#//except somehow its always pain with clive

[secondflame-archive]

Her scrutinizing gaze made Clive's posture stiffen further where he stood glued to the spot opposite her desk. He held her gaze with a slight furrow having formed between his brows. He parted his lips to answer her question, only to be stopped short when she dismissed it with a curt shake of her head, making his mouth click shut immediately once again.

The Duchess' next words made him shuffle his feet and turn his gaze towards the floor. Was this why she called him here? Was she so concerned he would do something to embarrass that she would see the need to address this before the festivities began?

But then, he blinks when her statement fully registers, head snapping up to find her gaze, blue eyes slightly widened in confusion, in shock. "Mother---" He caught himself too late, but fell silent anyway. He had long since stopped calling her this to her face, having found it to only sharpened her words directed towards him whenever he did.

"Your grace," he corrected, his thoughts already reeling. He struggled to find a proper response, too many questions fighting over which would be voiced first, but in the end it's helpless resignation that won out.

"Why... Why was I not told about this prior?"

masquerade ball starter for @creatrix-mea

Roughly an hour until the first guests arive, he thinks as he walks by several servants working to get the last preperations for the ball out of the way. He would love to lend a hand, do something to keep his hands busy and his mind occupied.

However, with his mask held tightly in one hand, his festive attire in place and also already sufficiently uncomfortable as he tends to be before bigger events such as this, Clive instead is forced to make his way through the castle halls towards his mother's study. Her having summoned him on very short notice.

His hair is for once tamed into a somewhat tidied appearance, although it threatens to curl at the the ends, whatever the servants tried to put into it this time to keep it straight failing it's intended purpose like all the others before it.

He breathes deeply, shuffling his feet as he stands infront of the door, jaw clenched, teeth grinding. A nervous knot in the pit of his stomach keeps him from raising his hand to knock. It's never a good sign when the duchess bids him for conversation.

As of late she seems to prefer to act as if he doesn't exist at all, which is an improvement to the open hostility she utilized before. However, it is also all the more reason to be wary of whatever she means to speak to him about now.

At last he raises a hand to knock and then, he waits.

[synnutwritesstuff]

Bad to Worse

Started as a few whump tropes: defiant whumpee, captured whumpee, overly intimate villain is really what caught my attention here, and all the nasty little ways an overly intimate villain can really fuck with the hurt/comfort cycle of torture and human emotions, especially as it relates to a captured whumpee

All these characters are mine. Let me know if you like it - there’s loads where this came from!

This started off fairly straightforward, and ended Very Complicated. I blame Clive Owen. A lot. 

TW: Torture, violence, electrocution, broken bones, bleeding, sensory deprivation/blindfolding, dubcon/noncon elements, implied dubcon/noncon

She opened her eyes and blinked as her eyes adjusted to a dark room. A single neon bulb lit a space the size of her bedroom, big and empty enough for the chair she sat on and a person in front of her, could hold maybe five or six people standing around, but not a table for that many. A masked figure sat on a stool in front of her, and still tugged back on her hair to wake her up.

“She’s awake,” the figure said with a smile in his voice. “Can you hear me alright?” His accent was British of some flavor, and pleasant on the ears.

Kathryn nodded, and then frowned as she realized that something was the matter. She knew out of habit that this man’s voice would have been blue-ish green, maybe turquoise but...She couldn’t see his voice on the air, even though she squinted trying to see it.

The masked figure nodded, leaning forward to grab her chin and pull it down, to force her to look at him as he let go of her hair. “That’s right, darling. Got a serum here built just for you, takes away your sound manipulation while leaving your hearing and your healing mutation intact. We’re going to draw your blood and saliva six times a day, and once we get the call, you’ll be on your way, no problems, nice and easy, alright?”

Kathryn stared at him, feeling something hot stir in her gut at his words. She yanked her chin free and spat on him. “You let me off this chair and we’ll see about your nice and easy.”

The masked figure sighed, and she watched him check his sleeve as if to see if her spit had gotten on him. They seemed to be in a repurposed shower, with tile walls and a drain in the floor. He wore dark blue coveralls, a hood drawn up over his head, white latex gloves, black tennis shoes, a white skintight mask that covered his nose, and wide, reflective sunglasses. “Kathryn.”

Kathryn knew it was stupid, but she shuddered at the fact that he clearly knew her name. She considered the fact that he really had grabbed her on purpose, and gritted her teeth. ‘Assume your captor is always lying,’ was a lesson she knew well. Still, he definitely knew what power she was missing, and he knew her name.

Gloved fingers gripped her chin again, drawing her focus back onto him. “Please pay attention. I think it only fair to tell you that if you harm me or any of my people, there will be reprisals. This is not personal, and aside from those conditions, we will feed you and no harm will come to you. Do I make myself clear?”

Kathryn tugged her chin from his grip again and spat on the floor. “Easy for guy who abducted me to set conditions. My people will come for me and you’ll be sorry you grabbed me. If you know who I am, you’ll know they’re very good.”

She couldn’t see any of his features (except the fact that he was white, behind his sunglasses, and his accent right now, at least, was British, but she heard a little smirk before he spoke. “We do know about your people, and are taking great care to keep you from them until the job is done. I have business to attend to. Be good.”

He left, the sound of a door behind her telling her that her cell was locked, leaving her alone in the space with just the empty stool for company.

Kathryn sighed, but there was no use worrying herself sick without anyone present. She helped herself organize the information he’d given her by repeating it back to herself, and also by repeating back what he’d been wearing, and his features and accent. She’d call him British Guy 1, which would help her keep a tally, and keep her mind fresh.

Still, once that inventorying was done, she rolled her neck, and tried to get some rest.

What felt like almost immediately, she heard and felt someone enter behind her.

“Who’s there?” Kathryn called, and she heard that her voice was a little hoarse, rough. She must have fallen asleep, nap length, she guessed, less than three hours, based on how her mouth tasted and her eyes felt.

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth,” an American accented man said, coming in with a shiny metal kit that he opened to Kathryn’s right.

“Calm down,” a light Scottish brogue said, a woman, coming up to stand on Kathryn’s left.

“Open your mouth,” the American man said, glaring down at Kathryn and grabbed Kathryn’s chin. He wore the same ensemble as the British man, with the only noticeable difference being his voice.

She spat a mouthful of spit right into his face, and so he hit her across the face, splitting her lip, her blood smearing onto his white glove.

The Scottish woman said nothing, so Kathryn sprayed the American man with the blood that collected in her mouth. His mask was covered in her blood now, too. Her hands were bound behind her, so she had literally had nothing else to do but spit on him.

He swore at her, his accent sounding Midwestern, or possibly Southern, to Kathryn’s ears, and he grabbed her by the throat as Kathryn tensed her shoulders and neck muscles. She knew from experience that she was very hard to strangle, which meant this was going to hurt a lot.

“I’ll handle that,” the Scottish woman interrupted, putting her hand over the man’s hand. “Just get your samples.” She tutted impatiently, and Kathryn wondered how many more rounds of this they had to deal with that had the Scottish woman so ready to move on.

The American man let go of her throat, and the Scottish woman paused before touching Kathryn. “You’re up to five lashes for spitting, love,” she said kindly. “Unless you want more, don’t make me open your mouth.”

Kathryn decided that was enough for now, if they were going to do this draw five more times today, she had better pace herself in terms of pissing people off. She opened her mouth, and let the man swab her mouth. If he stuck the swab in so far it made her eyes water and made her cough, if that was more than was necessary, Kathryn ignored it.

She also didn’t say anything else as the woman drew a vial of blood from one arm tied behind her.

Kathryn was happy to let bygones be bygones for this interaction, her mind ticking away at what she knew so far, when the American’s voice spoke behind her.

“No, I’ll handle this. You go on ahead, and I’ll meet you there.”

Kathryn sighed. She got the feeling she was not going to get out of this with only five lashes.

The door opened and closed behind her, and Kathryn was not surprised to hear the Amercan man behind her. “Glasgow’s gotta go,” he said, pronouncing the Scottish city “glas-gow,” rhymed with cow, instead of Glas - go. “So it’s me and you, girlie. You fuck with me, I’m gonna make you bleed for it.”

Kathryn sighed, letting her muscles loosen as the clank of metal behind her told her he was unlatching the chains behind her. “Are you, like, Montgomery, or Jackson, or some other hellhole, then?”

She was in thickly padded cuffs, apparently, that he was able to tug on, yanking her off-balance at her commentary.

“I said to shut the fuck up,” he snapped, catching her in another backhand that Kathryn at least this time could roll with to soften some of the impact of the blow.

Kathryn staggered a little, her ear ringing on the side he’d hit. The serum they’d given to block her sound mutation had fucked with her ears a little, it seemed like. “Montgomery, for sure,” she said, gasping a little as he dragged her further back.

He was using some kind of hoist system that he was cranking down, she could hear the gears, or pulley, and he locked her cuffs into the hoist, and was now cranking her back up.

“You’re gonna regret all this talk, girlie,” he hissed, and she couldn’t see, but she could hear the gears of the hoist clank, or grip, as he locked her into place so she could just barely strain to get one toe on the ground to support herself.

Kathryn sighed. “Is this like one lash per word, Montgomery, or syllable?” She thought about that and shrugged. “I hope it’s not syllable or I’m gonna wish I nicknamed you Richmond, maybe.”

She heard the adjustment of his belt, and heard the test swing of the whip, a high-pitched whistling that was impossible to mistake.

“Oh, you better not miss,” she said, raising her voice a little to make sure he heard her. “You want me to count, cause you can’t, or you gonna just make this shit up til you finally manage to shut me up?”

That got him to storm out in front of her so she could see him. He dragged her chair and the British man’s stool away from her and glared up at her. “Fifteen,” he hissed, staring  up into her face. “Count out loud. You lose track, I start over.”

Kathryn blanched, and let him see it, but sneered at him regardless. He’d added ten lashes onto the spitting penalty Glasgow had mentioned. That was interesting. She filed the information away for later.

The whistle of the whip was fast, crack as it broke the sound barrier, and Kathryn gasped as it bit into her. White hot searing pain, instantly cutting her open. Her clothing took the brunt of the force, but after one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, her plaid shirt and undershirt were no longer helping her. The pain became so constant it was muted, somehow, like her brain had maxed out its ability to throttle all the way up to 11.

Kathryn didn’t try to stop herself making noises, which were now pained cries at eight, nine, ten, eleven. She heard the door open, dimly, but counted twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and finally fifteen.

Kathryn sighed, sagging. She flinched as she felt someone behind her. Blood flowed down her back in streams, and she could feel the slightest movements of air on the strips the whip had taken from her flesh.

“Good girl,” Montgomery breathed, patting her thigh.

Kathryn flinched her leg away, and swore at him. “Fuck off, Confederacy,” she said, but her voice was hoarse and tired and held none of the venom it had before.

He had picked up her chair, maybe to put it under her to give her shoulders some relief, and instead set it back down, well out of her reach, shrugging.

He patted her leg on his way out, and left.

Kathryn sighed and spent the worst of the pain (the pain she wouldn’t have been able to sleep through anyway) cataloging what she had learned.

At some point, she must have dozed, because the feel of air on her back and its accompanying spike of pain woke her.

Kathryn bit down on the inside of her cheek to stop herself groaning out loud where they might have heard it, but she heard Glasgow’s voice as a blue figure moved to stand in front of her to her right.

“I’m going to get you out of this shirt, alright Kathryn?” Glasgow said, moving Kathryn’s chair and standing upon it within arm’s reach of Kathryn.

She chuckled. “It’s ruined anyhow, Glasgow, you might as well.”

The woman made a disapproving sound in her cheek, but quickly cut Kathryn out of her ruined plaid button up and her black undershirt, leaving Kathryn in her sports bra, which had held up surprisingly well.

Kathryn held still as the woman put the swab in her cheek, and was interested as the woman just barely ran the cotton swab along her cheek.

The woman then did an upside down blood draw, which would have impressed Kathryn if her back and legs weren’t covered in her own dried blood.

“You guys gonna feed me or try to drain me dry til my friends get here?” She asked, watching as Glasgow filled not just one, but four little vials with her blood.

Glasgow gave a little shrug. “Not up to me.”

Kathryn snorted, but shrugged. There had been no Montgomery at this draw, so she decided she did not care.

Kathryn was interested when Glasgow pushed the chair under her, and her poor shoulders could get a rest. She sighed in audible relief and rested her head on her arms, dozing off more quickly than she had the first time.

She startled awake as air blew on her back again, but there was less pain, more surprise until she remembered that Glasgow had cut her out of her shirt.

“You didn’t fuck up once, so you get a meal, girlie,” a familiar voice drawled.

Kathryn rolled her eyes. “You miss me, Montgomery, is that it?” She asked with an audible sigh, but her tone was still light.

A different male voice chuckled. “She sure has your number, huh Richmond?” This voice was Eastern European, based on the way he treated his vowels and /h/ sounds, and Kathryn couldn’t stop a snort at what Eastern Europe was saying.

Montgomery, who was apparently actually Richmond, the actual capital of the Confederacy, snarled and kicked Kathryn’s chair away, making her legs dangle and her shoulders and wrists support her full weight again. She hissed as her shoulders seemed to catch fire at suddenly having to support her weight again. She breathed through her mouth. Her body would do what it always did, she just had to stay calm.

Kathryn glanced at Eastern Europe and raised her eyebrows at him. “Touchy.”

Eastern Europe didn’t look up at her comment, and she could hear the hoist grinding as it lowered.

Her feet hit the ground and there was enough slack that she could lower her arms all the way down.

Richmond was in front of her, putting a straw in her face.

Kathryn turned her face away, because she didn’t want anything he was offering.

“You want to eat, or not?” Richmond demanded.

Kathryn bunched up her aching shoulder muscles and lunged for him, thinking she could maybe get her shackled hands around him, or at least punch him.

