#path verse

He flicked the radio on, blaring voices spouting something inane. He jumped stations a few times, looking for something with music. He found something that sounded like country, listened to that for a minute or two, before flicking it off again in annoyance.

Of course Julie didn’t understand, because this was flat-out crazy, and Danny knew it. He didn’t know how it had come to this. What had he been thinking? What did he think he was achieving? This had been a mistake, from start to finish.  

“Um. Handler? Danny?”

The white line on the road jerked and veered wildly in front of Danny as he swore, curbing the impulse to whip around and look behind him.

Fucking hell. Keep it together enough to drive, will you?

He spared a glance in the mirror. Sure enough, the Path was sitting up, looking small and hunched and incongruously clean in the grubby back seat of Danny’s old car. His thin pale fingers clutched at the black seatbelt.

“Jesus, kid,” Danny snapped.

“Sorry,” TJ whispered. “Sorry, I’ll – I’ll be quiet, I’m sorry...”

“No, I - ” Danny breathed out heavily through his nose, made his hands relax on the wheel. The way TJ was lately, Danny couldn’t raise his voice without the poor sod thinking he’d done something wrong. The way he cringed from the nurses, from other handlers, from Danny himself sometimes - it made Danny think hard, vicious things about whoever had been assigned to him before.

How could I have just gone on to the next job and left him there?

He tried to make his voice light. “No, kid, not your fault,” he said. “You just, uh, startled me. Didn’t mean to wake you, we’re hours away from where we’re going yet.” For God’s sake don’t ask me where that is, I don’t fucking know.

“I was awake,” the Path said, a wispy thread of voice from the backseat. “Um. Danny?”

Danny grunted to show he was listening.

“Are you really stealing me?”

Damn it.

“How much did you hear of that?” Danny asked, his stomach sinking. He’d thought TJ was safely asleep. Idiot.

“Um. All of it,” TJ said. “You said – Danny, you said – why do you think someone’s going to kill me?”

“I – well, because…” This was stupid. Why was Danny floundering for words in front of a Path? Danny could only catch the occasional glimpse of the Path in his mirror, and blindfolded TJ wasn’t capable of looking at anything, but still he had to fight back the feeling that TJ was looking at him accusingly.

“Because you’re sick,” he settled on eventually. He blinked hard at the wavering road in front of him, resettled his grip on the steering wheel. “And… and you’ll get better if you have time, TJ, but they don’t want to give you that time. Because it isn’t… ” The end of the sentence died in his throat. Because everyone’s too busy. Because there’s a contract. Because you’re not important enough.

Because it isn’t cost-efficient.

“Did they tell you that?”

“No,” Danny said. “I just… I can see how it’s going to go. That’s all.”

“Oh.” TJ’s voice was thin, quiet. He shifted, overlarge scrubs rustling. “So… so that’s why you’re stealing me?”

Danny winced. “I’m not – TJ, stop saying that. I’m taking you to a different Agency where you’ll be taken care of properly. It’ll all be okay, all right?”

Danny wished the Path hadn’t overheard. He wished this conversation could have held off until they’d stopped; he couldn’t assess the Path’s body language. Fuck, Julie had said that word, described this as ‘stealing’, and maybe now it had stuck in TJ’s head.

He wondered what the hell went on in that head sometimes; how did a Path see the world? Not how normal people did, clearly. Obviously a Path wasn’t really capable of understanding right and wrong, and the law, and morality. But... TJ had seemed to understand a lot of the things he’d read for the court. He definitely understood what ‘stealing’ meant.  

Danny was half waiting for TJ to challenge him on it. They’d worked a case a few weeks ago, theft of a car and some power tools – perhaps TJ was now going to ask Danny what made this any different, why they’d helped send that person to jail but now Danny was taking off with Agency property.

Danny sighed. No, you idiot, he thought, exasperated with himself. Poor fucking kid’s probably a bit preoccupied with the whole ‘they’ll kill you’ thing. Pull your head out of your ass.

