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When you hear for the first time in a decade – since the injury that robbed you of both your hearing and your freedom – you fully believe that you're dreaming.
It's so high-pitched that, even in the dream, you strain to catch it. Before sleep, you'd been curled up in the corner of the frumentarii slave pens, huddled next to a small group of your fellow captives for warmth. The Mojave was never particularly kind, whether it be in the waking or sleeping worlds.
At least, that's the way you've come to know her.
Taken so long ago that the world beyond the confines of Fortification Hill exists only in your haziest memories, you have served as a cupbearer for a favored praetorian of Caesar's Legion since your capture.
You do remember the day you were chosen for the task, though.
As a female slave kept at the Fort, you were automatically relegated to two particular services: breeding with eligible legionnaires, and assisting work details around the base.
And for you especially, a third purpose – you had a knack for healing. Mostly just scrapes and lacerations; but you'd become invaluable amongst your fellow captives for your soothing hands and deft touch with headaches, sore muscles, and wounds sustained in the fighting pits.
It didn't take long for this to attract the attention of others.
The praetorian who currently owned you had seen you; sent with other female captives of a similar age to frumentarii quarters, meant to stand before this particular unit of elite scouts as choice rewards for a recently successful raid.
You had never made it that far – your praetorian had slipped close, selecting you from the back of the ragged procession. He'd taken you twice, up against the searing metal wall that surrounded the Fort, before speaking to you.
You're mine, now, he'd remarked while straightening his tunic, using crude Legion sign language as casually as if he were telling you the weather. Caesar has permitted this. You do no tasks, warm no other tent, other than those I allow you to. And you heal no one save Caesar, and those he deems in need of such.
And then–
Shivering beneath the thin canvas tarp allotted to you for covers, you shake your head hard to clear away the memories. The high, shrill noise still wavers through the air.
Stiffly you rise, gathering the delicate chains attached to the manacle around your ankle, and make your way to the pen's edge.
There's a small gap in the rusted sheets of metal that make up the wall between the Fort and the outside world. You peer through, but see nothing.
Nothing beyond an endless expanse of sand, and a few scrubby trees.
Still, you hear something. A clear, ululating whine. You've not been able to hear since early adolescence; one of Caesar's favored punishments for slaves who too often comforted one another, or were particularly unruly.
You had done both.
Then something passes directly in front of the gap; close enough that there's a cool breeze kissing your face from the movement.
It smells of blood.
Silently, you jolt backwards and lose your balance. As you sit down hard, you see your chain whip snake-like across the ground and wince. Holding your breath, you wait for one of the rank-and-file foot soldiers typically posted as sentries to appear and mete out punishment.
No one comes.
Cold floods through you. This cannot be a dream; because on the rare occasions you have dreamed, the Legion is never absent. They're always, always there.
You've no idea what you just saw. Not exactly a shadow, but not a solid being, either; it had been like a graceful ripple in the air.
Though you kneel and gently shake some of the others asleep on the ground nearby, you can hardly get a single one to stir. This only adds to your growing sense of unease.
Straightening, you turn and run headlong into something so dense that the wind is knocked cleanly from your lungs.
But... even as you lay gasping, heart racing and chest burning, you see nothing there.
Except – if you concentrate, the air just in front of you shimmers. Almost like the clear, cool pools of water that appear on particularly scorching Mojave afternoons; cruel illusions that instantly dry up upon being reached.
As your breath slowly, painfully returns, you keep your wide eyes trained on that delicate shimmer.
The shrill whine draws nearer. So does the strange disturbance in the air, with movements that seem fluid and somehow deliberate.
But now, you feel vibrations trembling through the ground beneath your body.
You don't bother to look around for a weapon; there are none. As a Legion slave, you don't even own the scanty loincloth that flutters against your legs, or the biting leather chastity belt your praetorian had you fitted with. Even Caesar's bull, branded deep upon the back of your neck and denoting you as property, owns you.
Weapon or no, how did one fight the wind, anyway?
It's the last thought you have before you feel a keen sting just above your collarbone. Touching the side of your throat unsteadily, your fingers come away spotted with blood.
Then, heat and darkness.
When you wake, you're in another world.
Everything around you is... foreign. Alien. You lay sprawled atop something warm, remarkably textured like old leather worn smooth. Glowing lights in cool, muted blues, purples, and greens blink periodically from walls that are thick with fantastically lush vegetation.
Spiraling vivid blossoms, thorns as thick as your forearm. Flowers that resemble vicious jaws, slowly opening and closing with deadly grace. A vine thicker than the chain that no longer weighs heavily upon your leg crawls up the wall beside you, pulsing as if it has a heartbeat. You've never seen so much green, and it dazzles you.
The floor and ceiling, matching shades of green so dark it's nearly black, are riddled with elaborately honeycombed fungi; each of which glows with its own soft, bioluminescent inner light.
You almost struggle to breathe, as the air is so thick and humid that it's as if the atmosphere is pressing heavily upon your chest.
When the floor swells gently beneath your body, you startle violently.
But in a moment, it falls, smoothing out until the process repeats itself again.
