Ashes in the Fire

A Magnum P.I. Fan-Fiction by Emachinescat

Summary:AU of 4x08 "A Fire in the Ashes," where it isn't Eve tied to the chair, waiting for Juliet to interrogate her. It's Thomas.

"Well," Juliet said, standing slowly, looming over her friend, fists balled at her sides. "Don't say I didn't give you a chance. What happens now is entirely your own doing."

The lips that so often grinned around a stupid joke twisted in a snarl. "Go to hell," Thomas growled.

Too late, Juliet thought. I'm already there.


A/N: Not sure why, but when I was watching 4x08, I was so sure Thomas was going to be the one Juliet would be forced to interrogate. Sadly, he was not, but it did spark this little idea. Hopefully you all enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it! This one was intense!

Also, I feel like I took a LOT of liberty with my interpretation of the prompt, but I think it holds up. I mean, it IS an experiment, a test, and Thomas is being used against Higgins, so, yeah. It checks out! :)

Also also, see what I did with the title? This flips the episode around, so I flipped the episode title around. Aren't I clever (read: lazy)?

I'd love to know your thoughts!


Ashes in the Fire

Juliet Higgins would be lying if she said she'd never wanted to punch Thomas Magnum.

True, the two of them had grown much closer over the years – this man she had first had nothing but disdain for had, somehow, become her business partner and her best friend – but there were times that he ground on her last nerve. It didn't help that he was incredibly smart and intuitive – not that he would ever hear her admit it out loud; they had a dynamic to uphold – and that he was really good at knowing exactly which buttons to push and precisely how to push them. He could get under skin like no one else could. She supposed that was what a good friend did, and she did her own fair share of nagging and needling and teasing.

But truth be told, even if she had felt like he'd deserved a good whack every now and then to keep him in check, she had never seriously entertained the idea. She wasn't in the habit of slapping people who annoyed her – unless those people had guns and were actively trying to kill her – and she had a feeling that with Thomas's big brown eyes and bigger heart that punching him, even in jest, would be the same as kicking a puppy.

Juliet didn't know what she expected when Sean Cavendish opened the heavy door to the interrogation room. He'd wanted to see her skills in action, he'd said, a slight upwards curve to his lips. Juliet Higgins was a bit of a legend, particularly after taking down Viper, and if she was going to be working for their rogue MI6 organization, then he wanted the pleasure of seeing her work firsthand. When they first told her they had a prisoner for her to interrogate, she half-expected that they might have somehow cottoned on to Eve and her operations on the island, that they could have snagged her.

But no, as she, Cavendish, and a young agent named Oliver Kent approached the cell door, Cavendish had offered a bit of clarification. "One of my men was captured and almost tortured by an unknown gentleman earlier today. The interrogator was quite eager to know the location of our little operation here. It was only pure luck that another one of my operatives was in the area and managed to take the intruder by surprise. He had no ID on him, but we have our suspicions that he's special forces, maybe CIA."

By this time, Juliet's insides had wrapped themselves into knots, and a dark suspicion had hollowed out her chest. He, Cavendish had said, so the intruder was a male. CIA. That indicated he was American. Surely not, Juliet told herself firmly. He promised he would stay out of this, let me handle it.

A nasty little voice snapped back, Yes, but when has Thomas ever backed off when one of his friends was in danger?

The door finished its arc, and it took every bit of Juliet's training not to react to the sight that greeted her: Thomas Magnum, her business partner, her closest friend, sat in a heavy metal chair, wrists zip-tied firmly to its arms. His ankles had been zipped to the chair's legs, which themselves had been bolted to the floor. He was gagged, a wide swath of duct tape slapped tightly over his mouth. He didn't look injured, other than a bleeding welt near his right temple.

He stared back at her, and a slight shiver ran down her spine at the icy blackness in his normally friendly gaze. At first, she fancied that his fury was directed at her, but quickly realized that he, too, was putting on a show. He knew how important this mission was, and how much danger Juliet would be in if her cover were blown. And so, even now, captured, in enemy hands, in mortal danger, his first instinct was to play the part, assume the identity of this enemy agent that had been trying to infiltrate their rogue operation. She may have enjoyed teasing him about a whole host of faults – most of them arbitrary or even imaginary, if she were completely honest – but she was entirely serious in the notion that Thomas Magnum was a good man. One of the best, in fact.

