Fic: The Twelve Labors of Sean Parker [The Social Network][3/3]

[antistar_e]

| then |

Still dazed, feeling off-center by the blow of the revelation, Sean wanders out into the hall. Distantly, he's aware of more shouting, and only then does he remember Mark sprinting out of the study, the raw terror on his face like some silent alarm had been tripped. The panic comes back, and he sets off down the hall at a run.

Everybody, it seems, is gathered in the front hall: there's Bobby, even, hovering uncomfortably by the door with his massive arms folded across his chest, a clear brand of fear making his eyes tight around the corners; Chris, grim-faced, with a bizarrely shirtless Dustin hovering nervously at his elbow; Mark and Divya square off in the middle, shouting.

"-- going to beat the shit out of them with a hammer!" Divya roars, just as Sean elbows through the knot that Christy, Alice, and Sharon make at the end of the hall.

The front door bangs open, and Cameron stumbles in, Tyler directly behind him. Rainwater runs in rivulets off their clothes; their jeans are soaked up to the knees, like they'd been splashed by a car going through gutter water. It hadn't been storming that hard when Sean made the trek back from Goodwill, but glancing around the breadth of their shoulders and he spots a jagged tongue of lightning as it splits the sky in half.

As soon as he claps eyes on them, Mark tries to launch himself at the Winklevosses, fingers shaped into claws. Eduardo grabs him, restraining him with an arm across the chest.

"What happened," Mark barks out, struggling against the hold. "Where is she?"

With identical horrorstruck expressions making their eyes huge as saucers, the twins trip over each other in their hurry to reply.

"We heard it in the rain and we sent Divya to come tell you --"

"-- told us that there was a girl and a van. The rain said the men in the van took the girl and --"

"-- because it had to have been Erica. The rain told us what she looked like and it had to be her because the rain didn't really know how to describe that beanie hat she likes, you know, and anyway --"

"-- we tried to follow, but it's like chasing the Karate Kid around a high school gym. We probably looked ridiculous."

"-- you know how she is. One of those frat boys she likes to terrorize probably recognized her and called --"

"Where did they take her?" Mark cuts in, all but vibrating with his impatience. "Ask the rain! Where is she now!"

In synchrony, the Winklevoss twins lift their hands. Their fingers are taped up, raw from the abuse they withstand at work, but they twitch so very minutely, like they're running over a thousand miniscule threads. They close their eyes, and Sean suddenly realizes he doesn't need to hear the answer, because he already knows. Where else do you take an errant silvertongue?

Head ducking down so as not to attract attention, he backs out, retreating through the maze-like halls down towards his room.

His mind is a whole cacophony of different thoughts, half-plans, a spinning mess of the little bighorn plan and they're the Albrecht twins and the fractal-bright memory of his big brother holding him down on the kitchen tile and beating his face in and the look on Sharon's face when they unlocked the door to her room, like she was expecting to be hit.

A brother needs his sister. The boss-man needs his boss-lady. The Brooklyn kids need their aunt.

Nothing, Sean realizes, is quite more important than what he's going to do right now.

All right, Sean Parker, he thinks, and tilts his head side to side, cracking his neck. He's going to need to do something big. This is your moment. Let's see how fast you can piss off the US government.

| now |

When he comes back to himself, it's to find a new set of hands on him, coaxing and hauling him up by the shoulders to make him kneel, rewarding him with an almost gentle touch to his chin when he goes, his kneecaps creaking and gone numb on the cold cement floor. He sways there, not opening his eyes, but a cursory touch of his mind tells him that the policemen are gone and this isn't them.

The soft, near-fatherly touch almost lulls him into a sense of security, which is why the next punch knocks everything out of him. Stars collide on the insides of his eyelids and his mind pushes through the last bit of deliriousness and suddenly goes bright and fever-focused.

He opens his eyes, now very awake.

"That," says Manningham, very calm and standing over him with his fist still raised. "Is for the mess that you and the Harvard Connection have left for me and my people to clean up."

Sean laughs raspily, lifting his head off the concrete. "Then you shouldn't have kidnapped Erica," he says.

"Why not? She hasn't even been in our custody for twenty-four hours before it did exactly what we wanted it to do. You all came crawling out of hiding pretty much immediately, didn't you? It's kind of like smashing in that last bit of drywall and watching all the cockroaches scatter."

This time, Sean manages it on his own. He draws his knees up under him and uses the ball of his shoulder as leverage to push himself back up into a kneeling position, balancing on his haunches.

"Do you know how long you've been a thorn in my side?" Manningham continues, as pleasantly as if they're talking about the last Green Bay Packers game. "Since your brother Thomas made that ... accidental slip-up in that interview about his sweet baby brother, the founder of Napster. Very curious, don't you think, the way he kept on mentioning how you talked to computers when you were a kid? It's a pity music piracy is still a federal offense."

I always thought they came down on me really hard for that, Sean thinks, viciously hating his brother for one nova-hot moment, before even that passes through him.

He tips his head to the side, licking back blood and saliva and hawking it out: the spray of spit coats the floor, droplets glittering dark as rubies.

"Imagine my surprise when our security cameras casually mention that they were asked to look the other way by this very suave young man, the same day a beast-speaker goes missing from this very facility. That was very, very sloppy of you, Sean. You're not as good at this criminal thing as you think you are."

Sean ignores the jab. He takes a moment to gather himself, before he turns around to face the front, looking Manningham dead in the eye. "Let me tell you something," he goes. "Do you want to know why holding me here, the same way you're constantly trying to push oppression on the rest of us, is futile?"

"Because your rhetoric is so important to me," Manningham returns, sarcasm dripping from every word. "Please, entertain me. I'd love to hear it."

"You know what's cooler than the government, cooler than the elite majority, cooler than you?" Sean murmurs, only a little rhetorically, thinking of the way Mark said because we're silvertongues and not even pretending to be smarmy anymore. "Us. But the thing is, Mitch, is that human beings, by the very nature of their souls, are taught to respect a love story."

"Mm." Manningham makes a sharp, impatient noise in the back of his throat.

