"There's an easier way to do this Lauren", Evony pronounced drily.
"And I could certainly make it harder on you, God knows people have suffered far more here, for far less than you did."
Lauren hadn't even heard the cell door open. Everything seemed to hurt except her hands. They never touched her hands. They were careful about her eyes too, actually, now that she thought about it. She was no good to them if she couldn't work.
"I'm altogether too soft on you. Far too fond, it's a weakness."
Lauren, for all the pain she was in, understood this was sort-of true. In her strange way, Evony did like her. She didn't seem to take pleasure in having her goons hurt her. She didn't stay to watch, didn't revel in it, put limits on how far they could go - they only ever seemed to do enough to get what they wanted, although they always made sure to do that.
Lauren had also seen first hand exactly how creative the woman could be, when she wanted, and yes; by Evony's standards, she had been very soft on her indeed.
Evony crouched down beside her, the Oscar winner lines of her dress, and her elegant heels, clashing with the dirty stone of the room. Lauren flinched when she touched her face, but she was too exhausted to lean away, even as far as her chains would allow. Evony gently stroked a strand of damp hair from her features to examine the damage this time, and frowned when the doctor winced to her touch.
She sighed.
"I mean it Lauren. I know you want to fight the good fight, and I respect your resilience, I really do. But you have to understand I will get what I want one way or the other. You're too smart to think you can keep resisting forever."
She tilted up Lauren's chin to meet her gaze, her features soft and benign, and Lauren glared back defiantly.
"So what is it that you're hoping to achieve by forcing my hand like this all the time?" she asked gently.
Lauren had no answer to offer, and turned away as soon as Evony let her.
"It's misplaced, Lauren, all this effort, and you know it. With your succubus gone, you know nobody's coming to ride to your rescue. You know you're too valuable to me not to use, and you know what lengths I'd go to in order to get my way. So you know - you know - that all of this is pointless, and you know that tomorrow we'll do it all over again. Ugh, it's such a waste!"
Lauren still didn't respond, but she just couldn't hide the fear in the sound of her heavy breathing. Evony rose to her full height, and threw up her hands in exasperation.
"But... I also know you're going to keep fighting me as long as you can. I know you can't help it, even if you can't rationalise it, because deep down, beneath the scientist and the pragmatist and the survivor type, you my dear, you are a true believer. You're going to resist to the bitter end even if I have to start taking you apart; because for some incomprehensible reason, you think that's the right thing to do even if you don't know why."
There it was again, that note of strange, warped respect. Evony could recognise her motives, even if she didn't understand them; and she could respect her determination even if it seemed, to her, ludicrously misguided.
She extended a regal hand, and somebody immediately provided it with some small clean cloths. Again, and this time she was provided with a clear bottle of liquid. She tipped the bottle against the fabric, damping it.
"Leave", she commanded simply, and her henchmen dutifully filtered out.
She approached Lauren again, and this time the prisoner did try to lean away, desperately. She could smell a chemical bite from the liquid on the cloth and she feared it. Whether she thought it was chloroform or acid or God knows what, she wasn't sure, and didn't want to find out.
Evony crouched down beside her, and despite Lauren's efforts, pressed the cloth to the cut on her temple. She cried out - it burned, it did burn, but not evilly so, and Lauren realised it was some kind of disinfectant.
She cleaned that cut carefully and moved on to the others, mindful to avoid the bruises, and Lauren warily permitted it.
"You know, I've known plenty of masochists in my time, and you're not one, I know you don't enjoy any part of this. You just think you have to do it, don't you? That suffering is just your duty for the greater good. Well it's not, Lauren, and you don't. Whatever it is you're trying to achieve, it is not worth your suffering."
She gestured the bottle accusatorily in a vague direction.
"Ugh, The Light did this to you, you know" she said, clearing a little patch of crusted blood and grime from Lauren's face. "Stripped you of yourself. You-"
She touched the bottle to the cloth again.
"-simply don't understand how much you're worth, so you don't care when you are damaged. I'd bet you'd keep on fighting me and taking any punishment I had to give, just because you just don't understand you deserve better. But believe it or not–"
She gestured her intention to move to the other side of Lauren's face. Lauren hesitated, and turned to allow it. The cut here was fresh, and she couldn't help hissing at the contact.
