A/N: A bit longer this time. Hopefully the actual plot will start picking up soon. Any comments more than welcome.

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So roll out the stretcher and make me feel better...

When he woke up, he had lost all concept of time. It was dark, the night lights turned on. He must have slept for hours, longer than he had since he was a child. The hunger was sapping his strength, but he didn't think that was what had woken him. There was a scraping sound, very quiet, from below. He was lying down with his face to the wall and when he turned around, the bed gave a little creak and the scraping noise stopped. Then something moved in the shadows and Michael's head came into view.

"Not sleeping?" Michael asked, his eyes glimmering wide awake in the darkness.

Something was going on. L felt better after having slept; the feeling of unreality that had been with him ever since the arrest had lifted a little. Some tension had eased. Why here? he suddenly thought. He had never questioned their choice of prison, but really—why here? It wasn't in the American capitol or even its largest city. The prison was not the highest security in the country, or seemed particular in any other way. Why had this not occurred to him earlier? With his kind of money, his lawyers should have been able to fix somewhere more comfortable. His chock and disbelief had blinded him, but now...

"Why are you staring at me?" Michael said.

"Sorry."

He lay back down and stared at the ceiling. Below him, he could hear Michael sitting down on his bed, sighing. L had slept enough for a week, now there was no way left to pass the time. The hours stretched out in the darkness.

Another day passed in a haze of hunger and light-headedness. It seemed like sugar was about as hard to get a hold of in here as gunpowder. He stood in line for coffee in the canteen, and when they asked if he wanted sugar he told them 'please—lots' and they put two teaspoons in which sunk to the bottom of the paper cup and there was nothing to stir it with and the coffee was bitter and disgusting, weak like they had just washed out a used pot and served the dishwater. He tried to drink it fast to get to the sugar that had settled in the base of the cup, but someone shoved him before that and the cup fell. Someone else kicked it away when he tried to grab it, and the guards wouldn't let him get back in line for another one. He wolfed down the bland mush they called food, glancing around him with feral vigilance, ready to protect what was his. Finally, the day ended and he crouched on his bed listening to Michael waiting for him to sleep so he could do whatever it was he did during the nights. He was looking more and more stressed, like he was on a schedule.

It was the next morning it happened. L was walking through a corridor, following the stream of inmates towards the exercise yard, when hands suddenly grabbed him and pulled him into an adjoining room. The door slammed shut and he stared up into the face of the big ugly guy from yesterday's altercation in the canteen. He had clearly not forgotten about that.

"You shouldn't have kicked me, fish," the guy said.

There were four other men in the room with them, one behind L, blocking the door, two others that he had never seen before, and then that gangly southern—if he was right about that—man from the yard stepped forward and licked his lips.

"He's a Japanese fish, ain't he," he said, "perhaps we should call him sushi."

"Sushi refers to the taste of the rice," L said in monotone. "You are thinking of sa..."

His voice was cut off as Big Ugly drove his fist into L's stomach. He doubled up and gasped for breath.

"Now, now. There might be no need for that kind of violence. At least give the boy a chance to cooperate here..." The lanky man put a hand under his chin and lifted his head. L stood up, defying the pain in his gut.

"I'm Theodore," the man said, "but that's a bit too many syllables for most of the gentlemen in here, so now I go by the somewhat less than flattering name of T-bag."

L took a step back, he really didn't like this man touching him at all. But behind him was someone else who grabbed his shoulders, and that was even worse. And T-bag moved closer again.

"I've heard stories about you, boy," T-bag said. "Apparently, you're quite the celebrity in crime circles..."

He knew! L's stomach cramped up like he had eaten something bad, and he could feel his heart beating very fast. T-bag leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "...aren't you 'L'?"

He stood back and looked very satisfied with himself and the fear that was no doubt showing on L's face. Then he said, "Now, so far I've done the courteous thing and not been running around telling tales, but this is an arrangement dependent on a mutual exchange of favours. You scratch my back, and so forth..."

L was starting to get confused. He had no influence in here, no power over anything, and no contact with the outside world. There was nothing he could do for him, so what did this man want from him? His food perhaps?

"What is it you want?" he asked.

