Work Text:
"I'll burn down every cobweb through the hallway to your heart. Darling, I'm not scared of spiders nor the stories in your scars. If you're face down, trying to tread the water, you know you can climb my shoulders if you need. Darling you're safe with me." (Safe with me - Ike Dweck)
"I'll hold you. I'll know you. I'll never leave out the back door." (Packing it up - Gracie Abrams)
AGENT BRIGGS
Whenever I interacted with Grayson Shaw I was always reminded of the first time I met Sloane. Four years ago. Only eight hours after Margot Tavish's death.
I remember the first thing I noticed about the hotel that night was how quiet it was.
Not the ordinary kind of quiet that came with expensive carpets and thick walls and people who had paid enough for a room that they expected not to hear their neighbors.
This was the kind of quiet that had things buried underneath it.
My hand tightened around the folder tucked beneath my arm.
Sloane's name written on the front.
Twelve years old.
Thirteen in one month.
Dangerous with all things numerical.
She was a natural.
I had been looking into her case for six weeks.
I'd looked at reports from social services. School attendance records. Hotel security footage. Statements from teachers who had started noticing that she was always tired and hungry.
Hotel personnel who were worried about the girl who was always wandering around the casino.
The lift chimed. The doors opened. I stepped inside.
"Which floor?" the security guard asked.
"Twenty-four," I said flashing my badge at him.
He hesitated.
"Mr. Briggs?"
"Yeah?"
"You know about the girl?"
Everyone in this building knew about the father.
Not many knew about the girl.
A hotel owner. A businessman. A married man with a second life he kept meticulously separated from his first.
Father of two children. A girl and a boy. Each one with a different life.
The boy was the heir to everything. The hotel, the casino, the family. He had the best of everything. The best school, the best clothes, the best doctors, the perfect life.
The girl on the 24th floor was part of the second life. Or, more accurately, the evidence of it. And she had nothing.
Her mother, Margot Tavish had worked herself nearly to death trying to provide for her daughter.
And now she was dead. Overdose. 8 hours ago.
I looked at the lift doors.
"That's why I'm here."
I'd seen Grayson Shaw once before.
He'd been charming. Men like him usually were. I'd dealt with them before. Both on a personal and professional level.
He'd shaken my hand, looked me straight in the eye, and told me his daughter was "a difficult child." He couldn't have been more eager for Sloane to join the program.
His daughter wasn't difficult. His daughter was brilliant.
She could beat anybody at poker. Or any type of card game. That was what had caught my attention.
I'd looked through the glass wall behind him and seen Sloane sitting alone in the restaurant.
She was small. Smaller than Lia even though they were around the same age. Thin. Light blonde hair. Knees tucked beneath her chin. An untouched bowl of cherries on the table.
She had been watching everything without seeming to look at anyone. And she was counting the number of wine glasses at the bar.
And for half a second, I'd forgotten where I was because she looked like Scarlett. Our Scarlett.
Scarlett had been taller. Older. Her face had been rounder.
But it was the eyes. The same watchful expression. The same habit of staring at the doors to remind herself she had an easy exit.
Scarlett had been my friend since college.
Dead for two years.
I'd learned, eventually, not to see ghosts in strangers, but the first time I'd looked at Sloane something in my chest had gone painfully tight.
The lift stopped and I stepped out.
I found the room number.
Knocked. Nothing.
I knocked again.
"FBI. Mr. Shaw?"
I tried the handle. Locked.
I stepped back and looked toward the security camera.
"I will force this door open."
A minute later, it opened.
Grayson Shaw. He looked older than he had six weeks ago.
His shirt was wrinkled. His eyes were red. Not that I cared about how he felt.
"Agent."
"Mr. Shaw. I need to speak to your daughter."
"She's asleep." It was nearly midnight.
"Open the door."
His jaw tightened.
I'd spent my whole life watching people lie. Watching people try to hide the things they'd done. Watching violent men. I knew the signs.
Fear flashed across his face as I shoved the door open.
"FBI!"
He stumbled backward. I was already moving.
"Where is your daughter?" He didn't answer.
I heard something. A tiny sound. A gasp.
I pushed through the doorway.
Sloane was laying on the bathroom floor.
