Page 183 of Victorious

“I thought EON no longer had cells.” His mouth twitched grimly as he said it, but his body was coiled, tense. He knew he’d gone too far.

“It doesn’t,” said Gabriel, unbuttoning his cuffs. “This room isn’t for my current patients. It’s for those who haven’t started treatment yet.”

He let the words hang in the air, watched the understanding settle over Eli.

This wasn’t a cell. It was a morgue.

A place EOs were brought after they’d been killed, and before Gabriel resurrected them.

“I suppose you could say,” he continued, slowly rolling up his sleeves, “that we are standing in the closest thing EON has to a religious space. A place…” He nearly said, “a place where miracles are performed,” but he knew that Eli did not consider EOs miraculous in any way, so he adjusted. “A place of transformation.” He looked around. “This is where I brought you back.”

Eli’s jaw ticked. “Why are we here?”

Gabriel hummed. “Why indeed…” He folded his arms. “I could have reined you in,” he said, “extracted your compliance, demanded absolute obedience. Instead, I let you believe that on some level, you were still in control.”

Eli’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. He obviously wanted to believe that Gabriel was lying. But couldn’t be sure. Gabriel felt the other man’s uncertainty, like momentary slackness in the line. Good.

“Call it curiosity,” he went on. “An exercise. But the time has come to clarify our roles.” As he spoke, Gabriel’s fingers went to the buckle on his thin black belt. Eli’s resistance to authority had one exception. God.

But his devotion to that higher power was built on fear as much as faith.

Gabriel slid the belt free.

Eli’s eyes followed the motion as he began to coil it around one hand. “I expected better from you, Eliot.”

Sure enough, Eli flinched at the use of his full name. A name he’d clearly wanted to bury with the rest of his childhood.

Gabriel had read each and every file. He knew about the scars on Eli’s back. Knew how he’d gotten them. The cross in the family church, where his preacher father took him, whenever he decided he was bad.

A good therapist understood the grip a person’s past could have over their present, years, even decades later.

Gabriel held out the belt. “Take this,” he said, and the look on Eli’s face was a mix of fury, hatred, and betrayal. “And use it to bind your hands to the post in the corner of the room.”

It was a direct command, one Eli could not refuse, but it was clear, every part of him wanted to. With clenched teeth and shrunken pupils, he took the belt, and turned, moving stiffly toward the post.

“Wait.”

Eli stopped, clearly hoping for mercy, but Gabriel only said, “Remove your shirt.”

His knuckles flashed white as his fingers tightened on the belt. But he obeyed, dragging the black uniform over his head, exposing the latticework of scars. He stayed where he was, until Gabriel instructed him to continue.

As Eli neared the corner post, his steps took on a lurching measure. Every muscle fighting, the true extent of his resistance on display as self-preservation warred with the command. It took all of Gabriel’s composure to keep the strain from showing in his limbs, his face. If Eli had turned round at that moment, he would have seen the toll it was taking. Would have known that Gabriel was lying.

That he wasn’t fully in control.

But Eli’s eyes were on the metal post.

He looped the belt around it, and then around his wrists.

It was awkward work, made harder by the fact his hands were clearly shaking. More than once, his fingers slipped while he was doing it, and in the end, he had to use his teeth to cinch the knot around his wrists.

Gabriel began to cross the narrow room, Eli tensing with the sound of each approaching step. He tipped his forehead against the wall, knuckles white around the post, and held his breath, his entire body bracing for the blow.

Instead, Gabriel reached out, and laid a hand on Eli’s shoulder. He stiffened at the touch, expecting violence. Or even his unmaking. A final sentence.

But Gabriel was not there to hurt Eli, or kill him.

He reached past the EO and laid his hand on the belt.