Chapter Text
Up until a few hours ago, she genuinely hadn't spent much time worrying about being found out. For one thing, to the best of her knowledge no one was paying attention to her at all, and for another her employers had assured her that if she did get caught the most likely outcome was that she wouldn't even notice; they would quietly stop giving her useful information, and then, after a while, quietly shuffle her out of the organization. She had asked about counter-interrogation training once and they had looked at her like she was a total fantasist. Also, honestly, after two months of pretending to be an only moderately competent intern, even her baseline level of anxiety - high at the best of times - has been unable to really, truly convince her that anyone at this place would be up for spending that amount of energy on her.
The idea that it would be him specifically -
And yet here she is, and here he is; intermittently, at least. Actually there's less torture involved in being tortured than she thought there would be, and a lot more sitting around tied to a chair waiting for him to come back from a phone call. When he is in here she feels almost like he's looking through her as he does stuff to her. Also he isn't talking to her: right at the start, while he was attaching an electrode to her sternum, he said, "You should feel free to tell me anything you want," and that was apparently it for the interrogation. Unfortunately she genuinely does not know anything she thinks he would be interested in, except, she supposes, the three-minute version of how she got recruited and what she's been up to, but since he hasn't explicitly requested that, or suggested that he might stop hurting her if she gives it up, chances are that's information he already has. Instead she's been asking him things, including:
- What are the electrodes for (response: they're to track your heart rate)
- When are you going to let me go (no response)
- What is that thing (no response)
- Please, please, I'll do anything you want, just tell me what you want (no response)
- Are you going to kill me (no response)
- Wait, are you leaving (response: yeah, I just need to take this, sorry)
There's no clock in here, which seems like torture 101, but she estimates he's away for about fifteen minutes the first time. Initially she assumes this is a ploy, torture 102, maybe, but it keeps happening and he looks annoyed each time, and eventually she comes to the conclusion that it's just hard for him to carve the time to do this out of his afternoon.
Her teeth are chattering a lot, the shocks, and also cold and terror, but when he comes back the fourth time she does succeed in saying, "I'd hate to think I'm keeping you from anything."
She's absolutely expecting to get ignored, but instead he says, "Do you think that's a good tactic?"
"- What?"
"Being a little bit sarcastic with me, do you think that's a good tactic?" He sounds like he might actually be curious. This is the first question he's asked her, so she stops to think about it.
"I don't, I don't think I was trying to -" She hesitates. "I wasn't doing it on purpose," she says. "Sorry. It's getting to me a little."
"I'm as unhappy about this as you are," he says. "It's just a really busy day. Bad timing."
"Do you want to -" The surreality sticks in her throat for a moment. "Maybe, do this another time? I actually don't think I have anything you want. It'll keep?"
"Mm," he says, and shakes his head. He's really looking at her now. She's wondered in the past what it would feel like for him to do that; it turns out it feels like getting punched slowly. "I mean, it's clear to me that you don't know anything useful, that's not really what this is."
After several seconds she manages to say, "Okay. Th-" Her mouth struggles to shape the words. "Then w-, what is it?"
He gets the penlight thing again and gestures for her to open her mouth, which she doesn't, obviously. He gives her a look, this one like being punched a little faster, and she exhales slowly, shakily, and opens up. He pushes the object in between her teeth, nestling the metal contact point against the back of her tongue. "Getting to know you," he says, and he turns it on.
Over the next ten minutes or so she starts to look forward to his phone ringing again, and of course it doesn't. Maybe he finally set it to focus mode. When he takes the penlight out of her mouth for a moment, she says, "How loud is it okay to be in here?"
The absence of reaction is so total as to be counterproductive; it's clear that he's suppressing something. She's not a great spy but she is good at reading people, and she's starting to realize that she might, in particular, be good at reading him. He says, "How loud do you want to be?"
"I'd like to scream," she says. Her throat is so dry. "I know I complained about all the breaks, but it's sort of - building up now."
"You could just go ahead and scream," he says.
Startlingly, absurdly, hearing him say this in that calm, unemphatic tone is physically arousing. She tries to rationalize the response, fast, before it makes her panic; she thinks: fear and sex, adrenaline, crossed wires. She thinks: the intimacy of this particular form of hurt. She thinks: how close he is, how he's looking at her. Pulling herself together forcibly, she says, "Yeah, but I don't know where we are." (One of the top three scariest aspects of this experience: the part right at the start where the intern group supervisor asked her to come into her office, then stuck a needle in her arm. When she woke up after an indeterminate amount of time she was in this featureless little room, already tied to a chair - still in her work clothes, at least - and the door is behind her, so she can't even try to catch a glimpse of the hallway when he opens it.) "What if we're in a broom closet right next to the break room or something and everyone hears me and I blow up your whole spot?"
This time his reaction gets away from him. He's surprised; he might even be shocked. He says, "Can you expand on that?"
She's not sure whether she can, but if she keeps talking it might at least distract him for a minute. Her mouth really hurts. She says, "Well, just, I'd rather not give you any more reasons to be mad at me."
"It would have been nice to see this level of cooperation earlier this week." She doesn't respond. What is she going to say? I was doing my job? Don't take it personally? I'm sorry? Like he's pulling her thought from the air, he says, "Do you feel like apologizing?" He's back in control of himself now.
"Do I feel like apologizing?"
"Yeah. If you don't want me to be mad at you? Could be worth considering."
"- would you like me to?"
He thinks for a second, then says, "I think I would. Can you make it believable?"
