After getting VidAngel, I finally watched 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street, and in the second movie I was so sad that Eric was getting raped by his insane former teacher that I wanted to do something about it. Luckily Dave Franco is in a few movies I enjoy, and it seemed fitting to put Eric in Now You See Me, after Jack had worried about going to jail and there was that "It rhymes with grape" line in 21 Jump Street. They seemed similar enough, so I ran with it.
Also, I'm ignoring NYSM 2 because reasons.
Hope you enjoy!
…
Eric had realized long ago that Mr. Walters was insane. His insistence that he was his bitch attested to that. And he'd tried fighting back and resisting in the beginning, but Walters was much larger than him and had been able to overpower him. He had cried – he couldn't help it. Walters insisted that they were tears of joy "at finally having him". After a couple of weeks, he'd stopped fighting back. He knew it was useless, and Walters' words convinced the guards that Eric was kidding, or playing hard to get, or was fucking jealous. All Eric had left were his words, futilely trying to reach some sane part of his former teacher's brain. Even the two narc cops found out about what was going on after about eight months in jail, and he'd made a last desperate plea to get him out of there. He didn't even care where he went, just not in the same cell as the insane older man. He was certain that if there was any real friendship while the narcs had been undercover, that they would have done something.
But nothing happened. The narcs had only cared about finding the next bust on their agenda, and Eric had to deal with Walters raping him every night.
And then, the straw that broke the camel's back – Walters had said those two words – "I'm late!" – and he realized that he'd truly underestimated the level of the psycho's insanity. For a minute, he'd felt completely helpless and then ready to commit suicide, just to escape this hellhole. He couldn't handle another nine years and four months here.
But then he'd decided that he was already fucked anyway – literally – and decided that breaking out was the best option. Worst case scenario, he gets thrown back into the same cell as Walters. Best case scenario, he gets shot in the escape attempt and either dies or is transferred somewhere else. Impossible scenario, he gets free.
So he'd turned around and faced Walters, playing along with him and concocting some bullshit about how the baby can't be born here, so he needs to break out. After a lot of discussion, he promises that if Walters will help him get out first, he can start off with getting some money. Walters can't go first, because he would have a lot more people after him, but going after an eighteen-year-old wouldn't be high on their list of priorities. After a few months when any sort of panic calms down, Eric can come back and get Walters out, and they can live together with their baby.
The very idea makes Eric want to gag, but he would say and do anything to get out of this hellhole.
It was a month later when Eric was finally able to get out, involving a riot in the cafeteria and some stolen clothes and a swiped key card, and Eric ran without a glance back.
He knew there was no future for a felon, so he stole an identity of a guy in the morgue. After picking a few pockets (thank goodness several movies were accurate about how to do it), he had paid a guy to erase records of the teenage Jack Wilder dying, and then got some IDs to make any search for Jack Wilder show his face. Burning off his fingerprints was painful but necessary, and he'd done it in a way that his hands were still rough, like it was an accident falling into some fire rather than intentionally getting rid of evidence of who he was.
After a couple of weeks on the streets, he'd seen a magic show for a guy named J. Daniel Atlas, and was inspired to try some of it himself. He was a very quick learner, and he got better at it very quickly. So, he decided to be a magician. No one would ever expect that of a high school drug dealer, after all.
…
Walters was staring at him with a look on his face that Eric knew very well. Aroused, but angry and somehow hurt.
"You were supposed to come back for me!" Walters cried. "We have to stay together – for the baby!"
Walters was heavily pregnant, and Eric's eyes widened at the sight. Men couldn't get pregnant, whether they surgically got a vagina or not. He backed away, finding himself stopped by the wall behind him.
"It's alright, though," Walters said, calming down slightly and coming closer, rubbing Eric's shoulders in what he assumed the other thought was a comforting manner. "You're about to tangle with the FBI. When you're arrested and they find out who you are, you can come back and share the cell with me. We'll be together – forever!"