Breathing, you think. It breathes as if it lives.
On cautious, unsteady bare feet, you rise and take a few tentative steps – realizing, then, that the chastity belt has been cut away from you, too, and you can move without discomfort.
Taking care not to touch anything, you find yourself in a spacious chamber filled to the brim with life.
Countless glimmering energy fields separate you from fish, birds, tiny rodents. Some you recognize; some, you cannot begin to describe.
Larger animals pace restlessly back and forth or doze behind their respective barriers – you see foxes, a mountain lion, and a small pack of creatures that you'd think were wolves, had they not been curled up peacefully on the ceiling of their enclosure, nestled in hanging slings made from leathery, interlocking tentacles.
And in one far corner, something darkly chitinous, eyeless and hissing. Elegantly monstrous, slinking with deadly grace back into shadows too thick for your own eyes to follow.
But amidst life, there is also death.
Meticulously preserved skulls of every shape, size, and color, serve as the base for each and every exotic plant and flower in the chamber. Seedlings propagate and flourish in the gaps between vertebrae of the longest spine you've ever seen.
When you reach a neat row of skulls that looks exceedingly fresh, you stop dead. There are battered helms, animal skins, mounted to the wall above each one. Unconsciously, you step forward. Closer.
Because you have to know.
Legion.
And the one that you're standing in front of – split nearly in two, remnants of the red crest he had been so arrogantly proud of cleft similarly in twain – your praetorian's. His mark is easy enough to identify; it too is branded upon the back of your neck, just beneath Caesar's.
How long you stand there, torn between overwhelming relief, gratitude, and fear, you don't really remember.
Everything is beautifully well-cared for. It is the chamber of an avid collector. A conneisseur, maybe; of what, you're unsure.
Or a researcher.
You try not to dwell upon the alternatives.
On the furthest wall stretches an elaborate mosaic. The outer edges depict the swirling tendrils of a massive galaxy; at the center, a star system with twin suns.
Reaching out to run your fingers admiringly across the polished sheen of one sun, you realize that the artwork has been made using thousands, if not millions, of bones. It takes several moments of searching before you pick out human amongst them.
"Does it please you?"
You whirl around at the voice–
At the voice.
Because you can hear it – guttural and rough, punctuated by sharp, almost mechanical clicks that you can feel fluttering deep within your chest.
So shocked are you by this that it takes a beat to notice the open void in the wall opposite you – a door you'd never noticed, blending in seamlessly with the thick vegetation.
There is a darker outline, within the murk. It shifts, and you detect the impact of steady footsteps through the soles of your feet.
Running isn't an option. You've no idea where you are, what your unknown captor wants; nor what they are capable of. If someone had wanted you dead, you'd already be so.
So, your back against the mosaic wall, you lift your chin and pretend that you're not terrified and bone-weary.
That, closing the distance between you in two easy strides, there isn't a monster from children's tales extending a massive, clawed hand to you.
Though the lighting is dim and hazy, it is clear that the chamber's high ceilings are by design; the being stands so tall that you must sharply crane your neck to meet their gaze.
You are reminded of the super mutants that praetorians sometimes hunt for sport – although far more graceful. All corded muscle and lean sinews, their movement is a foreign sort of poetry.
They come to stillness before you, harsh breath hissing through a sleek mask topped with guarded, almond-shaped lenses and faceplates carved with angular markings. It is no metal you've ever laid eyes on; almost iridescent, surface taken over by twisted, glowing fungi on the right side.
It's like nothing you've ever seen before – maybe this was something to do with the whispered rumors of Vault experiments that regularly spread like wildfire amongst Legion slaves. A wildfire fanned by Caesar himself to keep escape attempts down.
Hesitantly, you take their proffered hand; feeling tiny and vulnerable as their long fingers close around yours and pull you close.
Their streamlined body is encased in form-fitting wire mesh, muscles rippling in perfect fluidity beneath scaled skin the color of burnt umber. Long, heavy tendrils resembling dreadlocks and decorated with woven vines fall well past broad shoulders, down to a simple leather loincloth. Attention shifting to the wickedly-curved wrist blades glinting from one heavy, tarnished gauntlet, you shiver.
You don't know how or why you can hear, but when you try to speak, you aren't as fortunate. Opening your mouth results in nothing, and you touch your throat in alarm.
There is an amused chuff of warm air from above you.
"I repaired your auditory defect, oomani-di–
As they speak, you wonder if the helmet is translating for your benefit. There is an electronic buzz to the deep, masculine voice, and you can still faintly hear complex, rolling clicks and hissing snarls overlaid atop the speech.
"–but your tongue is yet mine."
One curved claw taps at the polished metal collar that you now register at the base of your throat. Your eyes go wide, but the claw taps once more and you feel something inside you shift and relax; when you try again, you're able to speak.
"Where–" Your voice has gone hoarse, hitching abruptly and forcing you to start over. "Where have you taken this one?"
For a time, there is only the low murmur of something mechanical, far beneath your feet.
"You ask where," the mask tilts to one side and you get the distinct feeling you are being studied, "and not why? Not what is to be done with you?"
