Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Though Zazzalil is stubborn, she can admit when she's in need of medical attention. So she tries to stay still, not fighting the headlock that And holds her in as El uses a damp cloth to wipe the grime away from the messy gash in her brow. The cold water stings in the half-closed wound, the fact that the skin around it is bruised and tender doesn't help, but she bites her lip and tries not to squirm. That is, until El pulls out a needle and tries to stab her in the head.

The captive flinches away, tugging at And’s arm with her bound hands until he pushes her arms down and holds them against her waist. She tells them to stop. She's ignored. So she snarls, baring her teeth in an obvious threat, but El ignores her. It’s easy enough for the woman to just keep her arms out of the way of the captive’s teeth as she pinches the wound shut. Zazzalil’s fidgeting is out of confusion as well as the pain; why does El think she can fix her wounds like a tear in a dress? If you give them enough time, wounds heal themselves. She's just fucking up her head more. And the feeling of the thread being dragged through her skin is nauseating.

Several stitches later and to her patient’s great relief, El snips the thread and puts the needle away. But she moves on to pulling back Zazzalil's lip, in the spot where she's painfully aware of the bits of broken teeth still lodged in her gums. Muttering something to And, the trader gets to her feet and heads back towards the cart.

As soon as the man releases Zazzalil from his hold, she begins tugging at the chain wrapped tightly around her ankles, biting back the pain in her gashed arms as she moves them.

“Zaz-”

She snarls, just like she has in response to every attempt he’s made to start a conversation this morning. When she looks up he’s wearing a pathetically upset look on his face. The woman is unimpressed. Without a hint of pity, she curtly points out her black eye and bruised jaw, pulling her lip back herself to display the shards of enamel.

“Zaz, I’m sorry, I-”

“Quiet, And!”

For a moment he looks as if he’s about to respond, but reconsiders and gives a small nod.

She continues to glare at him as he takes the cloth from the bowl of water, wrings it out and attempts to swat her hands away from her legs so he can clean the gashes there. She persists. He grabs her by the ropes around her wrists then, tugging her hands off the chain.

“Stop it, Anne.”

The snarl returns to her face. “Anne?” Fuck, she hates that name.

“Yes, Anne. Now stop it.”

He shoves her hands away and tugs up her now rather tattered trouser leg so he can get at the gashes. She freezes. The anger and pain from last night’s fight entirely pushed the thought of the little pouch tied to her leg from her mind. But the shredded ends of her trousers are doing nothing to disguise it now.

She doesn’t catch what the man says, but he sounds confused. He holds her bound wrists away with one hand as she tries to stop him from untying the string wrapped around her leg. Kept on the ground by the chain around her ankles, she can only watch as he stands, peeks into the pouch, and tucks it into his pocket.

“Can I have it?” she asks angrily. It’s not exactly what she wanted to say, but it’s the closest thing in her vocabulary. She needs that pouch back.

“Later.”

The woman snorts. “‘Course,” she mutters to herself, knowing he won’t understand her, “because we can’t have me eating when it’s not convenient for you, can we?”

When Elizabeth returns, Andrew is cleaning up the girl’s bloody legs while she lays flat on her back. Something about her expression gives the woman the distinct feeling that her arms would be crossed if they could.

“Hey. Andrew.”

“What?” he snaps.

The woman rolls her eyes. “You’re not still sulking, are you? She was going to end up hating you sooner or later. And she’s a little shit anyway, I don’t know why you care.” She kneels down beside the captive. “Come hold her still, she needs teeth out.”

The man doesn't respond, silently moving to tug the girl into a sitting position and wrench her jaw open as she squirms. Not particularly enthusiastic about watching teeth being pulled, he looks over Elizabeth’s shoulder. Jeremiah is standing at the fold-out table littered with a few new items he's bought, scribbling furiously in his journal.

“For someone so insistent about Annie being worth a lot,” the man comments, “Jeremiah really doesn’t seem to give a shit about her, does he?”

“She'd die of infection within a day if we left her alone with him," Elizabeth agrees. "We better get a fucking good cut when he sells damn girl."

Said damn girl yelps as the woman wrenches out a broken bit of tooth, thrashing as they both attempt to keep her still. Andrew presses his thumb to the bleeding gum, his other arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

"It's alright," he attempts to comfort her, "it's okay, Annie."

In response, she bites down on the thumb in her mouth. He wrenches it out.

"Anne!"

Elizabeth snorts. "Don't sound so surprised, she tried to put a spear through you yesterday."

Again, the man doesn't respond, instead attempting to regain contol of the tribeswoman squirming in his grip. She yelps when he tightens his grip on her waist and he quickly relents, remembering how many times she was kicked.

"For fuck's sake, keep her still!" Elizabeth snaps as she attempts to hold down the girl's ankles.

"She's bruised pretty badly, it'll hurt her."

"Then fucking hurt her!"

He grits his teeth and holds her closer but she only thrashes harder, throwing her head back and slamming into his nose. He yells in pain as Elizabeth grits her teeth.

“You know what? Fuck this. Jeremiah, move your shit! We’re using the table and you better fucking help!”

Being manhandled when you’re a mess of cuts and bruises is… painful, to say the least. Struggling hurts, and Zazzalil’s sure a few of her cuts are bleeding again, but it’s that or being lashed to the table. The thought of being that vulnerable is terrifying. So she thrashes and yells and snaps at their hands and tries to ignore the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. At least, she does until Jer finishes binding her wrist and slaps her hard across the face.

