TRIGGER WARNING: the second half of this chapter contains mention of suicidal thoughts/feelings.
Weird confession: Ah'kiat was a spur of the moment addition to this story and I am OBSESSED somehow. Let me know what you think! (and not to worry, there will still be plenty of Riot and Zihrait (+ Vechaath being a BAMF appearances))
Soft whuffs and strange keening noises filtered into her consciousness as Hwynn came to. She felt disoriented and numb, unable even to swallow or remember how to open her eyes.
Was this death? And if so, what was that awful racket?
Her throat throbbed, memory of the unforgiving grip crushing her windpipe so clear and real that she wondered if she wasn't still being suffocated. But no, when she sucked in, precious air found its way into her lungs, and along with it a foreign smell. It was earthy and pungent, yet not in an unpleasant way - just different from the recycled air on the station. Eyelids fluttering open of their own volition, she squinted in the dim lighting. The surface upon which she was lying was hard and tepid beneath her cheek.
A chorus of yips assaulted her ears the moment she managed to convince her limbs to move, setting her heart to pounding as she staggered up onto her elbows and blinked in the semi-darkness. Thick bars surrounded her, and on the other side of them dozens of sleek quadrupedal beasts lunged and leapt, saliva glinting off their gnashing fangs as they snapped and gnawed at the metal enclosure encompassing her. She pushed herself further back, only to realize the drooling creatures were caged to either side of her and that her movements were serving to rouse them more, eliciting louder agitated cries. Spots tinged her peripherals, warning that her blood oxygenation levels were still recovering.
Where was this? What had happened?
Drawing her arms and legs in tight, she quivered at the scraping sounds of teeth on metal as the beasts struggled to reach her. They snarled and clambered over one another in their frenzy, tussling for room to chew and slaver on the bars. Beady black eyes and a slightly elongated snout, lean hairless bodies, and claws which scrabbled for purchase on the smooth floor - an image from one of her digitized texts materialized in her panicked mind.
Yaut hounds.
She'd no sooner identified them than they quieted in unison and turned away from her, the eeriness of it causing the fine hairs on her body to stand on end.
The room brightened marginally as a door slid open. Whines prefaced the arrival of a Yautja, the illuminated white eye slits confirming that this was indeed the male who'd choked her into unconsciousness and presumably then locked her up with the hounds. He paused, silhouetted for a moment in the doorway as those piercing lenses were directed onto her.
Hwynn's muscles froze up, riveting her to the spot - not that there was anywhere for her to go in the confines of her cell. She was trapped out in the open.
The male gave one abrupt jerk with his arm, sending something tumbling into the room. It landed in a misshapen heap just beyond the bars of the larger enclosure which housed the hounds, within which her cage had been placed, sending the beasts into a raucous tumult again.
Slapping her hands over her ears, she watched in mounting trepidation as the male approached the outer cage. He lifted his wrist device and entered some command and a section of the bars immediately before him retracted, freeing the frantic hounds. They fell upon whatever it was he'd thrown in, piling atop the heap and ripping into it. Wet sounds of rending flesh reached her despite her palms pressed over her ears and the thrum of her own pulse.
With the hounds distracted, the male stepped inside their enclosure. Instead of taking a direct path, he prowled around her cage slowly, forcing her to twist and pivot in place to keep him within her sight, motions which brought on a bout of lightheadedness. She blinked and drew more air past her bruised and tender throat, desperate not to pass out in his presence again. He circled, one way and then another, his silent movements deliberate and unhurried - and designed to toy with her, she recognized.
Attempting to demand what it was he wanted with her produced nothing more than a whimper and had the undesired effect of causing him to close in on her. She shrank back as he crouched down, pushing herself as far back against the opposite side of the small cage as possible, and tried again. "What do you want?" Forming the simple question grated against her abused vocal cords painfully and she was unable to achieve more than a hoarse whisper.
