onebehind | magician's apprentice | what if i wanted to break (rp for the_death

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magician's apprentice | what if i wanted to break (rp for the_death_card)

For all that the fight lasts maybe forty seconds before Jack gets a hand on his radio, for all that he and Jack have done this dance a hundred times before, it's the hardest thing he's ever done. He can't hold back, after all, and he can't pretend to fall for any of his little tricks. If he does either, Jack will know, suspect, and as much as he'd love to tell him, he can't. This is a test of faith, he is Jack's test of faith, and so he has to keep playing along and make it look good. It helps, he thinks, that he won't use his magic with Fuller in the other room, and Jack knows it.

It doesn't help that, for as hard as this all is, it's also easy to forget that this isn't just a game for how often he and Jack have sparred, none of it real, and so, that in mind, when he does get the radio, he slips.

"You little shit," he breathes, and while the corners of his mouth don't twitch, he doesn't smile, nothing here worth smiling about, he still freezes. The world freezes on an inhale, and half of him hopes Jack gets it now, calls him out, because he's tired of all this, while the other half is busily swearing internally. Either way, he knows he's given something away.

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Jack had known going into this that he couldn't hold back, that this wouldn't be their easy back and forth like in all the times they had practiced before. He knows Dylan is actually out to stop him this time, and that he has to deal with both his dad and his uncle. He knows he can't hold back, can't count on either of them pulling punches.

It all goes like he plans, though. He's lucky enough to slip past Dylan, to get Fuller incapacitated without actually doing that much damage (he can't help the "sorry" he blurts out as he hits him in the head with his own belt) - and then he can keep his full attention on Dylan.

It's closer than he would like considering Dylan knows his moves, and he's lucky to get hold of the handcuffs, to get him secured to the chair - and then he has a hand on the radio, which is one of the most important parts of this: he needs it to make sure he can keep the rest of the FBI's teams off his back.

He's distracted enough with the radio that he almost misses Dylan's question - and then he stops, blinking at him. Dylan's been calling him a little shit for years, now, and it's always been affectionate, always a sign that he's doing something right. He knows, of course, that Dylan knows what's really going on, that he just has his own part of this to keep up so that the FBI doesn't catch on, but that feels entirely out of character for Agent Rhodes, which means it's a slip - which means there's something else going on that he hadn't really considered since after Dylan told him someone else in the Eye had commissioned the art for their cards.

"You..." he begins - and it comes out half in Dylan's voice considering he had already been concentrating, preparing to misdirect the other teams. He swallows and starts again. "Are you....?"

"Ah, fuck," Dylan sighs, not loud enough for Jack to hear. Something in his expression changes, however -- he looks all at once exhausted, old and yet relieved, somehow, like he's been supporting the weight of the world for the last several months and it's just been lifted from his shoulders. Much as this is a wrench in the machine, a part of him is glad to have been caught, and that's why he lets Jack see that relief, see him, not bothering to try and recover.

While he doesn't immediately pull his poker face back into place, however, he does move, slipping the cuffs magically so he can scramble to his feet, reach for Jack. He knows Jack's closed him out of his head, but that doesn't stop him from seeking a connection as he touches him. He wants to ask him to trust him, so he can pull him into a headlock so he can actually talk without giving up on the show. Whether or not that actually translates, or if Jack's still deflecting, he has no idea, but either way, he still manages to get his arms around him, pulling him back against his chest. And as he leans into Jack's ear, no louder than before but much more audibly, he breathes, "Yeah. Yeah, it's me. I'm ... "

Voice breaking, he gives up on words. The answer is clear, he's sure.

Jack takes a step back when Dylan moves - but he catches up a moment later, catching that relief, catching the moment that Dylan used magic. He doesn't pull away when Dylan goes to grab him - and for the first time in a week, he drops the walls Max taught him to build to keep mentalists out and reaches for a connection himself.

"I hoped," he returns just as quietly and as much through the connection as with his actual voice. That's honest and possibly something he hasn't told Dylan even though he thought it back when he got his card - that he had hoped Dylan would be the one to bring him in.

Even if Jack never mentioned it, Dylan knows. He knows his son. Jack likely gets a sense of that, that certainty, now, too, slipping through the connection like a sob, as Dylan pulls him back against his chest.

