FIC: [Agent Carter] Great Stores, Great Choices - PG13 [2/2]

[roseveare]

Jack shuts the door, his chest lurching.

"What is it?" Daniel asks. He's investigating a trolley -- smaller than the big cage, from a recess a few yards further down the corridor -- but he stops to look intently at Jack, his balance precariously held between foot and stick. "...Jack, talk to me. What is it that's going on here?" There's a wheedling laugh in his voice but tension in his eyes.

Jack can't not tell him they're in a store. That they could walk out there into the public eye and demand help. The police, a phone, someone would surely have to oblige them.

Then he'd have to go back and explain, or more likely look for ways not to explain, to hide his failure to protect the SSR's secrets. He needs to fix this first. Deliver some return to these guys, pull his ass out of the fire, so he can stand up and say, It was all part of the plan. He can't stumble out like this to call in a rescue and emerge from this nightmare with his head held high.

Ass. You're an ass, he tells himself.

Aloud, he says, "We're in a store. Big, glossy, chandeliers and piano music."

Daniel frowns and his forehead wrinkles. He lurches slowly to the door to take his own look through it. He shuts the door with a pensive and very concerned frown on his face. "Neither of us look normal enough to be certain of walking out of here without plenty of excuse for the staff to accost us, and there are too many civilians for us to lay down gunfire in a damn store."

"...You're right. That's a good point." Jack can hardly believe his luck. "We don't know how many of the employees are involved in whatever the hell this racket is." They don't, it's true. He eyes Daniel's empty, swinging pants leg -- he's tied it in a knot at around knee level, but it still leaves a length of cloth and the weighted knot on the bottom to swing -- and wonders if he's not the only one looking to walk out of this a bit more intact. "We need to get back the information they wrote down from me, and find your leg."

"Or just find a phone," Daniel adds, so maybe not. He lurches back to the smaller trolley and starts dragging at it. Jack winces because as well as the trundling sound it makes, there's a squeak on the thing like a mouse being repeatedly squashed. Still, he supposes that even if people hear them coming, it's not a sound out of place for the environment.

Daniel is able to hang off it and push with his foot and freewheel, though it looks hellishly awkward. He looks back at Jack and pats the metal frame and offers a tentative grin. "Maybe we can use more of this gear that's lying around. We can't do anything about your face and my leg, but they've provided a change of clothes. We wouldn't have to look like we've both been dragged through the dust. And--" He nods his head toward Jack's liberally blood-spattered shirt, hesitation in the back of his eyes. "A bit ghoulish right now, Thompson."

"If we get recaptured because we stopped to change, I'll be making sure you never live it down," Jack complains, but the temptation once offered isn't one he can pass up. He's not tracking clearly, or he'd have thought of it already. He grabs at the packages in the big cage trolley, sorting through for his size. Finds something he thinks will fit Daniel first, and tosses it to him. It falls on the floor and Sousa gives him that look, like he thinks Jack did it on purpose. "It's not as colourful as your own," Jack offers.

Daniel may have suggested it, but he can't easily change himself while down a limb. Jack watches warily out of the corner of his eye, aware of the seconds ticking away while they linger for this, and wonders at what point he gives in and asks for help, but Daniel sits down on the empty trolley to put the shirt on, and takes a size larger pair of pants to pull on over the grubby ones. He manages to squirm into those deftly enough, though Jack still has the feeling undressing the others would've been harder, and clearly if he can avoid showing off the scars underneath, after one enforced freak-show already when they took his leg from him, he's all for that.

Jack, meanwhile, sheds his own pants to discover half his left leg bruised almost black, knee swollen with a big lump at one side. Daniel swears for him. Jack scowls and hides the damage under clean clothes.

"Did a number on you," Daniel remarks.

Jack re-laces his shoes, gathers up both their shed clothes to stuff down the back of the cage trolley, and holds a staying hand out as Daniel moves to scramble up from his sprawl. They need to move on from here faster than that. "Why not stay on board?"

"I don't need to be--" But Jack already has hold of the push bar and swings the trolley around with Daniel still sitting on the base. Daniel shuts up and focuses on balancing while grabbing up a gun ready to greet whatever they might encounter. "Okay, we should look for offices." He clings on precariously as they turn, and Jack stifles a grunt of pain as the rattling progress jolts his damaged hands. "More likely to have either the answers or an outgoing telephone line, right?"

"...Right."

"You're quiet, Thompson. You know, I don't like you quiet. Gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"Screw you, Sousa."

"At least that's honest."

Jack doesn't have the energy. "We may not be stealthy, but we'd do better just sounding like a trolley, so can it, alright?"

It's hard to think past all the other things trying to keep up an endless echo through his head, Okinawa and spilling his guts and 'They say you're a worm...' He'd rather not invite further comment from Daniel, but he's struggling to remember how to act normal. He tightens his hands on the push bar, using the pain for distraction.

Fuck you. He projects the thought at the unconscious bruiser. Should've killed him even if he is just another stick.

Just as well they hushed the banter. They're approaching one corner when a voice calls out, "Larry, you better have a bunch more of those medium shirts before you even think of coming back, the racks out there are empty!"

Jack swings the trolley around fast. Given the tone of the man who called out, a hasty, trundling, squeaky retreat won't be suspicious. He doesn't risk offering a verbal acknowledgement.

