Work Text:
2007
Somewhere in the Zagros Mountains
Rusty, neglected hinges let out a mournful screech, protesting their rough treatment. Light from the hallway carved a slash into the dark cell and a voice, gravelly from the desert sand, ground out orders in Farsi. The butt of a rifle struck Flynn between the shoulder blades, knocking him off balance and sending him tumbling to his knees on the concrete floor of the cell.
All in all, not his worst day yet.
Not his best, by far, but not terrible.
At least he'd found himself in a top-notch desert lair. It came equipped with the amenities he'd come to expect from warlords. The lankier of the two guards grabbed his shackles - shackles, really, how quaint - and dragged him over to the back wall, latching his wrists to the bare loop of metal embedded in the concrete. Really, that was an entirely unnecessary overreaction.
"Come now, gentlemen, you don't have to roll out the red carpet for me." Flynn said, lips quirked in a sardonic grin.
From across the room came a quiet release of air, almost like a scoff.
Another, angrier bellow in Farsi (and really, he could read cuneiform fluently and had learned the language of the birds in a matter of hours, but he had to be mystically displaced into an area where he had no grasp on the modern dialect? How was that fair?).
"Shut up, dog!" The first guard continued in English, his accent thick. "You tell us how you entered the chambers of Khashayar the Enlightened, or you end up like him!"
Whoops, that was an oversight. Flynn hadn't noticed the other party in the room- though in his defense, he'd been distracted by the guys with the guns. Squinting in the shadows, Flynn could just make out a shadowy form chained against the opposite wall.
Guard number two, the lad with a patchy beard who'd pistol whipped him thirty seconds after he'd teleported into the center of the warlord's lair in a whirl of ethereal material and nausea, helpfully pushed the door open a scootch further to cast his cellmate in stark light.
Top-notch amenities and five-star treatment, no less.
The man was alive, but laboured breathing and a pattern of vivid bruising that trailed down his left shoulder and across his ribs in a rainbow of delayed healing showed that he had been worked over multiple times.
His head was tucked against his right shoulder, which distributed his weight disproportionately on his right side and couldn't be doing his breathing any favours. Yet his squared left shoulder (anterior displacement, atypical with prolonged hyperextension of the arms - had to be traumatic in nature) and a pattern of vibrant purple bruising (blood collecting in the cavity concurrent with delayed reduction) could account for the strained posture. His chest and bare arms were littered with scars, beyond number, beyond sense. His face was hidden behind curtains of long, dark hair that was matted with blood.
Guard number one, the heavyset, vocal one of the pair -or at least the one who spoke more than a smattering of English- gestured dramatically toward the other prisoner. "Behold what happens to foolish dogs who try to rob from Khashayar the Enlightened."
"Seems pretty terrifying, alright. But need I remind you, I'm not here to steal anything. I'm trespassing. Now, if I could just have my Cloak back, I'll be on my way-" Flynn quipped, and earned a swift boot to the ribs for his wit from Guard Two (US Army-issued desert mountain combat boots, courtesy of the friendly neighbourhood black market). His common sense, which for ten years had sounded like a British woman, tutted in his head.
(Note to self, try to stop poking the bears.)
But, he replied to no one, it was so much fun...
"You have death wish, American? You want piece of this?" Guard One spat, reaching down to grab the other prisoner's jaw and lifting it so his face was clearly visible.
And Flynn's heart stopped.
The hair was longer; the angles of his face sharper; the blue eyes hazy, one pupil blown and the other a pinprick; but it was definitely, definitely, "Stone?"
Muscles contracted minutely around those distinctive blue eyes, his gaze sharpening in in a way that cast doubt on how incapacitated Stone really was.
Guard One perked up, barking out a long sentence that ended with a question. A short response from Guard Two. Then, addressing Flynn, "You know this sneaking dog?"
The first sign of life from Stone. His expression twisted into a deadly scowl. "Hell no," He ground out. His voice was raspy and low, yet his accent (the rich blend of Midwestern twang and Southern drawl that characterized an Oklahoman) was unmistakable.
Flynn nodded. "It is you, Jacob Stone! What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the Annex?"
Stone's expression flickered (his microexpressions betraying a microspasm of fear to fury to confusion in a blink, before settling back on fury). "Don't know the hell you're talkin' bout. I never met this guy." He said, attempting vicious eye contact with Flynn. The expression was intimidating, but after seeing Jacob use a less intense version of that same scowl to ward Jones away form the last slice of pizza, Flynn's confidence was unshaken.
Guard One let out a hearty laugh. "The two of you should pick one tale to tell." He paused and translated for his partner, who shared in his mirth. "No matter. Farhad will be here soon. He will find what is true and what is tales."
