Nightingale

by octomegalodon

Taneleer Tivan is the premier collector of the universe's most exotic flora and fauna. Radio, the very last of her kind, is determined not to be his most prized possession.

Nightingale

"Is she not exquisite?" the Collector asked of his guest. "My newest acquisition."

The guest, an uncomfortable looking man of indeterminate age and moral standing, eyed the creature in the terrarium, trying to decide if "exquisite" was an appropriate word. Radio wasn't surprised at his dubious expression; she knew she must look dreadful, having been shipped from several different cargo containers to this glass and steel box in the menagerie of Taneleer Tivan, The Collector. He kept pets and specimens from every corner of the galaxies in terrariums just like hers. Radio had not yet figured out how to escape it.

She was a plain enough thing, as aliens go: mint colored skin that had dulled and greyed from lack of sunlight, black hair, colorless eyes, utterly medium build. She was nothing spectacular until the moment she began to sing. This was what her people did. Radio was the very last of them.

"Sing for us, my treasure," said the Collector, his grey eyes twinkling with the joy of fresh procurement.

Radio sat on the floor of her terrarium, letting her bare feet rest against one cold glass wall. She had been given minimal clothing: a soft white shirt and white shorts. It made her feel as if she were in a sanitarium. She'd considered crumpling Tivan's "gifts" and throwing them back at him when he gave them to her, but then she would simply have been displayed naked.

"Sing, Nightingale," he said again, his tone hardening. "You are making our guest wait."

Radio stared sullenly at the Collector. She hated when he called her that. Nightingale was the name she was sold under at auction, some Terran bird famous for its haunting song. She had never seen one. Of course, Tivan had not purchased her at auction. He had not purchased her at all. The blooming garden of dead bodies left in his wake as he carried her away had made her respect him for a short-lived moment.

Tivan raised an eyebrow.

"I am becoming impatient."

Radio lifted her head and leaned forward, placing both her palms on the cool glass. "Go fuck yourself, you perverted gargoyle."

The eyebrow dropped.

Tivan reached for the key to her enclosure. At the top of the black metal key there was a round node. The moment he touched it, Radio was paralyzed with pain. It tore through her limbs, clenching her jaw, blinding her. Pain was so loud. The sound was everywhere, buzzing, screaming. When silence finally came, it seemed to cover her like a beautiful snow blanket. She collapsed.

Without lifting her head from where it hung, Radio began to sing. Her voice was low and clear, filling the air like a summer rain. This was her power and her attraction. Her voice could create music of all kinds - a full orchestra, drums and guitar, a chorus of background singing, a sound so rich it could come from a full concert hall. She could bend light and weather to her sound, often weaving beautiful scenes of holographic imagery while singing her favorite song.

The singers among her people - which had comprised about half the population while they still lived - were revered as great artists. They were peaceful, which ultimately led to their destruction. Too many people enjoy locking songbirds in a cage. Before long, they all die out.

Radio's song was enticing and sweet. Her eyes locked onto the stranger. From the moment she began to sing, his dismissive attitude disappeared. He watched her transfixed as she sat upright, letting lush jungle vines grow and curl around her to the sound of her voice. The sun seemed to shine through the leaves she created, and deep red flowers unfurled beside her.

"Come along with me, come away with me,

I need you in my world, my hero, my knight

I need you to take me, this night, every night

Come along with me, come away with me

Oh, my world can be yours if you take it

What's a vow to a man who would break it?

Come along, come away, do it now, today, tonight..."

Closer and closer, the stranger approached the glass. His eyes were locked on hers, a ghost of a smile beginning on his lips. Radio sang on, her voice shifting the light, shining it directly in Tivan's eyes to make him squint and look away as her new friend came ever closer.

"Ah," the Collector reached forward and grabbed his guest by the arm. "Be careful with this one. She will try to convince you she is in danger. Three escape attempts already, and this her first week."

"Oh," said the man, turning back for one more look.

Now that Radio was no longer singing, her jungle vines had curled up and disappeared, the sunlight was gone, and she was no more than a shabby looking alien girl in a box.

"I rescued her," Tivan told his friend, knowing he could be heard by his enraged captive as they walked away. "I was her last chance for survival..."

It doesn't matter, thought Radio as she settled down in her terrarium. He liked me. He'll come to me tonight.

That night, she sang again, soft and low, but she knew it would carry all through the ship, all the way to the guest quarters. True enough, it wasn't long after lights out that she saw a little glowing ball heading in her direction. She knew Taneleer Tivan would command all the lights to be lit for him if he should come down to admire his treasures. This was her ride.

"We have to go quickly," said the man, approaching her terrarium with a glowing ball to light his way. His bright blue skin cast the color all around the menagerie. In his hand was a copy of her key.

"What are you doing?" she hissed. "How did you ever get the key? No one gets the key!"

He smiled as he pressed the black key against her terrarium lid. "I'm a skilled pickpocket."

This one could work out, she thought, taking his hand and letting him lift her up through the top of the cage. He caught her on the way down and they ran in the dark, his little glowing orb illuminating only the first few feet in front of them.

"He's going to kill you," Radio whispered as they ran.

"Here's why this is going to work," he said, guiding her down a winding tunnel. "I have a hidden escape pod on my ship. He didn't even detect it when I docked. You get on that, I follow when it's safe, and you're free. I'm Varuk, by the way."

Radio stopped them in the thick blackness of the tunnel.

"Hi, Varuk," she said, smiling for the first time in as long as she could remember. "I'm Radio."

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. And oh, how she meant it.

2

To his credit, Varuk lasted nearly a month.

Being a smuggler by profession, he had access to hiding places and cloaking devices that even The Collector had trouble keeping up with. After a few weeks, Radio finally felt safe. She lived with him in his messy apartment, they made love often and loudly, she teased him about cutting his long hair that she secretly liked. They had the beginnings of a life. He loved her, and she was sure she could love him back in time - gratitude and friendship was an excellent step one.

Radio began to think the Collector had more on his mind than her. He had to be too busy, too caught up with his massive menagerie, to look for one singing alien girl.

When Tivan's hired muscle busted in the front door of their apartment and Radio had only the few seconds it took to see Varuk fall dead to the floor before she hit the lock on the escape pod, she knew how foolish she'd been. As Varuk's pod raced underground along the route he'd programmed weeks prior, Radio felt nothing but anguish. Her friend and rescuer was dead, and it was her fault. Now the Collector would be after her, and she would be deposited somewhere far below the city.

How would she get by? How could she stay hidden?

When her pod came to a stop, she took a moment to collect herself, then looked around. She was in a system of pipes and tunnels, far below the city, but she could hear music. That was the one thing Radio could understand perfectly well. She was directly below a night club.

Through her tears, she smiled.

Within weeks, Radio became Blue Spot's prime attraction. She downplayed her abilities, allowing bar patrons to think the lighting and holograms came from the stage help. In reality, Blue Spot was too poor to afford even to pay her, let alone to provide mood lighting. Radio didn't care. The manager had known Varuk and agreed to shelter her for as long as she needed it.

Finally, Radio could sing because she wanted to. Her voice drew crowds that the seedy liquor cabinet could barely hold. She dressed in bright colors, peacock blues and greens, reflective purples, sizzling reds. Her skin brightened to a light mint. She cut her hip-length hair to her shoulders. She performed every night, to an increasingly choked house.

The night Peter Quill walked in, she was already on stage, lights of pink and lime shuddering out of the cracks and doorjams of the club.

"Trust, me, this is your kinda thing," His friend Rocket had told him before sending him off for the evening. "Chick likes Terran music, you'll see. Everyone says she knows tunes from Zenn La to Jersey. You'll lose it. Now get out of my face for one night."

With the omnipresent homesickness creeping ever inward, and a need for booze and solitude, Quill stepped into the Blue Spot with no idea what he would find.

The music was fast, bouncy, electric, sexual. It pulled him instantly away from the bar and toward the stage where the aqua girl in the pink dress was singing and jumping in time.

"I'm gonna break break break your little heart, little heart

Gonna set set set you up to fail from the start

But I'm into you, I'm into you

I promise we can make it fun before we have to part..."

Her voice was so clear and so fluid, as if she could bend it entirely to her will. She glanced his way and he froze, her sizzling smile shooting straight for his chest. She wasn't the kind of beautiful that generally turned his head. Maybe if she hadn't been singing, he wouldn't have noticed her at all. As it was, she alarmed him in ways he very much desired to be alarmed. Quill knew what would come next. That ever so familiar crush, the flirting, the probably incredible sex, the next morning's goodbye, and a tattoo on his heart forever. He was already planning to love her mournfully all his days when he noticed a flash of fear cross her face as she sang.

He looked at the entrance. Two goons had just walked in, their eyes locked on the singer.

I knew this chick was trouble, he thought.

"It doesn't matter matter matter if you go go go

Get me home or on a train I'll let you know know know

It's you I want to get me gone

I'm into you, I'm into you..."

Radio kept singing, plotting her next move. She recognized one of the men as a cyborg in the Collector's employ. Tivan would be watching it all through the lens in the cyborg's face. She could see him now in his study, watching her sing, arms crossed, glaring at the screen. Radio's smile only grew. She sang louder.

Two more men in black busted in from behind the stage and she launched herself, mid-song, into the crowd. Before she could hit the mass of confused patrons, she was grabbed around the waist and lifted into the air. The handsome stranger had swung them up to the ceiling with a grappling device, looking like a space pirate with one arm around her and one clutching his gun.