He remained still at first, making her wonder whether he even understood - but he'd seemed to comprehend well enough when the other Yautja, his Hunt brother, had left her fate in his hands. 'They silenced his voice,' the other had claimed, and his continued silence seemed to support that. Even if he did understand her, he wouldn't be able to explain why he'd brought her here instead of killing her. She flinched reflexively when he moved, one hand and then the other coming up, thick fingers sliding around the bars, curling and tightening as he leaned in until his mask was nearly touching the cage. The gleaming white optics both pinned her in place and also served to reveal small fissures and pitting in the dull armor concealing his face. In his current stooped position, the long black tubules which sprouted from the dome of his sloping head brushed the floor. Ivory and obsidian banding alternatingly encircled the curtain of smooth appendages. His hide was graphite in colour, with darkening points dorsally along the outside planes of his heavily muscled arms and legs, and lighter ventrally. This close, the pale splotches she'd initially assumed to be splatters of synth fluid appeared more as irregular patches of dermis void of pigment, a condition which was known as vitiligo amongst humans and which was believed to be caused by episodes of extreme stress.
A sudden jolt to the cage brought her wandering attention flying back from a visual study of the male to her current predicament. Something seized her from behind and she remembered the hounds with a shirek, lurching away from the bars too late. One of the beasts, muzzle now stained with a milky white substance, had caught the back of her lab coat in its fangs. It snarled and gave a shake of its head which yanked her bodily backwards towards the bars with an audible shredding of the fabric. The clasps which held the garment closed busted apart under the strain of its wearer clambering in one direction while it was being relentlessly jerked in the other. Like an out-of-body experience, she perceived the panting and plaintive, desperate cries she heard were coming from her and not the hound as it hauled her back towards the bars.
Then the coat tore and she collided with the floor, stunned motionless for a fraction of a second before the good sense to move out of reach overtook her. She scrambled on all fours to the centre of the cage and recalled the Yautja, whipping her head that way.
He hadn't moved at all. The featureless mask remained fixed on her and his hands still gripped the bars. Watching her struggle against the beast.
"You distracted me on purpose," Hwynn croaked in comprehension.
Removing one hand, he flicked his fingers in some gesture she'd never before seen. A staccato clicking noise burst forth and to her surprise the beast, which had moments before been doing its utmost to eat her through the bars of her cage, slunk over to his side and rolled submissively, showing its belly.
He had command of the hounds, it seemed.
She swallowed with difficulty as, one after another, the rest appeared and arranged themselves all around their master. Their feral black eyes rested on her, snouts tinged with the same white liquid as the first, and a furtive glance over her shoulder confirmed the thing they'd been fed had been an android. A scored and drool-coated endoskeleton was all that was left.
The male's other hand released the bars as well and he reached up, disengaging his mask with a hiss of depressurizing air. He lowered it from his face, revealing deep set eyes of an unexpectedly intense frost blue hue and a cranial ridge ringed by bony protrusions. Quills, indicative of a well matured age she knew, sprouted from his temples and prominent brow, and below them his upper mandibles supported two sets of tusks instead of the one she was accustomed to from the cadavers. As he spread them to an impossibly wide reach, the insides of his cheeks flashing a contrasting salmon colour, she noted rows of symmetrical divots in his large lower tusks which looked to have been notched into them intentionally using some tool. Mandible flaring was an aggressive display, one long since determined by xenobiologists before her time to be designed to intimidate or challenge, and being the target of such a display, she couldn't say she disagreed with the interpretation. The inner fangs he bared looked no less lethal than those of the hounds surrounding him as their chorus of vicious growls rose up, filling the silent void their master left.
Jaele waited, chewing her lip as the male artisan she studied under examined her progress on the serrated guard she was working on. The piece would be designed to affix to a gauntlet once finished, to act as both another layer of defense and a slashing weapon. She rocked gently on the balls of her feet while he turned the honed metal in his hands, his keen beryl eyes scouring it for defects, and couldn't help preferring a certain sanguine set.
