part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
part seven
part eight
"Where are they now, if they aren't dead?" he asked softly, instead of handing it over. He clenched his fist around the locket and took a step backward as she advanced only to find his back up against the wall. His heart jumped at the contact, but he fought to slow it down. He'd known his back was against a wall. He'd put himself there. Stop jumping at the little stuff. There's a big stuff right in front of you.
"Living their lives...helping other people, most of them. Some of them are heroes..." her voice trailed off as if recalling the other Josiahs had brought countless fond memories to bear.
"So many nights of passion," her voice was as careful and relentless as the smooth draw of a bow by an expert musician; she was starting to show that seductress' spark again, "continuous hours...heat and sweat, slick skin rubbing together," she smiled, "Every little private fantasy can be real," she let the blodied outer robe of her nightgown slip to the floor, handily removing most of the blood from immediate sight and replacing it with a bountiful vision.
"I can bend in every way you can imagine," she promised silkily.
"Ah..." Josiah jawed. He had counted himself among that larger than you'd think handful of gents who found tastefully scant clothing sexier than outright nudity. Ercinee's tiny nightie certainly counted as scant, bereft as she was of robe. His brain didn't even try to decide whether it was tasteful or not. She might have needed the drug to make him think this was what he wanted, but she certainly didn't need it to get him to .. ah, physically react, not with this combined with her low, husky voice, promising that he'd given in to this ... how many times before? Crap. So unfair.
Oooh humans were weak. He was no exception. He continued to not be an exception, time and time again apparently. Perhaps he could distract himself with philosophy. Oh, were he but a parallelist, and so could separate the mental from the physical without breaking a sweat. But he wasn't. He was a staunch interactionist, which meant his head was going to inform his parts and his parts were going to mercilessly inform his head geez oh pete it wasn't working. Stupid soft science.
"Oh really," he managed, trying to look disinterested. Because he was, damnit! Disinterested! Obey me, stupid pumping heart!
"Yes, really," she smiled. "Why don't we put the entire mess on hold for a little while? All of those worldly concerns can take a tiny little break, can't they?" She held her index finger and thumb in the universal symbol for "teensy weensy." "It's just you and me right now... We both want each other. There's no harm in it at all. I'll tell you what, if you find me a poor lover, I'll release you on the spot, no questions asked." She touched his face gently.
"Uh... Worldly concerns..." he repeated. No! She's trying to break you! This is just the ecstasy part so she can do the horrible tormenting part later! If you give in-!
If I give in, what? You'll leave me? Stupid brain. Anyway, it was a chance. Even if she was really great - and let's just look at the chances that she's better than the other... three people you've slept with - just... /lie/. Then you're home free.
Josiah licked his lips. "Uhm..."
The fingers on his cheek slid perceptively down to his neck. She closed the distance with one more step and then all of that pale softness was leaning against his front. "Josiah..." She let his name slip out like a sigh and her head came to rest on his shoulder.
The linguist closed his eyes against the gentle onslaught on his senses and relaxed against the wall behind them. Her hair smelled like... and her skin was soft as... He put his hands up on her shoulders and pushed back a little, stuttering. "Ercinee, ah. You're - You. Ah. Don't you get tired of, ah, seducing me? I must be boring to you now." He couldn't meet her eye, ridiculously feeling the shame of a dozen Josiahs who'd given in before him. "Not exactly a challenge, am I?"
"Oh but you are a challenge." she began gently, "A Russian writer once explained the 'curse of the intelligent man'-- a complicated man, a man who has difficulty making decisions because he must examine all possibilities before deciding... Whether you believe it or not, you are that man, Josiah. But, for your kisses, your breath, and your gentle embrace I will keep on trying..." she softly kissed his temple.
No, it wasn't complicated. It was way too easy. Easy for her, because it was so darn difficult for him. Her lips on his temple were at once cool and blisteringly hot. His heart pounded heedless of his mind's warnings. She's drugged you, threatened you, tied you up, and is effectively keeping you against your will. She knows you way too well, and - and this should be enough all by itself - she's CRAZY.
And yet, all of that resounding through his head did little to quell the physical thirst she was evoking in him. Was mankind such a slave to his body that he couldn't decide when and where he wanted to do... things?
"Do I always..." he said softly, inwardly cringing at how defeated and sad he already sounded. "Do I always give in to you, Ercinee...?"
"Mmm," Ercinee let her lips stay against his cheek while one hand came to rest on Josiah's chest. "Pretty much every time... but it's not for any skill of mine; it's always been your desire to save me, your pity. That was how this entire dance started... because I didn't want to live without the chance to be saved."
Her words came back to him then, just after he'd shot her. The emotionless, /is this your idea of mercy?/ He hadn't said anything about wanting to save her, nothing about being merciful, save to provide her company for a spell. She ... she just knew him. Knew... what he'd do. And oh God she was right. He didn't yet know how he'd get to the conclusion that to save her, he'd need to give in to her, agree to this training, /sleep/ with her. But if he got there before, he was bound to again, and then he'd try. He'd try to "save" her. Just as she was trying to "save" him.
"Do you ever give in to me?" he murmured. "Do I ever save you?"
--
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 8
part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
part seven
"So, now that you've heard it, what will you do this time?" He'd thought it couldn't have gotten worse from there, but Ercinee's decidedly wakeful voice proved him wrong yet again.
This time. Oh... He felt sick. What the Heck was this? After the moment of stomach-plummeting passed, warmth suffused his limbs as adrenaline pumped into them. She was awake. Crap crap damn, she was awake. He stood immediately and surveyed the room for her.
She hadn't moved.
"What is this," he murmured, his voice uncharacteristically gravelly. "What have you done?"
"I've done a lot of things," she answered smoothly, moving slow inches, as if testing the extent of her stiffness. "To what things, specifically, do you refer?"
Josiah frowned mightily. "You know what things. I've never met you before."
"Actually," she corrected, "we have met...many times," she sighed and smiled as if reliving fond memories, "but you, the you who you are now, would not remember them. The 'you' you are now is new...and I'm still searching..."
The linguist was piecing the situation together as quickly as he could, but he still couldn't come up with anything that made sense. Was he a clone of a previous Josiah? He'd heard of that kind of thing happening. Or... maybe she'd gotten him before and wiped his memory of it, so that he was something of a tabula rasa for her to try again. The SGC offered a colourful array of possibilities, he thought uncharitably.
"Searching for what," he tried.
"Searching for you, of course. I told you, Josiah. You. I have to save you, before something Bad happens. I just want back... what we shared once..."
Ercinee reached her hand above to get purchase on the vanity, and began to pull herself up.
Josiah shook his head in mute denial. Crazy. So, woefully crazy. He found his voice when she started groping for a handhold. "We've never met," he said again, softly. "We've never shared anything together, Ercinee. I'm sorry. I'm not who you're looking for..."
"WE HAVE MET!" she shouted suddenly and then swallowed and went on more calmly, "Yes... we have... and you were kind... and I was crazy and alone. It wasn't you... it was the other you. The first one. The one who is no longer... here. The one whose voice I will never have back. The other dimensions made you just a little different, but somewhere, Josiah, there is a you who is like he was... that is the one I'm looking for. He's the one I need," Her speech was broken up by
exertion as she managed, slowly, to get to her feet. She wasn't entirely well; she needed a little more time, but she was uncomfortable that Josiah had her memory locket.
Di...mensions? Other dimensions? She was going around to other dimensions and... kidnapping him from them? Oh... wow. This was bad. So much worse than he'd thought it was. Her comments made so much more sense now. And she'd said he was different from the others. The others who were really just him, from another plane where circumstances had shifted, just a bit. Fleetingly, he wondered whether there was one wherein his mother hadn't died, but the more immediate concern was: if he didn't fit the bill, what was she going to do with him? If he DID, what would she do? How long had she been doing this for?
Oh man, just how old WAS that MRE she gave him?
"What happened to that first one?" he murmured, eyeing her progress.
She was on her own two feet now, and moving towards him. "He told me he would be right back, that he would check to see if it was all clear... but it wasn't all clear. It wasn't. So they took him away and I hid because I was helpless at that time... they took him away, hurt him for the sake of hurting him, which they like to do, and he gave up and died. It's very important to me that it doesn't happen again," she reached out her hand, "return my locket."
Josiah watched her for a moment. The locket, at the moment, was the only thing he had against her. There were lots of things you could do with hostages. Smash them, dangle them over stuff, keep them away from the people who cared about them.
In his pocket were all of the Josiahs who'd been successes. Not quite perfect enough for her, but successes. Josiahs who loved her, who thanked her for "saving" them. Josiahs who broke under her "conditioning." He banished any lingering thoughts about her ability to actually change him. He'd already been changed by her, in who knew how many different dimensions.
So the Goa'uld took her little boyfriend. He refused to think of this other Josiah as himself. Took him then, tortured him. That explained why she wanted to make all Josiahs everywhere immune to pain. Crap. He was feeling sorry for her. Crap!
"I'll give it to you if you let me go," he tried without much hope of success.
Ercinee raised an eyebrow in something akin to surprise. She still looked like hell, but some color was returning to her cheeks. It did not bode well. "Oh? Really?" she asked, somewhat amused, and then looked around the room in an obvious restatement of the bleak facts: as long as he was here, the locket would not be getting very far. "Josiah, I'm being patient. Without the drug, you will think too much. This won't make sense," she sighed, her eyes expressing genuine sympathy.
Josiah didn't need the reminder, and he didn't appreciate it. He knew as well as she did that he was pretty well without options. His best bet was just to bide his time and look for an opportunity, and stay alive in case there was someone looking for him. While he was still vaguely worried about being programmed or having his brain data-mined, the possibility that she was just a simple crazy was up to 83% and rising, which meant he didn't need to worry so much about the distasteful prospect of taking his own life to protect millions and that sort of stuff. The linguist flexed his fingers and toes discreetly to test that whole drug thing, to make sure it was out of his system. He didn't feel heavy or anything, but ... without the drug, it won't make sense, she said. /That/ didn't sound good. Was he expected to actually /agree/ to this at some point?
She continued her slow, cautious approach. "They aren't dead," she said quickly, glancing at the bracelet, "because I saved them. It makes no sense to you now, but you need to trust me..." She held out her hand insistently, "Return it to me."
"Where are they now, if they aren't dead?" he asked softly, instead of handing it over. He clenched his fist around the locket and took a step backward as she advanced only to find his back up against the wall. His heart jumped at the contact, but he fought to slow it down. He'd known his back was against a wall. He'd put himself there. Stop jumping at the little stuff. There's a big stuff right in front of you.
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
part seven
"So, now that you've heard it, what will you do this time?" He'd thought it couldn't have gotten worse from there, but Ercinee's decidedly wakeful voice proved him wrong yet again.
This time. Oh... He felt sick. What the Heck was this? After the moment of stomach-plummeting passed, warmth suffused his limbs as adrenaline pumped into them. She was awake. Crap crap damn, she was awake. He stood immediately and surveyed the room for her.
