A/N - just a smidge of housekeeping- this was originally supposed to be a one-shot. Then I realized I can't leave well enough alone and it's turning into a series. Thing is, the FC5 fandom on here is practically nonexistent, and I'd rather not inflate the entire category with a whole bunch of my stories posted on their own, and this series will all fit under the whole umbrella of Fraternization, so the plan is to just keep posting chapters to this story, even though it will be divided into sub-sections that are arcs in their own right, all contributing to an overall story arc. It'll be chronological and (hopefully) organized, the main thing you need to know if you're here and you're interested is that there may be gaps of time between these sub-sections as I write the next one. AO3 features a more focused FC5 fandom and better organization and my profile there will definitely be the home base for this series but I didn't want to just not post material here if I have it. If you're cool with all that, then welcome to part 2!

Hunting Party

1.

Maybe it won't end up mattering that I made out with my nemesis.

"I ain't sure we should go in here," says Hurk doubtfully as they stand on the hill overlooking the distant, currently-Peggy-run Hot Springs Hotel. "See, Limp Dick Larry—so called on account a' the time he got his pecker caught in a car door, and now it don't work too good, I mean, that's what I hear, I ain't seen it in action of course—well he told me he brought a girl up here, presumably before the pecker incident, and he saw some weird shit, like—"

He seemed eager to move right past it, so that means he probably won't tell anybody, and if he doesn't tell anybody, and I don't tell anybody, and nothing changes like he said, then there's no reason to regret it, right?

"—lamps lifting off the shelves, blood drippin' from the windowpanes, some ghost girl with long black hair coverin' her face, though man I tell you I don't think I believe that last one, I think he's just been watching too many of them yurei movies—"

And the fact that I've been thinking about it nonstop for a full week is totally normal after doing some good kissing. Doesn't mean jack. Really, the worst thing about it is that I can't tell Sharky that I won the bet.

"—but even if he's only kinda tellin' the truth, I don't feel great about this place, you know, I'm not too good with ghosts. When I was ten we had a ghost, it used to come scratching at my window at night, scared the piss outta me. One night my daddy got tired of me talking about it and locked me outside with nothin' but my BB gun, I swear to you I thought I was gonna die, but that ghost never did show up. Shot some raccoons trying to get into the trash cans, though."

One thing I'm not going to do is be that dumbass that pines for a total and complete asshole of a man.

"Popo?" Sharky's voice cuts through Hurk's rambling. "You, uh… you all right there?"

His tone is uncharacteristically tentative. It's enough to jar Rook from her circular mental wallowing, and she turns to Sharky, flashing a bright, reflexive grin. "Peachy keen. Why, don't I look all right?"

Sharky says, "Uh." Hurk, in an unusual moment of perception, slowly turns away from them both, clearly wishing he was somewhere else.

Rook narrows her eyes. "Okay, spit it out."

Sharky glances at Hurk for help, but when his cousin proves useless on that front, Rook can practically see him think fuck it. "You've been acting a little weird lately, is all. Been real quiet for a week, at least. That's not like you."

Well, shit. He's right, of course—she's been a little bit fucky ever since she came back from the Whitetail Mountains last week with a fresh gash in her forehead and a lot to try to avoid thinking about. (Try being the operative word.) She's noticed herself completely disappearing down trails of thought lately, and granted, they're not all about whateverthefuck happened up there with Jacob Seed, but the ones involving the other Seed siblings or the captured deputies are no less gripping.

They're at the start of the second month of this little civil war, and the more familiar Rook grows with the county's inhabitants, the more she feels the little ball of dread in the pit of her stomach swell. The paths to any good (or even just decent) ending she can imagine are closing off, one by one, as things continue to escalate. Thinking about it makes her feel panic in her chest, straining to get loose. She spends a lot of time not thinking about it.

(This means she spends more time thinking about Jacob instead. It's lose/lose situation, but not much else stands a chance of holding her attention in spare moments.)

"See? See right there? S'exactly what I'm talking about." Sharky's voice jars her, and she flinches. Shit, she's been doing it again. It must be really bad if Sharky is noticing it; she'd always thought of Hurk and Sharky as the guys you hang out with when you don't want anyone asking why you're acting strange. She's been hanging out with them a lot lately.

"I'm not trying to be nosy or nothing," he continues, "but someone's gotta say it: it's fuckin' odd, you being so spacey. Did something happen, or—?"

Shit, she thinks again. Threat level midnight. Damage control!

"Nothing ever happens to me. I have the most boring life imaginable."

"Okay. Well, that's obviously bullshit, so—"

"He's right," Hurk chimes in, his back still half-turned, and Rook turns her attention to him, her smile sharpening into something close to a threat. Hurk eyes her, a little wary, but doesn't back down. "Well, shit, man, you come from ol' Jacob's area, fresh lump on your noggin, real quiet, and we're supposed to act like we don't notice? Shit goes on up there."