"Maybe we should go back to the elevator," Daniel suggests quietly once they're safely out of earshot. "Offices might be on an upper floor. Everything looks to fit a pretty similar plan down here."

Jack makes a noise of frustration. Sousa's probably right, it's becoming clear there's nothing on their current floor of the building except a thin spread of private staff corridors and stock rooms, running like hidden arteries throughout the store's public face.

"Left an unconscious employee in the elevator," he points out.

"...Damn." Daniel catches just the right tone to prompt a snort of laughter in spite of everything. In some ways, Jack's glad it's Sousa who's here with him, even if that's not doing Daniel any favours, and even if that adds so many of its own complications. "If we go back now, he might still be unconscious and no-one have found him yet."

Back in the elevator, Jack asks Daniel, "Is he all right?" as Daniel leans off the trolley, way over his centre of gravity, to examine the man still slumped in the corner. Since they knocked him out, it's become entirely possible he's nothing more than a hapless store employee who has no idea what was going on in the basement, so Jack's feeling maybe a twinge of guilt.

"He's breathing," Daniel says. "We'll send him help once we get free and clear."

Jack drags the door of the elevator car shut and hovers bloody fingers over the array of buttons. "Top floor first?" Daniel gives a nod and he presses the uppermost. The goods elevator makes an almighty noise and rattles their bones again as it sets off upward. Jack flaps his hand for Daniel to pick up his weapon again before they can come to rest, but the trundling progress seems to take a disproportionate amount of time to his restless nerves. He's starting to become increasingly aware that unless they have the wildest of luck, their escape is likely to be discovered soon; they can't possibly have a lot of time left clear of active pursuit. Maybe he should ditch Daniel someplace safe and go off on his own. Daniel, at the moment, is hardly mobile, let alone fast.

Jack bursts out into a short, empty corridor. Daniel comes after him, not waiting to be pushed, upright and hanging onto the trolley while awkwardly levelling his gun. At the end of the small corridor, Jack backwheels frantically from bright lights and restful dinner music. They're at the back of a public restaurant. He can see windows onto the sky, and a view of the city streets half a dozen floors below.

"It's the Randall Arthur building," Daniel says.

"You've been in here?"

"Only seen it from outside." One shoulder moves in an awkward shrug. "It's about, um--" His eyes tip back as he tries to recall the visual "--six storeys, I think? He's an entrepreneur of sorts, a local mover. Everything's all about bigger, faster, more... mostly profits. He's got a reputation for scandal with a bunch of incidents over other people's patents."

Jack frowns. "A man like that wants two SSR chiefs?" His next breath chokes him with a surge of disgusted anger. "They were asking about SSR's confiscations. All that goddamn stuff we've got in storage. Weapons, espionage devices, tools of warfare... You're suggesting he wants us to help him steal those things for commercial use?"

"I wasn't suggesting it," Daniel says calmly, "but now that you mention... It makes as much sense as any of this."

"None of this makes sense," Jack snaps. Who they are, they should be safe from this kind of... of civilian interference. Yet there are new self-made businessmen aplenty in the clubs of power, and he knows the way Vernon and his set talk. He's heard Vernon talk and he's seen Vernon drink. Blabs his mouth off far worse than Jack did, down in that room, and with far less provocation. He's done it to big up Jack, hand slapping genially on his shoulder: Do you know what these guys found today, huh...? If people in those circles know that the SSR have those things, it's down to occasions such as that. Not, of course, Jack thinks bitterly, that people in those circles would ever be tarred by suspicions they might use the knowledge for criminal acts.

He wonders in a way he hasn't before what others think when they see him with men like Vernon, trading in honey-tongued diplomacy and backslaps. To him, trying to stay in their good graces is just sense. Doesn't mean he agrees with the lines he spouts for their favour, or has to hold up his end -- it's all about creative reinterpretation.

Jack swears. "A damn store owner--" They were brought to this by someone who sells men's clothing and lighting solutions. "Why would that person take the risk? Kidnapping two chiefs of a government agency just like that?" It sounds like insanity. Also, ow. Jack can't click his fingers right now and it was a lousy idea to try.

Daniel gives him a tired, knowing look far more cynical than he generally associates with Daniel. "You know what they're saying..."

Jack stares, nonplussed.

"You must. SSR has had its day. We were a wartime organisation. They downsized the New York office to split operations to LA, a fresh chief in place at each... On the face of it, they're calling it expansion, but the West Coast office was really just to keep closer to the cluster of international contacts working their way in via the movie industry. As to what they say about us..."

--A worm-- "What do they say about us?" Jack asks, dangerously.

"We're young, Jack. We're both green as my whole damn office, so far as this position goes. The higher-ups chose to promote from within rather than bring on board anyone with real leadership experience. No-one with genuine political clout, who might carry the organisation when it comes to the crunch, no-one used to wielding power. And I'm a crip and you're... you. We're just counting time until they choose to declare the SSR defunct. Not that the chieftancy won't look good on both our records."

Jack grinds his teeth. He forgets that people talk in front of Daniel. He shouldn't forget, considering the things he's said in front of Daniel. Nobody normally talks like that in front of him.

Though now, thanks to his interrogation, he's fully briefed on the other things said about him.

"Don't flip." Daniel eyes him with a bit too much wariness. "We've still done well for ourselves."

"...How the fuck do people get off on saying these things to your face?" Jack demands. Can't help it. He's supposed to be the realist, he tells himself. Get a grip.