"Yeah," he breathes, instead. A moment of pause follows, as he struggles to get a handle on himself, and then he nudges Jack's knee with his own. They can keep talking, God, he wants to, needs to talk to him, but they need to keep up with the show. Jack needs to fight back.

"Oh, shit," Jack mutters, because yeah, he knows they have an act to put up, and he braces himself, pretending to be trying to pull away, bringing the radio up again as a voice comes over it - and his voice is Dylan's when he responds.

"We're good on six; move to seven," he says over the radio before he goes to throw it, to keep Dylan from taking it from him.

There. That's done; now they go back to the charade.

Dylan pushes past him, lunging for the radio too late, and goes down on his knees as he purposefully overbalances. He shoots Jack a look, though there's no heat behind it, relief and exhaustion lingering instead, and then grabs one of the fireplace pokers as he scrambles back to his feet again.

"C'mmere," he snarls, as he starts at Jack. Beneath that, he pushes a question a Jack mentally. Does he think he can keep up like this and still carry on the fight? Also, don't forget to grab the papers on the safe in Queens.

Jack stumbles back and away, grabbing the paper as he goes, shoving it into his jacket - and then sweeping a handful of fake Euros into his hand, lighting them one at a time as he tosses them at Dylan. Dylan also gets a sense of agreement, that Jack can keep this up and "talk" at the same time.

He's sorry he still has to run, but he still needs to avoid the rest of the FBI and meet up with the other Horsemen on the bridge. He's at least less worried about Dylan or Fuller knowing him too well now, though.

Jack gets a vague sense of disapproval, as Dylan knows he has nothing to light the flash paper with and Fuller is just in the other room, but it's a brief thing. Fuller's a little too occupied, still, to be following the fight that closely, and even if he wasn't, he'd probably just think it was a trick, that Jack had a lighter, somewhere. Not to mention the fact that he's a little busy, himself, trying to keep from taking one to the face, batting each one away with the poker -- or trying to keep up his end of the conversation.

He knows Jack has to go. He wouldn't have it any other way. They still need to finish this. He needs Jack to be safe, though. He's been having nightmares about something going wrong, here, on and off for the last several weeks.

Jack dodges the swings, backing up as he does - and then reaches out with his right hand as he throws the last of the Euros with his left hand, pulling the poker out of Dylan's hand when he lets go reflexively to cover his face - and then he stops, grinning.

This might not be their usual sparring, but he's definitely taking the moment to enjoy pulling one over on Dylan.

He passes back a sense of victory for that - and more reassurance. It'll all be fine - they've done more dry runs than he can remember at this point. He trusts the Horsemen. It'll be fine.

He did, in fact, pull one over on Dylan, if the sense of confusion that meets that victory is any indication. He knows that Jack is magic and magic, both, that if he couldn't have done that with simple sleight of hand, then there are other ways, but he still doesn't understand how Jack did it -- or where the poker goes when Jack tosses it away, not able to spot the edges of an illusion or a sign of it beneath his coat.

He'll asks him about it later, he thinks. For now, he very deliberately gives up on it and grounds himself, kicking Jack back into the wall. A sense of his worry persists. He's pleased that he trusts the Horsemen, that more than part of the point, but -- please. Please be careful. It's all but killed him, being without him for a year, for having to play the role of antagonist, now. It will kill him to lose Jack, and he won't know, won't know until the end, if he's okay.

Jack falls back into a curtain hanging over the nearby window, slipping around it toward the alcove in the corner, to duck around the corner and into it. He doesn't really think he'll get away with slipping past Dylan unnoticed this time, now that Dylan does know where he is, but he needs to loop back past him to get to the door.

He promises he will - and he knows the feeling. He was homesick as hell for most of the year, homesick both for the Brownstone and for Dylan himself. He tried to keep the distance, but the few texts he did send just came at points when he couldn't stand it anymore, when he needed some little bit of contact. He's even more excited for this to be over now that he knows he's not going to have to try and figure out how to apologize for all of this.

Dylan follows him into the curtain, though he's quick to recover when he doesn't find him there, turning, wheeling around, expecting him behind him. He 'finds' him, too, his reflection in a mirror, and while he recognizes it for what it is, he still lunges forward, hands falling to either side of the road case between it and him, and pushes it into the glass. That, he thinks, should buy Jack time to get around him.