She hadn't moved.
"What is this," he murmured, his voice uncharacteristically gravelly. "What have you done?"
"I've done a lot of things," she answered smoothly, moving slow inches, as if testing the extent of her stiffness. "To what things, specifically, do you refer?"
Josiah frowned mightily. "You know what things. I've never met you before."
"Actually," she corrected, "we have met...many times," she sighed and smiled as if reliving fond memories, "but you, the you who you are now, would not remember them. The 'you' you are now is new...and I'm still searching..."
The linguist was piecing the situation together as quickly as he could, but he still couldn't come up with anything that made sense. Was he a clone of a previous Josiah? He'd heard of that kind of thing happening. Or... maybe she'd gotten him before and wiped his memory of it, so that he was something of a tabula rasa for her to try again. The SGC offered a colourful array of possibilities, he thought uncharitably.
"Searching for what," he tried.
"Searching for you, of course. I told you, Josiah. You. I have to save you, before something Bad happens. I just want back... what we shared once..."
Ercinee reached her hand above to get purchase on the vanity, and began to pull herself up.
Josiah shook his head in mute denial. Crazy. So, woefully crazy. He found his voice when she started groping for a handhold. "We've never met," he said again, softly. "We've never shared anything together, Ercinee. I'm sorry. I'm not who you're looking for..."
"WE HAVE MET!" she shouted suddenly and then swallowed and went on more calmly, "Yes... we have... and you were kind... and I was crazy and alone. It wasn't you... it was the other you. The first one. The one who is no longer... here. The one whose voice I will never have back. The other dimensions made you just a little different, but somewhere, Josiah, there is a you who is like he was... that is the one I'm looking for. He's the one I need," Her speech was broken up by
exertion as she managed, slowly, to get to her feet. She wasn't entirely well; she needed a little more time, but she was uncomfortable that Josiah had her memory locket.
Di...mensions? Other dimensions? She was going around to other dimensions and... kidnapping him from them? Oh... wow. This was bad. So much worse than he'd thought it was. Her comments made so much more sense now. And she'd said he was different from the others. The others who were really just him, from another plane where circumstances had shifted, just a bit. Fleetingly, he wondered whether there was one wherein his mother hadn't died, but the more immediate concern was: if he didn't fit the bill, what was she going to do with him? If he DID, what would she do? How long had she been doing this for?
Oh man, just how old WAS that MRE she gave him?
"What happened to that first one?" he murmured, eyeing her progress.
She was on her own two feet now, and moving towards him. "He told me he would be right back, that he would check to see if it was all clear... but it wasn't all clear. It wasn't. So they took him away and I hid because I was helpless at that time... they took him away, hurt him for the sake of hurting him, which they like to do, and he gave up and died. It's very important to me that it doesn't happen again," she reached out her hand, "return my locket."
Josiah watched her for a moment. The locket, at the moment, was the only thing he had against her. There were lots of things you could do with hostages. Smash them, dangle them over stuff, keep them away from the people who cared about them.
In his pocket were all of the Josiahs who'd been successes. Not quite perfect enough for her, but successes. Josiahs who loved her, who thanked her for "saving" them. Josiahs who broke under her "conditioning." He banished any lingering thoughts about her ability to actually change him. He'd already been changed by her, in who knew how many different dimensions.
So the Goa'uld took her little boyfriend. He refused to think of this other Josiah as himself. Took him then, tortured him. That explained why she wanted to make all Josiahs everywhere immune to pain. Crap. He was feeling sorry for her. Crap!
"I'll give it to you if you let me go," he tried without much hope of success.
Ercinee raised an eyebrow in something akin to surprise. She still looked like hell, but some color was returning to her cheeks. It did not bode well. "Oh? Really?" she asked, somewhat amused, and then looked around the room in an obvious restatement of the bleak facts: as long as he was here, the locket would not be getting very far. "Josiah, I'm being patient. Without the drug, you will think too much. This won't make sense," she sighed, her eyes expressing genuine sympathy.
Josiah didn't need the reminder, and he didn't appreciate it. He knew as well as she did that he was pretty well without options. His best bet was just to bide his time and look for an opportunity, and stay alive in case there was someone looking for him. While he was still vaguely worried about being programmed or having his brain data-mined, the possibility that she was just a simple crazy was up to 83% and rising, which meant he didn't need to worry so much about the distasteful prospect of taking his own life to protect millions and that sort of stuff. The linguist flexed his fingers and toes discreetly to test that whole drug thing, to make sure it was out of his system. He didn't feel heavy or anything, but ... without the drug, it won't make sense, she said. /That/ didn't sound good. Was he expected to actually /agree/ to this at some point?
She continued her slow, cautious approach. "They aren't dead," she said quickly, glancing at the bracelet, "because I saved them. It makes no sense to you now, but you need to trust me..." She held out her hand insistently, "Return it to me."
"Where are they now, if they aren't dead?" he asked softly, instead of handing it over. He clenched his fist around the locket and took a step backward as she advanced only to find his back up against the wall. His heart jumped at the contact, but he fought to slow it down. He'd known his back was against a wall. He'd put himself there. Stop jumping at the little stuff. There's a big stuff right in front of you.
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
Friday, February 22, 2008
Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 7
part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
There was no response. If Ercinee was not asleep, then she had gone unconscious. Either way, she was not going to be traveling to the bed. The young woman's impossibly long black hair was draped over Josiah's shoulder, pillowing her head. It smelled vaguely like lilacs, or some other plant with a strong resemblance. In this unconscious state Ercinee looked almost....childlike. The hardness of her jaw, her eyebrows, and her lips softened. She looked so much younger, more vulnerable than the cold, calculating, flirtatious expression her black eyes provided. The illusion, or lack thereof, made it nearly impossible to see this woman as a threat, as a "conditioner", and a creature who promised pain in exchange for revelation.
The room was eerily silent.
Josiah sighed and fidgeted with the gun before setting it aside. With his hands bound, there was no way he was going to be able to get her to the bed, and he hadn't even decided she deserved that much yet. So instead, he shifted around gently to get out from under her and let her lie on the floor. The sedative she'd given him was wearing off, and he was able to get to his feet shakily to retrieve his P90 and clip it back into place over his shoulder. His sidearm went back into his hip holster, and a pillow from the bed got slipped under the sleeping crazy lady's head. He sat on the bed watching her as he inspected one of the MREs for edibility.
Well. Edibility was a strong word when it came to MREs. Still.
So, a plan. Isn't that what one did in this situation? The only thing he could think of besides killing her was... to be so boring that she'd send him back in favour of entrapping some other wide-eyed Darwin-escaping weakling. Which wasn't right. Maybe he had to just... do it. To spare others having to do the same. If she chose him specifically, and she'd done this to others, he could only assume they'd been similar to him, at least some of them. Put into the position of having to choose between what she offered and taking the life of another living, sentient being. He'd never be in the position to choose if only someone else before him had made the decision first. He could spare those that would follow him this choice in turn.
He pulled his side arm and took aim at the helpless unconscious woman.
What was holding him back, anyway? She was a Goa'uld. And they were bad. Except the ones that were good, and the only real difference there was that they gave themselves a different name. And she was against the bad ones' ways, which... was a more general translation of the name Tok'ra to start with.
Blahblah logic. There wasn't a way to logic out of this, stupid. He sighed again and dropped the gun onto the bed, starting to work on the cord around his wrists with his teeth.
He'd just have to be dull and work on a better plan while she tired of him. Who knew? Maybe her idea of pain wasn't all that bad.
--
Josiah woke with a start and checked his watch on reflex, blinking sleep from his eyes. Four hours. Crap! He looked to Ercinee immediately, but she was still out cold where he'd left her. His heart was racing, and he was on his feet retrieving his fatigues jacket from the floor by the time he realised that the sedative had worn off in the intervening hours. Well. Great. That was... totally useless.
All right, Sho-sye. Calm down. She's still out. Check her for a hand device. He hadn't seen one, but he hadn't thought /she/ was Goa'uld until after he'd been drugged, and by then, well. He'd been drugged. He went to her vanity and started looking through the drawers, quietly, because the last thing he wanted was to wake her up while he was rifling through her stuff.
Well. Maybe not the /last/ thing.
The three drawers of the vanity were a lifetime's lesson in the darkest side of sex. One drawer was filled with outfits: from the small and lacy to the leather and strappy, including items barely larger than a handkerchief. Josiah shut the drawer as quickly as he could without slamming it and possibly waking her prematurely, as soon as he ascertained that there wasn't anything useful in it.
He might've spared himself scant few moments of relative bliss, however, if he'd kept on pawing through it for a bit, as the second and third drawers looked like some kind of ah... well, that store his uni friends had dragged him into the day he'd mentioned transferring from Baptist College. He stared in shock for a moment, unable to look away. There were ... organs in every shape and color, and, frighteningly, species. As in, alien species. As in, some of these species didn't even appear to have been cataloged by humans yet, much less had their junk reproduced in space age polymer. He was appropriately scandalized, until he opened the third drawer. Then he was just ... sort of dazed.
This drawer... was the two player drawer. He closed it again quickly, his desire to put such things out of his mind winning out over his scientific curiosity over just what might be awaiting him. He couldn't blot out what he'd seen on his cursory examination though - what use could one possibly have for some of this stuff! He was in so far over his head, he thought he could see the soles of his feet from here.
He sighed heavily and turned around to sit on the floor, his back against the vanity drawers as if his weight could prevent the things inside from coming to life and escaping. He looked in sort of breathless dread at the still sleeping seductress. He'd been searching for clues to her nature, personality, situation - anything that could help him get a handle on her. Touches of home, sentimental objects, things like that that he could use to his advantage in persuading her that what she wanted to do was wrong. But he didn't find a single thing to help him.
Crap. He looked over at Ercinee and set his mouth in a grim line. Time to search the villain.
Really carefully, now. Don't wake the beast. Let sleeping dogs... uh, keep sleeping. Please please God, let her just -- er. Well. If she kept sleeping indefinitely, he'd just starve to death. But still. A few more... hours. Would be good. Thanks. Love, Josiah. PS, Hey God, I could really use some rescuing. Peace out.
Josiah blew out a breath. Skimpy bloodstained nightie, check. Nearly healed wound, check and crap. Heaving breast, che-- erk. Was that the drug talking, or was he just actually a male under all of his bulky modesty? Ok, catalogue the shiny things. Hair adornments, earrings, bracelets--
Er. The linguist narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. That one wasn't shiny. It wasn't even spangley. The pendant on the bracelet had some structured fine engraving on it and looked old, definitely didn't fit the profile. He kept his eyes on Ercinee's face as he worked the clasp and pulled it off her wrist.
