Warnings: Abuse, dubious consent, dual destinies spoilers, erotic electrostimulation, frequent death and suicide mentions, and the fact that much of this is unexplored territory for me.

- Simon's crying is based off of information from the art book.

- Thank you to madamtiresias for being my beta.

xxxxxxx

The first time, Simon isn't expecting it. He never thought Fool Bright capable of subduing him—his initial impression was of a fool with no restraint, amusing to tease and handy to have around but useless in situations requiring ruthlessness. So when Simon's doing nothing more harmless than flirting with the attorney, he's unprepared for the jolt of pain that paralyzes him before he collapses over the bench, clutching his heaving chest and glaring.

It's not just the lack of control, which he hates, or the fact that his lungs and heart feel crushed, reminding him of the mortality he'd rather not remember. It's not even just the violation of trust, or that Fool Bright is laughing, confirming Simon's suspicion that this is all a joke—if not justice, then at least his 'belief' in a death row inmate, his little project. It's that while the detective might be loud, he was the first person in years that Simon believed to be harmless. He, of all people, should have known better.

He's barely unleashed half a threat before Fool Bright presses the remote, once again sending Simon doubling over. His dignity crumbles, and he closes his eyes. He is in public for the first time in six years, his niece stands across the room, the chief is awaiting a report, and his subordinate is torturing him. He cannot even choke out a silence.

He'd thought, while standing at the bench with straight shoulders and proper attire, that he could regain his pride, if only for an hour. Clearly that was too much for a convict to hope.

His first trial in years comes to end, and Simon's mind is elsewhere. Officers approach to escort him; their touch makes him uneasy, but at least they aren't Fool Bright. Across the room, Simon catches his eye, and the fool grins. Simon manages to scowl for half a moment before breaking contact, though that grin stays with him, mocking him as he exits the court.

xxxxxxx

Thanks to that defendant's hammy act, the case isn't finished, meaning it's not long before Simon is meeting with Fool Bright. The detective acts the same as always—Simon's noticed that Fool Bright doesn't seem aware of when to adjust his demeanor, and the psychologist in him feels a flicker of suspicion before he willfully writes it off as obliviousness. Regardless, he's on his guard, watching Fool Bright for signs of aggression and—to his shame—flinching when the man reaches for his pocket (he only pulls out a time piece, which is odd when he's wearing one, but Simon's used to his partner behaving irrationally).

"You know," Fool Bright says while they're discussing the other suspects, "the defendant told us L'Belle can't be the killer, even though that narrows down his scapegoats."

Shuffling through profiles, Simon only grunts, which Fool Bright correctly interprets as a sign to continue. "He didn't have any evidence of that, but L'Belle is his subordinate. It's not surprising he'd stick up for him, really."

"And you're one to speak of loyalty?" The jab is out before Simon can resist. It's not as if the police in this accursed place haven't treated him to violence, but he still remembers how empowered being assigned a subordinate made him feel, and how pleased he'd been to find one eager to be at his beck and call.

Fool Bright's hands fly into the air, palms forward. "Are you accusing me of being anything but faithful?" Simon rolls his eyes and holds up a cuffed wrist, prompting Fool Bright to adjust his sunglasses. "Ah…that. You know, if you simply behave, that won't have to happen again."

Simon doesn't answer. He can recognize manipulation, and he's sure this falls under it. After all, he's done nothing to deserve torture. Has he?

His head throbs. He suddenly can't remember.

No, he can. For his master's sake, he's molded himself into the sort of person given capital punishment. If he's convinced even the one who 'believes' in him, well, isn't he succeeding?

He weighs the justification before resuming studying files. Unusually powerless boss or not, he's still a prosecutor, and his duty to justice takes priority.

xxxxxxx

Enough weeks of confinement pass between cases that before each one, Simon leaps at the chance to stretch his wings. Every time, the 'Jolt of Justice' strikes him down before he's lifted off. Though corporal punishment is routine, Fool Bright still manages to surprise him through his absurd timing—letting Simon run amok, only to taze him for not responding courteously to the judge? Simon learns he can't trust he won't be shocked at any given moment.

Except in prison, oddly enough. Only in public, where it shames him most, does Fool Bright torture him; in jail, Fool Bright only disciplines Simon through scolding that he easily brushes off. It becomes a sort of frustration as Simon readies himself for an attack that never comes, resulting in tension that remains after Fool Bright leaves.

Nighttime brings worse sources of tension. Rattling and coughing make his skin crawl while screams pierce more deeply, but it's the moans and unidentifiable sounds from the building itself that unsettle him most, as it's impossible not to imagine ghosts slipping out of the cracks. Of course, nothing external can be worse than the torment inside his mind, rot and decay and a memory of the moment he stopped living.

One night, his fits are especially bad. The moon is the exact crescent shape of the crest on Metis's lab coat, and he tosses and turns and cries as hard as he had his first year in the clink. As always, he doesn't wipe his tears, letting them slide down the tracks they've molded.

In his thrashing, the mattress creaks, causing him to cover his ears. He wants silence, he wants stillness, and he won't get it until several more months of this torture…

Torture…he remembers the tazer and winces. Must that grating laugh haunt him now? Yet at least if Fool Bright assaulted him, he would be unable to move, and the bloody mattress would shut up.

With that thought, something odd happens. As if reliving the experience, he locks up, but instead of pain a gentle tingling spreads over him. Immediately he feels a sense of wrongness, but the sensation isn't unpleasant, so he latches onto it. He returns to those events, this time in tentative exploration. He removes the setting, the onlookers, the surprise, focusing on his body shaking before freezing while his real body barely twitches.

Stillness. His chest isn't heaving, but his breath comes more heavily than expected.

