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

[the_hermit]

Merritt steps into this one as readily as he did the first, clinging back, one hand still at Dylan's neck. He doesn't pull away until Dylan does, and then he, too, wipes at his eyes and then runs his hand down his face as he nods a few more times than is probably actually necessary, as he pulls himself back together.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Let's get the fuck out of here."

[onebehind]

"Alright, c'mmon."

Twisting away from him, Dylan starts towards the door but slowly, ready to double back, catch Merritt, if need be. He's in a hurry to get out of here, but he won't let him fall, won't abandon him. That much is clear.

[the_hermit]

Merritt follows immediately, slowly at first but then gaining steadiness as he goes. By the time Dylan opens the door, he's walking fine, if still cradling his hand to his chest to avoid jarring it on anything.

[onebehind]

The trip back down the hallway is uneventful, the area as quiet as it was the first time Merritt came this way. Dylan stops when they reach the door at the top of the steps, however, and glances back at him, raking his tongue over his teeth.

"When we came up, we kind of just pushed through this." He gestures to the door. It was still jammed, when he came in, and he'd pulled on Henley's magic to ignore it. It's still jammed now, and while he could probably do the same again, take Merritt with him, he's not sure they should leave it like that. He's also not sure he should be the one to try and fix the lock, despite having Jack's skill set, at the moment, now, too. Either might not be good for Merritt in the long run and he's suffered more than enough mental trauma today to last a lifetime.

[the_hermit]

Merritt steps up beside him, jaw clenching as he considers the door. "I did the one downstairs. He did this one," he says darkly, but he reaches out to rest a hand on the knob, focusing for a moment as he reaches out, feeling out the damage Ben did here.

It takes him a moment to undo it - but after a moment, he hesitates - and then turns the handle. It opens, and he pulls the door slowly toward them, peeking through. There's still no one there, and he sighs before pulling it open the rest of the way, gesturing for Dylan to go ahead.

[onebehind]

Dylan doesn't bother repeating the idea that it might be better if he tried fixing it first, regardless, rather than him, them -- he figures he got that, even without him having to say it. Instead, he grunts in lieu of an answer, and steps out of the way, giving Merritt room to work. When he manages to get the door open, Dylan rocks back into place, taking point, and flashes Merritt an apologetic look, in spite of himself.

He knows he's tired. Just a little longer.

And so he starts down the stairs, shifting out of the way again as they reach the ground floor so he can repeat the process.

[the_hermit]

Merritt follows him down the stairs more slowly than he originally went up them. He is tired, but he can make it. He has to.

It takes him about the same amount of time to open the second door, if just because of that. He opens this one even more carefully, barely opening it before he looks through the gap. When there's no one there, he once again opens it all the way.

"Were those assholes still down here when you came in?" he asks, because he might be worrying for no reason, but he would really rather not have someone else trying to stab him after all this.

[onebehind]

"The place was empty," he answers, shaking his head. Not that he took any chances, when he came up, if the fact that he took the time to clear the room of Merritt's prison was any indication, nor does he plan to, now.

That in mind, he pulls his gun from his hip again, checking it over briefly if only out of force of habit born in the waking world, and nudges past Merritt. The lobby, however, is as empty as it was when he entered, now, the only sign of something being wrong the bars and grating still in place over the doors. Dylan only lowers the gun again after taking a moment to reach out, feel for anything beyond them, and coming up empty.

"General consensus is we're good."

[the_hermit]

Merritt sighs again, following Dylan out into the lobby proper. "Guess he didn't think anybody else was coming in."

He means to mean that as Ben thinking too much of himself, that the Horsemen wouldn't have managed to find a way in - and a beat later, he shakes off the literal echo of what he could have meant - that no one was even going to try.

"Sorry," he mutters, reaching up reflexively to adjust a hat he's not wearing, knowing Dylan's likely to have heard. "Didn't mean to go there."

[onebehind]

Dylan glances back at him, something not so much angry as intense in his eyes, and then turns to face him entirely. "Yeah, well. Guess he didn't know us as well as he thought." A beat. "We already covered this, but ... "

But while the sense that they will always come for him is very real, unmistakable as this is Merritt's mind, he forces himself to say it aloud, anyway. Or maybe someone else currently sharing headspace with him forces him to say it, considering it comes out in a tone not entirely his own, again.

"We'll always come for you."

[the_hermit]

Merritt takes another steadying breath and nods. "I know. And the same goes for the rest of you."

Just in case anyone else needs to hear it. He figures it can't hurt, anyway.

He pauses a beat and then clears his throat, looking to the bars and security grate over the door. "Anybody got the gate key?"

[onebehind]

"We know," Dylan echoes, his voice still more.

Clearing his own throat, he glances to the bars, too, and then turns looking back at the front desk. A nod in that direction follows. "Places like this usually have a keypad, somewhere, that controls this shit." There might actually be a real key for the doors, considering the metaphorical nature of dreams, but in reality, they'd be looking for something like the pad he mentioned.

[the_hermit]

"Most of their security measures weren't put there by a psycho, though," he returns as he heads for the desk - and then on past it and around the corner out of view as he tries to find out how to get behind the desk.

[onebehind]

"If you'd ever seen the blueprints for some of these places, you might rethink that statement," Dylan shoots back as he follows Merritt to the desk. He watches Merritt continue on, aware that he's looking for a door, and after an impatient moment once he's disappeared, decides they don't have time for this, takes a few steps back and vaults over the thing.