"Ask yourself," Daniel grunts back. "It's uncanny, really, the way amputation does something to other people's brains."

Jack thinks he flushes, but his face is too hot and hurting already to tell. He needs a break away from Daniel, at least for a moment, to wind down and process his anger. "You wait here. I'm gonna see if I can find which floors the store occupies and which aren't public access. There should be signage by the customer elevators."

Daniel opens his mouth to protest, but only says, "Be careful." He gestures quickly and desperately with an open hand in front of his face as Jack backs off. Reminding Jack that he looks like the worst loser of a title match in history. Thanks for that, Sousa.

Jack scowls -- which only hurts more -- and puts his Smith & Wesson in his pocket and covers as much of his face as he can by holding up a hand to his hair. It probably doesn't look particularly casual, but it has to look more casual than the state of his face.

There are kitchens over the far side, off the restaurant, and between there and all the public seating, the elevator and a large stairwell for shopper use. Jack limps quickly straight ahead to the elevator, pretending to be rearranging his hair all the way. It can't hide the damage from all angles, but it's the best he's got.

He fields some stares. As long as their owners aren't alerting store security, he tells himself that's fine.

His feet root to the floor in front of the elevator doors and he stands there frowning... He knows the building has six floors, seven with the basement, but the only buttons on the elevator are 1 -- 2 -- 3: clothing and hosiery, household, and gifts and electricals respectively. Even if Daniel was one floor mistaken, that's still two floors unaccounted for, unless Daniel's mistaken about the whole building... They can't afford the time to search up and down.

He waits for the car anyway. He can see Daniel's worried face mouthing at him from around the distant corner as the door opens. He holds up a hand in a subtle 'ok' gesture and mouths reassurance back. This won't take long. The public elevator has an operator stationed on it, who regards him with suspicion. He tries to hurry things up, but a couple get into the car beside him before the attendant can close the doors. The woman gives a shocked exclamation as she sees Jack's face.

"Walked into a door," he provides, averting it. He could use a hat. How come they couldn't stumble across those in the staff corridors?

He asks for the next floor down, and tries to ignore the looks. He needs to concentrate to count the seconds as they descend. When they stop and the operator opens the door, Jack looks out at rows of wireless radios and shakes his head. "Oh, no, I'm sorry. I must've been thinking of the next."

The man and woman get annoyed as he pulls the same trick on the next floor, and the operator is glaring by the time they're down to street level. Jack attempts, "I need to head back up to the restaurant... forgot my hat..." tapping his head again, but gets a glower that tells him he's pushed it one step too far.

"Alright, I guess I'll take the stairs..." He doesn't want security getting called over. He backs off through the open doors where the couple have already gone. Another couple approach just in time to be ever-so-delicately shocked as he passes them.

"What happened to you?!" asks a pretty woman he all but bumps into as he turns, her face dismayed.

"...You should see the other guy!" Jack touches an imaginary hat, hates what he looks like right now all the more, and breaks for the stairs at virtually a run.

He didn't particularly want to take the stairs. Aside from his current limp, anyone walking down toward him as he hurries up the staircase has opportunity for a damned good eyeful, and he just has to hope his luck holds and he doesn't run into any of the staff who'd actually recognise him.

There wasn't enough time for any additional floors between first, second and third, so anything else going on in this building is between the third floor and the restaurant on the roof. The stairs, it turns out, make things a lot clearer, with doors leading off to men's and women's restrooms on the fourth and fifth floors, but only one disguised private access door and in each case, that's firmly locked. He doesn't risk attracting further attention by trying to force it. He does slink into the men's restroom briefly to attempt again to tone down the damage to his face, but it looks horrendous and he gives up quickly, after wiping clear what he can of the drying blood only to start a weal on his cheek bleeding afresh.

Either way, they can't use public stairs or elevator to get where they want to go, which Daniel will probably appreciate, at least in the sense of not having to hop or wheel through the busy restaurant.

Jack goes back to Daniel, who looks on the verge of a fit. "--the hell were you doing?!" He grabs Jack by the shirt collar to pull him back into cover. Given their respective capacity for balance, that leaves Jack with a Sousa hanging off his shirt as soon as he gets his own footing back.

"Leave it out, Sousa. Any kind of offices or sinister bases in here are on fourth or fifth. I checked out the elevator and the stairs. But neither stop where we want to go."

"I've been rethinking. What say the two of us walk out of here by the front door and find the nearest public telephone?" Daniel grits. "I don't know what you did that you feel you have to cover it up so badly--"

"Hey! I'm only trying to save both our asses here! It won't do your reputation any good, and you are the one so hot to emphasize how precarious our positions might be." Jack puts him back upright against the wall and jabs him in the chest with an unbroken finger.

"It's neither of our faults that we got abducted!" Daniel protests fiercely. "It's -- well, it's probably understandable if you told them something, given how they clearly put in significant time and effort to rearrange your face--"

"I had to let them think I was weak, or I'd never have been able to pull off that escape!" Jack corrects, unable to let that one past.

"So let's capitalize on your sacrifice and escape..."

Jack doesn't appreciate the sarcasm, but he abruptly finds other things to think about. He shushes Daniel and manhandles him desperately back as he spies men in security uniforms coming up from the staircase and out into the restaurant. Daniel mutters a curse as Jack releases him, and doesn't argue when Jack starts to hustle them back into the staff area.

