Re: The Translation In Blood 4/?
anonymous
May 11 2012, 08:56:10 UTC
[Glad you like it so far, OP! This is the last bit for tonight, I'll post more later today.]
***
It was dark and blessedly cool, a solid surface at her back and a breath of wind in her face.
Droplets of water were tapping lightly at her parched lips, her tongue darting out to taste them. The liquid succeeded in rousing her, forcing her to open her gritty eyes and stare into the face of the spikey-headed monster that had caught her.
She was too tired and sore to resist when he took her good arm and pressed a canteen into her hand, placing the opening at her lips and gesturing sharply for her to drink. Not needing to be told twice, Hannah took a few careful sips. It was then that she noticed her hands were free.
And her legs were not.
The cuffs had been adjusted to snap around her booted ankles, leaving her arms free of both bonds and, apparently, jacket. It felt good to be in her sleeveless under shirt, but her arm still hurt like hell and-
She jerked as something jabbed into the inside of her arm and the shitty piece of equipment that had gotten her into this mess to begin with. She whipped her head around to find the Turian pinning her wrist to the floor with one knee, his hand pressing her shoulder to the wall while his other pushed talons-
Talons?!
-into the seeping wound on the inside of her elbow. The flesh around it was swollen and red, unbearably tender and oozing liquids that looked distinctly unhealthy. He had removed the armored gloves she knew he sported earlier, using the sharpened tips of his talons to tease the implant from the muscle it was lodged in.
After watching for several nauseating moments by the light of some kind of synthetic torch, Hannah had to look away and close her eyes, concentrating on breathing through her nose. She probably shouldn't let him have the damn thing, but with it reacting as badly to her biology as it was, it would more like as not kill her if she kept it in any longer.
Besides, it was their technology. It wasn't like they'd learn anything new.
She felt the casing slide free, gasping as the searing ache faded and the static between her ears completely eased away. Her good hand pressed the canteen to her head, fighting the tears of relief that threatened to pour free.
The Turian gave a low whistle, holding the thing to the light as he turned it this way and that. When he turned to look back at her arm, he ran a finger across the angry flesh, voicing an inquiry that sounded like a cross being soft growls and rumbling syllables. His brow-bits rose at her, waiting for her reaction as he gave a nice, deliberate poke.
His question was fairly clear: Does it hurt when I do this?
She couldn't hide the sharp cry or the bodily jerk she gave, scowling at the creature as she heard the unmistakable ripple of a chuckle.
He was laughing at her.
She contemplated spitting in his water when he drew away and turned to his pack, rummaging about for something in the dark. She knew her glare probably meant nothing to him; he was massive, had a good two feet on her, and had taken her down without so much as a scratch on him.
Not that it stung her pride or anything.
She'd been in transit to the main part of the colony to test the new Turian translation device they'd attempted to adapt to human physiology, hopping a ride by surface shuttle to control central, when the Turians had come over the barricades in full force. Shot down and thrown over the main wall, Hannah had been the only survivor of the four in the vehicle, and under the cover of the assault, she'd run for her life in the wrong damn direction.
To be fair, she hadn't considered that the chunk of requisition office in the smoke had been thrown there, but it still wasn't an excuse. She'd let panic get the better of her, and if she hadn't, she'd have made it to cover inside of Alliance ground and would never have gotten captured.
Re: The Translation In Blood 4/?
anonymous
May 11 2012, 09:10:01 UTC
Thank you for making me the happiest OP this night. Seriously, I know I’m probably bias, considering it’s my prompt, but this is wonderful. Beautiful. I am beyond excited for the rest. :D
Re: The Translation In Blood 4/?
anonymous
May 12 2012, 06:14:47 UTC
Oh my God, I love how this fill is going so far - I'm already in love with Hannah/Sparatus and they haven't really spoken to each other yet! :DD Keep being awesome!
Re: The Translation In Blood 5/?
anonymous
May 12 2012, 08:25:13 UTC
[I'm really unfamiliar with this part of the war, and I'm doing my best to keep the timeline 100%, but I don't think I'll be able to. Forgive artistic license as I bend the Mass Effect universe to fit into my smut. <3]
She had run for almost two days, too far behind enemy lines to get back, and those damn Turians could see in the dark. So she'd made for an alternative route behind the battle-lines, hoping to get around the explosions and sneak in the back way. It would have taken a few more days, but as long as she'd found water, she'd be fine.
She hadn't counted on being followed. She'd left no trace or track of herself, she knew better than that, but she must have done something, left something, for him to follow, because one second she was high in a tree, belted in and dozing, and the next she had a three-fingered hand around her throat and a gun in her face.
She was brought back to the present with the touch of cool gel against her arm, bringing a hiss to her lips. The Turian field dressed her arm with surprising finesse despite his probable limited knowledge of her anatomy. Bandaged and somewhat cleaned up, he secured her arms behind her back, ignoring her wince of discomfort.