And then across the room, feeling absurdly safer with most of a bed between them, he putzed around with his pocket notebook and pencil, working the filigree engravings into something that might make sense. He'd thought, since she'd used that urn back on the planet, but no. It was something else. Closer to... Er. Well... the construction was Delphic, but the sublimation... Oh. Duh.
Josiah pressed lightly on a slight depression in the muted crimson bauble and then winced when he heard voices coming from it. A sound recorder. Might've been smarter to figure that out /before/ turning it on, he thought, then stopped thinking altogether as what he heard filtered into the forefront.
"Yes, my Mistress."
Overlapping it and sounding... jealous? "Surely, my Mistress-"
The same voice, but clearly a different person. Another joined the murmuring chorus. "So pleased."
"Could never be angry with you, my Queen..."
The voices overlapped each other, new ones joining the growing crowd. And then they all died out, the entire choir of the same voice on different people until one voice remained, murmuring in abject adoration.
"Thank you. Thank you. I love you. So much. Thank you."
And then Ercinee's recorded voice, soft and seductive and sweetly innocent. "I love you, too, my Josiah..."
And then the recording died out, and Josiah sat on the floor with the pendant in his hands.
The others, she'd said... Oh God.
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
There was no response. If Ercinee was not asleep, then she had gone unconscious. Either way, she was not going to be traveling to the bed. The young woman's impossibly long black hair was draped over Josiah's shoulder, pillowing her head. It smelled vaguely like lilacs, or some other plant with a strong resemblance. In this unconscious state Ercinee looked almost....childlike. The hardness of her jaw, her eyebrows, and her lips softened. She looked so much younger, more vulnerable than the cold, calculating, flirtatious expression her black eyes provided. The illusion, or lack thereof, made it nearly impossible to see this woman as a threat, as a "conditioner", and a creature who promised pain in exchange for revelation.
The room was eerily silent.
Josiah sighed and fidgeted with the gun before setting it aside. With his hands bound, there was no way he was going to be able to get her to the bed, and he hadn't even decided she deserved that much yet. So instead, he shifted around gently to get out from under her and let her lie on the floor. The sedative she'd given him was wearing off, and he was able to get to his feet shakily to retrieve his P90 and clip it back into place over his shoulder. His sidearm went back into his hip holster, and a pillow from the bed got slipped under the sleeping crazy lady's head. He sat on the bed watching her as he inspected one of the MREs for edibility.
Well. Edibility was a strong word when it came to MREs. Still.
So, a plan. Isn't that what one did in this situation? The only thing he could think of besides killing her was... to be so boring that she'd send him back in favour of entrapping some other wide-eyed Darwin-escaping weakling. Which wasn't right. Maybe he had to just... do it. To spare others having to do the same. If she chose him specifically, and she'd done this to others, he could only assume they'd been similar to him, at least some of them. Put into the position of having to choose between what she offered and taking the life of another living, sentient being. He'd never be in the position to choose if only someone else before him had made the decision first. He could spare those that would follow him this choice in turn.
He pulled his side arm and took aim at the helpless unconscious woman.
What was holding him back, anyway? She was a Goa'uld. And they were bad. Except the ones that were good, and the only real difference there was that they gave themselves a different name. And she was against the bad ones' ways, which... was a more general translation of the name Tok'ra to start with.
Blahblah logic. There wasn't a way to logic out of this, stupid. He sighed again and dropped the gun onto the bed, starting to work on the cord around his wrists with his teeth.
He'd just have to be dull and work on a better plan while she tired of him. Who knew? Maybe her idea of pain wasn't all that bad.
--
Josiah woke with a start and checked his watch on reflex, blinking sleep from his eyes. Four hours. Crap! He looked to Ercinee immediately, but she was still out cold where he'd left her. His heart was racing, and he was on his feet retrieving his fatigues jacket from the floor by the time he realised that the sedative had worn off in the intervening hours. Well. Great. That was... totally useless.
All right, Sho-sye. Calm down. She's still out. Check her for a hand device. He hadn't seen one, but he hadn't thought /she/ was Goa'uld until after he'd been drugged, and by then, well. He'd been drugged. He went to her vanity and started looking through the drawers, quietly, because the last thing he wanted was to wake her up while he was rifling through her stuff.
Well. Maybe not the /last/ thing.
The three drawers of the vanity were a lifetime's lesson in the darkest side of sex. One drawer was filled with outfits: from the small and lacy to the leather and strappy, including items barely larger than a handkerchief. Josiah shut the drawer as quickly as he could without slamming it and possibly waking her prematurely, as soon as he ascertained that there wasn't anything useful in it.
He might've spared himself scant few moments of relative bliss, however, if he'd kept on pawing through it for a bit, as the second and third drawers looked like some kind of ah... well, that store his uni friends had dragged him into the day he'd mentioned transferring from Baptist College. He stared in shock for a moment, unable to look away. There were ... organs in every shape and color, and, frighteningly, species. As in, alien species. As in, some of these species didn't even appear to have been cataloged by humans yet, much less had their junk reproduced in space age polymer. He was appropriately scandalized, until he opened the third drawer. Then he was just ... sort of dazed.
This drawer... was the two player drawer. He closed it again quickly, his desire to put such things out of his mind winning out over his scientific curiosity over just what might be awaiting him. He couldn't blot out what he'd seen on his cursory examination though - what use could one possibly have for some of this stuff! He was in so far over his head, he thought he could see the soles of his feet from here.
He sighed heavily and turned around to sit on the floor, his back against the vanity drawers as if his weight could prevent the things inside from coming to life and escaping. He looked in sort of breathless dread at the still sleeping seductress. He'd been searching for clues to her nature, personality, situation - anything that could help him get a handle on her. Touches of home, sentimental objects, things like that that he could use to his advantage in persuading her that what she wanted to do was wrong. But he didn't find a single thing to help him.
Crap. He looked over at Ercinee and set his mouth in a grim line. Time to search the villain.
Really carefully, now. Don't wake the beast. Let sleeping dogs... uh, keep sleeping. Please please God, let her just -- er. Well. If she kept sleeping indefinitely, he'd just starve to death. But still. A few more... hours. Would be good. Thanks. Love, Josiah. PS, Hey God, I could really use some rescuing. Peace out.
Josiah blew out a breath. Skimpy bloodstained nightie, check. Nearly healed wound, check and crap. Heaving breast, che-- erk. Was that the drug talking, or was he just actually a male under all of his bulky modesty? Ok, catalogue the shiny things. Hair adornments, earrings, bracelets--
Er. The linguist narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. That one wasn't shiny. It wasn't even spangley. The pendant on the bracelet had some structured fine engraving on it and looked old, definitely didn't fit the profile. He kept his eyes on Ercinee's face as he worked the clasp and pulled it off her wrist.
And then across the room, feeling absurdly safer with most of a bed between them, he putzed around with his pocket notebook and pencil, working the filigree engravings into something that might make sense. He'd thought, since she'd used that urn back on the planet, but no. It was something else. Closer to... Er. Well... the construction was Delphic, but the sublimation... Oh. Duh.
Josiah pressed lightly on a slight depression in the muted crimson bauble and then winced when he heard voices coming from it. A sound recorder. Might've been smarter to figure that out /before/ turning it on, he thought, then stopped thinking altogether as what he heard filtered into the forefront.
"Yes, my Mistress."
Overlapping it and sounding... jealous? "Surely, my Mistress-"
The same voice, but clearly a different person. Another joined the murmuring chorus. "So pleased."
"Could never be angry with you, my Queen..."
The voices overlapped each other, new ones joining the growing crowd. And then they all died out, the entire choir of the same voice on different people until one voice remained, murmuring in abject adoration.
"Thank you. Thank you. I love you. So much. Thank you."
And then Ercinee's recorded voice, soft and seductive and sweetly innocent. "I love you, too, my Josiah..."
And then the recording died out, and Josiah sat on the floor with the pendant in his hands.
The others, she'd said... Oh God.
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 6
part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
There was an explosion of red liquid and Ercinee fell back. Now the nightgown-clad beauty looked like something out of a horror film. Blood poured from a wound in her shoulder, down her arm, and dripped eerily onto the glowing violet floor. Her face, her neck, the front of her nightgown and several parts of Josiah had gotten misted as well. Ercinee hadn't cried out, and now she sat, her face expressionless as she numbly clutched her dead arm with the other.
She looked up at him, disappointed? Sad? Angry? "Is this your idea of mercy?" she asked softly.
"It's the only avenue of escape you left me," he said numbly, lifting the gun in his bound hands for a second shot. The small handgun had never felt heavier. In nearly thirty years of life, he'd never done something so directly violent, least of all bloody. And despite feeling so numb about it, his hands shook almost irretrievably as he tried to line up another shot. How did people get used to this? he wondered distantly, some little part of his brain ticking on like nothing had happened. "But I'm still here." His mouth was dry. "I wanted to bargain with you. I tried." He was sounding like a psycho person justifying his crimes.
And it was that thought that had him nauseous. He choked on a breath that came too quickly and held it, forcing himself to steady up. Silverhawk would have shot the woman by now and gone home. One of the team diplomats might have even talked themselves out of the situation already. But he... was a historian. A linguist. Give him a language, a puzzle, a society, and let him go to town. But this?
He licked his dry lips and took shaky aim.
"I like that look in your eyes, Josiah," she smiled, "Didn't think you had it in you, did you? I wasn't sure myself, really. Well, now you know I can bleed." She smiled. "You aren't afraid to shoot me anymore, you just don't want to. That's good," Ercinee sounded strange, "that's a start. If nothing else, I've helped you learn this lesson; that you have it in you." She didn't move, though she did survey the bleeding damage. "Think of how much more I could teach you, Josiah..."
She was wrong; he didn't have it in him. Not really. Or maybe he had, and now it wasn't in him any more, and that's why he felt kinda hollow now. Either way, he didn't think he could pull the trigger again. Thought it was supposed to get easier after the first time, he thought distractedly. At least she didn't die. That was what he /really/ couldn't do. In fact, she didn't even look perturbed beyond that he'd ruined her nightie.
"I..." he managed through a breath. But what? All he could think to say was, "Put me back on the planet." But even that repeated demand didn't hold the conviction and command it once had. The part of his head that was still ticking on wondered how long he'd been there and whether his team was still planetside. He didn't have his GDO.
"I told you, Josiah, I'm not affected by pain, and, therefore, your threats aren't very... threatening. You may have to empty that thing to make your point; I'm not releasing you." slowly, hesitantly, she got to her feet and turned towards the bed. "I'm very tired now, Josiah, and I'm bleeding."
Josiah's gunpoint jerked to follow her as soon as he realised she was moving. But as she turned from him, he relaxed. Then he relaxed more, and was slumping against the wall behind him to slide down it to the floor. He'd tried. "My people will look for me," he murmured, staring off at nothing with his hands between his knees.
"Can they read a third generation form of Ancient Shashani?" she asked, sitting upon the bed. "That trap was for you, Josiah. Just you. I want no other company but you." Without grace she lifted part of the violet sheet to her mouth. The sound of tearing fabric was loud in the still room.