It's likely he'll have found the keypad before Merritt finds the door.

[the_hermit]

"Did you just..." Merritt begins, literally walking backwards into view again. "Of course you did, because you've got the kid in here," he complains, and it's probably a good sign. Even he recognizes it's the most like himself he's sounded since all this started.

He moves back to stand in front of the desk, leaning over, now. "See anything?"

[onebehind]

"We got bored," Dylan answers simply, shrugging. He takes a half-step back out of the way, letting Merritt get a look at what he found. "But yeah, here."

It's a standard numerical keypad, though hell if Dylan or the Horsemen beyond him know what the code might be. Worse comes to worst, between the four of them, they might have some ideas, but he figures Merritt can take a crack at it, first. It's his head, after all; maybe that counts for something, as far as the code goes.

[the_hermit]

Merritt peers over the top of the desk at it, thinking for a moment, focusing on it - and then smiling almost wistfully. "Try the date we met you in the park."

He sounds sure, too.

[onebehind]

Dylan makes a small, pleased sound, despite the fact that, directly after it and as he punches the date in, he mutters, "One of us should have thought of that."

That done, the gate in front of the doors slides back up into its place in the ceiling, the bars beyond it flicking into the unlocked position a beat later and with a satisfying thunk. Dylan glances up, satisfied, and moves to climb back over the desk.

When his feet are back on solid ground, he nods to the doors. "Let's get out of here."

[the_hermit]

Merritt can't help but snort at the comment, hearing Daniel behind it, and takes a step back as Dylan makes to climb back over the desk.

"God, yes," he agrees immediately, and then, like the other times they've escaped from something like this, reaches out to rest a hand on Dylan's shoulder, to keep them in contact with each other as they head towards and then through the hotel's doors.

[onebehind]

They step out of the hotel and there's a sudden shift as Merritt finds himself on his back, in bed, again, the Horsemen circled around him, with Dylan's hand on him rather than the other way around. He keeps it there, even as he sucks in a sharp breath as his lungs come awake with the rest of him, and on the breath out, murmurs, "Don't move just yet."

The suggestion has less to do with the fact that sitting up suddenly might be bad for Merritt, considering the mental trauma (though that certainly factors into it) and more to do with the fact that he doesn't want to break his connection with the kids all at once. It'll be better for them, if he can take a moment to disentangle them all one at a time, the same way he brought them in. It'll be better for him, his head already pounding and for more than just the hangover he would have been nursing if not for how he woke up.

[the_hermit]

Merritt, too, sucks in a deep breath, eyes blinking open. It takes him a moment to focus, for a kind of haze to fade from his vision as he blinks at the ceiling. The soreness he felt in his head remains - and more besides, his whole body feeling like he's taken a beating. He aches enough that Dylan's warning comes before he even tries to move, and he relaxes again, just humming an acknowledgement of that.

There's still the faint feeling of Ben's magic in the air - but stronger, drowning it out, is the four of them, and if he wasn't theirs and they weren't his, it might be overwhelming. It still almost is, in fact, though not in any negative way.

[onebehind]

It's hard to tell whether Dylan can feel him relax or if he gets a sense of his acquiescence through their still connective state, but either way, he hums.

Silence and stillness follows, the former growing more absolute still as he breaks off his connection with Merritt, first, pulling the hand on his chest back into his lap. He lets Daniel go a beat later, and with an intake of breath of his part as he comes back to life, Daniel pulls his hand off of Dylan's shoulder. Dylan makes a small, vaguely pained noise as that loss of connection takes some of his defense against the strain of that connection with it, but keeps going, guiding Henley's thoughts away as he lets go of her hand, then Jack's. When everything is said and done, his head hurts so badly that he's sure, for an instant, he's going to be sick. Apparently, being four people at the same time isn't good for you.

To his credit, however, he manages to fight through it, and finally, finally opens his own eyes, squinting into the light of the room as he looks from one face to the other, each in turn. When he settles finally on Merritt, he offers him a thin smile and a "Welcome back."

[the_hermit]

The loss of the connection leaves Merritt feeling a bit bereft, and Merritt sighs, reaching up with the hand that had been broken both to make sure it's whole again - which it is - and to scrub at his own forehead, at his own piercing headache.

He drops his hand as the last of the connection fades, as Jack comes back, and Merritt looks at Dylan. "Thanks," he says - and then, looking to each of them, with as much sincerity as he can manage. "Thank you."

Jack reaches out, dropping a hand to Merritt's shoulder and squeezing before he pulls it away again.

[the_lovers]

Henley, too, reaches for Merritt, lacing their fingers together wordlessly. Dylan, on the other hand, offers him a sharp, serious nod and a brief, warmer smile. Daniel, meanwhile, in spectacular Daniel fashion, looks over at the other Horsemen, and asks, "So, is this the part where we tell him that, if he tries that again, we'll kill him?"

He's glad you're back, Merritt.

[the_hermit]

Merritt squeezes Henley's hand - and then barks out a startled laugh as he shoots Daniel a grin. "Believe me, once was enough."

He looks back to Dylan. "You've got..." he begins, reaching up to touch his own face by way of indication - and then startles a little when he finds wetness on his own face. "And so do I, apparently."

Now that he's thinking about it, he can taste it, too, and he makes a face. "Okay, I need to..." He doesn't let go of Henley's hand but gestures with the other, too. He needs to not be flat on his back, but he's going to need a hand.