The Garden's End Pt 2

[marguerite_krux]

Rating: PG-13? There's a bit of Lizzie-whumping
Genre: Prison break.
Setting: Season 3, pre Sunday.
Summary: Elizabeth is taken prisoner. She's in no mood to play damsel in distress.

Disclaimer: No infringement intended. Stargate Atlantis is not mine. Though I have more respect for its characters. At least I seem to *care* more than they do.  

A/N: Not that I believe anyone would take her, but Sekara's mine. Came up with her all on my own. XP

The Garden’s End Pt 2

Five days ago:

Elizabeth regained consciousness slowly, the foreboding sense that something was wrong piercing the fogginess of her thoughts. She didn’t remember going to bed the previous night. In fact, she didn’t remember leaving the dinner that their alien hosts had put on. Which either meant she had drunk too much alien booze, or, considering that she made a point not to get drunk in general, let alone at diplomatic functions, something more sinister was going on…

She opened her eyes, dreading what she would find. And discovered that her worst fears had been confirmed- she was all alone in what looked like a giant fish tank. If fish tanks came with interrogation-room style glass. The walls reflected her own image back at her, revealing nothing beyond the room. Elizabeth rose from the bed, the only piece of furniture in this cell, and circled around to examine her new accommodations.

In the midst of her confusion and anger at finding herself imprisoned, a concealed door opened, and a woman walked through. She was not very tall, with dark hair woven in an intricate braid that wound around her head, and had a painfully slender frame that gave the impression a gust of air would topple her over. Just as Elizabeth was contemplating the rash notion of pushing past this stranger and running off, she caught a glance of two armed guards out in the hallway.

If she had been naively inclined to hope this was all a misunderstanding, that hope was extinguished now.

Looking at the beautiful stranger, she realized the only option now was to befriend this woman and elicit any information she could use to her advantage. Reining in the urge to lash out- not unreasonable given the circumstances, she thought- Elizabeth offered a humorless smile. “I’m Dr Elizabeth Weir. You’ll understand if I don’t say I’m pleased to be here,” she said wryly, waving a hand in an enquiring manner, “Wherever ‘here’ is.”

Sekara introduced herself dispassionately, and explained that she had been assigned to impart the Lord’s standard orders for all new chattels. Elizabeth’s eyebrow arched the moment she heard the word ‘chattels’.

‘Firstly and most importantly, you are not to speak without his command, and you must not challenge anything he says,” said Sekara, without any inflection to indicate her personal feelings on the matter. “You are no longer a person of consequence, now you are his property alone.’

‘No,’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘That isn’t true. I am the leader of the expedition at the city of the Ancients, and my people will come for me. I won’t just give up and let someone take control of my life like this, not without putting up a fight.’

The other woman was startled out of her passive façade, and regarded Elizabeth with a more assessing gaze now, as though she had not expected this show of defiance and was reluctantly intrigued. ‘You are not from here,’ she said quietly. ‘He is a powerful man- the Lawmaker of our people. No one will come looking for you here, I guarantee you.”

“John Sheppard and his team are very persistent, they won’t give up on me,” said Elizabeth, delivering her words with confidence. She believed them completely. The only problem was that they wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.

Only, she thought, with a healthy sense of irony.

“I can see that you will not listen to reason,” said Sekara. “It would be easier for you to accept the reality of your new position, but you seem to be rather stubborn. I advise that you tone down this quality of yours when the Lord comes to visit, or his punishment will be severe.”

“Thank you for the warning.” Elizabeth watched her leave, and drew in a deep breath. Waiting around for this Lord to visit was going to be very stressful.

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That evening:

It wasn’t anything in his expression or manner that was fearsome in itself. Elizabeth had negotiated bound and blind-folded with Genii soldiers in her first year in the Pegasus Galaxy; and she had faced the Wraith Queen in her own office on Atlantis in the second. She had not been out of her depth in either situation, but took the dire circumstances as motivation to prove herself beyond all her previously defined limits.

This time, it was completely different.

Absent was the fear of imminent death, and in its place was the helplessness she associated more with the time the IOA had put her on trial for all her decisions as leader of Atlantis, and threatened to separate her from the city and the people she had come to care deeply about. The same helplessness she had been overcome by when the Ancients had returned to rule their city and her expedition had been ousted without ceremony. Because just as in those situations, this man didn’t see her as a leader. Many people had doubted her abilities in the past, and that had only firmed her resolve to make them acknowledge her worth. Even the Genii and the Wraith had recognized her as leader of Atlantis. But this man had just ripped her from that life and designated her to be a mere possession, something that belonged to him, that he could lock in a room to await his attention. A toy he maneuvered at will.

Facing this one man, Elizabeth was afraid.

He had entered the room without any undue pomp. That was for men who were unsure of their position and wanted to make it clear to everyone that they were someone. This man was confident of himself, and possessed an aura of authority, unforced but instantly recognizable. He was someone whose word would be obeyed by those around him, and he was someone who would not be denied what he wanted.

Sekara trailed behind him, carrying some clothing. He didn’t bother with introductions or any small talk, merely indicated to her and told Elizabeth, “Your clothing is no longer appropriate. Instead, you will wear this gown to mark your new status. Also, I have provided a band,” he motioned at the entourage who had also accompanied him into the room, and she saw that one of the guards held a case that displayed a silver choker, studded with blue stones at regular intervals. “This will be part of your daily wardrobe; it is designed to encircle your throat, and will remind you of your place and who you serve.”

