The Devil's In the Details

Archer had been incredibly, incredibly busy as of late; Rocket was seemingly more active than ever, requiring more and more time and effort of his to be put into varying projects, directing missions, making decisions about things he hadn’t been able to make decisions about in a long time. Even without Giovanni there, it was like something just clicked into place. Like things were getting better. But even though Rocket itself seemed to be progressing, even though they suddenly had more money than they ever had in a long, long time, there was still something worrying at the back of his mind, something Archer always kept looking for in the corner of his eye.

Sapphire. Damian. Tabitha. Drama. Scuffle. Fights. And, of course, signs of Kyogre. Whether or not he believed in the legend’s divinity was moot—she was, in fact, living within one of their grunts, and that made Sapphire’s position one Archer could not ignore. So even though he was busy, far too busy, he never stopped keeping an eye out. And somehow it seems to pay off.

He was in his office that morning keeping a subtle eye on the security camera feeds on his monitor as he scribbled hastily at his never-depleting pile of paperwork when he heard a knock at his office door. With a hefty sigh, he raised himself from his chair, pausing a moment to straighten, back cracking satisfyingly, before he trudged over and yanked the door open, preparing to admonish whoever it was before slamming it in their face—and he stopped cold.

Sapphire. Standing at his door. What? The last time he’d seen her, she had been wrapped around Damian’s little finger, like he’d done something. But here she was. Hope cautiously sat on his features. “Well, now,” he said slowly, “I didn’t expect you to come to me, after our last meeting. Would you….?” He pauses there, his eyes drawn to the glow along her arms, then clears his throat and tries again. “Come inside. I’d expect you have questions for me?”

Sapphire leaned against the door frame as Archer opened it, doing her best not to just sag to the floor as her leverage against the door dissapeared. Her hand throbs once with an icy sting and she flinches, but raises her head to look at the older man.

Arceus, did everything just hurt. Breathing was taking so much effort, and she didn’t know how she was keeping from retching again. Sapphire looked up at Archer, her eyes wild and distraught. “--What-- what do you know?” She shakily brought up her glowing hand and fisted it into the admins shirt, her entire body trembling with the effort of not just collapsing onto him. Her voice was a raspy, angry thing when she choked more words out. “Of course I-- I have questions, I don’t-- I don’t--” 

Her sentence tapered off, acrid bile rising in her throat and she gave up all pretenses of being okay, dropping to the ground and gagging off to the side. A small trickle of blood mixed with the saliva that she hocked to the floor, her whole body trembling under the strain of coming off of whatever she had been shot up with. Fentanyl her brain supplied, that’s what the doctor had said-- so much of it in her blood he was surprised she as still breathing and coherent.

She goes on about how she must have done something for all of this to happen, and while Sycamore knows vaguely why she was targeted (he’d done his research after his fist encounter with Damian) he wasn’t sure he could explain the why’s to her properly in this state—better to just let it come back naturally. Besides, the tired, hysterical laughs that came out her were enough to convince him that they couldn’t spend any more time on this. She needed rest.

“Your father,” he said, beginning to mention the fire at his lab, but stopped. “Your father has been fine. Because you were so very brave, my girl, he’s safe. So please. Please come with me now, okay? Let’s go somewhere you can be safe, as well.”

She looks like she’s going to be sick, at any rate, and Sycamore reaches to steady her as best he can. “Come now,” he gently pushed, “come, we’ll go to the infirmary, and there will be people there who can help you.”

She heard the pause, knew he wasn’t telling her everything- was probably placating her about her father, but she let it slide. It was too painful to focus on at this point. The nausea bubbled in her throat as she tries to nod her assent to going with him, and she let out a slight gagging noise trying to hold it back.

“Everything-- everything hurts, somethings wrong.... there’s something weird in my head, this weird humming, it feels--blue? I don’t-- I don;t know why, I’m so tired--” she let herself fall forward into his arms, losing whatever strength she had to hold herself against the wall. She had a feeling she would be able to walk, with help of course, but right now she didn’t want to move.

She’s trusting him again. Slowly but surely, she has to be. It’s why she doesn’t run, why she stays and keeps asking him things. Things he doesn’t necessarily want to answer, but things she needs to know, nonetheless. Things to remind her why she was here, who she was with, and why he was bad news. Again, Sycamore swallows hard.

“I know that he would hurt you,” he told her, “I know—know that we thought you were dead. Your father and I. We—you were gone for so long, and we never heard anything. And I know that I… I found you here, I walked into a lab room and he was—he was hurting you, and…..”

But the last thing she asked was the most painful. Did I deserve it? Who could ask such a thing? Those were words that never should have even come out of his precious niece’s mouth. “Of course you didn’t,” he stressed to her, “Sapphire, my girl, you didn’t do anything. That psychopath, he… he does it for fun.”

