Here ya go sweetiepies. I managed to match this more eventful chapter with a busy week, so I won't be able to update for several days (at best). So enjoy this until then!

Story fun fact: An incredible perk with having a main character named Stephanie is that I easily can change 'She' by going in to the word and writing 'tep' and then jumping right and writing 'ani'. I'm fully aware that wasn't even a little bit interesting but goddamit this is hard. And also I wanted to share that with you guys. I've totally used that move lots of times writing this.

Chapter 20
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
or
Gabriel Keller

It had been naïve to think the world would stay idyllic forever.

Stephanie thought it bitterly, annoyed with herself and most of all the gods of misfortune. She scanned through the shelves with hectic eyes. It was just a stupid pill.

Sure, she had no idea she would be having any use of that sort of protection when she fled her apartment all that time ago, but she definitely should have been thinking about it once she'd started sleeping with Toad. It was like she was an idiotic teenager. Of course you should use protection during sex. Only, neither she nor Toad had remembered that.

How can someone not remember that?

He probably had assumed she was taking the pill. Everyone was. How on earth she had forgotten she wasn't taking it, she didn't know. She'd been taking them since she was fifteen, never worrying about any other protection. Her mind hadn't gotten the hang of how it only kept protecting if she kept taking them.

Thank god she'd been quick about noticing her missing period. If she was pregnant she couldn't be that far along. This meant she had – options - however little she liked to think about it. With an exhale of breath she found the test.

She scanned the aisle to find something else she could take with her, if someone noticed her missing. An excuse for sneaking out to town even though no one was supposed to.
She saw a packet of tampons and picked them up.

A pregnancy test and a packet of tampons, what a strange combination of things to buy. If you needed the one you probably didn't need the other. She decided to head for the cashier.

She was startled when she heard a voice behind her, interrupting her steps.

"Fancy meeting you here."

She twirled around towards the voice, gasping once she recognized the man. He was called Hendrickson, and he was one of many anti-mutants working beneath Gabriel in the CS.

The mere sight of him turned her blood cold, and she knew without a doubt she'd done a grave mistake leaving the mansion. She staggered backwards, items falling out of her limp hands, only to stumble into a hard body behind her.

"We met around Christmas. I had a hunch you'd come back. Do you remember, Steph?"

She felt something press at the small of her back, and she knew immediately it was a gun. Looking over her shoulder she saw David Juarez, one of Gabriel's closest. It was him she had seen, she reflected numbly, when they had all been Christmas shopping. She'd thought it was a trick of the eye, but it hadn't been.

They had probably been patrolling the town since then, waiting for her to come back. She knew there was no use in fighting.

"I'll come with you," she said in a low voice.

"You will," David agreed, pressing the gun harder into her back for measure.

They left the store like a group of friends, calmly, with Hendrickson and David chatting between them. There was no reason for anyone around to notice anything suspicious, and Stephanie was brutally sure she'd be long dead before anyone even thought to look for her.

She was thrown into the back of their car, and Hendrickson cuffed her hands while David made a phone call.

"We have her," he said immediately.

Even though she couldn't hear the voice on the other end of the line she was sure it was Gabriel. She felt nauseated of a sudden, her stomach cramping. This was worse than any of her nightmares. David started up the car while listening to the other person talking, taking the car out in the road.

"Yes…. Yes… We'll bring her."

Stephanie took a few deep breaths to keep herself from either crying or throwing up. Hendrickson saw her teary eyes and grabbed her arm roughly, leaning in close.

"We all heard what Gabe taught you, whore. If we're all lucky he'll let us all have a go after he's done with you. Maybe that'll make you finally get you don't fuck with us."

The car drove on, and Stephanie dimly wondered if they were heading for the Headquarters, or perhaps the former-secret building by the harbor, where they had kept Toad and Elizabeth imprisoned.

Perhaps even a new building. The harbor building had after all been compromised when she spilled the beans about it.

She had been somewhat proud, before, thinking about the mutants she had helped revealing those secrets. Now she was far too sick to the stomach to feel any of the sorts.

Stephanie didn't at all recognize the building the two men brought her into. David Juarez had taken them far away from the mansion, on roads she didn't recognize, and they ended up outside of an office complex in an industrial area, possibly somewhere in New Jersey. The drive had taken something between 40 minutes and an hour, Stephanie wasn't sure.

