Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through this.
A/N-Warnings: pre-slash, kidnapping, torture (non-graphic), stream of consciousness in places, synesthesia (loosely interpreted), 80's style bad guys, brain damage, unrealistic (possibly), possible continuation with "Blacklist" (if I can make it work).
A/N2: Much thanks go to swifters, who read this through for me, and encouraged me in the posting of this. Be sure to check out her profile for, "Fifteen" (coming as soon as I've finished posting this story, which has 10 chapters). It's a fantastic read, and one that you will not want to miss.
It's gloomy. The sky more white and gray, filled with billowing clouds, than blue. The sun's shining, though, and it's warm, even with the clouds and the gentle breeze that's blowing.
Danny wraps his arms around himself and shivers, cold in spite of the heat coming from the sun, from himself. He's sitting beneath a palm tree. There's an ocean to his right, a city to his left. He recognizes none of it, though now he knows the words, and can put tastes to them.
He has no idea where he is, how he got there, and only has a vague idea of who he is. He knows his name. Danny. No middle or last name. No idea where he's come from; where he's going; what he does, or did, for a living.
He's surrounded by raucous laughter, the cries of seagulls soaring above the ocean's waters, voices that ebb and flow with the roar of the waves as they hit the sands of the beach, pulling at the shore.
The scent of fish, dead and decaying, mixes with that of coconut tanning oil and something distinctly flowery that Danny can't name, or picture. It's nauseating, and Danny presses his nose and mouth against his shoulder to stifle it.
He can only imagine what he looks like, hunched over in the white sand, shivering. No one seems to notice him, though. They walk by, chatting about things that Danny, in his confused state, cannot focus on. He catches only snippets of words and phrases. None of them make any sense, none of them have a smell or a taste: Trade Winds...Ala Moana...Black Friday...brah...body board...
His head hurts, and his stomach feels like it did that one time when...he can't remember, and trying to remember makes the dual hammers in his head pound even harder against the inside of his temples. He's going to be sick. Doesn't want to, because he knows it will hurt, that there will be nothing for him to evict from his stomach if it insists on rebelling again.
He needs to find someone. That's a persistent thought that he can't shake. Hasn't been able to shake since...he can't remember, doesn't try to, because of the pounding that's making his skull crack in two.
He digs his toes into the sand. It's cool, comforting in a way that nothing else is. Danny focuses on the gritty feel of the sand between his toes, curls them beneath the surface of the rough-soft sand where it's cooler, and tries to think beyond the pulsating throb behind his closed eyelids.
His head's a jumbled mess of disconnected thoughts. Faces mixed with numbers, mixed with bright, swirling colors, mixed with blurry images that Danny can't make out. And there are hands. Too many for Danny to count and keep track of. Hands that hurt him in countless ways.
He bites his lip, rocks back against the trunk of the palm tree, and tries to block out everything around him, because he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he needs to find someone.
Find someone.
Find.
Someone.
Who?
The name escapes him, and he fears he's in danger of losing his own name if he tries too hard to remember who it is that he's supposed to find.
It's not an even trade. Danny for...someone. His first name is the only thing, besides the urge to find someone, that Danny's been able to hold onto with any real clarity.
It's why he has the headache. Why his stomach feels like it's being ripped apart, bleeding, killing him. He knows this, but he doesn't dare allow himself to trade his own name for that of someone else's, because if he loses his name, then nothing else will matter, because he will no longer exist, which is what the hands want.
Danny presses his face further into his shoulder, trying to drown out the oppressive assault of images that flit across his mind in his failed attempt to remember who it is he needs to find, and why. His own name (Danny) almost escapes him, and he clings to it as a man shipwrecked clings to flotsam trying to keep afloat, head dipping, again and again beneath the swelling waves.
He's drowning.
It's not the first time.
He remembers drowning before.
Multiple times.
Remembers hands pushing, shoving, holding his head under cold, cold water. Remembers water creeping up his nostrils, clogging and choking him, clawing its way in past his sealed lips, and into his mouth, his lungs.
He remembers sputtering, gasping for air, throat aching, head sore when he's finally let up. It's cold, and he's in shock from the...training? torture? punishment? Shaking so hard that knows he's going to fall apart. Teeth chattering loudly in his head, making it impossible for him to hear what they're...the hands that held him under...are saying.
Green.
Everything's green. Even the dark space behind his closed eyelids.
The color is all-consuming. It's everywhere. It's inside of him, sinking into his bones the way he'd sunk, sunk, sunk down into the green morass of where he'd been. Which was...not here.
He thinks he remembers liking green. Before.
He doesn't like it now. It's too bright. Too...too...too...green.
It makes him think of death. Of moss growing on the decaying flesh of a man's severed arm.
His arm?
Danny's breath catches, and he clenches his fingers tight to his flesh, tries to picture another color besides green. Fails.
He counts his fingers. He needs to know, because he's not sure that the arm he saw with the green creeping along it, growing like moss on the limb of a tree, isn't his own.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
He breathes. In, out, through his nose, chokes on the remembered smell of death, stomach twisting hard even though he's relieved that the green arm isn't his own. It's someone else's though. Should he care? Was it the arm of someone he knows...knew?
Swallowing convulsively, Danny's fingers dig into the flesh of his arms, bruising himself as the hands of others had when they'd held him down trying to drown the fight, and answers to questions he doesn't remember being asked, out of him.
They'd tried to drown the memory of his name from him, too. But he kept that. Kept both of his arms, and all ten of his fingers and toes.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Twenty digits altogether.
Twenty digits, four limbs, one pounding head, an angry stomach, and a name.
Danny.
His name.
His arms.
His fingers.
His toes.
All of them intact, and trembling with cold and some unidentifiable fear; and underlying it all, the color green.