"They'll find a way," he said dully. He dropped his forehead onto the heels of his hands. Chances were she was right. He didn't even know for sure that he was on the same planet. After some time, he'd be declared officially Missing In Action, and life at the SGC would go on until this banshee decided he'd been adequately "conditioned," at which point he'd be stuck back on P-whatever-whatever without a GDO and no way to get home anyway. She wasn't without intelligence, though. There was a chance that with time, she'd... what? Learn compassion. She'd spoken of things he could teach her...
"Are you all right?" he murmured, lifting his head to look at her.
Ercinee was having a hard time getting the fabric around her shoulder. "That depends upon what you mean by 'all right'," she began, "I am not mortally wounded. This arm is useless for now, however." She wobbled for a split second, as a narcoleptic does when having a sleep attack, but resumed her activity as if nothing had happened. "From your point of view, I'm surprised you are taking such chances, letting me live, when you clearly believe I represent a significant threat."
He considered her. Considered /helping/ her, then banished the thought. Too far was too far. "You can't take my point of view," he said softly. "You don't know me. From my point of view, the threat to me - if it won't cause my death, then I have no right to cause yours..." But would the threat of her involve breaking down the SGC's front door and leading the Goa'uld infiltration? That'd cause some death, there. Turn him into a secret assassin? Someone would die then, or he'd be killed first. But she'd said she despised the whole idea of killing lots of people; it was why she was locked up. If he could believe that. Either way, he didn't have a GDO, so the code in his head was pretty well useless. Not much chance of him /or/ her getting back to the SGC.
"You're right," she agreed, "that is sensible." She had managed something akin to a bandage and sling. "I would not kill you, of that you have my word. So then... it seems we are at an impasse..." She looked to him. "Are you hungry?"
"Ah..." he started, quirking a brow. "Not particularly." His stomach growled right on cue, as was its wont. He blew out a breath and looked off.
"There is food in the vanity there," she said, "along with a few toys. A couple of them are edible," she grinned and raised an eyebrow, "but I don't suppose you would find me very funny right now."
Josiah twisted his mouth up at her for a moment before light dawned, and then he frowned and blushed red, resolutely sitting just exactly where he was. "Not. Hungry."
Ercinee sighed. She rose from the bed shakily and crossed to the vanity. Rooting in one of the drawer she produced two nondescript standard MRE packets. She approached Josiah gingerly, proferring the packets like a peace offering. "Truce?"
"Did you get these from my pack?" he said instead of agreeing to a truce. He raised his bound hands to take them.
"Is 'yes' the right answer to this question?" she asked, sliding down to sit less than delicately next to him. "Oh...you think I'm going to drug you again," her speech sounded slurred, "that would have been a good idea to try first..."
"Actually," he replied, "I hadn't even thought of that. I was just wondering if I was the first Tau'ri soldier you lured here." Nevermind that he wasn't a soldier. He glanced at her. "Er, you seem to have lost a little grace. Blood loss?" he guessed.
"Would it ease your jealousy if I said you were the first?" She looked at her shoulder. "I made this place for you. In retrospect I should have done more with the place; it seems like we'll be spending a lot of time together. As long as I don't make any threatening moves, you won't shoot me. If you don't shoot me you don't leave. You know, this would go so much faster if you'd just give it a try."
"Try shooting you? I already did." He gestured vaguely. "It didn't turn out that well, if you recall."
"How is it you are allowed to be funny and I am not?" She yawned and leaned against Josiah. "Let me sleep with you... sleep. Just sleep..."
"It's because I'm more charming than you are," he replied, "and no. There's a bed. I'll sleep on the floor. Or you could put me on the planet. I'll sleep fine there. Got a tent and everything."
part seven
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
part two
part three
part four
part five
There was an explosion of red liquid and Ercinee fell back. Now the nightgown-clad beauty looked like something out of a horror film. Blood poured from a wound in her shoulder, down her arm, and dripped eerily onto the glowing violet floor. Her face, her neck, the front of her nightgown and several parts of Josiah had gotten misted as well. Ercinee hadn't cried out, and now she sat, her face expressionless as she numbly clutched her dead arm with the other.
She looked up at him, disappointed? Sad? Angry? "Is this your idea of mercy?" she asked softly.
"It's the only avenue of escape you left me," he said numbly, lifting the gun in his bound hands for a second shot. The small handgun had never felt heavier. In nearly thirty years of life, he'd never done something so directly violent, least of all bloody. And despite feeling so numb about it, his hands shook almost irretrievably as he tried to line up another shot. How did people get used to this? he wondered distantly, some little part of his brain ticking on like nothing had happened. "But I'm still here." His mouth was dry. "I wanted to bargain with you. I tried." He was sounding like a psycho person justifying his crimes.
And it was that thought that had him nauseous. He choked on a breath that came too quickly and held it, forcing himself to steady up. Silverhawk would have shot the woman by now and gone home. One of the team diplomats might have even talked themselves out of the situation already. But he... was a historian. A linguist. Give him a language, a puzzle, a society, and let him go to town. But this?
He licked his dry lips and took shaky aim.
"I like that look in your eyes, Josiah," she smiled, "Didn't think you had it in you, did you? I wasn't sure myself, really. Well, now you know I can bleed." She smiled. "You aren't afraid to shoot me anymore, you just don't want to. That's good," Ercinee sounded strange, "that's a start. If nothing else, I've helped you learn this lesson; that you have it in you." She didn't move, though she did survey the bleeding damage. "Think of how much more I could teach you, Josiah..."
She was wrong; he didn't have it in him. Not really. Or maybe he had, and now it wasn't in him any more, and that's why he felt kinda hollow now. Either way, he didn't think he could pull the trigger again. Thought it was supposed to get easier after the first time, he thought distractedly. At least she didn't die. That was what he /really/ couldn't do. In fact, she didn't even look perturbed beyond that he'd ruined her nightie.
"I..." he managed through a breath. But what? All he could think to say was, "Put me back on the planet." But even that repeated demand didn't hold the conviction and command it once had. The part of his head that was still ticking on wondered how long he'd been there and whether his team was still planetside. He didn't have his GDO.
"I told you, Josiah, I'm not affected by pain, and, therefore, your threats aren't very... threatening. You may have to empty that thing to make your point; I'm not releasing you." slowly, hesitantly, she got to her feet and turned towards the bed. "I'm very tired now, Josiah, and I'm bleeding."
Josiah's gunpoint jerked to follow her as soon as he realised she was moving. But as she turned from him, he relaxed. Then he relaxed more, and was slumping against the wall behind him to slide down it to the floor. He'd tried. "My people will look for me," he murmured, staring off at nothing with his hands between his knees.
"Can they read a third generation form of Ancient Shashani?" she asked, sitting upon the bed. "That trap was for you, Josiah. Just you. I want no other company but you." Without grace she lifted part of the violet sheet to her mouth. The sound of tearing fabric was loud in the still room.
"They'll find a way," he said dully. He dropped his forehead onto the heels of his hands. Chances were she was right. He didn't even know for sure that he was on the same planet. After some time, he'd be declared officially Missing In Action, and life at the SGC would go on until this banshee decided he'd been adequately "conditioned," at which point he'd be stuck back on P-whatever-whatever without a GDO and no way to get home anyway. She wasn't without intelligence, though. There was a chance that with time, she'd... what? Learn compassion. She'd spoken of things he could teach her...
"Are you all right?" he murmured, lifting his head to look at her.
Ercinee was having a hard time getting the fabric around her shoulder. "That depends upon what you mean by 'all right'," she began, "I am not mortally wounded. This arm is useless for now, however." She wobbled for a split second, as a narcoleptic does when having a sleep attack, but resumed her activity as if nothing had happened. "From your point of view, I'm surprised you are taking such chances, letting me live, when you clearly believe I represent a significant threat."
He considered her. Considered /helping/ her, then banished the thought. Too far was too far. "You can't take my point of view," he said softly. "You don't know me. From my point of view, the threat to me - if it won't cause my death, then I have no right to cause yours..." But would the threat of her involve breaking down the SGC's front door and leading the Goa'uld infiltration? That'd cause some death, there. Turn him into a secret assassin? Someone would die then, or he'd be killed first. But she'd said she despised the whole idea of killing lots of people; it was why she was locked up. If he could believe that. Either way, he didn't have a GDO, so the code in his head was pretty well useless. Not much chance of him /or/ her getting back to the SGC.
"You're right," she agreed, "that is sensible." She had managed something akin to a bandage and sling. "I would not kill you, of that you have my word. So then... it seems we are at an impasse..." She looked to him. "Are you hungry?"
"Ah..." he started, quirking a brow. "Not particularly." His stomach growled right on cue, as was its wont. He blew out a breath and looked off.
"There is food in the vanity there," she said, "along with a few toys. A couple of them are edible," she grinned and raised an eyebrow, "but I don't suppose you would find me very funny right now."
Josiah twisted his mouth up at her for a moment before light dawned, and then he frowned and blushed red, resolutely sitting just exactly where he was. "Not. Hungry."
Ercinee sighed. She rose from the bed shakily and crossed to the vanity. Rooting in one of the drawer she produced two nondescript standard MRE packets. She approached Josiah gingerly, proferring the packets like a peace offering. "Truce?"
"Did you get these from my pack?" he said instead of agreeing to a truce. He raised his bound hands to take them.
"Is 'yes' the right answer to this question?" she asked, sliding down to sit less than delicately next to him. "Oh...you think I'm going to drug you again," her speech sounded slurred, "that would have been a good idea to try first..."
"Actually," he replied, "I hadn't even thought of that. I was just wondering if I was the first Tau'ri soldier you lured here." Nevermind that he wasn't a soldier. He glanced at her. "Er, you seem to have lost a little grace. Blood loss?" he guessed.
"Would it ease your jealousy if I said you were the first?" She looked at her shoulder. "I made this place for you. In retrospect I should have done more with the place; it seems like we'll be spending a lot of time together. As long as I don't make any threatening moves, you won't shoot me. If you don't shoot me you don't leave. You know, this would go so much faster if you'd just give it a try."
"Try shooting you? I already did." He gestured vaguely. "It didn't turn out that well, if you recall."
"How is it you are allowed to be funny and I am not?" She yawned and leaned against Josiah. "Let me sleep with you... sleep. Just sleep..."
"It's because I'm more charming than you are," he replied, "and no. There's a bed. I'll sleep on the floor. Or you could put me on the planet. I'll sleep fine there. Got a tent and everything."
part seven
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
Monday, February 18, 2008
Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 5
part one
part two
part three
part four
Ercinee pulled up on the cord and Josiah's body grudgingly went with it. Juust a tad stronger than the average female human. "Sure. You can shoot me at any time, provided you can overpower me and get to your weapons. This is important to me, Josiah, and in time you'll come to understand it." she leaned forward and nuzzled his chin affectionately. "Just leave it all to me."
