Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author Note: Title means prisoner of war. Written because I wanted to desperately find reasons :(

P.O.W

"Nice work, kid."

Seth tensed as Triple H patted him on the shoulder like they were buddies. Seth's grimace couldn't ever be called a smile but Triple H grinned anyway, like all his Christmases had come at once. They probably had.

"You've got power, you've got position, you've got the briefcase. Enjoy yourself, if things were different they sure would be."

Seth ground his teeth, but followed Triple H into the waiting limo. He couldn't look back, he couldn't chance it, but God, he wanted to.

It had all started when a letter had turned up in Seth's bag. Who wrote letters anymore? And who knew where the Shield stashed their bags during shows? Seth had just shoved the letter back in amongst his sweats and iPod because he'd had too many other things to focus at that point, like how to deal with the Authority and the reformed Evolution thinking that they could just rise to the top of the roster without such an injustice being violently addressed by the Shield.

Of course when he'd actually read the letter, he'd realized that that particular problem was actually closer that he'd thought. It'd been in his bag in fact, in that letter.

Dean had been out at a bar and Roman had headed outside to take a phone call from one of his many family members. Seth had been alone, having peeled off his ever-present gloves before tearing open the letter. It had made Seth's throat close up, particularly the last line.

Even if you beat Evolution at Payback, the Authority still wins.

Seth would have laughed and torn up the letter but it had gone on to detail exactly what would happen to Dean and Roman if Seth refused to meet with the Authority later that week. They'd also gone into a lot of disturbing detail about Dean and Roman's personal lives – what gyms they both used, where they tended to buy their morning coffee, who they socialized with. It'd been really unnerving to read, laid out dispassionately like that. The Authority had once thought that they could squash the Shield in the ring but having found that they couldn't, they'd worked out a different devastating plan instead.

If Seth had told Dean or Roman about the letter, then they would have suffered the consequences. How would the Authority even be able to tell he'd revealed anything to his friends? The Authority had assured him that they'd know, just like they'd known which supermarket Roman often liked to frequent. They'd know if Seth told his brothers, just like they'd known everything else.

Seth had been more than trapped. He'd tucked the letter into his wallet, seething as his knuckles had whitened. It had all looked too easy, hadn't it? The Shield had thought that it'd be simple to topple Evolution for the second PPV running. But Triple H had been on top for a long time, he knew exactly what lengths to go to retain his own power.

So Seth had gone to meet secretly with the Authority, following the instructions specified in the letter. Roman had been at the gym and Dean had been God only knows where. Despite what people thought, the Shield had never spent every moment together, all three of them valued having space and time to themselves. Seth had gone to the meeting without anybody asking about his destination.

He'd gone there and had learned just how screwed he was. Did he want to keep his family safe? Triple H had laid out surveillance photos which had made Seth feel sick to his stomach. Triple H had smirked, like the cat who'd gotten more than one canary. How long had he been planning this?

Seth had agreed to their terms, hating himself by inches and hating the Authority most of all.

So the betrayal had happened and Seth had made it look really good. He'd battered Dean and Roman, who hadn't deserved even one of the chairshots that he'd clattered them with. He'd made it look like he was an unbelievably greedy and disloyal asshole and everyone had believed it.

The silence had nearly killed him, having to keep his true reasons completely hidden from his friends, his brothers. Every day he'd wanted to tell them. They'd have helped him, they'd have battled until they were bleeding because what Triple H had made happen was definitely an injustice and it was personal. But Seth couldn't take that chance, he couldn't. They'd have understood that too, if only he could have told them.

Triple H had timed it perfectly, he'd told Seth less than two weeks before Payback so Seth hadn't had time to think up any wild alternatives. He'd made sure that Seth was tied-down and helpless, he'd made sure that Seth had absolutely had to accept. Seth hated himself more and more each day, staring in the mirror and seeing a suit-clad sellout staring back. Did he like the power and position? It was good to be on top of the heap but that position was tainted because of how he'd gotten there. Did he like being Mr Money in the Bank? Having a title shot in hand was perfection but not the way he'd gained it. Everything he'd done after lifting that steel chair to attack his friends was stained. Triple H didn't see it that way of course, why would he? It was how he'd gotten to the top after all.

