Characters: Victoria Argent, Derek Hale

Word Count: 2000

Rating: K+

Summary: The Hunters have strong opinions about werewolves. For one of them, those are going to need to change.

Notes: Spoilers for 2x09, for h/c bingo prompt: deprogramming, and angst bingo prompt: restraints

Cross the Bridge, Bear the Cross

"Animal!" Victoria hissed into the darkness. "Monster!" She struggled against the bonds that held her to the chair she had awoken to find herself lashed to, but it was no use. The thing that had bound her knew too well, better than she, what her strength was. "Abomination!" Its scent was everywhere, filling a space that echoed with openness: distant walls and high ceilings amplifying the push and pull of her breath and the scrapes of her chair legs against cement floor. The darkness was absolute, not a shred of light under a doorway or through a window. This room had been prepared for her, for this.

"I am what you are now," her captor replied, striding closer to her from wherever he had been standing. Victoria refused to let her vision slip from the human spectrum, so she couldn't see him. Her hearing, she had no control over. His heartbeat pounded steadily through the darkness and his steps were confident. His voice was more tenor than she remembered it—she always remembered him having a deeper voice than he did—but there was no mistaking who he was: Derek Hale. "Are those labels you're willing to accept about yourself?" he asked, the challenge clear.

Victoria snarled: Stupid question. They weren't labels; they were in her life had she not believed them, and the feel of the full moon tainting her body had only reinforced her knowledge. "You should have let me die."

"You should have known that a knife through your heart wouldn't be enough," he countered. Derek paused, probably taking a second to survey her because he would have no qualms about using his misbegotten abilities. He clicked his tongue at what he saw. "I don't believe you really wanted to die."

Victoria twisted her hands, testing the give on the chain wrapped around them. She didn't bother to correct him.

"How does it feel to have become what you hate?"

Again, she kept her silence; the fact that she couldn't see him made it easier. His voice could be coming from anywhere. His scent was weak, as if he had merely passed through the room hours before and now was projecting his part of the play in from elsewhere. It was an illusion, one created via sensory input she didn't know how to interpret, but it seemed oddly fitting.

"You're going to see things very differently now," he continued. "You'll discover… that we're really not that bad." He stated his point, sounding so pleased with himself that Victoria wanted to spit. She settled for throwing herself against her bonds again, which succeeded only in tipping the chair backward and off-balance. She quickly corrected the problem, yet could still hear the smug smile lingering in the air.

How wrong he was, too. Werewolves were killers; history was replete with stories of werewolf rampages, the monsters killing dozens or scores of innocents for no reason whatsoever. That's why the Hunters existed, to put the beasts down before they could give in to their urges. She knew how strong those urges were, too; she had felt that bloodlust coursing through her in the seconds before the knife had penetrated her chest. Only the power of her will had allowed her to keep them in check.

Now she was trapped here, at the mercy of whatever game Hale was playing. She envisioned wrapping her hands around his neck, her fingernails digging into the soft tissue. It didn't help. She was still bound and, she suspected, would soon be gagged once he believed he had learned from her what he could. Who knew how long he would leave her this way. Until the next night? The next full moon?

The chains were wrapped tight, grinding her wrists together, but maybe... She began manipulating her hands against the bonds to dislocate her thumbs, a technique she had spent months mastering early in her Hunter training. The give in the chains was miniscule, but it might be enough.

"I know all about you and your kind," she spoke, dredging up words to mask any noises her other efforts might be making. "La bête. The Gandillons. Stubb." She named off more, with each piling more contempt on the name than the last. Murderous, monstrous, beasts, killing for the sheer thrill of death, or for no reason at all. Killing because they couldn't help themselves.

The laugh that cut through the darkness was short and dismissive. "Stories, all of them. Stories told about human psychopaths to make humans feel better. Stories that are hundreds of years old. You'll have to try harder than that."

"Peter Hale," she said, the name dropping off her tongue as if it had been waiting for the moment.

"Kate Argent," Derek countered, just as quickly.

Victoria felt a touch of shame at the reminder, not because of what Kate had done, but because of how sloppily the execution had been carried out. That Kate had left survivors was inexcusable, a sign of her immaturity and the brashness of youth that had led her to overestimate her abilities. That Victoria had trusted Kate to carry out the execution order was a sign of Victoria's. She had devoted a great deal of time and energy to correcting those flaws in her personality in the intervening years. Kate hadn't, and had ultimately paid the price.

"Peter was born a werewolf," Derek pointed out, as if she didn't know that the mongrels put no shame in propagating through all the methods available to them: breed or bite, it didn't seem to matter how many lives were destroyed in the process. Yet another reason their numbers needed to be controlled. Continuing, Derek said, "He lived his entire life without killing anyone, until Hunters decided that he was a threat for existing." He snorted softly. "If he was the monster, then who do you think his Frankenstein was?"

