#local gremlin exploited for interrogation purposes

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The King of Spades

Summary: Janus and Spade have an actual discussion.

A/N: Requested by DorkSpader on AO3

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Date Archived: April 4, X

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Starting sequence

“You’re not Logan! Who are you?”

“I can’t afford to have you running around and ruining things.”

“Dee!”

. . . . . .

Janus came in and out of consciousness while he was trapped in his own staff. Which he didn’t even know had been possible.

Being awake, he felt every second and tried to escape. He couldn’t see or feel but he could hear. The deceitful Side was locked behind a glass case and there was nothing he could use to either break the cane or rip off whatever was adhering him to the cane.

Being asleep was blissful. He felt nothing, and it relieved every migraine he felt while being conscious. At this point whenever he woke up, he tried to get back to that unconscious state, but each time he woke up it was getting harder.

Janus only knew that Orange and Remus were nearby. Orange because of the ticking of the metronome, which only gave Janus more of a migraine when he was conscious. And Remus because Spade had told him. A worry while conscious was that he couldn’t feel or hear Remus. It was just Spade, one of the Suits walking in to talk with him, and Orange’s incessant ticking!

The deceitful Side was unconscious when he was jarred back to wakefulness. He actually felt something, in that he was shaken before he felt the rush of air into his lungs and a sensation of feeling at his fingertips.

It was so reliving and so overwhelming that it stunned Janus long enough for Spade to tighten magic chains, binding Janus to a chair in the center of an enchanted circle that kept him from shapeshifting.

“Enjoy your nap?” Spade’s distorted voice greeted him.

Janus hissed at Spade, his spit turning venomous in his anger.

Spade just laughed at him, waving his hand and the chain glowed before giving Janus a warning jolt of electricity. It hurt, but nowhere enough to kill him.

Janus was reflexively coughing when it was done as Spade walked back to his desk. The Side looked up at his kidnapper, “What do you want? I would already be dead if you meant to kill me.”

“You are right on that count,” Spade answered. “You are far more useful to me alive, than dead.”

“And what use do I have for you then?” Janus hissed.

Spade was watching him as he spoke, the mask keeping Janus from getting a read on his mood.

“You’ve made things exceedingly difficult for me,” Spade commented instead of directly answering. “But that’s alright, you didn’t know. I’m here to fix it.”

Janus fell silent at that. There were too many variables. Too much he didn’t know about the situation. He couldn’t see a door. He didn’t know where the other Dark Sides were. Even if Orange had tried to kill Logan, he had left all of them alone for months, he didn’t deserve to be left behind.

Once he was confident in his tone, Janus asked, “Where’s the Duke?”

“Oh, Remus?” Spade corrected and he walked around Janus. The deceitful Side saw a tall, thin, glass cabinet with three items in it: a ticking metronome, his cane, and Remus’s belt buckle.

He also saw a door. Janus didn’t know where it led to, or if it was just a closet, but it was a door!

Spade took out the buckle and closed the cabinet door. He slowly, too slowly, walked back and held the buckle in front of Janus. “I wouldn’t worry about your boyfriend, he’s sleeping. Took a bit to get him to go to sleep, but I figured it would be better. That you would appreciate it.”

“Why would I appreciate anything you do?” Janus dared.

The Suit waved his hand and chains shot out of the floor and ceiling to suspend Remus’s buckle right in front of Janus’s face. “Because I could torture him in front of you. I know the Duke has a high tolerance for pain, I even know that he finds personal pleasure in it. But I could wake him up, I could show him things and do things to him that he would not enjoy. Things he wouldn’t find pleasure in.”

“Enough!” Janus cried out, trying to keep a tone of desperation out of his voice. He could envision Remus’s peacefully sleeping face in his mind. “You haven’t told me what you want.”

Spade took the buckle out of its hold, but kept it in his hands. “I’m going to say some words, and you are going to answer them, I don’t care if you’re being truthful or not, my scans and readings will give me the answer I want anyways.”

Janus looked at the buckle in his hand and swallowed his barbed comment. “Fine.”

“Excellent,” Spade praised, the word almost feeling like a slap across his face. “Now what color is the sky?”

The deceitful Side wanted this person dead. “Blue.”

“That was a little bit of a muddied question,” Spade remarked. “Your birthday is February 3?”

“No,” Janus lied.

Spade seemed to hum noncommittally.

“Your name is Janus.” Spade’s head tilted to the left ever so slightly.

“No.” Janus felt distinctly like he was being mentally picked apart.

“Who would you say is the most powerful Side?” Spade asked. “Not in terms of leadership skills or the power that Patton and Roman have to make the public love them. I mean raw, magical potential. Which is it?”

Red flags went up in Janus’s mind. He managed a sly smile. “I am. My illusions are unparalleled.”

The Suit’s fingers started tapping dangerously on Remus’s buckle. “You and I know that’s not true. Remus is Remus, and Orange squanders his magic on his own laziness and apathy. So it leaves the other four. Is it Patton’s infectious empathy? Roman’s sense of imagination? Virgil’s fear powers? Or did you all lie to Logan and tell him his superpower was his intelligence and not something more powerful?”

“The others have no drive to make their powers any stronger,” Janus reminded. The answer lodged in his throat, and he desperately hoped it would stay there, or he could figuratively swallow it down further from Spade’s insidious grasp. “They’re not willing to do what it takes to make themselves stronger.”

Spade observed him for a bit, the tapping on the buckle stopping.

“I suppose you are right on that front,” Spade allowed, walking back to the case and putting Remus’s buckle back inside.

Janus held in his sigh of relief. None of them were safe yet. Spade took the staff out.

“Deceit is quite the interesting title,” Spade walked back to stand in front of him. “Did you come up with it yourself?”

“Of course,” Janus answered, “really rolls off the tongue.”

“Of course,” Spade parroted. Then he leaned close to Janus’s human side ear, as if to whisper a secret. “I already know it’s Virgil.”

Before the alarm could set in, the flat of his staff was pressed to Janus’s back and with a flash of magic Janus was gone and the chains cascaded to the ground with a loud CLINK.

Spade quickly applied some tape with some writing around the pole of the staff and then casually placed it back in its case.

The cabinet gave an angry shake, for a bit as Spade walked over to his computer and turned onto a news feed and began looking for recent stories of the Sides. In the first one he found was of Patton. The Side was talking energetically to some reporter as Virgil hid behind him.

Spade was watching news streams of the Sides as he was working on one of his many projects. In the background he had a program analyzing everything the Sides did. Virgil was the hardest for the program to read since he tended to use the other Sides or his hood as a protective shield. So Spade had to go in and personally take those notes.

The only sounds that accompanied the streams was the clatter of the glass cabinet, the ticking of a metronome, and a light hiss of a solder iron.

End of Sequence

Conclusion: Janus is easier to bait than predicted.