Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Now, Milligan wasn’t one to point fingers. But one of them had the grand idea to bring the fight into an elevator of all places, and it certainly wasn’t him.

McCracken didn’t turn his back from the tranquilizer gun leveled at his chest, one hand reaching behind to jab at the elevator buttons. Nothing moved. The buttons didn’t even light up when pressed.

“It would appear to be jammed,” McCracken said evenly.

“Really,” said Milligan. “I didn’t notice.”

Shouts and crashes rang out overhead. The elevator shuddered as muffled bangs rocked the cab.

“I wonder how this could have happened,” Milligan said. In reply, a pencil whizzed at his face. He ducked.

“I wonder,” he continued, undeterred, “Why someone thought it would be a good idea to enter an elevator right before an explosion. That doesn’t seem very cautious.”

“I wonder,” said McCracken through gritted teeth, “Why some of my men insist on planting calculator bombs willy-nilly and not informing their associates.”

Ah. So he hadn’t known.

Milligan readjusted his grip on the tranquilizer gun. They had only been descending for a few short moments before the blast had rocked the building. And they had been relatively high up. Really high up, actually. He winced, weighing the prospect of a fire breaking out from the explosion. “We need to get out of here.”

“Indeed. Up you go, then?” McCracken waved a hand at the panel in the ceiling as if he were politely opening a door for Milligan.

“No, please. Ladies first,” Milligan said, raising his tranquilizer gun higher.

For some reason McCracken seemed to find this terribly funny. Then another echoing thud boomed down the elevator shaft, and he sobered. “Really, though. Enough dallying.”

“I’m not gift-wrapping a nice little opportunity for you to stab me when my back is turned, thanks,” Milligan growled.

McCracken put a hand on his chest and let out an offended sound. “Milligan! For shame! When have I ever backstabbed you?”

“Frequently?”

“That’s not true and you know it. I always clearly announce my intent to cause you harm.”

Another odd crash from above, this time accompanied by a strange roaring sound. The Ten Man was right. They really didn’t have the luxury of time.

“Do me a favor though?” Milligan said, cracking his knuckles and moving to stand underneath the panel in the ceiling. “After you knock me out, could you just drop me down the elevator shaft instead of bringing me to Curtain? I’d rather not smell his breath again if I can’t help it.”

McCracken snorted and rolled his eyes. “Don’t get your cargo pants in a twist. You’re too precious to dispose of at the moment.”

With that comforting notion ringing in his ears, Milligan leaped onto the hand bar at the back wall of the elevator cab. He balanced there, unscrewing the panel with deft movements while his other hand kept the tranquilizer gun leveled at McCracken. It wouldn’t help him, not while most of his attention would be focused on wriggling out of here, but it made Milligan feel a tad more secure. He let the last screw clink to the ground and poked his head out of the opening.

He was met with a mess of tangled metal. Coughing against the acrid smoke billowing into the cabin, Milligan waved a hand in front of his eyes and tried to make sense of the sight. Beams and poles criss-crossed all the way up the shaft, crumbles of concrete and rebar blocking his view. If there was a clear way out, Milligan couldn’t find it.

“See anything?” McCracken called. Milligan had almost forgotten he was there.

Milligan didn’t bother to reply, only tilted his head out of the way so the Ten Man could take a look. McCracken squinted at the web of rubble above them.

“Can you find the opening to the floor above us?”

Milligan peered some more. “Nope.” Then, as the smoke drifted and shifted, he saw something that made his heart stand still.

He must’ve made a noise, for the Ten Man called out, “What? What is it?”

Wordlessly, Milligan pointed far, far above him at a gap in the concrete, where the severed elevator cables swayed in an invisible breeze. 

“Ah,” said McCracken.

More crashes, this time from somewhere off to their left. The elevator shivered.

“And we’re not cracked like a couple of sunny side up eggs on the floor because…” McCracken wondered aloud.

Milligan studied the very top of the cab. “Because we got one-in-a-million lucky. The largest beam there—see, that one?—that’s pinned the cables attached to the cab against that block of concrete above us. It’s holding us up.”

“I see,” said McCracken. “And if either of those pieces shift …”

“Splat,” said Milligan. Another boom rang out, as if to illustrate his point. The elevator cab slipped by a few centimeters. Milligan swallowed hard. “I’m going to come down now.”

“I think that’s for the best,” McCracken replied in a slightly strangled tone.

The Ten Man passed the panel and the screws up to Milligan. He reattached them, working quickly to prevent any more smoke and debris from seeping into the cabin. Then, ever-so-carefully, he slid off of the handlebar and back onto the floor of the cab.

“Do you think you could manage a truce until we’re back on solid ground?”

