So, those of you who have read my work probably know me by now. This story is in line with my standard.

This story assumes that everyone has seen the episode "Vendetta" and remembers most of it.

Of not, here's the quick and dirty: Artie has been drawn to Russia by his past contact, only to be kidnapped by his former contact's son. The son, Ivan, (Evan? I went with Ivan) rapped Artie on the head, chained him up and started torturing him with artifacts. Myka, Pete and HG are trying to find him.

So- after all of that, I was left to wonder...

What would happen if Pete and Myka took just a little longer to get to Artie after HG found him?

Description of torture. Please use your own judgement.

In the dank, dirty warehouse, Artie's screams filled the vast space. The neat, European youth stood before the shackled older man confidently. Ivan, in a leather jacket, gripped Torquemada's chain and pulled it taut invoking another guttural cry of pain. Each outburst from the warehouse supervisor satisfied Ivan's memory of his dead father a little bit more. The young man's life devotion was being fulfilled; he was torturing his father's persecutor, his so called "friend" who betrayed him into jail and death, taking him away from his family and from Ivan's own childhood.

Ivan's long hair, pulled back neatly, emphasized his eyes that fired with his own pain. There was plenty of it in the room and Ivan's pain mixed along with the tortured agent's. He let the chain go slack in his hands, giving Artie time to catch his breath and his own heart beat to settle back to normal. Artie recovered quickly, breathing heavily and sweating, but looking Ivan in the eye.

"Ivan…" Artie said in between catching his breath. "Stop. Please, you don't know what you're doing…. what that's doing to you." The agent could see Ivan's eyes hardening each time he used the chain and knew it was a side effect of the artifact.

"It is not what it is doing to me, but to you." Ivan replied coldly in his heavy Russian accent. He had sacrificed everything that he had in his broken life to get here, with this man, in this place. Nothing else mattered to him. There was nothing for Ivan beyond this moment. The young man calmly stepped closer to the old man restrained in between the building's support beams. "I want you to know what I went through after you took my father." He ignored Artie shaking his head. "I want you to suffer like he suffered. Away from his family. Dying. Alone." Ivan's eyes narrowed and his nose flared and twitched at the raw pain that he lived with for as long as he could remember.

"Ivan, it was your government. That wasn't me, I came back, I triiiied-" His voice was taken from him as he grunted against the pulling effects of the artifact chain when Ivan pulled it tight. Knowing about the artifact, Artie was able to counter the most permanent damage by balling his fists and therefore protecting his fingers from dislocating, but couldn't prevent the pain spiking through his body from the artifact stretching every joint and tendon.

Pain streaked up Artie's legs and came out of him in a scream that mixed with the dust floating in the abandoned factory. He felt a pop in his foot and knew that his bones were being dislocated. He focused through the noise of his body and tightened his feet and fists against the pulling. Artie squeezed his eyes in the effort and his dislocated foot sent fire up his leg in protest.

As quickly as it started, the pulling stopped. The agent gasped and swallowed after his screams made his throat raw. He looked up to see the young man that looked so much like his old friend, Alexi, but for his eyes. Ivan's eyes were involved with in his own pain. Artie caught the man's raw injury hiding just behind his dark brown eyes before Ivan hid it and looked at him.

Artie knew that he needed to get at that hurt in Ivan. It was his the only way out for him. "Ivan, you father…" he breathed and blinked away sweat dripping in his eyes. "Alexi, he wouldn't want this..."

Ivan's eyes hardened. "To confront his betrayer? You're wrong. He would want this for you." He smiled a sick, sweet smile.

"Not for me…" The light reflected in Artie's brown eyes when he looked up at the taller, young man in sympathy. "He wouldn't want this for you."

"For me… How dare you think that you know what my father would want for his son!" He made the older man stop talking by giving the chain a jerk.

Artie clenched his jaw, grimacing at the shot of pain when his right wrist dislocated from the jerk sent through the artifact. He could tell that he was on the right track with Ivan by his reaction. Artie knew Ivan's father far better than Ivan did. If he could only get through to his friend's son, Artie thought that there was hope for the young man that was in so much pain before him.

"Ivan." He groaned out.

"No." Ivan was to calm and methodical. Artie knew he was too calm; the chain was taking him over. "No more talk from you." Ivan gripped the ends of the chain and slowly pulled it taut.

Artie gulped a breath, held it and tensed his hands and feet against the chain. But the artifact's powers slowly pried his fingers open. Tendons in his back were strained to the brink, shooting pain up his nerves. Artie heard himself scream, his breath leaving him involuntarily when his legs, neck and shoulders were stretched out by the artifact.

Ivan found the perfect balance of force in the chain and held it there, keeping the agent trapped. Suddenly he didn't care about the man before him anymore. His own torture for the last 30 years was all that mattered. He pulled just slightly more causing the old man to jerk and scream in agony. His scream burned Ivan's ears but it was like a salve on his old wound. Seeing this man, who had an attachment to his father that he would never have, to see this man hurt as Ivan hurt, it made his wounds seem less in comparison.

Just before he thought that the old man might pass out, Ivan let the chain go slack. Artie fell when released by the artifact, held up by the chained shackles around his wrists. His chest heaved as his breath came in great gulps. The physical strain had sweat soaking his dark green shirt, turning it black around his neck.

Confidently, Ivan stepped back from his prisoner. Artie struggled to maintain control over his injured body. His back muscles were starting to seize up and he had to focus to overcome the pain burning in his foot. A whimper escaped him and he couldn't hide a tremor from shaking the shackle around his dislocated right wrist but he defiantly raised his head and got his feet to hold him up again.

The youth's lip curled up as a sickly sweet smirk crawled over Ivan's face. His head tilted with a bit of admiration for the older man's tenacity. "Good." He said, seeing Artie stand.

Very calmly, Ivan walked over to the table holding the assorted artifacts that chose to bring along. He slowly set down Torquemada's chain on the table. Ivan could feel something different in himself. He remembered Artie's words of how the artifact "hardens your heart" but he felt nothing hard, just emptiness. Ivan thought that perhaps the old man was right and he was being affected by the artifacts as well as his prisoner. Ivan blinked hard to clear his thoughts. His eyes focused on his table of artifacts. A statue of the Russian General Samsonov supposedly transported people directly into the Russian Second Army during their loss at the Battle of Tennenberg, but Ivan had never seen it work. Instead, the hardened youth's hand reached out to carefully pick up a child's set of toy jacks. A single jack sat quietly in Ivan's gloved hand for a moment, then it briefly glistened a deep green sheen. Ivan could somehow sense it's power, and then he felt it himself.

Ivan looked over his shoulder at Artie. He turned and revealed the single jack in his hand.

Artie gasped. "Not the jacks…"

Ivan's lip curled. His boots clicked as he descended on the old man.