"We are," Sean insists. "It doesn't matter if we're silvertongue or not, black or white, CEO or CFO or paper-pushing lackey. Each and every one of us has gone out of our way to avoid maligning something that somebody else loves, even if we don't understand it. We respect people who are in love, even if we think they're crazy. Love is a part of all of us, the one thing we respect above everything else; we don't do great actions with only a little love. We do many, many little things, all with great love."

"Very touching, Mr. Parker, but are you going to arrive at the point?"

"What happens when a heart, a mind, and a body walk into a bar?" He doesn't even wait for an answer. "They raze it to the ground."

Sean gives him a shark's grin, slim and toothy, and says, very soft, "Case equity, bro. You're so busy parading around in your ridiculous suits, trying to outsmart a mastermind that you don't get it. Mark Zuckerberg loves two things in this world and two things only, and neither of those things is his own damn cleverness. He loves Erica, and he loves Eduardo."

And he just has time to see Manningham's expression shift, eyes widening fractionally with sudden realization, before Sean hears the most blessed, blessed sound in the world, crackling at the back of his mind.

It's the ringing, spitfire calvary charge of Eduardo's gun.

Somewhere deep in the warehouse, an alarm begins to sound: short, sharp, piercing wails that makes Sean's soul lift practically into his throat.

Manningham ticks his eyes sideways and draws in an exaggerated sigh. "And here come the rabble," he says. "An agent's work is never done. I'll be back," he promises, and sidles on out the door, like he's in absolutely no hurry to meet what's coming for him, or rather, like he's not worried about meeting what's coming for him. Sean grits his teeth.

He really hopes Christy sets him on fire.

It's only a matter of about sixty seconds before the door to Sean's makeshift holding cell bangs open.

Chris fills the doorway, black bandana pulled up around his mouth. The gun in his hand purrs in delight, saying I see you, Sean, we found you!, settled in Chris's hand like a natural extension of his arm, the way objects do when they truly love their owners, and the feeling of it settles inside Sean's ribs, warm as coal. The bright, focused look on Chris's face breaks for a moment, becoming something complicated at the sight of Sean, kneeling on the floor with his clothes askew, blood and snot dripping unattractively from his face.

"No homo, bro," Sean goes fervently. "But you are maybe the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life."

The gun lowers, safety clicking on, and Chris tugs the bandana down around his neck, revealing a smile as wide as a slice of the moon.

"Well," Sean admits, because he can man up. "Okay, that was a little homo," and Chris snorts, both fond and relieved at once. He holsters his gun and kneels down, wrapping his arm around Sean's waist and helping him to his feet. Sean isn't proud to admit, but his knees wobble and he leans into Chris's warmth with a pathetic amount of gratefulness.

"I don't suppose --" he starts, and wriggles his hands behind his back.

"Please," goes Chris immediately. "I might not be a thing-speaker, but even I know how to pick a pair of handcuffs."

They go out into the hallway, where Sean turns his back to Chris, letting Chris's fingers turn his wrists up so that the lock on the handcuffs faces upwards. At the end of the hallway, he can see where it widens out onto a platform that looks over the main storage area of the warehouse. It's dark, gloomily unlit, even though outside it has to be the height of afternoon. The instant the handcuffs click open, Sean pulls his arms loose.

The unexpected pain almost knocks him down; his arms had been trapped in that position for so long that they cramp horribly, and Sean hisses sharp between his teeth, ending on a whimper.

"Sorry," whispers Chris, touching the flat of his shoulder reassuringly. "I should have warned you."

"Don't worry about it," Sean replies, because he has bigger things to worry about. His hands are free. "I apologize about this in advance," he says preemptively, and sprints the rest of the way down the hall, unzipping his jeans as he goes and reaching in. With no small amount of satisfaction, he pees right over the edge of the platform, all over whatever it is the BIA keeps down there.

He throws his head back, groaning out in sheer, unadulterated bliss as his bladder empties at long last.

"Scratch everything I've ever said," he says to Chris, who hovers a respectful distance away, his eyebrows hiked up very high on his forehead. "This is the most amazing feeling in the entire world."

"I will ... take your word for it," Chris replies.

He shakes himself off and tucks back in, zipping up his jeans. His bladder still hurts, upsettingly enough, and Sean didn't even know a sore bladder could be a thing, but there you go. He pulls his sleeve down over his fist and starts wiping at the mess on his face when he hears another familiar voice; a gun he usually hears tucked safe into a holster pressed close to a heart.

"Eduardo," is all he gets out in warning, a beat before the man himself appears on the other end of the platform.

Dark-colored eyes flicking from Chris to Sean and back again, he says in a very controlled voice, "I got him, Chris. You go help Mark look for Erica."

Sean isn't even sure that Erica's being held here, which is a little frustrating. But he's been casting his mind out ever since he arrived, trying to find her clothes or jewelry or that white beanie cap of hers, the one she was wearing when she got kidnapped, but he can't. He can't hear her.

"I can't hear her," Eduardo says, in an eerie echo of Sean's own thoughts, and he blinks over at him, unsettled by it.

"Are you sure?" Chris looks ill at ease, but Eduardo just shakes his head. They exchange a significant look, quiet except for the continuous drone of the overhead alarm, before Chris turns around and goes clattering down the stairs.

Sean reaches out and grabs Eduardo's sleeve, tugging on it pointedly. "Hey, hey," he goes, a sudden thought surfacing in his mind as something Manningham said about the warehouse's security cameras finally starts to make sense. "I think the other agent guy, Roth, might be --"

"Another thing-speaker," Eduardo finishes for him, distracted, shifting his torso around to face him. His eyes flick back and forth between Sean's eyes, like he's checking pupil size. "Are you all right?"