In the end TJ said neither of those things, though.

“You’re still going to be in… in a lot of trouble,” he said instead.

Danny laughed, a harsh, coughing noise that surprised him. “Yeah, kid, probably.”

“What if you can’t find another Agency?” TJ sounded calm, reasonable.

Danny resisted the urge to swear. It’s a good fucking question, isn’t it? “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s… it’ll be fine. It’s not your problem to worry about, kid, so just - ”

Danny’s phone rang.

The sound filled up the car, irritatingly cheerful electronic trilling. Danny knew who that would be; didn’t even need to look at the display. TJ subsided into silence. Danny drummed his gloved fingers on the wheel, gritted his teeth, wished he had a cigarette or a coffee or fucking something to calm himself down with.

If Danny really intended to make a run for it, he ought to throw that phone out the window and keep on driving, he knew. People could track you with those things.

But keep on driving to where? In the end, Danny didn’t have any real idea what he was doing. And the only one around to talk to in this car was a Path.

So he took a hand off the wheel and hit the button that answered the phone.

“Danny,” Julie said, her voice filled with relief. “Thanks for picking up.”

Danny made a noncommittal noise.

“Danny, where are you?”

He glanced around. Danny hadn’t driven in this area much; he didn’t know what the street was called, or even really what suburb he was in. Not much in the way of signs to help him out, either. But did that matter? He might have answered the phone, but Danny wasn’t at the point where he was willing to give Julie either of those things.

“You’re sending people out after me,” he accused her. “The cops, or, or an Agency acquisition van.”

“Danny, I want to help you, I - ”

“If you wanted to help me you could have heard me out,” he snapped. “But you’re not going to, I can fucking tell.”

“Hey, you’re the one who hung up on me, remember?”

“Yeah, cause you weren’t listening to me!” Danny said. The scenery sped by, a patchwork of industrial-looking squat concrete blocks of buildings and what looked to be neglected empty land, filled with scrubby trees and patchy fields that were more weeds than grass. He tried to keep his voice down, keep calm, but it grated and wobbled in his ears regardless. “You didn’t have any intention of helping me with TJ, you just lied to me to shut me up when you said you would fix it.”

Julie was better at lying than she’d been before, but the seam was still visible to Danny. The point where she had just started agreeing with anything he said in an attempt to get him to do what she wanted.

“No, Danny,” she protested. “Look, Danny, I just – I don’t know this Path, okay, I don’t know what your situation is, but I want to help you. So if you want to talk about the Path, okay, let’s talk. I’m listening.”

“Talk about….” Danny glanced up to the mirror. At TJ still sitting there, turning his head this way and that.  Making Danny think vaguely of a baby bird, head too big for its little neck. Listening to everything they were both saying. “Look, he’s not dangerous or anything.”

“Okay. Danny, is… is TJ…” Julie’s voice hushed, suddenly, as if she was talking about something obscene. “Danny, are we talking about the child of someone you know? Or your child? Because…”

“Wh- No!” Danny yelped. He took his eyes off the road to gape, horrified, at Julie’s name on the display for a moment. The car wavered underneath him and he dragged his eyes back up.  

That was… a thought. Jesus Christ. It had somehow never occurred to him. Danny wasn’t anywhere near the point in his life where he’d be contemplating babies, but even so – even so – how had he never thought of that? That if he did, there was a non-zero chance they might be…

“I’m talking about an adult Path,” he said, to Julie, forcefully. “Not a child. He’s not related to me in any form. He’s my Path from work, just a regular assigned… fuck, you know what I mean!”

“Uh huh,” Julie said cautiously. She sounded relieved; papers shuffled again, and Danny suspected he could hear her typing something. “All right. What class is he?”

Danny let out a breath, trying to calm down. “E,” he said. “We worked in, um, Criminal Justice. The courtroom mostly, sometimes the police station.” He chewed his lip, considered and rejected two or three different sentence beginnings. “It’s fucking hard work, OK? It’s difficult, the readings are always long, and it’s bloody dark stuff sometimes, and they never….”  

