taking the fall (7)
warnings: presumed character death, mentions of death and injury, miscommunication, angst, psychological warfare between 2 fools, poor life choices, cliffhanger (?)
-
The human was acting weird.
That in itself wasn’t unusual– almost every human Virgil had ever seen was engaged in some incomprehensible nonsense, and the tales Roman had told him only further solidified his personal belief that beans had only managed to make it this far through a combination of size and luck alone.
Even that simple memory of sharing stories made his eyes sting. He’d been forcing himself to think about Roman more often lately, like he was picking at a barely healed scab. Any time he thought about Janus– no, the human without the proper amount of sickened fury, he ran his mind through the horrible facts, digging his nails in deeper until the wound felt freshly made.
(The facts were as follows: Roman had been caught and caged and killed. Virgil would never see his best friend again. And it was all the human’s fault.)
The injury wasn’t allowed to heal, not now, maybe not ever. It didn’t matter if the human shared his name or treated his wounds or gave him food. It didn’t matter how many little quirks and habits that he noticed, the little things that turned someone from a stranger to a fully-formed person. It didn’t matter because Virgil would never fall for the facade, would never forget that a borrower’s life wasn’t worth anything to the monster before him.
So, he refused to give up a single smudge of ground, his jaw locked and glare sharp. The human kept providing food and medicine and idle commentary, and Virgil kept himself from softening through constant mental reminders.
He wouldn’t need food or medicine if the human hadn’t captured him in the first place. He could certainly live without the snarky remarks and sarcastic flattery, no matter how much he sometimes wished to snap back, and the human’s apparent delight on the few rare instances he did bite out a scathing response. It was easier to keep quiet when he thought about how gullible Roman could be, how easily he might have fallen for simple acts of decency and insincere compliments.
It was harder when the human did things like spend an afternoon building a makeshift bed for him. It hadn’t been a hand-me-down; Virgil had overheard several hissed swears throughout the process, and seen the shiny burns notched across a few of Janus’s fingers as he set the bed down with a flourish. Still, at first he’d stalwartly refused to so much as glance at the wooden frame, its bumpy hot-glue edges, or the soft, hand sewn pillow serving as a tiny mattress.
Oddly, the human never seemed particularly put out by his stubborn refusals to engage. Wryly amused, maybe, but he hadn’t watched Virgil with those cold, hawk-sharp eyes since those first couple of days. The little interrogation session seemed to have reassured him greatly, forebodingly enough.
It was hard to feel good about the schemes that had to be going on out of sight, with Janus indubitably planning to root out the rest of the small colony in the walls, but at least the shift in demeanor meant Virgil was less likely to keel over from stress alone. His instincts had been worn to a thin, frazzled thread from all that intent staring, and he was glad for a break from it.
Still, because he was who he was, he couldn’t help but think about what might happen once the season turned. He didn’t want a human to catch any more borrowers, even ones who had so thoroughly screwed him over, but if summer arrived and the human hadn’t succeeded, Virgil was well within reach, small and injured and easy to take out a fit of temper on.
If the human didn’t believe he was telling the truth, subjected him to a more painful sort of interrogation to try and get the information Virgil just didn’t have, it could prove lethal. One break was bad enough, but if the weak spot was re-shattered? He could be left adjusting to life with one usable leg, with no family or companions to act as a safety net as he relearned vital skills. The life of an outside borrower was harrowing when one did know they were doing, let alone when they didn’t. The first time he messed up, he’d be as good as dead.
If the human did catch the other borrowers, well. Virgil wouldn’t have any more use to him, at that point. If he continued to sit here helplessly, his fate would probably match Roman’s.
(Why had Janus been stupid enough to kill Roman before figuring out what he needed to know in the first place? Had he misjudged his own strength and killed him accidentally? Or had it been an active, malicious choice, made with full confidence that he’d be able to catch more borrowers to replace Roman?
He had to stop thinking about this. He was going to make himself sick.)
So, no matter which outcome, he had to escape before then.
Easier said than done, of course, but nothing in his life had ever been easy, and he was still trying. At the very least, he thought the human’s strangely accommodating behavior could be turned to his advantage. If Janus thought he was falling for the nice guy act, he’d lower his guard, the same way he’d lowered it when Virgil had lost himself to panic and hunger before.
If a snappish prisoner was entertaining to the human, he would stop keeping his replies trapped behind his teeth. He would banter and complain and drop little bits of useless information whenever his captor pried, pretend that he was softening under the improved treatment. He would do what he had to do, give as good a performance as he could through the bitter hatred, if it meant upping his chances.
So be it. As long as this human insisted on pretending to have a heart, Virgil would gladly take advantage of every faux beat of it.
