The night passed slowly, as neither Fred nor Daphne got any sleep at all. Fred surreptitiously kept practising playing possum, and Daphne rehearsed her lines and tried to think herself into the mindset she would be in if Fred died for real, all the time snuggled in his warm arms and resting her head on his chest. Every time he started rehearsing playing dead, she could feel the steady movement of his chest ceasing to exist and the soft, hot breath coming from his face becoming faint and almost undetectable. It scared her and reassured her at the same time; he was certainly convincing, but it wasn't something she needed to hear right now, the sounds of her boyfriend dying as she lay entwined with him and pretending to be asleep.
Dawn broke, and with it came the large man who had knocked Daphne out the day before and given orders for Fred to be injected with the sedating chemicals. From listening to the quiet conversation he had with another man, they figured that his name was Barrios, but he was called Pound around the building.
"Wakey wakey, sleeping beauties," Pound crooned roughly into the cage as he stomped in, his huge ugly boots crunching on the metal floor and seeming to attack it with each step. Daphne half-opened her eyes and whispered "Freddy?", forgetting momentarily about their plan and panicking for a second as he lay motionless and she shook his shoulder gently. Then it came back to her and she smiled surreptitiously and shook him a little harder.
"Freddy, darling, wake up," she murmured, reciting the lines she had formulated in her head and whispered to herself during the night, seeking Fred's approval. He had made a few suggestions here and there, but most of the job had been Daphne's.
"Freddy? Freddy, come on."
His eyes remained closed, and his breathing gently deflated, becoming shallower and shallower even as she watched; the steady movement of his chest stopped, and she gasped as it did so.
"Freddy! FREDDY!"
Despite Daphne almost blasting his eardrums off, and cursing herself internally for it, Fred did an excellent job of acting dead. Pound yanked the door open roughly and strode round, pulling Fred up and opening one of his eyes, taking no care not to poke Fred in the eye. Daphne winced as his sausage-like finger found its way to Fred's iris and prodded it hard, but Fred's reaction was so minute Pound missed it altogether and Daphne only just caught it.
"Freddy? Please tell me he's going to be OK, oh my goodness, Freddy, no…"
Daphne began sobbing, crying her heart out, and to her immense relief (and Fred's, although he showed no sign) real tears leaked from her baby-blue eyes.
"Freddy… He can't be…"
"Shut up," Pound growled, shaking Fred hard, trying to get some movement from him. There was nothing.
"Get the doctor, I want to see him die like the Organisation wants him to!" Pound yelled at someone, who rushed out of the door and into the corridor.
Daphne rushed forwards and started holding onto Fred, her tears falling onto his shirt and his face and his closed eyes.
But underneath her long red hair, she smiled.
"Death by natural causes, possibly the accident the other prisoner described. The doctor believes internal bleeding."
Daphne caught her breath; they wouldn't have hurt Fred, would they? She knew all about post-mortems from a school project (it had been Velma's choice of subject, she'd wanted twenty-first century Parisian fashion) and she guessed that they would have had to cut him open to determine internal bleeding. Shuddering at the mental picture that came into her head, Daphne focused back on the people in front of her, who were looking over the report from the doctor and thinking over what to do next.
"We still need to drain his body of mana, we should have done it while he was alive," one man said, and another nodded.
"Excuse me…"
The heads of the people whipped round to look at Daphne, who was standing with shackles on her wrists and ankles, her head bowed as though in sorrow, although under it her eyes were dry.
"Can I… can I go and see… see his body? Please?"
It would be the perfect way to make their getaway. Already Daphne's mind was going over the escape plan, thinking of how best to distract anyone around them, and she smiled beneath her locks as she formulated her plan.
"Why?" Pound growled, standing up. Daphne gave a quick pretend sob.
"We were… we were lovers… we were in love…"
Quietly wondering whether she would class herself and Fred as lovers, she didn't dare to look up. Pound grunted above her and she felt herself being steered towards the room in which they had decided to place Fred's "body", rough hands on her arms and yanking on her chains but taking her to the man she loved.
"You have five minutes," Pound hissed threateningly, unlocking the shackles (they wouldn't fit through the narrow doorway) and pushing her in.
Daphne walked slowly up to the table on which Fred was lying, pressing her hand against his as she drew near him.
"Freddy. It's me."
Fred opened his eyes slowly, adjusting to the light and looking up at her. He was still in his normal clothing, and the only wound on his body seemed to be a sharp, scalpel-style cut on his arm.
"I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to come."
"Of course I was," Daphne said gently, leaning down to kiss him. Fred pushed himself up with some difficulty, due to his stiff muscles from not moving, and pulled the sheet covering his body off. Daphne caught his arm and had a look at the cut on it.
"Did they make that?"
"Yeah, they thought there was something under my skin. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, anyway."
Daphne winced and pulled her scarf off, winding it gently around the cut. Fred sucked his breath in sharply as she tied it and she grasped his hand harder as she did up the knot properly and let his arm fall back to his side.
"There. Now you won't drip blood all over the place and give us away."
"Thanks," Fred murmured. "What's the plan from now?"