“Class E? OK,” Julie said, gently. “Where is, um, TJ now, Danny?”

“He’s here,” Danny said, exasperated. “I can see him right now, okay, he’s still got his blindfold on and he’s in the back seat and he’s not causing any trouble. He’s never caused any trouble, even though he’s been treated like shit.”  

“He’s in the back? He can’t touch you?”

“What? No?” Danny glanced in the mirror. Still just a puzzled TJ, seatbelt done up, eyes covered, hands in his lap.

“Okay, good.” Julie started speaking rapidly, urgently. “Danny, I really really need you to pull up by the road and wait for me. Okay? You’re not going to understand why, but we did this in training, right, so I need you to trust me. You’re probably confused and that’s okay…”

“What?”

“Danny, you know that Paths can affect people’s minds - ”

“You think he got to me? You think that’s what this is about?” Danny shook his head, bottling up the stream of swearwords that wanted to escape. Julie thought that TJ was somehow making Danny do this? TJ, visibly upset by the change in routine, shaking and frightened at getting into a slightly different car, who’d been in a hospital bed with tubes everywhere and dried blood all over his face just a week ago? “You’re wrong. Dead wrong. How would that even - ”

“I know that what you’re doing probably makes perfect sense to you now,” Julie interrupted, her voice somehow managing to be both soothing and urgent. “You just have to trust me that it doesn’t, Danny, okay? You can’t rely on your instincts now.”

“Fuck’s sake, Julie - ”

“Nothing is the way it seems. It’s not your fault. You’re in the presence of a Path; they get into your head, they can make you think or feel whatever they - ”

Danny growled in frustration. He hauled on the steering wheel, hand over hand awkwardly, to navigate a turn. “Julie, cut the crap! Trying your scaremongering bullshit on me like I’m some clueless layperson? He never fucking touched me, and he’s fucking E, he’s not even capable of that!”

“Danny, you may not know as much about him as you think you do,” Julie insisted. Some of the cool soothing quality frayed away from her voice. “Come on! I know it’s hard but think. You know why we take the precautions we do, you know the damage that can be done! It’s not your fault, you’re confused. Once you tell me where you are - ”

“I’m not confused,”Danny snapped. He felt sick. If this was what Julie thought, there was no chance of this turning out all right. Not within any Agency. It didn’t make sense but had that ever mattered to Agency management? “I’ve never been confused.”

“- once I know where you are I can help you, okay? We can sort it all out, for you and TJ both, it will all - ”

“Sort it out!” Danny snarled. “Oh, yeah, sure you fucking will! I know how you’ll sort TJ out!”

“Danny - ”

“This is bullshit! I’m not going back to your goddamn cold-blooded, two-faced – uh- ”

Danny caught his breath. The metal barrier that lined the road, painted with yellow chevrons, was coming up fast – way too fast.

Fuck, there was a turn, he hadn’t seen -

He slammed his foot onto the brake pedal and wrenched the wheel to the left; metal grated and squealed in protest.  The car was sliding – Danny’s seatbelt was digging painfully into his ribs as the world swung back and forth violently, and he realised in the half-second he had that the car was fish-tailing as it hurtled towards the metal barrier and the downward slope that lay beyond.

Somewhere in the background, Julie’s voice was asking something, pitched high with concern, but it was drowned out by the screeching of tires and the sound of TJ’s frightened yell from the backseat.

Especially a party like this, Violet thinks, with a nervousness that doesn’t show on her face. This is a dinner for the elite, and there’s plenty of agency scum around—those vile people who spread the propaganda that Paths aren’t even human. Having grown up in an agency, Violet would be happy to eliminate all of them. Unfortunately, though, Ace only gave her one target for tonight. She can’t afford to draw attention to herself by disobeying the boss, so she’ll stick to the plan.