"Y'all worried I'm gonna snap and kill you both?" Rook asks, saying it like it's a joke to hide the fact that that's exactly what she's afraid of.

"Hell no. We can take you," Hurk says, hefting his RPG confidently.

Rook laughs, immediately feeling better, and the slight tension that has sprung up between the three of them vanishes, just like that. "I don't know, dudes. Shit just gets heavy sometimes. Hanging out with the two of you usually helps me not think about it, but it creeps in now and again. You know?"

The two are unusually silent for a moment. Sharky rubs the back of his neck, and Rook suddenly feels awful. It's not fair to lay her angst on them—they've got their own issues to deal with; this is their home that's being taken and twisted, not hers, and anything she's dealing with pales in comparison to that. Before she can say anything, try to apologize for being self-centered, Hurk asks hesitantly, "Will blowin' shit up help?"

She doesn't know if it'll help her, but it'll probably help them, so gamely, she puts on a grin. "Only one way to find out, right?" she replies, and then she charges him.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he says, alarmed, but she ignores him. A second before impact, she sees his eyes widen in the understanding that she isn't going to stop, and he barely gets his back turned in time before she jumps on him.

"Carry me, Hurk, I'm tired," she whines as she clambers up his shoulders, pinning her knees to his sides and wrapping her arms around his neck.

"Well, dang, man, I'm tired, too," grouses Hurk, but nonetheless, he shifts the RPG to one arm and uses the other to circle her thigh, securing her in place, and he starts off towards the car down the hill. (Hurk doesn't necessarily look like it, and he definitely doesn't act like he knows it, but he's quite possibly the physically strongest person Rook's ever met. Case in point: she's not a small woman, just a hair shy of six feet—of a height with John Seed, as a matter of fact—and she's not skinny for her height, either, despite what Jacob Seed says, but Hurk barely seems to notice the extra weight, despite his complaints.) "Come on," he says, "let's go wreck some Peggies' days."

Sharky follows them with a staccato little "Fuck, yeah."

She manages to keep her mind on her friends for the rest of the day. They take the hotel from the cult as the sun sets, and in the aftermath, before members of the Resistance arrive to take it over, they scare the shit out of each in a search of the building that gradually turns into a game of hide and seek. (More like hide and scare, given that it consists mostly of them scurrying around to nooks and crannies and popping out at the nearest unassuming body, a dangerous game for people as heavily armed as they are—a game that ends when Sharky briefly sets the hotel on fire in reaction to a particularly shitty move on Hurk's part, wherein Hurk had crept out from behind the shower curtain while Sharky was just trying to rock a piss.)

Sharky suggests 8-Bit afterwards, but Rook begs off, claiming to be worn out. She giggles a little at the sight of them piled onto an ATV together, waves in response to Sharky's extended arm as they take off, then they turn a corner and she lets her hand fall and feels the warmth that comes with being around them ebb away, fast. Figures.

She needs to put this Jacob shit to bed before it gets her in trouble.

She sighs, orients herself facing northwest, and hikes towards the McCoy cabin, which she'd cleaned up some and has been using as a place to sleep and eat when she finds herself in the Henbane overnight. (Adelaide has repeatedly told her she's welcome to stay at the marina whenever she likes, but—"Addy, that's a sweet offer, but your walls are like tissue paper, so no.")

Why? he had asked her, as in why the fuck do you like me, and she'd basically told him she didn't know, which wasn't really true. She'd been thinking about it so much since they'd met that she'd reached some sort of understanding by then, though it wasn't exactly a logical one—but Jacob had been so thrown off his game by her admission that she was into him at all that he hadn't seemed to have the focus to press for a real answer.

Part of it is all in her head. There are dozens if not hundreds of copies of Joseph's little gospel scattered around the county; Rook, a big believer in knowing her enemy, had picked one up at the first opportunity. It took no time at all to read, and just like that, she had the Seed brothers' background—from an unreliable narrator, to be sure, but the more she gets to know the men, the more she believes what the book said. At the very least, she believes that Joseph believes the story.

That puts her at a disadvantage, because now she knows about the grind these three men have been through—combined with what Faith has already told her about her past, that makes the whole family who've had shitty lives—and while she knows and believes that having a tragic backstory doesn't justify spending one's life giving other people tragic backstories, it still changes the way she thinks about the Seeds.

Jacob, in particular, stands out to her, like a rough edge that refuses to be smoothed away—not because she thinks the others have fewer demons, but because of the way Jacob reacts to his. The others use the shit they've been through to make themselves look more sympathetic (to some effect, she admits—even as she's furious at all the Seeds for the shit they've done to the people in the county, even as she counters them wherever she possibly can, she's also sad for them all in a bone-deep way that she carries around with her constantly), whereas Jacob uses the horror he's been through to make himself more alien, more inaccessible, distancing himself from anything approaching humanity.

