#bell reader

Adler’s hand is cupping the back of your neck. Fingers pressed together, cradling your skull so your head stays upright against his shoulder, soft cotton rubbing against your cheek. Some of your hair has gotten caught in his watch strap, tugging with each step he takes. You try to focus on the warmth of his skin against yours as he carries you, his other hand locked safely under your knees.

After a moment, you crack your eyes open. The stars wink at you from the sky above, before black spots threaten to overtake your vision again.

Cuba had turned out a shitshow. There had been far more resistance than expected, and breaking through the entrenched forces had only been rewarded with a disastrous reveal about Perseus’ plans. Then, Park and Lazar had been left for dead on the roof. You’d only just got out in time, injured from a rocket blast, before the skyhook dragged you away into the sky, swiftly reuniting you with Adler, who had kept you close the whole way back to Germany.

He always did, whenever you’d been apart. He’d pull you close, tuck his hand on the back of your neck, like he was holding his whole world in his hands.

It would be more romantic if you weren’t drifting in and out of consciousness.  

“Adler, what the hell are you doing?” You dimly recognise Hudson’s voice as the stars overhead disappear, replaced by corrugated metal, hidden in vaulted shadows. Hudson’s voice echoes in the empty safehouse, making you wince as the metal door begins to roll down behind you and Adler.

“Sims, get the gurney…”

Your vision abandons you again, only returning when you are lying down. The sudden loss of Adler’s touch, of his arms surrounding you, leaves you feeling exposed. You wince again as a door slams shut somewhere behind you. Twisting your head, you squint around the darkened room, trying to understand what the argument you are overhearing is about.

“Doc, if you won’t listen to him, listen to me.” Sims sounded more urgent that you’d ever heard him.  “We don’t have time to do any of this.”

“I’ll catch up.”

“D… Adler.” Sims sighed heavily as Adler reappeared at your side. His words had a mournful feeling to them. “Don’t do this. It won’t work; we don’t have time… You’d only end up making it – her, suffer.”

He stumbles on his words when he sees that your eyes are open.

“Bell’s tougher than she looks.” Adler waves Sims away, and presses the back of his hand to your forehead. “I’m doing it. Stay or don’t.”

Sims sighs again, and disappears from your view. You hear the door open and close, as you struggle to free your hands from the cuffs on the sides of the gurney.

“Easy…” Adler rests his hand on top of yours. He has his sunglasses on. In the dim light you can’t see his eyes. 

“Russ…”

“I know. It hurts. I’m going to get you sorted. Don’t worry.” 

He squeezes your hand, then moves to the head of the gurney, pulling you backwards into his office. The blinds are already drawn down, the only light coming from a lamp on the desk as Adler locks the door. It’s nearly impossible for you to see now. You’re struggling to keep track of whether your eyes were open or closed, whether you were asleep or awake.  

“You still there, Bell?” 

You tilt your head and squint as Adler’s shadow moves in front of the light. “Yeah… what’s going on? What are we doing about the…”

“The nukes? We’re working on it.” He bends over something on the desk, not looking at you. You struggle to sit up again.

“We?”

“Yeah. You and me, Bell. We’re going to figure this thing out.”

“How?”

“Trust me.” He turns to face you, smiling, then reaches for something in the darkness. 

Bright white light floods the room, and you shut your eyes tight.

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” His hand grasps your jaw, keeping your face upright as you try to turn away from the brightness. “C’mon, Bell. Open eyes. We have a job to do.”

You crack your eyes open, and realise that the light isn’t actually that bad. His face is blocking part of it anyway, as he leans over you, mirroring your soft smile.

“See? Not so bad.” His thumb skates across your lip, before his hands moves up further, grasping your head tight. “You need to stay still for this to work.”

“Uh huh.” You mumble into his hand, resisting the urge to nod, blinking rapidly as he lets go of your jaw, and pulls your left eye open.

“Real still…” 

You feel the discomfort of the needle without ever seeing it. You immediately forget that you’re not supposed to move, writhing on the gurney, pulling on the restrains, eyes watering as you try to blink the thing away. Adler lets go of your face and sits at your side, waiting for you to settle as he wraps his hand around your cuffed one.