"Let them stare stare stare, let them cry cry cry

I never ever ever have to ask myself why

I'm into you, I'm into you

Forget about the future and don't pass me by..."

The crowd, unsure whether to be frightened or entertained, burst into shouting and applause as Radio clung to Peter. He grabbed a railing leading to the attic and groaned, "They're not gonna like this..." before throwing two silver balls in the direction of the Collector's men.

"Who's not -" Radio was cut off by the loud crack and explosion of light that burst from the devices as they hit.

He grabbed her hand and ran with her along the attic ramp until they reached the window. It was a long drop to the street below.

"Hello, we've just met," Radio said. "That is a very long drop to the street below."

"Hi, yeah, howzitgoin', I'm Starlord -"

"You're a what now?"

"Starlord, that's... that's my name, it's - we don't have time for -"

"That's not your name," she said. "That's no kinda name."

"Hey, I'm the guy who saved your life! If I tell you my name is Chewbacca, that's what you call me!"

"I'd believe Chewbacca before I believed Starlord."

"What's your name then, Princess Judgeypants?"

"Radio!"

"Okay, you've now lost your talking privileges," said Quill. "I'm not arguing with a house appliance while our lives are at stake."

"I'll show you who's a house appliance..." Radio grumbled, and then she sang.

The sound echoed out the window down the narrow alleyway and filled the cracks between the buildings. Thick vines grew from building to building, curling forward, thickening with her voice, stretching from the street up toward their window.

It was just in time. They heard crashing and cursing behind them and knew that the Collector's men had found their way up to the attic.

"All right, Radio, let's hit it," Quill wrapped an arm around her and grabbed a vine, swinging them down from the window just as arms reached out to grab for her.

Radio, knowing the Collector would be watching and cursing them all for fools, couldn't resist turning around as they swung away and blowing a kiss.

3

Radio liked Peter. He reminded her of the Terran broadcasts her captors would let her watch as a child, bizarre shows about warrior pinnipeds and monsters living in an ordinary town that they found terrifying. Beside that, Peter was brave and funny, and instantly put her at ease. For this reason, she knew she must dump him as soon as possible.

They were flying down the street in his motor cruiser, dodging pedestrians, police, putting miles between them and the Collector's guns for hire. She thought of Varuk and the expression on his face as he fell to the ground. Better to not even try to like another man. When you're on the run, you run alone.

"Peter," she called in his ear over the scream of the street. "We have to stop. Stop here."

"What, are you nuts? Those guys are gonna catch you! We're going to my ship!"

"Peter, no, I mean it. Pull over."

Groaning, Quill yanked his machine into a dark crevice between buildings, all the while peering around for suspicious shapes in the distance.

"Radio, I don't think we should be stopping, those goons weren't playing Yahtzee back there!"

"You don't even know why they were after me. You don't even know I'm not the bad guy."

"You're not the bad guy," he said, leaning toward her with a seductive look. The way he leaned, the way his body seemed to gravitate toward hers, was dizzying and so very tempting.

Radio backed away. Peter sighed.

"Come on, that was my best lean..."

"It's okay, Peter," she said. "I'm safe now. Those guys are gone. I don't think I'll see them again. Thanks for the rescue."

"Radio..."

"I'll be fine," she said with her brightest smile. "I have to go. Thank you, but I have to go."

Peter groaned again, digging in his pockets for something.

"Look, I don't know you," he said. "But I know trouble, and you're in it. And you're gonna keep getting in it. So just... call me."

He slipped her a small, round device that hinged in the middle. She took it with both hands and put it carefully in the pocket of her dress before kissing him on the cheek and waving him off.

Not until his cruiser was completely out of sight did Radio leave the alley. She was frightened that at any moment she would be swept upon, but was determined to walk with confidence, betray nothing. Another new beginning. Now what?

She waved down the nearest transport. When it stopped and she climbed in the back seat, she asked the driver for the cheapest hotel he knew of. She was so exhausted, she didn't even notice when the transport left the city, left the atmosphere, and began to dock with a larger ship. It wasn't until they began to slow down that she opened her eyes and screamed.

The driver pressed a button on his control panel and she went down, all lights blinking slowly out.

Radio awoke as she was being dragged into the Collector's study by two of the men from the Blue Spot. Taneleer Tivan was standing in front of his gigantic black desk with his arms folded, watching her with that blend of anger and heartbreak that might have come from a parent. Radio tried to wrench herself free of the men holding her, but years of being locked in crates and cages had not prepared her for physical combat. She only managed to tire herself.

Tivan stood before her, looking her up and down. His expression might have been concerned if she did not know him.

"Has she been hurt?" he asked the men, all the while watching her eyes with his own.

"She's intact, Collector," one of them replied.

"Then let her stand."

They released her and stepped back, and Radio stumbled a moment before gaining her feet. Tivan had put out a hand. Radio glared at it as if it were venomous.

He walked around her in a circle, raising an eyebrow at her pink dress. He touched her shortened hair, clucking his tongue disapprovingly. Radio swooped her shoulders away from him, glaring again at the venomous hand. Tivan only sighed as if he expected such disappointing behavior all along.

"My dear Nightingale," he said.

"Radio!" she shouted at him, leaning forward to meet his eyes, inches away. "My name is Radio!"

He watched her with widened, curious eyes, lifting a hand to signal his henchmen to keep away.

"I see," he said quietly. Tivan's voice was like syrup; every word dripped slowly from him and left a mess behind. "You escaped me once, something, I think, which must have taken no small measure of bravery and cunning. You had your fun, exposing yourself to half a planet, putting yourself in peril for your life each day -"

"My life?!" Radio shouted above him. "You killed my friend in front of me -"

"A regrettable circumstance for myself as well, severing ties with one of my own best contacts," he slipped his words quickly beneath hers, pattering them out like an auctioneer. "Can I be to blame if he stole my property and took it to bed?"

Radio's hand flew toward Tivan's face but he caught it at the wrist. She was surprised at his grip. It could have been his soft voice, his strange clothing, his preference to have servants get their hands dirty for him, but she'd never thought of him as a strong man. Though he was not hurting her, the pressure in his fingers suggested that he could.

"You got out, yes, and you saw some of the world," he murmured, close to her face, still holding her wrist. "I congratulate you on this. But now you have been returned to me. You will wear what I give you, live in what I give you, eat and drink what I give you, and when I command it of you, you will sing for me."

Radio could no longer meet those unyielding grey eyes of his. Something in his gaze, in his voice, in the way he held her wrist without hurting her, was bothering her terribly.

Still, she growled, "I will never sing for you again."

He released his grip on her and stepped back.

"We shall see," he said, gesturing to his men to lead her away as his assistant greeted her with new white clothes. "You are home now."

4

Radio spent her first hour back in her terrarium trying to break it apart. She flung herself at the glass, kicking at it, shoving it with her shoulder, bashing it with her forehead. She even tried to use her voice to create a sonic scream that would match the resonant frequency of the glass itself, vibrating it until it shattered. She only managed to hurt her own ears, and wound up curled in a ball, clutching her head in pain.

She remained there, collapsed against the floor of her cage, elbows and knees bloodied, sobbing in rage, until a shadow crossed over the sickly green lighting of the menagerie.

"Take her out," she heard Tivan's voice.

She felt herself being lifted by someone, but her sonic scream had rattled her too much to move.

"Should I treat her, Collector?" the man asked, hefting her over his shoulder.

"And how much do you know of the anatomy of her kind?" Tivan asked in his slow way, almost as if he was being patient. "Do you imagine I put my other work on hold and came here merely to watch you hold her like a sack of grain? Take her to the room and leave us."

Radio was carried to the examination room of the Collector's lab; a large, clinical space where he processed new acquisitions and analyzed the corpses of specimens collected after their demise. By the time the Collector's henchman set her on the table, Radio was recovered enough to sit up on her own, gripping the sides of the table to steady herself. The lab door closed behind the servant and she was alone with Tivan. Was this the first time they were truly alone? She stared at her bare feet, hanging off the edge of the table.

Without speaking to her, he gathered a tray full of supplies. Bottles, wrapping, speculation tools, cleaning swabs. He set the items on the table beside her and took her arm gently, turning it to inspect the scrapes and bruises on her elbow. Letting out a short breath through his nose, he took a damp cloth with a sharp smelling liquid and wiped away the blood. Radio sat there, numb, staring at her feet. She let him clean her minor cuts and bruises, was silent as he held her knee and wrapped it with soft cotton.

She kept asking herself why he cared, but the answer was so harsh that she had difficulty facing it. He wanted her intact and alive because she belonged to him. He cared for his property the way someone might care for their pet or their artwork or their airships. He wanted her to look pretty when he showed her off to guests, wanted her to be healthy so she would remain in his collection for many years.

He straightened up and reached toward her face. Radio flinched. Tivan paused a moment, then reached forward again, smoothing back her hair to inspect her forehead. She had hit it against the glass harder than intended, and if the throbbing in her ears and behind her eyes was any indication, she'd done herself some harm. She kept her eyes low as he cleaned her up.

Having him so close to her was strange. Behind the scent of the cleaning alcohol and the brushed metal of the room, Tivan smelled like something she remembered from long ago, those very brief years when she had a home. The smell was warm, spicy, reminding her of crisp red leaves falling to the ground, crackling fires, her breath coming in mist in front of her face. Cinnamon. It was everywhere on him, on his clothes, his breath, everything cinnamon. It was unsettling. It had been so common in her youth but it seemed exotic to her now. Did he think of it the same way?