McCracken held up his hands in a who, me? gesture. “I didn’t backstab you, did I? O ye of little faith … But yes, you have a point Milligan. Perhaps our time would be better used trying not to move around too much.”

The elevator slipped again, and Milligan winced. All of their not-moving efforts would be pointless if the building kept toppling like this. Backing into a corner, he slid against the wall until he was seated on the floor. Keeping his tranquilizer gun not pointed at McCracken, exactly, but certainly at the ready, Milligan fished out his radio from where it was clipped to his utility belt. Across the cramped cab, McCracken was doing the same.

Determined but not particularly hopeful, Milligan thumbed at the buttons and put out a bulletin for help. No such luck. He didn’t even get any static in response. He tossed the radio between his palms, wondering why it was suddenly getting rather difficult to breathe in the cabin. Maybe it was the cologne? In this enclosed space, the scent was all the more overpowering. On his third toss of the radio he caught sight of the broken-off pencil tip embedded in the back.

“No response?” McCracken called to him.

“Hm.”

“Your radio’s broken, isn’t it?”

Milligan chose to neither confirm nor deny this. McCracken let out a long sigh. He seemed to be having no trouble getting air, if he could sigh that long, Milligan thought idly. The Ten Man raised his own radio and tried again. No response at first. Then, static, interspersed by odd squawks. The squawks were unintelligible, yet oddly familiar, as though Crawlings had run afoul of an evil witch and had been cursed to wander the world in seagull form forever, bothering tourists for french fries and generally making a nuisance of himself. McCracken drummed his fingers on his briefcase. “At least they can locate us with the tracking chip.”

“Yeah,” Milligan gasped. “They could do that. If they bother.” The air had suddenly grown far more dense, as if it sank to the bottom of his lungs when he inhaled, too heavy to make use of. Was the cologne slowly suffocating him? Was something else suffocating him? He glanced up at the panel in the ceiling, expecting to find dark smoke billowing in through the cracks. All seemed to be clear. The air was a bit cloudy, a bit hazy, but nothing alarming.

“They will bother,” McCracken said darkly. “If they know what’s good for them.”

Had he been poisoned? When could that have happened? He hadn’t felt any needle sliding under his skin when he’d poked his head above the cab, and there was no way to stuff a handkerchief under his nose subtly. The last time he’d eaten or drank anything had been hours ago.

“You should sit down,” Milligan said, trying to distract himself. He gave himself a shake, then froze in case the motion had been enough to jostle the elevator. It seemed relatively secure for the moment, however. “If the elevator falls, laying down and protecting your head with your briefcase will give you the best possible chance of survival.”

McCracken barked out a laugh, but he complied. “Yes, you would know that, wouldn’t you?”

He got the sense he was supposed to be offended by that. He couldn’t bring himself to care. He gripped his tranquilizer gun, raising it higher. Suddenly pointing at the ground seemed more than he could handle. Too unprotected. Too exposed. 

“I mean, really,” McCracken continued, unbothered. “Is it contagious? Any afternoon out with my good friend Milligan will result in a fall from a great height? Is that how this works?”

Why was his heartbeat so loud? Or was that more debris booming to the ground? He chanced a glance above at the ceiling. Still intact.

“—should stuff a parachute in that utility belt of yours, really—” McCracken stopped mid-sentence when he glanced over at Milligan. He squinted.

Milligan shuddered. “What?”

“What’s wrong?”

Milligan huffed out an attempt at a laugh. It just made him lose what little precious air he had. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but several things are wrong at the moment.”

“Not with the situation. What’s wrong with you?”

Milligan raised the tranquilizer gun higher, pointing it at the space between McCracken’s thick eyebrows. His hands shook. (He had unfailingly steady hands. They never shook.) 

A dull roar took up in his ears, echoing louder and louder. Bright lights spread across his vision, popping and crackling, dotting his eyes like falling snow. When the roar dulled down and the snow melted, his hands were clenched into fists—empty—and McCracken was holding his tranquilizer gun.

“It’s heavier than I thought it would be,” McCracken said, inspecting it with a strange sort of reverence. “Let’s see … ah. Space for six darts. I always wondered—”

Milligan snatched his weapon back with a wordless growl. He clung to it like a lifeline. The roar was back in his ears, accompanied by an inexplicable, irrefutable certainty that he was going to die in this elevator. He needed to get out of here. Screw the precarious cable. He’d find another way—

“Where are you going,” McCracken deadpanned, tugging him back down.

“Out,” Milligan growled, beginning to thrash.

The elevator cab slipped.

Milligan froze.

