2019-11-17 - LOCK DOWN!

Every night, same time, Itzhak stuffs precious toilet paper in his ears and clamps his hands over them. The noise, the noise, the noise; he can't take it. And they make him take it, several times a day. He's at the point that the scheduled ones, he can get his hands over his ears in time. It's the surprise ones that make him, as counselors over the years like to say, 'act out'.

So this one is just the regular lights-out, and after the noise settles, Itzhak lets the breath he's holding out and relaxes the tiniest of bits. Another day down. He sprawls on his bunk, staring at the concrete ceiling, tapping out a beat on his sternum. His insomnia tortures him in here, without anything to relieve the boredom of it, so he spends a fair amount of lights-out remembering music.

August starts awake. He's been in the tank before, but never inside, so the entire thing reeks of wrong (and a whole lot else) when his senses kick in. And then his Gifts wake up too, and he grunts, grips his head, forces them to go dead silent. Rage and pain and misery and loneliness and every sort of torturous thing, all over. It's almost as bad as Bosnia. Almost.

He turns over, peers out from under his covers at the guard, up at the bottom of the bunk above him. He stays quiet a moment. Saying anything in front of the guard will be a bad idea. A really bad one.

Hatred and fury boils up in Itzhak's chest, driven by fear. It's not true, he's fucking lying to get a rise out of you, he tells himself, and he doesn't believe it. He makes himself keep time, 3/4, don't drop a beat, keep rolling, the audience forgives you for fuckups but not for stopping the music. But his jaw is clenched, his frame tight. He stares at the ceiling.

"Everybody knows you cribbed your aptitude test." The words are out before he can stop them. "Ya so fuckin' stupid if you looked up when it's raining, you'd drown."

August waits until the guard is well and gone before he says anything. It's on the tip of his tongue to say, 'Itzhak', but he realizes he can't be sure this is Itzhak. Maybe its not. Maybe They're just fucking with him.

God there's so many ways he can second guess this. Well. Here goes nothing. He sighs. "Itzhak," he murmurs.

Itzhak represses the very real shudder that wants to start at the base of his spine. No. He won't think about that. He. Won't.

Then he blinks. A mix of relief and panic surges in him. "Roen," he murmurs back. He drops one long arm off the edge of his bunk, fingers inviting contact. "Roen why are you here?"

August allows himself to relax just a fraction, reaches up to take those fingers. "I don't know." He swallows. "This feels like...when Eleanor wound up with me in that wasteland." But this is Itzhak's wasteland now, or at least, he expects it is. He grips those fingers tight. "I've never been inside before. I have no idea how you survive this." But then, people have said the same of Sarajevo, so maybe that is how he survived--too stubborn to give up, refusing to let hell take him away from people back home.

"Assuming he's not just fucking with us, what are we looking at."

Eleanor. Roen. Names he hadn't known while he was in. Itzhak swallows. This...might not be real. "This might not be real," he whispers, eyes wide in the dim light. "This might...fifteen years for me, if they put a dime on me. I wouldn't be out by now." Cold races through him and he can't help the shudder now, his fingers twitching and curling in August's. "Eight for you, because ya smart and keep your yap shut. Oh Christ, Roen, I can't do fifteen. I can't."

"You're not doing fifteen years," August says, voice firm and steady. Of course, he might be wrong--maybe they can make them feel fifteen years have passed, then dump them back out in their bodies of now, with all those memories? God, how ugly that would be.

"You're not," he repeats, holding tighter. "Why would they put extra time on our sentences just to kill us? No point. It was to make you too scared to fight back when they come to get us. Or just to have some fun. Either way." Either way, they have a problem, because August hasn't so much as thrown a punch in 23 years, and hurting people with his Gifts makes him nauseated to even think about.

"Naomi'll die, Mireleh won't have a mom, Ma will have to take care of her, I'll still be in here while she grows up, I won't meet you, I won't meet Finch or Alexander, I won't meet anybody, I'll still be here!" Itzhak doesn't dare yell like he wants to, but he's yelling in his soul. His fingers wind tight with August's fingers, shaking and clammy with panic.

Then...the cell door opens, a sound he'll hear in his dreams ten years from now. Itzhak's gaze snaps to it.

"That's a fuckin' honeypot if I ever seen one," he rasps.

