Timeline: Many Hours Later

Rating: Pg-13

Chapter 18

Detach

Hours passed, as meaningless as the mindless doodles of an apathetic student, and Mark had yet to feel the usual twinges of guilt from an unforgiving conscience. He had yet to feel anything at all. Nothing had elicited even the slightest emotion from him after he said good-night to an already unconscious Amanda. He felt numb and removed, like a frostbitten limb amputated in a desperate attempt for survival. Mark wondered if he'd finally done what John wanted him to do all along, if he had finally detached from his emotions.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, wrenching him out of his deep thought. His real job demanded attention. He sighed and answered his cell.

"Hoffman," he said coolly.

"Mark?" the voice on the other line said. Even though her voice sounded different than usual because it was repressing tears, it could only be Kerry. "Eric's gone. He left with John Kramer to get Daniel, and now we can't find him. The tapes weren't live and–"

She rambled on and on while Mark slouched lower in his chair, calm and slightly surprised by his own callousness. He wanted to flip the phone lid down and drown out her frantic chatter.

"Daniel's here now, can you speak to him? He won't talk to us."

That surprised Mark. He expected Daniel to be blabbing every detail he could remember to anyone who would listen. The only explanation Mark could think of was that he was too traumatized to talk.

"I'll be at the department as soon as possible. Just get Daniel to calm down and tell you anything he can remember. And Kerry-"

"Yes?"

"Relax, before you scare him even more than he already is. You need to be the composed one in this situation."

"Right," she said. "You're right. Okay…" She was no longer talking to him as much as she was just trying to keep herself together. "Okay. Thank you, Mark. Bye."

Mark hung up and put his phone back in his pocket. He rubbed his eyes, trying to spurn his body's exhaustion and convince himself he could cope with another sleepless night.

"Who was that?" he heard Amanda say from behind him. He craned his head to the side to look at her, bruised and wounded. He silently cursed Eric again.

"Detective Kerry. My real job is calling."

"Oh."

"What are you doing awake? You should be resting."

"I hurt too much to sleep," she sighed. "I just got up to get some ibuprofen and water."

Mark knew it was pointless to offer her anything stronger, even though he knew a hospital wouldn't hesitate to prescribe more powerful painkillers after what she'd endured. She was too proud of her rehabilitation. He was hoping she would evade most of the pain with excessive sleep. Seeing her awake so shortly after her fight with Eric bothered him.

"Are you feeling okay? I can wait if you need me here," he said. He gazed at her with obvious concern.

"No. I'm fine. Well…" she said with a hesitant pause. She shifted her gaze away for a moment before admitting, "I guess I could use some help with the bandage on my head. It's falling off, and I can't fix it myself. My back hurts when I lift my arms..."

She turned around to reestablish her eye contact with Mark, daring him to laugh or smirk. Instead, he remained serious as he rose up to retrieve the medical kit that he abhorred having to use so often lately. He sighed, opened the box and pulled out the needed contents.

Amanda leaned on a nearby table for support. Her back still ached from the impact of Eric's metal pole colliding with her shoulder blades, and she felt lightheaded from lingering pain and exhaustion. When she saw Mark turn around with the antiseptic and cotton ball, she propped herself on top of the table to avoid the risk of collapsing from dizziness.

He eased the loose bandage off and patted her wound with the antibacterial. She winced.

"Does it sting?" he asked.

"A little," she confessed in a low voice. He softly fanned the wound with his breath. Unlike last time, she visibly shook from the sensation.

"Better?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. He placed gauze over the area and bandaged her until he was satisfied it would hold until he returned. He put the materials away and when he turned to look at Amanda and reassess her wound, he drew too close to her face, her lips in particular. The table had corrected the great height advantage he usually had over her. Now she was literally face-to-face with him, and her eyes didn't waver from his. Both of them waited for the other to break eye contact, to break the intensity that was building between both of them before it became something else, something neither of them had control over, but neither moved an inch. Until Mark's lips brushed against hers, both of them were sure that the other was going to turn, make up some excuse as to why they had to leave, and then take off, leaving the other one breathless and frustrated. Then after that first moment of physical contact was made, neither of them were sure of anything anymore.

Mark's gentle first attempt was met with Amanda's hesitant consent. Her eyes closed, and suddenly it seemed impossible not to give in to the soft sensation against her skin that was making her shiver and made breathing require a conscious effort. Then a faint hint of his cologne hit her, and the smell completely yanked her out of what little was left of her conscious thoughts. Her instincts had control of her now, and her instincts demanded pursuit of the object of her desire.