Zihrait had once judged her javelin with equal scrutiny. Now, his clouded gaze saw little, if anything. The impairment wasn't as pronounced as it might have been in a human because his other senses were perceptive enough to diminish the deficit his loss of sight constituted, but the uncertainty it had created within him was hard to watch. His movements, always so lithe and full of purpose before, were much more careful now, sometimes even hesitant. He was comfortable in the confines of his quarters, which he was familiar with, and could navigate fairly easily. The only time she'd yet enticed him to leave, trying to coax him to the mess hall to eat, they'd made it as far as the first intersection in the corridor where a passing male had ruthlessly shouldered him aside and set him over the edge. Worst was that she knew he'd been able to hear and smell the other Yautja approaching, but had frozen when she'd attempted to steer him out of the way. It'd only been later that she'd realized her error. Only younger, lesser Hunters gave way to their betters. She saw it everyday as she traversed the halls to and from the armory. To move aside would have probably shown weakness.
She was caught up in her own thoughts to such an extent that not only had she failed to notice her mentor was no longer inspecting her piece, but also the arrival of a second male - Vechaath.
He gave the guard, still held by her mentor, only a cursory glance before his red eyed mask tilted down to survey her. "You labour twice as long to produce the same piece as any other, little female. If gestating hinders your efforts, you will be moved to the nursery with the other breeders."
Baffled by this pronouncement, Jaele wondered if perhaps whatever device allowed him to speak English hadn't malfunctioned. Gestating? Breeders?
"Speak," he prompted her, the command more growl than word, when all she did was blink at him dumbly.
"I don't- what do you mean?" she managed to cobble together, heart thumping.
"In what way was I unclear?" The demand hung in the air between them, daring her to contradict his statement. This was someone unaccustomed to being questioned, she could tell.
"I know I'm not as fast as the others, but I'm not-" Her tongue stubbornly refused to form the term, thwarting her even when she tried a second time. "I'm not p-"
Vechaath continued to glower down at her for several drawn out moments. Her mentor stood slightly behind him, silent as he looked on, and during that potent silence her heart rate doubled, knocking against the inside of her ribcage as though fighting to free itself from the situation as frantically as she wished to flee it herself. Finally, Vechaath snorted. "Witless 'ooman. If it is Yautja spawn you carry, you have wasted my time and patience, for your kind are too frail to bear pups. Was it the ignoble pretender who seeded you?"
Distantly, she could hear the normal ambient noises of the other crafters labouring at their work stations, but a dull roar was building slowly in her head. She couldn't be- she could not be pregnant. A low rumble of perturbance reminded her she was expected to respond and she grasped for an appropriate answer. "Zihrait- no, he never- he didn't-"
"The cowering filth from the ship on which you were found, then," he cut her off, head cocking to the side as though he was considering this alternative. "A human suckling will not survive long amongst Yautja. You will retire to the nursery and will continue your training once the thing has perished. Go."
Jaele's mind was in such a tangle she only understood half of what the giant male grumbled at her, but she latched onto his concluding order of 'go' and tripped over herself in her rush to leave the armory.
This was not happening. She couldn't be.
Her stomach churned at the implication one of those monsters who'd forced themselves inside her lived on in a tiny spark growing within her body.
How could Vechaath know? Why would he even insinuate it if he didn't know, what would cause him to make such a declaration? The male had shown as close to zero interest in her as possible while at the same time acknowledging her existence since they'd come face to face on that ship. There was no reason for him to insist she was pregnant if it wasn't the case, and yet every fiber of her being revolted at the idea.
Corridors passed in a blur as she tried to put as much distance as possible between herself and that awful revelation, but could not quite evade it no matter how many disgruntled Yautja she skirted around or how many turns she took. It wasn't until the doors of the lift she'd thrown herself into sealed that the futility and weight of it came fully crashing down upon her.
It would have been better had she died on that ship. If she'd had the courage to just end it, to put herself beyond their ability to hurt her. She hadn't escaped, not even now - not even with them all dead.
Sinking down onto the floor, Jaele succumbed to desolation in a way she'd not allowed herself to before. Not when Zihrait had located her in the mine and she'd been convinced she was about to die, not when he left her on that planet alone time and time again, not when they'd held her down and used her over and over or beaten her for fighting them, not when the 'aseigan had stolen her meager meals and jostled her around or hissed at her as if she were worthless. Violent sobs wracked her entire frame as she wailed at the unfairness of it all, of surviving all of that only to now be faced with this. She couldn't do it, couldn't cope any longer.