"We can get out of that opening there," Daphne whispered, pointing to a canvas flap on the side of the building. The whole place was falling apart, and the flap covered a hole in the wall big enough for both to squeeze through. Nobody had been bothered about it being there when they had put Fred in the room- after all, to them he was dead- and they'd forgotten all about it since.
Making as little noise as possible, Daphne walked over and, with Fred's help, lifted the canvas to let him squeeze through.
Together they ran from the building, heading towards the town, hand in hand and with their mission suddenly seeming much more like reality.
"Velms! Velma, like, you need to hear this!"
Velma turned as Shaggy pelted down the corridor towards her, his eyes alight with a boyish fire and Scooby hot on his scruffy heels.
"Like, he moved! Properly moved!"
"Freddy?" Velma asked, turning and dropping the money she was holding. Stooping to pick up the dollar bill and grabbing her arm at the same time, Shaggy began dragging her down towards the ward.
"C'mon!"
Velma started hurrying as well, pushing the door to the ward open way too hard and running helter-skelter over to the curtains and past them. She arrived just in time to see Fred's fingers grip a drip lead and hastily pulled them off, putting her hand on his arm and frowning as he winced. Looking down at his arm, she could see no visible wounds.
"Freddy?"
He opened his mouth and looked as though he was trying to say something, but the words refused to come. Velma gently put her hand under his head and lifted it slightly, bringing her own head down and trying to make out what he was saying.
"We escaped… played possum… my arm… scalpel… help me… black… portal… means safe…"
"Freddy?" Velma asked gently, putting her hand on his forehead, gently opening one eye. It didn't focus on her, but it was focused; Velma had no idea what on.
"The north… remember… portals black… black… means… home."
Fred closed his eyes as he murmured the last word, his soft breathing starting up and his face becoming limp and expressionless once again. Velma reached down and tried to open his eyes again, but it was no use; he was dead to the world once again.
"I just wish I knew what he meant," she murmured, sitting down, thinking hard. Normally she would presume this was some sort of crazy dream, brought on by his comatose state, but that just didn't seem right now. Shaggy, beside her, had the same feeling, and Scooby whined and pawed at Shaggy, the same theory inside him.
"Portals… and black means safe… That's the key… black means safe…"
"Go in, she's had her time," Pound growled, and one of the henchmen standing around the makeshift morgue's door grunted and squeezed in through the slim doorway, wriggling through and swearing like a trooper as he did so.
He stopped swearing abruptly at the sight of the empty room and the canvas flap swinging in the breeze.
"What's happening in there, fool?" Pound roared, grabbing the doorframe and pulling it out of the wall to reveal the figure of the henchman's silhouette behind the dust and the empty room he was stood in.
Pound stood motionless for a moment.
Then he threw back his head and bellowed for all he was worth.
"YOU IDIOTS!" he bawled as several more men came running. "Get after them! GET THEM!"
As the swarm of men trampled the ruined doorway into the metal floor, Pound stood motionless except for his deep breathing, his fists clenched and his face contorted in wrath and loathing.
"They will PAY for this!"
Fred bent over forwards, gasping as Daphne pulled on his hand, his own hand scrabbling at the stitch in his side. Daphne put her hand on his back and guided him gently behind some old wagons in the scrapyard they were hiding in.
"Come on, sweetie…"
Fred managed to straighten up to clamber over some piles of metal and twisted, charred wooden poles, letting himself fall into the little clearing Daphne had made for them.
"Are you OK?" he asked, panting and rubbing his skin to try and get rid of the stitch. Daphne nodded, leaning against him and listening to his rapid heartbeat, feeling his warmth on her skin and pressing her lips against his damp cheek.
"Are you crying?" she whispered, tipping his head back to see the moisture gathering in his storm-coloured blue eyes. He shook his head just as a tear fell from his eye, and Daphne wiped it away with gentle hands, putting her arms round him and whispering in his ear.
"Come on, Freddy, my darling, we're OK. We got away from them. Next stop is the IDVPs and home!"
Fred sniffed determinedly and nodded, giving Daphne a tremulous smile.
"I know. I'm just… being stupid. Take no notice. You were amazing back there."
"Playing dead while they're cutting your arm open takes guts as well, you know," Daphne reminded him, making sure the bandage was firm and lying back with him, spreading out on the blanket she had scrounged from the town. Fred shrugged.
"That was only a couple of minutes."
"Even so."
Daphne leaned over and pressed her lips against his, feeling him respond gently and his head falling back to lie on the ground, his eyes closing properly. Within a few seconds he had fallen asleep, a glaze of tears still visible on his cheeks. Daphne wiped them away and snuggled down beside him, closing her own eyes and just keeping awake long enough to drape a blanket over the pair of them before she was asleep as well.
A/N: Sorry I took so long updating, school and such (and plain laziness on my part-sorry!) and I went to the Hay Festival today and met Sophie McKenzie! Oh yeah… I got to interview her! :) Still, please review and let me know if you like what I'm writing! Thanks to ShaggelmaLove for the long and completely random and weird conversation we've been having while I wrote this chapter and also to all my reviewers! Jazzola :)
