Sadie Shepherd (sadieshep) wrote in beeocalypse, @ 2009-04-09 21:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | gabe, ketty, sadie |
Base; Thursday morning, Sadie, Gabe, Ketty
They never had taken Gabe out of the chair in the interrogation room. He'd gotten one glass of water, and then had eventually given in and used the cup as his toilet. It was either that or piss himself and really, he already smelled pretty rank. At some point a guard had been gracious enough to remove it. Gabe was surprised the guard hadn't just dumped it on him. With the cameras on him, they hadn't taken any more swings at him, but he'd fallen asleep with his head hanging down and dark bruises and little scrapes around the edges of the shackles from the weight of them chains and the shackles.
At some point early in the morning, they splashed half a bucket of cold water on him. His hair was still a little damp around the edges and he was half asleep at the moment, wishing that Ketty would just come in and kick him around a little until he coughed up the information. His eyes were bloodshot and red around his eyelids, the rest of his eyes had dark circles under them. His lip was split from the backhand the other day and he still had those bruises on his arms and face and under his clothes of varying stages of healing.
"You can't let him get to you. Just remember that. He's going to do whatever he can to survive, and that'll involve playing you."
Sadie frowned and turned away from beat up Gabe in the mirror to look at her sister. "I really don't want to do this."
Ketty nodded a little bit and reached her hand out to rub up and down her sister's arm. "It'll be all right. If it gets to be too much, we'll take you out. We'll all be watching." She indicated the other soldiers in the darkened room next to the interrogation room. There were more in there than there had been the day before when Ketty had been doing the questioning.
Sadie sighed pathetically and Ketty took that as an okay to go. They tested the little speaker they had hooked up to Sadie's ear, briefed her on what she should and shouldn't do, and then led her out into the hall. At the door to the interrogation room, Ketty gave her sister a hug, and then headed back into the observation room. Sadie closed her eyes and steeled herself for the coming confrontation, and then the guard let her in.
She stepped inside and took a quick glance at the mirror before looking at Gabe. It was a good thing they'd let her take a look at his current state before they sent her in. It was less of a shock like this, but still pretty painful to look at.
Finally! Gabe lifted his head a little when he heard the door but he was pretty exhausted and sore so it took his eyes a little while to rise from his chained wrists to see who was entering. His eyes opened wide when he spotted Sadie and he blinked a number of times as his mouth fell open, positive that he was hallucinating. That had started happening sooner than he thought it would. When he finally realized that she wasn't just his imagination running away with him, he shook his head. Why were they doing this to Sadie? He shook his head a little more and turned his eyes away from Sadie's shamefully. He stared through the mirror, too tired to hide much emotion as his eyes filled a tiny bit. "Don't do this to her..." He stated quietly though he knew they'd hear it.
The frown that was already on Sadie's face deepened, and she hesitated a bit as she looked back at the mirror as well. Her sister coaxed her on over the earbud, and after taking a moment to breathe, Sadie walked over to the table. She pulled the chair out and sat down, torn between staring at Gabe and looking away. Instead she looked at the edge of the table right in front of him.
"What's the WA's plan for moving the border east?" she asked in what was mostly a reluctant mumble.
When she spoke, Gabe looked at her. He couldn't help it. It felt like it'd been forever since he'd spoken to her and the last time had been when she was terrified of him and thought he was going to kill her. And now she couldn't even look at him and he was the one that had done something - a lot of somethings - wrong. His eyes started blurring a bit and the bridge of his nose burned a lot. He shook his head and looked at the mirror again. "Coward." Specifically, he meant Ketty. He turned his eyes back to Sadie and focused on memorizing every detail of her features and how miserable she looked since it was his fault. He wanted to apologize to her. He wanted to tell her he loved her and that he hadn't meant for any of this to happen. She didn't want to hear it, he was positive.
So he sniffled out of necessity and sat up straighter. He shook his head at her, keeping his mouth shut only because if he spoke, he was going to answer her question. Ketty had to know this was going to work in her favor even if he resisted at first. He looked back at Sadie, focusing on her eyes now even if she was looking at the table. He wanted to tell her not to let them bully her into this but it was too late.
Sadie almost flinched when he spoke, and it took her a few seconds to realize that he wasn't actually talking to her. She brought her eyes up to him and then looked at the mirror as Ketty told her not to worry about it and to just ask the question again.
After swallowing down a lump in her throat, Sadie turned back to Gabe. When she saw the tears in his eyes, her face contorted a little bit and she turned to where her sister was. She really couldn't do this. It was akin to torture, surely. Ketty told her again not to let him affect her and to keep going. They needed to find out the information and the fastest way to do that was through Sadie.