The naked curiosity in their voice makes you smile despite the situation. You lift one shoulder in a resigned shrug, gesturing down at your body – bare save for your loincloth, skin striped with scars given by those who took your freedom.
"As long as this one–" you flinch at the sound of yourself using the diminutive with which Legion slaves were expected to refer to themselves, "–as long as I'm not in the Fort, anything that happens to me will surely be better."
Another silence.
And then you feel such heat grazing your collarbone that you shrink back as if burned. Thick fingers press against the fluttering pulse at the base of your throat, then glide upward to stroke your jawline.
"Are you so very anxious to greet death today, little one?" Surely you're imagining the slight thaw you hear, the lessening of harshness.
It has been so long since you've been touched, have felt anything other than detached brutality, that you stop breathing and your eyes sting.
"Not death," you say quietly, "but choice."
The blank eyes regard you, still and solemn, long enough that you notice the ragged laceration wandering up across the left side of their torso and freely bleeding luminous cyan fluid onto the ground below.
Following your gaze, they release your chin
"You are healer," Nodding tersely towards the fresh injury, they then indicate their right arm. Immobile and bound tightly to their side, the arm terminates at the elbow in a neat, cauterized stump. "Assist. Heal."
"I've no supplies," you respond half-dazed, upturning empty palms and wondering how they knew. From what you'd seen, you would need catgut and needle at the least; let alone the bitter powders Caesar had taught you prevented the scourge of infection.
A torn and bloodstained rucksack bearing the Legion bull across the front is dropped into your hands. Inside, you find nearly everything you'd need to complete several field dressings.
Was there a point in not complying? After all, they'd taken you from Fortification Hill; that in itself is more than you had dared to hope in years. Whether you live or die, now, you will do so free of Caesar and his godforsaken praetorians.
"Kneel, please," you say, deciding. There's no way you can stretch to reach the topmost edge of the injury, curving up around their shoulder.
The atmosphere in the chamber seems to grow colder, and they do not move. Their silence is speech enough.
But you are long accustomed to the pride of those who deal easily in blood and death.
Casting your eyes about the dim space, you spot an unmarked metal box and tug it over. As you climb up, now so close that you want to bask in the heat that radiates from their scaled skin, your head barely reaches the top of their shoulder.
When you first cautiously begin to clean the wound – twitching muscle lies shining and exposed at the deepest point – they shudder beneath your fingers. You pause, but this elicits an irritable jerk of their head, a snarl.
"This will take time," you keep your eyes on your work as you speak, "and there will be pain."
"There always is," they return, and you feel the depth of their voice vibrate in your breast. "As there should be."
Silence between you, save for the quiet snip of scissors as you cut a length of thread.
"Will you kill me?" The question slips out unbidden, and your hands still momentarily. "After?"
A sudden burst of rolling clicks, overlaid with crackles of radio static, chitters through the helm. Quiet.
"Hurt me?"
They don't immediately reply, but you can feel them watching each movement you make. Your eyes slip to the web of intricate scars, stretching across their chest and disappearing beneath their loincloth. A few have been made by weapons, animals that you know. Most, you've no earthly idea.
Then–
"Would you like me to, little one?"
The head again cocks to one side, distorted voice still managing to carry a current of amusement.
You flush, and your captor tenses. Lenses flaring bright, they scan you from head to toe with a slow sweep of their mask, a low, thrumming purr punctuated with soft snaps beginning deep in their chest.
Heat, and you are shocked into absolute stillness when, one-handed, they make the crude Common sign for the word.
Then, another:
Rising.
Signing feels more comfortable to you, particularly now when everything feels like a dream, anyway:
Yes, Cheeks burning, you lay the needle down. I am frightened. Weary. Confused.
They make a sign you do not understand; you shake your head.
Name.
It is a complex enough symbol that you struggle to replicate it with two good hands.
But you try, and they chuff in response.
"S'rin'de," the electronic speech is over-enunciated for your benefit, rough. "A hunter does not give his Name to dead meat."
Then nothing more is said until you've finished piecing his side back together. You try to ignore the tension that has him rigid, nearly vibrating beneath your fingers. As you complete your last neat row of stitches and tie it off, the impassive mask swivels to look down at you more directly.
Sufficient, he signs. Sleep.
With a quiet that unsettles you, he – the hunter, you repeat in your head, S'rin'de – is gone; the door seals behind him.
Nearly half a day passes.
You gamble, when it comes to the passage of time; there is no true light, no window, no sign of the outside world, in here.
Even so, sleep comes more easily than you expect. You'd discovered a cot roughly your size, along with a single frayed blanket and pillow, in one of the chamber's many quiet alcoves.
Curling up in utter exhaustion, you marvel at how much you can sense all at once. Quiet plinks of water, the rustle of leaves and occasional snippet of birdsong. The air is hazy and heavy; sweetly-scented with faint acrid, bitter undertones that sting your eyes.
Though your blanket is rough and spartan, it's clean. And, at least for now, yours. You stare at it for a while, enjoying the control you're able to exercise in deciding whether or not to use it.
