Chapter Text
You bring out the worst in me. Now that you've seen it, you're mine forever.
ღ
"BRRING!"
"BRRING!"
The grating blare of the bell bounced off the walls and into my skull, yanking me out of a fitful sleep. With a snarl I covered my ears, willing the ringing in them to fade. One would think I'd have gotten used to that terrible alarm, after having spent years in a terrible place, but I was known for being stubborn. With a groan, I dragged myself off the dingy ground, dusting off the dirt and other things that had crawled onto me that I'd rather not think about. On some mornings it quite felt like I was rising from the grave; perhaps it would have been safer to be dead. Three walls, a barred door, and the soothing concrete ground were what made up my wonderful home. A dog pound might even be a step up—at least people pitied dogs. There was no pity for people like me, for people like us.
From the cell beside mine, I could hear a girl grumbling about the early wakeup calls, and I had to agree with her. They always roused us early on shower day though, and how angry could I really be with the prospect of clean water dangling in front of me? Sauntering towards the barred door, I leaned against it, arms through the space in the bars as I peered around the corridor. Seldom did anything exciting go down, but it never hurt to check. It sure beat rotting in one corner all day long, even if sometimes we got snapped at for being nosy. Footsteps alerted me to someone approaching, and I turned my head to watch a familiar face walking towards me. I grimaced, but it didn't put him off, nor was I sure I expected it to. The warden was a stoic man, I doubted he even saw any of us as people, but stock. The metal pole he carried around clanged off the metal bars of the cell doors as he dragged it along our cages, waking up those that had yet to stir.
Some didn't bother…some couldn't. I winced as a couple of body bags were rustled by the guards who followed the warden, those who took care of the dirty work. It wasn't uncommon, not in the winter when the dreadful conditions were even more biting. It was cold, and our clothes were thin and torn. Our meals were scarce, water scarcer, and we were worked hard. We slept only a few hours at a time; the rest we spent on our feet or on our knees, performing labor of varying degrees. Some of us…I shook my head. I would much rather be standing to work than lying down. Always. I'd gone this long.
As the body bags were carried out, I shut my eyes in the offer of silent prayer. I'd long since stopped believing any god was looking out for us, but it was all I could offer them, and it felt like an injustice to ignore the losses entirely. Maybe wherever those poor souls ended up would be better than this place. I'd tried before to squash what was left of my heart, throw it to the wolves the way they'd thrown the rest of me. I just couldn't do it, I'd never been able to harden myself like that. Some of these people were so fragile, some were just kids. Hell, I could still be considered a kid, at sixteen. The sympathetic, frightened looks I aimed at the younger girls, I often caught the older women looking at me with. They should save it for someone who needed it. Some weren't built for a life like this, but for me, for a handful of us, it was almost all we'd ever known, or perhaps all we cared to remember.
"Hey, little one," a nasally voice rasped, making every hair on my body stand on end. I scowled and snapped my head towards the guard standing at my door.
"What an unwelcome sight," I said, pulling my arms back through the bars. I had known this particular guard at least three years, and his crass words never failed to make my stomach turn. I'd watched him seduce plenty of desperate people here into bed, with the promise of a blanket or a full meal. I couldn't imagine it was worth the price (how many bruises for a bowl of soup?) but I couldn't begrudge a one of them for something as human as desperation. The guard grinned at me with a mouthful of bad teeth, reeking of sleaze and smoke. Shamelessly, he eyed me up and down, and I felt naked under his gaze, the holes in my nightdress exposing too much skin, the gaps in the bars too far apart. I turned away from his scrutiny. Most of us had to scavenge for our clothes, trading and sharing among ourselves or at places where we served. Clothes were a luxury, just like food or water, or even the fucking air we breathed as far as some of these bastards were concerned.
The guard reached his thick fingers through the bars, and I cringed away as I backed up towards the farthest wall. If at all possible, I might've tried to fight my way through the brick. I possessed the fangs from my species, my mother's kind, but I didn't have the strength. Just enough wolf to be exotic, they told me; not enough to be of use. "Don't be that way, darlin'. Come to my office, tonight. Maybe I could get you something warmer…" he aimed a persuasive smile at me, but I only wanted to retch. When I was younger, I never quite noticed the leering gazes, nor why the older women always snapped at men who looked at those my age. Now when I saw a man's eyes linger too long on someone young, I yearned to rip them out.