It's foolish and self-indulgent, she knows, but she can't seem to stop herself from thinking about his shit-show of a life, speculating about his time after being abandoned by the army, homeless and anchorless, and how he developed his worldview, trying to make him make sense. She knows she's projecting her imagination onto him, seeing things that likely don't exist, but knowing that doesn't help her stop doing it, or feel less of that weird little ache in her chest when she thinks about him for a bit too long. It makes her want to be more open with him instead of less, to try to pull similar humanity from him, a stubborn impulse: look, see? We're not just meat. That line of thought has already made her feel more emotionally attached than is wise.

As far as the physical attraction—well, the man's a big strong redhead with killer bone structure, a soft voice that gives her the good kind of chills, and those pretty blue eyes all the biological Seeds share, and she's always appreciated the distinction scars give a person, so of course she's into all that. Moreover, she suspects it's her brain's way of coping with the fact that she's kind of scared shitless of him, interpreting that electric little thrill that shoots down her spine whenever he's around as a good feeling instead of a bad one.

(She's not even scared she'll lose to him, because she's pretty confident at this point that she and her crew can handle whatever the Seeds throw at them. Instead, she's scared of how he always seems to know where she is and what she's doing whenever she's in his area, worried by how quickly and easily he can have her brought to him if he wants to, by how capable he's proven at messing around in her head. She's afraid he's going to fuck her up permanently. She's afraid he already has.)

She's also still a little suspicious that these feelings for him were initially planted in his little fucking brainwashing sessions. Unintentionally, she's pretty sure—looking at him when she confronted him with it, she determined that he previously had no idea that she feels the way she does about him—but the song he's chosen for whatever the hell he's doing is indisputably a romantic one, and she thinks maybe, maybe the tone of it had seeped into her subconscious and set her on this path to begin with.

Doesn't help that it turns out he's good with his mouth. And his hands. God, all they'd done was kiss and she still can't think about it too long without getting a little lightheaded. It's ridiculous.

It all adds up to the perfect recipe for an ill-advised crush, which is… whatever, shit happens and bodies and brains don't play by the rules if they can help it, but then she'd had to go and fucking admit it to him. Granted, she'd taken a lead pipe to the forehead about ten minutes before he'd emerged from the woods; it had definitely split her eyebrow open like a ripe tomato, but more than that, she's thinking it was the thing that scrambled her brains to the point where she thought that confessing was a good idea.

At the time, she'd thought telling him was the best option, because he'd either a.) try to use the crush to manipulate her, a shitheel move that had a good chance of killing said crush outright, or b.) get really freaked out and start avoiding her. She hadn't considered the possibility that he might, on some level, reciprocate, and hadn't imagined that he'd act on that reciprocity—or at least, that he would allow her to act on it. She's supposed to be the reckless one; he's the measured, controlled guy, the one who never says a word or makes a move until he's carefully considered every available option.

Then again, she thinks as she crests a hill and spots the cabin through the trees, trying to maintain that level of control all the time has got to be exhausting. It's not surprising that he'd slip up eventually.

And so what if that slip-up had led to a brief make-out session that, okay, had probably seemed more intense to Rook than it actually was due to the aforementioned head injury? Hope County is basically a pressure cooker at the moment, it would have been a foolish move to let weird shit keep accumulating in her head, much better to just kiss the man and get it out of her system, so that's what she'd done.

Except it's not out of her system. She can't stop thinking about it. It's getting annoying.

She wonders if Jacob's experiencing a similar fixation. Probably not: she'd seen the look in his eyes after he'd nearly dropped her on her ass, and it scanned as outright loathing. (She hadn't thought she was that bad at kissing, but folks had all kinds of different strokes, so who was she to say?) He'd been so eager to get her out of his sight he hadn't even taken her to task for that openly mocking little salute. He'd let her call him Buttercup. He must have been fucking traumatized to let her get away with that without swift and merciless retaliation.

She stomps her way up the steps to the cabin and bellows "WHO'S A GOOD BOY" at Boomer, who's standing on the porch waiting for her, tail wagging ferociously. She grabs his front paws when he goes to jump up on her, kisses him on the top of his head, then drops him down and heads inside.

Jacob has made it clear—twice now—that he's not interested in pursuing anything else with her, and she'll respect that. She can't force herself to just move on, she knows that, but she is resolved on one point: she will not let the incident between them make her change her behavior towards him. She's not going to avoid him, and she's also not going to be weird about what happened, because she doesn't need to give him another weapon to add to his arsenal of contempt for her, and she is not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he's gotten under her skin. As far as Jacob needs to know, she hasn't given their little encounter a second thought. Full stop.