"See, now that's the proper attitude," T-bag said. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled the lining out so it was hanging from the side of his leg. The look on his face told L that this was supposed to mean something to him, but nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe he was telling him he was poor; empty pockets.

"Money? I don't have any with me..."

T-bag laughed. "Ah, my bad. Of course you're not familiar with our little codes." He reached out and cupped L's face in his hand. It was a very un-aggressive gesture, but during the circumstances it felt like a massive violation of his personal space. "I know you're Scofield's cellmate, but I also know he ain't interested, and I'm sure we can work something out."

L did a quick rundown of the possibilities in his mind—there weren't many. If T-bag knew who he was, he also knew what had happened to him. There was nothing else he could even be suspected of having to offer, ergo, the most repulsive scenario was the only one left. The man was desperate, obviously. L had seen a lot of young men among the inmates, all of them stronger and fitter and more compliant with all standards of attractiveness he knew of—and they looked more able to fend for themselves. That must be it.

"I'm sorry," he said, "Like you said; I'm not familiar with your codes and your slang. But I have nothing of value, so I fail to see what you want from me."

"Ah, come on now! They told me you was smart, real smart even." T-bag raised his eyebrows. "It sure don't seem like that right now."

"I'm not interested in any kind of sexual arrangement, if that's what you're trying to allude to."

T-bag laughed, and for a second, L thought he had misunderstood this alien culture. He felt a small sense of relief, but then T-bag ruined it all by saying, "Well. I thought I'd ask nicely, because if you'd taken me up on my offer, it would have saved you a lot of pain. You see, my friend here," he gestured at Big Ugly, "told me he had a bone to pick with you. And since those whom with he takes issue usually end up in quite a sorry state, I told him it would be a shame with such a pretty face, and he agreed to give me a chance to... pitch my proposal, so to speak. I'm truly sorry the negotiations fell through so soon... but, such is life, I suppose."

He didn't look sorry, in fact he was smiling. So was Big Ugly, who took a step forward and made a move to grab L. He was slow though, and L was not going to wait for him.

L was a lot more capable of self-defence than he looked, but he was weakened by the lack of sugar and there were too many of them. He kicked high, feeling cartilage break and give under the blade of his foot, but the man behind him grabbed his arm. He spun, his body trembling with effort, and swung his leg into the man's ribs, earning a satisfying crunch, but then someone else grabbed his shoulder. He threw his arm back, connecting with his elbow, and heard the snap of teeth slamming shut. The first man started to scream as the pain from his crushed nose registered, and someone clamped an arm around L's neck, squeezing. He kicked and fought, but the blows started to fall across his body like a heavy, volatile rain, setting his skin ablaze in patches of agony. He couldn't breathe and the pain and adrenaline ate up what little oxygen he had. They pushed him down, his arms bending at awkward angles, and his head hit the concrete floor. Black stars exploded in his vision and all of reality was pulled away, like a camera zooming out. There was a ringing in his ears and then the sound of metal catching and sliding, a buckle, and a tearing noise like fabric ripping. Something was holding him down, everything hurt. Cold air against his skin and hateful words that his tired mind refused to parse, and then a shrill noise cut through the haze. A whistle.

The weight on top of him lifted, but not before hissing 'later' into his ear. Angry, shouting voices and trampling footsteps all around him. A loud, wooden bang and sudden quiet. He could feel the concrete against his cheek and it seemed like the only solid thing in the world.

"Hey, you alright? Can you get up? Hey, Lawliet, talk to me."

Oh, the voice was talking to him. He opened his eyes and a guard's face hovered into blurry view. L moved his fingers experimentally and found they worked. He rolled himself into a ball and managed to sit up. There was blood on the floor where his head had been.

"Yeah, you're alright." The guard offered his expert medical opinion. "Come on, let's get you to medical."

He sat slumped on a stretcher in the medical unit and hurt. Physical pain was not an unfamiliar sensation, but it had been rare as of late. And he had never been this badly beaten before, not even as a child. To take his mind of it, he looked around the room. Cupboards, a table and a chair, the stretcher he was on, a grate in the floor... That grate in the floor; there was something odd about it. He leaned over, peering down through the bars, and could see a tiny hole and through it; a room underneath. He straightened up quickly as the door opened and the nurse stepped in. She stopped inside the door and looked at him, then down at the clip-board she was carrying and back at him again. Then she smiled, rather nervously, it seemed.

