decided to split this into three chapters, and i hedged a lot on how much of what this guy says to actually include, because it seemed needlessly upsetting, but decided to put basically all of the most upsetting bits in the second chapter. if you're worried you might be triggered or upset by it, please prioritize taking care of yourself, and you can easily skip the second chapter if you'd still like to read the fic.

warnings: adam was, as ezekiel's handler, a manipulative, emotionally abusive bastard. there are some not-so-nice things implied about ezekiel's childhood. additionally, the content of the second chapter could basically be called emotional/psychological torture, because adam says some truly vile things about ezekiel to the team in front of him. rated for this, and for language.

i've learned enough to keep my mouth shut

i've learned enough to watch my back

I've learned enough to become wallpaper

and blend in with the cracks

- electric president, "ten thousand lines"

England makes Ezekiel nervous.

It's not immediately obvious. Nothing about his everyday behavior changes. He jokes and lounges and smirks, breaks rules just because they're there to break, but Eve starts to notice it maybe their third time in the country. (England is ripe for preternatural nonsense it seems, so it's a frequent stop.) She sees it in his eyes flicking around over and over, like he's cataloguing threats, identifying exits. It's in his hands, too. Eve has never seen Ezekiel's hands so still.

Eve doesn't know how to bring it up. She doesn't know how to ask why it seems like Ezekiel thinks he's being hunted every time he crosses under the Union Jack. So instead of trying to get to the bottom of the odd behavior, she does what she can to compensate for it. Eve takes to walking right beside him when they're in English country, the straightness of her back and the strength in the set of her shoulders reminiscent of her military training. Whenever they're not mid-chase, running after or away from something, Eve puts herself between Ezekiel and the angles her NATO-honed skills of threat assessment determine to be the most difficult to guard.

It's unclear whether Ezekiel notices her changes, but she notices the corresponding shifts in him. He relaxes a little after that. Not much, not enough to make Eve stop worrying, but it's something.

When she brings it up to Flynn, he is about as helpful as Eve was expecting him to be - not much. He, albeit after several moments of genuinely troubled conflictedness warring over his face, waves it off as not their business to confront Ezekiel about, pointing out that Cassandra hates hospitals and Oklahoma makes Jacob edgy for days after he's left. They all had their things - things that are better left not pressed on too hard.

For the most part, Eve concedes that he has a point, but it doesn't do much to soothe her nerves. She knows all too well exactly why Cassandra and Jacob feel the way they do about those places and the possibilities that crop up in linking those to whatever Ezekiel's deal with England is strikes a chord of nausea in Eve's gut.

And then of course there's the matter of that second FBI file, the one Ezekiel had looked so stricken by when she'd mentioned it. MI6. An English organization.

With all of those pieces of the puzzle laid out in front of her, Eve concludes that there's no way to proceed without asking Ezekiel about it directly. That's the point at which she decides to follow her sense of caution, her respect for Ezekiel's privacy, and Flynn's advice, and let it be.

Unfortunately, skeletons have a way of falling out of closets whether you let them be or not, especially when someone helps them along by yanking open the door. Which is a polite way to put what happens the next time their job takes them across the pond.

The thing about being drugged is that everyone reacts to it differently. People will succumb at different intervals, and wake up at different times. Despite this, when Ezekiel Jones wakes up in a strange, narrow room, slumped on the ground, and none of his four companions have so much as twitched, he's got a distinct feeling it's not because of a chemical reacting to him differently. When he blinks his way to consciousness, he tries to take a look at his surroundings without making his return to awareness too obvious to whoever it was that took it from him to begin with. There is… not a lot of information to go on.

The room is, as he first noticed, narrow. The walls are ridged, and Ezekiel has been in and around enough storage containers to recognize the interior of one. It's fairly dark, the source of the dim lighting casting ominous shadows over the sparse contents of the unit not visible from this angle. There's something cold and heavy encircling both of his wrists, and Ezekiel shortly determines that he's been handcuffed to the people on either side of him - Eve on his left and Jacob to the right. They're both still out cold. Alive though, information gained from the pulses Ezekiel can feel, sluggish but strong. Then, as he gets bolder and lifts his head a little, Ezekiel sees him, and his blood runs cold.

