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“KS-44. New subject. Activate.”
***
The man on the steel table before him is a rebel, captured on a failed infiltration operation earlier that day. The only one who’d been caught. Extract information. Extract information.
That word—rebel—sends a red-hot torrent of anger flowing through him. It is the only emotion he feels besides the overwhelming duty to his government.
Placing the briefing papers to the side, he pulls on the latex gloves and swings the surgical light over his newest subject, watching as the man stirs under the new brightness.
Slowly, he comes to, groggy and disoriented, squinting, apparently coming to realise that his hands and feet were restrained only when he goes to shield his eyes and finds he cannot.
He struggles desperately. KS-44 grows impatient.
Extract information.
“You will now be asked a series of questions. Failure to comply will result in discipline.” The words that roll out of his mouth are programmed into his brain.
The subject’s expression becomes instantly unreadable, a spark of recognition clouding his features. When he turns slowly to look at KS-44 and they lock eyes, he chokes, before sobbing in relief.
KS-44 notes this.
The subject continues to sob, and closes his eyes with an overwhelmed smile before turning to look at him again, as if he cannot believe what he is seeing.
“Oh, thank fuck,” he gasps. “We thought you were dead, Kyle, oh my god-“
The name Kyle is meaningless to him.
“Woody, Will, Charlie...we’ve all missed you so much. We came to get you, where in the bloody hell have you been? I never thought I’d see you again...”
More empty names. KS-44 stares blankly down at him. The silence drags on. The subject’s smile falters. He frowns.
“...Kyle? C’mon, mate, let me out.” He tugs his hands against the restraints. Then, more cautiously, “are you being watched?”
“Failure to comply will result in discipline.”
“Wha- I don’t understand. Kyle? Kyle, it’s me...”
KS-44 begins to charge the machine to his right. The subject follows his movements with wide eyes.
“What’re you doing? Kyle, look at me. Look at me,” he says firmly, and there’s a hint of desperation in his voice.
KS-44 picks up the two-pronged rod on the trolley beside him, connected to the machine by a long black wire. He turns the dial labelled ‘voltage’ clockwise. The subject begins to panic.
“Kyle,” he hisses, angrily trying to pry his hands away from the table now. “What did they do to you? What did they do?”
KS-44 notes that the subject is more concerned for his wellbeing than for the subject’s own. A hum of energy runs through the metal rod.
“Failure to comply will result in discipline.”
Extract information.
“It’s me, Kyle...it’s Dan...” he pleads.
Dan...once again, the name means nothing.
The bright blue eyes screw shut in defeat; the subject clenches his jaw and braces himself.
It only takes one touch of the rod, strategically placed against the ribcage, for the subject’s entire body to convulse, the restraints rattling as his back arches off the table.
One, two, three, four, five. Pause.
The subject groans in pain, gasping as a solitary tear rolls down the side of his face and lands on the table.
“State mission objective,” he demands.
“You’re joking,” the subject pants, turning to look at KS-44 in disbelief, his eyes glazed over in agony. “To rescue you. It was to rescue you, you fucking idiot-“
KS-44 notes the hint of affection within the anger of his tone before using the rod again, this time jabbing it into the soft flesh of the subject’s stomach. This has had effective results on previous subjects.
The subject does nothing but cry out, hands needlessly balling into fists.
This continues for approximately 58 minutes before the subject falls unconscious and is dragged away, lasting longer than any subject KS-44 has ever worked on, and answering only one of his questions.
He will do better the next time.
***
KS-44 sleeps when he is inactive, which can often be for hours at a time, and so when he is awoken to engage with the subject in the dead of night, he complies easily.
The subject—Dan—is curled up asleep on the hard, solid ground in the corner of the small bare cell. His food from feeding hours earlier remains untouched by the door. He does not stir as KS-44 enters, and so the surprise is clear in his eyes as KS-44 rips him from his rest and pins him against the cell wall with his hands clasped tightly around his throat.
Extract information.
“Share database access information.”
“Good morning to you, too,” the subject chokes, hands clawing at KS-44’s as his feet kick against the wall where they hang off the ground.
“Share database access information.”
KS-44’s hand grips tighter. Dan’s eyes go wide with alarm and his face turns red.
“Maybe...I would..if you’d let me...talk,” he wheezes, and so he drops Dan to the floor, where he begins to choke and gasp like a fish out of water.
“Kyle...please. Don’t you remember me? Anything? Me and you? Or...or how about the others, then, how about-“
He cuts him off with a kick to the ribs, sending the other man reeling on the floor with a shocked yelp.
“Just, stop, a minute. Kyle, your name is Kyle, and I’m Dan, remember?” He pleads desperately. “Just try, Kyle, forget whatever bullshit they’ve brainwashed you with, yeah? I-“
He grabs him by the collar and punches him square in the nose. Dan cries out and falls back to the floor, his face gushing with blood.
Extract information.
His hand flies gingerly to his face, blood flowing freely and garbling his words. “We’re going to get out of here, Kyle. I’m going to get us out.”
KS-44 contemplates this. Why does the subject insist on referring to him as Kyle? That is not his name. He knows no Dan. He knows no world outside of this place.