It came to rest only a few inches below, but tilted, as if Milligan were trapped at the bottom of a long, winding crevice in the earth. It didn’t help his sense of balance, which already seemed to be sloshing about with the roaring in his ears.

When his vision cleared again, McCracken was squinting at him again, as if he were a quizzical bug the Ten Man had trapped in a jar and was struggling to identify. “You’re deathly pale.”

“Don’t get to the beach much.” His mouth seemed to run on his own, disconnected from the rest of his systems. As soon as he thought of that, it was as if every function running in the background of his day-to-day life suddenly became yanked uncomfortably to the forefront. He was all too aware of the pulse pounding in his neck, the nerves winding down to his fingertips, the blood gushing through his veins. He risked another glance up, where he knew tons and tons of concrete and steel beams were precariously balanced, just waiting to fall. 

He’d never felt more like a piece of meat.

“Are you having a stroke?”

The absurdity of the question pulled him out of it for a moment. “What?”

McCracken was watching him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “I’m serious. Are you?”

“I don’t know,” Milligan answered a little too honestly. He wiggled both of his arms experimentally and shook his head. Then, almost as an afterthought, “I think it feels more like a heart attack, actually.”

“Your chest hurts?”

“Yeah.”

“Can’t draw a full breath?”

Milligan nodded.

McCracken hummed. “Do you know what I think, Milligan?”

Milligan swallowed. It felt as if there was a small handful of gravel lodged in his throat. “What?”

McCracken smiled at him. His teeth shone in the dim of the elevator. “I think you look scared out of your mind.”

Milligan laughed.

It came out wrong. Nothing like his usual booming chuckle. High-pitched, too sharp, devoid of any real humor. “That’s a good one,” Milligan said, scrubbing a hand across his face. With his other he tapped the tranquilizer gun against his knee, a frenzied, fervent tattoo.

McCracken’s smile had only widened. “I wasn’t joking. Really, I’m an expert. I’ve seen a lot of people look very, very afraid. And you do look it.”

The very suggestion was ridiculous. Absurd. The strange lights popped in front of his eyes again.

McCracken looked as though Christmas had come early. “What I wouldn’t do for a camera… This wouldn’t be my doing, would it?”

“No,” said Milligan, before he’d had time to think about it.

“The elevator, then? Don’t tell me this is your first time being trapped in an elevator,” McCracken purred.

“This is the seventh time this year,” Milligan gasped. “And before you ask, no, I’m not claustrophobic. I seem to spend half of my life in vents.”

But then again … he had been able to escape the vents … and each of the elevators those previous six times …

Another wave of … of whatever this was threatened to strangle him. This time, his vision fuzzed out entirely. Sound warped and blurred. McCracken might have been talking. The concrete might have been collapsing over his head, for all he knew. It faded into an all-encompassing roar. Milligan shoved his head between his knees and struggled for breath, trying to let it pass.

He couldn’t get any air. He really was going to die here, wasn’t he? This was it. The concept did not frighten him, exactly; if the prospect of dying paralyzed him then he’d never get anything done as a secret agent … but the unshakable certainty with which he knew this was the end was foreign, too strong to comprehend. 

His hands clenched in his hair. His mind seemed to separate into two: one, uncomfortably here, squashed on the elevator floor; another, somewhere else entirely. Out of here. It was this part that remembered his years of training, of pulling people out of collapsed buildings and of attending to his junior agents after too-close encounters with their adversary. 

Breathe, that other-Milligan said. Your only task right now is to breathe.

So he did.

The air did not come easily, did not seem to help, did not seem to supply any oxygen. But he sucked it in anyway, following a rhythm as best he could. Moments passed. How many, he didn’t know. But his heart kept beating, and he was still alive to feel them pass.

At last he became aware that his palms hurt. He flexed them, wondering. A sharp pain greeted him, little pinpricks dotted across his hand. It was his fingernails digging into his palm. A moment later he noticed that his scalp stung similarly, and tugging with his arms, he realized he had grabbed fistfuls of his hair. With an effort he let go.

Now his hands were empty. He got the sense that they shouldn’t be. He should be holding something.

He peeled one eye open. His tranquilizer gun gleamed in front of him. Someone else's hand was curled around it.

“I’d like that back,” Milligan croaked.

“Welcome back,” McCracken grunted. “And no.”

A noise above him. Milligan’s ears perked up. The noise had been distinct from the steady creaks and rumbles of the debris settling, which was why he had noticed it. It sounded like a voice.

“Down here!” McCracken boomed. Milligan jumped a foot into the air, and the cab wobbled again. 

The voices resumed above, growing clearer, sharper. 

They had been found. There was a way out.

