If I weren't so busy, I would have loved to take more time with this. But... here ya go.
Broken
Part II
"Your refusal to talk isn't going to convince me you're fit for duty," Dr. Ombric said, sitting in the arm chair across from Jack.
Jack sighed, leaning back in his own seat.
The office was located in the GUARDIAN's base, though it felt like stepping into a completely different world. Unlike the high tech base, the office was almost void of technology. Ombric's wooden desk was in one corner, set with random knick-knacks, but no computer.
One wall was lined with a wooden bookshelf that half everything from books on psychology and a complete Encyclopedia Britannica, to classic novels, biographies, and even picture books. Jack had gone through them all during his session the day before.
The walls were off white, with a few plants. And it smelled like wood polish. A smell he knew well from home.
It was too formal to be "homey", but it wasn't as sterile as pretty much everywhere else in the base.
Jack didn't like either, but at that moment, he would have chosen any other area of the base. If he couldn't be home, he didn't want anything trying to make him relax. It felt like some kind of cruel joke.
Unfortunately, it wasn't getting him any points with Ombric.
"I told you: I don't need therapy," Jack said. "I need two week's leave for R-and-R."
"Out procedure for agents who encounter Pitch Black—"
Jack waved the man off. He knew the procedure.
"I notice North has always excused you from therapy, however," Ombric added. "This is your first session since you were recruited, almost two years ago."
"And I'm fine."
"Obviously not, young man," Ombric said, his voice disapproving.
Jack sunk back in the armchair. He had an idea what was coming. Apparently there was no avoiding it.
"Between yesterday's session, when you said nothing for the entire hour, and the ten minutes you've been here, you've displayed signs of PTSD, depression, and paranoia."
"You know what line of work I'm in, right?" Jack asked, arching an eyebrow. He was pretty sure those were all permanent fixtures in his psyche. They came with the spy territory. And the "orphaned at a young age" territory.
"According to your teammates, you were alone with Black before they arrived on the scene," Ombric went on, refusing to be distracted. "And you were visibly shaken afterwards."
"If you've read my file, you know this isn't my first run-in with Pitch." Just as he finished the sentence, he realized he had walked right into the trap. (And that wasn't the paranoia talking.)
"You were trained by Pitchiner, correct?"
Jack slumped down, tilting his head back. "Yes."
Too late to back down. Unless he just stopped talking for the next forty-five minutes.
"And that was before the accident, I prewsume."
"Before he went crazy," Jack said, looking up at the white ceiling. "Yes."
Looking back, he was pretty sure Kozmotis had already been going insane by the time Jack started his training. The loss of his wife and daughter had left the man seriously scared emotionally, probably his psyche as well. Little things that hadn't made sense at the time, but all lined up in hindsight. Moments of anger that came out of nowhere, decisions that didn't make sense… It all added up.
"You left not long after the accident, I understand."
He nodded. I grabbed my girlfriend and ran, more like.
"And what was your opinion of Kozmotis Pitchiner?"
"I thought he was an amazing man," Jack admitted honestly, the words coming out a strange mix of raw and half-hearted. His opinion had since changed. But he couldn't change that he once had looked up to and admired him. "He looked at an orphan boy everyone else wrote off, and he saw that I just needed a chance."
"He used you as a human experiment."
Right. He should have seen that coming.
"I knew what I was agreeing to," Jack said. And he was impressed that the words didn't sound untrue.
That was what he had thought at the time, anyway. Looking back, Pitchiner hadn't really given him a choice. Every time he had asked if Jack was sure about undergoing the procedure, the conversation had included subtle comments that guaranteed Jack couldn't say no.
"That is what you've been trained for."
"We've spent years preparing you for this.
"I'm counting on you, Jack."
Looking back… he had never had a choice. Pitchiner had just known exactly what to say so that Jack couldn't say no. Reminding him of the unspoken debt between them. Of everything he had done for Jack.