She flinched again when he brushed her hair away from her ear. He peered into the shell of her ear with a bizarre tool, all the while making a low "tsk"ing sound under his breath.

"You are a very foolish girl," he said at last.

This certainly was true.

"I'm getting smarter," she said softly.

He looked at her, taking the tool away from one eye.

"At great cost to yourself, no?"

That certainly was also true. Radio remained silent.

"You escaped the safety of my menagerie so you could run wild with thieves and pirates," he said, returning to his inspection of her inner ear, laying his hand on the other side of her head to steady her. "You imagined you could hide from me with vulgar clothing, shorter hair, and a different name. Perhaps in future breakouts you might consider not becoming the star of a night club if you wish to remain under my radar."

"You live, you learn," she said. "Next time, I'll be hell and gone before you even crawl out of your coffin at sundown."

"Indeed," Tivan circled her and inspected her other ear. "And perhaps next time you intend to shatter Trifalyan glass with a B flat, you will bear in mind that you're more likely to rupture your own tympanic membrane than make even the slightest crack."

"Right," Radio began to feel heat rising to her face, and knew her cheeks were beginning to turn purple. "Thanks for the tip."

"And that even were you to escape your terrarium, my facilities are aswarm with armed personnel who would bring you to me at once."

"Okay, I'll get on that too."

"Not to mention the fact that I have held this, and many facilities since time unknowable, and have had more than one occasion to provide ample security measures for such as yourself."

"I get it!" Radio turned her head to glare at him and swat him away from her. "I know, I was stupid, I misjudged what a soulless, obsessive goblin you are. I will bear this all in mind from now on, mark that. Ow..."

Yelling had caused her head to pound again, and her vision fuzzed. Fireflies swirled around the corners of her eyes. Tivan placed one hand on the side of her face, tilting her head back.

"Be still," he said softly.

He uncapped a small bottle and let a few drops of cool liquid fall into her ear. Radio squirmed, but remained as steady as she could. Though it pained her to admit it, this man knew more about her people and their medical needs than she ever would. He took her chin and inclined her head in the other direction, leaning her further toward him so that the top of her head brushed his thick jacket, and instilled drops in her opposite ear.

He let her sit up and he stood in front of her, watching her eyes. She could feel her head beginning to clear. The Collector held his index finger in front of her face.

"Follow my finger," he said.

"Leave me alone, I'm fine," Radio tried to hop down from the table but Tivan blocked her with an arm on either side of her.

He watched her as if he were confused, eyebrows knitting above dark rimmed, spooky eyes.

"You did yourself a harm," he said to her. "It could have been much worse. You must never do this again."

Radio couldn't help it, she smiled.

"Does it bother you, Count Dracula?"

His lips tightened. "Back to your cage, little bird."

5

Radio had every intention of sticking to her word and never again singing for the Collector, but it was a difficult task. She loved to sing. It was what she was made for. She certainly had nothing else to do in her little box. The Collector hadn't misspoken when he said Radio had harmed herself, but she had done so in a manner much deeper and more permanent than a head injury and a few bruises.

For the first time since she was taken away as a child, Radio had gotten to sing for pleasure alone. She performed for crowds who loved her, she sang for Varuk in the kitchen, she sang to herself when she was alone. This was such a dangerous happiness to have, and fear never to have again.

When she lived with Varuk those few short weeks, she would sometimes sit on the balcony of his apartment, one leg dangling over the edge, and sing to the plants on the neighbor's balcony. Considering what her voice could do to plant life, she tried not to make them grow out of control, but she would watch them stretch up toward her like little children wanting to be held. Radio always hid and watched when the neighbor came out to water them. She would squeal with joy at how much they had grown.

Coming to her now as it did, that memory left a taste of sorrow on her tongue. What joy could she bring to people now? She was the Collector's own pet, her songs meant only for him, that brooding, joyless ghoul who stalked the cages of the menagerie, looking for souls he might devour.

When he approached her terrarium that evening, paging through papers and hardly glancing at her, Radio turned her face away from him.

"Sing for me," he said carelessly, perching on one of the many plush red armchairs he'd strewn about the facility. He said this as if he expected nothing but her compliance, as if he had weightier issues on his mind than her enslavement and incarceration in a glass box.

Radio wrapped her arms around herself and curled up. She was silent.

Tivan looked up slowly from his papers.

"I have your key, my beauty," he said. "I am sure you recall what happened when last you defied me."

Radio kept her face hidden. He could do no worse to her than he'd already done. Let him zap her until her teeth chattered. Nothing was worse than a cage. Nothing was worse than accepting a cage, allowing herself to be ruled.

"My dear Nightingale," Tivan said patiently. "Your voice is precious to me. Come now, be a good girl."

This was the closest to asking her nicely he had ever come. Still, if she could, she would change places with any of the Collector's other fauna. He never demanded performances of his Kree or Skrull or his tube snails.

"Look at me, child," he said.

Radio lifted her head and looked at him.

"I have no wish to hurt you," said Tivan. "But you must learn how things work here."

It had been hours, maybe even days, since last she had spoken, so Radio's mouth felt thick and numb when she moved it.

"You cannot hurt me," she said. "Any more than I can stroll out of this prison and have a life."

"You can have a very good life here," Tivan stood and laid his paperwork aside. "You are protected, provided for, treasured. This could be much easier if you would only follow simple rules."

"I'm confused about something," Radio inched closer to the edge of her box, reaching up to trace her fingers along the glass where Tivan was standing. "The other prisoners in your sick little zoo... you have millions of them here, some of them gigantic, some stronger than I can imagine. How is it that they don't make trouble for you? Why do you come running when I crash against my cage but no one else seems to make a fuss?"

"It is possible you, my dear, are simply," Tivan paused, crossing his arms as he regarded her. "Higher maintenance."

Radio took a moment to process his words.

"Was that... were you making a joke? Was that a joke?"

"My reasons are much more complex than I can explain," he said, ignoring the question. "Some of my specimens require sedation, some are in sleep stasis for their protection, some are naturally compliant... a concept I feel sure will confuse you..."

"Another bloody joke, just perfect," she said. She leaned closer, staring him down through the glass. "And what about me, Generous Master? If I'm such a bone in your throat, why not sedate me too?"

There, a tiny suggestion of a smile began at the corners of his lips. He leaned his head back, looking at her like a freshly framed painting.

"Why, for the simple reason, beloved, that I wish to hear you sing," he said.

"I can't sing in a cage."

Tivan sighed and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.

"If your terrarium is not to your liking, I can arrange for you to have one larger."

"Smaller, if you have it," said Radio, curling herself up again. "Some shackles on the walls."

"I see."

"Framed photos of you, maybe."

Why do I keep talking to him? Radio cursed herself. I always promise I'll keep my trap shut and never do it...

Tivan cast his eyes around his menagerie as if looking for someone else to share in his frustration.

"If pain alone is what will inspire you," he said in a warning tone. "You will not find me a reluctant man."

"Less talk, more torture," said Radio.

Inside, her stomach was rolling. She still remembered the feeling of her every nerve on fire. Somehow, she couldn't help taunting him, being defiant when she knew she would do better to say nothing at all.

Tivan watched her with narrowed eyes.

"I ask so little," he said. "Why do you disobey me?"

Radio met his eyes, unflinching.

"Just push the button, please."

The Collector looked confused, hurt, angry, sad; but his hand did not go to his keyring.

A pink servant girl in her crisp white dress appeared at his elbow.

"You have received a transmission, master."

With a final look at Radio, whose heart was thrumming in her throat, Taneleer Tivan swept away.

6

Once the lights were out and the menagerie was expected to be asleep, Radio could hold it in no longer. Softly, for only herself, she started singing, and from her fingers swirled a purple and green nebula, fizzing with stars.

"Heartbreaker, you had your fun

You sat back and watched me jump the gun

I was a fool to come here, I am a fool to stay

But without my heart, I can't get away..."

Over the shifting holograms at her fingertips, she could see the faces of some of the other creatures in the terrariums, lifting their heads up to watch her. How could she have forgotten them? Some of them at least had to be awake enough to hear. Would they want silence from her, or enjoy her song?

When she watched a gigantic, brutish, furry white monster reach up to brush away a tear, she continued singing. She opened her hands, expanding her starscape for her fellows to see.

"Maybe you'll chase me from dawn till the night

Maybe you'll just watch me lose the fight

To you it's the same, you hold my string

You took my heart, my life, my voice

You took everything..."

Radio stopped singing at once when Tivan strode into the room, hastily buttoning his jacket. The other creatures looked away as soon as they saw him. Radio inspected her fingernails. He approached her box.

"You think I did not hear you singing?" he asked, his low voice just barely touched with anger.

"Who was singing?" Radio asked. She turned to the creature in the cage opposite her own. "Were you singing?"

Tivan crossed his arms.

"Your voice is mine, it belongs to me," he said. "You may not fight me when you are required to sing, and sing when I am away."

"Sure, whatever," Radio turned her back to him. "You mind shutting the door on your way out? Trying to sleep here."

Though she knew she was playing with fire, Radio still had to hold back laughter at the enraged pause that followed while Tivan gathered his composure.

"I shall be expecting better behavior from you tomorrow," he said. "I have guests arriving, and if you do not make me happy, you'll surely regret it."

Radio was silent, keeping her eyes shut. After what felt like far too long for him to stand staring at her, she heard the massive doors leading out of the menagerie slam shut.