There was a buzzing sound, and Kathryn realized in a split-second that she had miscalculated, that a third person had entered the room, aside from Eastern Europe and Richmond, when that person drove a cattle prod right into one of her wounds, and she dropped like a sack of hammers.

Kathryn moaned as she came to. She tasted blood in her mouth and her limbs tingled. She had a new wound in her head, too, from where she’d fallen and hit the ground. Her head ached terribly, and she left her eyes closed, because it hurt too badly to open them

She winced as she felt someone very close by her, and British Guy was shushing her.

“It’s just me, love. I think this might be a record you’ve set, quickest time to the cattle prod.” His tone was lightly amused, but not harshly sarcastic, his grip the same kind-but-no-nonsense it had been when she’d first woken up. His hand found her chin, and with more shushing noises, something cold pressed against the wound on the side of her head.

She hissed, trying to pull away, but his grip was firm, and the tang of antiseptic told her what he was doing.

She held still, but grumbled, “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of leaving me my healing mutation?” She wanted to know how much he knew, but she also wanted to know why he was doing this. Good cop, maybe, or maybe he was the interrogator. Glasgow was also sort of good cop, and Eastern Europe was at least decent cop. She’d also pissed off Richmond, but he’d started the whole thing off pretty pissed, so he might have been set up that way on purpose as well.

“If you keep up at this rate, not even your S Grade healing mutation is going to help you, love,” he murmured, and something cool pressed against her split lip.

She’d thought the room was very dark, but as Kathryn flinched from the sensation of something touching her lips, she realized that she was blindfolded, and jerked her head away in surprise and disgust. They must have done when she was unconscious, yes, very brave.

“It’s alright love, it’s the next step since you went after Richmond. Nearly knocked him over, too, and that would have DC’d him for this run. Settle down, it’s just me.” A firm hand pushed her hair out of her face and patted her shoulder.

Kathryn gritted her teeth but did settle as she smelled the antiseptic smell near her face again. “What happens to you if I knock you out?” She asked, and the question helped calm her down, settle her nerves despite having the blindfold on. She didn’t so much as rattle her wrists, had no idea how she was chained. She was seated, and her hands were in front of her, but she knew British Guy was within six inches of her right now, so that was something. He didn’t seem as afraid of her as Richmond had.

He chuckled. “Then they replace me with someone who probably doesn’t mind being round Richmond, whereas I loathe him.”

Kathryn snorted. That could have been a line, solidifying British guy’s place as good cop and Richmond’s as bad, but it felt honest to her, his chuckle and less than professional comment.

She tensed further as he pulled her forward off the chair, she had to be in her chair again, and began to dab at the wounds on her back, but that’s all he did.

“And who’re you?” She asked, more to give herself something to say than really caring about the answer. She thought about his accent, rolling it around in her mind, the way he didn’t ignore his /r/s, but didn’t pay them much attention. “Birmingham?”

He chuckled. “Your accent’s not bad, you know. You’re close, though. Coventry.” He hissed a little, and said, “Sorry in advance, love,” and Kathryn was braced for the absolute wash of pain that overcame her as the antiseptic came into contact with a much fresher wound than the rest, but even so she must have whited out there, because when she came to, she was laying on the ground, her hands all the way out in front of her, superman style.

“Oh fuck,” she gasped, and struggled to sit up, get out of this vulnerable position, but Birmingham was there, gently pushing down on her shoulder. .

“You’re alright love, it’s just me. Didn’t want to put more pressure on your wounds, so I lay you down. I’ll put you back to rights before I leave, don’t fret.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you’re playing Good Cop you’re meant to be a little nice, not all the way nice,” she complained, and if he noticed that her accent had picked up, tilted towards her father’s East London brogue in response to his own accent, he said nothing.

He just hummed in response and patted her hair as she hissed, exhaling pain as he tended to her wounds.

Kathryn had been thinking, anything to give herself something to do, anything to think about except the fire in her back and in her head, the horribly vulnerable position she was in, and the likelihood that she was going to get beaten again in this shit hole, and finally asked, “Is Eastern Europe guy Warsaw?”

Birmingham chuckled and pulled on her shoulder, helping her to her feet as he settled her back in the chair. Kathryn hissed as her bare, sensitive back came into contact with the chair, but there was enough slack in what had to be the chain that ran from the ground to loop around the shackles around her wrists that she could sit forward, in fact her hands were still in front of her. Huh.

She felt Birmingham in front of her, and felt him around her feet, her ankles. A clank of chain there too, and a heaviness round her ankles told her there was a leader chain between floor and ankle restraints.

“Bucharest,” Birmingham’s voice was a deep chuckle as he patted her knee.

Kathryn sighed in frustration. “Fuck those aren’t even close.”

Birmingham was seated near her, she could feel his knee press into hers, and she could feel him chuckle again. “Console yourself with some H2O before Richmond and Glasgow come back in, hm?”

Instead of the straw monstrosity Richmond had shoved into her face, Birmingham pulled one of her hands up and pressed a styrofoam cup into her hand.

Kathryn was so surprised she nearly dropped it, but she brought it to her lips and drank greedily.

Something tugged at her, buzzed at the back of her mind, but it wasn’t until she was clumsily eating a protein bar Birmingham had handed her that she realized what it was, recognized this.

“This isn’t just about the blood draws, is it?” She asked, frowning. “Are you lot recording my rate of healing? Is that why I’m not prone in some bed, that’s what all the sodding steps are for?” She gestured up near her face, the stupid blindfold. “Some kind of scientific study?”

Birmingham was making disagreeing noises. “No, love, that’s not quite-” and he reached up to stop her from yanking the blindfold off.

Kathryn growled at him, tossing her head back in a groan of frustration. “If you’re not trying to condition me and study me, then why tie me up like this?” She wanted to know. “If you’re not trying to interrogate me, why let Richmond add so many lashes?”

As if on cue, the door opened behind Kathryn, and she shoved the protein bar in Birmingham’s general direction. You didn’t need to have experience with something like this like she did to be able to guess she was not going to be able to finish her cement-flavored protein bar just now.

“Good morning, girlie,” Richmond’s voice was a slow drawl that made Kathryn want to put her own eyes out. At least she didn’t have to see his stupid, samey, masked face.

They were still close enough that she heard Birmingham sigh. He ran a hand over her cheek. “Be good, love.”

Kathryn growled at him too, because she did not need that kind of shit right now with Richmond, and at least one other person, whoever it was, in the room.

“Open your mouth,” Richmond drawled, and Kathryn sighed, but did it. She was just feeling almost back to full strength, and hadn’t gotten to eat but half that bar.

Richmond didn’t shove the swab in, just swabbed her cheek, and Kathryn thought they might have had a truce going, as someone else, she didn’t know who because they hadn’t spoken, pulled her wrists out and swabbed the inside of her elbow.

This might have been fine, Richmond snapping the cover on the swab, the other person putting a band around her elbow to get her veins to show up more starkly, if the door hadn’t swung open, and Kathryn hadn’t heard a sharp cry of pain from somewhere outside her cell. It was absolutely a cry of pain, and absolutely female, and the sound of it snapped her right out of whatever warm, hydrated Stockholm Syndrome place Birmingham and her apparent truce with Richmond had left her in.

She knocked whoever was doing the blood draw away from her elbow, driving her palm up into what felt like their nose (they’d been sitting far too close, which made her think it wasn’t Glasgow, who surely would have known better, or even Bucharest, who had also been in the room with one of her lashings out), blood exploding around her hand.

There was a muffled flurry of female curses that were definitely not Glasgow. They sounded Austrailian, actually.

Hands gripped her by the shoulders and slammed her down, trying to shove her into the chair, but Kathryn could tell they were behind her, and drove the back of her head as hard as she could straight back, and heard Richmond swear at her and clip the back of her shoulder with his elbow.

Kathryn drove her knee into Australia’s face as she bent down, stunned and sputtering, but the chain caught her knee before she could do more but sort of collide with Australia.

“Who the hell is that?” Kathryn yelled at them, reaching up and yanking off her blindfold.

She saw a light brown woman’s face near her feet, struggling to right askew sunglasses.

“Melbourne goddamnit get the blood drawn,” Richmond snarled, and before Kathryn could think to raise her hands to defend herself, a blow to the head knocked her out.

Kathryn groaned as she came to. Her back was on fire, felt raw like an open wound and the left side of her temple throbbed with each beat of her heart.

She was hanging by her wrists again, no chair beneath her to stand on, and her ankles were chained and connected to the ground, a blindfold tied over her eyes again. She wouldn’t be kneeing or elbowing anyone like this, that was for sure, and she couldn’t see. Shit.

The door opened behind her, and she flinched at the sound, already dreading it, although if that was for the stirrings of air it caused on her wounds or the fact that it brought people and confrontation, she wasn’t sure.

“It’s alright love,” Birmingham’s voice was pleasant, pitched for her to hear first, but Kathryn could hear him address others, too.

“Nice and easy, lads,” he said, and he moved quickly, followed by two others, to stand in front of her.

“Hello, love, it’s me,” Birmingham said, and he traced a comforting hand down her arm that Kathryn yanked away from.

“How many people have you got here?” She demanded, and her voice was hoarse, like she’d been yelling some more, but didn’t remember it, or hadn’t been conscious for it.

Her stomach twisted and she sneered at Birmingham. “You beat me while I was out? Not really how conditioning works, is it? I gotta be awake for it to matter,” she said, making a disappointed sound in her cheek.

There was a male chuckle, Richmond, at her right elbow, and Kathryn turned her head to spit in his direction, even if she didn’t know exactly where she was. “Fuck off, you arseholes lost the war, didn’t you? So sodding proud of yourselves.” She was furious that one conversation with Birmingham and her thinking about data collection had made her forget she was a prisoner here, that where there was one prisoner there would surely be others. That she was on the Reserve, and her friends were looking for her, so that that meant she had responsibilities to the other people here.

Birmingham swore colorfully and that was all the warning Kathryn got before a blow landed in her stomach.

She vomited, gagging, as she threw up mostly water. She could hear a male voice panting near her, still to her right, and spat another mouthful of bile in his direction. “You hit like a sodding girl R-” she couldn’t even get his name out before he hit her again.

Kathryn had nothing left to throw up, so when her stomach was empty she just coughed, and coughed.

She heard the hoist creak, and that was all the warning she had before she was dumped on her knees, enough slack let out that she could lower her arms. She winced, not having been expecting to need to brace herself, so her knees hit the ground hard, but she was thinking about the next step, about why they might drop her down onto the ground, and so when someone came within arm’s reach of her, she had her mouth open, ready for a bite, or to spit…

But she just felt a hand on her chin as someone crouched very near to her. “Stuff the heroics for thirty seconds, won’t you?” Birmingham’s voice was tight with anger. “You haven’t even been here for twelve whole hours, let them do the bloody draw.”

She tried to yank her head away from his grip, but he moved too quickly, framing either side of her head with his hands flat, forcing her to stay in place.

Kathryn snarled curses at him as she felt hands pull her right arm out and pin it down against the arm of her chair.

Birmingham’s voice was right in front of her face as she growled and tried to pull away from him. “I get that you’re angry, love, but you keep fighting and they’re going to put someone else in charge who’s just going to sedate you until your friends come and pick you up.”

Kathryn heard a chuckle, Richmond, he was holding her arm, and she flinched from his chuckle, from the implication of what that had to mean in context of what Birmingham had said.

She gritted her teeth as someone gripped her cheeks, as a hand reached up and closed her nose.

“You can’t help her if you do this!” Birmingham’s voice called, a little louder over the sounds Kathryn was making to try to dislodge whoever held her nose. “If they knock you out til you’re done, you can’t help anyone!”

That got through to her. She sighed and sagged, opening her mouth.

Whoever was working on getting her to open her mouth stopped suddenly. There was the quick invasion of the swab, then nothing.

She growled as hands still worked at her right arm, disliking the feeling of hands on her.

“Over here, love,” Birmingham said, gently tugging her chin to the left. “You did wonderfully,” he crooned quietly, and when she felt him put a straw near her mouth, she sighed and drank the water, knowing she needed the fluids after throwing up.

Still, when he moved the water away from her, she asked him, “How many lashes they give me when I was out?” Her back felt terrible, one giant wound, throbbing with her heartbeat as she felt the stabbing pinch of the needle in her arm as Richmond and whoever else must have found a vein.

Birmingham ran his hand down her face, smoothing her hair away from her eyes. “Twenty, for bloodying up two people but mostly for pissing Richmond off a second time,” he murmured, just for her, and Kathryn didn’t need her sound mutation to hear the amusement in his voice.

She snorted, and winced as her right arm was released.

She flinched as she felt hands on her right arm again, but Birmingham was making little shushing noises. “Did so good, love.” He murmured, and he was rubbing circulation back into her arm, avoiding the bruises that had been left behind.

Kathryn shuddered and had to choke back a sob that ran through her chest as he pulled her arms over her chest as best she could. She pulled her hands away from him as the full, terrible realization of all of this hit her. “Sod off,” she breathed, ignoring the tears that leaked down her face. “At least the Bad Cop’s honest. Honestly fuck off,” she hiccuped, trying to raise her hands to push him away.

Birmingham snorted, and Kathryn felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as the same voice, changed drastically in tone. “You know love, it’s quite refreshing to see someone going through as much as you are keep her eye on the prize.”

She choked on a terrible sound that was half sob, half laugh. “So glad to entertain,” she said, and at least there was enough length in the chain that she could lean her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands, trying to collect herself, to get a grip. “So you usually the Bad Cop then, hm Birmingham?” She asked, unable to stop herself. Even knowing what this was, she couldn’t stop from talking. The moment she shut up was the moment she’d start to lose her mind, she knew.