Hendrickson pulled her out of the car by the arm, unnecessarily roughly, and when David had gotten out of the car he joined them, grabbing Stephanie's other arm. She'd been amused if she hadn't still felt sick. What did they possibly imagine she could do? Her hands were caught in chafing cuffs behind her back and she was furthermore a particularly small woman. There was no need for two burly men to grab her arms so tight.

They probably want to look good, she thought. And make me realize what little chance I have of escaping.

As they led her over the parking lot she glanced at the men on either side of her. She knew them both well from her time with the CS. Hendrickson she'd never cared for – he was a sadistic guy, and he had been unpleasant to deal with from the start.

He was one of the guys that had tried to beat up that mutant child, the time she realized she had to get out of the CS. The time that was followed by Gabriel's abuse of her.

When her eyes went over to David, she had to force herself to get accustomed to this new side of him. David had always been polite to her. He'd even been a friend; she remembered double-dating with him and his girlfriend a few times.

"How's Suzanne?" whe asked in a friendly tone, for no other reason than to see his reaction and add it to this new picture of him.

He got angry, as she had suspected. Throwing a hard look her way, jaw clenching, he muttered:
"Don't speak about Suzanne."

Stephanie sensed a deeper meaning to his anger than her unworthiness of speaking Suzanne's name. She recalled Suzanne never had been that thrilled about the CS. Some distant relative that was a mutant, Stephanie couldn't really remember. It had been a touchy subject, silenced quickly.

Desperately grasping the chance to mock him, she said:
"Suzanne didn't dig the murder campaign either? Don't sweat it, it's got to be some sort of female logic. Couldn't possibly be your-"

She was interrupted by Hendrickson backhanding her. It was a hard blow, snapping her head back like a bobblehead. Her ear on the side he had hit was ringing. The pain was manageable, so Stephanie bit back a cry and focused on the satisfaction of actually having uttered the words.

She was pretty sure she wouldn't be in a clear state of mind for much longer, and taking that opportunity to show them how she felt about them almost made her want to smile. She might have done it too, if her face didn't hurt so much.

"Don't talk about her," David said again, slower.

She winked at him, still high on the feeling of defiance.

"I can't wait 'til you've got that smug look wiped off your face," Hendrickson spat.

Stephanie stayed silent after that.

They dragged her through the door, and entered a lobby empty of people - except for a man behind a desk who was monitoring several screens with security camera footage. The men all exchanged nods when they passed.

Entering what seemed to be a conference room Stephanie immediately recognized Gabriel's form. He was standing, the way he had always liked to do during meetings, discussing something with what seemed to be a handful of CS top members seated around a table. Stephanie even knew a few of them, though many faces were completely new.

Seeing Gabriel again after all that time was as horrific as all her nightmares combined. Her fear was suffocating, and she couldn't feel any difference from when she'd first managed to escape from him, that night that was now almost a year ago. Shouldn't she have been able to put anything of it behind her?

Nauseated, she froze on the spot and the two men beside her seemed content to stop in the doorway with her. They stood silent while Gabriel finished his conversation.
She knew he'd noticed them, even though he hadn't looked straight at them. Furthermore Gabriel had known she was coming for a long time, and he had been expecting her for the last few months. He was simply trying to make a point.

When he finished talking he at first avoided looking at her, instead meeting David's gaze. His blue eyes were colder than Stephanie had ever seen them. For a moment they passed over her face, so briefly it was barely noticeable. It made her melancholy, all of a sudden, remembering the time they had had together. But the feeling was only fleeting, soon replaced by the fear that was now so familiar to her.

The sound of his voice brought a flood of painful memories back.

"Put her in a cell. I'll deal with it later."

He was making another point, in the fashion he liked to. He was letting her know how little he cared for her now, that she was a nuisance, something to make an example out of and nothing more.

He was going to make her regret everything she had done, but he wasn't going to hurry doing it – she wasn't important enough.

He went back to the conversation, and Stephanie briefly reflected over how hard he looked. His face seemed tense, his hair was shorter. Had he always looked so cold?

Then David tugged at her arm, tearing her away from the conference room, and her thoughts.