If she wasn't in the Henbane region, where the Bliss in the water is much more concentrated than it is in the other areas of the county, and if she wasn't so beat, she might go fishing to get something for dinner—she's getting really good at cleaning and cooking fresh fish—but she ends up settling for a can of chili heated over the stove, which actually isn't too bad once she makes use of the spice cabinet to kick it up with some cumin, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper. She wolfs it down, realizing a little late that she hasn't eaten all day (and her week in Jacob's fucking cage still lurks at the corners of her mind, making her a little panicky when she's hungry now, which isn't ideal, given that she's so busy these days that she often doesn't remember to eat until she's already feeling the pain of it). She downs a can of fruit cocktail for dessert, a little more slowly now that she's starting to feel sated, then showers away the smoke and the stink of the day and heads for bed.

She sleeps hard and dreams. When she wakes, all she remembers of it is the vision of Jacob visiting her where she lay, sinking impossibly sharp teeth into her collarbone, and the blood running fast and heavily from the bite wound, soaking bright red into the sheets underneath her.

The next day, Jacob makes a move.

"They just took the fuckin' lumber mill back," Jess hisses over the radio, spitting mad. "Just walked in and took it. We musta killed thirty of 'em and didn't even make a dent. Should've stood our ground, but…"

"Yeah, I know," Rook says, making sure that her tone is almost flippant, because Jess won't tolerate outright sympathy, even when it's fully warranted. "Memory of those cages hitting a little too close to home still, right?"

Jess snarls a little laugh by way of agreement. "Oh, and you'll never guess who headed the assault."

"Hit me."

"Jacob fucken Seed himself."

Rook's heart does a weird little stutter, something that feels like fear. "Really."

"Hand to God. Saw that ugly Freddie Kruger mug of his in the woods a second before the bullets started flyin'. He doesn't usually leave his little fortress up in the mountains; I wonder what's so important that he's gotta come see to it himself."

"Who knows what he's up to. I swear he's not a man, he's twenty power moves in a trench coat. Is he still there?"

"Dunno. Didn't see him leave."

Rook sighs, feeling suddenly weary. "All right. I'll head up there within the hour, okay?"

"Don't try and do it yourself," Jess says fiercely. "Swing by the FANG Center; that's where we all are. Get some backup."

"I will," Rook promises. "Don't worry."

"Ain't worried."

"Well, good, then. Over and out."

Of course, given that she's heading up from the Henbane, Rook has a hard time keeping her word. She runs into the lumber mill well before she's anywhere near the FANG Center, and given that she's basically passing right by… well. She's got Boomer with her, and decides she might as well do a little recon before going on—check out the defenses at the mill, form a strategy before she goes in properly.

The place is better-equipped now than it was the first time she took it from the Peggies. More people, an extra alarm. She knows she should stay outside of the boundary, head on up to Jess and get some help before moving in, but sneaking around a Peggy outpost undetected is one of her favorite kinds of rush, and the temptation to do it now is powerful. She argues with herself for less than a minute before telling Boomer to stay and moving in.

She knows the layout of the mill from last time. She sneaks behind a cult guy near the big wooden crate under the open window, climbs up in near silence, and enters the building.

She can hear men talking, moving throughout the building, and she creeps along the rooms and narrow hallways, trying to figure out guard rotations, gather information that'll help her when she comes back to take this place for real.

It's all going smoothly until she turns a corner and runs into a solid pair of legs.

There's a second of pure fear as the legs stumble back a bit, then she looks up and sees Jacob Seed's face, and the fear spikes, and it's thrilling.

Jacob is looking down at her, his face twisted in an awful frown, and true to character, she says something ill-advised: "Is that a holster on your leg, or are you just—shit, I'm not supposed to say stuff like that to you anymore, am I."

He freezes, and for a second she thinks it's because she's once again stepped over the line, but then she hears what he hears: clomping boots, footsteps drawing nearer. Shit, time to get thrown to the wolves again, she thinks, but even as she turns back to Jacob, preparing to put up a fight that will doubtless prove futile, he's grabbing her by the shoulders, fingers digging in painfully as he hauls her upright. "You f—" she starts, ready to at least give him an earful, but he slaps a heavy hand over her mouth and pushes into her, forcing her to back up reflexively, and he keeps coming, hustling her back through a nearby doorway. Then, with almost insulting efficiency, he puts an arm around her waist and flips her around so that her back is pressed against the wall next to the doorway.

His arm leaves her waist long enough for him to silently grip the open door and pull it around so it'll shield them from view, then he braces his forearm against her collarbone and leans into it, ensuring that she's not able to go anywhere.

