A/N: Hey y'all. I started doing some prompts on Tumblr (the idea for which was inspired by the beautiful Bree), and I dunno how many I'll get, but I'm hoping to keep them all in one place. If you'd like to read any in the future, sign up for alerts on this story.

Let's begin.

PROMPT: Mona puts toby to the test to see if he's really loyal to the -A team but getting another member to hurt Spencer in front of him, and then Toby goes all cray-cray angry that someone hurt Spencer and he saves her and its all happy and cute - you should write something like that, i love protective Toby :)

Hostage

The very second his consciousness returned, he was greeted with a pounding headache. It felt as though he had been run over by an unmerciful steamroller and somehow lived to tell the tale. His entire body ached, and he had no idea where he was. His recollection of what had happened was fuzzy, and he was having difficulty concentrating long enough to remember what happened. He could only make out the blurred silhouettes of the shapes before him; their voices were muffled, as though he was listening from underwater.

It was the rusty taste of blood in his mouth that ultimately jogged his memory. He remembered that he had been jumped in Bucks County while walking home from work. He could recall his surprise – he had left Rosewood to escape these exact sorts of threats, only to walk right into a trap he had been sorely unprepared for.

He hadn't seen their faces. But he had seen the black hoodies. And that was sufficient to clue him into what was going on.

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, attempting to make the stars in his vision disappear. When he reopened them, the people in front of him slowly began to take form.

Mona. There was no surprise there. She had been on his case for weeks, trying to get him to return to Rosewood and 'finish what he started.' The figure of Noel Kahn did little to startle him, either, for Toby was one of the few people in town that was privy to his involvement in the A-Team.

But the third person he spotted caused his breath to hitch in his lungs. It was Spencer – some disheveled, unkempt version of her, anyway – tied to the rocking chair he had constructed for her last January. A familiar shade of blue fabric was being used to gag her, and with horror he realized it was the sleeve of the shirt she had claimed as her own after their stake-out at the Edgewood Motor Court.

"Spencer," he breathed, instinctively making his way to go to her. This impulsive movement, however, resulted in him bouncing backward immediately. He glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder, finding that his hands had been cuffed to a pipe behind his back.

Spencer was unable to coherently reply, but she whimpered pleadingly at him, silent tears streaming down her otherwise perfect features.

"Nice of you to finally join us," Mona mused. She was perched on a dilapidated desk nearby, filing her fingernails casually. In light of the current situation, the neutrality in her voice was substantially frightening.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded, tugging uselessly against his bondage. The most this accomplished was a painful digging sensation in his wrists.

Mona hummed thoughtfully. She had not even regarded him with eye contact yet. "Showing you the error of your ways."

He gulped against the troublesome lump in his throat, feeling the blood in his veins run cold at this declaration. He knew her well enough by now to understand precisely what she was intending to do.

"Leave her out of this," he hissed.

"I'm not sure you're in any position to be making demands," Mona replied nonchalantly. "Noel. You know what to do."

Noel cracked his knuckles, a devilish smile spreading across his lips as he approached Spencer. She struggled against the ropes, breathing so rapidly that Toby feared she was hyperventilating. Noel had unearthed a pocket knife, which only prompted strangled sobbing noises from deep within her throat.

Toby bucked wildly against the cuffs. Despite the fact that he was getting nowhere fast, he continued the futile efforts.

Noel was lowering the knife to her face, dragging it precariously down the length of her temple. Her eyes were alight with fear when they met Toby's, and he felt his heart anxiously skip a beat. Noel smirked in Toby's direction as he brought his face down into the crook of Spencer's neck, planting a filthy trail with his lips.

"Get your hands off her!" he growled.

"I've always found Hastings to be a hot little bitch," he mused, raising his eyes to challenge Toby. He was pressing the serrated edge of the blade against Spencer's throat with one hand, and stroking her hair possessively with the other.

"Don't fucking touch her!" Toby hollered, pulling against the cuffs so roughly now that he could feel the warm trickle of blood on the insides of his wrists.

"I should have you know, Cavanaugh," Mona began lazily, kicking her feet up onto a shelf beside the desk, "that this was meant to be a test. And you're failing miserably."

He scanned the room desperately, looking for some brilliant exit strategy. When his gaze returned back to Spencer's, there was a terrified darkness behind her eyes. But there was also something else – love. Gratitude. Disbelief.

"What is it, then?" he cried. "What do you want me to do? I'll do anything, if you just leave her alone."

"It's not about what we want you to do," Mona murmured. "It's about what we don't want you to do."

Toby released a guttural sound from somewhere deep in his diaphragm, feeling more murderous by the second. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that we brought you here to test your loyalty. The object of this game is to let us do what we need to do, and keep your feelings out of it. It's been getting on my last nerve for some time now."

Toby was chewing exasperatedly on his bottom lip, and suddenly the taste of rust had returned as he drew blood. He had found a seam in the pipes behind him, where two separate pieces were bolted sloppily together. He had spent enough time working on houses, and though he was no expert in plumbing, he was well aware that this design flaw would be his only way out.

Noel was fingering the buttons on Spencer's blouse suggestively, looking at Toby all-the-while for a reaction. And Toby was desperately trying to ignore it – long enough to keep Mona distracted.

"So deal with me. This has nothing to do with her!"

Mona's eyes flashed dangerously to his, meeting his gaze for the first time since he had regained consciousness. She whipped the nail file furiously to the ground, leaping to her feet to join Noel beside Spencer.