It was as if a switch flipped inside Milligan. Suddenly, he felt brisk, all business, mind as sharp as ever. “Right,” he said, dusting his hands off as if nothing had transpired. “I’m going to get that panel open, then we can work with them to plot out a route—”

“You have quite a few more screws loose up there than I thought,” McCracken said, rapping his forehead.

Milligan ignored that. The strange spell had passed. He was back on track now. He was fine.

He stood up and immediately careened sideways into the wall.

The elevator slipped a few inches, tilted further. McCracken barked something at him. Milligan clung to the hand rail at the back of the elevator, riding out the wave of dizziness. The tilt of the cabin floor didn’t help his balance. When at last his vision righted, he noted that the voices overhead seemed closer. 

Again he climbed onto the hand rail, placing his feet gingerly this time, as if a single misstep would be the end of them. He produced his screwdriver from his utility belt and set to work on the screws.

“There seems to be a beam blocking you in,” a voice came from above, muffled through the panel. “We’re going to try to move it and—”

“You’re going to do no such thing,” McCracken interrupted harshly.

Milligan frowned in concentration. His fingers were trembling. (They never shook.) He couldn’t get the screwdriver to do his bidding, manipulate it into any sort of twisting motion. With a curse, he jammed his fingers under the edge of the panel and ripped it clean from the ceiling, as if yanking out a wiggly tooth. The screws stripped and gave easily, clinking to the floor below. Milligan poked his head through the gap only to be met with a familiar eyebrow.

“Fancy running into you here,” Milligan panted.

“There’s only one open seat left in our van,” Crawlings called back. “You’ll have to stay down there, Milligan. That’s just how it is.”

“You would leave all of his passwords and secrets down this elevator shaft as well?” Below him, McCracken put his hands on his hips and angled himself so Crawlings could see his stormy expression through the open panel. “And we are going to have a word about caution with those calculators when I get up there.”

Milligan intently watched as the Ten Men above them maneuvered through the rubble, shifting what was possible to move and navigating a path through the rest. He and McCracken couldn’t be much help down here, not with the beam blocking the majority of their vision. He wished it was his agents that had found them—he had infinitely more faith in Hardy and Gristle over Crawlings—but what Crawlings lacked in caution he made up for in spindliness and nimbleness. In no time a rope had been passed through the open panel. McCracken tucked Milligan’s tranquilizer gun into his suit coat, clasped his briefcase, and, roughly elbowing Milligan out of the way, began to climb. 

Perhaps the Ten Man thought them safe. But his incautious shove proved premature. The elevator cab slipped with a stomach-dropping lurch. 

Hurry up, Milligan hissed mentally, watching McCracken disappear through the panel, not daring to speak aloud lest the Ten Man slow down just to torment him. His turn, next, as soon as there was spare rope. Then he’d be out of this place—

The elevator dropped again. Then a bit more. Then it began to slide, unhalted, the cables screeching as they scraped between the concrete and the beam …

Then the screech ended. The cable had run out of slack and had slipped fully loose. The elevator began its long-delayed free fall.

But at the very last second, Milligan jumped, high as he could straight up into the air, straight through the open panel in the ceiling. His nimble fingers, shaking though they were, brushed the very tip of the rope and curled around it. The elevator fell around him, passing by him untouched, the force ruffling his hair.

Far, far below him, the elevator crumpled on the ground below.

Silence. A cloud of dust spilled up to meet them.

“Splat,” said Milligan, still swinging.

He had no memory of climbing out of there. It was a big stretch of nothingness, as blank as if it had been brainswept away. But his body must have worked on its own, putting hand over hand and foot after foot. When he came back to himself again, his eyelashes were wet. It was raining. That must have helped to quell any fire as a result of the explosion. 

Rain. They were outside. Trees. Drenched grass. Safe ground. Milligan leaned against a tree and hauled in air. Fresh air, unclouded by smoke or concrete dust.

The Ten Men were giving him strange looks. Milligan ignored them. In the corner of his awareness he could hear McCracken telling them he’d had some sort of episode up there. He didn’t elaborate, which Milligan was thankful for. That wouldn’t last. No doubt he would be subjected to endless ridicule once they got the full story … which was what, exactly? He still wasn’t sure.

God. He hoped there were no working security cameras in the elevator.

A deep, unshakeable exhaustion settled into his bones. Inescapable. It was as if he’d used up all his fight in there, simply sitting still on the floor. He didn’t protest when rough hands snatched his utility belt away, emptied his hidden pockets in which he stashed boomerangs and darts and lockpicks. It wasn’t a fight he could win right now.

He would try tomorrow.