"- contrary to rumour, I am not a sadist either, not a real one. A megalomaniac, arguably, and a tyrant certainly, and a dreadful example to tiny homeschooled children everywhere. But not a sadist - sadism has its charms as an occasional diversion, I'm not saying I don't… dabble - but a true sadist, well they wouldn't cut it in my league. They get too sloppy to last long, they get a little power and a few dungeons, and they always lose sight of the bigger picture. Always too liberal with the stick when the carrot would be more effective."
She produced a tube of some kind of medicated cream, and squeezed it onto the other little cloth, retracing her work. The cream soothed the burn of the other liquid and it was a small, precious relief.
"So that brings us to a plateau. You're going to keep fighting me, and I'm going to have to keep reining you in, and you'll behave for a while before trying something else, and the cycle will keep going until you make me do something drastic to you for once and for all. And I do so loathe repetition."
She took one of Lauren's wrists, starting to raw from the heavy manacle, and slipped the metal up just far enough to apply the cloth carefully to the pinking skin.
"No, my true vice is that I am a connoisseur. I like to surround myself with the finer things in life, and put great time and energy into seeking them out. You my darling, you were quite the prize, and I'd like to enjoy you. I'd very much prefer to parade you around my court and have you doing extraordinary things in my labs than have to stash you in a kennel like this all the time."
She took the other wrist in turn, just as gently, and repeated the process with just as much care.
"What I am not, is a patient woman Lauren - and I don't appreciate scratches on my favourite toys. Even Dior doesn't work with missing teeth or stitches and I have no intention of playing this game with you over and over again in the decades to come, so I'm going to try a different approach."
Evony gathered her accoutrements and stood up. Lauren scanned her features fearfully, for some clue of what she had planned, but she knew it was no use. Her expression never changes, Lauren had learned. Her expression never changes whether she's promising or flattering or threatening me.
"Bring her in."
The cell door screeched open again, and the henchmen reappeared. This time, they dragged in an unresisting bundle of bloodied deadweight and waited dumbly for further instructions.
Lauren immediately recognised this new victim as Kenzi, and her heart jumped into her throat. She bolted up straight, wide awake now despite her condition, and heard her pulse pounding in her ears.
"So. Here we are. I know you'll take just about anything I have to throw at you, and you know I don't want to harm you more than I have to. But I also know you couldn't bear to think I was doing those things to somebody else on your behalf, and unless this one has developed some very hidden aptitude for the sciences recently, you better believe I have no hesitation in hurting her."
She flicked her hand, and the men dropped Kenzi to the floor into a senseless heap.
"And Doctor - you do know exactly what I am capable of."
Panicking, Lauren looked all around the room for some miraculous new way out of all this that she might somehow have missed. Something, anything.
Evony watched her impassively, and waited for Lauren's eye line to come back to her. Holding her gaze, she stepped over to Kenzi, and with an expensive shoe, kicked one of her hands away from her body. She casually pressed down on the palm of the girl's hand with her shoe's toe, splaying her fingers.
"Great nails doesn't she? All ten of 'em."
Lauren looked at Kenzi's hand, and all she could see were the cuts and scratches she recognised as defensive.
"Tell me, how long would they take to grow back? I've never actually bothered to keep track."
"Evony... please –" Lauren said, hearing for the first time the slur in her speech from her split lip.
"Please what Lauren? "Please Evony don't hurt her, I'll do whatever you want, just don't hurt her", something like that?"
She's toying with me, Lauren realised. She's toying with me now, and I don't know how she wants me to play this game. Panic was starting to seize around her lungs like a tight fist.
"Yes, anything, please Evony you said it yourself!"
Evony made an elaborate performance of considering her options.
"Well, that is the goal, yes, but the problem is, we both know you're probably smarter than I am. You've duped me before, didn't you? So how can I trust your word now?"
"Evony please, please!"