Rook's spent a good month keeping her panic at bay. Every time it threatens to eat her up, she's lashed it back, tied it away in some dark unused part of her mind, all the while knowing that she'll have to reckon with it someday. Jacob's body pressing hers into the wall and his hand on her mouth make it hard to breathe, and she's not sure what he's doing and what his intentions are, and she's suddenly excruciatingly aware that she can't really move, and the tethers keeping her panic held back just… snap.

She starts squirming—he's holding her so tightly that there's very little wiggle room, but dead-weighting him works a little bit, buys her some room as she slides an inch down the wall—and makes a choked little noise against the press of his hand. He's too close for her to see much but his neck, which doesn't help matters, and quiet words reach her ears—"Shut up. Hold still"—but he may as well be speaking Aramaic for all the sense he's making to her right now. Belatedly, she realizes he's left her hands free; she makes a fist and punches him hard in the ribs, twice in rapid succession.

He lets out a low, muffled grunt, pain or surprise, and the arm pinning her to the wall drops; he catches her fist just as she attempts to get a third hit in. Making use of the surge of adrenaline, she throws her shoulders forward into him—have to get free—and actually knocks him a step back. Her back's away from the wall and her struggles get more ferocious as she senses that freedom is in sight, but she can't extract herself from his grip. After taking a second to adjust and regain his balance, he moves against her again, pushing her back into the wall, winding her a bit, and if she was having a hard time breathing before…

She's still got one hand free, and as an almost inaudible little whimper of distress trickles out of her, she paws blindly at his throat, trying to get to his face. He lifts his chin, moving his eyes out of her reach, and she sinks her fingers into his beard, feeling hair and flesh accumulate under her nails as she gouges short lines into his jaw, thinking little beyond escape escape can't breathe can't breathe escape.

The pressure on her lessens, and he sidesteps. She makes an immediate bid for freedom, lurching in the opposite direction, but he yanks her back with the hand still clasped around her face and twists them both around. His back settles against the wall, he pulls her to him with her back to him, catching both her wrists in one big hand and crushing them against her chest. Even though he's close enough now that his beard scratches the shell of her ear, she can barely hear his voice when he says "Stop. Breathe. Calm the fuck down."

Despite the fact that he's still got her restrained, she's not trapped between him and the wall anymore, and it… helps, her heart still hammering, the panic still buzzing in her head, but not quite so all-consuming. The words actually make it through to her, she finally manages to suck in a deep breath through her nose, and the relief of it almost knocks her out. The more she breathes, the calmer she gets, and he catches on to that, saying in that same almost-inaudible tone, "Good. Keep at it. Stay calm."

Between the open air on her face and his encouragement, she regains herself, slowly, and starts tuning back in—she hears voices, loud, not far from the open door. Peggies, having a conversation, evidently still unaware of who's holed up in the room a ways beyond, despite their brief struggle.

It's okay. I'm all right, she thinks—Jacob's insistence on being quiet still makes no sense, she can't think of any conceivable reason he might want to keep her hidden from his people, but it's in her best interest to cooperate regardless. As her heartbeat slows she tries tentatively to pull a hand free from his grasp, but he just tightens his grip.

Well, all right, then. She relaxes, since there's little else to do, and waits it out. He smells sweet like gun oil and bitter like smoke, and he's rigid at her back, breathing so quietly that she feels it in the motion of his chest more than hears it, and he waits, waits till the men pass by and the sound of their voices disappears. Then, slowly, he lets her go, freeing her hands first, then, when she doesn't go berserk on him again, he lifts his hand away from her mouth.

She steps away in silence, turns around so she can see him. He takes the door, twisting the knob so he can close it without a sound. As soon as it's shut, she hisses, "Why wouldn't you do that to begin with?"

"They were too close. They would've noticed the door shutting right in front of them. What the hell was that?"

Oh. Shit. She doesn't want to talk about this. She ducks her head, checks her knife, pulling it from its sheath like it might have gone somewhere since she last thought about it, then sliding it back in abruptly. "Nothing. What? Nothing."

"Really. Cause it looked like claustrophobia."

"Oh, so you already know—good that you're wasting time asking, then."

"That a recent development?"

"Why, you want to add it to the torture rotation?" He says nothing, just waits, and she sighs, exasperated. "No. It's long-term. Has to do with having no breathing room and knowing I can't get away if I want to. It's not even an issue most of the time, obviously I'm all right in choppers, cages, whatever, but… I don't know. I didn't know what you were doing, you scared me, it flared up. So don't pull that shit again."

"Don't make me, then."

She puts up a hand, palm to the ceiling, are you fucking serious, and he scoffs a little bit. She turns, glances around the room—it's windowless and dark, mostly, lit just by the blue light of a computer screen. She hops up to sit on the computer desk facing Jacob, willing herself to come off as casual as she wants to, despite the fact that none of this feels casual and her heart is still racing a little.

