Timeline: The next day (aka, during Saw and a little before and after)

Rating: Pg-13

Chapter 8

Reunion

"You will give me every cell in your body..." -Jigsaw

Very rock star, he'd said only hours ago. His innocence made her want to cry. This wasn't what she'd had in mind at all. He was a seemingly sweet guy. And clean, as far as she knew. No needle marks that she could see.

Very rock star. Your hair.

It had been an impulsive action. All John's talk of "rebirth" made her want to change her exterior to match the internal change. In an impulsive moment, she chopped off a great deal of her hair and dyed it black. She didn't like the outcome very much, but she didn't really care all that much either after it was over. She looked different, and that's all she wanted. She wasn't sure what look she was going for because she wasn't sure what this new life was going to be like. Wasn't sure who she was going to become. But she certainly wasn't going for "rock star".

I'm going to kidnap him and who knows what John is going to do to him, she thought. I don't know him. I don't know anything about him. What if he doesn't deserve this?

She felt very uncomfortable. Her fingers twitched like she was tweaking for another hit. But the withdrawals were gone now. The psychical ones, anyway. The psychological ones would never leave, haunting her for the rest of her life.

I don't need it, she reminded herself. All I need is to focus on my mission.

She trembled. It was time. Adam stumbled around, using his camera as a source of light. But of course, it only gave him brief moments of sight. She had more than enough time to leap out from the darkness and drug him. And after the hesitation passed, she did it in one swift motion. It was over quickly. It had been easy. Far too easy. Somehow that was worse than if it had been a challenge. She felt horrible. That horror was only slightly mitigated by the knowledge that her savior would be more that pleased.

Everything was set. The doctor shackled on one end of the room, Adam, whom she'd shackled herself, was on the other, and John sprawled out in a pool of fake blood between them. She glanced at them all, fear and adrenaline running through her veins, not knowing who to root for or whose side she was even on.

She turned off the lights and slammed the door shut. After it closed, she walked down the hall and once she reached the end of it, she collapsed against one of the walls in sobs she tried to muffle with both hands. She wanted to run away. Hadn't that always been her solution though? And not once had it ever solved anything. It was always a temporary solution, like putting a band aid made for a paper cut onto someone who was bleeding out from fatal wounds.

She crumpled up into a ball and continued weeping. The guilt she'd repressed came out through her tears. Now that John couldn't see watch her, she felt less of a need to control herself, not that she could contain herself much longer even if she wanted too. She cried and when she was incapable of more tears, she just remained there for hours, void of all emotion, limp like a rag doll, waiting for either man to come crawling out of the bathroom at any moment.

But before anyone escaped, Zep came storming through the hallway. Amanda was surprised. Their time is already up? Zep passed by her, and she remained unnoticed, not that it really mattered anyway. She knew that this confrontation wouldn't end well. She got up to leave before she had to hear the screams or gunshots, but wound up hearing both in her mind, repeating over and over, saturating her consciousness with an all consuming guilt that was becoming all too familiar.

"What happened down there?" Amanda asked later. They were both sitting down, exhausted from their work and over 48 hours of endless activity with not even a brief respite. Yet she didn't dare ask for a moment of rest.

"They failed."

"All of them?" she asked, her eyes alert with surprise.

"Yes. All of them," John said with his usual expressionless face.

"They're all dead," she murmured.

"Big surprise," she heard a foreign, yet strangely familiar voice say. Her head darted towards the origin of the sound, and her surprise intensified when she realized the identity of John's other assistant.

Her surprise was rivaled only by his own. His hand immediately clutched the first thing within reach as he attempted to guise his shock and horror at the sudden revelation. The chair in his grasp tipped slightly as his knuckles turned white, evidence of the anger forming in Mark.

"Amanda," he said calmly, his cool voice and expression a complete contrast to his tense body language.

"Mark!" she said, unable to mask her reaction as well as he did. She couldn't stop staring at him. Not just the fact that his presence shocked her, paralyzing her so that she couldn't move, not that she had any desire to. But also because splattered all over his white shirt was a dark crimson liquid, seemingly still wet, that could only mean one thing. If his appearance said nothing, his clothing said everything only too clearly.

"I suppose introductions are unnecessary," John said suddenly, after a short silence. He rose from his chair with grace, seemingly fine, as though the exhaustion from his sickness was something he could merely cast off from time to time when he pleased.

