And we’re back! New piece for TJ and Danny’s series. It’s been a while, so for a refresher: Carrying on directly from previous piece here. Masterpost is here. The Pathverse is a creation of @wildfaewhump!
TJ jerked back, hands pressing themselves into his armpits, cringing. Voices hammered at his ears – at least two voices? Had somebody else approached, too?
The man was swearing, yelling – of course he was, it was bad and wrong for TJ to be here, he knew that, this person had every right to be upset. But TJ hadn’t gotten close, hadn’t looked at him, hadn’t – if only he would listen, but he wouldn’t. TJ wondered, panicked, if he ought to just sit down, fold his arms over his head, and wait for the Agency people.
The new person had a loud voice too, but not as angry – and also getting closer. Almost in his space – and then TJ stiffened, his mouth opening to cry a warning, because the new person had walked right up to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
No, you can’t touch me, he tried to say – but before he could get the words out, her bare fingers had found his and closed around them.
And then everything was fine! TJ hadn’t needed to worry about it at all. He closed his mouth, feeling a little silly he’d been so panicked. Relief washed over him like an ocean wave, inexorable, dizzying. The fingers squeezed his and he found himself grinning. Everything was going to be okay.
“I’m so sorry about my brother,” the new person was saying, her voice higher pitched than TJ’s or Danny’s, warm and friendly and with an edge of a laugh on some of the words. “He promised me he wouldn’t make a scene or cause any trouble! Here, let me help you with that…”
The warm arm around TJ’s shoulder disappeared as the woman stepped away, her voice chattering, saying something meaningless and friendly. And after a moment – the man laughed, as well, sounding shaky but relieved.
“It’s only a costume, of course!” the woman said. “I’m working on a film for school!”
“Oh, thanks – really, a film, haha, what sort of…”
“Oh, kind of – a psychological horror, sort of thing, you know.” A self-deprecating chuckle. “It’s probably not going to be very good.”
“Well, I’m sure it… the costuming is pretty, um, pretty realistic…”
“Thanks! I worked really hard on it!”
TJ tipped his head, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead and making the hastily-applied blindfold slip and let in a crack of light. He couldn’t quite get his head around how fast things had changed – now these two strangers were talking and laughing, as if they were old friends? But something wasn’t right. It was a good thing, of course it was a good thing, but why...
The woman was lying to this stranger – or was she dreadfully confused? Was it TJ’s fault? Maybe he ought to say something. Had he somehow managed to convince her, in that one brief hand-touch that shouldn’t have happened, that he was her brother?
Oh, no - he’d touched her, he’d touched a real person and his handler was nowhere near him, no, that was never ever ever supposed to happen…
She draped her arm over TJ’s shoulder again, and for a moment he felt the prickle of her thoughts like he was used to – anxiety, play this just right, waiting for somebody, he’d better get here soon, determination – before they were gently moved out of his reach. Comfort and warmth replaced them, and it seemed like a much better deal, so he let it happen. He didn’t need to worry about reading her – that was such a relief. And she was nice, she was so nice. He couldn’t see her but he bet she was pretty and smiling, he could hear the smile in her voice. And she’d soothed the angry stranger, too, so did it matter how she’d done it?
He grinned, wordlessly, filled with a kind of shy happiness, and leaned into her side. He listened to her talk without really following the words, just enjoying the cadence of her voice. Everything was going to be all right now.
“… yeah, like a third of our grade. My friend said they’d be here with our camera and stuff but they’re running late.”
“And your brother…”
“Oh, no, he’s not in the class. I just promised he could play the monster, but I didn’t think he’d be such a dick about it, he keeps sneaking up on people!”
“Oh, well, you gave me the fright of my life, not gonna lie, kid!”
The arm around TJ’s shoulders tightened. “Oh, um, my brother doesn’t talk much,” the woman said quickly. “Is your food still good to go? Sorry if it got ruined, I can replace it if you want.”
“No, no, that’s fine, no harm done.”
“Great!” A new note appeared in her voice, and if TJ hadn’t been so distracted, he might have wondered if she was nervous. “Oh, look, there’s my friend arriving with all our equipment, we’d better go! See you!”
She took hold of TJ firmly and turned him around, pulling him with her as she strode out into the rest of the concrete-and-fumes wasteland of the carpark.
He went without complaint, reassured by the firm grip on his shoulders. He stumbled once or twice over irregular surfaces she didn’t know to cue him about. But that was okay. He wondered dreamily why she was almost running.
There was the familiar sound of a car door opening, and the woman seemed to want him to get into it, so he did his best. That had to make her happy, right? It was more important than anything that the nervous bright-voiced girl with hurried hands was happy.
