-Author's note: Ahoy! Now finally we will see what happened with Dudley, I hope you'll like it :)-

There are things that are always the same no matter where you are. Like they were somewhere written into the universe's DNA and then spread from particle to particle at the big bang. Things that fall under these universal axioms would be the smell in a dental clinic for example.

Or the fact that the guy at the beach who sells watches just has forgeries in his inventory except of course the one he wears around his own wrist. Or of course, the fact that every interrogation that contains a hefty amount of torture was structured the same way.

First, they would lay down the instruments, before they used these they would use their actual first instrument, fear. If the victim should stay unimpressed then they would start with something light, like pulling a nail after that a tooth. If that doesn't help they start with the detachment of different smaller body parts.

If all this shouldn't bring the interrogator any further, they would usually use their whole cruel arsenal until the victim spoke or died. The quality of the information usually fluctuates using these methods, most people would just say anything just to make the pain stop. A lot of cultures had stopped seeing torture as a valid tool for this exact reason.

It was not a shock for Dudley, as he experienced it firsthand, that the lizard didn't belong to the cultures that preferred quality information. Right now, the realization sunk in ever more as a heavy built giant of a lizard from time to time put a taser device on his shoulder and asked the same question over and over again.

"Where isss your base?"
Dudley liked to answer with long-winded descriptions of landscapes that he had seen on other planets maybe a century ago. Initially, the lizard made some notes but after the third time Dudley had tricked him into wasting time, he demanded shorter answers.

So Dudley did him the favor he kept on saying nonsense like "Southeast of the west" and received a shock for it every time. With more time spent the lizard grew more impatient and angry. Dudley soon received another kind of torture for his remarks. With a vicious-looking injection pistol, the lizard pushed something into his veins that made him wish he could rip his burning flesh from his bones.

'I might overdid it a little…' Dudley screamed inside his mind while his screams to the outside kept unintelligent for the most part.
"Tell me now where is your base!" The lizard said and added a few shocks from his taser to Dudley's chest. The poking with the electric stick felt like tickling compared to the rest of the pain.

Dudley tried to remember what he had learned back at the academy in case he got himself in such a situation. Mentally he tried to go to his happy place, a happy memory to be precise. It was a wide empty beach, the beach of his home city Petropolis. He was there with Kitty and it was about two weeks before his space flight.

They both lay on their towels under the sunshade and watched the sunset. It was a tranquil memory but something had bothered him lately about the scene.
He started his inner movie as he did always with him kissing her and then saying "I never believed the beach was so empty at this time."

"Well, I have my tricks." Kitty then answered grinning mischievously.
"Do you want to tell me the trick?" he giggled excitedly.
"Hmm… no." She said and pinched his nose playfully. "Like a good magician, I keep my secrets."

Dudley smiled and lay back onto his back and closed his eyes. He listened to the sound of the waves on the beach. Slowly he drifted away into a state of peaceful unconsciousness. At least he did so until he suddenly felt the weight of someone sitting down on top of him.

"Are you really sleeping right now?" Kitty purred as she moved from a sitting to a lying position.
"I never would, I just relaxed a little. You know with the ocean sound and so on." He said suppressing a yawn.

"You know there are better ways to do so…" she moved her lips onto his and instinctively Dudley's hands moved onto her backside.
At this point something was wrong, Dudley felt it for a while now but right now, maybe through the pain fed into his system from outside, a part of the memory unlocked that that maybe time had altered.

At the point, before he had closed his eyes more had happened. He now could remember that Kitty had sighed in a way he had never heard her before. She sighed fearfully, Kitty Katswell was afraid. She had jumped in front of guns, wrestled guys twice her size, and even got into shouting fights with the chief but during all of that, he had never seen her afraid.