"I am now," Sean goes, not even bothering to try and sound casual, because whatever, at this point he's pretty sure he's thrown his lot in with the Harvard Connection as far as it can go, if they jump, he jumps, never let me go, Jack, so on and so forth, and the corners of Eduardo's mouth twitch amusedly. "But do you think they really --"

"Yes," is the instant reply. And then, "Always with that look of surprise, Sean, every single time. It's like, no matter what you always say and how much you play up your paranoia of its goings-on, you're still somehow caught off guard whenever the government turns out to be as two-faced as you think it is. Yes, I think not only is the BIA perfectly capable of detesting silvertongues and using them for its own gain at the same time, I think it's absolutely true."

Sean digests this.

"Fuck him," he says seriously, meaning Manningham. "Fuck him very much. I'm going to tell him that when I see him next, I promise you that right now."

"We're going to have to find him first," Eduardo answers, like it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion. "Which is going to be hard, if Roth has thing-speaked everything in this building to keep mum and not do anything that might aid our search."

There's something wrong with this picture, Sean thinks, and feels the weight of this thought very keenly.

"Wait," he says, and very slowly, turns his head. "How do you know that?"

Eduardo just looks at him patiently, and the silence stretches for several seconds, because Sean knows he's missing something here, because how does Eduardo know that about the locks on the doors and the cameras, how does he know about the thing-speaking.

He wants me to tell you that you're being very slow, says Eduardo's gun. But he'll forgive you on account of you having been held in captivity for the better part of the day.

And there it is. The puzzle piece that didn't quite fit where Sean was trying to make it fit, falling into place like it was just waiting all along, and he feels his eyes double in size, leaping from Eduardo to the gun cradled capably in his hands the same way a businessman can handle a Blackberry, and back again.

The gun that spoke to him.

Eduardo spoke to him through the gun.

"You're a thing-speaker," he says. "You. You're a thing-speaker!"

"There you go," Eduardo murmurs, and Sean's brain clicks into overdrive, because of course, of course, of course, he'd always wondered if maybe there'd been another thing-speaker who'd gone through Mt Auburn Street, because the appliances all kept their silence, like they already knew they had somebody to talk to. Everybody else knew, everybody else had to know, but they kept quiet because Sean was so adamant that he was useful as a one-of-a-kind, an unregistered thing-speaker.

When, of course, there was already an unregistered thing-speaker on the premise. No wonder Eduardo had been so mulish, following Mark around and saying things like, we don't need him.

Because they didn't.

Oh, god, everybody must have laughed their asses off.

"Dude," he goes wonderingly, tilting his head up to look at Eduardo with the same shock people usually reserve for risen members of the undead. "This explains everything. Dude, dude, dude," he shakes Eduardo's sleeve again. "Do you know how much I've heard about you?"

"Do I want to know?"

"Nothing," comes out of him, admiringly, and it looks like Eduardo can't help the smile he gives at that one. "How did you manage to keep it a secret all this time?"

"I hadn't really planned on it," Eduardo admits. "Mark and I just wanted to know what you were made of -- the Winklevii had done all that research on you, sure, but we could go on the Internet and read any number of untrue things, so we wanted to get the measure of you without the lens of competition."

He pauses, like he's waiting for Sean to ask more questions, but Sean just kind of wants to know everything, so he flaps his wrist around to get Eduardo to keep going.

"When I was born, my parents bought out the nurse's silence, and then since silence became kind of running theme in my household, I didn't tell them what I could do. I think my parents are still under the impression that I'm some kind of beast-speaker."

Sean shrugs. "Hey, you can get Mark to shower. I consider that a pretty impressive form of beast-speaking," he says, and is gratified when Eduardo actually barks laughter.

"I was eighteen and bagging cookies in the mall when Mark and Erica found me. They wanted my chess algorithm, but what they got was an unregistered thing-speaker. The rest, I think, is history."

"Snookies?" Sean goes, uncertain as to where he gleaned this information from -- it might have been from one of those drinking nights around the fire pit up on the roof of the empty office building -- but feeling the truth of it anyway. "Snookies Cookies?"

"Yeah."

"I love that place!" he enthuses, and a quick glance at the expression on Eduardo's face tells him this probably isn't the time or the place. He lets go of his sleeve, and says, "But, seriously, dude, you could have offed me at any point. I never would have seen it coming -- I thought you were as human as they come -- and Mark doesn't need two thing-speakers. I was a threat to your position. I am a threat to your position."

Eduardo snorts at that, smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, like he's enjoying a private joke.

And then.

Something in his expression shifts, changes, and his eyes go from their usual warm cat's eye gleam to something familiarly reptilian.

"You're really not," he says, and it's Eduardo's voice, but not his tone, and Sean looks at him and realizes that someone else entirely is using his mouth to speak. "I'm glad to see you're all right, Sean," it continues, matter-of-fact and a little brusque. "Thank you for ... for what you did. I appreciate it," and understanding slams into Sean like a hammer blow, felling him neatly.

He hears the far-off echo of Divya's voice, saying, what do you know about transference?

Transference: the possibility of an irreversible connection formed between a people-speaker who tries to people-speak another silvertongue. It's a people-speaker's greatest fear, of becoming so dependently, fantastically bonded to somebody else, that their every thought, word, memory, and action become yours as well, and from that moment on, neither of you can ever be separated, and are never alone again.

"We look after our own, Sean," says Mark through Eduardo's mouth.

"Shit," Sean breathes out, because he's not sure how many more drastic reveals he can take. Mark and Erica are the Albrecht twins, Mark and Eduardo are soul-bonded through some hinky defect of silvertongue genetics, and Eduardo is a thing-speaker. It is seriously blowing his mind.

It also makes so much sense, though, because how many times has Sean thought it strange that whenever Mark and Eduardo spoke to each other, it was like they were having whole conversations in the wealth of a few words (he remembers Eduardo bending at the waist to kiss Mark's mouth, saying, you idiot, like it was a whole adoring soliloquy,) and how they always seemed to have a sixth sense for when the other needed back-up, and how strange it was that they were so subtle -- touchy, sure, because Eduardo was in close proximity more often than not, the two of them with their backs pressed together and turned in different directions (which he supposes now is their way of seeing 360º) -- but he had lived with them for three months without knowing that they were banging. He had to walk in on them making out before he figured it out.