The lift slowed to a halt and agitated snarling floated inside the moment the door slid open.
It didn't matter. She couldn't even be bothered to get up and out of the way of the Yautja waiting to make use of the lift. A clawed foot made contact with her side, an indication she was probably about to be kicked aside, and she was past caring. Her vision was swimming with hot tears when she opened her eyes, and all she could discern was a sturdy pair of legs.
The growling varied greatly in cadence, evidence the Yautja - who had demonstrated far more patience than most so far - was disturbed by her emotional display. A light touch atop her head startled her enough to break off from crying. She saw a vague impression of the figure standing above her slowly lower itself down and the light pressure slid down along the side of her head as well, talons scraping across her braids to rest against her flushed and wet cheek. Even through the haze of tears it was impossible to mistake the soft yellow abdomen and scarlett stripes curling around the mossy hide.
She almost pressed into him, overwhelmed with sheer relief by his unexpected presence, but recoiled belatedly.
What was he going to think? Surely he'd be repulsed by her condition, by what it meant - by the knowledge she'd allowed herself to be victimized and been helpless to stop it.
A fresh wave of self disgust washed over her and she shrank away from him while her chest tightened in anguish. She wouldn't be able to bear his derision.
The moment she leaned back, breaking contact, the snarls were replaced by pensive clicking and eventually an uncertain chuff. That one soft call caused her to dissolve into despair again - the first time he'd done so since they'd been reunited. He attempted to beckon her to him again before releasing an anxious groan at her unresponsiveness.
She told herself it would be best if he lost patience with what must be proving highly unusual antics from his perspective and simply left her there. Female Yautja didn't weep. They were resilient and fierce. She was neither of those things, just a frail and witless human, as Vechaath had noted already.
Reverberations so low she felt rather than heard them at first slowly rose in volume, echoing off the walls of the lift. Dragging a sleeve across her sweaty, tear streaked face, Jaele hiccuped and peered at the source crouching opposite her.
Zihrait's head was angled, his once vibrant eyes staring sightlessly over her shoulder as he issued the purring sound Pheist had described as one Riot used when content or when trying to comfort her. It wasn't a noise she'd heard him use before now and she found herself unspeakably humbled by it. Sensing she'd been somewhat pacified, he chuffed again and waited. When she finally overcame her indecisiveness and shifted toward him, his head turned to track her movements and a taloned hand reached out, seeking her and closing around her upper arm.
She expected him to pull her up from the floor, what amounted to a vulnerable position to him, but he did no such thing. His warm grip remained gentle, not threatening to propel her anywhere in particular, more of an anchoring point of contact. With an equal parts guilty and grateful whimper, she huddled in his shadow and allowed him to close the space between them until he squatted on his haunches, each muscular thigh bracketing her and the hot expulsions of his breath fanning the crown of her head. Carefully, she laid her cheek against his pale abdomen and closed her eyes. Gentle undulations swelled within his chest, enveloping her, and she sagged in exhaustion, utterly spent and yet unable to accept the consolation he offered in bad faith. Blindly locating his free hand, she guided it to her belly, praying he would understand the unspoken confession.
The soothing purrs ceased immediately as his body stiffened in reaction and she braced herself for rejection, for outrage - for precisely what, she knew not. He'd never lashed out at her apart from when she'd defied him in filling the water skins, and even then he'd not harmed her - but this? She wasn't sure how he'd respond.
He didn't pull away. His warm, calloused palm stayed where she'd placed it, resting over her as yet flat stomach. Should he have had a mind to, his talons could have easily found their way to her vital organs. They did no such thing, however. Tense moments melted into one another. He clicked softly, processing either the situation or how he would proceed. Then, to her dismay, his hand flattened further against her and he resumed purring, the reverberations deeper and richer than previously.
Jaele cried more.