Chapter Text
The pounding of shoes and heels hitting cement echoed through the dimly lit tunnel, mixing with the panting of four out of breath magicians. They came to a hard stop in front the narrow door marked Exit where Dylan Rhodes stood, visibly eager to hurry them outside. There wasn’t much time to gather their bearings, but it was the first time since they’d bolted from the main floor that there was a chance to look around. The four of them nodded to each other as they- only four. Dylan frowned hard, scanning the tunnel behind them with dark eyes,
“Where is Atlas?”
It was a stupid plan. At least that was what Atlas had quipped when they were all hunched over a table looking down at the new play-by-play for their latest and greatest performance- or rather, their next target.
“You know, at least I can always count on you to speak your mind.”
Dylan rolled his eyes, standing up straight with a sigh. It was late, and he’d spent most of the day wearing the disguise of the bumbling federal agent, and after years of playing the long game it was beginning to grate on him. He’d tried to mentally prepare himself for the headache he knew he was bound to be afflicted with upon his arrival to the apartment, a headache that went by the name of Daniel.
“What do you want me to say, that I feel great about sending us all into a hornet’s nest simply because the cubicles of the Eye put together a thought experiment? There are too many assumptions. We’re out.”
Merritt hadn’t bothered to look at the plans. This is how it tended to go, with Dylan and Atlas rehashing the same three or four inconsistencies until they came to some form of an agreement that really only entailed appeasing Daniel. As annoying as his process was, they couldn’t argue with the results. On more than one occasion they’d narrowly avoided having their asses handed to them, when his compulsive nagging had prevented a wrong move that would have surely sold them up the river to Rikers.
Henley was leaning on the other side of the table opposite Daniel. She was squinting at the building drafts for the grand compound that was to be the stage for their upcoming appearance. She chewed the inside of her cheek,
“I hate to say it, but Danny’s right.”
“I didn’t need you to chime in to know that I’m right.”
Henley leveled her eyes into a comfortable glare.
“Oh trust me, we all know that you think you’re right.”
“Well ‘think’ and ‘are’ are different words, aren’t they? So let’s clarify that, I am right.”
God she wanted to deck him. He had such a talent for making her feel like a fool. Dylan cut back in, ignoring their tiff,
“So there are a few hitches we can iron out-“
Dylan waved his hand dismissively at the papers. Atlas cocked his head to the side,
“They aren’t hitches. The entire plan to get us out
leaves too narrow of a window. If Jack sneaks through the back quarter-“
He took the blueprints from the table and held them up to the light,
“And Henley and I exit here, Merritt can slide out into the staff break room and onto the street but Lula’s only option is to go through the main lobby. If we raise the alarm at any moment, she’s toast.”
“Then we won’t raise any alarm.”
Dylan threw out, losing steam mid-sentence. Atlas was right. There was too much risk. They went quiet. Henley grew bored after a minute and a half, sauntering out of the room and disappearing down the hall. Daniel studied the papers, fidgeting with the mess and lost in a silent debate with himself. Dylan was doing the same, with less of an anxious aura than the young man to his left, who resembled a more mad mathematician on the verge of a breakthrough than an illusionist planning a robbery. After a few minutes of mumbling back and forth, Atlas came to a passable solution,
“We swap.”
“What?”
Dylan had his chin balanced on his hand. It was his turn to shoot Daniel a questioning look,
“We swap. I take Lula’s place. That way she and Henley can still make their way out through the corridor to the right of the central stairwell.”
Dylan shook his head, his brow knit,
“No, no- that doesn’t solve our problem. That leaves you-“
“-There’s no other way. We need all five of us in the central building to make this whole circus work, nobody can double up outside of the B team. The only other exit plan that could fit will be blocked by the security checkpoint, and there’s no tripping it, not with so many witnesses and an armed third-party monitoring system.”
Merritt’s ears had perked up from the recliner he’d claimed in the living room area. The open concept brick studio had left much to be desired in the way of privacy. The conversation between the two men carried just enough to make the mentalist pay an ounce of attention.