Then again, why do you need to touch someone excessively when you can just ... do it in your heads?

"Shit," he says again, softer.

"You're one of us, Sean," it's Eduardo's inflection now, inside his own voice, and he nudges Sean with his elbow. "As long as there's a Harvard Connection, you'll have a place with us."

"That's ... fuck it, can I have a hug? I mean, I know neither of you two crazy kids are huggers, but I can't let that one go."

This startles Eduardo into laughing, who goes, "maybe later," with a tolerant air of long-suffering, before his face shifts again, and now that he's looking for it, Sean knows that he's seen this exact thing happen dozens upon dozens of times before: that moment when Mark or Eduardo see something important happen through each other's eyes.

"They found her," he goes, a wealth of wonder and relief so deep in his voice that it sounds like he's drowning. "Erica. She's alive."

Sean nods, and rubs at the red lines bitten into his wrists. He can hear it, down below: the shape of things in his mind that means Mark and the shape of things that mean Manningham, facing each other. He looks up and meets Eduardo's eyes.

His mouth set, Eduardo clicks the safety off his gun.

The warehouse control room is lit by the light of a single bulb, bare and swinging on the end of a chain. There's a bank of control switches against the far wall, levers that manage the floodlights and the skylights and the bay doors all flicked to off.

The first thing Sean sees when they bust in there is Manningham, unarmed with his shoulders held straight back, and Erica on a pallet behind him.

She's unconscious, flung out on her side with her shoulders drawn up like the wings of a bird; she's wearing nothing except for her tank top and black pajamas bottoms, rolled at the waist and decorated with Tweety Birds and the caption of dat's right, pussycat! all down the legs. She's soaked all the way through, her clothes clinging to her, and it looks too fresh for it to have been from the rain yesterday.

Hatred courses through Sean like vinegar in his veins.

Mark stands across from Manningham, also unarmed but trembling with scarcely-contained rage, his eyes flicking rapid-fast, back and forth, Erica's prone form to Manningham's smug face. The only thing that's keeping him from going to her are the cops, flanking him on either side with their handguns trained right on him. They're the same ones that beat Sean bloody; their guns are a nasty, offensive bark in his head, their stony silence from before broken by the promise of fresh bloodshed.

One of them spins around when Eduardo and Sean come in, the barrel pointing right at them and sending them to a skidding halt, but the other cop doesn't waver. Mark doesn't move to look at them, either, but he doesn't need to, not when Eduardo's standing right behind him.

Sean takes a moment to be grateful that nobody's handcuffed this time around.

There's a beat where everybody lets the reality of the circumstances sink in, and then Mark speaks.

"Good job," he goes, biting out each word. "Using our own invasion tactic against us. Pick a day when the NYPD is busy with a number of other things in other places, and act in the shadow of it."

"There are a lot of people out there, lacing up their jogging shoes and racing for the cure," Manningham agrees mildly. "I hear it's a record-breaking number." Mark says nothing, so he makes a small, interested noise. "It's called the little bighorn, Mr. Albrecht, you should look it up."

The use of Mark's real name acts pretty much like a cattle prod set directly against his spine: Mark's whole body jolts with it, eyes flying betrayingly wide before his face settles into a mask of cool indifference, mouth flattened out, like this is something he can't even be bothered with.

His voice, when he speaks, comes out silky and oily to the touch, so silverly smooth and persuasive that Sean leans towards it involuntarily.

"I don't know how you came by that information, Agent Manningham, but I think it would be best for the both of us if you just forgot --"

Manningham backhands Mark cleanly, almost casually, and his men step smartly out of the way when Mark hits the concrete. Eduardo bellows in outrage and pain, jerking forward, but a deliberate move on the part of the gun turned towards him makes him freeze again, eyes blazing the color of brimstone and hands white-knuckled on his handgun, hovering uselessly in front of him.

Mark scrambles to his feet again, red mark showing bright on his cheek.

"Don't try to people-speak me, Mark," says Manningham, voice cold. "Or I'm going to have to cut out that pretty silvery tongue of yours."

Mark is quiet.

"That's better," Manningham relaxes back onto his heels. "Now, do you know how ridiculous you and Ms. Albrecht here look with that ... ugh, does it even really deserve the name of a crime syndicate? It really isn't, is it, it's just you two pretending you can ... what, viva la revolucion with some therapy sessions for spoiled teens? Please, Mark, we both know the Harvard Connection isn't going anywhere but the bad end of Brooklyn."

Mark shrugs one shoulder. "Okay, that's fair," he goes. "But I believe I deserve some recognition from the Bureau."

This makes Manningham pause.

"I don't understand," he says, hard.

"Yes," answers Mark, like that's a given. "Which part?"

"You believe you deserve recognition?"

"Well, yes. We all do -- Erica, Eduardo, Sean, and I, with the help of our whole entire family. You know," he snorts derisively. "I think we've done a pretty good job severely undermining your frankly underwhelming attempts at controlling the silvertongue situation in Brooklyn. How many years has the Harvard Connection made the BIA look like idiots?"

Something passes over Manningham's face, something that blanks it out like a slate swept clean. The next moment, he sweeps forward and seizes Mark around the throat, hauling him up almost onto his tiptoes.

Mark's eyes bulge wide, pupils swelling with fear and edging out the blue-grey color, as Manningham's thumbs dig hard into his windpipe. The agent's face goes apoplectic, seemingly oblivious to Mark scrambling at his wrists, and everybody shouts at once: Eduardo and Sean and the two cops, overlapping each other. Sean can feel the cords in his throat standing out, and Manningham lets go, holding his palms up in surrender.

Knees giving out, Mark slides to the ground. Every breath he pulls in whistles through his nose. Eduardo shudders, full-body, and Sean flings an arm out sideways to stop him from moving.

Running his hands over his greased-back hair, steadily regaining his composure, Manningham paces in a tight circle before he turns around and kneels down next to Mark's head.

"Well now," he says. "Don't be shy, Mr. Albrecht. Is there anything you'd like to say?"