She returned Mark's gesture with much more compliance, giving him the encouragement he needed to turn that slight touch into a full kiss. His lips pressed against hers with more force. She reciprocated with an intensity that matched his. His hands slid down her sides towards her hips, gentle in contrast to the much more vigorous way he was now pursing her lips. His tongue slid into her mouth, completely welcome and met with her own. He plunged deeper in, grazing the roof of her mouth and eliciting a slight moan of pleasure from Amanda, who now had one hand against Mark's neck and was pulling him closer. His hands traced the outline of one of her bandages, a subtle reminder that no matter how fervently she was kissing him, at the moment she was fragile and had to be handled as such. But Amanda's muffled moans of longing made it hard for Mark to control himself, so very hard…

The need for air interrupted the euphoric embrace. Mark gasped, and as soon as they parted contact, Amanda's eyes shot open and widened as she realized what they had just done.

"What the hell, Mark?" she snapped, still slightly breathless herself, as if she had been suddenly jolted out of a trance, a hypnosis begun by his comfort and gentle touch, and made more alluring by his sensual voice and soft lips. But now that brief spell over her had ended, she was furious she had succumbed to his charm. She pulled away from him, expecting to see his smug self-satisfied smile that had been absent for so long return. But what she saw was that he had apparently been as stunned and smitten as she had been, for his eyes had not fully fluttered open until she spoke, or rather hissed, his name, and his face did not take on the demeanor of someone smug or conceited. He looked rather surprised, either by his actions or hers or perhaps both.

Amanda waited for an explanation, but the kiss had left him inconveniently speechless.

"Never mind," she groaned. She attempted to slide off the table and nearly collapsed onto the floor. Mark instinctively crouched down to help her, but she shirked away.

"Just go," she snapped in a harsher voice, attempting to create as much physical distance as possible from him with her outstretched hand. "Your real job is calling, remember? You can stop wasting time here."

After a shaky second start, she regained her stance. She looked up at Mark.

"I think you should go now," she said. Her voice lowered to an almost normal volume, but her glare indicated that nothing was alright, that what had just transpired was not soon to be forgotten or dismissed. As she stared at him, his phone started going off again, an insistent reminder of things that needed to be taken care of elsewhere, in his other life. Torn between the pressure of taking care of the chaos that was surly exploding at work or resolving what had just happened between himself and Amanda, he chose what he deemed was probably the less exhausting of the two acts, reasoning to himself that Amanda probably needed a cooling off period anyway.

"We'll talk about this later," Mark said.

"Can't wait," she said sarcastically. He sighed, matching her intense stare with his own before he turned to leave. Amanda watched him as he walked away, her brow furrowed. She remained staring at the door he passed though as she wondered why she had just lashed out at him, why she had asked him to fix her bandage when she was capable of doing it herself, why she had wanted him to touch her, and what it was that he could possibly have to say to her, except that maybe, she feared, he thought he had just made a great mistake.

The artificial energy from his coffee felt like the only thing propelling Mark forward. It wasn't just the physical exertion, but the mental exhaustion that was tearing him down.

Get it together. Eric is missing; you have to pretend to care about that. Daniel, in some ironic twist of fate, is waiting to confide in me, and Kerry's probably out of her mind right now with worry…

What was it that he always said to rookies and the subordinates in his department?

Leave your problems at the door.

No, its leave your personal shit at the door. No, that's not right either. That sounds more like Eric than me…

"Mark!" Kerry yelled, rushing past and nearly knocking into other detectives as she sprinted towards him. She looked awful, with knotted unkempt hair and bags under her eyes. Eric hadn't been gone long, and Mark wondered how his sudden disappearance could have already created such a major negative impact on Kerry's appearance. Then he realized the majority of the damage was probably the result of recent extensive crying; her eyes were the red shade of an insomniac, without the side effect of fatigue. She seemed alert, prepared to follow whatever orders Mark gave her.

"Mark…what do we do?" she said, completely lost, looking for leadership and direction from him as though he was the native guide that would lead them out of wilderness. It was new territory, after all. This was one of their own that was lost, possibly dead. That simple fact made the situation completely different than the Jigsaw cases before.