He was led into a vehicle, pushed into a seat. None of this prompted even a spark of alarm. With the tires rumbling softly beneath him, Milligan let his head drop against the window and drifted away into sleep, uncaring of where they took him.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, he didn’t stick around to experience the ridicule. Crawlings performed his regularly scheduled blunder much earlier than expected, so Milligan found himself sneaking away and hitching a ride back to Mr. Benedict’s long before he had to face McCracken again.

Now, a week and a half later, Milligan was a bit disturbed to find that the exhaustion hadn’t vanished, easy as morning dew evaporating in the sun’s first rays. Instead it clung, damp, weighing down his every move. Oh, sure, he was a lot better. Just getting out of the elevator had done wonders. But he felt oddly hollow. As if he were a simply drawn outline on a bit of sketch paper, the artist having neglected to color him in.

He slept for a full day when he returned. Kate was beside herself. Milligan struggled to concoct an explanation given that he hadn’t sustained any serious injuries that would easily account for his slumber. The others seemed to require no further explanation, however, upon hearing that he’d been kidnapped, albeit briefly.

Milligan himself wasn’t satisfied with that. Something was wrong with him, and he needed to get to the bottom of it. He’d avoided going out on missions for the past week, letting Hardy and Gristle pick up his absence. They were more than capable. Besides, he’d only be a detriment and a danger to them if it happened again. Maybe it had been a heart attack. Maybe McCracken was closer to the truth, and it had been some strange, rogue bout of terror. He needed to find out, either way, and put a stop to it.

And so home Milligan remained. At least the higher-ups were delighted with his newfound commitment to his backlog of unfinished mission reports.

Despite the exhaustion, he found sleep evaded him, night after night. His efforts tonight once again proved to be in vain. He finally called it quits around four o’clock in the morning, deciding his time might be better used by raiding the fridge instead.

As it turned out, the kitchen was already occupied.

“What are you doing up so late?” Milligan asked.

“What am I doing up so early,” Moocho Brazos corrected. “And I am baking muffins, for the ragamuffins.”

They smelled wonderful. “Am I a ragamuffin?”

“You can be if you fetch me some more blueberries from the fridge,” Moocho said without looking up from his batter. Milligan obliged, and was soon rewarded for his efforts with a warm blueberry muffin. Moocho smiled sadly at him. “Can’t sleep?”

If nearly anyone else had asked, he would have waved an easy hand and laughed their worries off. He doubted he could fool Moocho, however, and so he shook his head. “Not sure why. Not for lack of trying, either.”

Moocho patted him on the arm. “We might as well make a picnic of it if you’re going to be sleepless.” 

Soon, a plate of muffins had joined him at the table, along with two empty glasses and a bowl of fruit. Moocho busied himself lighting a candle—out of the corner of his eye, Milligan saw that the candle was called “Sleepytime Scent” and had to wrestle down a grin at Moocho’s earnest scheming. It did smell nice. Something with lavender, perhaps? Moocho returned from the fridge with a carton of pomegranate juice and poured into the two glasses, one for him, one for Milligan. 

“So tell me,” Moocho said, loading up Milligan’s plate. “What happens? You fall asleep and you keep waking up, or …”

Milligan rubbed his forehead. There was a strange, sudden tension there. “Well … not exactly …”

“Can’t get to sleep, then?”

An odd buzzing in his ears. “More like that. Then sometimes I end up face down on my desk during the day.”

“Maybe if you didn’t drink coffee at 9PM …”

The air felt useless, all of a sudden. Far too thin …

Oh no.

Not again.

On instinct, he drove his heels into the floor, intending to push his chair back and flee. But the rational part of his brain stopped him. If this was some sort of medical episode, he needed another person there. Besides. Moocho might be able to help him figure out what was going on. He was far more trustworthy than McCracken, anyway.

His companion had already noticed something was off. “You alright there, friend?”

“I’m not sure,” said Milligan. He snatched up his glass of juice and took a long gulp, trying to clear it. He set it down on the table hard. His hands were shaking again.

“You don’t look well. In fact, you look quite pale. Do you want me to get …”

The rest of Moocho’s sentence was drowned out by the roaring in his ears, and awareness faded away. Where the creeping sensation in the elevator had been sudden, incremental, this seemed to snatch him all at once, yanking him out of the room into another indeterminate space entirely. 

He couldn’t feel his fingers. Or his toes. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to move them. Couldn’t. They were trapped. Restrained? He kicked out. He felt nothing. He heard nothing except a dark, cold laughter ringing in his ears. Or maybe that was the blood roaring.

He couldn’t feel his torso, either. It was one big stretch of nothingness, as if he lacked a body entirely. The only thing he could feel was his forehead, and he could feel it only because it hurt. It felt tight, as though he had the worst tension headache, as if a band had wrapped around it and squeezed, unbearable.