Mark throws him a deeply hateful look. "Yeah," he goes, his voice sounding like it had been raked backwards over hot coals, rasping like sandpaper. "Sean Parker says fuck you."

Unbidden, Manningham and his men cast a startled glance in Sean's direction, and Sean smirks, lifting his shoulder in an aw shucks, you mean little ole me? gesture. He swears his heart grows three sizes with pride.

Manningham's smile goes tight in the corners. He looks back at Mark and says, calmly, "Listen to me, you little shit. While you're busy playing chicken with me, my partner is out there rounding up your whole ragged crew, and he's going to bring them here and then we'll really see how thick that skin of yours is. Now, I've found that there are really some very interesting loopholes in silvertongue legislation -- did you know, for example, that it's generally frowned up to kill one, but it's legal to cut out their tongue?"

His eyes glitter at the thought. Mark doesn't look away.

"And I'm just one man, I'm prone to making mistakes. It would be so easy to miss, you know," Manningham touches the tip of his finger to Mark's jugular in a very, very pointed gesture.

It happens in a matter of seconds, in one blinking fall of the eyelids to the next, eternity unfolding like a child's finger puppet fortune teller game.

To Sean, everything suddenly slows way down.

Manningham's lip curls on the end of his threat, and there is just a beat, less than, for the implication to sink in.

A half-beat, and then Erica Albrecht unfolds.

She stands in one fluid movement, wide-eyed awake and wet hair clinging to her bare arms, and Sean catches a glimpse of something glimmering in her hands -- wire, he recognizes with a sharp metallic nip at the back of his mind, which she had worked out of the mattress the whole time they'd been talking. A step is all it takes for her to position herself behind Manningham, her face so cleanly set it looks like porcelain.

Then, still too fast for anyone to even realize she was standing, she loops the wire around his neck and garrotes him clean through.

Blood slashes out, glinting darkly red as it spills down Manningham's neck and stains the collar of his shirt. He drops, his strings completely cut loose, landing lopsided on the cement and skidding a bit with the momentum. Erica stands over him, hands splayed open and empty, her expression shining pure, so fierce in that moment it clenches at Sean's throat like he was the one she sliced open. He has less than a second to comprehend what she's done -- killed the man who threatened her twin and threatened to bring down her family, calmly and without pause.

In this second, in this moment, she reigns. Mob queen, boss-lady, and head of the family, blood on her bare toes and her eyes lifting.

She looks at her brother. Mark looks back.

We protect our own.

And then everything moves again.

Manningham's men lift their guns simultaneously, barrels pointed straight at Erica's chest and fingers pulling reflexively on the trigger, their mouths cast open in a rictus of horror. Mark leaps, pushing off at an ungainly angle like a long-distance sprinter, like he's going to throw himself in front of those guns.

There's no time to think -- Sean's already reaching, and meets Eduardo's hand half-way, and that's all it takes.

It's like his mind explodes outwards. A star, gone completely supernova, jiva thing speaking to jiva thing and receiving an answer.

Hold up two mirrors to each other, and what do they reflect?

It's an experience outside time, to suddenly have Eduardo's mind laid out in front of him, a whole spreadsheet of memories right there for Sean to touch. The reverse is true, too, of course; all of Sean's secrets bare for Eduardo to bring up at will, to remember, but it almost doesn't matter, because it's too fascinating. Without bidding it, scenes from Eduardo's life play out in front of his eyes: a sunlit parlor room, palm trees bobbing outside the window, and through Eduardo's ears he hears his mother's teacup warn her not to grip it around the handle, and feels Eduardo's mouth open to warn her, just as the cup breaks apart in her hands. He sees a distorted underwater view, sand rippling with an incoming wave and summer sunlight distortedly bright. He sees Christy, small and teenage with lime green rubber bands in her braces, and she snaps her fingers in front of his face, sparking off a candle flame. He sees Mark, head tilted up to compensate for Eduardo's height and his eyes burning, his voice going low and liquid as quicksilver -- the first and last time he used people-speech on Eduardo, saying, simply, I need the algorithm. Wardo.

There's Mark here, too, of course there is, because there's no Mark without Eduardo, no Eduardo without Mark. Sean can hear him, tinny like he's coming through a pair of headphones pulled low off his ears, both here in the present and as a constant echo in Eduardo's memories.

Brushing close to it is like tumbling a kaleidoscope, typeset and clicking faster than a machine-gun, and Sean cannot breathe with the force of it.

It could have been so easy to vaguely pity them, he realizes dimly, for being stuck with this: the thankless curse of always knowing what the other is thinking, seeing, doing. They had to have changed after the bond formed and sealed over like a cooling link in a hot metal chain, entirely against their will, because you cannot think for two people without changing in infinitesimal ways. Sean Parker may be a firm believer that privacy is a relic of the past, but that doesn't mean he's ready for what Mark and Eduardo have, that instantaneous knowing; he enjoyed having his mind to himself and assumed it was the best thing for everybody else, too.

The second stretches, everything suspended like dewdrops on a spider's web -- Erica with a corpse at her feet and the gunmen about to open fire and Eduardo and Sean with their fingers touching and Mark, coiled half in the action of catapulting himself forward, eyes on his sister -- and then it telescopes down, into one single feeling shining hot and bright through their chests like white light from a prism.

Eduardo and Sean open their mouths in unison.

STOP, they say, or maybe DON'T or maybe they don't say anything at all, because there's no real way to vocalize what's going on inside their heads, the earth-shattering kind of love Sean feels -- love for Mark, love for Erica, love for every nook and cranny and beat-up person that makes up the Harvard Connection, and only half of it is his.

It's the kind of love that stops bullets midair.

The guns come apart. The bullets are unmade. They come out of the hands that hold them and lay down at their feet in pieces.

Now, you probably already know this, because Eduardo might have told you (don't ever believe what he tells you about the marlin, the dude can't hold his fish metaphors,) but Sean Parker has a land speed record for talking, it's kind of impressive.

However. It's always at this part of the retelling that Sean stops, because he forgets, momentarily, that there are words.