“-o we should just put you on the chopping block, then?”
“It’s not a guarantee that we’ll get caught here at all. This is all assuming everything else goes precisely how we want it to anyways. I could get caught at the door before we even begin if we want to go there. Besides, I trust myself more than I do the girl who’s greatest claim to fame is pulling pigeons out of pants and hats out of rabbits. I don’t even trust her to use the dish washer when we’re not here.”
There was that classic Atlas snark that was sure to charm any Tom, Dick and Harry, Merritt thought sarcastically. The kid was lucky he was handsome, because his general approach to human interaction did him no favors in the ‘likability’ sector.
Still, there was an edge to his words that didn’t strike Merritt as sincere. Some give-away, nearly indescribable, was telling him that while yes, Daniel did believe the hat and the rabbit and the pigeon pants were gimmicky and unimpressive, he also had some hint of an ulterior motive that he couldn’t say out loud.
“… I’m not convinced. Maybe if we-“
Atlas had a habit of cutting people off.
“There is no other way to go about it. It’s either we do it as planned or not at all, there’s not enough time to go back to the drawing board. I wouldn’t endanger the entire team if I didn’t think the risk level was acceptable.”
He sounded so assured. Dylan took a moment to respond, mulling over his words.
“… Fine. Fine. So that’s it.”
“- so it would be Henley starting here, Merritt would be- “
The pair droned on. At some point, Lula had popped into the kitchen space where they’d been agonizing over the scattered prints.
“-and I go here instead, while Lula goes-“
“Lula what?”
She turned her head at the sound of her name, glancing down at the mess of papers.
Daniel put a hand over a paper with a large blackout where he’d penned in his name on top of hers.
“- Nothing. We're trying to work. We’ll debrief with the group in 20.”
Lula put her arms up in mock defense, backing out of the kitchen with a bagel in hand. She knew better by now than to push Daniel’s buttons, meaning she did so as often as she could. But now was apparently a fine time to drop it, and the room silently thanked her for not poking the bear while he was brooding.
The debrief came and went. They were all given copies of the plans to have memorized backwards and forwards. Dylan made a schedule for them to start practicing the more finicky illusions as a whole. After they broke and wandered into various corners of the apartment to pour over their assignments, Dylan excused himself for the night and headed back to his own apartment on the other side of the East Village. Lula and Jack had left the dingy apartment together, hoods drawn up and giggling with the empty promise to study on the rooftop. That left Henley, who was nowhere to be seen, Merritt, and Danny. Merritt meandered over to where Daniel had roosted at the dining room table, still holding up the blueprints and muttering to himself.
At Merritt’s sudden presence beside him, a palpable annoyance graced his features. Still, Merritt didn’t let him shut him out,
“You care.”
Daniel scoffed,
“I care? About what, about these blueprints? About you?”
The snide comment finished itself.
Of course I don’t care.
“You know, it’s not a weakness to admit it.”
“Yeah, I’m trying to think right now, so if you could kindly drink too much whiskey and bumble around the apartment over there, I’d-“
“You switched places with her so she would be in less danger. Than you. Who is now in the hot seat. Because you care.”
Daniel’s eyes betrayed his tone and his sharp edges. For a split second they flashed with… vulnerability? He didn’t counter, instead looking at Merritt for a beat as the corners of his mouth twitched.
Merritt grinned smugly,
“You aren’t denying it.”
“And yet astronauts don’t usually have to shout at flat-earthers, it’s kind of just implied that they’re being dense, so.”
“You know some would even call caring a superpower. The Care-bears are world famous even…”
Daniel was buried in the plans once again, ignoring him. Merritt laughed to himself, turning to find his recliner. As he thumbed through the pages of his packet, his eyes drifted over to the figure of Daniel, hunched over the kitchen table. The sound of hurried scribbling was only broken up by the rustling of papers.
That kind of attention to detail-that bordered on obsession- didn’t come from a need to save his own skin in this game. Merritt let out a deep, deep breath.