"So what is this about?" she asks, and when he just glances at her briefly, she mugs back at him, pulling an exaggeratedly clueless face. "Wouldn't exactly hurt you if your men found me, so why bother to hide me from them? I'm tryin' to figure out a reason, but I can't."

"If they found you, they'd kill you. Or you'd kill them. Neither serves our purpose."

"Kay, so what now? You knock me out and lock me in a cage again?"

"No. It's not time for that."

She's determined not to let him see her relief at his answer, needling at him a little in order to cover it up. "Because Joseph says so?"

"Because I say so."

She lets out a derisive little hiss. "So, what, you're just gonna let me go?"

"Maybe. If you can get outta here without drawing attention—or killing anyone."

"Hey, this was just a recon mission to start with," she says, planting her hands on the desk on either side of her. "I was never going to kill anyone."

"Yeah, well, that's a first."

"I'd've thought you'd be happy. Cull the herd, isn't that the little mantra you never give a fucking rest? If your people are weak enough for me to take them down, don't they deserve it?"

He grunts, doesn't bother giving her a real answer, and it gives her a chance to catch herself. Stop picking a fight with a guy who's got at least four inches and fifty pounds on you, at least while you're trapped in a room alone with him. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to be paying much attention to her. He stands by the door, head cocked a bit—listening, she thinks, making sure the coast stays clear, and in the blue light she can see something dark and wet shining in his beard.

Oh. She sighs, runs a hand through her hair, and says, "Shit. I'm sorry."

He looks sideways at her like she's just said something crazy, an unspoken question in his expression. By way of reply, she just lifts her hand, points at his bloodied jaw. He reaches up, touches the scratches like he hasn't even noticed them, eyes his fingertips. "S'fine," he says, turning back to the door.

"I wasn't thinking. Didn't really process that I was hurting you."

"You didn't. It's fine."

She realizes that he's barely met her gaze since he let her go. Sure, it's not uncommon for him to hardly acknowledge her when they're in the same space, but before this it's always been part of whatever his training, brainwashing thing is, a demonstration that he's above her, that she's not someone he feels he has to worry about, that he's in control. This doesn't fall under that. The vibes are different, weirder. She narrows her eyes and, testing him, says, "Hey. Jacob."

If he keeps avoiding eye contact now, it'll be obvious that he's trying to, and he's not the kind of guy to shy away from a challenge. He meets her, stare for stare, and says, "What."

She just watches him for a few seconds, trying to get a read on him, to interpret the weirdness. His face is twisted a little in something that she suspects is hatred, and it stings, and she feels like a fool for letting it. She doesn't want him to hate her, especially since she suspects that this is more personal than the sort of default hatred he seems to feel for the average person, but what the hell can she do about it? She's already taken her shot, and it didn't end well. She needs to let this go before she does something else stupid, jeopardizes herself and the whole Resistance by playing with fire despite the clear warning signs.

To that end, she flings herself suddenly to her feet, seeing his eyes sharpen attentively, tracking her every move. "Okay, well," she says, and heads towards the door, "if we're done here—"

Jacob reaches out before she can grab the doorknob, snags her by the elbow, jerks her bodily into him. She moves reflexively, bracing her hands against his chest in an effort to fend off the perceived attack, but an instant later, his mouth is on hers and she realized that she has badly misread the situation.

Oh. Oh shit. Well, yeah. She immediately stops pushing at him, instead lifting her hands to either side of his neck, pulling him nearer. He backs her into the wall again, but it's different this time, no less dangerous, but in a different way. His hands fit against her ribcage, just below her breasts, fingers pressing hard enough into her that it hurts a bit, and she moans, quietly, into his mouth, the pain of his rough touch only contributing to the already-flowing adrenaline going straight to her head.

He kisses her hard, like he's angry and taking it out on her, and with the warm slick of his tongue moving in her mouth her knees are suddenly weak and her hands slip down to his shoulders, using them to do a better job staying upright. Well, she thinks dizzily, so much for this never happening again.

Once it's evident that she's not trying to pull away, he slows some. The pressure of his fingers lessens until his hands are just pressed up against her rather than actively gripping her, hot through her shirt. They don't wander, and she's not sure if she's relieved that he's not pushing her for more or if she wishes he would. For a second, she hates him, for willfully being a monster, for helping the cult advance their bullshit, because this—like the time before it, this is good, and it's also totally unsustainable.

His radio crackles. "Jacob, you on?"

Jacob pulls away from her, but his hands don't leave her. He stares at her, the computer light casting an almost eerie glow to his eyes, as his subordinate goes on: "Heller's here with a new batch of potential Judges. Said you wanted to look at them personally before sending them on to the labs, can you confirm?"

