Cell Number Eight 2/9
Title: Cell Number Eight 2/9
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Nate and Eliot, Backstory
Verse: Origins Verse
Summary: Nate was waiting for IYS to pay his ransom. Eliot was waiting to die. Neither expected sharing a tiny cell in a prison outside Cairo would forge the foundation of a relationship that would last the years.
Notes: This is my backstory for Nate and Eliot used in this verse and probably the other stories unless stated otherwise.
Chapter One can be found here.
For more than a day the boy continued to fade in and out of consciousness, lucidity only returning occasionally.
He didn’t speak, Nate half wondered if the man was hoping Nate would just give up and leave him to die. Nate might have been tempted if there was anything else to do but stare at the four walls and wonder what would happen to him. Nate would be lying there, thinking about Sam and Maggie and then the guards would tromp by outside and Nate would freeze in terror that maybe they were coming to do to him what they’d done to the boy. The guards would tromp on and Nate’s rattled mind would forsake all thought and he’d go check on his patient one more time.
Nate did try to reach out to the man, in those few period when the man was awake and a little alert. Nate would keep a running one-sided dialogue in the hopes of drawing some kind of response from the man. When he received a glare sometime near dusk Nate considered it a small step in the right direction.
The second day dawned with the man in a little better health, his lucid moments stretching longer and his fever had finally broken.
He also didn’t glare when Nate checked his wounds and he seemed to have gotten over the fact he needed help to eat the meager meal porridge they were given twice a day. It was small steps but somewhere in those two days the man seemed to have, if only subconsciously, regained something of a desire to get better and live.
But as night fell the second time and Nate helped the man sit up enough and attempt to manage to feed himself the man still hadn’t said a word. Nate was beginning to wonder if the man had gone mute from the trauma.
The candle was nearly burned out and there was no sign of another one so when darkness fell Nate made his way to the straw and burlap pallet that served as his “bed” and tried to fall asleep thinking of the home he should have been flying home to tonight.
Over the years Nate had learned there were few people as unpredictable as thieves and conmen. You could spend your whole life studying them and he was pretty sure they would still manage to surprise you with some insane twist in the end.
So it really should have come as less of a surprise when on the third morning, while Nate was trying to eat the foul concoction that had shown up as breakfast without throwing up, that the other man casually broke his silence.
“The key is ta relax your throat, it helps suppress the gag reflex.”
Thick, congealed, meal-porridge was spewed across the floor and wall Nate had been facing as he sputtered with surprise and reaction to the way it was obvious by the man’s voice the sentence had been meant. Nate turned to see a Cheshire cat smile spreading across the man’s face taking some of the tired out of his eyes.
“You know this from experience?” Nate asked, wiping at his mouth. The stuttered, embarrassed, denial and surprise at Nate’s quick recovery lifted a little of the tension away. “So you do talk I see. Just waiting for an opening.”
“The way you’ve been talkin’ my ears off it was hard. You gab like a gossip Nathan.” Eliot finished the last of his food with a long, somewhat disgusted, sigh and let himself relax against the wall he was leaning against. He was making fast progress but he could barely sit up under his own power. He closed those clear blue eyes and let out another long sigh. “’names Eliot. Now can you let a guy get some sleep?”
“By all means” Nate said with a small grin, gathering up the bowls to be put by the door.
~*~
It was three days and Eliot still didn’t know what to make of his cell mate. The guy was taking care of him, being gentle, patient, even friendly. There was no reason for him to be. What was in it for him? What did Nathan hope to gain from all of this?
As the days had passed and Eliot’s mind became more lucid he started to just maybe consider that it was because Nathan was a good person. As unlikely as it seemed Nathan might just be doing it because he was a good guy.
It was a concept Eliot had a surprisingly hard time wrapping his mind around.
It was strange, but around the time he first considered that he noticed for the first time since he’d been here he was trying. Eliot was responding to the care, trying to get better rather than just fade away like he had been. He still wasn’t sure entirely why, except that somewhere in between dreams and waking he’d started going over all his escape tactics and things he’d learned to see if they could be adapted.
He wouldn’t admit, even in his head, what he was doing that for yet.
So Eliot laid and waited and tried to focus on getting better and figuring out his strange companion.
Nate talked when ever he knew Eliot was awake. It had grated on Eliot’s nerves at first but after a while he started to find it strangely soothing. It broke the silence and gave him something to think about besides the round and round of “whats the point” “wonder what Ammie and her new husband are doing” and bad memories that had been keeping him mind occupied.