He wasn’t going to just lie down and accept his fate. He refused to give the human the satisfaction of an easy kill. If he couldn’t escape, he would at least go down fighting tooth and nail, vicious and determined all the way to the end.
He thought Roman would have wanted that much, at least.
–
Janus was feeling good about the progress he’d made with his little guest.
Sure, they had gotten off to a poor start, what with the violation of several ethical, moral, and legal boundaries, and certainly, his first impression had been a ludicrously evil one, but even so!
V didn’t spend as much time sulking behind the fake shrubbery lately, had been eating and drinking with reassuring regularity, and after an initial period of resentful silence, had even occasionally deigned to reply to one of Janus’s mostly-cursory questions. All promising signs, though Janus still felt like the olive branch he’d extended was always a mere moment from being sharply swatted away.
That was fine; he didn’t really have to make nice with the borrower he’d abducted, in the end. In fact, he doubted that V was truly feeling as grumpily peaceable as he seemed. The borrower had spent the first week of their acquaintance trying dedicatedly to escape, and his placidity now was likely just a long con.
It didn’t matter. So long as he could retrieve what had been stolen, he didn’t mind at all if V vanished without a trace the very next day. Janus was oozing with charisma and wit. He certainly wouldn’t miss the reticent company of someone so morose and petulant, even if that someone also happened to have a dry sense of humor and a remarkable talent for razor-sharp rebuttals.
Janus suspected that he would have an easier time ignoring his tiny hostage’s sparkling personality if he hadn’t taken to spending at least one meal a day forcing V to endure his presence, but his recent attempts to become a more gracious host didn’t extend that far. He had to take his amusements where he could find them, and lately he’d been finding them in bothering his snappish guest.
It was during one such meal that he was forced to admit, even if only to himself, that V truly had been an innocent bystander.
Janus was an expert at convincing himself, but the evidence was overwhelming— the most obvious being that there were quite a few marked differences between V and the other borrowers he’d spotted.
For one, their knowledge bases.
He’d realized early on that in order to survive in such close quarters with humans, borrowers needed to have excessive knowledge of not only human architecture and technology, but also of humans themselves, particularly the routines, habits, and personalities of the ones they robbed. They certainly wouldn’t have managed to get one over on him without that keen understanding of the layout of his apartment and his schedule alike.
V, on the other hand, had nearly concussed himself trying to hide in faux foliage the first time Janus had turned on the television.
The borrower tended to survey everything with a level of narrow-eyed suspicion, but whenever he was confronted with something he didn’t understand, that wariness was joined by a somewhat comical expression of poorly-hidden bewilderment. Janus had noticed that V even tilted his head sometimes, as though trying to use a different angle to puzzle out the function of a toaster.
(The little gesture was not charming. Not remotely. Janus remained thoroughly uncharmed.)
If V had truly been living in the walls of this apartment with the others, he would have been spotted by Janus long before the current situation. So then, the question became: where had V been living?
To his horror, the answer became more and more clear with every sour response V provided during their mealtime conversations.
Simple offhand comments that went like,
“Something that bright is bound to be poisonous. Do you even know who harvested it? You might be fine making yourself sick, but I’m not.”
and,
“Look, it doesn’t matter if it warms up, not even insiders are idiotic enough to try and move homes during the spring. A single thunderstorm and they’d lose most of their supplies, if not their lives, to the mudslides.”
and even,
“I’m not scared of a little garden snake. It couldn’t eat me if it tried, and besides, I’ve fought bigger beasts as a teenager.”
If Janus had been perturbed by the knowledge of tiny people secretly living in the walls and watching his every move to steal from him, he was outright horrified by the realization that there were some borrowers who lived outdoors, entirely in the elements.
Outside, where they were towered over by squirrels and storm clouds alike. Frankly, he considered it a miracle that V had survived long enough to be pushed into his sink. Maybe he did care if V escaped, if it meant that he would return to living the terror-filled life of, essentially, a wild mouse with thumbs.
Janus had felt the rapid near-buzz pattering of V’s heartbeat, held the weight of V’s life in the palm of his hand, knew that he was so incredibly small and breakable and determined to survive despite it all. To imagine the borrower being snuffed out by something as banal as the life cycle made an inexplicable unpleasant twisting begin in his gut.
Not that he actually cared about the guy or anything. It was simply a shame, and horrifying to think about to boot.
Still, the thoughts were pervasive enough for him to begin reconsidering the terrarium V was currently residing in. It had sufficed as a temporary holding cell for a borrower he planned to release once he’d reclaimed what was his, and he’d added a few small touches for comfort, but it certainly wouldn’t do as a more permanent residence.
If he planned on extending V’s stay past the season’s turn, he would have to come up with something better. Luckily, he had the perfect starting point: he’d recently run into a neighbor a few doors down with a particularly undersized hobby…