You're still deciding, when you drift off to sleep.
When you wake, the room has been plunged into near-total darkness.
Beneath you buzzes a constant gentle hum of what sounds like... engines? A generator?
Are you moving?
But it's difficult to expend further thought upon it. You're alive, and are no longer the Legion's chattel.
What had woken you, though, hadn't been the noise; covered in a thin sheet of sweat, you lay restless and twisting in the narrow cot.
It is the first time you've been free of your chains, your chastity belt, of the ever-present eyes of watchful legionnaires. If you wanted to, you could rise. Could go back to sleep. Could turn a cartwheel in the dark. Anything you wanted, without facing punishment or pain.
Sleep almost feels like a waste, when you're free to experience. Even in the dark, you can hear quiet nighttime calls of captive animals. And you can feel – the humidity of the chamber, the blanket, your own flushed skin.
Gods, and minus the harsh discomfort of the belt, you can stretch, can move. Running your fingertips lightly over your belly, your hips, then your inner thighs, you marvel at how soft your skin feels.
By the time your fingers drift further, moving tentatively up over the sealed petals of your sex, a pulsing ache throbs between your thighs.
You hesitate; your body has not been your own for a long while. Self-gratification had been strictly forbidden and swiftly punished by your former captors.
That thought alone has you decided, and you strip off your linen loincloth – the last trappings of Caesar's control.
Your body belongs to you; not Caesar, not the praetorian, not the fucking Legion.
You.
Gently, you glide over soft curls and softer skin; shivering when the pads of your fingers graze the hood of your clitoris and then part your outer labia. Your body responds immediately, hips canting up and back arching; you're shocked when your fingertips already come away shimmering with arousal.
The time that it takes you to stroke yourself fully open – shakily at first, then with more urgency – is embarrassingly short.
It is only when your hips are rocking wantonly up off the cot; when you're biting your lower lip to keep from whimpering; when your inner thighs are shuddering with sweet tension, that your quickly-dissolving attention is caught by movement in your peripheral vision.
Pressing your legs together, you're reaching blindly to pull the blanket over yourself when your wrist is caught up in a grip reminiscent of an iron vice and yanked from between your thighs.
Then, a sharp intake of breath. Stillness.
"You are warm," and a distinct note of wariness makes it through the electronic distortion of his mask. "More so than before."
Frustration, fear, and uncertainty have you at a loss. Sitting up, you hug your knees close to your chest. Try as you might, you cannot steady your breathing. The chamber smells different; a sharp, smoky musk that has you feeling the way you did the time you managed to sneak a bottle of wine from your praetorian's table.
Emerging from the darkness, the hunter tilts his head to one side. A luminous glow has begun to seep through his bandages, his weapons are absent, and muted lights flicker across his mask too quickly for you to follow.
Rapid flurries of clicks erupt from beneath the mask, and you feel them all within your chest, your belly, your very being. You aren't certain if he's seen you, or how long he has been there.
And you're also not entirely certain whether or not that thought bothers you.
"I see your heat. I watch it rise." Then he is directly before you, reaching down with a massive, elegant claw-tipped hand to lift your chin. "You will tell me why flames grow high within you."
The words are harsh, but there is no true malice in them. Instead, you sense something like an intense curiosity; one that has had ample time to develop into honed, searing hunger.
"I'm not... I don't–" you start, but then he's picking you up effortlessly with his good arm, muscles shifting fluidly beneath scales as he promptly deposits you atop a high vine-strewn console of some sort.
Before he withdraws, the hunter caresses something on your sleek collar – you'd nearly forgotten it was there – and you feel a slight constriction in your throat.
"If you do not value truth, words will not serve you," he remarks simply, observing your reaction. "Instead, you will show."
You freeze, naked and huddled almost level with his chest atop the sturdy console. Then you sign, both for clarification and to buy yourself time to think:
Do not understand.
He hisses dismissal before stooping so that his head is even with your face. Once he has ensured your attention, he hesitates briefly before removing his mask with a few deft motions and a soft whoosh of released pressure.
One deeply-set amber eye is fastened to your face, keen and attentive. The other – his right one, same as his ruined arm – is unseeing and covered by cloudy white film.
Suppressing a prickling shiver, you can't help but feel that this is meaningful. He's allowing you to gaze up at his face, remaining very still while you do so.
His face... you are in turns fascinated and overwhelmed by the noseless, sleekly reptilian countenance. Four razor-tipped mandibles surround a fanged mouth not so very unlike your own, save for a delicately-forked tongue. The mandibles move independently of one another, sharp ticks raising gooseflesh upon your skin.
When he speaks, rasping and deep, it is not with words you know; yet they send up an odd little flutter of intrigue in your belly.
Upon your silence, he signs in Common. Stiff and awkward in his use of your language, he yet manages admirably with one hand. Perhaps without the mask's translation, you think, he cannot easily speak your words.
You. Present yourself– he searches for the word, –correctly.
Almost without thinking, you obey. After all, it's so like the duties you've been forced to perform for the past several years.
