Nina didn't even realise she'd fallen asleep until Jack shook her awake,
she'd heard the clanging of the door lock in her dreams, although she
didn't remember in what context or whether she really remembered it.
At some point during her sleep Jack had manoevered her head onto his lap, and that was where she struggled to get up from, rubbing her eyes and trying desperately to keep them open. The guards were inside the room when she finally sat up, and they were yelling at Jack, words her sleep fuddled mind took a while to translate, until the man who had interrogated her walked in.
"The woman." He instructed his men in his native tongue, and Nina unconsciously gripped Jack's thigh.
He'd understood their words without the help of a translation matrix in his mind. Nina's hand only served to support his worries, he covered hers with his and squeezed it lightly. The guards moved forward and one of them reached for Nina's shoulder.
She felt a mixture of embarassment and fear when her first resort was to hide her body behind Jack's. He shifted over her and the guard pulled on his shoulder to get at Nina. He wouldn't budge. "Nina Archer, you will come with us." The man who'd interrogated both of them demanded.
"She's not going anywhere." Jack growled back, shifting a hand across her legs to rest on the other side of the sofa, completely blocking her from them.
Jack noticed him nod out of the corner of his eye and then felt a swipe across his head, as one of the guard clocked him with the butt of his weapon. Jack was knocked off the edge of the couch and onto the floor in front of it, on his knees.
Nina stood up "Okay, I'll come, I'll come." She said to the room, focussing her last words on the speaking agressor. He nodded, and she took a step forwards, showing them she was willing to go with them, before she squatted neck to Jack, who was picking himself up off his hands and knees.
"You okay?" she whispered to him, glancing up at the interogator as she spoke.
He nodded, and pressed a finger to the cut on his nostril, checking the wetness was blood before he pressed his palm to his forehead. "But this is the last time we go sight seeing in Fuengirola."
-24-
Jack rose to his feet as Nina retreated across the room. The guards opened the door for her and then one followed her through, escorting her and protecting the English speaking man from Nina, just in case she decided to bust out some moves on him. A guard who was stood on the inside of the room closed the door quietly, and it was then Jack realised just how many hadn't left. Four men stood on the inside of the door, two holding rifles, and two disturbingly unarmed. Jack took in the buzz cut, the thick necks and watched as one man pounded and clenched his fists. The smile on his face - Jack had lead men like this into battle.
The two unarmed men descended on him, one providing a swift blow to his stomach that bent him double, and the second giving a sudden kick to his leg, dropping him, once again, to the floor. He curved his body up as small as possible, hoping to shield his soft organs from their blows and mentally took himself to another place - exactly what he was trained to do when he was expecting to endure terrible pain.
-24-
She squinted across the table, across the bright light reflected in the steel table to her interrogator's shirt, a thin tag on his shirt seemed to bare writing, and she was determined to know how it read. As if in response to her thoughts, the man rose, changing the angle of her focus and blocking out the glares of the light, giving her a clear view "Hant, Lt JE." Batilla's subordinate. She knew she'd collected his What if Batilla had told his subordinate the name of the woman who'd slighted him at the Showrooms? Would Hant collect the dots?
Nina was thankful when the door opened an a young officer came in, she guessed he was in his early twenties, and definitely subordinate to her interrogator. He stood to attention as he waited by Hant's side, and Hant took a deep, staggering - annoyed breath before he let the man speak.
"Senor, oficial Juave no aparecio para su guardia. La policia militar busco en su dormitorio - no esta ahi. Pero la policia descubrieron referencias d'Eta y una restaurante en la strip." The man reported, his eyes focused solely on the wall.
"Que trabajaba en, antes de su huida?" The officer pursed his lips and paused, causing his commander to repeat his question.
Nina was mentally translating their conversation, running their words around on her mental tape loop until she knew exactly what they were talking about - it wasn't long before she had a general gist of the conversation. Some officer had fleed the base, they'd found connections to the terrorist group Eta, and to the restaurante on the strip - chances were that had been their informant at the restaurant. When the officer answered Hant's question; what was he working on before he disappeared? She was up to speed, the man was a gifted mathematician, he'd been decrypting some terrorist channels. Hant and the officer reporting to him had no idea that Batilla was dirty, they thought that the young missing officer was a terrorist agent.