The cell was a small room, much like an interrogation room. There were a couple of mirrored windows on one wall, and a chair in the middle of it all. There was even mattress in a corner, but David pressed her down on the chair, hooking her cuffs on the chair. It was a very uncomfortable way of sitting, arms locked behind the back of the chair, but she didn't complain. They left her then, and she was alone.

Stephanie had managed to calm herself down slightly during the hours she was alone there, but when the door opened and Gabriel stepped through it the fear was on her once more. Realizing she was alone in a room with him again made her want to throw up.

She swallowed hard, forcing the bile down in her throat.

Gabriel must have seen how frightened she was, because he was smiling.

"Stephanie, Stephanie," he sing-songed mockingly, "did you actually think you would get away?"

He caught her chin with his hand, forcing her face up and staring at her.

"You will regret everything you did to us. Filthy whore."

What's a little pain, Stephanie tried to think, but this was all her nightmares come to life. All her ghosts – or that one specific ghost - standing right in front of her, promising her he would hurt her.

Gabriel let go of her face then, crossing his arms and looking down at her.

"But first I want you to tell me what you did at that mutant-infested place."

Stephanie stared up at him in surprise.

Doesn't he know already?

"I hid. From you," she said, and her voice seemed weak in her own ears.

He grunted. She wasn't sure if he had been hoping for something more.

"What did you tell them? About us?"

Stephanie's eyes fell to the floor. What had he hoped? That she would still be keeping the CS dear in her heart after everything? That she would care about him at all – after what he had done?

"Look at me," he hissed, and his calm exterior fell for that second.

She met his eyes.

"Everything. I told them everything," she said.

She wasn't sure if her voice was defiant or apologetic. He hit her with his fist across her cheek.

The pain was explosive, but not as bad as that time with the lamp. Not yet, anyhow. He hit her again, and the chair fell over.

"WHORE," he shouted at her, spitting as he did so, kicking her in the stomach. He wasn't calm at all anymore.

Her shoulder ached on the spot where she had landed on it, and Gabriel's foot hit her hipbone with force, making her cry out in pain.

The situation, the overwhelming fear, was all too familiar. She felt tears forming in her eyes, but she didn't care any longer. The pain was too immense.

In his anger Gabriel fell down on his knees and grabbed her neck, strangling her. His face was bright red, his expression a distorted mask of pure rage.

The feeling of strong fingers pressing on Stephanie's blood flow to the head called on a different memory. She gasped unsuccessfully for air, and for some strange reason could only think of that time Toad had strangled her. In the beginning, when she and him had been fighting all the time.

She had been defiant then.

Gabriel let go of her throat and her breath was ragged when it came back. When he punched her again she felt the metallic taste of blood in her mouth.

Still not being able to get the thoughts of Toad out of her head, a strange obstinate impulse made her spit the blood at Gabriel's way. It hit his shirt.

The rage after that was indescribable. When he rose to go Stephanie felt as if every part of her was broken. She was crying openly by then.

"I'll get the respect back in you," he muttered, his tone threatening.

He turned then, to leave her lying on her side, still cuffed helplessly to the chair. She was bleeding and hurting, and he was so sure he'd beaten all the defiance out of her. That though filled Stephanie with anger.

"What, you want me to heil for you?"

Her voice was week, and a loose tooth distorted her speech some, but Gabriel heard it all right. He stopped in the doorway, one hand on the handle. When he looked at her the anger was gone, replaced by utter surprise.

"Did you just call me a Nazi?" he asked.

The question brought strength to her voice. She lifted her head from the floor to stare at him.

"Aren't you?"

She could tell he was too surprised to get angry, and she recognized the feeling. She had been surprised when Toad had accused her of the very same thing – and that was after she had left the CS. She couldn't imagine the confusion for someone so caught up with the organization as Gabriel was.

He was actually dumbfounded.

"No!" he sputtered.

She had the retort on her tongue immediately.

"No?" she smiled sweetly, even though it hurt her face. "Sorry there, love."

It was ridiculous to say it, and it was the worst situation imaginable, but it was all Stephanie could do just keeping the British accent out of her voice when she continued:

"It's the part about racial cleansing. Always confuses me to think it's the same thing."

Around Halloween I brought back a ghost. Super intentional.
Hugs.