Whenever Seth looked a glimmer close to rebellion, Triple H made sure that Seth saw more surveillance photos – Roman looking happy and relaxed as he visited his family, Dean walking down a street with his headphones on, all three of them peeling out of a bar together, Dean laughing, Roman looking so fucking fond and amused, his hand resting easily on Dean's hip, Seth's eyes were squeezed shut as he grinned in the photo, listing towards them both. Then, most chillingly of all, there was a picture of Roman letting someone in to his Florida property to fix the electrics, the visitor turning slightly towards the camera, revealing the WWE logo hidden under the cuff of their work-shirt. The Authority could get people into their homes, message fucking received.

So Seth smirked and pontificated on-camera, every inch the sell-out, the smug bastard who'd gotten exactly what he'd wanted. He did everything the Authority asked and more.

Backstage he told them exactly what he thought of them. Triple H just shook his head and looked pointedly towards the gold briefcase that Seth took with him everywhere now. Triple H didn't get it at all, did he? The Shield were just pawns in the Authority's game, the Shield wouldn't have crossed that line, not now, not ever. That was the difference between the Authority and the Shield, and Seth was paying for it.

The Authority would claim that this had all proved their point – because they were on top and had Seth on a leash. Seth growled and followed their lead.

Roman and Dean wanted to rip him apart, Seth couldn't have been more proud of them. Despite the massive betrayal that they'd both suffered, neither of them were letting the Authority take anything else away from them. Roman was in the WWE Championship picture and Dean, Dean was making sure that he physically released his rage towards Seth on a nightly basis. Seth was okay with that, he and Dean had fought before, and this way, the Authority got to see what they were actually up against.

Seth hated the look in Dean's eyes though, not the anger but the hurt buried underneath it, the hurt that probably only Seth could see. Well, Roman almost certainly saw it too but Dean probably thought that he was hiding it from Seth. Seth had broken the already-fractured Dean even more.

And he couldn't spend any time with them now, not that they wanted to spend time with him, but he couldn't talk to them, he couldn't tell them what was really going on. He had to spend time with the Authority because that was expected of him and because nobody else would go near him after his epic betrayal of his friends. It was no less than he deserved. Seth often received calls from family and old friends, they all wanted answers that he couldn't give. He always told them that he was doing what he had to. It hurt but that didn't make it any less true.

He missed his friends, he missed traveling with them, he missed seeing Dean freak out passers-by, he missed the way that Roman always made Renee laugh on-camera and how she got revenge afterward. He even missed the smell of Dean's sweaty vests that Dean had always flung across whichever room they were occupying that night and how fucking comfortable he'd felt sharing a bed with both of them, piled up together and all three of them actually able to sleep. He missed knowing that Roman and Dean unquestionably had his back. Now they were just in his crosshairs, they had to be.

It was like a fucking pain under Seth's skin every time he saw them. They were his brothers but in the middle of the ring he proclaimed that it'd just been business, nothing more. He spoke about Dean's craziness and Roman's uncontrollable temper, he felt their powerful blows whenever they got hold of him. He was pushing them further away and the Authority loved it.

"You never needed them anyway," Randy Orton told him, with the air of someone who'd left more than one devastated group of friends in his wake. "You're achieving more than they ever could. Feels good, doesn't it?"

No, it didn't. Randy had been hugely successful but he'd had to drop bodies and cut out hearts to do so. He'd had to return to Triple H's side in order to become relevant again. Randy's only friends were the ones that the Authority had bought for him. Seth intentionally grated against him, smirking about how he was going to cash in his shot against Randy or Kane, whoever won the title from John Cena first. Under his smirk, he meant it. People would expect him to be greedy now, to be thinking only about himself. After all, Randy and Kane weren't getting along so Seth had the perfect excuse not to get along with them both either. It was expected of the Authority's minions, they should be fighting amongst themselves. Weren't they all fighting for the same prize? Seth couldn't wait to unleash his rage, he couldn't wait to force open the cracks that already existed in the Authority, he couldn't wait to destroy them. At the same time, he'd cash in and gain himself some leverage. Maybe then he could get the control he needed in order to turn things back his way.

Sometimes, on the worst nights, he thought that such plans were only an illusion. Maybe he'd never get out of this cage, maybe Dean and Roman would never be completely safe.

The hallways were packed, weren't they always? It was such a pain in the ass. Seth was sweating through his suit and thinking about reports he'd heard of Dean needed a lot of medical attention due to his shoulder injury. All those thoughts stopped when he accidentally slammed into Renee. She glared up at him for a brief moment before her expression transformed into something blankly professional. Right, because she was one of Stephanie's favorites and the Authority actually had no idea about Renee's sort of friendship with the Shield. They'd spent a lot of time and money on shadowing the Shield but Renee was smart. She interviewed the Shield with enjoyment that she muted perfectly and frequently exchanged text messages with them and apparently the Authority hadn't noticed, neither had whoever they'd hired to follow the Shield. That was another victory that Seth held fucking close. He knew that if the Authority had been planning to use Renee against him, they would have crowed about it by now.