Adam Bennet.

In the moments it takes the man to cross from his corner over to stand in front of Ezekiel, time slows to a crawl. Ezekiel watches Adam approach and feels sixteen years old again, standing in a safe-house living room while his world crumbles around him, just when he'd finally started feeling safe. Feeling like he had a home.

"We no longer have need of your… services," Adam says in the memory, blue eyes tundra-cold and granite-hard, face impassive with a hint of disdain. Ezekiel can still remember how his heart had lurched at that, how usually when he'd returned from an assignment he'd been greeting with a smile, a rare and coveted word of praise. Not that time. "MI6 is terminating our agreement. Do stay out of trouble, Jones."

They haven't seen each other since. Until now.

"You know," Adam says, looking down his nose at where Ezekiel sits crumpled against the side of the container, "when DOSA contacted MI6, gave us names and files of a group of dangerous criminals calling themselves 'librarians', I couldn't believe it was actually you. But it's hard to find a lot of people named Ezekiel Jones running around, and then the picture was definitely you, so…" He chuckles, shaking his head. Ezekiel tries to swallow but his throat feels tight. He can't remember the last time he was this afraid. "How long's it been, then, hm? Five years? Six? Seven?"

"What do you want?" It has got to be some kind of minor miracle that Ezekiel is able to speak at all, even though his voice is thinner than he'd want, shaking and sounding half a decade younger than he is now, sounding like the kid he'd been when last he and Adam spoke. He both wants Eve to wake up now, and wants her to never see him like this, never have cause to meet the man in front of them now.

"Same thing I wanted before," Adam says like, despite his previous question, no time has passed at all. Like they're still on good terms. Like Ezekiel had never discovered the truth behind his handler's actions, never finally learned that every proud hand on his shoulder, every word of encouragement was a lie. "We have an opportunity to mutually benefit one another, here, Jones. So I'm ready to offer you a deal."

Far from being the most important part of his current predicament, it does nevertheless occur to Ezekiel, with a minute fraction of the zing of self satisfaction that he gets out of being right, that it now makes complete sense he woke up first. Adam wanted a chance to speak privately, it seems. Unfortunately, Adam either takes his lack of response as an invitation to continue, or doesn't care if he got one or not, and lays out his offer.

"All you have to do is tell me where I can find the Library, and we'll let you come back." The way he says it makes it sound like the holy grail, like an invitation to endless wonder.

Ezekiel blinks. "What?"

"MI6, Jones," explains Adam, rolling his eyes. "You can come back to your old job with MI6. Keep up."

Ezekiel doesn't need to think for so much as a second before he comes up with his response.

"Fuck you, Bennet. Fuck you."

Adam's face cycles quickly through smarmy, to confused, to shocked. Ezekiel could swear there was something affronted in there as well, a hurt response to his emphatic, immediate rejection of the proposal.

"Still an ungrateful little bastard, are we? After all the organization did for you? All I did for you?" Adam asks, and his voice has gone from detached friendliness to vicious cold in an instant, drawing from Ezekiel a flinch he internally berates himself for even as he registers it's happened.

Years without seeing Adam, without hearing his name or his voice, and this much at least is still familiar, still as clear as yesterday. Years, and Adam Bennet has not changed.

"Very well," Adam sighs. Staring up at him from the floor, Ezekiel is uncharacteristically quiet. There's nothing he wants more than to run, but he can't get away, can't so much as stand. "We'll do this your way, then. How much do they know, Ezekiel?" The use of his first name is almost as sickening as the question, which sends a jolt of adrenaline down Ezekiel's spine. "How much have you told them about your old job? About you?"

Silence follows between them as Ezekiel doesn't answer the question. He doesn't need to. They both already know.

It takes thirty-two wordless minutes for Cassandra to wake up.