“Just a little pinch Bell. To sharpen your memories.”

“My mem… memories…” Your vision is blurring. The shadowy grey room is coming to life with new colours, muddling everything you can see together. You can’t tell the blinds from the walls, the desk from the floor, your body from the gurney.

“Bell, you need remember. Remember, when you met Perseus in Vietnam.” The only concrete thing left is Adler. His grip on your hand, his voice slowly echoing through your mind.

“Vietnam?” The syllables feel heavy on your tongue as you feel yourself slipping away from reality.

“Yeah. Nam, Bell. Where we met, do you remember?”

It was December of ‘67. Camp Haskins, where everyone was too busy complaining, that they would be away from home for Christmas, that the heat even now didn’t relent, that the enemy was better supplied than we were; to do their fucking job.

You had kept yourself tucked away in your corner of the command tent, hunched over a desk, deciphering soviet radio transmissions. You had glanced down the list of dates again, circling the ones that contained the name that kept appearing over and over. Perseus.

“Perseus?” A voice had echoed over your shoulder, and you’d snapped the file shut, glancing up at the man staring down at your work. “Where’d you pull that from?”

“Radio.” You pointed at it. You’d dealt with enough shit from men at work to not entertain this interruption, even if he was easier on the eyes than your usual irritants.

He didn’t take the hint. “Huh. You should probably take a look at this, then.”

He leant over to the desk next to yours and pulled out a file, holding it out to you. There was something oddly comforting about him. His sunglasses, the suave attitude. Like all of the actors you remember loving from back home.

You shook your head. Now was not the time for that.

The folder he’d given you had a photo paper clipped to the front. A man in soviet military dress, probably in his fifties. Maybe late forties, if the years hadn’t been kind to him. The name Perseus was written on the front of the manilla in thick black ink. Subtle.

“So, what’s he doing?” He leant over your desk again.

“Sorry, who are you?”

“Russell Adler. MACV-SOG.” 

“Didn’t realise the CIA hired pretty boys.” You put the file aside and uncovered the list of transmissions again, letting him glance over it. “Supposedly, he’s sending in a weapons cache between Christmas and New Years. To catch all of us Americans off guard.” 

“That’s right.” The scene blurs before your eyes as Adler’s voice comes from somewhere… else. “But it never appeared, did it?”

“No.”

“At least, not then. Later you found more. You followed the trail, and came face to face with Perseus, in Vietnam, didn’t you?”

“I…” you hesitate. You blink and look away from the blurry, young and scarless Adler standing over you.

He’s there. The General. Perseus, as he fancies himself. He’s coming up to your desk in the bunker, footsteps echoing off the metal and concrete in disharmony. You’re at your desk, squinting under lamp light, in a cold, dreary bunker, not a tent, working on encryptions, not radio transmissions. You were trying to organise a weapons shipment to go… somewhere.

The General smiles, and softly puts a file down at your elbow. 

“This is who Stitch mentioned. You should take a look at it.” 

You nod, taking the thin file. Russell T. Adler. There were just three photos, spread out over several years, all military issue. He looked very stereotypically American, if you had to describe him. A nasty scar appeared between the second and third. You lingered on that third one, studying his eyes closely. He didn’t like being photographed, resented that his existence was being put to glossy photo paper.  

You brush your fingers over the few documents in the file, the hard back of the chair digging into your spine as you sit up, for once. Stich had spoken of little but his desire for revenge on Adler since he’d been rescued. Perseus was moulding him to lead a strike team, stringing him along with the promise that this Adler would get his dues.

That’s where you came in. Stitch can’t kill him, if he doesn’t know where he is. You look up, ready to ask if there’s anything else Perseus needs, but he’s already left, a red door swinging closed behind him. 

“Bell?” Adler’s voice snatches you back to Vietnam. At least, its what your eyes would have you believe. Your other senses say that you’re still in the bunker, stuck in that cold, quiet, lonely place. You reach for the arms of your chair, only to find that you can’t move your hands.

“Never met you. In…” Your voice trails off as something stings, again. You reel back and fall off your chair, hands flying to your face as you try to find where it hurts.