And now, she was going to have to torture a very good man – beyond that, her best friend – to save both of their lives. And she knew from the moment he met her gaze with that defiance in his eyes that Thomas was going to let her.

Juliet thought for one very scary moment that she might vomit, or start bawling, or otherwise give herself away. But she was trained for exactly this sort of mission, and beyond that, her undercover game was on point. Richard had once told her that if she hadn't gone into intelligence, she could have made it big as an actress. Still, she couldn't actually go through with this, could she? They hadn't given her any tools, so she was obviously expected to use brute force alone, but what if they wanted her to escalate her interrogation? What if they got tired of his defiance and decided to end it? What if they put a gun in her hand and ordered her to shoot him in the head?

Well, if that happened, she would sooner shoot Cavendish and fight her and Thomas's way out in a blaze of glory – or, more accurately, die trying. There was no way in hell she'd shoot Thomas. But could she really bring herself to torture him for information that she knew just as well as he did? All for an act?

She thought about all of the agents whose secrets would be exposed if she couldn't get that data. She looked closely at Thomas, framing it as if she were assessing her prey, but in actuality, she took in the firm set of his jaw beneath the layer of duct tape, the determined squaring of his shoulders despite his uncomfortable position secured to the chair. She saw once again his commitment to the part he had silently agreed to play as soon as he'd realized the position that Juliet was in. And in that moment, she knew that Thomas truly wanted her to continue, to do whatever she had to do to keep herself safe.

Besides, she reasoned, hating herself as she justified what she was about to do, if I am compromised now, they will certainly kill me, and right now, I'm the only way either of us is getting out of here alive.

Still, she thought desperately, there had to be another way. If there was, however, she could not think of it. And so, swallowing the raging self-hatred, guilt, and terror blossoming inside of her, she nodded curtly. "What do you want to know?"

Cavendish offered her a grim, almost apologetic smile, which made her dislike him even more. "Everything," he said.


Once they were alone, Juliet steeled herself, set her shoulders, and grabbed the back of the second metal chair – this one not bolted to the floor – and dragged it slowly, deliberately, loudly across the rough concrete until it was directly in front of Thomas. She sat down across from him, their knees millimeters away from touching, then leaned forward slightly.

To those watching, a classic intimidation tactic. For Juliet, her last chance to communicate with her partner. Her fingers tapped discreetly on her knee, out of sight of any of the cameras. Morse code. OK?

Thomas used one of the oldest tricks in the book – he blinked. One means yes, two means no.

She tapped out another quick message. Sure?

Another blink.

Juliet gritted her teeth, then closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. When she opened them, she tried to imagine the man in front of her wasn't Thomas. He was an enemy agent, a threat to Queen and Country. It didn't work, but she pretended it did and in one fluid jerk of her arm, she ripped the tape off his mouth. Thomas didn't even wince as the adhesive pulled at skin and hair, just continued watching her with those black, dangerous eyes.

Juliet thought a bit wildly that he could have been a marvelous actor, too. If she didn't know him so well – how he ate in bed and ran from the lads and made babies laugh and dripped water all over the floor after a swim – she might have actually believed he was dangerous. Well, she amended. She'd seen him fight, seen him shoot a gun. He was dangerous, but not to her. Never to her. Which made what she was about to do that much more painful.

"Hello, Mr…?" She kept her voice a cocktail of amiable and dangerous.

The man opposite her – she couldn't think of him as Thomas, not now – chuckled darkly. "Oh, come on," he said coyly. "You really think I'm that stupid?"

Juliet considered him coldly for a long moment. "I think you are smart enough to know how this is going to end if you do not cooperate."

"Who says I'm going to be here long enough for that to happen?"

Juliet paused for the briefest of moments. He'd stayed true to character, but something about how he said it, the way he looked at her when he said it, made her wonder. Did he have a plan? Or was he just letting her know that he trusted her to get them both out of this mess? She couldn't waste any more time ruminating, so she set straight to business. She couldn't delay the inevitable any longer; if she tried, she would bring suspicion down on both their heads and kill them both.

"Well," she said, standing slowly, looming over her friend, fists balled at her sides. "Don't say I didn't give you a chance. What happens now is entirely your own doing."

