A/N: Okay, I know everyone's itching for the cavalry to arrive, but just hang in there for another couple of chapters, okay? I like these ones too much to cut them. And yes, this ones short, and yes, this is going to be another double post. So I'm expecting reviews as a thank you :)

Disclaimer: No, I still don't own Numb3rs. Unless someone would like to give it to me?

All the world I would defy

Let me make it plain as day

I look at you now and I sigh

How could it be any other way?

-"Tell Ol' Bill," Bob Dylan

Chapter 8—Live With It

"Hey, uh, Don?" David's voice brought Don out of his reverie. It had been maybe twenty minutes since Hett had left the room. Everyone had been completely silent. Don brought his head up. David was looking at Robin. Don looked over at her too and saw that she was beginning to stir.

Robin moaned, sitting up straight. At first Don thought that she was just going to fall right back over again, but she managed to steady herself.

"Robin?" Don said her name. "It's okay, sweetie, you're okay."

"Don?" Robin's voice was slightly groggy.

"I'm here, Robin, I'm here," Don told her. Robin opened her eyes, looked at Don, and blinked.

"What happened?" she asked. Don saw her twitch when the handcuffs stopped her as she instinctively tried to reach up and feel her head.

"Hett knocked you out," Megan told her.

"How long ago?" asked Robin. "What did I miss?"

"Maybe twenty, thirty minutes," replied Don quickly, wanting to handle this one. "You missed nothing—just a few threats. Trust me, it wasn't worth sticking around for."

Then the door to the room opened and they all looked around. Hett walked in, and Don clenched his jaw—Hett was carrying a pack of cigarettes. He walked up to Don, and Don did his best to hide the fear in his eyes. Cigarettes might not be the most painful instrument of torture out there, but they certainly hurt plenty.

"It was your choice, Agent," Hett said.

"What?" asked Robin, her voice betraying a note of panic.

"Well, look who's up," said Hett, turning to smile sickeningly at her. "Your friend Eppes didn't tell you? I gave him a choice. Him or you lot. He chose himself. Now he has to live with that choice. For a while."

Don saw Robin looking at him, sadness in her eyes. There was no surprise, he noted. Meanwhile, Hett pulled what looked like a rag from his back pocket. He bent down and moved to tie the rag around Don's head. Don jerked instinctively away. Hett leaned back on his heels.

"You or them, Eppes," he reminded. This time, as Hett tied the makeshift blindfold around his eyes, Don managed to hold himself still. Through the pain, Don noted that Hett had tied the blindfold tighter than was strictly necessary, so that it put pressure on his broken nose.

A moment later, Don coughed as cigarette smoke filled his lungs. Don had never been a smoker. He was used to walking by people with cigarettes—everyone was—but he didn't exactly go out of the way to inhale the stuff. As he struggled to get his breath back, he heard Robin cry out. A split second later, he jerked in pain. He could feel the cigarette burning a hole in his arm. Don bit the inside of his cheek, refusing to make a sound, refusing to give Hett the satisfaction in front of his friends.

"Stop!" he heard Robin yell as he gritted his teeth against the pain. The longer the cigarette was held in one place, the more it hurt. He wouldn't be able to bear it much longer, he knew. The inside of his cheek was bleeding. He wanted to spit out the blood—better than choking on it—but he knew that if he opened his mouth, the cry he'd been holding back would escape. "Please, stop hurting him!" Robin screamed again. Don shook his head once, wanting nothing more than for her to stop calling attention to herself. His memories of what Hett's unspoken threat were too fresh. "Don, Don, no!" he heard Robin cry a third time. Her voice was growing more distant, pushed away by the pain, the pain that was slowly pushing everything else away as well, expanding outwards towards the horizons of his mind like the shock wave after an explosion.

He was no longer aware of the particular location of the most intense pain, although he was fairly certain that cigarettes were still Hett's weapon of choice. The pain would be sharp and intense, then ease away for a few seconds in which he felt no relief, merely apprehension as he awaited the next time the cigarette would make contact with his skin, when the pain would once again blossom and there would be nothing else for what seemed like an eternity. Although by the time Hett left, there was so much pain that Don could barely tell the difference between when the cigarette was pressed against him and when it was not.

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