"We'll find him. I promise. Kerry, you need to…detach yourself from the situation and think objectively. When you walk in here, you have to leave your emotions at the door. You're not going to help Eric if you're not focused. "

"Okay. I will," she said, her eyes revealing the liar she was. She'd say anything to hover around the department waiting to hear news about Eric's location and condition.

"Daniel's in room two. He hasn't said much except that he wants to see Eric. And when I told him his father…wasn't available, he started throwing chairs around and demanded to see you or his Dad," Kerry said.

Throwing chairs around? Not so different from his Dad after all, Mark thought, appreciating how he'd continued to underestimate Daniel all these years.

"Alright," he said, nodding his head. He left Kerry standing there, her hand covering her mouth and her eyes squinting, trying not to give into the tears that pressed against her eyelids, ready for release. She looked hopeless and alone, as if stranded on her own little island of despair and everyone else around her dared not attempt a rescue. It had come hours too late, but Mark finally felt that usual pang of guilt he'd been missing. Although it hurt to be a witness to Kerry's grief, he knew he just had to wait it out, and eventually the guilt would fade, the way the unpleasant tingling sensation of disturbing a sleeping muscle mitigates with the passage of time.

Mark entered Room Two and saw Daniel with his forehead pressed against the table, his arms shielding his head on both sides. Mark hoped he wasn't crying. Between the trauma of what Daniel had been through and the unexplained absence of his father, he had every right to, but to see more tears…

How many tears can someone witness in 48 hours without losing it?

"Hello, Daniel," Mark said with a professional, sympathetic yet formal tone that he reserved for this aspect of his job. He dragged the chair on the opposite side of Daniel so that he could sit beside him. Talking across the table made the situation feel too much like an interrogation. Witnesses freeze. Victims retreat from the external world and into themselves. He put a hand on Daniel's shoulder, both comforting him and trying to ease him out of the physical barrier he'd created for himself.

"Are you okay, Daniel? You can talk to me," he said. He lifted his head up and looked directly in Mark's eyes.

"Where's my Dad?" he asked. "No one's telling me anything. I know something's wrong, or he'd be here right now." His eyes were tainted red from tears as well, but unlike Kerry, he didn't seem to be on the verge of more. He was completely cried out. His eyes were empty shells, hollow and no longer innocent, like the eyes of many police officers Mark had known who'd been on the job too long. He looked the way that Mark felt.

"I know you'll tell me the truth. What happened? Is he dead?" Daniel asked, a reasonable question Mark anticipated would come up, not that he had prepared a reasonable answer. He swallowed uncomfortably.

"Your father is missing."

Daniel shook his head, his lips tightening in anger. His left hand pulled at the sleeve of his shirt. Mark noted that the nervous tic probably helped him cope when tears would no longer suffice.

"It has something to do with Jigsaw, right? Something to do with me?"

Mark didn't know what to say. Surely honesty wasn't going to make him feel any better, but he was bound to find out the truth eventually. It left Mark in a very difficult spot.

"Tell me the truth, damn it!" he yelled. He darted up from his chair and grasped the edge of it like he was ready to start smashing it into windows and vandalize the entire building. Both his hands shook, his fingers twitching as though he were playing guitar on the chair. His tic continued to progress.

"Yes," Mark said calmly, trying to handle Daniel's outburst the same way he used to handle Eric's. "It's true. You're father went with Jigsawbecause he promised he'd lead Eric to you. He obviously lied. And now we don't know where they are."

"No…no…" Daniel whimpered, shaking his head. He crumpled into his chair. His bottom lip trembled. He stared at Mark with pleading eyes.

"This is my fault," he confessed. "I stormed off after our last fight. I didn't think that…I was stupid and reckless and…"

"Daniel, this is not your fault. No one could have predicted what Jigsaw was going to do, not even your Dad. But we got the whole department looking for him. We're going to find him."

"Alive?" Daniel asked, but the way he looked at Mark showed that he already knew the probable answer. A silence followed Daniel's one word question.

"Hopefully," Mark said at last, the best he could do under the circumstances, even though the lie was getting much harder to tell. Eric could be a real bastard, but Daniel didn't deserve to suffer through this. The longer Daniel held onto this false hope, the harsher reality would be when it came crashing down on him.

"He's a real jerk sometimes. Especially lately, because of the divorce. But…he's my Dad. I just want him to be safe. I'd do anything to have him back."

