Chapter 6

Sage's head snapped back as a fist slammed into her jaw. She stumbled and almost fell, her head swimming. It took a moment for her to regain her senses, and for her vision to clear, and by then, her arms were locked behind her in the vise-like grip of two strong men. Blood filled her mouth, and she let it drip from her lips, too stunned to do anything about it. Blearily, she looked up, already knowing who would be standing before her.

"That felt good. Did you think so? Cuz it looked like it felt good. What about this one?" Leppun taunted before burying his fist in her stomach. She tried to brace for it, but it helped little. He was extremely strong, and she had no means of protection or defense.

She doubled over, wheezing out curses, but the men holding her straightened her up and dragged her away at some unseen signal.

By the time they reached the obscure passageway they were headed to, Sage's mind had cleared. The pain was sharpening her mind and strengthening her anger and indignation—as well as her fear of what she knew was coming.

Leppun walked calmly and superiorly to stand in front of her, flexing his wrist and wiggling his fingers into a studded glove. "You know Bitch, we could have—" Sage took the moment to brace herself against her restrainers and swing her leg out at the man in front of her with lightning speed, just like she had done when she was captured. Leppun doubled over as her boot met his gut, and she brought her knee up hard to meet his nose, sending him flying backwards.

"Spare me the lecture, Snake." She spat.

Leppun clutched his face, and his hands came away bloody. He stared in bewilderment, and then turned to her with pure fury on his face.

Before she saw it coming, he struck her in the face, and stars exploded across her vision. He gave her no time to recover as blow after blow fell, mostly to the left side of her face, but some landed on the right. Her head was going numb with the trauma of it all, and she was aware of blood spattering the ground intermittently.

When at last he stopped, she was left with an intense, throbbing ache that pulsed from somewhere deep inside her, and her eyes refused to adjust. Images blurred together, and her ears rang loudly. Someone grasped her chin roughly and jerked her head up, and she saw a mouth moving, but no sound was coming out. To her shame, hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and her eyes began to droop. The edges of her vision were growing dark, and she was about to slip under when a sharp slap brought her back. Only then did she realize he was talking.

"…twice before you do that to me again. TO ME. You definitely picked the wrong guy to mess with, little c**t."

Anger welled up inside her, despite herself. She had never done anything to this jerk! The grip of the hand clutching her face tightened, and he was about to say something else, but before a sound passed his snarling mouth, she lunged forward and sank her teeth into his hand as hard as she could.

He bellowed in pain, a bellow that changed pitch and deepened, changed into something else. An animal howl of rage.

At last he ripped his appendage from her jaws, and she glared weakly but defiantly at him. Blood ran freely down his fingers, and was smeared across his face. A glow of smug satisfaction touched her: she was giving him a hell of a lot more trouble than he had counted on.

He met her eyes, and her happy feelings drained. He was morphing, and frighteningly so. His teeth were jagged and his face lengthened and distorted, his eyes were the same, but so much more cruel now. Dread began to leech at her resolve to make him regret this.

In an instant, the men restraining her were gone, and he was there, holding her right arm in an agonizingly tight grip, twisting it slowly, slowly to its limit…past its limit. A strangled cry broke from her, and the hot breath of a chuckle ghosted over her ear. She shuddered.

"I hate you." Leppun's voice was deep and guttural: it sounded like pure bloodlust. "You have no idea how much I hhhate you. You have no idea whhho your dealing withhh. You sssssaunter around like your ssso brave, but now look at you. Whimpering on your kneessss…"

Her arm was bent at an unnatural angle now, and Sage's vision flashed and began to fade black as the torture overtook her.

"…like a broken…" Farther. "….ssssstray…" Farther.

The end of his insult was lost as her arm was wrenched from her with a sickening popping sound. A shudder went through her, and she thought she might have screamed, and then everything went blessedly dark.

Sage was brought back to consciousness by the sensation of being dragged roughly to her feet, and forced to make a semblance of walking. She managed only to stumble a step or two before her body refused to comply and she went limp with pain.

They came to a door and she thought hazily that it was a very nice door. She would like to touch the nice door. She reached her hand out to it and it miraculously opened. There were two blankets inside. Oh! This was her room! The realization came even as she was thrown to the floor of it. Pain like none she had ever felt, not even when she first came here, shattered her to her core, and she again felt tears trail through the clotting blood on her cheeks. She had not the energy for anything more than that. She could barely roll onto her back, whining pitifully.

Slowly it all came back to her, and she bit her lip as the tears of pain, of anger, and of despair bathed her cheeks. Suddenly hands grasped her shoulders, the nails digging painfully into her skin.

