A/N: It's short. I know. I'm sorry but it's the holidays so you can cut me some slack. The Beka and Trance bit was inspired by Benesound and Grayangle. Special thanks to Lyekkablack whose reviews keep me going. Hope you all enjoy. Thanks.

OOO

Beka sat on the not so comfortable bed in the brig, leaned her head against the wall and sighed. It had been hours since Trance and herself had been 'escorted' down there and she was getting just a bit tired of looking through the slats in the door and listening to the big Nietzscheans bragging about their conquest.

It was maddening.

Especially with Trance sitting cross legged on the floor, looking contemplative but being so patient.

Beka sighed loudly again and Trance gave her an innocent look, complete with purple smirk.

"Is there a problem, Beka?"

"No, not at all. I enjoy sitting in the brig while the ship is being taken over by Dragans," she answered, the sarcasm all but dripping from her words. "How can you be so calm?"

"Because I know there is nothing I can do besides wait," Trance said folding her hands into her lap.

Beka pulled her knees to her chest. "There's always something we can do. Run around. Create a diversion. Get naked. There has to be something."

Trance said nothing and merely smiled.

Beka looked at the purple alien, sitting so demurely in the floor, not bothered by their current situation and it hit her. She dropped her legs from the bed and leaned forward, whispering. "You know something," she accused.

Trance's smile dropped and she looked away. "I might."

"Ok, spill it. What do you know?" The girl squirmed underneath the scrutiny. "Oh come on, you can tell me." Beka added smiling as sweetly as possible, desperately wanting any information she could glean.

"Well," Trance began hesitantly, "I can say that if this were one of your holo-novels, you and I don't play that big of a part."

"Oh," Beka said surprised, the smile disappearing from her face. It grew again when another thought struck her. "So it's Dylan right? He's got a plan."

Trance slightly shook her head.

"Tyr?"

Again, Trance shook her head.

Beka's mouth dropped open, the implications hitting her like cold water. Their lives rested in the hands of one insane, genius, scheming engineer with experimental hair.

Trance shrugged her shoulders at the look on her former captain's face and gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry Beka, but this is a Harper story."

OOO

A short walk and a few more bruises later, Harper was literally shoved through a door into a well decorated room. Though he had never been in these crew quarters before, he knew that they hadn't been this ornamented. Nietzscheans apparently moved pretty quickly once they had staked their claim to something.

At his arrival, the tall Nietzschean woman who had slapped him, looked up from her reading and gave him a feral smile. She stood, eyeing him and slinked over.

"She whispered your name," she stated simply allowing her eyes to sweep every inch of him.

Harper felt like he was on a slave selling block, barely able to hide the shivers that were traveling up and down his spine.

"I have no other slaves with me at this time and I need someone to tend to her injuries. I don't trust my son to do so." She swept past him, heading for the door. "Her clothes and supplies are on the couch. You have two hours."

Then she was gone.

Harper gulped wondering why he would need all of two hours to get Josephine ready to work. What had they done to her? And where was she?

He stepped further into the quarters, in awe again at the quick decorating. Where regular deck plate had been was now covered with fur rugs. Where there had been just bare wall now hung silk wall hangings. He marveled.

Stepping off the rug, his boot slipped out from underneath him on something slick. He looked down and his insides twisted when he realized it was blood. In fact, there was a whole trail.

He followed it with his eyes and noticed that it disappeared into a corner that was beside the couch and underneath one of the wall hangings. He walked toward the corner and pushed the silk out of the way, his heart in his throat at what he'd find there.

There she was, lying on her side, curled into a ball, barefoot, stripped to the waist and shivering. Her back was to him and he stared in horror at the thick red lash lines that crisscrossed her bare skin, openly bleeding.

He cautiously knelt down beside her, scared that no amount of doctoring would ever allow her to work again. For his own benefit, he allowed his fingers to gently brush the skin of her arm to make sure it was warm and not the cold feeling that came with death.

"Don't touch me," she hissed and curled into a tighter ball, a soft groan escaping her lips when the action pulled on her injuries.

He pulled his hand back, not wanting to cause her any further agitation and silently chastised himself for his action. He should've known better. It was the natural reaction for anyone who had just been whipped, beaten or woken from a frightful nightmare. He knew that first hand.

"Josie," he whispered softly, his own emotions threatening to overwhelm him, constricting his throat.