If he had realized then that Pitch was manipulating him, would he have said no? Would he had run sooner? Said "forget it" and got out while he still had a chance at a normal life?
He looked at one of his hands, which rested on the arm of the chair, frost spreading across the green fabric.
"Your procedure was after his?" Ombric asked.
"Before."
The guinea pig.
Ombric frowned, flipping through the pages of Jack's file, which had been sitting on the table next to his armchair. The folder included most of the pages from Pitchiner's file on him – including those about his procedure. And the note that he was the only one, out of almost twenty people, to survive with his sanity intact. (All mentions of Rapunzel had been removed before North put together the file.)
When Jack had been deemed a success, Pitchiner had been confident enough to undergo the process himself.
Joke's on him.
"I went through the whole gauntlet of tests when Tsar Lunar recruited me," Jack said. "They declared me sane." And he knew the shrinks who assessed him had gone in determined to mind him unfit for duty.
His first few months here, Jack had given the science lab so many blood samples that eventually he had finally put his foot down. If they couldn't find what made him different in all that, then they weren't going to. (North had, thankfully, backed him up.) Of course, they had used his last sample to create a digital map, and were still running tests. (Still no progress.)
Ombric hummed in response. Apparently he wasn't accepting someone else's assessment of Jack's sanity.
"Does your admiration of Kozmotis make you hesitate when facing Black? Do you have difficulty fighting the man who gave you your chance?"
Jack resisted the urge to glare at Ombric. "You obviously haven't read that file very well."
There had been hesitation. Once. The first time he had come face to face with Pitch Black, he had hesitated. And he had paid for it.
He still had the scar on his stomach where Pitch had taken advantage of that hesitation. With a knife that barely missed his right kidney.
For a few tense minutes, Ombric flipped through the file.
Jack looked at the clock.
Twenty more minutes.
"Considering your past with Pitchiner, he must have an intimate understanding of your weaknesses."
"That's his power," Jack reminded. "He knows everyone's fears."
"As your teammates can attest."
His teammates.
If he had snapped out of it a minute sooner – if he had shaken out of his fears long enough to attack Pitch, they wouldn't all be a wreck.
Merida's hands had still trembled when he saw her that morning. He hadn't seen the others since they got back – he had a feeling they were all avoiding each other. But he had run into Merida in the gym.
He had never asked the others what their fears were. It wasn't fair to do so when he wouldn't dream of telling them him. But he knew Merida's, whatever they were, were probably the worst of any of them. She took every encounter with Pitch harder than even Jack.
"Yeah," Jack sighed. "He knows me."
#
Nightmare gas lasted a little less than 24 hours in the system, without outside factors. After that the hallucinations stopped.
The psychological affects though… there was no rule for how long those lasted.
It was why Jack was afraid to sleep. He stayed up late with any excuse he could find: he did a load of laundry, he cleaned his weapons, he reread several of the picture books Rapunzel had illustrated... But exhaustion eventually caught up with him.
The dream – the nightmare – was always different, but always the same.
Thanks to lucid dreaming, he knew it wasn't real the moment he found himself on the shadowed walkway. The same hallways as always.
What little light there was was strange – almost watery. As if it weren't actually light, just a means to see. It had no source, and the angle it came from was always changing. Every crevice and doorway was filled with inky black shadows. The ceiling was obscured with shadows. When he looked over the edge of the walkway, he couldn't see what lay below.
Rapunzel loved the 1960's Bat-Man TV show. The first time he had watched it with her, he had been unnerved that, every time the villain came on the screen, the camera tilted. It created a disorienting affect. The same one he experienced now, because the labyrinth was tilted at the same angle.
Some nights, if the nightmare wasn't too strong, the Bat-Man connection helped him get out. It didn't make sense, and he would probably never tell anyone, because the results were usually ridiculous.
Not tonight.
No sign of Pitch.
Yet.
Some nights he was right there when Jack arrived in the dream. Others, he took a while to show up. But he always did.
