disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warnings: definitely in this one for sexual (non graphic/explicit) themes and mentions and prostitution.
Author's Note: Michelle (guest reviewer) I'm sorry that you've been triggered reading this. Sorry to anyone else who has been as well (the full warnings are in the first chapter for anyone who needs to review them). I can't promise a complete 180 in this story, but there is fighting the system and really asking why women are being treated this way. Also, to note, this will be a series, so anything missing in terms of rebelling and resolving will crop up at a later date. Until then, I hope you can all read Sam, Jack, and the other's girls struggles with some hope that things will get better, but knowing that it will take time. In the meantime, BIG thanks to everyone who's complimented this story, because I was in debate about posting it at all.
Hope you all enjoy this small chapter.
Sam continued to shiver long after Dove undressed her, removing the Swan from her skin and clothing her in a white nightgown. She ordered dinner for her, which appeared through the little door in the kitchen wall. Sam ate it without tasting it, shaking, mind whirling. Just after the meal, John arrived and appraised her once before checking something on his arm interface.
Sam was only faintly aware of his words breaking through the fog in her mind. "Your blood pressure if a little elevated, but you will recover well."
The nightgown was soft and light and Sam shivered again because her long hair was damp and cold. Her fingers began to regain their warmth. And she tried. She tried so hard to riase her fist to John's jaw, to strike him.
"Now, Swan." He caught her pathetic attempt to harm him. His hand was warm comapred to the ice that made up the rest of him. "You need to save your strength." He cupped her face with his other hand, rubbing his thumb against her bottom lip. She tried to bite it. He tapped her nose in response, then gestured. "Follow me."
Sam was fully ready to accept her punishment. But her stomach rolled as she thought of the marks on Jack's back. She wanted to share the burden, the pain with Jack. If he was punished, she should be punished too, because it was her fault. And to suffer through something with someone else made you stronger than bearing it alone.
They took an elevator to a completely separate wing. Sam was confused. She had assumed that she would be thrown back into the Isolation Room. But that wasn't where they heading at all. They headed down a back corridor. John instered an electronic key card into the slot and opened the door he stopped at. Inside the room, it was completely dark. John closed the door behind him, snuffing out the hallway glow.
"What is this place?" Sam asked, stiffening at the sudden darkness.
She heard the sound of a click as John pressed a button somewhere. Light poured forth -not from lights in the room they were standing in. Light came from the room directly below Sam, which she could see through the glass floor.
Once Sam saw what was taking place in the room below her, she looked away. But it was too late to undo the images. They would be forever stamped into her mind.
Another click and the sound poured in. Moans rose into the room. Growling. Winded breath, shuddering gasps, a whimper, yells building in volume. The occasional scream. The whole floor was glass, the entire length of the corridor above and below. Another click and lights shone through from other rooms, one by one. With the light, Sam could see into the private client rooms.
Sam jerked back fast and hit the wall, but the glass went right up to it. She squeezed her eyes closed, breath rattling in her chest. She couldn't escape the noise. She knew that covering her ears would do nothing.
John approached her, speaking to be heard over the noise.
"I come here to monitor the appointments if I suspect any wrongdoing on the part of a client or one of my Birds."
Sam stared at him for a heartbeat before lunging for him.
"You sick, demented-"
John easily seized her arms, pulling her close, pressing the full weight of his chest against hers and pinning her. Sam hated the feeling, but she didn't fight it.
"Consider this a gift, Swan. Tonight you will remain here as a witness to what I have been keeping you from. Perhaps when it is over, you will understand how lucky you are that I have not yet allowed you to take clients of your own."
Allow? As if she had a choice in the matter. And he hadn't 'allowed' her clients because he was waiting to sell her to the wealthiest bidder.
"All night?" Sam whispered, trying to block out the awful sounds by sheer willpower.
For a moment, John hesitatted, and Sam felt a flicker of hope that he would change his mind. But then his face hardened. "All night. I will come for you in the morning."
"Please don't do this, John." It was the first time that Sam begged him. The first time she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, summoning tears. It was the first time she found herself clinging to him like some sort of leech.
His eyes seemed to swim for a moment, but then John turned away, clearing his throat.
"I have told you before, Swan. John is too personal," he said, his voice catching. He turned to face her again. "You must learn to call me Owl or Director Druitt. I have invested a great deal in you. You must learn control, governance. My intention is not to break you, only to help you understand that certain actions must bear consequences."
Sam sobbed a little, despite her intentions, when she heard a long, languid moan below her. "Please! I'd rather take a beating than this."