Hant paced the room for a few seconds, whilst Nina tried to decide whether watching him or ignoring his movement was the best way to keep him in the dark about her knowledge of their conversation. He shocked her by letting out a loud angry growl and then yelling to his subordinate "Poni ella y su espose en libertidad!"
The man gripped Nina's wrist and tugged her towards the door, Nina didn't protest this time though, Hant had just ordered him to release her and Jack.
-24-
Jack wasn't in any state to drive them back to the hotel when the officers left them near their car. He'd handed Nina the keys with a shaky hand, the company insignia exhibiting a few bloody finger prints from when he'd pulled them out of his pocket.
Nina winced in sympathetic pain for him as he lifted himself into the passenger seat, refusing any help from the outstretched arms she'd offered, and ignoring her suggestion that he lay down in the back. He forgot about her queries as he requested to know what they'd done to her. The heavy questioning was nothing compared to the brutality visited upon him.
His clothes were matted onto his skin with crusting layers of blood, she knew his wounds probably looked worse that they actually were, he wasn't bleeding all that much anymore, and the pain was probably from the scabs shattering as he moved. She also knew just how stubborn Jack was, and wasn't expecting to hear about any broken ribs or shattered finger bones unless she injected him with truth serum.
The valet at the hospital had not commented on him, just scowling at the state of the passenger seat of the car. Nina didn't bother to stop to get the rucksacks from the lake, they were probably safer underwater anyway, she just drove straight back to the hotel, where, thankfully Jack decided to accept her help to get out of the car, he joked that he was worried he'd crush her into the ground. "...After all, what do you weigh? A hundred pounds - at a stretch?"
"One ten." She replied confidently, smiling, half in relief as he reached a hand out to the car bonnet to stabilise himself.
"Okay, lets just pretend that's my weight to." He said to her, finding his footing on the pavement. "Gracias." He dismissed the valet as Nina handed him the keys - he had no money to tip the man with.
-24-
When she heard the shower stop running Nina decreased her attention to the book she was reading, folding the corner over, marking her place lest she forget to later. Jack stumbled out of the bathroom a few moments later, clad in a pair of loose trousers that she may have seen before, holding a balled up wedge of black material in his hands. He tossed it at her as she shut the book and moved it onto the lightstand. It took her a moment to gauge the dampness of the shirt and she unraveled it, holding it up by the tips of her fingers before she dropped it off the edge of the bed. Jack had obviously had to blast patches of the shirt with hot water in order to remove the cotton from his wounds. She watched as he crossed the room to his suitcase and only stopped him when he hovered over the suitcase, letting out an almost imperceptible sound of pain.
"Jack come here." She muttered, slipping off the bed and gripping his good hand lightly by the wrist. She tugged him towards the bed and he perched on the edge of the bed, he slid back onto it as she collected a bottle of iodine solution and a bag of cotton wool she'd laid out on the table ready to clean his wounds.
"Is this all of them?" She asked, pulling open the cotton wool bag and sat next to him on the bed.
"Just my back and this one of my chest." Jack replied. The wound on his chest was a torn bruise, it had already made itself a light layer of black scarring, and a cut followed the line of his collar bone across his chest. Nina pulled a palm sized lump of cotton wool out of the packet and tore a section off, covering the opening on the hydrogen peroxide bottle with it and turning the old brown glass upside down, soaking the cloth in the antiseptic.
"This might sting." She whispered, gritting her teeth together and daubing the hydrogen peroxide soaked cloth at the cut. She sneeked a glance up at Jack's face, but his reaction was minimal, the cut was obviously closed, although he was watching her with a passive expression on his face - it made her uncomfortable.
When she'd dotted a line of peroxide on the cut she tore the cotton wool and gave it a clean face, and then ran the wool along the length of the cut, keeping the pressure light so as to not to pull any blood clots. Jack shifted on the bed, and she paused, holding the piece of cotton stationary above his wound.