"Oof," he grunted. What the Heck... Ok, he wasn't exactly a heavyweight champion, but she shouldn't have been able to get him to his feet with just a rope around his wrists, especially when he was mostly dead weight. He swayed a little and winked up an eye in distaste when she nuzzled against his chin. Now or never.
He grabbed the rope near his wrists and pushed her away with all the muzzy strength he could eek out of his lazy muscles, immediately jerking on the rope to get it out of her hands so that when he dove for the gun behind him, he wouldn't be caught up short.
Ercinee had clearly been caught off guard by his resistance to her sedative. She knelt on the ground where she had toppled and glanced up in dismay as Josiah came up with his handgun clenched tightly.
"Put me back," he said through his teeth. His aim wavered, but she was close enough that even his sedative-slagged aim would probably hit her. "Or I'll just shoot you and go back anyway."
A tense moment passed as the lovely dark-haired woman remained stock still, staring at Josiah's weapon and considering her options. Finally her black eyes fell on him pleadingly. "Don't go," she begged quietly, "Please... you don't know what it's like out there. You don't know what it will do to you! Please... I like you, Josiah. If you could see it from my eyes... how much I can help you... don't go. I promise, I swear to you on my life, I'm telling you the truth."
"Out there?" he replied quietly. "Out there I have people to watch my back. To /protect/ me from harm, just as I'd do for them. We do just fine without your kind of training." He lowered the gun, just a little, his muscles already rebelling at being forced to do more than they felt they had strength for. "Your kind of training isn't wholly unheard of," he offered. "But it's not my way."
"It's always about 'your way,'" Ercinee said miserably, "and you think I am arrogant. You won't always have others to look after you. Divide and conquer, that is how the intelligent overlords do it. Divide... and conquer. Isolate your enemy and destroy her. Isolate and destroy. You won't always have your people, Josiah, and 'your way' isn't necessarily a good way. Shoot me, or stay and try me. I'd rather you stay, but if you are going, it will only be after I am unconscious or dead enough to stand the loneliness..." She put her head in her hands and began what really sounded like actual weeping.
He was getting a better picture of her situation the more she talked. She was Goa'uld, he posited. And she'd gotten irritated with their ways, the loss of life she'd mentioned. To silence her, they'd separated her from them and from her followers, if she had any. Locked her up. Damn. If he could get her to the SGC... She wasn't exactly Tok'ra, but she could know things. Still, it meant he couldn't trust anything she said. Could his gun even really kill her? He hadn't had any actual experience with Goa'uld before, but he'd been fully briefed on the crap they could pull. Still, crying? Good grief.
He retrained the gun on her obviously, but aimed low. "If you're lonely, let's just talk, then."
Ercinee looked up and managed to reclaim a bit of dignity though her eyes were red. "Don't you understand what I am telling you?" she began calmly. "It's too late for talking. Talking accomplishes nothing because your mind cannot comprehend what I am trying to explain. I have to teach it to your body, teach it directly to your mind otherwise... otherwise there is no purpose in my life anymore. I MUST save others. This is the way that I know actually works. Some have been willing, but it's always the ones who really need the conditioning who resist the most..."
Josiah took a shuddering breath. He really, really didn't want to shoot her. But he really, really didn't like the sound of "conditioning," which he knew from movies before he ever /thought/ of the military, was BAD. And he was losing feeling in his fingers. Craphole.
"Well we've gotten ourselves into a little cycle then," he murmured, watching her. "I'm not going to go along with this, which makes you think I need it all the more. But I don't. You can't help me, I'm sorry. Just break the connection. Cut your losses. Let me go."
"Let yourself go," Ercinee said with grave calmness. "Make your point, Josiah, if you can. I've cut too many losses already; you have no idea. If you hate this so much then shoot. I won't even stop you. You think you have something to lose..." she shook her head, "You think that I am some kind of villain. You think you are right because it's all about 'your way,' but the next time you are in fear for your life, and it will happen, I promise you, you may remember what I've said. The next time you innocently get caught in a trap, separated from your people, you will wish it was my hand..."
He shook his head back at her, flexing his fingers a little to keep the blood flowing past the cord around his wrists. "This is unnecessary," he whispered. "I don't want to shoot you. Don't make me."
"You're right it IS unnecessary. Unnecessary for you to leave when you have so much potential." She crawled forward towards him slowly. "Just give me a chance..."
With a jolt, he retrained his wavering aim. "Stop," he murmured, new dread blossoming in his stomach as he realised that she knew too. He couldn't shoot her. Craaaaap. "Don't come any closer."
"Or you will shoot me?" Ercinee asked gently. "Don't you see, this is what I love about you, Josiah. This is why I want to help you. Please," she put her own hand around his shaking ones, purposefully steadying the gun instead of taking the cord. "Please...don't be afraid..." she cooed as if placating a startled kitten.
Josiah knitted his brows and blinked quickly. She was serious. For her, it was him or death. And he didn't want to kill her. But. He couldn't allow himself to be at the mercy of a Goa'uld, especially one bent on "conditioning." He couldn't run the risk of being turned into some kind of Manchurian Candidate wannabe, and he couldn't risk divulging secrets that could let her run amuck on Base. He couldn't. And he'd known this job was going to bloody his hands eventually.
So just keep chanting to yourself, "The wench drugged me!" and get real good and mad, Sho-sye. Then nail her somewhere distracting but not fatal.
He took a measured breath, then wrenched his aim to the side and out of her steadying hands, firing his sidearm at point blank range.
part six
part seven
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
part two
part three
part four
Ercinee pulled up on the cord and Josiah's body grudgingly went with it. Juust a tad stronger than the average female human. "Sure. You can shoot me at any time, provided you can overpower me and get to your weapons. This is important to me, Josiah, and in time you'll come to understand it." she leaned forward and nuzzled his chin affectionately. "Just leave it all to me."
"Oof," he grunted. What the Heck... Ok, he wasn't exactly a heavyweight champion, but she shouldn't have been able to get him to his feet with just a rope around his wrists, especially when he was mostly dead weight. He swayed a little and winked up an eye in distaste when she nuzzled against his chin. Now or never.
He grabbed the rope near his wrists and pushed her away with all the muzzy strength he could eek out of his lazy muscles, immediately jerking on the rope to get it out of her hands so that when he dove for the gun behind him, he wouldn't be caught up short.
Ercinee had clearly been caught off guard by his resistance to her sedative. She knelt on the ground where she had toppled and glanced up in dismay as Josiah came up with his handgun clenched tightly.
"Put me back," he said through his teeth. His aim wavered, but she was close enough that even his sedative-slagged aim would probably hit her. "Or I'll just shoot you and go back anyway."
A tense moment passed as the lovely dark-haired woman remained stock still, staring at Josiah's weapon and considering her options. Finally her black eyes fell on him pleadingly. "Don't go," she begged quietly, "Please... you don't know what it's like out there. You don't know what it will do to you! Please... I like you, Josiah. If you could see it from my eyes... how much I can help you... don't go. I promise, I swear to you on my life, I'm telling you the truth."
"Out there?" he replied quietly. "Out there I have people to watch my back. To /protect/ me from harm, just as I'd do for them. We do just fine without your kind of training." He lowered the gun, just a little, his muscles already rebelling at being forced to do more than they felt they had strength for. "Your kind of training isn't wholly unheard of," he offered. "But it's not my way."
"It's always about 'your way,'" Ercinee said miserably, "and you think I am arrogant. You won't always have others to look after you. Divide and conquer, that is how the intelligent overlords do it. Divide... and conquer. Isolate your enemy and destroy her. Isolate and destroy. You won't always have your people, Josiah, and 'your way' isn't necessarily a good way. Shoot me, or stay and try me. I'd rather you stay, but if you are going, it will only be after I am unconscious or dead enough to stand the loneliness..." She put her head in her hands and began what really sounded like actual weeping.
He was getting a better picture of her situation the more she talked. She was Goa'uld, he posited. And she'd gotten irritated with their ways, the loss of life she'd mentioned. To silence her, they'd separated her from them and from her followers, if she had any. Locked her up. Damn. If he could get her to the SGC... She wasn't exactly Tok'ra, but she could know things. Still, it meant he couldn't trust anything she said. Could his gun even really kill her? He hadn't had any actual experience with Goa'uld before, but he'd been fully briefed on the crap they could pull. Still, crying? Good grief.
He retrained the gun on her obviously, but aimed low. "If you're lonely, let's just talk, then."
Ercinee looked up and managed to reclaim a bit of dignity though her eyes were red. "Don't you understand what I am telling you?" she began calmly. "It's too late for talking. Talking accomplishes nothing because your mind cannot comprehend what I am trying to explain. I have to teach it to your body, teach it directly to your mind otherwise... otherwise there is no purpose in my life anymore. I MUST save others. This is the way that I know actually works. Some have been willing, but it's always the ones who really need the conditioning who resist the most..."
Josiah took a shuddering breath. He really, really didn't want to shoot her. But he really, really didn't like the sound of "conditioning," which he knew from movies before he ever /thought/ of the military, was BAD. And he was losing feeling in his fingers. Craphole.
"Well we've gotten ourselves into a little cycle then," he murmured, watching her. "I'm not going to go along with this, which makes you think I need it all the more. But I don't. You can't help me, I'm sorry. Just break the connection. Cut your losses. Let me go."
"Let yourself go," Ercinee said with grave calmness. "Make your point, Josiah, if you can. I've cut too many losses already; you have no idea. If you hate this so much then shoot. I won't even stop you. You think you have something to lose..." she shook her head, "You think that I am some kind of villain. You think you are right because it's all about 'your way,' but the next time you are in fear for your life, and it will happen, I promise you, you may remember what I've said. The next time you innocently get caught in a trap, separated from your people, you will wish it was my hand..."
He shook his head back at her, flexing his fingers a little to keep the blood flowing past the cord around his wrists. "This is unnecessary," he whispered. "I don't want to shoot you. Don't make me."
"You're right it IS unnecessary. Unnecessary for you to leave when you have so much potential." She crawled forward towards him slowly. "Just give me a chance..."
With a jolt, he retrained his wavering aim. "Stop," he murmured, new dread blossoming in his stomach as he realised that she knew too. He couldn't shoot her. Craaaaap. "Don't come any closer."
"Or you will shoot me?" Ercinee asked gently. "Don't you see, this is what I love about you, Josiah. This is why I want to help you. Please," she put her own hand around his shaking ones, purposefully steadying the gun instead of taking the cord. "Please...don't be afraid..." she cooed as if placating a startled kitten.
Josiah knitted his brows and blinked quickly. She was serious. For her, it was him or death. And he didn't want to kill her. But. He couldn't allow himself to be at the mercy of a Goa'uld, especially one bent on "conditioning." He couldn't run the risk of being turned into some kind of Manchurian Candidate wannabe, and he couldn't risk divulging secrets that could let her run amuck on Base. He couldn't. And he'd known this job was going to bloody his hands eventually.
