Day Sixteen: Do you know a way out of here?

Characters/Pairings: Jake/Rose

Rating: T

Content warnings: kidnapping; restraints; captivity; slight blood/wounds

Don't forget that you can find me on tumblr: we - are - all - of - legend - now and that my ao3 account is wearealloflegendnow (even though I haven't posted there yet)!

~TLL~

"Psst. Psst. Hey! Are you dead? Please don't be dead."

Jake grunted, lifting his head and opening his eyes, finding only darkness as he looked around. He could set a fire and get a better grasp on his surroundings but something was telling him that it was a very bad idea. Maybe the fact that his hands were chained above his head and he was sitting on a barren stone floor. The voice next to him sighed in relief.

"Thank goodness. I couldn't take it if another one of you were dead."

"Another one?" Jake asked the female voice, his tongue feeling swollen in his mouth. How did he get here? Where was here?

"The Huntsclan isn't good at taking people alive. Or leaving them alive, at least," the voice said.

The Huntsclan?

Oh, crap, the Huntsclan. Jake could vaguely remember a fight now. He had been on his own and he had been overwhelmed. He wondered if Gramps was disappointed and then he just shook his head at himself. No one would know where he was or if he was even alive. Gramps would be hunting for him now and be disappointed in him later.

"Is that where we are? In the Huntsclan?"

"I hope so," she said. "If I could figure out a way to get out of these chains, I know how to get out of the Huntsclan."

"Who are you?" Jake asked.

"My name is Rose," she said. "I'm just one of those who thought that the Clan should be brought down. They caught me sneaking into get blueprints and tossed me in here. They don't want people to know how to get in or out."

Now it was Jake's turn to breathe a sigh of relief. Another magical creature who had been caught by the Huntsclan's brutal net. Jake wanted to ask Rose who she was and where she had come from but he knew there was a reason that she hadn't offered. He wasn't going to offer either. It was dangerous to announce that he was the American Dragon while in the bowels of the Huntsclan. Even he had enough common sense to know that.

"I'm Jake," he said. "I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Rose snorted. "Yeah, that's what they all say."

"I thought you said the rest of them were dead."

"Touche," Rose said.

Jake quietly summoned the tail of the dragon, grateful for the darkness. He maneuvered it up toward where he thought the keyhole on the manacles would be and he hoped that Gramps had taught him enough. No, Gramps had definitely taught him enough; Jake just might not have been paying enough attention.

"What if I could get the chains unlocked?" Jake asked. "Could you get us out of here?"

"I think so," Rose said, "but how are you going to do that?"

The first lock opened and Jake's numb hand dropped into his lap. Just how long had he been hanging there? He didn't have long to ponder as he tried to shake out the painful pins and needles.

"Just say you'll take me with you," Jake said. "We can talk about details later."

"Okay," Rose said. "Let's get each other out. I promise."

Jake would just have to take her at her word.

"Are we in separate cells or are you right next to me?"

"I don't know," Rose admitted.

And then Jake called himself an idiot and kicked the eye of the dragon into high gear, finally finding shapes in the darkness. It was easier to see that he and Rose were in one large room, using only two of the ten sets of manacles scattered around. Unfortunately, he couldn't see a door, but that probably fell under the 'Rose getting them out' territory anyway. Jake watched Rose as he tried to figure out the second keyhole. She looked human but that meant nothing in the magical world. It did make Jake even more reluctant to let her know that he was a dragon, let alone a world dragon. The second manacle let go with a clang and Jake's other hand fell against the floor. Jake was sure he scraped it but he didn't feel anything right now.

"I'm free," Jake confessed.

"That fast?" Rose said, skepticism in her voice. "Impressive."

"Hey, you'll keep being impressed by me," Jake said, "just watch."

"I'll even hold my breath."

With some feeling back in his hands, Jake stood from the floor. His legs felt weak under him but he could make his way across room.

"I'm on my way over," he said, not wanting to scare Rose. Who knew if the Huntsclan ever came down here and what they did when they arrived? Jake didn't want to scare her when he needed her.

"Okay."

Rose held deathly still as Jake approached. It made it easier not to expose her to the tail that he was trying to hide as he moved around her. Jake had it nearly figured out and Rose was free in no time but she slumped to the side in a way that he hadn't, desperately rubbing at her wrists. Rose let out a little groan and struggled to rub her own hands. She couldn't quite get her fingers to move so Jake took pity on her, taking her hands into his own and giving her a little message. She jumped when he touched her and Jake felt bad for scaring her.

"Sorry," he whispered, "is this okay?"

"Yeah," Rose said, "it feels pretty nice actually."

"How long have you been down here?" Jake asked when Rose stood, slowly stretching out her legs and grunting the whole time she was moving.

"No idea. Feels like forever." Rose shrugged her shoulders. "We should go. I don't know how often they check on us or if they realized we got out. We've got to be fast."

"Lead the way," Jake said. "I'm right behind you."

"Good. Don't ask questions, just follow, okay? I'm worried I'm going to mess it up. I didn't actually get the blueprints to this place."

"I trust you," Jake said, because it was true and he had no reason not to, at this point. He wasn't going to be able to figure out how to get out of here himself.

Rose went to the far side of the room and knelt down on the floor, patting the bottom of the wall as she crawled. "There should be a switch or something."

