A/N - I have edited and updated chapters 1 - 5 as of March, 2019. All editing for chapters 1 - 3 (including beautiful Spanish translations) are courtesy of "leave your sanity at the door". She also has a FC3 fic and I highly recommend you check that out too.
Warnings: This fic is based on the game and thus contains both references to and graphic descriptions of drugs, torture, alcohol usage, general violence, rape, dub-con, slaves, etc... Please proceed with caution.
Booming, crackling fire, splitting logs, gunshots, shouting…the cacophony awoke the girl and her senses were immediately overwhelmed. Her head smarted as though it had been hit. Hazy, dark shadows ran across her partially-obscured vision; something was preventing her from seeing properly and it was as though she were looking through a black filter. She struggled to sit up against what felt like a fence. The reek of booze, rotten fruit, fish, and sweat overcame her all at once, as though a candle had been lit. Fear hung limp and moist in the air, prickling her skin. Five or six shadows - men - stood before the fire speaking, shouting, and arguing, but still she could not make out distinct shapes - only figures. One man muttered, another spoke in a low tone, and then one, the leader, shouted once more.
"What. The. Fuck. Dog." Or had he said 'Doug'? "Honestly! What in your tiny fucking mind told you to grab product I can't sell? I ask you again, Hermano, I mean it: explain it to me."
There were more words exchanged in a hushed tone, embarrassment. A gunshot went off into the sky and she flinched at the sound. Fabric rustled; she realized she couldn't see because she was blindfolded, the fabric partially see-through. But was she alone? No…she felt her friends around her, felt them whimpering. They were two of the most physically beautiful people she knew, but they were ugly when they cried, and she knew the sound of their distress. There was also another girl, one she couldn't identify, leaning on her shoulder, still passed out. Though she couldn't see her, she remembered her scent in the back of her memory, floral and pungent, but otherwise entirely unfamiliar.
"Amigo, I couldn't give two fucks what the other two said - it's plain wasteful. I like my shit to run smooth, ves? I hate when you bring me something that's complicado. I can't kill her or give her to the boys, because, well, look at her. She's not an ugly bitch, is she? She's got an interesting look. Can't just pass up that money. But how do we sell her? It's like a damaged fucking smart phone. Can't throw it away because it might be worth something. Goddamn it, Doug." Definitely Doug.
"Baahs," one said louder, and then continued in lower tones once more. Or had he said 'Was'? Were they speaking German or Spanish? Everything was still hazy. Why would they be speaking German? Their accents were Spanish…
"That's an interesting fucking proposition. Yeah, let me call Hoyt."
He, Vas or Boss, was still shouting. The girl tried to speak, but came to realize she was gagged as well as blindfolded. She shifted her wrists. Ah, they were bound. Her mind was still working to figure out what had happened, but she felt worse than hungover and any coherent thought was difficult to pull forth. Ema shuddered against the night air, near enough to feel the pressure change with her motion.
"Hoyt, I can't sell her. She's worthless as is." A pause. "Sí, we used to have that buyer but he has gone, pouf, disappeared." A longer pause. "Doug here says we can keep her until she's sellable, starve her and wait." A short pause. "Oh Hoyt, I think I love you."
Out of nowhere, hands were pulling her to her feet, her blindfold ripped off. A tan man, dark-eyed, and scarred all over, leaned into her face, eyebrow cocked, and stood powerfully before her. It would have made for an interesting character study. He reached out and pulled down her gag.
"What the fuck…" she mumbled, still a bit disoriented. Though his eyes were dark, their color was a brilliant green; a beautiful shade of emerald, gorgeous gemstone brilliance and all. She flinched at her own wild imagination. A pirate with pretty eyes was still a pirate, for fuck's sake. His shirt was stained crimson and she had to wonder if it had originally been that color. Then there was the Mohawk…it would have made him less threatening, more approachable because of her exposure to 'artistic types', except for the huge scar that paralleled it down to his eyebrow. His hands were working on something, twisting a rag. It seemed like he was cleaning something, and so she squinted in the darkness. It was a gun; charcoal, shiny and now cocked.
"Oh, chica, I don't like you already. It isn't your fucking fault, I know. Thank Doug for that." He cocked his head toward a shadowy man and waited for her to respond.
"You're...Vas?" She tried not to make it sound like a question. He didn't stop her. "Where are we? Why are we here?" Her voice was soft, shy, but not afraid like she should have been. Yet she was leaning awkwardly, as though socially conscious of the fact that all eyes were on her, aware that she was supposed to be afraid and struggling to reconcile how to act. She was not used to people more volatile than she. While she had enjoyed a relatively cushy lifestyle up to this point, it wasn't as though she was unaware of evil in the world; she'd just never experienced it before. Fear, it seemed, was something she had avoided most of her life.
