The wagon carried on bumping and jerking along the mud road, and Fred could feel his body gradually becoming covered with bruises. He smiled and then grimaced at the thought of what his friends would be thinking if the bruises appeared on his body in the hospital at home, but guessed they wouldn't, since he didn't have any marks on his body here from what they were doing to him at home. To avoid bumping into Daphne constantly, he had wrapped his arms round her and now held her close, her head resting against the crook of his neck, as the journey carried on and on and on.
Eventually, the wagon stopped and a voice filtered through the cloths on the wagon into Fred's ears.
"Are they in there?"
"Yes," came a harsh voice from the front of the wagon, and Fred frowned; where had he heard that name before?
"Bring them in, then. We will have to use the methods on them; the room will need soundproofing. Female screams in particular are very piercing and easy to hear."
Fred gulped slightly and tightened his grip round Daphne. She had woken up a few minutes earlier, but hadn't yet opened her eyes, and at the feel of him holding her tighter she looked up at him and made eye contact.
"We're gonna be OK," she mouthed to him, seeing the uncharacteristic fright in his eyes, and he gave her a small and unsure smile as the cloths were yanked away from over them and they were hauled out with rough arms and minimal care taken not to hurt them.
"These the pair, Mitchell?" someone asked, and the driver nodded. Fred gasped as it fell into place, and as he was pulled round he caught a glimpse of the driver.
His brother sat there, or at least a man who looked too similar to his brother to be coincidence, a carbon copy of the Mitchell Fred knew, and Fred could feel his head and stomach starting to swirl as he and Daphne were hauled off to inside some building.
Daphne began crying as soon as they were inside, her sobs of fright echoing off the walls. Fred reached over and grasped her hand as the ropes were untied and they were put in some room with bars all around it, making both feel like animals in a zoo but at least now sitting down and not jerking around in a cart.
"Ssh, Daph, it's OK," Fred whispered, letting her nuzzle into his chest and sob onto his shirt. He put his arms round her and held her close, his chin resting on her head as she gasped, but his thoughts strayed to the man who seemed to be some sort of equivalent of his own brother.
He would have thought that Mitchell would be working with them, rather than against them, and the- betrayal?- sliced through him darkly, raising his pulse and clenching his fists as he held Daphne still. She sobbed and cried and hiccupped into his shirt, feeling his warm skin next to her, and tried to stop crying, but instead of stopping her crying stepped up a notch and she started wailing, howling and not caring that the people around her could hear her; only Fred mattered to her now, and she knew he didn't mind.
"You, shut up, now," a man hissed from outside of the cage, pointing to Daphne. She shook her head, holding Fred tightly and feeling him stroke her hair, his mind diverted from the Mitchell-clone in this world to her at the sound of her crying.
"Shut up or I'll make you shut up!" the man threatened heatedly, raising a huge fist and pressing it against the bars, right into Daphne's face. Daphne continued sobbing, a bubble of emotion pressing against her chest and making it impossible for her to stop crying.
"Alright then…"
The man yanked his key ring from his pocket, opened the door of the cage and grabbed Daphne, pulling her head forwards and punching her in the back of the neck. She fell onto the floor of the cage, her shrieking stopping abruptly as she lost consciousness.
"Daph!" Fred gasped, rushing forwards and grabbing her hand. He looked up at the tyrannical man towering above him and narrowed his eyes.
"You'll pay for that…"
Fred leapt up and grabbed the guy round the neck, pulling him into a headlock, and the man roared and tried to pull him off. Several more men and women rushed in, and together managed to pull Fred off, whom normally would have been flattened by the huge hulk of a man he had picked a fight with but who was now fuelled by blind rage which made him fight like a cornered wildcat, swift and fierce.
"I want him down as well," the man growled, pointing at Fred as he got his breath back and massaged his neck slightly. One of the women holding Fred back reached into her bag and pulled out some sort of dart-like object.
"Hold him nice and still."
Hearing the words and the sinister tone in which they had been said, Fred writhed even more in the arms of his aggressors, but it was to no avail and the needle of the dart pierced his forearm and began draining something into it. Still fighting, Fred could feel his arm growing steadily weaker and tried to jerk the needle out of it, but before he could the full contents of the dart drained into his bloodstream and he fell into unconsciousness, unable to resist the sedating effects of the chemical.
"Good," the man said softly as the group of assorted people laid Fred down next to Daphne and the woman reached down to pull the dart out from his forearm. The small, puckered wound was bleeding, and the man bent down and wiped a little blood onto his own fingers, smiling as he did so.
"He will have lost more than a little blood once we are finished with him. Come, we have more work to do and we need to carry on with the plans. These two are out now."
Nodding and responding quietly, the group walked away, leaving both Fred and Daphne unconscious on the floor of the cage.
"Very restless today," Velma murmured as she saw Fred's hand tighten round the drip lead feeding him. She gently untangled it and put her hand on his forehead, wondering if he had caught some infection or some illness. His temperature was completely normal.