His face is hot. All of him is hot, he realizes with embarrassment. He pictures Fool Bright's smile and grows hotter.

Well. This is unexpected. He's far too tired to be horrified, too relieved that the sobs wracking him have stopped. In the next cell, an inmate screams, but Simon is too numb to be disturbed. At last, he thinks.

xxxxxxx

He doesn't see Fool Bright again for a week, during which several abysmal nights wipe the recent one from his mind. When he spots that white suit among the grey it comes back to him, and for the first time while in an alert state of mind he realizes what he'd fantasized about, that it had been a fantasy.

Master of psychology as he is, he doesn't let his embarrassment show, keeping his face masked while they sit at a meeting room table. Fool Bright dismisses the guard—he always does—an act Simon once thought of as foolishly trusting that now makes him suspicious. He dismisses the thought; whether or not Fool Bright is simple, Simon wants him to be, and there's nothing he can do about it either way.

Fool Bright straightens a stack of paper, making a clacking sound against the table. "The warden tells me you've stopped writing your reflections."

An interesting way of putting it, given that Simon's 'essays' had included such gems as a drawing of a caged falcon and an arbitrary segment of script from The Phantom of the Opera. "If a shadow looks in a mirror, is there a use in describing what it sees?" he asks, rolling his chin to affect the image of an apathetic delinquent.

Fool Bright crosses his legs, clasping his bare ankle. "That's…an interesting question, but I know for a fact there's a self in you waiting to show. Why, what of that spark I see whenever you act in court?"

Simon is now genuinely bored. "Did you remember to feed Taka?" he asks, scratching his ear.

"Are you listening to…yes, yes, of course I did."

The topic of his partner gives Simon fondness. Taka is the closest thing he has to a child, he muses before thinking of the interaction in that light and wrinkling his nose. It occurs to him he allows someone who's betrayed him to feed Taka, and that concerns him.

Still…sitting across from the big Labrador Retriever of a man, exchanging banter interspersed with silence (not enough silence—Fool Bright has a hundred irritating habits, including whistling and tapping his foot, that he uses to fill space), Simon has a hard time truly believing him to be unsafe. Simon has little to trust anyone with—Taka, investigations, and that's about it—and Fool Bright carries the keys to all of it. The one thing Simon does not trust him with is his safety, but does safety matter to someone who volunteered for the gallows?

A cough brings Simon out of his introspection. Fool Bright neatens the stack again before pushing it across the table. "Write something—anything. Pretty please?"

Are you a grown man or a five year old asking for candy? Then again, Simon considered writing the word 'anything,' so he isn't one to speak of mental age. "And what would be the point?"

"Creative expression does wonders for rehabilitation. It doesn't have to be conventional; I found your choice of script interesting. You really have it memorized?"

Used to Fool Bright's non sequiturs, Simon ignores him and picks up the pen. He knows by now that scribbling something Fool Bright can cry about the hidden meaning of is the fastest way to leave the room. Absently he scratches the pen across the page while considering which song lyrics to quote, or perhaps a samurai movie…

The marks fall in a zigzag pattern. He doubles back until a bolt of lightning splits the page.

Wires connect—electricity crackling, the smell of something burning…not real, but imagined so vividly that Simon shivers. A shadow passes over the top of the page as Fool Bright leans across the table. "Have you thought of something, Prosecutor?"

"When was the last time this bloody prison paid its heating bills?" Sweat is collecting under Simon's shirt, hopefully out of sight to cover his flimsy misdirection. Seeming disappointed, Fool Bright settles back.

"Ah, well, I'll speak to the warden, but crime doesn't pay, you know."

It's kind of funny, but Simon hides his appreciation of it and runs his eyes back and forth across his 'art.' Oddly, the action calms him, which must show since Fool Bright makes a point of how successful the session is and how they should do it more often.

xxxxxxx

When he closes his eyes that night, Simon sees the lightning. It's windy outside, and the rustling leaves aid his imagination. If the prison had proper windows, he'd wish for a real storm, but as it is, he can only pretend.

Storms have power, he muses. Lightning can only destroy, but rain provides necessary nourishment. Still, the uprooted trees can hardly appreciate a drink. That's as far as his poetics extend before he remembers the book of Japanese poetry Metis gifted him with and the tears begin to fall.

Crying has long been his way of honoring her, the only way given to him until it's time to face the gallows. Yet with few months left, he's restless enough to want a distraction. It's more self-serving than he's comfortable with to picture lightning sliding through the window and wrapping him like rope (restraining him, keeping others safe), extending along his skin with a buzz that's revitalizing and energizing and…dare he think it? Electrifying.

Inevitably, Fool Bright enters the picture like a clap of thunder. Simon grimaces. He has to admit the man is all energy, even if it leaves Simon himself drained. There's a certain…'charisma' is not the right word, he's too odd, too erratic, but he seems to simultaneously draw attention to himself and fit into any scene. He could come in like a hurricane and leave only a hydrated flower in his wake, or enter as a light patter and burn a trunk to a crisp.

Tentatively, Simon develops a theory. That if circumstances were different, if Fool Bright weren't tazing him with the voltage necessary to subdue him, if they weren't in public, if Simon agreed to—no, instigated it, that…he'd enjoy it.

The confession hangs in his mind like humidity. He knows it's pointless—circumstances aren't different—but he hadn't thought that even now he could find a new experience, a new piece of himself to explore. The possibility leaves him almost drunk.

It wouldn't be ideal, but all it would take to test the theory would be to incite Fool Bright to taze him within the prison. Well, his master, her poetry, and the her power might be out of his reach, but that should certainly be attainable. He uses the hours before dawn to plan.