The words spilled out of her mouth.
"You're cuffed to the wall, are you not?" She didn't bother to wait for his response. "You cannot approach the bars fully, anyway. I can almost guarantee you I can pick the lock to your cuffs, if you could only manage to scoot close enough to me."
"It's not possible."
"I assure you, it is possible. You only have to save your silverware from your next meal. I am small enough that I should be able to stretch my arms through the bars and reach your cuffs."
His voice, low and full, rang new and unfamiliar in the vacuum of their tiny world. It had a deep hum that could have been sensuous under different circumstances. "Not possible. The chains are vytanium, the silverware is a paper byproduct. The prison wards have insured themselves against conspiracy."
"It doesn't matter. I can pick it," she assured.
He snorted.
"Believe me," she grit through her teeth, "I can."
"You plan to pick the locks on my cuffs why?" There was a hint of an aristocratic stroke to his speech that appeared alongside his incredulity towards her.
"You have the brawn, and the quick reflexes, to escape. Knock the guard upside the head and walk out the door! You can free me once you've freed yourself."
Laughter billowed up from some nasty place in his gut. "Why should I?"
Her face slackened before pinkening with fury.
"Are you a scoundrel as well as a political prisoner?"
His face darkened. She took the silence as victory.
"I thought not. Save your silverware. I'll pick your locks. You will escape the next time the guard opens your door. You will unlock my own door. The spaceport is only across the upper level. I will hot wire a pod and we will have won this small battle against them. I know plenty of quadrants that will allow us sanctuary."
He took a stab at her pride. "You are not as peace-loving as you'd like to think, I'd say, wanting me to bludgeon the guards."
"No. I am not." Her agreement was hushed, but firm. "But it's my opinion that they don't deserve any more compassion than Kami has already given them having allowed them to live." She spared the darkness of his cell a sharp look. "I will not tolerate their existence while I still draw breath."
Something aligned in his chest and he felt a new strength flood him. "Let's do it."
It took a few meals to gather enough silverware to weave together into a lock pick. He didn't know what he expected, but not this, with the woman hunched over their used, disposable silverware in the corner of her cell, peeling the threads of each spoon apart and slicking each with her spit with the pink tip of her tongue.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" He demanded impatiently, his back against the far wall, watchful.
She sent the darkness a sharp look. "Of course I do," she retorted. "I have done this before, the first time I was captive after the Imperial Army raided my planet." Her voice softened. "It didn't take me long to discover that the silverware they gave us was Goitten reeds, which have a compound that causes it to stiffen with the acids in ones saliva. My first cellmate was from planet Goitten and she said they used to chew it like gum until it became like chewing gravel and they'd have to spit it out." She clucked her tongue as she rolled the thick threads between her palms and began the tedious task of braiding them into the others. The braids became stiffer and stiffer as she worked, hopefully rigid enough to withstand unlatching each of the four cuffs at his ankles and wrists. "And that is how I first broke out of prison, and how I earned my first lashing and my first assignation." Her tone grew dark.
His eyes narrowed fractionally.
So, it was true. It was a whore's life for the women of the diaspora that the Empire had planted and sewn with its greed. How had a whore forged the ties to form an able resistance? How had she spanned the craters and crevices that Frieza had left in the hearts of all refugees and convinced them all to risk their lives to overthrow an impossibly powerful, exceptionally defended Emperor? Had the women of his planet even been given that small, bleak chance at life after death? Or had Frieza turned them into dust to more thoroughly humiliate him? When Frieza walked, did the wind whistle through the place where his heart would be?
She tucked her legs underneath her bottom and continued braiding, her profile expressionless. They had neglected to yet bring her the jumpsuit that all inmates received, so she'd taken to washing her clothes in the sparse, cold water of the toilet, and her once white suit was now thinning and wrinkled, reeking of mildew. But despite her haggard appearance, she continued to carry herself upright, and Vegeta was reminded of the fairy tale he'd been told as a kid, of the small Saiyan who braved the giant that tormented his village when no one else would, and the blue-hued seraph that appeared at his side to usher him to victory.