So Renee was an Authority favorite, a professional at her job, somehow not letting on that she probably wanted to kick him extremely hard right now. Seth felt a spark of something jolt through his chest; the Authority were currently in meetings, Randy and Kane were with them. If their spies saw him talking to Renee, they wouldn't think anything of it, because as far as they knew, Renee was one of them. In fact, they'd probably be pleased that he was spending time with someone that they prized so much, she was probably considered a good influence. God, Seth loved that irony, especially right now.

Because, with his heart running a mile a minute at the realization, he had an idea, a fucking fantastic one. He'd suffered this situation for long enough, making what moves he could to implode the Authority while also keeping Dean and Roman completely in the dark, hating him and therefore safe. Here was his chance to really change things, to swing the battle in the Shield's favor, to gain some fucking hope and momentum and give some to his hurt and furious friends. Fuck yes.

"How's life treating you?" he asked with an oily smirk, because that was expected of him, superiority and douchebag behavior. He'd hung around with Randy recently, he knew what to do.

Renee only lifted her eyebrows. "How's life at the top? Congratulations by the way on the briefcase."

Seth patted the case with his free hand. "Yeah, this, this is gonna take me far. It's the reason for everything, you know?"

He used very careful emphasis as he spoke, hitching the briefcase up so that he was holding it with both hands now, his fingers drawing aimless patterns on top of it. Only they weren't that aimless.

POW, POW, POW, POW...

Renee was whip-smart, her gaze darted down once, twice, to take in his silent message. To anybody watching, she was just admiring the prize that he'd won or giving him one of her usual wry glances. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. She nodded slightly; message received.

"Well, I'm sure it all feels a bit unbelievable right now," was her cleverly innocuous but pointed reply.

Right, because this could just be another Authority plot. Seth inclined his head and dropped his briefcase down again, scowling a little, like any wrestler would if their place in the company was challenged.

"Unbelievable? I've been working towards this for years and the Authority always has victory in their grasp, no matter what. It's a real meeting of minds, a success story that everybody should pay attention to. Because you know what? The Authority keeps an eye on everything around here and that is what's best for business."

He stormed past her, faux offended, and he didn't look back. Hopefully Renee would communicate his words and his silent message to Dean and Roman. Hopefully they'd make sense of it, hopefully it was a thread that they'd pull loose and follow. Jesus fuck, he hoped so. The pain eased under his skin for a moment. He clenched his fingers around the briefcase's handle and kept on walking. He kept on sweating too.

The next time that Dean beat him down mercilessly, a fist twisted up in Seth's tie so that Seth choked and gasped, his limbs flailing, Dean took a moment to hiss low in his ear

"POW? Fuck you."

He tapped a fist to Seth's arm three times in quick succession and then punched him hard in the face.

Later, while he was recovering with an ice pack clamped to his head, Seth smiled triumphantly under his angry scowl, because Dean had actually talked to him and had made sure that nobody had overheard. He'd tapped his knuckles three times against Seth's arm – for the three members of the Shield who were also all under surveillance. It was a gesture that nobody else would have truly understood or viewed with any suspicion. Some things only the Shield knew. Seth wondered who Dean and Roman had gotten to dig out their shadows; the people following them, photographing them and fucking invading their homes. Dean had some suitably sketchy friends, a few of them were hackers, a few more had criminal records, all willing and able...

Of course Dean still had a lot of anger to work through when it came to Seth. But he and Roman had also started searching for the truth buried in Seth's words. The relief Seth felt was so enormous that he almost staggered. Fuck yes.

It could be a revenge gambit by Dean and Roman - giving Seth hope before tearing him down. It could be but Dean wouldn't ever go for stealth when it came to payback this personal. He'd just beat the shit out of Seth, which he was doing most nights now anyway. They could communicate a lot during future beatings, now that Dean was apparently willing to do so.

On his side, Seth would do all that he could to cause believable chaos among the Authority's inflated crop of egos, a trap within the Authority's snare. Exactly what they deserved. Seth was going to do everything possible to help without endangering the Shield, to make the way easier for his brothers because that's what they still were. That was never going to change and all three of them were going to prove it. They had to.

Fuck you indeed.

-the end