As far as he's always been concerned, things are not worth doing if he can't tell an awesome story about it later, but to the day he dies, he's not sure if he'll ever be able to express what it's like, to stand there and not even be sure he's part of his own body. He feels like he transcended the dimensions of his own skin, became pure jiva, talking to the jiva things like it was the beginning of the universe. He and Eduardo did something together, something so great that not even the most stubborn, spitfire gun could ignore their command.

It saved Erica's life.

It's ... okay, listen up, little ones, because Sean's only going to tell you once.

If you're going to do something devastating, if you're going to throw yourself off the Golden Gate Bridge or throw yourself in front of a bullet, if you're going to go to your knees and surrender to the police, if you're going pledge yourself to a crime family, if you're going to go up to that person bagging cookies in the mall just to try...

Then, little ones, then you've got to do it for love.

Sean drops Eduardo's hand. The connection breaks, leaving him reeling for one achingly lonely beat before his own mind folds back around him, comforting and familiar in its idiosyncrasies. He wonders if it's possible to give your own brain a welcoming hug.

"Time to go," Eduardo says shortly.

After that, everything seems to happen at once, a whole mess of things that Sean will only remember later in cinematic flashes, mental photographs that he uses as touchstones to build a whole story around.

Flash! There's Mark and Erica, colliding together in their haste to get their arms wrapped around each other.

Flash! There's Chris, arriving on the scene at last, coming around the corner leading with the barrel of his gun, which greets Sean and Eduardo both, loud and ecstatic and plainly relieved to find them in one piece. An autumn-haired woman follows right on Chris's heels; she's wearing a brown cotton skirt with a hankerchief hem that kicks up around the tops of her rainboots. She beelines straight for the empty-handed cops, touching their chins to get their attention and peppering them with questions.

Flash! There's Christy, a bandana pulled up over her mouth and her face lit up by the burning end of a molotov cocktail.

She says in grim promise, "Get everyone out. Bobby and I will clean up here."

Flash! Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss bar the exits of the warehouse, keeping a cluster of cops from swarming in with the sheer wide breadth of their shoulders and the size of their fists, their hands going liquid like puppetmasters as they slick water over the cop's visors, letting Sean and the rest slip out and away, racing along the waterside.

It takes three men in full body armor to wrestle the Winklevosses to the concrete, and when they haul him up in handcuffs, Sean swears he sees Tyler wink at them.

Flash! There's Mark and Eduardo, kissing up against the side of another building with the fervor of protestors in wartime, like they wouldn't even notice if the whole world burned screaming to the ground around them. Eduardo's gun is out, held steady off to one side with the safety still clicked off, and he takes one hand off the barrel in order to press it into Mark's spine, hauling him closer. Mark's spider-leg fingers catch him by the face, holding him in place for another deep, dragging kiss, before they slide up and into his hair.

Erica leans against the wall next to them, groggy, her strength clearly flagging. She cants to one side a little, pillowing her head against the blade of Eduardo's shoulder -- not like she's trying to get his attention, but more like he trusts that he's there for her to fall against. Her hair's beginning to dry, coiling up into corkscrew curls as it does, and Sean understands now, why she always meticulously straightened it. She and Mark don't really look like twins (their faces are shaped completely different; Mark's all hard angles and Erica's soft, heart-shaped) but the fewer visible similarities there are, the better.

She catches Sean's eye.

"The rats will come for Manningham," she tells him, completely serene. "I'll tell them to keep an eye out for Roth, too, shall I?"

He suppresses the shiver of dread as it creeps icily down his spine, the reality of today yawning mightily in his face. They're going to escape, they're going to make it, which is more than Sean thought when he woke up this morning with steel biting his wrists, but this is going to follow them. There are eyewitnesses who know that Erica Albright murdered Mitchell Manningham -- eyewitnesses that will conveniently forget that Manningham was threatening their lives.

There's the problem of Roth, too, who knows that Mark and Erica are the Albrecht twins. He knows that Sean's a thing-speaker, because he's one too.

Erica's fingers curl around Eduardo's elbow, eyes fluttering shut, and Sean sees Eduardo tremble with the effort of keeping still for Erica and kiss Mark enthusiastically at the same time. He forgets to be scared, because he doesn't feel safer than he does with these people, and the lengths they'll go to to protect each other.

We look after our own.

It's loud outside, the normal afternoon sounds of a city whose only major news story this evening will be about the turnout for the race for the cure, but it doesn't quite drown out the wet, smacking noises that Mark and Eduardo's mouths make, and Sean doesn't even bother being embarrassed about that, either, because he's been inside their heads. He knows how it feels to be them. The memories are retreating already, like the grand scale of a dream that can't be remembered upon waking, but he can feel the echo of what it's like, to love someone and feel them love you back, like mirrors turned in, love and love and love reflected a hundredfold.

It's hard to be embarrassed when you know what it's like to love someone like they're gravity, like you could fall into them and never reach the bottom, like being apart from them is like being amputated.

He's actually just glad the transference happened. In another world, he might have been worried for them.

Imagine how much things would suck if Mark and Eduardo actually had to communicate using words, without automatically knowing the thoughts and intentions behind them?

This whole time, he thinks. This whole time he's been treating Mark Zuckerberg like a crime boss, like he's the head of the family, the master and commander. But it's not entirely true, is it, because it's the three of them, here; Mark, Eduardo, and Erica. Remove any one of those pieces, and the Harvard Connection falls apart.

Erica's the body that walks the walk, Mark's the mind that talks the talk, and Eduardo is their heart. (A heart, a mind, and a body walk into a bar.)

You can leave best friends and you can leave girlfriends, but you can't leave family.

(They raze it to the ground.)

There's a clatter at the end of the alleyway, accompanied by the fierce, honking protest of a Canadian goose, and then Chris and the redheaded woman materialize around the corner, walking fast, with Dustin bringing up the rear. Mark peels away from Eduardo like he's performing the surgical separation of conjoined twins, and rounds on Chris the second he's within arm's reach.

