Epic by InSilva

Disclaimer: I didn't create any O11 characters. If I had, I could read all the O11 fanfic and feel proud of myself. ;)

A/N: I'm baaaaack! Moving house and getting back online took a ridiculous amount of time but I'm here again. *waves*

For otherhawk and Zaira and Maia and Peanut Tree and anyone else who has been following this fic. Hope you enjoy.

Chapter Six: Separated


Rusty was being hauled through and down corridors and no amount of struggling was helping. Wasn't hindering either though, and he was grimly pleased with his captors' red sweating faces and curses. Right up to the point where Striker sighed and muttered, "This is taking too long", then stepped round and punched him hard in the head twice, dazing him. He was vaguely aware of staircases and doors and darker and darker corridors and when he recovered his senses, he found the crewmen had disappeared and he was facing Striker in a small poorly lit room with pipes running through it.

Rusty caught the glint of handcuffs in Striker's hands and he launched himself forward, trying to make it past him to the door. The scuffle was less than dignified and less than winnable and the outcome was really never in doubt. The handcuffs rattled uselessly around the stout pipe and panting, he glared at Striker.

"Mr Benedict presents his compliments."

The heavy fist buried itself in his gut and he doubled over.

"No one's going to hear you down here," Striker said as he was trying to manage the pain. "But just in case…"

"Son of a-" Rusty snarled, just before the rag was tied tightly around his mouth. Striker had come prepared.

"Enjoy the rest of your trip," Striker said pleasantly, stepping out of the room.

The wheel on the door span shut thereby sealing it tight and leaving Rusty mentally raining down invective on the man.


The room was empty when they walked back through. Danny opened his mouth to ask the question and Terry answered it before it was voiced.

"He's still on board. I can find him with ease."

Danny's mouth closed again dutifully.

"By the way…" Terry sounded as if he'd remembered something he shouldn't have forgotten. The back-handed slap was unexpected and hard and heavy across Danny's face. "You never hit me again."

Danny resisted the urge to rub his left cheek and the even greater urge to snap out a biting retort. Terry was all smiles and calm once more. He picked up the room service menu.

"Shall we order?"

"I'm not hungry."

Terry tutted. "I'm sure you can find room for something."

Danny doubted he'd keep anything down. Dully, he watched Terry scan the menu and then order two cheese platters. He wondered where Rusty was. He wondered if Striker had hurt him. Actually, he didn't have to wonder.


Try as he might, Rusty could not get his hand to fit through the handcuff. Either hand. Either handcuff. He couldn't reach the lockpick in his pocket and there was nothing else close by that would work. Plus the gag was pulled too tight to be able to free his mouth. Terrific. He stared at the door, willing it to open. Didn't look likely.

He thought about the look on Danny's face as he'd hit Terry.

"Do you give me your word?"

He thought about all that that entailed. Sacrifice of happiness and freedom. All for him. For his safety. Fuck…

He went back to trying to force his hand through an unforgiving steel ring.


Terry had been direct and demanding and he'd spelled out consequences just one more time. Because he wanted to. Danny had sat and listened. Because he had to.

The food arrived and interrupted Terry's pontification.

"A civilised meal together, Danny," Terry said, looking down at the spread approvingly. "You want some wine? No?"

"No."

"Suit yourself." Terry slowly poured himself a glass of red, smiling as he did so and then continued where he'd left off. "So all that eye-fucking last night was part of his act. You do realise that. No wonder he was all over you at dinner. You didn't have to reciprocate, you know."

"Seem to remember you were all for it," Danny reminded him. "That didn't last."

"Seem to remember you were a little outraged." Terry's smile broadened and he raised his gaze from the wine glass to Danny. "Judging from what Striker told me, you got over your coyness successfully."

With difficulty, Danny controlled the heat rising in his face and he held Terry's stare. He badly wanted to tell Terry that it hadn't been what it looked like. Trouble with that was he would have to explain about Andrew Lee and Terry didn't need any more ammunition.

