For nine_ofswords

[the_hermit]

Summary: In which Merritt fails his will save Merritt makes a stupid decision... In which this thread ends badly.

--

Merritt goes still, something about him calming, and the smile that crosses his face is humorless. "That little 'stunt' was easy," he begins seriously, his tone becoming carefully measured.

"The Horsemen are my family, and leaving that man a drooling idiot was the very least I would do to protect them."

He's not close enough to actually, physically reach Ben, but he doesn't need to be. He swings, mentally, lashing out with a burst of magic designed to cripple.

Comments

[onebehind]

Dylan's eyes drop to the chains, then dart back up to Merritt's face. Another slam of psychic energy follows, like a shock collar turned up to its highest voltage.

"Yeah, so you keep saying." And as he's said time and time again, it was real enough for him and he's still burdened with the memories of another forty years with his father. He's still living with the fact that Merritt all but made him murder him. Actively watching as a child was bad enough; all of this has apparently broken him, if he's turning on his family. And Merritt missed it, misjudged just how angry he really was.

"We'll see how real you think this all is, after you've been here awhile." A beat. "If I ever let you out."

[the_hermit]

Merritt jolts back hard at the shock, and then grunts again when the chains react to his movement and tighten even more, pulling him farther back into the chair.

He sees that, too, hears it like Dylan said it outloud. He missed what Wade had planned, missed that he was about to get screwed over - and now he missed this.

Merritt lets his head drop for a moment, abruptly defeated, and then tilts his head to the side to look at Dylan sideways. "Just take care of the kids," he says, simply, because he knows he can't win this. He can't talk himself out of this, magically or otherwise.

He missed again what little he actually meant to someone. He deserves this.

[onebehind]

"I was planning on it," he answers, some of the edge gone from his voice all at once. He may be willing to leave Merritt trapped in his own head forever, but the rest of the Horsemen have done nothing to deserve the same treatment.

That said, he pushes away from the wall where he's been leaning, and turns to head for the door. The sound of the locks unbolting are deafening in the silence. "Nice knowing you, McKinney."

And then he's gone. The locks snap back into place all on their own and with a note of finality.

[the_hermit]

Merritt just nods to that - and huffs out another shallow sigh when Dylan leaves. The chains seem to settle somehow and while they don't loosen, it feels almost as though they've clicked into place, now, instead of being held ready to tighten.

"Fuck," Merritt breathes quietly - and then, so, so carefully, he lets himself relax into the restraints.

He should have seen this coming. He knew Dylan was still angry, was still holding against him what they'd had to do to break him out of his fantasy - but he'd also thought they had talked things out, that they were getting better.

It shouldn't have surprised him that he didn't have enough to offer to balance out what he had taken.

Merritt works his hands carefully as they begin to tingle. There's no response from the chains, and he carefully begins to turn his hand, trying to find a way that the metal isn't cutting off the circulation. It's no more comfortable, but it also doesn't feel like it's crushing his wrists anymore, and so he counts it as a win.

"Hm," he hums, closing his hand over the end of the chair's arm. Slowly, he begins to inch his hand and arm backward, grunting softly and uncomfortably as the metal rolls down his skin.

Just when he begins to think he's making progress, as the chain reaches his knuckles, there's a shift in the room's energy, like someone just about to take a breath, and Merritt goes carefully still. For a long moment, nothing happens, and Merritt dares to relax, dares to move -- and the chain jolts, clamping down hard over his hand, this time, squeezing his fingers together painfully.

He cries out and reflexively tries to pull his hand the rest of the way free, to stop it being crushed. All the chains immediately tighten, the snap of a finger breaking drowned out only by the sound of his scream as he struggles reflexively, pulling hard against the chains, his resignation abruptly overwhelmed by sheer panic.

He's so busy panicking that he misses the sound of a metallic rasp as another chain bursts from the chair's cushions. Before he knows what's happening, the chain wraps itself around his neck, and Merritt's vision tunnels down as he finds himself with no air.

Desperately, he presses his head back into the chair, retreating as much as he can from this last restraint, and forces himself to ignore the water rushing in his ears to go perfectly still. It's not enough for him to draw a full breath, but he can breathe if he does it slowly, and he closes his eyes against unbidden hot tears.

[onebehind]

For as long as Merritt stays still enough for his movements not to be mistaken for escape, the chains remain unmoving, too, content to simply hold him in place, albeit in a permanent state of too tight, too much. Time marches onward, though how much is hard to tell, between the fact that there are no clocks, no windows in the room, and the fluid quality of dreams, and everything is still, silent. Apparently the projections that were chasing them downstairs, whether they were Ben's or part of Dylan's half of this trap, have either ceased to exist or don't care enough to keep an eye on him.