The laughter rang out again. Not amused. Mocking. At his expense. Milligan wished it would stop.

The band around his head was burning. He needed to get it off before it scalded him … on second thought, the band seemed to be burning with cold. Metal? No, colder than that. He reached up and touched it. Ice cold. Then his fingertips stung with cold, and he was reminded of them, reminded that they were attached to his hand, and his hand to his arm, and so on. Awareness flooded back in gradually.

The burning sensation around his head seemed to be moving. Curious, he reached up and touched it again. Lumpy. Milligan’s eyes sprang open of their own accord as he seized hold of the ice-cold object and yanked it down.

It was a bag of frozen mixed vegetables.

“I couldn’t find an ice pack,” came a sheepish voice.

“‘s alright,” Milligan mumbled. “Veggies are good for you.”

“Did they help?” Moocho asked anxiously.

Milligan nodded and leaned back against something solid. It rattled as he did so. The cabinet. He was on the floor, and something was dripping onto his leg. Peering up, he spied his glass overturned on the table, pomegranate juice pooling onto the tile floor.

“Did I do that?” Milligan asked, scrubbing a hand across his face.

Moocho shrugged. He batted Milligan’s hand away and replaced the vegetable pack. “It might have gotten jostled in the confusion.”

“I kicked it?” Milligan wondered aloud. “I remember kicking something.”

“I think it was more of a swat,” Moocho confessed.

Something horrible occurred to Milligan. “Did I hit you?” 

“Oh, of course not!” Moocho was quick to soothe. “I ducked. No harm done.”

This pronouncement had the opposite effect Moocho was intending, and Milligan curled a hand across his stomach, belly churning with guilt and horror. The former strong man didn’t notice, too busy fussing over damp hairs at Milligan’s brow.

“Was someone laughing?” Milligan mumbled. “I heard laughing.”

“I definitely wasn’t laughing. I mean, you said some things …” Moocho admitted, then quickly forged on. “I didn’t think it was a laughing matter. I was quite frightened, in fact.” After a few moments of quiet breathing, it seemed Moocho could contain the question no longer. “Milligan, what … what happened?”

He had been expecting this. And yet he had no answer. “I don’t know.”

“It was like you went into a fit,” Moocho wondered. “I think you were somewhere else entirely. Nothing I could do seemed to bring you back.”

“That’s not true,” Milligan said. “I know one thing for sure, and it’s that the veggie pack helped. It pulled me out of it. Thank you, Moocho.”

Moocho ruffled his hair. “Would a muffin help even more?”

“Perhaps,” said Milligan, mouth twitching.

Maybe he had to eat it sprawled on the floor of the kitchen, half-drenched in juice. Maybe he clutched the ice pack against his forehead until the vegetables began to defrost. Maybe he was more confused about this whole mess than he had been yesterday.

But the muffin was still a bit warm, and so was Moocho’s smile, and so was the sun rising.

Chapter Text

It happened again.

He couldn’t find Kate. She was gone. Taken? He’d searched her room. No signs of a break in. She wasn’t in the attic. She wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the sitting room—

“Milligan?” someone called. “Do you need something?”

“Can’t—” he gasped—where was the air?— “Can’t find—”

“You’re looking for something?” said the voice.

“Are you alright there, son?” said someone else.

“Kate—” he forced out around a wordless bout of terror.

“She’s safe. Milligan, she’s safe.” It took a minute for the words to register. When they did, the fog parted a bit, and Miss Perumal was speaking to him slowly, annunciating. “Milligan. They’re outside. All four of them are playing outside. Ms. Plugg is watching them. Would you like to go see for yourself?”

Milligan’s eyes darted around the room, automatically scanning for exits. Both of the Washingtons were looking at him, startled, confused, concerned. He nodded.

Lengthening his stride, he arrived at the window in no time. Ms. Perumal and the Washingtons followed soon after. He curled his fingers around the sill for support and looked, dreading what he might find.

Constance grumping in the corner. The boys half-heartedly kicking a deflated ball around. Kate practicing tricks with her beloved falcon. Ms. Plugg watching them, clapping at appropriate moments, eyes diligently darting away to scan the bushes every few seconds.

“Oh,” said Milligan faintly. “Okay. Thank you. I’m going to sit down now.”

And he did, right there on the rug.

“I think I’m sick,” Milligan announced.

Mr. Benedict looked up from his desk and smiled at him. “Tea?”

“Not that kind of sick.”

“I know,” Mr. Benedict said gently. “Tea anyway?”

He accepted. Mr. Benedict had a hot kettle ready, as if he’d been expecting Milligan. Clutching his steaming cup, seated on the couch next to Mr. Benedict, he felt rather small. But not in a diminished way. It was a relief, as if he no longer had to be the biggest person in the room.