The lips that so often grinned around a stupid joke twisted in a snarl. "Go to hell," he growled.

Too late, Juliet thought. I'm already there.


Juliet thought that the first hit would be the most difficult. It was the act of actually spurring her arm into motion, following through, and keeping herself from instinctively pulling the punch at the last moment that would be the hardest. After that, the band-aid would be well and truly peeled off.

She was very, very wrong.

The first hit was to his jaw, a wicked right hook that would have made a pro-boxer proud. As tempted as she was to go easy on him, she knew that both of their lives depended on how real this looked. If she beat him without consequences – if he didn't bleed – then the jig would be up. To his credit, Thomas didn't make a sound as his head snapped back.

He turned back to face her, grinned ferally, waggled his eyebrows, and taunted, "Oh, you're going to have to do a lot better than that, sweetheart."

Sweetheart?! Was he deliberately trying to rile her up so that it would be easier to use him as a punching bag? Who was she kidding? Of course he was. Though he didn't have to enjoy playing the part this much.

She felt as if her arm were pushing through water as she wound up for the next hit. Every fiber in her being screamed at her to stop, to find another way, but there wasn't another way, and so much was at stake beyond just her and Thomas. His lip split with the next hit, and he shook his head and spat blood at her face.

It missed, but once again she was reminded of his dedication to the act.

As she continued the interrogation, as the cuts and bruises piled up and Thomas's face was red and puffy and covered in blood, and Juliet had felt no fewer than two ribs crack beneath her heel, she couldn't help but wonder how often he'd been beaten like this when he had been held captive by the Taliban. Had he been tied down when they hurt him, too? Was she forcing him to relive his eighteen months of hell, at the hands of his friend? His partner? Someone he should have been able to trust with his life? Even with all of her extensive training, Juliet found it hard to stay in character after these thoughts swam to the surface.

And finally, at last, by some unspoken agreement, they decided that the ruse had gone on long enough to be believable, that no one would question it if the captive broke now, and she sat down in front of him again. Somehow, she maintained eye contact, though she wanted to bury her head in shame. A blood vessel had ruptured in his right eye, and the white had turned bright red. She knew that his defeated posture might be at least partially an act, but she could also tell that he was hurting. And it was her fault.

She swallowed heavily. "So," she said. "Mr…?"

"Magnum," Thomas panted, shoulders slumping in resignation. "Thomas Magnum."

She quirked an eyebrow. "Well, Mr. Magnum. Are you ready to tell me who here you are working with?" As she spoke, she spelled out a name in Morse code. Thomas's eyes, bleary from pain, tracked her finger's movement wearily.

After a moment he sighed, hung his head, and whispered, "Oliver Kent."

Slow applause rang out by the door. Thomas's head snapped up at the sound, but Juliet rose slowly and deliberately to face Sean Cavendish, who had let himself in the interrogation room the moment Magnum had given up his "mole."

"Bravo," Cavendish gushed, eyeing Juliet with a twisted triumph that sent Juliet's heart plummeting to the floor.

"You doubted me?" she asked, desperately clinging to her cover, even whilst knowing there was no point. Somehow, they had figured out the truth.

"Oh, yes," Cavendish simpered. "Mr. Magnum here may have been smart enough to ditch his wallet and phone before trying to interrogate my man, but we did find his Ferrari. And as soon as we saw the license plate, we knew that he was connected to you in some way."

Juliet blanched. Higgins 2 .

"So if you knew from the beginning, why the facade?" she demanded. "Why not kill us both on the spot?"

Cavendish rubbed his chin as if in deep thought. Reaching into his holster, he removed his gun, considering it as he weighed it in his hands. Juliet's heart sped up; this was it. She had moments to make a move for the gun, or she and Thomas would be slaughtered where they stood – or sat. And Juliet refused to let being beaten by his partner be the last thing Thomas Magnum knew before he died. "Well," he said, taking aim, the muzzle lined up precisely with the center of Thomas's forehead. "I suppose you could say it was a bit of an experiment . Misplaced loyalty for Queen and Country aside, you would make an excellent agent. But we had to know just how much you can dedicate yourself to your role first. And you did swimmingly ."

Juliet's ears buzzed, her heart thudded madly against her ribs. "You mean to tell me," she hissed, voice low and even, deceptively calm, "that you had me torture my best friend as, what, a twisted experiment?"