August reacts to the sound of Itzhak's mounting panic automatically, reaching out with a gentle brush of his mind. <<None of that's going to happen,>> says the river as it rushes over the rocks. The tall aspen in the heart of the volcano crater's leaves shake. <<Your sister's going to treatment, she'll go into remission. You'll be out to help with Miri. You'll meet Alexander and me and Finch and Isolde. You'll see Ignacio again. >>

He turns to look at that door, grimaces. <<Pretty sure that's not how getting out works.>>

Itzhak responds just as automatically to the sense of the rushing river and the forest and the silent volcano, out of whose heart a tree now grows. He closes his eyes, shoulders relaxing, breathing evening out a little from the hyperventilation he was heading for. <<That sounds fake but okay.>> Dour, bitter humor.

He lets go of August so he can roll off the bunk and land neatly like he's done it a thousand times (oh, he has). Wary, silent on the concrete, he prowls a step and a half towards the door, on high alert. <<Guards are waitin' for us to make a move. Make yourself tough, Roen.>>

August huffs a laugh. Gallows humor he'll take over panic any day of the week and twice on Sunday. He's familiar with it, after all. He eases out of his bunk, far less nimble than Itzhak. <<Gotta warn you, I might not be much good at this. And, done. Same for you--don't put yours on me.>>

He takes a slow breath, in and out. Well. Maybe he should let Itzhak get a good first strike. He curls his fingers into a fist, and a little tingle runs down Itzhak's spine. <<A little something extra.>>

Itzhak's terrified and furious and running at the razor's edge of his experience and ability. His shine is strong, glimmering like noon sun on a bright ocean. Blinding. When he steps up to the guards, a snarl twisting his face, it's big boy GTL he's focused on like a laser. Ffffffssssht! The electricity dies and before anything else happens, Itzhak is on him, launched at him like a fucking missile. Left fist DOWN is followed by right fist STAY and Itzhak is walloping GTL like the man said something about his ma. Oh, he DID. The big dude goes down with the skinny dude on top of him making blood and teeth fly, knee in his chest to pin him to the floor, snarling in Yiddish and English.

Then Itzhak's back on his feet, fists bloody, grinning like a madman. "Who's NEXT?!"

August feels the back of his neck tighten and his stomach churn as the guards close in and Itzhak goes ballistic. He works on dodging and just absorbing blows rather than inflicting them, and supporting Itzhak as a secondary target while he does the real work. It's successful, mostly; August is bruised and hurting, but nothing he can't work through. Itzhak's injury makes him wince, though, as does the damage he inflicts. He grits his teeth, takes in a shaky breath, gives Itzhak something more again. <<Keep at it.>> Really that's not just for Itzhak, but himself too.

The third guard is going after August and no no no no NOPE FUCKING NO not on Itzhak's watch, asshole. He turns on that guy with feral fury, yanks him by his hair (not the hair! YES THE HAIR) away from August and whips him around and smashes him across the face too. The pain of his knuckles splitting on teeth just makes him madder. "You keep your filthy fucking hands OFF HIM!" The other two guards are hitting him with their clubs, trying desperately to take him down and it's like he doesn't even feel them.

Now August knows why he got that tattoo over his heart. Unbreakable.

August takes far less of a beating now, particularly with Itzhak taking care of the one guy after him still, but that means it's Itzhak who winds up getting clubbed for his trouble. And while he might not feel it, August does. The damage is minimal, but taken with GTL's continued threats ('die in solitary' in particular; 'Naomi'll die, Mireleh won't have a mom') August finds himself at the end of his rope for acting defensively. He focuses on one of the two guards after Itzhak. He didn't spend all that time stuck under concrete feeling people die just to forget how to make it happen.

The things Itzhak's hinted at, the way he used to be, the way he hides certain thoughts and events from August in the kythe: now they are all laid bare. Hot living fury erupts at the core of him, protectiveness and hatred boiling like a geyser. The Unshaped are getting quite the meal from him, garnished with the strength of his shine. He must be delicious.

He's fencing with one of the guards now, each of them circling each other, feinting, testing. When Itzhak sees an opening he doesn't hesitate. He drives himself into the guy and plows him into the wall and bounces his head off concrete.

August can't really deal with this, isn't sure how Itzhak did. The killing in Sarajevo had been impersonal, in effect; shells fired from miles away, bullets from shadowy windows. He never saw the face of an 'enemy combatant' even once. But this person he can see (even if it's just some construct of Theirs), swining a club at Itzhak, giggling about ten more years, about dying in solitary, and something in him that's been unable to fight back just snaps.