She slowly moved to look over her shoulder, her blue eyes clouded with pain. "Harper?" she whispered back, when her eyes met his.

"Yeah, it's me."

He noticed her bruised arms wrapped around her shivering frame in either an attempt at warmth or modesty. He took off his over shirt, a loud blue and red design, grimacing when the action pulled on his own bruised ribs, and gently laid it over her to cover her chest and stomach.

"Why are you here?" she asked as she gratefully accepted the shirt, but her voice wary. The last time she had seen him he had been staring daggers at her and it was quite obvious, to her at least, that he hated her.

"To make sure you're ok," he answered. Tentatively, he added a quiet, "How many?"

"Twenty." She allowed her head to rest on the deck either from exhaustion or remorse and broke her gaze with him. "I'm sorry," she replied. "I'm sorry for everything."

He could hear the tears in her voice though he couldn't see them. He could hear the regret, the bitterness. He wanted to comfort her, but couldn't find a place where he could touch her that hadn't been whipped or bruised, so he settled for words.

"It's alright, doll. We'll just have to find a way out of this."

"I can't. I'm destined to be a slave," she said softly, defeated.

"What if I told you that I don't believe in destiny?" Harper said. "What if I told you that I know for a fact that your brother doesn't believe in it either? No one is destined to be a slave. No one is destined to be whipped and beaten. There is a way out of this; we just need to find it."

"I'm glad you're so certain," she replied.

"Hey, as certain as a Perseid is about the complexity of temporal mechanics." He smiled when it garnered a small laugh. "Come on, let's get you out of this corner and start the scheming."

Very wary of her back, since he knew the feeling of lashes all too well, he helped to maneuver her onto one of the fur rugs. It would no doubt be warmer than the bare deck and would be much easier for him to tend to the lashes in an open area and not wedged in a corner.

Once lying on her stomach, her head pillowed on the borrowed shirt, she closed her eyes from exhaustion, and very carefully let her muscles relax. Her back literally felt like it was on fire and it was taking all her strength not to just give into the beckoning arms of fatigue.

Harper watched her, concerned, and softly nudged her. "You ok?"

She didn't open her eyes but responded. "Yeah, it's been a very long time since I was whipped. I'd almost forgotten how it feels."

"Key word being almost," he said while rummaging through the supplies Nefertiri had left him composed mostly of cloth. No hyposprays of pain killers and no nanobot injections to repair the tissue and prevent scarring. Of course not. She wanted her slave to know who dealt out pain and wanted the scars left as an ever present reminder.

And bandages would do no good, especially with the lashes still weeping. He knew that just from helping bandage his friends on Earth. The cloth would just stick to their skin and be agony when they had to change them later. Since they were on the Andromeda, with her nice clean air systems, there really was no risk of infection either. It was best they lay open.

The only thing he could really do was clean off the blood.

He took a basin from the table, went into the bathroom and filled it with warm water. When he walked back into the room, he thought she had fallen asleep.

Her whispered words proved otherwise. "You ever been whipped?" she asked softly, the question slightly slurred and he knew utter fatigue and pain would be taking over soon.

He sat beside her on the rug, dipped a piece of cloth in the water and carefully ran it over her back. The cloth stained red almost instantly. "Yes. I wouldn't say it was one of my proudest moments."

"What did you do?"

The bitter memories came flooding to him and he gamely tried to lock them back away. It took him a few minutes of warring with his subconscious and his soul but he managed to regain composure with only a single tear escaping.

"We really should be talking about how we are going to get the Ubers off the ship," he said, steering the conversation away from himself.

She managed to open her eyes and Harper noticed they were glassy with pain. "Honestly, Harper, how long did it take you to learn all of Andromeda's systems?"

He cleared his throat nervously. "Weeks," he answered.

"Exactly. I can control the virus but all I can do is either turn the ship over to the Niets or have the virus eat itself. Both ways, they have control. And there's no way I can learn how to do anything in the VR matrix in the span of time they're going to allow me to be in there."

Harper sighed. She was right. And he knew there was no way they'd let him help her. Unfortunately, the Ubers weren't that stupid.

"I'm sorry," she said softly when she caught his look of despair. "Maybe if there was some kind of training mode that I could use real quick to learn some basic…" she trailed off when his expression changed from one of obvious defeat to one of absolute joy.

"Training mode! Josie, you're a genius! I have a plan!"

OOO

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