Disclaimer: none of these characters are mine. They all belong to their creators.
I've been bitten by an idea and I'm not entirely sure where it'll end up, but I'm hoping to get a chapter up every few days, and finish it about a week or so from now. Haha, take that with a grain of salt, but I'm determined to pop this baby out before Christmas. There will be between 4-5 chapters, roughly. Hope you guys like it!
He'd been planning his death for over fifteen years. The real death, not the one in Marrakesh. While dramatic, it had hardly been the way he should die. If anything, it only spurred him on to die right and true to himself no matter the circumstances. That incident had given him reason in defining such a meaning. He thought up specifics. Entertained the moment. What weapon might finally do him in. The pain. Whether he'd feel it creeping into his limbs or if he'd be numb. Slow or fast or instant. Whether he'd see it coming or if it would snuff him out. If shock would be too much to realize what might be happening. How his thoughts would be. Who he would think of. Lizzie. And that's where an illogical ideal had come to mind. He knew the way he'd prefer to go, but he was sure, after all these years, that he didn't deserve it. If a certain death could be a pipe dream…
"Quickly," He opens his eyes, the draw of a smile playing on his lips as he looks over in the general direction of Donald's cell. "But not too quickly." He can hear a rustling sound, a leg shifting somewhere in the dark. "When I first started down this road, I thought that, if I was lucky, I'd get to die looking at someone I love."
Ressler sighs and looks at the lock on his cell door, contemplates how fast he might be able to swing the thing open when it was time for them to retrieve him. If things had gone the way they did with Reddington, they'd haul him out and try to drug him. If he could get to them before that second part, he might have a shot. Literally.
"You're doing it again." They'd drugged the poor bastard every time they'd left. And Red gets chatty with whatever the stuff is; a pale yellow concoction. His cumulative, slurring narratives are a torture on their own. Especially, because of the life Red has lived. His poignancy, his depth…Red told him last time to stop him if he goes on too long. The time before that, Red simply passed out a short while after. And while Ressler is curious about this topic, he isn't too keen on getting too much of it.
"Donald, I've barely gotten started." Ressler can see a tremor race through the man. The sweat on his brow. How his fists clench in the restraints above his head. He wonders what the point is with Red telling him these things. He'd never thought about how he would die. Not because he didn't think he wouldn't. He just figured it would be a function of his job. A patriotic death. He knew he was taking a risk every day he went to work. He signed up for it. Getting shot, stabbed, beaten captured…These were the dangers of his profession, a staple in the contract. It was the price he and his fellow agents would pay in service to their country.
An honorable way to go. If anything, he had only ever thought of his mother: what she would do, who would check in on her every Wednesday and Saturday, who would take her to Church when she couldn't drive herself, talk to her when she was missing dad. His friends and colleagues would mourn and move on or just straight up move on. His death would be a condition of the job. That's it. A name on a wall.
"Just to see them. Their eyes would shine with tears. They'd tell me to hang on. Stay awake." A cough catches in Red's throat and he grunts at the discomfort in the way it rocks his body. Ressler notes that he seems to swallow with some difficulty. "I wanted to see the undeniable proof of love in their stare. Hear it in their voice. I wanted to be held close. Protected in those incredibly small seconds until death." By the heavy silence, Reddington knows he has Ressler's full attention now. "To feel safe."
"You're not gonna die, Reddington." Ressler gets that wave of restlessness and hunger in his belly. A kind of longing he can't put his finger on or give words to. Red's hopes always seem to pull on something visceral deep inside of him; dreams he hadn't known he'd dreamt. "You can't tell me you're gonna let these guys get the last of you."
"We don't really know that, do we?" The criminal's voice is low and stifled by whatever is racing through his system; weakening and reducing him to a pale, sweaty, shaking man. Red's been here two days longer than him.