He snorted, and Kathryn shuddered hard as his hand came up to push her hair from her face even in the way she sat, even after her realization. “I’m whoever’s needed,” he said reasonably. He didn’t seem to be upset,that she’d cottoned on, that they were having this conversation.

Kathryn, dimly, recognized his calmness in the face of her realizing the plan as a very bad sign, but she was too busy talking, keeping the conversation going, to notice right then. “Oh yeah?” She asked. “Who are you right now, then?” She asked, her tone twisting, becoming dark and harsh, so much so that even he froze for a moment as he reached up again to smooth hair off of her face.

He recovered after an instant, and seemed to smooth her hair back again, for emphasis, as if just to say he had not, actually, as a matter of fact, been caught off guard by her words, but she knew better, she knew what had happened. “I’m the bloke keeping this site profitable while you’re here,” he said, and he planted a gentle kiss on her cheek as he levered himself to his feet with a grunt of effort.

Kathryn shuddered at his words, but they were honest, at least, which she appreciated, she could work with. He even left her chains the way they were, so she almost slept comfortably, and was asleep before she heard the door open behind her.

She heard another cry from behind her, from the hallway as the soft tread of boots filled her cell, and she flinched, standing in an instant even if her wrists were connected to the same loop that held her ankles, so she couldn’t stand all the way up, but she could twist at this angle to angle her face towards the sound. This cry was deeper, but just as full of pain as the first she’d heard.

She yelled back, the drive to do so completely instinctive. Kathryn didn’t think, just shouted, “I’m Kathryn! I-” And she heard a flurry of sound, a “-Dan!” and then everything went black.

Kathryn gasped as she awoke, because her back was still raw, but she saw stars as the gasp at her back still hurting the same as it has the last time she awoke made pain slice through her ribs. She tried to hunch over, protect her torso, but her shoulders were on fire, she was suspended up in the air again, ankles connected to the ground, but she was hoisted high enough in the air that she couldn’t touch the ground. “Fuck,” she murmured. This was really bad. She hadn’t even realized anyone was in the room with her, and they’d knocked her clean out.

“All you had to do was not shout your name.” Birmingham’s voice was so close she flinched, surprised.

He ran a hand down her arm and her back, carefully avoiding her fresh wounds there.

Kathryn flinched from his touch. “Fuck off,” she breathed, wincing, her tone emphatic but not loud. His touch, his actions, were so different from Richmond, who was surely the designated Bad Cop, that it freaked her out more than her initial realization of their roles had.

He chuckled. “If you hadn’t literally pointed out my role here, or if you stopped fucking around and making such a mess for even a single draw, I would,” he said, and again, Kathryn felt the truth in his words even as she bit back another shudder as he gentled down her other arm and side of her body.

“Why are you doing this?” She asked through gritted teeth, trying to stop her shakes and unable to do so as he ran his hand over her hair, down her back, over her arms. It was all wholly nonsexual, which made it even harder to calm herself down. Why was he doing this? The shaking in her arms made her realize that her arms were tender, that the air hurt her arms as much as it hurt her back. She was bruised to shit, and injured enough elsewhere that the bruises were no longer healing. Dehydrated, malnourished, too, probably, all factors which slowed her healing mutation down to a crawl. She wouln’t die of sepsis, but she also wouldn’t get better with any speed. Shit

“I told you darling, my job is just to keep this place afloat while you’re here. Since you’ve found me out, I’m not going to lie to you any more. Of that, you have my word.” His voice was a quiet lilt, and he chuckled as she swore at him.

He seemed about to say more, but the door opened behind her, and she immediately felt a hard hand press against her mouth.

Kathryn knew this trick, and had her jaw open wide, and found an edge of Birmingham’s hand and bit down, hard.

He swore fluently, and she was willing to guess that his real accent was the Birmingham accent she kept hearing, because it was almost impossible to keep a fake accent when you were in that kind of startled-pain, she knew from experience.

And then a hand hit her right in her solar plexus, and things shattered and broke insdie her and she was writhing and contracting and unable to draw breath like her lungs had forgotten how to breathe and she was gasping, no air, gasping, gasping...and something hit her again, like a freight train she felt things splinter and break but at leastshe could breathe, was sucking in shredded, gasping breaths and then someone grabbed her face.

“I appreciate the foreplay, darling,” Birmingham’s voice was a little ragged, but still amused. She felt his blood on her chin, from his hand where he grabbed her and where she’d bitten him, and grinned at him, knowing how close he had to be, able to feel his body heat in front of her. “And I do hope it’s worth it.”

She hardly had any slack in the chains, but he was hanging onto her, giving her a sense of how far away he was, and so she was able to move in by using his grip on her to pull herself forward, so she could plant a sloppy kiss on his temple. “Thank you for the foreplay, darling,” she mimicked, rubbing his blood from her chin onto him the best she could.

She heard him swear again, and people must have come into the room, but she didn’t hear a whip. Instead, pain exploded around her knees in two white-hot bursts that crunched sickeningly, hotter than the sun and twice as blinding.

Kathryn had not experienced this pain in a long time, and these catastrophic, torrential injuries being added to the injuries she already had, and her central nervous system blessedly tapped out for her. She passed out.

She came to with a sob as pain woke her up. She felt like her legs were being pulled apart at the knee. She  still couldn’t see, but she could feel blood dripping down her legs. Fuck.

She tried to make a list, and spoke out loud for the desire to get out of her own head. Not being able to see was awful, and speaking would be something she could set against that.. “Whippings, 35 lashes, I think, over what has maybe been an eight hour period?” Kathryn wasn’t sure about this math, but it was close enough for now. “At least one blow to the head, no actually make that two, no, three, if we’re including the blow that got me here.” She sucked in a breath as she cast her mind back. There was a lot to inventory. “One stun baton, had ribs burised, at lesat, and my knees had been, what, shot out?” She shook her head. There had been no rapport of gunfire. “Fractured at least, no way to know the damage right now, without being able to see them.” She sighed, but she was close to the end of her inventory, might as well finish. “There had been three blood drawings. At six per day, with an organized schedule, that assumes one every four hours, which argues for at least twelve hours.” She sighed, because her arms were even more tender than they had been. “Add at least one more draw, so 16 total hours, possibly several more.”

“It’s the worst beating I’ve ever seen,” Birmingham’s voice was low and interested wasn’t the right word, but it was close. She flinched at the fact that he must have been in the room this entire time.

He was seated below her, in her old chair maybe, as she was still being pulled in two directions, it felt like.

She snorted. “Not even the worse beating I’ve gotten in a place like this,” she scoffed, because it was true, probably, technically. She couldn’t quite remember, but the bravado felt good, helped to ground her and helped her feel more settled, blindfold, injuries, and all.

She felt Birmingham’s hand on her torso, and whimpered before she could stop herself. She could feel the painful flesh under his fingers, practically feel her bones move and grate against each other. “You’re gonna feel like an ass if I puncture a lung,” she gasped, remembering a training session with Miller where they’d nearly done just that.

Birmingham chuckled, and she thought she knew what he was going to say, she’d participated in this play before but then he said, “Doesn’t matter to me if you puncture anything, love,” he said, smoothing back her hair from her face in a way that had become very familiar, but was incredibly jarring as his words shook her entire thought process of why she was here completely apart. “You’re just here til your friends follow all the clues.”

Kathryn gasped, because this had not felt like her last experience with a place...like this, but to hear him say so was very upsetting. “What clues?” She asked, because any words, any questions, were better than the reality of what he implied. She ignored it, it was too terrible even to consider.

She flinched as she felt hands near her face, thinking they were coming for her mouth, but the blindfold was tugged off her eyes.

Kathryn whimpered at the suddenness, at the fact that he was so close to her he could take something off her face, and at the newness of sensation after...however the hell long it had been with that fucking thing on, but Birmingham was running his hand down the side of her face, making little shushing noises. “It’s alright love. I wanted you to at least be able to look me in the eye when I said this, because I don’t think you’ll believe me, and I really dont’ think you ought to take any more punishment right now.

Kathryn’s chest heaved at his words, but all that left her mouth was a choked little laugh. “You don’t, do you?”

Birmingham had her blindfold gathered in one gloved hand, and he used that hand to take off his sunglasses. He was a white man, maybe a little older than Kathryn based on the laugh lines around his eyes, with otherwise healthy looking skin with no identifying marks she could see. He had unusual eyes, which made her breath catch in her throat because they were quite identifying. His right eye was light green, lighter than her own dark green, and his left eye was light blue. The overall effect was grey, but they were not the same color.

He was standing very close to her, to allow her to examine his face, and she saw the corners of his eyes crinkle and wrinkles at the edge of his nose crinkle, in what was clearly a smile, as she seemed to finish her examination. “Very good, darling,” he said, as if they’d come to some kind of agreement, running his hand down her face and brushing his thumb across her lips before turning away from her, seemingly looking for something.

Kathryn shuddered, muttering, “Fuck,” as he seemed to come to some kind of decision, abandoning, what, his search for her chair? She had no idea where it had gone, nor the stool he’d sat on when she’d first woken up here.

He turned back to her, still standing within arm’s reach, still smiling up at her. “You’re not here to be interrogated, or tortured, and although the blood and saliva samples are a helpful bonus, they’re not why you’re here, either, love.”

Kathryn stared at him, her mouth falling open a little, because that made no sense. “What clues?” She repeated the last question that had come to mind, forcing herself to have something to say, to continue to collect information collect information. She watched him hungrily, so grateful to have her eyes back, to be able to process data visually as well as auditorily.

He shrugged, seemingly taking his fill just watching her. He reached up and ran his hand over her cheek and jaw, seemingly just because he could, ignoring the shudder that ran through her at his touch, before dropping his hand again. “Dunno. Our employer was extremely specific about the conditions you were to be held in, though, very specific about other instructions he’s given us about you, darling, but once we hear the message we’re waiting on from your friends, we’re to let you go.”

Kathryn flinched from his words, shaking her head at him. “You’re lying.”

Birmingham got right into her face, moving within six inches of her, and even though she was suspended in the air, above the ground, he was still a little taller than she was, just a few inches. “I’m not,” he said, his words crisp, maybe irritated, in a way they had not been thus far. He grabbed her chin. “I gave you my word that I wouldn’t lie to you more, love.” He seemed to think this was a bit too harsh, because he released her chin and ran that hand down her face, thumb over her lips.

Kathryn shuddered, looking away from him, her chest heaving as tears sprung to her eyes. “You said it doesn’t matter, if I puncture a lung. Does your employer want me dead?” There was quite a bit of evidence against this, but she was curious. She wanted as much information on who was actually in charge here. She believed Birmingham, for now. There was just too much that didn’t make sense, otherwise.

He shook his head, tracing the other side of his face with his hand now, running his fingers through her hair, making her shudder involuntarily as his fingers brushed against a wound on her head, making pain shoot down her spine and through her skull.

He muffled a curse. “Shite, sorry love,” he said, and he seemed genuinely sorry, adjusting his hand so the next time he ran his fingers through her hair, he would not hit the wound he’d hit. “No, they don’t, but I haven’t got any more information about what they want, ultimately, just what they needed us to do.”

Kathryn shuddered, a sob fighting its way out of her chest, and did not fight it. It didn’t matter what she did here. She believed Birmingham, and so that meant that all of these injuries had absolutely been for nothing. She shuddered, and then could not stop, and began to cry, huge sobs that made her ribs and back ache, that made her shake so her legs were shaking, and she didn’t know what would happen, if she’d shake herself apart with crying, or if they’d come back in to hurt her some more.

Instead, she felt gentle hands on her face, in her hair, down the undamaged parts of her back, gentle along her arms.

Kathryn automatically felt her crying subsiding under the soothing touch, thought at first she must have fallen asleep, until she heard a muttered, “No, it’s under control,” and realized she was not asleep.

She flinched from the hand that was still running up and down her arm and opened her eyes to see Birmingham talking on a radio of some kind, and she felt like throwing up as she realized he’d very deliberately taken the white gloves off everyone else used here.

“What the fuck?” She demanded, trying and unable to draw her arms away from him, the cuffs were too tight above her, but she could and did move her head away from him as he circled so he was standing in front of her. “Put that shit back on, it’s to keep me disoriented about who my captors are, you fucking idiot,” she snapped, her tone staccato and shuddering. She learned something about why she was here, and he immediately fucked that up with...whatever he was doing. It was making her angry, pissed at him, and she clung to that anger, as it gave her somewhere productive to go with her emotions.

He chuckled up at her, running his hand down her face and thumb across her lip. He showed her his left hand, the clear bite mark in the meat of his left hand, with tidy stitches between his ring and pinky fingers. “I know,” he said with a shrug, “But you’re the most interesting mark I’ve had in ages, and me and you, we’re connected.” He tapped his temple, covered at least by the hood he still had pulled up over his hair.

She shuddered again, shaking her head, turning away from him. “Sod off. This is a psychological trick mean to-” her words cut off as he grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him.

“I said I was not going to lie to you, love,” he breathed, running his thumb over her mouth before letting her go. He drew a knife from the pocket of his pants, and Kathryn couldn’t stop the whimper in her throat. That knife was nearly as long as her forearm, and meant business. Normally, knives could not stop her, but she was so ground up from this place that it could kill her.

He’d also just said his employer did not care what condition she was in…

Birmingham shook his head, shushing her and running his hand down her face and thumb over her lips. “This isn’t for you, darling, look,” he said, and tugged on her chin so she was forced to look watch as he easily, one-handed, opened the butterfly knife, and swiftly drove it into his own arm.

She gasped at the blood that sprayed her and his pristine white mask, but Birmingham had barely drawn the knife from his arm before the wound began to close.

She stared at the wound as it closed, looking for a trick, but all she saw was a very similar hair-thin white scar on his arm where there had just seconds before been a gaping flesh wound. He wiped the knife onto his trouser leg, closed it, and replaced it in his pocket.