"It has everything to do with her!" she screeched. She grabbed Spencer's chin roughly in her hand, lifting her face toward Toby's field of vision. Spencer inhaled sharply in reply. "What is it about her, Toby? What is it about this stupid, useless, insufferable bitch that has you so confused about the man you're meant to be? Look at her, Toby. FUCKING LOOK AT HER."

He could feel the hot presence of tears streaming down his cheeks now as his eyes met Spencer's. Behind the fear he saw warmth there. Forgiveness. Understanding for him doing what he had to do. And nothing in this world could possibly make his heart soar the way those gentle eyes did.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. He hardly recognized the raspiness of his own voice, struggling against the urge to cry. "I love you. I'm so sorry."

A meek sob escaped her throat, and he knew she understood.

Mona continued on, as though he had not interrupted.

"The funniest part is – despite everything – despite how much I loathe her – she's still way out of your league, Toby."

He knew what she was trying to do. She was attempting to draw on his insecurities to anesthetize him all over again. Numb him against any useless emotions. Weaken him to bend to her will. He knew she was right, of course – he had never deserved Spencer. Not in a million years. But he was not about to let Mona Vanderwaal break him. Not this time.

"You're missing the point of this exercise," Mona concluded quietly. The extreme shift in her mood was so abrupt that it only served to remind Toby that her sanity had been hanging by a thread for the past several months. Radley did nothing to tame her – in fact, it only drove her further past the brink.

"C'mon, Noel," Mona sighed, summoning him toward the door. She directed her next statement at Toby. "We'll try this again later, when you've come to your senses."

Noel looked over his shoulder to deliver one last wicked smirk at Toby as they disappeared. As soon as the door had shut behind them, Spencer let out an anguished sob that she had clearly been holding in. His heart bled for her; she always tried to stay so strong.

It was stupid of them to leave him alone. But that was Mona's greatest flaw – the sense of superiority and invincibility. She was so overly confident in her ability to control everything in her sights, that she often overlooked the tiniest details.

Like a weak pipe.

"I'm going to get you out of here, okay?" Toby whispered to Spencer, fumbling with the plumbing behind him. "I promise."

She wept quietly, shaking her head in defeat. She had given up. So much more easily than she ordinarily would. It wasn't even something that she had to say aloud – he knew her well enough to understand precisely what her body language implied.

"Don't. Don't you dare think like that," Toby murmured desperately, trying to speak around the lump in his throat. He angled himself so as to grip the metal behind him. "Please, baby…you have to trust me."

She would not even meet his gaze now. Her eyes were lowered to her lap, her body trembling with silent sobs. He had never seen anything so heart wrenching in his life; it only made him struggle harder.

"I almost have it. Stay with me, Spencer, all right?"

He could feel the rivets of the connecting piece now. He grasped on tightly, yanking with all of the power he had within him, which at the moment was not much – he had been considerably weakened by being bludgeoned in the face earlier – but no amount of dizziness or exhaustion was going to keep him from getting her to safety.

At long last, it began to give way. He shimmied the chains of his cuffs to the breaking point between the pieces, pulling them taut at the place he hoped would give him the correct leverage. And then he snapped them against the metal – hard.

The pipe snapped in two, like a twig that had been trampled underfoot. Spencer gasped shakily in surprise, struggling against the ties that held her to the rocking chair once more.

His rocking chair. Mona was such a sick, twisted bitch.

His heart was beating at a million miles a minute as he stretched his arms at their full length to bring them around to the front of his body, still encased in the handcuffs. He hobbled in her direction, reaching out to pull the gag from her mouth.

She rolled her jaw in discomfort as her mouth was freed, sniffling frightfully. "Toby, I'm so sorry…" she began immediately. Her voice was hoarse from crying.

"Stop it," he commanded more harshly than intended as he began fumbling with the knots in the rope. "You are the last person in the world the should be apologizing right now."

She said nothing in reply, but only nodded resolutely. She understood that it was useless to argue with him right now, and she clearly lacked the energy to do so anyway.

She allowed him to work in silence for the next several minutes as he pulled, chewed, and clawed at her bindings. When at long last she was free, she threw her arms around him, panting tiredly into his chest as she fought to calm her breathing.

He could not do much to reciprocate with his hands still bound. Instead, he planted a chaste kiss atop her head before angling his face back to study her carefully.

"Listen to me," he began, reaching his conjoined hands to brush a strand of hair from her tear-stained cheeks. "We have to leave. It isn't safe here."

"I know, I know," she agreed hastily. "They could come back any second."

"No," he stated darkly. "We have to leave."

Her breath hitched in her throat, but after a beat she nodded. She understood that he meant this in a much broader sense.

"We'll go away. Far away. And we can't look back ever again. Do you understand?"

She nodded more fervently this time, silent tears cascading down her face.

"Hey," he said, softening as he brushed away a stray tear from the tip of her nose. "I'm never going to let anything happen to you. Ever again. I swear it."

She sniffled quietly, offering a sad smile in return. "I know."

And then he asked the question that had been burning deep within him for weeks. The prospective answer terrified him, but he had to know. "Do you trust me?" he whispered.

She hesitated for a moment, biting her lower lip and scanning his eyes with her own. He knew that she was debating this – was considering all of the things she had found out as of late, and how they contradicted everything he had told her in the past. He had been her rock for so long, only to have him pull the rug out from under her ass. He knew it was his fault. And he planned to take full responsibility for it, if she gave him a chance to.

And then, she nodded, ever-so-lightly. "Yes," she whispered.

He released a breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding, pressing his lips firmly to hers for a moment. He did not linger there. Time was of the essence.

"I won't let them hurt you," he said quietly. "I know I haven't kept good on my promise, but I swear to God, Spencer, no matter what happens – I'll always be your safe place to land."

END