Plot - Interrogation Room I

[agirllost]

In less time than it takes to blink, Kim could free herself and be standing on a mound of rubble that was once a wall.

She doesn't have to submit to them. The mirror shows a reflection, but she knows it's hiding double sided glass.

They're watching her.

Thousands of miles away, she senses Behrooz, and she knows he can't be distracted or feel her fear. 'I'm sorry,' she thinks. 'I'm sorry that I can't let you be here and that I can't help you and that I was unable to figure any way out for either of us.'

She keeps her hands on the table, wanting to dig her nails in, feeling the weight of the path she's chosen. For anyone else, they'd be trapped, but she could escape, it would just mean that at least one person would know what she really is - and she can't let that information get out.

The other way out of this situation, would be to start talking, to tell them what they want to hear and save herself. If her dad knew what was happening, he'd tell her that he only wants her to be safe and that he wouldn't blame her for giving in. She knows that there's no good option, either she betrays his trust, or she stays silent and deals with the consequences.

Bill enters the room, he talks to her for a few minutes, and she wishes she could tell him the truth. Her lies are part of the reason why she's here now, if she'd only been honest, maybe he would have accepted her arguments as more than just family loyalty.

He tells her that she could be protecting an assassin, and she presses her lips together for a moment before looking up at him. He doesn't know a quarter of what her family's been through, and she intends to keep it that way.

'I know who I'm protecting and you have no idea what I could do to you right now if I let my control slip.' she thinks. She went to China, she faced unknown danger to save him, and he's done the same for her.

They want to use her to get to him and she won't let them.

A long time ago, she told her dad that she'd sooner die than be used to hurt innocent people. The situation's not exactly the same, but, she survived Mesaana, and she'll survive whatever happens next.

She saw her dad after China, she tried to remind him of reality when it slipped away, when the lights went out and just that was enough of a trigger. A sick feeling spreads through her at the thought of him in this situation. In CTU, you're guilty until they find evidence otherwise, and they wouldn't listen to denials and they'd hurt him until he confessed or they --

"He's innocent," she repeated as Bill left, and with him her chance for getting out of this unharmed.

Time passes.

Behrooz was right. She has some idea of how he felt, sitting in that room, and waiting for them to make a decision. She'll defend them even after they make her scream, because it's the only way she knows, and she's part of it. Once she only felt hate and a desire for revenge, now she tries to feel nothing at all.

She breathes in, allowing herself one last image of the rose unfurling, prepared for pain, and determined not to speak or give in.

A soft buzz and the door opens.