“I’ve just begun a most courageous undertaking,” Mr. Benedict announced. “Organizing my desk. I know, I know. It has served its purpose over the years. Whenever I receive a document or a piece of correspondence I don’t want to look at, I put it on my desk, and inevitably it vanishes. A most auspicious miracle! It’s proven nearly 100% effective.”

Milligan took another sip. “Then why change it?”

Mr. Benedict smiled ruefully and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. “My own disorganization has betrayed me, I’m afraid. Recently my desk vanished a lovely drawing Constance made for me, and, well, we can’t have that, can we?”

“We cannot. I’m sure it’s buried in there somewhere,” said Milligan. The meandering subject would have been strange, but he knew Mr. Benedict well enough to understand. Mr. Benedict was letting him choose how much he wanted to discuss and when. If he just needed a soft place to land, then Mr. Benedict would provide that. Perhaps some light chit chat would have been easier. His hands were still shaking, after all. But the mug was warming them, and he wanted this out in the open.

“I thought I was having a heart attack,” he said, broaching the subject bluntly. “I’m still not convinced I’m not, actually.”

“A few minutes ago?” Mr. Benedict asked. Someone must have snuck downstairs to tell him what had just transpired at the window.

“It’s happened before,” Milligan confessed.

Mr. Benedict tilted his head as though this were not news to him, but he wanted Milligan to tell him the full story anyways.

And so he did. He told Mr. Benedict about the elevator, about the way the air had vanished, the ache that had seized his chest. He could not give a full account, given that there were moments when he’d been unaware of his surroundings, but he told Mr. Benedict about those missing moments too.

“I wondered if I was afraid of McCracken,” Milligan said. “That would make sense, right? That would be simple to understand. And being trapped with him was certainly unsettling, but I know that’s not the reason. I just can’t explain why it’s not the reason.” He cut off with a frustrated grimace.

Mr. Benedict waved his turmoil away. “Let’s take your gut feeling as true, at least for now. As I’m sure Constance could tell you, there are many times we know something but can’t pinpoint how we know it.”

Milligan nodded his thanks. “Then I thought maybe it was the sensation of being trapped. I definitely wasn’t thrilled about it, but I’ve been trapped in various dilemmas before, and never had lost my head like that.”

Mr. Benedict pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I do wonder if the combination of unsettling factors, all stacked on top of each other—”

“I thought that too,” Milligan said, not worrying even in the slightest Mr. Benedict would be offended by his interruption. “But then it happened at home, here.”

“Were you trapped?”

"Trapped where? Like, in the laundry chute or something?" Milligan half-laughed. "No. I was perfectly safe. I was sitting at the table with Moocho, eating muffins and drinking juice. The most dangerous thing in the room was a candle.”

At the mention of the juice, Mr. Benedict’s brow furrowed. But it was so instantaneous that Milligan wondered if he’d imagined it.

“Can you … please just tell me what you think?” he asked, suddenly exhausted. “Please don’t bother with the clever questions to try to draw out what I think. Let’s just skip that part. Normally I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but not now.”

“It seems my usual strategy is not as subtle as I like to imagine,” Mr. Benedict chuckled. He took a long sip of tea and leaned back in on the couch. “Ahhh, what do I think? I think, dear boy, that despite what my brother thinks, the workings of the human brain are rarely straightforward or orderly, rarely fully harnessed and understood. Beyond that, I have only theories and queries and more questions.”

“Can I hear them?” Milligan asked, who sensed that Mr. Benedict’s theories were likely far more developed than he gave himself credit for.

“Certainly. What do you know of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?”

More than the average person. He knew it was very real, and devastating. But as it applied to him, he knew nothing. The thought had not even entered his nighttime wonderings. He’d always thought of it as something that affected other people. Not that he was invincible or untouchable … but he’d always been hard to rattle, always rolling with the punches. That was just who he was. He’d been through a lot, sure, but didn’t he have more than enough joy in his life now to make up for it?

“I don’t know about the ‘post’ part of it,” was all he said aloud.

Thankfully, Mr. Benedict let him off the hook. “Active-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Current-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Ongoing-Traumatic Stress Disorder?”

“More like Can’t-Catch-a-Break Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

Even if he couldn’t catch a break, he was able to catch Mr. Benedict’s teacup as he slumped backwards.

He wasn’t out for long. “Ah, it’s good to laugh,” he sighed. But this reminded Milligan that there had not been much to laugh about as of late, and slowly he grew quiet again.

“It really felt like a heart attack,” he sighed.

