The Soldier didn't offer her his hand, but she had not expected him to. The courtesies of a lover were not in his nature. Distantly, so distantly, she knew herself to be rationalizing—it is not what I do, it is why I do it. Posed on the edge of horror, she found herself bargaining again and again, promising herself anything and everything if only she could bear it, bear letting him see lust long enough to cloud his mind. More intimate than anything he'd done to her, even than the scalpel the Medic had wielded, letting him have this much was a more bitter violation. For a moment, she understood the RED Spy so well she wanted to hunt him down and rip him from chin to groin for teaching her how to survive under these conditions.

She pulled her gaze from the bony arch of the Soldier's toes up the muscle of his shins, the round cup of his knees, chest that spoke loudly of the gym, to his face and the triumph on it, the simple knowledge that he would win, inexorably as time marched on. And then she was someone else, the knife of despair opening her like a mouth and something new emerging.

The Cook pushed herself against the back wall of the tub, looking at him with lust made unstable by the riot between her ears. She reached for the taps, turning them on to send cherry-bright water in gouts down the drain. Wet, she reached for the Soldier, pulling his hips toward her.

Goosebumps swept his body, and he pulled the shower curtain across the tub, blocking the room. The silent space between them started to fill with steam and he watched her, knowing the profanity she was committing as she willingly touched him.

"No tears in you, are there Rosie-girl," he said softly. "Just that devastation." The Soldier laughed. "I didn't find many like you while I was hunting, but I kept the ones like you the longest. You're harder to break, because someone has already crawled into all the holes in you and broke you. But there's always one or two holes no one has found yet."

She dug her nails into his hips, closing the last inch and pressed herself against him, leaving blood and water where they touched. He let her, more than willing now that she thought herself to have reached the deepest part of despair. It was only then that he touched her like a lover, reaching gently for her to hold her close to him.

"Did lust win," he said. "Will you willingly let me crawl in all the holes inside you, thinking it'll end this just a little faster?"

The Cook stayed there, clinging to him, and he stroked her face. "It won't," he said softly. "Even when they take you back, it won't end."

The Soldier leaned down and kissed her, his stroking hers until they opened. "What you don't understand," he said, "is that anything you give me stays mine. And you will hate yourself for it."

She kissed him with the cruel edge of determination, and he only smiled and returned it. Then he turned her and grabbed the soap. Putting her hands on the wall under the spray, he washed her, hands cunning and kind.

Did I think I was terrified before, she thought distantly. She could feel herself responding, could feel the desire to please and be pleased if only it would stop him from hurting her anymore. The Soldier patiently scrubbed the last of the blood from her, hands lingering where he knew he could elicit noise, to make the lie she'd told real. And despite her best efforts, it became real, sensation rushing in where she had opened up just enough to make her changed behavior believable. Slowly, ever so slowly, she warmed, still hating him and yet reacting. She had to chew the inside of her cheek not to make a sound, warmth crawling up her spine with his fingers. He leaned on her to turn off the taps, pressing himself against her back.

The Soldier lingered there, draped over her, hands sweeping up to cup her breasts as if he loved them. "The body reacts, Rosie-girl, even if you don't want it to. Your body wants me to be kind, wants the pain to stop and to get the chance to relax. It'll change your mind for you, Honey. You'll keep rallying, but it'll be harder every time because you'll remember that it could feel good, if you'd just do what I tell you to do." And then, he thought, I'll wean you from even that, living in the hope that I might make you feel good if you obey. But even then, it won't be predictable.

He straightened, still close enough to raise the fine hairs on her body, and reached for her hips. She yielded for just a moment before stiffening and he chuckled. "Bit by bit, Rosie."

The Cook turned and backed up, pressing herself to the tile behind her—volatile and acidic, nerves singing and screaming at the intimacy, at the creeping way that it had sneaked up on her. I have to take it back, she thought. I have to take control of this.

She took a breath to speak and he reached out for her chin, tilting her face up. "You never did tell me who made all those broken places in your head. Not a boyfriend, but someone. Who?"

She shook her head at him stubbornly, fingers skating on the wall behind her.

"Tell you what," he said. "I'll ask and watch your face. Father."

She simply stared at him, hate burning on her face.

"Brother."

She kept staring.

"Priest."

She couldn't stop the shadow on her face.

"That's a reaction, Rosie girl, but it's not quite as good a reaction as I want. So now I'm going to keep asking questions about that."

"Rector."

"Deacon."

"Preacher."

Her pupils dilated.

"So, now I ask a few more questions. Touch."

A slow flush started up her face. The Soldier chuckled.

"Sex."

The flush deepened and she started to picture killing the Soldier again. His eyebrows raised. "I wonder how old you were. Do you picture yourself on his lap, Rosie? Do your little legs dangle without touching the floor?"

She clamped her teeth together and he whistled through his teeth. "Now that, Rosie girl, is a hell of a hold to have over someone. I do love that you blush so clearly. It makes this much easier. Tell me something, Sweetie. Did you like it? Do you ever touch yourself and think about it?" He leaned down, closer to her up-tilted face. "Did you like servicing him? Did it hurt?"

Her blood roared in her ears—if I don't stop him, she thought and then let the thought trail off, refusing to finish it. "Did you," she whispered, breath trembling, "know that the Spy is using you?"

He looked at her incredulously. "Of course he is. And I use him."

The Cook struggled to put words on it—the expressions on the Spy's face, the way he eagerly fed the Soldier ideas and kept him busy. Control, she thought. "Did you notice," she whispered, "that your urges are always stronger when he's around?"

The Soldier frowned, his fingers on her chin tightening. "No, they're always strong."

"Did you notice," she said, "that he feeds you ideas and inserts himself in your play time?"

He looked at her then, a strange expression on his face, and said nothing.

"Did you notice," she said, "that you never quite get what you want, that you include him whether you meant to or not?"

At that, the Soldier's habitual expression of condescending amusement disappeared. The expression left on his face was naked—power, a rage fermented to a killing high, a hunger that was helpless to anything but destroy. A guess, she thought, and a good one.

They regarded each other. She saw what he could not do, the missing part of him. Not a matter of training, or even un-training, but something that was never there, a baffled and missing part of him. The Cook had seen a lack of mercy the first time he abducted her. But the fault lines ran deeper. What he could not control was poison to him, and what he could not know had made it poison. If he lacked love, or mercy, kindness or even how to identify it, he knew that he lacked it and could not obtain it. He could not control it.

The actions of a lover without understanding, she thought. A clever play.

He saw that she could see him, past the amused cruelty that he found comfortable and into another part of him, a part he had thought carefully hidden, the insecurity of knowing that there were things the world knew but he did not. The long carried burden of rage, that there was something he could not understand no matter what he did—the woman standing in front of him was uncanny, the expression on her face raising the memory of a time when he fumbled to find control of his world knowing that an inarticulate piece of it was missing. War had rescued him from it, giving him the background he'd always needed to blend in.

"Nothing's perfect," the Soldier snarled. "And you're not taking control of this. On your knees."

He pushed down at her shoulders, forcing her to her knees. "Since you need something in your mouth," he said, anger heating his tone, "get busy."

He was softer. The Cook could tell that he was thinking about what she'd said, and wrapped her lips around him with a secretive smile.