"No," Eric choked. "I'm not Eric – I'm Jack now. They won't find out who I am."
"Oh, honey, of course they will," Walters crooned, and suddenly they were both in the jail cell, with the prison door slamming closed behind him. Eric spun around and saw the locked door made of the metal bars. But nothing is ever locked, he knows – not anymore, not after he learned how to pick locks so he'd never be trapped again. He ran forward, looking for where he knew the lock was supposed to be, but it was solid metal. There was no lock to pick.
Suddenly he became aware of Merritt, Daniel, and Henley on the other side of the door. He reached a hand out from the bars, toward them
"Guys!" he cried, "You have to help me get out of here!"
"Jack, you have a family now," Henley told him sympathetically. "We couldn't take you away from the baby on the way."
"There is no baby!" Eric cried. "It's just Walters – he's fucking insane!"
"You should've told us, Jack," Daniel said matter-of-factly. "You're going to be a father – you have to help Walters have this baby."
"Come on, honey – come to bed with me," Walter murmured in his ear, wrapping his arms around him. Eric looked down and saw that he was dressed in that dreaded orange prison jumpsuit again, and immediately began struggling against the arms growing tighter and tighter around him, until he couldn't breathe.
"No," he wheezed out. "Please – please don't – "
Jack shot up with a gasp as cold water splashed over his face. Disoriented, he fell off the couch he'd been sleeping on. Still gasping for breath, he was startled by Merritt's drawling voice coming from the direction of the chair opposite the couch.
"You know, we've only known each other six months, but you are surprisingly hard to get a read on."
Jack rubbed the water out of his eyes, trying to get the adrenaline to stop racing through his system that was causing him to tremble uncontrollably. Sitting up, he blinked at Merritt, seeing him sitting unconcernedly in the chair with an empty glass in his hand.
"What?" he said, shaking his head quickly as though to clear it, causing droplets of water to fly from his hair.
"I mean, even Danny-boy is easier to read, and he has a freakish amount of control," Merritt went on. "You're also nineteen – or so you say – which would make you nine years younger than him, so really, logically, you should have had less practice keeping up a poker face."
Jack coughed. "Well, we all have our own backgrounds," he said noncommittally. "And – water? Really?"
Merritt shrugged indifferently. "I tried shaking you awake, but you kicked me. Water seemed to be a safer option to wake you up for both of us." He leaned forward slightly. "Quite the night terrors you have," he commented, watching him carefully.
Jack quickly stood up and backed away from the older man. "No, no – do not try doing your little mind tricks on me. It's not any of your business."
"Everyone's business is my business – it's what I do." Merritt countered, not moving from his spot on the chair. "And the majority of the knowledge I've gathered about you is that you're afraid of what we're doing here, and it's holding you back."
"I'm fine," Jack said stubbornly. "I can do the tricks – I won't screw it up."
"Oh, I'm sure not intentionally," Merritt said nonchalantly. "But night terrors like yours aren't just going to go away. Best get it off your chest.
"Now, your average psychiatrist will charge you two, three hundred bucks for this session. Me? I don't want you choking when we're trying to get shit done, so I'll do it for free."
"I don't want…"
"Come on, Jackie-boy," Merritt persuaded. "I won't tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about. Confidentiality of clients, and all. I may not have an actual, fancy-schmancy degree behind me, but I know a thing or two about people's privacy and their need to sometimes give it up, even if it's jst to one person."
With the same resignation he'd felt in prison with Walters coming at him with pants down, Jack defeatedly sank into the couch and clasped his hands, looking down at them and biting his lip.
"Just say whatever's on your mind," Merritt instructed, leaning back in his chair. "Pretend I'm not even here."
"Um…" Jack resisted the urge to fidget as he tried to figure out where to start. "Well, I'm not nineteen, as you've probably guessed. I turned twenty-three in July. Um…I don't know really how to say this…"
"Alright, then – question: why do you pretend to be nineteen?" Merritt coached.