“Why would I want to leave?”
Dan appears surprised that he has responded at all, and falters for a moment. “So we can be happy, again. So we can bring this place to the ground.” There is determination shining in his blue eyes. “This isn’t who you are, Kyle. These people here...they cause pain, and suffering. They messed with you...fucked with your head, or something, I don’t know,” he says in despair. “You don’t belong here.”
“We are order. We are peace. You work to destroy us.”
“Peace isn’t the same as fear,” Dan says.
KS-44 considers this. He knocks Dan’s head back suddenly against the wall with such force the other man only lets out a small, surprised groan before slumping back and passing out again.
He will not be able to extract any more information tonight.
***
Day after day, he breaks Dan down a little more.
He does not eat apart from when KS-44 forces it down his throat until he’s gagging on it. He does not sleep aside from when the pain becomes unbearable. He does not stand unless he is being dragged to and from his cell by guards, his feet trailing limply along the floor even then.
Follow your orders.
The subject would kill you given the chance.
The rebellion must be destroyed.
In his pain-induced comas of exhaustion, nightmares haunt Dan. KS-44 watches his face contort in his unconsciousness, sometimes, watches his legs draw up to his chest involuntarily, before shocking him back awake with a strike to his battered body.
Destroy the rebellion.
Extract information.
The subject has stopped begging. Instead, he looks at him with hollow, empty, dull eyes, and sometimes whispers a quiet “Kyle,” before he is silenced once again. Even more rarely, he will say, “this isn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself. It’ll be alright.”
KS-44 pays no attention to these words, non-sensical and confusing as they are; likely a product of delirium and persistent sleep-deprivation.
There are days when he feels a sense of recognition when staring into Dan’s eyes, but it always disappears as quickly as it came.
There will come a day when KS-44 will be ordered to kill him.
But they have yet to extract the information they need.
***
Their plans are thrown off-kilter by a significant rebel victory in hacking their systems, and KS-44 is ordered to kill Dan immediately.
The rebels will come. They will capture another. The subject is virtually unresponsive, anyway.
It is back in the same place they met—Dan lying on the table, although significantly weaker than before. His body is thin, chest rising shallowly as his eyes fight to remain open.
It is just the two of them there. KS-44 stares down at him with the syringe in his hand.
The silence drags on.
Kill him.
Kill him.
Kill him.
KS-44 finds him fascinating to watch. There is some strange sense of familiarity in the freckles dusting his face, the blue eyes lined by smudges of tiredness and thick eyelashes, the dark limp hair, the ashen skin and gaunt cheekbones.
He takes in a breath, and moves the syringe to the pulsing vein in his neck, the point prodding ever so lightly against the skin there, as Dan’s throat quivers with every minute breath he draws.
The time ticks on. KS-44 knows he must do this soon. The rebels will descend upon them eventually, and there can be no risk of a rebel who has spent so much time inside their headquarters falling back into enemy hands.
Kill him.
Kill him.
Kill him.
He knows his orders. And yet he hesitates, still.
“Kyle...”
The word is so quiet and strained he almost misses it. His hand continues to hover by Dan’s neck, and yet he turns to look at his face.
“Just...remember...this isn’t your fault..”
KS-44 continues to stare at him, startled when he suddenly feels a hand weakly grasp his own.
He looks down to see Dan intertwining their fingers where his hands are unrestrained (considering the concentration and effort it requires him to lift but one hand off the table, it’d be pointless to bother). KS-44 does not remove his hand from the pleading grip, but does not remove the other from Dan’s neck.
“The others will come...they’ll bring you back..” Dan desperately hangs on to KS-44’s hand.
KS-44 looks back at the magnificent blue of his eyes and sees the pain shining there, alongside an unwavering hopefulness.
“I love you...”
KS-44 drops the syringe and hears it shatter, but does not see it. Instead, his eyes do not leave Dan’s face as his eyes slide shut and the small sad smile disappears as consciousness escapes him yet again.
His mind stops screaming at him to kill Dan, but instead, it’s come back. Come back. Come back.
He realises that Dan’s hand has gone limp entirely, and yet he has not dropped it. His own fingers have held on.
Those three words, and a scene plays out in his mind—somewhere he doesn’t initially recognise, softer and brighter and happier, until the word home is flashing before his eyes. Very much like now, he and Dan are holding hands, only Dan is smiling far more brightly and looks healthy and Kyle (incorrect, KS-44) is smiling too. Dan says those three words, and Kyle (incorrect, KS-44) - no, Kyle, (incorrect, KS-) Kyle, Kyle - says them back.
He sees Dan fast asleep, only this time he is in bed and looks peaceful and Kyle is lying next to him in the darkness, running his fingers through his impossibly soft hair and smiling as he leans into the touch unconsciously.
He feels electricity running through his fingertips, only this time it is not because he is holding that horrific device which inflicts so much pain, but because his lips are connected to Dan’s and fireworks are going off behind his eyelids.
An alarm is blaring in the distance, but Kyle barely hears it. The screaming in his head has stopped—no more robotic voice commanding his every move.
Instead he can only stare at Dan’s face and feel tears fill his eyes at the sight of what he’s done. And then the screaming returns.