Meanwhile, he sends Jack a bit of contact, at that, the feeling like hands on his shoulders, warm and light but solid, and entirely reflexive. He misses him still. He'll see him again, soon, when they get to the carousel and he can touch him for real. He's sorry he made Jack think he ever had to apologize to him, explain at all, but entrance to the Eye includes a test of faith and he was Jack's. He had to know he could do what needed to be done, with or without him and his approval.

When the mirror shatters, Jack makes his move, aiming to slip past Dylan and head for the apartment door across from the alcove. It'll take him past the kitchen, too, but he can still hear that Fuller is still struggling with the disposal.

Jack lets out a breath at the feeling, as the warmth washes over him through the connection, and passes back his own. He knows this was a test, has figured for years that the Eye would, at some point, want him to pass a test of his own instead of being a member by virtue of being Dylan's son. It both was and wasn't what he expected, really - but that's all something they can discuss later, when this is all over.

For now, he needs to keep to the plan and timeline, which means first getting out of the apartment and putting Dylan behind him again, as much as he doesn't want to.

They can talk about anything Jack wants, later. They have a lot they need to talk about beyond that, like him apologizing for all the shit he put Jack through, all the things they both said in the interrogation room, and -- well, here, Jack. Have a stab of apology now as he takes a couple of steps forward and levels a kick at Jack's knees, trying to bring him down. Just because he needs Jack to get away doesn't mean he can make it easy on him. He has to be able to say he tried. Jack has to be able to say that he did, if anyone in the Eye takes issue with any part of this, later.

Jack catches the apology but doesn't have a lot of time to respond to it considering the kick connects and considering he goes down hard on his hands and knees. He hesitates a moment before he makes a grab for the cards nearby and turns over onto his back, scrabbling backwards a bit. It's probably a good thing no one else can see right now, because he can't quite keep the smirk off his face now as he produces the cards, popping an eyebrow at Dylan.

He doesn't quite pull Neo's "come at me" hand gesture, but it's somehow implied anyway.

"Seriously?" Dylan mutters, less surprised that Jack went for the cards, and more -- well, there's a sense of resigned amusement to his tone, to the cadence of his thoughts. Do you really hate him so much as to give him a dozen cardboard paper cuts, Jack? Does he really hate himself that much as to come at him, knowing what's coming?

He must. He ran into the fray in New Orleans, let all the people Merritt had hypnotized dogpile him, after all. And so he stalks towards Jack, now, too, hands coming up to at least keep the cards away from his face. Come at him, indeed.

"Yep," Jack returns an instant before he throws the first card, angling it to whip past Dylan's face - he'll feel a little bad if he does actually hit him, but he's also maybe not as accurate as he could be with it, considering at the same moment he's throwing the cards, he's also scrambling to his feet, whipping cards at Dylan as he backs up for the door to the apartment.

Dylan flinches every time Jack looses a card, whether or not they get close to him -- though some do, some get more than just close for all that Jack isn't being as accurate as he could be. Again, though, he signed up for this; he doesn't fault Jack for what he leaves him with in the way of battle scars. They'll look good later, as part of the story, and he doubts they'll actually scar.

Keep going, he urges, that in mind, as Jack gets close to the door. A flutter of nerves rises up beyond that, as he's still worried about something going terribly wrong during the chase, and he'll have no way of knowing until the end.

Jack throws one last card at Dylan - and then wings one into the kitchen at Fuller, who recoils, the garbage disposal whirring anew as it gets a fresh hold on the coat.

Jack doesn't respond beyond a flash of acknowledgement, though, running out of the apartment and making for the laundry chute, fumbling for the papers when they start to slip out of his pocket. He puts them in his mouth as he gets to the chute, grabbing the bar and swinging up onto the opening, to drop through it.

There's a sense of resigned amusement as Jack goes for the chute. That wasn't strictly part of the plan (he was supposed to get away from the FBI, when they took the bait, get to the car, the bridge, but the how was open-ended), but it's admittedly Jack's best option. Still, it's not going to be fun to follow, and he both hates him, mostly jokingly, for making him, and is impressed by his creativity. There's a reason he picked him, back on the street, years ago. There's a reason he picked him for this, this plan. Good. Good show, Jack.