Dudley now could remember that he had opened his eyes and looked at her.
"Are you alright Kitty?"
"You know… it's just." She drew circles in the sand while avoiding any eye contact. "This space flight of yours. You know I was really proud of you at first that you won this stupid competition…"

"Weird compliment but I take it." He giggled but instead of the usual smile, Kitty would give him for this remark, she just sighed again in this awful way and continued.
"After you won this competition and this thing became a reality… I'm afraid Duds. I… I can't tell you why but I have the feeling that something terribly awful will happen and you…" her tears welled up in her eyes. In that moment, and even weirder for Dudley himself he wasn't in his body anymore. He suddenly stood next to his younger self and Kitty who were hugging.

Dudley looked confused around before he heard young Dudley say. "Don't worry Kitty…"
"No don't tell her that!" he tried to intervene but he seemed to be like a ghost to them.
"You always worry too much. You know?"

"YOU IMBECILE YOU HAVE NO IDEA!" He started yelling at himself and tried to push his younger self to the ground to beat his stupid smug face. But the attempt just proved that he had all characteristics of a common ghost.

"You are sure?" Kitty asked and Dudley screamed in exasperation before his young self-eased Kitty's worries with a kiss.
"HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE HIM HE IS AN IDIOT… oh god…" Dudley gasped as he realized. "I must have infected her with my idiocy…" Dudley knew that the Kitty he knew would have never let anyone go on a trip that dangerous but somehow he must have lulled her with his stupid unreasoned optimism.

Again, something weird moved in the space of his head shifting the scenery to him and Kitty in pure blackness. She was just standing there frozen with a smile while Dudley was slowly pulled into the blackness. Her green eyes that followed him were the last thing he saw before he was slammed back into a body that was feeling like being burnt alive over a lava grill.

"I think thissss issss pointlesssss right now." The lizard hissed annoyed. "Ssssomeone bring him back into the cell. Give him a little to catch his breath."
Dudley again received a shot from the injection pistol and realized that the pain together with his perception dwindled. It was a microsleep later that he woke up in a cell on something that had the resemblance of a bed.

"Finally!" it was maybe the second or the third fully conscious second Dudley experienced in which Rob's voice reminded him of the guy's existence. "I thought you were out cold."
"They need more than a little torture for that..." Dudley sat up slowly and looked around. The cell was quite wide and tiled with dark metal tiles.

Light was given by a wide containment field that had a distasteful purple hue. The only bed in the room was the one Dudley lay on, something like a place to release any metabolic end products was missing.

"I'm glad you aren't." Rob sighed in relief. "They brought… René was his name? Anyway, they brought him away not too long ago."
"Bad…" Dudley stretched, every fiber of his body was still tensed but whatever this chemical was it mostly must have been out of his system. "Did we receive anything from…"

Rob quickly lay his finger on his lips and then pointed to his ear and then at the walls all around him. "At least that's the gesture René made," Rob added afterwards.
Dudley nodded he should maybe tone down anything evolving tactical data. "I see… uhm…" He looked around and then shrugged. "Did they have you in for interrogation already?"

"Yes, I was there at the same time as you… I just kept my mouth shut, they lost interest quickly."
'I should have done that too…' thought Dudley and looked at Rob. He just now realized that he was just sitting in his underwear there. And as he looked down on himself he saw the same. He looked back up at Rob, his fur was outrageously dense for someone who fought with a dietary deficit not too long ago.

Dudley stared into the body hair and tried to imagine how it must have looked before the apocalypse. Also, his whole physique was still in a good state although more taken by the malnourishment. Dudley was wondering what the guy worked in his old life. A fitness trainer maybe? A bodybuilder? A professional athlete?

Dudley's gaze stretched so long that Rob was finally realizing that he was ogling him. "See something you like?" he asked and flexed his pecs like he wanted to tell him that he didn't care and he could take another look.

Dudley shook his head and quickly looked into Rob's face. "I? I didn't…"
"Sure Dude, you could have said that you are into guys, I know a few in the base that would love to meet you." Rob grinned provokingly showing a set of teeth that weren't maybe the whitest anymore but still sharp.

