‘Verse: Unlikely Salvation (@whump-sprite)
Timeline: Ari is about 19 and in training as a federal agent
Cowritten with @khalwrites, Jo is hers
Two Shots 2/5
[1, 2, 3]
“We work undercover for the Resistance.”
Ari’s heart sinks as the words come out of Jo’s mouth. She thought Jo might have a good plan. But it’s not like she has any ideas of her own.
“Shut up,” she hisses, rolling with the first half-formed thought she has of how to back Jo up.
“Do you want to live or not?” Jo snaps back at her. Quicker off the mark than Ari as always. “What choice do we have?”
Ariadne glowers at her. Pain pools in her eyes as she deepens her frown.
“Yeah right,” scoffs the warlock with the gun -- what kind of weakass warlock needs a gun?
But the other one is listening.
“We work with the Resistance,” Jo keeps talking, “planning a jailbreak of some of the warlocks there.”
“Shut up, Jo,” Ari repeats. Where is Jo getting these ideas? All Ari can do is try to stick to the part she’s picked and hope it isn’t a stupid one.
“They’re coming soon, we need to be there to meet them or the plan goes to hell."
The guy holds Jo's gaze for a few seconds, then shakes his head with a bitter laugh.
"The 'Resistance'," he mocks, "are a bunch of weak-willed cowards. They'd never dare send someone 'undercover', let alone a coupla kids."
Jo looks to Ari for help, and Ari has nothing.
"I told you to shut up," she stalls, letting her frustration into her tone. Not the best plan you've ever had, Jo. "Who even are these assholes?"
"You're just trying to save your skin. If you're really Resistance, show us some magic."
"Do not," Ari cuts in, still pretending she doesn't want Jo to give up their 'secret', "Don't you fucking--"
But Jo is talking too, protesting "Not everyone in the Resistance has magic." And that's two different stories, and Ari's sure they're fucking this up, but she doesn't know what she could possibly say to fix it. Her head is killing her, pain spiking with every sound and every motion. She huffs in frustration and lets her gaze drop.
"The Resistance won’t be pleased if you hurt us,” Jo tries, calm and unfazed still, not a drop of fear or anger in her voice.
The warlocks scoff.
Jo has so much bravado. Ari’s heart aches. Jo is strong, she can be too.
“You don’t lose anything if you let us go,” she tells them sullenly.
Gun-man laughs again. “We lose plenty if we let a couple baby feds go. You’re a message to them. They better start watching their backs.”
Jo looks at Ari as if to ask Now what? and there’s something almost helpless in her eyes. Ariadne’s temper flares.
“Yeah,” she snaps, “real impressive, you grabbed a pair of untrained teenagers. Great message, real scary.”
“Why you little--”
Crack -- the sound of air tearing -- and Ari screeches as unexpected force hits her like a shot in the gut. She thinks she has been shot for a moment, but her whole body goes rigid with it like the worst cramp she’s ever had. As it fades, she realises the warlock used his fucking magic on her.
“-- you fucking asshole --” she spits “-- you wouldn’t be so--”
Another shock slams into her, and Ariadne yells again. She clamps down on the sound faster this time. Those fuckfaces don’t get to hear her scream.
She only barely gets a breath in before his hands are on her shoulders, and his power is ripping through her in waves of agony again.
There’s no getting used to it. It’s the most pain Ari has ever felt by a million miles and it won’t stop -- but fury is as loud in her splitting skull as the panic. She grits her teeth and holds her breath and her body convulses with the magic but she doesn’t scream, she doesn’t, she doesn’t -- she doesn’t --
She does.
The sound just spills out of her, and she has no more control over her throat than any of her other muscles. She chokes, and she yells, and she screams.
There are brief pauses so that she can gasp for air, but not long enough for her to curse the motherfucker out. His hands are on her shoulders, and Ari’s head knocks against his arms as she tosses it side to side. His arm is right there -- her teeth find flesh, and she bites down with the force of a panicking animal.
She doesn’t get to appreciate his reaction. She hears him yell, and then all she gets to experience is the fresh wave of agony that surges from his hands.
It goes until her vision is black and she thinks she is dying. She gets a single breath, and it happens again. And again. And again. And again.
Ari screams and screams and writhes and panics and there is nothing nothing nothing she can do.
Story: Jo and Ari
Timeline: Simultaneous to these pieces
Jo belongs to @khalwrites
---
Alarm
Ariadne sits on her bunk and stares at the opposite wall.
She doesn’t touch any of Jo’s things.
That would be tampering with evidence. It would make her look even more guilty than she already does.
Than she already is.
Jo is a traitor -- no, Jo was a spy, and Ariadne is a traitor.
She cried for hours earlier but the tears have run dry. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. The door is locked from the outside.
At least the others each have a roommate to talk to. But Ari… Ari doesn’t have a roommate any more.
She wants to take something of Jo’s and keep it. Something small, something that won’t be missed, just something before they come and take everything away.
But they’ll search her and they’ll search this room and they’ll be looking for evidence of collaboration.
She could go out the window. Hide something on the roof, or even just -- get some fresh air. She could, but she won’t. Because if anyone catches her doing anything out of the ordinary -- anything but sitting here with her hands folded in her lap -- if she’s caught they will hunt her down and she will -- the same thing will happen to her as -- the same as --
She’s breathing too fast again, and she wishes she could cry. She scrunches up her face and holds her breath trying to force more tears. At least when she was sobbing it felt like the feelings were going somewhere. But nothing happens.
She flops face down on the bed anyway, and hides her face in the pillow.
This, at least, is not suspicious.
She’s still face down when the alarm starts blaring. Ariadne jumps to her feet at once. She almost goes for the door before she remembers that it’s locked. She runs to the window instead.
It’s not an alarm for this building. Ari throws open the window and sticks her head out, but she still can’t be sure if it comes from the high security cells or not. A dozen emotions rush through her body and she couldn’t name a single one of them.
Is it Jo? Did she do something? Is she escaping?
Ari can hear raised voices, too distant to make out the words. A couple of people move through the quad at a jog, hands on their guns.
And that’s it.
The alarm sounds for a little while longer, then cuts off mid-wail. In its absence, Ari’s pulse is loud in her ears.
What happened?
No one will tell her, that’s for sure. She won’t even know if it was Jo. It could have been anything.
It’s a long time before her heart stops racing.
When she finally remembers that it might look bad to be too excited for any sign of Jo, she closes the window and slouches back to her bunk.
She could reread something from the shelves to distract herself from wondering. She could work out and hope to exhaust herself enough to nap. She could fix the hem of that t-shirt that’s trailing a thread.
But she doesn’t do any of those things. She just sits back down, folds her hands in her lap, and stares at the wall opposite.