It's not quite like what he told Lilith, 'the reverse', because he heals in careful layers, fixing damage in a natural and gentle way. This isn't slow and methodical, there's nothing careful about it. He know what he can break, crush, and bring the guard swinging that club at Itzhak to a halt. The valves of the heart are just doors. So he tears them clean off their hinges. The guard sucks in a breath, clutches his chest. Staggers, coughs up blood, and falls over.

For a second August stands there, trembling. He knows, logically, what he's done; thinks he can even see it in his mind's eye. But he can't feel it, can't feel anything, for a time. Then it hits him in a wave, and he stubmles to one side, looking for a corner to give him a couple seconds privacy while his stomach reacts. Not useful, if reinforcements are coming.

Itzhak's busy planting his fists one-two-one-two in the first guard's gut, until the guy sags over whimpering. Itzhak kicks him for good measure, demonstrating why inmates don't get to have real shoes. When he turns for the last man standing, the man is suddenly choking on his own blood and falling over like one of the trees August cuts down with surgical precision. Itzhak kicks him, too, because fuck him. Then he turns back to August, letting him do his thing, panting harshly, limping from a good blow someone caught him to the thigh. <<We gotta get out of here. I'll carry you if I gotta.>>

August wipes his mouth on his shirt. <<I'm okay.>> It's a lie, but he is good enough to move. <<Let's go.>> He clears his throat, doesn't look at the bodies, doesn't think about how he's killed someone. Doesn't think about it at all. He moves in behind Itzhak, ready to support him if needed. (Ready to kill someone for trying to attack him if needed.)

<<Stick with me. Don't get separated!>> Itzhak's scanning around, ribcage heaving, eyes wide. He knows what he's got to do now. One hand shoots out to clench around a bar of the open cell door. Itzhak bares his teeth, and screams. The door crumples in his grip and he yanks it free and flings it, still roaring wordlessly. As he does, every other cell door crumples just like it and falls away. Not just the cell doors. Every door in the prison is wrenched clean off its hinges.

August knows Itzhak doesn't need to hear this, but, <<They might attack us as soon as run for it.>> He backs Itzhak's play regardless tightening one hand into a fist and resting the other on Itzhak's shoulder, raising his power as far as he can. There are tears streaming down his face at that scream, but he stays there, resolute, one hand on Itzhak's shoulder.

Itzhak opened every door in the prison. Every door. Not a civilian bathroom stall has a door left on it. The door of every minifridge, every cabinet, even books and boxes have flung themselves open on his command. He doesn't spare the guards' weaponry so much as a glance. Those are toys he has no interest in, not when he can do worse with his will alone. Lesser men can have those. He's a fucking wizard.

Of course, opening all those doors has had undesired results in the form of people coming after him and August. Maybe Itzhak should have thought that one through. But his power is thrumming in him, running tsunami-high. <<Cover me!>>

He rears back on one leg and stamps on the wall. It cracks in a huge piece, falling outwards, and then hovering where it falls because Itzhak fucking told it to. <<Come the hell ON, Roen!>>

August shudders as the doors go flying. He doesn't even care about the tears and sweat soaking his face. The silence is beautiful for the handful of seconds it lasts.

Then, chaos. He turns as Itzhak tears open the wall, calling up a large teardrop-shaped flame, flickering orange and lavender, and flinging it at the inmates come to harvest the guards for their weapons and radios. One of these inmates lands a hit to August's stomach; the fire misses, splashing against the wall and startling the others so that they hang back, too confused to attack. Fire! Where did that come from? August takes the opportunity to get through the opening, prepares another handful of fire to cover Itzhak's escape through the new door in the wall.

The chunk of cinderblock goes THUNK, falling and kind of propping itself up against the side of the building as the world's worst ramp. Itzhak pokes his head out--and nearly gets it pinched off by a sniper bullet. He swears, ducking as a puff of vaporized concrete hisses out next to his ear. Then he bails, hitting the cinderblock hard, stumbling, and only just barely does not slip off the edge. Turns out dust is slippery! Weird. <<ROEN! COME ON!>> His violin is roaring in the kythe like a cello.

August is right behind Itzhak, ducking at the sound of the sniper bullet and coming back up, pausing just long enough to find that fucking rifle. Ah, right there. He crushes it, then picks up the pace, almost tripping and falling, recovering at the last second as they plunge into the darkness. <<See? No fucking prison's holding us.>> He's not going to think about how he killed someone, how he wanted to burn a few people but missed, about how this might not be real but the last time that came up he told Itzhak it didn't matter, and what did that mean now?

No, that's for later, with a bottle of bourbon. Right now, he runs.