“Yeah, we did. Met in Nam, Bell. Turns out you were a dab hand at knowing who was at the door by just their knock. Our own little doorbell.”

Had you? When tents don’t have doors?

No, because it had been later. In the office, where the air conditioning clicked every twenty-two seconds, and your chair fell apart every other Thursday, and good coffee was beyond the codebreaker’s budget.

You’d hated that office almost as much as the nickname. Wasn’t your fault everyone had distinct footsteps and knocks. You’d brought it up as a security risk. 

Adler had chuckled, and told you that being paranoid was his job. 

“Yeah. Where was that office again?” Eventually, the ‘door’ got dropped, and you were just ‘Bell’.

“Stateside. One of our top-secret ones.” He was squeezing your hand, stroking your knuckles so softly. He couldn’t have done whatever had hurt you so much just moments ago. 

“We didn’t spend much time there.”

“True.” He sighed. “Too much travelling.” 

You nodded. “Europe.”

“Asia.”

“South America.”

The bits and pieces come back to you, like they always do. Snatches of dates, conversations, a wedding, in Greece, you think. But… nothing complete. Like always. 

It’s only ever bits and pieces, with an occasional spark reminding you of places you and Adler had been together. “What about… Turkey?” 

“Turkey? Yeah… wow, that was a long time ago.”

“Was it?” Your brow wrinkles, as you feel the phantom pain of a bullet lodged in your torso. “Feels like just yesterday to me.”

“It would. You got pretty badly injured. Those things stay with you.” He inhales, clutching your hand like he wants to stop the memory of the car that’s forming around you.

“It was… Trabzon. And… Arash.” 

“Yeah. He had you caught, tried to kill you as he fled, but we got to you. Rescued you.”

“No…” No, that wasn’t what happened. You were there to make sure Arash stayed on task, and he’d taken issue with that, not knowing that you’d been in this longer than he’d had. He’d shot you, and you’d thought you were done for, until someone had found you… The words, the first ones Adler ever spoke to you, fall out of your mouth before you can stop them. “Over here… We’ve got a live one.”

“What do you mean by that Bell?”

“I mean…”

You shut your eyes as the jeep distorted around you, Adler’s face looms, disproportionately large, as he drags you out of it, lying you out on the tarmac, the night sky appearing above you. The same night sky you saw in Berlin, around Volkov’s head as he talked to you like he knew you, only for Adler to arrive and stop you from asking more.

You chased Volkov across the warehouse, he surrendered to you, and when you tried to ask a question, Adler appeared and shot him. He kissed you right over the corpse, once, and quickly, before everyone else caught up. Then, he had to go off to appease Park’s annoyance that you hadn’t taken Volkov alive, leaving you with only the parting promise that he’d finish what he’d started up on the rooftop earlier, crushing your body against his in an alcove as the searchlight swept by, his fingers dipping below your waistband as you killed time while waiting for Kraus to show up.

Later, he’d hesitated to be away from you, only just conceding that you could go alone with Woods to Ukraine. After that went tits up, he’d insisted on taking you with him to the Lubyanka building, and taken full advantage of the dark tunnels you were sneaking in through. When inside, walking through the marble halls, he’d kept you close, face tucked down next to your side, not to protect you, but so no one would recognise you. As Volkov had done.

Lazar hadn’t known. He’d suspected something, after seeing Adler put his arm around you in the car. It’s what that warning has been about, the one that you’d overheard when you were only half awake. The one that had sounded a little too impersonal to be about a man defending his wife. He’d denied any explanation when he’d come back afterwards and hushed you, gently checking the glass cuts on your arms, getting you more painkillers when you’d groaned in pain, complaining about a nightmare that woke you.

You’d assumed they were pain killers. All those tablets he’d handed you, you’d just assumed. Because why wouldn’t you trust him? Why would he lie about what he was giving you?

So brazenly, too. As far as you could remember, most painkillers were little white pills. These had been all different shapes and colours and sizes. 

As far as you could remember… how far back could you remember? 

The safehouse? 

Turkey? That had to be before Berlin… with Arash, then Adler. 