The scene before him- that he’d seen a dozen times by now- made little sense for the arrogant, selfish prick routine.
The nervous energy that propelled him into his work showed a care that was outside of his angsty pattern of behavior. He clearly didn’t like himself enough to put this much effort into safety and to act so anxious- like if he missed a detail, the Eye would round up the Horsemen and kill one of them in front of him point-blank. Merritt had watched him exude a similar energy in small ways over the past year, like when Lula tried to eat reheated rice she’d left on the counter for too long and Daniel had barked at her while grabbing it from her hands and throwing it in the trash. Or when Jack had stolen a bike and never heard the end of ‘how he was less likely to get noticed if he wore a helmet to cover his signature swept hair’, and that it would ‘help make him look more like an unnoticeable dork and less like a boy band reject who was compensating.’
Merritt wanted to roll his eyes when he thought about the falling routine they’d done with Henley from the bubble projection. The first time she’d practiced the fall, you’d have thought she was dropping from a 700 meter cliff into jagged rocks. Daniel insisted on being surrounded by mattresses and only resigned to ditching them after they’d rehearsed it for a full week straight. He’d check the rigging himself before and after every go, and as much as he got on everyone’s nerves, there was no denying the faint blush on Henley’s cheeks when he’d frantically look her over for signs that she’d gotten hurt, asking if she was alright.
Despite his small shows of fondness towards her, when she’d tried to joke around with him and laughed out,
“Trust fall!”
He’d completely tuned her out and was walking away as she hurdled backwards, conveniently onto a mattress, with a thud. He’d turned around at the sound of her ‘mphf’ and looked boredly at her sprawled out on the cushion before saying something about how she was wasting time and that they had more to go through, before he strode off, clearly not bothered by how his words stung the poor woman nearly lying on the floor.
Merritt closed his eyes, not absorbing any of his stage directions anyways. His thoughts wandered back to their very own J. Daniel Atlas.
Atlas was a textbook case in many ways. The dangerous lifestyle that he’d deliberately chased came from a pathological avoidance of stability and a need for complete and unrelenting control. When an illusion went right, when they’d made off with a fortune and took down a morally corrupt figurehead, he’d won. He was the man holding the cards. The Mentalist guessed that the only time Danny felt alive was when an audience was putty in his hands.
There was something else, far darker that Merritt wished he saw less of in the clearly troubled young man. Daniel constantly threw himself into situations that could end very badly. Merritt saw firsthand how he didn’t seem affected by the idea that they were dealing with sketchy people and attempting high-stakes tricks to pull the wool over said people’s eyes, or that there was a very real possibility that someone, mainly him, might die. Where Jack would swallow thickly, where Lula’s eyes would go wide- where Henley would go quiet- Daniel would be fine, sharper even. It was his tendency to engage in risky behavior that worried Merritt, Dylan too, he could tell.
Three months ago, after a particularly difficult escapade, they’d all made a swift getaway across the Manhattan bridge in the back of a moving van. The van however, to fit against the back of the stage they’d disappeared behind, had to have the door taken off, leaving them to face the open road. Pallets were fixed to the floor to hide them, with bolted-down ropes to hold onto in lieu of seatbelts. It certainly did not abide by the road safety laws of New York State, to say the least.
Once they’d made sure that they were in the clear, whooping and hollering erupted from the inside of the van. In the chaos of cheering and high-fiving, Daniel had crawled to the other side of his pallet stack, inching along as the speeding truck jostled them around. The gaggle of Horsemen were too busy celebrating and replaying the evening with more shouts to notice that he’d gone, or to clock his rope that lay abandoned on the ground. But Merritt noticed. He slowly leaned to peer around to the obscured side of the wood stack,
He looked through the haze of whizzing cars that raced past to see Daniel leaning out of the back of the van by a single hand that was carelessly holding onto the pallet. His other hand was outstretched, almost as if he was trying to catch the wind. His feet were balancing dangerously at the very edge of the metal-one more jostle from the road would surely make him slip.
The look on his face had somehow made it even worse. His eyes were closed. He looked calm.