The smile disappeared and Terry's eyes narrowed. "Did he ask you about me? What did he want to know? Does he know about the necklace?"

Danny was saved from replying by an insistent bland ring-tone. Terry pulled his phone out.

"Tess. How very lovely to hear from you. No, nothing special. Well…" His eyes were on Danny's. "Danny has been making an interesting friendship." Terry laughed. "Shipboard romance and all that."

Danny set his jaw.

"No." Terry's gaze was steadfast and unblinking. "No one special. I'll tell you about it when I get back. I love you, too. Bye, Tess."

He snapped the phone shut and smiled at Danny. "I'm sure she said "Hi".


By now, the phone masts would be rigged to blow. So was the communications post. The lifeboats would be sabotaged. In the shadows of the engine room, he placed the final explosive and set the detonation charge countdown. He smiled as he did so. In five minutes, they would have completed their mission and their names would live on as legends within the cause. In five minutes, Operation Iceberg would be a success. Five minutes, 4:59, 4:58…


Terry's threats, overt and otherwise, ringing in his ears, Danny sat with an untouched plate of food and gave up the way in to the Linson Davis Corporation.

"Not so difficult, now, is it?" Terry raised the glass of red in Danny's direction.

Danny had to look away.

The door opened and Striker walked into the room, round the table and up to Terry, who wiped his mouth on his napkin and raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Mr Ryan will not be any further trouble, Mr Benedict."

Danny wanted to scream at him till he had answers. Where was Rusty? What had he done to him? He settled for digging his nails in his palms as Terry shot him a look that probed for any sign of rebellion.

"Excellent. You hear that, Danny? Now you can keep your mind completely on the task in-"

Three loud bangs in succession shook the room, sending glass and china to the floor.

"What the…?"


Down in the little room with the pipes, Rusty felt the aftermath rock hard through the structure of the ship itself. His thoughts were also around the "What the…" closely followed by a "…fuck…" as one of the pipes – unfortunately not the one he was connected to – split and water started hissing out in a fine spray, coating him.

Some days, the toast landed butter side down.


The three of them hurried out on to deck, teeming with passengers looking for answers that weren't forthcoming. No crew members were in sight.

"Go find out what's happening," Terry instructed and Striker melted away. "Don't worry." This last was to Danny but seemed to be more to himself.

Reuben appeared out of nowhere, walking briskly back through the crowd and Danny headed over to him.

"You know what that was?" Danny asked.

"Explosion," Reuben said succinctly. "According to Arnold on the deck below, the phone masts have gone."

"The…" Danny pulled his phone from his pocket. No signal.

Danny saw Striker returning and pushed his way back through the confusion, Reuben close behind him.

"Communications room has been taken out, Mr Benedict," Striker was saying in a low voice. "The ship is under attack. This has become an unsafe environment."

Another bang thundered through the air and Danny caught Reuben as he lost his footing, keeping him upright. The ship developed a definite list.

"Unsafe?" Terry repeated. "No shit."

"I need to get you to a lifeboat," Striker insisted. "Now, sir."

Reuben's eyebrows shot up. "Lifeboat? It's really that bad?"

Striker fixed him with a polite look that said the question actually merited a roll of the eyes.

"This is planned, sir. And whoever has planned it, means business." He turned his attention back to Terry. "Whoever acts first is going to be among the first to be safe."

"Understood," Terry nodded. "I need to pick up something from the cabin first."

Striker looked as if he'd really rather Terry would just do as he suggested but he nodded.

"Danny?" Terry half-turned his head. "You're with us."

Terry walked away from him, Striker following and Reuben laid a hand on Danny's arm.

"Where's Rusty?"

The question he himself was forbidden from asking cut through the shock and the enforced inactivity. Danny stared at Reuben, his mind focusing into a crystal-clear plan of action.