“If it was a panic attack, which I believe it may have been, then yes,” Mr. Benedict said sadly. “Many people think that they’ve been poisoned, or become convinced they’re dying.”

“I thought both of those things,” Milligan recalled. “What about hallucinations?” Mr. Benedict was an expert in hallucinations, he remembered now, mentally smacking himself. Why hadn’t he asked earlier?

This seemed to surprise Mr. Benedict slightly. “Do you think you saw something that wasn’t really there?”

“No, my vision went dark. But I felt as though I couldn’t move my limbs, as though they were restrained, even though I was just sitting at the table with Moocho. And I thought I had a headache, because I felt as though there was a band around my forehead. But now I wonder …” he trailed off, unsure of what exactly he was wondering. “And I heard someone laughing. I remember that very clearly, even though Moocho said no one was.”

“I wonder,” Mr. Benedict said very slowly. “If it was not a hallucination, but a memory.”

“One of mine?”

“Yes. A flashback.”

Milligan frowned. “But I was safe. I was eating my muffin. What could have brought that on?”

“Maybe nothing at all,” Mr. Benedict sighed. “Maybe some loose connection you might never put your finger on. Maybe something sensory.”

At once, Milligan remembered Mr. Benedict’s brow furrowing for the briefest instant when he’d relayed his story. “You think it was the juice?”

“These things are rarely simple, rarely so easily pinpointed, Milligan. The human brain is not a riddle, whose answer becomes clear if we only puzzle it out—”

“You do! You think it was the juice!” He pressed on, excited now. “Why do you think it was the juice?”

Mr. Benedict sighed again, sensing there was no dissuading him. “I … with the details you’ve mentioned, Milligan, I do wonder if you were having a flashback to the moment your memories were stolen. The arm and leg restraints, the band across your forehead possibly from the Whisperer helmet, the sound of someone laughing—”

“My fingertips were stinging,” he said wonderingly. “Just like they were when I woke up in the Whisperer. I remember that now. I thought it was from the cold. Moocho gave me a pack of frozen vegetables. But what does this have to do with the juice?”

Mr. Benedict grimaced, as if to paint such a direct link went against his every instinct. “Reynie has recounted many details of my brother’s personality and daily routines to me, or at least what he remembers from his time at the Institute. He told me that my brother found the Whisperer incredibly mentally taxing and exhausting to operate, and indeed, it is true. I deal with this by resting. My brother, it seems, refused to rest, and so he sustained himself by frequently drinking juice.”

“And so you think I smelled it, or tasted it, and that brought the memory on somehow?” Milligan wondered. “But I’ve had plenty of juice since that memory.”

“Who is to say?” Mr. Benedict said, throwing up his hands as if to demonstrate the futility of seeking a determinate answer. “Perhaps it was the same brand of juice my brother drinks. Perhaps you were having a bad day, and something that may not have affected you on a good day did on that day. Perhaps it was not the juice at all and we are blundering blindly in the wrong direction. It is easy to speculate, as there are thousands of possible answers, and no certain way of finding a correct one. I imagine that could be frustrating to hear,” he said with a sad smile, seeming to put aside his insistence on proper scientific inquiry to focus on Milligan’s emotions.

Milligan’s emotions were currently a bit all over the place. “Do you really think it wasn’t a heart attack?” he asked one last time.

“Truly? I don’t know. I could be completely and utterly wrong in even bringing up PTSD. I think it would be wise to check with a doctor,” Mr. Benedict said. “Are you on a first-name basis with everyone at the hospital yet?”

Milligan groaned. He was. And Dr. Steven from cardiology was going to yell at him the second he showed up back at their doorstep. 

He felt himself becoming more grounded in his body, in Mr. Benedict’s study, with the raw conversation drawing to a close. Half a mug of tea was still cooling in his hands, and he sipped it. “I have a lot to think about,” he said quietly.

“I imagine you might,” Mr. Benedict said. “And putting all of my theories aside for a moment, as someone who cares about you and someone lucky enough to be your dear friend … I am sorry, Milligan. That sounded scary.”

They seemed like juvenile words coming from such an eloquent man, but truly there were no other words. “It was scary. It is scary.”

His tea was very good, even lukewarm. Mr. Benedict’s couch was soft. “Can I stay here a while? Can I watch you organize your desk?”

“I suppose you know me well enough to not be astonished when I inevitably dig up an unpaid utility bill twenty years out of date,” Mr. Benedict said with a mock put-upon expression. 

He would do his thinking later. For now, Milligan laid back on the couch, comfortable and cozy, chest feeling strangely carved out but warm. “I think that counts as archeology. You’re an archeologist now, Mr. Benedict. What can’t you do?”

“Find a piece of paper, apparently,” sighed Mr. Benedict.