A muscle in his cheek jerked. He seemed furious at the notion.
Suddenly, John leveled with her, bent with brows low so that they were eye to eye, his words soldifying like ice. "Out of the question."
He said nothing more before leaving, locking the door behind him.
Sam's heart was pounding in her chest and she was immediately overwhelmed by all the noise around her. She scrambled at the switches on the wall, flipping then up and then down, jamming any button she found, but they did nothing. Nothing! Her eyes slid over the long room, refusing to look down.
Her eyes surveyed the room instead. There was nothing. No table, no chairs, no objects. Bare of everything but glass and the bodies beneath it, bodies that would twist and bend and moan and scream all night long. Even if she could fall asleep, Sam knew that the sounds wound haunt her nightmares. She would never forgive him for this. Never.
The only thing she had to distract or comfort herself were her memories. But one in particular, one that wasn't comforting, stuck out to Sam in this moment. The day she had gotten her first period.
"It's not your fault," her father had told her after he and her mother had convinced her that she wasn't hemorrhaging -that she didn't need any sort of stitches.
"You're growing into a beautiful girl and we love that," he'd said. "But you have to be careful, kiddo. You have to watch how you dress and what you watch."
For years, Sam remembered feeling angry. At so many things. Angry because girls were raped every day and it didn't matter what they wore. Ridiculous because she didn't wnat to dress like museum girls even if it seemed...fun. Sam was more comfortable in loose clothing or male clothing. She had been angriest because Jack could leave the hotel rooms without permission or anyone watching him.
"Jack has to watch where his eyes wander and how he treates women," her father had argued when she had told him. "It will be different because he is different."
Sam had argued against that. Jack didn't have to watch how he treated women. He would never mistreat a woman because that wasn't who he was. Her father had sighed heavily at that, leaving her alone with her anger.
She had also been angry with her mother that day. Sam knew that periods happened, of course, but her mother had never talked to her about it. It was as if Patricia had thought that by not telling Sam about it, she would be able to stop her from becoming a woman. There had been a reason that it had been Jacob who had been giving her that talk, not Patricia.
After that day, Sam had given in to her parents' wishes. She had started wearing longer skirts. Peasant blouses to hide her breasts, though she argued that boy's clothing would be better and easier. Eyes had still devoured her wherever they had traveled, which had showed her just how little her wardrobe mattered. The fact that she had an extra X chromosone was enough for most men.
Jack had stopped watching television unless she asked him to because so much of it showed skin and parts. He started reading more.
When Sam heard another moan, she crumpled into a ball, covering her ears with her hands. She didn't want to hear this. But she did. She could hear the hevy breathing crawling through the speakers and straight into her mind. She tried to imagine her mother's voice above the speakers. Remembered how she had picked up the frame with the butterfuly trapped behind the glass. Sam had caught it in a bottle when she had been nine, but it had died. She hadn't been willing to part with it, fascinated by the creature, so her father had decided to pin in a glass frame as a gift to her.
She heard her mother's voice. It was comforting, because it was her voice, though the words, perhaps, weren't.
"So many girls are like this butterfly, Sam. They feel dead inside, even though the look so beautiful on the outside. Some are trained to smile. To look pretty from birth. Others are forced or manipulated to look that way. The last thing we want is for you to be stuck like this, my darling. The last thing I want if for my own daughter to feel trapped. To be trapped like I was in the Temple walls."
A scream startled Sam out of the memory. Ear-splitting because of the volume on the speakers. She peeked through the thin gap in her fingers despite herself, wondering why such an awful noise would be made, searching for the source. All she saw was the girl's face. Neck arched back, mouth open wide as her head rocked back and forth, but her eyes were vacant. Emptier than a winter bird's nest.
Sam covered her eyes again, shuddering, more memories tugging from the depths of her mind.
Her father had once worked in a graphicker studio. He had explained how they took phots of girls to put in their digital galleries. Every time they did, he had explained, that girl was no longer free. he had said that the electronic frames of screen flashing pictures still haunted him after he had found her mother. Because those girls were still stuck there in that gallery behind those screens. Because he had put them there.
"You can never lose the memories," Patricia had told her in a soft voice.
"It was like having a monster inside of me, Sam," Jacob had finished. "One that got its claws in me. It stayed there and when it had, I wasn't satisfied. I had to feed it more and more. Your mother was my saving grace. But I never want you to become some monster's fantasy."