When you rise up on your knees, thighs slightly parted and hands clasped together behind your arched back; when you thrust your breasts out submissively and bow your head low, it is not the living, breathing organic floor you see below you.
It is the red sand of the high Mojave. Your praetorian's laced sandals. Heavy metal cuffs rubbing your ankles raw.
The quickening of your breath, the heavy chill spreading through your limbs, isn't something you register until you feel something silky-smooth and cool flick out to caress your cheek.
You're summoned jarringly back to the present: where he is within touching distance, your eyes are wet, and his long, forked tongue is just slipping back into his mouth.
Pleasing, and a low, velvety purr rumbles up through his chest. Like my stars. But... The hunter hooks a single claw into a lock of your hair, his eye languidly flicking down to study it before returning to yours. Softer. Warmer.
When you flinch and look away, there comes a strange, sudden hesitance in him.
Pleasing, he signs again. You. Soft meat, with eyes like stars. A fine little pet, and yet... He drags the back of scarred knuckles down your cheek, and you are surprised by the unexpected gentleness from such an immensely strong being. Yet you have been mistreated. Broken by fools.
Your eyes fly up to search his good one. Within it, you find a curious sort of questioning. You can only nod, fingers unable to form any words.
Honorless, with a growl so low, it makes your stomach flip and twist. Unnecessary. He leans close, using the tip of a claw to outline your lips, then his tongue flicks out and follows the same path until it reaches the pulse at the base of your throat. Wasteful.
He touches you with something you could only describe as scholarly reverence. As if you'll crack and shatter beneath the heat of his hand. This sort of contact is so foreign to you, so unimaginable, that you're unsure how to process it. How to interpret the feelings it awakens in a body so long bereft of agency.
Your lips part, and you'd whimper quietly if you were able.
You burn. Your head falls back in frustration as his hand leaves your face to sign. Here–
The hunter indicates your mouth, then carefully digs the tip of one claw into the flesh just below your chin. Pulling it slowly downward, he leaves a stinging red line that stops over your heart. Here...
A flicker of crimson silk, his mandibles flare; then he wriggles his bifurcated tongue down over the scratch and between your breasts, stopping to lap inquisitively at one nipple. Two slick, flexible tines wrap easily around the sensitive little bud, stroking and tugging at it in turns.
Only stopping once you arch into the touch, your eyes squeezing closed tightly and breath coming in shallow pants, he then trails his tongue further south. Lower, until you feel cool wetness parting your aching heat and delicately exploring your entrance.
And here.
The sound torn from you – soft and choked, almost pained – makes him briefly hesitate, mandibles contracting close to one another.
In the reflection of his eyes, you see ruin in yourself. Decadently vulnerable.
"You taste not of pain," he muses aloud, your language sibilant and awkward in his mouth. You think he almost seems perplexed. "Nor fear."
It's a funny sort of feeling, suddenly being your own person again. Even here and now, being spirited away by gods know who to gods know where, you don't feel entirely afraid anymore.
You can hear. See things other than the slow loss of hope and meaningless, futile death.
And you can touch.
Gathering your courage, you take his heavy hand in both of your trembling ones. He stiffens, but allows it.
When you place his palm against the back of your neck, where the smooth, puffy lines of your brands are slightly raised, his mandibles flare wide and he goes still.
For a time, you both remain like that – you, trembling on your knees as you wonder what exactly the fuck you're doing, and him, frozen like a colossal statue as he cradles your head in one massive hand.
"Ah," comes the slow rumble finally, "you were broken badly by fools, and you remain broken." He traces the brand with one halting finger, curious; watching your reaction, learning you.
"Broken not by pain," his voice drops in volume, and when he shifts lower to explore the scars decorating your back, you lean into the touch as his palm glides down over them. "Nor, I think, by fear."
Almost too quickly to see, he then uses his hand to bring you flush against his chest; forcing you to spread your thighs wide so he can stand between them.
You know he registers the way you tense, the instinctual way your hips twitch upward against the searing heat of his body. But – unlike your praetorian – he doesn't push further. His hand upon your lower back is steadying, not insistent.
Not cruel.
"Tell me," the hunter taps your collar once more, and you experience an odd little shudder of happiness as your vocal cords relax. "What, then, little one? What has broken you this way?"
There is a long silence while you yourself wonder about your answer. And about his interest. Why he would've taken a single slave from her captors; why he would care about her thoughts.
"A cage," you finally whisper, your eyes slipping away from his amber one as you glance over at the subtle glow of shimmering energy fields keeping the other inhabitants in their enclosures.
Most of the animals sleep, behind the barriers.
Others are restless.
A soft, cascading flurry of clicks makes you shiver, the sound tickling and strange as it buzzes against your bare skin.
"I see no bars before you. Is that what you think this is? Where you think you are?"
When you look back up at him, amusement crinkles the corners of both eyes; his seeing one is fixed upon your face, studying you so intently that you blush.
Again, he tenses; eye flicking to your cheeks and then lower, where the soft pink flush has begun to spread across your chest.