"I think…" Dudley said slowly, and his face became a stone mask. "We both know what or rather who I am into." Rob reacted to this statement like Dudley and the playful smile fled from his face being replaced by cold sternness.

"Oh, so you want to start like this?" He meant.
"We have some time on our hands for this, yes." Dudley meant and started a staring contest which neither party wanted to lose.

"If you think so, then let me begin. What makes you think that, after 16 years of absence, you still have any chances with her? What gives you the right, after leaving her alone with YOUR child for so long, to come back and try to squeeze back into her life again?"
Rob didn't seem to be the one starting with light punches, Dudley could just barely try to prevent himself from shaking after hearing that.

It was exactly the kind of uncomfortable questions he sometimes asked himself after talking to her. The problem was that he hadn't found a satisfying answer to them, yet. The younger more naive Dudley would have probably just answered that by saying that it was meant to be but he wasn't that naïve anymore. Things weren't meant to be, everything could break given enough pressure or time.

"I…"
"I'm not done yet." Rob said and Dudley now suggested by the verbal punches he received that Rob might have been the conversational equivalent of a heavyweight boxer. "Is there any decent bone in you that realizes that your time is over? That you maybe make way and let her be happy for once? You see that you make her miserable right? She would never admit it, but she is devastated after each of your meetings."

"You have to talk about decency." Dudley huffed. "Walking around with her in front of me hands always placed somewhere so I can see them…"
"That's not the point, and besides that, as long as she is comfortable with it I can put my hands everywhere I want."

"Funny you decide to put them on these everywheres always when you see me."
"Fine." Rob said. "I am marking a little territory, after all, she is my girlfriend."
"No she is my fiancée!" Dudley replied and stood up from his bed, Rob also moved his body into a standing position and now had to look down at the shorter dog.

"She's not," Rob replied slowly. The speed that was lacking in his tone was replaced by anger. "And don't change the topic. You started this now at least be a man and answer the question. What gives you the right to come between me and her."

"Because she is mine!" It burst out of Dudley and for a moment he himself was surprised by these words. And his mouth seemed to have some more surprises for him as it didn't want to be shut by Dudley's sensible brain parts. "I traveled billions of light years through an empty galaxy to find her! I was tortured, cheated, shot stabbed, and other horrible things on my way just to get back to her and when I arrive there's you destroying the order of how it's meant to be!"

Dudley walked over to the cell's wall just to start punching it. "I. Did. Not. Get. This. Far. To. Fail. Here." He turned back around to Rob who wasn't moved a bit by Dudley's display, not even by the big dent his punches had left in the massive metal cell wall.

"She is a person Dudley, not someone's property." The wolf calmly said. "And no matter how much you struggled to get back to her, she doesn't owe you anything." He stepped towards Dudley and stared him deeper into the eyes than it was comfortable for him. "You should ask yourself one thing, are you really here for her or to chase that dream you had for so long."

Dudley now felt the first psychosomatic reactions to Robs verbal slaughter. His knees gave in he tumbled against the wall behind him and slid down on it next to the dent he caused.
"I..I.." he stammered. "I don't know… I was… I mean I…"

Rob sighed, something inside of him must have felt some sympathy for the defeated dog in front of him. He sat down on the wall next to Dudley and said. "It requires some soul searching."
Dudley had put his head between his knees while a war started in his head. The forces of nostalgia had to defend their positions against the somberness of reality which itself fought a civil war.

The few times he spoke to Kitty the two of them could never just talk freely, they were always just between the states of work and avoiding emotional drama. He had to admit there wasn't much he knew about the new Kitty. He even knew more about his son than about her. For the first time, he was afraid that he would even like her that much.

"My whole life…" He said after he thought that he could speak a full sentence. "I was hunting for an idea of something that once was, you know? This feeling of complacency was an integral part of me my whole life with her. And maybe it is nostalgia I am not willing to simply put it behind me again."
"Again?" Rob's ears perked visibly up.