The water was nothing more than an irritation. No more than a split washer in a cistern would produce. But it was constant and persistent and the room was starting to fill. Negligibly, slowly, but there was water pooling on the floor in inches and it wasn't going anywhere except upwards.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.


Down. It had to be down and far away from anyone. Somewhere that was private, where Rusty could be hidden and contained. Tied up. Gagged probably. Danny's imagination never struggled to conjure up detailed and definite pictures. In his head, Rusty was bound and gagged and blindfolded, stuffed into some tiny crook of the ship, somewhere Terry could find him if he wanted to. Well, he was going to find him first.

The corridors grew less special the lower you went. Below the living quarters, there was little by way of paint and carpet and the décor had definitely moved over to the functional side of aesthetics.

"Sir! Sir! You shouldn't be down here!"

No, he shouldn't. Neither should Rusty. He grabbed the crewman's arm and fixed him with a look of authority that Terry could only dream of.

"I need your help."


The water was still spraying over him, a fine mist of cold water dampening down his hair, making his turquoise shirt cling to him. His pant legs weren't doing any better. The water was over his ankles now and creeping up his shin and for the very first time, Rusty contemplated the fact that he might actually not get out of this.

He could drown. He could drown with a gag in his mouth and handcuffs round his wrists and he could drown.

Jesus, he needed to get out of there.


The man was mad, Perkins decided. Completely and utterly mad. And really, they didn't ought to let him out by himself. Really, they ought to have him locked in a cabin. Or preferably not on board at all. He didn't want to be on board himself at that moment. Those bangs. The whole ship had shuddered.

The man had been insistent.

"Somewhere isolated and quiet. Some place no one would look. Somewhere the crew would have access to."

Some game, probably. Perkins had decided to humour him. The inspection chambers probably qualified. Nothing in there except pipes, really. He'd offered up directions and the man had fixed him with that killer look.

"Take me."

He'd taken him. The first chamber had been empty and then there'd been more ominous creaking and groaning and then Perkins had thought "Sod the madman" and pointed at the second room and fled.

Didn't the man know the ship was in trouble?


Fuck, but the water was cold.

He concentrated on rattling out "S.O.S" on the pipe with the handcuffs. Someone, somewhere might be listening.

Fuck, but the water was cold. Up to his knees now and creeping up his thighs and fuck, but it was cold.

Many ways to die: none of them were that appealing. Images flashed through Rusty's head of the couple of other times when he'd been mostly dead. Mostly dead, he reminded himself. Not like he'd stopped breathing. Not like miracles couldn't happen. Not like the handle on a watertight door couldn't turn.

The handle on the watertight door was turning. Rusty shook his head and blinked the water back out of his eyes and stared harder. The handle was still turning. And then the door opened, the water flooded out and impossibly, incredibly, there was Danny.

Relief shot through him and he saw it reflected in Danny's eyes as they stood and stared at each other. And the relief wasn't just that Danny had found him or that he had been found. It was simply that they were together again. It was like a natural law – like the sun setting in the west or the tides of the sea – and he hadn't realised how wrong it had felt until it felt right again.

Hey.

Hey.

Danny sloshed through the puddled water and untied the gag, pulling it out of Rusty's mouth.

"The wet look really isn't in this season."

"No one told me," Rusty grinned. He looked at Danny, standing in the informal shower, his hair plastered back from his face. "Looks like no one told you either."

Danny's eyes dropped down to Rusty's steel-bound wrists and Rusty felt the cold fury rippling from him.

"Silver bracelets." Rusty rattled them. "Just not the kind I normally go for."

Fingers wrapped themselves around his wrists.

"Let's get these off you," Danny said and his voice was hoarse with the effort of managing the anger inside him. His eyes suddenly lit up. "Wait here."

"I take it that's ironic," Rusty called after him as he disappeared back out of the door. He did a double take as Danny re-entered clutching a fire-axe.

"You have got to be kidding me," Rusty muttered. "Tell me you've used one of those before."

