Jian awakes in what she can only assume is the hold of the drukhari ship. Her head throbs and even the dim light hurts her eyes. The rest of her body aches and burns and stings in so many ways she's not sure if she could pick them out individually. Darkness slips back over her and she lets it take her into unawareness.
When she comes to a second time, little seems to have changed, although she can keep her eyes open now. Her skin is dry and itchy and feels oddly gritty.
My mother is dead. The thought overwhelms everything else in her mind and it crushes her. Her mother, dead, her waystone shattered. Her soul now the possession of the archon to feast on and revel in the pain or to sell to someone else who will do the same. Jian tries to call to mind a pleasant memory of her mother, her smile, the warmth of her embrace, the taste of the meat that she enjoyed smoking and drying for her family. But all that she can see is her agonized death mask, and all that she can taste is the bitter tang of her ashes. Sobs wrack Jian's body, but her eyes remain dry.
She feels a sharp sting in her leg, followed an instant later by a horrific, formless pain that races over her entire body in a wave and breaks, leaving her weak. Her cry of alarm only brings another sting, on her shoulder, followed by the same agony. So she holds in her emotions and does her best to remain quiet as, for the first time, she ventures outside her own head.
Her armor and weapons are gone, leaving her clad in only the tight shorts and sleeveless top she had been wearing underneath the body glove. Her hands are cuffed above her head and her feet chained together and attached to a ring in the deck plating, forcing her into a hunched sitting position. Although she can't tell exactly what's at her back, it feels like some kind of pole or support beam.
From her position, she can see others of her kin from the ship, perhaps two dozen of them. All bound, all wounded to some degree, all looking as defeated and exhausted as she feels, although not all have been attached to anything solid like she has been. Many she recognizes, although there is no one she knows as more than a name or a face. None of them seem to want to look at her. They blame her, she's certain. The protector who failed to protect them.
Some dim part of her brain that's still capable of thought realizes that there are probably more survivors that she can't see from her position, but her efforts to look around only bring another whiplash from the man that stands nearby.
As time stretches on, Jian grows used to her new situation. She's lost all sense of time, but it must be days, weeks at least she sits in the dark. Although she's never fed or given anything to drink, she doesn't feel the effects of hunger or thirst as acutely as she might. She wonders if that's the purpose of the injections that all the prisoners are repeatedly given. At first, she tries to count how many she receives, but gives up when she realizes she doesn't know how much time there is between them, or even if it's the same interval each time. Besides, there can be only one destination. What does it matter how long it takes to get there?
She and the others nearby are guarded by a rotating roster of what she surmises by appearance and comments to be low-ranking warriors of the kabal. They rarely speak to each other and never to the craftworlders, but are quick to strike out with the green-glowing whips any time someone makes a sound, or if they judge that someone has moved too much. So she stays still and silent, and in the stillness, she thinks of Reena and of her father. By now they must know that something is wrong. She tries to keep from imagining their grief and wonders what happened to Verynia, and to the rest of her sisters. The line of thought is full of sorrow, but when she lets her mind drift from the losses, she is instead forced to consider what will befall her when they reach Commeragh. Will it be a slow, torturous death, or centuries endless toil and a slow grinding into dust?
Yet even these ugly fears are preferable to remembering her mother's death, a scene that nonetheless torments her over and over again throughout the long hours. She must sleep at some point, but it's little different than being awake, the dreams only slightly more vivid than her own recollections.
One man, who wears tattered healer's robes, must lose his mind from fear and begins to babble and wail incoherently. When kicks and whiplashes fail to quiet him, the guard on duty rips his tongue from his mouth without hesitation. They drag him away a while later and Jian doesn't see him again.
Over the course of the journey, various drukhari visit the hold to slake their lusts on one or another of the prisoners. Unlike the normal silence, the guards seem to welcome the screams and struggles as their fellow raiders take their pleasure.
This, at least, she is spared, although she has no idea why. She certainly doesn't escape the attentions of her captors. Men and women both, she learns to silently accept their hands thrust roughly down her shirt and pawing at her thighs and tugging on her ears, accompanied by crude descriptions and threats that paint color to her starkest fears. Every word and touch builds a cringing, sick feeling in her, but the pole and the chains leave her nowhere to escape but her own head, where nightmares drive her back out and into sharp awareness of each moment.
After the healer has been gone for several injections, one of the guards approaches her. She doesn't look up. Why bother?
The guard grips her chin, forcing her to lift her head. She's a drukhari girl, Jian's own age or maybe even younger, with long, shiny black hair and a wicked grin on her face.