Jack realised, belatedly that she'd stopped caring for his wound, and watched the frozen black mop of hair close against his chin. He gently nudged her into action, raising a hand to touch her elbow. She shot back, as if from a flame, resting herself on her ankles. Her gaze remained on his chest for a long moment before she lifted her eyes. "Uh huh?" She questioned.
Jack didn't say anything, regarding her with an odd expression, which only served to make Nina feel more self conscious that she had done before. She pursed her lips and forced herself to move back onto her knees, taking the damp cotton with her once again and finishing with the first cut. "None on your legs?" She forced herself to ask, thankful she could think of some relevant conversation.
She needed to talk to stop herself from obsessing about his body and proximity. It was attractive even given their current situation and his state, and she couldn't let him know. She finished with the wound. "Well my shins." He muttered, and then as she retreated back onto her ankles he painfully lifted a leg and pulled up the loose canvas material. There was a large bruise on one leg, but the other seemed ok. "But they're not too bad."
Nina nodded, but slid off the bed and lifted his trouser leg again, squatting on the floor and using her folded knees as a table to examine the bruise for any scrapes. She changed legs, rubbing lightly around the bruises, knowing that the actual bruise extended far beyond what had shown itself in this limited amount of time. "Yeah, they look okay, I don't think the skin's broken." She informed him, levying herself up to the bed.
"God bless the fetal position." He joked, smiling.
Nina felt her heart swim a little as he smiled at her and gave him a soft, but gritted grin. Jack could read her pretty well, and he knew she was holding something back, even if he wasn't sure what it was. Most of the time he would leave her to her own devices and not mention it. "Yeah, let's do your back."
Next chapter is NC-17, which I was going to post separately, but thanks to the new FF.net submission policy - I can't. God knows how they still find legit reasons to complain when the default browser setting filters them out, so kiddies aren't immediately blasted with them, when you can't put explicit stuff on the summary sheet, and when you get a little warning saying not to view if you are under 17 as you click it!!
Argh! That chapter will be up at my new fanfic website - livelyaria.bravepages.com - It's not absolutely crucial to the storyline. I've made it as superfluous as possible, in fact - I'm only typing it for the fun of it. The next chapter should be up here soon, as the computer issues I had recently are finito.
At some point during her sleep Jack had manoevered her head onto his lap, and that was where she struggled to get up from, rubbing her eyes and trying desperately to keep them open. The guards were inside the room when she finally sat up, and they were yelling at Jack, words her sleep fuddled mind took a while to translate, until the man who had interrogated her walked in.
"The woman." He instructed his men in his native tongue, and Nina unconsciously gripped Jack's thigh.
He'd understood their words without the help of a translation matrix in his mind. Nina's hand only served to support his worries, he covered hers with his and squeezed it lightly. The guards moved forward and one of them reached for Nina's shoulder.
She felt a mixture of embarassment and fear when her first resort was to hide her body behind Jack's. He shifted over her and the guard pulled on his shoulder to get at Nina. He wouldn't budge. "Nina Archer, you will come with us." The man who'd interrogated both of them demanded.
"She's not going anywhere." Jack growled back, shifting a hand across her legs to rest on the other side of the sofa, completely blocking her from them.
Jack noticed him nod out of the corner of his eye and then felt a swipe across his head, as one of the guard clocked him with the butt of his weapon. Jack was knocked off the edge of the couch and onto the floor in front of it, on his knees.
Nina stood up "Okay, I'll come, I'll come." She said to the room, focussing her last words on the speaking agressor. He nodded, and she took a step forwards, showing them she was willing to go with them, before she squatted neck to Jack, who was picking himself up off his hands and knees.
"You okay?" she whispered to him, glancing up at the interogator as she spoke.
He nodded, and pressed a finger to the cut on his nostril, checking the wetness was blood before he pressed his palm to his forehead. "But this is the last time we go sight seeing in Fuengirola."
-24-
Jack rose to his feet as Nina retreated across the room. The guards opened the door for her and then one followed her through, escorting her and protecting the English speaking man from Nina, just in case she decided to bust out some moves on him. A guard who was stood on the inside of the room closed the door quietly, and it was then Jack realised just how many hadn't left. Four men stood on the inside of the door, two holding rifles, and two disturbingly unarmed. Jack took in the buzz cut, the thick necks and watched as one man pounded and clenched his fists. The smile on his face - Jack had lead men like this into battle.