She makes her way around the ballroom, smiling, engaging in brief pleasantries with people she’ll never see again. The longer she goes without seeing her target, the more strained her smile becomes. It’s possible that her intel was bad, or that the man decided to skip the dinner. It’s unlikely that he caught wind of the assassination plan, but it’s a distinct possibility.

But—there. Across the room, Violet spots the man, recognizing him from the dozen or so photos she studied beforehand. Casually, she wanders in his direction, slipping a hand into her skirt pocket. She pries open a tiny box, and her fingers close on the projectile: an object that could easily be mistaken for a sewing needle, except that it’s half as long and sharp on both ends. She’s careful not to jab herself as she extracts it and hides it in her hand, waiting for an opening.

She’s still a good twenty feet away, but she doesn’t need to be close—she just needs to be fast. The target has a group of people surrounding him, but the group shifts every so often, new people joining in, others occasionally leaving. Violet just hopes the target won’t leave; she’s not as confident with moving targets.

The target stays put, and after a few minutes, Violet’s line of sight is clear. She suppresses a smirk as she reaches her hand up, like she’s about to fix her hair. The projectile flies from her fingers, rocketing towards the target. One moment he looks normal. The next moment, he stiffens, eyes widening, a hand flying to his throat. From her vantage point, Violet can’t see any blood. She does, however, see him collapse.

Someone screams, and that seems to set off the chaos. Some people gather around him, while others move away, shocked and horrified. Violet pretends to be among the latter group: she covers her mouth, eyes widening, and moves for an exit. Just a fainthearted girl fleeing from what looks like a medical emergency. It’ll take a few minutes yet for anyone to realize what’s really happened. That’s all the time Violet needs.

She ducks into a side hallway and texts a single word on her phone: Done.

When she makes her way through a side exit, she finds the car already parked by the curb, idling. She throws open the passenger side door and climbs in, collapsing into the seat. Quill grins at her from the driver’s side, his face illuminated only by a streetlamp overhead. He starts driving as soon as she’s seated. “So how’d it go?”

Violet smiles back at him. It’s hard not to love Quill and his casual way of handling things. He’s always been good at that: being nonchalant, discreet. It’s why he’s on the team, despite not being a Path himself.

Violet sighs dramatically. “Well, I feel contaminated just from being in a room with all that agency scum,” she says, buckling her seatbelt, “but I did kill him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Like any of us doubted you would.” He gives her a fond glance. “You’re good at this, Vi.”

She grins back at him. “Ace wouldn’t let me do this if I wasn’t.”

She wasn’t so keen on killing people, at first—not when she was at that agency; not when someone was telling her to. But now that she’s killing the very people who sought to turn her into a killer, and killing them of her own volition—well, now she finds it satisfying. It’s one hell of a revenge plot, anyhow.

There was silence for a long, horrible moment. Then TJ heard the sound of someone shifting amongst bits of debris and fabric. A swearword, drawn out and slurred.

TJ shifted in place, trying to find a position that wasn’t as uncomfortable, plucked awkwardly at the seatbelt strap. It hurt. He wanted it off. He wanted to get out of the car.

What had happened? Danny had been driving, and arguing with his friend from the other Agency, and then – and then – had the car crashed? Was that what had happened, that brief couple of seconds of being thrown about violently?

The phone voice was silent now. The car creaked, plinked, tiny noises in the quiet. Danny’s breathing was loud and harsh panting, from somewhere in front, that TJ could hear even over his own breaths.

“Danny?” TJ asked again.

Danny grunted, moved, and made an odd noise. High-pitched, wordless. Was he hurt?

“Kid,” Danny’s voice said, hoarse and faint. “Oh, fuck. Ah, shit – damn it – damn it – I can’t…” He puffed for breath, the movement subsiding. “TJ, are you – are you – hurt?”

“No,” TJ said, frightened. He wasn’t, was he? He patted his arms, shifted his legs to make sure he was telling the truth. He ached, the seatbelt hurt, but he had had worse.  Nothing was injured. “No, I’m not – are – are you?”