The next day, Radio stuck to her plan. How could she do less? The Collector had all but drawn her a map of the best manner in which to infuriate him.

When she saw him approach with his guests, a group of four surly-looking criminals with atrocious hair, Radio curled up on the floor of her terrarium and pretended to sleep. Nothing Tivan could say would move her. He demanded and threatened in turn, but Radio's only response was a loud snore. At any moment, she expected him to take out his keys and hit her again with that electrifying pain, but the pain never came.

With apologies to his guests, and a story about his Nightingale being under the weather, Tivan moved them along to view an unusual space cocoon.

It seemed that the Collector was not at liberty for the rest of the day, too busy with his colleagues to come lecture her on obedience; either that or he simply could think of no words strong enough to describe his rage. He didn't strike her as a man who often lost his cool, having seen a little of everything there is to be seen across the universe, but she was close to cracking that vampiric outer casing. What would happen then, she had no idea. Anything was better than a life behind glass. She couldn't just accept his terms and let him win lord and master the way he had done with everyone else.

That night, when the lights in the menagerie were dimmed for the evening, Radio was excited to connect with the others again. Could there be allies in these silent cages?

"Hey, wake up," she called out. "Get up, move!"

Some of the people and animals began to stir at her voice. Knowing many of them were heavily drugged, she understood she would have trouble rousing them, but days and days of life in a box with no one to talk to but Taneleer Tivan was torture enough. It was time to wake the zoo.

"He wants us to sleep," she said. "Let's have a little fun before the Duke of Nightmares comes back!"

High above the menagerie in his private chambers, Tivan was unbuttoning his wrist cuffs and glaring at the screen of his surveillance camera. She was there, dancing in her cage, shooting light from her hands out across the menagerie, inciting the other creatures to stand and move as well. What was happening? They were moving in rhythm together, reaching out for the light, smiling. What was she doing to them?

Tivan leaned closer and narrowed his eyes at the screen. What was she doing with herself?

The way she was moving her body was primal and sexual. Having owned several night clubs on Knowhere, he was familiar enough with dancing, but this was something different. Her body seemed to be a ribbon, undulating and twisting in the confines of her terrarium. Her hips were swiveling, pushing her body into shapes that bothered him in ways he would have to contemplate later.

Whatever she was doing, it had to stop. She was upsetting the calm of his menagerie. Tivan growled and left his room.

Downstairs, the menagerie was alive with noise and light. He could hear drums and bass pouring out from the closed doors even as he marched down the dark hallway, illuminated by purple lights flashing through the cracks between the doors. This, at least, he knew all to come from Radio's voice. He could also hear the screeching and shouting of the other inhabitants of his collection, adding their voices to hers. This was more dangerous than any of them could fathom.

He burst into the room and the music cut at once. The lights went down, the shouts and calling stopped. Those creatures in their cages not put entirely to sleep were all standing, watching him, as if he were intruding.

"Party's over," said Radio, sounding like a teenager whose parent had just come home.

He wanted to grab her out of her terrarium and shake her, to yell at her until she understood. Where was this frustration coming from? Taneleer Tivan had not had this much trouble with a girl since he had been a father.

"Have you no concept of the damage you are doing?" he asked her, fighting to keep his voice low and steady.

"To your illusion of control?" she asked. "I have every concept of it, thank you."

"Illusion..." Tivan took a moment before crafting his answer. "My control over this facility and the creatures within it is of paramount importance to the survival of all in the universe."

Radio stood on the other side of the glass, pressing her palms against it, regarding him with a cold stare. "My hero."

Tivan stepped close, his face inches from her own, separated only by the glass between them. She tilted her face to look up at him.

"Take care how you test me, my girl," he said softly. "I have shown you far more patience than I should do, but that ends tonight."

"I am positively shaking," said Radio.

Though she said it with boldness, Tivan was watching her closely, and she was shaking, shaking all over, glaring into his eyes with a rage she thought would move him.

"Alyce!" Tivan called, and in moments his attendant appeared beside him. "See that the private room is prepared for our Nightingale. Tonight."

Radio stepped back and crossed her arms, affecting an attitude of nonchalance.

"I suppose you shall get what you wish, after a fashion," he said to her, unlocking the top of her terrarium as two house guards appeared to climb in and yank her out through the top like a goldfish. "I'm letting you out of your cage, my pretty bird."

Radio tried to wrench herself free of the guards, kicking and elbowing them, to no effect. They dragged her across the floor of the menagerie until they reached the hallway that housed the clinic. They threw open a large door to reveal a room that was almost entirely empty. The only objects inside were a plush red viewing chair and a single terrarium, smaller even than her old one, lit by the barest blue light string being placed by Alyce as they entered.

"But you shall have another one."

7

Radio felt like a trapped tiger. She could barely pace the inside of her terrarium; the moment she turned around, there was the wall again. What use was the power people wanted her for? Her singing couldn't set her free, her light projections couldn't open locks. She could manipulate weather and make things grow, but that was worth nothing. She was stuck, and now she was alone.

When Alyce entered the room to bring her food, Radio pressed against the glass, trying to get her attention.

"Alyce," she called. "Alyce, wait, stay. Talk to me."

The pink woman kept her eyes down.

"Alyce, hey," Radio pivoted to follow her. "How thick is that smog outside today? What'd you have for breakfast? Alyce. What's your favorite song?"

Alyce slid the food tray through the thin slot at the bottom of the glass door. Radio watched her face. She looked frightened.

"Alyce, come on, come back," said Radio. "It's just us, right? Just us girls. Hey. He's rotten, isn't he? Tell me."

Alyce paused on her way out the door, then scurried away. Radio crouched beside her food tray, picked it up, and slowly tipped it upside down.

The days passed in much the same way. Any time Tivan visited her, she remained silent. She would not sing, would not speak to him, would hardly meet his eyes. The Collector would command and threaten, but in the end he would leave, seemingly less composed each time.

Then at night, she would sing. She'd sing of her pain and longing and despair, her dreams of love, her wish for freedom. She'd weave light and patterns in the air, create little gardens that she would grow and grow around her with her voice, only to watch them curl up and disappear once she stopped.

"Why are you doing this?" Tivan demanded of her after days of this, clearly beginning to wear down. "You ignore me all day and sing all night. Can't you understand what I'm trying to do for you? Can't you see that I - that I care for you, that I wish to protect you?"

Radio had many things she would like to say in response, but she was silent. Tivan came closer to the glass, his dark-rimmed, haunting eyes cast down.

"I am told you will not eat," he said.

Was this true? Radio hadn't noticed.

"You cannot do this, my jewel," Tivan put a hand against the glass. Radio glared at it as if she were possessive of the space he was invading. "You surely must despise me. But you must know... I ought to tell you one thing. Those men I took you from when first I found you... they would never have kept a glass box between you and themselves. I fear their intentions were far different than my own."

Radio's eyebrows scrunched together but she swallowed all her questions. He was either lying or distorting the truth to his benefit. Tivan sighed, struggling with whether or not to go on. He moved his hand closer to where her body lay on the other side of the glass.

"You cannot starve yourself," he said gently. "It will only harm you, and furthermore, it... won't work."

Radio understood. The hunger strike approach wouldn't do her any good; there were other ways to feed problem children. The frightening part was, she hadn't been trying to go hungry. The frightening part was, she just didn't care.

"I will return," said the Collector, and he turned to go.

As he walked away, Radio felt herself panic with loneliness, moments from crying out for him to stay. He was the only face she had seen all day.

That night, the lights went out and Radio drummed her fingers against the glass, creating a smooth piano line, illuminating each keystroke with pulsing blue lights. She sang, twisting and extending her voice to sound like two singers in harmony.

"I'm stuck in your power, I'm under your spell

Turn me loose, baby, it's hurting like hell

Don't want to be a flower in your garden

You know every flower dies

Baby let me leave the garden

Lover, open up your eyes..."

As the heartbeats of blue lit the room, Radio noticed movement in the doorway. He was there, she knew without looking. With a quick glance she spotted him, leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, eyebrow raised, an expression somewhere between stern disapproval and desperate need.

Radio could have stopped then. She always stopped singing when he was near, a fact which frustrated him more each time. This time, she pretended not to see him at all. She kept her face away from the door, though she knew his eyes were fixed on her all the while.

"I need a rescue, how I need a friend

This can't be how the story ends

Don't want to be a flower in your garden

But you won't ever let me go

Can't you get me out the garden

Set me free and let me grow."

She let her voice fade out, let the lights on her fingertips disappear. Still pretending she didn't see him, she curled up on the floor of her terrarium. For a long time there was silence; so long that Radio felt sure he had left. Then, so softly that she could only just hear it, he sighed, "Oh, Nightingale."

Taneleer Tivan entered her room and collapsed on the chair in the center of it. Radio stopped circling her terrarium and stared at him.

"You look like shit," she said.

Whether he was more surprised at her bluntness or the fact that she'd finally spoken to him after days, she couldn't tell. The surprise on his face was amusement enough to make her put her anger aside.

"Yes, I feel certain I do," he said. He pinched between his dark eyes. "I have not been sleeping."

"You sleep?" Radio asked.

Tivan gave her a look from under his eyebrows. "Not presently."

"I'm just surprised. I expected you to spend your nights consuming the souls of the living. Maybe frightening small children, sacrificing a virgin or two."

"How I've missed our cheery little chats."