Then, with a glow that made her flinch, he accessed his holographic mobile interface and began to type away, before touching his ear and proceeding to speak.
From what Hannah gathered, the conversation didn't go very well. Despite the species barrier, some things still carried through; his posture was suddenly stiff, his tone sharp and distinctly angry. Someone wasn't getting their way.
When the communication ended, he turned to look at her, leaning against the cavern wall, dirty and disheveled and exhausted, she was sure. The mandibular protrusions on his face fluttered, almost agitated, like he was weighing a decision.
The cave he'd found was fairly secure, a shallow enclosure that was just deep enough to hide them from eyes and weather. The suns were just below the horizon, twilight long since fled before the purple velvet of night. Gazing through the cave opening, Hannah whistfully thought how beautiful it was, and how maybe she'd come back here and show it to her daughter ...
Bad, that's bad, Hannah, she thought abruptly, closing her eyes and thumping the back of her head against the stone wall.
She'd been warned about that, about serving in the military while being a mother. It wasn't that it made you a liability, but it was one more vulnerability to overcome. That love was something that surpassed orders and rank and honor; you'd do anything to make sure your child was safe. She tried instead to feel thankful that her little girl was light years from here, safe and sound and back on Earth.
With a deep breath, she pulled herself together, just in time to feel something brush her cheek.
She didn't mean to flinch as hard as she did, managing to lift her chin and look up at her captor as he drew his fingertips back to his face. Confusion made her frown, before she understood what he was looking at.
Re: The Translation In Blood 6/?
anonymous
May 12 2012, 08:26:45 UTC
In her relapse of emotion, tears had slid down her cheeks. Not many, but enough to be noticed. He seemed ... interested by this. She didn't imagine Turians could cry, though he didn't seem surprised or shocked by their presence.
He voiced a question, a flurry of words and a tilt of his head. She made a face at him, then replied flatly:
"I don't understand you, you spikey-assed bird-thing. I don't knw why you bother when it's not like you can understand me eith-" And then she felt stupid.
Right. The translators.
Fuck me in the eye.
She must have been worse off than she thought. A slow inhale and she was back to her center, focusing on staying alive and being in the moment. Running five steps backwards without knowing where she was would only get her killed. And that couldn't happen.
She fixed the Turian with an angry glare, and grit out a question of her own.
"How long are we stuck here?"
He seemed to give her credit where credit it was due, in that he didn't regard her with suspicion or check her other arm for a working device. Instead, he pointed at the horizon and lifted one finger.
A whole day.
"Yey," she muttered. Just swell. "Where are you taking me?"
He pointed back towards the colony, arm steady and unerring.
Re: The Translation In Blood 7/?
anonymous
May 13 2012, 06:49:07 UTC
It was standard procedure to brief newcomers to colonies on the local wildlife, at least the dangerous ones, to ensure mishaps to a minimum. Generally, the 'shoot first, ask later' policy was acceptable in an emergency, but didn't go over well if the critter was cute, fluffy, young, harmless, rare, endangered, valuable, or an understated form of sentient life. In the beginning, when space exploration was new and humanity knew next to nothing about the new planets they discovered, they depended on scout drones to collect as much data as possible and report back to the Alliance, and then, once a colony was founded, they simply taught it to every incoming human and so on.
It was the only reason the sound of scales on dry dirt snapped Hannah into instant alert mode.
The Turian had done his best to get her comfortable, for whatever reason, although she suspected it was a perverse reminder of how completely at his mercy she was, and how easy she'd been to capture. He'd bolted a ring to a lower part of the cavern wall for the cuffs around her wrists, and another for a tether that bound to her ankles. It made it easier to sleep, curled on the floor, but it also made it impossible for her to escape. Instincts told her that if he'd intended to hurt her, he'd have done it sooner and have never been so ... accommodating. It seemed Turians had some measure of honor. Maybe. Although it appeared they were worse at the 'shoot first' policy than humans at this point.
She was dozing, cheek on her arm, laying on her belly when the scrape of movement caught her attention. Eyes snapping open, she immediately located the Turian across the cavern, sprawled in the back against the far wall. He was sleeping, breathing shallow and facing her, one arm tucked under his head, the other gripping a pistol. Quickly noting that it couldn't have been him, her gaze darted around the cave for-
Ah. There it was.
The blaze chameleon was known to be a fantastic creature, beautiful and sleek and a rainbow of reds when it wasn't blending expertly in to the surroundings. It was small, only about ten inches long from nose to back legs, trailing another ten inches of tail behind it. It was stealthy, slow moving, the only give away that same tail being drug across the ground; only the trail it left in the dirt could visually give away its location.