Jacob leans forward abruptly, nips at the soft spot beneath her ear—startled, she gasps, fingers twisting into the edge of his jacket, completely undecided as to whether to pull him closer or push him away—then he leans back, drops one hand to pick up his radio, still keeping her pinned to the wall with the other. "Yeah, confirmed. The recruiters've been slacking lately." How can he sound so normal? Rook wonders. If she tried to talk right now she'd be a mess of stammering and botched syllables. "Last batch had three unsuitable candidates. Let 'em in, I'll be down in a minute."

"Ten-four."

Jacob puts his radio away, and the blatant reminder of what he does, what he's doing… it should repulse Rook, and on some level it does, but she can't seem to make herself push him away; the closest she gets is placing her hand on his bare forearm, feeling the silken knots of scar tissue slide beneath her fingertips as he moves. He seems in no hurry to go very far, either, standing very close with his head bowed over her—she can't force herself to look up and meet his eyes, staring instead at the dogtags hanging at his chest—and she hisses like he's hurt her when he slips his hand beneath her shirt, his warm, rough palm coming to rest against her navel.

"Maybe I should take you now," he says, and his tone would be unbearably casual if not for the bit of gravel at the bottom of his voice that belies it. She's pretty sure he's just sounding out the thought, that there are no teeth behind the implicit threat, but still, she feels goosebumps forming along her arms, shudders in reaction to the creeping prickle at the back of her neck. She's very afraid, and very turned-on.

"That strike you as a good idea?" he prods, hunting for even more of a reaction. She still doesn't really trust herself to speak, and he's not very patient—he gives her just a few seconds before leaning in to speak directly into her ear, and her eyes slide shut in an unconscious reaction to the slow, pleasant growl of his voice. "You know… it's not desertion if you don't really have a choice. I could take you, one last time, and just… not let you go again. Hmm? Your conscience wouldn't have a goddamn thing on you that way."

Well, that is… quite a fucking proposal.

Of course, she's ninety percent sure he's fucking with her, doesn't mean a word he's saying, but on the off-chance he's not… sure, the suggestion scratches portions of her id, specifically the parts that are very interested in fucking Jacob six ways to Sunday, parts that are more than a little whiny that she realistically will never get to indulge them, but they don't stand a chance at getting her to agree to this weird-ass kidnapping arrangement Jacob appears to be offering. There's too much else. There are people she loves. There's her own stubborn pride, completely unwilling to give up the fight before she's won it. She's not going to cast that all aside just because some man she's foolishly into—her enemy—is tempting her.

She's not going to say no outright, though, because her instincts are warning her that even if he's being totally insincere, she's still in danger, that she risks having the rug ripped out from under her if she doesn't tread carefully. Instead, she counters with an offer she's pretty sure he'll find as unsatisfactory as the one he just made her. "Desertion, huh?" she says softly. "There's an idea. Let's do that. I leave my people, you leave yours, we abandon this whole thing and get the fuck out of this county. It's fair that way. We both give something up."

She feels the warmth of his breath on her ear, hears the scornful little hiss of laughter before he leans back and looks down at her, and she meets his eye, suddenly convinced that if she shows him weakness now, he will lunge at it. "Ahh, you're full of shit."

Knew it. A man like Jacob is always testing people; she isn't at all surprised to find that all this has been just another one, designed to prove some point of his. Of course, just what that point is, she's not sure, so she asks, "I'm sorry?"

"You've got no intentions of taking off with me. Whatever this is—" his hand slides out from under her shirt so he can gesture between the two of them, leaving a sudden feeling of being bereft that she does a good job of ignoring—"for you, you know damn well it's got an expiration date. The novelty of it—of being with a man twice your goddamn age, or someone who can overpower you, or someone who looks like they ran afoul of a woodchipper, whatever it is that's got you sniffing around—it's gonna wear off, sooner or later, and you've got no intentions of being stuck with me once that happens, do you, darlin'?"

Huh. She drops her gaze, frowning thoughtfully.

Her immediate reflex is to be mad at him for the bullshit implication that he's some sort of sideshow attraction because he's got scars, but that impulse is swallowed up fast by an abrupt sense of understanding. She doesn't know if he knows just how much about himself he's just revealed to her, but it's more than she's ever gotten from him before.

First, all that talk about her not wanting to get stuck, about an expiration date—it tells her that his default is to think long-term, which is interesting, because she'd never thought he'd want more from her than a fling, if it turned out that he wanted anything at all. She can't afford to read too much into it, but… there are more obvious reasons that something between them won't work than you don't actually, truly like me, so the fact that he's raising that as a primary objection to her interest? There's an implication there, an unspoken but I would be more open to all this if I believed you did.

