Chapter Text
“How kind of you to join us.”
Ethan knows that voice. Rasping and calculated and cruel. Unmistakable. He opens his eyes and curls his lip with disgust at the sight of Solomon Lane. He wants to attack him, but he meets resistance. Metal digs into his wrists, his ankles. A rag has been shoved into his mouth. All he can do is snarl wordlessly at Lane as he paces before Ethan, hands folded behind his back.
“I was so hoping you would wake up on time to see this.”
To see what? He glares at Lane and struggles against his restraints. It’s useless. He’s been stripped of anything that would be useful to him, no hidden lockpicking gadgets, no conveniently placed paperclips. It’s just Ethan, handcuffed to a cement column, and Lane, walking free.
And then a door on the other side of the dingy, windowless room opens, and a newcomer is roughly shoved inside, stumbling forward and nearly falling flat on his face. Ethan’s mouth goes dry. It’s Benji.
He tries to shout around the rag, but there’s nothing he can do. He chokes on his own saliva in the attempt, gagging until he can calm himself enough to focus on breathing through his nose.
Solomon Lane saunters over to Benji. Benji has a strip of duct tape sealing his mouth shut, and he makes muffled noises of protest as Lane grabs his face with a hand, sizing him up like he’s an animal, a show horse being evaluated. Ethan makes eye contact, and the fear in Benji’s eyes guts him, how Benji tries and fails to hide it, trying to put on a brave face, to resist. His hands are tied behind his back, his ankles shackled, and Lane forces him to sit at a table in the center of the otherwise barren room. Benji’s chest heaves as he hyperventilates, his focus fixed on the metal table in front of him decked with a neat array of scalpels and knives and harsher implements Ethan recognizes all too well.
Blood trickles down Ethan’s wrist. He has been straining so relentlessly against his handcuffs that they’ve broken through his skin. The pain means nothing to him. He continues to stare daggers at Lane, who only smiles.
“You’re wondering what it is that I want,” he says, strolling idly around the table. “There’s no information I wish to extract from you, or from your friend here.”
Ethan glowers.
“No, the thing I want is much, much simpler. I want to see you suffer.”
When Lane turns back to Benji, Ethan’s blood runs cold. He screams despite the gag in his mouth, screams until his throat grows ragged and hoarse, resists his cuffs, ignores the hot blood trickling down his hands and feet.
“No use resisting, Ethan,” Lane says, tutting with disapproval. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”
All Ethan can do is watch as Lane picks up a slim, cruel-looking knife and holds it to Benji’s cheek, standing to the side so that Ethan can get a clear view. Benji is visibly trembling. He tries to give Ethan some kind of comforting look, but it only increases Ethan’s dread as Lane carves a terrible, deep wound into the side of Benji’s face, slow and deliberate and uncompromising, cutting through too many layers of skin and muscle. Even muffled by the tape, Benji’s muffled screams are enough to wreck Ethan, to fill him with fury and with the anguish that Lane had been wanting him to feel. Ethan puts his full weight into his efforts to break his bonds even though he knows it’s futile, his wrists and ankles lacerated, his throat hoarse from shouting, tears streaming down his cheeks in a never-ending flood.
“I want you to hear this,” Solomon Lane says, and he rips the duct tape from Benji’s mouth.
“Ethan, don’t listen to him!” Benji gasps, but his voice comes out thick and slurred, his head lolling forward, the pain and blood loss already making him woozy, and the gouge along his cheek making it difficult to speak.
When Solomon Lane looks into his eyes and makes another incision deep into Benji’s already bloodied skin, Benji cries out again through gritted teeth, and his attempt to stifle it only makes Ethan’s heart ache more, only adds fuel to his burning fury. Ethan hurls himself forward with so much force he thinks he might break an arm.
“Ethan!”
Ethan wakes with a start, drawing his gun from beneath his pillow and sitting up in one fluid motion, sweat running down his back, panting heavily. A hand closes over his wrist, and Ethan is ready to retaliate until he blinks and realizes that the hand belongs to Luther.
He’s on the floor of a safehouse, on a bedroll. Ethan swallows the blood in his mouth from the ragged inside of his cheek he’d bitten in his sleep, the metallic taste lingering on his tongue. Luther is kneeling beside him, a worried look on his face as he gently prises the gun from Ethan’s hands. “Maybe you shouldn’t sleep with that if you’re gonna aim it so carelessly like that.”
“Safety was on,” Ethan mutters. He rubs his eyes and slumps forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He wipes tears from his face with the edge of his shirt. “I wouldn’t have shot you.”
“Yeah, well, you know as well as I do that you should never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot.” Luther verifies that the safety is in fact on, and then he stows it in Ethan’s bag. He sighs heavily and waits for Ethan to raise his head so he can meet his gaze. “Nightmare?”
Ethan nods.
“Julia?”
He shakes his head.
Luther purses his lips. “One of us, then.”
He nods. “Benji,” he whispers. “It was Lane.”
Luther draws in a deep breath and nods slowly. “You dreamt that he took Benji again.”
“He was torturing him. And I couldn’t do anything.” Ethan pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to put the image out of his mind, tries to forget the sound of Benji’s screams, the terror in his eyes.
“Ethan, none of that was your fault. And Lane is long gone. He can’t hurt any of us anymore.”
“I know.” Ethan releases a shaky exhale. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Luther says, laying a steady hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “We’ve all got our ghosts. That’s to be expected in our line of work. And it’s almost morning anyhow.”
“Yeah,” Ethan says with a bitter semblance of a smile. “I should have a better handle on it by now, though.”
“Please.” Luther scoffs. “That’s not how this works, and you know it. I’ve known you for decades now, and I know you’ve only gathered more shit to have nightmares about as time has gone on, same as the rest of us. As long as you don’t actually pull the trigger on anyone, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Thanks, Luther,” Ethan says softly. He clasps Luther’s forearm, and Luther pulls him into a hug, slightly awkward at this angle on the floor, but comforting all the same.
“Any time, brother. You’d do the same for me.”