What was especially neat about this fellow was that no only was it a predator for bugs and amphibians and the like, but it had no problem taking out bigger prey to feed its whole colony. One individual would slink out and use it's quick, barbed tongue to sting, immobilizing animals as large as elephants into waking paralysis before calling in the family to come in and have dinner.
Despite this, however, the blaze chameleon had a high body temperature and was easy to spot via thermal scan, and even easier to keep away; it hated loud noise and apparently the bustle of a metropolis, and the human outposts and colonies were prone to both. Still, as the only real animal danger on the planet, it was good to know the signs before you wound up a living buffet, without only the halls of your mind to scream in.
Those tell-tail marks were appearing in the dirt not four feet from Lt. Shepard, heading, bizarrely, for the Turian snoozing on the ground instead of the more fleshy bound human.
Re: The Translation In Blood 8/?
anonymous
May 13 2012, 06:50:50 UTC
His death would probably make things easier in some ways, and there was no doubt in her mind she might figure out a way to get free of her bonds, high- tail it to the colony and figure out a way to get back in. But she had no idea how long any of that would take, and short of chewing through her arm, it would take a while to work the bolt free of stone. Even then, unless she intended to crawl, travel was going to be impossible.
And then there was the chameleon and all his relatives.
No animal alive would pass up a free meal, let alone two. She was all but certain that even if they waited until after they'd picked his Turian bones clean, the would still zero in on her and treat her to the same fate. It wouldn't be anything personal. The rain seasons were coming and some animals had a lot of mouths to feed.
Decision made, she carefully sat up to the best of her ability, took a slow, deep breath, then let loose the loudest yell she could manage.
He was on his feet in a minute out of what had seemed a dead sleep, gun aimed at her, head whipping around. She pointed right at the trail in the dirt, shouting, "SHOOT RIGHT THERE! NOW!"
To their mutual surprise, he didn't question her. Shot fired, air burning of ozone and cooking flesh, he strode over to the smoking corpse not two feet from where he'd lain; known minimum barb distance for the blaze chameleon.
They were both breathing hard, Hannah closing her eyes in relief that it had all gone so well.
God, that could have been terrible. She tried not think about how fun it would have been to bite through her wrist in an effort to not be eaten alive.
She heard a soft, questioning rumble of syllables. She cracked open an eye to see him looking at her, gun pointed at the twitching lizard. she made a face at him.
"You can't look it up?" she grumbled at him. "And while you're doing that, cut a girl a break and let me sit up." She shook her manacled wrists against the bolt.
Re: The Translation In Blood 8/?
anonymous
May 13 2012, 06:57:02 UTC
I was about to go to sleep for the night and then I thought, "Hey, it wouldn't hurt to check this prompt for an update before I sleep, right?" And lo and behold, there were two more parts to read! :D
I loved that you're trying to flesh out their relationship before jumping right into the smut, which makes me happy because I'm really loving your Hannah and Sparatus! And ohhh, I'm so glad she decided to warn him about the chameleon in the end! Keep on going, this fill is absolutely wonderful!~
Re: The Translation In Blood 8/?
anonymous
May 13 2012, 07:06:28 UTC
Hee! Yeah, the build up is important to me. Smut is easy to write, but the development makes it all the better, right?
I don't know if you can do this, but on my LJ I can log in as myself and track a series of comments by hitting the little thumbtack button, and get notified for every reply to every comment in the thread I've selected. It's a good way to keep tabs on stories, I have at least a dozen or so selected myself, including the fills I'm working on. It helps me remember where I left off last.
Anyway! Just thought I'd say. It's still anonymous even if it sends it to your email.
Thanks for the comment, it makes me excited to write more!
Re: The Translation In Blood 9/?
anonymous
May 13 2012, 06:58:33 UTC
Grumbling under his breath, he moved to her and released her from the wall, taking a step back to scan the animal on the floor and tap in a few inquiries. Reality settled into his features, the imperceptible widening of his eyes and rising brow registering all kinds of surprise. Apparently, he wasn't quite as thoroughly briefed as she was on this deployment.
Maybe she'd blame it on the dehydration, or hunger, or the crappy bed, but she couldn't help it.
"Just because it looks a little like you, doesn't mean it's a friend."
His shoulders went stiff and he shot her an angry glare.
"And the proper response is, 'Thank you for saving my life'," she told him, legs curling under her as she sat up, settling her back against the stone.
***
He didn't try to communicate her too much after that, showing a prickly manner compared to the acute professionalism the day before. She didn't care; it was hard not to feel the tiniest bit smug about him owing her for that one. It was obvious he wasn't stupid and wouldn't forget it either.
It was getting warm again even within the confines of the cave, but there was a cross-breeze coming through from the mouth to whistle softly through a low opening in the back she'd missed the night before. It made the heat far easier to handle than out in the blazing suns and Hannah was not about to bitch about it.