“Fuck. Yeah. Yeah, I – TJ, I can’t come and – come and let you out, s’rry, fucking… fucking legs’re… you should, y’should….”

Danny’s words trailed away, became unintelligible. TJ felt cold fear starting to creep around his chest and stomach. Danny was not supposed to sound like that. Danny was supposed to tell TJ what to do.

“Danny?”

No answer, only breathing.

TJ gripped tight to the seatbelt, the fabric smooth and shiny-feeling under the pads of his fingers, tiny threads catching under his nails. He gulped for breath, panic rising.

“Danny, I should what?” he wailed. “What am I supposed to do? Danny? Danny, you need to tell me what to do next!”

TJ’s voice bounced back at him from the small enclosed space, too loud, too much, and Danny still didn’t answer. Something clinked; TJ’s faded secondhand memories filled in possibilities. Broken glass, stone, metal? The broken glass in his mind’s eye was painted with blood.

No, he thought, shoving that back forcefully. No. There isn’t. You’d smell it, wouldn’t you?

The car was so hot. TJ thought he could still feel sunlight on his upper arm and his face.

What had Danny been about to say? He’d said that he couldn’t get TJ out of the car. Then that TJ should do something. Maybe he’d meant… TJ should get himself out?

TJ’s fingers found the fastening of the seatbelt. How did you… He fumbled, found the right place to push, click.

He found himself sliding across the tilted carseat, grabbing at the door to hold himself still, as the belt slithered back to wherever it went with a whirring noise. Okay. Okay, now open the door. He tried, twice, fumbling at the handle. People did this all the time, right, they were supposed to open from the inside, it shouldn’t be – that – difficult -

He got it open a crack, but it closed again immediately, the weight of metal pushing it shut. TJ chewed his lip, took a deep breath… then reached up, and pushed his blindfold up over his forehead before he could change his mind.

The sun was bright, pouring in through the car window, little motes of dust twirling and catching golden in the air in front of his face. TJ squinted, blinking down at his clenched fist in his lap until he could see well enough through half-closed eyes to work the door handle.

Eventually he clambered out of the car, thin-soled shoes slipping over the rubber and plastic, and stood beside it.

It was… too much, out here. Too bright. TJ shaded his eyes, holding his hands up like a child pretending to use binoculars, blinking aside tears.

The sky was… the sky was… too big. He whimpered involuntarily, stumbling away from the car. A vast bowl of blueness that might suck him up and into it if he wasn’t careful, if he looked at too much at once. He carefully directed his gaze downwards, focusing on one thing at a time.

The ground was yellow-green grass, knee-high in places and mixed with weeds. It was torn up in great gouges leading up to the car, ridges of mud with grass blades pressed into them.

The ground sloped away from the car, upwards to – TJ chanced a quick glance up, to see a metal barrier hidden behind more weeds, and then more hill and trees further along. The road was that way. He was dimly surprised at how far away it was.

The car was a dull blue, boxy and shiny like a beetle, lying all askew with its right wheels half-buried in dirty water and weeds and the left wheels not even touching the ground.

The car crashed, he found himself thinking, numbly. It hit the barrier and went over it. Now it’s lying on its side, on the slope. There’s broken glass and plastic on the ground. His arm hurt, and his head. He couldn’t see Danny at all…

TJ realised that his lips had been moving, half muttering. He shook his head, frustrated with himself. He pulled the blindfold off his forehead, scrunching it up in hands that shook. Stop it! This isn’t a memory. Nobody needs you to say it out loud. This is real. This is happening now.

And there’s no ‘he’. There’s just you.

All there is here is you. Danny can’t tell you what to do now.

He walked, dreamlike, around the car, the mud soaking through his thin shoes and getting his feet wet. The front of it was crumpled – cars weren’t supposed to do that – shards of orange plastic mixed garishly with the grass.

And Danny was in the front seat. At the first glimpse of him, a brief flash of dark fuzzy hair and a bulky shoulder in a uniform visible through the broken window, TJ gasped and squeezed his eyes shut. That was wrong! TJ wasn’t supposed to see Danny!