He should have known that the plan was doomed to fail as soon as he heard the footsteps outside their doors in the middle of the fifty fifth shift.
The woman's door began its song of clangs and clacks as she hurried to stuff the now nearly solid pick into her shirt, to fall into the space where it was tucked into her waistband.
"Here kitty kitty," came the gut wrenching peal of one of the guards, and Bulma stood to meet them.
"We've come bearing gifts," him hawed the other, and in he lumbered, carrying something folded in his arms. "Clothing." He held it up under his cragged face and toothless leer, and it unfolded, a slender gray jumpsuit. "Strip, little kitty."
"Absolutely not." She stood stiffly in front of them.
"Ya don't have a choice," quipped the other guard. "Either ya strip, or it be ripped."
"I am not undressing in front of you. Place the clothing on the floor and be gone."
"It ain't gonna work like that, honey."
He watched her mouth purse and her expression darken dramatically. "Don't call me honey."
It was then that the guards bumrushed her, flanking her and roping her wrists at the small of her back, and then tearing at her blazer and her pants front.
She kicked and hit, pinioning between them as she sought to outmaneuver them, but she was hungry and small, and they were big and cruel.
They ripped her blazer off, wrenching her arms in the process, and pulled her shirt over her head, laughing at her temporary blindness.
Vegeta watched the pick fall soundlessly to the ground near their scuffling feet.
Her muffled screams rung painfully throughout their cells, and just as Vegeta moved to turn away from the scene with that terrible, carnivorous helplessness that had inhabited his belly ever since he'd watched Frieza slay the Royal Family, he watched her place her heel on the pick and then, smoothly, slide the pick with as much force as she could, into his cell.
His eyes widened.
They pinned her to the ground and dressed her, palming her unabashedly and slapping her when she bucked against their hands, wrenching the rope tight to watch her clammy face screw with the pain of their power.
Eventually, she was dressed, and they both kissed her mouth and laughed as they left her there, arms pulled tightly behind her under her back.
"It's war!" She railed, sobbing now with the clawing sobs of a child in the sticky center of a nightmare. "War, you fucks." The spat threats fell like rocks from her mouth.
He was no stranger to his infallible pride paving the way into a self made grave.
Still, he looked away politely, giving her the privacy to grieve.
But not before palming the pick.
She'd fallen into drowsing against the icy floor, when he hissed again. "Woman."
Her puffy eyelids opened slowly, and he watched her try to focus in on the darkness.
"Woman. Come here."
For a moment, she lay there, staring unseeing. His heart began to flutter. Had she finally lost it? Not when they were so close!
"Ugh. So demanding," she muttered dully into the floor, and she wiggled her way toward him slowly until, with a grunt, she pulled her torso up and leaned heavily against the bars that separated their cells.
"All is not lost. But...I'm going to need you to...to be a man and grit your teeth through some pain," he tried explaining. He still wasn't very good at asking and not just taking, it seemed.
"I'm as strong as any man," she contested hotly, looking daggers into the darkness that loomed just beyond the bars.
"As strong as a Saiyan then," he corrected impatiently.
She snorted and kicked her feet, pouty, against the floor.
"Are you weak or are you strong?" He snapped.
Her eyes filled with tears, then, as he hit some nerve, but she pressed her face to the bars and grimaced with anger.
"Are you weak or strong?" He bellowed.
"I'm strong," she cried out, strained.
"Good. I need you to put your back to the bars. I'm going to get you out of that rope, but...it's going to hurt."
Fear flashed in her eyes.
"I don't want to hurt you," he assured her gravely. "But it's the only way."
She stared into the darkness with profound clarity. "You're going to dislocate my shoulder."
"Yes."
"Can you reach?"
"Yes," he assured. "But only if you squeeze your shoulder between the bars."
