Title: Something Familiar: Chapter 2
Rating: T - Nothing graphic. Still falls within the Fiction Ratings T parameters, "with some violence, minor coarse language, and minor suggestive adult themes." Rating may go up in later chapters.
Category: gen, het
Pairings: Davenport/Goddard
Summary: Seth was unable to curb his wry tone even under duress, and T.J. found that fact reassuring. Certainly things couldn't be too bad if he was willing to banter with her. Or perhaps things were really bad, and he was trying to keep her from panicking.
Something Familiar: Chapter 2
Davenport's head was throbbing when she woke up. Her surroundings came into focus little by little, still swimming a bit in front of her. She found herself in a small dark room strapped to a contraption approximating an upright gurney, with her hands bound around the apparatus behind her. Panic set in, and she struggled to pull the restraints loose.
"Don't bother," a familiar grim voice echoed in the dingy cell. "The more you pull, the tighter they get."
T.J.'s eyes widened. "Seth?" She craned her neck and was able to see him tied up on a gurney next to her, angled so they were facing adjacent corners. She noticed the disks on his temples and the look of defeat on his face, gasping as she put the pieces together. "No."
She took a gulp of stale air into her lungs and tried to focus on her breathing. She stared at the wall in front of her, noticing the small triangular door and unbreakable crystal bars blocking their only way out. She moaned as a sudden wave of nausea washed over her.
"Just sit tight, T.J. The tranquilizers are probably still in your system. Are you going to be sick?"
It was an effort for her to gather her thoughts. She slurred a bit when she finally answered, "No. I'll be all right. But we need to get out of here."
"Luckily when it comes to prison cells, I'm well-read," Seth responded.
He was unable to curb his wry tone even under duress, and T.J. found that fact reassuring. Certainly things couldn't be too bad if he was willing to banter with her. Or perhaps things were really bad, and he was trying to keep her from panicking.
He continued, "So far it seems like Reaver has stolen Luff and Spung technology for his own personal use. By the looks of things, he's also fixed that remote of his or plans to use something similar on us. And God knows what else he has in his armory at this point."
Oh. So. Really bad, then.
T.J. gulped. "But we will make it out of here, right?"
"Oh, how wrong you are." Reaver's voice reverberated through the hallway, and his shadow loomed outside the door before he appeared behind the bars. "How are you two finding your accommodations? I gave you the best cell: the honeymoon suite, if you will. Thought you'd appreciate it."
"Let us go, you piece of filth!" T.J. snapped, attempting to conceal her fear with false bravado. If it worked for the commander...
Reaver laughed at her as he deactivated the power fence around the door: one he'd installed as an extra precaution. He entered the room, closed the door behind him, and immediately approached Davenport. She felt exposed; his ice blue eyes seemed to hypnotize her, render her immobile, and read her every thought at the same time.
"This one's not your usual type, Goddard," Reaver remarked casually as he appraised her. "But it's slim pickings out here. You take what you can get, I guess."
There was a dark, dangerous quality to Seth's voice as he growled, "Leave her alone."
Reaver shrugged, ignoring his protests. "I mean, I guess I get it. The bitch is feisty. Could be fun."
The space pirate leaned in closer. Davenport looked away, shuddering as she felt his hot breath on her neck. Then she saw an opportunity: she jerked her head back, clocking him square in the nose. Goddard, who had been clenching his jaw in rage, suddenly felt the need to stifle his laughter.
"Do you still like feisty?" Davenport challenged the space pirate, narrowing her eyes.
"I like it," Goddard offered boldly, turning to meet her eyes, "for what it's worth."
"You whore!" Reaver bellowed as he tended to his bleeding nose. "And to think, I was going to keep you all to myself. Maybe I'll just torture you as much as possible before I kill you. Aw, hell. Why not go with all of the above?"
"Over my dead body," Goddard snarled.
"Actually, the plan was to make you watch."
T.J. swallowed thickly; Reaver's threat made her feel even more nauseous than before.
"Don't you dare touch her!" Seth thundered. "You can do whatever you want with me; I don't care. Just leave my crew out of this!"
Reaver tsked. "No can do, old buddy. Here's the deal: you two tell me where your ship and kiddie crew are, I sell them all to the Spung, and then the three of us can have some fun. How does that sound?"
"You've got me where you want me, and you're going to torture me anyway. Why would I give up the rest of my crew in the process, you ass?!"
"Because I can do this."
The space pirate pressed a button on his wristlet, sending Goddard into a series of convulsions. T.J. winced and looked away as he cried out in pain. She couldn't bear watching him being tortured.
"Stop it!" she begged. "Stop it! Please!"
Reaver did make it stop with another quick flick of his fingers. Seth fell back against the gurney, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath.
T.J. panicked. "Seth, are you all right? Say something!"
Goddard swore through gritted teeth. It wasn't what she'd been expecting, but he was conscious, at least.
"Since you said 'please,' " Reaver's grin grew all the more menacing as he turned to leer at T.J. "How 'bout I show you what being with a real man is like."
"You are disgusting. And I would never—"
"Oh but you would." Reaver poised his fingers on his wristlet again. "I can make you do anything I want, remember? Anything."
Seth thrashed around; tugging at his restraints until the cables were so tight he could practically feel his heartbeat in his fingers. "Reaver, I will fucking kill you!"
The space pirate only grew more confident. "Classic Goddard. You always did have a god-awful poker face. It's like you're not even trying."