He was still in the car, he couldn’t get out. Did he look hurt? It was wrong that TJ had seen him!

TJ stood there, eyelids scrunched closed, in the hot dark dizziness of the sunshine. The world was spinning slowly around him.

I can’t look at Danny. What if I take his soul?

TJ didn’t have the faintest idea… how exactly a Path would take a soul. People, both handlers and his caretakers back when he was a child, had always acted like it was something he would just sort of instinctively be able to do. But he didn’t know how, so that meant he also didn’t know how to not do it, right?

But Danny was hurt. TJ didn’t know how badly. What if he needed TJ to do something?  

“Danny?” TJ quavered. “Danny, I’m out of the car.”

There was no answer, again. Was Danny unconscious? Or awake and not able to talk for some reason? TJ caught his breath in a panicked sob.

Think, okay, think. He needed someone to tell him what to do, but there was no-one.

So… if someone told him to do something… what would that be? Could he guess? Figure out what the right thing to do was even if there was nobody to tell him?

Simplest, safest answer was almost always to sit still and wait. If you hadn’t been ordered to do anything, that was the same as being ordered to do nothing. Right? So TJ should just sit down here, in this ditch, and wait for somebody from the Agency to come and get him.

He did so, wobbling a little bit, sinking down onto his rump on the uneven slope. He folded his hands in his lap, trying to calm his racing heart. It was going to be okay. Even if TJ and Danny were alone now, it wouldn’t be for long. The Agency would send people to get them. It might take time, but they would.

Only.

Only Danny was hurt.

What if by the time the Agency got here he was…. Worse? What if he died? What if, while TJ was just sitting here in the dirt, Danny was bleeding or suffocating or dying? What if the Agency never came – TJ remembered with sudden painful clarity that Danny had never told Julie where he was.

He whimpered, his hands twisting in his shirt. He didn’t know what to do!

What do I think Danny would say if he could?  

Well if I knew what he’d tell me to do I would just do that, wouldn’t I!

This was so hard. What did Danny say when things were hard? He would swear and be annoyed but he’d tell TJ to push through the pain and do the job in front of him. He’d tell TJ he was tough and he could do this.

Come on, TJ, he thought at himself, firmly, trying to infuse his inner voice with Danny-ness. Think it through, step by step. Easy does it. TJ was okay at following other people’s trains of thought, but this was so much harder.

If sitting still and waiting wasn’t the best answer, what else could TJ do? He could… find somebody else, another handler. Could he use the phone Danny had been using to call Julie again? Or the Agency?

TJ carefully, slowly cracked his eyelids open, and peered at the car. Sunlight dazzled off glass and metal. Somewhere in there was Danny’s phone… right? Could TJ use it? Oh, that felt wrong, that felt like a bad Path thing to do, but it was the only way TJ could imagine of finding another handler.

Of course, it might be broken. And TJ didn’t know how if he could even find it, let alone use it to call someone specific...  

He could get up and go walk for help.  

TJ slid his eyes closed, to better contemplate this thought. It also felt… kind of bad. Danny’s voice echoed in his head. I’m not going to go off and leave a Path unsupervised. An unsupervised TJ was a bad thing that needed to be kept away from people, right?

But the Agency didn’t know where TJ and Danny were, and they wouldn’t know unless they happened to find them. Right? So TJ needed to go somewhere he’d be more likely to get found. Then the Agency would know where Danny was and they could save him!

TJ took a deep breath, set his shoulders firmly. All right.

He got to his feet.

“Hey Danny,” he said, voice wobbling only slightly. He looked deliberately away from the car, as if he was talking to the stand of weeds a few feet away, and pitched his voice loud enough to carry. “I’m going to walk up to the road, and find some people. Okay? Everything – everything is going to be all right. Don’t worry, I’ll put my blindfold back on as soon as anybody’s around, and I won’t touch anyone, and, and, and I’ll be careful.”

He waited for long enough to know Danny wasn’t going to say anything.