There was a darkening bruise beneath her left eye and swelling beginning along the cheekbone. A split at the corner of her lower lip had dried into a thin line of blood. One side of her face was already beginning to swell.
Her left wrist was red and marked where someone had gripped it.
There were bruises along her upper arm, some fresh enough to still be purple, others faded to the yellow-green of injuries that were days or weeks old.
There was one across her collarbone.
Another visible just above the neckline of her shirt.
She was holding her ribs.
Her breathing was shallow.
But it was the fear in her eyes that stopped me.
She looked at me as though she'd already decided exactly what I was. I was something to be scared of. Another adult. Another man who would hurt her.
I crouched several feet away.
"Hey."
She flinched.
I stopped. "You're okay."
Her eyes moved toward the doorway.
Her father was still there.
I shifted slightly, putting myself between them.
"You don't have to look at him."
Her gaze came back to me.
"Is Margot Tavish dead?"
I swallowed. She already knew. She just needed confirmation. She needed someone else to say it to make it real.
"I think you know the answer."
She stared at the floor.
"I watched her. She took the pills," she whispered. "I told her not to."
My chest tightened.
"What happened?"
"She couldn't stand up. She fell."
She looked at me. "I counted."
"Counted what?"
"Her breaths. Forty-three in the first minute," she said. "Then twenty-eight. Then..." Her voice shook, "Then there weren't any."
She looked down. "I called him."
Her father shifted uncomfortably in the doorway.
"It was my fault."
My jaw tightened.
There was something strange about the way she said it.
Not childish. Matter-of-fact. Like she was stating a mathematical certainty.
"It's not your fault."
"I know," she repeated. "I couldn't physically stop her. I weigh 36 kg. She is....was bigger than me. And she locked the bathroom door."
I looked at her.
She was bruised and frightened and in pain.
And still she was calculating. Facts. Numbers. Things that could be proven.
That was how her brain worked.
"My name's Tanner Briggs."
"Sloane Tavish."
Her eyes moved to the folder under my arm.
"You have twelve pages about me."
I stared at her."What?"
She pointed.
"The corner of the second page is folded."
I looked down. She was right. I almost smiled.
"You're observant."
"You're FBI."
"Also true."
"But where do I go now?"
I crouched a little closer. "Somewhere safe."
She shook her head. "Everyone says that."
She didn't believe me. Why would she?
Promises were cheap things in her world.
I lowered my voice.
"I'm not asking you to trust me."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"I'm asking you to let me get you somewhere safe."
I held out my hand.
After a long moment, she reached for it.
Her fingers were shaking. And cold.
I closed mine gently around hers.
She stood.
Immediately, she winced.
"Your hand."
"What's wrong with it?"
"You're squeezing too hard."
I loosened my grip.
"Sorry."
She shook her head. "It's okay."
She swayed.
I caught her before she fell. She went rigid.
"I'm sorry," I said, immediately easing my hold.
She looked at me.
"Don't let go."
"I won't."
The emergency department confirmed what I'd suspected.
She had a fractured rib.
Two, according to the imaging.
A significant bruise to her left cheekbone. Swelling around the eye. Multiple contusions across her arms and torso. The bruising around her wrist was consistent with someone having grabbed her forcefully.
There were older injuries too.
The pediatrician showed me the scans and photographs after they'd finished examining her. I'd had to take copies for her file as well.
"There are injuries in different stages of healing," she said quietly.
"How long?"
"Some are recent. Some appear to be several weeks old. There are signs of repeated trauma."
I stared at the images.
"What about the rib fractures?"
"One appears recent. The other is older."
I rubbed a hand across my jaw.
"Could all of this have happened tonight?"
"No." She paused. "Absolutely not."
I looked through the glass at the examination room.
Sloane was sitting on the bed.
A nurse was taking her blood pressure.
She was staring at the monitor.
"What are you looking at?" the nurse asked.
"The systolic pressure."
"Why?"
"Because it's lower than it was when I came in."
The nurse smiled gently. "You're right."
"She's been watching everything."
"I know."
The pediatrician lowered her voice.
"There's something else."
I looked back at her.
"She has refused any type of pain medication we've tried to give her."