It seems, for a moment, for ages more than, for both at the same time, that this is it, that Dylan honestly did leave him here to rot -- and then there's the sound of footsteps in the hall.

Whoever or whatever it is, they're obviously trying and mostly succeeding at stealth, but in an otherwise silent building, the sound still sticks out. They stop outside Merritt's door and, after a beat, the door rattles as whoever's on the other side tries to push it open. The deadbolt catches the door, stops them from coming in, and there's a growl of a swear, followed by what sounds, very vaguely through the wood, like Henley's name. Another pause and a hand pushes through the reality of the door, not a woman's, not Henley's, but like her, phasing through it. Fingers scrabble for the lock, find it, turn it open, and then the hand withdraws. The door opens in earnest less than a heartbeat after that, and Dylan steps into the room.

Not unlike the first time, he takes a few seconds to clear the room, this time, with a gun, found or created from the ether, and -- and he stops when he spots Merritt, recoiling as if physical struck. Despite the fact that he was just here, there's worry behind his eyes, fear and now horror, all of it out of place with the anger, the cold from earlier.

"Jesus Christ," he breathes, and then he's moving for Merritt and the chair, tucking the gun away as he goes.

[the_hermit]

It doesn't take Merritt long to lose hope. Moving at all means losing oxygen, the chain around his neck pressing against his throat. His hands and feet go numb first, and then it starts creeping up his arms and down his thighs. He can't see the bruises forming, at his broken finger, at every point the chains touch, but he thinks he can feel them, and he swallows hard against more panic, more tears.

He counts his breaths to distract himself, to remind himself he can breathe, but when he reaches the thousands, he has to stop, the distraction turning into just another reminder of how trapped he really is.

By the time he hears footsteps outside the room, Merritt is staring blankly at a point on the opposite wall, defeated. For a moment, he doesn't register that there are footsteps - but then he hears the door jolt, and he has to force himself not to startle, to hold still.

Dylan's appearance is no relief, and he swallows again as best he can with a mouth left dry by the combination of his own panic and the conditioned air, slumping back into the chair, eyes refixing on that vague point across the room. He has nothing to say, and even if he did, he doesn't have the air for it.

[onebehind]

"It's okay," Dylan tells him, repeats like a mantra. His voice shakes, but the tone is soothing.

Not that he expects him to answer back, regardless, because yes, he does note the chain around his throat and how painfully tight they all are. It's as much for his own benefit (as well as, seemingly, someone beyond him and Merritt) as it is anything else and as he rounds the chair to look for locks.

He finds none, and breaking in his not-quite-prayer, mutters something about needing locks. A swell of magic follows, as does a metallic shunk, and a relieved breath as, while Merritt can't see it from where he is, a bouquet of them all but ooze out the back of the chair, along with the opposite ends of the Merritt's restraints. He flicks a glance over to Merritt, to make sure that hasn't put any more pressure on him (so far, so good), and then goes for the lock keeping the one around his throat in place, a set of picks, Jack's picks, appearing from seemingly no where as he reaches for it.

Beyond him there's a flicker of movement as his shadow, oddly not his own even when he entered, shifts and then shifts again. He ignores it as he works the lock, and a handful of heartbeats later, there's the sound of clicking metal and the chain around Merritt's throat goes slack.

"Don't try and move yet," he orders, distracted, as he moves onto the next. There's something like a dozen of them and he imagines this isn't too far removed from the chains that held him in place in his head, when Torre locked him away -- the more Merritt struggles, the worse it will get.

[the_hermit]

Merritt twitches faintly at the sound of the locks appearing, bracing himself for the chains to tighten in response to the disturbance. "Don't..." he literally croaks out, painfully pleading, and he squints against the embarrassment as another tear leaks from the corner of his eye. All he can imagine is that Dylan needs the locks to make sure he's not going anywhere. He's pretty sure that's obvious on both counts.

When the chain loosens, he's just confused. A faint burst of something gets through his despair, the feeling of there being more people in the room than just him and Dylan, but he's exhausted and can't think what to make of it. He's not passing up the opportunity, though, and he sucks in as much of a rasping breath as he can against the constriction that remains across his chest, doing his best not to start wheezing. "Now what?" he manages after a moment, his voice still rough but not quite as painfully so. "Gonna feed me to those guys downstairs after all?"

Maybe Dylan decided to make this quick after all. That would be better.