Jake squinted at the wall but he couldn't see even the slightest imperfection. She kept crawling around and Jake was growing impatient because who knew when someone was going to be down here or maybe they already knew that their prisoners were free and were waiting on the other side of the door. If there even was a door.

"Do you know a way out of here?" Jake asked.

"I don't appreciate your tone," Rose said, and went right back to fondling the wall.

It scared him when Rose did find the right spot, because the door out opened completely silently, letting in a flood of light that made Rose cover her face, barely peeking through her fingers. She retreated back into the darkness, pulling her dark long-sleeve shirt up over her face, trying to protect herself.

"That's going to be a readjustment," Rose said, her eyes barely open. "Can you see?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "I'm fine."

"Okay, then you lead." Rose fumbled forward and grabbed onto the sleeve of Jake's jacket. "Keep going straight until you reach the first fork, then go left."

"Okay, let's go."

They tripped over each other for the first couple of steps until it just because easier for Rose to hang onto his hand. As they moved, trying to be quick and silent, Rose kept tilting her head back, trying to force her eyes to adjust.

"Going left," Jake said.

"Okay, there should a set of stairs coming up on your left. We need to go down."

"Go it."

Jake found the entrance to the stairs and led Rose inside. He looked down, only to find a bunch of Huntsclan members on the stairs. No one had noticed them yet but Jake didn't exactly want to follow them. He whispered the information to Rose who nodded.

"Okay, let's go up one floor and find the other stairwell that'll bring us down. I wish we would have known it was day time," she hissed. Her eyes were half-open now and she was able to move more confidently as she directed them up the stairs and out into another hall.

This hall was luckily deserted. It was lined with lockers, much like the school hallway that Jake would return to, hopefully, at some point, if he survived getting out.

"Cross your fingers and hope class doesn't let out soon," Rose murmured.

The hunched as they ran so that hopefully no one in the classrooms would see them if they were looking out the thin windows in the doors. They were moving as fast as they could without attracting attention and Jake could see the stairs they were heading for: six doors away, five doors away. Then, the bell rang, and with the impatience of students everywhere, all of the classroom doors flew open and the hallway was immediately flooded. Rose kept trying to pull Jake along, as if they could move fast enough to not to be noticed. Rose might have gotten away with it – she was in a black burglar's catsuit and not all of the Huntsclan students were wearing masks – but Jake was still in his street clothes. Not a single student was wearing anything like his shorts and bright red jacket.

"MA'AM," yelled one of the students, who Jake had to assume was a raging suck-up, "dungeon escapees! Dungeon escapees!"

Most of the student body started trying to locate the prisoners and Jake felt a couple of hands on him. They weren't going to make it to the stairs and he could see Rose desperately trying to figure out where they could go. Jake saw into one of the classrooms and he saw the large windows. He could get them out. He could sprout wings and get them out. He wouldn't have ever have gotten out of that dungeon without Rose and he owed her this.

"Catch them!" one of the teachers ordered. "What has all your training before?"

And even they were just students, he and Rose couldn't take on a hundred of them with just the two of them.

"Do you trust me?" Jake asked Rose.

Rose kicked one of the students in the face, not using both of her hands so that she could keep holding onto Jake's hand. Her eyes looked out over the sea of heads and she nodded, just as Jake had known she would. Jake pulled her into the classroom as she tried desperately to beat back the hands that were tearing at her clothes, trying to be the one that captured the prisoner. Jake wondered what kind of twisted reward that student would get and decided it was not the time as the teacher in the room – the definitely armed teacher – jumped at them.

Jake raced toward the window.

"JUMP!" He shouted at Rose.

Rose didn't hesitate, leaping into the air. Jake caught her around the waist, hearing a loud tear as one of the students tried again to jerk her back by her shirt sleeve, but it was too late for them to stop them. They crashed through the large window and Jake could feel the way the glass was cutting into them. To her credit, Rose didn't scream, even as they started plummeting down twenty floors. Jake held her close to him and transformed, immediately spreading his wings to sail them far from the Huntsclan building. He didn't really know where he was going, he just knew that he couldn't land anywhere too close or they'd be doing this all over again.

Jake found a deserted alley, hopefully far enough away that the Huntsclan wouldn't be on top of them immediately and he and Rose could actually stop and talk to each other before they had to start running back to their respective safeties. If Rose even had a place to be safe. Jake looked down at the top of her head, realizing that her eyes were still squeezed tightly shut and that she had little bleeding cuts from the glass over the top of her head. Jake probably did too and he hoped that he'd taken the worst of it from her because he knew that he could handle it.

Jake set them down and Rose stumbled away from him, staring at his dragon form with her mouth open. Jake's eyes were drawn to the bared arm, her sleeve having been ripped off at the shoulder. On her arm was the mark of the Huntsclan.

"You're one of them?" Jake asked, not understanding. Why would one of their own be in their dungeon?

"You're a dragon!" Rose exclaimed. "I helped a dragon escape?!"

"Well, I set a Clan member free!" Jake said. "What –"

"No. No," Rose said. "No, we hate each other. We are mortal enemies."

They had both ended up in the same dungeon, Jake thought. They couldn't be enemies anymore. My enemy's enemy is my friend or something like that.

"So, what are you going to do?" Jake asked. Because, if she wanted a fight, he would have to give her one.

"I'm going to go this way and you're going to go that way," Rose said, "and we hope we never run into each other again because I will kill you."

Jake watched her run off, knowing deep down that he was going to see her again and hoping that they didn't really have to try to kill each other.