“Told you, love, we’re connected,” he said, moving closer to push her hair away from her face, soothe it down the back of her head and her neck.

Kathryn shuddered, but couldn’t help the sob that escaped her lips at the comfort, even if she knew it was false. She felt tears on her cheeks and mucus on her face as she struggled to speak. “I haven’t-” she began, and flinched as he moved quickly in front of her, as something was raised to her face. It was a handkerchief he was raising to her nose, very gently. “Blow,” he ordered, very much in the tone of father to child than captor to captive. She grimaced at the comparison, because how had things gone from worse to better to worse so quickly?

She obeyed, because she did need to blow her nose, after all, and she fully believed, now, that she would not be let down from here until the contract was done. He even moved the hankerchief to a different spot once she’d blown her nose and gently wiped her face and under her eyes.

Kathryn felt a lump in her throat she was fairly sure was never going to go away, but she didn’t ask the question she wanted to ask. Instead, she cleared her throat, not removing the lump there but feeling better about the attempt. “I haven’t met anyone with a healing mutation like me since I was at the last place like this I’ve been.”

A high pitched beeping sound emitted from somewhere below her, and Kathryn winced, but Birmingham quickly silenced the alarm on his watch and moved around on the floor beneath her, rummaging for things she could not see, before returning with a giant plastic container of water with a massive straw.

He held it up near her face and she drank until he took it away, could have had more.

He clicked his tongue, seemingly in sympathy. “I know love, but they’re going to be back in three hours to beat on you some more, and so I’d rather try to rehydrate you in small steps, not big ones, to increase the chances you keep it down.”

Kathryn shuddered involuntarily at his words and the extremely casual mention of severe pain in them, a series of shakes that just kept continuing until she felt his hand on her face, and stilled somewhat at the now familiar movements, thumb on her lips, hand down her scalp, over her shoulders, and the backs of her arms, gently over her sides.

“Are you really this bored?” She wanted to know as he turned back to set the water down and reached for something else.

He straightened with an IV needle and bag, and she flinched from him, but he made shushing noises at her. “You desperately need fuel to rebuild yourself, and you’re not allowed solids anymore, so please let me help you.” His expression was level, and his words about what she was not allowed sounded like they were from his employer.

She sneered at him. “I’m a prisoner here,” she deadpanned, as if he needed a reminder, or as if she did. It was more out of irritation that he’d even asked. “I can’t give consent for anything in this fucking place.” It did feel good, a little, to feel some of her anger kick back in.

The corners of the edges of his eyes were very tender as he moved closer and placed a kiss on her cheek, running his hand down her face and finger over her lips. She shuddered, but not as much as she had done at such intrusions before, which just made her angrier.

She felt the whine of the motor of the hoist, and it took her brain a moment too long to realize what that sound was, what it meant, and she cried out in pain as he feet brushed the floor.

She was choking on a sob as she tried to use her abdominal muscles to pull her legs off the floor as the hoist lowered her all the way to the ground. She relaxed a little as her butt hit the ground, and she could gently lower her abused legs to the ground, but she still winced as her heels hit, because it sent vibrations and radiations straight through her knees, making her eyes water and a sob leave her throat in earnest. Fuck…

She couldn’t even lay on her back, because it was still cut up.

Kathryn didn’t realize that her eyes had closed, or that tears stood on her cheeks, until Birmingham crouched next to her and wiped the tears away, carefully, as careful as all of the touching.

She didn’t try to fight him as he put in the IV and attached the bag to the chain that connected her wrist shackles to the hoist, although she did smile a little as he made a show of not putting his left hand within reach of her mouth as he wiped off her hands and arms.

She swore a little, because her arms looked terrible, like she was a drug addict,  were swollen and lumpy, black and purple and blues of deep bruising. She was sure her abdomen, and knees for sure, but her back as well probably, were worse. Kathryn was suddenly ver grateful that she couldn’t see her knees under the jeans she wore, or her back. She wasn’t sure she could handle seeing whatever mincemeat she looked like right now.

He had wiped her hands, face, and feet down when he paused, and frowned at his watch as an alarm went off again. He grabbed the bottle and she drank as much water as he would let her, before he set it aside again.

She felt exhausted, drugged, and struggled to keep her eyes open as she looked at him. Apparently, accusation was clear on her face.

“I would never,” he said, putting a hand on his chest as if offended.

Kathryn snorted rudely.

He shrugged. “I’d never do such a thing without being paid handsomely for it,” he amended, grinning and patting her cheek and rubbing his thumb across her lips.

Kathryn sighed as he pulled his hand away, she grimaced as she recognized the emotion she’d just felt. She glared at him, feeling something like a snarl pull her lips up. “Are you being paid to do this, or just a pervert, taking advantage of a helpless woman?” She hissed as he grabbed a new baby wipe and seemed to be deciding which leg to clean of blood and grime first.

He looked up at her sharply, and he was so close to her, she thought she could hear him give a hiss of protest as he considered her words.

He seemed to think for a moment, eyes flashing, before he swiftly moved closer to her, and since she was no longer chained up, but chained down, her wrist restraints and ankle cuffs connected to the chain on the ground, she had nowhere to go as he loomed over her as she sat with her injured legs straight out before her. He seemed to be thinking hard, patting in his pockets for something with his hand that was further away from her while running his hand down her face and thumb over her lips with the other.

Kathryn heard a clank of chain and realized that without thinking about it, she’d tried to bring her hands up to stop him, stop whatever was about to happen, but the chain was too short. She couldn’t get her hands above her heart.

While she was distracted, Birmingham seemed to have found what he wanted, because he leaned into her space and instead of touching her face like he’d done countless times, he pried her mouth open and crammed something, she choked, it was a piece of cloth, into her mouth, covering her mouth with his right hand this time as she struggled to spit out whatever the hell, yuck...

She swore and tried to stop him, to fight him off, but the attack was too sudden and too forceful. She had tears standing in her eyes as he reached back to the kit that looked a lot like a fishing tackle box she could see sitting on the ground next to him and peeled off a piece of duct tape and placed it over the gag he’d put in her mouth.

Kathryn’s chest was heaving as she stared at him, flinty eyed. She bit down on the cloth in her mouth and glared at him, trying to get the gag out of the way of her tongue so she could speak, but she couldn’t. She didn’t even realize she had tears standing in her eyes as she glared at him, anger feeling like it burned her up from the inside. This was so stupid, what was she even thinking...

He made a little tutting sound, as if he could hear her thoughts,  and wiped the tears that had fallen down her cheeks away, glancing down, Kathryn flinched as he seemingly reached for something else in his pockets, but he was just shutting off the radio she’d heard him use.

He made little shushing sounds, wiping away more tears that had spilled, running his hand down her face and thumb across her lips, shaking his head as this made her more upset. “I apologize, but I didn’t want you calling me out for what I’m about to say, as it could get me in fairly serious trouble.” His expression was clear, but she did see the corners of his eyes tighten at the effect his gagging her had had on her. She shook her head a little, not at his words, but at herself, shaking off her thoughts. He had just gagged her, she reminded herself. She did not care what he was feeling, she reminded herself. Get a grip.

He reached forward and ran his hand down the side of her face and thumb across her lips, as if unable to stop himself, before taking a shuddering breath and saying, “Look, I’m not bored, or, or...” he got stuck on the word, apparently, Kathryn was surprised to see, needing two more tries before he could spit out, “a pervert, alright? I’m just thinking you might join us, after all this is said and done.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes at him, calling him terrible names around the gag in her mouth.

He shrugged and smiled fondly at her. “You say that now, pet, but our employer has a lot of plans for you and your friends. Who knows how things turn out after all that?”

Kathryn snorted, shaking her head at him. She had a lot she wanted to say, about the Reserve, and her friends, and what she thought about his stupid employer, but she could articulate none of it with the gag in her mouth, and trying to talk was making her drool.

Birmingham was within arm’s reach of her, but he moved closer, automatically caressing her cheek and swiping tears away from under her eyes. “I know it seems impossible, but I sat where you’re sitting,” he breathed, his voice so low as to be inaudible to anyone who would just be coming into the room, with her body between him and the door.

Her eyes widened in surprise, confusion.

He shrugged, equivocating a little. “Well, not exactly where you’re sitting, of course, but someone hired these people to grab me, before I worked for them.”

She sneered at him, calling him all kinds of terrible names, and he seemed to expect this, patting the air in a placating gesture.

“I know, I wouldn’t have believed it either, but,” he drew in a shuddering breath that Kathryn, watching his face, watching as he drew his eyes away from hers, did not think this emotion on his part was feigned. “Fortunes change fast.” He looked back up at her then, gray eyes seeming to bore into hers. “I just want you to know you’ve always got a place to go.” He reached up to caress her face, running his thumb across her lips, and leaned forward to kiss her cheek, holding onto her face as she tried to pull away, and then he breathed, “New York. 2551 Crescent. Code’s august, 87-67-05” into her skin as he kissed her cheek, then up into her hair as he spoke.

Kathryn’s chest was heaving as he pulled away, smiling gently and running his hand down her face again, his thumb across her lips, as if to seal his words into her mind.

She felt like his words were seared into her brain, like he’d stamped them there the same way he ran his calloused thumb across her lips, but she didn’t know if the brand was the healing heat of a cauterized wound, or the searing fire of agony, had no idea where her thoughts were jumping to, she was so surprised by his words.

The door opened, and she flinched away from it automatically, into Birmingham, a sob tearing its way out of her throat as, unbidden, she imagined getting her elbows broke this time.

“The hell is this?” Richmond asked. “Directives were very specific, Birmingham.”

Birmingham patted her on the cheek as he disengantlged himself from her, thumb swiping across her lips before he was gone, moving around her to stand. “Because you have better things to be doing now, Richmond, is that it?”

Richmond snorted, and Kathryn wondered to what extent Richmond and Birmingham played bad cop and good cop roles out of planning, or out of necessity given their seemingly opposite personalities, vinegar and honey.

(Stop it, Kathryn ordered herself. Stop romanticizing-)

As if he could feel her thinking, She felt a booted foot nudge her in the back. “How’d you feel, girlie?” Richmond wanted to know.

Kathryn swore at him, but froze as she realized Birmingham had not removed the gag from her mouth. Hadn’t wanted to risk her blabbing his words to his coworkers? Or for some other reason? Her heart pounded in her throat as Richmond seemed to realize she was gagged, moving to stand over her to peer at her.

He chuckled, and shrugged, putting his free hand in the air as the other held a kit. “Hey, whatever, man. Do what you gotta do, huh.” He leaned his leg against Kathryn’s back Kathryn as he stepped back over her, and she shuddered away from it, because his tone and words were very different from Birmingham’s, and she did not like it, no matter what she did or did not feel about either one of them.

The door closed, and Kathryn flinched away from movement in front of her.

Birmingham was settling back down on the floor, watching her closely.

She stared back, unable to plead her case that she would keep her mouth shut while she was still unable to speak.

Still, something must have shown on her face, because he rolled his eyes and, while one hand caressed the side of her face, the other eased off the tape enough to let him draw out the gag. She tried to spit it at him, but ended up coughing instead

She coughed once more, then swore colorfully at him for doing that to her. “Ought to gag you while Richmond’s around, see what you think about it,” she grumbled, and as much as she wanted to refuse the water he offered, she didn’t.

“That is the opposite of foreplay,” he deadpanned, and his tone was so serious otherwise that she flinched a little as she looked up at him as she sipped water, but his eyes were dancing. He was making a smutty joke, she realized with jolt, and he suddenly sounded so much like her friend Ollie that Kathryn shuddered, choked a little and nearly aspirated water right back up.

“You’re not supposed to joke that way with your female captives,” she said, coughing a little but smiling nonetheless. “Didn’t they teach you that at asshole captor school?”

He snorted a little, but didn’t take the water in retaliation for the insult like she thought he would. He shrugged. “Might as well not make smutty jokes, especially about Richmond, around any of the captives, regardless of gender,” he muttered, seemingly to himself, as he reached down to pick up something from the floor and tuck it behind him into his kit.

His watch timer went off, and she handed him the water back automatically, but she was staring at him, at the way lines tightened around his nose at the sudden shift in conversation, at the way he himself had shifted the conversation, actually, now that she thought about it, and at the way he looked away from her as he took the water bottle. “He really is a pervert, isn’t he?” She wanted to know, her voice low and intent as she watched what part of his face she could see.

Birmingham looked up at her, sharply, but the door opened before he could say anything.

On impulse (whatever crazy impulse had gotten her here, so whatever), Kathryn reached over and grabbed the gag from him, cramming it into her mouth before pressing the tape back down over her lips.

He ran his hand down the side of her face, running his thumb over her lips as he got to his feet, but Kathryn turned to see that Richmond, and someone else had come in.

She heard someone else moving behind her, and Kathryn sighed as the hoist pulled on her wrists. Richmond moved around and unclipped her wrist restraints from the floor.

“You’re needed in A7,” Richmond said, and Kathryn felt her blood run cold even as she thought, at least this time she was conscious as the hoisting happened, able to stand up, slowly, carefully with the movement of it. It felt good to stretch her legs. The water and the IV were doing her a lot of good. Her knees were painful, but they no longer felt like gravel and ground glass. Her back ached, but no longer felt like ground meat.

Richmond was adjusting her chains, making sure they were connected to the floor, and Birmingham, kit closed and in one hand, caressed the side of her face, running his thumb over her lips.

Did Kathryn imagine it, or did he look at her, glance at Richmond, and glance back at her, before he left? She had no idea, but it set her teeth on edge, the not knowing.