Baring my teeth at him, I swiped my arm in protest as if I might be able to claw him from three feet away. My pointed ears flattened down into my mess of red hair as I snarled. "Get away from me, surely you've still got a few goats in the barn?" I spat, though the anger made me dizzy. "I'm never begging for help from someone like you, you're nothing but dirty old men!"
The guard sneered at me, brown lumps of teeth on display as he spat at my feet. "Have it your way. I'm sure I'd catch something from sticking it in worn out whores like you lot," he snapped. That warmed my heart. I crossed my arms as he marched off down the line, most likely to find another young thing to attempt coercing into bed. I didn't blame them when they did; it was tempting, the allure of even a moment's comfort. A bed, dinner, maybe even a kind hand, I couldn't picture what exactly drew them to guards or men like that one. Sometimes it did get hard to resist, and sometimes they did reach out to hold something I longed for right in front of me; but I'd learned to live with the hard, cold edges in my life, and I wasn't interested in paying a price in flesh to change that. Most of the guards here were no different, and the people enslaved here often fell for lies wrapped in ribbons, despite the rarity of any guard keeping a promise. A lot of them came back with eyes emptier than before, and perhaps that hollow-eyed memory kept me from tumbling headfirst into a deal I'd surely regret.
Sometimes people agreed to the guards' whims simply to avoid a punishment. Almost none of them were gentle people, often doling out violence for the sake of violence. I reached and rubbed at a bruise on my shoulder, one I'd earned from a riding crop yesterday when I'd been scrubbing the floors too slow. We all bore marks and many of us bore scars, the guards were inescapable. Their hands, their blades, their staffs; it was best to grit your teeth and bear it. I'd seen the guards when they really lost it, same as I'd seen what was left of the slave who was unfortunate or brazen. It was the same everywhere, no matter the stories. A village that "valued" servants still enslaved them, and a village that "didn't tolerate" the compounds and rings still allowed us to slip under the radar.
Heaving a weary sigh, I winced when the warden walked past my cell again. I didn't care for him, but he was better than a number of his guards. He didn't toy around with people for the sake of sadistic pleasures, he was pragmatic. Not lenient by any means, but at least he didn't care for the mind or body games, if only because he didn't see us as worth his time. Pausing at my door, he peered in. "Number 6-6-6 needs water!" he shouted, for any of the number of guards to hear and jump on command. Despite the ire of hearing him use my tag number instead of my name, my mouth watered. How long had it been since I'd tasted water? At least three days, but after the first they all seemed to blend together.
I moved to the corner to wait while one of the guards unlocked my cell, holding a pitcher to fill my bowl with water. I leveled a careful stare at him as he poured, and when he took a step towards me, I growled, far from the mood for these games they all seemed to want to try so early. He simmered in frustration, but let me be. Many wouldn't and would instead look for a fight, but I'd overheard before I wasn't worth the trouble. I'd left many a scar on the guards like they had on me, and many a man had come to regret contracting me. It might be a miracle I was still alive at all. Of course, I was worth just enough that they'd be losing out if they did away with me.
Much of that had to do with factors outside my own control, such as age and species. I was different, and that attracted plenty of folks' attention, and the younger you were the spryer, and the less rations and sleep you had to be allotted. As for the rest, I didn't totally understand why, and I'd never learned the real reasons; ever since I was young I was kept in the higher cells, where we were referred to as Crown Pets. We were considered more elite slaves, often sold to important people, rich people. Crown Pets were more often for entertainment than labor, but that didn't mean there was a lack of that, either. For someone as stubborn as me who resisted the more carnal side of this coin, I was well-suited for labor, often cleaning and tending, or the occasional guard work, something I favored a bit.
I knelt by the bowl and cupped my hands in the tepid water, bringing it to my lips as I drank greedily to soothe my parched throat. Although considered Crown, I was often sold to anyone willing to pay a steep enough sum, but it was a temporary contract, never permanent. Permanence was more expensive, and in the long run, wouldn't it be a waste? Repetitive leasing brought in more, did it not? Besides, I was one of the ones most willing for the hardest work, and I always enjoyed a good fight, leading to me often being chosen for security contracts. I was no stranger to hard work; cleaning, repairs and building, tending to people and animals alike. When I was very first dragged into the compound, I'd been nothing but the lowest, someone common and expendable. I wasn't sure what had changed, but I suspected my species might have something to do with it. Ibrida were rare, and in the slave and pet trade we were considered exotic and especially durable. I was a wolf ibrida, and I quite looked it, possessing the ears, tail, and fangs of the animal, and a bit of enhanced senses. Perhaps some of the personality, if you got too close.