So just keep chanting to yourself, "The wench drugged me!" and get real good and mad, Sho-sye. Then nail her somewhere distracting but not fatal.
He took a measured breath, then wrenched his aim to the side and out of her steadying hands, firing his sidearm at point blank range.
part six
part seven
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
Friday, February 15, 2008
Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 4
part one
part two
part three
"Yes," she replied, "that's why I wished you would just...'be together' with me. In the long run, it helps so much." She slid off the bed, her nightie riding up just enough in the process to show a generous amount of thigh and a complete lack of undergarments. She walked towards the vanity with so much grace she appeared to float.
In the long run... Josiah frowned as she walked away from the bed. How in the world could he feel so guilty? She'd /drugged/ him. But there it was. He dragged himself to the edge of the bed and swung his legs out over the floor. "Ercinee-" he started, then cut off when the world went sideways and he slumped backward against the bedpost for support. "Oh." Right. Drugged. How silly of him. He sank to the floor and frowned at her. "What is it you want, really?" he asked.
Ercinee turned from the vanity holding a long, wound black cord presumably some kind of leather thong. "What I want," she began kindly, an ironic departure from the sinister object in her hands, "is really to help you. And in doing so, I'll be helping myself." She took a step forward. "You'll never be afraid, you will never be in pain, and you'll never submit so easily to anyone again. You'll be strong, you'll be respected, you'll be like a rock for your people. Isn't that what you want?"
Josiah's eyes widened at the thing in her hand. Surely - he swallowed dryly and picked out the one thing he could pull from her list to help him. "I'm - I'm respected." He fumbled for the safety on the P90 slung across his chest, cursing his rebelliously slow fingers. "As a scholar. I don't need - need to be..."
"You don't need to be what?" she asked, her voice that of a mother gently teaching her child an important lesson. "Don't need to be strong? But you do, Josiah. You have developed your mind, you have in there the reasoning power of 20 humans who have spent their short lifespans developing their bodies. But that is what makes you so precious, so vulnerable. You don't have to worry," she continued, unafraid, "I'm not interested in the secrets you know. I'm not interested in taking anything from you, I just want to train you, as the others have trained their muscles because right now," she paused as if knowing the last part would bring him great pain, "You... You, Josiah, are the weakest link in the chain."
He gaped, and for a moment, all thought fled. He'd thought - well he'd always reasoned that societies had evolved specialization, so that made it all right that... They weren't cavemen any more for cryin' out loud. As a people, they could afford to have some specialize in brawn, cunning, knowledge for knowledge' sake. Art for art's sake, even. That's - that's how he... How he'd gotten through years of studying societies where people like him were Darwined out, sometimes purposefully.
But it wasn't just a rationalization. It was a solid, well-researched theory. Her words had struck him to the quick, but only because they were designed to, he decided. He was, in theory, necessary to the mission, and if he was the weakest link, it was only because the consequences of his loss had the potential to be dire. So why couldn't he stop his voice from shaking when he answered her? "That- that's not true."
"You say it's not true," Ercinee began to idly tie one end of the cord into a slip knot, "but you were solely responsible for coming here. Remember the inscription on the tablet on... what is it you call it... P38-209? The carving was ancient, but you thought it looked like a language you had encountered somewhere else. There was an urn that seemed like some kind of canopic jar, and you eagerly removed it from the pedestal. Do you remember that now?"
"I... remember that," he replied cautiously.
"That was mine. When you touched it, I felt you, and brought you here." She sighed, "There is so much we can teach each other, Josiah. There is no reason to be afraid of what I offer," she reached out and gently stroked his cheek.
He flinched away and frowned, looking pointedly at the knotted cord in her hand. "And what would you learn from me?"
"An end to my isolation... companionship." She leaned in to kiss the place her fingers had been. "You can teach me comfort, tenderness... I need these things..."
Josiah closed his eyes at the feeling of her lips on his cheek, a starkly gentle reminder of what she'd been able to do to him without even really trying. What kind of being could feel his presence through an artifact, take him who knew how far from his team? What else did she have up her sleeve? Clearly she was able to elicit pity from him, guilt. She was still doing it, even now that she was probably telling the truth. However many years here, alone. It was no wonder she had reached out to him in such a completely unreasonable way. "I can't teach you comfort when I've been kidnapped," he murmured. "You're holding me against my will."
"I won't keep you here forever," she promised, "but the training is hard, I admit, and if you would have only let me provide you with ecstacy you would see that the rewards are greater than the drawbacks... and besides," she paused and bit her lip, looking away as if unsure whether to reveal her hand too much. "You aren't here against your will. There is a way to leave."
Josiah gathered himself together to focus on the task at hand. Silverhawk would expect him to be trying to get back to the team. Regardless of his own curiosity, that had to come first. People could even now be throwing themselves into danger on his behalf, and he didn't fancy having to explain why he was sitting around having a tea party while they were putting their butts on the line to rescue him.
"How."
Ercinee sighed and rested her hand on his P90. "Shoot me. Several times. Without me to sustain it, the connection will be severed and you will return to P38209."
He stared at her, willing her to admit that she was lying. He couldn't even pretend to threaten her with doing just that, because he'd already admitted that he'd never had to shoot anyone. He'd gambled away all of his chips before he even knew he was playing the game. Crap.
Soooo fine. Maybe if he just went along with her for a little, she'd get tired of him and put him back. "What's this... training involve?" he murmured, the taste of defeat sour on his tongue even as his curiosity was piqued.
"Well, first of all," she crooned, leaning in to kiss his lips, running her hand down his waist. When she pulled back she had his sidearm, "these aren't necessary." She tossed the weapon behind her as if discarding an unwanted toy. "Still interested? You still have another gun to shoot me with..."
"You know I don't want to do that," he groused, laying it all out. "If I'm going along with this, it's just because I find the idea of shooting someone several times to be really low on the option totem pole. Not because I'm interested in being trained to be ... strong or..." He stopped talking before his voice could waver. He'd never been sensitive about his ability or lack thereof before. Side effects of the drugs?
"And that's what I'm talking about," Ercinee said gently as she removed the P90 from it's security around Josiah's shoulder. "If you didn't need me, you would have shot me and returned to your normal life."
Even if he hadn't been chemically sedated, her words might've rendered him too stunned to prevent the removal of his second and last means of defense. Which really just proved her point all the more.
No, no, no, damnit. His reluctance to resort to force was... a good thing! Not particularly useful in certain situations, sure, but -- Oh cripes. Fine, /most/ situations. Still! When had he become such a pushover? What would Austin do? Well... he was past that now. Austin, Silverhawk - none of them would have allowed themselves to be disarmed so handily.
Oh man, the Major was going to be so pissed at him.
"I don't think strength is synonymous with accepting violence as a means of escape," he replied. "If I were a mass-murderer, passing up the chance to shoot you full of holes just now would have been a great show of strength."
"It would have been a great show of strength, but such an unthinking brute like a mass murderer would never have made their way here," she countered. Something dark in her eyes suggested that she had little regard for mass murderers or the correlation. "Besides, I didn't make the conditions that difficult. I haven't used excessive force. Wily, unfair feminine force, yes, but only because I was just hoping..." she sighed. "It'll be a bit rougher this way. Are you sure there is no way I can... change your mind about 'being together?'"
Josiah was halfway through forming the required thoughts to say "At this point, I don't think you could turn me on with a car battery and a light switch" when a whiff of her sweet breath reminded him otherwise. "Uhm," he murmured, swallowing. "No. Thanks." How rough could it be, anyway?
"Very well then." Ercinee pulled on his fatigue top at the shoulders, sliding it off of him.
Josiah frowned. "I thought..."
"Oh no. You had your chance at that," she smiled darkly as she looped one end of the cord around his wrist and began to wrap it around the other. "But I may let you beg me for it later."
Josiah pulled back weakly, eyes wide. He hadn't counted on being bound. Training... wasn't like. Endurance? Strength? "Uhm. What exactly is involved in this... training thing?" He'd asked before. Her lack of a definitive answer should have tipped him off. Not smart, Sho-sye.
"Pain," Ercinee replied without smile, "pain and pleasure, at the same time. A lot of it in increasingly concentrated amounts. Your mind will eventually come to confuse the two, pleasure for pain and pain for pleasure. Right about the time you break, your will undergoes a self-defense transformation. After that, neither pain nor psychic attack will have have the slightest effect on you. You'll be able to withstand anything, absolutely any situation, without fear. You'll be free..." her eyes softened, "I can't wait..."
"Ah..." Josiah breathed. She was insane. Everything made so much more sense when he realised that little fact. "I can. I changed my mind. Can I shoot you now please?"
part five
part six
part seven
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
part two
part three
"Yes," she replied, "that's why I wished you would just...'be together' with me. In the long run, it helps so much." She slid off the bed, her nightie riding up just enough in the process to show a generous amount of thigh and a complete lack of undergarments. She walked towards the vanity with so much grace she appeared to float.
In the long run... Josiah frowned as she walked away from the bed. How in the world could he feel so guilty? She'd /drugged/ him. But there it was. He dragged himself to the edge of the bed and swung his legs out over the floor. "Ercinee-" he started, then cut off when the world went sideways and he slumped backward against the bedpost for support. "Oh." Right. Drugged. How silly of him. He sank to the floor and frowned at her. "What is it you want, really?" he asked.
Ercinee turned from the vanity holding a long, wound black cord presumably some kind of leather thong. "What I want," she began kindly, an ironic departure from the sinister object in her hands, "is really to help you. And in doing so, I'll be helping myself." She took a step forward. "You'll never be afraid, you will never be in pain, and you'll never submit so easily to anyone again. You'll be strong, you'll be respected, you'll be like a rock for your people. Isn't that what you want?"
Josiah's eyes widened at the thing in her hand. Surely - he swallowed dryly and picked out the one thing he could pull from her list to help him. "I'm - I'm respected." He fumbled for the safety on the P90 slung across his chest, cursing his rebelliously slow fingers. "As a scholar. I don't need - need to be..."
"You don't need to be what?" she asked, her voice that of a mother gently teaching her child an important lesson. "Don't need to be strong? But you do, Josiah. You have developed your mind, you have in there the reasoning power of 20 humans who have spent their short lifespans developing their bodies. But that is what makes you so precious, so vulnerable. You don't have to worry," she continued, unafraid, "I'm not interested in the secrets you know. I'm not interested in taking anything from you, I just want to train you, as the others have trained their muscles because right now," she paused as if knowing the last part would bring him great pain, "You... You, Josiah, are the weakest link in the chain."