She knew that the feeling she had of trusting Birmingham, whatever his motivations, were false, created, structured. He’d admitted as much. She also knew that Richmond was clearly the bad cop here, and so any of whatever she thought was going on could, and probably was, a set up for that continued psychological payoff, a compelling narrative to lull her into, to assure her compliance while she was here and…

But the good cop bad cop routine was used in interrogations, when intelligence needed to be gathered. Stupid as she surely was for it, Kathryn believed what Birmingham had said about his employer, about this not being an information grab, but a holding pattern until some mystery asshole’s conditions were met.

“What’s the IV for?” It was Australia’s light voice Kathryn heard behind her, who had come into the room.

Richmond reached up, and Kathryn grimaced as he pressed himself against her, chest to thigh, as she tried to lean away from him.

“Hey, hold the fuck still,” he snapped, grabbing her by the face, hand over her mouth, fingers grabbing her left cheek, thumb grabbing her right cheek to get her attention.

Kathryn did, because he was so close to her that his gesture to grab her had made him move against her, all the way down to her knees knocking against his, and it hurt like hell. Maybe she wasn’t as recovered as she’d thought.

“She got beat so bad Birmingham took pity on her,” Richmond called with a snort, looking right down into her face as he said it. He still wore his sunglasses, so she could tell nothing about him except that he, too, was white. Still, something in his tone was not at all nice, made Birmingham’s name and the word ‘pity’ into something foul.

“Isn’t that contraindicated by the directives?” Australia wanted to know, her voice a nervous flutter behind Kathryn. If she picked up on Richmond’s innuendo, she said nothing.

Richmond still held Kathryn by the face as he smirked down at her. He was much stockier than Birmingham, and just about as tall, which was only an inch or two taller than Kathryn, max. “So is the gag, but I’m not gonna fuss, you?”

Kathryn was suddenly glad the gag hid her expression because she knew men like Richmond, knew that outside of his role, this was who he was, what she was seeing.

There was a grimace on her face as she came to this realization, and she was glad he could not see her expression, glad he could not easily see as the lightbulb went off in her head. ‘Got you.’

He was bullying the more timid Australia, bullying her into bending the rules as he was, and he was bullying Kathryn herself because he could, because he liked it. She knew this kind of man, this kind of person, and Birmingham’s comment flashed in her mind, helping her put all the pieces together in a flash of insight so hot it seemed to burn white hot through her mind.

A moment before it happened, as Richmond trailed his free hand up her leg, her abdomen, tracing patterns up her throat, she knew what was going to happen as he traced the shape of the tape across her lips and pressed a hard kiss down over it, pressing his body more tightly against hers as the chains on her ankles and wrists prevented her from moving. But the chains did not stop her head from moving.

Kathryn was ready, could feel his grip on her face go slack as he tensed with other parts of his body. She slammed her head forward into his face, bloodying his nose for what, the second time in as many days? which he had brought far too close to her, lulled by her more vulnerable position since she had been in that chair.

Blood exploded in front of her as she heard, and felt, bone crack, in him. If you had practice headbutting, as she did, it wasn’t hard to mash the very hard plate of bone that was the forehead into the much more sensitive mess of cartilage and bone that was a person’s nose.

He swore and his knee knocked against hers as he backhanded her, and Kathryn screamed as her barely healed knee erupted in agony.

His mask was a mess of blood and gore and his sunglasses had fallen off as he hit her again, and again, and Kathryn was idly interested that he’d gone into punches rather than stay with the backhanding.

He yanked the tape off her mouth, after hitting her in the stomach, pulled the gag from her mouth, and kissed her, bruising her lips before she could bite him.

She swore at him, using every filthy word she’d ever heard in every language she knew, and he promised her terrible things, ‘later.’

It was just punches after that, though, until he caught her once in the face with a huge blow that split her lower lip, her right eyebrow, and cracked her orbital bone.

He must have felt bone crack, or just needed a break, because he paused, chest heaving. He moved forward enough to tip her chin up, to see the damage he’d done, Kathryn guessed he’d want to inspect his work, and so she was ready, spraying his face, and more importantly, his uncovered eyes, with blood.

He sputtered in indignation, tugging up his mask to wipe away her blood, and when the mask now lay too loosely to conceal his face, he just sneered at her, yanking the mask off and throwing it onto the ground.

He was a white man in his late fifties, maybe younger. It was hard to tell with all the blood she’d sprayed on him. He had ice blue eyes and was tanned, with a faint line in a line from the corners of his eyes to over his ears that meant he wore sunglasses often in the sun. He had a scar on his upper lip and another in the side of his neck. He had high cheekbones, and might have been handsome if he weren’t such a black-hearted bastard.

Kathryn was working up to another mouthful of blood, but he moved aside and grabbed her mouth as he’d done before, not letting her spit up on anything but his hand. He dug his fingers into her cheeks, forcing her to spit up her mouthful.

He wiped his handful of spit and blood onto her shoulder, before hitting her again, so hard she saw stars, across the other cheek.

This one wasn’t angled as correctly, so her other eyebrow split and although she could feel that he’d blackened her eye, the bone under that eye didn’t crack. She clicked her tongue at him as he took a step back, out of spitting range, reaching for something in his kit.

Kathryn was panting, but she felt better than she had since Birmingham had told her that there was nothing they wanted from her. That might have been true, Birmingham might not want anything from her, or whatever he did want was confusing to her, nebulous, some future offer, some future promise that one day she would be like him.

But Richmond absolutely wanted something from her, something that had nothing to do with the role he might have been assigned to play, and more to do with the role he played here, because he could.

Kathryn had been dealing with Richmond’s kind of bully for a long time. She scowled as something rose to the surface of her memory and connected with a comment of Birmingham’s. “You do this to Dan, too?” That had been the strangled voice she’d heard, when the door had been opened, whose name she’d heard, who she’d called out to

She was rewarded with real shock, then pleased malice on Richmond’s face at her question. She could see his entire expression, from the slight widening of his eyes as they dartedto something near the door, to a tiny, cruel smile on his lips, and she wasn’t sure if she was pleased or very upset to see that her instinct had been right.

He darted forward and grabbed her mouth again, pulling her towards him into a horrible kiss. Kathryn muffled curses into his mouth as he grabbed her by the back of the neck to deepen the kiss, and she wished her ankle chain were just a bit longer...she was so close to being able to knee him, but couldn’t quite do it, so she settled on trying to yank her body up on the chains so she could drive her elbow into his back when...

A high pitched alarm went off, and she was not surprised when Richmond glanced automatically at the watch on his free hand. He swore colorfully, but let her go and set about packing up his kit.

He kissed her again on his way out, putting his hand over her mouth to stop her spitting on him, but she got in what she wanted to say before he left her line of sight. “I am going to kill you,” she breathed, threat and promise.

He hitched a shoulder, but didn’t comment further. She sighed as the door swung open, letting her eyes close, and flinched with a cry of surprise as a hand ran down along her face and a thumb brushed over her lip, but by the end of the gesture she recognized who it had to be, and she had begun to shake so hard she could hardly see straight.

Kathryn couldn’t help it, she let out a sob of relief at seeing Birmingham’s face, his sunglasses perched atop his head and his gray gaze taking her in. She watched as he seemed to inventory her new injuries, and clicked his tongue at what he found.

He lowered her to the floor like before, but it wasn’t until he was running his hands over her head, arms, legs, that she sobbed again, began to cry in earnest, tension begining to ease from her body. “You should see the other guy,” she said, her head in her hands.

Birmingham shushed her, brushing the hair out of her face.

She felt something against her hands, and flinched, but he just offered the water bottle. She sipped, and there was no alarm this time. She frowned at him, but he shook his head a little so she didn’t ask. She set the water bottle down when she was full, and startled, but didn’t say anything as Birmingham detached the IV line from the empty bag above her, and replaced it with a new one.

He was cleaning her up, running antiseptic wipes along her hands, arms, torso, and face, making little sympathetic shushing noises at the cuts in her face, and he even put a bandage on the cut in her face, helping to close her poor cracked orbital bone, before running gentle, careful hands over her.

He had moved much closer to her over the course of his treatment, and as he wiped antiseptic down her back, shushing her as she made pained noises, he reached up to caress her face, ran his thumb across her lips, and breathed, “You got him to admit what he did to Jordan. His hurting them was not a directive from the employer. Richmond’s in very deep shit, thanks to you,” into her ear.

Kathryn shuddered at his words, because there was a lot to take in there, and she leaned into Birmingham as he murmured compliments and tried to let him assure her that she’d done okay, that something here had not been for nothing.

She must have dozed, but when she woke, Birmingham was still there. He seemed to be reading something on a tablet that was on the other side of his legs from her, blocked from her view.

Birmingham shushed her, running soothing hands over her as she woke, but Kathryn had other plans.”That gag was contraindicated,” she breathed, keeping her voice to below a whisper. There was apparently a camera somewhere in the room, by the door, if she had to guess, based on the way Birmingham had placed himself so far, with her always between him and the door.

He chuckled and caressed her face, running his thumb across her lips. “You’re not going to tell on me, are you love?”

Kathryn gave a shuddering sob of a laugh, because no, obviously, she was not. She was off the deep end, so off the deep end she didn’t know where that left her, so no, she was not going to rat him out.

“I am so susceptible to this shit and I am just so tired of it,” she sighed, not even caring that she rested her head on Birmingham’s shoulder, and that he not only hadn’t prevented it, but was gently rubbing her back in careful little circles that didn’t intersect with any injuries.

He chuckled. “Don’t you reckon those healing mutations make us even more susceptible to this kind of shite than regular people?” He mused, running his hand through her hair.

Kathryn sighed, but instead of answering, she heard herself ask, “Did you hit me in the solar plexus?”

There was a pause, before he simply said, “Yes.”

Kathryn nodded. She’d thought he had, the timing made sense, but she’d been curious if he’d admit to it. It fucked up his ‘good cop’ order.

She sighed, but couldn’t lean on him again after that. She had more play in the chains than she had before, so she rubbed her eyes with her hands. “I dunno if we’re more susceptible to it, or if I just have the worst decision making paradigm ever.”

He chuckled again, and shrugged, and she found herself almost looking forward to the predictable caress down her face and thumb across her lips in the split second before it happened. “For what it’s worth, love, I’m grateful to you for getting rid of Richmond for all of us.”

She turned to stare at him, her brain racing back through memories. The gag had been his idea, she’d thought to keep his safehouse secret but it had been the trigger that had made Richmond snap. “You,” she breathed, wide-eyed. “You set it up, on purpose?”

He tapped her on the nose, before shifting to remove another empty IV bag and replace it with another.

She put her hands to her lips, frowning as she thought about that, about his tacit confirmation. It wasn’t enough. She wanted to know more.

She glanced up at him, but it was impossible to tell read anything from his expression, which was all covered except for his eyes, which he’d deliberately uncovered. The coveralls and outfit covered up everything else. “How’d you know it’d work?” She breathed as he settled back down, her eyes fixed on him, hungry for any details she could get as he answered her question.

He shrugged as he reached back in his kit. She winced a little, but he offered her a stack of protein bars.

She sighed and tore into one, devouring it as she watched him. If there had been a rule against her eating solids, apparently the issue with Richmond had rendered it a moot point. She did not care.

“I didn’t. But I recognized you, from the Reserve of course, and the dossier our employer gave us, and knew that I’d have Richmond on shift with me…” He shrugged, but she saw his eyes tighten, muscles around his nose crinkle in what might have been a grimace as he picked up tubing or plastic that might have been from the IV bag and tossing them into his kit.

“The odds were decent, if you could push them a little into your favor,” she supplied, wanting more information on him, on Richmond.

He shrugged, reaching out to brush his fingers across the bandage he’d put on her face. She frowned, but he seemed satisfied, with the distraction, maybe, and caressed her face and ran his thumb across her lips.

She was ready, had just been using one hand to eat the protein bar, and dropped it as she grabbed his hand and in a quick twist, had his pinky bent back against the rest of his hand. One twist, and she could break it, easily. Another twist after that, and she could break his entire wrist. She had the leverage advantage, with him leaning forward to touch her, and the wrist restraints just gave her a very solid tool to use  as well.

He grinned at her. “You know I heal like you do, love,” he said, as if she could forget him stabbing himself.

She shook her head. “I know you heal like I do, so everything hurts, every time,” she reminded him somberly.

Her mean trick was rewarded by a snarl across his features, a flash of expression: a tightening across his eyes, a flashing there as he looked away, a quick intake of breath, quickly let out. “It wasn’t just you and Jordan he hurt, is that what you want me to say?” He asked, his voice very low, and his eyes locked with hers for an instant, and she felt his gaze jolt through her before he looked away from her. “I can spin you a lovely tale or you can take my word for it that I have not lied to you since promising I would not.”

Instead of releasing her grip on him, Kathryn tightened it for a moment as she processed the implication of his words. “You lied to me before that,” she said, her breathing picking up as she thought back through their interactions. It was hard, given that so much of her time was muddied by injuries and pain.

She hazarded an educated guess. “The blood draws. They’re useless.”

If he smiled, it did not reach his eyes where she could see it. He tapped her on the nose with his free hand. She frowned, and immediately let him go when she realized he was making absolutely no effort to free his hand from its precarious position in her grip. He either did not care if she broke his finger, or wrist, or was doing a very good job pretending not to care. Either way, she did not like it, no matter how she was ‘supposed to’ feel about grabbing one of her captors.

He reached up to caress her cheek, and rub his thumb along her lips, but stopped his hand part-way there, and let it drop.

Kathryn flinched, and did the gesture, but to him, using her right hand, her left clanking uselessly. He was close enough that she could do it, and he did not move away like he thought she might, especially after she’d threatened to break his bones.

She traced her hand up his face, mostly on mask, but let her fingers linger on the skin she could feel by his temple. She ran her thumb over where his mouth pressed against the white mask, and saw his eyes flutter closed at her touch.

Kathryn gasped at this reaction, surprised even by her own daring for touching him in the first place, and they were so close that she watched his eyes open, and then he took her hand off his face and set it back on her leg.