They sauntered out, chuckling to each other in Farsi as the door swung shut and heavy bolts slid into place.
Fun Fact: Until this point in his life, Flynn hadn't known that he could feel a glare from across a pitch black room.
"Way to go, asshole," Stone growled, his chains clinking together.
"Sorry, I wasn't aware that you guys had a thing going here," Flynn said, feeling blindly at the shackles for landmarks. They were rusty - both his bonds and his slipping skills - but after a minute of fussing he pulled his hands loose and dropped them into his lap. "Houdini strikes again."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Stone said.
"Oh, just a book. Houdini's lost manual, to be precise - quite handy for the hiccups and hullabaloo we're prone to." Flynn said, feeling his way along the wall and over to Stone. His heart rate picked up - the LITs had been running solo missions for a couple months, but any mission as risky as this should've been a team effort. He ought to move quickly, in case the others were around. Nevertheless, he let out a soft happy noise as he removed a shim from the hem of his collar. "Hmm. Hullabaloo. Haven't used that in a while."
His hands glided up to the place where Stone's shackles were bolted into the wall and began to fiddle. "Come on, Stone, we're getting out of here."
And just as suddenly as Flynn managed to work one of the shackles free, Stone made his move. The man, the scholarly cowboy that Flynn had spent so much time chatting with over culture and architecture and historiography, lurched forward, wrapping his hand around Flynn's neck and pulling his face down into the ground. Stone's knee landed against the back of his neck, pinning him against the cold stone floor.
"Who the hell are you, and how do you know that name?" His voice was venomous, sharper than Flynn could ever remember hearing.
"Jacob, it's Flynn. We don't have time for this, we've got to get going-" Flynn gasped, his voice strangled slightly against Stone's grip.
A bitter laugh, strangled. "I'm not that concussed. I've never seen you before in my life. Try again, asshole." Jacob growled.
His nose smushed against the concrete and blood pooling against the side of his mouth, Flynn thought it might be time to start worrying. Perhaps he didn't have a handle on this situation, after all. "Jacob-"
Stone dropped his knee further, increasing the pressure on Flynn's neck. "Stop calling me that. Jacob Stone's been a dead man for fifteen years."
Alarm shot through him. He ran possibilities through his mind, paging through artifacts and anomalies that could have confused his friend and protege so drastically. As one would expect for the curator of a library of magical artifacts, the list was... substantial, so he'd have to keep the man talking, try to figure out which they were dealing with.
"Okay, what do I call you?" Flynn said, thickly, impressed at how calm he sounded with his nose being pushed out of joint.
"Spencer. Eliot Spencer." came the drawled reply. There was a significant pause, as though Stone - no, Spencer - expected some sort of reaction to the name.
Flynn attempted and abandoned a nod, settling for an affirmative noise instead. "Eliot. Got it. Well, I'm Flynn Carsen - the Librarian." He offered an unconsciously similar significant pause, waiting for any sign of recognition - of easing up on his neck - but none came.
Instead, it doubled down. "And how d'you know the name Jacob Stone?" St-Spencer said, his voice taking on that bitter tinge once more.
"We've been working together the last two years. At the Metropolitan Public Library. Remember?" Flynn said, voice growing ragged as his airway was compressed against the ground.
Spencer snorted. "I'm a lot of things, but I sure as hell ain't no librarian."
Flynn's mind raced. How could he build a bridge of trust to reach this dark version of Stone? What could he find that they would have as a common reference point? "Just- listen! Twelve years ago, did you get a white envelope in the mail that went all glowy when you opened it?"
"Glowy?" Finally, Spencer eased back. His tone calmed as he thought back. "Yeah, I got something like that... five years ago. Creeped me the hell out."
Flynn drew in a relieved breath. (His timeline is off, but the amount of sun damage to his skin appeared to be about the same.) Okay, maybe Stone/Spencer had just lost a few years of his memory. He could work with that. "'An invitation to interview for a prestigious position with the Metropolitan Public Library,' right? And you missed the interview, didn't you? Because you already had a job?"
"You could say that."
"You were an oil rigger, yeah? Had to take over the family business?"
Spencer paused. "No, I- that life's long behind me. I joined the military straight outta high school." Confusion crept back into his tone, followed by suspicion.
"You've got bad intel and worse luck, 'Flynn.'" Spencer snarled, pressing back down with renewed force. "Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you right now."
Flynn coughed, struggling vainly to relieve the pressure. He pushed against the ground, fighting to get back, to get some leverage so he could find air once more, but in the meantime he did what he did best.