The thing Nate talked about most often was Sam and Maggie, Nate’s wife and year old son. Eliot was pretty sure if Nate had had his wallet Eliot would have been treated to plenty of pictures already but it just gave Nate a reason to describe them to the ceiling and a listening Eliot.
Nate told stories about Sam. How Sam was already running about at barely one. How Maggie and all her mother friends had a huge birthday party for their one year olds that had really been more of a celebration of surviving their first years as parents, how everything was perfect even if Nate had to travel for work.
Nate also talked a lot about art and crime and it wasn’t long before Eliot put it together that he was a con man or an investigator. It was a good explanation of why he was here. Eliot listened to those stories and picked up a few tricks along the way.
But somtime during the third night Nate had stopped talking and Eliot made the decision to break his own silence. The man had done a lot for him. Eliot would a least give him a reprieve from that fear laced behind his words.
If Eliot did it in his own little way to get rid of any awkwardness early on then who could really blame him?
And so somehow, here they were, Eliot pretending to sleep against a wall and Nate moving about the cell doing god only knew what. It wasn’t until Nate sat close to Eliot and started doing something on the floor that Eliot cracked his eyes open a little to try to see what he was up to.
Nate had a pile of the straw from his bedding and a few small piles of various shaped stones and pieces of wax. He watched as Nate used the straw to make a sort of box shaped grid on the floor before setting out the stones in two lines on the sides of the grid nearest himself and Eliot.
When Nate was done he started moving the stones one at a time in odd, apparently haphazard movements occasionally taking a piece off the the board.
After a long time had passed and Nate was down to only a few pieces Eliot finally gave up. “What are you doing?”
“Playing chess.” Nate answered.
“Right. Don’t cha need those little horses and castles for that?”
Nate looked up, grinned a little and shook his head. “I’m making do. You wanna play a game?”
“Do I look like I play chess?” Eliot asked. Sure he’d heard of the game and if pressed he might be able to recall how the pieces moved.
Some of them.
“I can teach you if you want.” Nate offered, already moving to put the pieces back on the board. “It’s not like we have a lot else to do in here.”
Eliot grunted his agreement and let Nate go ahead as he explained the rules and pieces and pointed out how to identify which one was which and how they moved. It took a few minutes but in a surprisingly short time Eliot got over the fact this was a game geeks played. It was interesting, hard. It made his head hurt but in the good way.
Even though Nate beat him so soundly that if it had been a fight Eliot would have been well and truly dead Eliot was the one to start setting up the pieces. “How didya do that?” He asked.
“Strategy.” Nate said with a grin, putting his own pieces back into place. “The key to chess is planning ahead. You don’t think about your next move, you think about your next ten moves, more even.” The board was set back up and Nate moved. “Like this. I move my piece here to open the way for my bishop to get out. My next move if my knight and after that, unless you’ve done something drastic I’ll castle my king and my defenses are set up for a long game.”
Eliot moved a pawn.
“Why did you move that?” Eliot asked.
“So I could get my queen into play?” Eliot said, trying not to sound as confused as he was.
“You tend to keep her out of play for the first few moves.”
“But she’s your strongest piece! Why not use her?”
“You’ve left your king open to an attack from a bishop a few moves down the line.” Nate said, tapping the space left open. “And it’s not about strong pieces. If you want to win at chess you plan ahead.” Nate made his next move, moving his bishop and saying “check”.
The game was two moves in and already not going well.
~*~
They were on their sixth game by the time dinner was delivered and Eliot was picking up the game with speed that surprised Nate. In honesty Nate had figured his cell mate as the Muscle type. Strong, fast, with plenty of street smarts but not too bright.
But the afternoon of chess had shown Eliot had an astounding learning curve, like every move he or Nate had made had taught him something about the game. Nate had started off going pretty easy on Eliot. More and more he was having to be more careful. Being cocky had nearly cost him game number five.
It seemed Nate’s old theory about how much you could learn about a person from playing chess with them held true. He now knew Eliot was actually quite smart, already had a strong grasp of planning even if it took him a while to implement it in chess, and was quick to learn. Eliot had even let it slip that learn quickly was the only reason he’d survived this long.
Nate had learned something else, something that made his heart hurt just a little bit. An offhand compliment on picking up his lessons so fast had caused a wide grin to spread across the man’s face. Suddenly he looked like an eager to please teenager and Nate had to wonder how long it had been since someone had just sat down and nicely taught him something.
After eating dinner Nate cleaned up the board, careful to put the pieces in easy reach for Eliot. Then he checked over Eliot’s healing one last time before falling darkness made the retreat to his own mattress the best course of action.
