Cell 14
Henderson wasn’t quite Las Vegas, but it wasn’t Searchlight, either.

Surprisingly, this was Jill’s first visit to the facility in Henderson. Almost a month doing the whole government thing, one would’ve thought she would’ve been here sooner, but as she escorted a vampire through the front gate, the former attorney was impressed with the scale of things.

She was also impressed with the arsenal at her disposal. Without that weapon – it was like a stun gun on steroids – Jill would’ve never been able to apprehend the resistant monster to bring him to the Intake and Interrogation wing.

Flashing her badge to the guard, Jill pushed the vamp through the gate as it swung open, her eyes searching for an open cell. Space was becoming a premium in the facility; if Jill could guess as she saw all the creeps holed up in the cells, Project Integration had been going on for a while – and not everyone was happy about it.

“This is what you get for not playing nice,” Jill told the vampire, pushing him face-first into a wall of bars. “We offered you government pay, job security, kickass weapons … and yet you chose dark cell.

“Hope your cell doesn’t have a good view of the sunrise.”

When Oliver finally regained consciousness, he was lying on a bunk facing the wall. There was a foul taste in his mouth and a knot of the back of his head. He knew because he checked, his fingers pushing through his sweat-matted hair to touch the lump, which sent out a nauseating distress signal that made him call a quick halt to that stupidity. When he looked at his fingers, they were blood-stained.

"Fuck ..."

He lay there quietly for what felt like a long time, piecing it together. Davey's Locker. A raid. A nightstick being used on his skull. He felt like he had the grandfather of all hangovers. He rolled onto his back, timing it so his head didn't explode from the pain, then fumbled around looking for his pockets.

They'd taken his smokes, the bastards. His wallet and watch were also gone, along with his belt and his shoelaces. Oliver looked at his feet blearily, noticing the way the cross-trainers flopped on his feet due to the lack of being tied. Did they think he was planning to hang himself? If so, they knew less about him than he expected.

What time was it? There were no windows that he could see, and he wondered how long he'd been out of it. "Fuck."

Hannah. Hannah was going to be terribly worried.

"Do I at least get a phone call?"

“That depends,” Jill uttered at the voice, turning on her feet. “Does your provider have coverage out …”

Jill stopped the minute she laid eyes on the person in the cell, a lump forming in her throat. She knew on some level she’d be faced with this scenario one day – she figured running into Oliver would be a part of correcting the sins of her past and moving forward – she just never expected it this soon.

Or in this place.

“Oh,” she said, mostly to herself, tentatively approaching the bars. Oliver might’ve been in captivity, but she knew his ability and his temper. One thing she didn’t have yet was fire-retardant body armor – and she suddenly wished she had.

“Lemme guess,” she said in an uncertain, shaky voice. “They asked you to join, you said no.”

Oliver recognized the voice instantly, and he turned his head too quickly. The cell started to tilt in a slow circle, and he rolled to the right and threw up on the floor. There wasn't much of his dinner left at this point, but there was enough. Of course. Why was he not surprised?

"If you've come to gloat you can stuff it," the spellcaster said, sagging back against the thin mattress and concentrating on not passing out. "I am far beyond not in the mood." He kept his eyes closed, hoping that when he opened them again this would all be some nightmare. Even delirium tremens would be an improvement over being locked up like some criminal.

"What did they promise you, Ms. Andersen? Or is this all the reward you need, seeing me here?"

“There’s nothing to gloat over,” Jill said in a soft tone, averting her eyes – both to avoid seeing Oliver lose his lunch and to avoid making eye contact. Apologizing to Victoria had been easy, mostly because of how forgiving she knew the vampiress was. Oliver wouldn’t be do forgiving, and as guilty as Jill felt over what happened, she wasn’t so convinced she deserved his forgiveness.

But if she was serious about turning her life around, righting all the wrongs she let David Gregor and Wolfram & Hart make, she had to at least apologize. If Oliver didn’t forgive her, then he didn’t forgive her. But Jill had to make the effort.

“Just that the firm won’t come after me,” she answered. “The only reward I need is a chance to start over.”

Even in his state, he could tell she sounded different in some regard, and he turned his head much more slowly to look at her through the bars. He was tired and irritable and injured. Did they plan to get a doctor for him? His dark eyes were watchful as he lay there, and after a minute he coughed, wishing to Christ he had at least one cigarette.

"Nice concept, starting over," he said, pushing hair away from his brow. "Never see it put into practice much, though." Oliver sighed, looking up at the featureless ceiling.

"What are they planning to do with me? Rubber hoses? Bread and water? Electro-shock until I cooperate?"

“To be honest, I don’t know,” Jill whispered with a frown. “I’m not that far in the loop yet.”

Whoever or whatever brought Oliver in did a number on him, that much was certain. And, in a display of something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time, Jill found herself sad over the thought. She fished a two-way communications device from her belt, pressing the button.

“Agent Andersen reporting … I need a doctor to cell block 14.”

Putting the device back on her belt, Jill sighed and dropped to her knees. She gazed at her ex-lover with a sad guilt in her eyes, shaking her head. He probably wouldn’t believe what she was about to say, but it needed said. She had to do this.