Well…

"That's what I thought. Come over here and let me give you a quick lesson in picking a lock."

The ship shook again.

"No time," Danny said decisively.

"Believe me, there's time," Rusty corrected him. "There's always time."

Trust me.

A long second spent staring into dark eyes.

"Oh, fuck…" Rusty pulled his hands as far apart as he could manage, tightening them into fists, exposing as much of the chain as he could. He didn't actually close his eyes but he couldn't stop himself from twisting his head away, pressing his face against the pipe and bracing himself for the blow.

There was a clang of metal on metal on metal and his hands fell down by his sides. Slowly, he peered back round at a grinning Danny.

"Did you have your eyes closed?" Danny asked, propping the axe up against the wall.

"No," Rusty stepped out of the fine rain spraying over him. He dug in his pocket for the lockpick and worked on the handcuffs. "Did you?"

The grin remained. "That would be telling."

The handcuffs fell to the floor and then he was standing in front of Danny and they needed to move, they had to move, but before they went anywhere, there was something that needed to be said. The look in his eyes made the laughter fall away from Danny's face.

"That must qualify as the most stupid idea in the world."

Danny's eyes flickered. "It worked, didn't-"

"I'm not talking about the axe and you know it." Fierce. Definite.

"I want you safe," Danny told him in a low voice. "I need you to be-"

"I want you to live," Rusty retorted. "Not shackled to Terry - and certainly not because of me!"

He saw the "If there was something I could do, I had to" in Danny's face and Rusty's gaze softened. He nodded in slow acknowledgement.

"I know," he said in a gentler tone. "I know."

Danny's lips curved upwards.


"So what's up with the ship?" Rusty asked as they moved at a fast pace back up through the corridors.

"Explosions. Deliberate explosions," Danny answered. "Communications have gone and phones are down. Think it would be a good idea to get to a lifeboat."

That had been Striker's advice and as much as he disliked what the man did, Danny trusted Striker's survival instincts. They needed to get off the ship.

"If this is deliberate…" Rusty frowned and fell silent for a moment or two.

"If this is deliberate, what?" Danny prompted.

Rusty hesitated and then shrugged. "Let's go and find out."

They emerged on to a crowded deck of panic and instinctively, Danny caught hold of Rusty's arm. He wasn't going to lose him again.

People pushed past them, milling around and there were sobs and fear and confusion surrounding them. That was to be expected, he supposed. But by now, they ought to be getting to their lifeboat stations. This level of chaos was-

"They've taken out the lifeboats," Rusty said and Danny now knew what he hadn't wanted to say earlier.

As he stood, digesting that thought, a large man fell against him and he stumbled. Rusty's hands shot out immediately and grabbed him, keeping him from hitting the deck. Someone else shoved up against Rusty and the two of them were pressed together and hemmed in. They needed to escape this before panic overrode the crowd. He saw the same thought in Rusty's eyes.

Danny put his mouth to Rusty's ear.

"Come on."

Working as one, they manoeuvred their way back off deck and into one of the public seating areas. There were little groups of passengers sitting patiently, uncertainly, anxiously to be told what to do: instructions that would never come. Danny looked at their faces and swallowed.

"Here."

Rusty had found two lifejackets and they pulled them over their heads and secured them.

"This is…" Danny gestured at the situation.

"Yeah," Rusty agreed.

Another shudder ran through the ship, stronger than before.

"This isn't going to end well," Rusty murmured, half to himself.

Danny looked at him. "Think that's an understatement."

Rusty didn't answer. He stood lost in thought.

Rus…?

Then Rusty came back to him and smiled, bright and brilliantly.

"This way."


Rusty was leading them against the flow, back towards the inner corridors and staircases and Danny was a step behind him, at his shoulder and he didn't even ask where they were going. He trusted Rusty.