"Ris Reddy rill?" Scooby asked softly, walking over. Velma frowned, shaking her head but her brain still whirring so hard that Scooby could almost hear the cogs grinding against each other. Then again, with Velma's love of computers she would probably have a motherboard in there instead.
"Just… very active somehow. Don't ask me, Scoob."
Scooby nuzzled Fred's hand and smiled as one finger reached up, seemingly unprompted, and stroked his muzzle.
"Reddy!"
Fred didn't seem to respond at all, but Velma looked down at him and once again got the sense that he was awake somehow…
"Freddy?" Daphne whispered, waking up and slowly remembering all that had happened. She looked round and saw him next to her, his arm scarred with rivers of blood from a puncture wound on his forearm. She rubbed the scarlet away gently.
"Freddy, sweetie, can you hear me?"
He didn't respond, and Daphne simply lay down next to him and curled herself round his body. He was slumped awkwardly, and Daphne guessed he hadn't lain down there himself, he had been lowered there or forced there.
After a while she whispered "I'll wait for you to wake up, then," and reached out to stroke his hair, taking his hand in hers. He whispered something that she didn't quite catch, but which might have been her name.
"I'm here," she murmured, turning his head to open his eyelids gently with her fingers. His eyes were empty, cold, asleep. Daphne shivered and closed them again.
"He's not gonna wake up, child."
Daphne swerved hastily round to see the man who had knocked her out, narrowing her eyes as he moved closer.
"Crushed mazzivarus bark. A very powerful sedative; they use it in hospitals. He's asleep for at least another half an hour, I'm afraid."
He grinned as he said it, and Daphne bit back a rude remark, afraid of him and how powerful he was but hating him with all her heart. Fred squeezed her hand gently and she turned, only half pretending not to be able to look at him any more (except not due to fright, due to hatred) and whispered to him, "Are you awake?"
He gave the smallest possible of nods, and Daphne smiled and whispered back, "Keep your eyes closed and pretend to be sleeping" before turning to the hulk-like person standing nearby and glaring at him.
"Could I have some privacy, please? I want to check Freddy over, he had an accident at the hotel, and I don't want you watching as I do it."
The excuse, despite being a little desperate and lame, did the job, and the man left.
"Long shot, but it worked," Fred whispered as he sat up, moving his arm and wincing at the pain from the wound in his forearm. Daphne rubbed her fingertips over the puncture, looking him in the eyes and whispering so quietly Fred had to lip-read some of what she was saying.
"I've got a plan, I made it in my head while you were asleep. Are you up for it?"
Fred nodded, not breaking his eye contact with her.
"Anything to get us out of here, Daph."
Daphne nodded and reached up to entwine her fingers into his ascot absent-mindedly as she talked.
"I want you to pretend you're dead. Remember drama class at school? You almost fooled the teacher."
Fred chuckled slightly.
"She was the one who nearly had a heart attack, never mind me."
"So we know you're convincing. They'll take you somewhere else and they won't bother to secure it. You can escape and then I'll pretend to die of grief or something in my sleep. They want us dead anyway so we'll just be playing along. We'll both escape and meet up at the staying-house we stayed at before, and then we'll find the IDVPs and get home. I know it's a long shot, but it'll have to work or we're sunk."
"Don't think that," Fred whispered comfortingly, putting his arms round Daphne and holding her close. He smeared a little blood on her clothes by doing so, but she didn't care; her clothes were in an appalling state anyway. For some reason, even though she had been in her pyjamas when she had come to this world, she was dressed in her normal dress, scarf, tights and shoes when she was there. Fred was the same, except obviously in different clothing.
"Hopefully it'll work, and if it doesn't, we'll just have to think of something else. We will get out of here, Daph. We will."
Daphne gave a small, wet smile and nodded bravely, kissing him on the cheek and jumping as a gravelly voice made its way through from the door.
"Are you finished yet, girl? I am getting impatient!"
"Fine, I'm done," Daphne called back, and Fred hurriedly lay back and pretended to be asleep again as the door opened and the man stomped in, clearly in a bad mood about something.
"They've delayed your execution for some reason," he hissed, walking over and slapping the wall with his palm in anger. "I cannot believe it… still, I will see you dead one day, even though it will be further away from now than I thought."
He turned away, still evidently annoyed about the delay of the deaths he was looking forward to in his savage mind. Daphne gulped and clenched her fists, torn between anger and fear at the sight of his broad, irritable profile.
"It'll be tomorrow then," she whispered, so quietly that Fred only just caught her and the hulk-like man across the room was oblivious. "We'll do it tomorrow."
A squeeze of her hand told Daphne that Fred agreed.
A/N: I'm sorry I've been so long updating, I have exams still and they are eating away at my free time like bugs eating at rotten fruit… What a lovely analogy… Sorry. Hope you liked the chapter, anyway, and please review! Thank you for bearing with me. Jazzola :)