As he sat next to Daniel and listened to this pitiful teenager's confessions and misplaced guilt, Mark truly felt remorse for Eric's fate. Through Daniel he was able to remember the good in Eric too, not just the monster capable of nearly killing Amanda. But despite the rising feelings, it wasn't the time to mourn.

Leave it at the door, he reminded himself.

"Daniel, I'm going to do my best to locate your father, but I need you to help me. Do you remember being abducted? Do you remember anything after that?"

Daniel shook his head to indicate he did not.

"I remember some stuff that happened after the kidnapping. Lots of traps. Dead bodies. A bathroom. But it's all confusing. It's a total mess in my head."

Good.

"Do you remember ever seeing Jigsaw in person?" Mark asked.

"No. But there were tapes, tapes that told us what to do. The first girl that found a tape…Amanda. Shit. Did you find Amanda?" Daniel asked. "Is she okay?"

She'd be a lot better if your Dad hadn't gotten hold of her.

"Amanda?" Mark said. "You mean Amanda Young? No, her whereabouts are currently unknown."

"Oh," Daniel said, slumping even further down into his chair. Suddenly the door swung open, Kerry emerging from the staffroom with a cup a coffee in one hand while the other clinched the doorknob like a stress ball. A jiggling sound reverberated in the room as she rattled it back and forth in her shaky hand.

"Daniel, your Mom's here," she said. Daniel nodded and left the room, glaring at Kerry with disdain as they passed at the doorway. Kerry sighed and set the coffee on the desk in front of Mark.

"Here," she said. "You're going to need this. It's going to be a long day."

Amanda took a slight detour on her way back to her measly cot. She left the medical kit as it was, the ibuprofen as absent from her mind as the pain itself. She drifted towards the room John resided in, lingering in the doorway, wanting to talk with him and debating whether or not to stir him from his sleep, like a child wondering if they should wake their parents for comfort from a bad nightmare. Eventually she decided against it. Her emotional conflict wasn't something she could talk about with him anyway. Although hearing his voice would be a real comfort, far better than the inadequate aspirin she originally sought when she rose from her bed.

The pain returned as she stood there, her mind drifting into thoughts of Mark. At first it was slow, like tides receding from a beach, before the throbbing ache crashed down with sudden force, a cruel reminder of her encounter with Eric. She retrieved the medicine she so carelessly dismissed earlier and went back to her room to rest. As she anticipated, the sleep she longed for wouldn't come. She stared up at the dirty ceiling, wondering why Mark had kissed her, and more importantly, why she wanted him to, why she practically begged him to with her eyes, with her thoughts.

It's obvious why I wanted it, she thought, her conscience harsh and accusing. He's been on my mind ever since I so coyly asked him if he wanted a private showing, and oh, did I give him one. Gave him a little extra too, didn't I? Gave him a real bang for his buck before I left him high and dry with lust still glowing in his eyes ...those beautiful eyes...and let's be brutally honest, I left him with a nice, big hard on tucked under those slacks... all because I thought he was another Eric. I bet he didn't like being toyed with, being led on like that…

The thought of Mark putting the bandages over the wounds Eric had inflicted on her dismissed her memory of the strip club.

But I was wrong about that, a more innocent, vulnerable Amanda admitted. I was so wrong, and I realize that now. Mark is the opposite of Eric. What happened before I was reborn doesn't matter. What matters is whether he's toying with me now the way I toyed with him, or if...

But Amanda didn't want to think about or if, because she knew he wasn't toying with her, and what she didn't know was what or if entailed. She'd never known because being toyed with was all she'd ever experienced or expected. He wanted her now like he did then. It was the look in his eyes before the kiss, and afterwards, those fluttering eyelashes that grazed against her cheeks, that blissful expression on his face that gave him away. It wasn't an act or a game to him. Whatever spell had been cast over her in that moment had taken him as well, and now that it was over, she had to decide what it meant.

As Amanda thought about him, her fingers absentmindedly grazed one of the bandages on her arm. A bandage he had put there. He told her to leave, to stay out of John's games before she got hurt, and when she inevitably did get injured, he was always there to bandage her wounds, her own nurse aid whenever she needed him. It meant something that she couldn't quite recognize because it was so foreign, but she did recognize that it meant something. Amanda rolled over on her cot and rubbed her bandaged wounds, trying to figure out what that something was.

Author's Note: Thanks to Kalika Barlow, still the best Beta Reader/Editor ever.