Taking advantage of his distraction and unsure how to answer, you reach out gently and touch him. It is only the most gossamer of contact – still on your knees, you stretch up and rest your fingertips atop his right shoulder.
His scales are smoother than they look – like warm, polished stones, save for where they've been cracked or cut through by dozens of ragged, wandering scars.
The hunter hisses in a breath, but does not pull away or stop you. Just... watches you, with such rapt intensity that soon your whole body is hot and you can't help but remember the way his probing tongue had felt as it slipped between your legs.
Gliding your hand down his maimed arm, you stop before you reach where it is tightly bandaged; your fingers feeling tiny and delicate as they pause in the crook of his elbow, just above the missing forearm.
"Yes," he rasps softly, following your eyes, "everything here is broken." His taloned fingers leave your brands and comb through your hair. Perhaps you only imagine the weary wistfulness in his voice.
You don't imagine, however, the way he averts his gaze from yours, as if he's...
As if he is ashamed.
And that thought – that something, someone so fearsome and strong, so utterly powerful in his own right, could feel ashamed...
Could feel broken–
Suddenly, you feel much less alone in your own brokenness.
As your fingers trace over deep, scarred furrows peeking out from under the binding's edges, your eyes widen.
So do his.
Gods. Marks left by gargantuan claws, even larger and more wickedly-hooked than those of the deathclaw that had taken out a dozen legionnaires before a unit of the most elite praetorians finished it, fuck, it makes you shake all over again just looking at them, you'd had to treat what was left of those men alone–
You screw your eyes shut in an attempt to banish the memories, drawing your unsteady hands back to yourself.
Only you can't, because he reaches out and catches your wrists. Dragging you back to his reality.
Opening your eyes is one of the most frightening things you've ever done.
Who – what – will he be, when you look at him?
Your captor, endlessly demanding and casually cruel?
Or maybe... maybe just another broken thing, seeking whatever counts as solace to you both now?
He looks down at you, chest heaving, your wrists still held fast in his taloned hand.
Then with agonizing deliberation, he brings your hands back to him. Presses them against his chest, his skin blazing through the wire mesh as a heartbeat unlike any you've ever felt before thunders beneath your palms. Your head spins, instantly overwhelmed by the contact, by the smoky, bittersweet musk of him.
In the clear, rich amber of his eye burns something like desperation. You know, because you see it mirrored there in your own eyes, too.
When he releases you, your hands remain. That guttural, velvet purr begins, shivering up through your arms.
Then, not trusting your voice to hold, you sign:
Heat, and you can feel his muscles jump beneath your fingertips as you form the next word against his warmth. Rising.
The hunter's mandibles briefly flare before he stops breathing altogether. The contact between you has turned into a language all its own.
You hardly notice when he lifts you, cradled in the crook of his arm, and strides out of the darkened chamber without looking back.
Navigating the complex warren of curving corridors just outside with ease, he carries you past cramped rooms full of shifting holographic displays, maps, and stores of weapons that would've driven Caesar entirely mad with envy.
It's all background noise; you're far too enamored with the raw, shuddering way his breath catches in his throat when you run admiring fingers through his dreadlocks. The tendrils are warm and fleshy, twitching as you stroke them. Part of him.
When he brushes aside a thick cascade of blooming vines and drops heavily into a massive chair with you in his lap, you're forced to drag your gaze away from his when he takes your chin in his hand and turns your face away from him.
Gods above.
Your entire world.
You see your entire world through a thin, curved piece of glass. Everything. Everything you have ever known, every sky you have ever woken up to.
The stars you used to lie awake beneath, whispering fervent prayers and pleas and promises to.
The sun that has burnt your skin each and every day in Caesar's cage and yet left you wanting during the harsh, frigid Mojave nights.
Blazing, beautiful, brilliant orbs suspended in starshot blackness. Darkness so deep and immense that your head hurts and your eyes sting when you look too long.
And still, even as you feel hot tears upon your cheeks, you can't get enough. You need more.
The viewport is surrounded by an intricate mess of blinking lights, diagrams, machinery, controls; the same harsh, angular markings that had adorned the hunter's mask scroll endlessly across several small holographic displays, soft chirrups breaking the silence every so often.
Behind you, his mandibles click gently together. When you turn back to face him, his attention is so raptly focused upon you that he appears carved from the very shadows themselves.
"How can you be broken?" you whisper incredulously, shifting so that you straddle his thick waist, thigh muscles burning with the stretch it takes to do so. "You sit amongst the heavens."
His response is to spread his mandibles wide, his hand pushing at the small of your back until your breasts press against his chest. He leans forward, and you remain very still as he stretches each mandible until all four enclose your throat. The razored tusks at the tips lightly score the back of your neck, but don't break the skin.
Breathless, you watch as his good eye slides closed. Then – ah, then, again that flickering cool wetness as his serpentine tongue darts out to caress the pulse fluttering at the base of your throat. The sound you make is soft and helpless, your own eyes closing as you lose yourself in the sensation.
He sets his fangs against your skin, and you feel him trembling against you. When you slip both hands between your bodies, desperate for more contact, your fingers are met with the delicious marriage of rough mesh netting, warm, smooth scales, and rippling muscle.