"And what is it Generous Master wants from his little bird?" Radio crossed her arms as she watched him. "A lullaby?"

Tivan sighed, casting his eyes around the room as if he would find the answer there. He gave up and put his head in his hand, massaging his forehead. He had come to her for something, but now that he was in front of her, he couldn't seem to bring himself to say it. Radio found this rather out of the ordinary for the Great Collector, master of his house, commander of everyone unfortunate enough to be near him.

"I'll do it if you get me out of the box," she said.

He lifted his head from his hand, looking at her.

"I do beg your pardon?"

"I'll sing your song," said Radio. "But not from here. You have to let me out of the cage. It doesn't matter where we go, anywhere, just not a cage."

The Collector's eyes narrowed as he watched her, trying to puzzle her out. It looked less like he was trying to decide if she was telling the truth and more like he simply had no idea who she was. He had never seen anything like her before. He could not find a category, in all the billions of phylums and genuses and subspecies he had been used to categorizing others in, that would fit all that she was.

He blinked his eyes, looked down, and reached for his keys. Radio tensed when he pushed a button, sure that he was going to send that horrible pain through her again, but instead, the button released a side door on her terrarium and it swung open with a soft hiss. Radio paused before moving. She looked at Tivan, still sitting on the wide, red armchair. With the merest hint of a smile he opened his palm, inclining his hand toward the space beside him.

Ah, the catch, she thought. I can get out of my little jar, but the punishment is being close to the King of the Underworld.

She crossed the room carefully, half expecting the armed guards to descend upon her any moment. The cool, smooth floor felt foreign against her bare feet. She took a moment to flex the muscles in her legs. She glanced at the door.

"If you run, I shall catch you at once," he said.

"Never crossed my mind," said Radio, perching on the arm of the chair and letting her feet rest on the cushion beside him. "However, it won't be relaxing unless you close your eyes."

"I will not tell you how to sing," Tivan growled. "Do not tell me how to appreciate it."

Even so, he settled back in the chair, lowered his eyelids just slightly, and wrapped his hand around one of Radio's ankles. Though she could only have expected such a measure to make up for his diminished alertness, the gentle pressure of his fingers around her ankle surprised her. She took a moment to decide between indignation and surprise, but was simply relieved to be breathing air outside her terrarium. Let him hold onto her if it made him feel better. She didn't feel half as trapped as moments ago.

She began with a low hum that played gentle starlight across the ceiling and the floor. The hum continued in a layer under her voice as she sang.

"You want my voice to soothe you

When the evening comes to close

A lullaby, a lullaby

But monsters never sleep

I know you can hear me weep

You just want a lullaby

You somehow think you love me

Like you know what love is for

A lullaby, a lullaby

I'll sing but you won't sleep

All those secrets that you keep

You'll never understand my lullaby

The skeletons you hide from me

You tuck me in my bed

My lullaby, my lullaby

Sing me songs at close of day

And sleep, I'll make my getaway

And that's the last you'll hear of my

My lullaby, my lullaby..."

As she sang, Radio found her voice was having more effect on herself than she'd intended. She was slowly sinking down into the chair, her eyes growing heavier, her body going limp. By the time she finished singing, she had sunk completely down into the cushion of the armchair, and Tivan's hand had released her leg and slid around her back to support her. Whatever little part of her mind was still awake was screaming at her to get away from him as fast as she could, to get up, move, but her limbs were so heavy, her eyelids so very heavy, and he was so warm, and he smelled of cinnamon.

She could feel herself drifting away against his side, her face pressed against the soft fabric of his vest.

He must have a heart somewhere in there, she thought as she felt it thrum gently against her cheek.

Tivan was saying nothing. With one arm holding her to him, his other hand reached forward to touch her hair. Radio could only let him. How soothing it felt to be stroked again, to have her hair touched so gently, like a lover would do. She thought of Varuk and rather than reacting in rage, as she always seemed to do, it only inspired longing. How she missed being loved.

His fingers weaved through her hair with such tenderness, easing away the tangles that solitude had built up, sending tingles and shivers up the back of her neck. Though she was half asleep, Radio felt a ball rising in her throat, that familiar feeling that her sorrow was too big to contain, and a hot tear slipped down her nose before she even had time to hold it in.

She felt his fingers on her cheek, brushing the tear away.

"My dear girl," he whispered.

At the sound of his voice, she remembered who he was. His tenderness was only affection for his own possessions. When he touched her, it was like touching a doll, admiring its porcelain face and soft hair. He thought of her as a thing, just another thing in his collection.

"Get away from me," she shoved herself to her feet, leaving him sitting back on the armchair with an unreadable expression.

"Nightingale -"

"It's Radio," she said. "I'd like to go back to my cage now."

8

Negotiations for the Gir artifact had drawn on long into the night. Taneleer Tivan's mind was, for once, not focused on the acquisition of the precious and rare, but rather on a solitary room in his facility where he would much rather be. His thoughts had drifted to this room frequently of late, though Tivan himself had not entered it in a few days.

She wanted him far away from her.

As soon as he could be rid of the Gir, he crossed his already sleeping compound to his room. He had cameras for every angle of his menagerie, able to peer into every terrarium and case. He searched his screens until landing on the only one that currently mattered.

She was sitting propped against one glass wall. For a moment, Tivan was shocked by what he saw. She was soaked to her skin, her hair hanging in wet ropes around her face. He increased the sound. She was singing, not words but sounds; gentle, heartbreaking melodies, and as she did, she was making the rain fall. He could see her breath coming in a mist, could see her body shiver with the cold.

Her people could not long survive low temperatures. They went into shock in moments, especially in minimal, wet clothing. With a curse, Tivan ran to the menagerie.

When he opened the door to her room, she continued singing her haunting, wordless melody as if she hadn't seen him. The rain came harder, pounding down like crystalline bullets. Her clothes had sucked onto her skin, and she was trembling violently.

Tivan slapped his hand against the glass. She didn't react.

"Stop!" he said. "I demand that you stop at once!"

The rain thickened and became snow. Tivan watched thick flakes melt on her bare aqua skin. Frost began to paint the inside of the glass. Through flushed lips that spouted elegant puffs of steam, she kept singing, but soft now. Her voice was as frail and shaky as the rest of her.

"Why are you doing this?" Tivan asked. "You'll kill yourself! Stop singing!"

It seemed she didn't hear him at all, but in moments, her eyes fell closed and she did stop singing, and Tivan was frightened by the silence. He hit the glass with his fist.

"Wake up, Nightingale!" he shouted. "Radio! Open your eyes!"

She didn't move. He threw open her door and reached for her.

If this girl is playing with me, the things I'll do to her... he thought, but her body felt like ice when he touched it.

He lifted her into his arms and drew her out of her terrarium. She was so cold and so still. He unfastened his white fur cloak with one hand and folded her into it. With only her face poking out of the opening of his cloak, she looked like a child lost in the snow.

Holding her close to him, Tivan rushed across the menagerie floor, up to his private room where he laid her on the bare tile before his enormous bath tub. Unlike most creatures in hypothermic shock, her people needed increased body heat as soon as they could get it, and she would need hot water immediately. He couldn't risk letting her heart slow down. Four taps filled the giant octagonal tub with steaming water, and it was only a matter of moments before the water was deep enough to dunk a girl. Tivan rolled back the sleeves of his jacket.

He unwrapped her from the furs, his heart tangled up somewhere in his throat. She was still unmoving, pale, hardly breathing.

Lifting her gently, he peeled off her wet clothes. He hefted her into his arms and lowered her into the hot water, supporting the back of her neck to keep her head above the surface. He smoothed back her hair, trying to warm the top of her head. Keeping his hand at the base of her neck, his other hand rubbed her all over, chasing the cold away from her arms, her waist, the tops of her thighs.

All the while, he watched her face with anxiety. She could not leave him, not this way. He could do nothing but watch her and think how agonizingly, how violently he needed her to open her eyes.

At last, her dark lashes squeezed together, fluttered. He set his hands on each side of her face. She opened her eyes.

"Oh," she groaned. "You're still here."

He gave her a stern look, hiding his relief.

"And so are you," he said. "But only just, it would seem."

He leaned forward to grab a pitcher from the side of the tub and dipped it in the hot water. Radio looked around her, groggy.

"I'm... I'm naked! Fuck... why am I naked?"

"Because you are in the bath," said Tivan, reaching behind her shoulders to urge her into a sitting position.

Radio sat up, trying to cover herself with her hands.

"Why are you seeing me naked?"

"Oh please," said Tivan, holding her hair away from her eyes while he poured the hot water from the pitcher over her head and shoulders. "I have seen naked creatures of every conceivable species from every end of the universe, do you sincerely believe your breasts to be of any significance to me?"

In spite of the numbness and pain in her limbs, Radio looked somewhat offended at his dismissive response.

"They're of significance to me," she said, her teeth chattering. "Because they're mine."

"I shall endeavor to bear that in mind when I stare at them."

Radio was watching Tivan with an expression of indignation and confusion.

"Jokes," she said through her shudders. "Unbelievable."

"Hush now," said Tivan.

He continued to bathe her in hot water until her trembling died down and her skin took on the slightest purple glow from the warmth. He stroked her wet hair and she let him, but all the while there was a sorrow written on her face so deep and so harsh, even her beauty couldn't conceal it.

"Come," he said to her. "Let's dry you off before you become cold again."

"I don't want to go."

"It will only harm you further if your temperature goes down. Can you stand?"

"Don't look at me," said Radio.