She climbed in after TJ, pushing him until he slid along the seat and fetched up against the opposite door. The car jolted into motion without anybody strapping TJ in, which was weird. He found his grip tightening around the woman’s hand, which was somehow in his again. She squeezed back, which was oddly reassuring.
“Thank Christ,” she said, out of breath. “Glen, don’t go home, I think we’re going to need to dump this car.”
“Yes, probably.” The person driving the car sounded distracted. “How bad do you think? Are we going to need to move?”
“No,” she said, after a moment. “No, I don’t think so, it was only a minute of conversation. I spun that guy a story, hopefully he’ll believe it for a while. Had to put the whammy on him pretty hard.”
The car turned, making TJ slide across the seat and knock his shoulder against hers. It sure was a good thing touching her was fine, he thought. Otherwise this would be a disaster.
He didn’t feel the slightest bit afraid of either of them; he could tell they were good people. Everything was going to be just fine now that he’d found them.
The thought of Danny, still probably stuck in the car, gave him pause. He shouldn’t be this happy while he hadn’t gotten Danny out yet, should he?
“Violet,” the driver said, tense and careful. “Sometimes I really do wish you would hang back for more information.”
“There wasn’t time,” she – Violet? - protested. “If I’d waited, the whole place would have been freaking out calling the Agencies and the cops.”
Glen sighed, heavily.
“Hey,” he said, his voice suddenly different, cheerier. “You all right back there?”
TJ, startled to be addressed, flinched away from them both into the car door. “Um, yes,” he said timidly – then more sure of himself. “Yes, I’m all right. Thank you!” He caught himself wanting to subside back into the seat, smiling and waiting to see what happened next. No, not yet! He pushed forward. “Only, only, I need your help with something!”
“Of course,” Glen said, sounding surprised. “We can – Violet. Are you still doing something?”
The fingers in TJ’s twitched. “Yes. He was pretty panicked when I found him. I needed him not to give the game away.” Something bled around the edges of the warm, happy feeling. Defensiveness? Impatience?
Wait, why did the warm feeling and the defensiveness both seem to come from somewhere…
“I know,” Glen said. “That’s fine. But, you can let him go now.”
“Are you sure? I think he might lose it.”
“Well, why don’t we give him a chance and see.”
The fingers uncurled from TJ’s, reluctantly. He felt, for a bare couple of moments, mostly empty. Then the awareness that he was in a car with two strange people – people who’d been touching him – seeped back in. Didn’t they know how dangerous this was?
When he got back to the Agency, things were going to be… bad. If they hadn’t been going to get rid of him before, they definitely would now.
“Oh,” he said. He pulled his arms and legs in close – hands buried under his elbows. Then he just sat, breathing quietly, head down, feeling the fear rise like dark water around him. He felt sick with dread, and guilt, and fear.
“All right,” the voice from the driver – Glen – still calm and cheery as if everything was fine. “Take it slow, now, I know it’s a lot. What’s your name?”
“Um. TJ,” he whispered. That was… a weird question. Nobody had ever needed to ask his name before. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t – I didn’t mean to do anything, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to! It’s just that Danny’s hurt and, and, I’m not supposed to be out here but I need to do something, I need to find somebody to fix it!”
“OK, OK,” Violet said, soothingly. “TJ. Like tee-jay? OK. I’m Violet. The guy driving is Glen. Everything will be fine, don’t worry. We’re going to take you somewhere safe.”
“No, you don’t understand,” TJ said, urgently. How much time had he already wasted? “Danny’s hurt. I need you to call our Agency, or somebody, to come get him. He’s back there, he’s in the car, he stopped talking….”
Neither of them said anything, and the car didn’t stop or turn around. Neither did anybody seem to be making a phone call. TJ wasn’t explaining it properly, they didn’t understand. TJ should know better than to get the story all jumbled like this.
“There was a car crash,” he said, slowly and carefully. “Danny’s car, it rolled over. I came out here – without him – to find someone who could call our Agency. Danny’s too hurt to do it for himself. So, you need…”
“TJ,” Violet said, speaking over him. “We can’t call an Agency. OK? Agencies aren’t safe for us right now.”
But she was wrong, the Agency was the safest place – the only safe place. But he supposed normal people wouldn’t think that way. “No, it’ll be fine,” TJ said, his voice starting to wobble. “That’s where I’m from – it’ll be safe for you, it’s not – I’m not normally wandering out alone. Agencies are safe. And it’s where Danny and me came from, so we need to go back.”
“We know that’s where you came from,” Violet said. “It’s okay, we’re not scared of you, TJ. We’re like you. Agencies would hurt us.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” TJ said, bewildered. “Maybe not ours, but another one? That’s what Danny wanted. You could find Julie, I think hers is Southwest...”
“No! We’re not calling any agencies.”