"Looks like there's no going out that way, after all..."

"You're an idiot. We could've walked out of here. Pig-headed, prideful, overly-ambitious idiot..."

"Savin' both our jobs," Jack says again.

"I'm safe," snaps Daniel.

Jack prods, "Bet you'd still rather walk out of here on your own two feet."

"The leg could be a hundred miles away, still in the back of that van, for all I know!" Although Daniel looks afraid saying it.

Bit of a custom item, that leg, Jack also bets, and a real pain to have to replace if it's lost or damaged. "Get back on the trolley."

The buttons on the service elevator aren't marked, not even with numbers. Jack pushes the next one and hopes. The elevator travels a short way down and Jack readies his gun and checks the spare in his pocket as they grind very slowly to a halt. He has to use at least one hand to pull back the heavy door, so he looks to Daniel to make sure he's prepared to meet whatever's on the other side, and tries not to block his shot as he hauls the door open.

Jack sees an office, but there's no protection or cover, the elevator opens straight onto it. Big, open plan, desk upon desk. Women typing aren't going to be a part of any steal-military-technology-to-get-rich scheme, though the nearest look up and make exclamation at the sight of them, attracting the attention of all the rest. Jack ducks back behind the door, but Daniel can't easily move. He struggles to hide his guns and hisses at Jack desperately, "Down one?"

Jack slams the door closed all the way and hits the next button again, though he thinks that maybe they should've charged out and demanded to see the boss, or as Daniel wants, demanded a telephone. He hears running steps on the other side of the door before the elevator moves out of range.

"Ready?" This floor's their last shot, and by God he's going to start shooting and demanding to speak to someone this time.

Daniel grimaces and nods, levering to his foot and gripping the trolley in a manner that tells Jack he, too, is committed to this. Jack hauls the door back and bursts out to slam into the opposite wall. Corridors again, but white-painted, clean and crisp. Daniel's trolley squeaks as he trundles in Jack's wake, awkwardly hopping.

There's natural light coming through windows. A door they pass says Lab 1, and another says Development Room. They can hear voices, normal workplace chatter. There's a stairwell in a corner, more obvious in the wider and brighter corridors and straightforward layout. Jack can hear shouting, agitated voices coming toward them. The sound is bounced around and he can't tell if they're coming from above or below. He runs to the side of the stairwell and leans over to discover security uniforms approaching from both directions. He gestures frantically to Daniel, still several yards behind him. "Get back on the damn trolley!"

The force of his own running leap allows him to catch the back of the thing and starts them moving in a crazy slide down the long, polished floor of the narrower corridor that cuts down at right angles between the closed doors of Lab 1 and the Development Room.

There are observation windows lining either side of them. It isn't lab techs, but engineers in familiar overalls and regularly dressed workers who stare up to watch them sail past.

"Nice going, Jack!" Daniel's voice cracks unhappily.

"Shut up!" Jack kicks off against the floor, moving them faster. They're heading full-pelt toward a door with some kind of a large, exotic potted plant outside it and an expensive looking name plate.

"Oh, screw you," blurts Daniel, with a force like he suspects they might be his last words. He abandons one of his guns, which skitters away and whacks off two walls, bouncing like a ricocheting eight-ball, in order to cling to the trolley and hold an arm protectively over his face as they impact.

On impact, they manage to decimate the door and most of a desk located on the other side of it. It's a desk about the size of a large family dinner table, so there's still a solid amount of it left standing. It's a pity. They didn't manage to include in their damage tally the man sitting behind the far end of it.

The shadowed, suited man.

Jack has somehow managed to ride through the careening, crazy entrance with an absurdist streak of elegance, clinging one-handed to the back of the trolley, Smith & Wesson raised in his other hand and his centre of balance artfully arranged so he neither tipped them nor fell off. The impact spits him across the top surface of the desk -- clearing the nearer half before it groans and collapses -- through papers and other oddments, rolling over once but still ending up stretched out on his front, perched on one supporting elbow as he instinctively braces to rise. The gun is miraculously still in his hand, pointing in the right direction, and hasn't discharged accidentally into himself, Daniel, bystanders, or their jaw-agape mysterious enemy.

Daniel moans from somewhere underneath the collapsed part of the desk.

Jack gapes back at the suited man. They're probably equally stunned. He manages to put strength into his words after one squeaky false start: "You're under arrest."

"What the hell?"

Daniel's face pops up over the desk's edge several feet to Jack's left, a scrape across his face and his hair all sticking up. "Mr. Arthur...?"

Jack scrambles backward, panicked by the sound of running feet as security catch up. They're not free and clear yet. He'd lock the door, if he hadn't just destroyed it. He slides his spare gun across to Daniel, who takes it, bearing out the impression he's lost both his now. He indicates the open doorway and is aware of Daniel hauling himself into a position to lean against the wall to cover it.

Drawback is how that leaves Jack with Arthur, and Jack hasn't even begun to wrap his head around how he's going to deal with that... The suited man, the man from the shadows of his interrogation. Memory and every hurt with it seems to press back in on him. It brings a return of tightness of breath and the painful contracting of his stomach, and all of the fear that was generated in that closed, dark experience in that tiny room.

Jack staggers aside to throw up in another elegant exotic potted plant, but keeps his gun on Randall Arthur the whole time, which he supposes is a victory.