Your fault.
Your fault.
Your fault.
Gunshots resounding down the corridor snap him out of his trance, and he wipes away his tears as he realises if there is any chance of Dan so much as looking him in the eye ever again, he needs to get them both out of here.
His memories are a mish-mash of what he knew once and what he knows now, blurring into one, and so as he scoops Dan off the table as gently as possible, refusing to let go of his hand even once, wincing at how bone-thin he feels even in Kyle’s stick-like arms, he realises that there is at least a chance he will be able to navigate their way to escape.
The gunshots seem far closer than before. They could mean safety and rescue—Woody, Will, Charlie, the others—or they could mean capture.
Kyle realises with a sickening sensation that he’s not sure their friends will ever look at him in the same way again either, not once they find out the truth.
Dan’s heartbeat is faint where he is pressed tightly to Kyle’s own chest.
Hitting the button next to the door with desperate force and poking his head around the corner, old fragments of Kyle’s initial training spring to mind.
Survey. Assess. Run.
They seem to run through corridor after corridor with no luck, and Kyle grows desperate, cursing with every dead end they come across.
“You there—stop.”
A female voice from behind them turns his blood ice cold in his veins, resounding down the otherwise empty corridor. Kyle freezes, instinctively pulling Dan closer to his chest, his standard-issue white shoes making a horrific screeching noise on the scrubbed white floors.
“Put your hands where I can see them.”
Kyle feels panic seize him, his arms shaking with the adrenaline and effort of carrying Dan for so long.
“I...I can’t..” he chokes out, not daring to turn around, too scared to meet his fate.
“I said, raise your hands.”
Kyle’s heart is beating rapidly in his chest as he slowly turns around, the sound of a gun re-loading and the woman shouting a warning for him to stop echoing loudly over the distant sound of alarms and gunfire. He presses his face into Dan’s hair and feels another tear slip out as he screws his eyes shut and accepts that this is it.
But the bullet never comes.
“Kyle? Kyle Simmons?”
He could’ve collapsed in relief when he sees the standard black uniform of the rebels, his knees threatening to give way beneath him. He doesn’t recognise the agent in front of him, but her eyes are filled with concern as she holds up a hand to her ear and murmurs into the comms, “I’ve got them.” Laying eyes upon Dan, she adds as an afterthought, “send medical.”
Wordlessly, she helps Kyle manoeuvre Dan to the floor, but he never lets go of the other man, only slumps against the wall and cradles him in his lap.
Your fault.
Your fault.
Your fault.
And with that, promptly, Kyle faints.
***
The first person Kyle sees when he awakes is Charlie, hovering near his bed with a small paper cup of coffee and what looks like a permanent frown etched onto his face.
He hardly even spares a minute to acknowledge the fact that he is in the infirmary, and the relief that should come with it, before he is attempting to climb out of bed despite the throbbing in his head and the ache of his legs.
Find Dan.
Charlie looks up from his cup when he hears movement, and hastily throws it haphazardly into the bin to grab Kyle firmly by the shoulders, his eyes bright with alarm.
“Woah, mate, calm down-“
“Where’s Dan?”
“Kyle, lie down.”
With that, he gently presses Kyle back onto the uncomfortable mattress, and Kyle’s tired arms easily give way beneath him.
He doesn’t stop struggling, though.
“Where’s Dan, Charlie? Is he alright?”
“Listen, Kyle, just for a minute stop, will you?” Charlie begs, and Kyle reluctantly stills and listens.
“What do you remember?”
He closes his eyes against the sudden onslaught of memories, of commands running through his head on repeat, ordering him to hurt Dan, his Dan, and Kyle carrying them out without hesitation. He takes a deep breath in before he can be attacked by the sound of Dan pleading for him to stop, and grounds himself with the hand Charlie suddenly places on his arm comfortingly.
“Hey, it’s alright, I...shouldn’t have asked. Sorry, mate. It’s just...you’ve been gone, like, 2 months.”
Kyle gulps.
“And when we went to get you back and lost Dan, that was about a month ago too.”
A month. A month Dan was subject to Kyle’s endless torture. A month he’d been destroying him. A month of constant pain, and it was his fault.
“It’s just...well, when we found you, you were wearing...their uniform, and the nurses say your brain activity has been all over the place, and Dan...”
His eyes snap open. “What about him? Charlie, what about Dan?”
“He’s, he’s just in a bit of a bad way, is all. Nothing permanent, it doesn’t seem like. He’ll be alright Kyle. Mostly, at the minute, we’re all just trying to figure out what happened...we’re really glad to have you both back too, obviously,” he adds as an afterthought with a strained chuckle.
“I want to see him.”
Charlie sighs.
“Please, Charlie. I need to.”
“...Alright, alright. He’s only just woken up, though, so he’s a bit drugged up.”
Kyle’s legs feel weak when he first swings them over the edge of the bed, but he shakily follows Charlie down a series of corridors, his heart like a drum in his chest, his palms sweating furiously.
Charlie turns around and gently places a hand in the centre of his chest, bringing them to a halt right outside another door in the infirmary.