Silence fell and lingered for awhile after that. It wasn’t until guards tromped by the door unexpectedly and Nate found himself jerking to a sitting position, tense and waiting that Eliot spoke. “What’s got you worked up?”
Nate looked into the inky darkness. “They don’t normally come by this time of night.”
“The patrols an hour late but there are plenty of reasons.” Somehow Nate wasn’t surprised that Eliot seemed to have the schedule of the guards committed to memory.
“It’s what the reasons could be that have me worried.” Nate admitted.
It was a moment before Eliot spoke, his voice a little gruff like he was uncomfortable. “You shouldn’t need ta worry. They’re not the one who did me over. Aren’t paid enough to bother themselves.”
Nate raised an eyebrow, which was mostly lost in the darkness, but his pointed silence got the message across.
“The job before this one went way farther south. Damn monkey got me landed in a Russian Crimelords dungeons. Took me awhile to get out. Then I got stupid and tried this job before I was back on my feet.” He laughed bitterly at some irony Nate didn’t catch. “Don’t be afraid Nate.” He said after a moment longer. “I don’t think anyone’s comin’ for ya.”
Nate sighed. It was a relief but also… well that was one way of putting the problem. “That’s actually kind of what I’m afraid of.” He mused out loud. “I figure they’re holding me for ransom but… well I guess there’s not a lot I can do but wait.”
“And help out your cellmate.” Eliot added, a note of irony. “I know no one’s comin’ for me. All I can hope for is once I get better I’ll be able to get out of here on my own. I escaped that crime lord’s dungeon. Took twenty tries but I did it in the end. They say it’s just part of earnin’ your stripes as a specialist. I’m just gettin’ ahead of the game. Gonna be great one day. You might even chase me sometime.”
Nate nodded uncomitably, though Eliot couldn’t see it, and smiled up at the ceiling a little. There was still exhaustion in Eliot’s voice and Nate knew enough about phycology that you didn’t go from wanting to die to being well adjusted in three days but it was a start.
So he closed his eyes, bid Eliot good night, and tried to fall to sleep thinking about getting home and raising Sam and maybe how years from now Nate would be the one investigator of IYS who could catch Eliot, the best retrieval specialist in the world
Previous: Chapter One
Next: Chapter Three
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Nate and Eliot, Backstory
Verse: Origins Verse
Summary: Nate was waiting for IYS to pay his ransom. Eliot was waiting to die. Neither expected sharing a tiny cell in a prison outside Cairo would forge the foundation of a relationship that would last the years.
Notes: This is my backstory for Nate and Eliot used in this verse and probably the other stories unless stated otherwise.
Chapter One can be found here.
For more than a day the boy continued to fade in and out of consciousness, lucidity only returning occasionally.
He didn’t speak, Nate half wondered if the man was hoping Nate would just give up and leave him to die. Nate might have been tempted if there was anything else to do but stare at the four walls and wonder what would happen to him. Nate would be lying there, thinking about Sam and Maggie and then the guards would tromp by outside and Nate would freeze in terror that maybe they were coming to do to him what they’d done to the boy. The guards would tromp on and Nate’s rattled mind would forsake all thought and he’d go check on his patient one more time.
Nate did try to reach out to the man, in those few period when the man was awake and a little alert. Nate would keep a running one-sided dialogue in the hopes of drawing some kind of response from the man. When he received a glare sometime near dusk Nate considered it a small step in the right direction.
The second day dawned with the man in a little better health, his lucid moments stretching longer and his fever had finally broken.
He also didn’t glare when Nate checked his wounds and he seemed to have gotten over the fact he needed help to eat the meager meal porridge they were given twice a day. It was small steps but somewhere in those two days the man seemed to have, if only subconsciously, regained something of a desire to get better and live.
But as night fell the second time and Nate helped the man sit up enough and attempt to manage to feed himself the man still hadn’t said a word. Nate was beginning to wonder if the man had gone mute from the trauma.
The candle was nearly burned out and there was no sign of another one so when darkness fell Nate made his way to the straw and burlap pallet that served as his “bed” and tried to fall asleep thinking of the home he should have been flying home to tonight.
Over the years Nate had learned there were few people as unpredictable as thieves and conmen. You could spend your whole life studying them and he was pretty sure they would still manage to surprise you with some insane twist in the end.
So it really should have come as less of a surprise when on the third morning, while Nate was trying to eat the foul concoction that had shown up as breakfast without throwing up, that the other man casually broke his silence.