"What was that back there? I thought I told you to bring back-up! NYPD or the kids from da eastside or something," he manages to get out, breathless and scowling.

"I did," Chris returns, unperturbed. "I brought you the most powerful back-up there is."

The woman steps forward like this is her cue, jutting her hand out between them. "Hi," she goes. "I'm Rachel, I'm with the Harvard Crimson."

Mark's eyebrows tick up, his mouth dropping open, but for a moment, he's completely unable to find the words.

Rachel helps him out. "It's the school newspaper for --"

"I know what the Crimson is," he breaks in, finding his voice again. "But --"

"Then you know what it means when I tell you that I have a sound-bite of almost everything that went down in there," says Rachel briskly. "And that the flagrant abuses that the BIA has leveled against US silvertongue civilians will be tomorrow's headlines."

Whatever Mark had been expecting, this plainly wasn't it. Completely floored, he blinks once or twice, and then looks over his shoulder at Eduardo and Erica for reassurance. Erica's eyes are sparkling, and she nods firmly -- this triggers some thought in Mark, because he twists around front.

"When you say you have a sound-bite of everything ..."

"Almost everything," Rachel stresses. She seems to know exactly what he's worried about, because her eyes flick between the twins. "Mr. Zuckerberg. Ms. Albright," she says, very deliberately.

The message couldn't be clearer: whatever Manningham may have said regarding their real identities, it's not for Rachel to reveal. Sean doesn't know if that makes her a really lousy journalist, or a fantastic one.

Mark breathes out in relief.

"Now," she continues. "Most media is controlled by its own rules and the conglomerate American bureaucracy, so even I'm curbed by some censorship. But. I can get you on the most important kind of news circuit -- the college level." She flicks a lock of her hair over her shoulder. "People are going to learn about what happened here today, and they're going to be curious. They're going to ask questions: both of themselves and of authority."

This, Sean realizes. This. This is the gift they've been waiting for -- a chance to affect people on a much, much larger scale than just the Brooklyn area.

This is no time to take your chips down, Mark, he thinks, but doesn't bother to vocalize, because he's pretty sure Mark already knows it, and doesn't need the advice.

Now that he's out of immediate danger, the strain of the day is starting to catch up to Sean, so he leans back against the wall and lets Rachel exchange rapid-fire communication with Mark, who is flanked by his sister on one side and his lover on the other -- the two people he loves more than anything in the entire world. It's nice to let someone else be in charge, and not have to put on any kind of Sean Parker Variety Hour, or to live up to anybody else's expectations, his own least of all.

Everyone has the gift of speech, Sean thinks, with a brain that feels overtired, heavy and swimming. Humans and silvertongues both. Everyone.

"Hey, guys, hey, hey," Dustin cuts in, lilting his voice up very loudly to be heard over Rachel and Mark's heated debate over how soon the story can break, before the BIA sends somebody in to sweep it under the rug, the way all accounts of police brutality are carefully made to just go away. Yale, Columbia, and Stanford, she's promising him, and they look over at Dustin, annoyed and distracted in turns.

"Dustin. What?"

"While you guys were busy with your search-and-rescue, I did some poking around," Dustin tells them. The goose waddles around his legs. "Usually I leave the master-hacking to Mark, or hell, I suppose I could outsource it to one of you thing-speakers, but hey, I know Mark was busy sticking his tongue all the way down Eduardo's throat -- and don't think I'm not going to make fun of you for the rest of your natural lives -- so I figured at least one of us should do our jobs," he waves a hand around with a lofty air, and then reaches into his pocket to pull out a datachip, the same size and shape of a postage stamp.

"This," Dustin says, with the air of a master magician pulling his coup de grace. "Is the government facebook for all the registered silvertongues in the United States."

A moment of stunned silence greets this announcement, and six pairs of wide eyes stare at Dustin, the same way you would at the person who just discovered the cure for cancer.

"All of them?" says Mark, in a very small voice.

"Names, addresses, forms of speech -- you name it, we got it," Dustin confirms, and then squawks noisily when Eduardo grabs him up, crushing him close in a hug that Chris joins in on, their faces split open and grinning, because this ... this is exactly what they've been waiting for.

They spend the next couple of nights lying low.

It goes against Sean's every instinct, which tells him that he needs to escape, to flee, before anyone knows who they're looking for. Hiding in the same state as the scene of the crime is not Sean Parker's main mode of transportation, but he's not really just Sean Parker anymore, is he? He's part of the Harvard Connection, and it takes time to make something as big as the Harvard Connection just ... vanish.

So Sean and Erica stay indoors through two piercingly bright autumn days, recovering. He's surprised to find that he needs it. His insides feel sore, battered, and Erica sleeps for thirteen hours straight before the bruise-colored marks under her eyes go away. They sleep on an air mattress in the unfurnished guest room of one of Gretchen's friends from law school, a meat-handed man she calls Sy. They quibble with each other in tones of exasperated fondness, passing plates of Bagel Bites back and forth across the dinner table.

During the day, the apartment is empty; Sy has work, but he leaves them the wireless access code. Erica pulls on thick socks that bag around the toes and curls up with Sean's book on Jaina traditions, running her fingers along the edges of the pages with quiet reverence as she reads.

"Maybe we'll go to India," Sean tells her when he catches her at it. "At least there we won't be breaking any laws. We'll become a famous traveling circus!" he warms up to the idea, thinking of Alice training horses to jump through hoops that Christy has charmed to blaze the same oranges and reds as Indian spices. "We'll wash ourselves clean on the holy days in the River Ganges, and meditate in the Nepalese mountains. Dustin can spend all day talking to cows!"

She laughs, covering her mouth with her hands.

Sy comes home shortly after six, and goes about making dinner out of assorted packages in his freezer, the way one does when they have unexpected guests and aren't used to preparing meals for anyone else. Mark, Gretchen, and Eduardo usually come home around ten, filling Sy's apartment to the brim. Mark falls on the leftovers with a ravenous hunger, and while his mouth is otherwise occupied, Eduardo tells them what they've accomplished.

