Chapter Text
Bewildered, Jack shot up from his seat in indignation, making Lula yelp and Dylan back off, knocking into Merritt.
“What the hell are you talking about??” He said forcefully, making Daniel flinch and curl up on himself a little.
Trying to rein in his anger, Jack said, slightly more quietly, “Danny you’re an amazing magician!”
Hearing the other man scoff at this, Jack completely gave up on controlling his anger and almost screamed, “It’s true! I believed it when I was a kid, and I still believe it now!”
Realizing how hard he was breathing, and how much he seemed to have frightened his friend – not surprising, seeing how emotionally vulnerable he was right now - the young man tried his best to calm himself. The whole cabin had descended in stunned silence; it was extremely rare for Jack to lose his temper so badly.
After a few seconds, though, the showman’s voice could be heard again, calm and resigned, “A magician’s greatest power lies forever shrouded in his empty fist, and the very idea he can convince the world that he is, in fact, carrying with him a secret… Lionel Shrike.”
Confused, Jack heard Dylan’s sharp inhale of breath.
“Shrike was an incredible magician – Just like his son…”
“Atlas…” and if Dylan’s voice sounded a little wet, no one commented on it.
“… and I know this phrase is meant to explain the simple yet incredible power of a magician, but Jack,” Daniel stressed the younger man’s name, “it also describes me perfectly.” Still not looking at anyone, Daniel kept going, talking faster and faster, like a damn had just broke and everything was spilling out of him, out of control, “I’m an empty fist Jack. I’m all show and no secret, and the more I flail around, the more I can make people think I’m special, but in reality, scratch the surface just a little and you’ll see that it was all a trick. I’m sorry if I made you think-”
“THAT’S BULLSHIT!”
At Jack’s yell – so loud he even surprised himself – Danny shut his mouth with an audible click, and whimpered softly, curling up even more on himself.
But Jack was way past caring about that. He was seething.
He felt Lula’s hand lightly grab his wrist, “Jack, calm down- “
“NO!” he exclaimed, turning sharply to face her and pulling away from her grasp in one smooth motion, “I’m not letting him say all those things about me, just so he can talk shit about himself right after!”
Trying hard not to cry – damn, how he hated that he always cried when he was angry – Jack kept going, “I became who I am today because of him! I survived on the streets all those years because of him! He gave me a goal, a passion to cling to, something that always brought me happiness and comfort even when I had nothing, when I was freezing my ass off trying to sleep under some bridge with no food and no one who cared about me!”
The sleight-of-hand artist turned towards his former idol, but Daniel still wouldn’t look at him.
“That was all you Jack,” the showman murmured.
“But- “
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad and flattered that my little magic show inspired you, but my only merit is to have been in the right place at the right time. It’s your talent and your dedication that made you into who you are today.”
Exhaling sharply through his nose, Jack shook his head. “You don’t get it. It wasn’t just one show.”
Freezing in place, Daniel let out a soft “what?”
“It wasn’t just one show. I mean yeah, the first time I saw you perform I was amazed, and I immediately knew that I wanted to be a magician, but as a scrawny, poor as dirt, street kid, I didn’t have much of a way to learn magic you know? So, I stayed on the lookout for your street performances and every chance I got I would come, find a good spot, and observe you.”
Daniel’s eyes were now fully open, and his gaze was firmly fixed on him.
“You know how hard it is to learn a magician’s trick just by watching him perform, so I started going to the library to read books about magic. They gave me pointers about what to look for during a performance, and after a few shows, I started to pick up on certain tricks. It helped me hone my pickpocketing skills and to learn how to divert people’s attention so I could get where I wanted to. After a while, you left, probably to go perform in another city, but I kept reading until I’d gone through all the good magic books at the library. A few stolen decks of cards later, and the rest is history.”
Looking briefly at the others, Jack could see sympathy and sadness in their eyes. He barely ever talked about his childhood, so the reminder was always a soft spot for the Horsemen who all, at one time or another, had thought to themselves, “Where was I while this kid was fighting to survive on the streets, alone?”