"Yeah…" Dudley kept silent for a while before he sighed. "After 80 years with the hu… with you know who, I fell into a deep hole. I knew by the time that my son would have been almost 80 and Kitty… well nobody lives that long."
"I see… must have been quite hard to bear."
"I mean you know the feeling yourself by now don't you?"

Rob also for a moment froze in his sitting position and Dudley took a quick glance at him. The wolf stared wide-eyed at a dark metal tile in front of him. "I haven't taken the time yet to…"
"Distracting yourself is a good way to keep yourself functioning but this knowledge gets you no matter how good you tried to distract." Dudley saw how Rob blinked a few times like someone who tried to shake off a hallucination.

"What… happened then?" the wolf's voice now sounded like he pressed every word out of his throat.
"A long depressive spiral. I turned against the ones who helped me, treated others and myself bad, volunteered for every mission no matter how crazy it was… Good for the career but I think I just wanted to die and be done. Everything felt so color- and pointless. The only times I felt happy were when I dreamt a few dreams that made it look like I was back here." Dudley now searched for eye contact with the wolf. "These memories were my only anchor and seeing you with her feels like you are trying to take the most core thing of me away. I don't need soul searching Rob, this little bit of hope for a feeling from the past is what's left of it."

"I see… and I feel you, that must have been rough but…"
"You were right about it all, about me, probably the rightest someone has been for a while. I am an indecent egoist. I do know that, I am hating it and I know that. But…" And Dudley stood up and placed himself in front of the still-sitting Rob. "Don't I and her deserve to know if there is still a spark between us? Wouldn't you want to know that too? Is that the way you would imagine the relationship? After every melancholic moment after every fight, her asking herself the question how it would have been if I was in your spot." He extended his hand down to Rob and spoke. "A clean cut is necessary, and I will give her the chance to it."

Rob looked up at the dog and took his hand and the help to get up on his feet. "You know that you don't have the slightest chance, don't you?" A little smirk was showing around his lips. It wasn't completely full of smugness a certain honesty had mixed in.

"Wouldn't have been the first time." Laughed Dudley and let go of the hand.
"You know what, if it wasn't for Kitty I think I'd like you." Rob meant and walked to the bed to sit down on it. Dudley followed him and sat down next to him.

"And you know what I'm willing to share a beer with you when we are back home."
"To make sure my hands are on a beer and not on her?"
"Precisely." The dog grinned.

"If the gentlemen are now finally done with their afternoon tea…" Both men turned their heads hastily to the doorway and saw a grinning Kate standing there leaning to a now turned-off containment field. "…there is some work to do."

"Kate how…?" Dudley jumped up from the bed. Rob imitated him but just uttered a surprised "I can understand her again!"
"Don't ask questions now, the sensors in this region are looped but I don't know how long that'll fool them." She quickly explained as the prisoners left their cell.

"What now?" Dudley asked hastily and searched the ante-room, nothing interesting could be found there it seemed to be just a plain hallway. The weird thing was that the entirety of it was teal-colored, just their cells had this dark look.

"There is some kind of storage closet down the hallway to the left, with some luck we…"
The steps approaching the door had been almost inaudible, but they nonetheless made the three fell silent. Kate just made a gesture for them to hide in a nook of their cell before becoming invisible again.

It didn't take the guard long to arrive at the cell and not even 5 steps into the hallway to realize something wasn't right. A breath was drawn and that was followed by the discharge of an energy weapon. The two left the cell again and saw Kate rematerializing next to a headless guard that still stood in place.

"Where was I? Oh yeah, down the hallway to the left, hurry, I don't know how long they can be fooled." Again, she disappeared in thin air.
"You heard her," Dudley said and waved Rob to follow him.

-Author's note: Well first step is done, they are out of the cell. Now they just have to get off this ship. I hope you had fun. Tell me what you think about the chapter in the reviews! And as always, stay tuned-