"You're... much younger than I expected," she said, walking over to where he was sitting. "My father, actually, told me about you. He was very upset at the conviction. 'the system's biggest failure in modern times' I believe were his exact words..."

Her voice trailed off. She was quite young too, and quite pretty with red hair and a open face that seemed to lack a certain cynicism he would have expected in a place like this. As if to prove his point, a small frown of sympathy ghosted across her face when she saw the wound on his head, but she quickly got it under control.

"Well," she said, getting professional, "you're going to have to put your legs down; I need to take a look at you. Shirt off."

L tried to do as he was told, but lifting his arms over his head was much too painful. In the end, she had to help him. She threw the bloodstained shirt on the floor and he wondered where he would get another one between here and his cell. The nurse touched his side and he twitched. He wasn't used to people touching him, especially not this carefully.

"I have to check for broken bones," she said.

He looked out the window to take his mind off it. There was a cable running from right below the window, across the stretch of yard and over the wall. Over the wall? Yes, it really was. It looked like power cables and he couldn't understand why they had not been run underground. They looked solid enough to support a person's weight. No doubt the door to this room was locked at all times... and the hole in the floor?

"There's nothing broken," she interrupted his thoughts, "and there doesn't seem to be any internal haemorrhaging. You're lucky."

"I feel very lucky," he said, and she laughed.

"I'm sorry. You know what I mean. It could have been much worse. I'll give you some painkillers. Just going to wash that cut on your head, then you can go."

She poured alcohol on a compress and dabbed at his hairline. It stung, but he was too distracted by having a woman's chest almost in his face. He could smell her perfume. She was very nice; it wouldn't surprise him if some people in here got hurt on purpose to get this treatment.

"There," she said, sticking a few skin closures over the cut, "you're all set."

She turned away from him and pulled a key out of her pocket to unlock a medicine cupboard and take out a card of pills, which she broke in half, leaving four on a thin strip of aluminium foil.

He shivered in the cold, dangling his legs over the side of the stretcher and feeling more vulnerable and exposed now than when they had him beaten down on the floor. When she faced him again, that look of sympathy was back on her face, stronger than before.

"You're... quite underweight," she said, "Do you get enough to eat?"

"The food in here is disgusting," he said. "They put salt in everything."

"It's not great, I know, but you'll have to try and eat it anyway. Any other problems? Do you get any sleep?"

He must look a mess, he supposed, but he wanted to get out of here now so he just nodded. He felt dirty, too many people pawing him in one day; he wanted a shower.

When the nurse opened the door to let him out, Michael was waiting right outside. When he saw L, he got a sharp look on his face. L thought perhaps it had something to do with the woman, but he ignored the buzzing thoughts and headed for the showers. Standing under the spray, feeling the hot water run down his shoulders and wrap him in a warm, wet blanket, he zoned out. He could still hear the angry, excited voices as those men pushed him down. There was no doubt what would have happened if the guards hadn't come along. A trembling grew inside him, and he gasped as the delayed reaction and the horror washed over him. Tears flooded his vision and he sank down into a crouch on the white tiles of the shower. The water spattered down on top of him, and he could almost pretend that it was rain.

"Hey, you alright?"

He looked up. Michael was standing there, a towel around his waist, and holding out another towel towards L. The shower was off. He accepted the towel and stood up, wrapping it around himself.

He had lost time again. By the way his fingertips looked—spongy and white—he must have been sitting there for quite some time. His head was swimming, his body aching. Michael was looking at him with a frown, and L saw that the tattoos on his arms continued all across his upper body. An intricate network of...

He could feel his face betray his shock, but he was too weak to stop it. His eyes widened, his jaw relaxed. There was a definite underlying pattern to those tattoos—a map, a blueprint. It all fell into place like a jigsaw puzzle falling out of the box and miraculously—impossibly—landing with all its pieces in the correct order. The map, the scratching noises, the paranoid looks, the grate, the cable.

"What are you looking at?" Michael said, but there was more worry than anger in his voice.

"You're breaking out?" L whispered.