He talked, trying in an increasingly strangled voice to make Spencer see reason. "No, wait - I know this - You were born in Oklahoma City, your dad's name is Isaac - you've got two sisters and a mess of nieces and nephews - your favourite thing to do on Christmas Eve is to get in a barfight. The one place you told me to could quiet your mind was riding a horse, and you've been playing dumb since grade school, when you realized you were smarter than everybody around you - you knew it wouldn't it wouldn't matter if you disappointed your dad or not, because if you weren't really trying then it wouldn't count!"
Spencer sat back on his haunches.
Flynn shot up with a gasp, coughing and rubbing at his neck.
"Shit. Maybe you do know me." Spencer said, his eyes wide.
"I told you, we're friends - sort of." Flynn said hoarsely.
"Be that as it may, that name hasn't been connected to my face in fifteen years. And you just let that slip to a couple of thugs workin' for a Khuzestani warlord. Brings a whole lotta ugly down on... some innocent folk." Spencer said. He swayed on his knees, falling back against the wall with a dull thud. Taking a ragged breath, he pressed his free hand gingerly against the technicolour display on his left shoulder. "How is this possible, anyways?"
"Still working that one out. But don't worry, I'm a pretty smart guy."
A disbelieving grunt in the gloom, followed by a dry cough. "All evidence to the contrary."
Feeling his way forward, Flynn found his landmark again and felt his way down the chain on the wall to Spencer's remaining shackle. "I'll have you know, I'm a quadruple doctorate with 22 degrees."
"Any of 'em in common sense? Not-pissing-guards-off-ology?" Spencer responded, incredulous.
This close, he could smell the heavy, cloying smell of blood in Spencer's hair, see the minute head tilt that accompanied his rolling his eyes. "...Perhaps not."
The rusted metal popped open.
Eliot braced his wrecked left arm with his right. A smothered groan coaxed itself from his throat as, inch by measured inch, Eliot lowered his arm and laid it to rest in his lap. He bent forward on himself, struggling to reclaim the gentle cadence to his breathing that managed his pain and needs for oxygen at the same time.
A minute passed before his strained voice resounded once more. "May not have your fancy degrees, but I know a thing or two. Like, those guards are Khuzestani separatists financed out of Saudi Arabia. Khashayar claims to be part of the independence movement, but he's actually just building a kingdom for himself. His men are bored, poorly trained, and well armed, and they're bringing back an interrogator. So unless you've got a pressing desire to spend some time on the business end of a car battery, you should start working on a way out of here."
"What about you? You're down two limbs by my count; you're not going to move very fast on that ankle."
Flynn heard a wolfish smile in Spencer's voice. "I've done more with less."
"See now, that's terrifying because I believe you."
A one-armed shrug. "It's just part of the job, man."
In the dim lighting that cascaded through the gap between the door and the floor, it was hard to make out the level of detail that he'd seen before, but Flynn's photographic memory provided him with perfect recall of the network of scars traversing Spencer's body. He'd been shot, stabbed, burned, and broken. With a sharp pang, Flynn recalled how Jacob had wistfully mused about what his life would have been like if he'd left home instead of lingering about the oil rigs of Oklahoma.
Perhaps freedom wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Clearly, this timeline had not been kind to Spencer.
"And what job is that, exactly?"
"Retrieval specialist." Spencer ghosted his fingers across the abnormal depression in his shoulder, sharp catches in his breathing the only indication he gave to his condition. "Somebody wants something. I get in, get it, get out, and get paid."
"Sounds a lot like a Librarian to me. Maybe a librarian for hire." Flynn said, clearing his throat to distract himself from the shadows in his thoughts.
"Hell kind of librarian is that?"
He made a vague gesture that was meaningless in the gloom. "My kind. The Library keeps magical artifacts out of the hands of people who'd abuse them. Stores dangerous objects away from the public."
"Magic?" Another scoff. "Now I know you're crazy."
"How else do you explain the things I know?" Flynn replied. "I don't remember your timeline, you don't remember mine. One of us is in the wrong place. This isn't the way that things were supposed to go for you."
Eliot's breath caught again. He inhaled quickly, then let it out again. Trying to work up the words (or the nerve) for a reply. "So what's your theory, then?"
Flynn scrubbed a hand through his hair. Thought of the most likely possibilities, and continued eliminating the flimsier options. "Well, this isn't a hell planet, is it? Dragons flying overhead, army of zombie ghosts? World overrun by evil plants?"
"Not that I've noticed."
"Okay, just narrowing it down. I - oh." Flynn straightened up as the last of the pieces slid into place. "Nevermind, it's not you, it's me. I'm the one who's out of place."
Shadows shifted on Eliot's face, consistent with him raising an eyebrow. "Gonna explain yourself anytime now, professor?"