Sadie turned back to Gabe one more time and then brought her eyes back down. "What's the plan for mov-" Her voice cracked a bit and she cleared her throat. "What is it?" she finished up quickly.
The second time Sadie turned away, Gabe turned his eyes down. She couldn't even look at him. She'd let him explain in the bathroom and part of him had been holding on to the hope that maybe she didn't completely despise him even if there was only some small repressed part of her that still loved him, he'd take it. But she was here only because her sister was intent to put her through torture to get information out of him. All because she knew Gabe was the one who wasn't willing to hurt Sadie like that.
He cleared his own throat. "I need a map." He told her, lifting his eyes but only to the table top right in front of her.
Sadie nodded and looked to the mirror. Ketty told her that they'd send one in, and Sadie nodded again. "They're getting a map," she said to Gabe in a stilted tone. She looked at him only briefly before bringing her eyes back down to the table.
And then they had to wait. Sadie tried not to think about the last time they were together before everything went to crap, but she was having difficulty controlling her brain.
Gabe nodded but said nothing else at first. He wanted just to remain quiet, keep his eyes down and just answer the questions they fed to her. He wasn't stupid, he knew they had her hooked up and were feeding her questions. But he couldn't keep his eyes from looking at her, which only caused a number of memories to creep in. "I'm sorry they forced you into this." He said. He looked at the mirror and then back at her.
"I'll tell whoever they send in anything else they want to know if they let you leave so you don't have to be here," He looked at the mirror. "She doesn't have to be here and you know it. You're a coward! You're older than her! You're supposed to protect her!" He shook his hands a few times to rattle the chains hooked up to his wrist shackles. "You're torturing your own sister!" He shouted.
Sadie winced as he yelled at the mirror. Ketty swore, irritated, but then started telling Sadie a few choice things over the earbud.
"You know I love you, right?" Ketty asked from inside the room.
Sadie frowned at the mirror, not looking like she particularly felt the sentiment at the moment. "Yeah," she mumbled.
Ketty said a few more things to calm her sister down before Sadie turned back to Gabe. "Please stop yelling," she requested, a pained look on her face.
Gabe shook his head. "No. I'm sorry." He told her in a quiet calm tone, and he really was sorry too. He lifted his hands as high as they would go and brought the metal shackles down on the edge of the table loudly. Head turned and eyes on the mirror only. "Get her out of here or you get nothing!" He shouted, even though it wasn't true once they got the damn map in there. They had to know it wasn't. The look on Sadie's face had only served to anger him further. There was a tear or two sliding down one of his cheeks, visible only because it made a path down the dirt on his left cheek.
Sadie winced at all the noise he was making and she scooted back in her seat. "Stop it!" she pleaded. "You're scaring me." Scaring her in all sorts of ways, what with the crying he was doing as well.
Right after she spoke, the door behind her opened and a guard came in a map.
Gabe's hands sunk down into his lap, rattling some of the chains along the floor lazily as they fell. He frowned even as the door opened and watched Sadie. For a moment he thought maybe they'd told her to feign the fear but the way she'd scooted back, he knew it couldn't be the case. He was left to stare at the map on the table. The shouting was done and the noise was over. The map was here, and they weren't going to let Sadie leave until he gave them the answers. He lifted his hands, both together since they were chained.
He reached the edge of the map and tugged it toward him with his fingertips. He blinked again and another tear went sliding down, this time along the outside of his right cheek, as he unfolded the map enough to so Sinai and the WA border before he let it drop to the table. Then he looked down at it and blinked a few times to clear his vision.
As Gabe looked down at the map, Sadie turned back to the mirror and scowled at it. Then she looked back at him. "Tell me everything you know," she said as though she was repeating something she was told to say. Because she was.
Gabe nodded. He reached out his right hand further than his left, his finger, all but his index, extended. They were dirty and bruised, some of his knuckles cracked and scabbed and blood dried around his fingernails. He pointed to a spot to the south along interstate 29. "They're preparing positions to take out, Dell Rapids." He dragged his finger north from Dell Rapids and then west along route 34, "Madison," He added, sliding his finger west from Madison to route 81 and then north, past the west wall of Sinai, "Arlington," He turned his finger east at route 14 and brought it back to Interstate 29 again. "And Bookings." He looked up at Sadie, his nose still burning.