Muttering a swear in spite of his pride, because of it, he watches Jack descend for several feet before finally committing to following, slipping into the opening the same way, using the bar above it for leverage. He doesn't bother to brace himself on the way down. It'll be a hell of a landing, but he needs to make up for those seconds, lost.

Jack glances up when he sees Dylan peer down at him, letting himself slide a little more quickly - and then takes his hands off the sides of the chute to try and keep ahead of Dylan. It doesn't work all that well, though he does manage to keep him back as they hit the bottom and fall onto the mattresses left there for this purpose. He loses his grip on the papers as he lands, rolling head over heels to one end, and he immediately turns back to try and make a grab for them before Dylan recovers.

Dylan collides with -- something not the mattresses on the way down. A table, he thinks. Either way, Jack gets a flash of pain, bit back too late, as it takes him a second to get his head back on straight. Another flicker of apology follows, as he didn't mean to force that on Jack, and then he lunges for the papers.

"Gimme that."

Christ, he's going to be sore, by the time they make it to the carousel.

Jack passes back a quick flash of concern in return for the apology, but he's already moving to grab the papers, stepping back up onto the mattresses. He also means to step over Dylan once he has a hand on them again - but his foot slips, and he sends a flash of apology of his own when he steps on Dylan instead. He's already making to run before he gets a response, though, bolting out of the store room and through the maintenance hall, pulling down a stack of mop buckets as he runs for the stairs, shoving the papers back into his jacket as he goes.

Dylan follows, managing to avoid the barrels albeit not with the greatest amount of grace. He's less lucky when it comes to avoiding who he assumes is building maintenance as he sticks his head out of the office. Hissing, Dylan pushes him out of the way, another apology roiling through the connection, this time like distant thunder, not directed at Jack, but not something he feels the need to clamp down on, desperate to keep himself open as long as he can, if only to feel Jack.

(It's been a long year, and he's tired of missing that piece of himself, tired of missing his son.)

Either way, a second later he's crashing onto the street and into a pair of agents, practically in a heap.

Jack still hasn't closed the connection down either - and isn't likely to, considering how long he has had to have it shut down, how much he's been missing Dylan - and there's still a sense of an adrenaline rush and concentration from his side, as Jack maneuvers through the traffic.

Back with Dylan, one of the agents manages to extricate himself long enough to point down the street - at about the same time a flashy black sedan comes up the street with a familiar blonde behind the wheel.

Dylan's looking in the other direction when the car stops, as if he can see through the buildings and tell where Jack's headed -- as if he doesn't already know. Either way, he only keeps it up for a second before heading for the passenger seat. He spares an idle glance towards Bradley's car, to make sure he's still on the hook, before getting in.

"Alright, follow 'em," he orders as he slams the door behind him.

Alma doesn't step on the gas, though, glaring at Dylan as he slides into the passenger seat. "Don't ever tell me to wait in the car," she orders him loudly.

Dylan gives her a long, incredulous look before finally, simply, he tells her, "I didn't have tactical command." Which is -- mostly the truth. He at least made it look like it wasn't his call, never mind the fact that he'd pulled the strings there, to make sure Alma wasn't involved. Considering how fast she'd caught up to Daniel in New Orleans, she couldn't be. She might have actually caught Jack.

Alma doesn't seem at all convinced by that argument.

"You have to trust me!" she continues. "Promise me next time that you'll back me up."

"Could we have this conversation later, please?" Dylan asks, eyes darting in the direction Jack's car went. He's tempted for a moment, to reach along the connection, to suggest to Jack that he wait, but he thinks better of it. For all he knows, someone else is hot on his heels. He doesn't want him to get honestly caught because of him.

So far, no one else is after Jack, but he still has to balance getting to the bridge in the right time frame with making sure the FBI is following, so he hasn't gotten too far away, yet.

Which is probably good, considering Alma still hasn't moved the car and is still glaring at him. "No!"

"Okay, fine, I promise, now go," Dylan relents. This really isn't going to come up later, so it's an easy promise to make, and whether or not Jack has a strict timetable to keep to or that he's aware of it, they're still losing time. They need to go and now. He needs to be there for the crash to get the Alcorn papers out of the car. He needs to know that Jack wasn't in there, period, that nothing went wrong.