"We can't just leave," he tells Sean and Erica, who don't need to be told. "Who's going to run the after-school programs, the Goodwill drives, the internships? We need to find someone trustworthy to run those after we split."

"It's a tangle of bureaucratic nonsense," says Gretchen happily; bureaucratic nonsense is bread and butter to her.

"And we need to round up everyone who's coming with us," adds Mark, scraping at the inside of a Tupperware container. "The people who are absolutely dependent on the Harvard Connection for survival."

"So, basically everyone who lived at Mt Auburn Street before the cops got to it," says Erica, and they all share a grimace. It wasn't even an hour after they got out of the warehouse that the BIA did a full-on SWAT raid of Mt Auburn Street; a combination of some fast texting and Dustin's army of city crows meant there was a forty-five minutes warning; the hard drives stripped clean and everything with their names on it destroyed before everyone at base who hadn't volunteered for the rescue mission melted into the afternoon light, scattering to the safety of the Brooklyn kids' homes.

They stay up into the early hours, planning. Mark and Erica sit close together, knees touching, and the first time they laugh together, it strikes Sean out of absolutely nowhere, the one similarity he was looking for that could reconcile the fact that they are fraternal twins: it's their dimples.

When Mark and Erica laugh, they dimple in the exact same way.

Afterwards, they sleep tangled like puppies in a basket on Sy's loud, flatulent air mattress. Eduardo doesn't even roll his eyes that hard when he wakes up to find Sean plastered to his back, just elbows him long-sufferingly until Sean's limbs retreat back into his own personal space.

That weird Vulcan mind-meld thing hasn't happened again, which Sean is both grateful for (because he would hate having to avoid touching Eduardo all the time, the guy is just too much fun to rib and push around,) and curious about, because what made it happen? Was it the stress of the situation, the sheer panic and desperation that turned them into creatures of pure jiva, communicating even on the subatomic? Is it something that thing-speakers can do only with each other, or is it possible for all silvertongues to do it? Is it like transference?

Once again, Sean's struck with how little anybody really knows about silvertongues.

Houston, I think we have a calling, he thinks to himself, and rubs his hands together.

Finally, at the end of the week, Sy comes in and shakes Sean and Erica awake at six in the morning, the places between their bodies bare. "Time to go," he says softly, procuring good New York bagels for them in a brown paper bag and leaving to let them pack. He presses a wad of twenties into each of their palms when they come out of the bedroom, ignoring their immediate protests. His eyes are gentle when he says, "good luck," and it's only when the building gate clicks shut behind them that Sean realizes he never asked if Sy was a silvertongue or not.

It doesn't matter, he supposes. Sometimes human kindness doesn't come with a price.

They meet in the basketball court; the locks chorus a warm greeting when Sean approaches, making him grin and magnanimously bow in their direction. They unravel willfully in his hands.

Joggers go by in windbreakers and seagulls cartwheel overhead, and the sun rises in a smear of grey, dark blue, and a gentle pink on the horizon. Within fifteen minutes of their arrival, the fragmented remains of the Harvard Connection materialize on the court, carrying duffel bags and small suitcases filled with all their worldly belongings, bundled up against the chill. Leaning against the hoop, Sean takes inventory of who they have left.

There's Bobby, who Erica runs for as soon as he slips through the gate. He meets her at the half-point line, scooping her up into a crushing hug and spinning her around.

There's Christy, who punches Sean's elbow in greeting and says, "I'm glad you're not dead, Parker," with her eyes as glittering yellow as a Japanese ladybug, her hair thrown back in a ponytail and hoop earrings swinging. Her jacket's unzipped far enough that he can see the soft ripple of gooseflesh on Bonnie and Clyde.

The Winklevoss twins are gone, of course, because even if they're already out on bail, they need to stay for their court date, but Divya, surprisingly, is there, crouched down next to the chain-link fence. Even more surprising than that: KC, the junior librarian who works with Divya's after-school program and is not a silvertongue, stands over him, talking quietly in a huddle with Alice, Sharon, Andrew (a heavyset beast-speaker who got Sean addicted to Harvest Moon, but shh, don't tell anyone,) and someone whose name Sean doesn't know; a slim Asian man with reflective aviator sunglasses and a fuzzy winter hat with a panda face on it, who Sean thinks might be a wind-talker.

As he watches, Divya catches KC's hand and kisses her palm, eyes lidded and grateful.

There's Dustin, Chris, Stephanie, and Gretchen, sitting in a semi-circle around Dustin's laptop. Mark stands over them, talking rapidly, and Sean takes a moment to study him. He looks strong, purposeful, completely in his element; this twiggy nineteen-year-old lit up, with power settling easily around his shoulders. The marks around his neck from where Manningham gripped him in a choke-hold have faded to a pale, sickly green, and mid-sentence, he lifts his fingers to them, hand covering bruise briefly.

Eduardo stands behind him, close as shadow, gun sparking close to his heart. Sean murmurs to it, something joking, and Eduardo glances over, eyes crinkling in a smile; where Mark's face is bright with power, Eduardo's face is soft with love, and loyalty.

With Erica tucked securely into his side, Bobby says, "Hey, fearless leader."

Mark startles, looking up, and Sean catches the flicker of shock widening his eyes. He doesn't think he's ever heard Bobby speak before, either.

"Where are we going?" Bobby asks.

Sean thinks, unbidden, of the list of silvertongues that Dustin has on that data chip he took from Manningham and Roth, the facebook, the endless wealth of people like them. Maybe some of them are perfectly fine with the status quo and don't want to change a thing, but not everybody, surely; someone will want to join them, someone will want to change the world and connect it. He thinks of the first entry, the possibilities; Ashleigh Abalt, water-walker, twenty years old, Atherton, California.

He thinks of the way Amy Ritter had looked that day, her eyes fixed somewhere beyond him, saying quietly, all this speech, and nobody's saying a thing.

He thinks, what's on your mind?

He steps up to Mark's side.

"You know," he offers smoothly, with a slow, creeping grin. "I hear California is nice this time of year."

-

fin

back to masterpost