“But you have to call them! You have to call somebody!” TJ felt his voice rising, bouncing off the interior of the car back at him, and he was too upset to care right now. He still wasn’t buckled in, and it felt wrong and bad and distracting. He put his hands out, feeling the surfaces around him, soft fabric fuzz and hard plastic, nothing familiar.
“TJ, it’s OK, I - ”
Glen’s voice cut over the top of Violet’s. “Vi, let him be. TJ, who is Danny? Your friend?”
“Nnnno?” TJ gulped in a breath. “My handler Danny. He takes care of me. He was taking me somewhere in his car, but then it crashed - he’s stuck. Somebody needs to go get him out, so we have to call. Or – or, you have a car, he isn’t far, you could go get him?”
There was a long silence in the car, in which he heard somebody hiss in a breath.
“Look, if you go back along the road,” he said, the words falling over each other. If he could just get them to see Danny… “Back where I came from, the road with the grass and the trees, the, the hill – it isn’t that far, if you go back there you’ll find him -”
“Your handler,” Violet repeated carefully.
TJ nodded. “My handler, Danny. Yeah. You’ll help, right?” He’d felt so sure they would, just a few minutes ago when Violet was holding his hand. He shouldn’t be talking to people like this – Paths didn’t talk to people – but Violet had been so nice, and this was so important. Surely people wouldn’t just let somebody die if they could help. Would they?
Another long silence, filled with the little noises of a car on the road, the rush of wind and the small clicks and beeps.
“We can’t, TJ, I’m sorry,” Glen said.
No.
TJ filled his lungs with one huge, horrified breath, like he was drowning. How could this all be going so wrong? “But you have to! He might die!”
“We can’t,” Glen repeated. “I’m sorry, we just can’t. You, me and Violet are going to go somewhere safe. And I’ll try to explain it all later.”
“No! You don’t understand!” TJ’s hands gripped his knees, so hard it hurt. Somewhere safe? Safe wile Danny was maybe dying? “I can’t go with you somewhere without him!”
“It’ll be OK, TJ, I promise. Someone else will get Danny. You won’t -”
“No! No, it won’t!” His eyes stung under the blindfold, the blindfold that was slipping and letting in cracks of light, hot tears seeping through the fabric. “It won’t be OK. He’ll die! He’ll die and it’s my fault! Why won’t you do anything, I- !”
TJ stopped, gasped for breath for a second, and -
And everything went away. Again.
Violet’s fingers nudged him to let go of his knees, and there suddenly wasn’t any reason to be gripping them so hard, so he let the fingers relax – distantly he felt the ache of something that might bruise later.
And then once that wasn’t hurting anymore, there was nothing to do but sit back in the car seat, watch the glittering bits of light in the darkness, and… drift.
His body felt weird. Why was he breathing that hard? He listened to his heartbeart – it was very fast just at the moment, but it was slowing down. The others were talking about something, and they both seemed kind of agitated about something.
“… isn’t fair or right, Vi. You can’t keep - ”
“Glen, he’s fresh out of an agency! He doesn’t even understand what consent is!”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to respect it.”
“Like I told you, he is flipping out, he’s fucking traumatised, you can’t expect to talk him down out of this in the course of a fifteen minute drive!”
“And do you really think this is helping that in the long term?”
“Long term, jesus, let’s just get through today, all right?” Violet sighed, a heavy sigh that moved her shoulder where it was brushing against TJ’s. “Look, I’m sorry, we can argue about it later but it’s done now. We need to focus on getting everybody locked down.”
“You’re right. Fine. We’ll talk about it later.”
TJ wondered, for the first time, who these people actually were. Glen and Violet. Afraid of Agencies. Did that make them criminals? Probably. He hadn’t really read anything from Violet, and -
In fact, he still couldn’t. That was… strange. He’d been too afraid and confused before to really think about it.
TJ struggled against the emptiness, the blank lethargy that he seemed to be floating in, to find that thought compelling enough to keep thinking about. It was difficult. It’d be so much easier to just sit here, thinking of whatever crossed his mind, and not needing to go anywhere or say anything or be upset about anything.
But this was important, he reminded himself. Really important. Danny needed these people – he needed TJ.
“I think we call it. If they’ve had a unit go missing, this place is going to be crawling with Agency goons any minute now.”
“Mm.”
Violet. Her fingers were resting lightly on top of his. It was wrong of him, but he quested towards her, like a hand patting around to find something that wasn’t where it should be.
The something pushed back, gentle but impatient, and was back in the drifting impassivity again.
The pieces fell into place, as he drifted, and felt only the vaguest impression of surprise as he realised that these people were other Paths. She’d even said so earlier, she’d said we’re like you.
But they were nothing like TJ. They talked more like… just, well, people. Like anybody, any random person from the borrowed memories TJ plunged into every day.
“Who do you think they are? The uniform doesn’t match any of the locals.”