Rolling his eyes, Tivan held out his soft white cloak for her and kept his eyes averted as she climbed to her feet and stepped inside it. He could feel her trembling again. He rubbed her shoulders and back through the furs, watching her downturned face, hair dripping, clutching his cloak to her neck.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered.

"You know why," he said dismissively.

In that same low, choked whisper, she said, "Because I'm your porcelain ballerina."

"You are no such thing," Tivan tried to ignore her growing anger and sadness, focusing on rubbing away the cold from her arms and her back, drying off her dripping hair.

"I'm just a thing to you. You keep me here because you think people can belong to other people. You couldn't just -" Radio's shoulders began to shake again. She looked furious. Her voice caught and tore on itself. "You couldn't just let me..."

"What?" he held her shoulders tightly now, watching her face with confusion. "Let you harm yourself? Let you die? Let you give up? Is that what you wish I would do? Let you slip through my fingers like everyone else I have ever cared for?"

"Is this how you care for me?" she shook herself free of his hands, stepping back. "Treating me like a toy, like my life isn't my own to control?"

"It is not yours to take!" he stepped close to her again.

"Because you're playing with me?" she glared into his eyes.

"Because I am protecting you!" he said. "Don't you understand that you are the last of your kind? Your family is gone, your people are gone, and you are foolish and headstrong enough to play with your life as well."

Radio stared at him, looking stricken. Tivan had to continue.

"Have you no idea how many other parties attempt to buy or steal you every moment? And you think I treat you as a commodity. These are men who would not need you alive to preserve your bloodline and sell it to the highest bidder, and I am the best authority on your being more trouble alive than otherwise."

Radio turned away, possibly to make for the door, but he reached for her arm and held it through the fur cloak. She turned her face toward the floor. It was difficult for Tivan to forget what was under that cloak.

"Believe me, my dear," he said softly, and he set his fingers under her chin to tilt her face upward. Defiant, she would not meet his gaze. "I would much rather have you be with me happy than unhappy. But as things stand, you must stay with me, for your own safety, for the preservation of your kind. I cannot let you leave. I cannot let you give in to despair."

"Please, Tivan..." she said in a whisper.

Tivan felt himself tighten in the chest. She had never said his name. He watched a beautiful tear slip down her face.

"Please just... don't lock me up," she said. "I can't... I can't tonight. I can't go back to my cage. Please, I won't try anything, just don't make me go back there tonight."

Tivan watched her with his eyebrows knitted, his breathing a little heavy. He would have to examine her and observe her, but certainly he could not trust her to be out of locked quarters. And yet, when he looked at her, he could not make himself see her as just another addition to his vast collection. He could not see himself shoving her back into her terrarium for the night, to cry alone on the hard floor.

He found himself reaching for her shoulder, found himself drawing her closer to him, found himself burying his face in her soft, damp hair as he held her in his furs. When she did the unthinkable and responded to his closeness without rage, it was another surprise. She slipped one arm around his neck, holding the fur with the other.

He lifted her in his arms again and carried her into the next room, his own room. There was no safer place anywhere.

9

Of all the expectations Radio might have formed about what the Collector's bedroom would look like - racks of specimen jars, the strong smell of formaldehyde, a bed of steel nails - warm and inviting was furthest from her imagination. She was still groggy and disoriented when Tivan carried her like a baby into the room, but she was set instantly at ease by the soft, buttery lighting at the base of the floor, the enormous white bed in the center of the room, and the wide aquarium against one wall.

"I can walk, you know," she said as he shifted her weight to elbow the door shut behind them.

"You will not be very strong for some time," said Tivan. "I would recommend that you take it easy. This includes any wild escape attempts you might be plotting just now."

Radio shook her head. She knew better than to try that now. Besides that, she had promised.

Tivan lowered her onto the bed. She sunk in at once, curling the furs around her. Oh, how she liked beds. It had been a long time, and never had she been in one so huge, so soft, so warm. In spite of the comfort surrounding her, Radio's heart was stomping around in her chest like an angry child. She felt that she was waiting for something, that perhaps they both were. They both had to understand how close they were to something very dangerous.

Tivan looked as if he wanted to sit beside her, but he hesitated. Strange, as the bed was large enough to easily sleep five. Strange also, as the bed was his own.

"You worry me so," he said at last, looking down at his hands.

"I'm fine now, Doc."

"That's not what I mean," he said. "You could easily have killed yourself. Are you so desperate to get away from me? Am I such a monster?"

He spoke with such quiet agony, his voice thick with a sorrow that colored every word. Radio stopped herself from saying, "Now he gets it!" and decided to be honest rather than flippant.

"I wasn't trying to do myself any real harm," she said. "I didn't know the things you know. About my people, about anything. I was just being... reckless. It was all I knew how to do... like when you can't help but listen to sad songs for hours and hours. I just wanted to feel something."

Tivan watched her, eyebrows knitted in that way he had of always looking like he couldn't make sense of her.

"I was so sick of feeling helpless," she said. "But you couldn't know what that's like."

Tivan finally sat beside her. He looked at her, a sadness etched into his eyes, eons old.

"How wrong you are, child," he said.

Radio smiled. "You do know I am not a child."

The sadness melted for a moment to make way for a smile of his own. Tivan looked down at his hands again, folded on his knees.

"When you are as old as myself, my dear," he said. "I am afraid you all appear as children. Such wonderful, immaculate children."

Radio looked at him as if for the first time. "How old are you?"

He smiled again, still not looking at her. "Very old indeed."

There was silence for a moment, Radio waiting for him to go on. When he glanced back and saw that her eyes were fixed on him, he sighed, leaned further back, and began.

"Before many of these planets were even formed, long before your own, I was a different man," he said. "My wife and my daughter were the joys of my life. But children grow, and they must be free to go their own way. I did not press her to stay with us when she wished to go. When our little girl was gone, my wife fell into despair."

Radio watched him with horror. It was hard enough to know that he had been a person once, a man with a family he adored, but the fractured storybook quality to his voice and the evidence all around them of who he was today told Radio she would not like the end of his tale.

"Nothing I did could ease her sorrow," he said. "And before I understood what was happening to her, she died. You can imagine my shock... not only had I lost my wife and companion, but... I had believed we were immortal, you see. I thought we should be together for eternity."

Radio's throat was tightening and she hated Tivan all the more for it. How could she want to cry for this man who had made her so unhappy? His heartache was palpable. It gripped her in a way that was shocking.

"Upon researching the matter, I found that what made us immortal was the will to live," he continued. "And my wife had nothing left to her that she..."

He trailed off and flexed his fingers.

"I could not save my wife," he said. "And I have lived with that for an eternity alone."

That was it for her. Radio's dam broke and hot tears splashed down her face, her throat aching with trying to hold down the sobs that wanted to come bursting from it. She was surrounded by him - wrapped naked in his cloak, in his bed, in his room, by his side, spicy sweet cinnamon smell everywhere, his eternal sadness settled on everything like a dust.

"And I just - brought that all back," she hiccuped through her tears. "All because I had to have - a temper tantrum..."

Unbelievably, Taneleer Tivan smiled. He leaned forward to hold her cheeks, clearing her tears away with soft hands, stroking her hair back from her face.

"My sweet Radio," he said.

At the sound of her true name, Radio stopped crying and looked at him. His face was so close to hers now. Did he realize the way he was leaning? One side of the soft cloak had slipped away to bare her smooth, mint green shoulder. She could tell he noticed by the way he was not looking.

Slowly, tentatively, she poked a hand out from the folds of the white fur.

What was she doing? She curled her fingers back.

She reached forward once more and brushed her fingertips across the side of his face.

At her touch, Tivan tensed. He looked at her with those low, scrunched up eyebrows, that intense look of confusion, as if she were presenting him with a severed head.

No... that he would know what to do with.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked, speaking in a whisper.

"Because you confound me," he said. "You frustrate me in every possible fashion... but your compassion, your beauty, your grace... Forgive me. I find you unique."

She laid her palm flat against his cheek. His eyes fluttered. Tivan found himself unable to form a coherent thought.

"If it helps," she said. "You're pretty confusing too."

Radio leaned close to his lips. She had to find out if he tasted like cinnamon too.

He did.

* Chapter 10 has been omitted to comply with the guidelines of this website. It contains content that might be considered kinda mature. If you should want to read it, you can visit /works/2283942/chapters/5020158 to check out chapter 10 in full! There's also a groovy illustration.

11

Radio wasn't surprised to wake in the giant bed alone. Tivan was an odd, solitary man, and if not called away by business, he was sure to have his own routine that he would want to keep.

And who knows how many hours of sleep a nightmare wraith gets each night? Radio thought, then checked herself, smiling. She had to be gentler now, the way he was being gentler for her.

Radio had no complaints about having his squashy, warm bed all to herself. For the first time since she had run away with Varuk, she felt good. She felt happy, safe, full of exciting memories from the night before.

Until she saw the neatly folded pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. White clothes. A white shirt, and white shorts. Radio's heart began to knock around. Someone had laid those out for her.

Tivan swept into the room, buttoning his jacket. He saw Radio sitting up, the bedsheets wrapped around her torso.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning," said Radio, and she pointed to the clothes. "The fuck is that?"

Tivan blinked at her. His fingers paused in their buttoning.

"Clothes, of course," he said.

"No, no," she held up a finger. "Your uniform. For your pets. You're trying to put me back in the cage like nothing's changed."

Coldly, Tivan said, "Nothing has changed."

