Chapter Text
Languages are second nature to you.
Perhaps it was your work or your home environment, the people you spoke to or the places you visited - fragments of audible mosaics piecing together for a beautiful picture. Maybe you just enjoyed the puzzle, the culture. Maybe you just had a lot of time on your hands. It didn’t matter. You had a skill, a proficiency - and though it was difficult, confusing more often than not, it was a skilled card you were always glad to have in your deck.
But there was no way of knowing that eventually one day it would save your life.
“What are they saying?” Someone whimpered to your left, shivering so badly the rope binding their hands above their head squeaked incessantly.
They repeated the question again and again, as if those were the only words they knew. What are they saying? What are they saying? What are they saying?
You knew.
In the delirium of your own fear and confusion, through the biting pain of your own bonds and situation, you could loosely translate what your captors were saying. It wasn’t a familiar dialect, but you had enough to work with.
You rubbed your chapped lips together and looked over at the shivering person. “They’re judging our worth.”
The man’s shivers increase two-fold, his fingers starting to join in the macabre dance above his head, as if with enough movement he could shake the atoms free. “What?” The man yelps. “What the fuck do you-”
You shush him with a sharp seethe of your lips, glancing around to see if his volume had caught any attention. By sheer luck, it hadn’t - this time.
“Keep your voice down,” you hiss.
To his credit, he does, if only slightly. “W-what do you mean ‘our worth’?” The man’s eyes searched yours desperately, as if he could find any and every soothing answer in your gaze. Even as you looked away, took in the stock of some of your captors, tried to hear the sounds of their conversations over your new companions' relentless whimpering - he still stared.
The people weren’t here permanently. No-one seemed familiar to your kidnappers, names were used informally, mockingly. Anything material of worth - phones, cash ( they particularly liked this one, easier to launder ), jewellery, even clothes if they could see the designer label - they were all stripped, carted away.
But this was past a simple robbery. There was too much formality, corralling - the bamboo bars you were kept in were built sturdy enough to last, but easy to clear and abandon if necessary. There were even wedges in the sand and dirt below where they had been moved before.
“H-hey, what did-”
“Shut up,” you snap, taking a harder look at some of the people in the cages next to you. None familiar, but also definitely not locals. You only needed to look at Hawaiian shirts and impractical footwear to know that.
Then you see one man, one of your captors, circling the bar with a piece of plastic in his hand, measuring it next to the terrified faces of the people inside. An I.D?
It takes a minute, an arduously long sixty seconds before you piece what slivers of information you have together. You feel your heart sink in your chest.
“Traffickers.”
The man squeals like a stuck pig then, twists and turns in his binds so hard you sit and wait for the inevitable crack of his bones. Not a chance those bamboo bars would break - he would first.
“Fuck, no! I’m not getting sold like fucking cattle-”
Your eyes widen in fear. His hysterics are attracting attention, and fast. The nearest captor turns towards you both, and you do your best to keep your eyes down and fearful. It’s too late for whatever the fearful man had brought upon him, the only thing you could do was hope he didn’t drag you down with him.
The captor shouts, words muffled by the bandana around his face - but his words fall on deaf ears. The southern man can’t understand a single word he’s saying, and shouts obscenities and threats back.
If he knew just what the captor was saying, he might not have been as quick to shout back.
You have no time to even warn the man before the crunching sound of metal against flesh meets your ears, the answering groan. You don’t look, you can’t - all you can see is his twitching leg in your peripheral. That, and a steady stream of blood droplets.
Where your heart had been in your gut previously, you now find it crowding your throat. You let out terrified huffs of breaths through your nose, try to dampen and smother the whimper building in your throat. You don’t look across at the body, you can’t - you know what happened, you certainly don’t need to see it too.
“ Mateo-” A voice calls distantly from across the camp. “ I fucking swear, man, if you just killed him-”
What had been a myriad of shouts and commotion a minute ago suddenly descends into a deafeningly quiet ambience. The crying, the gruff sounds and shouts - they all disappear.