“Now, remember what I said,” he says softly, his eyes pitying. “He’s doped up on a lot of shit, and no one knows how much he remembers or anything like that.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Kyle says impatiently, pushing past him to open the door before he has a chance to hesitate.
Woody’s familiar frame is silhouetted by the window of the small room, and Kyle can see the seriousness in his eyes as he turns around and looks at him sadly, then to the side.
Kyle follows his gaze to the hospital bed and his stomach lurches.
Dan looks dead.
The only thing to assure him that that is not true, and that Charlie has not played some sick joke on him, is the mild tremor in his hands, and wide, glazed-over eyes staring blankly at the wall.
He looks as pale as the bedsheets in the dimly lit room, the bruises blossoming in stark contrast on his skin like dark purple stains. His hair still limp and flat—the way Dan always hated it. Kyle has never seen him this skinny; his arms look like they could be snapped with ease. There’s a cut on his forehead. His eyes are tired—so, so tired. Even worse than when Dan would come in from a particularly strenuous mission, so exhausted Kyle would wordlessly open his arms and let Dan curl up and sleep there, for hours on end, even if he was too awake to fall asleep himself. And it was always the same vice versa.
Kyle had torn that apart. He’d torn Dan apart. He remembered inflicting it. And worst of all, he remembered the satisfaction of carrying out his duty perfectly. He remembered liking it.
Will shifts uncomfortably in the seat by Dan’s bed.
Kyle stands there, frozen.
Dan’s glassy eyes finally settle on him from across the room, and Kyle’s heart drops as the heartbeat monitor by the hospital bed gets faster.
Woody and Will shoot each other a concerned look, but Kyle can only stare at Dan as he begins to shake his head and mumble, hands trembling, feet slipping against the sheets as he tries to draw his legs up to his chest.
“...Dan,” Kyle chokes out, and that sets Dan off crying, trying to hide his face.
Kyle makes out a hoarse, “please, don’t,” watches Dan flinch violently as Will grabs his shoulders in an attempt to calm him down, and runs from the room.
***
Weeks go by. Kyle hardly leaves his room. He was discharged from the infirmary after a day, and hadn’t been back there again.
The others grow concerned.
Will drops by every so often to check he’s eating, looking after himself—of which Kyle is doing neither—but also to hint at questions he’s not quite brave enough to ask outright, with updates on Dan.
“He’s properly awake—and coherent now, eheh...they lowered his med dosage .”
Aren’t you going to come and visit him?
“He gets so bored in there...but the doctors don’t think it’ll be too much longer. There’s just some stuff they’ve not quite figured out yet.”
What happened to you both in there?
“Dan’s been let out today, Kyle...he’s missed you loads.”
Haven’t you missed him?
Woody, however, is not nearly as patient—or forgiving.
“Kyle, you bloody twat, open the door.”
“Fuck off,” Kyle grumbles from his bed, ignoring Woody’s knocking.
The door slides open anyway. Of course Will lent him the spare key card to Kyle’s room. Dick.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Woody complains, and Kyle groans. “You need to explain what the hell happened in there.”
“No,” Kyle says, and instantly feels like a stubborn child.
“Kyle,” Woody says desperately. “You and Dan are practically fucking inseparable and now you’re acting like you never want to see him again.”
Kyle picks at his fingernails and stares down at his lap.
“Cmon, help me out here, mate. He’s been asking for you, y’know.”
Kyle’s head snaps up at that. “That’s a lie.”
“No it’s not. Why would I lie about that? In what world would Dan not want to see you?”
Kyle is silent for a moment. “You saw how he was. That day, when we woke up. You saw how scared of me he was.”
“Kyle, he was so doped up he could hardly remember his own name. He probably just felt, crowded, or something, I dunno.”
“He was scared of me.”
“But why?”
Kyle sighs.
He then proceeds to break down, and spill everything.
I hurt him.
I tortured him.
My fault.
By the time he’s done, he’s gasping for breath with hot tears running down his face. He waits for the disgust and anger and rejection, but Woody—Woody, of all people—pulls him into his arms and holds him.
“That’s not your fault, Kyle. None of what happened in there is your fault. They controlled you. They tortured you. Dan was desperate to get you back, too, when he went on that bloody rescue mission—it was driving him insane, he was probably reckless-“
Kyle ignores him. “There’s no way he’s ever even going to want to look at me. What if I hurt him again? What if there’s like, a trigger in my brain or-“
“You’re being ridiculous. You’re not going to hurt him again, because you love him. And he’s missing you like crazy, Kyle—Dan hating you is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. He wanders about like a lost puppy without you around, mate.”
Kyle sniffles. He knows he shouldn’t, but if Dan’s hurting without him...Kyle at least owes him an apology. Even if Dan clearly has no idea what’s best for him.
Dan doesn’t deserve to have to see Kyle ever again.
***
He can’t run from it forever.
He waits outside Dan’s door for what feels like an eternity, his breath rattling in his ears as his heart races, every muscle in his body screaming at him to run away—before he knocks.
“Come in,” Kyle hears quietly, and it’s Dan’s voice, clear and solid and as smooth as he remembers it being, if not tired and dejected.