He gaped, and for a moment, all thought fled. He'd thought - well he'd always reasoned that societies had evolved specialization, so that made it all right that... They weren't cavemen any more for cryin' out loud. As a people, they could afford to have some specialize in brawn, cunning, knowledge for knowledge' sake. Art for art's sake, even. That's - that's how he... How he'd gotten through years of studying societies where people like him were Darwined out, sometimes purposefully.
But it wasn't just a rationalization. It was a solid, well-researched theory. Her words had struck him to the quick, but only because they were designed to, he decided. He was, in theory, necessary to the mission, and if he was the weakest link, it was only because the consequences of his loss had the potential to be dire. So why couldn't he stop his voice from shaking when he answered her? "That- that's not true."
"You say it's not true," Ercinee began to idly tie one end of the cord into a slip knot, "but you were solely responsible for coming here. Remember the inscription on the tablet on... what is it you call it... P38-209? The carving was ancient, but you thought it looked like a language you had encountered somewhere else. There was an urn that seemed like some kind of canopic jar, and you eagerly removed it from the pedestal. Do you remember that now?"
"I... remember that," he replied cautiously.
"That was mine. When you touched it, I felt you, and brought you here." She sighed, "There is so much we can teach each other, Josiah. There is no reason to be afraid of what I offer," she reached out and gently stroked his cheek.
He flinched away and frowned, looking pointedly at the knotted cord in her hand. "And what would you learn from me?"
"An end to my isolation... companionship." She leaned in to kiss the place her fingers had been. "You can teach me comfort, tenderness... I need these things..."
Josiah closed his eyes at the feeling of her lips on his cheek, a starkly gentle reminder of what she'd been able to do to him without even really trying. What kind of being could feel his presence through an artifact, take him who knew how far from his team? What else did she have up her sleeve? Clearly she was able to elicit pity from him, guilt. She was still doing it, even now that she was probably telling the truth. However many years here, alone. It was no wonder she had reached out to him in such a completely unreasonable way. "I can't teach you comfort when I've been kidnapped," he murmured. "You're holding me against my will."
"I won't keep you here forever," she promised, "but the training is hard, I admit, and if you would have only let me provide you with ecstacy you would see that the rewards are greater than the drawbacks... and besides," she paused and bit her lip, looking away as if unsure whether to reveal her hand too much. "You aren't here against your will. There is a way to leave."
Josiah gathered himself together to focus on the task at hand. Silverhawk would expect him to be trying to get back to the team. Regardless of his own curiosity, that had to come first. People could even now be throwing themselves into danger on his behalf, and he didn't fancy having to explain why he was sitting around having a tea party while they were putting their butts on the line to rescue him.
"How."
Ercinee sighed and rested her hand on his P90. "Shoot me. Several times. Without me to sustain it, the connection will be severed and you will return to P38209."
He stared at her, willing her to admit that she was lying. He couldn't even pretend to threaten her with doing just that, because he'd already admitted that he'd never had to shoot anyone. He'd gambled away all of his chips before he even knew he was playing the game. Crap.
Soooo fine. Maybe if he just went along with her for a little, she'd get tired of him and put him back. "What's this... training involve?" he murmured, the taste of defeat sour on his tongue even as his curiosity was piqued.
"Well, first of all," she crooned, leaning in to kiss his lips, running her hand down his waist. When she pulled back she had his sidearm, "these aren't necessary." She tossed the weapon behind her as if discarding an unwanted toy. "Still interested? You still have another gun to shoot me with..."
"You know I don't want to do that," he groused, laying it all out. "If I'm going along with this, it's just because I find the idea of shooting someone several times to be really low on the option totem pole. Not because I'm interested in being trained to be ... strong or..." He stopped talking before his voice could waver. He'd never been sensitive about his ability or lack thereof before. Side effects of the drugs?
"And that's what I'm talking about," Ercinee said gently as she removed the P90 from it's security around Josiah's shoulder. "If you didn't need me, you would have shot me and returned to your normal life."
Even if he hadn't been chemically sedated, her words might've rendered him too stunned to prevent the removal of his second and last means of defense. Which really just proved her point all the more.
No, no, no, damnit. His reluctance to resort to force was... a good thing! Not particularly useful in certain situations, sure, but -- Oh cripes. Fine, /most/ situations. Still! When had he become such a pushover? What would Austin do? Well... he was past that now. Austin, Silverhawk - none of them would have allowed themselves to be disarmed so handily.
Oh man, the Major was going to be so pissed at him.
"I don't think strength is synonymous with accepting violence as a means of escape," he replied. "If I were a mass-murderer, passing up the chance to shoot you full of holes just now would have been a great show of strength."
"It would have been a great show of strength, but such an unthinking brute like a mass murderer would never have made their way here," she countered. Something dark in her eyes suggested that she had little regard for mass murderers or the correlation. "Besides, I didn't make the conditions that difficult. I haven't used excessive force. Wily, unfair feminine force, yes, but only because I was just hoping..." she sighed. "It'll be a bit rougher this way. Are you sure there is no way I can... change your mind about 'being together?'"
Josiah was halfway through forming the required thoughts to say "At this point, I don't think you could turn me on with a car battery and a light switch" when a whiff of her sweet breath reminded him otherwise. "Uhm," he murmured, swallowing. "No. Thanks." How rough could it be, anyway?
"Very well then." Ercinee pulled on his fatigue top at the shoulders, sliding it off of him.
Josiah frowned. "I thought..."
"Oh no. You had your chance at that," she smiled darkly as she looped one end of the cord around his wrist and began to wrap it around the other. "But I may let you beg me for it later."
Josiah pulled back weakly, eyes wide. He hadn't counted on being bound. Training... wasn't like. Endurance? Strength? "Uhm. What exactly is involved in this... training thing?" He'd asked before. Her lack of a definitive answer should have tipped him off. Not smart, Sho-sye.
"Pain," Ercinee replied without smile, "pain and pleasure, at the same time. A lot of it in increasingly concentrated amounts. Your mind will eventually come to confuse the two, pleasure for pain and pain for pleasure. Right about the time you break, your will undergoes a self-defense transformation. After that, neither pain nor psychic attack will have have the slightest effect on you. You'll be able to withstand anything, absolutely any situation, without fear. You'll be free..." her eyes softened, "I can't wait..."
"Ah..." Josiah breathed. She was insane. Everything made so much more sense when he realised that little fact. "I can. I changed my mind. Can I shoot you now please?"
part five
part six
part seven
---
Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively
Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 3
part one
part two
Surprisingly, Ercinee didn't come back with a counter offer. Instead, she got to her knees, her black eyes fixed on Josiah's, and leaned forward. One side of her robe conveniently slipped over a pale shoulder as she finally seemed ready to seal the deal.
Josiah didn't lean forward to meet her. For all of his prudish tendencies, his heart leapt a little at the contact. She really was very beautiful. He raised a hand but didn't lay it on her shoulder. Instead, it hovered while she kissed him. She tasted sweet, and he thought briefly that it'd been a while since he'd kissed a girl. And then he thought it seemed strange how sweet her lips were, and then he thought about how warm her mouth was. He'd only gotten to "three" before he forgot to keep counting.
Ercinee kissed Josiah very very slowly, letting her tongue imprison his mouth much as the cheeked vial of liquid she had kept under a pillow began to imprison his senses. Three seconds turned to ten, and climbed to twenty. At some point she had drawn herself practically into his lap, one arm around his shoulders, her other hand massaging his scalp in time with the kiss. A completely unfaked moan escaped her lips. Nothing was sweeter than the temptation of innocence.
It was just a kiss, Josiah thought. A really nice kiss that went a little further and stretched a little longer than he'd set a limit on. Then... a little longer. And he felt his limbs get heavier. Oh. That was... a bad sign. Crap! Regardless of the company - the really nice company - he was pretty sure that his more military minded compatriots would be frowning at him. He imagined Silverhawk glowering in disapproval. So... he could just push back. Wipe his mouth, grin sheepishly and say "All right. That was your kiss. Let's do it again." No, wait. Not what he meant to think.
So he pushed back, meaning to wipe his mouth and grin sheepishly and say something more appropriate. But his arms didn't obey him with any sort of immediacy. "Mmphf," he murmured, unsure himself whether it was a sound borne out of pleasure or resistance.
Ercinee seemed quite pleased with his reaction, or lack thereof. In a few more seconds had become so comfortably heavy that being gently pushed back onto the pillows and cushions was almost a relief. Ercinee was fairly assured that her little love potion slash sedative was working before she disengaged her lips and took a seat on Josiah's abdomen. She kissed his eyelids and murmured, "Poor Josiah. I won't let you be lonely..."
"Lonely..." he repeated murmuringly. "'mnot..." He blinked quickly as the realization of what had obviously happened warred with the strange feeling that his situation wasn't really all that bad. He couldn't think exactly clearly, but he wasn't thinking poorly either. "Ercinee," he attempted. "Did you do something...?"
The young woman was moderately surprised, and thrilled, that Josiah was resisting her even in his inebriated state. "You aren't like the others," she whispered sweetly, tracing his ear with her lips. "You have so much more potential... I fear for you. The universe is a crushing, unstoppable trap for the curious, for you, Josiah. I just want to save you... is that so bad?"
"N-no..." he replied, rallying even as her lips on his ear evoked an involuntary shudder of delight. She hadn't denied doing something to him. The others? She... did this before? Crap. Crap! Wait. He wanted to kiss her. She wasn't being wicked to him, really. Was she? Oh cripes, get it together, man. He'd never been drugged before. Did it always make a person want to, ah... be "together" with another person? "Save me from... the universe?" he slurred softly, quelling the insistence from his lesser intelligenced body parts firmly. "Not sure what you mean."
Ercinee made further conversation substantially more difficult as she began to undo buttons and clasps at his neck and chest. "Humans are so fragile...so fragile. Imagine what could have happened to you if I didn't have your best interest at heart? But I do, Josiah." she went for his bare neck, now, and kissed it so ardently that it almost hurt at the same time sending more insistence signals elsewhere. "I will help you... help you to be ready for the universe, but you have to trust me..."
Josiah caught his breath at her lips on his skin, his vulnerable throat. /What could have happened to you.../ No, nono, he thought fervently, commanding his body to co-operate and get up, pull his gun and start making demands for... stuff. But even as he got himself over the mental hurdle of hormonal, emotional arousal, he could tell that his physical body wasn't anywhere near complying with his hasty mental commands. Oh, crap crap crap.
"I don't," he bit out. "I don't trust you. Let me go. The universe and I have an understanding. I don't uh n-need help." If only that were true.
"But you do need help, and so do I," Ercinee pleaded. "The only ones who have an understanding with the universe are the Dead, and they don't explain anything. They don't feel...they don't feel pain, they don't fear as you fear." She opened his fatigues to reveal the black ribbed t-shirt underneath. "But neither do they feel this," she promised, sliding her long fingers over his almost-bare chest. "And this comes with my help. All of it. All of me."