And no one was feeling as bad about it as Daniel right now.
“I never even noticed you,” he breathed with sadness and horror in his voice, “You were there, and I was too self-absorbed to see you. I never helped you. God, Jack, I’m so sorry…”
“Don’t.” Jack cut him firmly, “I’m not telling you this to get your pity. I don’t need it, and I don’t want it.”
Saying this, he looked at the other Horsemen, who averted their eyes.
Looking back at Daniel, his gaze softened as he said, “I was good at blending in any way, so it’s not your fault you didn’t notice me.” He sighed, deflating as the anger started leaving him, “What I want you to understand is that you didn’t just give me the spark. You helped to keep it alive until it was strong enough to burn on its own.” Realizing that Lula had backed up to leave the seat beside Danny free, Jack sat down gingerly, Daniel’s eyes tracking him the whole time, “And if I’m such a natural in front of a crowd, it’s because I learned from the best showman in the world.”
At this, said showman let out a small sob, but the corners of his mouth were curled up in a tentative smile. He brought one of his hands up towards Jack, letting it hang between them, like he wanted to touch him, but was afraid the contact would be unwelcome.
The younger man couldn’t grab the offered hand fast enough. He squeezed it hard to reassure his friend that in Jack’s book, he was always, always, welcome.
“So yeah, now I know that you can be a real dick when you want to, that you’re a control freak that demands nothing short of perfection from yourself and others, and that you’re often an insensitive, self-centered twat with a God complex,” at Danny’s flinch he quickly continued, ”but I also know that most of that is just a mask, just that tightly clenched fist you present to the world. And I know that it’s far from empty. That hidden in it, there’s a hard-working, brilliant, caring, a-and… creative, and curious and loyal person who I’m honored to call my friend.” He felt Daniel’s hand squeeze his as a new tear escaped, rolling down his face and following the path of all the others before it.
“And I’m not asking you to drop that mask completely – none of us are – because it must be scary as hell, and I know that defence mechanisms are there for a reason.” Pointing his head at Lula and smiling proudly, he added, “My wonderful psychologist of a girlfriend taught me everything about that the other day.”
Blushing slightly, Lula ducked her head and mumbled, “Not a psychologist…” which made a burst of affection for her bloom in Jack’s chest.
“So yeah, you can keep the mask if you need it, but… maybe you could put it down once in a while? Or at least lift it for us to see underneath a little better,” from the corner of his eyes, he could see Merritt nodding approvingly, “Please Danny, stop shutting us out.”
Jack could see the fight raging in Danny’s big brain. Through his eyes he saw fear, sadness, hope, determination and a thousand more emotions battling for dominance. He could only hope and pray that a good one would come out victorious. He didn’t know what he would do if his friend ended up shutting them out once again.
No, that couldn’t happen.
“Please Danny, come back to us…”
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only 15 seconds, Jack saw the winner take its rightful place in the blue eyes staring at him: trust.
He could’ve wept with joy and relief.
“OK.” Daniel finally said, and the tension the Horsemen hadn’t even realized had settled in the air around them suddenly lifted, making it a hundred times easier to breathe.
Closing his eyes and sagging in his seat, Daniel took a deep, steadying breath, seemingly steeling himself.
“Hey Dylan?”
The man, who had been thinking about how glad he was that the discussion seemed to be coming to an end so he could get off the uncomfortable floor, turned all his attention back to Daniel.
“Yeah Atlas?”
“Can I ask you a favour?”
“Anything man, you know it.”
A small smile appeared fleetingly on the showman’s face, “Yeah I know.” And the rest of the tension in Dylan’s frame melted away.
Another second of hesitation, accompanied by a brief squeeze of his hand from Jack as a silent form of encouragement, and Daniel said, “Can you take the paper that’s in my coat’s inner pocket please? Right side.”