The wait was both nerve-wracking and boring, if that was possible. While she felt oddly safe with her captor, her future was uncertain even on the ground, but she imagined the odds would be much worse once she was airborne and within the Turian fleet. Rules of war aside, she didn't know what to expect. She didn't even know if she was supposed to be afraid. The calm that had settled in her bones was an anchor she clung to despite how irrational it seemed, but in the end, she decided it was better than being panicked and terrified.
He'd given her more water and had snacked on one of the rations he had, then moved to stand at the entrance of the small cavern. His arms were crossed over his chest and he was staring up and at the horizon. His back was to her, and as she shifted again to get more comfortable, she took the moment to look at him unguarded.
He was tall, easily seven feet, with broad shoulders that tapered down into a wasp-thin waist, flaring out to supportive hips balanced on well muscled legs that flared spurs at the knees, rooted on digitigrade legs. He wasn't as heavily armored as the soldiers she'd seen at the outpost, boasting thinner, flexible stuff that was both non-descript and matte; light didn't just avoid the stuff, it was practically absorbed into it. If he wasn't so mellow, the entire impression would have screamed, "assassin".
But then again, a good assassin didn't give the impression that he was anything but shadow... Although that still didn't make any sense. Assassins didn't follow single targets into the wilderness without knowing who they were, and experimental tech aside, there was really nothing strategically valuable about Lt. Hannah Shepard. Hell, her presence on this rock was practically a fluke.
Every now and then he'd shift, look off into the distance to the north, and then back again to the west. She was beginning to wonder what the blazes he was looking at, when she heard a distant echo, low and deep like thunder, and then a tremor through the ground.
"What the hell-" she began before she could stop herself, eyes going wide.
He glanced back at her over his shoulder, expression unreadable (but that was hardly surprising) as he stared at her for several long moments. He returned back to whatever it was that had his attention, shifting again but this time clearing his throat in what was definitely discomfort or anxiety or something. Whatever it was he was looking at was making him uneasy. That did nothing to help her own nerves.
Re: The Translation In Blood 10/?
anonymous
May 13 2012, 07:02:48 UTC
The distant booms and resulting tremors continued off and on for the rest of the afternoon, driving Hannah crazy with curiosity and the first real trickles of fear. What was happening to Shanxi? Did they set off a bomb... or bombS? Was this even related to the fight? Was it a natural disaster?
Several times, she saw the Turian go stiff and drop his hands to his sides, only to bring them hesitantly back up to cross his chest. The ... jaw thingies on his face would flicker rapidly during these moments, a sign of anxiety she was coming to recognize.
She could only stare at his back for so long, however, and the heat and immobility eventually lulled her into a doze. Her dreams were fretful and agitated, visions of a toddler stamping through the dirt, people the size of ants scampering around her feet...
***
She was all but yanked to her feet some undetermined amount of time later, her ankles freed and her body shoved hard towards the darkening cavern. The shadows were growing deeper, which was weird because the twin suns still glared a good hand or so above the horizon-
The growl of the Turian had become a shout, he was practially in her face and hauling her backwards. Everything about his body language told her he was scared shitless and she didn't have the presence of mind to disobey. Without warning, he was stuffing her into that hole in the ground at the back of the cave, ignoring her yell as she began a free fall slide down stone into blackness.
She didn't know how long she tumbled, rolled, and sometimes scooted, but she took his angry, short growls and clipped words to mean she had better hurry the fuck up if she didn't want to get trampled or maimed. Eventually the lavashuite leveled out, but there was a tremor in the walls around her that told her to move even if the verbal prodding behind her had gone silent.
Wrists still bound, she felt along the walls and trusted her feet as best as she could, but after the fifth knee-bruising trip she yelled at him to give her some kind of light. There was an amber flare over her shoulder; he'd accessed his implanted interface.
The light wasn't much but it was better than nothing, sparing her knees as the two of them scrambled single-file down into the endless cavern. When there looked like a chance to go up, he would bark at her and slam her shoulder down, forcing her to scoot deeper into the tunnel and down into the earth.
It couldn't have been more than ten minutes, but damn it felt like an eternity. After a while she was beginning to wonder what was really going on, when the ground heaved beneath them.
There's really no better way to describe it. One moment, they're on their feet running through the dark, the next, the ground wasn't there and they were neither falling nor thrown; they were floating.
And then gravity remembered them.
The stream of words from both of them could have scorched ice when they both tumbled, plummeted, rolled, as the earth opened up and swallowed them whole.
Re: The Translation In Blood 12/?
anonymous
May 13 2012, 07:47:27 UTC
***
Trickling water. Pressure on her shoulders. And back. Actually, there was weight pressed all along her spine and across the back of her hips.
Were her eyes open? It was hard to tell. Was there just no light?