Maybe some of the sickness in his stomach could be accounted for by the manner of their arrival, or could easily be mistaken for it. He straightens and wipes his mouth.

"You alright?" Daniel asks, wide-eyed.

"Just keep them out." Jack jerks his head in the vague direction of the door, not looking. A cabinet stocked with glittering decanters of mellow shaded liquids stands against one wall, having happily escaped their path of destruction. Jack goes to it and one-handedly pours himself out a very large glass, and takes a gulp before he ventures back to the desk, keeping the tumbler. "Good stuff." He wheezes the bravado to no-one in particular.

That Arthur has been wary and watchful, not crying outrage and protesting the intrusion throughout, tells him volumes. Though he already knows that Arthur was the man in the shadows, in the suit.

"Got a bone to pick." Jack hooks his hip over the edge of the desk and seats himself a few feet from Arthur. Toys with his drink on the polished wood surface in front of him. In the background, Daniel tells people not to come any closer, and then retorts that he is the police, damn it. Jack surmises that the men outside are just store security, so far, and that store security are in fact not in on the rest. It doesn't help them a lot when they're demanding of Daniel I.D. that neither of them have. "Where are the notes you took?"

"I... I don't know what you're talking about." The other man bluffs too late. Jack's hackles rise, but if anger replaces fear, that's all for the best. "You people are in a lot of trouble, even if you are the police. Don't you know who I am?"

"No. Don't you know who I am?" Jack echoes, loudly, pausing and punctuating every word, before he loses it and sweeps all the contents off the desk onto the floor. As it goes down, he spies a familiar notebook. He dives and grabs for it, shoving his Smith & Wesson up into Arthur's throat as his knee hits the floor. Bloodied fingers scrabbling, he comes up with the papers crushed triumphantly in his hand. "I should shoot you right now--"

"Jack!" Daniel, he decides, is nothing but a spoilsport.

"--Or maybe your face needs a much closer acquaintance with that chair." Although Arthur's chair isn't hard wood, but covered with padding and plush leather. Still, that means it might be possible to asphyxiate him with it if Jack mashed his face down hard enough.

"Jack!"

The moment slows and stills.

Daniel's here, Jack thinks, and there are still things he needs to keep hidden, if after this he intends to go back to anything like normal...

Calm resumes.

...He can see Daniel's leg, he realises suddenly -- propped bizarrely in a nook between a filing cabinet and the big near-ceiling-to-floor window. He climbs over to retrieve it. Daniel seems to be breathing a sigh of relief even before he brandishes the prize to show him. The crutch is next to it, and Jack hauls them both onto the big desk to shunt across to his crippled colleague.

"Oh, thank God. And, thanks, Jack."

Jack scowls at Arthur anew, and moves so he can cover the door while Daniel Sousa goes through a bunch of acrobatics required to get out of his pants and put his leg back on that Jack never needed to see.

Jack looks the other way and focuses on raising his eyebrows and tempting security to just try do something about him. They don't.

"What did you think this would achieve, Mr. Arthur? I can't really say I understand," Daniel asks.

"The scientific genius sitting in SSR's vaults? The products of some of the greatest minds on either side of the war, left to molder, when those ideas could be re-applied and mass produced and marketed?" Arthur rattles off the words like he's the one addressing a grievous crime.

"They're weapons of war, Mr. Arthur," Daniel says with an odd gentleness.

"You have no idea the advances the commercial sector could make out of the fruits of the war. Everything has a plethora of other applications! All that technology, all that potential..."

Jack snorts. That still hurts his nose quite a lot, pulls at the swollen skin of his cheek, and he can't help but follow it up with a small grunt of pain.

"You thought that was reason enough to take two government agency chiefs hostage and beat all hell out of my friend?" Daniel actually manages to sound quite aggrieved about the latter.

Jack turns a wry smile over to him. "I'm touched."

"Would've been my first guess, from the way you've been acting," Daniel grumps. Now Jack's looking at him again, Daniel has his leg on, and his pants on; a thousand percent improvement on any sight of him since they were taken back at the airport. Jack nods to him and manages to start to feel relieved.

The notebook is in his pocket: he can destroy it later. Hopefully neither Arthur nor Bruiser will remember enough that what he told them can damn him through their mouthing off alone. Daniel can walk out of here on his own two feet. And there's a phone on the desk in front of Arthur. Jack points to it briskly and says to Daniel, "Get--"

A woman screams from somewhere out of sight beyond the open doorway, back in the corridor where they've been holding off Arthur's employees.

A familiar male voice shouts, "Hey, Thompson!" and the woman whimpers and Jack's heart sinks as Bruiser drags her into view.

She isn't anyone he knows at all.

"How about I try out my fists on this pretty face instead?" Bruiser calls, stroking her face with the hand that holds his gun, making her squeal. Jack squeezes a shot off but Bruiser dances out of his line of fire.

There are a couple of smacks of fists hitting flesh and more whimpers. Jack gapes at the open doorway, unable to quite believe it. Daniel looks stunned. Arthur just looks pleased. Jack mouths at Daniel, "I don't know who she is."

...Apparently that's not even a relevant factor. Bruiser's voice comes from the unseen space outside: "Better yet, how about I keep dragging in random members of the public, and shooting them, until you boys throw those guns down and come out?"