"So even if I kept her down here" she continued, as if she hadn't heard, "And had you up there, you'd probably spend the whole time trying to figure out a way to get her free rather than concentrating on your work, wouldn't you? And you might even attempt it, and then we're right back where we started, aren't we? And that wouldn't do at all, so that's a dilemma, really, isn't it? If I keep her around, you'll keep trying to come up with something, and if I let her go or kill her, you've lost your incentive, haven't you? You see my predicament?"
"Evony, what do you you want me to say?!? Don't hurt her and I'll do whatever you want me to do, please!"
"I need more than that. I need to know you're absolutely loyal, and I want to have her off my hands. So here's my offer Lauren, and I promise you it's the only game in town - I will let her go, scot free, back to whatever rat hole she's nesting in of these days -"
She crouched down again, and laid her hand on Lauren's face with a presumption of intimacy that made her skin crawl.
"And you, you will be given the run of the labs and spoiled to within an inch of your life, I promise you that too, I do so love your figure in silk."
Kenzi groaned softly from the floor, and every instinct in Lauren's body screamed at her to help.
"And all you have to do is accept my thrall."
Lauren stopped dead. She looked up at her in mute horror. Of course. Of course that's what she wanted.
"It's that simple. I suppose it was inevitable. I won't have to worry about your loyalty all the time, you won't have to worry about Kenzi."
She leaned in so she was only inches away.
"You won't have to worry about anything ever again, frankly."
Evony reached out to stroke her face again, and Lauren craned away in terror and disgust with every effort she could muster.
"Oh sweetie, I know, I know it sounds daunting, I do. But just imagine all the people who'd have given anything for the same chance. Just think about it! A chance to be truly exceptional in your lifetime. It's what you dreamed of your whole life, really."
"You'll drive me insane" Lauren said weakly after a moment, trying not to see how shallow Kenzi's breathing was, trying not to hear her own voice quiver.
"Yes." she agreed. "But I'll do it so slowly you won't even feel it happening. Why, they'll be the happiest days of your life. Your every need will be catered to, you can devote yourself entirely to something you love doing. And oh the things we'll accomplish together!"
A pitch, Lauren realised madly. She's making me a pitch. Evony caressed her face sympathetically.
"I won't hurt you Lauren, and I won't have to hurt her either. But I will get what I need, do you understand?"
Lauren tried to turned away again, trying to hide her eyes, but Evony fixed her still.
"I know, I know you're probably blaming yourself for all this, and that's very you, but it's really not your fault. And for what it's worth, I think I would have liked to have done this another way. But if you think about it, it was probably always coming to this. You are what you are, and I am what I am, and I've got you in a corner. There is no other way for you sweetheart, this is just how it went. It's not your fault."
Her mind still grasped hopelessly for something, anything she could think of, to get them both out of this or even buy them a little more time. But there was nothing, nothing at all. Evony could have every bone in Kenzi's body broken in the blink of an eye right now, or have her skinned inch by inch over the course of years, or anything else her awful imagination could contrive. And even if, by some miracle, Lauren could ever manage to save Kenzi, Evony would find somebody or something else to hold over her instead.
Evony was right. Lauren was smarter than her – but Evony was smart enough. And Evony, Evony wasn't restricted by conscience, power or resources.
There was nothing. Nothing she could think of, nothing she could do. With a sinking weight in her stomach, Lauren felt herself staring at a dead end.
Despite her efforts, a tear rolled down her cheek. Evony brushed it away with the pad of her thumb, as though that was entirely her right, and Lauren despised her.
"Shh now, don't. It won't hurt. You're going to be magnificent, Lauren."
She shook her head, desperate not to hear it.
"But she'll go free?"
"She'll go free. You have my blood oath if you want it. And frankly, she'd be more use to me as an independent contractor than a carcass anyway."
Lauren swallowed a shallow sob, determined not to break down entirely.
"Can I say goodbye? We weren't always friends, but we were… something."
Evony smiled kindly.
"Oh Lauren, don't be silly. You don't need to, this isn't the end of anything. It's the beginning. "
Even aside from Evony's crooning reassurances, Lauren knows that it won't hurt. She's read the texts, she knows everything ever written about Leanan Sidhes and more besides. Still, she can't help… bracing herself for something. She expects something, some signature physical sensation to let her know it's begun.
