Content Warnings: Torture, non-consensual alcohol use, discussion of suicide, some harsh language. This is primarily a Hurt/Comfort fic where Finch is kidnapped and tortured. The method of torture is severe, but I don't consider it graphic or gory (even though it could have gotten gory if it hadn't been interrupted).
There's a point where a person's mistakes catch up with them—and your life is replete with the kind of mistakes that like to track you down.
The kind that get you captured.
This isn't the first time that you've been tied up, but it's the first time you've been tumbled into the trunk of a car. The first time that physical force has been used against you, instead of mere threats. It's bizarre, to have enough kidnappings under your belt that you can compare and contrast them. Prior to this afternoon—starting, in point of fact, with that very first terrifying experience—it has always been threats.
I won't shoot you. I'll shoot someone else.
Make a sound, I start hurting innocents.
Root called it your "flaw," and, at first, you rejected that idea: How could caring about other people be a flaw? But you've come to understand the idea, to accept it as a bitter truth. You hold the knowledge that could change the world, or destroy it; risking that destruction because you can't bear to see an innocent die is… irrational. It gives evil men power they should never have, and puts at risk a much greater group of equally innocent people.
And yet.
There's a moment, the moment you first resigned yourself to being in the power of someone you could have stopped. It would only have taken a shout, a few words; Root might well have escaped custody, but you would have been free, the fear and danger behind you.
At that moment, as you sat there in deliberate silence, heart sinking as you watched the policeman pay for his coffee and smile at the waitress and walk out of the diner, some small part of you shattered forever.
I'll shoot someone else.
That's all she had to say. All she's ever had to say, or even to imply. It's been enough to get you to go passive, to cooperate—even, one time, to call the police on your own partner, just to keep him out of the way. The people who have wanted to capture you have never needed to grab you by the arm or shove you against a car or pull a bag over your head.
Not that the Okamotos would know that. They've been in prison for a good twenty-eight years; it's understandable that they'd be somewhat behind the times.
So you're in their trunk, arms behind your back, your own weight cutting off circulation to half your body; you're bracing with one leg to keep from rolling onto your stomach, because being face-down is somewhat more literal when you've got titanium pins that prevent your neck from turning sideways.
And you're already having trouble breathing through the cotton that's pinned to your face, catching the warmth of each breath; in here, in the increasing heat of this metal box, it's stifling. As you focus on taking long, slow breaths through the fabric, you're also fighting to stay in charge of your emotions, to stave off the growing panic as the minutes stretch out and the car gets farther and farther from your friends.
Sweat stings at your eyes. More of it runs down your forehead, and a shudder runs through you at the image of Fusco, crumpled to the sidewalk, blood pooling over the concrete. Seeing him go down had frozen you in your tracks, but he'd been—he'd been moving again, just a little, right before Ken grabbed you and Daichi pulled a bag over your head. So he's probably okay. You take first aid classes twice a year; you know that head wounds bleed more than other wounds do. There's a lot of blood vessels, so even a little cut can look ghastly.
That knowledge has never made you feel better at the sight of Reese all bloodied up—and it does little to staunch the worry over Fusco.
Still, Shaw's got medical training—more than just the basics of first aid—and she had been only minutes away; you'd been on GPS double-checking her whereabouts, and Reese's, when the car pulled up beside you. She's found him by now, she's got the training to help him, to get him the help he needs…
But what that means for you, right now, is that the amount of time it takes Shaw to care for Fusco is the amount of delay they have in getting on your trail. Which could, conceivably, mean the difference between finding you in time and… not. You still don't know what your former associates might have planned.
The rapid shifts in speed and direction have been murder on your neck, but then there's a few agonizing seconds where you're pressed to the back as the car accelerates up to what you can only guess are freeway speeds, and then you're on a long, steady portion with a smoother road and more gentle curves. So you're on the Expressway, although there's no telling which direction.
How long have you been in here? Ten minutes? Fifteen? It hasn't been half an hour yet, you don't think, but already the pain in your lower back has shifted from mild through difficult-to-ignore and on toward excruciating. Even so, you've dealt with pain this bad just from the aftermath of a particularly strenuous day in the field, the kind of cases where John's tasks are too complex or too numerous to handle by himself.
