A/N: Woo, first round of midterms over! Yay! Halfway through this semester, bless.

Okay, WARNING - this chapter has attempted assault. Nothing graphic. If you've read The Mortal Instruments, it's more mild than the scene with Clary and Sebastian.

Just a quick name refresher:

Eagle - Ian

Wolf - Luke

Snake - Quinn

Fox - Ben

Please review :)

Danielle's knee wouldn't stop bouncing as she sat on the edge of the bed trying to think of a way to get out. Her entire body felt like it was made of nervous energy; her fingers, drumming on the bed sheets, sweeping through her hair, skating over the windowsill just within reach. Her breaths came fast even as she tried to calm down, and her knee still bounced, jiggling the bed.

The window was covered in bars - thick, vertical ones that bolted onto the bricks outside. She had tried to open the glass part of the window but it wouldn't budge, probably glued in place. Bars were just insurance that if she broke the glass, she still couldn't get out or fall to her death fifty feet below. Was that even far enough to kill someone? Danielle shook her head to get all the distracting thoughts out - better than panicking, but she knew she had little time - and forced herself to stand even though she just wanted to curl up in a ball and fall asleep.

Alex said he was coming.

She didn't want him to, he didn't know August.

August would twist everything into a tangled mess but somehow never lie; he could make people loath themselves or fall in love with him. Danielle didn't want to find out what he could discern from Alex.

She started pacing. That's what Alex would do. She traced the floorboards with each step, from wall to wall, over the rug on on the floor, to the closet and back to the bed. The room was small but fit a king-sized bed and a dresser without feeling cramped. Danielle tugged open each dresser draw, but they were all empty. Nothing to see there.

She sat back down on the bed. Frustrated tears pricked at her eyes.

Of course, she could always leave the room.

A wave of fear rolled through her stomach. Leave the room? She'd just learned every inch of it. She was safer here not aggravating August.

But, out in the rest of the house, maybe there was a way out.

Danielle got to her feet and walked to the door, her legs feeling wooden and numb. Her hand shook as she grabbed the knob.

And twisted it.

Alex precariously balanced on the tiled roof, his fingertips useless and bloody from clawing his way up the side of the house. He edged forward, trying not to make too much noise, and gently rattled the sliding patio door. It slid open, unlocked.

He stepped in, not caring if his shoes left tracks along the pristine white carpet.

The room was obviously the master bedroom; large and extensive, with a massive four-poster bed that had to be custom designed. Carpeting covered the entire floor and a large wooden shelving structure, elegantly carved and stained, held a TV over two meters long and almost as high. Crystal glasses sat out on one of the small tables next to an ice bucket and silver tongs. An electric fireplace sat up against the wall next to the TV shelves, but it wasn't turned on.

Alex's spine crawled from the sheer stillness in the room and he knew it was time to move on. The door to the hall was open. He peered around it, pressed flat up against the wall, and waited for a count of ten.

No one appeared.

No one stirred.

Alex was beginning to feel like he was in a morgue instead of a mansion.

The hallway was frozen in time: pearly carpet, also free of stain and dirt, ran the entire length towards the top of a staircase guarded by a delicately engraved banister. Burgundy wallpaper spattered with golden, covered the walls. Spots were missing, revealing chipped paint and plaster beneath the paper. The hall itself was flooded with light, but it carried a gloom, too. Some of the marks on the wall looked disturbingly like bullet holes.

Alex stepped lightly on the balls of his feet as he walked down the corridor. Nothing creaked under his feet; the floor didn't give or squeak. It was as still as everything else. Alex's breathing echoed in his ears, seeming too loud in the dead silence, and he concentrated, carefully listening for any hint of human presence.

Then he noticed the stench of bleach. It stung his nose and made his eyes water. He looked closer at the carpet and noticed barely-perceptible patches that weren't white but translucent, all color bleached from the plastic fibers. Shudders ran up his spine and suddenly, he was reminded of a different corridor covered in fake stone with arrows launched by motion-sensitive triggers. Running through it, triggering the darts by rolling . . .a sock? His shoe? Alex blinked hard - he couldn't remember.