Elizabeth resisted the urge to tell him to go to hell, and settled for a calm, reasonable tone. “This is absurd. You have no right to kidnap me like this. I am the leader of Atlantis, and rest assured, there will be people looking for me.” He regarded her with the bemused air of someone watching an animal perform a trick, and couldn’t work out how it had been done. “Let me go now, and there will be no repercussions for your actions. But if you insist on maintaining this-”

“I have not witnessed the spectacle of someone daring to defy me since…well, since Sekara here became the first member of my personal menagerie,” he said musingly, completely ignoring her speech. “It is not something I enjoy dealing with; you will remember not to speak to me in such a manner again or I will be forced to demonstrate the consequences. Nothing disfiguring, of course, that would defeat the whole purpose of adding you to my collection.” He smiled chillingly. “I hope that is simple enough for your alien mind to comprehend. Now put on your dress, fasten the band around your throat, and do not make this harder on yourself than it needs to be.”

“I’m afraid my highly developed sense of personal autonomy objects to your entire philosophy on slavery,” said Elizabeth in a flippant manner that she wasn’t certain she could pull off. “Maybe we could have a discussion on the joys of civil liberties versus the offensive nature of dictatorship over tea and biscuits? It might enlighten you to know that my simple alien race abolished the human slave trade decades ago.”

He sighed, and nodded at the guards. “Do it.”

Elizabeth drew back instinctively as they moved towards her. She felt like screaming, but knew it would accomplish nothing. “Wait,” she said, trying to hide her increasing desperation. “This is not necessary- I came here to trade with your people! We can offer assistance to you, we have medicines, technology of the Ancestors-”

Two guards grasped her arms and held her firmly in place, now matter how hard she twisted and pulled. When the third guard reached out with the choker, Elizabeth lost her grip on the panic swelling inside her and kicked out at him frantically, trying to keep him away. She wasn’t sure why the trinket was so important to the Lord, but could not stomach the thought of him marking her as his property. The two guards dragged her over to the bed and pushed her down, holding her arms and legs, and even as she bucked against their combined strength, the choker was inexorably placed around her neck, then snapped securely into place.

Irrationally, she felt insulted for a moment when they briskly let go of her and stepped back to their positions by the Lord. Almost as though they were eager to wash their hands of her, to keep their distance from the alien like she carried a disease or something.

A moment later, she understood why they weren’t keen to remain in contact with her as the blinding pain tore through her body like a bolt of lightning, and she convulsed awkwardly. Realization set in when she saw the device in the Lord’s hands, and the satisfied set of his features. This collar was the instrument of his punishment. Of course. It was pretty and functional, delivered a hell of a jolt yet left her unmarked. Perfect.

“Do you feel more like a man now?” she said hoarsely, raising herself up on her elbows. She didn’t dare try sitting up properly just yet. Any thought of caution deserted her as she taunted him bitterly, “Find it too hard to get yourself a woman the normal way? I wonder what it says about you that you need to abduct women and torture them in order to bind them to you.” His face was set like a stone as he endured her barbs. “And not just one woman at a time, no, you need a whole menagerie! I can’t even begin to imagine what deficiencies you must be compensating for.”

Out of the corner of her vision, Elizabeth registered Sekara’s hand fluttering to her mouth in a gesture of dismay. She did warn me, Elizabeth thought.

The Lord approached her, and out of pride, she did manage to sit up after all and direct a glare at him. In a move that could be mistaken for gentle, he pushed her back down onto the bed. “Why don’t you relax and lie down?” he said, with a parody of a smile. “I would be remiss in my responsibilities if you fell off and hurt yourself. Now, hopefully this lesson will not require too much of my time. Learn quickly and save us both the trouble.”

Oh, hell. That was all she had time to think before he triggered the device again and generated the relentless electric shocks that stole her breath and set her writhing with agony once more. Elizabeth clawed at the bed-sheets, digging her nails in as her body bowed against the jolts, elevating her off the bed. At this point, she would have welcomed falling to the ground, desperate for any other sensation to relieve her from the overwhelming sensation of electricity flooding through her, setting her muscles on fire and impulses rushing to her brain, screaming of one thing. Pain.

She wanted to give in. She wanted to promise him anything if only he would end this. No one, not even the sanctimonious members of the IOA, could find any wrongdoing in her actions if she fell apart and wept and begged for mercy. But if she pleaded with him now, that man won and she was lost.

Her teeth bit into her lower lip as she fought against that moment of weakness as much as the torment. And Elizabeth thought of Atlantis.

Of the pleasure she felt at random moments, like when she received a new report from the science labs, gushing over the discovery of a new device that could have exciting applications; or when she put down a report and stretched back in her chair, looking over at the control room to see the people on duty moving around with purpose, and felt the awe and the responsibility of being their leader.

She remembered the many startling yet undeniably amusing occasions; the return of an unusually disheveled Zelenka, complete with face paint and pigtails courtesy of the children on M7G-677; the time when Lorne and his men had accidentally disturbed a scientific experiment, triggering a harmless chemical reaction that had nonetheless left them with eerily glowing skin, requiring them to take a week off duty as this affliction understandably rendered them useless for recon and exploration. Walking in on Teyla sounding whipping Ronon’s butt during their regular training sessions had tested her ability to maintain a sober expression in the face of wounded male dignity, as had John’s snores on the one occasion during which he’d attempted to teach her meditation.

She evoked the peace she felt when she stood at the balcony overlooking the gate room and welcomed home a team that had safely returned from a mission; as well as the moments she spent at the balcony outside the control room where she dreamily gazed down at the ocean, often enjoying the breathtaking view with John as they stood together, either in companionable silence or deep in discussion about their plans and their goals.

There was an entire library's worth of the fun, exhilarating and amazing events she had been fortunate enough to be a part of as the head of the expedition team. Elizabeth didn't have any regrets about choosing to come to this galaxy at all, and if this was how it was to end, she would face it with the dignity and courage that she had tried to live by her entire life.

And then the pain was gone.

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