"Well, that," Cavendish acknowledged with a dip of his head. "And fun." He bared his teeth in an animal grin. "Mostly fun." His finger squeezed the trigger.

Juliet sprang into action, leg swinging up and foot slamming into Cavendish's wrist right as he fired. As she slammed her forearm into the other man's throat, she prayed that Thomas hadn't been hit.

She fought Cavendish like she'd never fought anyone before; she fought like a woman possessed, all her guilt and fear and rage channeling into her fists and knees and feet. She didn't stop to wonder why no one had barged in to break up the fight, to take her down.

In thirty seconds flat, Cavendish lay face-first on the floor, dead to the world, but, unfortunately, not actually dead. Given that Juliet had just slammed his head into the floor like cracking an egg on a counter, he wouldn't be waking up any time soon. Her pulse fluttering wildly in her neck, Juliet braced herself for what she might see when she turned around. There was every chance that she hadn't been fast enough. That she would turn to see Thomas slumped forward in his bonds, head hanging, bullet hole square between the eyes.

Her mouth fell open as she spun on her heel to face the damage. "Thomas, what the actual hell?"

Thomas was out of the chair, at the other end of the room, picking Cavendish's gun up from where it had skittered. He held his ribs and moved like he was ninety years old, but he was upright – sort of – and alive, if only just.

He flashed her a tired grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Old trick of the trade," he explained, raising his free hand, the thumb of which was already twice its normal size and a nasty shade of blue.

"You broke your thumb," Juliet breathed. It was what Amanda Sako had done to escape her captors a couple of years ago, but most people needed the leverage of both hands for the kind of force needed for an escape like that. "How…?"

Wincing as he shuffled forward, Thomas said, "Lots of practice. I just needed a distraction." The lost look in his eyes warned her not to pursue it further, but she knew it had to do with his time in the POW camp. She nodded curtly.

Everything within Juliet screamed for her to say something, do anything , to fix this, but she wasn't stupid, she knew that nothing could heal the wounds she had opened. Sure, the physical cuts and bruises and broken bones and concussion would heal given much time and rest, but the other, less visible wounds? She would never regain his trust. She wanted to cry, to break down, to beg for forgiveness, but that would be pointless, and anyway, the need to escape, to somehow survive, was more pressing, so she shoved everything deep inside and simply said, "Thomas, I'm so–"

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Even though we didn't know that they were onto us, if we hadn't played our parts, we both would have ended up dead. You did what you had to do to keep us both alive. And you kept me from getting shot, which is a definite bonus." Juliet bit her lip, not wanting to argue with someone who looked as poorly as her partner. "Besides," Thomas added, grunting in pain as he made his way gingerly to the door. "Don't you think we ouughta figure out why no one came running in here when they heard that gunshot?"

He reached for the handle, but the door opened from the outside first. Eve stood on the other side, semi-automatic weapon in hand, more disheveled than Juliet had ever seen her.

"I think you'll find that I had something to do with that," she said. At the stunned expression on Juliet's face, she allowed herself a tiny half-smile. "Okay, you two. Let's get what we came for and get the hell out of here."


"So wait," Thomas said from where he lay on the E.R. bed, eyes glazed with pain medication, IV tugging at his wrist as he spoke with his hands. "Eve spotted me tracking you down, realized you'd been compromised, then snuck into the building while you were interrogating me and took down all the onsite agents, one-by-one, like her own one-woman army?"

Juliet couldn't help but smile at the childlike awe on Thomas's swollen face. "That's right," she acknowledged. "Actually, it makes me think of something you would do."

Thomas scowled. "Yeah, that was the plan, before that guy got the jump on me."

"You had no way of knowing that there was more than one of them, Thomas."

"I was a SEAL. Reconnaissance is kind of my thing. I should have seen him."

"You're not seriously feeling guilty about getting caught, are you?"

"Well, if I had been a little more careful, if I hadn't gotten caught, then maybe you wouldn't have been outed as the mole. I put you in danger."

Juliet laughed, a short, manic bark that the lads would have been proud of. " You put me in danger? Thomas, look at you. You have a concussion. Three broken ribs. A fractured cheekbone. A broken thumb. Your face looks like ground beef."