Despite your reluctance, on instinct you find yourself looking upward, following the sound of the new voice. It carried weight, and even in a tongue that isn’t your native one you can hear the authority within it.
Your captor, Mateo, in response to the same voice, well... he just about shits himself.
He jumbles his words so badly even you can’t understand them despite being a foot away. The rifle in his hands hangs loosely by his hips as he desperately tries to stutter out a sentence that might save him from the wrath heading his way.
It comes quicker than you think, and certainly quicker than poor Mateo expects.
Thudding boots, rustling clothes - another man comes marching past the cages, and you watch the captors scatter out of his way like rodents, sand kicking up in their speed to keep out of his path. One nearly trips in his haste, and you have little doubt in your mind that if even your captors are scared of him, then you should be downright terrified.
The man comes into view, and you’re not sure if it's the clothes, his unmasked face, the large scar across his face or the mohawk - but he’s not like the rest, not even remotely.
“ Hermano- ” The syllables roll off of his tongue in a condescending purr.
Looking between Mateo and the presumed dead body, he sighs heavily. Walking towards the bars of your confinement, he doesn’t even notice you - just extends a boot and roughly kicks the body. It doesn’t stir.
Even in the shine of moonlight, you can see the hard glint in his eye. He is not pleased, and by the sheer panic in Mateo’s brown eyes you can see that he knows it too.
“Vaas-”
He, Vaas, places a hand on his narrow hip and shushes him repeatedly - with the other, he beckons him closer towards him. You don’t have to have any experience in reading a room to understand that Mateo might not make it through the night, because even though Vaas’s body spells one thing, those dark, green eyes spell another. They spell danger, of the terminal kind.
“Vaas, please- he was shouting and trying to-”
Vaas grabs him by the back of the neck like a misbehaving pup, pinching the skin roughly in his palm as he pulls Mateo close. Even in the dark lighting you can see the broken skin across his knuckles, the dried blood caking his hands.
If he kills Mateo right in front of you, you doubt it’d be the worst thing he’s done tonight.
“What did I tell you, man? What did I say?” His voice dies down to a whisper, smothering Mateo's stammer like water on a fire.
They murmur to each other lowly, quietly. Whatever they’re saying you can’t quite make-out, and you’re hardly about to ask them to speak up. Mateo speaks quickly, Vaas slowly.
You avert your eyes and keep them on the bloodied sand in front of you, hoping - praying - that you don’t have to sit there and witness someone else's death today.
Their words begin to fade off, and after a second of silence that you hope in your life to never have to sit in ever again - Vaas pushes the captor away from him with a strong arm. Mateo trips and stumbles in the uneven sand, standing there dumbly for a second before Vaas shouts. He flinches, but still makes no move until Vaas makes a run at him, and Mateo sprints from the scene at break-neck speed.
Part of it might even be funny if everything wasn’t so downright terrifying.
“Fucking amateurs.” Vaas spits on the ground and turns to another poor soul. “Someone take this corpse out of my fucking pen.”
Two men immediately break to do so, opening your cage, breaking the dead man's bonds and dragging him away unceremoniously. You doubt he will be buried.
With nothing left now but a smear of damp sand and the scent of copper mixing with the salty air, Vaas turns to you. Finally taking notice, his eyes slip over you like a cool wash of water.
It’s an odd way of being seen. It’s like his gaze is taking you in and yet not at all. Something bristles along your spine, and you feel your back straighten of its own accord.
With a gait that could only be described as a stalk, he edges towards your side of the cage. The heel of his boots drag through the thick sand slowly. He reviews you silently.
You try to maintain his gaze, an odd feeling that swells in your gut telling you it would be very unwise to look away - but the way he looks at you, empty yet hungry, is intimidating, beyond so.
He whistles.