Second—and this one is a bit of a doozy, considering how their professional relationship has basically broken down to him demeaning her, telling her she's not good enough—but the talk about him being so much older, the reference to his looks… it tells her he doesn't think he's good enough for her, at least as a romantic partner. She already knows he's got a bit of a complex, his nihilistic worldview of we are all meat conflicting with his determination that he is one of the strong, that he's useful, that he's enlightened, but really? Even that usefulness he sees in himself is predicated on his intentional lack of humanity, and if he sees himself as inhuman and ultimately insignificant, he's going to have a hard time seeing himself as desirable, especially by someone young and hale and moderately functional. Given that and their state of enmity, it makes sense that he thinks this is just a hate-crush, about as solid as smoke.

Which—even if that was the case, it shouldn't matter to him. They're enemies. He shouldn't care what she thinks about him, or for what reason. The antagonistic, nearly angry tone he's taking makes her think that on some level, maybe one he doesn't even know about yet, he does.

She doesn't want him to catch on to her train of thought, doesn't want him to get the opportunity to pull back, to overcorrect, so she takes a sideways approach to getting him where she wants him. Again, he's not the type of man to shy away from a challenge, so she tightens her grip on the edge of his jacket and says, slowly, "Okay. Let's just say, for the sake of discussion, that you're not wrong about any of that."

He raises a cool eyebrow, waiting to see where this is headed.

"Is that a dealbreaker? You done with me, with this?"

He stares at her, silent, for what feels like a long time after that. She gets the impression that he'd anticipated some pushback, an argument, and isn't totally sure what to do since she's offering him none. Then, his eyes narrow in distinct amusement, and he shrugs a little. "Nah. So long as we both know where we're coming from, I'm game to come along for the ride."

Okay, she thinks. I can work with this.

She lets him think that he's got this in hand, that he knows what she's thinking. She needs to regroup, anyway. He doesn't know it, but he's just fired up the contrariness in her nature that frequently proves one of her most powerful motivators, has just scrawled something on her to-do list for her, at the top, in permanent marker: drag Jacob Seed out of this cult, kicking and screaming if necessary, just to show him beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm not fucking around with him.

He lifts his hand from her, finally, and she carefully steps sideways, looking furtively at him to see if he plans on stopping her. He just watches, a smile in his eyes, confident and calm, and she knows she should catch the little grin she feels growing on her face before it gets too big and tips her hand, but God, this is going to be fun. He sees it, narrows his eyes, a little suspicious but unthreatened, and she knows she needs to wrap this up before she starts laughing from the sudden sharp, giddy rush and really betrays her train of thought.

She points a pair of finger guns at him and says, "You need to get downstairs before people start to miss you, and I need to get my ass outta this mill before anyone else catches me."

"Go on, then," he says, his tone lazy but his eyes tracking her movements like he thinks she might be about to try to start a real fight. Maybe later. "Try not to kill anyone on your way out."

She freezes, looking at him in wonder. "Was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?"

"I have no clue why you would find that funny." The delivery is too deadpan to be an accident.

"And now a zinger! You're on a roll." She edges to the door, listens, gently opens it to find that the corridor beyond is empty, for now. She looks back over at him—he's still watching her, implacable, and she winks at him. "See you around, Handsome," she promises, then slips out of the doorway, and a few seconds later, vaults out of the window, climbs to the ground, and heads in a crouch towards the tree line. She makes it without hearing any commotion behind her to signify that she's been noticed.

She shouldn't feel as good as she does.

Her skin is buzzing by the time she finds Boomer, and she's not sure if it's because of the light adrenaline rush, or if she's just feeling more cheerful than she has any reason to. Being involved with Jacob in any capacity complicates her life; she should be pissed at herself for re-opening that locked door (but hell, it wasn't like she was getting much peace of mind with it closed). There's also the significant matter of Staci: this man has her partner in shambles and she needs to do something about it. She's not sure if she'll have more success on that front now that her status with Jacob has evidently subtly changed, but she can't imagine she can have less—so far, she's been at a standstill as far as her efforts towards Deputy Pratt go. If she's going to make nice with Jacob, it's got to be with an eye towards securing Staci's freedom, and she might actually have a better shot at it now.

She's also going to have the unpleasant task of telling Jess that they need to skip taking back the lumber mill, at least for the time being—she's sure Jacob is going to beef up security temporarily in response to her presence, and she's also not keen on bringing her favorite squad of killers around while he's there. She doesn't want to paint a target on his head, now that she's decided she's going to save him. Jess isn't going to be happy about losing the mill, but she'll get over it.

(She doesn't even want to think about Jess's reaction if she finds out what Rook has done with Jacob, twice now. That's a problem for Future Rook.)

She reunites with Boomer and heads towards the FANG Center, humming softly as she goes.

A/N - shoutout to quietest for being the best/funniest conversational partner I could ask for and helping me talk nonsense and bitch about Jacob Seed as I wrote the draft for this story over the last month, you are truly the MVP.

Next chapter: ...oh, John.