I closed my eyes briefly. "The overdose."
"She'll have to have a formal psych evaluation but I think she will probably have some significant PTSD. And stigma towards medications of all kinds."
My hands curled into fists.
"She's twelve."
"I know."
I looked through the glass again.
The girl was counting the beeps on the monitor.
"Does she understand what's happening?"
The doctor gave me a sad smile.
"Probably better than most adults would."
That didn't make me feel better.
It was nearly four in the morning when I went back into her room.
She looked exhausted.
Her hair had been brushed. Someone had cleaned the blood from her lip.
The swelling around her eye had become more pronounced.
Her ribs were bandaged.
She looked younger now. Much younger.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
I pulled the chair closer.
"What?"
"My injuries."
I hesitated.
"You have two broken ribs."
She nodded.
"Anything else?"
"You have bruising on your face and arms. Your wrist is badly bruised. You've got several other bruises."
"Old ones?"
"Some."
She looked at the blanket.
"How old?"
"I don't know exactly."
She nodded.
"Probably three weeks."
I looked at her.
"Why?"
"I remember."
She began pointing at the bandages.
"That one happened after the restaurant. That one was Monday. The one on my ribs was two weeks ago."
I stared at her. She noticed.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You don't believe me."
"I believe you."
She looked relieved. Then she frowned.
"Good."
I sat back. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"Has your father been hurting you for a long time?"
She looked at the ceiling.
"No."
The answer came without hesitation. She was an obvious liar.
"Are you sure?"
"He doesn't do it all the time. Only when I've done something bad."
As if that made it better.
"He usually apologizes afterward."
"It's not your fault. You are not responsible for what happened to your mother."
She swallowed.
"And you're not responsible for what your father did to you."
Her eyes filled.
She didn't wipe the tears away.
"I know. If it was my fault it means there's something I could've done different. But I couldn't have stopped her taking the drugs."
I stared at this remarkable little girl.
She was terrified. She was grieving. She was injured. But she was still questioning the truth behind the story she'd been told.
But she didn't sound like she believed it yet.
So I stayed.
The social worker arrived with paperwork.
There were interviews. Investigations.
There were procedures for everything. Even off the books programs like ours.
"How long will I be in this program? Is it like foster care?"
"It's kind of like a foster home. And you can leave at any time if you wish."
"Statistically speaking how long do people stay?"
I almost laughed. "That isn't how this works."
"It should."
"Probably. There are two other kids. Dean and Lia. You're all around the same age. They're like you."
She looked down. "Will you be there?"
The question was so quiet I almost didn't hear it.
I looked at her "I'll make sure you're not alone."
"That's not what I asked."
I took a breath. "I know."
She looked away.
Then she said, "You promised you wouldn't let go."
"I remember."
"So?"
I leaned forward. "So I'm going to keep that promise."
She finally looked at me. For the first time since I'd walked into that hotel room, she smiled.
The nurse came in a few minutes later to turn off the lights.
I started toward the door.
"Agent Briggs?"
I turned.
"Yeah?"
"Can you stay until I fall asleep?"
I looked at her.
And suddenly she wasn't the daughter of a hotel owner.
She wasn't a witness. She wasn't a case file. She wasn't a natural.
She was just a child who had lost her mother and been hurt by the person who was supposed to protect her.
"Yeah," I said, pulling the chair back beside the bed.
"I can do that."
She closed her eyes.
A few minutes passed.
Her breathing slowly evened out. I watched her sleep.
And there it was again.
Scarlett. The angle of her cheek.
The crease between her eyebrows.
That same stubborn little frown she'd worn whenever she was trying not to cry.
Sitting there in the blue light of a hospital room, watching this little girl finally sleep without looking toward the door, I realized something.
I loved my job. I loved being able to protect kids.
Because I was once that kid. I used to be the one bleeding on the bathroom floor wishing for somebody to help me.
Nobody had come for me. But I sure as hell was going to be there for these kids.
So I stayed.
Not because I was Scarlett's friend. Not because I knew Judd would love Sloane. Not because I wanted to train her abilities.
Not because I felt guilty.
Not because I thought I could save every child who was hurting.
But because I had a responsibility.
And because when I made a promise I kept it.