Leppun brought his face scant inches from hers and hissed "Tell anyone…give any hint…and I'll kill that little human brat you call a brother." With that, he jerked her roughly, and was gone.

Sage came to and blacked out again several time, and all sense of time was out the window. Sometimes her thoughts were perfectly coherent, and sometimes even humorous, and other times she was out of her mind with hallucinations and night terrors. Things she couldn't run away from.

She was experiencing one such horror, a horror where a terrible leviathan oozing blood and screaming a stuck pig was chasing her down the halls, and she had just made it into her room, and it was pounding on the door, louder and louder, taunting her in its horrid wheezy voice, and she was expecting to wake up to sanity any second, when the door actually burst open. She shrieked and scurried away, but strong hands grabbed her and shook her back to her senses.

"Sage! Sage it's alright, it's me! You know me. Roa, it's Roa, Sage. Shh, it's not real." A pause. "Good God, what happened to you?"

Sage blinked hard and his meaty, white blonde face blurred into focus. Her head pounded with the effort and the screams, and it brought all her aches back to her. More tears were sliding down her cheeks when another shape burst through the door. Sage jerked away instinctively, but Roa held her fast.

"Roa there's blood on the floor in the southeast corridor, and I…" Martel trailed off at the sight of Sage. "What the—"

Roa held up a hand and said in an authoritative voice, "Go tell Mr. Greed that an important matter has come up. If he asks, tell him what happened, or at least what you've seen. He's not going to be happy."

Martel started to protest, but Roa sent her on her way with a stern look. After she was gone, he swiftly checked Sage over and then picked her up gingerly, carrying her quickly out of her room and before long, they had reached the clinic.

It hurt to breathe, and her eyes wouldn't work correctly. Her right arm felt like it wasn't there, but the shoulder hurt terribly. It hurt to move her jaw as well, and her face felt crusty and sticky. Try as she might, she could not stop the tears that were making tracks through the crust on her cheeks. Shame filled her. She didn't want the people she respected—Roa and Martel, or even Dorchette—to see her like this. They could have handled Leppun.

Roa didn't let her wallow any more than that. He gently probed her face, ribs, and shoulder, asking her where it hurt most, if she felt anything inner injuries, etcetera: he was all business now. He asked what happened, but Sage didn't say anything. As much as she longed to rat out her persecutor, she couldn't risk Luke: she had not doubt that he would carry out his promise.

"Well don't you remember?" Roa snapped. "Tell me who it was!"

Sage was saved from answering him, because Dorchette stepped in, muttered something to Roa, and, after a grave, piteous look at Sage, was gone.

Roa stepped over to the cabinet and fetched a needle. As he swabbed her left arm, he explained, "This is a shot of adrenaline. It should take away enough of the pain so that you can coherently explain what happened."

Sage gritted her teeth. "To who?"

"To Mr. Greed. He has called a trial to find out what happened and who is responsible."

Sage gulped. Greed was so intimidating. She didn't know if she could keep it from him. He had a way of coaxing things out of you. What if she lied and he discovered it? She didn't want to face him.

But a cool, soothing sensation flooded her body, and with it, a new resolve and determination. "Can you stand?" Roa asked.

In answer, she sat shakily up, and slid off the table to her feet, grunting with the effort. "That adrenaline should last you a good half hour. If worst comes to worst, I can slip you another one, but that isn't good for you. So try not to drag things out, okay? Come with me."

He led the way at an easier pace to a large, well lit room, with gilded framed mirrors on the walls and rough chairs scattered around. She blinked in the brightness, still trying to focus her eyes correctly. The left one was unnervingly dark, and the contrast was making her dizzy.

There were a lot of people in this room. She gulped, and before she was ready for it, two people took her from Roa's side and escorted her roughly to stand before a chair, in which Greed was seated.

She stood with a slumped posture, and would not meet his crimson eyes. She tried not to look at anyone, but caught sight of herself in a mirror. Her face was indeed crusted and seeping with blood. Her left eye was swollen. Her right shoulder was a mottled purplish grey color, the color your finger tips turn when you squeeze them too hard for too long. Her clothes were torn, her hair disheveled, her face tear streaked. Lovely. So she averted her gaze, and it fell on the crowd.

She only knew a handful of the people here. There was The Baldy, there was Martel, Dorchette, Roa. There was the guy who smiled to her when they passed in the hallways. There was the cook. There were the two men who had held her while Leppun beat her.

There was Leppun. He smirked in a satisfied way. The sight of him ignited such an indignation in her, and an anger began to grow. He smirked, but the smirk faltered when he saw her eyes darken.

A deep voice interrupted her thoughts.

"Speak." The drawl was gone, and it was icy, not normal Greed voice. Sage's gaze snapped back to the chair before her, and met his red eyes. They looked murderous. Sage was taken aback, and she averted her eyes again.