His palms almost slip as he gently opens the door to Dan’s room, and he realises with a shock how long it is since he has been in here—it’d been almost three months since he’d gone on that fucking mission and been stupid enough get captured.
His mind floods with memories of sneaking in here late at night, lying next to Dan on the cramped single bunk and telling stupid jokes just to hear that gorgeous laugh, into the early hours of the morning before they both fell asleep in each others’ arms. His heart aches.
Dan is sat on his bunk, back turned slightly to the door so Kyle can see part of his profile, his glasses resting atop his nose and his eyes sad as he stares down at the book resting on his lap, seeing but not really focusing on the words in front of him.
He looks how Kyle remembered him before everything happened, if not a little more weary and skinnier, some of the bruises and cuts still fading. He looks like Dan.
Dan, apparently, is not expecting Kyle. He sits and waits and it is only when he realises that whoever is now in his room, whether he thought it was Woody, Will, Charlie or someone else (Kyle can only assume they’ve been in here as much as they have his own room) is not talking, that he looks up, and their eyes meet.
Dan’s deep blue eyes widen, and Kyle feels his knees go weak as Dan actually smiles at him.
Before he has a chance to choke on unplanned words, Dan is bounding off his bunk with all the energy in the world and throwing himself into Kyle’s arms, knocking Kyle back with the force. He stumbles, but maintains balance as he embraces Dan back with just as much passion, tears beginning to fall from his eyes when he realises how much he’s missed this.
Three months.
He realises Dan is crying too when he feels a growing wetness on his shoulder, and moves a hand up to card through his unimaginably soft hair.
Three months.
“What kind of person,” Dan sobs into Kyle’s neck with a weak laugh, “tortures their boyfriend and then avoids him for a solid month?”
Kyle can’t help but laugh back wetly too, clutching Dan as if he will never let him go. He can feel Dan’s ribs, but he tries not to focus on that.
“I’m sorry,” he blubbers, embarrassingly tearful, “I’m so fucking sorry, Dan, ‘m sorry, sorry-“
“Shut up,” Dan cries, and pulls back to look at Kyle’s face, his eyes serious. “It wasn’t you. Wasn’t your fault. If anyone, it’s mine, I went in there to rescue you and I failed, I got caught-“
“But you didn’t,” he says, bringing a thumb up to wipe away the tears under Dan’s eyes. “You didn’t fail. You did save me. I’m the fucking idiot who got caught in the first place. I knew what I was doing the whole time. I remember all of it. And I remember...liking it, too—you can’t possibly forgive me for that Dan, please don’t-“
“It wasn’t you. You’d never hurt me willingly. And you never will. We’re safe, now.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Do you trust me?”
Kyle hesitates, before whispering, “with all my heart.”
They say nothing, for a moment—lapping up every detail of each others’ faces as if it’s the last time they’ll ever see one another.
When it looks as if Dan might cry again, Kyle pulls him wordlessly back in, wrapping him up tightly in his arms.
“Missed you,” Dan mumbles into Kyle’s chest, and Kyle returns the sentiment with a kiss placed softly atop his head. “‘M never letting you go ever again.”
***
Life does not continue exactly the way it had before, but Kyle is just happy to have Dan back, regardless of everything that comes with that.
Upon request, Dan and Kyle now officially share a room. Relationships were not permitted between agents (which was a rule he and Dan had already been ignoring for exactly a year and a half) but when they saw the defiance in Kyle’s eyes they knew better than to argue.
Dan gets terrible migraines which the doctors can’t explain and so just prescribe him pills that don’t really work. Kyle rubs a soothing hand down his back when they get so bad that tears begin rolling involuntarily down his cheeks, with a cup of cold water and a kiss.
Dan used to have the occasional panic attack, too, but they’re much more frequent now. Most of the time they don’t even have a clear trigger. They could be eating lunch in the canteen with the others, making stupid jokes about how Woody never eats anything other than ham sandwiches, and Dan will suddenly go rigid and knock his tray off the table as he stumbles to his feet and forgets how to breathe. Kyle grabs him to steady him and leads him away from worried eyes, to a quiet corner where he tells Dan to match his breathing. On the days where they’re the worst, Dan curls up and hides, and Kyle has to remind himself that it’s nothing personal, even if it kind of is. Dan will always refute this later, but Kyle’s not sure he’ll ever be able to shake off the nagging guilt he feels.
The nightmares are the worst. In his own, Kyle hears Dan screaming. Most nights, he wakes up from them to hear the exact same thing, only it’s real and Dan is kicking him wildly in his sleep as he whimpers and shakes.
“Dan,” he says, voice hoarse, sitting up next to him and shaking him. “C’mon, babe, wake up, you’re fine-“
Dan wakes with a start, screaming until his throat is raw and then collapsing into Kyle’s waiting arms, trembling and exhausted. Kyle swallows around the lump in his throat and smooths Dan’s hair back from his sweaty forehead.
“You’re safe,” he whispers, and Dan gives a small nod and presses himself against Kyle under the sheets.
“Sorry,” he says quietly in response, and Kyle peers at him incredulously through the darkness.
“‘The fuck’re you sorry for?”