"See? What did I tell you?" says her companion, a redhead in an off-duty outfit, but otherwise very similar to the guard in appearance and mannerism.
"Hmm… I think you're right." They giggle to each other as the redhead hands the guard a small silver bag. She goes to work, smearing Jian's face with powders and liquids, twisting her head this way and that, pausing to lean back and inspect her work. Finally, she holds up a hand mirror, clearly expecting her work to be admired.
The makeup is garish, cheap products hastily applied, but even Jian can tell what it was meant to imitate: the purple-haired, robed woman who often appears at the archon's side, an attendant or courtesan of some sort. For a moment she stares at her reflection, searching for the source of amusement.
It's only then that she realizes with horror why her own face looks so strange to her. Under the heavy eyeliner and smears of red shadow, the blood-colored lips and drawn on eyebrows, her skin is coated in pale grey powder that matches the other woman's white skin. Her mother's ashes.
She turns her head in sorrow and revulsion and the drukhari girl steps away, laughing raucously with her friend. Jian has no idea what the joke is, but they apparently find it intensely funny. So do the next few shifts of guards.
The other slaves look at her even less after that.
Still more endless time passes, much the same as before, but with the addition of the humiliating laughter that makes her long to tear away her skin to be free of her the constant, agonizing presence of her mother's pain. But at some point, she feels something, perhaps some slight change in the air currents of the hold or the tiny vibrations of the deck plating. The ship has stopped.
Not long after, a large group of kabalite warriors appear, carrying a mass of chains and shackles. They drag about half of those present into a line, binding them together and forcing them to their feet and out of Jian's sight. Perhaps a few hours later, they return and drag off four more, all of whom appear to have been minor ship's officers. This process is repeated again and again, the groups growing smaller each time, until Jian sits alone, watched over still by the ever-present guard.
Finally, it's her turn. It might be the same warriors that came at first, or it may have been different ones each time, she has no way of knowing. They unfasten her bindings and push her to the floor, several of the men pinning her limbs to keep her from moving, but she doesn't fight. There's no point. There's only enduring as they tear the remaining clothing from her body, leaving her naked and exposed to their hungry gazes.
In a way, it would almost be a relief for her fears to finally realize. But instead, the same black-haired girl from before steps forward and slides her into a pair of tiny black lace panties, barely enough to cover her. Jian finds herself roughly hauled to her feet, one drukhari clasping each arm as they carry her through the ship and outside.
Commoragh.
The city of her darkest nightmares overwhelms her with sound and smell and movement. Bruised sky spreads above them, stabbed with twisted spires and buildings larger than she's ever seen. The streets bustle with drukhari and their slaves of every race she knows of and many she doesn't. Above their head swarm flying vehicles and flocks of some kind of eldar-sized bird. The air is cold on her bare skin and heavy with the odors of death and decay.
Before she can process the sudden onslaught of sensations, her captors move off, half-carrying, half dragging her through the twisted streets. They make casual conversation as they go, as though this is the most normal thing in the galaxy. And, indeed, it seems as though very few pay them more than passing attention. Jian watches their progress wide-eyed, grateful even for the horrific sights in front of her as any kind of distraction from her own situation.
They reach their destination fairly quickly, however, and even that slight reprieve ends. The archon and her female companion stand waiting inside the building they enter, next to a small platform. As they set her on it, a pair of shackles automatically wrapping around her ankles to hold her in place, Jian can feel the soles of her feet pierced with dozens of tiny needles. She cries out and for once, no one strikes her. Instead, they haul her arms above her head and the man holding her up steps away as an identical set of restraints encircle her wrists, keeping her roughly in a standing position. More needles pierce her palms and she sags, unable to hold herself up, as clear walls rise around her, locking her in a glass tube barely wider than she is.
The slavers fiddle with the exterior of the cage for a few minutes and Jian's eyes close. She's so tired, so weak, so overwhelmed by her pain and grief that she can't bring herself to care about what's going to happen to her next. The world around her shudders and through her closed eyes she notices a change in the light outside.
A moment later, music begins to play, loud and strangely upbeat. A shock of electricity races through her body, making her jerk involuntarily, followed an instant later by another one, and another. She drags her eyes open to see a slowly rotating view of the street outside, the music attracting onlookers. The electrical pulses continue, matching the beat of the music to create a twisted mockery of a sensual dance.