Kathryn sighed, and suddenly this was all too much, too new, too terrible, even too interesting, which was much, much worse than the pain that sparked like wildfires all through her body. She dropped her head into her hands.

When she woke next, it was to Birmingham’s low voice. “C’mon love, you’re all done.”

She flinched, not sure what he meant as he lowered the hoist, not having remembered being chained back up at all, but her legs were able to support her weight, with hardly any pain in her knees at all. She held still as Birmingham made shushing noises at her mutterd cursing as she flexed her shoulders, but he did not reach up to touch her face, which hurt somehow, which made Kathryn angry.

She gritted her teeth as he connected her wrist restraints to her ankle restraints via another chain that he held the leader of. “Not going to lie, love,” she said, mimicking his accent more deliberately now, as opposed to the way her vowels had been elongating, rounding out she’d been doing by instinct, mimicking her long-gone father’s British accent. “This is not my idea of foreplay.”

He chuckled, which almost made her smile, but then he drew black fabric from his pocket. She automatically backed up a step, putting her hands up defensively.

His eyes tightened in sympathy as he made a little clicking noise. “Sorry love. You’re getting out of here, so there’s a bag on your head. Rules are rules.”

She hissed as he drew the bag over her head, every muscle tensing for a fight, and so it took her a moment to recognize the hand on her shoulder as his. She drew in a shaky breath and forced herself to follow along, and to listen as hard as she could.

She was moved up a hallway, turned right, then left, then right again, oh shit were they leading her around on purpose? And then the bag was removed and she squinted in brightest sunlight as she was harried into a van.

Birmingham was there, the only person in the back with her as he threaded her ankle restraints into the loop built there in the back of the van.

“No parting injuries to sell it, huh?” She asked, but her voice shook too much for the joke to land correctly.

His sunglasses were back on, but she thought she could hear a smile in his voice. “No, love. Just a drop off. You’re free to go.”

Kathryn flinched, wanted to tell him to come with her, but she had no onearthly idea how to do that. Instead, she sat in the back of the van, their knees touching, and tried not to think of anything at all.

Kathryn frowned as they hit a bump in the road and she saw a flash of light in her peripheral vision. She flinched, and looked again, but the bag still covered her head.

“Something the matter, love?” Birmingham’s voice was quiet, but insistent.

Kathryn’s mouth had fallen open a little as he spoke. She saw small blue triangles coming from his direction. “What’d you lot give me to dampen my sound control?” She asked, her voice shaking.

She couldn’t see him, but she could feel the muscles in his leg tense from there they touched. “Apparently not enough,” he muttered, and before Kathryn could say or do anything else, he leaned towards the front of the van and banged hard, three times, on the separator between them and the driver.

Kathryn startled as the van began to change direction, and the slight screeching sounds of the tires might have been disturbing, but they were accompanied by the faint yellow sounds screeching tires always made, and Kathryn knew all at once that she had full control of her sound manipulation again.

The van screeched to a halt, and Kathryn did several things very fast. First, she yanked the bag off her head. Then, she gathered up the yellow screeching sound the way someone else might quickly gather tangled up earphones at the bottom of a purse, messy but effective. She twisted that power and slammed it into the metal ring that held her chains to the floor of the van. Free, but still chained, she lunged forward, using some of the light red, tinkling, clanking sounds of the chain to give her movement a bit of bite, she pushed Birmingham’s hands out of the way as he raised them.  She stood and leaned over him.

The van was slowing down now, coming to a sudden halt as a result of Birmingham’s signal.

She had the angle advantage on him, and her hands thrummed with the sound she could feel all around her, their heartbeats, the van’s engine, and more sounds, she knew, if she concentrated. But that’s not what she was concentrating on, right this moment.

She reached forward and tugged,yanked his mask down so she could see the bottom of his face. Slightly tanned, dimpled chin, stubble, a cut on one cheekbone. She caressed his face, brushed her fingers across his lips, and then sat back down, hard, on the bench seat across from him.

Less than two seconds later, the door to the van was opened from the outside

Birmingham was on his feet, mask in place, and pulled her to her feet by one elbow. Kathryn moved with him, and stepped down holding up her hand as they were in bright sunlight, the van pulled up on the side of the road. They were at the back of the van, shielded somewhat from passersby by the open van doors, but that would not last for long. One man, masked and covered like Birmingham, worked quickly to unlock the padlocks of her restraints.

Birmingham himself was rubbing his chin as he looked at her, but he reached back into the van and handed her a bundled blue...something. “Parting gift,” he said. He did not touch her as she took the shirt, and pulled it on as the chains on her wrists fell away, but he did say, “Be safe, love,” before he and the other man climbed into the van, and it sped away.

Kathryn blinked in the bright afternoon light as she tried to get her bearings.

“There she is!” The familiar teal voice washed up the street, and Kathryn sighed as she heard it, easing muscles that had not eased since however long ago that she’d been grabbed.

She turned and was nearly knocked over as Ollie hugged her fiercely. Kathryn returned the hug, but hissed a little in pain.

Ollie froze, stepping away from Kathryn, her wide, unnaturally teal eyes bright in her light brown face.

Kathryn just shook her head, and pulled her friend into a hug. “Watch some horror movies while I was gone?” Kathryn asked, feeling her friend shudder a little at the comment.

Kathryn sighed with relief. She could work to put this behind her, but they all had some work to do to figure out what was going on and who was Birmingham’s mysterious ‘employer…’

Sixteen days later, Kathryn found herself in Long Island, on the run from having been framed for the murder of her best friend. No one believed her, she could hardly believe herself what had happened (Ollie, dead…) Some part of her brain short-circuited just at the thought. She gritted her teeth and forced herself up the street, peering at the numbers on the houses.

Crescent street was full of fairly well-to-do places. Old homes, but in a nice place. She hadn’t been found because she’d left all her electronics in her room at home, and because she knew Karine well enough to be able to evade her.

Kathryn found the correct house, 2551, and knocked on the door. It was very late, but she had nowhere else to go. Her family had been gone since she was a kid. The people who had become her family all thought she had killed Ollie. Kathryn drew the collar of her coat further up as she waited.

She finally heard movement on the other side of the old wooden door, and frowned as she realized the door had no peep hole. A voice spoke, nasal, American, small blue triangles that sluggishly filtered from his side of the door to hers.

“When did Japan invade China, sparking World War II in the Pacific?”

Kathryn frowned, but said, “August.”

“When was Spartacus’ slave uprising against the Romans?”

She frowned again, but said, “87, BCE I guess.”

There was a slightly longer pause, then, “In what year did Gagarin make history?”

Kathryn said, “‘67.”

“The Exposition Universelle was held in Paris in nineteen- what?”

Kathryn spared a thought at the fact that the man’s French accent sounded quite good, before saying, “Oh-five,” and there was a pause, and then she heard dark gray thumps of locks unlatching.

She knew he had given her this information, but Kathryn was not at all expecting to see Birmingham barefooted, wearing a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting blue t-shirt, his black hair sticking up at the back. “It’s half past two in the morning,” he said, and the nasal American accent was gone as he looked at her.

She pulled a picture of Ollie from her coat and showed held it out to him. “They killed her,” she said, gritting her teeth as pain seemed to rip through her, trying to hang on so she could finish. “And they said I did it.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, and nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. “I know. Come on in, it’s freezing.”

Kathryn froze as she started just taking her first step towards him. She noticed that he had hair-fine scars on his arms, just like she did, and continued into the house as he spoke.

Birmingham grinned at her. They were nearly the same height, she realized as he opened the door and stood aside so she could enter. “Never got round to talking about my primary mutation,” he said, as if they’d met by chance at the supermarket once. “You ever heard of a power called precognition?” Kathryn stared up at him as the front door shut behind him.

[acheaptrickandacheesyoneline]

Chapters: 4/? Fandom: Arrow (TV 2012) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak Characters: Oliver Queen, Slade Wilson, Patience and Fortitude the New York Library Lions, Felicity Smoak Additional Tags: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Remember the fic I've been talking about only as IndyFic, This is Indyfic, Indiana Jones inspired, If you think you recognize a plot device or nod from somewhere you're probably right, I have stol...Borrowed so much, From Uncharted to Indiana Jones to The Mummy to Clive Cussler books to Aladdin Summary:

She didn’t plan on ever having an adventure unless it said ‘turn to page 34 to open the door’, but somewhere between being kissed in the library and running from a one-eyed man with a gun, Felicity was pretty sure adventure had found her whether she wanted it or not.

It's like The Mummy, only not really.

AN: As always, thank you to ohemgeeitscoley for comma wrangling in this chapter, and to adiwriting for first round edits. I couldn't do it without you ladies! 

Chapter art is, again, by the talented nightkeepyr   

There is a cameo appearance by one of my favorite Uncharted characters. You'll know it when it happens.

When she had asked John to rush her to the airport, she had hoped that Oliver hadn't left yet. That she would have a chance to tell him she knew were El Dorado was based on the quipu . The sight of Oliver getting into an old dual prop airplane had her racing out of the car and onto the private airstrip, trying to yell his name out over the engines.

An older man was reaching out to close the airplane door. He looked at her a moment before yelling over his shoulder, “Friend of yours, Queen?”

“Who are you talking--” Oliver’s head poked around the frame of the aircraft and his eyes widened. “Felicity, what are you doing here?”

The other guy, maybe the pilot of the plane, held a hand out to her and helped her hop into the plane. “You two wanna talk, do it. But make sure you strap in first. Only got a small window from Control for takeoff since someone couldn't wait for an actual clearing in flight space.”

He gave a shake of his head and let himself fall into the pilot’s seat.

Felicity took a seat at the window across from the door as she looked up at Oliver. “I figured out what all the knot work on the quipu means,” she yelled over the engines.

She was louder than she would have liked to be when the loud whine was cut down as Oliver closed the door. “I know what they all mean,” she repeated, voice quieter now. “The red knots are the larger mountain peaks--”

“Put on your seat belt,” Oliver said, cutting her off.

She worked very hard to hold back the huff of annoyance at his insisting on a seat belt. It wasn't like they were going to be flying while she was still on the plane. Stupid FAA regulations about keeping a belt on until they were off the tarmac. Who was going to notice if she wasn't wearing one except for her or Oliver or the pilot guy.

Given that their pilot was currently lighting up a cigar in the cockpit, Felicity didn't think that she really had much to worry about in terms of flight restrictions.

Absently, she reached for the seat belt dangling down and clicked it together. “The red knots are mountain peaks, important ones, at least,” she began again. Opening up the atlas still clutched in her hands, she pulled out the photo of the quipu she had shoved in. “Those match up with these peaks here, here and here.”

A brush of Oliver's hands over her shoulders made her shiver. Thankfully, he either didn't notice, or was too nice to comment on it and he settled back into his seat, pulling the two shoulder straps over before connecting the seat belt itself.

“I assumed the blue always meant rivers, but I wasn't sure what the knots meant,” he said.

“Maybe wide spots?”

He shook his head. “Fishing spots, maybe river mouths?” He heaved out a sigh and settled back into his chair. “It isn't like we don't have plenty of time to toss around ideas on the way.”

“Oh, no, I'm not…” Felicity trailed off, noticing the intensity of the engine sounds growing. It matched the growing dread in the pit of her stomach. As much as she didn't want to look, she peered out the window next to her.

It was indeed the ground moving past at a high speed. Which then went from horizontal, which all ground should be, to a vertical sort of feeling, pressing her back into her chair.

“Oliver why is the plane taking off?”

“It beats the alternative to not taking off, don’t you think?”  He looked her straight in the eye. His voice was so dry she wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

“That...that’s not what I…” He had a point that taking off was better than crashing off the end of the runway. It hadn’t been the actual question she had been asking though. She was positive that Oliver was aware of that too, and had decided to be all dry wit with her. That answered the question of was he joking or not, at least.

“Why do you have to be so infuriating,” she demanded to know.

He turned in his seat as best as he could given the harness to give her his full attention. Like the other times she had been on the receiving end of his complete awareness, it was both an amazing feeling, and uncomfortable one. There was no way she could escape him. Even if she wanted to, a small part of her mind added.

“Why do you,” he asked slowly, “keep helping me when it’s clear you don’t think I’m a good person?”

In that moment, somehow even the engines on the plane went silent.

Of course he wasn’t done though. “You have made it clear since day one that you have disapproved of me, and my attempt to find El Dorado. So why did you help me translate? Why index my notes, or come to Star City?”

“It’s where the quipu was,” she said quietly. “I didn’t come here to see you.”

He nodded, and Felicity felt a strange sort of pride as he at least conceded that point to her.  

“You have made it known from the start that you’re a librarian, that you don’t like my family, or me. That you don’t approve of what we do. What Ido.” She watched Oliver ran a hand through his hair as he tried to find words. “You made it pretty clear yesterday about your thoughts on the matter,” he said.

She didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. The edges of the atlas were cutting into her hands, she was gripping it so tight. He was right. She had been rather clear about what he should do with her shoe and his butt.

Felicity shifted in her chair and looked out the window. They weren't so high off the ground that she couldn't see the cars and houses. This was the part of flying she usually enjoyed, when everything looked like small toys. It didn't distract her like it normally did, her thoughts too wrapped up in themselves regarding Oliver's words.

She had been rather hot and then cold with him. The first time they met, it had been because of a kiss and a need for a distraction. Every time since, it had been because of her though. Felicity had made the choice to help him translate in the library, to run when Slade Wilson had attacked, not just hide.

There was no one who had forced her to bring him home to her small apartment as a place to hide, or share in take out with him while they worked to decode the journal.

One of the first things she remembered her mom teaching her was to never judge a book by its cover. It was advice that had served her well through her life, and the irony of being a librarian and working with books and covers every day was not lost on her.