When Bo would use her thrall on her, when they would experiment with it together, she could feel it in every nerve in her body. She could feel it from the pores on her skin to the low of her belly; she could feel how it progressed through her nervous system, and signalled her body for sex, and it thrilled her.
But Evony's power is different. She doesn't feel anything.
It seems blackly ironic, now that Lauren thinks of it, how that worked out. Bo was so full of love, but her power was sex. Evony, Evony was a carnal, predatory creature, and her power pretended it was love. And it is worse, somehow, that it feels like nothing – there's no bloom of warmth or breath of air or anything like that. No jarring new thoughts announcing themselves in her mind, not even a tingle on her skin.
She can feel no trace of it at all, even as it creeps in to rewire her most deeply held emotions, and that is strange to experience. The effect, she knows – having seen Evony's victims in the past, in various stages of decline – will be ultimately devastating, but not one of her senses is detecting it. Even forewarned, even aware it must be happening, there is no physiological alarm bell ringing to alert her to the intrusion she's undergoing.
Radiation sickness, carbon monoxide poisoning, Creutzfeldt–Jakob, a killer with no fingerprints. Under other circumstances, it would be fascinating.
It probably could hurt, if Evony wanted it to. But she said it wouldn't, and it didn't. She loves Evony for that. She loves Evony.
For the first few months, and in a remote way, she can understand that what she feels for Evony is not real. Not really. It is a compulsion devoid of reasoning or foundation, even as love goes. It is something which has been brutally driven into her understanding of the world, and at first, she can still feel the mismatched fit. It is a thing which sits uneasily next to how she feels about politics, or ethics, or her taste in women, or the fae, and she understands she would never have come to feel it under other circumstances. She knows, in an abstract way, that this is part of the bargain she made, the effect of an action taken on her.
The problem is that knowing it doesn't matter. Being aware of these things does not diminish the pace her pulse picks up to when Evony is around, or the ache which settles in her chest when she is not. It does not negate the drive to please her, to impress her, to be of use to her. It does not mean she can think about anything or anyone else in all her idle hours. It does not mean she can sleep without dreaming of her every night until she tosses herself awake earlier and earlier every morning.
It gets easier, eventually. Soon, the conflict between the things she feels by herself, and the thing she had been made to feel, erodes away, and she can no longer imagine being able to think any differently.
After all, why would she ever feel anything else? Why would she ever feel in any way that Evony would not want her to feel?
Evony brings her to some kind of formal function. She has her dressed in something the price of a building, and adorned in the kind of gems that republics have toppled for. Lauren recognises some of the other fae luminaries she meets there, although very few of the old guard are left. She assumes she is expected to remain silent and deferent; a mute, invisible accessory, as she was for The Ash - but Evony introduces her to everyone, and encourages her to speak about her work at length. Although she is careful to steer her from the more sensitive details, the others seem duly impressed.
Later, Lauren asks her what the hell that was all about. Evony laughs. She is not sorry, she says, for wanting to brighten up such a dreary shindig by showing her off a little, especially when she looks so wonderful. Lauren laughs back, and jokes that if she'd known she was having a debutante ball, she would have demanded a box of fancy chocolates first.
When it's over, Evony seems very pleased with her and Lauren is gratified to have apparently performed well. But still, something she cannot put her finger on suggests to her that this will not be a regular event in future.
Evony briefs her on a new project she's to start. Lauren forgets what she was even working on before. Evony tells her she's hired somebody for the fieldwork, and Lauren watches her mouth pronounce every word, she is so beautiful. Evony tells her she is sure that Lauren will make her proud and Lauren wants that, wants that more than anything in the world. Evony leaves, and Lauren watches her go sadly until she is out of sight. She realises the woman who has been hired for the job has been speaking to her, and she forces herself to concentrate. She needs to make Evony proud.
It takes her a few moments to realise the woman knows her, is familiar to her. She knew her once, a lifetime ago – she recognises the ice blue eyes first, bright though they are with horror and pity. She recognises the woman's small frame and dark looks, and belatedly offers her greetings to Kenzi.