A groan resonated through her ear when she tried to shift, the flutter of something rigid and textured against her cheek. Face down, her cheek pressed against wet stone, her arms were folded under her, immobile from the weight of the Turian laying on top of her.
A scrape of flesh on dirt, arms drawing in around her as the pressure eased off. She was pulled effortlessly up and rolled over, a mutter in the dark that clipped into what she was rapidly recognizing as a curse. There was a flare of amber light, brighter in the pitch black they were encased in, and she saw his alien face outlined in the shadows he created.
He'd pulled her over his thighs, looking her over, starting from her legs and traveling up. He seemed surprised to see her blinking in the light, pausing for an awkward moment before nodding at her and twitching one brow plate upwards.
He was getting good at this non-verbal communication.
She nodded back to him, mumbling, "I think I'm alright," before struggling to sit up.
He helped her before standing carefully himself, lifting his arm to peer around. Hannah winced as she stretched sore parts, felt for scrapes or bruises in the dark. Despite the free fall from hell, they both appeared relatively uninjured.
It was hard to see, but the sound of water gave her hope that they weren't completely trapped. Girl Scouts, spelunking 101: where there's water, there's a way out. Usually. Most likely.
She caught a flash of green when the Turian turned away from her, blocking the light with his bulk for a moment. With a hiss, she pushed him lightly with her bound hands and whispered, "Turn it off a second."
Without a sound, he flipped his interface inactive.
She couldn't help herself and gave a soft laugh. "You Turians do make good soldiers. Never question orders, do you?"
For a second she thought she'd offended him, but then she caught the low rumble of returning chuckle. It made her smile in the dark.
Soon, her eyes began to adjust and she looked around for that flash of green. Keeping her bound hands on his lower arm, she took a few steps over and leaned towards the sound of water.
***
It was dark and blessedly cool, a solid surface at her back and a breath of wind in her face.
Droplets of water were tapping lightly at her parched lips, her tongue darting out to taste them. The liquid succeeded in rousing her, forcing her to open her gritty eyes and stare into the face of the spikey-headed monster that had caught her.
She was too tired and sore to resist when he took her good arm and pressed a canteen into her hand, placing the opening at her lips and gesturing sharply for her to drink. Not needing to be told twice, Hannah took a few careful sips. It was then that she noticed her hands were free.
And her legs were not.
The cuffs had been adjusted to snap around her booted ankles, leaving her arms free of both bonds and, apparently, jacket. It felt good to be in her sleeveless under shirt, but her arm still hurt like hell and-
She jerked as something jabbed into the inside of her arm and the shitty piece of equipment that had gotten her into this mess to begin with. She whipped her head around to find the Turian pinning her wrist to the floor with one knee, his hand pressing her shoulder to the wall while his other pushed talons-
Talons?!
-into the seeping wound on the inside of her elbow. The flesh around it was swollen and red, unbearably tender and oozing liquids that looked distinctly unhealthy. He had removed the armored gloves she knew he sported earlier, using the sharpened tips of his talons to tease the implant from the muscle it was lodged in.
After watching for several nauseating moments by the light of some kind of synthetic torch, Hannah had to look away and close her eyes, concentrating on breathing through her nose. She probably shouldn't let him have the damn thing, but with it reacting as badly to her biology as it was, it would more like as not kill her if she kept it in any longer.
Besides, it was their technology. It wasn't like they'd learn anything new.
She felt the casing slide free, gasping as the searing ache faded and the static between her ears completely eased away. Her good hand pressed the canteen to her head, fighting the tears of relief that threatened to pour free.
The Turian gave a low whistle, holding the thing to the light as he turned it this way and that. When he turned to look back at her arm, he ran a finger across the angry flesh, voicing an inquiry that sounded like a cross being soft growls and rumbling syllables. His brow-bits rose at her, waiting for her reaction as he gave a nice, deliberate poke.
His question was fairly clear: Does it hurt when I do this?
She couldn't hide the sharp cry or the bodily jerk she gave, scowling at the creature as she heard the unmistakable ripple of a chuckle.
He was laughing at her.
She contemplated spitting in his water when he drew away and turned to his pack, rummaging about for something in the dark. She knew her glare probably meant nothing to him; he was massive, had a good two feet on her, and had taken her down without so much as a scratch on him.
Not that it stung her pride or anything.
She'd been in transit to the main part of the colony to test the new Turian translation device they'd attempted to adapt to human physiology, hopping a ride by surface shuttle to control central, when the Turians had come over the barricades in full force. Shot down and thrown over the main wall, Hannah had been the only survivor of the four in the vehicle, and under the cover of the assault, she'd run for her life in the wrong damn direction.
To be fair, she hadn't considered that the chunk of requisition office in the smoke had been thrown there, but it still wasn't an excuse. She'd let panic get the better of her, and if she hadn't, she'd have made it to cover inside of Alliance ground and would never have gotten captured.