"Well, after I busted out of prison I took a dead kid's identity," Jack said bluntly. "He was a bit younger, but since I've always looked younger anyway, I didn't bother changing the age. No one would care, anyway – I was just on the street; not going to school, or anything."
Merritt was surprised the kid had been to jail, but said nothing as Jack continued with his story. He didn't go into too much detail, but Merritt could read between the lines and figure out what happened. He hadn't pegged Jack as a drug dealer, but Jack had been very firm in telling him that he was not going to do that again. And when he learned of what the sick former teacher had been doing to him in jail, he could completely understand his desperation to break out and reinvent himself. His burned-off fingerprints illustrated that, and Merritt was surprised that even he hadn't figured out that burning his hands had been intentional.
"So now, I just worry that if we're caught during all this," Jack finished with his story, "They'll figure out who I am and put me back in jail with Walters. If that happens, I'll kill myself before the day is out." He was utterly certain of this, eyes dark with dread and promise.
"Well," Merritt said, "I know my telling you 'we won't get caught' isn't going to help you any"—the look Jack shot him confirmed this—"so I'll just say this: this isn't some petty crime. We are crossing international borders with this plan, so I suspect we'll have FBI involvement. We get caught, and we're going to be going to a maximum security prison with our own cells for the rest of our lives. They won't want to risk us getting out, as we're magicians. No one would be in the same cell together."
Amazingly, Jack appeared relieved and comforted by this information, and Merritt went on, "And if that doesn't help, this prison was in – California, you said? The closest we're getting to the ol' Golden State is Vegas. So if we get caught, we'd go in a prison inside whatever state or country lines we got caught in.
"And"—Merritt tapped Jack's Death tarot card sitting on the coffee table—"We still are undecided about whose death we're gonna fake. We could always go with you, and no one would look for you because they'd think you're dead."
Jack nodded slowly. "Alright," he said, exhaling slowly. "Alright."
Merritt beamed. "See?" he said cheerfully. "What'd I tell ya? I'm the smartest one here, as much as Danny-boy would like you to believe otherwise. Talking to me helps."
"Yeah, okay," Jack shrugged. "Um…you won't – look at me differently now though, will you? I mean, you went to jail because you were screwed over, but I went to jail because I fucked up."
Merritt shrugged and rose to his feet. "Probably think of you differently, but you're still the same kid, and I'm not about to convince Henley and Danny that we need to drop you from the group because you wanted to make some extra cash in high school."
"Alright, cool," Jack said, relieved. "Thanks, man."
…
"Who are we working for? And are we prepared to go to jail for them?"
Jack looked up at Merritt when he asked the group this general question. Biting his lip at the reminder, his eyes moved to Danny when the other spoke.
"Stop being paranoid," he said annoyedly.
"It really does happen," Merritt argued, face serious, and Jack felt the panic rising in him again.
"It happened to you," Danny countered. "Doesn't mean it's going to happen to us."
"Guys," Jack said nervously, remembering the hellish several months in prison and feeling the panic rise in him. "I don't know if I can do this, alright? I don't want to go to jail, you know?" Again.
"Then don't screw up," Danny said sharply, looking at him in annoyance. "You're always talking about wanting to be treated like an adult. Now might be a good time to start acting like one. Stick to the plan." He shoves a stack of paper into his hands. "Stay here and burn it all."
Jack can feel his breathing quickening with panic as he remembers that night five years ago, when he was panicking in front of the narcs.
"It's just that I don't wanna go to jail! Do you know what happens to a handsome guy like me in jail?! It rhymes with grape!"
Jack swallowed, glancing around the room as the walls seemed to grow closer and close in on him. His breathing quickened in his panic, but it was quiet enough that the others didn't hear in their preoccupation. Merritt had said something that had Henley snapping at him, but Jack didn't care to know what.
It rhymes with grape.