“The key is ta relax your throat, it helps suppress the gag reflex.”
Thick, congealed, meal-porridge was spewed across the floor and wall Nate had been facing as he sputtered with surprise and reaction to the way it was obvious by the man’s voice the sentence had been meant. Nate turned to see a Cheshire cat smile spreading across the man’s face taking some of the tired out of his eyes.
“You know this from experience?” Nate asked, wiping at his mouth. The stuttered, embarrassed, denial and surprise at Nate’s quick recovery lifted a little of the tension away. “So you do talk I see. Just waiting for an opening.”
“The way you’ve been talkin’ my ears off it was hard. You gab like a gossip Nathan.” Eliot finished the last of his food with a long, somewhat disgusted, sigh and let himself relax against the wall he was leaning against. He was making fast progress but he could barely sit up under his own power. He closed those clear blue eyes and let out another long sigh. “’names Eliot. Now can you let a guy get some sleep?”
“By all means” Nate said with a small grin, gathering up the bowls to be put by the door.
~*~
It was three days and Eliot still didn’t know what to make of his cell mate. The guy was taking care of him, being gentle, patient, even friendly. There was no reason for him to be. What was in it for him? What did Nathan hope to gain from all of this?
As the days had passed and Eliot’s mind became more lucid he started to just maybe consider that it was because Nathan was a good person. As unlikely as it seemed Nathan might just be doing it because he was a good guy.
It was a concept Eliot had a surprisingly hard time wrapping his mind around.
It was strange, but around the time he first considered that he noticed for the first time since he’d been here he was trying. Eliot was responding to the care, trying to get better rather than just fade away like he had been. He still wasn’t sure entirely why, except that somewhere in between dreams and waking he’d started going over all his escape tactics and things he’d learned to see if they could be adapted.
He wouldn’t admit, even in his head, what he was doing that for yet.
So Eliot laid and waited and tried to focus on getting better and figuring out his strange companion.
Nate talked when ever he knew Eliot was awake. It had grated on Eliot’s nerves at first but after a while he started to find it strangely soothing. It broke the silence and gave him something to think about besides the round and round of “whats the point” “wonder what Ammie and her new husband are doing” and bad memories that had been keeping him mind occupied.
The thing Nate talked about most often was Sam and Maggie, Nate’s wife and year old son. Eliot was pretty sure if Nate had had his wallet Eliot would have been treated to plenty of pictures already but it just gave Nate a reason to describe them to the ceiling and a listening Eliot.
Nate told stories about Sam. How Sam was already running about at barely one. How Maggie and all her mother friends had a huge birthday party for their one year olds that had really been more of a celebration of surviving their first years as parents, how everything was perfect even if Nate had to travel for work.
Nate also talked a lot about art and crime and it wasn’t long before Eliot put it together that he was a con man or an investigator. It was a good explanation of why he was here. Eliot listened to those stories and picked up a few tricks along the way.
But somtime during the third night Nate had stopped talking and Eliot made the decision to break his own silence. The man had done a lot for him. Eliot would a least give him a reprieve from that fear laced behind his words.
If Eliot did it in his own little way to get rid of any awkwardness early on then who could really blame him?
And so somehow, here they were, Eliot pretending to sleep against a wall and Nate moving about the cell doing god only knew what. It wasn’t until Nate sat close to Eliot and started doing something on the floor that Eliot cracked his eyes open a little to try to see what he was up to.
Nate had a pile of the straw from his bedding and a few small piles of various shaped stones and pieces of wax. He watched as Nate used the straw to make a sort of box shaped grid on the floor before setting out the stones in two lines on the sides of the grid nearest himself and Eliot.
When Nate was done he started moving the stones one at a time in odd, apparently haphazard movements occasionally taking a piece off the the board.
After a long time had passed and Nate was down to only a few pieces Eliot finally gave up. “What are you doing?”
“Playing chess.” Nate answered.
“Right. Don’t cha need those little horses and castles for that?”
Nate looked up, grinned a little and shook his head. “I’m making do. You wanna play a game?”
“Do I look like I play chess?” Eliot asked. Sure he’d heard of the game and if pressed he might be able to recall how the pieces moved.
Some of them.
“I can teach you if you want.” Nate offered, already moving to put the pieces back on the board. “It’s not like we have a lot else to do in here.”
Eliot grunted his agreement and let Nate go ahead as he explained the rules and pieces and pointed out how to identify which one was which and how they moved. It took a few minutes but in a surprisingly short time Eliot got over the fact this was a game geeks played. It was interesting, hard. It made his head hurt but in the good way.