A hand touched TJ’s shoulder, plucking at the scrub shirt to look at something on it. The pocket?
“Damn, this says Smithfield…. Off their turf. What are they doing all the way out here?”
“I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”
This is really important, he told himself. The blankness pressed back against this thought - no, it wasn’t important – but it was.
When you’re done with this, then you can rest, he told himself – feeling the echo of Danny in his mind again, pushing him onwards, always when he felt like he couldn’t take one more instant in foreign minds. Just a little more. Just a little further. TJ could always go for just a little longer.
He set himself against the blankness, against the source of it. Pulled together all the little scraps of strength he could muster, and tried to throw the smothering nothingness off like a blanket.
It fought back. Slipping under his guard, a slow inexorable pressure that bore him down. He struck out, and a little bit of fear crept in underneath it. Had he felt this before? He had a sudden – fleeting sensation that maybe he had. Not the blankness, exactly, but… pressure. The fuzzy, painful, untouchable edges of a mind, sudden emotions that seemed to come out of nowhere.
He lifted up his hand and pulled it away from Violet’s.
“Hey, uh - ” The hand grabbed his again, before the nothingness could truly lift. She sounded surprised. “TJ, don’t.”
He resisted, trying to hold a space free for himself underneath the blankness. “Stop it,” he managed to whisper. “This is… important. It is.”
“Just chill out, it’ll be okay…”
“No! It won’t!” TJ found the weirdly slippery, elusive boundary that should have been Violet’s mind, and shoved it as hard as he could.
“Ow!”
And just like that, the hand was gone, the mind was gone, and the world came flooding back.
TJ huddled against the car door, panting. Tears were running down his face, the blindfold was wet. “Stop it!” he said, with more force than he’d ever used in his life. Anger. That was a bad, a dangerous feeling, but he didn’t care. “Don’t! I don’t want you in there, you can’t make me forget it! You can’t get me to just sit here and do nothing!”
While he was trying to get his breathing under control, Glen spoke again from the front of the car.
“Well. That’s that.”
“Ow,” Violet mumbled. “I didn’t – ” There was a sigh and a thump. “Fine, we’ll drive all the way to the second safehouse with him in hysterics. Great.”
“You’re wrong,” TJ blurted out. “People aren’t going to be coming to look for us. We’re not supposed to be here.”
“The Agency will still know where you are, TJ,” Glen said gently. “They always do. I know you’re worried about this Danny, but once he doesn’t report in - ”
“The Agency doesn’t know we’re here! Nobody knows, we’re not on a job, I’m not supposed to have left! I’m only here because Danny stole me!”
He could hear surprise in Glen’s voice. “Stole you?”
“That’s why it’s my fault!” TJ hung his head, feeling a drip of moisture fall from his face onto his knee, warmth soaking through the thin scrub fabric. Blood? Tears? He blotted his elbow over his face, speaking muffled through the folds of fabric. “He only came out here to try and, try and get me better, so if it wasn’t for me he wouldn’t be hurt. He’s not supposed to get hurt because of me.”
“He took you from the Agency?” Violet pressed. “Why?”
“He said – he said they were going to kill me,” TJ snuffled. “I don’t – know – why, I guess I’m not good at it anymore, the reading. But he said he wasn’t going to let it happen. S-so he took me here.” The words were coming out all wet and mangled, could they even understand him? “He can’t die. Please. He’s – he’s the only person who’s ever been nice to me – just nice for no reason – ever, that I can remember, ever ever. You have to help him.”
The car was quiet again for a moment, only the sounds of TJ’s difficult breathing.
“You’re not thinking of actually picking this guy up, are you?” Violet demanded.
“Mmm...”
“That’s crazy! You know it’s crazy.”
“Well, it might…”
“You will?” TJ’s head snapped back up. “You’ll go back? Oh, please! I promise I - ”
“Shhh, TJ, just a minute. Look, I think it might be worth it, especially if it means the trail goes cold. No Agency car, no path, no handler…”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“Elise will help. And… depending… if it goes south, we can always call in Peter.”
Violet made a scoffing, incredulous noise. “You’re really serious about this. Damn.”
“Mmm.”
The car suddenly changed its speed and direction – swinging across the road, making TJ gasp and grab at the seat in front of him. We’re turning around?
“Shit. All right,” Violet said. “TJ – I’m gonna touch you, don’t freak out, just strapping you in, okay? No tricks.”
“No tricks,” TJ echoed, sitting back. He felt a smile – the biggest smile he could remember – spreading across his face. “We’re going back? We’re getting Danny?”
“Guess so,” Violet muttered. Her hands firmly pulled the seatbelt across with a zzzippp, careful not to touch TJ’s bare hands this time. “But, hey, I’m the one who acts too fast and doesn’t think things through. It’s me. Yup.”
