AN: Here. Take it. Enjoy it. Tell your friends.

Slainté.

-Shazzy

-Hostage-

She woke with a start, but didn't move any further.

She was completely aware of what happened, she'd been hit over the head and rendered unconscious. Breathing slowly through her nose, she didn't move, didn't even open her eyes.

Being a writer, and the daughter of a police officer had it's advantages.

The first was a logical thought process. The second was an over-active imagination. The third and probably most valuable advantage she'd had was the fact that she had been trained as a child to keep herself in excellent physical condition. She wasn't an Olympic athlete by any stretch, but she made sure to keep herself fit and to keep up her martial arts training.

Blaise squeezed her eyes tighter for a moment, letting her thoughts collect slowly as she felt out her predicament.

She was sitting, her head hanging forward, her shoulders slouched slightly. She could feel that she was bound at her wrists and ankles. Handcuffs, maybe. Something taught against her belly suggested that she was tied to the chair, but whether it was rope or tape she couldn't say. She wasn't blindfolded and she wasn't gagged.

Well that's not a good sign. Blaise thought to herself. They want information. They're going to use scare tactics on me.

She allowed herself another long moment of contemplation about what, exactly, that could mean.

Bollocks.

Blaise was a writer. Choosing to fight crime in the realm of fiction, rather than on the mean streets, she'd been a bestselling author for years. An only child raised by a single father, she'd had plenty of time to hone her imagination. And she'd been reaping the benefits of it, much to her father's delight.

Blaise had been lucky enough to have been friends with the MacManus brothers before they had become the infamous Saints of South Boston. Lately she'd been harbouring her vigilante friends, making sure that they stayed out of trouble. They'd lost too many friends already, and the privacy and security that Blaise the writer paid for certainly made her home the ideal hideout. Besides, it wasn't like she would let the only man she'd ever had more than a fleeting crush on just disappear, vigilante or not. And the Saints were kind of a packaged deal, so she'd ended up hiding them both and running errands for them, feeding them information and doing whatever a writer could to help the two angels of death continue their holy mission.

Besides being friends with the Saints, Blaise had made her way in with the Mayor, donating money and speaking at charity events or running events of her own, and with her father being an Irish cop, she'd had the pleasure of making friends with most of the older detectives on the force.

Between Connor and Murphy, the Mayor of Boston, and Detectives Dolly and Duffy, she knew that there would be a veritable army looking for her when the neighbours reported the strange goings-on.

Now if only she knew where she was, and how she could get a message to her boys.

It had been a home invasion. Blaise O'Malley was sitting quietly in her own home, a two story Victorian number in South Boston. It was a family home she'd been willed by her father after he was shot and killed by the Yakavetta family. The elder O'Malley had been the cop who'd taught Blaise everything he knew. She'd been sitting quietly on her couch, in her pyjamas reading a book, waiting for her Saints to to get home. She'd paid for privacy and security and no one had any reason to suspect her involvement with anything that the Saints did, so it was more than a little shocking when the invaders arrived.

The initial text message she'd managed to send off was a single word to Detective Duffy, he was the first contact she could think of to dial as the masked men kicked open the heavy, steel-reinforced oak door.

"Help" was cryptic enough to have Duffy rush over to her place, so she typed it immediately and shoved her phone into her couch cushions. She didn't want these men to find her phone right away if she could help it. There were contacts in her phone she'd rather keep private.

There were three of them, dressed in black with ski masks. For a split second she'd thought it was Connor and Murphy screwing with her, but the third man, and the second look that told her these men were too big to be the MacManuses, sent her into panic mode.

She was on her feet before they were fully aware that she was even in the living room. She'd been reading a heavy, hardcover book and she brandished it like a weapon. She managed to clock the first man in the side of the face with her book, getting rewarded with a dull crunch as cheek or jaw snapped. She growled her satisfaction as he stumbled back into his partners.

She was on the stairs, running when they grabbed her. She was small in comparison to these men and they'd had no trouble lifting her from the ground. She screamed and flailed uselessly, unable to get a shot at the person holding her in a way that could do any damage. She tried her hardest to fight back, biting the bare hand that attempted to cover her mouth.

She didn't understand the language in which she was being yelled at, which was a clue as to who it was that had set their sights on her. She swung an elbow, catching her attacker in the side of the head. A momentary release of the grip around her waist was enough for her to pry herself away and make for the stairs again. She made it to the top this time and partway down the hall before she was caught again.

"Let me go, you bastard!" Blaise growled, clawing and fighting however she could.

She was half dragged down the short flight of stairs, still screaming until she was blue in the face. She needed ten minutes before Duffy would be on her doorstep. By her estimation, less than five had elapsed.

She stopped struggling for half a minute, breathing heavily and whimpering and her ruse paid off. She felt the strong arm relax enough for her to pull away a second time. This time she made for her front door, whirling to face the front entrance and make a run for it.

She'd barely gotten three steps before the man whose face she'd broken with her book hit her over the back of the head. Everything went black before she even hit the ground.

Now she was sitting, bound somewhere and alone. She only hoped that her message had gotten through and that Duffy could figure out where she was before something happened to her.

Through her closed eyes she heard a door open on a squeaky hinge and she felt her heart begin to race. Blaise did her best not to move, not to show any sign that she was actually conscious. She forced herself to breathe regularly as heavy footsteps approached.

"Wake up, little writer." A deep voice crooned.

Blaise couldn't place the accent.

"We have some questions you need to answer if you want to go home."

Blaise felt her stomach drop at the words and she slowly opened her eyes.

"Hello, little writer." Blaise's captor said. "Are you ready to tell us a story?"