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