She nodded, looking sick. "Okay," she confirmed weakly.
Although straining, she was able to squeeze her round shoulder between the bars, wrenching her head to the opposite side and sucking in air to make herself as thin as possible. "Damned breasts," she fussed, wiggling back and forth to ease herself between the bars as much possible.
He snorted. "The impressive size of her breasts is not something a woman usually complains about."
"That's because you've probably only been in the position for you both to enjoy them. Tell me, how many women have you known who were comfortable enough with you to detail all of the pains of being a woman, huh?"
He thought of his mother.
"Are you as close to me as you can get?" He issued grudgingly.
With her head wrenched to the other side, he couldn't see her face, but irritation pervaded the air around them.
"I'm as close as I'm going to get before I surrender the ability to breathe."
The corner of his mouth crooked before thinning. "Are you ready?"
"I'm about as ready as I'm going to be, you heartless- -OWWW!" She shrieked with pain before swallowing it in a gulp.
"Anger is the best pain suppressor," he informed her tonelessly. "I'm going to loosen the rope now."
She was breathing fast now.
"Don't pass out!" He barked. "Take deep breaths. Slowly. Count to ten. Count to ten in Saiyago. Ready?"
She whimpered her acquiescence.
Together they counted slowly in his native language, and jagged as her answers were as she repeated after him like a child, he could tell she was using all of her energy to concentrate on the task.
With the last few inches of his tail, he was able to tug the rope off her wrists inch by inch, now possible with her arm hanging limply between the bars, fingers dragging on the asphalt.
A feeling of unaccustomed success shot through him as the ropes fell limply to the ground.
"This is the last part, okay?" His voice was rough, but not unkind. "Here."
Slowly, he was able to place the pick into her good hand with the tip of his tail. She gazed at the wall uncomprehending.
"Pick my cuffs. The sooner you get it done the closer we are to putting your shoulder back in place."
Her good hand clutched the pick but she made no effort to move.
"PICK ME!" He hollered, and she jumped, her head swiveling against the bars, sliding sweatily as she tried pinning the darkness around him with a furious glare.
She didn't answer him, only reached jerkily for his cuffs. He stretched both his arms and his tail out and guided her fingers towards the left cuff's key hole with his tail. When she started fiddling with the pick against the hole, they both held their breaths, listening to it scratch along the metal, feel it jump out of the hole a few times only to sink back in. After a minute, she seemed to get her groove, and with less shaking and more surety she dipped the pick into the lock, through the locking mechanisms, and jerkily pulled it back.
The cuff opened and slid off without complaint.
Vegeta held back laughter. He gazed at his wrist in the darkness with wonder.
"Next," she rasped, and he swiftly grabbed her hand and guided it toward the key hole, grasping it loosely with encouragement so her hand didn't shake.
The pain was leeching her focus, and this one took longer, but after an impossibly long few minutes, the lock teeth clicked, the cuff opened, and then rattled to the floor.
This time, Vegeta laughed irreverently, and he gripped the bars she was stuck between with shaking hands, and pulled.
The bars bent outward with hollow complaint, and with a welp, the woman fell in between them, her body hitting the floor of his cell.
She let out a howl as her dislocated shoulder hit the ground with a smack. With the extra length afforded him by the lack of wristlets, he first stretched his arms outward with a pained groan, and then carefully gripped her under her armpits and pulled her the rest of the way through the bars.
She was sobbing silently now, and he sat her up against the bars, her head lolling on her shoulders. He made sure she was propped firmly before shoving her arm upwards without preamble, where it slid back into her socket with an audible click.
She inhaled with a gulp and wrested her head in his direction. "Oh my god you beast!" She fell to the floor on her back, taking in gulping breaths and shakily running her hands over her face and through her ragged locks.
He leaned over her.
"Now my legs."
"Can't you just wait a second?"
"We only have an hour or less until shift change."
She let out an exasperated breath and sat up testily.