***

Jack's face hits the wall again and he struggles for breath, pinned there with his arms yanked back and both his wrists squashed in one of Bruiser's overlarge paws. Bruiser leans back to accept some kind of rope from one of the others, which he uses to tie Jack's wrists. Then he pulls him the right way around. Jack is shaking all over, and he can't think it's anything but humiliatingly obvious.

Daniel stands to one side, upright and still wearing his leg, but not able to move fast or well without some kind of crutch to balance it. That false limb almost only makes him look normal, is what occurs to Jack suddenly, bizarre amid the situation. It's easier to keep Daniel subdued. The gun held on him by Arthur is probably enough. Bruiser pushes Jack back against the wall more roughly than he needs to, and goes to Daniel next anyway.

The girl Bruiser punched is standing by the doorway, with dry eyes, but looking sore and pissed off. She's one of them. Jack supposes it doesn't matter. They could still have done what they were threatening to do. He doesn't begin to understand how they explained the threat away to the regular store security employees, but they've sent those out now; said they were going to wait for the police. Jack's yell of, "They're not calling the police, they're breaking the law!" only got him punched. Again.

Daniel says, "If you tie my hands, then if you want me to go anywhere, you'll have to carry or drag me."

"We need to go somewhere we can at least lock the door," Arthur says. "The people in this building can only stay oblivious about so much."

"Wait for Mike to come back," Bruiser says. "It'll take more than two of us to move them safely."

The girl, who he hasn't counted even though she picked up Jack's fallen Smith & Wesson, says, "Randy, I hope you're going to get something good enough out of all this to make up for my face."

"Baby, of course I will," Arthur says. "We can pull something out of this yet."

"I wouldn't have done it if she hadn't suggested--" Bruiser looks awkward.

She sneers at him and says, "You don't hit that hard." Closer up, Jack can see the bump in her nose and catch the street in her attitude, and he thinks this girl usually hits back. Her comment is mostly in jest, but Jack scowls at them both.

One of the other men from earlier enters the room, takes a sharp stock of the situation and says with relief, "You got them back."

"Yes, I did discover they'd been running loose around the store for most of the last hour while you men kicked your heels in the basement... after they crashed through my door," Arthur says. "Alright, take them to the meeting room."

Jack jerks away before he can be manhandled again and steps forward of his own accord. For his efforts he gets to walk on his own, stumbling a bit, while they manhandle Daniel behind him. They're escorted along to a large, richly decorated conference room, all fine-polished wood and expensive red upholstery.

"Sure you want to get blood on all this?" Daniel asks, halting in the doorway. Jack wishes he wouldn't try to play the hero with the smart mouth when they're in this position. It isn't as if either of them are actually That Guy.

"We've a good, discreet cleaning service," Bruiser says with amusement.

At least the chair Jack is pushed into this time is more comfortable. The way he's positioned, they can't see his hands, behind him and obscured by the large table, but he hasn't had any luck loosening the bonds so far, and his hands were wrecked to begin with. Mike pushes Daniel toward another chair, on the side of the table closest the door, but he apparently gets to keep his hands free.

Bruiser shuts the door. The girl didn't come with them, gone to the ladies' room, no doubt to pout at her bruises. It's just Arthur and his two heavies, plus Jack and Daniel, now. "It seems we have a bit of a problem, gentlemen." Arthur spreads his hands on the head of the table and leans forward, wryly looking between them. "We underestimated you. Now you've seen a little more of our operation than we'd ever intended."

Jack bites down, grimly. They've seen his face and they know who he is, and since they didn't make a clean break, their chances of survival now are--

"I'll do it," he volunteers, shaking his head slightly at Sousa as the other agent's jaw jerks up in outrage. "Whatever you want. Access. SSR's vaults. I can still get that for you." He doesn't want to die, nor does he have any intention to help them, but pretending will extend their chances. They already have the career-damaging information from before. Arthur took his notebook back. Jack doesn't know how he'll claw this situation back, but he can try.

Randall Arthur barks a laugh. "We can never trust you, Mr. Thompson. No, we already know you'll say anything to save your hide... Then turn around and lie your way out of that, too."

Jack can see Daniel's face flatten at the description as he tries not to display... well, inappropriate amusement, at a guess, the bastard. But it flattens for real and with no humour at all as Arthur swings around to him and says, "You. It has to be you."

He's going to kill us anyway, it would be crazy not to. Jack is sure Daniel knows this and if he agrees to do anything, it will be just as much for the purpose of buying them time. Assuming that he does agree, boy-scout Daniel Sousa, instead of standing on honour and telling Arthur and his goons to get screwed. Which is apparently what he did before.

Daniel looks at Jack. It's a long look, and considering, but apart from that very hard to read. He sighs and scratches his head and looks pained to be involved in all of this, like fighting for his life by dissembling is beneath him. "I won't be able to get you into the East Coast office, you understand that? Only the one in LA."

...There are no vaults full of confiscations in the West Coast SSR office. If there has been anything at all transported over so far, and Jack's pretty good at keeping track of how things move in his own damn office, then it's certainly not on the scale of New York. Jack can't believe they'll fall for it, but it seems they do. The source for their information can't be all that detailed.

Jack has to quash a smile at the thought of Sousa weaselling the deal just as well as he could. But then, he's already seen that Daniel can play people when he wants to: that stunt with the earplugs being Exhibit A. It's only that normally Daniel is so straight-up, Jack forgets. But considering how, earlier, Daniel did not, he has to wonder why he'd fold now. The only difference is the company. Jack inclines his head and says, "Aw, Sousa, you care. I don't know what to say."