Turkey, then… a lab. 

“What… what did you do to me?” You blinked, and finally, your surroundings solidified around you. Tiled walls, stretching away from you, dotted by white doors. You reach out, touch the wall, and shiver. It was cold. Air was blowing from somewhere, carrying the smell of a chemical with it. The entire place was empty and sterile.

Except a red door, ahead of you, marking the end of the hallway.

“I gave you a second chance.” Adler opens the door, facing you as he holds it flush to the wall. The room behind him was shrouded in darkness. You could just make out a chair, where some poor bastard with a bag over their head sat.

“Really?” A flash interrupts you. White, wedding. Adler’s voice echoes himself, his hands in yours, proclaiming that this marriage was a second chance for both of you. You shake, fingers curling and finding the grout line between the tiles. Your fingernails scrape at it, gathering dust underneath them.

“I did.” The door swings closed as Adler walks towards you. “I don’t give many of those.”

“What am I, special?”

“Yes.” He answers immediately. “I gave you a chance to fix things. A chance with me.” 

“Fuck you.” You let go of the wall and step back as he reaches for you. This lab is inside your mind, not his. It’s yours to control.

The tiles explode. Ceramic shrapnel fills the air, hanging in the air like snow, forcing the two of you apart.

“Bell…” Adler sighs. He shrugs, and the ceramic crashes to the floor. “What do you think is going to happen if you don’t help me?”

The nukes would go off. Lots of people would die. That was what this whole exercise was about, wasn’t it? But why? You didn’t know any more than Adler did, about where Perseus was planning to detonate the bombs and kill millions from.

Millions of lives. That you’d be responsible for. You had been part of that plan, originally. You were at the meeting, with Perseus, where he’d laid out his plan, including the reunion in Solovetsky.

So, for one. That would happen.

As for what would happen to you, personally… Adler seems to have an idea.

“Do you think Perseus is going to come and save you? You heard what Volkov said- there’s a price on your head.”

You had heard that. But that had been when Volkov had you captured, before Adler arrived. He couldn’t have heard it, too.

“Perseus will kill you, and that’s if you’re lucky.”

You turn your back on Adler and his logic, walking back up the corridor. Ceramic crunches under your boots, and you round the corner to find Adler and the red door in front of you again.

You stop and glance back.

He was still there, too. Adler in front of you, and behind you.

“Bell?” The Adler to your left begins to walk towards you. You turn back, only to find the one behind you doing the same. When you look around again, there’s another corridor in front of you. You charge into it blindly, stopping short when you see another Adler, another red door. You turn back again, and another passage appears, making the corner into a crossroads.

There’s another Adler in the final corridor, too. He has you surrounded, coming at you from every direction.

“I can protect you, Bell.” Four voices, identically blending into one roar, as you shake, covering your eyes as you open your mouth to scream.

That’s when the first one reaches you. He catches your shoulders, preventing you from collapsing. The second takes your hands, swiftly moving to take hold of your wrists, as the third grabs your hips, steadying your shaking legs, as the fourth, the original one, cups your head in his hands.

“No one knows about this, Bell. Park and Lazar are gone, Sims will forget this before he tells anyone. No one will know about your past. You can start over, with me.” All of the voices overlap, one starting a sentence and another finishing it. The harmony is impossible for you to ignore, as he holds you up, pulls your hands away from your eyes and ears, and tries to soothe you, get you to breathe deeply, to stop shaking, to cooperate. “We could make all of our memories real. Get married in Greece, a house with a picket fence. A dog, a car, as many as you’d like. All the clothes, food, luxuries you’d want.”

“But…”

“Help me, and I can protect you.” Is it I, or should they be saying we? Is this in your head, a product of whatever piece of himself Adler inserted into you to make Bell, or is he out in the real world, narrating all of this to you? “Save the world, and the CIA would move heaven and earth to keep you safe.”

“You… mean, you.”

“Yeah. ‘fraid I’m non-negotiable, Bell. You’ve got me for the long haul.” 

You hesitate. 

“Just, tell me where Perseus is. Then I can make all of this go away. No more lies, no more pills. Just the two of us.”