[onebehind]

Dylan glances up from the next lock he's gone to work at, and while Merritt can't see the confusion on his face for the fact that he's still behind him, it's in his voice. "What?"

He heard him, he just doesn't understand.

[the_hermit]

"You were leaving me to rot, right? Why the change in plans? Decide to finish me off before the kids had too many questions?"

There's bitterness in his tone, now, but no heat; he's still defeated. Whatever Dylan's planning, he's resigned to be helpless to stop it - just like when Wade screwed him over.

[onebehind]

There's an intake of breath, as Dylan opens his mouth to say something. Whatever it is never comes, however, as, as he takes a moment to pull his attentions away from getting Merritt free and really takes in the shadow of despair here, what's going on hits him like a freight train. Whether that's insight on his part, being able to pick the inferred meaning up because, being in Merritt's head, he may as well have explained out loud, or some combination of the two, even he's not sure, but either way, the breath goes out of him almost as quickly as he pulled it in.

The temperature in the room drops noticeably. A spike of heat follows, like standing in front of a space heater on a cold day, albeit not one directed at Merritt, the feeling crashing around him without actually touching him, and then the cold flows back in. There's a sense of sickness to it, Dylan, whatever's beyond him, fighting with his equilibrium as his stomach rolls, and, to a lesser extent, something hard. This affects him; this infuriates him, touching down to the very real core of his temper.

Giving up on the locks, he rounds the chair to stand in front of Merritt, looking as torn between those extremes as he feels. His shadow flickers violently between several different forms, none of them his, and quietly, he puts words to it all. "He used me."

[the_hermit]

Merritt braces again for a blow - that never lands, and the warring temperatures and feelings permeating the room are enough that he shakes his head faintly. He has no idea what's going on, now. This doesn't make sense at all, and he's still looking at a point somewhere past Dylan when he comes to stand in front of him. "What?" is all he can manage, this time.

[onebehind]

Dylan doesn't, can't answer immediately, frost starting to form on the edges of the glass coffee table behind him as his anger grows. The room grows colder still along with it, and -- and then all at once, the temperature snaps back to rights, the frost receding as quick as it came and as Dylan jerks his head to one side. The sick, stale smell to the air fades but doesn't quite disappear, even as Dylan tilts his head forward, as if listening to something, his horror a little harder to manage than his temper.

Raking his tongue over his teeth, he blows out another breath through his nose, and holds up his hands, plainly in view of where Merritt's not looking at him. Nothing up his sleeve. When he lowers them again, he takes another step forward, his legs filling the space between Merritt's, and reaches for him slowly, leaning in as he does so. He hooks one hand around the back of Merrit's neck, gently, so gently, and guides his face up to his, forcing him to look at him as he presses his forehead to Merritt's. The only way he's going to get out of this, now, is if he closes his eyes.

"Merritt, listen to me," he starts, voice back to soothing, shaking. "The guy that trapped you here? That wasn't me. Me and the kids just got here."

[the_hermit]

Merritt shakes his head again, increasingly aware of there being more presences in the room than just Dylan, of the oddness with his shadow. He blinks at Dylan's hands in front of him - and then goes still as Dylan reaches out to him. He doesn't resist, doesn't close his eyes, though he does frown.

"He was you, Dylan," he breathes, and his use of the wrong name probably speaks volumes to how nearly broken he is by all this. "I know you, and..." he tries to go on but ends up just cutting himself off, and his eyes do slip closed, now, against the possibility of hope.

[onebehind]

"Yeah, that's the problem," Dylan tells him, his tone gaining some certainty even if he doesn't raise his voice. "You do know me, and he was in your head, so he knew me."

It doesn't hurt that Ben was in his head, once, too. Between the two of them, he imagines it let him do a damn convincing impression, not to mention find the things that would hurt Merritt the most and use them against him. It's a miracle, in that instant, that the frost doesn't return for how angry that thought makes him. The only thing that stops it, stops him is the fact that he doesn't want to disturb too much here, for fear of hurting Merritt more.

[the_hermit]

Merritt opens his eyes again in the face of that new certainty - and finally, they sharpen faintly, as he focuses. As he focuses on Dylan, now, as he feels out the same things that left him so sure it was Dylan before - and then on, finally, beyond Dylan, to the echoes of Jack, of Henley, of Daniel.

And again, he slumps, but there's a release of tension now, the doubt and fear fading as he lets his head tilt into Dylan's. His arms twitch faintly, fighting the currently impossible urge to reach out to him, just barely holding still against the threat of the chains tightening again.

"I'm sorry," he breathes, finally.

