No Quarter
Summary: Basically, my take on what may have happened in the shed at the end of S3, because I couldn't help myself and waiting even a few more months for Alex Vause is so not an option.
Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine. Wouldn't that be something though?
A/N: Ok so after watching the horror show that was Season 3 for the umpteenth time (and setting my burning hatred of Piper to a low simmer rather than a white hot blaze) I decided to give the writers the benefit of the doubt and hope to God they know what they're doing with my Vauseman. That said, I need to do a little creative problem solving of my own if I'm going to make it to May so…here's my take on what could happen in season 4
Please Read & Review
Chapter 1
Against the quiet whisper of coarse bristles, the sudden creak and clang of the heavy greenhouse door was a jarring shock of sound. Alex felt her heart jump in her chest, but the only outward indication of her stirring nerves was the reflexive clenching of hands on the painted wood.
"That was quick—" she joked a little breathlessly, as she turned to face the apparently hasty CO. Maybe he got a little nervous leaving an inmate behind with all these gardening tools. Granted, they were all locked away so…
Except, when she finally turned around, it wasn't baby blue eyes and greying hair that greeted her. This face was familiar for entirely different reasons. The air left her lungs in a single startled exhale, and her veins seemed to sing with her racing pulse. "Aydin…How?"
"This place would hire Forest fucking Gump. The guy who interviewed me was so relieved to find someone who was actually qualified."
She heard the words and his taunting tone, and in another time and place she might have chuckled at the obvious sarcasm, but the days she could laugh in this man's presence were long behind her. In her nightmares—the nights her growing fear swells to a blind panic without the fierce suppression of her waking mind—it was this face she'd see standing across the room with a toothpick caught between smug lips and cold eyes. She saw him just as clearly as the morning his bullet blew a hole through Fahri's skull and she watched the laughter in his eyes turn dull and lifeless on the floor.
She knew what came next, knew the futility of the plea, but she couldn't help the fear in her voice when she told him, "You don't have to do this."
His face fell slack and his muscles tensed as he dropped that hateful, mocking smile from his ruthless mien. There was not a trace of compassion or regret in his brown eyes when he told her matter-of-factly, "Yeah. I do."
There was a hard and predatory gleam in his eye as he stalked forward, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the slim black object in his right hand, lingering with an ominous sort of ease in Aydin's confident grasp.
With a flick of his wrist, the baton slid open and an audible snap of metal broke the tense silence of his advance. Alex took an involuntary step backward at the gesture—hyper aware of the solid door at her back and the grate to her right, boxing her in. There was nowhere to run, but that wouldn't stop her trying.
"Why'd you do it, Vause?" he asks, though it sounds more threat than question. "Kubra's been so good to you. Treated you like family, and then you stick a knife in his back. How do you think he should repay you?"
Through the pounding rush of blood in her ears and the rising swell of fear, some tiny spark of a younger, tougher Alex Vause lit the fuse of her anger and she bit out acerbically, "Oh, right. I forgot. Killing your friend in cold blood and threatening to do the same to you if you fuck up again is what passes for kindness in this operation. You always were such a tool Aydin."
"I'd watch that mouth of yours Vause. It'll get you into trouble someday."
He advanced on her and, with snake like quickness, whipped the baton at her head. Of their own accord, her hands brought the broom before her panicked eyes defensively, meeting the thrust with a startling impact. The wood bent and quaked beneath the staggering blow, but held. Aydin was undeterred. He never lost a step; merely stomped hard on the bound straw, bracing his knee along the protesting wood and, with the hand now settled above her fist, levered the ends apart.
It cracked beneath the added force and Alex felt a searing pain down her left ear as the sharp, layered edges of the baton scraped across sensitive skin as it slammed against her temple with a resounding Crack!. Her ear burned with a stinging kind of wetness, but the pain hardly registered as she stumbled back, her palm brushing the sharp metal of the grate behind her as her hand tightened reflexively on the now splintered handle.
He smirked at her grunt of pain and while she fought to regain her footing, struck again, this time with a blow to the stomach that sent her reeling and her back to crashing hard against the grate. The chain-link door shook and trembled, bounced harshly against its metal frame, and threw her forward at the impact to land on hands and knees on the wooden floorboard. Her glasses crashed to the ground and out of sight.
She stumbled to regain her footing, pressing back against the harsh metal, deliberately ignoring the sudden ringing in her ears. She shook her head as though to dislodge the sudden pressure, her eyes flickering upwards to catch his still smirking face as he heard her grunt of pain.
Aydin was little more than a menacing blur as he loomed over her, cruel and self assured as her world turned soft and hazy in the thick tension of the imminent threat. Her heart pounded angrily against her ribs, blood rushing madly in its desperate terror-fueled fight, and adrenaline stained her eyes in red.
She knelt there gasping for breath—feeling desperate but still defiant as she physically searched the floor for her lost lenses. She felt more than saw the forward movement of his boot and her hand flattened tensely on the still present broom handle pinned beneath her bruised palm. She felt her fingers wrap again around that stick of chipped paint and splintered wood in preparation, willing her shoulders not to cower as she awaited the blow.
"Hey!"
Distantly she recognized the voice. She heard the scoffing chuckle of Aydin's voice as he turned to face the intruder.
"What the fuck? Nice to see you're making new friends, Vause."
The only thing in her limited eye line was a pair of worn black boots striding toward her with lethal intent. Her fingers squeezed, wood creaked, and she seized her chance. In the next moment she was upright on her knees, and Aydin's cold brown eyes stood inches from her own determined greys.
Not an ounce of mercy showed in her eyes as she watched that mocking laughter fade. Warm liquid drew frenzied rivulets of red down the pale skin of her clenched fist, trailing down her arm in the moment before his body sank to the ground. Thin wood protruded from the savage wound like a flagpole staking her victory.
"Holy shit!"
Holy shit was right. As the adrenaline fled her body, her hands began again to shake and the enormity and severity of their current situation set in.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. He was NSA, wasn't he? No, CIA. Oh, god. He was an assassin. The CIA sent an assassin after you. Do you think they know you're a double agent? Oh, god, they probably know I'm working with you. They're gonna kill me, aren't they?" the second inmate ranted, hands twisting in knots around her linen prison shirt as she paced the room in growing hysteria.
"Lolly, calm the fuck down!" Alex snapped. Or, rather, she attempted to. What was meant as a shout sounded more a feeble supplication to her comrade's insanity than a firm demand. Regardless, it made very little impact.
"What are we gonna do? What do we do? What do we do? Wait, what about the NSA? They don't know yet, right? They can protect us! We have to call the NSA!"
"No, Lolly," Alex hissed between gritted teeth. The pain climbed higher and higher with each passing moment, and she could feel the walls closing in. "No we can't tell anyone the truth. They'd put us away…"
The ringing became a pressurized buzzing, then a roar as it took physical shape in her tingling fingertips and the edges of her blurring vision. Specks of blackness seemed to fill her eyes like a bad television connection, darkening her rapidly narrowing landscape as the strength left her limbs and she crashed again to the dusty floor.
"Fuck."
It was the last coherent thought in her mind before the blackness took her.