You see the house swimming in your mind’s eye. The white fence, a dog rolling around on the lawn, his and hers cars parked in the driveway. A flagpole, the stars and stripes flying high. An American’s wet dream. Adler’s dream. 

But is it yours? Is the longing that tugs on your heartstrings Adler’s, or yours? If it is yours, is it genuine, or from fear of the alternative?

Perseus has forsaken you. Volkov had made that clear. Is it worth dying for them? Someone who would no longer die for you?

What is a meaningless death, to being a caged bird?

“Bell?” You look up at the Adler to your right. “You think too much.” 

The one on the left takes your chin and tilts your head back to face him. “Don’t make the choice Perseus would want you to make. Make the one you want to make.”

Like you have a choice here.

You close your eyes and take a deep breath. The four Adler’s vanish, leaving you shivering again. When you open your eyes, the crossroads are gone. Only the original corridor remains.

You walk down it slowly. As you reach for the handle on the door, you glance back. Only tiled wall greets you at the other end of the closed space.

That’s it, then. No way out. No alternative.

You open the door. The room is still dark. The reflection of a red exit sign glows in the glass window on the opposite wall. The chair, facing it, is empty. Behind the glass, there are people moving around. You lean close to it, but can’t make out who they are, or what they’re saying.

There’s a bag on a wheeled tray next to the chair. You pick it up, sliding it over your head as you sit down, inhaling sharply as feel the restraints around your wrists again. You blink, and realise you’re back in the safehouse. The bright light is gone, leaving you seeing only by the desk lamp. 

“Bell?” Adler asks softly, prompting you to turn your head towards him. He leans close, lips a hairs breadth from yours. “Where is Perseus?”

“Solovetsky.” The word slips from your lips.  

“There we go.” Adler smiles, leaning back minutely. “Would’ve been a whole lot easier if you’d just told me that the first time.”

He kisses you. You don’t kiss back. When he pulls you up into his arms, you realise your restraints are gone. He lets you sit up, softly reassuring you when you clutch his hands tight, shaking with sudden light-headedness.

“There we are. I’ve got something for you.” He reaches up to his shirt collar and pulls a chain out from underneath it. It has a ring hanging on it, the gemstone glittering even in the dim light. “My grandmother’s. I’d like for it to be yours, in Greece… or somewhere else, if you prefer.” 

He sets the band in your hand, and leaves the room to make the call. It feels like it weighs a hundred pounds in your palm.

You made your choice. Maybe not consciously, but you have no place to go without Adler. You have no identity without Adler. You will die a lonely, pointless, excruciatingly painful death without Adler. 

It’s not like he’s the worst option. He’s handsome enough, and you remember enough midnight rendezvous to know he’s not boasting about… certain things. You’ll grow to love him in time. 

“Bell?” As if on cue, he returns. 

You look up at him. “Do you know who I am? Really?”

There’s a twitch in his eye. You almost miss it, but it tells you that the real answer is yes. That at some point, he was handed a photograph of you, a run of the mill, person of interest, and that’s where all of this had started. His obsession had stopped being about Perseus a long time ago. “You’re mine, Bell. That’s all that matters.”

He reaches into your palm and plucks the ring out of it. Taking your hand in his, he slides it onto your finger.

Perfect fit. 

He smiles, tilting your chin up to his. “It’s like we’re meant to be.”

In some roundabout way, you were. He’d turned you into putty, and remade you into… whoever you were now. Meant might be a stretch, but it sounds more poetic than made.

“Russ…” You whisper.

“Yes?”

“Do you think I’ll like Greece?”

Cold. Clammy.

The hand covers his eyes. Gloved. The somewhat coarse nature of its fabric brushes against his brow. It cups, and presses against his face like a blindfold, but through the minute cracks of the fingers he sees light. Concrete-colored light. Seeping through like the trickling of light.

Warmth presses against his back. A body. One he leans against.

Soft caresses of her breath bates down his neck, brushing against the shell of his ear as she leans in.

“I will be your eyes.”

Her other hand traces down his arm, until their fingers touch. Covering his hand, she lifts the gun. Guiding the nuzzle to point at a direction he cannot see.