Admitting to herself that she had been guilty of judging on that first impression with Oliver cut deep. It made her stomach want to twist around itself , and she wished she could somehow curl up smaller in her seat. It was even worse when Felicity realized that she hadn’t been mentally trying to distance herself from him due to their first meeting. No, Oliver had apologized right before he had kissed her, and she was the one who had chosen to talk further.

She had judged him on name alone. Based on what she knew of the Queen moniker.

Oliver had told her that night in her kitchen why he was searching for El Dorado. He wanted to be his own person, not just “Robert and Moira Queen’s son.” Here she was, doing just that. Felicity had only thought of him as Oliver Queen , rather than the Oliver she had gotten to know.

Oliver who liked greasy pizza and could eat with chopsticks. Who liked to cook because it helped him think and who left books open with the spine facing up in a way that sort of hurt her soul. She glanced down at the atlas in her lap and worked to force her fingers to lose a bit of their grip. The nail markings she was putting in the cover probably wouldn’t help anything.

He wasn’t a bad person.

At all.

She let her head fall back against the headrest and winced at the dull pulse of pain. Like the rest of the plane, it wasn’t as comfortable as it looked. Closing her eyes, she tried to work out the other part of his question: why was she here?

Working at a library was something she had really fallen into, not something she had ached to achieve. Not like her childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut and going to Mars. Which, okay, good news there, she hadn’t lost out on that yet. Not that the space program seemed to be headed that way, but it was still something that could happen one day.

Right after she got up the courage to do laser eye surgery and pigs flew, but hope springs eternal.

There was a small bit of excitement in everyday life working in the NYPL System. Figuring out what books a person was looking for based on half remembered names or plots, or running a summer course on Coding 101 for kids. It was solving a mystery.

Computers and hacking, 1s and 0s, they were always something different. It was rare that it was the same problem twice when she was fixing things.

Somehow, her work had become routine. Oh, there were fun things here and there, that was true. But Felicity couldn't remember the last time she had felt the same thrill she felt when she was helping Oliver solve the various mysteries about the journal, the quipu , the City of Gold itself.

That was why she had gone after Oliver. To get that high from adventure she hadn't even realized she had been missing. Which made her even worse than Oliver, really. He had been honest with her since the beginning about why he was doing this. She was the one who was lying about it all, and those lies had been to herself.

Given that she was on a plane ride to Venezuela with only Oliver and the pilot for company, Felicity knew that she would have plenty of time to think about why she was doing this. In the end, it hadn’t taken much longer than five minutes of actually sitting down and not avoiding the question for once. She was doing this, helping to find El Dorado, for herself. She had become just as entranced with the mystery to the point that she wanted to see it through.

When she opened her eyes again, there were only clouds beneath the wings. She didn’t know how much time she had spent in her head, but it was apparently enough for them to have gone high enough that the captain probably would have turned off the seatbelt sign and snacks would have gone around if they weren’t in a plane older than she was.

She shifted in her seat again, and carefully reached a hand out towards Oliver’s arm to get his attention. The leather jacket was soft under her fingers and clearly some sort of heavy duty armor. Oliver didn't even register she was touching him until she squeezed his forearm.

It was a very firm forearm. Not much to squeeze. Enough to get a good grip on.

Oliver’s right hand covered hers and Felicity lifted her head, startled. His blue eyes were right in front of her, impossible to ignore even if she wanted to. The bit of beard he was sporting looked softer than it had a right to, and his eyelashes were far too long for any guy to have without serious mascara help.

“Felicity,” he asked. Goodness, being on the receiving end of his full attention was not something she thought she would ever get used to.

She could feel herself starting to blush the longer they stared at one another. For the love of everything, how was it that when she needed to say something, her brain didn't want to work? It had to be him, or some sort of strange superpower he used on her.

Pulling her hand out from under his, she brushed a piece of hair from her face and looked down at her hands. “I'm sorry,” she told him.

Silence.

“Did...did you not hear me?” She had been rather quiet with her apology. “I said that I was sorry,” she said a bit louder, raising voice and her head. Felicity noted that he hadn't moved from his prior position, though he was looking confused.  

“I heard you,” he said slowly, “but I'm not sure I'm understanding you. What, exactly, are you apologizing for?”

“You were right,” Felicity said. “Before, I mean. I haven't been treating you nice at all, and you have every right to be angry at me and I'm sorry.”  

She watched as Oliver rubbed at his neck, shaking his head. “I never said that I was angry at you, Felicity.” He reached over and gently took the atlas from her hands. She made to grab after it, wanting the book shield back, but then he grabbed her hands and was completely focused on her again. “I’m just not sure why you are here when the entire time you’ve been vocal about your dislike about my hunt.” He gave her a wry smile. “I believe your exact words might have been tomb raiding?”

“I...I realized that I was going off of what I thought about your family,” Felicity said quietly. “Not about you. You’ve been clear from the start about why you’re doing this. I’m the one who kept wanting to make it about something other than finding the city and getting credit for it.”  

Her hands were getting really warm in his. And when she pulled away to grab the atlas again, she immediately tried not to notice how cold she felt. It was her fault for wearing a cute sleeveless shirt instead of her comfy airplane sweatshirt.

“I’m the one who kept inviting myself along, getting involved when I didn’t have to,” she continued. “I wanted the adventure you were having, but I didn’t want to admit that to myself. I wouldn’t be the person I thought I was supposed to be if I was off having adventures.”

“Supposed to be?”

She gave a small shrug in her seat. “A librarian. I read about the adventures, but I don’t have them.”

“What do you know about the Brothers Grimm,” he asked her.

The sudden shift in topic threw her. Apparently they were done talking about feelings while trapped in a flying death trap, which was okay with her. Really. It had been awkward for everyone involved. “Grimm’s Fairy tales,” she said. “Really, Oliver, you should know better than to ask someone who works with books who an author is.”

“Do you know how they got them? The folk tales for their collections?”

Maybe going after the goose that laid the golden eggs was the next trip Oliver was going to go on? If there was truth in the legends here, who’s to say there wasn’t a magical goose out there somewhere, popping out 14K eggs every other day?

“They went out into Germany, before it was Germany, and walked. They walked through the Black Forest, the alps. They talked to people. They traveled to Paris, through Prussia,” he continued on. “They collected these stories and then published them, and then did it again. People started to bring stories to them, but they still visited other cities and villages. Felicity, they went on adventures.”

After a moment of admiring how good Oliver looked when he was passionate about something, Felicity finally found her voice enough to respond. “You’re going to tell me they were librarians, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “They were librarians.”

“Know who else was a librarian? And ended up saving the world? Evelyn Carnahan.”

“I don’t think I know her.”

Felicity settled back into her chair, trying to hide her smile. She wasn’t sure how he had missed watching The Mummy, but she wasn’t about to let her pop culture knowledge go to waste! And it would kill time on the way to South America in a far better way than sitting in silence ever would.

Being strapped into a seat on an airplane with a five point harness was not how Felicity had expected her day to go. Into a seat on an airplane? She had planned for that, even for the lack of leg room. But it turned out that there were worse ways to spend a long flight than talking with Oliver.

Even if the bathroom was a bucket in the corner and a shout of “don’t you dare turn around” for privacy.

There were a few times that she sat with Oliver in the copilot’s chair while his pilot friend, a man named Sullivan, used the bucket. Oliver was clearly comfortable in the cockpit of the plane, and when she asked him where he had learned to fly, it led to a discussion about what their parents had taught them when they were kids.

She even got the full story about how he and Slade had started working together. Before he had lost an eye, he had been a friend of Moira Queen’s, often helping to finance some of their other endeavors. He had helped Oliver to regain his footing after the news about his parents had hit, taking him on some of his own explorations. It was during one of them that he had lost his eye, forcing him to take time to recover. He had, according to Oliver, dived deep into the myth of El Dorado, and became near obsessed with finding it; Slade became a man possessed and started to take risks he never would have before.

Those risks included the lives of people both on his payroll and not, and it had all come to a head in New York City. Slade hadn’t thought twice about killing the previous owner of the arrow head, and Oliver had hoped that by running with it, he could keep Slade from figuring out any of the next steps, and maybe the obsession would fade.

It hadn’t worked out according to plan.

They had plenty of time for Felicity to explain her discovery about the quipu being a map too, given the eight hours they were going to be flying for.  Using the atlas she had carried along, and Oliver’s notes, they managed to work out what knot represented what location. Some of the once tall mountain areas weren’t as prominent now, so it did make for a harder time decoding, but there was enough information that Oliver was able to freehand a rather impressive map of Venezuela over the quipu to narrow down their search area to where the golden knot was.

She wasn’t positive how Oliver was going to get into the middle of the rainforest without a week long hike and being eaten alive by bugs, or maybe even a panther. That part would probably come after they landed though. The packing of supplies, finding a guide. Oh, maybe Oliver would rent a jeep. Driving a jeep through the jungle always sounded like a fun thing to do.

Speaking of Oliver, he was making enough noise behind them that Felicity found herself roused out of the nap she had been taking. “Are we almost there,” she asked, turning in her seat to better see him.

“About as close as we can get,” he responded. “I’m making sure everything is packed up here before we drop out.”

“Drop out?” She had to have heard him wrong. There was no way he was talking about dropping out of the plane. Maybe pop out? Wheels dropping? Wheels dropping out made more sense. And was safer. A lot safer. Even with the plane that had stuffing coming out of the headrest, it was safer on the plane than to leave it and just sort of hope you landed without dying.  

“Aren’t we supposed to stay in your seat with your seatbelt fastened until the plane had reached the gate?” she continued. “I’m pretty sure I remember being told that when I landed in Star City. And all of the other times I have flown.”

“There isn’t a gate, Felicity,” he said, tugging the strap on the large backpack tight. He stood up to look at her. “Besides, how are you planning on getting through customs without your passport or ID?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and glared over the top of her glasses. “So your plan is to have us jump out of a perfectly fine airplane instead of waiting for it to land?”

Oliver slipped his brown jacket on before holding up what looked like a web of straps and buckles. “You’ll be jumping with me, actually. Unless you know how to skydive? I assumed you didn’t, but I might be wrong.”

Damn her for wanting an adventure.

At least she had on shoes that were good for walking.

There were probably things Felicity had done in the past that had, in the moment, scared her so much that she thought she was going to die. The only thing that even came close to falling from the sky and hoping Oliver remembered to pull a string and that a bunch of fabric would hold them was when Slade had been shooting at them back in the library.

At least during that she had  some measure of control over that situation. And wasn't staring death in the face while wind was taking her breath away and her eyes were watering, but also really dry at the same time. It had been warmer too, because it turned out that the sky was a cold place to just sort of hang out in no matter how close to the equator she was.

Oliver, of course, being the asshole that he was, hadn't even given her the count of three to prepare like he had promised. No, instead he had jumped at two, an excited whoop loud in her ear even as she tried to catch enough breath to scream while attached to his front in the tandem harness.

She had to give him credit at the fact that he landed them in a clearing in the middle of the amazon rain forest without snagging any trees on the way down. As soon as they had both touched ground, Felicity began to work the straps on her front. She wanted to get out of the harness as soon as she could, no matter how solid and warm Oliver’s body had felt against her on the way down.

Dropping the pack that held all of his gear to the ground, she was able to finally reach the buckles and wasted no time at all in stripping the harness off of her quicker than it took to fling her bra off at the end of a long day.

“I am never, ever, doing that again,” Felicity said, still trying to catch her breath.

Oliver stepped out of the harness and began to repack the parachute into the backpack. “Hopefully we won’t have to.”

Hopefully? Oh no. There was no hopefully about it. She wasn’t going to do it again. Jumping out of a plane once was one time too many for her life. Even though it resulted with her standing in the middle of the rain forest.

That part was pretty amazing. Especially given as how she had never been out of the country before, and now here she was, Felicity Smoak, standing in the rain forest to try to finish a hunt for a legend.

Standing in the rainforest in a sleeveless shirt and cute skinny jeans. Which she was going to have to hike in for who knew how long until they reached the ruins of El Dorado, or found a town or village or something where she could get better clothes. If she didn't die from the tsetse fly or malaria on the way.

The Amazon Trail game had not prepared her well enough for this!

“I don't think this is the best idea,” she told Oliver in a panic.  “You can't have packed enough food for two people and I am not dressed for any of this!” She motioned at her clothes, hoping he would understand. He had to have a way to get back out of the jungle when he was ready to, right? He wasn't just going to live in it and become Oliver of the Jungle.

Although, it wouldn't be bad for him to go around shirtless and swinging from vines.

Felicity forced her attention back to the present, grabbing onto the bag that Oliver was handing her. “I was planning on fishing for food, honestly,” he told her. “And seeing what else we might find on the way.”  Her eyes widened as he pulled out a huge looking knife--was that honestly a machete-- from his bag and waved it in her direction. “I can make your jeans into shorts if you want?”

“I think I will keep my jeans as they are, thank you,” she responded. Honestly, didn’t he know how expensive a good pair of jeans were? What was she thinking, really, of course he didn’t know. Nor did he know how hard it was to find a good pair of jeans that fit. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.

He looked at her for a moment, before giving a slow nod. “If you change your mind, let me know.” He was clearly in his element as he struck out at a brisk pace, large camping bag hefted onto his back and using his freaking machete to chop through any sort of foliage in his way.

Setting off after him, she grumbled about tall people and their long legs until he finally slowed down enough for her actually keep pace with him.

Without a watch, she didn’t have really have a lot to tell her how much time had passed since they had landed in the jungle. It felt like it might have been hours, but that could have been her completely winded and out of shape self talking. She was already close to having completely and totally sweat through her clothes, which was uncomfortable by itself, but the last straw for Felicity came when a crack of thunder startled her before the downpour began.

It was official. She hated the rainforest.

Or the rainforest hated her.

It was mutually assured hate.