"Oh," he stopped and raised his eyebrows at his comrades. "She knows my name. You know my name." He was gesticulating with his gun. "Maybe I do like you a little, hermana, but you ask too many questions. You see," he said, clasping his hands around his gun, "you see I have a little operation going on here and we sell a product, tourist scum," he pointed the gun at her, then up into the air, "to buyers with lots of cash. You, niña, are not a high-end commodity. You are not our metaphorical cup of tea."
The string of intelligent words against his rough appearance was making her dizzy. He didn't look the type to have stayed in any school for very long, though his vocabulary spoke to the fact that he was well educated by some non-conventional means. Movies, maybe. Perhaps even books. She looked down at her two friends; bikini clad, shaking, and not one bit concerned about her, she was sure. At the moment, she was still inexplicably less frightened and a little woozy.
"You mean because I don't look like them," she tilted her head at her friends. The two girls, Ema and Anni, were a size 4 and size 6 respectfully. She was roughly twice as big. While not obese by any means, she could see where he was coming from.
"Yes, yes, estás un poco gorda, a little plump. What is your name, chica?"
"It's…hm…how do you say it…Fuck Off." She made as though to spit, but he grabbed her chin. Her bold move was dampened by her anxiety at making eye contact those shining, emerald orbs.
"No really, chica, your name. I'll ask you just this last time." He steadied his gun and placed it in the center of her forehead. "I don't like playing other people's games."
"Alexander Marque."
"Wow, I mean wow. Are you still playing me, Alexander?"
"You have my passport, you can check, señor bossman. I was named after a great relative of mine, and there will be people looking for me-" Her voice was still quiet, but now trembling.
"SHUT UP. SHUT THE FUCK UP. I ask you one fucking question and you give me a life story. Jesus." He turned and laughed at the guard next to her. "Fucking Americans, am I right?" He withdrew his gun and began flipping through her passport, already in his other hand.
"Oh, you've been to Japan and China? I bet it's nice there. Lots of shiny toys."
"I can think of a couple of toys I'd like to shove up your-" she mumbled, but was cut off, luckily, by an approaching underling.
"Oye, Vaas!"
"Qué?"
A pirate began whispering in his ear in rapid Spanish while Vaas finished flipping through her little booklet. He went from irritated, to wide eyed and excited. It seemed to be a trait of his.
"Fotos? Hoyt quiere fotos?"
"Sí, Vaas."
"Entonces agarra la puta cámara y trae a la chica. Tengo trabajo que hacer."
Hoyt, a name she'd heard before, and photos. They had…work to do. Her basic Spanish was enough to dampen her mood a notch. Unceremoniously, they dragged Alexander to a little shed. Her stomach dropped as she realized she was not working with someone completely sane and her back-sass started to look pretty stupid. It had taken her a little while to figure it out, it was true. The shed looked like something out of a horror film. The windows were blocked off. Inside, it was crudely lit and the floor caked, smeared and splattered with copious amounts of dried blood, like a Jackson Pollock gone awry. There was no question about it; she was going to be tortured, and soon by the looks of it.
"Sir," she ventured, voice soft, but was cut down immediately. She flinched at his shouting, eyes directed between her feet.
"You hear her? Sir," he squeaked in a girl voice, mocking her. "Chica, chica look. We are not are not going to a fucking prom here. I do not want to hear you calling me Sir. I am your boss, you must call me boss. I own you now. You do what I say when I say it. This bullshit with sir won't do."
"B-boss, I…can I do anything to…to, uh, avoid…pain..." Her voice cracked on the final word.
He leaned in close as she spoke, as though very interested in what she was saying, and then snapped his teeth at her. His voice rang out, oddly strained, in a barking laugh.
"Avoid pain? Hermana, you cannot avoid pain. You see?" He looked to the same underling beside her. "These fucking Americans are fucking crazy. You be a good girl and I'll treat you well, but even a good bitch needs to be reminded of her place every once-in-a-while. If I don't remind you, someone else will. Just behave and I won't leave any scars, okay? String her up, boys!"
The two guards flanking her hoisted her up and latched her cuffs to the wall. Her feet reached the ground if she strained her arms a bit, but she did have to stretch. It was not unbearable. And it was a mercy she wasn't at the center of the bloodied floor.
"Dame la puta cámara! Dámela ya!"
Vaas slapped one guard on the back and told them to get out. Slamming the door behind them, Vaas caused the whole shed to wobble. The lone light flickered in the dusty gloom and casted shadows as plentiful as the sins that had occurred there; her mind flashed stupidly to a Caravaggio painting of a man being beheaded. All the art history in the world wasn't going to help her here. She shifted to a more comfortable position as Vaas fiddled with the camera. It went off once and he chuckled to himself.