Radio stared at him. She realized she'd let her mouth fall open. What was happening? How had they pulled so far back from where they were? Tivan's face twisted slightly with what might have been regret.

"I have a meeting I must attend," he said, looking as if his explanation could somehow take back the verbal slap. "It cannot wait, I - you will be safe in your terrarium, and I shall not be away long -"

"You don't get it," she got to her feet, drawing the bedsheet around her. "Everything's changed, we've changed. I'm not your toy! You don't get to take me out to fuck me, then lock me back up!"

He stepped close to her, growling low.

"As I recall, the first move was your own."

"Ah, I forgot the part where you ran screaming from me."

"That's hardly the point," he said, clenching his fists in frustration. "Can't you do as I ask just once without fighting me -"

"Can't I just put on your pet clothes and go back to my pet cage and be your plaything until I die?!" Radio shouted in his face. "Oh sure, Dracula, that sounds amazing, why didn't I agree to it before?!"

Tivan squeezed his eyes shut. He was a creature of unknowable power, and could easily have restrained her without lifting a finger. His ability to control energy and force, even to change his form, would not only keep her in place but keep her quiet for a change. It would be so easy, but of course, it would scare her half to death. He flexed his fingers and swallowed his irritation.

"What happened to you, Tivan?" she asked. "How in the hell did you get like this? Did no one ever tell you this was wrong? Your wife? Your kid? Your fucking mother? Did no one ever tell you it was wrong to steal people and lock them away forever? Did no one ever make you stop?!"

Tivan strode to the bedroom door and opened it, calling for Alyce.

When the pink woman entered the room with a pack of house guards behind her, Tivan handed her the pile of white clothes.

"Alyce, see that Nightingale is dressed and in her terrarium in five minutes. If she requires an escort, my men will assist you. Do not let her leave your sight."

Without glancing back at her, he marched out of the room, not even seeming to hear the things Radio was screaming at his back as he left.

The sound of her crying must have echoed through the entire menagerie. Radio had no will to censor herself. Everything was agony. How could she be such a fool? How could she let herself be vulnerable again, and in front of him? Was he playing her the whole time, or was he so scarred and screwed that he had convinced himself that she was playing him? Her fury didn't allow her to analyze it. She threw herself against the glass walls of her cage, numb to the pain, sure that any moment this would be the insane thrash that would break her free.

She pounded the glass over and over until she was on fire from her elbows and knees and forehead, until she could hardly see, until her rage and humiliation and helplessness had taken a backseat.

Somehow, she spilled out into Tivan's arms, which locked around her as she stumbled from the ledge of her cage.

She was too angry to speak, only to struggle and cry in his arms while he waved off his attendants. As soon as they were alone, she threw off his arms and tried to scramble to the door. He grabbed her waist and clamped her body in close to his. Radio screeched, sobbing, and collapsed half onto the floor with him. Unable to shake his grip, she laid down there on the floor and cried. He pulled her into his lap.

"What have I done to you?" he was whispering again and again, hardly audible over the sound of her own crying. "What have I done? Radio, forgive me, what have I done to you?"

Radio couldn't move. She was numb, but in a way that meant everything was about to hurt.

"Never again," he said, holding her. "I cannot ever hurt you again."

Alyce opened the door with a little knock.

"Many pardons, master, but the delegates from the -"

"Tell them I do not wish to be disturbed," said Tivan, getting Radio up to her feet.

"I am sorry sir, but your negotiations were -"

"Our negotiations were complete the moment I left the room, any further inquiries can be taken up with me at a later time," Tivan slung Radio's arm over his shoulder and her feet into his arms. He swept past his assistant. "All further appointments for today are to be cancelled."

Alyce paled. "But sir, if I tell them -"

"Alyce," Tivan stopped on his way out. "You may tell them exactly what I said. You may not accept any arguments on the matter. If anyone should try, they shall deal with me in a manner most unsatisfying. Now be gone."

Alyce ran off and Tivan carried Radio into the medical room. When the door closed behind them, he set her down on the table. Radio found a burst of strength and tried to launch herself toward the door. Tivan set his hands on her waist, gently holding her back.

"Leave me alone," she groaned.

"I cannot do this," he said. "I know how you must despise me, but you need me just now. Just sit still for me and let me help you."

"Yeah, I need you," she said flippantly, trying again to walk to the door. "Like I need a - ahh!"

Suddenly, she realized how much she'd hurt herself. Her elbows and knees were a spray of blood, her shoulder a mess where she had thrown it against the glass. She looked at herself and wanted to laugh. Hadn't they been here before? Hadn't they done just this very thing, in this very room, a hundred years ago? Or was it a week past?

Tivan pointed to the table.

"Go sit and stop giving me such trouble," he commanded.

Only because she could think of nothing else to do, and knew she would not run far on her damaged legs, she obeyed.

He reached for her knee. When he touched her, she jumped. She glanced at his face and saw him grimace, squeezing his eyes closed, as if in pain. When he reached out a second time, lightly placing his fingertips on the top of her thigh to hold her steady while he cleaned her scraped knee, Radio remained still.

"My kind have limited powers of prognostication," he said as he worked on her.

"Am I supposed to be impressed, Great and Powerful Oz?"

"You are supposed to be silent," he said with a sigh. "This was part of our arrangement."

Radio raised an eyebrow but kept quiet. Whatever liquid he was rubbing onto her knee was taking the pain away entirely.

"As I was saying," he continued. "In looking ahead once, I saw that a great and terrible threat to all life would one day arise, creatures so intent on destruction that they would wipe out whole cultures and species. I was determined that such terrible loss could be prevented. I began my collection. I did so as a way to preserve and protect life, to keep such beauty and treasures from being eradicated. I was so fascinated with every world I came to know..."

Radio listened, trying to imagine the beginnings of his collection made for altruistic purposes. He was more powerful than she had any reason to understand, a fact which confused and frightened her, but he was also so very cracked. She was not sure if he could be repaired.

"Over time, things changed," said Tivan. "I changed. Without my wife and my daughter, my priorities were... altered."

He leaned in close to her face to wash a scrape on her cheekbone. She didn't look away from his eyes.

"I so wanted to protect the creatures of all worlds, to keep them safe from the destroyers that would come. But over time, I suppose solitude has darkened my motivations. I suppose the collection itself has become the goal. I suppose... I forgot to care about those unique, beautiful, individual creatures I cared so much for protecting."

He flicked his gaze away from her wounds and up to her eyes.

"Until recently."

In spite of the fluttering Radio felt in her heart, she said, "I am not here to rehabilitate you."

"No," he admitted, raising his eyebrows sadly and lifting her arm to work on her injured elbow. "You are not. This is the mistake I have continued to make with you, Radio. You are nothing but your very own person. You are not a replacement for my wife or child. You are not a cure for my solitude. You are not a trinket to add to my menagerie."

He finished cleaning her wounds and stepped back from the table, drawing a hand down his face. For just a moment, he looked older.

"The trouble with this... is that I have a place for everything," he said. "I have categories in which I place every book and artifact and species and animal. I have boxes and shelves and containers and terrariums. I have entire planets full of neatly organized things."

Radio rolled her eyes. This shouldn't have surprised her.

"And yet, I can find no place for you," he said. "I cannot put you anywhere. I cannot label you and classify you and place you in a box. I have tried, and only made a calamity of it all. For this, I can only beg your forgiveness."

He took a hesitant step toward the table and reached his hand toward her face. Radio could no longer fight herself. She reached up to set her hand against his own, and press it to her cheek. Tivan watched her with that omnipresent confusion.

"I find that I have never been able to keep you contained," he said, his voice heavy with pain. "I find that there was never a place for you among samples and artifacts and specimens. I find that I cannot keep you any more than I could keep the sun."

Radio listened to him, watching his face, her hands shaking. What was next?

Tivan took a breath. He pulled his hand away from her and curled it into a fist, staring at the floor.

In a tight voice, he said, "And I find that I love you more than I can possibly bear."

12

This time, when they fell into Tivan's warm, wide bed, there was no anxiety or anticipation. They knew exactly what they wanted for and from one another. They made love desperately, holding onto each other as if frightened. Though only the second time, Radio couldn't shake the feeling that Tivan was treating it as if it was his last.

When they fell back against the pillows, Radio leaned in to kiss the side of his face.

"I never," she said breathlessly. "Never thought we would wind up here."

Tivan paused.

"I did."

"Oh!" Radio cried in mock offense, laughing and pressing her elbow into his side. "Those limited powers of prognostication you have?"

"Nothing of the kind," said Tivan, unable to hide his smile. "I could just sense that under many many layers of fury and loathing, you loved me."

"I do," she said, her giggles tapering off. "I do love you."

Tivan snapped his head to the side to look at her, his teasing smile dying. That look of puzzlement returned, as if the possibility had never truly occurred to him.

"You do?"

"Yes, though I'm sure I need my head examined," she said to him. "Why do you look so sad?"

Tivan let out a breath and looked away from her face.

"My mind is very full at present," he said.

"I can see how it would be," said Radio. "But I want to give you something."

There came the smile; small, curious, barely edging up the corners of his mouth as he looked at her. What do you give the man who has everything?

Radio sat up in the bed, drawing some of the sheets around her. Echoing her movements, Tivan propped himself up against the headboard, watching her with an eyebrow raised.

"I don't remember much from my world, but I remember this one story," she said. "Only the singers could do it... I guess you'd call it an opera. My mother would perform it for me. She'd make these beautiful pictures appear that told the whole story... Nailela was in love with Morsorro, this dark wizard, who was bad news..."