“Look at you,” he says in his own tongue almost mockingly, dragging his feet to a slow halt next to you. He whistles again, but it’s an odd, off-beat tune you do not recognise. “ Not a single tear, no.” Tilting his head, he looks down at you. “ You’re something else, aren’t you, eh?”
You keep your face impassive, try to act attentive but ignorant to his words. You’d much rather keep your cards to your chest and feign ignorance - the longer those around you don’t know about you understanding what they say, even if only loosely, the better.
He smacks his hand heavily on the side of the bamboo right next to your head and you can’t help the strangled yelp that slips free of your mouth. You swallow heavily.
Vaas sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, holds onto it with his teeth for a second. “English, right?” Warily, you nod. He points to the damp, crimson patch in the sand where your momentary companion previously sat. “Sorry about your, uh, friend. Did you know him?”
You shake your head. Vaas nods, purses his lips.
It might have been an awkward interaction had it all not been laced with terror and fear.
“Not a talker?” He doesn’t wait for you to even reply. “Not a problem, hermana . I’m sure we’ll change that. Talk… no talk… it don’t matter. Can you cry? Eh?” He makes a crybaby sound with his hands, mocks a blubbering child with a face made of stone. Your expression doesn’t change much, but he must see the flickers of confusion on your face. “Hm? No? Not much of a crier either? Shame, real shame. You see, chica, I find this all works a lot quicker for me when you can put on a show, you know? For your familia . They rich?” He drags his eyes down you again, moves his head side to side as if unsure. “We’ll find out.”
There’s a commotion somewhere behind him, just past another cage and it takes your eyes just for a second - and that’s all it takes for Vaas to strike.
He immediately crouches, arm darting through the bars with the speed of an arrow; fingers pinching underneath your throat as he sharply drags your face and attention back to him. Your face almost bumps into his with the surprise of it all.
“Don’t fucking look away from me when I’m talking to you!” He shouts, and his voice goes raspy with the strength of it. “Just… keep those pretty eyes on me, okay?” He whistles, like you’re little but a dog. “ On me .”
You let out a strangled affirmative sound, but his grip is by no means choking, just commanding. It’s with no large use of the imagination to know that if he wanted to, he very much could.
Something lights up in his face in seeing your reaction, and even in the darkness with little but the light of fire and moonlight to see, you can spot it clearly. “Ah, you see, chica - now that works. No tears?” He makes a noncommittal sound. “Fear will do.”
He lets your throat go, but you daren’t move your face away for fear of retribution again. So despite your discomfort; the twinge in your neck from the awkward angle, the bruising along your wrists, the burning stretch of your spine suspended - you push it to the back of your mind.
All that’s left is his endless stare.
He looks away from you, and you take that precious moment to blink the soreness out of your eyes. Whistling once, he points and clicks over at you. One of his presumed subordinates scurries to collect something before jogging over to Vaas. Handing it to him with a quick flick, shuffling his feet as if he can’t wait to be out of his presence, Vaas dismisses him with a quick point of his chin.
It’s your driver's license.
“Okay, who are you then?” He mutters to himself, hums as he reads over your I.D aloud. He calls out your date of birth, your home country, but pauses at your name of all things. Rolling around the syllables of it, he briefly glances at you from under his brow as if waiting for confirmation. “Pretty name.”
You smother your surprised scoff, if only barely.
“Well,” he says your name again, as if he just enjoys the sound of it, “Let’s see if your family likes you enough to want you back, eh?”
Your heart pulses, clenches. A wild rush of adrenaline sears through your veins as he makes to walk away, and panic bubbles and threatens to overflow. The thought of your life being weighed against your family’s bank account fills you with dread.
You already know what the answer will be.
Sliding your I.D into his front pocket, Vaas stands, makes to walk away. Despite every vessel in your body, every survival instinct that’s been in your blood since birth - your genes, your ancestry - you call out.
“Call my employers.”