Daniel narrows his eyes and puts his hands on the table (for subtle support, Jack gauges, having been watching Sousa manoeuvre around his missing leg for a while now), and adjusts his stance to something... bigger, somehow, and more commanding. What do you know, he actually can look like he's chief of something when he tries. "What assurance do I have that you won't harm Thompson any further while I'm out doing what you want?"

"Where would be the point?" Arthur spreads his hands. "No gain for us. That's the forfeit for you not delivering. Besides, I'll leave Harry in charge. Harry's a fair fellow. Not a petty bone in him." He's looking at Bruiser, who gives a tight smile -- is that insincerity Jack sees? -- and a nod. "I'll be coming with you," Arthur continues, "but trust I'll have measures in place. If I give the wrong signal... your friend is dead."

"It's really more like 'colleague'," Daniel corrects, counter to earlier, deliberately not looking at Jack. Ouch. He glances around the others shiftily. "When do we go?"

"No time like the present," says Arthur.

***

Jack ends up back where he began, locked in his small storage room prison with Bruiser for company. This time, Bruiser's name is Harry, and he isn't using his fists... despite some initial tension. The hour must be getting late, because they've added a mattress to the floor. It has pristine sheets tucked over it -- straight off the store shelf, Jack guesses.

All of this experience has a surreal edge.

Bruiser -- Harry -- grunts and says, "You might as well sleep." Resentment rolls under his voice for the sleep that he isn't going to get while on duty guarding Jack.

Jack stumbles to the mattress and collapses to his knees, then sideways onto his face. It's not painless, but it's the easiest way to get down without the help of his hands. He should be working on plans to escape, but under so close a guard as this, he doesn't see any point. Maybe he has to just accept that it's all in Sousa's hands now.

Maybe he's just really damned tired.

He's drifting when Harry asks, with suspicion in his tone, "What did you mean, before, when you said I was you?"

"Fuck off," Jack grunts into the pristine sheets.

He hears Harry sit down at the table. Paper scrapes, and there are further similar small sounds like that. After a while, Jack realises that the bruiser has taken playing cards out, and is playing some kind of solitaire, or something else against himself.

Jack sleeps for a while, unconsciousness landing on him like a wall. It's maybe a few hours later when he wakes up with a cry, with everything stiffened up, his shoulders and arms seeming to have set in their wrenched-back position.

Harry throws over an idle-toned question, "You hurtin'?"

A stab of resentment helps drive back the pain. Jack can't decide if the tone is trying to be mocking or conciliatory. Insults seem an appropriate response either way. He bites his tongue instead.

He doesn't want to make nice with Harry. But stronger instincts within him rebel and rise up. Other parts of him groan, but the part that says survive no matter what, but try to make it look good is the one that wins, exactly the way it always does. If he can get the bruiser to like him, he's less likely to shoot him later, and it doesn't actually lose him anything in the meantime. Any honour he ever had already expired in the war.

Jack rolls over on the mattress, to face Harry instead of the wall. It's a struggle and he notices that the sheets are no longer pristine where his battered face has been rested, but the reminder doesn't sway him. He contemplates rising to a sitting position or standing up and asks, "You want an opponent?" tipping his forehead at the cards on the table.

Harry stares back at him with suspicion.

He can't help but shudder when the other man stands and comes to get him, and he half-attempts to rise then cringes and falls sideways as the bruiser reaches down. Harry catches him anyway and hauls him back onto the mattress, and Jack supposes the guy has had adequate provocation to tie his feet firmly before dragging him over to drop him in the chair. "Stay there a moment."

Harry leaves the room briefly, locking it all the same, and returns with another chair before Jack can begin to think about taking advantage of being unobserved. This time, though, Harry comes around behind him and unties his hands.

"I'm not actually Captain America," Jack tells him, taken aback. The caution seems to contradict their demonstrated disdain.

"No shit."

At first there's barely feeling in his fingers to play, and any conversation there is, is unsurprisingly awkward. Manipulating the cards isn't easy with the damage to his hands, but once he finds his rhythm he can work around that, and manages to shake loose his tongue just the same. When the game's warmed up, they're pretty evenly matched, and the conversation becomes rapid-fire. Jack wonders if he makes it easier than he should to cast aside how this guy beat the hell out of him and made him betray himself.

But he needs Harry to like him, and he's good at making people like him -- when he tries -- and so he plays on and marvels at how his pride will stretch and skew and go there.

"--How 'bout that girl, huh?" Jack asks casually. "She's something, telling you to hit her just like that." He throws a strong card down in distraction, making Harry curse.

"Aw, Clara, she's..." Suspicion chokes his words. "Never you mind. Just put your cards down." But Jack laughs it off, and makes a joke, and a few minutes later another nugget of information comes with the win.

When Daniel comes back with the cavalry -- and he actually brought Rose, though Jack assumes there're other SSR West Coast personnel out there beyond Daniel's broad shoulders -- Jack's still playing cards with the head henchman. What's more, he has just about all the dirt on this operation they could ever want already under his belt.

He fancies to himself that sitting up at the card table, leaning back and offering a greeting wave and whatever he can of a smile, he looks just as suave and dignified as anyone might in such straits.