Yet again, time loses its meaning. An endless stream of passerby continues unslowed. Some stop to watch her humiliation, others walk past without so much as a second glance. A stitch grows in her side, becoming more and more painful until it, too, disappears. One of the kabalites that guards the cage begins to pleasure himself to the performance until his companions force him to stop. It seems to her that it's more because they find it annoying than anything else. A deep flush of shame heats her cheeks and ears and her head bows again. Hair falls into her face and she welcomes its presence to cover her.
The music stops and the walls slide down. A severe-looking woman in tiny scraps of fitted black leather approaches her, lips pursed. She examines Jian critically, prodding her like a cut of meat, opening her mouth, and even sliding down the underwear to inspect what little they had covered. Apparently, she doesn't like what she sees, as she steps away shaking her head. The walls rise again and the dance resumes.
She hardly registers this latest indignity. Her body barely seems like her own, anymore. Just a damaged, soiled puppet carrying her to whatever doom lies at the end of her journey.
Not long after, the music stops again. She looks up. The redheaded archon stands in front of her cage, talking to another drukhari, a man in bone-white and green armor that exceeds even the archon's in quality and detail. Jian drags her mind back into her body as the archon gestures excitedly. "Don't worry, Lord Aire, the girl is top quality. Ex-banshee, she'll make a great trophy with just enough fight left in her to give you some fun later. Almost sorry I'm not keeping her for myself."
The other man says nothing, simply holding out what Jian assumes to be money. The archon takes it and shakes his hand.
Before the significance of this can penetrate the fog in Jian's mind, the bands around her wrists and ankles retract, the bottom slides away from the cage, and she falls to the ground. A jolt of pain races up her body as her knees slam down on the cobbled street with a crack. She tumbles forward into a heap. The archon is still speaking, apparently unwilling to leave her sales pitch incomplete. "… told my men to leave her untouched, my scanners picked up on her virginity." She snorts and pokes Jian roughly with the tip of her boot to urge her up. "Typical banshee. She's probably a pussy-only girl, but I'm sure she'll learn to take dick just as well with proper training."
Shakily, Jian raises herself on her hands. As she does, something wraps around her neck, cold and smooth. A collar. She looks up, along the silver chain attached to it, into the face of the man who holds her fate now.
He's older than she is, she judges, but not old, with the same pale skin as all of the dark ones and long hair, silver-white like her own, worn loose. Stark black tattoos mark his skin, lines radiating from his forehead down his face and coloring his upper lip. He looks almost bored with the situation. "I suppose you'll have to do," he says. "Are you ready to leave?"
Jian blinks in surprise before nodding automatically. It's not as though she has any choice.
"Well then, get up." He tugs at the leash. "And try to make it look as though you actually want to be at my side as we depart, I have a reputation to uphold."
Get up? Jian can barely imagine sitting without her arms to prop herself up with, but the memory of the whiplashes and the knowledge that this new, unknown drukhari will likely do far worse if she doesn't obey forces her to try. It takes several attempts, but she finally rises. Her legs shake and her feet throb and sting as she puts weight on torn soles, but she is indeed standing.
The man in front of her remains silent, watching her almost expectantly. She feels the stares of the crowd that's gathered to watch and her head spins, black gathering at the edges of her vison. She wraps her arms around her chest, as much an effort to physically hold herself together as an attempt at modesty, and does her best to form her face into a smile.
This proves an even harder task. Eventually, however, the man nods, apparently satisfied. He steps closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. The contact knocks her off balance and she finds herself leaning on him for support. An instant later, he scoops her up into his arms, bridal style, and begins to carry her away to whatever home he plans for her. Jian can only hope that it won't take too long for her to die.
Cheers and whoops erupt from the crowd as the drukhari walks off with his prize, studiously ignoring the attention. The battered, filthy slave girl in his arms is frozen, staring up at him with glassy eyes and trembling with cold and exhaustion. Still, he pays her no more mind than it takes to occasionally keep her from slipping from his grasp and his expression remains carefully neutral.
A/N: This might be a good time to talk a bit about eldar sexuality, or at least how I headcanon it for the purposes of this fic.
In writing this, I'm working from the premise that sexualities are distributed approximately the same as they are among humans in real life. For craftworld eldar, that's all there is to it. However, in drukhari society, sex has become almost completely divorced from love, affection, or even really pleasure or attraction. This has been coupled with the well-known psychological fact that sexual assault and rape are much more about power and/or sadism than they are about sex to wind up with a situation in which most dark eldar are functionally bisexual, even if the majority of them would strongly prefer an opposite-sex pairing if they were looking to have sex purely for fun (and some would strongly prefer same-sex).