John. John will certainly come for you, the moment he learns that you've been taken. But he's two and a half hours away. Whatever the Okamotos have planned for you… is it going to take that long? If it is, you're not going to like it… but you can hold out. Probably. You've gotten good at that. Not that you'll ever be comfortable getting kidnapped—really, who would?—but you do have some practice in it. Just have to stay calm and wait for rescue.
And keep breathing.
It probably won't be two hours, unless Fusco was badly injured. Shaw was close, and Fusco saw them take you; your friends are on the trail. It's taken you quite a while to get to the point where "trust" is even part of your vocabulary when it comes to other human beings, but you trust them to put your safety above almost every other concern. So you trust that rescue is coming; you just don't know how soon.
Being battered about this way has given you an odd sort of nostalgia for the first time Root had you in her power. At least being zip-tied to a chair hadn't given you nausea or bruises—though it hadn't taken even an hour to get to the stabbing back pains. Due to your injuries, you need to switch position frequently, but she'd kept you in that chair long enough that you lost track of the hours, eventually measuring time by the gasps of the man that she was slowly torturing to death before your eyes.
This darkness can hardly compare to that horror; at least you're the only one at risk right now. But the pain is so much worse. There's nothing here like the cushioning of a car seat; every bump and swerve knocks your head against the thin carpet—and the metal beneath it. The Expressway's a bit of an improvement, but you still get unexpected jolts of pain that make you dizzy and bring tears to your eyes.
With your hands tied behind you, you haven't been able to find a better position, a way to shield yourself from the unpredictable motion. Lying on your stomach would be impossible; rolling onto your bound arms would put even more strain on your lower back, and you're not convinced that you could hold your head up all that well. Curling up into the best fetal position you can manage has helped, a little; tensing up hasn't, so you've done your best to go limp, with just the one leg still bracing you, keeping you in the best position you can maintain.
The sound shifts—almost like you're going through a tunnel. Could be the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel… or the bottom layer of the Verrazano. Up to Manhattan or over to Staten Island… you've been through both of them, many times, and yet you've never tried to tell them apart by sound alone, much less from the muffled sounds that make it into the trunk.
Whichever it is, though, it's only a couple of minutes later before the sound's back to normal, and then you're moving off and slowing down, back to city traffic. No… quieter, you think. Fewer cars. It takes you a few minutes to pick up on the other key sound—or lack of it: no horns. Not Manhattan, then. But the roads aren't in great repair, and the constant and unexpected changes of pressure on your bound arms is a growing agony.
It's increasingly difficult to stay calm and let your body relax, or to call up the mental tricks you use daily to keep from dwelling on the pain. And as the ride gets longer, you get hotter, and sweatier, and dizzier. You start to lose track of time.
Eventually, though, there's a few more swerves, and then the car slows and turns, rocks to a stop and then moves forward another few feet before the engine cuts out.
You breathe.
Car doors—you feel the rock and dip of the car and then hear the slams. A moment later, the sound and feel of the trunk popping open. Fear makes your stomach clench.
One of them grabs you under the armpits, drags you up and out with no concern for your comfort; hardly surprising. They've got you on your feet, now, and they're muscling you along, up a short set of stairs, in through a doorway… the air heats up a little, not much but noticeably, and it's not hard to guess that you've just left a garage.
You stumble along without resistance, letting them direct you through some amount of space before they're turning you and taking you down some stairs—one in front of you, one behind. Steep stairs, and cooler air—much cooler, this time, quite chilling to your damp skin; you can make out the whirr of an air conditioning unit. A basement, most likely.
One of them holds you by both arms, pushing your body to one side and the other while his brother maneuvers your legs, pulling off your shoes, your socks. And then he guides your feet up and over something, some thin piece of plastic maybe, until you're standing on a surface that is not the floor of this basement.
They untie your hands and remove your suit jacket right before forcing you down into a chair; the returning circulation is just starting to get painful as they tie your knees.
Ankles.
Elbows.
Chest.
You don't struggle; there's no point.
After the ropework is done, there's the rustle of fabric, for a couple of minutes.
And then the bag comes off.
"Well, hey, Professor," one of them says, jovially, before you've blinked the spots out of your eyes enough to tell them apart. "Care for a drink?"
The smell of vodka hits you hard, and your stomach turns over.