lynchthedove:
Cal knew how quickly the serum would work, but he still wasn’t prepared to watch it dig as deeply into Mats’s mind as it has. Helped along, of course, by Cal himself. Gordon, he reminds himself, but it doesn’t matter. The guilt kills him inside, and he knows Mats will forgive him because it’s part of the ruse, but Cal has to choke down a mix of blaming himself, and anger at Mats.
He’s the one who let it get this far, a cold voice speaks in Cal’s mind, and he recognizes it as Gordon, the practiced voice he’s been refining for months now to make sure his veneer was perfect for this ploy. The amount of deep-diving he’s had to do has fucked with his mind at times, and he hated it then, and he hates it now. Hearing the words, cold and cruel, in Cal’s voice but skewed, different, makes him want to rip the Abstergo uniform off and drag Mats away from the situation.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t, and it kills him. Mats would break without Cal, they both know their dependence on each other is unhealthy, but Cal doesn’t think he deserves to be forgiven for doing this to Mats. Rising to his challenge. Just as Mats could have backed down when Cal - Gordon - produced the serum, so, too, could Cal have backed down. It might have gotten him a tongue-lashing from the higher-ups, but it wouldn’t have blown their cover.
Instead, he has to stand to the side, hands behind his back, nails digging into his wrist, and watch with as impassive an expression as he can while Mats cries out for his mother, pleads for her to stay, and Cal’s heard these words often enough in Mats’s nightmares to know what he’s seeing.
Mats screams, pounds the floor with his fists, and Cal knows the strength of the serum enough to know that, were he not seeing memories of his mother leaving him, Mats would have enough focus and strength to knock Cal aside and escape. Instead, Cal’s planted the most painful memories he can into his head and forced him to relive them.
Drive it home, Gordon says, a double edged sword of logic and cruelty. Remind him that Callum isn’t here for him, and perhaps he won’t act out again in the future.
Cal’s jaw clenches tighter, and his eyes flicker once to the side as Mats screams louder. To the security camera, it might look simply as if Gordon were uncomfortable with the volume rather than the truth that Cal hates every single second of what’s happening. Rage stirs in the pit of his stomach, at himself, at Mats, at the entire idea of infiltration, and he imagines Moussa, Lin, Josef, and Stevie must be having an easier time with this. Dangerous, yes, but it feels like nothing can hurt as much as this right now.
“You know where Lynch is,” Gordon speaks, accented and cold, and Cal knows it could change the visions along with it, permeate what Mats is already seeing and shift it to follow along. “And Moussa, and the others that broke out with you. You’re protecting them, while they let you get caught. They left you alone-” Fuck, he’s saying this, and he hates it. “-and you’re the one suffering. It can all stop if you would just…cooperate.”
Hell isn’t a place; it’s a memory.
It’s the echo of his mother’s laughter, knowing he’ll never hear it again. It’s the phantom warmth of his own breath fogging the floor beneath his face, because he’s too tired to lift his head, and too broken to care to try. It’s the hazy face of the man he loves, but it’s not his face, and he’s not the one behind it. He’s there, but he’s not, and it’s torture.
His insides are in fractures. Shards of bone and punctured flesh, blood and viscera, sadness and madness. How many times can someone be broken before they can’t be put back together again? Before the cracks become the more than the pieces, and none of the edges fit together again.
How many times, before he doesn’t want to come together again.
Lynch.
It’s a light in the storm. His Lynch, his Callum, his king of doves. “He’s not here,” he says, fingers curling into fists on the cold floor. Cold floor, slick floor, not hardwood and dust. “He’s not here, and they’re not here, and I’m not here. Not really. I’m not here.” He’s not here, and it’s not real, and the pain is just pain.
“It’s like people,” he whispers, pushing his knuckles to the floor. Is the skin really splitting across the bones of his hand, or does it just feel that way? There’s a scream in his throat, but it never surfaces. “Pain is like people. It comes, and it goes. It always goes.” But not his dove. His dove won’t go; he’s just not here. His face is there, his voice is there, but it’s not him.
His hand slips, muscles unraveling beneath his skin, but he just tries again. Will always try again, because he promised he wouldn’t stop trying to put himself back together again. He owes him that much. Lynch.
“You’ll go, too,” he tells Gordon. “Maybe not yet, but you’ll go. He’ll come, and you’ll go, and we’ll be gone together before they can find us again.” His laugh is a sob, and he tastes old pennies on his tongue as a smile carves its way onto his face.
The light is blinding; he can’t see his face. And he’s glad for it. “Haven’t you learned, mon ami? We are shadows, and we don’t cooperate.”