The conversation was random and the stories were tumbling and Rusty was talking about places he'd been and things he'd done and Danny saw a future of them built on the kaleidoscopic past. His imagination fired, even as they were trying to save themselves, even as they were moving through less populated corridors.

He followed Rusty.

He trusted Rusty to keep them safe and he imagined that Rusty knew some detail about this boat that others didn't. That he didn't. Some detail that was going to keep them safe and get them out of this and that was good because he didn't have any great ideas at this juncture.

No. Rusty knew something. And Rusty would keep them safe. He trusted Rusty.

And that…as they emerged on a private side deck that contained no panic and no dismay and a group of elite passengers and a lifeboat that looked functional enough to be launched, that was about to be launched…that was his mistake.

Somewhere, faintly, he heard Rusty saying, "Times like these, money survives."

"Danny." (And was that actually relief he was hearing in Terry's voice?) "We wondered where you'd got to."

Disbelief. Rich and running through him and the future, the impossible, wonderful future, turned to dust in a moment. Danny stared past Terry and Striker at the lifeboat full of wealthy faces. The cattle baron and Andrew Lee at the back of the boat and standing near Andrew, Willy Bank who smiled thinly when he saw them.

Them.

Danny turned his head and looked at Rusty.

"Why?" Whispered soft betrayal.

"I want you safe," Rusty said in a low voice.

"Well, I want you to live!" Danny snapped back. He started to head back the way they'd come and Rusty instantly blocked his path.

"Rus-!"

"Danny."

Rusty's eyes drifted over his shoulder and back again and before Danny realised the ask for what it was, Terry was there and Striker's hands were on Danny's arms.

"We go together," Danny said urgently. "We both leave-"

A shake of a head and a smile. "There isn't-"

"-room," Terry finished. "Striker, he wasn't supposed to be so easy to find. I'm officially disappointed." He shoved Rusty back a step. "Though I have to say, Ryan, you must be one hell of a fuck."

Rusty stepped back into Terry's personal space, face to face and toe to toe. "Well, you're never going to know."

Terry bared his teeth. "Since we're about to part company permanently, I'd have to say you're right."

"We got an understanding here?" Rusty asked.

"I'd say so."

"I wouldn't!" Danny interjected.

They both ignored him.

"Look after him," Rusty instructed, patting the front of Terry's jacket.

"Oh, I will-"

"You will." Danny glimpsed ice blue ferocity. "Or I will find you."

There was a ripple of unease in Terry's face and then it disappeared. "You're not getting off this ship, Ryan. I don't think you're in a position to make demands."

Rusty stepped back round in front of Danny and Danny had to try again. Had to. Had to get Rusty to undo what he'd done. He willed Rusty with his eyes to understand what he wanted to say.

Rusty had his own words. Danny read "Sorry" and "If there was another way" and "Good-"

"No!" Danny said at once and the desperation was taking on an identity of its own. "Never!"

With an impulsive gesture, Rusty caught his face in between his hands and kissed him briefly and fiercely on the lips.

"Be all you can be," Rusty told him and it was another way of saying goodbye and Danny hated the very idea.

"Rusty-"

"Gentlemen, the first lifeboat has rowed clear," one of the crew said. "We can launch."

"Danny, we need to get on this boat," Terry declared and he was being dragged backwards and however much he struggled in Striker's grip, nothing was happening and he was on the damn lifeboat and the crew were casting off and every second, every moment was taking him away from Rusty.

He stared at Rusty leaning against the railing of the ship and all Danny could say, over and over, was No…No… and all that he had coming back to him was amused acceptance and acknowledgement. Everything was narrowed down to a world of two.


The Heart of the Ocean sitting in his pants pocket (and he wished he could be there when Terry found out about that little reappropriation), Rusty watched the lifeboat swing out over the water. His eyes were locked on Danny's because if this was going to be the last he ever saw of the man, then he wanted… Rusty swallowed. This probably was going to be the last he ever saw of the man.

Live, he told Danny silently. Live for both of us.