Slowly, she says, "I mean, I definitely - I do regret it."
"To be clear," he says, "I'm okay with a lie here. I'd just like to hear it."
"That's so fucked up of you," she says, and he says, immediately,
"Open your mouth again."
"Oh no - no, I didn't mean to -"
"I know, but come on. Open your mouth."
"Please don't?" But she does it. He presses the penlight deep into her mouth, past her gag reflex, and triggers it. She does scream this time, although it's a little muffled by the object in her mouth, and when he withdraws it she dry-retches onto the floor. She hears herself sobbing, or moaning, like it's someone else doing it, like she has no control over her voice. She presses her face to her shoulder and tries to get it together. Probably they're not in the broom closet, then, if he's okay with forcing this kind of volume out of her. Is that good to know? She feels lost; no tactics, certainly no strategy left to speak of.
He says, "Apologize to me."
She looks up slowly. Her hair has fallen in her eyes and he reaches over to tuck a lock of it behind her ear, which is the first time he's touched her without hurting her. Her shudder in response probably looks like revulsion, or just fear. For about half a minute she's unable to speak; she keeps trying and failing to prepare herself to form words. He says, "You're not great at dissembling, for a spy."
A near-imperceptible smile, and that unlocks her, for some reason. "Okay, I know. This specific job actually doesn't require a lot of active dissembling."
"What does it require?"
She has a moment to wonder whether this is the actual interrogation, maybe this was all an incredibly involved setup to make her feel, what, comfortable talking to him? But she isn't, of course, she just can't stop herself. Also, she actually does believe what he told her earlier. Getting to know you, she thinks, and says, "Observation skills. Maybe a certain level of physical sneakiness? But mostly you just need to have your head on a swivel." She reads his look and says, "I know, I can't be all that observant if you were able to get the drop on me. I didn't say I was very good."
He says, "I think you were okay." The past tense here makes sense, of course - it's not like he's going to let her keep doing it - but it scares her anyway. "Most people in your kind of role never get found out because they don't really do very much, they just stay in place for years, pass on the very occasional little bit of something. We discovered you because you were ambitious. What was it, did you just get bored?"
"I didn't get bored," she says. He waits for her to go on. Don't say it don't say it don't say it: "I couldn't," she says, voice wavering, "I couldn't keep letting you -"
And she cuts herself off. The silence drags out; he looks, another first, like he's really, really enjoying it. He says, finally, "You're an idealist."
"I don't have to be an idealist in order to want to fuck up your operation. I think it's just - it's a natural response."
"Wanting to is a natural response. Actually risking yourself like that -"
"Maybe I'm just stupid," she says. "Maybe I didn't realize how risky it was. I mean, I didn't - I didn't expect you to personally torture me over it." Actually saying this word is surprisingly difficult; in spite of the chair and the restraints and the pain, some part of her expects him to say, oh, come on, this isn't torture. Stop being so dramatic. Maybe it's the lighting in here, just regular office lighting, fairly bright, not unpleasant, making her feel like this whole thing might somehow be a misunderstanding on her part.
But he says, "No, I suppose you wouldn't have."
"Can I ask -" She hesitates and he gives her a go-ahead look. "Why are you here? Do you not have like. People for this?"
He doesn't respond at first, which gives her the chilling feeling that they might be returning to the her asking questions, him not answering them, her crying in pain part. But then he says, "Do you want to try to work that out for yourself, Jessica?"
No, thank you. But he looks at her patiently until she says, "Because you want an apology?"
"I do, but that's not really it."
"Because you don't trust anyone else with it?"
"Mm. Just in an operational sense, your estimated value is not that high."
Okay, she doesn't want to say this. "You wanted to. You want to."
Didactically: "I want to what?"
"- Hurt me."
"Be specific." Something in the movement of his hands makes her remember he's still holding the penlight.
"Like this." She makes herself continue. "While I'm tied up. Making me h -. Making me helpless. Putting that thing in my mouth, hurting me there. My tongue -." He tilts his head, inviting her to go on. "It's like - punishment. Right? I betrayed you, and you're redressing it."
"Almost," he says, and he's really looking at her now.
"Almost," she echoes. "It's not redress. It's something else." Superstitious dread crowds her throat. "You like it."
Now he actually is smiling, for real, and she's terrified. "Well," he says. "I guess you're not stupid."
She closes her eyes tight, like it might hide her from him. "Will you tell me what's going to happen to me?"
"What do you think is going to happen to you?" Gentle, didactic again. Over the last two months she's had to work as hard as she can to focus on anything other than him, and now she remembers why: because she ends up thinking things like how could you and God you seem so normal, you seem nice, and very occasionally, even things like -
She opens her eyes and says, "I'm not thinking clearly. I'm scared."
A trace of gratification crosses his face, although that much must have been obvious to him already. "What are you scared of?"
That superstitious fear again, like somehow she might be about to put the idea in his head. "I'm scared that you're going to kill me."
"I understand," he says. "I'm almost definitely not going to do that."
She's not sure she wants to know, but: "How close to definitely?"
"I don't want to say absolutely for sure because you could still fuck it up," he says, "possibly, if you made yourself more trouble than you're worth. But at the moment, a, you're behaving perfectly." Seeing her expression: "You are. You're beautifully compliant, no trouble at all. And b, you turn out to be worth considerably more than I'd expected."
Her throat tight with fear, she says, "In an operational sense?"
"No, Jessica," he says, "not in an operational sense."