The area was sparsely populated enough that they would be able to do it under one condition. "On the same date." He told her. If they took all those communities out in the same day, they'd have access to the major roads into and around the city, surrounding it. Once they had control of the walled city, and dispatched of the resistors, well it wouldn't be hard to starve out the rest of the surrounding communities and pillage whoever decided to revolt. He decided to take a moment and let whoever on the other side of the mirror transcribe that down.
Sadie nodded, but she wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying so much as looking at his hands. She was feeling all conflicted again as she wondered if her sister was the cause of any of his many bruises. She probably was. She was angry enough. Sadie was angry too, but at the same time she kind of wanted to take care of him. It was a horrible mix of feelings.
In the earbud, Sadie could hear Ketty talking to the other people in the room. Then she told her what to say next.
"When?" Sadie asked, looking up from his hands to his face.
Gabe leaned over the map and shook his head. "It was supposed to happen late December," said as he sat hunched forward with his weight resting on his elbows to give his wrists a break. Soon enough the sores on them from the shackles were going to get infected, he was sure. One of the tears he kept blinking away to clear his eyesight slid down his chin and fell off of it into the map. He reached out to Pukwana and slid his thumb across it.
"They've taken most of I-90 to Mitchell." He spoke quietly, in a sad tone. "They've been masquerading as nomads. People scatter to save themselves...die in the wilderness. Too scared to return home." He lifted his eyes to Sadie's. "They had to change the date because of me." He said, speaking just to her. "They couldn't get accurate information from me, it was postponed. It was too important and I was unreliable." He dropped his eyes away so she wouldn't have to look at him.
"What do you mean?" Sadie frowned, ignoring the question Ketty had just told her to ask. She'd heard about false supply run information and the supposed reason behind the arsonist, but she wanted to hear it from him. Even though she shouldn't believe it.
Gabe left his eyes on the map. He used the thumb he'd moved across Pukwana to wipe that excess water from the tear, which caused a smudge from the dirt. He looked up at her question. He knew it couldn't have been what they told her to ask, but the fact that she asked it was something. He opened his mouth to respond but then thought better of it. Anything he said, her sister was going to claim as a lie anyway and Sadie no to reason to believe it either. He shook his head. Even if he told her and even if she believed him, they were going to kill him eventually, and it wouldn't be right to put her through that. He wanted so badly to make his case to her somehow. But he just shook his head. "It doesn't matter now," He sniffled a little and lifted his hands to pass one of his palms over his cheeks to dry them.
Then he cleared his throat and sat up straighter. "They were posting on weather forums. They stopped trusting me when they sent in the firestarter so they've moved on to a backup code. I don't know what it is or how far they've pushed it back. At least another month or two now that you've got me." He nodded. "Might've even picked new outer communities to ambush since I knew these." He went on, hoping Sadie would just drop it and kept asking whatever they told her to so he could get her out of here sooner.
Sadie didn't know how to respond to what he said. Well, she knew what to ask next because her sister was insisting she ask it, but Sadie wasn't really listening. "Did you move here just so you could kill my sister?" she asked instead.
Gabe hesitated before he lifted his eyes to look at Sadie. "I didn't know she was the one who killed him until we talked at your bar, after those three fires. Then I found his tags." He told her without looking away from her eyes. "If I was going to kill her for it, I would've pulled the trigger when they busted the door down." They were going to kill him anyway, and they wouldn't have been able to interrogate him if he was dead.
"I couldn't knowingly do to you what she did to me. He was all I had until..." Gabe cleared his throat again and rolled his eyes up then shut them before he shook his head and let out a slow shaky breath. Too emotional. He didn't want her to think he was just feeding her bullshit because they put her in here and it would somehow keep him alive longer. It wouldn't extend his life and that was fine. He'd known that when he'd gone into her bathroom.
"You have to play by the rules now." He shook his head. "Stop asking your own questions." He pleaded. "What are they telling you to ask?"
Ketty was getting worked up in Sadie's ear, telling her not to get off topic. Sadie was tempted to pull the earbud out, but she was afraid they might pull her out of the room before she got a chance to ask all she needed to ask. She ignored both Ketty and Gabe's requests and continued, frowning. "What would you have done if you found out about her and they weren't trying to capture you? Like if it was any other day and you found out that she killed your brother?"
