Chapter Text
City lights rush like wind across the glass of the window, casting him, intermittently, in gold and in darkness.
Doktor stares down at his feet.
The dirty silver floor of the bus rattles against his torn up dress shoes as he shuffles uncomfortably, trying not to let his shoulder brush against that of the sleeping stranger at his side. Above the smell of sweat and someone's heavy magnolia perfume, the smoke of the city curls around him in a gasoline purr, staining his mouth with the taste of engines and fast food, dripping down his throat to sit in his lungs, in his chest, near to his slow-moving heart.
He wishes he had the strength to be annoyed.
Most everyone on the bus is silent, pressed against the backs of their chairs or the cool, vibrating window panes, worn into quietude by long days and long journeys. It's late and everyone would rather be at home, asleep.
Doktor wishes he could sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. Sleep and sleep and not wake up again.
The missing piece is the only one who seems to have any energy.
Glancing across the aisle, Doktor's eyes land on the boy's black dress shoes, tapping rapidly against the floor. Higher up, he sees his worn hands gripping hard at the thighs of his slacks, clenching and unclenching his fists around the soft fabric. There is blood on his white button-up shirt, but it is dark enough that no one has noticed. Small mercies.
Jameson coughs frailly. His head is still but his eyes flicker wildly around the bus, like the rolling pupils of a horse trapped in a house on fire. Doktor supposes he's looking for help. For comfort. For anything and anyone to save him.
Poor thing.
Jameson coughs again, a little louder. Doktor realizes he is doing it on purpose, trying to attract attention to himself. Not easy with a guard dog at your side. Doktor shoots him a warning glare and then sits back, trying not to look at him.
But his hands are making a small sign, over and over again, shaking but determined, stiff but desperate –
“S,” signs Jameson, his mouth quivering. “C. H – ”
A hand shoots out to snatch his wrist and Jameson jumps hard, curling back against the seat of the chair, his face losing color in the rapid-passing shadows of the city rushing past.
Red squeezes the missing piece's wrist so hard Doktor knows it will bruise black. Then he leans in, close enough that his hood brushes against Jameson's downy brown hair, and he whispers – in words only heard by his brothers – with a voice so harsh as to cut the ear –
“You so much as lift a finger and I will deliver your corpse to the dumpster personally.”
The light of a nearby casino rushes over the bus. Jameson's tears are illuminated in gold.
“Am I understood?”
“Yes,” knocks Jameson, biting hard on his lip.
Red lets him go in silence and sits back.
Doktor sits back too.
They are just passengers like everyone else.
A memory flashes across him the same way the lights do, here and then left behind in an instant.
He remembers, with a nauseating effort of the will, a happier day, with Jameson perched at his side just the same. His face was full of joy and he was smiling at him, his hands moving in rapid words now less than half-remembered. Their train raced past little white sheep in little green pastures, and Jameson spent half the trip staring at the window, slumping back occasionally to rest against Doktor's shoulder. He was as warm as an engine against him, healthy, whole, and unharmed. He called him by a name Doktor can no longer recall.
He can't remember where they were going or why. But he seems to remember that joy.
The darkness swallows him whole again. He closes his eyes and tries to forget.
It's easier, these days, to obey.
It's easier not to remember.
This is a time of pain.
Stepping into the reach of the monster is a relief so heavy it is better compared to opium than home-coming. Outside Anti's power there is confusion, fear, guilt, and doubt above all else. Within it?
Doktor steps across the thresh-hold of the abandoned house where they have taken refuge and breathes in deep, shuddering hard as the darkness steals back inside of him.
Bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss –
He wishes he could spend every second of the rest of his life in the very heart of Anti's control, mindlessly numb, overwhelmingly content, but unfortunately there is only so far his master can stretch, and so whenever he is sent away on missions like this one, he does his best to return home quickly.
Jameson seems less relieved to enter the run-down little house. His wide eyes stare at the room around him, flickering over squirming rats and patches of white mold patterned along the walls, until at last his gaze lands on Trickshot, and he stiffens as though impaled.
Trick stares right back.