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She had run for almost two days, too far behind enemy lines to get back, and those damn Turians could see in the dark. So she'd made for an alternative route behind the battle-lines, hoping to get around the explosions and sneak in the back way. It would have taken a few more days, but as long as she'd found water, she'd be fine.
She hadn't counted on being followed. She'd left no trace or track of herself, she knew better than that, but she must have done something, left something, for him to follow, because one second she was high in a tree, belted in and dozing, and the next she had a three-fingered hand around her throat and a gun in her face.
She was brought back to the present with the touch of cool gel against her arm, bringing a hiss to her lips. The Turian field dressed her arm with surprising finesse despite his probable limited knowledge of her anatomy. Bandaged and somewhat cleaned up, he secured her arms behind her back, ignoring her wince of discomfort.
Then, with a glow that made her flinch, he accessed his holographic mobile interface and began to type away, before touching his ear and proceeding to speak.
From what Hannah gathered, the conversation didn't go very well. Despite the species barrier, some things still carried through; his posture was suddenly stiff, his tone sharp and distinctly angry. Someone wasn't getting their way.
When the communication ended, he turned to look at her, leaning against the cavern wall, dirty and disheveled and exhausted, she was sure. The mandibular protrusions on his face fluttered, almost agitated, like he was weighing a decision.
The cave he'd found was fairly secure, a shallow enclosure that was just deep enough to hide them from eyes and weather. The suns were just below the horizon, twilight long since fled before the purple velvet of night. Gazing through the cave opening, Hannah whistfully thought how beautiful it was, and how maybe she'd come back here and show it to her daughter ...
Bad, that's bad, Hannah, she thought abruptly, closing her eyes and thumping the back of her head against the stone wall.
She'd been warned about that, about serving in the military while being a mother. It wasn't that it made you a liability, but it was one more vulnerability to overcome. That love was something that surpassed orders and rank and honor; you'd do anything to make sure your child was safe. She tried instead to feel thankful that her little girl was light years from here, safe and sound and back on Earth.
With a deep breath, she pulled herself together, just in time to feel something brush her cheek.
She didn't mean to flinch as hard as she did, managing to lift her chin and look up at her captor as he drew his fingertips back to his face. Confusion made her frown, before she understood what he was looking at.
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He voiced a question, a flurry of words and a tilt of his head. She made a face at him, then replied flatly:
"I don't understand you, you spikey-assed bird-thing. I don't knw why you bother when it's not like you can understand me eith-" And then she felt stupid.
Right. The translators.
Fuck me in the eye.
She must have been worse off than she thought. A slow inhale and she was back to her center, focusing on staying alive and being in the moment. Running five steps backwards without knowing where she was would only get her killed. And that couldn't happen.
She fixed the Turian with an angry glare, and grit out a question of her own.
"How long are we stuck here?"
He seemed to give her credit where credit it was due, in that he didn't regard her with suspicion or check her other arm for a working device. Instead, he pointed at the horizon and lifted one finger.
A whole day.
"Yey," she muttered. Just swell. "Where are you taking me?"
He pointed back towards the colony, arm steady and unerring.
She swore.
***
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It was the only reason the sound of scales on dry dirt snapped Hannah into instant alert mode.
The Turian had done his best to get her comfortable, for whatever reason, although she suspected it was a perverse reminder of how completely at his mercy she was, and how easy she'd been to capture. He'd bolted a ring to a lower part of the cavern wall for the cuffs around her wrists, and another for a tether that bound to her ankles. It made it easier to sleep, curled on the floor, but it also made it impossible for her to escape. Instincts told her that if he'd intended to hurt her, he'd have done it sooner and have never been so ... accommodating. It seemed Turians had some measure of honor. Maybe. Although it appeared they were worse at the 'shoot first' policy than humans at this point.
She was dozing, cheek on her arm, laying on her belly when the scrape of movement caught her attention. Eyes snapping open, she immediately located the Turian across the cavern, sprawled in the back against the far wall. He was sleeping, breathing shallow and facing her, one arm tucked under his head, the other gripping a pistol. Quickly noting that it couldn't have been him, her gaze darted around the cave for-
Ah. There it was.
The blaze chameleon was known to be a fantastic creature, beautiful and sleek and a rainbow of reds when it wasn't blending expertly in to the surroundings. It was small, only about ten inches long from nose to back legs, trailing another ten inches of tail behind it. It was stealthy, slow moving, the only give away that same tail being drug across the ground; only the trail it left in the dirt could visually give away its location.
What was especially neat about this fellow was that no only was it a predator for bugs and amphibians and the like, but it had no problem taking out bigger prey to feed its whole colony. One individual would slink out and use it's quick, barbed tongue to sting, immobilizing animals as large as elephants into waking paralysis before calling in the family to come in and have dinner.