Sapphire gripped at the hand on the crook of her arm, eyes wild and bloodshot. She was hearing the words, but they made no sense to her. Why would he target her? She couldn’t have been all that important? He mentioned her father, and that brought forth a burst of fear, a needing to protect papa that overwhelmed her senses for a moment. She could feel starbursts at the corner of her eyes, small white specs beginning to crowd her vision. She ignored them, she had answers to find.

“I must have-- I must have done something--” she stressed, her grip against the wall turning white with the effort to keep herself upright. “---you don’t just fake someone’s death without a good reason, right?” a small hysterical giggle bubbled out of her throat, and Sapphire made no motion to stop it. She was so tired. She raised her head to look at the man-- her uncle, with half lidded eyes, trying desperately to hold onto consciousness. 

She shrinks from him, and Sycamore supposed that was his own fault for getting upset, for being angry and that he needed to try harder not to spook her. She’s swaying and looking not good at all, and if anything happens Sycamore needs to know she’ll let him take care of her if she falls, hurts herself, anything—she needs to remember that he’s her uncle, and he’s here for her. 

When he notices her looking down at her arms, his mouth forms a thin line and his brow creases. “Yes,” he says, “yes, I would not put it passed him. He is vile, my girl, and all of this…..” He reaches out slowly, gently taking one of her arms in one hand and running his fingers over the marks. “This is from drugs, chére. And I know you—” His voice broke, and he swallowed hard.

“I know you would never hurt yourself this way,” he finished a moment later when he was able to compose himself. He released her and tried to give her space, but still stood close; just in case, he told himself. Just in case.

Sapphire stares up at the lanky man in front of her with a desperate look on her face, familiarity of him so close in her mind, but still so far out of reach. “Why can’t I remember anything?” She needed to know, why would he want to wipe her memory?

His voice broke as he spoke to her, only confirming more to her that this man knew her, could almost feel the desire to protect radiation off of him. It baffled her. This had never seemed like a possibility-- but then again, what did she know? She had apparently been drugged up to keep her from remembering something. Something important, she could feel it. She thought of the scars all over her body, the huge, old gashes across her back.

Something important indeed.

Yes. She begins to remember, he can see it in her eyes, and she starts to recount her family, and for a single beautiful moment, Sycamore felt the hope swell within him, but it was short-lived, and to Sycamore’s dismay, it was only his own fault for setting her off. He started even as she wobbled forward, wanting to catch her and hold her, but her defensive words stab him deep into his heart.

Damian. Damian again. This was his doing, had to be, and Sycamore didn’t know what he did, how he did it, what he used, but his darling niece is suddenly under the impression that Damian was her ally, and he knew without a doubt he had to have done something to make her think such a way, and the image seared into his mind that haunted his nightmares resurfaced, her pinned to the lab wall, Damian taking her so roughly—

“No,” he said aloud, voice suddenly low and dangerous, seething with rapidly increasing murderous intent, “no, that limp-dick bitch has not helped you, my girl, he’s only harmed you, Damian has only harmed you, and I do not know what he’s done but you do not look well, and you need to come with me now.”

Sapphire immediately shrinks back at his tone, instinctively bringing her arms up close to her chest, ready to defend herself if need be. It takes her a moment to realize that he is angry for her, and it calms her somewhat. The throbbing in her head grows as she tries to recall exactly what Damian has done to her, the only alarming things coming to mind being smiles that didn’t reach his eyes, grips on her that became a little too tight, too possessive. 

It is very easy for her to imagine him being violent, and that scares her.

She didn’t recognize him. It was plain as day, there for the world to see, and they may as well have, because she didn’t recognize him. His darling niece. And she didn’t recognize him, and the way she was looking at him—no. No, she wasn’t allowed to be scared, he remembered when she was small and tiny and Brenden brought her with him when they met up and Sycamore would get to hold her and steal her little nose. And now she didn’t know him.

“Sapphire, ma chére, it’s me,” he said, “it’s Augustine. You remember? I would come and your parents would let me sleep on the couch and we would drink chocolate milk and look at pokemon. Please remember me, chére.” She was scratching, and his eyes were immediately drawn down to the pock marks on her arm and his face fell.

No. No. This couldn’t be happening. This isn’t happening. Why would she? Who would even deal to this poor girl? Why would she turn to something like this? Sycamore was no stranger to a little recreational drug use, could remember vaguely the time in his life when he’d used as well, and it wasn’t the answer. It was never the answer, and he knew that now and thought Sapphire had known it, too, but now…. “Sapphire. Sapphire, my girl, what have you done?”