“Holy shit,” he whispers, and then his mouth breaks into a smile cold enough to re-freeze icebergs. “You found the little mouse. Done running, bitch?”
Jameson flinches, turning his gaze away. Trickshot gets to his feet, approaching easily and grabbing JJ's chin, lifting his face up to the light.
“C?” signs Jameson frantically, forgetting his guardian for a moment. “What's happened to – ”
Red snatches his hands and yanks him towards his chest, throwing him off balance and then shoving him hard to the ground, where nails and an undrying moisture found perpetually on the wooden slats of the floor press against his palms. Jameson, mouth open with pain, gasps and crawls backwards, clutching at the wounds from the fight –
Trickshot grabs the boy by the back of his shirt and drags him to his feet.
Punished for speaking, Jameson makes good use of his large eyes instead, staring at what was once his brother with an undeniably agonized desperation in his eyes, reaching out to cling to the soft fabric of the torn grey shirt Trickshot wears.
“Get the fuck off me,” snaps Trick in a voice so thin he can barely be heard, shoving his hands away. He decides to grip his hair instead of his shirt and Jameson scrambles as the pressure on his scalp pulls him onto his tip-toes, his face contorting with pain.
“Poor little thing,” purrs Trick in a babying voice, still rasping from his purple-bruised throat, using his spare hand to grab Jameson's chin and tilt his head up to what little light comes from the flickering overhead. “You beat him to hell, Hoodie!”
The irony of this is that Trick is hardly better off himself. For every bruise, broken bone, and cut that Jameson's body took tonight, there is at least one match on Trickshot's skin. His master has not been kind to him. When it comes to a hierarchy, they all know where Trickshot falls – the very bottom of the pack.
Trick tries to lift Jameson off his feet, but a sudden bout of coughing forces him to let his brother go. He doubles over, shaking hands clutching at his aching chest, and coughs so deep and so hard that it sounds as though pieces of bone are being shaken off his ribs.
Doktor watches wearily, a little irritated. One more sickness he's going to be expected to fix. Red reaches over to smack the back of his head. “Do something, Deutsch!”
Yelping, Doktor grabs his smarting skull and staggers away, well wary of Red's temper. “No medicine,” he whispers, scuffing his way towards the other room.
“Oh, that's your fucking excuse? You're supposed to be a doctor!”
Doktor hides his face in his hands, cowering against the wall, but all Red does is roll his eyes and turn away, shoving Trick to the side. He heads toward the stairs, his victory only barely soured by his brothers' stupidity. “Master, I found him!” he calls, smiling as he moves down, down into the darkness of the basement. “I brought him back for you!”
Removing his hands from his eyes, Doktor turns to see if Jameson is afraid, but there is nothing in his eyes but worry. He's helping Trickshot to stay standing, rubbing warmly at his chest. Trick does not have the strength to push him away.
And then the darkness is upon them.
Jameson whirls wildly, his fighter's hands out-stretched. Doktor catches sight of Trickshot staggering away, retreating from Anti's attention. He knows it would be safer for him to run too, but he needs Anti right now – needs something to extinguish these thoughts in his head – pity and guilt and concern, all useless remnants of a time when Jack was the one who pulled his strings.
He needs Anti to make his brain stop asking his mouth to say, Jameson, I'm sorry, run, now, while there's still time –
“Arzt,” calls Anti's voice, a whisper that echoes from every side, and Doktor jumps to attention, staring around him. “Bring my new little puppy down here.”
Jameson doesn't turn to run fast enough. Doktor's grip on his wrist is tight as a blood pressure cuff.
“H-E-N-R,” he begs, and Doktor grabs his other hand and begins yanking him towards the basement, dragging him across cold cement and old bloodstains.
“Doctor, doctor, doctor,” signs Jamie again and again, using what little mobility his hands have. He has begun to cry. Doktor will not look at him. Cannot look at him. “It's me, it's me, it's me, brother, brother.”
“Child, be silent,” Doktor whispers.
He never does anything more than whisper these days.
“You will only make this harder.”
He drags Jameson down to his master.