All of the girls below Sam were fantasies. They weren't just exchanging skin with the men. They were exchanging blood and flesh and bits and pieces of their very souls. Feeding the monster of desire over and over even though he would always starve.
"What's your fantasy?," she had asked Jack one evening as they strolled the lake shore.
He had stopped dead, looked at her with angry brown eyes.
"What the hell are you talking about, Sam?," he had demanded.
"Mom said that every man has a fantasy. What's yours?," she had asked it innocently, causually. Jack was her confidant in everything, the one she went to with questions first. And it had seemed such an innocent question when she had been twelve.
"I'm not like those monsters your mom was talking about. I thought you knew that, Sam."
She hadn't meant to make him so angry. She hadn't thought she would. But Jack had answered her before storming off.
"What everyone's should be. Someone who I love. Who I don't have to force and who doesn't feel like they have to."
None of those girls would ever get to live that fantasy. She doubted that any of the men had even tried to.
She spent the night sobbing, her gut wrenching, trying new ways to twist her body away from the sounds and movements of the client rooms below.
She didn't open her eyes again for the entire night.
XXXXXXX
The dark haired girl closed her eyes as the last of the black paint was swept over her body. The cold of the colored liquid was familiar and she embraced it. Her artisan's hands were sure and quick, never straying. He was one of the three people she was certain felt affection for her.
The artisan picked up a can and shook it before coating her in a sealing spray. Then he took a brush and opened a container, pulling out several real gems. Using another product, he attached them to her face.
The dark haired girl studied her reflection in a detached manner. Her eyes were no longer blue. Digital contacts turned her eyes into glowing embers. It wasn't the first time she had worn them, but she admired the way they reflected in the mirror.
"Done." he pronounced after fiddling with the arrangement on her chest.
She turned and looked in the mirror. She did not care much for looking at her own reflection, but she showed him respect for his work by doing so. She tilted her head to study it.
Her skin was black, her hair tinted darker for the night. Her eyes were glowing embers, and rubies, enhanced with optic lights that lit them from within, dripped down her face like tears of fire or blood. Tattered, dark clothing covered her 'important' areas. She was a demon from hell.
It was not the first time she had worn this skin. She admired the hellish look. But she had no idea why a man, paying large sums of money, would want a demon to perform for him before he bedded her. Most men would prefer angels. She had played the angel as well.
"You've outdone yourself." she complimented, turning away.
She was rewarded with a grin. He walked over to her, fussing with some of her curls and then dropping a kiss on her forehead. He knew what he prepared her for, of course. But he did his best for her. He gave her her beauty. He did this for her, not for the men she was to please.
She did everything a man could desire. She dressed as they wished. She performed for them. Her interactions were secret but lengendary. She fufilled their fantasies. Some simply bedded her. But whatever they wanted, she did. And she did it well.
"Why, Maura..."
They both stiffened at the voice. She turned. He started to gather his brushes. Slipping past her father, he gave her a reassuring gesture before leaving.
Her father stepped further into the room. He looked her over, appraising her. But he would find no fault in the artisan's work. He never did. Whatever fault he would find, it was her own. She bowed her head.
"Father."
"You are devastating. Though my own daughter reduced to a demon..." he clicked his tongue, seeming somewhat annoyed.
She kept her head bowed. She didn't say anything. He was the one that chose her clients. He was the one that sold her. If he'd had much of a problem with how she was to perform, he would not have allowed it. There would always scores of men to replace any he dismissed.
"Some men are so strange in their fantasies. Do you not agree, Maura?"
"Yes, Father."
"Good girl. This is an important client. You understand that."
"Yes, Father."
She remained meek. If she had been brave enough, she would have said something biting about the client. She would have said that she did not wnat to do this. She wanted one night off. One night to rest her body and her mind. Which was something that her father would not give her. She was not brave. She never would be.
"So you must perform well. Do anything he asks."
Her father smirked. The words said that abuse or something incredibly degrading would come her way. But she nodded.
"You will have an hour afterward to prepare for the next client. And then a session with the doctor after that."
Two men, sure to abuse her more than usual. That was what a session with the doctor immediately after client sessions meant. But she nodded.
"Yes, Father."
Those were the two words she uttered most in her life. They pleased him.
He slid a hand beneath her chin and tilted her head up, smirking at her.
"Do well, Maura. You carry the reputation of the Temple on your shoulders."
"Yes, Father."
Author's Note: Short chapter, I know. Next one will be longer. Also, for anyone thinking John went too far, I think that was the least Jack the Ripper could do to Sam.
Any and all reviews welcome at all times!