifts and the more active hours to memory, but Seth's additional details flesh it all out considerably. He's not sure when he'll be ready to do anything about it, but the slow-burning progress he's been making doesn't feel like enough. It's killing him to have to bide his time like this.

No, scratch that.

It's killing Seth. Slowly and horribly.

Less than two days later, it turns out that none of it matters anyhow.

Less than two days later, Daniel hurtles down hallway after hallway, subterfuge out the window, cover about to be well and truly fucked, because he heard the noises from a distance and he recognizes the timbre of that scream and there's nothing that will convince him that his silence and cooperation is worth this, because nothing is.

Seth hates waiting. He hates not knowing what he's waiting for or when it's going to happen. He hates not being able to talk to Daniel. He resists writing more messages. He reads the books instead. They're dull, but they're better than nothing.

It's almost a relief when they actually ask him to do something. Just almost. He's taken to the interrogation room as usual, sits there quietly awaiting whatever poor soul Seth's going to rob this time.

It's a young man, but he looks more like a zombie. Not rotting flesh or anything like that, but the dead, unfocused eyes. When they lead him in, he's completely compliant, but he also looks like the only reason he's even putting one foot in front of the other is pure muscle memory. He doesn't look like he's able to object, or even has the will or reasoning to do so. The guards have to put his hand forward for him.

Seth doesn't like this at all. He doesn't know what sort of power this person has, they never tell him. And while he knows that powers aren't any use to him, that they can't affect him, he doesn't want anything from this person inside him. The idea fills him with dread.

Yet it only presents as hesitation, because Seth is being good, he's cooperating, he's keeping his head down.

From the moment the transfer begins, panic floods through him, paralysing him with pure, primal fear, his grip only tightening as a result. He can feel the power coming into him, like poison being pumped into his veins, acid eating him up from the inside, tearing away at everything that makes him who he is.

The instant the light goes out, he jerks back, getting violently to his feet, the chair thrown back with a clatter, and he topples backwards, crashing down onto the floor, only he's forgotten where he is or what he's done, all he knows is pain. Horrible, gut-wrenching, suffocating terror and pain, and he's drowning, and he's going to die, and he's not even aware he's screaming, writhing and twitching in agony.

The door isn't all the way closed and Daniel barges in without difficulty, taking in the civilian huddled to one side, the twin armed guards with their weapons trained on - on -

He can't see what's happened to Seth, the table legs obscure the view, but he can hear the spasmodic jerk of limbs hitting walls and the screams rebounding from the corners, and whatever it is it's bad, Daniel's never heard Seth scream before and he never wants to again, this is really really disproportionately terrible.

So fuck the plan and fuck the playing along and fuck all of it. He clings to the adrenaline-saturated breath of decompartmentalization that floods before the panic sinks in, and takes full advantage of the guards' drawn focus. Namely by slamming his elbow into the first one's neck, knocking the guy against the wall and seizing his weapon in one sharp motion, then twisting the gun from his slack fingers and employing the momentum of his initial strike to slam the guard's head into the table. He makes short work of the second one, who has time to turn and gape and point his weapon before Daniel discharges two quick rounds into his chest.

The civilian scrambles away from the bodies and has soon skittered out the open door into the hallway, to freedom or more captivity depending on who he runs into, but Daniel doesn't care about that, he dodges around the table and crouches in front of Seth. He won't stop screaming and thrashing and Daniel struggles to hold him still but doesn't know if he's at all cognizant of his surroundings and shoots worried looks at the open door, because if his cover wasn't blown before it most certainly is by now and it's only a matter of time before -

- he can't think about that.

"Seth," he says desperately, trying to make himself heard over Seth's own screams, what the hell was done to him? "Seth! Seth, can you hear me?"

Distantly Daniel's brain is still whirring, flinging all the scraps of context together - the civilian in captivity, the guards, a routine power transferal - and it becomes horribly, starkly clear.

"Seth!" he bellows, grabbing at his friend's shoulders in an effort to stabilize him. "Seth, put it in me! Put the power in me!"

Edited 2014-10-20 08:42 (UTC)

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