Victoria shook her head in surprise. The idea that Derek would have read a book, much less that book, struck her as absurd in the same way that she'd feel if someone insisted that their pet alligator liked to cuddle. Feral beasts didn't do those things. But Derek had, and he'd gotten the allusion correct. She wondered if Allison—or Kate, for that matter—would have known which character in the story was Frankenstein.

"Werewolves can learn control," Derek was saying, as if his words were getting through, rather than her silence being from the effort of keeping up with the tangents of her thoughts. In the pitch black room, with its distant walls distorting all the sounds, her imagination felt larger than ever, her thoughts wilder, and it was taking more effort than it should to keep her focus where it needed to be. Long ago, she had learned all the lessons the Hunters had to offer about controlling one's body, about not giving in to fear, or panic, or fatigue. Working herself free now was taking more focus than it should, but still less than she had to give. "We teach our kind not to kill."

"We hunt those who hunt us," she ground out, just as one thumb dislocated. She began to shimmy the chain over her hand, all the while having to will the injury from healing. The escape was harder than she remembered.

"You hunt those who did nothing to you!" Derek roared. She smiled at how she had made him lose control, certain that he had given in to the shift as well and was now standing before her with his true face on. Yet, no red showed where his eyes would have to be. She heard a large inhalation, one meant for finding calm, then an equally large exhalation. "Look at what you've accomplished. Look at the success of your efforts." He went silent, no doubt expecting her to follow his command.

Only because her concentration was elsewhere did she get a flash of Kate's tombstone against the verdant cemetery lawn. For a second, she thought she caught an acrid whiff of ashes and burning plastic. Then came a touch on her arm reminiscent of how her Allison used to press close when she needed her mother. The blood caked shirt she still wore from her attempt at suicide rubbed against her skin as she moved, the roughness a persistent reminder of what had brought her here.

"Now you're a target," Derek told her, as if she didn't know that. As if she didn't know why. "Are you prepared to have your husband slice you in half? Your father-in-law? Your daughter."

Yes, Victoria thought. "Yes." Clear, definitive—a position wrought from habit and training. This is what happened to Hunters who got bitten. She was hardly the first. And yet…. The shame was back, and with it a sense of failure rather than pride.

Now it was Derek's turn not to respond. She could hear his heart thumping, steady and slowly, not the slightest hint that seconds before he'd been yelling. She felt a flash of admiration at his control, and hint of doubt about the common knowledge that werewolves were forever teetering on the edge of ripping out the nearest throat.

A loop of chain slid off her hand. The scrapes it left behind began to heal, and she paused in her efforts to assess her next move. Once she had her hands free, there was still the matter of the chains binding her body and her feet, none of which she could see. Then she would have to get past Derek, and until she had reason to believe otherwise, she was going to plan as if the rest of the pack were lying in wait. Then what? Was she going to return to… the other Argents…for the purpose of having them kill her?

"It's not going to work," Derek spoke through the darkness. At first she thought he was suggesting that she wouldn't be able to seek death, a point both of them knew was ridiculous. She had always prided herself on her ability to do what was necessary. Then she realized that he was talking about her escape. She stilled her efforts while trying to work through what had given her away. Was it a change in her breathing pattern? A hitch in her heartrate? A miniscule clink of one chain against another that she had underestimated his ability to discern? As if following her thoughts, Derek supplied an answer: "You might be able to remove them, but it won't matter. The chains aren't the only thing restraining you."

Her eyes went wide, then narrowed to glare furiously at where she determined her captor to be. Her Alpha. "Why use the chains, then?" she growled.

"Because you understand them," he replied, his words soft, almost thoughtful. He let the comment hang in the air for a long moment, the only other sounds the thrumming of her pulse. When he continued, he sounded more like his usual self: "You have a lot to learn. Until you do, you're too dangerous to let run free."

She expected him to say more, to offer up threats, to start an interrogation. Instead, he turned on his heel and left, leaving her alone. The lights stayed off.

The determination that had been fueling her faltered at that, all the tiny pricks of doubt and upset weakening her. She shoulder throbbed where the bite had been, and her chest ached from where the knife had slid into her heart. The warehouse remained devoid of any light, but outside its walls, for the first time, she could hear the footsteps of the others as they gathered in waiting. From somewhere farther away, a howl rose up; it was all she could do not to throw her head back in response. She thrust out her chest, pushing against the chains and the taking advantage of the small amount of give she'd been able to create. She needed to escape.

Her family was out there, waiting.

END