Jack took a careful step down the slanted walkway, then another. There was no way out of the labyrinth. But there was no point standing still and waiting. The place didn't have many more surprises to throw at him. Just timing.
He came to the abrupt end of the walkway, where the yellow grey stone gave way to... nothing. Just blackness.
"Are you lost, Jack?"
"Really?" Jack asked, rolling his eyes.
Pitch Black laughed.
His voice, rough in tone, but smooth in cadence, came from every direction, shifting through the shadows.
Jack was lucid enough that that didn't bother him anymore.
What bothered him was what he knew was coming.
Pitch laughed. Dark and cruel. "You've always been lost. When I picked you out of the foster home, you were a lost little boy, shouting at the world because no one would listen."
"And you were already insane," Jack said. "What's your point?"
"Always so mouthy," Pitch said, with a dramatic sigh. The theatrics had gotten worse right along with the man's mental health. "Trying so hard to convince the world you're good enough."
Jack's jaw clenched.
"But we both know you never will be."
The dream world shifted. Jack hadn't taken a step, but he was falling from the edge of the walkway.
Falling... falling... falling...
"Well, at least you keep your promises."
The words were almost off handed.
And Jack was suddenly standing on another walkway.
"How is that pretty wife of yours?"
The words were a reminder that this was just a dream.
Pitch didn't know that Jack and Rapunzel were married. After all this time, he might suspected they were, if the thought crossed his mind. But he never referred to her as Jack's wife. But Jack thought of her as his wife, so his traitorous brain put the words in Pitch's mouth.
"Has your... protection started to chafe yet?" Pitch asked. "Really, I'm surprised she's lasted so long. A vibrant young woman, locked away..." He laughed. "Her name proved prophetic. Oh, maybe you haven't locked her in a tower. But you've still locked her away."
Jack stumbled as the words hit him.
The exact words Pitch had said two days ago. Jack was going to relive it, with his brain making a few changes. Just to make it more personal.
"How much longer do you think she'll stand for it?" Pitch asked.
He was falling again. But he still heard every word Pitch said.
"And what reason does she have to stay? What, exactly, do you offer her?"
Nothing.
He had nothing to offer her.
And that was why the words always got to him.
"She spends most of her nights alone. Without friends. Unable to leave. And all because of you."
He landed in a corner. Back pressed against the wall.
Pitch materialized out of the shadows. His gaunt face leering at Jack.
"And that is why she's safe from me," Pitch said. "Because nothing I can do to her – no threat, no attack – will hurt you more than the inevitable. I can snug out her light. But even that wouldn't hurt you as much as the day she walks out. Of her own free will.
"And when it happens..." Pitch laughed. "Well, we both know what you'll be without her. Anything you were – anything you had before her – you've given it to her. Your battered heart is in her pocket. And you couldn't take it back. She couldn't even give it back. When she walks away, it goes with her. And you'll be nothing."
Pitch looked Jack over appraisingly. "Of course, you were never much to begin with."
With a jolt, Jack was awake. He inhaled sharply.
Frost spread across the sheets, and over his bare chest. In his sleep he had lost control of his powers, and it had frozen his sweat to his skin.
He looked to his left, even though he knew Rapunzel wasn't there.
Grabbing his phone from the bedside table, he was halfway through dialing her number before he stopped.
Jack took a deep breath, draping his forearm over his eyes.
It had been a year and a half since Pitch had promised that Rapunzel was "safe" from him. And Jack believed it. Because the man was right.
Jack was selfish enough that having her walk away would be worse than her dying. Nothing was worse than that thought. That she would realize that he wasn't good enough, and that he wasn't worth staying isolated in the safe house.
It was why he couldn't call her. Why just thought of doing so made his entire body shake.
Because if she didn't answer...
Jack put his phone back, rubbing his hands over his face.
He was getting worse. Faster than he had expected.
He had to get home.
This was only going to get worse the longer they kept him at the base.