A little confused but happy that his friend was comfortable enough with him to ask for his help, Dylan quickly answered “sure,” got up – Thank God - and unzipped the other man’s coat just enough to grab the paper from his pocket, before zipping it back up and taking the opportunity to sit back in his seat on Danny’s right.
“You can read it.”
Dylan looked gingerly at Daniel, and then at the others – who all looked as confused and curious as he felt – before slowly opening the meticulously folded piece of paper and reading it.
“Atlas…,” he said, sounding unsure, “that’s a prescription for… for anxiolytics and psychostimulants and-and something else I don’t even know about.” Looking back up at the man beside him he added, bewildered, “Daniel? What is this for??”
Realizing his tone had caused his friend to curl up on himself and seeing the glares the others were sending his way, he winced, making a placating gesture and mouthing “sorry.”
Taking a deep breath, the former FBI agent continued, his tone gentler, “Sorry Atlas, I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just worried ‘cause from what I understand, you’ve been needing medication; medication you haven’t had since the night of the Octa show,” and even though Dylan knew the answer, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
It took a few moments for Daniel to muster up the courage to start talking again, but a soft pat on his knee from Merritt and some soothing circles rubbed on the back of his hand by Jack’s thumbs helped to steady him.
“I always have an emergency stash on me, so it took a few days before I ran out. After that, I thought I could handle it. I mean, I’ve got strategies to help with the symptoms and I can usually take care of myself, but then everything started to spiral out of control, and the accident with the safe happened, and I couldn’t deal with the anxiety anymore, and the panic attacks started, and- “
“Wait, this wasn’t your first panic attack?” Lula asked, concern bleeding from every word.
Scoffing, Daniel answered, “sadly, no.”
“So… You have a panic disorder?”
“No. I’ve had panic attacks on occasions, ever since I was a kid, but not that often.”
Silence fell on the group after that, uneasy, but the question everyone wanted to ask was obvious: what are the meds for then?
No one dared to voice it out loud, though. Sighing, Danny answered anyway, “The psychostimulants are for my ADHD. The others are for my GAD and OCPD.”
Jack was confused, but he saw Merritt close his eyes and bring a hand to his forehead. He didn’t need to be a mentalist to understand what that meant.
“I should’ve known.”
Lula, for her part, let out a soft “oooooooh!” of understanding.
Turning his head towards his girlfriend, Jack whispered, “Lula? Care to share? I’m feeling a little left out here.”
Craning her neck to see Danny’s face better over Jack’s shoulder and realizing that he wasn’t going to elaborate any further, she sat back in her seat and said, just loud enough for the youngest Horseman to hear, “Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.”
“Ooooooh!” Jack said, unconsciously mimicking Lula’s reaction from a few seconds earlier.
On the other side of the showman, Dylan had gone completely silent, staring at the piece of paper in his hand but clearly not seeing it. Back in Quantico, he’d taken a few psychology classes, and although he admittedly forgot a lot of what he learned back then, he did remember a psychopathology class where they covered anxiety disorders and a criminal psychology class where they talked about personality disorders.
He didn’t remember much about OCPD, though, except for the fact that it was different from OCD, since the teacher talked a lot more about Antisocial and Narcissistic Personality Disorders.
Dylan’s breath hitched as a particular memory came back to him:
“As a psychologist, it is admittedly difficult to work with patients with personality disorders,” their teacher, a kind but steadfast middle-aged psychologist who’s name he’s forgotten, unfazed by her half-asleep class of mostly young, brash, self-righteous douchebags (or so that was Dylan’s opinion), was calmly saying, “They don’t often seek help and when they do, they’ll usually blame other people in their lives for their problems.” Turning around to face her class, she continued, “Building a therapeutic alliance with them is hard, as they don’t trust easily precisely because they so often feel betrayed by others.”
That’s when one of the aforementioned douchebags leaned over his desk to whisper, not-so-subtly, to the guy in front of him, “So they play the victim and push you away when you try to help? Sounds like my ex-girlfriend.”