Something in Alma's expression says she knows they're not going to actually discuss this later, that he's just agreeing to get things moving again, but she just looks at him for another moment before she puts the car back into gear and steps on the gas, making a hard left turn to the sound of a horn from another car that had started through the intersection.

It takes her a couple of turns to spot the black FBI issue sedan weaving through traffic, and she cuts off another car getting behind Jack as he makes a couple of hard rights of his own.

Jack speeds up as they get in behind him, blowing through intersections and dodging around traffic, swooping behind a truck backing out of its loading bay and into Alma's path.

Alma throws the car into reverse and whips the car around, heading down the next street, scanning traffic for the FBI car.

Dylan throws out a hand to brace himself as she brakes, a genuine flicker of panic running through him. It's short-lived, however, replaced by focus as she turns them around, and as they head back into traffic, he spots Jack's car at once. He's all he can do not to smile. So far, so good, and the chase is fun, even if this wasn't how he imagined it.

"There he is," he tells Alma as they speed around a corner. Reaching for the radio Alma brought with her, he tells whoever might be listening, "We're heading East on the FDR Drive." Later, he'll argue that he made that mistake on purpose, hoping to baffle their pursuit, however briefly. In reality -- well, it's an honest mistake. Anyone could have made it.

Alma doesn't take her eyes off the road, intent on keeping the sedan in sight, but she does call back, "This is not east!"

Seriously, what?

"North, north," he corrects, being purposefully obtuse, now. That misstep won't throw anyone directly behind them, but anyone further out will start off headed in the wrong direction, if only for a minute or two before someone corrects them. He can write it off as just not being familiar with New York, anymore, later, for all that he apparently lives in Vegas. "We're headed north on the FDR Drive."

Though, speaking of the cars behind them, "Fuller, where are you?"

He needs the lifeline, and he doesn't want to reach out to Jack, even if, mercifully, he can still feel him.

Alma shoots him another confused look but doesn't respond again, returning her attention to the road and keeping up with Jack.

Jack's side of the connection is still open - he has no intentions of closing it again now that he knows he doesn't have to - but he's distracted, too, with the road in front of him and keeping an eye out for the other Horsemen as they approach the bridge.

"Right here," Fuller says into the radio a moment later. "Trying to catch up to you now."

Dylan doesn't get the chance to answer, hands shooting out to brace himself reflexively, as a truck swerves in front of them. He breathes out, as she wheels around it, and takes another breath in, holding it as they turn onto the bridge. This is it. The rest of this little ballet has been a cakewalk compared to this. This is the hard part, this is crunch time, this is where, if anything's going to go wrong, it will, and God, he hopes it doesn't.

"Good," he tells Alma, despite all that. "Just stay with him."

Alma doesn't respond, just shifting gears as she keeps her attention ahead of them, lips pursed in concentration.

Jack weaves easily between cars, swerving around a taxi and then cutting hard into the right lane to slip past a bus. There's also a feeling through the connection like a huffed breath out, like he'd been holding it and is finally exhaling - just before the bus swerves into their lane, cutting them off.

Alma slams on the brakes - but so does the driver of the taxi, which means they're, for the moment, boxed in.

Dylan mirrors her, slamming on imaginary brakes, too, reflexively. When he relaxes, and he feels Jack's relief wash over him, he lets out a breath and dumbly, dizzy almost, declares, "You're behind a bus."

Mentally, finally he dares to reach out for Jack, his own relief adding to his. They're done now. The hard part is over. Now Jack is, like him, behind the scenes until the end.

Alma yanks the wheel back to the left to get back out from behind the bus, and ahead, the decoy car deploys from the front of the bus while, unseen, Jack pulls ahead and away, disappearing into traffic.

Jack reaches back through the connection. He's good, he's got the rest of this under control, and he'll see him at the park - and, most importantly, he loves him.

Dylan returns that love and fiercely, then pulls back, not quite closing off the connection again but at least turning the volume down on it. It'll help, going into the crash knowing that it's not really Jack in there, but it's still not going to be entirely acting that gets him through the next several minutes. He's still going to feel what it might be like to lose him, even if it's not real, not real, notreal, and he doesn't want Jack to have to suffer through that, too. He'll survive, though, and yes, he'll see him at the park.

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magician's apprentice | what if i wanted to break (rp for the_death_card)

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