Merritt glanced over to him by happenstance, and in an instant he was in front of him, before had Jack even noticed him moving. He grabbed him by the neck, taking him by surprise and turning his head to look at his wristwatch while the second hand ticked around the circle.
"You see the hand counting down the seconds in 5…4…3…2…1…your body is calm, without worry, and when the second hand reaches the twelve – you…will…sleep." At the word "sleep", Jack's body went limp, and Merritt caught him, holding his head against his shoulder to keep him from falling.
"What the fucking hell, Merritt?" Danny exclaimed. "I just said they're here – we need to go, not deal with your mentalist bullshit!"
Merritt ignored him, knowing that they had little time, this being the reason he was doing a much sloppier job than normal.
"When I snap my fingers, you are going to wake up," he instructed. "And when you wake up, you will be completely focused on the plan. You will fight with all you have to get away from the FBI, and you will know that you will win, and our plan will work. When you feel yourself start to panic, you will know that we will not allow anything bad to happen to you." Then he snapped his fingers, and Jack jerked awake, standing on his own now. His panic was gone, his gratitude for Merritt's help in the back of his mind as he focused on the plan, as instructed.
"Alright, guys, let's go," Merritt said, straightening his jacket. Daniel and Henley gave him odd looks, but rushed out quickly while Jack moved to burn the papers.
…
Jack had never felt freer as he walked alongside the other three Horsemen in Central Park. The world thought he was dead, and thanks to Dylan Rhodes, the one who had orchestrated this all, all record of Eric Molson had been erased as well. He had a new life now – a real life – even if he had to fly under the radar in public. Now if he was ever arrested, it would be for the actions in his magic life, and not his stupid mistakes in high school.
He didn't expect he'd be arrested now, though. The other three Horsemen were very good at what they did, and he could count all of them as his very best friends. He knew that none of them would let anything bad happen to any other member in the group – even Merritt or Dylan would do anything and everything they could to make sure the other was safe, if it came down to it. It also certainly didn't hurt that they had someone in the FBI on their side.
Yes, he had friends now – and not the 'friends' from high school whom he'd never heard from after his arrest. These friends were real, and had stuck by him for the past year and a bit they'd known each other. He'd worried a bit that after the final act and whatever happened at the end, that the other three would part ways.
But it hadn't happened. It had been two months since the last act in New York, and they were still going strong. Everything was just the same as it had been during their 'year of living dangerously', as Merritt liked to put it. Daniel and Merritt still bickered constantly, but Jack suspected that they just enjoyed bickering. He could see Daniel beginning to pull his head out of his ass when it came to Henley, and he knew that they would be together soon. He wasn't treated so much like a kid anymore, as they all treated him with more respect after he was able to follow through on his promise of finishing up the touches of the final act. There was still a protectiveness coming toward him especially from Henley, but rather than rankling, it was…nice.
He'd never had anyone who loved him for who he was. His parents he hardly knew, because they were gone all the time and gave him free reign. He'd realized after a few weeks in jail that he had no real friends in high school, because he hadn't seen a single one since his arrest. This trend had only continued through the rest of his time in the god awful cell. He'd thought maybe Jenko – or at least Schmidt – had cared about him at least a little bit, even if they were undercover, but after nothing had changed in his situation with Walters after the visit where they clearly saw what was going on, he'd realized that they didn't care either. He'd had no one – not until he'd gotten that tarot card in his back pocket and met Henley, Merritt, and Daniel – and then later on, Dylan.
The other four weren't his friends, he realized suddenly, coming to a stop at the unexpected insight.
"Jack! We're getting ice cream – hurry up!" Henley called ahead of him a bit, still laughing at something Merritt had said while her hand swung in Daniel's.
He smiled and hurried to catch up, the thought and realization he'd had swirling repeatedly through his brain.
Merritt, Daniel, Henley, and Dylan – they weren't his friends.
They were his family.
…
Such cheese. Many fluff. ;)
Thanks for reading!