"Oh come on, it can't be that bad up there." Ressler gets scoffed at, but not much else. Red seems to have faded out for a second and the two of them lapse into silence. It's not like the last time they were stuck in a dire situation. There's no box. No one is bleeding out. They haven't even touched Ressler yet, except for the rough manhandling to get him in the cage he's in now. They didn't even secure his hands. Help is coming. No way to stop Liz, Dembe, and the team from getting us back. He looks to the subdued criminal in front of him and watches the man's eyes flutter open, and then closed, only for him to jerk awake again. Good, keep with it, Red.
"It could definitely be worse, I'll give you that."
"I think having someone set your leg on fire to cauterize your artery is pretty high on the pain scale." Making jokes at a time like this seemed to be exactly what would keep the old man awake. The sound of Reddington's laugh bounces around above them in the vaulted ceiling and Ressler finds himself suppressing a smile. He's struck by how relieved he is to hear that particular sound and how quickly his relief is frozen by the sound of Red's dry cough. The agent watches his chest rise and fall sharply where he lies shackled to the table. Reddington's face scrunches up a bit, his mouth ajar as he breathes. Somewhere under the vest and shirt, are bruises and potentially broken ribs where parts of his vest and shirt are singed. They've got him situated to make the more sensitive areas along his sides vulnerable; wrists tied down above his head, legs shackled to the end of the table.
"Not to start…a mine's bigger than yours contest, but you've clearly never been poisoned, Donald." Words breathless. Voice rough with pain. Red tries clearing his throat. "It grabs you by all the wrong things. Your intestines. Your throat. Your heart. Your brain. Your lungs. You can't even get the words out in time before you're on your back." His head falls back and forth against the steel table, unable, even in his weakened state, to keep the showmanship, the mannerisms that make him, at bay.
"Oh I don't know," Donald leans his back against the wall and raises his knees to rest his arms. "Electrocution looks pretty bad from where I'm sitting." There's a pale note of trepidation stuffed somewhere in Ressler's voice. He'd been watching the man get tortured for an hour or two at a time for about a day, now, knowing that it would be his turn eventually.
"It's not pleasant." The criminal's head falls towards Ressler a bit and he can see that his eyes are closed; brow furrowed like some thought is bothering him. "Did you know your blood is actually boiling inside of you when you get shocked by something? Essentially, your body is cooking."
"Is that what it feels like?" Might as well be mentally prepared for the kick Red's body gives every time they zap him. Red gives him a small shrug, face suddenly thoughtful.
"It burns. Like your muscles are on fire and you can't breathe and you can't shy away from the pain but your brain is screaming to try anyway. There's such an enormous freedom in knowing you're powerless." Ressler makes a face at Red's informative answer, thinking a simple 'yeah' would have sufficed. A moment later, there's a smile spread out on Red's face. Something ironic or revelatory. "If they keep going, I'll be Reddington a la carte, trussed up on a silver table. What is it with criminals and silver furniture for torturing, anyway? Everyone seems to have the same table or chairs or basements. Hell, even this warehouse is something-"
"Reddington stay with me on this alright?" He watches Red give that shiver again, the one from before. There's a tension in the criminal's muscles, a tightness he hadn't noticed the other times. "That shit they've been injecting, what's that doing to you?" Besides scaring the hell out of me.
"The drug…It makes it hard to breathe. My heart's…pounding…I feel anxious…a compulsion to speak…" Another spasm jostles Red's body and Ressler finds himself frowning. There were various drugs to weaken the minds of suspects. While it wasn't out of the scope of his government to apply extreme interrogation techniques, he couldn't be sure if Red was under the influence of barbiturates or something else. Something to make him more compliant, to make him less of a threat. Ressler knew that Red's fortitude under pressure had something to do with these small and extensive chats. The man would be in a zen-like trance during the actual interrogation, calm as Lake Placid, and then lapse into this nervous, Chatty Cathy.
"Then you have to stay awake and you should probably stop talking, they could be listening." For God sake, please. The sarcastic, exasperated dialogue he has going on inside his head doesn't denote how nice it is to have Red speaking as though they weren't captives and they were just two, dare he say it, friends discussing past grievances and sharing hopes. Torture and death weren't the usual topics but in this life, Ressler wasn't going to be picky.