As the two students snickered, the teacher shot them a look so full of disgust that they shut up instantly.
“Mr. Landry, if you treated your ex-girlfriend with as much respect as you’ve been treating my class, then maybe you should work on your self-criticism skills instead of whining about her shortcomings.” The guy, now red as a tomato, seemed to shrink in his seat under the teacher’s glare and the other students muffled laughter – which the woman put an end to with a single hand motion, “Calm down everyone. Mr. Landry, you are not a teenager anymore and this isn’t a high school. I won’t tolerate any petty comment or disrespectful behaviour.” The young man had practically fused with his chair by then, “Normally I would ask you to take your belongings and leave my classroom, but I think you will learn more by staying and hearing what I have to say next.”
The teacher turned and swept her gaze over the whole, now fully awake class.
“I’ll make myself perfectly clear: mental health is no laughing matter. The kinds of comments your classmate just did may seem harmless, if in bad taste, but they are exactly why people with mental disorders, and particularly people with personality disorders, are ostracized and why the public has such a caricatural vision of them.”
Sighing, she continued, “I’m afraid I’ve done a disservice to those people, and to you, by not telling you this earlier: in your classes, you will mostly learn how to recognize different types of disorders, how they may appear in criminals, how they can contribute to people doing horrible things. By doing so, you risk reinforcing your already ingrained stereotypical ideas instead of nurturing a better understanding of the human being. To avoid that, you need to remember and firmly believe that people are complex beings and that a diagnosis doesn’t. Define. A person. Not even a personality disorder.”
She took a pause. The whole class was silent.
“A personality disorder, while a risk factor, doesn’t make a person a criminal. A personality disorder, while making it more difficult for the person to form relationships, doesn’t make it impossible. It also doesn’t make someone incapable of change or completely blind to their own flaws.”
Moving to the center of the class to address the whole group, she stated forcefully, “And if any of you were to reduce a person to their diagnosis, no matter the diagnosis, then I would strongly recommend that you find a line of work where you do not need to interact with anyone, ever, because that is no better than reducing a person to their gender, ethnicity, or to the colour of their skin.”
Snapping back to the present, Dylan realized why Daniel had been so scared to tell them about his diagnosis, and it made his skin crawl unpleasantly with anger.
Taking a mental note to do some more research about GAD, OCPD and even ADHD later, Dylan carefully folded the prescription paper back the way it was and stashed it inside his own inner pocket.
“Alright, I’ll call a pharmacy as soon as we’re back to get your meds delivered,” he said, with as much casualty in his tone as possible.
Turning slowly to look at him, Daniel’s eyes were as round as saucers and his expression screamed disbelief. Which made Dylan realize that although Atlas had mustered the courage to open up to them and to ask for help, he had still expected some sort of backlash or questioning from his friends.
Dylan wanted to punch something.
Rearranging himself in his seat to try and find a comfortable position that wouldn’t hurt his back – which was basically impossible, he knew, with how long he’d been on the ground – or the still tender spot at the back of his head from hitting it on the crates earlier, Dylan said, “Atlas, if you thought this was going to change anything between us, then you must be a lot less intelligent than I thought.”
Smiling at his showman to make sure he understood he was just messing up with him, he added with sincerity, “Danny, you’re still the same man you were five minutes ago, before we knew about the meds and the diagnosis. It doesn’t change anything, except that now we understand you better.”
“Actually, it does change something.”
Surprised, Dylan looked up towards Lula, who was now frowning, an angry expression on her face.
Clearly scared at the turnaround, Daniel started to tremble slightly, and squeaked, “Lula?”
“Remember when I told you guys about my PTSD, how the others were telling me that it was all going to be okay, that they were always going to be there for me and all of that?”
Still looking terrified, Daniel nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Well, you didn’t do that. You. Wouldn’t look at me. And even though I was happy that the others were so sweet and understanding, I couldn’t stop thinking that this was it. This was the end. You would think I was some unstable, crazy freak, and you would kick me out of the team.”