Seth's whole body jerked and he lashed out at him, "You hurt her in any way, and I will end you."
"I'd like to see you try. I really would." Reaver smirked, his fingers hovering over the buttons on the controls. "Which I why I'm going to do this..."
T.J. braced herself and squeezed her eyes shut as Reaver toggled several switches. She held her breath and heard him snarl in frustration as he continued jabbing at his device.
"What the hell? Why won't this work? You bitch! What did you do?" he fumed.
T.J. opened her eyes; aware that the disks on her head were emitting a high-pitched frequency but didn't seem to be doing much else. "I haven't done anything," she answered hotly. "Perhaps your shoddy craftsmanship is to blame."
Reaver backhanded her, and the blow was so intense that she saw stars. Seth called her name in a panic and craned his neck to get a look at her, grateful when she seemed to right herself, albeit with a groan and a bloodied lip.
The space pirate zeroed in on Davenport. "My equipment isn't the problem. It's you."
"What are you talking about?"
"Don't play coy with me, lady. Whoever worked on you was good. No visible scarring."
T.J. shook her head. "I don't understand."
"The only way you could be immune to mechanisms like these is if you've got some sort of tech implant," he explained, tapping his temple. "Way out in these parts, it's usually through invasive surgery. You sound all snooty and posh. What kind of work did you have done since the last time I saw you? It was probably expensive."
"I have done nothing of the sort," T.J. protested.
"Let her go," Goddard begged, his tone now slightly defeated. "It's me you were after, and you've got me. Just let her go."
Reaver circled around both of them now, the smirk never leaving his face as he addressed Goddard. "No, no, no. Now my curiosity is piqued. Your woman is quite a novelty. I have a couple of contacts that owe me favors. They could help me see what makes her tick. Of course, after we're done slicing and dicing, she probably won't care about escaping anymore."
Davenport whimpered as she thought of her brain being poked and prodded in a filthy makeshift operating theater. Or perhaps Reaver would just kill her and dissect her in the very room in which she stood.
"But I wouldn't want her back when she's practically a vegetable." Reaver shrugged. "In my experience, the ones that don't fight back aren't as much fun. Might still be able to use her for something though."
T.J. managed to keep from vomiting as she tilted her chin up. She made an effort at appearing defiant, even though the tears welling in her eyes betrayed her. She wondered if she was even the slightest bit intimidating, or if her efforts were only encouraging Reaver to think of more horrible ways to break her.
"God, there are so many things I can't wait to do with you two," Reaver declared with a perverted sense of glee. "How about I leave you alone to discuss, hmm? I might be in a giving mood and let you guys vote on our first activity. I'll be back in a bit. Don't go anywhere."
The space pirate slammed and locked the door to their cell and reactivated the force field around it as he left. Davenport sagged against her restraints with a sniffle, and Goddard collapsed backward against the gurney and stared at the ceiling.
"I'm so sorry, T.J. God. I'm so, so sorry."
"Seth, this isn't—"
"My fault? It is my fault. One hundred percent," he insisted. "I should have scanned the Christa for Reaver's tech. And I shouldn't have let him go when we were on that planet, I shouldn't have let him capture you, and I definitely shouldn't have shown him my hand just now."
"But you haven't told him anything."
"I didn't need to. He knows that you... that I..." He sighed and tried again. "The more I care about something, the harder Reaver will try to take or destroy it. And he'll do it just so he can watch me suffer. So I think it's obvious that I... I put you in a lot of danger."
T.J. shuddered at the memory of the tone he had used with the space pirate earlier. She'd never heard him so furious or seen him so protective. She turned to Seth and dared to ask, "And how much danger would you say that is?"
He cleared his throat. "I, uh, I'm not sure how I should answer that."
T.J. gave him a watery smile. "Were you to classify the amount of danger we have the potential to be in, would you be inclined to call it... the utmost?"
He blinked. "What?"
She spoke slowly and with purpose, fighting to steady her voice. "Well, there's 'the very least,' which we previously determined was actually a good amount. However, you may feel inclined to go with something more significant: like the utmost."
"The utmost?"
"Was that a question or your answer?"
He groaned in frustration. "We're in a prison cell waiting to be tortured. This isn't the time for subtext, T.J. Space hates subtext."
She rolled her eyes. "I am asking—"
"I know what you're asking! But you'd...you'd actually want that?"
"Yes," she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe.
"With me?"
Her tears finally fell as she nodded. Softer now, she answered, "Yes. Would you not want that with me?"
Her voice was so small; Seth thought she sounded more terrified of rejection than she did of being tortured. First he'd put her in danger, and then he'd made her cry. God, he needed to find some spectacular way to make this up to her later.
"Teej, there's no one I'd rather be in the utmost amount of danger with than you."
She forgot herself for a moment. How was it that Seth had made that sound romantic? A grin crept across her face without her permission, but the stinging of her split lip quickly brought her back to reality. She hissed and tasted blood.
Goddard cleared his throat and broke eye contact with her, glancing around the room for something, anything, to aid them. "Right. So. Escaping is a thing."
He felt something brush against his fingers. Somewhat surprised that his hands hadn't already gone numb, he looked behind him to find T.J. had curled her pinky around his, with their hands still bound behind their backs.
"How are you with knots?" she wondered.
"Not good. You?"
"At the risk of sounding like Mr. Bova, 'Let's find out together.' "