He looked tired.
For a moment, Atlas was gone and in his place Danny stood teetering on the edge. Like he was daring the truck to hit another bump.
Merritt felt a wave of panic slam into him. He lurched forward, clutching onto his rope for dear life while using his full wingspan to grab the back of Daniel’s shirt. Daniel’s eyes flew open with a start, looking up confused at the older man who was staring at him like he’d grown horns. Merritt made no attempts to warn the kid as he yanked him backwards. They both slammed into the side of the pallet. Daniel was fuming, but he said nothing, instead his eyes shone with a sudden rage that twisted into vicious hurt. The look Merritt was giving him made him feel like Merritt had cracked open his diary and was reading it on the street corner for spare change. He knew Merritt was really looking at him. He felt like he couldn’t breathe.
Merritt saw a trapped animal. Daniel’s expression was desperate and angry, challenging Merritt to say what he was thinking out loud but terrified that he actually would. They just shared a look. Merritt couldn’t wipe the concerned, twisted scowl from his features, but he nodded slowly at him. Daniel’s fierce expression didn’t waver. Merritt realized that his hand had been locked on Daniel’s shoulder in a death grip. He lowered it, and Daniel kept his eyes fixed on Merritt, unwilling to concede. His chest was still heaving.
“Hey! What are you two talking about over there?”
Jack laughed from the back of the van, just out of view. Daniel still wasn’t budging,
“Nothing, just making sure we’re not being followed.”
Just like that, the mask slipped back on. Daniel nearly ran past him to rejoin the others, leaving a stunned Merritt to question what exactly he’d just witnessed and more importantly, what he was going to do about it.
They hadn’t talked about that night. Merritt had tried a few days after, when they were alone and Danny was distracted, clacking away on his laptop but he had quickly shut him down,
“You don’t know what you saw. You were probably drunk.”
His words had been callous, biting almost. Merritt dropped the subject. For now.
Daniel was calculated, absolutely, but he was over-correcting to compensate for just how out of control he felt. Daniel had this deep subconscious desire to surrender himself to the uncontrollable despite his very best efforts to predict every outcome. Merritt was almost certain that he didn’t realize that his constant anticipation for the worst was burning him to a crisp, leaving a buried part of his mind to crave the opposite. In some ways, his mind wanted to just let the bad things happen. It was if being at the mercy of fate in spite of his intellect put him into a place that he couldn’t bring himself to on his own- a place where he could let his mind stop sprinting because it didn’t matter anymore, a place where the pressure was gone.
Merritt had a feeling that Danny had no idea who he really was when he wasn’t standing on that edge.
Balancing right at the brink was a lot like finally telling someone you’re in love only when the gun is being cocked at your temple. The fear is sobering. The hard things have an easier time rising to the surface when a greater threat makes them feel small.
It all read to him as a young man whose emotions were far beyond his reach. Merritt could practically paint a perfect portrait of Daniel’s childhood from what he’d pieced together. Somewhere along the way, someone had made him feel like he was nothing. Like something bad happened and if he’d been better he could have stopped it, and despite growing up and getting out, it all stuck.
Atlas was above self loathing. Atlas was suave and precise, and arrogant because he had the goods to back it up. But Danny was a different story. Danny was scared, Danny lashed out at people to keep them away from the burden of who he really thought he was.
Confusing kid.
He thought, letting a steady stream of air through his nose.
The plan was to be set into motion within three days. It was cutting their usual practice-time nearly in half, but this was their only window to get Walter Maybry and Veronica Vanderberg in the same building. It had to work. Otherwise, Merritt figured he’d have to get really good at pushups and get used to wearing head to toe traffic-cone orange.
He eventually drifted off, coming to and blinking around only to see Daniel still sitting at the table, with a presumably cold cup of coffee sitting atop a stack of papers he was using for God-Knows-What research. Sunlight was peeking through the floor-length curtains of the highrise.