Sapphire stares unseeing for a moment as her vision clouds, echos of a memory bubbling through the heavy fog in her mind. --Uncle, uncle, tell me more, I want to know everything, tout savoir Uncle!-- she shakes her head and the echo is gone, lost to the abyss of pain and confusion. “My mama has been dead since I was a girl-” Her response comes from her mouth before she understands the words, and her eyes widen at information previously lost.

Her hand lifts from her arm to cover her mouth, and Sapphire tries to blink away the sudden burn of tears behind her eyes. She will not cry in front of this man, she will not. His eyes had focused in on her arm, the itchy little red bumps standing out on her pale, was once sun kissed and tan pale skin, and suddenly he was berating her. She staggered to her feet, wobbling dangerously and using the wall for support as she gathered all her frustrated strength.  

“I-- I have done nothing! I woke up hurt and confused and no one is making any sense! You-- you say you know me, that man... that man Archer says he knows me, but tries to hurt Damian, but Damian... he says he helped me, took me from something, something terrible??-- I don’t--” she tapered off towards the end, her strength draining quickly. “I... I don’t know.”

As he neared her, however, he realized the feeling hadn’t been joy, not by any means—though certainly he was glad to see her and know she was still alive, the feeling that had settled into his throat and made its way towards his stomach could only be defined as dread, the apprehensive fear of the unknown. Where had she been? What had she been doing? Why hadn’t he seen her in months?

She tried to ignore the pain building in her lungs, the rasping in her throat the only giveaway to her misery. She looked up at this new man, this gangly, lankly man in a lab coat and gave him a nervous look. “I-- I don’t... who are you? How do any of you people here know me, I don’t-- I don’t understand?” Her nervous energy spilled over to her hands, and she brought her hand up to scratch at the pock marks on her forearm.

Augustine was getting antsy. It had been a couple months since he’d last seen Sapphire, and though he tried not to worry so much, it was hard; despite telling himself numerous times that his darling niece was likely just busy hiding, that she was maybe with that Archer fellow or one of the executives or enforcers, he had remained on edge, unable to stop searching wildly in the dark corners of the base to try and find any scrap of hope, any signal that she was okay.

It was a maddening procedure—twisting and turning at night, unable to sleep, hardly ever hungry, but often seeing a figure out of the corner of his eye, seeing her shape in the shadows only to blink and realize he was just imagining it. If Brendan knew just what was going on, how useless Augustine was being in finding her, protecting her, he knew his friend would beat him bloody raw; it’s just how fathers were. And knowing that, knowing his imagined fate, Sycamore couldn’t help but feel more and more powerless, more and more of a failure. She was his niece. He should have been there for her. They were family, even if not by blood.

She could feel the calling from the woods. There was a lake there, she just knew it. It was calling her.

A sudden surge of pain in her abdomen leaves her gasping for breath, scrabbling for purchase against the wall. The pain keeps hitting her in waves, on and off for the past few days, its becoming excruciating. Sapphire lets out a small moan, slumping against the wall where she fell. She can feel he tugging towards the woods. She just dosen’t know why. 

That was when she hit him, ran into his side, and Archer was caught off-guard, surprised that Sapphire would throw herself into the fray at him, and wide-eyed he toppled off of Damian and scrambled backwards, fearful that any new attack he made towards Sapphire’s captor would end in her getting accidentally hurt.

Sapphire, for her part, was horribly confused. Nothing was adding up, nothing made sense. This man-- Archer, seemed so adamant that Damian was the bad guy, but he wasn’t-- right? The muted screaming in her head wasn’t helping, everything hurt. Her body was trembling, both from emotional and physical exertion, nausea made her head swim. Damian looked her over, keeping an eye on Archer as he did. When he saw him reach towards his belt for his pokeballs, he yelled;

“Zion! Hold him!” The Gardevoir was quick to obey, using her psychic abilities to hold the man master had commanded her to keep still. Sapphire stared blankly ahead, still not sure what to do in this situation, confusion, frustration, fear all leaking in her head. She didn’t have much time to think, before Damian stood up with a hiss of pain, pulling her up with him. She looked up at Damian, who was grimacing in Archer’s direction. 

He heard Damian’s theatrical bullshit, and that only served to make him angrier, a vicious growl loosing form his throat. “Shut yer whore mouth!” he snarled, “just shut yer fuckin’ whore mouth, ye goddamn LIAR!” His hands sought out Damian’s neck, gripping tightly onto his throat as he began to mentally prepare himself for the aftermath, the fallout. Tabitha was going to hate him. That was okay. Archer was going to put everything right. Tabitha would get over it. And Damian finally, finally would be gone.

“Who’s-- the monster... now?” He rasped out, playing the situation up as much as he could. The movement out of the corner of his eye was growing closer, and he had to fight the overwhelming urge to grin. Checkmate. 

“STOP!” 