Gabe frowned when Sadie ignored his, and most likely whatever Ketty was yelling in Sadie's ear. He didn't look away from her because that would just make him look guilty. "I spent over six years of my life living off of nothing but anger. Blinding, rageful, angry hatred." He said said through a tight jaw to keep his eyes from burning and filling again. "I lived, dreamed and waited for the moment I found out the truth." He frowned. "And when it finally came, I didn't want it and I couldn't do anything about it. I know what it's like to lose that person." He leveled his gaze on her again and repeated. "I couldn't knowingly do that to you." He wondered if she was going to be satisfied enough by his answer to move on to the other questions. There was a quiet apology at the end of that but he wasn't sure, himself, how loudly he'd said it or if she'd even heard it.
Sadie heard it and it only made her frown further. She didn't really know what else to say to that. So he wouldn't have tried to hurt Ketty even if his own life wasn't in danger? Well, that was what he said, anyway. She deflated some and sat back in her chair.
"How many outposts are there?" she asked quietly, giving in to Ketty's incessant demands.
Gabe frowned at the way she sunk back against her chair. He wished this was over for her. He was pretty certain, more so now than before, that it would only be over when he was dead. He sat forward slowly, afraid of scaring her since she said the screaming before had scared her. He squinted at the map, and pointed. "Mitchell," He said, pointing out the spot on I-90 that he'd indicated before. He moved further north on the map and pointed to a small lake town. "Lake Kampeska, north of Watertown." He said.
"Those are their outposts. They'll supply the soldiers before they make their attacks. Lake Kampeska is more vulnerable. The I-90 feeds into Mitchell from Pukwana. Fort Thompson and Chamberlain have easy access to it to supply them with fresh bodies, extra arms and food and medical supplies should they run low." He paused as he looked at the map and turned his eyes up to Sadie. "They have two man scout teams as far east as the cross section of I-90 and route 81." He told her. "Bout every ten kliks there's a scout team, ready to make any ambush they have to. "There are only two scout teams for Lake Kampeska. On along the 212 and 81 intersection, one westward along 212."
Most of this went over Sadie's head as she wasn't really paying attention. She didn't have to anyway, so it was all right. "Have they taken over Pukwana?" she asked as instructed as she looked over the bruises on his face.
Gabe nodded. "In November." He answered, watching her eyes and wondering what she was thinking about his dirty, beat up appearance. His hair was gross and greasy, parts of it matted to his head. He was starving. His stomach was probably grumbling but all it had in it was one glass of water. The stitches in his leg from the bullet hole at some point had popped and there was blood on his pant leg where it had clotted to the wound. He thought that was already infected. He had been sweating a little for an hour or two so he looked fairly clammy amongst the bruises, dirt and dark circles covered blood shot eyes. He was a mess, and he smelled too.
Yeah, Sadie couldn't miss the smell. She looked at the scabbed over cut on his lip as Ketty and the other soldiers conferred behind the glass. "Did they really leave you in here all night?" That had to be cruel and unusual punishment. Shit like this was part of the reason why Sadie couldn't deal with the military.
Gabe frowned at Sadie's question. He nodded. "Yeah," He answered quietly. They could've done worse, they should have. Now that she was here, he knew why they hadn't. He wondered if that meant they would tonight. He was a military guy, so he understood exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it. He wondered if when they brought him his glass of water tonight, it was going to be in the same cup, just dumped out, not washed out, that they'd taken away this morning.
It was a good thing Sadie didn't know about that. She knitted her brow quite a bit, feeling her eyes getting wet. A little over a week ago, he'd been sleeping in her bed, and now he was sleeping strapped to an uncomfortable folding chair. Over the earbud, Ketty told her not to concern herself with that kind of thing and to get back on track.
Sadie turned to look at the mirror. "You left him in a chair," she frowned. Ketty told her that he was lucky that he got even that.
Gabe shook his head. "Sadie, no-," He said when he saw her eyes but then she turned around and was speaking through the mirror to her sister and he sunk back. He frowned. "They could've beaten me, or killed me by now," He said to Sadie to get her attention again. He frowned but he definitely felt his nose burn a little after she pretty much tried to defend him. "They should have done one of the two or both. But they haven't yet." He reasoned. "The more you protest, the longer you have to sit here and be subjected to this torture." He told her. "Stop making it harder on yourself." He pleaded. He was still angry they were using her, that her sister was using her. How did this make Ketty any better than a WAer?
Sadie turned back to Gabe and arched her eyebrows with a humorless laugh. "So they haven't beaten you?" she asked, looking him over again.
Gabe shook his head. "So some of the guards hit me. They haven't beaten me." He insisted looking down at himself. He hesitated a moment before he looked her in the eye again. "Sadie...this only ends with me dead." It was a fact. He stated it. He wasn't even sure how she was going to react to it. Regardless of which army did it, this was truly only going to end when he was dead.