Merritt stretched dramatically, causing Daniel to snap his head over and growl. His hoodie hung loosely around his frame and his hair was tousled. He looked young despite the shadows that hung under his sleep starved eyes. Merritt felt a tug of affection at the sight of him.
Somehow, despite the thorns he made sure to cover himself in, he had grown on all of them. It was almost miraculous.
“Get to sleep, kid. We don’t buy enough coffee for this behavior."
He knew it fell on disinterested ears, but he felt better having said it.
Jack strode into the kitchen from his room and made his way over to the coffee pot, frowning at its stale contents.
“Hey Danny, did you use the last of the instant grounds?”
No response.
Typical.
He took in a deep breath,
“Danny.”
The sound of the backspace being spammed followed by more feverous typing was his only response.
“Daniel.”
Still nothing. Jack couldn’t tell if he was being purposefully ignored, or if Daniel was just lost in his own little world. It was usually a mixture of both.
“Don’t bother. He’s on hour 34.”
Merritt supplied lazily from the recliner, checking his watch.
“I am not. And stop counting, it’s creepy.”
“Oh so you can hear but only when it’s about you? You know, we have a word for people like you back where I’m from.”
Daniel stayed silent to prove his point, going back to his typing.
Jack wasn’t in the mood for one of Daniel’s melancholic stupors. He picked a nearby deck of cards and twirled them through practiced fingers like they were made of silk. With a flourish, he flicked the top card at Daniel’s head, making contact with his temple. Bingo.
“Ow! What the fuck was that for?”
Daniel glared at him, rubbing the red mark from the card-stock corner.
“I couldn’t get your attention. Did you use the last of the instant grounds or do I need to run out?”
“You have two eyes. Do you see an empty container?”
“Yes or no, please.”
“No. Check above the cupboard. Do you need anything else while you have my undivided attention? Maybe we can talk politics, or maybe we could talk about any interesting dreams you might have had.”
Daniel tried to retort, but it came out with less punch than it normally would have. He picked up the fallen card and flung it back pitifully, sending it tumbling through the air before softly hit the side of the toaster and landed on the countertop. Jack laughed,
“Very impressive- huh.”
He swiped the card from the counter, thumbing it and narrowing his eyes.
“What, does it have a location and a time written in disappearing ink for us to all blindly follow?”
Daniel was being facetious, but he’d perked up at the thought of even a scrap of long-awaited contact. It had been over three months since they’d received any intel outside of Dylan and he was beginning to worry.
“No-not that, it’s just, the Nine of Diamonds.”
He’d tilted his head, flashing the card around to face Atlas.
“So? Is this that-”
“Aaah. The Curse of Scotland. That’s the card of bad luck, mi amigo. Gambler’s superstition.”
Merritt spoke up again, this time with his hands behind his head and the footrest kicked up on the chair. Daniel rolled his eyes.
“Good thing I’m not a gambling man.”
Merritt wasn’t too sure about that. Daniel took a gamble every time he stepped out onto a stage with the Horsemen, maybe even greater of a bet than the rest of them from time to time.
Jack shook his head, returning the card to it’s deck and shuffling them hastily,
“I don’t know , in my business, we take those superstitions pretty seriously. Watch your back, man.”
Daniel ran a hand over his face,
“Will do, man. I’ll try not to step on any cracks or open any umbrellas inside.”
Atlas didn’t believe in superstitions. Every magician seemed to have a laundry list of performance rituals and signs from the universe that would come to them to warn them of catastrophe as if what they did wasn’t the art of illusion and was instead real magic. Ridiculous. But his sleep deprived brain didn’t quite seem to want to let go of Jack's words,
“Watch your back, man.”
He had definitely been awake too long. After 25 years of being himself, he’d learned that hour 32 was about the point where he’d get shaky and paranoid, and 33 was where it started to look like someone put vaseline over his eyes, clouding his vision with a haze he couldn’t blink away. Merritt had almost been correct- he was almost to hour 37. He shut his laptop with feigned annoyance and finally sulked away to his room.
He’d later come to think that maybe he should have taken the mystic warning a little bit more to heart.