"Hah, and they'll learn I want a somewhat quick death, which they will then deny me, and that I am feeling every bit of what they are doing to me, whilst getting next to zero information." Red shifts his torso a bit to the left, and strains against the restraints on his ankles, relieving his wrists and arms as much as he can with what wriggle room he has. "I think I'm alright with that."
Part of Ressler wonders if Red hopes they're listening. Hopes to piss them off, play a different game, to get at them by doing nothing, by doing the unexpected. Red seems to have run out of words for the moment, wincing at pain he isn't vocalizing. Feeling the silence stretch, a needling worry for Red's current condition, he figures, if Red is going to stay awake, he'd better start telling his own stories. Pull his own weight in the effort of staying alive until the cavalry gets here.
"Don't take this personally, but I still hate you a lot of the time." That pulls another laugh out of the man, and Ressler joins him a little. "I mean, you annoy the hell out of me. As far as I'm concerned, we're destined to be enemies," Ressler's tone drops the amusement from before as he speaks, falling, gradually, into something raw and honest. "But dammit if I don't agree with you on what it takes to keep the people you care about safe in this world." It scared him, this part of himself; that undeniable readiness to tear across the world in order to protect his people. The rage that fuels itself on his pain; perceived or real. "I may not be as skilled as you are, but I agree with what is sometimes necessary even if I don't like the method." He stares at Reddington's prone figure and feels that restlessness again. "And I hate that I envy the moral freedom you have when it comes to doing what needs doing."
"We're not so different, Agent Ressler." Red shakes his head a little, chews on the inside of his lip as he stares up at the ceiling. "I'm curious to see who you'll become after all this." Red drags in a steadying breath and Ressler watches something at the foot of the table distract the criminal as his words sink in.
After all this, like they're all on some long journey together, like Reddington hasn't been pulling them along this whole time. Like he has chosen to stay with this task force for reasons beyond keeping America's Most Wanted in line. He likes his team. He likes putting away the guys they didn't even know existed. But in the end, really, he wasn't sure why he was here. Or why it bothers me that I don't.
"Agent Ressler," For as long as he can remember, he'd been doing his job because it was the job and he was passionate about being useful and honorable and honest. There was no need for him to examine why when the structure of the FBI consisted of jobs well done and eventual raises. The occasional, political leaps were also in play, but again, that was just the job. "Ressler."
"What?" He focuses, and finds that Red is still looking at the foot of the table, his face haggard, breathing a bit too erratic.
"I'm hallucinating."
"Okay…" Shit. Whatever Reddington was seeing, it wasn't good. The man was coiled tighter than a snake, his jaw working furiously. He sits up a bit more, leaning forward, inches from the grate on the door to his cage. He watches the sweat bead on Red's forehead and he's about to say something to get his attention when the criminal flinches and tenses. "Reddington?" But the man doesn't seem to hear him. It's like whatever he's seeing is scaring him. Ressler's never seen this expression on Red's face before. A crumbling mess of shadows and guilt. "Red, look at me. Hey. Look at me."
Red lets out this clenched sound and the next thing Ressler knows is the savage need to get out of the cage he's been put in.
"Shit." The rattling on the table is a hollow horror as Ressler moves back and slams his feet against the door to the cage. Again and again. The criminal's convulsions and the sound of Ressler trying to get out, bring their captors back into the room. The two goons that had shoved him into the cage pause as they take in the scene before they leap into action. Ressler pulls his legs back for one more, futile attempt at breaking free, and then makes himself watch as they unlock Red's wrists. They rotate his torso and position him on his side so he doesn't choke. The convulsions continue for a minute, and the swarm of people around the table are administering medication, an IV, undoing the shackles around his ankles. If they're this prepared, these people mean to keep them for a lot longer than he'd thought. Ressler gets a glimpse or two of Red's slack features, and he's about to ask if he's okay when there's a crash from the opposite side of the warehouse.
And all hell breaks loose.
Welp, there it is. The prelude to a Chrismas Carol. Chapter two should be up shortly. I hope this doesn't feel too rushed, haha. Aw well. Thanks for reading!