His head hurt, but damn was it worth it to get the shot in, and Archer lifted his eyes to see the sort of damage he had caused. With any luck Damian’s nose would be bleeding, or at the very least maybe he would get some nasty black eyes, be unable to see for a while yet, and Archer could grab Sapphire and run and—

But he felt Damian’s leg sweep at his feet not a second later, and unprepared, Archer felt himself wobble and fall, but he kept his grip on Damian, aimed to bring him down too as he felt his back hit hard against the cold floor, and he could see a glint of metal as Damian went down, too. Archer wasn’t an idiot; weapon, his mind whispered, and there was only thing to do in such a situation: make sure Damian was incapable of using it.

The instant he had his bearings back, Archer flung one leg around Damian’s back and used the momentum to flip them so he could pin him down, grabbing onto his arm with both hands and squeezing, squeezing, crushing, until he heard the snap and his eyes lit with sadistic satisfaction. “Drop it,” he growled, “drop it, bitch!”

============

Damian growled as blood dripped from his now broken nose, glaring at Archer all the while. He kept his focus as he grappled with the older man, keeping an ear out for the slumped figure on his peripheral. She should be waking up soon, and all she would see would be terrible incriminating for Archer.

Perfect. 

Sweeping Archer had been simple, but he wasn’t prepared for the man to twist, to flip them around and pin him down-- Damian let out a string of expletives, he had forgotten that Archer could be fucking vicious if given the opportunity. It happened so fast, Damian almost didn’t feel the pressure on his arm until blinding white pain shot up to his shoulder and he let out an involuntary howl. Son of a bitch. Forearm was broken, that he knew-- it wasn’t his first time grappling like this, he would have to train more with Tabitha after this, he had made a stupid, stupid mistake and now it was costing him.

     Her voice didn’t sound quite like her own, and the confusion was met in turn with confusion. She didn’t seem to know him as he turned to face her, surprise lingering in expression at the sight of her but it was still off, still wrong. She was there in his lab, but why if she didn’t recognize him or anything about where she stood. 

Sapphire rubbed at her arm absently, her shirt sleeves pulled up to allow her access to the forearm. The fabric itched her so bad some days, irritating the little pin pricks that dotted the inside of her arm. She gave a tentative smile-- this man’s name was Matthew it seemed. “You say I’ve been gone-- a month? I’m sorry, I-- I don’t remember much. My head hurts terribly. You say I worked here, with you?”

“Ye damn sunova bitch,” Archer growled, fists clenched tightly and trembling with seething anger, “ye Lugiadamn psychopath, I swear if ye don’t git the fuck away from her right now—” His eyes fell to Zion, and his brain snapped into overdrive, the energy of his anger concentrated into his strategists’ mind. His hands stilled, and Archer was suddenly, eerily calm. Dangerous man, Damian said. Archer could be dangerous.

He could be excruciatingly fucking dangerous when he wanted to be.

The motherfucker had headbutted him! Damian spit curses, drawing his leg out to sweep Archer off his feet, grappling for a good grip on the older man with his free arm as he tried to blink the stars out of his vision. His spotty vision cased him to miss his grip at Archer’s shoulder, throwing him off balance and actually falling into the man. 

“Damian,” he snaps, feeling the fire of righteous justice flowing through his veins (the only appropriate course of action at this point would be for him to scream FOR AMERICA and tackle Damian to the ground foot-ball style) but before he’s able to demand just what the uncultured piece of shit had done to the poor girl, Damian kneels next to her, coos sweet words as though he hadn’t been the demon previously in her life, and Archer is disgusted. He is disgusted by the man before him, disgusted not just by his words and actions, no, but by his very being. He shoots her up with something, it has to be some sort of drug, and with that shit-eating grin of his tries to talk to him.

He grins up at Archer form his crouched position on the floor, subtly gesturing to Zion to stay with the girl for now. He’s got this covered, he’s been so bored. Sapphire makes a low moaning noise from her position under Zion, and Damian gives a small chuckle. “Such a nice bruise you’ve given me Archer, it’ll only help reinforce my hold on her now you know. How I saved her from that dangerous man~” Damian gestures dramatically in front of him, sweeping into a cramped bow.

But then all of a sudden it seems like she can’t breathe and a second later she went down. Archer wants to go to her side, to help her back to her feet, but after how well his last attempt at grabbing her went he was more than a little reluctant to try again.

He kneels over her, brushing hair away from her face and shushing her, his whole demeanor changing to fake concern and care. “It’s okay dear heart, you’re going to be fine-- calm down and try to breathe okay?” He pulls out Zion’s pokeball and releases her to stand over the two of them, keep Archer from interfering with what he is about to do. Sapphire can only wheeze, her body slumped, but seemingly calmer.