"No," he breathed. So dramatic, but he thought it was warranted. She'd drugged him, after all. And was now attempting to... well. Hardly counted as an attempt, did it? If he was offering up such weak resistance? Her fingers felt warm through his tee shirt, too warm. "Wait, Ercinee," he managed through a breath. The drug that'd made his limbs heavy wasn't so potent that he couldn't fight it, but with her weight on his chest, slight as it was, he was pretty well trapped. And thinking about himself in a detached analytical way didn't stop those electrical impulses shooting through his nervous system, telling his parts to do things and feel things.
"Ah..." he relaxed back into the pillows and heaved a sigh. "You brought me here, didn't you. No one's going to ring in. You're not a captive. I'm not..." Not the dashing hero. Ah heh. "I'm not going to just go along with this," he said instead.
"You are right and wrong," she answered, giving in, politely, to his attempts to be rational and logical about the situation. After all, it was what was keeping him from being thoroughly swayed. She could respect that. He was strong, which of course was simply enticing her further.
"I gave you the opportunity to come here, and no one is going to ring in, but I am a captive nonetheless. Of that I promise you. In exchange for your help, I'm going to help you in return, I can help you become stronger." Her hands were traveling south, but she allowed him some reprieve from total physical mutiny. "I wish you'd open your closed eyes. If I wanted to destroy you, don't you think I would have done so? If I had desired your secret knowledge, don't you think I would have taken it by now? Think... think about it, Josiah..." Her voice was sweet, pleading, and she leaned forward so that he could feel the fullness of her chest on his.
He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed at it meagrely. He didn't actually have proof that she could have killed him or gotten information from him, but he didn't like the confidence in her voice. "I can't help you," he murmured. "You drugged me. I can't trust you now. I have no idea what you're capable of." Probably shouldn't have admitted that. Oops.
Ercinee stared into Josiah's eyes. Her hands had stopped and she appeared to be considering something. "I see..." she laughed a small self-deprecating little laugh and leaned up. She dismounted Josiah's hips reluctantly. "I was too eager for you ... and you are too strong. I overestimated." She smiled sadly and looked away, "I thought you would come to understand... I'm sure it's too late now."
Josiah swallowed roughly. She was... giving up? That didn't seem right. Just like the empty ache in his abdomen at the sudden disappearance of her warmth wasn't right. Not right at all.
He shrugged and pushed himself back to sit up a little. If her life so far had been protected or bought with her affections, IF that part of what she'd said was true, it was a sad possibility that she'd been going after him in order to secure his assistance. Even after he said he didn't want anything from her. Maybe. "Understand what?" he murmured. "The universe? The way you want to help me?"
"Yes," she admitted, "Understand that you are still vulnerable, that you're lonely. Understand that I could help you with both, and help myself at the same time." She winced, "and, I admit, it stings a bit that, after all that, I'm still so...repulsive..."
"Not repulsive," Josiah replied immediately. Not at all, his body told him, clamouring for her touch on his skin again. "I told you about my ways." He hitched himself a little higher against the headboard and sighed. "I'm not lonely, Ercinee," he said with effort. But still pretty vulnerable, his heavy limbs added. "But perhaps you are..." He smiled kindly.
part four
part five
part six
part seven
---
Ercinee (c) Mary Logan
Post written co-operatively
part two
Surprisingly, Ercinee didn't come back with a counter offer. Instead, she got to her knees, her black eyes fixed on Josiah's, and leaned forward. One side of her robe conveniently slipped over a pale shoulder as she finally seemed ready to seal the deal.
Josiah didn't lean forward to meet her. For all of his prudish tendencies, his heart leapt a little at the contact. She really was very beautiful. He raised a hand but didn't lay it on her shoulder. Instead, it hovered while she kissed him. She tasted sweet, and he thought briefly that it'd been a while since he'd kissed a girl. And then he thought it seemed strange how sweet her lips were, and then he thought about how warm her mouth was. He'd only gotten to "three" before he forgot to keep counting.
Ercinee kissed Josiah very very slowly, letting her tongue imprison his mouth much as the cheeked vial of liquid she had kept under a pillow began to imprison his senses. Three seconds turned to ten, and climbed to twenty. At some point she had drawn herself practically into his lap, one arm around his shoulders, her other hand massaging his scalp in time with the kiss. A completely unfaked moan escaped her lips. Nothing was sweeter than the temptation of innocence.
It was just a kiss, Josiah thought. A really nice kiss that went a little further and stretched a little longer than he'd set a limit on. Then... a little longer. And he felt his limbs get heavier. Oh. That was... a bad sign. Crap! Regardless of the company - the really nice company - he was pretty sure that his more military minded compatriots would be frowning at him. He imagined Silverhawk glowering in disapproval. So... he could just push back. Wipe his mouth, grin sheepishly and say "All right. That was your kiss. Let's do it again." No, wait. Not what he meant to think.
So he pushed back, meaning to wipe his mouth and grin sheepishly and say something more appropriate. But his arms didn't obey him with any sort of immediacy. "Mmphf," he murmured, unsure himself whether it was a sound borne out of pleasure or resistance.
Ercinee seemed quite pleased with his reaction, or lack thereof. In a few more seconds had become so comfortably heavy that being gently pushed back onto the pillows and cushions was almost a relief. Ercinee was fairly assured that her little love potion slash sedative was working before she disengaged her lips and took a seat on Josiah's abdomen. She kissed his eyelids and murmured, "Poor Josiah. I won't let you be lonely..."
"Lonely..." he repeated murmuringly. "'mnot..." He blinked quickly as the realization of what had obviously happened warred with the strange feeling that his situation wasn't really all that bad. He couldn't think exactly clearly, but he wasn't thinking poorly either. "Ercinee," he attempted. "Did you do something...?"
The young woman was moderately surprised, and thrilled, that Josiah was resisting her even in his inebriated state. "You aren't like the others," she whispered sweetly, tracing his ear with her lips. "You have so much more potential... I fear for you. The universe is a crushing, unstoppable trap for the curious, for you, Josiah. I just want to save you... is that so bad?"
"N-no..." he replied, rallying even as her lips on his ear evoked an involuntary shudder of delight. She hadn't denied doing something to him. The others? She... did this before? Crap. Crap! Wait. He wanted to kiss her. She wasn't being wicked to him, really. Was she? Oh cripes, get it together, man. He'd never been drugged before. Did it always make a person want to, ah... be "together" with another person? "Save me from... the universe?" he slurred softly, quelling the insistence from his lesser intelligenced body parts firmly. "Not sure what you mean."
Ercinee made further conversation substantially more difficult as she began to undo buttons and clasps at his neck and chest. "Humans are so fragile...so fragile. Imagine what could have happened to you if I didn't have your best interest at heart? But I do, Josiah." she went for his bare neck, now, and kissed it so ardently that it almost hurt at the same time sending more insistence signals elsewhere. "I will help you... help you to be ready for the universe, but you have to trust me..."
Josiah caught his breath at her lips on his skin, his vulnerable throat. /What could have happened to you.../ No, nono, he thought fervently, commanding his body to co-operate and get up, pull his gun and start making demands for... stuff. But even as he got himself over the mental hurdle of hormonal, emotional arousal, he could tell that his physical body wasn't anywhere near complying with his hasty mental commands. Oh, crap crap crap.
"I don't," he bit out. "I don't trust you. Let me go. The universe and I have an understanding. I don't uh n-need help." If only that were true.
"But you do need help, and so do I," Ercinee pleaded. "The only ones who have an understanding with the universe are the Dead, and they don't explain anything. They don't feel...they don't feel pain, they don't fear as you fear." She opened his fatigues to reveal the black ribbed t-shirt underneath. "But neither do they feel this," she promised, sliding her long fingers over his almost-bare chest. "And this comes with my help. All of it. All of me."
"No," he breathed. So dramatic, but he thought it was warranted. She'd drugged him, after all. And was now attempting to... well. Hardly counted as an attempt, did it? If he was offering up such weak resistance? Her fingers felt warm through his tee shirt, too warm. "Wait, Ercinee," he managed through a breath. The drug that'd made his limbs heavy wasn't so potent that he couldn't fight it, but with her weight on his chest, slight as it was, he was pretty well trapped. And thinking about himself in a detached analytical way didn't stop those electrical impulses shooting through his nervous system, telling his parts to do things and feel things.
"Ah..." he relaxed back into the pillows and heaved a sigh. "You brought me here, didn't you. No one's going to ring in. You're not a captive. I'm not..." Not the dashing hero. Ah heh. "I'm not going to just go along with this," he said instead.
"You are right and wrong," she answered, giving in, politely, to his attempts to be rational and logical about the situation. After all, it was what was keeping him from being thoroughly swayed. She could respect that. He was strong, which of course was simply enticing her further.
"I gave you the opportunity to come here, and no one is going to ring in, but I am a captive nonetheless. Of that I promise you. In exchange for your help, I'm going to help you in return, I can help you become stronger." Her hands were traveling south, but she allowed him some reprieve from total physical mutiny. "I wish you'd open your closed eyes. If I wanted to destroy you, don't you think I would have done so? If I had desired your secret knowledge, don't you think I would have taken it by now? Think... think about it, Josiah..." Her voice was sweet, pleading, and she leaned forward so that he could feel the fullness of her chest on his.
He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed at it meagrely. He didn't actually have proof that she could have killed him or gotten information from him, but he didn't like the confidence in her voice. "I can't help you," he murmured. "You drugged me. I can't trust you now. I have no idea what you're capable of." Probably shouldn't have admitted that. Oops.
Ercinee stared into Josiah's eyes. Her hands had stopped and she appeared to be considering something. "I see..." she laughed a small self-deprecating little laugh and leaned up. She dismounted Josiah's hips reluctantly. "I was too eager for you ... and you are too strong. I overestimated." She smiled sadly and looked away, "I thought you would come to understand... I'm sure it's too late now."
Josiah swallowed roughly. She was... giving up? That didn't seem right. Just like the empty ache in his abdomen at the sudden disappearance of her warmth wasn't right. Not right at all.
He shrugged and pushed himself back to sit up a little. If her life so far had been protected or bought with her affections, IF that part of what she'd said was true, it was a sad possibility that she'd been going after him in order to secure his assistance. Even after he said he didn't want anything from her. Maybe. "Understand what?" he murmured. "The universe? The way you want to help me?"
"Yes," she admitted, "Understand that you are still vulnerable, that you're lonely. Understand that I could help you with both, and help myself at the same time." She winced, "and, I admit, it stings a bit that, after all that, I'm still so...repulsive..."
"Not repulsive," Josiah replied immediately. Not at all, his body told him, clamouring for her touch on his skin again. "I told you about my ways." He hitched himself a little higher against the headboard and sighed. "I'm not lonely, Ercinee," he said with effort. But still pretty vulnerable, his heavy limbs added. "But perhaps you are..." He smiled kindly.
part four
part five
part six
part seven
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Ercinee (c) Mary Logan
Post written co-operatively
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