I could hardly remember a life outside of this. I was pretty young when the slave trade captured me, having stumbled across a wandering, dirty child with nowhere to go and no one to look for them. I'd been lost and alone, and could only tell anyone my name. My parents were long gone. Although I hadn't had a home before, I'd had a home in the freedom I'd once possessed. Entering this underground life wasn't an easy way, but I did favor my labor and servitude to some of the more unsavory work the other girls were forced into. Crown Pets especially were popular among sex work or other erotica, many of them being dancers. They populated high-end brothels, while the lower tier slaves were forced into sleazier joints or to walk the streets; any way to bring in cash for the guards, the people who owned them, or the compound itself.
I would rather my hands be bloody from work and to fall asleep on my feet than to ever become a mindless toy, used for nothing but another person's gain. I'd never been victim to such a dreadful fate, and I always had and would continue to use every ounce of my strength, will, and anger to make sure it stayed that way, even if my fucking teeth and nails were filed to nothing but nubs. The closest I'd come to that fear was working in bars with exotic dancers. I'd never been one, myself; I had too much weight on me, and I lacked the grace and delicateness. I'd always been known to steal rations, both for myself and those I could pass them off to; but even if I ate little, it seemed prone to sticking to me, and I'd begun to lean towards chubby as I grew up. Far from a bad thing, it offered me extra padding and warmth, and even if a particular client didn't prefer it, their problems weren't mine.
I heard a telltale sound of steel grinding and flinched when my door clicked open, snapped out of my train of thought. The warden was already walking away to the next cell by the time I looked up. "Shower time for this section, get moving!" he barked.
I relaxed a fraction. Every time I heard the door open, I dreaded what was going to come out of the warden's mouth. Rising on stiff muscles, I headed out of my cell and grouped with the other women in my section milling about. They tended to separate us, women from men, and those who didn't favor either gender or stood somewhere between; we all worked together at times but the guards wanted to prevent bonds being made, or running the risk of unwanted children. I stripped my clothing off and tossed it aside with the pile of other ratty clothes. The showers were communal, but I'd had to shed my bashfulness ages ago. I was among the shortest in the crowd, but as I'd mentioned, I wasn't thin and fragile either, so I could fight the jostling and shoving. Wandering over to one of the nozzles, I stood beneath the spray of lukewarm water as all the nozzles began to turn on, dousing the room full of us. I shivered until I grew used to the chill, and tilted my head under it to wet my hair. Showers were an ordeal around here even for the resilient. I could hear arguments brewing over the showerheads and soaps already; it was best to rush through it when you could. Reaching for the meager amount of soap we were provided, I scrubbed suds onto my skin and into my hair, smelling faintly of something floral, if flowers grew in hell.
Water washed the bubbles down the drain as I stared down, simply basking in the fresh feeling for a moment, because I knew it would be brief. My hair, a tangled crimson mess, clung to my cheeks and the back of my neck. It only hung to around my chin, and I took a knife to it if it ever grew much more than that. Any longer and I risked it getting matted or worse, infested. The people here with longer hair usually braided it, but I didn't have that patience and preferred to just keep it cut. Abruptly, the water turned off; that was why you washed fast, you never knew the time you would be allowed, and it was never generous. Trembling in the cold air, I scuttled back to my cell, straying away from the escalating shouts over those who weren't finished or those who were shoved around or some such. Back in my tiny home, I found a change of clothes was waiting. To my surprise, the clothes looked quite new. No holes, no stains…clean underwear, with a dark tank-top and shorts, something simple and easy to maneuver or work in, thus I thought little about it. I waited until I was dry before dressing and beginning to comb through my hair with my fingers. The shorts clung to my thighs, exposing more of my legs than I'd like, but when I couldn't ask for even food, who was I to ask for modesty? That ship had sailed—hell, that ship had fucking capsized.
At my cell door, a bored voice drawled to me. "New lookers today, sweetheart." I glanced with a fond smile at one of the guards who treated the slaves fairly, Ryu. Ah, possible buyers, that explained the fresh clothes.
Standing, I headed for the door and leaned against the bars, the picture of laziness. "Any idea who they are?" I asked, cocking my head. Not that it mattered, but I couldn't help being curious, sometimes something new and exciting stumbled this direction. The answer was something I never wanted to hear, and I regretted ever opening my mouth.