"Yeah, but I don't have a bullet-hole between my eyes."

"Thomas, I tortured you."

"I told you to."

"That doesn't matter."

"Actually, it does," Thomas argued stubbornly. He blinked slowly, the drugs sapping what little energy he had. One of his eyes was completely swollen shut. "You asked, I consented."

"Yes, but I could have found another way."

"Any other way would have left us both buried in unmarked graves or dumped in the ocean."

"Magnum. Will you please just let me apologize. Imagine, for a moment, that it had been me in that chair. That you had tortured me. You cannot tell me that you would not feel overwhelmed by guilt."

Thomas was quiet for a long moment. "Okay," he said finally.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, unsure of how to proceed. She'd been prepared to fight him tooth and nail on this, but perhaps he'd realized how desperately she needed this. Finally, she said, "I'm sorry that I lied to you for so long. I am sorry that I kept you in the dark. And I am so, so sorry for what I did to you today. Perhaps you are right, and there was no other choice, but… I still hurt you, Thomas. Badly. And that is going to take a long time to come to terms with."

Thomas's lips lifted in his easy grin. "I forgive you, Higgy. Now it's my turn."

"I'm sorry?" Was he really going to counter her apology for actually torturing him with one of his own?

"No, I'm sorry," Thomas corrected, the cheeky bastard. "Sorry for not listening to you, for going behind your back and following you. For not trusting you like I should."

Juliet smiled sadly. "If they hadn't found you, there's every possibility this still could have gone badly. They could have discovered Eve's involvement, or…"

The two sat in silence for a long moment. Then Thomas spoke, his voice ragged from pain and fading from exhaustion. "Look, I know that if I were in your shoes, I would be struggling with what I did. It would probably take me a long time for forgive myself, too. But, for me, can you please just, I don't know, start the process? Once I'm back on my feet, I'm gonna need my partner back."

Juliet shook her head. "You don't understand, Magnum. Katsumoto was there when they took in the false agents. Lia was too. Once Rick and T.C. find out you're in the hospital, they're going to be on the warpath for whoever did this. And then there's Kumu…"

"When Katsumoto took my statement earlier, while the paramedics were checking me over, I told him that Cavendish had one of his goons work me over. And that's what I'll be telling the others too."

Juliet gaped. "You're going to lie about my involvement? To protect me? Thomas, I don't deserve–"

"You keep forgetting that you saved me from being shot in the head. Your interrogation had to look real, or we both would be dead right now. You did what you had to to keep us alive. And for what it's worth, I think the guys would understand that. But there's no reason for them to know. It won't help anything. So I'll tell them the truth – one of Cavendish's goons beat the shit out of me when I got caught tailing you."

Juliet shook her head in disbelief. "Thomas Magnum, there really is no one like you."

Thomas laughed, groaning when it turned to a cough. "Is that a compliment?"

Juliet thought about lying. She considered teasing him about being selfish, or lazy, or a playboy, like she had so many times. But instead she smiled warmly, leaned forward, and brushed a stray strand of hair off of his forehead. "Believe it or not," she said, "this time, it actually is."

"Thanks, Higgy," Thomas slurred, the drugs claiming him at last.

Thomas had been right. It would take a long, long time for Juliet to forgive herself. Possibly she never would. But for Thomas's sake, the sake of their friendship and their partnership, she had to try.

"You're a good man, Thomas Magnum," she whispered.

Only then did she finally allow herself to cry.


A/N: This one proved to be a tough one to balance. I had to make sure I portrayed Higgy accurately - and I feel that although she doesn't usually apologize, in this case, with what she was forced to do, she would be consumed with guilt, scared of her own emotions or not. I mean, look how much it affects her when it's Eve she has to interrogate. But Thomas? Oof. Also, I didn't want it to come across like she's getting off too easily, but I also feel like she had literally no choice if they wanted to live and that Thomas is totally the "You did what you had to, calm the **** down" kind of guy. So hopefully all that, as well as the new resolution, went over well. I had fun playing with Eve's character a little more. She doesn't give us much to work with in the show, so I let her be a badass in this fic.

But yeah, I really hope you enjoyed reading this one! It was a blast to write. I'd love to know your thoughts, and I'll see you with more Magnum fics soon!

~Emachinescat ^..^