As he neared the end of the hallway, he saw a door hanging ajar. Air currents lightly nudged it back and forth in small increments, making the hinges squeak, and he placed his fingertips on the wooden surface and shoved.

The door swung open on silent hinges and revealed a small room almost filled by a large bed and a dresser with a dark blue rug sprawled across the floor. Thick, iron bars were bolted across the single window. He entered the room and crossed to the glass panel; it had a perfect view of the house across the street, as well as the closed gate.

Danielle had been there.

There was no sign, of course - no shoes, no clothes - but Alex knew with the same conviction that told him something wasn't right with those people and the docks back at the safe house, the conviction that told him the attempts on his life were just distractions from something bigger. It was instinct, the same that had saved his life several times out in the field.

Alex felt his growing concern tighten inside his chest as he spun on his heel and returned to the hallway. He shoved his hair out of his eyes. Danielle had been there, but where had she gone?

Then, he heard it: the first sound to break through whatever insulation in the hallway, echoing from down the stairs spiraling upwards towards the cavernous ceiling Alex peered at from the end of the hall.

A shattered glass.

Pause.

A human scream.

Danielle gripped the staircase and tiptoed down it as quietly as she could. August wasn't in the foyer, she could tell that much, and he wasn't in the study across from the staircase. When he'd sent her away, he had returned down into the bowels of his mansion through the hallway, the one that made his shadows larger than life.

She kept her shoes on, afraid someone would come across them and know she had wandered off.

The door wasn't even an option; the keypad sent out an alert to August's phone whenever the gate opened, something she remembered from numerous trips to his house.

Danielle reluctantly walked towards the hallway. Every thunk of her feet against the ground sounded like a gunshot in the walled-in space.

Soft murmurs echoed from the large living room at the end of the hall. Danielle remembered the hall opened to a massive living room on one side that angled farther back into the house, and a kitchen that opened to the right. Beyond those were the rooms where he met his suppliers.

Danielle curled her hands into fists and lurked in the corridor, flattening herself against the wall. She peered around the corner.

Two men reclined on the cream-colored chaise. One of them was August, and the other had wide, broad shoulders and hair the color of bleached straw. He threw his head back with a laugh and tilted a crystal glass up to his lips, letting the cherry-colored liquid gush down his throat. Setting the glass down on the table with a thunk, the stranger kicked his feet up on the table and reclined, clearly at ease.

"Any wires?" he asked, and Danielle startled. The man's accent was American.

"No," August replied. He faced away from Danielle. "Not that I could see." His words were faintly slurred, but she knew that August was still fairly sober - she'd seen him drunk, and it wasn't pretty. He had been thoroughly inebriated when he broke her wrist.

Resigned to returning upstairs, Danielle backed away from the corner, still pressing her right arm against the wall so her shadow wouldn't ripple on the floor.

Suddenly, she wobbled. The heel of her sandal caught in the grout line between two of the coral tiles.

It snapped.

She reached for the wall to steady herself but it was too late, she lurched backwards, scrabbling at the unyielding wall, and crashed to the floor. Pain sang a gruesome chorus in her left elbow as it struck the marble first. Her eyes watered. She bit her lip until she tasted the coppery tang of blood, trying not to cry out.

The voices paused.

"What was that?" the American asked.

Fabric rustled as someone stood and Danielle scrambled backwards. Her heart thudded a staccato symphony inside her chest, so loud she feared the men could hear it, and she tried desperately to kick her other shoe off so she could get up and run -

August appeared.

Two meters away.

One and a half.

One.

Danielle crawled to her feet. She slipped on the slick tiles and backed away. He was near enough that she could smell the stench of whiskey on his breath and, as he opened his mouth with a look in his eyes like molten lava, she turned.

And ran.