He stops mid-step, and you clench your teeth. Had your hands been free, you might have struck yourself. Stupid, stupid, stupid-
“What was that?” He says, cups a hand to his ear - and you know he’s giving you a chance to be quiet, to shut the fuck up. You even doubt this is an opportunity he gives many, if any at all. “Sorry, hermana , for a minute it sounded as if you were giving me orders.”
He turns fully towards you, and you see that same look he had given Mateo just minutes ago.
You must have swallowed a stone at some point, you’re sure of it. Your forehead and upper lip tingles with fresh beads of perspiration, and it has little to do with the sticky humidity of a tropical night and everything to do with the psychopath staring at you.
“If you call the company I work for, you’ll get more.”
Silence drifts between you two like smoke. It’s choking, heavy, hazy; makes you want to claw at your throat and shove your words back down them.
Vaas doesn’t lunge or break at you like you almost expect ( though that potential seems to always be there, lingering behind him like a permanent shadow ) - he doesn’t so much as even move. He just stands there, staring down at you.
“So, I’m not hearing things - you’re - you’re telling me what to fucking do?” He takes a sharp step back towards the cage and you press yourself against the bars on reflex. “You’re playing a dangerous fucking game but you kno- you know what?” He crouches back down, rests his elbows on his knees and pointedly stares at you, makes a show of listening. “Go on - if you’ve got something to say, let’s hear it.”
It does not escape your notice that the sounds around you have gone deafeningly quiet.
“You’ll get the best price from my company for me,” you croak, and by God it’s a harrowing sentence to come from your own lips.
Something akin to a surprised laugh falls from his lips. “You’re telling me your company, right, the people you work for, would pay more for your life than your family?”
You resent the way he frames the question, but you nod. “You’d look for, what, a few thousand for a head? Maybe a little more depending on age?” Vaas doesn’t reply, but you don’t let his stare put you off. “Triple it. Don’t settle for less than ten-k.”
The silence returns, but there’s an odd energy to it this time. It’s not so much filled with danger as it is contemplation.
Another second ticks by, before Vaas wheezes a laugh.
“You know, fuck it,” he shrugs, a vindictive smile creasing the skin around his eyes. “Ten-thousand, huh?” He laughs again. “I have to give it to you, chica, you have some balls , eh?” He smacks a hand against the bamboo bars and you jolt again. “Do you know the amount of people I’ve had come through here, huh? Take a guess. Go on, take a fucking guess-”
“I-”
“Thousands!” He shouts. “Fucking thousands of crying, bitching, bleeding motherfuckers and I have never once seen someone try to give me - me - advice on how much they’re worth.” He shakes his head in disbelief, those distinctive eyes piercing through yours. “Never. And I’ve seen some dumb fucks.”
“But you know what?” He continues, “I’ll give you a chance, why fucking not? If you say ten-k, then that’s what I’ll ask for.” He pokes his head through the bar, crowds your space again, lowers his voice until it’s nothing but a threatening whisper against your skin. “Anything less, then we’ll break it down, yeah? Make it simpler for them.” Reaching out, he grabs you by the cheek this time, pinches the soft flesh of it between his thumb and forefinger. “See how much they pay per slice.”
He lets go, gives you a stiff pat on the cheek that feels more akin to a slap, and stands, walking away.
“Ten thousand, hermano, can you fucking believe that?” He says to a guard, chuckling almost hysterically, “I know you could, you’d pay twenty just for a taste, eh?”
He pushes his friend so sharply he almost falls over.
With one last look at you over his shoulder, Vaas rubs a thumb across his chin with a grin. His mocking taunts in his own language follow him, fading away until he’s out of sight.
A shaky sigh that sounds a little too much like a whimper slips free of your lips.
You had just gambled your life on the will of your employers, and the severity of your situation falls onto you all at once like rubble; suffocating under the weight of your own gall and hubris.
There was little else to do but wait - wait and fucking pray you had not overestimated your own worth.