"Right on time as I expected." Arrass said with a smug condescending smile as he once again led them to the dining room. Trophy noticed Alase hiding under the table. She wanted to reassure her that she'd be safe now, but Baralai had a plan and she trusted him implicitly, so she'd just follow his lead and not do anything she wasn't told to do.
"Get out from under there!" Arrass snapped at Alase, who reluctantly obeyed, keeping her head down, and Trophy barely stifled a gasp at the marks on her calves…no wonder she was crawling on all fours instead of walking. "So, what's it's going to be? Your wife or your career?" Arrass asked Baralai.
"Give me yours, I'll give you mine." he replied.
"I knew nothing meant more to you than your career." Arrass sneered. "Whore, go put these on your replacement." he ordered her as he took the shackles off and handed them to her. Whore looked down uneasily at the shackles as she took hold of them. She was so used to them that being without them made her feel naked, but that wasn't the source of her sudden discontent. "Go!" he spat at her with his hand on his belt.
Trophy had been stunned into silence when Baralai gave his response to Arrass' ultimatum, but now she found her voice as Alase slowly crawled closer. "Master? What are you doing?" she asked her husband.
"He's your Master now." Baralai coldly replied.
"Are you serious?" Trophy demanded to know. "This is your…"
Baralai quickly struck her before she had a chance to finish her sentence. "I didn't know you let your slaves talk back." he taunted Arrass while Trophy put her hand to her reddened cheek and stared at her husband with hurt eyes.
"I don't." He strode forward and took the gag out of his pocket and put it on Trophy before she even knew what was happening.
Despite her growing fear, she struck back at Arrass and bolted for the door, only to have Baralai shove her away from it hard, and she landed on the floor next to Whore, who was suffering her own emotional turmoil. She knew she was to be returned to her Master Baralai, but she knew nothing about being traded, and it was tearing her apart. She was being replaced by another woman who had the unmitigated gall to strike him! Whore could handle being apart from her Light with his promise that nothing could actually separate them, but not someone else in her place with him. Having become unable to hate her Light, she directed all her anger at Trophy as she erupted in violent jealousy.
"You're not worthy!" Whore tried to scream as she attacked Trophy with the shackles, but her voice was too broken to do more than whisper, and her attack was also broken since she was limited to only striking Trophy's legs from her position, but Baralai wrenched the shackles from her hands, putting them on his wife who had been trying to get away from her attacker .
A furious Arrass pulled Whore up by her hair. "Did you just disobey me?" he asked her angrily as she suddenly fell silent when realized she had crossed an unforgivable line.
"She's mine now. You deal with yours, and I'll deal with mine." Baralai pointed out.
"Fine." Arrass agreed, opening the door and dumping Whore unceremoniously onto the ground outside. "I'm done with you." He slammed the door as soon as Baralai stepped out, who heard the deadbolt slam shut as well.
Whore wasn't aware of Baralai picking her up at first, not until he opened the door to his luxury automobile, and then she turned hysterical, more from the shock of being cast aside by her Light than the fear of being outside for the first time in weeks.
"What the…" Laura blinked in disbelief at she took in the sight of a naked and injured Alase in Baralai's arms. An Alase who was mumbling incoherently as she tried ineffectually to free herself from him.
"Change of plans, as soon as we drive off, go help her." Baralai told Laura with an undertone of desperate urgency in his usually calm voice.
"You son of a behemoth!" Laura swore. "You bet your ass I'll help her, then you and I are going to have a talk." She hurriedly got out as Baralai carefully put Alase in the backseat and sat next to her.
"Let's go." he said when Laura angrily shut the door for him, and Solace took off. When they came to the first curve, she pulled over and parked where they couldn't be seen from the cottage. "I'll be back." Baralai said to Alase as he opened the door. "You're safe now. She'll take care of you." he indicated Solace before carefully closing the door and heading back to the cottage.
"I'm coming back there with you, okay?" Solace got out of the driver's seat and came around to the back to sit with the still hysterical Alase.
Whore barely heard anything, being put in a car against her will again had triggered an overwhelming fear within her, adding to the mental anguish she felt at being rejected by Arrass, and she was dangerously close to becoming catatonic as she curled up in the fetal position, still mumbling in whispers.
"I'm glad you're talking, because I have some questions for you, okay?" Solace put her hand on Alase's head and started gently stroking her hair.
Being touched with kindness for the first time she could remember penetrated Whore's torment with confusion, as the gesture evoked feelings completely alien to her. She felt like she was under attack, and she struck out blindly to protect herself.
"No." Solace easily grabbed Alase's wrists and held them firmly back against their user's body. "You must stop that." she said gently, but in an unarguable tone.
Whore's eyes widened and she focused on Solace as the mild use of force coupled with the authoritative command brought her back to herself. Her Light had acted the same way, just with more force…what was going on?
"Good, you're paying attention. Can you tell me who you are?" Solace asked her.
"My name is Whore. I exist only for the pleasure of others." she automatically replied, as her fractured mind's quest for a means to cope without her Light struck gold. She remembered her Master Baralai telling her that this woman would take care of her, and she was talking just like her Light had…could this be her new Light? Was that Baralai's purpose, to give her to them? "Who are you?" she dared to ask.
"My name is Patrice." Solace replied, controlling the anger she felt at what Alase had been brainwashed into believing she was, by violent means judging from the marks on her. "I'm here to help you."
"Thank you for helping me." Whore smiled genuinely for the first time in weeks as Solace's remarks unwittingly fed into her delusion by echoing what Arrass had told her…she did have a new Light! That was why she was traded off, it was time for her to move on to the next Light. She hadn't been rejected at all, and she was safe now, just like her Master Baralai said, and she became irreversibly attached to Patrice in that moment, as the only way to save her remaining sanity from a life without Arrass.
Trophy was also desperately trying to cope with her new situation. She wanted to believe in Baralai's plan, but what kind of a plan involved doing this to her? Arrass had shackled her in the confusion after Alase's failed attack, and now he was dragging her somewhere through the cottage. He taunted her as he opened the cellar door and pulled her with him down the stairs as she struggled in vain to free herself.
"I've always wanted to try an Al Bhed, but you women were always so damned independent. Gotta hand it to Baralai, he's got some skill if he turned their leader's daughter into his private call girl. Say, Callie would be a good name for you, wouldn't it? That's who you are now, understand?" Arrass told her.
"Who you are." Those words reverberated in Trophy's head. Baralai had told her to never forget who she was, and he had constantly reminded her of what she had accomplished. Now to escape, she had to draw on her skills honed from her rough and tumble childhood into her teenage years when she joined the fights against Sin and Vegnagun. Coupled with the commonplace fiend battles, she could do this. She still struggled, but now she looked around to plan her next move. When he took one arm off her to put his hand on the panel to open the door to the room he had kept Alase in, she realized she was going to have to take her only chance to escape now or end up like Alase.
"Get in there." Arrass went to shove Trophy into the room, but she ducked under his arms and slammed her full weight into him, knocking him painfully into the door frame before she sped for the stairs. She was halfway up them when he reappeared, cursing at her in the foulest language she had ever heard, but she didn't stop to look back, she kept her eyes on the open door above, and never saw the bent nail sticking up out of the rickety old stairs that caught one of the chain links of her shackles. Trophy never even had a chance to scream as she fell, hitting her head on the corner of the stairs and tumbling backwards, right into the waiting arms of Arrass.