He ran the circumstances leading up to his arrival in the lair through his mind. "I was tracking down the Cloak of Ahura Mazda. According to legend, the gods granted the cloak to Lady Nikbanou to enable her to escape the surrounding invaders who had trapped her against a mountain. The cloak supposedly gave her the ability to walk through stone into the heart of the mountains. More likely, the cloak was actually enchanted with teleportation and telepathically sensitive to her request."
"Of course." Eliot drawled, deadpan.
"But more than that, what if the Cloak allowed the user to teleport through dimensions instead of merely through space?" He said, slapping his knee enthusiastically. "It explains the original legend, and it explains how I got here. I took the cloak back from the Deadly Scorpions, who stole it from Zoroastrian priests. The Deadly Scorpions blocked the exit, so I put on the cloak and thought, 'Need my team.'"
Flynn frowned slightly. "Although, ancient Persian has a completely different grammatical structure and syntax - maybe it misheard me? What if the Cloak heard my request as 'Need: my team,' and brought me to a place of sufficient need instead?"
Eliot let out a long, controlled breath, continuing to work at his shoulder. "Let me get this straight. Your telepathic coat brought you from another dimension to bust my ass out of prison?"
"Cloak, not coat. But, yes. Apparently." Flynn said, smiling innocently.
The retrieval specialist let out a frustrated growl. "Fantastic. You can get your cloak and get out. I don't need your help - I work alone."
Flynn rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you definitely look like you've got this covered."
Great, he had to deal with an un-housebroken Stone. Like he hadn't heard enough from Eve about how frustrating it was to force three tall children to put aside their hang ups and work together. "Listen, from one lone wolf to another, I know first-hand that it's easier to count on what you know you can do rather than trust what someone else might screw up. But all the awesome things that you can do on your own are amplified when you work with a team. You each have a specialty and they all complement each other. When your strength is spent, they're there to take the slack. That's what teams are for. Come on, let me get you out of here."
Silence from Eliot's side of the room for a long beat. "Is that- that how it was supposed to turn out?"
"What?" Flynn frowned, put off by the non-sequitur.
Eliot's good hand dropped into his lap. Silence again, drawn out for so long that Flynn was beginning to wonder if the retrieval specialist had passed out. He shuffled closer, squinting in the gloom, only to hear Eliot's voice break the silence with sudden, halting uncertainty. "You said... it wasn't supposed to turn out like this, for me. How was it s'pposed to turn out? Me, on your team of librarians?"
His mouth went dry. This version of Stone, the man ready and willing to kill with one hand bound behind his back, the man who plundered warlords, the man who survived bullets and torture and lived to tell the tale, was looking to him to find out if fate was immutable. Eliot was, in a way the guards could never make him, vulnerable.
Clearing his throat, Flynn thought of the short-haired, bright-eyed Stone that he knew. The good man; the man who still had to be in there somewhere.
He thought of the storage room full of disassembled time machines from dozens of inventors cause in endless temporal loops. Thought of the towering consequences of violating causality. And Flynn opened his mouth to reply anyways.
"Something like that. The Jacob Stone I know stayed home to run the family business, but he always had one eye on the horizon. He studied art, architecture, history, and any language he could get his hands on. He's the only genius I know that wears cowboy boots. He eventually became a Librarian when, well, let's just say the Library's enemies persuaded him to pick a side. It's not an easy life. I told Jacob that being a Librarian meant mystery and misery; loneliness and adventure, and the opportunity to save the world every week. Twice before Friday."
Flynn fiddled with his lapel, fingers unconsciously seeking his confiscated calculus pin. "But I'm starting to think that misery and loneliness part isn't intrinsic to the role, just to the man who tries to do it on his own. Jacob, he - for the first time in his life, he's got people who know him for who he really is. A real shot at friendship, companionship. And if he doesn't screw it up with a pretty redhead, the chance for something more."
Something resounded within the chasm of the man that Spencer had become when he emptied himself of those things that had made him Jacob Stone. That tone rang out and reminded him of all the things that he no longer was, but could have been, and perhaps could be again. One small shred of that wistful tone made its way into Eliot's voice as he finally replied, "Then I guess we gotta get you back to them, huh?"
"That's the spirit!" The corners of Flynn's eyes crinkled as a grin spread across his face. "I'm thinking if we can get back to my cloak, we can solve both our problems - getting you out and getting me home."
"You realize your whole hypothesis stands on a lot of 'ifs' and 'maybes'.'" Eliot returned, skeptical.
There it was, that familiar incredulity that brought joy to his heart and gave him the opportunity to shatter someone's expectations again. Flynn's smile grew. "Believe me, I've done more with less."
And they were off, away to dodge guards and abscond with two different artifacts.
But the most important retrieval had only just begun.