She didn't get very far before a rough hand closed around her elbow and shoved her forward. Her foot hit the table inside the sitting room and a face fell off, crashing to the floor.

August's grip was bruising as he yanked her around to face him. His eyes were black with rage - she recognized the look, unhinged, out of control.

"You bitch," he hissed, and slapped her across the face.

Danielle screamed.

Her face exploded in pain.

She fell backwards, trying to wrench herself away. August held his grip on her, possessing her, and the fear inside her suddenly exploded in a fireburst of panic that left, in its wake, absolutely nothing.

Nothing at all.

Danielle bit her lip - it was like watching herself from a distance, from outside her body. She knew she should do something, but.

No.

She could barely feel his hands, both of them now, holding her wrists. Something stiff hit her back - the wall, she thought dimly - and August pressed her wrist up against the wall, pinning her there.

His breath, reeking of liquor, centimeters from her face.

What did he want from her?

"I was going to be nice," August said with a small frown. "But you broke my rules."

She took a shuddering breath.

"Tell me you love me."

"I love you." her voice echoed in her ears, echoing from far away, flat and dull.

"Say my name."

"I love you, Raoul August."

He kissed her, rough and bruising, and Danielle recoiled, trapped against the wall. She couldn't move away so she retreated into her mind, deep, deep down beneath layers and walls and dirt until she remembered a simple piano piece, plunked out by a little girl with clumsy fingers and a broken wrist.

And she listened.

He was touching her.

August - that pig - had Danielle pinned against the wall. Her head lolled to the side, eyes shut, eyelids fluttering, and she wasn't defending herself.

Alex froze on the stairs. He'd clattered down them, expecting a fight, but. . .not this. Adrenaline made his hands shaky and he forced himself to drop down another step, then another, even though his legs felt wooden and numb. He saw in his head what Danielle should do - bite down on August's lip or tongue, use her jaw, the strongest muscle in the human body - but she didn't know any of that, and if she did, she probably couldn't remember.

Alex couldn't move. He felt the damning straps around him again just like he was back in that damned chair watching the screen with Jack in the SUV, watching it explode into a fireball, watching himself fail -

And, suddenly, something else clattered to the floor.

He wrenched his eyes to Danielle - August was stumbling away, cursing, clutching his head, and beside him on the floor was a picture frame. Danielle had fallen against the wall but was crawling, dragging herself along the floor. Tears streamed down her face. Make up ran in rivulets, smudging her eyes.

August was moving again, on his knees, shoving her onto her back. His hand towards the waistband of her jeans -

And Alex moved.

He leapt down the last six stairs and sprinted across the foyer into the sitting room. His pulse thundered in his ears as he ran towards them, bending low and reaching out at just the right angle to tackle August. They rolled across the floor, August startled. He moved jerkily - intoxicated, Alex realized as he slid to a halt. Alex staggered to his feet, standing over August, and punched him in the temple. His knuckles ached - he hadn't hit anyone in ages - and August's eyes slid shut. Somehow Alex doubted that he was the sole force responsible for August's unconsciousness. Alcohol? Drugs? Had he started using his own supply?

A ragged, broken sob broke the air behind him.

Alex turned around, his shoulders heaving.

Danielle curled on the floor against the wall. Not crying. Not sobbing. She tried to move, uncurling her legs and pushing herself up, arms shaking.

"Alex?"

He hurried over her and fell to his knees, helping her sit up.

"There's someone else," she said, hiccuping. "In the sitting room."

"I'll go check. Will you be okay?"

She nodded, slowly starting to stand up. "I'm coming."

"Are you sure?" Alex reached out and gripped her hand, getting to his feet to help her balance.

"I don't want to be alone with him," Danielle gestured to August's unconscious body, which wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Alex wrapped his arm around her as they walked back out into the foyer. If there was someone still here, he would shove Danielle to the floor and take them out, even if that wasn't in the plan - he couldn't risk anyone else knowing they had ever been there.