“...for waking you up.”
Kyle laughs in disbelief and pulls Dan tighter. “Don’t you ever apologise for that again.”
They don’t ever really talk about what happened, and Kyle is happy to keep it that way. Truth be told, he hardly remembers what happened to him before Dan came into the picture. How did they manage to manipulate his mind like that, to the point he forgot his own name? He wonders to himself what might’ve happened if he’d never been caught—if Dan had never been caught, too. He tries not to think about that too much.
They still have each other. Even if most of Kyle’s time is spent keeping a worried eye on Dan, he knows Dan does the same for him. There are moments where it is easy to pretend that none of it ever happened. When neither of them can sleep, Kyle makes Dan giggle the entire night until people in the neighbouring rooms are banging on the walls for them to keep it down, which only makes them laugh harder. Dan will sing songs to Kyle as he drifts off with his head in Dan’s lap and a smile on his face at the blissful sound of his boyfriend’s voice.
They still have each other, and that’s all they need.
***
Their superiors allow them a significant period of readjustment before they are called forward for ‘official questioning’, which sounds more like interrogation than anything else.
Both Dan and Kyle refuse to go in separately, and so, with some slight reluctance from the board, they are permitted to be questioned together.
Kyle is angry that it even needs to happen, because neither of them want to have to remember what they went through. Dan tries to hide his nervousness on the morning of meeting, and fails spectacularly.
Kyle comes out of the bathroom and finds him crouched on the edge of the bed, eyes unfocused as he bites at his nails like there’s no tomorrow. Quietly, but loud enough so as not to startle him with his sudden appearance, Kyle crouches down in front of him and draws his hands away from his face and down into his lap, where he soothingly holds them between his own.
“It’ll be fine, Daniel,” he swears, smiling at him as brightly as he can, but Dan’s face is still lined with worry. “I’ll be there the entire time, okay? You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.”
“Mmhmm.”
Kyle moves up on the bed next to him, and begins rubbing circles into his shoulders. He can feel Dan shaking. “Please, baby, don’t be scared.”
Dan’s eyes are watery behind his glasses as he runs a hand through his hair, always a sign that he’s stressed or anxious. “‘M sorry...I’m being stupid, I know, I just...don’t want to have to relive it.”
“That’s not stupid at all,” Kyle says firmly, and cups Dan’s face between his hands so he’s looking him straight in the eye. “If they ask any question you’re uncomfortable with, then fuck ‘em. We’ll leave and they can’t stop us.”
Dan sighs. “Yeah, I’m sure they’d love us for that.”
Kyle kisses his lips softly. “Who cares what they think?”
Dan smiles shyly, before kissing him back. It’s as timid and cautious as the first time they ever kissed.
Kyle beams back at him, but then Dan looks at the clock, and the smile melts off his face. “We’re going to be late if we don’t get going.”
“C’mon, then,” Kyle says, rising from his position on the floor and holding out his hand. Dan hesitates, but accepts it regardless.
Kyle’s had de-briefings before, but the room they enter for the questioning is unlike any he’s ever seen. There’s two men and a woman sat behind a long desk, all of which he recognises as members of the council. Dick, their superior officer, is stood leaning against the far wall, his eyes dark. Kyle shivers, and squeezes Dan’s hand tightly before they are both asked to take a seat.
“Agents Simmons, Smith,” one of them acknowledges without looking up from his large pile of paperwork, a man with silver hair and glasses.
Unsure as to whether they’re supposed to respond, Dan and Kyle look at each other uncertainly from where they’re sat next to each other, and then jump when the sound of the woman clearing her throat sharply cuts through the silence.
“The purpose of this meeting, gentlemen, is to clarify exactly what occurred on missions 140-2 and 140-2.1. We have a basic understanding of what occurred, but as with every mission, to prevent this happening again, we require full detail. Do you understand?”
Her words make sense, and so Kyle nods, but the woman’s face is pinched and untrustworthy and sends a shiver down his spine. The only time she looks up from her file is to see them confirm their understanding, as though they had any choice but to say yes. Her eyes are cold.
“Wonderful. In that case, let’s begin.”
Dan swallows heavily next to him.
“So, we’ll go through this chronologically.” She looks purposefully at the short man to her left, and to Kyle’s relief, he smiles at them both kindly before clearing his throat.
“Agent Simmons. For the sake of clarity, would you please be able to state the purpose of mission 140-2 and describe in full detail its events.”
It takes Kyle more effort than he’d realised to be able to recount the mission. He hardly remembered what had even happened—it was a blur of gunfire and others being dragged off around him to never be seen again before a fateful blow was finally struck to his own head, knocking him unconscious. The purpose of the mission had almost been irrelevant.
“Uhh..yeah, um...it was a—an infiltration mission? Like...an operation to weaken their defences for a larger attack...”
He shuffles in his chair uncomfortably under the scrutiny of three pairs of eyes, but the man with the friendly face nods as if to encourage him. Kyle coughs.
“And...uh...well, it failed, basically. They knew we were coming, or something, and they took us out. I think, like, 4 others were taken? And the rest got out-”
“Yes, indeed,” the woman interrupts. “What happened following your capture and prior to Agent Smith’s attempted rescue mission?”