The two unarmed men descended on him, one providing a swift blow to his stomach that bent him double, and the second giving a sudden kick to his leg, dropping him, once again, to the floor. He curved his body up as small as possible, hoping to shield his soft organs from their blows and mentally took himself to another place - exactly what he was trained to do when he was expecting to endure terrible pain.
-24-
She squinted across the table, across the bright light reflected in the steel table to her interrogator's shirt, a thin tag on his shirt seemed to bare writing, and she was determined to know how it read. As if in response to her thoughts, the man rose, changing the angle of her focus and blocking out the glares of the light, giving her a clear view "Hant, Lt JE." Batilla's subordinate. She knew she'd collected his What if Batilla had told his subordinate the name of the woman who'd slighted him at the Showrooms? Would Hant collect the dots?
Nina was thankful when the door opened an a young officer came in, she guessed he was in his early twenties, and definitely subordinate to her interrogator. He stood to attention as he waited by Hant's side, and Hant took a deep, staggering - annoyed breath before he let the man speak.
"Senor, oficial Juave no aparecio para su guardia. La policia militar busco en su dormitorio - no esta ahi. Pero la policia descubrieron referencias d'Eta y una restaurante en la strip." The man reported, his eyes focused solely on the wall.
"Que trabajaba en, antes de su huida?" The officer pursed his lips and paused, causing his commander to repeat his question.
Nina was mentally translating their conversation, running their words around on her mental tape loop until she knew exactly what they were talking about - it wasn't long before she had a general gist of the conversation. Some officer had fleed the base, they'd found connections to the terrorist group Eta, and to the restaurante on the strip - chances were that had been their informant at the restaurant. When the officer answered Hant's question; what was he working on before he disappeared? She was up to speed, the man was a gifted mathematician, he'd been decrypting some terrorist channels. Hant and the officer reporting to him had no idea that Batilla was dirty, they thought that the young missing officer was a terrorist agent.
Hant paced the room for a few seconds, whilst Nina tried to decide whether watching him or ignoring his movement was the best way to keep him in the dark about her knowledge of their conversation. He shocked her by letting out a loud angry growl and then yelling to his subordinate "Poni ella y su espose en libertidad!"
The man gripped Nina's wrist and tugged her towards the door, Nina didn't protest this time though, Hant had just ordered him to release her and Jack.
-24-
Jack wasn't in any state to drive them back to the hotel when the officers left them near their car. He'd handed Nina the keys with a shaky hand, the company insignia exhibiting a few bloody finger prints from when he'd pulled them out of his pocket.
Nina winced in sympathetic pain for him as he lifted himself into the passenger seat, refusing any help from the outstretched arms she'd offered, and ignoring her suggestion that he lay down in the back. He forgot about her queries as he requested to know what they'd done to her. The heavy questioning was nothing compared to the brutality visited upon him.
His clothes were matted onto his skin with crusting layers of blood, she knew his wounds probably looked worse that they actually were, he wasn't bleeding all that much anymore, and the pain was probably from the scabs shattering as he moved. She also knew just how stubborn Jack was, and wasn't expecting to hear about any broken ribs or shattered finger bones unless she injected him with truth serum.
The valet at the hospital had not commented on him, just scowling at the state of the passenger seat of the car. Nina didn't bother to stop to get the rucksacks from the lake, they were probably safer underwater anyway, she just drove straight back to the hotel, where, thankfully Jack decided to accept her help to get out of the car, he joked that he was worried he'd crush her into the ground. "...After all, what do you weigh? A hundred pounds - at a stretch?"
"One ten." She replied confidently, smiling, half in relief as he reached a hand out to the car bonnet to stabilise himself.
"Okay, lets just pretend that's my weight to." He said to her, finding his footing on the pavement. "Gracias." He dismissed the valet as Nina handed him the keys - he had no money to tip the man with.