Ryu's expression darkened. "Akatsuki," he answered, his cheerful voice now somber. I flinched and began to back away, reaching a hand to cover my mouth. Other cries of shock and outrage echoed from eavesdroppers closest to me, and at least I wasn't the only one horrified. The name alone made blood chill for miles. What purpose would the Akatsuki have in a slave compound? They were infamous across all the villages, the lands—they were the deadliest and most powerful criminal organization to exist and they all but controlled everywhere they could reach. Even the more powerful villages had trouble building defenses against them. People like that could have anything they wanted, there was no reason for them to want a slave, they had no need for us. Right?
So lost in my own alarm, I was startled out of it by a voice—a loud voice—echoing towards me, filling damn near the entire section. "Why the hell did I have to come out to this shithole?" the disdained voice asked, prompting me to furrow my brows and approach the door out of sheer curiosity. I gripped the bars and leaned up onto my toes to catch a glimpse. The voice was masculine, and he was obviously displeased with being here. Well, weren't we all?
"It pays well if you bring them a new capture," a separate, more gravelly voice joined the first. Now my interest was really piqued, but more so out of anger—capture, had traders come in?
"It'd be fucking better to sacrifice the bitch," the first voice grumbled. I scowled at the callous remark. Shifting farther to the side to better my stance, I finally caught sight of the two men. I felt my heart skip a beat or six at the sight of the black cloaks they wore, spotted with red clouds. There was no mistaking the symbol. One of the men was unusually tall with most of his face hidden by a mask, and from what I could see of him, his skin was dark.
His companion was shorter, albeit still rather imposing. He was shirtless, broad and strong. Even without the Akatsuki cloak, most could recognize him to be a shinobi. His skin was pale and his hair, slicked back out of his face, was a dull silver. The taller man was holding a blonde woman by her arm, and he was speaking with the warden. He was obviously here to sell her, the bastard.
Appearing to grow bored waiting, the silver-haired man turned away from the exchange and began to walk down the line of cells. I was caught off guard by his striking eyes; they were a vibrant purple, almost glowing in the dimness of the compound. They were almost beautiful. Getting lost in the man's strange gaze, I found myself too distracted to keep track of the man approaching, until he stopped right outside of my cell. His eyes narrowed down at me. "What the fuck are you looking at?"
I blinked in shock, affronted, and perhaps a little chagrined I'd gotten caught staring. I hadn't even realized I was doing it. Nonetheless, I didn't take kindly to his harsh tone. Hands on my hips, I lifted my chin to glare right back at him. "Looks like a fucking dumbass," I snapped, mouth running miles ahead of my brain. I had scars to prove the trouble my mouth delivered me, but men like this were not about to earn my diffidence.
The man's eyebrows shot up; he clearly hadn't anticipated an answer, much less such a bold one. "You little bitch," he sneered, eyes narrowing back into a scowl as he stepped closer to the cell door. I had to suppress the urge to step backwards, like he could ever pry apart steel.
I scoffed at his remark all the same. "I know who I am. Now, why don't you take your ass back to your boss, snow white?" I grinned sharply, not above the pettiest of insults just yet. My grin deepened into a smirk when the man grit his teeth in an angry snarl, proving I was quite good at getting under his skin.
"Think you're fucking brave?" he asked, leaning down a bit. "You're nothing but a whore in this hellhole, and you think you can go around with that fuckin' mouth of yours?"
Those were all insults I'd heard before, he was far from unique, but was I still pissed off? Oh yes. I shrugged. "Just like you walk around with that arrogant, bitchy mouth, right?" I retaliated, too stupid to see when to back down, too stupid to see the danger in his eyes. Stupid, stupid girl.
Without a second's hesitation, the man came closer to the cage, wrapping his fingers around one of the bars. He had a good few inches on me, even leaning down to sneer at me. With his impressive build, some part of me wondered again if he couldn't just rip the bars right off the door. Not that I was intimidated. "You should watch that fucking mouth before it gets you in trouble," he said, his voice having suddenly dropped low. A chill arched down my back.
Rising to the challenge, I squared my shoulders. "What the hell are you going to do about it?" As soon as the words had left my mouth, I regretted them, I wanted them back. A sinister (and bit less than sane) expression painted across the man's face, driving me a step backwards. He turned to look over his shoulder at the warden.
"Give me the redhead."