Even though Nate beat him so soundly that if it had been a fight Eliot would have been well and truly dead Eliot was the one to start setting up the pieces. “How didya do that?” He asked.
“Strategy.” Nate said with a grin, putting his own pieces back into place. “The key to chess is planning ahead. You don’t think about your next move, you think about your next ten moves, more even.” The board was set back up and Nate moved. “Like this. I move my piece here to open the way for my bishop to get out. My next move if my knight and after that, unless you’ve done something drastic I’ll castle my king and my defenses are set up for a long game.”
Eliot moved a pawn.
“Why did you move that?” Eliot asked.
“So I could get my queen into play?” Eliot said, trying not to sound as confused as he was.
“You tend to keep her out of play for the first few moves.”
“But she’s your strongest piece! Why not use her?”
“You’ve left your king open to an attack from a bishop a few moves down the line.” Nate said, tapping the space left open. “And it’s not about strong pieces. If you want to win at chess you plan ahead.” Nate made his next move, moving his bishop and saying “check”.
The game was two moves in and already not going well.
~*~
They were on their sixth game by the time dinner was delivered and Eliot was picking up the game with speed that surprised Nate. In honesty Nate had figured his cell mate as the Muscle type. Strong, fast, with plenty of street smarts but not too bright.
But the afternoon of chess had shown Eliot had an astounding learning curve, like every move he or Nate had made had taught him something about the game. Nate had started off going pretty easy on Eliot. More and more he was having to be more careful. Being cocky had nearly cost him game number five.
It seemed Nate’s old theory about how much you could learn about a person from playing chess with them held true. He now knew Eliot was actually quite smart, already had a strong grasp of planning even if it took him a while to implement it in chess, and was quick to learn. Eliot had even let it slip that learn quickly was the only reason he’d survived this long.
Nate had learned something else, something that made his heart hurt just a little bit. An offhand compliment on picking up his lessons so fast had caused a wide grin to spread across the man’s face. Suddenly he looked like an eager to please teenager and Nate had to wonder how long it had been since someone had just sat down and nicely taught him something.
After eating dinner Nate cleaned up the board, careful to put the pieces in easy reach for Eliot. Then he checked over Eliot’s healing one last time before falling darkness made the retreat to his own mattress the best course of action.
Silence fell and lingered for awhile after that. It wasn’t until guards tromped by the door unexpectedly and Nate found himself jerking to a sitting position, tense and waiting that Eliot spoke. “What’s got you worked up?”
Nate looked into the inky darkness. “They don’t normally come by this time of night.”
“The patrols an hour late but there are plenty of reasons.” Somehow Nate wasn’t surprised that Eliot seemed to have the schedule of the guards committed to memory.
“It’s what the reasons could be that have me worried.” Nate admitted.
It was a moment before Eliot spoke, his voice a little gruff like he was uncomfortable. “You shouldn’t need ta worry. They’re not the one who did me over. Aren’t paid enough to bother themselves.”
Nate raised an eyebrow, which was mostly lost in the darkness, but his pointed silence got the message across.
“The job before this one went way farther south. Damn monkey got me landed in a Russian Crimelords dungeons. Took me awhile to get out. Then I got stupid and tried this job before I was back on my feet.” He laughed bitterly at some irony Nate didn’t catch. “Don’t be afraid Nate.” He said after a moment longer. “I don’t think anyone’s comin’ for ya.”
Nate sighed. It was a relief but also… well that was one way of putting the problem. “That’s actually kind of what I’m afraid of.” He mused out loud. “I figure they’re holding me for ransom but… well I guess there’s not a lot I can do but wait.”
“And help out your cellmate.” Eliot added, a note of irony. “I know no one’s comin’ for me. All I can hope for is once I get better I’ll be able to get out of here on my own. I escaped that crime lord’s dungeon. Took twenty tries but I did it in the end. They say it’s just part of earnin’ your stripes as a specialist. I’m just gettin’ ahead of the game. Gonna be great one day. You might even chase me sometime.”
Nate nodded uncomitably, though Eliot couldn’t see it, and smiled up at the ceiling a little. There was still exhaustion in Eliot’s voice and Nate knew enough about phycology that you didn’t go from wanting to die to being well adjusted in three days but it was a start.
So he closed his eyes, bid Eliot good night, and tried to fall to sleep thinking about getting home and raising Sam and maybe how years from now Nate would be the one investigator of IYS who could catch Eliot, the best retrieval specialist in the world
Previous: Chapter One
Next: Chapter Three