[onebehind]

"No," Dylan starts, forehead brushing against his as he shakes his head faintly. "I get why you did it."

He can't promise that he won't read him the Riot Act over this later, when Merritt has recovered, when the kids have, when he has, the terror he felt when he got that text message, when he found Merritt unconscious again cutting through any grudge he still held against him, and likely to cling, but he's not kidding when he says he understands. He would have done the same, if he hadn't been too busy grieving to think yet of going after their attacker. He might still, when the crisis is over and before his fury stills, despite having a first-hand example of how badly that might go.

"We're gonna get you out of here," he continues after a moment, as if that wasn't obvious.

[the_hermit]

"Now," he says, simply, pleading again, and he can't stop himself from shifting faintly, shoulders twitching again as he barely resists the urge to struggle. He still can't breathe right, and while his despair has been replaced by relief, there's still panic lurking at the edges of his mind, and it's still threatening to choke him. He needs out of this. "Please."

[onebehind]

"Yeah," Dylan breathes. On a whim, and as he pulls away, he brushes a brief kiss over Merritt's forehead, platonic and oddly soothing. "Give us a couple minutes."

That said, he rounds the chair again, lock picks reappearing from where ever they disappeared to when he came to stand in front of Merritt. There's another flicker of movement off to his side, where his shadow falls, the dark shifting once again and settling into Jack's as he goes to work. The locks proceed to come off, not one at a time, but in pairs, another popping free on its own when he finishes with the one on the other side, and sooner rather than later, the chains go lax in entirety, dead, empty. They don't reach for him again.

Dylan, on the other hand, does, darting around the edge of the chair as soon as the last lock comes off. He puts a hand immediately to Merritt's shoulder, to catch him if he should pitch forward and as a presence beyond the fact that the room practically buzzes with a sense of him and the kids, the lock picks disappeared again. "We've got you."

[the_hermit]

Merritt takes a breath, tilting his head again into Dylan's touch, the panic fully receding for the first time since Dylan... since Ben left him here - and then keeps breathing while he works on the locks. The shadow catches his eye properly this time as it shifts into Jack's, and he can't help but breathe out a wry, relieved laugh.

He doesn't quite pitch forward when Dylan frees him, but he does slump forward, pulling his injured hand to his chest as he takes deep breaths for the first time in what feels like days. Dylan's hand on his shoulder feels like four of them, and if his hands weren't all but useless, right now, bloodflow just starting to return, he would reach up to cover them with his own. As it is, he just leans into their touch, taking a moment to breathe.

[onebehind]

"We got you," Dylan repeats, his voice, like the rest of him, more than in those three words, the other Horsemen's voices overlapping his, speaking in time. He doesn't seem to find this particularly unsettling or surprising if the fact that his expression never shifts from the worry he's been wearing, among other things, since he walked in.

He does, however, clear his throat almost absently a second later before, in his own voice and just his own, offering, "When you feel like you can move, we'll see about getting out of here entirely." He's not going to rush Merritt, but they're not done here, yet.

[the_hermit]

Merritt huffs out a breath that carries behind it the sound of a sob, tension still draining out of him. "That is the best and weirdest thing I've ever heard," he says, voice choked now for an entirely different reason.

Slowly, he works his uninjured hand, real pain on his face now as the numbness starts to give way to pins and needles, the same happening with his feet as he carefully stretches out his legs, giving a soft noise of discomfort as cramped muscles protest the change in position, no matter how slowly he tries to take it. "It might be a minute," he both warns and agrees.

[onebehind]

"Sorry." He's not.

He is, however, sorry that Merritt's in the state he's in, that they weren't here sooner, that he didn't realize something was up when Merritt went to bed in the first place. (He should have known; he failed, again, as a protector.) While he manages to keep it off his face, however, the thought still likely carries as if he'd said it out loud, and so the apologetic look that follows, finally, belatedly is genuine.

He looks away a moment later. "We got time."

[the_hermit]

"If I can't be sorry, neither can you," Merritt admonishes, though there's no heat to it. "I came after this asshole on my own to keep the rest of you out of it. It wasn't supposed to go south. At least not for me."

Obviously. But the guy really had been more of an asshole than he was expecting, and he couldn't let the threat go unchallenged, and then the guy had cheated, using Dylan against him.

[onebehind]

"I do what I want," Dylan shoots back, trying for a levity he doesn't really feel. He reaches up to rub the corners of his eyes with a breath out, letting it go. A muttered, "So you people keep telling me," follows.

Clearly, the kids are giving him just as much shit, albeit only in a place where he can hear.