Despite this, however, the blaze chameleon had a high body temperature and was easy to spot via thermal scan, and even easier to keep away; it hated loud noise and apparently the bustle of a metropolis, and the human outposts and colonies were prone to both. Still, as the only real animal danger on the planet, it was good to know the signs before you wound up a living buffet, without only the halls of your mind to scream in.
Those tell-tail marks were appearing in the dirt not four feet from Lt. Shepard, heading, bizarrely, for the Turian snoozing on the ground instead of the more fleshy bound human.
And now, Hannah was presented with a dilemma.
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And then there was the chameleon and all his relatives.
No animal alive would pass up a free meal, let alone two. She was all but certain that even if they waited until after they'd picked his Turian bones clean, the would still zero in on her and treat her to the same fate. It wouldn't be anything personal. The rain seasons were coming and some animals had a lot of mouths to feed.
Decision made, she carefully sat up to the best of her ability, took a slow, deep breath, then let loose the loudest yell she could manage.
He was on his feet in a minute out of what had seemed a dead sleep, gun aimed at her, head whipping around. She pointed right at the trail in the dirt, shouting, "SHOOT RIGHT THERE! NOW!"
To their mutual surprise, he didn't question her. Shot fired, air burning of ozone and cooking flesh, he strode over to the smoking corpse not two feet from where he'd lain; known minimum barb distance for the blaze chameleon.
They were both breathing hard, Hannah closing her eyes in relief that it had all gone so well.
God, that could have been terrible. She tried not think about how fun it would have been to bite through her wrist in an effort to not be eaten alive.
She heard a soft, questioning rumble of syllables. She cracked open an eye to see him looking at her, gun pointed at the twitching lizard. she made a face at him.
"You can't look it up?" she grumbled at him. "And while you're doing that, cut a girl a break and let me sit up." She shook her manacled wrists against the bolt.
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I loved that you're trying to flesh out their relationship before jumping right into the smut, which makes me happy because I'm really loving your Hannah and Sparatus! And ohhh, I'm so glad she decided to warn him about the chameleon in the end! Keep on going, this fill is absolutely wonderful!~
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I don't know if you can do this, but on my LJ I can log in as myself and track a series of comments by hitting the little thumbtack button, and get notified for every reply to every comment in the thread I've selected. It's a good way to keep tabs on stories, I have at least a dozen or so selected myself, including the fills I'm working on. It helps me remember where I left off last.
Anyway! Just thought I'd say. It's still anonymous even if it sends it to your email.
Thanks for the comment, it makes me excited to write more!
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Maybe she'd blame it on the dehydration, or hunger, or the crappy bed, but she couldn't help it.
"Just because it looks a little like you, doesn't mean it's a friend."
His shoulders went stiff and he shot her an angry glare.
"And the proper response is, 'Thank you for saving my life'," she told him, legs curling under her as she sat up, settling her back against the stone.
***
He didn't try to communicate her too much after that, showing a prickly manner compared to the acute professionalism the day before. She didn't care; it was hard not to feel the tiniest bit smug about him owing her for that one. It was obvious he wasn't stupid and wouldn't forget it either.
It was getting warm again even within the confines of the cave, but there was a cross-breeze coming through from the mouth to whistle softly through a low opening in the back she'd missed the night before. It made the heat far easier to handle than out in the blazing suns and Hannah was not about to bitch about it.
The wait was both nerve-wracking and boring, if that was possible. While she felt oddly safe with her captor, her future was uncertain even on the ground, but she imagined the odds would be much worse once she was airborne and within the Turian fleet. Rules of war aside, she didn't know what to expect. She didn't even know if she was supposed to be afraid. The calm that had settled in her bones was an anchor she clung to despite how irrational it seemed, but in the end, she decided it was better than being panicked and terrified.
He'd given her more water and had snacked on one of the rations he had, then moved to stand at the entrance of the small cavern. His arms were crossed over his chest and he was staring up and at the horizon. His back was to her, and as she shifted again to get more comfortable, she took the moment to look at him unguarded.
He was tall, easily seven feet, with broad shoulders that tapered down into a wasp-thin waist, flaring out to supportive hips balanced on well muscled legs that flared spurs at the knees, rooted on digitigrade legs. He wasn't as heavily armored as the soldiers she'd seen at the outpost, boasting thinner, flexible stuff that was both non-descript and matte; light didn't just avoid the stuff, it was practically absorbed into it. If he wasn't so mellow, the entire impression would have screamed, "assassin".
But then again, a good assassin didn't give the impression that he was anything but shadow... Although that still didn't make any sense. Assassins didn't follow single targets into the wilderness without knowing who they were, and experimental tech aside, there was really nothing strategically valuable about Lt. Hannah Shepard. Hell, her presence on this rock was practically a fluke.