"And you were somehow just reminded of this?" Tivan asked with that hint of a smirk.

Radio pursed her lips, holding back a smile. He was learning how to be teased after all.

"Just sit still and listen," she said.

Radio began to sing, weaving sounds and images in the air like nothing she had ever done before. String music swelled behind her, the gathering strength of a full orchestra, and like an ether in the air, dark purple clouds revealed a white moon and a lovesick woman collapsed beneath it. She sang in her mother tongue, an ethereal language of undulating notes, clicks and dips in tones that seemed unnatural. Radio hit notes Tivan had never before heard, bouncing them in the air and warbling them like a frightened bird. She sounded at times almost mechanical - could a person do this with their voice? Was it real? He could hardly take his eyes from her, even to watch the entrancing scene unfold as the wizard appeared to antagonize his lady love.

Many of the Collector's companion Elders, all of whom as old as himself, found themselves long ago grown jaded and cynical by the nature of the universe. They had seen everything there was to be seen, many times over. they knew every move there was to be made before it happened. History repeats. Nothing is new.

This was not so of Tivan. Maybe it should have been, after all this time, but such was not his nature. He was created to find things fascinating, to adore the unique and special, and to see it in everything. He had scoured galaxies from time unknowable, and never had he failed to find something that sparked his interest. That being said, nothing in more years than he could remember had reached into his soul in quite this way. As he sat back watching her sing, this breathtaking performance for an audience of himself alone, he found himself clenching at the throat. He had forgotten that he could do that.

Radio continued, and translated the song so he would understand.

"Oh, Morsorro, my demon, my hero,

You have taken my heart away from me

And hidden it far up on the mountain

How can I live when you have the best part of me?

What is my life worth to you, dark lover

That I should go on alone as winter comes

And you, kept warm by the heart you stole from me?"

He was watching her with such a smile on his face - so faint, barely perceivable - as Radio had seen before when he looked at her. She so adored that expression of entranced happiness. He turned his face away from her a moment and in better lighting she might have seen something glistening in his eye.

"Thank you," he said as she ended her song.

Radio watched his face, the dark around his eyes absorbing all.

"I don't have much experience," she said. "But I thought people who loved other people were supposed to be happy about it."

"Radio..." he sighed. "How can I acquit myself? You were right. This is no life for you."

Radio was silent. This was true, not as it stood. But things had become complex within her heart.

"I am not a man who commits change easily," he said. "Perhaps for me it is not possible."

"I understand," said Radio. "Having led such an easy life myself, I have nothing to compare it to. You should stick with what you know."

"Radio," he growled, shaking his head. "I am attempting to be sincere."

"Then say it right out. Are you telling me to go?"

With that pained, frustrated, confounded expression, Tivan grabbed her in close to him. Radio laid her hands on his chest. Even now, his closeness was an oddity to her; she'd fallen for the enemy. What would she have said of herself a week ago? Or had she suspected the attraction behind her tension all this time?

"I have learned that I cannot, should not, command you," he said, stroking her hair and her shoulder blades. "I would do anything to have you near me... and this is quite unsafe. I know myself. I want to keep you, but I can not. I want to protect you, but I must let this go as well."

Radio pulled back to look at him.

"Taneleer, who were those people you were meeting with this morning?"

He regarded her for a long moment before looking away.

"They had come to try to take you from me," he said. "They claimed to be from some organization protecting rare cultures. Let us say their credentials were... not in order. I allowed them to leave alive."

She felt his fingers in her hair, his hand at her back, his lips against the top of her head, smelled that comforting cinnamon all around her, and still wondered who he was. Was this the sort of thing he dealt with continually, and kept hidden?

Tivan breathed out heavily. The next words that left him sounded like they were heavier than he could stand. They fought his voice on the way out.

"You must make the choice yourself," he said. "You must choose whether to stay or to go."

Radio watched him, her eyes narrowed, her heart thrumming.

"You would let me go?"

Tivan pulled himself away from her, crossed the room, and opened his closet. He emerged wearing his black robe cinched around his waist, and carrying a small folded bundle. When he got closer to Radio, she recognized her pink dress from the night his men had picked her up after her escape. It had been cleaned and pressed and folded nicely, and Tivan carried it like he would a gift. Radio felt a squirming in her stomach.

He set the dress down on the corner of the bed.

"If you go, it will not be easy," he said, staring down at the dress as if it were a relative in their coffin. "If you stay, it will be no easier."

"Hold on," said Radio, standing, leaving the bedsheet behind her, and laying her hands on his arms. "Let's talk about this for a minute."

"I cannot be a part of your decision," he said, slipping his arms around her back. "I can't begin to make up for locking you away. But I can give you freedom now."

Radio began to tear up. She was shaking from everywhere. All of a sudden, she didn't want this.

Tivan continued to speak in that halting, anguished voice. Every word seemed as if it did not want to come out of his mouth.

"If you go, I ask only that you do not say goodbye," he said. He held her in close to him, her warm, naked skin pressing in to the softness of his robe. "This is exactly how I would wish to remember you."

In spite of the tears rolling down her face, Radio let out a choked laugh.

"And if you go," said Tivan, lifting her face to meet his eyes. "Know that I shall always be watching after you, whether you like it or not. And know that I shall always love you. Whether you like it or not."

Radio flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, shaking with sobs even as he gripped her tightly, kissing her, bunching his fingers through her soft hair. When their lips parted, he pressed his forehead against hers, squeezing his eyes shut.

"I'll like it," she whispered.

With a final look at her, Tivan swept from the room. He would wash and dress and go about his work, and all the time try to ignore what he knew. That she would not be in his bedroom when he returned to it, that she would not be anywhere in his estate, that she would be a ghost, and once again, he would be alone.

Radio caught a glimpse of herself in the window of a nightclub on Knowhere. She smoothed down the sides of the dress. It felt like an ancient relic in some ways, and a secret passcode in others. As her hand hit the side of the dress, she felt a little bump at the hip and reached into the pocket. She pulled out a small round disc and remembered why it was there. She opened it and connected.

"Hello? Peter Quill?" she said. "You might not remember me, my name's Radio -"

"Radio!" Quill shouted. "Are you okay? Where are you? I'll come get you! You need help?"

"Actually," said Radio. "I was thinking about a coffee?"

13 - EPILOGUE

Radio ran as hard as she could but the men were close on her back. Years of being locked away hadn't made her a distance runner, though her time in the city had helped. She was as fast as anyone at a sprint, and could keep it up for a respectable amount of time; a skill that had come in handy more than once when sinister forces had rounded the corner, as she had been warned they might.

Something had always happened to them in the past, some transport accident taking them out right before they caught her, some release of poisonous gas that knocked them out in the nick of time. Radio leapt over a trash can, lungs burning, wondering how long it would be before she couldn't run any further. She had a long knife, given to her by her friend Peter, that she favored in a fight and always kept in her boot. As she ran she felt the pressure of it clipped to her leg, and she plotted her next step.

She sang out a note that made the vines on the side of a nearby building reach out for her. Grabbing for them, Radio swung upward, swooping at a dizzying height to the top of the building. Another sweet note from her voice and the vines curled back to block the path of the goons chasing her. She took a moment to cackle at them from the safety of her rooftop before turning around and meeting another group of three men stepping out of a black transport.

The city below them glittered with purples and greens in the evening. The air was full of zooming transport vehicles and irritated birds.

"My my," said Radio, breathing heavily. "That smog sure is thick today."

"Get in the truck, girl," one of the men shouted to her.

"I like it, kinda," she said, glancing over the edge of the building. "It makes the city sort of glow, don't you think? Makes it look like it's snowing. You've seen snow, right?"

The men pulled out blasters, edging closer to her.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't love breathing in all the chemicals of a Zapp Cola when I step outside," she continued, backing toward the edge of the building, away from the men. "But it's a little pretty how it coats the city floor from up here, am I right fellas?"

"Stop talking and get in the truck," said the first man, gesturing with his blaster.

"Almost as if everything down there becomes..." Radio grinned. "Invisible."

She threw herself off the rooftop, plunging down into the city and the smog, letting the layers of haze wash over her. She sang out, hoping that somewhere there would be a tree, a vine, a growing thing strong enough to reach out and catch her before the pavement did.

She could see the ivy of a nearby building weaving and stretching to grab her. In moments, she fell instead into the open back of a small transport. The men inside tied her hands at once, though she thrashed and fought hard enough to headbutt two of them and kick a third.

They didn't have far to take her. The rendezvous took place at Le H otel Oblique, the tallest building in the whole city, an imposing giant that loomed over the glittering, beeping, foggy mess below, whose top windows exposed a glorious view of the dark purple sky. As Radio was being muscled into the room, she could make out the faintest golden swirl of a star cluster from the window. She could also make out a dark figure standing there, looking out. The figure turned when Radio was brought in.

"Did she give you much of a fight?" he asked.

"Wounded four of us," said the man holding her.

"Excellent. Leave us."

They released Radio and disappeared. She turned to the dark figure at the window.

"Tivan," she said, grinning. "There has got to be a better way to get a date."

He smiled. It had been a long year on his part, balancing the work of keeping criminals off her scent with cataloguing the DNA of every member of his collection before returning them to their appropriate home. There was still much work ahead of them both.

"Well," he shrugged, pulling her in for a kiss. "One has to start somewhere."