The backpack of gear that Oliver had asked her to carry wasn’t helping matters either, and it was getting to a point that she was going to have to stop soon or she was just going to fall over and pass out. Walking through the concrete jungle was one thing, but it clearly had not prepared her for traipsing through an actual jungle.

Rain drops splattering against her glasses and face didn’t make anything better. As hot as the temperature was, the rain was making her feel cold and miserable.

“Why did I think this was a good idea,” she complained quietly. “I’m going to be the person that dies in the beginning of all of the adventure movies as the example of what not to do and so the hero knows that he needs to be prepared and that the audience knows it’s all serious.”

Felicity barely avoided a large puddle by skirting the edge of it, kicking at and stumbling over a few roots and rocks as she did. Only Oliver quickly grabbing her arm and holding her up stopped her from slipping off of the rain slicked bark and to the ground.

“Are you okay,” he asked after she regained her balance.

“Aside from damaging my ego, I’m fine. Just really hating that I did not prepare at all for this.” She peered up at him from behind her glasses and mentally cursed that she could barely see through them. “I am clearly not cut out for field work. Or jungle work. I could maybe do beach work, if it involved sitting on a towel and reading a book.”

With, quite frankly, a disgusting amount of ease, Oliver swung his large pack around and unzipped one of the side pouches. She watched him rummage around in it, trying very hard to not appreciate how good he was looking with his shirt wet and sticking to him.

“Here,” he said. He brushed his hands over hers, pulling her out of her thoughts of how he might look without the shirt on in the rain. “I should’ve grabbed this out earlier for you.”

Felicity took the bright yellow rain poncho from Oliver and slipped it on before snapping up the sides. The rain was still hitting her, but just the one layer between her and it was enough to make it not as awful. She pulled up the hood as far as it would go, trying to keep any more from getting into her eyes.

“Thank you.”

He gave her a smile that made her heart melt into a puddle and all sorts of other emotions curl up into a warm ball in her stomach. “Aren’t you going to wear one,” she asked, following behind him at his now far less intense pace

“I’ve got my jacket,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her. “And you’re wearing the only one I brought.”

When they made camp a while later, it turned out that he had extra clothes packed too, and offered one of his shirts for her to change into for the night while her clothes dripped dried in the tent. The parachute Oliver had carefully packed away was flung over the small tent to ensure nothing leaked through the roof.

The two had a quiet dinner made of supplies Oliver had brought along, during which he finally copped to knowing that she had been retelling him The Mummy's plot earlier on the plane.

Felicity threw one of the raisins from her trail mix at him for that.

He caught it in his mouth. As if there was any other outcome possible.

The forest around them got dark quick, and not even the full moon that she knew was overhead was able to provide much light. There was a small, hand crank light that Oliver brought out, using it to go over the map they two of them had traced over the photograph of the quipu ’s knots back on the plane.

“If we keep this pace, and I can keep us going the right direction, we should get there tomorrow no problem,” he said from outside the tent.

“It's kind of unthinkable,” Felicity called back to him, unzipping the giant sleeping bag Oliver had thrown in when she had been changing before.

“What is?”

“You and I. Finding a lost city that's supposed to be made of gold and treasure.”  She spread out the fabric to cover the floor, then rolled up into one side of it, leaving the other open for him. “You can come in now,” she said.

“I've been chasing after this myth for almost five years. It's not as unthinkable as you might think.”  He crawled into the tent, leaving his shoes outside. “I'm just dropping this in here,” he held up a small compass, “and then I'll be out of your hair.”

“Where are you going,” she asked, sitting up from her her sleeping bag burrito. Felicity tried to brush her hair out of her eyes, but the humidity had made it so wispy that it was sort of frizzing all around her face. “Are you doing a keeping watch sort of thing? You take first shift, and you’ll wake me in a few hours so you can get sleep?”

Oliver rubbed a hand at the back of his next and didn’t meet her eyes. Which she narrowed at him over her glasses even if he wasn’t looking up to see it. “I was planning to sleep outside, actually. Let you have the tent.”

“And be carried away by monkeys or a flash flood? Or what if some unknown spider comes and bites you, and then you die, and I’m stuck here because of it?”  She hated that she could hear the sound of panic in her voice, especially when she knew, logically, that she was being a bit over dramatic about it. They weren’t near the river, so it would be unlikely there would be a flood.

She was stuck on the feeling that the idea of sleeping alone in a tent in the jungle, in the pitch dark night, was causing her to have though. Mainly, total fear. How would she know if it was an animal or Oliver making noises outside, if they were both on the other side of the tent from her?

“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. By staying in here,” he said, slowly moving to lay down on the furthest edge of the sleeping bag, as far as he could get from her.

“I don’t mind sleeping with you,” Felicity said, and immediately winced. “And I mean sleeping as in actual sleeping next to you in the same bed. Or tent. Not anything sexual. Not that you aren’t attractive, and I’m sure that, you know, sleeping with you would be just as nice as the actual sleeping part and I’m going to stop talking, right now.”  She let herself fall backwards and tried to burrow her way under the fabric in an attempt to hide before she had to see the look she was positive Oliver was giving her.

Why did she have to let nerves get the better of her out here and let forth a babble unlike anything that had been seen before?

“Good night, Felicity,” Oliver said, apparently taking pity on her. She didn’t answer, instead rolled up her now dry shirt to make a pseudo pillow and hunkered down further into her part of the blanket.

The tent went dark around her when Oliver turned off their light. Instantly, she was aware of every little noise and movement around her, trying not to jump out of her skin every time it turned out to be a tree branch or a fern frond that was brushing against the outside canvas.

“I hate the rainforest,” she mumbled, knowing she wasn’t going to get any sleep that night.

Somehow, within the course of the night, Felicity must have managed to not only unroll herself from her cocoon, but also bunched it up for a pillow. While still leaving enough for her to say she was sleeping under a blanket. Nighttime Yoga was a wonderful new skill and it was the only way she could think of for why she was both comfortably resting her head not on the ground, and still be covered.

She turned onto her side and tried to bury her head further into her pillow, wanting to sleep more. Or not move ever, given how sore her legs were from all of their walking yesterday. Instead of pillowy softness though, she was met with muscley hardness in the form of a body.

Her eyes popped open upon realization that she had been using Oliver as a pillow, and that was why she felt so comfy.

When she had been busy babbling last night, he must have stripped down to just his jeans, as she had a perfectly clear view of his chest and arms and abs. She felt his hand twitch against her back where he was holding her to him, and she couldn’t help but settle more fully into her Oliver Shoulder Pillow.

“I should move,” she tried to convince herself quietly. “I should move before he wakes up and I make it awkward because I totally glommed onto him while he was asleep and that was not the plan at all.”

“I don’t mind.” His voice was still raspy with sleep. Felicity moved her head so she could look at his face. He looked so pretty in the muted morning light that it was really unfair. She was positive she probably had a rat’s nest for hair and morning breath that would kill since she hadn’t brushed her teeth or hair last night.

“Waking up like this is a nice surprise.” He spread the hand on her back out, and she could feel the heat from his fingers through the thin cotton of the shirt she had borrowed from him. His pinky touched bare skin where the shirt had ridden up during the night and he began to rub the spot gently. She wasn’t sure he was even aware he was doing it, the way he was looking at her.

She made a humming noise of agreement, enjoying the moment. Oliver lifted his head and leaned towards her at the same time she began to move towards him. She felt him cup her cheek with the hand that had been holding her. “Oliver,” she said softly, opening her lips slightly when he ran his thumb over them.

“Felicity,” he breathed out.

A loud squawking noise outside the tent made her jump. “What was that?” she asked, frozen. It sounded again a moment later, from a different spot and Oliver dropped his hand from her face and rubbed it over his face.

“Sounds like a macaw,” he said after a moment. He grabbed the shirt he had tossed into the corner last night and tugged it on when he sat up, not looking at her. “They’re obnoxious out here, especially once a group of them get going.”

Felicity heard the tent’s zipper behind her when Oliver pulled it down, and it sounded just as loud the second time when he tugged it back up. “I’ll um...I’ll let you get ready. Then we can break camp and start hiking again. It’s not too far away now, based on the maps and my notes.”

“Sounds good,” she responded, trying to sound normal. Like she hadn’t almost kissed him. Like he hadn’t pulled away the moment he realized what was actually happening.  

She shook her head and reached for her jeans before starting to search for her balled up top. Of course he had pulled away. He was Oliver Queen. He had probably thought that he was still dreaming or something and that she was some leggy damsel in distress he had just rescued ala Temple of Doom. The squawking birds had broken that spell faster than any fairy godmother would have, leaving him with just her: the woefully unprepared for the jungle librarian.

Packing up the sleeping bag, she sighed. “Just because you think he’s pretty doesn’t mean he’s into you, Felicity,” she told herself. “He’s here for El Dorado. You just happened to be along for the ride.”

For now, she would focus on getting to the city, seeing the mystery through to the end, and enjoying the rush of adventure that came along with it all. With her plan in place, she left the tent, ready to start a hike she was positive would leave her half dead by the end of it.

Oliver’s original estimation of reaching where the city was supposed to be no later than mid day were sadly inaccurate. Felicity was sure that it was because he was basing his hiking time on how fast he could go, which was at a stupidly fast pace considering the terrain. He was bobbing up and down, avoiding trees and slicing through ground cover like he was personally offended by its existence. The view from behind might have been a good one, but the trail he was making was not making it any easier for her.

Her stomach was beginning to clearly make its displeasure at not being fed known, and she wondered if Oliver would kill her if she asked for another rest stop to eat so soon after the last one she had asked for so that she could breathe. About to call ahead to him, she watched as he lowered his machete and took a few slow steps forward.

Drawing reserves of energy from somewhere deep inside, she jogged towards him. She emerged out of the jungle to the rocky top of a cliff, trying to catch her breath. “What did you find?” she asked. Oh, she was so going to work on cardio when she got back to civilization.

Oliver motioned with his head, drawing her attention forward to the edge of the cliff and what was beyond.

It was overgrown, taken back by the jungle around them. But the fact that she was looking at orderly rows of buildings and half crumbled walls, partial roofs and remains of statues glinting in sunlight made it clear.

“It’s El Dorado,” she whispered. “It’s real.”

[cinema-tv-etc]

‘All Tapped Out’ Proves Will’s Death Is The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened To ‘The Good Wife’

Lauren Duca Entertainment Reporter

Spoiler Alert: Do not read, if you have not seen “The Good Wife,” Season 5,

Episode 18, “All Tapped Out.”

Three full episodes have passed since Will was brutally killed off on “The Good Wife.” His death served to “impact every area of [Alicia’s] life,” and whether or not you appreciated it, the initial pain of the loss (read: seeing Christine Baranksi cry) was a real punch in the gut. But soon, Alicia was in sweatpants, Kalinda was vengefully having sex with every character that still had a pulse, and the show started to feel like a sad-off in which the goal was to be the most pathetic as a direct result of Will’s death. Then we got this week’s episode, and suddenly all the grief seemed worth it. With “All Tapped Out,” “The Good Wife” is back, finally ready to trade fully in the things it does better than any other show on television: the complex handling of moral ambiguity amid political intrigue mixed with the complications of new technology.

As for the last of those pillars, “The Good Wife” has long been hailed for it’s exceptional handling of new technology.

This is imperfect (the Bitcoin episode came off less than poignant in the hands of a too-goofy Jason Biggs, and “Chumhum” still feels kind of silly to say out loud), but, as Clive Thompson wrote over at Wired, the show “may be the best force for digital literacy in pop culture right now.”

Many episodes are pulled right from the headlines (see: the Steubenville fun house mirror played out in “Rape: A Modern Perspective“). These are a cunning look at the mix of innovations and the law. Overall, the strongest episodic plot lines have always been those that deal with things like Anonymous or surveillance, and last night’s take down of the NSA was no exception.

When Alicia grows (correctly) concerned that the NSA is spying on her firm, she runs to Peter, knowing he’ll be adept to squirm his way out of their current predicament. Twisted up in action is both the political spectrum of spying and Alicia’s own willingness to make a deal with her morally questionable husband. In a single gesture, Peter takes down the surveillance, with a use of blackmail so clever that even Eli is impressed. This further signals the return of Peter’s gubernatorial prowess, not just as a typically flawed politician, but as a strangely empathetic figure who understands the inner workings of corruption, and chooses to bend it to his own (and his wife’s own) advantage.

It is in political trappings that “The Good Wife” also shines. Through Peter’s various campaigns, to the dealings of his offices, the show is somehow perpetually toying with the inevitability of crookedness and impossibility of ever being “clean” without self-destructing. By the end of “All Tapped Out,” Alicia is relieved of the pressures placed on her firm, and the NSA slithers from the narrative center, wounded with by its own hypocrisy. In the course of a few scenes, the show uses the questionable justification for surveillance along with the stunning use political manipulation to spotlight cracks in both infrastructures, as well as our heroine’s moral center.

Over at The Atlantic, Kirthana Ramisetti called Josh Charles’ departure “liberating“ for Alicia’s character, and she’s right. It was a fact of the casting (Charles chose to leave), less so than a statement on the part of the showrunners, but the move still frees its protagonist from the ebb and flow of a love interest. Alicia is, obviously, the heart of this show, but it is the lens through which viewers watch her development that makes “The Good Wife” such an achievement of Cable television. For too long, her very existence was dictated by a tangible chemistry with her lover/boss — a fact of the story that seemed to undercut the validity of her every move, both in the minds of fellow co-workers and our perception of the character. Now, Will and his exceptionally large nose are gone. And, as in the fantastic penultimate episode of Season 5, our leading lady is finally free to evolve (or de-evolve) further from a core sense of right and wrong in the complex entanglement of politics and technology that have always made “The Good Wife” so damn great.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/will-death-the-good-wife_n_5185883.html