-24-
When she heard the shower stop running Nina decreased her attention to the book she was reading, folding the corner over, marking her place lest she forget to later. Jack stumbled out of the bathroom a few moments later, clad in a pair of loose trousers that she may have seen before, holding a balled up wedge of black material in his hands. He tossed it at her as she shut the book and moved it onto the lightstand. It took her a moment to gauge the dampness of the shirt and she unraveled it, holding it up by the tips of her fingers before she dropped it off the edge of the bed. Jack had obviously had to blast patches of the shirt with hot water in order to remove the cotton from his wounds. She watched as he crossed the room to his suitcase and only stopped him when he hovered over the suitcase, letting out an almost imperceptible sound of pain.
"Jack come here." She muttered, slipping off the bed and gripping his good hand lightly by the wrist. She tugged him towards the bed and he perched on the edge of the bed, he slid back onto it as she collected a bottle of iodine solution and a bag of cotton wool she'd laid out on the table ready to clean his wounds.
"Is this all of them?" She asked, pulling open the cotton wool bag and sat next to him on the bed.
"Just my back and this one of my chest." Jack replied. The wound on his chest was a torn bruise, it had already made itself a light layer of black scarring, and a cut followed the line of his collar bone across his chest. Nina pulled a palm sized lump of cotton wool out of the packet and tore a section off, covering the opening on the hydrogen peroxide bottle with it and turning the old brown glass upside down, soaking the cloth in the antiseptic.
"This might sting." She whispered, gritting her teeth together and daubing the hydrogen peroxide soaked cloth at the cut. She sneeked a glance up at Jack's face, but his reaction was minimal, the cut was obviously closed, although he was watching her with a passive expression on his face - it made her uncomfortable.
When she'd dotted a line of peroxide on the cut she tore the cotton wool and gave it a clean face, and then ran the wool along the length of the cut, keeping the pressure light so as to not to pull any blood clots. Jack shifted on the bed, and she paused, holding the piece of cotton stationary above his wound.
Jack realised, belatedly that she'd stopped caring for his wound, and watched the frozen black mop of hair close against his chin. He gently nudged her into action, raising a hand to touch her elbow. She shot back, as if from a flame, resting herself on her ankles. Her gaze remained on his chest for a long moment before she lifted her eyes. "Uh huh?" She questioned.
Jack didn't say anything, regarding her with an odd expression, which only served to make Nina feel more self conscious that she had done before. She pursed her lips and forced herself to move back onto her knees, taking the damp cotton with her once again and finishing with the first cut. "None on your legs?" She forced herself to ask, thankful she could think of some relevant conversation.
She needed to talk to stop herself from obsessing about his body and proximity. It was attractive even given their current situation and his state, and she couldn't let him know. She finished with the wound. "Well my shins." He muttered, and then as she retreated back onto her ankles he painfully lifted a leg and pulled up the loose canvas material. There was a large bruise on one leg, but the other seemed ok. "But they're not too bad."
Nina nodded, but slid off the bed and lifted his trouser leg again, squatting on the floor and using her folded knees as a table to examine the bruise for any scrapes. She changed legs, rubbing lightly around the bruises, knowing that the actual bruise extended far beyond what had shown itself in this limited amount of time. "Yeah, they look okay, I don't think the skin's broken." She informed him, levying herself up to the bed.
"God bless the fetal position." He joked, smiling.
Nina felt her heart swim a little as he smiled at her and gave him a soft, but gritted grin. Jack could read her pretty well, and he knew she was holding something back, even if he wasn't sure what it was. Most of the time he would leave her to her own devices and not mention it. "Yeah, let's do your back."
Next chapter is NC-17, which I was going to post separately, but thanks to the new FF.net submission policy - I can't. God knows how they still find legit reasons to complain when the default browser setting filters them out, so kiddies aren't immediately blasted with them, when you can't put explicit stuff on the summary sheet, and when you get a little warning saying not to view if you are under 17 as you click it!!
Argh! That chapter will be up at my new fanfic website - livelyaria.bravepages.com - It's not absolutely crucial to the storyline. I've made it as superfluous as possible, in fact - I'm only typing it for the fun of it. The next chapter should be up here soon, as the computer issues I had recently are finito.