“You shoot when I tell you to.”

He cannot see where.

All he can feel is her.

Oh the irony. He failed to be her death and yet…here she is.

Death, as her constant, unwavering companion. Death, as the sole notion of sovereignty of her fate. Death, as the very shadow he had ripped from her.

As she will rip from him.

Dig her nails into his eye sockets.

Gouge out his eyes.

He’d give her his sight and gun like a poor fool blinded with trust and faith (even if she were to shoot him dead and paint the walls with his flesh the next second).

A dead merlin. A dead doe. A dead body, a corpse-like figure lying limp in the cell. Her, her, her—

———

He wakes with a jolt. A gasp torn from his lips.

No more is the warmth of her. Just…the sticky, damp warmth of his sweat-soaked seeks and the nauseating sensation nestled deep in his throat enough to prickle his skin with dotted goosebumps, amidst the quickly cooling sheen of sweat on his arms and back.

No more is the concrete-colored light that trickles from the crevices between her fingers, but rather signs of dawn that paints his room in bluish hue.

He could still feel the touch of her fingertips, her lips that brushed against the shell of his ear, her icy yet emotionally detached voice— Oh-so vividly.

His hands tremble.

A year. A year of these nightmares haunting each of his nights. No more of Vietnam or other atrocities. Just her. And the familiar phantom touches of her cold and clammy hands (like a corpse, like a cadaver—).

Night after night of him willingly giving her his sight and guns.

Taunted by the tragic reality where he could not, he cannot do so. For she has already rejected his offer.

At least in his dreams, she takes.

And takes.

And he’d let her.

———

———

Limp, he sits there, nearly flat against the corner of the wall, shoulders sagging in something akin to defeat. He shivers. Blood seeps from somewhere; he cannot tell where, for certain. It’s cold, so utterly cold, juxtaposing the warm, honeyed-ooze of the lifeline ichor lapping at his searing flesh. His senses, dulled and growing further dull by the ticking second— the sharp clicks of her boots reverberate like a clock’s reminder of the dwindling opening he has.

When her fingers deceptively run through his matted locks, he shudders. A mock parody of a lover’s caressing touch. It’s oh-so laughable that even such minute actions garner such visceral reaction out of his heavy body. 

There’s little reaction from him, as she tugs his hair and pulls him along, like one would a ragdoll toy. Her nails graze against his scalp.

His lame limbs, the shuddery breaths that slip through his cracked, chapped lips, his weight nothing but a burden he bore. 

When she hurls his body against the other end of the room, he swears there’s a sickening crunch. Somewhere.

Again. He cannot tell where.

The noise escaping from his lips is but a pathetic, tiny breath of a gasp (like a whine), as, with shaky hands, he attempts to push himself up. His legs refuse to work, and his brittle grasp of balance sways with each second. Even lifting his torso is a monolithic task, let alone lifting his head, or his gaze, to look at her. 

The fury is already seared in his mind anyways.

“Get up.” It’s a command. One born from the funnelling depths of frustration, as her agitated, breathless voice looms overhead.

“My attention,” she seethes the word. A hand tightly grasps his jaw, forcing him to lift his heavy, heavy head. The world whirls around him. He gasps, spluttering as a shiver (fear? no, not quite—) wracks his body. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? My ‘attention’.”

Blood trickles down the expanse of her throat—his blood—and even amidst the daze, his eyes refusing to focus, he sees the vision of her fury he dared to scorch himself with.

This…this is what he wanted.

“And so I graciously gave it to you.” She snarls coldly. “At least attempt to make it worthwhile for me.”

As cold as the biting, nipping winds of Solovetsky.

God. What did he get himself into?

With the harsh edge of her scorn digging into his flesh like shrapnel, he is tossed aside once more. Finally upright, propping himself against the nearby wall, he glances down to assess his wounds and Jesus—

“—I’m not giving up.” He attempts, even if his words waver as she gazes over her shoulder at his broken little state. “I’ll get what I want.”

A sneer. 

An insect, she called him once, an insignificant man that only got in her way. And with a look that feigns a degree of pity, she simply states:

“I’ll kill you myself then.”

———