He can feels Dan’s eyes on him now, and he can’t stop twisting his fingers about in his lap.
“I...I don’t remember...”
“You don’t remember?” The man with the silver hair asks, almost incredulously, and Kyle has to shut his eyes and breathe deeply as he shakes his head.
The members of the council all look at each other with unreadable expressions, before the woman continues. “We’ll come back to you in a moment, Simmons. In the meantime, I’d urge you to try to recall at least something.”
Kyle wants to run away.
“Agent Smith. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to give us your version of events. What was the purpose of mission 140-2.1, and please state the events of said mission.”
Kyle cannot look at Dan as he begins talking.
“The mission was an extraction mission, so to rescue the others who’d been captured on 140-2. But, um, again, it...didn’t exactly go to plan...”
“What happened?”
“I...well, I, um...split off from the rest of the team...”
At that, Kyle’s head snaps up to look at him, but Dan’s gaze is fixated on the three people sat in front of them. His blood runs cold.
“You split off from them? Why?”
“I was acting...uh, recklessly, and...I was desperate, and I didn’t follow protocol-“
“Why didn’t you follow protocol, Mr Smith?” The woman says cruelly, and Dan flushes.
“Because I, um...I wanted to find Kyle.”
The rush of guilt to his head is enough to make him feel faint, but he grounds himself by planting his hands on the cool table in front of him and not letting his eyes drift from Dan’s face. Dan looks at him with watery eyes.
“What then?” The short man asks softly.
“Well, I...I got captured.”
“What then?” The woman repeats, faster, almost eagerly.
“I think you already know that,” Dick suddenly interjects cooly, and Kyle swears he has never loved that man as much as he does in this moment.
The woman glares at Dick, but presses on. “It says in your file that you underwent physical trauma during your time in enemy captivity, Mr Smith...and potentially psychological, too, if the anxiety medication you’ve been prescribed is anything to go by,” she says, scrutinising Dan’s file in front of her.
Dan must see the way Kyle is about to lunge out of his seat and attack her, because despite looking as if he is about to cry, he hastily shouts out “yes! I mean...yes, I did.”
“Please elaborate.”
“Why does he have to?” Kyle pleads before he can stop himself, and the short man takes pity on him.
“If we get a better idea of what...techniques, they’re using, then we can help others we rescue in the future more effectively, and develop our combat. And if there’s any lasting effects, well, we can try to treat them. I understand this is hard, but it’s all for the good of others and bringing the enemy down. We wouldn’t do this unless it was absolutely necessary.”
Kyle thinks bullshit—no one’s even tried to help him or Dan, they were forgotten about after a week—but he knows better than to argue.
Everyone’s eyes are suddenly back on Dan. Kyle grips his hand under the table, can feel his own fingers trembling. Dan looks at him with big, sad, grateful eyes.
“Uh...” he mumbles. “It was, um, electrocution...sleep deprivation, starvation...”
Kyle goes rigid and tries his best to drown his voice out. He can’t bear it.
“It says on your file that when they brought you in you were severely bruised,” the woman presses.
“Well, yeah...beatings too, I guess,” Dan says quietly.
The woman hums thoughtfully, and then, almost maliciously, as if she already knows the answer, asks, “and who exactly inflicted this upon you, Mr Smith?”
Dan gapes at her, and his fingers tighten impossibly around Kyle’s own as he turns to look at him blankly, like he doesn’t know what to say or do. Nor does Kyle. He can hardly hear the woman repeating the question over the sound of blood rushing in his ears.
“I...don’t remember,” Dan lies, poorly, and the woman raises an eyebrow.
“Are you sure?”
She knows. They all know. They saw Kyle wearing their uniform. They must know about the way Dan reacted when he first saw Kyle that day in the infirmary. About how they avoided each other for a month despite being inseparable. Despite being in love. They know it all.
“Really, I don’t know-“
“It was me.”
A triumphant smile crosses the woman’s face, but it disappears in a split second, as if it was never even there.
“It was you, Mr Simmons?”
“He was brainwashed- they fucked with his head, it wasn’t his fault-“ Dan rushes out, but the woman waves him off.
“What happened after you were captured, Mr Simmons? Brainwashing, you say? How was it done?”
“I told you,” Kyle grits his teeth, and he has to release Dan’s hand for fear of accidentally crushing all the bones in his fingers with the force of his hatred for this woman as his own curl into fists, “I don’t fucking remember.”
“Was it chemical? Psychological? How did they force you to carry out their orders? To torture your own friend? I’m afraid I really must insist upon an answer-“
“Why?” Kyle yells, and Dan stares at him in shock. “Why do you need to know? Why does it matter? Why can’t you just leave us alone?”
“Well, Mr Simmons,” the grey-haired man says smoothly, as if Kyle’s outburst hadn’t even happened, “should we learn to understand this new process of...indoctrination, shall we say, well...there’s no reason that we wouldn’t be able to replicate something of a similar nature.”
“...What do you mean?” Kyle breathes, although he has a sickening feeling he already knows.