Certainly it provides a startled moment of pause for Daniel and Rose, as they throw back the door.

***

Epilogue

Daniel has been worrying himself sick for the last eight or nine hours it took to get himself free, contain Randall Arthur, and put a team together fit to come back and rescue Jack. The last thing he expected was to find Jack sitting there cool as cucumber, playing cards with the enemy's right hand man.

Jack looks up and gives a little wave. Maybe it's harder to spot 'overwhelming relief' on him because of the relative immobility of his face at the moment.

The henchman groans and stands up, putting his hands behind his head, moving warily and slowly beneath Rose's glower and the aim of her revolver. Jack also puts his hands on his head, and leans back casually in his chair. His face forms something resembling a smug smile, which is just about possible to pick out, amid all of the marks.

"I guess worms are slippery," Jack tells the henchman like he in some way masterminded this. Daniel doesn't have the heart to throw in any correction.

Who the hell does Jack Thompson think he is anyway? he wonders sourly.

He's already exasperated by the contradictions of the last fraught day, and it's almost annoying to be reminded that even after all the time they've known each other, and some pretty sticky judgements on the way, he doesn't know everything about what makes Jack tick... Or what makes Jack break... and it was clear that, in some form, back in this miserable room when they had him before, he had broken. But it only seems he's swept it together from personal disaster to apparent heroism yet again. Daniel has the sneaking suspicion Jack's still going to end up coming out of this looking like he deserves another medal.

Especially since-- "I got Arthur's notebook." Balancing on his good leg, he pats his jacket with his crutch hand, frowns a meaningful frown, and doesn't specify further in front of Rose.

"Excellent." Jack jerks in his chair, which unexpectedly wobbles the table. "A little assistance here?"

Daniel steps back and ducks his head enough to discover the reason for the continued casually-affected sprawl: Jack's feet tied and hooked around the table leg.

"I've got it!" Rose says, and drops with the same unexpected enthusiasm with which she's approached this whole venture. Daniel has no idea where she draws the knife from that's suddenly in her hand.

He waggles his gun at the henchman, the one he'd thought Jack particularly didn't like, making the large man retreat to the furthest corner of the room, and stumps around the table. As the last rope parts and Jack pulls his feet back with a relieved sigh, Daniel says, "I'll take it from here." He waits for Rose to climb back upright, brush her bright dress free of dust, and resume covering the henchman, before he braces his crutch and reaches down for Jack.

Who did come back for him, and did his damnedest to save them both, no matter where else his motivations hovered at. At the end of the day... well, the day probably revealed more depths to Jack than Daniel would have expected.

Jack reaches higher, curling his fingers around Daniel's wrist rather than the offered hand, and Daniel can see at least one twisted finger so lets himself do all the gripping, taking hold of Jack's wrist to haul him up. He's unsteady on his feet for a moment, and clings to Daniel, a support which isn't easy to maintain, but fair's fair after earlier.

"I still can't believe that stunt with the trolley," Daniel offers.

"Me either," Jack snorts. For a moment, Daniel sees something more vulnerable there, in place of, say, You're kidding, Sousa! That was one hundred percent Thompson skill. Jack's legs falter again and he grabs more heavily for support, then the next moment he's steadied himself and that brief... weakness... openness... it's gone.

Daniel pats Jack heartily on the back instead of offering the more expansive embrace he actually gets the feeling might not go amiss. "Let's get the hell out of here. My two best guys--" who were Jack's two worst guys a month ago, but never mind that "--have got the rest of this in hand. Arthur's in a cell at the SSR and the rest of his people are going to be joining him, soon as we shake loose who knew about this and who didn't."

"I might've got hold of some information that can help with that," Jack puts in, self-satisfied, and in the background the henchman curses.

"Good, good." Daniel hasn't slept in over twenty four hours and he knows it's starting to affect his thinking. Jack Thompson, he reminds himself, never did a thing that wasn't done to serve his own ends.

He points Jack toward the door. As they leave, he overhears Rose asking the henchman with edged politeness, "You do that to Chief Thompson's face?"

He's not truly sure where the edge in her voice lies, and as he shuffles around to allow another agent into the small room to back up Rose, he's hustling quick as he can on his crutch to get out of earshot before he finds out, and more pointedly before Jack can find out if Rose's question is focused upon retaliation or congratulation.

"Rose, huh?" Jack asks, deadpan.

"I've got six staff who've completed combat training and an office full of boxes," Daniel retorts. And whose fault is that, Jack?

"You know, you didn't have to accept the promotion or the transfer," Jack points out.

Daniel laughs in his face, makes a quick glance about for any SSR personnel nearby or looking their way, and shifts the hand from Jack's shoulder to pat his chest. Pushes Randall Arthur's notebook into his grasp on the second pat. Jack's hand curls up in an instant to take and hide it. Jack's always quick on the uptake when it come to covering his ass.

"We chiefs gotta look out for each other," Jack says, smiling; spreading the weight again, as he does so well.

Daniel gives in. Jack always fails, and the world always rewards him for it. Why break a tradition? Besides, they've both had a damned awful day. "You said it. Let's go take care of those welts and get you a drink. I can probably swing the confiscation of a medicinal bottle of scotch from the food hall upstairs, all things considered."

"Sousa -- you're a pal."

They pick their slow way back to the service elevator, walking step-for-step from the weary hitch in Jack's walk.

END