Warnings: Altered timeline from 'Ariel', angst, interrogation, abuse

Time period: Around ‘War Stories’

Thanks to lvs2read for the great beta and thunder_nari for the great beta and spurring me on.

He’s taken the operative’s words literally, believing and steeling himself against pain and possible torment; trying to think up ways to disassociate himself if that happened. Instead the blue-handed man is disinterested, has smiled at first in such at way that made Simon’s gut wrench. The man pulls up a chair as he moves his hand to Simon’s water, making the doctor believe that they are going to start dehydrating him. Taking away the basic comforts of food and water. But the man merely pours himself a glass and tops up Simon’s, which confuses the doctor greatly. It is bad enough that his room has all the markings of a Core hotel- comfortable, clean and almost homely-as opposed to the cells, or possibly hole, Simon envisioned. But now they are going against all he’s imagined, all he has prepared himself for. Its distracted him enough that he doesn’t notice that the blue-handed man never touched a drop of the water.

Simon notes cameras mounted to each wall, pinpricks half hidden and not at all obvious, in every room he’s been in. On a particularly long day he’s spent what he assumes is the better part of it, scouring the room they’ve given him for such devices. Spending the rest of the day trying to imagine what techniques they’ll use, just how they could get him to talk about River.

When his captor escorts him to the large tank he feels his heart lurch, wonders what horrors lay inside it. But anxiety quickly gives way to embarrassment, to humiliation, as he’s ordered to strip. His initial refusal has the blue-handed man waiting patiently, speaking calmly as though he were lecturing a rebelling child. The man’s words only add to the mortification Simon feels, though he’s finally convinced to shrug off his clothes when the threat is insinuated, if Simon didn’t undress himself he’d call some people in w