She freezes, mostly due to shock. But when her wide eyes snap up to his face, her breath catches in her throat for an entirely new reason. A chill runs down her spine. She has no idea what that new reason is - the strike is nothing special. He’s hurt her while she can’t get up before.

When he lays his hand against her stinging cheek again it’s gentle, but she flinches all the same. In that moment she's never felt something so repulsive and so dangerous, though she couldn't begin to explain why. She can’t force him off - she's bound in place and can only press her face into the tabletop in a futile attempt to get away, eyes shut tight, hands curled into fists where they’re tied down at her sides. Though she makes an attempt at a snarl as he strokes her cheek, the sound won’t come. Her chest feels hollow.

"Good girl." They're words she vaguely recognises. Words that make her skin crawl.

She’s able to breathe a little easier when he removes his hand, cracking her eyes open as he starts to clean the gashes in her right arm.

Having one set of stitches sewn into her skin was nauseating, but three at once is putting her on the verge of vomiting, especially after having the rest of her broken teeth pulled. She can’t look away as Jer works on her arm, though. He seems surprisingly determined to restore her flame tattoo, carefully stitching together the raw edges of the design where the blades slashed it apart. There’ll likely still be scars marring the artwork eventually, yet she finds herself almost grateful to the man for at least trying to fix it. But she pushes it down. The day she’s grateful to the man who managed to plant such mind-numbing fear in her head is the day that boars learn to fly.

By the time Zazzalil is released from the ropes holding her down she looks like a child's first attempt at stitching together a tunic. Jer is the one to lock her back in her crate, handing her a needle and thread that he indicates is for repairing the slashes in her trousers. She’s able to pull away when he goes to touch her face again, shoving his hand back with a panic that she pretends is anger. This shouldn’t be scary. She shouldn’t be scared of a hand on her face. Fuck, she’s the Firebringer, she’s not supposed to be scared of anything. She’s an agent of chaos and flames. And sure, that’s not always intentional, but it’s energy she can channel. She forces a snarl onto her face and hunches her shoulders, trying to emulate a predator. There’s no point trying to speak. She doesn’t have the words in his language to express her disgust, and there’s no way he’d put in the effort to attempt making sense of her native tongue. A shame, since there’s a lot she’d like to say. Namely, how fucking dare he.

How dare he touch her like her father used to when she was barely taller than his knees. Like her wife does to wake her gently when she oversleeps. What does he think gives him the right? Just because she’s his…

Her snarl falters as the man walks away. She barely notices him leave, too wrapped up in her own head. His… what? His prisoner? His hostage? His slave?

She freezes. Bile rises in her throat again.

This whole time, she’s been so wrapped up in her anger that her capture happened at all that she hasn’t stopped to consider why it happened. But once the thought occurs to her it’s painfully obvious. That’s why they tried to change her name. That’s why they keep trying to teach her commands. That's why they're trying to break her. They took her as their slave.

Her hand tightens around the spool she's still holding, her body beginning to shake. She has to get out of here, that much is obvious. There’s no room for any other thought in her mind. She needs to get out. Now. Even though it's failed many, many times now she begins kicking at one of the slats, slamming her shoulder into another, rattling the lid. It's not working. Of course it's not fucking working, but it needs to work. She has to get out. It's getting hard to breathe. She claws at the nails holding her cage together until her fingers bleed. She tries to gnaw her way through the wood, spitting out splinters. She throws back her head and yells, hoping that Howl delivered her message to the tribe, hoping that he brought them close enough to hear her.

It’s not long before she screams herself hoarse, but she doesn’t stop. Her breathing is still quick and desperate. Shaking hands grab at her arms, the thread long since dropped. Her fingers find the gaps in her stitches, and when her grip tightens the nails dig in.

The shock of the sharp pain makes her jump. She sucks in a slow breath as she releases her arms, staring down at her shaking hands and bloodied fingers. The bruises still ache. Her jaw hurts where the teeth were pulled. One eye is still swollen half-shut. Her throat is too raw to keep yelling, and the energy has left her anyway. There’s nothing she can do. Nothing she can fucking do.

Her fingers dig into her arms again. Maybe the pain will shock her out of her head.

Andrew isn’t quite sure what to expect when he goes to feed the captive. The three traders agreed to ignore her yelling that morning, not giving her the attention that she seemed to be begging for. But he’s never heard her scream like that. Even when she’s been in pain, she’s never made so much noise.

He finds the girl curled up facing a corner of her crate, hiding her face in her arms. Apparently she didn’t care too much about her trousers, the legs still in tatters from the knees to the hems and the spool of thread abandoned behind her.

“Hey. Annie.”

She doesn’t respond, not that he expected her to. But he’s decided that using her new name is probably best; there’s no point in using a name that isn’t really hers anymore. He kneels down, attempting to catch her eye. From what little he can make out of her face, she looks like she’s been crying.

“Anne, there’s food in your tin. Eat.”

Silence. She’s been silent for most of the day, barely reacting to her crate being moved on and off the cart. Jeremiah’s been insisting that the girl is broken. Andrew is beginning to think he’s right. That made the fight worth it, didn’t it? Glancing past the crate to check he’s not being watched, he pulls a small pouch from his pocket and sets it down beside her. He doesn’t expect this to fix anything between them. The fact that she tried to impale him has already made it clear that reconciliation isn’t happening. But he has no use for a bag of scraps.

She raises her head and stares at it for a moment, then slowly takes it, wipes at the tearstains around her unbruised eye and rolls over to put her back to him. He takes the hint and leaves her be. Maybe she’ll eat once she’s alone, he reasons. But when he returns in the morning her food is still untouched.