They exchange stilted pleasantries. It's awkward – she does not know what Kenzi has been doing, or who she is circulating with these days. She remembers the girl being much younger than this when she saw her last, although now that she thinks of it, she's not sure how long that actually was. She's been so busy, she doesn't keep track of time very well anymore.
She half listens to what Kenzi has to say, politely answers her enquiries, assures her that she's fine and happy and wonders when Evony will come back.
She sees pity and sadness in the other woman's expression many times over the rest of the project. She notices it, but doesn't think about it much. She has so much work to do, and she has so many ideas, and she wants to get them all right, for Evony.
She is examining a sample Kenzi has retrieved when she notices tears in her eyes. She has been talking to herself without realising it, Kenzi explains; about her. Babbling. She thought she'd heard her doing it yesterday, as she walked down the hall, but now she's sure.
Lauren does not understand the problem.
One day, towards the end of the project, Kenzi takes her aside. She tells her, promises her, that she will come back for her. She tells her that it has been hard without Bo, and it's dangerous and chaotic out there – but that she has not forgotten her, they have not forgotten her. She tells her that they will save her, no matter what it takes, and that she's so sorry it has taken so long. Lauren wonders vaguely who she means by "they", but doesn't ask.
When she tells Evony what Kenzi has said to her, The Morrigan listens to her sympathetically. Lauren's heart almost bursts when she tells her she was good, to tell her these things so promptly was good and Evony is pleased. She will see to it that nobody else has a chance to get near her, to upset her like this again, she says, and Lauren is reassured. Evony apologises for hiring Kenzi, for letting her confuse and upset Lauren like this, it was a "mistake". Lauren laughs at hearing her say this word, thinking it is surely a joke. Evony tells her that she will take new precautions to keep her close, and that she should not worry any more. Lauren smiles, and gets back to work, comforted.
Lauren works mostly alone after that. It's better that way anyway, the others had started to slow her down. Partly because she's started finding it harder and harder to communicate lately. She knows what she means to say, but it piles up on itself when she says it, or other thoughts slip in part way through, and people can't seem to keep up with her. She has so many ideas, that are so complicated, it frustrates her to try to express them to anybody else. Only Evony ever seems to understand.
She's glad she doesn't have to deal with them anymore. She doesn't have time to explain her ideas to people who probably won't even grasp the concepts she was dealing in the first place. It's easier just to do it herself.
They couldn't match her pace even if they tried anyway, the hours she puts in. She has too many ideas, all the time, she rarely sleeps. Sometimes, where there is no priority project, Evony will come to the lab and tell her to go rest, and then she will. But otherwise, she just forgets - it doesn't occur to her to try, and her dreams are too restless to let her sleep for long anyway. She has so much on her mind.
Evony always brings her food though. If anybody else brought it, Lauren might not bother eating it. But if Evony gives it to her, she will, of course she will. She loves Evony.
Evony watched Lauren's frantic movements from her observation gallery. She fidgets a lot, but Evony knows she can't help it. She can hear her muttering feverishly to herself from here too. She can't catch the words, but she doesn't need to, Lauren does it almost constantly now. She sighs sadly – she really did like Lauren. She knows the signs. She knows it won't be long now.
She could stop, of course. Even now, in this late stage, she could stop, and Lauren would eventually recover. And often, she is sorely tempted - strangely, and despite herself, she misses being able to actually... talk to her, even as she was during her more lucid phases of the thrall. She knows she will not get much more from her, she's almost spent, but some ridiculous sentimental part of her thinks maybe the poor doctor has done enough for her by now to earn a reprieve.
But then she looks at Lauren's work. Her remarkable work. Absolutely, her methods are incomprehensible to any other staff, and the logical leaps she is capable of make her impossible to co-ordinate with any of her other projects - but still, still the results she produces are incredible.
The idea of letting her go, and missing out on the last of her incredible potential, her swansong... well, that would just be a dreadful waste.
The Morrigan leaves her to her work and strolls away unseen for her 2 O'clock. She's meeting a very promising and attractive young med student for lunch. She's going to have a vacancy shortly.