Danielle pulled up short, her forehead wrinkling into a frown, and untangled the wire earpeice from her hair. She held it out to Alex. "They want to talk to you."

Alex jammed the device against his own ear. "What?"

"Is everything okay?" Ben asked, static cutting off some of his words.

"Yes," Alex said. "August's unconscious, I'm checking for anyone else."

"Okay. Unlock the gate."

"I will." Alex returned the earpiece to Danielle and jogged across the foyer, his shoes squeaking on the polished tiles. He typed in the passcode - he'd memorized it - then hurried back to Danielle, who was staring aimlessly at a spot on the wall. Her eyes were dead, blank, and he knew she was relieving the events of the past few moments in some dark corner of her mind.

"Hey," he said quietly, wrapping his arm around her again. "You're okay. Everything's okay now." Even as he spoke he knew he was lying - nothing was fine, nothing would be fine for a long time. She wasn't okay.

Danielle blinked.

"You probably didn't even need me here. Seemed like you could handle yourself just fine."

"Thanks." Her voice cracked. "For coming, I mean. I used to think - think that no one would even notice if I was gone."

"That's not true. You have friends, now - *family*. Of course we'll notice." Alex peered through the opening to the sitting room, but he already knew it was empty. The air had that eerie stillness again, disturbed by nothing. Whoever had been there was long gone.

Suddenly he heard the front door swing open with a thud and several pairs of heavy boots stride in, cautious but determined.

"Cub!" Wolf's yell echoed around the downstairs, and Alex gently nudged Danielle to step forward so he could follow her back out into the foyer.

"We're here!" he shouted back, taking one last glance around the empty living room and kitchen.

Ben appeared after a few seconds, his hair sticking up from wearing a helmet. He held a pistol cocked towards the ground with the safety on. "Anyone else?"

"No," Alex said. "Whoever it was left."

"It's really quiet in here."

"Noise cancelling insulation, probably," Snake said, appearing from the end of the hall. "Eagle and Wolf are checking out the upstairs."

"What about August?" Alex asked.

"Cuffed."

"Unconscious?"

"Yeah."

"Hey." Snake reached out and gave Danielle a light push on the shoulder. "You did great under pressure."

She gave him a watery smile. "Thanks."

A shouted curse echoed from upstairs, and Alex pushed past Snake to run towards the stairs. He swung himself up, holding the banister.

Wolf appeared at the top of the stairs. "They're others."

"Other what?"

The look on Wolf's face was a mix of revulsion and horror. "Other people."

"Call in a tip," Ben said. He resisted the urge to kick something. "We can't deal with this right now."

"But -"

"Wolf. The police are better equipped to handle this."

"I'll stay here," Eagle said, his head sticking out from over Wolf's shoulder. "Until the police come."

Ben let out a long, tired sigh and glanced over Alex and Danielle. Both looked as if they might be violently ill any second, especially Danielle. Her face was ashen, smudged with dark paste. Both her shoes were missing.

Something had gone wrong.

They hadn't been able to hear very much over Danielle's wire; Alex had damaged the headphones when he ripped them off and tossed them aside; but clearly something had happened.

The front door opened.

Ben pivoted backwards, instinctively reaching to turn off the safety on his pistol, but -

It was Tom.

Tom's eyes flew to Danielle, filled with confusion-realization-anger in such quick succession that Ben would have missed it if he hadn't had years of specialized training in reading body language.

"You said she wouldn't get hurt," Tom hissed, glaring at Alex with smoldering eyes.

Alex's poker face faltered, the corners of his lips turning down for a split second.

"Okay." Ben stepped forward, ready to physically eject Tom from the mansion. "That's enough. Guys, come on. We'll take another car back to the house."

"Who's car?" Danielle asked. "The van's our only ride."

"MI6 left a sedan down the street. Emergency evac procedures, just in case."

"What about the others?" Alex's eyes flicked towards the stairwell.

"They'll come back later. Come on." Ben knew they couldn't stay there any longer; he needed to get Danielle out and away before August woke up, for her own sake.