That's when they realized just how near they were, his hot breath hitting her face.
The dark was almost impenetrable, but from the low light over her cell door, she was able to make out the profile of his face, at least, the strong shoulders rising and falling in front of her with his breaths. He was humanoid. She wasn't sure why, but the fact relieved her. "How did you get used to the dark?" She asked in a whisper, without thinking.
"My race are natural predators. We are able to see in the dark, go long lengths without eating, and endure long periods of trauma and isolation."
"How fortunate," she murmured with evident sarcasm.
"Yes. This is intentional."
"Why are you here?" She questioned him softly.
He outstretched his legs, and she settled beside them. Her hands grazed his skin as she pushed the coarse fabric of the jumpsuit over his calves and squinted down through the dark at the cuffs. His leg hair was fine and soft, and she leaned over him, chewing her lip and inserting the lock pick, until the left ankle cuff broke open.
He automatically pulled his leg toward his chest and gripped his ankle, worn red where the cuff had rubbed him raw over his pant legs for a year.
Vegeta's eyes slid to the periphery of his vision. "The same reason you're here."
"What? Being caught leading a ragtag army against the throne?" She asked with a chuckle in her throat.
"Something like that."
She looked up. "You're being deceptive," she accused him softly.
"You're not hurrying," he complained.
"I don't know if it's going to hold up," she informed him worrisomely, slicking the pick again with her tongue and blowing on it to bolster the softening thing before plunging it back in the hole. Finally, with a resounding click, the cuff yawned open, and Vegeta bolted upwards and stood for the first time in a year.
She stood, too, holding her hands out in the event that he toppled over. "Is the blood rushing to your head?" She asked wryly.
He stretched, and that's when she realized how well built he was. Not barrel chested or egregiously muscled, but his wide chest tapered into a slender, compact waist, and as he crooked his head to pop his neck, she could make out his defined jawline above his thick, corded neck. For the first time since he lashed out at her the first night she spent in her cell, she experienced a twinge of fear.
She was alone in the dark with a convict.
And with a humorless laugh, the man in front of her lit up into fire.
Her eyes narrowed against the light, and she raised her hand to shield her eyes. The room rumbled with his smug laughter, and the hot blast of ki energy whipped the air around them.
Just as quickly, it was extinguished, and she felt her wrist being grabbed as he drug her to the door.
"It would be safest to make our break from it now, when they're not worrying about being engaged. Stay behind me. We'll make our way through the tunnels to the front. I'm not sparing anyone," he warned her.
She nodded meekly.
"I smell your fear," he interrupted.
She gazed at his shaded silhouette with wide eyes.
"Are you afraid of what's to come?" He paused. "Or are you afraid of me?"
"Both," she whispered.
"Are you strong or are you weak?" He pressured her, shaking her by her wrist.
She felt panic burbling in her chest.
"I-"
She felt something else wrap itself around her waist, and his grip tightened almost painfully on her wrist. She let out a scared sound as she patted her waist instinctively, and her mouth gaped as she felt warmth and fur. She grasped it, and it stiffened, before whipping away and curling back around his own waist protectively.
"You're Saiyan!"
"I'm the Prince of all Saiyans," he replied ominously, "and I'm about to blow this place to smithereens. Are you ready?"
Before she could issue a yes or no, he was already pounding down his door with ease and dragging her into the hallway.
A/N: I've had a tremendous amount of things a'going on recently, and I found this this update/submission pretty challenging because of it. Ha ha, pun. Not necessarily time to find to sit and type, but time to get into 'Da Zone and get lost in it like getting lost in a good book. When I write, I pretty much become a foul smelling, grunting barbarian, eschewing showers and meals just to write fan fiction. Luckily I was able to do that this afternoon. I'm going to go take a shower and eat now.
A special thank you to my reviewers for giving me such kind praises and encouragement. I've been in a funk lately and you managed to give me the profound warm fuzzies, so thank you.