Jack, sensing his girlfriend growing more and more agitated, but unwilling to let go of Danny’s hand, where he was still rubbing soothing circles, leaned back until he was pressed against her chest, his head on her shoulder. Looking briefly down at him with a small “I’m okay,” smile, she rubbed his arm before turning her gaze back to Danny.
“But obviously, or I wouldn’t be there anymore, I was wrong. Before I could start panicking in earnest, you finally looked at me, and all I saw in your eyes, was understanding.”
Staring with more seriousness than ever at her friend, she said, “Do you remember what you asked me then, Daniel?”
The showman nodded again, realization flashing in his eyes.
“You asked me if anything triggered me. You didn’t offer me comforting words and hugs like the others, no. But you promised me a safe space by making sure you knew what made me uncomfortable, like it was the most normal thing in the world, like it wasn’t a bother or silly. Like it didn’t change anything.”
“That’s because it didn’t.”
“Exactly. Except that it changed everything for me. It made me feel safer, it made me feel seen. There was no judgment, no quips about any of my triggers being stupid or anything. You treated it with the seriousness you grant everything you deem important, and no one had ever done this for me before.”
Jack, still pressed against his girlfriend’s shoulder, felt something wet fall on his cheek and looked up to see that tears were freely flowing from Lula’s eyes. He could also see that she was smiling, though, and when she spoke again, her voice was strong and exuded gratitude and determination.
“So now, I want to do the same for you.”
Shifting his gaze to look at Danny, Jack saw the same emotions reflected on his face.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it, Buffy.”
With a wet sounding laugh, the last of Daniel’s energy seemed to melt away, and he started pitching sideways towards Jack’s laps.
Catching him by the shoulders before he could faceplant, the young sleight-of-hand artist said, alarmed, “Danny! Danny, you okay??”
“Yeah, Jack I’m jus’ peachy. Hey Lula, not that I’m not gra’eful, but cou’ we please finish this conv’sation la’er? Imma bit tired ri’ now…”, the showman slurred, sounding already half asleep.
The other Horsemen all laughed, relieved.
“Yeah, Danny no problem. I think we’re all wiped right now anyway,” Lula answered, amused.
The others all made general sounds of agreement, but no one moved.
“Hey, so…” Merritt finally said, “I think I’m officially past the point where I can get back up on my own and I’m not too fond of the idea of spending the rest of the flight on this not so comfortable floor, so… little help, please?”
Trying their best not to laugh at their older member, the Horsemen were about to get up from their seat to offer their help when hushed, slurred words stopped them dead in their tracks.
“Tol’ ya you were ol’...”
They all burst out laughing after that – Jack even fell from his seat, which gave Merritt the opportunity to flop across his stomach, effectively pining him to the grown and knocking the wind out of him, claiming the young man as his pillow since no one seemed interested in helping him get back up.
“Atlas, you… you little… shit.” Merritt was finally able to say once his uncontrollable bouts of laughter started to die down.
Daniel, now sandwiched between Lula, who had moved to take Jack’s place, and Dylan, was looking down at him through his lashes, eyes barely open. His head was pillowed on Lula’s shoulder and a sleepy but satisfied smile hung on his face.
“Ya know ya lof’ me ol’ man.”
Happy to have gotten his banter buddy back, Merritt smiled up at him.
“Yeah man, I know.”
In the end, Merritt abandoned the idea of getting up from the floor and did use Jack as a pillow, exclaiming that he was “more comfortable than these damn seats anyway.” Lula took advantage of the situation and brought her legs up on the empty seats so she could stretch them in front of her, her back resting against Danny’s side, his head still on her shoulder.
With Jack and Merritt snoring at his feet, Dylan pressed lightly on his right and Lula’s back against his left side, Daniel thought that he should feel a little claustrophobic.
Instead, he slept soundly for the rest of flight, perfectly content and feeling more at peace than ever in his life.
They would be okay. They were a family after all, and a family looks out for their own.
THE END