Sadie stared at him as Ketty told her not to listen to him. She blinked a few times and a tear rolled down her cheek. "How..." She couldn't figure out how to phrase what she was thinking. "Why did you do this?" she asked finally, her voice getting higher as she tried to hold back some more tears. "If you knew that it wouldn't end well, whether you were caught or did your job, then why did you tell me you loved me? Why were you with me at all?"
Ketty muttered something about it being because Gabe was shitty at his job.
Gabe frowned. He would have given so many things to be able to reach over and wipe that tear away. He wasn't sure how he should answer, or how to do so without his own eyes filling up more. "Because I do." He said before he could force the sentence to stay buried in his throat. He frowned afterward. "You can believe me or believe that it was just part of the act all along. Either way won't change the way I feel." He told her even though he wanted nothing more than for her to believe him. "I didn't lie about that." He insisted. He paused a moment, wondering when Ketty was going to show mercy and give her sister at least a break.
"I was picked because they knew I had no reason to live. All I wanted was to find the person who killed my brother." He went on after a moment. "I had no family. I had no one. I was angry. The supply run he died on was approved by your government and my brother died because your army didn't share the right information and my brother wound up dead when they attacked. I wanted revenge and the mission would take me right where I wanted to be. I didn't care then about getting caught because it didn't matter if I died, and then..." He shook his head a little and lifted his eyes from where they'd been on his hands to look at her. Yep, his eyes were all burn-y again. The bridge of his nose too. He set his jaw to blink them away. "I'm sorry I hurt you, I tried to back off," And he had, but obviously it had been too late by then.
Sadie felt pretty crushed, which was some feat considering she'd been crushed more than a few times over the course of the past week. But the person he was describing with all the anger and the need for revenge was not the person she fell in love with. Those were some pretty significant personality traits there, right? Yeah, of course. That wasn't Eli, who was all flirty and charming and super-helpful. It was someone who was bitter with a death wish. Very different.
"You didn't do a very good job," Sadie frowned at him before turning to the mirror. "I'm done with this." Ketty protested in her ear, but Sadie pulled the earbud out so she didn't have to hear it anymore.
"I know," Gabe answered quietly at her first comment. He let out a slow shaky breath when she pulled the earbud out. He wanted to go on to explain that the angry, bitter Gabe came after the flirty, charming and super-helpful. Then the angry and bitter took over, for the better part of a decade. And then Sadie happened. Instead he just watched her, waiting for someone to open the door and let her out. He kept his eyes on her instead of away from her because he was positive it would be the last time he was ever going to see her. It was better just to let her think of him as the angry, bitter asshole spy guy who just played her, though, right? "I already said I'd answer any of their questions if they let you out of here." He finally said, quietly.
"I know," Sadie frowned. "So it doesn't matter if I go." She glanced at the mirror and then looked back at him. Midian said they probably wouldn't kill him since he had too much information. But after they tapped that resource he'd be pretty useless and there were plenty of people in town (her sister and Slate in particular) who would have loved to see him dead. So yeah, this was probably going to be the last time Sadie ever saw him.
Her face contorted as she tried to stave off some more crying. She reached down into her pant pocket. There was something she'd brought with her. The stupid locket. She pulled it out, off the chain, and turned it over in her hand. She hadn't known what to do with the thing, but she knew she didn't want it anymore. Giving it to Gabe seemed appropriate, seeing as he was the reason she no longer wanted it. Maybe it would help with closure or something.
"Here...I don't need this anymore," she quietly before she put it down on the table and slid it toward Gabe. A guard was likely to come in any second, so Sadie moved to stand up.
Gabe nodded slow when she first spoke, frowning more than he already had, if possible. His face contorted a little when he saw the item she'd slide across the table. He had noticed that the chain was missing around her neck but it wasn't like there was time to bring it up, or y'know like he would have. Now he didn't have to. He lifted his hands to reached it but instead of picking it up, just ran his index finger across it first much in the way he'd run his thumb over Pukwana on the map at one point. He frowned and just nodded a little bit. He didn't want to apologize again because it didn't really mean anything, he supposed.
The door opened behind Sadie and she turned to look over at it. One of the guards came in and walked over to put his hand on her arm and lead her out. Sadie looked over her shoulder at Gabe for just a moment before she was brought out into the hall. Ketty was waiting there. She told Sadie that she did really well and tried to give her a hug, but Sadie wasn't having any of it. She just wanted to leave the base.