“I’m sorry, Ollie,” she said, taking a deep breath to steel herself. “For … well, everything.”

Oliver squinted at her as if he'd never seen her before. Did he have a concussion, and now he was hallucinating? "You just apologized," he said to her, and he started to sit up very gingerly. One corner of his mouth lifted in an attempt at a smirk. "Whose Kool Aid have you been drinking?"

He managed to get himself into a seated position, and he swayed a little as vertigo grabbed for him with oily fingers. He blinked, squinted, blinked again. Good, he was only seeing one of her. No concussion, then.

"Why?"

“Because you deserve it,” she said. “You never did anything other than love me – which I realize was hard for you – and I didn’t see it. You were there for me the whole time and I kept you at a distance, so damn worried about taking over the firm and all that bullshit.”

While the words were coming easier than expected, Jill was still uneasy about the whole thing. She didn’t know if Oliver would lash out at her – unlikely in his condition, but if he did, she wouldn’t be surprised. Nor would she think she didn’t deserve it.

Garbled voices chimed in on her communications device and with a sigh, she grabbed for it again.

“Cell 14 is not a vampire or a demon,” she bit back. “He’s human … and he needs a fucking doctor. Last I checked, head wounds were pretty bad on a mortal.”

It wasn’t the language or threats she was used to making, but Jill sort of smirked to herself that she could still chew someone out without so much as batting an eyelash.

“I took you for granted,” Jill returned her attention to her ex. “And you deserve an apology, at the very least.”

He was just watching her, his eyes never leaving her face as he listened. His hands dangled in the gap between his knees as his fingers twiddled with something invisible, and he tuned out the static from the walkie-talkie so that he could concentrate more fully. A soft breath escaped from his mouth. He wished for some water.

"I loved you," he said, and his voice was strangely without anger. "For the first time ever, I loved something outside of myself." And he had, loved her until it burned him from the inside out, and she'd left him over some piece of ass whose name he couldn't even remember. Crude? Certainly, but he'd never been anything but exactly what he was. And he'd loved her.

He looked down at the floor, tilting his head slowly so he could see his unlaced shoes. "I could have ... done better. Been better. I've always been destructive. Self-destructive, destructive of others. I think it’s encoded into my DNA." His fingers twitched, toying with that invisible something again.

"I could have done things differently." He looked up at her, his expression a little closed-off and a lot vulnerable. If he asked her for a smoke, would she let him have one? "Hindsight, and all that. I ..." He cut himself off, coughed into his hand. "I made mistakes. Being in love with you wasn't one of them."

Jill smiled ever so slightly as she grabbed one of the bars, tilting her head to the side. This was going much better than she could’ve anticipated – though the fact that she hadn’t bee confrontational about the whole thing probably helped. She glanced at Oliver’s hand when she finally felt a tap on her shoulder.

Looking up, she saw a white-bearded man in a lab coat, holding what looked to be a bag of medical supplies. With a nod, she stood, pointing at Oliver. “I’m not sure what happened to him, but he’s been woozy for the last 10 minutes or so. I think he even got sick.”

Glancing at Oliver again, Jill’s smile widened a little. “I have to get going,” she said. “Long as you’re in here, I’ll look after you.”

Turning her attention back to the doctor, her smile disappeared. “You patch him up … no monkeying around with anything. I find one hair out of place, and I’ll have your head.”

Just because Oliver was a prisoner didn’t mean they could treat him like an animal.

Kneeling again, Jill added, “We’ll talk again soon, okay?” Kissing her fingers, Jill reached through the bar and placed them on Oliver’s forehead. The smile grew a little again before Jill stood and turned to leave the facility.

“Remember, doc … one hair.”

Had he been better situated, he'd have told her he met someone, told her about Hannah. This new love of his was because of Jill, in a way, as if she had prepared the way for him, and if there had been more time he'd have told her so. Might even have thanked her for it.

But his head hurt, and he supposed that once this doctor was through with him, he'd sleep for a while. If he could survive a psychiatric ward, this was going to be a cakewalk. Let them try having a nervous breakdown, see how they fared. He was tougher than they thought.

"One thing," Oliver said, and he actually started going through his pockets again before he remembered they'd cleaned him out. He looked at Jill through the bars, continued with, "If you could, go to my hotel and pay a visit to my suite. There's someone there who's probably waiting for me to come back. She's not very trusting either. She probably thinks I've fucked off to Canada or something. If you could explain it to her in a way she'd understand, I'd appreciate it."

Asking for favors was hard for him, even in here, and the spellcaster turned faintly pink around the ears as he spoke. "Please. For me."

Jill stopped and looked back over her shoulder. She smile returned again as she watched the doctor open the cell and begin his work. Oliver was going to be alright, and if this conversation was any indication, there was at least something that could be salvaged from the tatters of their relationship.

“Of course,” she said with a nod before sliding out the door.

Oliver settled back on the uncomfortable bunk, looked at the doctor warily as the other man approached. If he did get a phone call, he was dialing his mother's office. Bitch that she was, not even Corrinne would tolerate this, he didn't think. They couldn't keep him here forever.

He hoped to fucking God they couldn't, anyway.