"Bueno! Ok, let's get you ready, chica." He put the machine down on the table and pulled out a knife. Alexander closed her eyes and whimpered quietly, thinking it better than pushing him into a fit of hysteria with more begging. She felt him grow closer to her, felt his heat radiating against her skin, his alcoholic musk drowning her, his heartbeat wild. He breathed in her hair and pushed it back behind her ear.
"I love that. What is that? Fucking almonds or some shit? Delicious."
Her eyes fluttered open and she gasped at his proximity. He was propping himself up against the wall with one hand, the one clutching the knife, and weaving his other hand into her hair, pulling her toward him. His face was nearly touching hers, his lips hovering before her mouth. He seemed sorely tempted to bite her with his bared teeth.
"Shhh, baby, I just need some pictures for Hoyt. Fucking business, you know?"
He held her face in his palm before his knife came up and cut her shirt right up the side. It slipped off in tatters, revealing her bra and pants. He slid her pants off and stood back like a painter examining his finished work, pushing her clothes to the side under the table with his foot. He grabbed the camera and began snapping off pictures, shifting her around and taking more.
"You are a little fat, huh? That's America's fault. I am going to make you be-yu-ti-full. Can you please give me a profile of your fucking face?! Fuck. Now show your ass a little bit. Stick it out like – yeah! Like that. Ah fuck, that's enough for Hoyt. He thinks he can find a buyer for you faster than I can starve you. Ha! Funny bastard, no?"
She feigned a small laugh and he paused to debate if it was good enough. He looked her in the eye and she immediately submitted by looking at the ground. Her cheeks were flushed at the eye contact and he wondered if it was because she was scared or just that socially fucked. Eventually, he decided to take care of Hoyt's demands rather than play with her. Usually the slaves just mouthed off or cried. He liked that she was trying to play along, trying to stay pain-free. But he would have to teach her how to laugh properly, how to be an obedient pet. He needed to craft a perfect slave, a loyal slave.
He went to find a runner for the pictures. What the fuck did Hoyt think he knew that he didn't? They had occasionally had buyers with a fetish, but not for a long while; the dumb motherfucker was still going to put her up for sale in her current state. The man truly had no business sense. Slipping the photos into an envelope and handing them to a currier, Vaas picked up his walkie and buzzed Hoyt.
"Hello, hello, hello? Wakie wakie, Sleeping Beauty."
Flat static and then, "Yes, Vaas, what do you want?"
Vaas tried to control the anger bubbling up behind his words and said, sweetly, "I have sent those pictures for you, Hoyt, every angle, every inch. But you won't sell her, amigo."
"We'll see about that," Hoyt drawled, sounding like he wanted to say more, but changing his mind. He always sounded so fucking disappointed in him. Vaas clenched his teeth.
"That everything, Hoyt?"
The other men in the room were packing up their things and leaving for fear of a crotch shot…or worse. Vaas muted himself for a moment and slammed his hand down on the table as Hoyt hummed to himself, then released the mute button.
"Actually, it's not. I want to make it very clear, Vaas, very clear that you are not to hurt that one in any lasting way. That means no scars, no broken bones, and no fucking her like you're a porn star."
"Absolutely, yeah, yeah, understood…and what if she escapes?"
"Catch her, and then kill one of her friends as punishment. They're just pretty white girls. She's half-half, right?"
"Yeah, half something. Looks a bit Asian to me," Vaas chirruped.
"Great, Caucasian/Asian sells real well. I know there're a couple of big buyers on the market for someone like her. They'd snap her up, just like that, if we can shave off a stone or two. I've got things to do, Vaas; is that everything on your end?"
"Mmhm," Vaas knew he would just get scolded if he yelled back at Hoyt, but he was still right on the edge. The way he fucking talked down to him, like he was a goddamn, petulant child…
"We'll talk later, then," Hoyt said, radio going silent.
"Hijo de puta!" Vaas shouted, throwing the walkie against the wall where it broke into several large pieces. He wanted to kill something, to feel blood on his hands. A hesitant pirate opened the door.
"Jefe, encontramos un barco grande. Montones de gente. Montonesde botín," (Boss, we found a big ship, lots of people, lots of loot) he said, rather apprehensive.
"Genial. A eso se le llama suerte!" (Good. Now that's what you call lucky!) Vaas replied, cracking his neck and pushing past the man. "Junta a toda la gente! Les vamos a dar la bienvenida a mi isla!" (Round everyone up! We're going welcome them to my island!) he cried out, twirling his gun in the air. It would be so satisfying to watch them cower as he slaughtered them, one by one.