Every now and then he'd shift, look off into the distance to the north, and then back again to the west. She was beginning to wonder what the blazes he was looking at, when she heard a distant echo, low and deep like thunder, and then a tremor through the ground.
"What the hell-" she began before she could stop herself, eyes going wide.
He glanced back at her over his shoulder, expression unreadable (but that was hardly surprising) as he stared at her for several long moments. He returned back to whatever it was that had his attention, shifting again but this time clearing his throat in what was definitely discomfort or anxiety or something. Whatever it was he was looking at was making him uneasy. That did nothing to help her own nerves.
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Several times, she saw the Turian go stiff and drop his hands to his sides, only to bring them hesitantly back up to cross his chest. The ... jaw thingies on his face would flicker rapidly during these moments, a sign of anxiety she was coming to recognize.
She could only stare at his back for so long, however, and the heat and immobility eventually lulled her into a doze. Her dreams were fretful and agitated, visions of a toddler stamping through the dirt, people the size of ants scampering around her feet...
***
She was all but yanked to her feet some undetermined amount of time later, her ankles freed and her body shoved hard towards the darkening cavern. The shadows were growing deeper, which was weird because the twin suns still glared a good hand or so above the horizon-
The growl of the Turian had become a shout, he was practially in her face and hauling her backwards. Everything about his body language told her he was scared shitless and she didn't have the presence of mind to disobey. Without warning, he was stuffing her into that hole in the ground at the back of the cave, ignoring her yell as she began a free fall slide down stone into blackness.
She didn't know how long she tumbled, rolled, and sometimes scooted, but she took his angry, short growls and clipped words to mean she had better hurry the fuck up if she didn't want to get trampled or maimed. Eventually the lavashuite leveled out, but there was a tremor in the walls around her that told her to move even if the verbal prodding behind her had gone silent.
Wrists still bound, she felt along the walls and trusted her feet as best as she could, but after the fifth knee-bruising trip she yelled at him to give her some kind of light. There was an amber flare over her shoulder; he'd accessed his implanted interface.
The light wasn't much but it was better than nothing, sparing her knees as the two of them scrambled single-file down into the endless cavern. When there looked like a chance to go up, he would bark at her and slam her shoulder down, forcing her to scoot deeper into the tunnel and down into the earth.
It couldn't have been more than ten minutes, but damn it felt like an eternity. After a while she was beginning to wonder what was really going on, when the ground heaved beneath them.
There's really no better way to describe it. One moment, they're on their feet running through the dark, the next, the ground wasn't there and they were neither falling nor thrown; they were floating.
And then gravity remembered them.
The stream of words from both of them could have scorched ice when they both tumbled, plummeted, rolled, as the earth opened up and swallowed them whole.
***
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Trickling water. Pressure on her shoulders. And back. Actually, there was weight pressed all along her spine and across the back of her hips.
Were her eyes open? It was hard to tell. Was there just no light?
A groan resonated through her ear when she tried to shift, the flutter of something rigid and textured against her cheek. Face down, her cheek pressed against wet stone, her arms were folded under her, immobile from the weight of the Turian laying on top of her.
A scrape of flesh on dirt, arms drawing in around her as the pressure eased off. She was pulled effortlessly up and rolled over, a mutter in the dark that clipped into what she was rapidly recognizing as a curse. There was a flare of amber light, brighter in the pitch black they were encased in, and she saw his alien face outlined in the shadows he created.
He'd pulled her over his thighs, looking her over, starting from her legs and traveling up. He seemed surprised to see her blinking in the light, pausing for an awkward moment before nodding at her and twitching one brow plate upwards.
He was getting good at this non-verbal communication.
She nodded back to him, mumbling, "I think I'm alright," before struggling to sit up.
He helped her before standing carefully himself, lifting his arm to peer around. Hannah winced as she stretched sore parts, felt for scrapes or bruises in the dark. Despite the free fall from hell, they both appeared relatively uninjured.
It was hard to see, but the sound of water gave her hope that they weren't completely trapped. Girl Scouts, spelunking 101: where there's water, there's a way out. Usually. Most likely.
She caught a flash of green when the Turian turned away from her, blocking the light with his bulk for a moment. With a hiss, she pushed him lightly with her bound hands and whispered, "Turn it off a second."
Without a sound, he flipped his interface inactive.
She couldn't help herself and gave a soft laugh. "You Turians do make good soldiers. Never question orders, do you?"
For a second she thought she'd offended him, but then she caught the low rumble of returning chuckle. It made her smile in the dark.
Soon, her eyes began to adjust and she looked around for that flash of green. Keeping her bound hands on his lower arm, she took a few steps over and leaned towards the sound of water.
There it was again. What was that?
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