"Mark, you're dismissed for tonight. You're free to leave whenever you like."

And with that closing statement, he left the two of them, still stunned, alone. As the door shut behind him, Mark's pressure on the chair made it fall over. Amanda flinched as it clanged on the ground.

"What are you doing here?" Mark said. He still remained at the other end of the room, and made no attempt to draw closer to her. The paralysis of surprise had taken them both.

"I could ask you the same thing," Amanda said when she came to her senses a little. She didn't want to reveal anything to him. Already it was beginning to dawn on her that he assisted in her capture and test. Mixed feelings stirred within her. He had been her savior. But at the same time, he was a liar. He pretended to be sympathetic and oblivious as she told her story again and again to the police, even though he could have probably told it better than her. He had lied out of necessity of course, but she felt the unease of mistrust anyway.

"Goddamn it," Mark said. He sighed and looked away. He didn't mean to sound quite so harsh, but he had a lot of rage within him and no outlet.

"John told me about you," Amanda said. "Told me enough anyway. He has some dirt on you that would get you in trouble. A very noble cause for helping us. Well, soon we won't be needing you anymore because I'm here."

"Is that so?" Mark said, slightly amused at her confidence. "I highly doubt that."

Amanda got out of her seat and approached him, leaning right into his face, doing her best to appear intimidating to the man who clearly had a height advantage over her. She glared straight into his eyes.

"I know you're not helping because you want to. You're doing this for selfish reasons. You're just like every other man I've met. You don't care about anyone but yourself. You didn't put me or anyone else in a trap to help. You did it so you could keep fooling everyone into believing you're a good person. Well you know what, detective? You don't fool me."

"I don't care what you think, Amanda. Just do me a favor and make sure you don't get in my way."

Amanda didn't respond. "I'll do whatever John needs me to do. I wouldn't interfere with his plans just to get back at you."

"You really believe in his ridiculous rantings?" Mark said. He took a step back and shook his head. "The man is insane."

"He helped me get clean," she replied, her voice escalating with her emotion. "That may not mean anything to you, but it means everything to me. He saved my life."

"And do you know how many other lives he's ended? Saving one person doesn't counteract all the murders."

"They didn't cherish their lives enough. But when someone does pass a test, it changes their perspective-"

"Wake up, Amanda. You're the only one who survived, and you'll probably be the only one. What he does is murder. You really want to be a part of this?"

"Yes," she said softly. "I do. But you've got it wrong. It's not murder. It's rehabilitation. It can work. And I can help, I can-"

"You're just as delusional as him," Mark said. Amanda grew silent. Nothing more needed to be said. It was clear that they were on opposite sides, despite the fact that they were working together. Mark stared at Amanda, wishing he could get inside her mind for just a moment and understand why she felt so overwhelming attached to John and his warped ideals. Her eyes shown with naive eagerness and fierce loyalty, the eyes of someone who hadn't witnessed repeated acts of violence and death. He was used to spending all his time around cops and victims, he almost forgot what that kind of pureness looked like.

She was in for so much pain.

"Amanda, do yourself a favor and get out now. Go back to your life. You can stay clean without resorting to...this," he said, gesturing around to the dirty, dim warehouse stuffed with blueprints designing deathtraps, tools for their execution, and an atmosphere of isolation and danger. His face looked sad and sincere, his voice nearly pleading.

But Amanda just shook her head.

"I'm staying. Good-night, Detective Hoffman," she said as she turned to leave.

"Mark," he said, instinctively correcting her. He'd told her to call him Mark when they first met. He saw no reason to resort to formality now, even if they did vastly disagree with each other.

She turned her head back to glance at him.

"Good-night, Detective," she said, exiting the room with him still staring at her. After she'd shut the door, he sighed and collapsed into a nearby chair. He'd been so relieved when she'd escaped. Nervous, but grateful when he'd seen her at the police station giving her testimony. And now the sight of her filled him with guilt and despair. Even the good that he did manage to do while assisting the Jigsaw killer was ruined by John in the end. He was also frustrated because he'd wanted to despise this accomplice as much as John, and yet he couldn't bring himself to do so. She was a victim. Trapped in John's games in her own way, in her own delusional ideas, perhaps even more trapped than him.