Alex started towards the door, followed by Danielle and Tom, and Ben motioned for Snake to follow them as he stepped over the threshold back into the sun.

Later that day, Danielle retreated outside of the safehouse. She walked barefoot over the rough wooden boards on the pier as the lake gently rippled against the dock posts, hoping she wouldn't get splinters from the wood.

She sat at the end of the dock, knees pulled up to her chest, hands clasped around her legs.

The afternoon's events ran through her mind; they'd been on repeat ever since she left August's mansion. Luke had called to say that he was in custody. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the feeling of being trapped up against the wall between plaster and August.

Danielle knew she should feel relieved that such a monster was gone from her life - he'd had other people up there too, and noise cancelling insulation according to Ian - but, sitting on the deck, all she felt was empty.

She sensed someone approaching before their footsteps hit the dock, light and gentle. Danielle didn't move to turn until someone sat next to her with a gentle breeze of vanilla and almond.

"Hey, Danielle. Tea?"

It was Gwen, Ben's wife.

Surprised, Danielle took the mug proffered her and wrapped her hands around it, thankful for the warmth. Even though it was warm outside, she couldn't stop shivering.

"Thanks."

"Sure. The boys are all in the basement, so if you want to sneak in, now's the time." Gwen's auburn hair rustled in the wind.

Danielle almost smiled. "I'll wait."

"Someone ordered pizza."

"Hm."

"Danielle, you've been out here for hours."

Danielle loosed a sigh. "I know. I just. . . don't want to go back inside."

"Yeah, I get that." Gwen nudged her shoulder. "But, you need to eat and get inside. The mosquitoes will eat you alive. Besides, it's getting dark."

Danielle drummed her fingers against the pier. "Are they all downstairs?"

"Yes."

"I'll come in."

So this was what self-loathing felt like.

Alex was almost surprised at the waves of it that threatened to choke him every time he looked at Danielle - but then again, he was already very familiar with despising himself.

He had allowed himself to be creeped out by the eerie mansion and weakened by flashbacks. He should have found her before August even had the chance to -

God, he hated himself.

At least the mission was a success, he thought bitterly as he stomped up the basement stairs.

Danielle was waiting for him.

She perched on the edge of the couch, picking at a loose thread in the upholstery, and stood when she saw him.

"Alex."

He glanced at her, sure she would condemn him.

Danielle took a deep breath. "I always figured this would happen. And it would be a lot worse." She bit her lip. "There's nothing - I don't know, I just feel - . . . empty. But I'm not. . ." she trailed off for a second, looking unsure. "I'm not mad at you."

"You should be," he muttered.

"No. I know how it feels to freeze like that, like all your worst dreams are coming true." shaking her head slightly, Danielle crossed her arms over her chest. "You're not the only one."

Alex fiddled with a strand of his hair, at a loss for words. She watched him anxiously and, finally, he looked at her helplessly. "What do you want me to say -"

She hugged him, throwing her arms around his waist.

Caught off guard, he stumbled backwards to keep his balance and tentatively wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She let a shaking sigh that turned into a sob and, very quickly, he felt his t-shirt soak through with tears.

His eyes stung. "I owe you one, okay? Anything. I'm so sorry. I try to be better than the other guys - I try not to use people." Like they used me.

"Yeah," she sniffed, pulling away to wipe her eyes. "I know."

They stared at each other for a second.

"So," Danielle said. "There's pizza in the kitchen."

Happy for the subject change, Alex agreed. "Or we could go out to eat. And rehearse. The concert's in six days."

"Six days?"

"Yeah."

She wiped her eyes again on the long sleeve of her grey sweater. "Thanks."

He knew what she was thanking him for. "Yeah." After a heartbeat, he added: "You're going to be okay, you know."

Danielle smiled and Alex wondered if, maybe, she believed him this time.

If, maybe, he believed himself.

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Guest: - yay! I'm glad it wasn't too choppy xD And, here is a full-length chapter :)