"If you have half the brains I think you do, you will speak now." Again, the coldness unnerved her, and she didn't know what to say, even if she would have spoken. So she simply raised her eyes and looked into his, and softly rasped, "I can't."

"You can't?" he barked. He pursed his lips and mulled this over. "I see."

He stood, and she flinched, but he merely began taking slow, commanding steps around Sage, and then across the room, saying "She can't. So. Could anyone tell me why this could be? Why this little hostage thinks she won't tell me what I want to know?" the room was deathly silent. "So since Little Hostage can't. tell me," he said, pointedly looking at Sage. "Is there anyone here who can?" the drawl was creeping back into his voice, but Sage still heard the annoyance and anger through it.

No one answered. "WELL?" he snarled.

Almost immediately, a sniveling voice popped up. "It was Dorchette." Sage's head whipped around. Leppun had stepped forward, and his face was every inch sincere.

Dorchette leapt up from his seat in the corner, bristling. "THAT'S A LIE! I was nowhere near this place last night! You know I was on a mission, he's lying, Mr. Greed!"

Greed considered this. "Leppun, why are you so certain it was Dorchette?" the drawl was all the way back now. Sage didn't trust it. She always had the feeling Greed knew a lot more than he let one.

"I came across him when he was stuffing her back into her room." He said without missing a beat. "He told me to 'keep it on the down low, a favor between friends.'"

Dorchette was livid. "LIAR!" he roared, hurling his chair across the room.

Greed was unfazed. "Why would Dorchette do this?"

Leppun immediately had his response. "Old grudges, I'm sure."

Greed nodded, and walked again around Safe, surveying the injuries. Casually, almost conversationally, he asked "Dorchette, you are a lefty, are you not?" he even flashed a smile of his jagged teeth at the dog-man.

Dorchette had calmed some, with Roa's hand on his shoulder. "That's right sir." Sage snuck a glance at Leppun. His face was a few shades whiter than it naturally was. Greed was nodding, as if he had just learned an interesting fact. His paced circles were growing wider, bringing him closer and closer to the audience.

"May I see your knuckles, Dorchette?" he drawled. Dorchette held out his hands. "Ah. Thank you, Dorchette, that's all."

Greed's march had landed him right in front of Leppun, and lightning fast, he grabbed Leppun's wrist and jerked it up to eye level. Sage's heart began to flutter with hope.

But Leppun's knuckles were smooth, unmarred by the scrapes punches leave. Sage cursed inwardly. Then Greed grabbed the other hand, the right one. A deep, purplish half-moon shape was carved there: Sage's teeth marks. A small smile lit Sage's face.

Greed's eyes were dangerous now, and he locked then to Leppun's grey ones. "So, who did you say attacked my stuff?"

Leppun quivered for a moment before sputtering "I'm sorry sir! She was trying to escape, and I know it's the third time or something, and I was just looking out for your property sir! It was shortly after midnight, and I didn't know what else to do! I didn't tell you because I was afraid you would be angry and not understand. I caught her right as she was about to slip out, and she attacked me first! So I was defending myself, and I suppose I got…carried away. I was only looking out for you, Your Excellency!" He finished frantically, sweat running down his face and his fear coming off him in waves that were tangible to everyone in the room.

Greed smiled, but even Sage could see it was treacherous. Leppun couldn't. He released Leppun's wrist and walked slowly away.

"Trying to escape was she?" he glanced frankly at Sage.

"Yes sir!" Leppun exclaimed.

"I see." Greed paused for a few moments. Then said quietly. "You would stake your life on this?" his voice was dripping with venom, and Sage shivered at the abrupt change in personalities.

Leppun hesitated. "Of course sir."

Greed spun around, his hand fisted in Leppun's shirt front. "You dare lie to me, Leppun? She was with me, in the showers last night shortly after midnight. Even if you got the times mixed up, why would she try to escape when she was just getting a shower? Hmm? Does she want to look nice and clean for the world? Hmm?" The room was deathly silent, everyone terrified by the scene before them. Greed hurled Leppun to the floor. "You disgust me."

He turned his back to Leppun, breathing heavily, and veritably shaking with anger. Leppun squirmed behind him, sobbing and whining for mercy. Even Sage couldn't stand to see him like this. Some people tried to leave.

"YOU WILL STAY!" Greed bellowed. "YOU WILL WATCH THIS."

With those words, Leppun clutched at Greed, but Greed whirled on him, seized his head in one hand, and, with a flash of silver and blue, crushed Leppun's head with his bare hands.

AN: hey! A longer chapter! Cool! haha R&R please! Your reviews keep me alive and inspired :D