“We could brainwash enemy agents,” the woman says, “use them against each other. Imagine the damage we could cause to their forces.”
Kyle considers this for a minute, and a dark, hidden part of him whispers yes, this is what they deserve, make them endure what they did to you, make them feel empty, make them suffer-
And then he sees Dan’s horrified expression, and feels ashamed that the thought ever even crossed his mind.
“No,” Kyle says, hardy masking his fury and the undeniable fear he feels settling in his bones like a heavy weight. “You can’t.”
“Why not?” The woman dares, peering at him from the elevated desk, her bony fingers clasped together.
“Because...because you don’t know what it’s like. How it feels to...to hurt someone you love, and not be able to stop yourself from doing it...to have someone control your every move, to have someone in your head, you can’t-“ he cries, and heaves in a breath. “It’s the worst feeling in the world, and everyday I see the things I did and...and if...if we use the same fucked up shit they do, if we have to resort to that, then...what are we even fighting for? What’s the point if we’re just as bad as them?”
He doesn’t remember when he left his seat, but now he’s standing over the woman, and her eyes study him thoughtfully. It makes him feel sick.
The short man looks ashamed, and the other taken aback.
“Even if I remembered, I’d never tell you how they did it. Not over my dead body.”
Dick smiles proudly from where he stands in the shadows.
The woman breaks eye contact with Kyle, and arranges the paper on the table in front of her.
Kyle takes that as his cue to leave, and grabs Dan’s hand and makes for the door without looking back.
Just as his hand reaches the handle, though, the woman adds, quietly, “I’m afraid, Mr Simmons, there are ways of extracting information, even from the depths of the human subconscious. Just be grateful that we are patient. There will be others who undergo a similar process to you. Actually, how many others were there you said were captured on your mission? Four, was it?”
Kyle freezes. Dick’s face goes dark. “Get him out of here,” he says, sensing danger, a chance of things getting messy, and Dan gladly obliges, tugging Kyle from the room desperately and slamming the door shut behind them.
He pulls him down corridor after corridor, and Kyle trails loosely along, unable to breathe, only able to vaguely make out the concerned faces of the people they pass. They must look like two madmen; maybe they are. Kyle can’t bring himself to care.
He doesn’t know where they’re going—as long as it’s far, far away from those people. He can hear KS-44 on loop in his head, only it’s in that woman’s awful fucking voice and she’s laughing, too.
Cold air washes over him suddenly, but Kyle is numb to it, hardly registering the sudden abundance of natural light, blue and blinding grey, engulfing them like a blanket.
Dan suddenly stops in front of him, and now that Kyle takes the time to stop and allow his eyes to focus, he sees the concrete under their feet, feels the wind drying the tears rolling down his cheeks.
“We’re not supposed to be out here,” is the only thing he can mumble, and Dan holds him close as he tries to breathe himself back to a state of lucidity.
“You’re alright,” Dan whispers, but Kyle doesn’t feel alright. He pulls away, and when the winter breeze picks up he suddenly regrets it.
He’s not been outside in so long. They’re not supposed to leave the base unless they’re on a mission, but they’re standing on the edge of a field along a concrete path and no one can stop them. The sky is cold, but the faint blue light that washes over them makes Dan’s eyes look incredible, and so Kyle decides it’s worth it.
“What do we do?”
Dan looks small and helpless in the face of Kyle’s question, and as if it’s too painful to look into Kyle’s eyes, he wraps his arms around himself against the chill and turns to look out at the forest they can see in the distance.
“We could run.”
It doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but they both know it’s not a realistic one. There’s nothing left out there anymore.
“We can’t.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared.”
Dan turns back to look at Kyle, and he looks pained as he whispers, “me too.”
He moves forward, then, letting his long, delicate fingers brush softly over Kyle’s skin for a blissful amount of time, before pulling him in for a long, deep kiss. Kyle falls into it and runs his fingers through Dan’s soft hair, his other thumb carding along his cheekbone and brushing his dark eyelashes. He feels Dan’s hands clinging to his jumper around his waist, and when they finally break apart for breath, neither of them let go.
“She was just trying to get under your skin,” Dan whispers, but it seems more like he’s trying to convince them both instead of actually believing it. Kyle still feels too ill to do anything but nod and shiver against the growing wind. “I won’t ever let them do it, Kyle. I’d kill them before they did.”
Kyle laughs, and feels another tear fall. “We can start our own revolution,” he says, and Dan laughs too, although his eyes are shining with tears as well.
They stare into each other’s eyes, and gradually Dan’s face becomes serious again, as he leans in and says, “let them destroy each other. I don’t need anything as long as I have you.”
Kyle decides that as stupid as it sounds, Dan is right. The world will probably always be a fucked up place, but it doesn’t matter.
“I love you,” Dan says then, and Kyle realises with a start that the last time he heard those words was as Dan lay dying on that steel table. It only took those three words to shatter the inhumane control held over his brain; to pull him back into his own mind and bring the warmth flooding back into his heart.
Dan must realise, as well, because his eyes are twinkling shyly, as if he were admitting it for the first time all over again—that day felt like years ago now.
“I love you, too.”
He pulls Dan closer. The breeze dies.