"Hold up. Just hold up a minute."
Scotty turns back to his partner, just recently recovered from the dead, or good as. The suits have filed out, Karolyi and his assistants in tow, and Kelly's bringing up the rear... only he isn't. He's paused in the door of Karolyi's lab, and though Scotty gives him a gentle nudge, Kelly turns back and takes a slow couple of paces back into the cavernous room with the stage props and the white-draped tables.
"Hey, man, maybe this isn't such a good idea…" Scotty trails off uncomfortably. It's unnerving to see the lab where they turned Kelly's mind inside-out, and to be honest, he'd be happy to get away from this place as soon as possible. Which is why he realizes that Kelly is a braver man than him, where this insistence of his is coming from. He wants to beat this thing, to exorcise the demons once and for all.
How can he deny him that?
So he steps back into the room he's been carefully avoiding looking at too closely, and follows Kelly around, physically, as he walks through the lab, examining the gurneys and wheelchairs and odd-looking props in the cold light of day. He follows him although it makes him sick to his stomach. At the very least, Kel shouldn't have to do this by himself.
His partner assumes a strange, closed-off look as he paces around the lab, and Scotty has to batten down the heart-stopping nervousness that the conditioning is reasserting itself. Kelly's not meeting his eyes again. "Uh, Kel?"
The downcast gaze flickers up to meet his for an instant, and while he can see grief, pain, discomfiture, it's definitely Kelly in there. "Yeah," he replies in that deep voice that only comes out when he's close to snapping.
"Nothin'."
Scotty watches as Kelly walks around the props. The hood of a car, a desk, an American flag, a silhouette of the Capitol building. He was in on the debriefing – he insisted on it, and they couldn't dare deny him – so he knows what they were for. Crude props, but effective.
He watches as Kelly fingers the American flag, passes a hand over the desk, walks over to the car mockup. He looks at them with contempt. He can barely hear the deep, throaty grunt, but he can make out the word, 'Idiot'.
He knows it's no time to speak, no time to tell Kelly he was drugged with a chemical cocktail so potent it's worth a pardon, citizenship and a villa in New Mexico to the US Government. That can wait till said cocktail cycles completely out of his bloodstream, till a few days have elapsed. He can't help a chill as he remembers Kelly's face before he fired, beaded with sweat, twisted with suffering, blinded by the light. He hopes he can forget it, but though time will fade the memory, he knows that seeing Kelly lost, floundering, so broken from the inside, is a sight that may well haunt him for the rest of his days.
He steps close as Kelly approaches a gurney draped with a white sheet. Scotty watches his partner as he moves to the head of the bed, examines something that looks like headphones lying there.
Electrodes. Scotty whirls sharply. He can't take this.
To distract himself, he follows the wires from the padded disks to the machine they are attached to, a metal box with buttons and dials. When he looks at the voltage indicator, his eyes widen in heart-stopping shock. This wasn't mentioned in the debriefing.
"Kel." It's out before he can think how prudent it is. He can't, he shouldn't, but he has to ask. "Is this…? Uh, did they…" he jerks his head towards the box.
Kelly turns a sardonic half-smile on him, but his voice is still in that low register. "Crispy-fried."
Scotty closes his eyes.
He's still fighting the miserable nausea roiling in his gut when he feels Kelly step up to his side. "It didn't work," he says reassuringly.
Scotty just barely manages to hold it together. "I know." Like he needed reassurance.
Kelly's still there, at his elbow, at his side, the misery radiating off him. His partner opens his mouth to say something more, but Scotty shifts and has him in his arms before he can speak.
Scotty imagines he may feel silly later, but there's nothing he can do in this moment but clasp Kelly tight, pull him close to his chest, lean his face into his partner's cheek, stroke his shoulders, the back of his neck, smooth his hands over his back – so he does, jerkily, feeling himself shaking with reaction. There's been no time, no time, on this wild roller-coaster, to ask himself how any of this will turn out—it's all been blind faith and seat-of-your-pants—and right now he cannot go another second without holding Kelly, proving to himself physically that he isn't dead, that Karolyi doesn't have him, that Washington doesn't have him.
And instead of getting shoved away, as he'd half-feared, he's getting an armful of Kelly, who's burrowed gratefully, desperately into his embrace, body all trembling, arms about his back, clinging to him like a lifeline, burying his face in Scotty's shoulder. His brave partner, still vulnerable, still shaky, who has come here like the trouper he is, here into this lab where his very soul was turned inside out. Scotty hates the brass for insisting that Kelly be present for the clean-up, in their own way paying Scotty back for his defiance by insisting that Kelly prove himself fit for work again. Well, he's proved himself all right, with flying colors, but at what cost?
Afraid to speak lest the moment shatter, Scotty pats Kelly's back comfortingly, feeling the fine tremors running through the thin body, the convulsive bobbing of the Adam's apple against his shoulder. What cost, indeed? He can get an inkling by the way Kelly's melted into him, pressing close, as though he could somehow slip under Scotty's skin and hide there, clinging on like a frightened child—oh man, he told them at the debriefing, told them about the accident, the substitution of his image for the driver's, showed them the bruised and broken ribs—Scotty should have pressed Kelly for answers way back then, maybe things wouldn't have gone this far. But it's too late now. He tries to lighten up on the embrace, spare Kelly's ribs, but Kelly shudders violently and clings to him. And in all honesty, there's nowhere else Scotty would rather have him than safe in his arms. So he holds on.
Eventually, they slip apart, unwilling to break contact; Scotty's hands are on Kelly's shoulders, Kelly clasping Scotty's elbows. Kelly's still looking at the floor, and it makes Scotty shiver. "Hey, man, c'mon, look me in the eye," he mock-whines. He thinks it'll be a while before he stops feeling a pang of hurt and alarm when Kelly doesn't look him in the eyes.
"Sure," Kelly says, still in that wounded tone. The green eyes obediently catch his, filled with pain and uncertainty, but they're latched onto his face like a lifeline.
"I told Mom you sent your love."
"Mom called?"
"Yeah, and you were too brainwashed to notice!" All the lightness he can find, he infuses into his tone.
"Aw, jeez…" He wanted to make Kelly smile, but he just looks down at the floor again.
"Don't worry," Scotty smiles until he sees a flicker of response in his partner's eyes, and grips Kelly's shoulders tighter, "I covered for ya."
"What did you tell her?"
"You're gonna have to buy me dinner to find out. Seen enough of the tourist attractions?" He gestures with his head around the lab, still holding on to Kelly with both hands.
Scotty can feel the shuddering breath, see the gratitude in Kelly's eyes. "Yeah," he breathes. "Sure."
He can't help slinging an arm around Kelly's shoulder as they turn towards the door. He'll need to keep an eye on his partner, and sooner or later they're gonna have to hash it out a little, make sure there aren't any dumb ideas in Kelly's head. But for now, they just need to get out of the lab. And get something to eat. And put one foot in front of the other.
It's not much, but it's a start.