Further down, you feel hard, polished quills lying flat against the center of his chest, thickening as you move down his belly. When you touch these, curious and hungry to explore, a rumbling groan vibrates under you, torn from deep within as if he's unable to silence himself.
The velveteen leather of his mandibles carefully disengage from your neck. Drawing back, he holds your gaze as slowly, deliberately, he lifts his chin and exposes his bare throat to you.
And though you cannot begin to imagine the vast divides between yourself and he, you've spent enough time around war, death, and battle-hardened warriors that you instantly understand the significance of the gesture.
Surrender.
Here and now, with the very world at your feet and eternity spread out in glorious array around you, words almost feel like a sacrilege.
So in silence, only the hum of engines and his low, rolling purr resonating through you, you indulge the impulse that has been threatening to consume you and press breathless, lingering kisses to every scar that cuts through the smooth brilliance of his scaled throat; then, the muscular expanse of his chest and the quill-covered planes of his belly.
The scars are many.
It takes time.
Time enough that, when you reach the waistband of his loincloth, his head is thrown back and your inner thighs glisten with your own need. Gods, the ache of it all.
The quiet snarl that escapes him at the first brush of your hands against his corded thighs initially startles you, but it soon becomes a point of pride – how many times you can draw audible reactions from him, with your soft mouth and clever fingers.
His claws strike up sparks as he grips the wide metal armrest of the command chair; you slide down onto the floor and kneel between his long legs, rubbing your cheek against his scales and smoothing your hands up further, higher, beneath the simply-woven fabric.
Catching his gaze, you're nearly shocked into stillness by the way he's sat up and is staring down at you. Like he is preparing to wake from a dream, cataloguing each and every moment, every movement and feeling; learning you with utter awed reverence.
You feel such a surge of emotion, of closeness, that whatever he sees in your face must be too much for him. His head drops back against the chair's support, and he winds taloned fingers into your hair.
Urging you on. Giving you permission.
Gently, trying to rein in the sudden ferocity of your desire, you trail languid fingertips up beneath the loincloth to the juncture of his thighs.
You've no idea what to expect, but when your fingers brush over intense heat and a slick blooming wetness not entirely unlike your own, you whimper softly.
More? you ask, using only your eyes.
More, comes his swift answer, hips jerking up once against your hand.
You tease over skin the texture of soft leather; over what feels like triangular petals gathered together around a bulging center, weeping thick, honeyed fluid onto your exploring fingers.
Hesitantly at first, you stroke along the surprisingly delicate seams there until he stiffens, panting shallowly above you and lifting his hips off the metal beneath him.
Then he takes your hand in his, guiding you in long, firm movements until his center swells outward; leathery petals unfurling to reveal him, thick and shiny with desire and pulsing with the frantic beating of his heart.
Like, and yet unlike, you think dizzily, unable to ignore that it takes both of your hands to wrap around his length fully.
Slippery ridges spiral outward from his tip – slightly forked, similarly to his tongue, dripping copiously – all the way down to his wide base, and you cannot resist following the cascade of ridges down with your fingers.
He twitches, responding with a low, sonorous growl that reverberates both through the small cockpit and yourself.
Before you can react, you find yourself lifted from the floor and through the air, landing firmly back in his lap. When you try to wriggle, to turn and face him, he shakes his head and, one-armed, drags your back to press flush against his chest.
Turning your face to the stars.
Behind you, his steady warmth. His beating heart, his hot breath caressing your neck. The silent presence of him is terrifying, arousing, comforting, all at once.
In front of you... everything.
The universe, burning bright and eternal. Every sight, every person you have ever seen or known, spins below you.
With a single shift of his thigh, the hunter spreads your legs wider.
Trembling, ice and fire simultaneously racing through your veins, you wind an arm back around his neck – warm beneath his long dreadlocks – to steady yourself.
When his tip nudges your sensitive, aching entrance, you can't help but look back at him with eyes gone wide and apprehensive.
One of his lower mandibles extends unsteadily; the fact that he, too, is trembling, is a strange, sweet comfort to you.
He strokes your cheek with the tip of his tusk, drawing it down along the line of your jaw and stopping just beneath your lower lip.
Then you find yourself whispering the name he freely gave you, what seems like days ago – S'rin'de – and a single shudder runs through his massive frame.
With far more restraint than you expect from one so strong, he gently presses his ridged forehead against yours, his eyes sliding closed.
And he waits, waits long enough for you to realize that he is giving you the lead.
Something you have never had. Not in your furthest, faintest memories.
The control, the trust, he is gifting you – it is overwhelming.
As you lower yourself slowly, slow enough to feel every slick, hot inch of his forked tip pushing into you, the stretch is the most exquisite agony you've ever known.
Stars burst behind your eyes in oscillating whirls of white and gold and green, almost brighter than the ones that glitter before you both. You're barely able to see straight; to watch as he throws his head back, mandibles wide, and roars, throaty and raw, at the feel of your lush heat enveloping him.
It feels as if it takes an eternity to work yourself down onto him, undulating your hips in sweet, slow rolls that have his claws flexing dangerously upon your waist. The pressure within you forces soft, broken little moans from your lips as the sheer size of him carves out space where you'd thought none existed before.
Beneath you, his muscles tense so violently that he shakes with it; with the effort it costs him to remain still, to keep from snapping his hips up and driving himself into you with abandon.
When you finally reach your limit, he's barely halfway inside you. You twist and whimper, falling back weakly against his chest, allowing your body more time to adjust as you catch what breath you can. He pulses within you, each throb sending blinding ripples of ecstasy through you as his ridges push insistently against your inner walls.
Burying your face in the crook of his neck, you're wholly unprepared when his long tongue snakes down your body – stopping only briefly to flick wetly at your pebbled nipples – and exploratively nudges at your swollen clit.
Your startled, breathy cry gives him a moment's pause, as if he thinks he's hurt you.
But when you roll your hips against him, whimpering with an urgency you don't ever remember feeling before–
He purrs again, and it rolls through your very bones like you've been caught directly in the heart of a thunderstorm.
Then the soft, pointed tines of his tongue caress your delicate, twitching bud – slowly, this time. Lapping with deliberate precision around it, skimming just over it, using the dextrous tines to rub both sides of your clit until your hips are chasing after him and you're keening desperately for mercy.
He's gauging your reaction; studying you, adapting his method, even in the fervor of his own want; even as the way you clench and flutter around him makes him rasp what is almost certainly a guttural curse in his own tongue.
At the same time that the tips of that forked tongue wrap snugly around your clit, his claws tighten upon your waist and he pulls you down; unhurried, measured, until he is somehow buried to the hilt inside you.
Fuck – it's too much. Too deep, too painful, too good, too real.
There is a moment where you wonder if he can feel your heart beating from the inside. If he can see the heat of the tears leaving your eyes and shining crystalline upon your cheeks.
Do two broken things make a whole one?
Or do they simply remain two broken things?
But he's moving now, and nothing else matters but how it feels when his arm wraps around your waist and holds you possessively against his chest.
At first, his thrusts are uneven, stilted. He groans beneath you as you nuzzle into his throat, crying out with every breath, every sweet drag of friction as he fills you again and again. Lifting you slightly, he withdraws almost entirely from your wet, clinging heat before plunging back inside in one intoxicating, aching rush.
Between your legs, his tongue moves in ways you'd never imagined – lavishing studious attention upon your clit, stroking your swollen labia where they're stretched tight around him, eagerly licking up the wetness leaking out around himself like he's starved for you. And you – you sing his praises until your throat goes raw.
You're struck by a sudden wild impulse to taste him, then. To add your own mark to his tapestry of scars.
Even though you doubt you can – his scales are smooth and so hard – you find a softer place just beneath his jaw, and nip him sharply there. He tastes of salt and something herbal, bittersweet–
–Then he registers the bite, and you see both his eyes go wide. He looks at you, and in that instant he sees you.
This time, when he moves, his hips snap up with enough force to drive the breath from your lungs. His claws score your side, and you revel in the sharp sting of it, the pride of bearing his marks.
His rhythm builds, faster and harder; your hips move in tandem with his, your cunt aching and your legs, dangling on either side of his thighs and spread so wide in his lap that the tension becomes the most exquisite thing you've ever known–
When you come, the last thing you see before your vision goes white is everything.
Your ruined world, beautiful from so high above, suspended in forever.
Not long after, he follows you – mandibles wrapping tightly around your throat again, saliva trickling down between your breasts, as he fucks up into you; chasing his pleasure single-mindedly as you ride out your own. You're able to feel every languid spasm of his cock within you when he comes undone, pumping thick, searing ropes of seed into your hypersensitive cunt as you collapse bonelessly back against his heaving chest.
Disentangling his mandibles from you – but not yet his cock – he pauses, breath warm and ragged on your shoulder.
The tip of one tusk skitters along the sleek metal collar still hugging your neck, a muted chirp quietly sounding beneath your right ear.
An unseen hinge clicks open, and it falls to the floor.
You breathe deeply, completely, for the first time since your taking. Maybe for the first time ever.
No cages, he signs, one-handed and sure, when, eyes stinging and tremulous hope writ large on your face, you look back at him. Not for you.
Then his arm again draws you close against his bandaged chest, and you both just breathe.
Two broken things, joined together as one.
Together. Whole.
It is a long while before the silence is broken.
He asks it aloud, first in his own tongue; you sense that it is important for him to do so. Sacred.
Repeating it in yours, working around the strange roundness of your words, he cannot disguise the yearning in his voice.
"Where is home for you, little one? Speak, and it shall be so."
The planet turns, before and below you. Weary upon its axis.
Within you, his living heat pulses, and the claws of his good hand stroke your thigh – unconscious and gentle, as if he doesn't even realize he's doing it.
It's almost unreal, when you find the smallest of smiles blossoming, tugging up the corners of your lips. Like the muscles have gone unused for so long that the act is foreign and difficult.
And then you give him your answer.
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