Chapter Text
Her eyes drift open some indiscernible amount of time later, though she doesn't think it's been very long.
She's being carried, now, still wrapped in the same blanket. Whoever's holding her is more concerned about hiding her than her comfort, based on how her body is contorted, but she doesn't complain. At least she's not still being forcibly held upright in the torture chair.
She shuts her eyes again and keeps them that way, hoping to at least fake being asleep for long enough to drift away again, but the muffled noises around her make that difficult. The feeling of movement as the person- man, she thinks- who is carrying her walks around to some unknown destination. Likely, she's going to be dropped off here, or at the very least, moved to a different vehicle for another leg of the journey to wherever it is that the people who bought her want her to be.
She knows she was bought. Perhaps not with those exact words- reward was more how they phrased it, if she recalls correctly- but the difference doesn't really matter. She's going from the torture chair to somewhere else, with hopefully enough time between the frying pan and the fire for her to wake up. Maybe even fight back, if it's going to be another torture chair. She doubts that her mother's gang would do that, but at this point, she has to keep it in consideration. Especially if they're paying out enough money to get members of a rival group to defect, at least temporarily, to get her out of there.
The man carrying her stops walking, and she hears a muffled knocking noise- reminiscent enough of knuckles rapping on a front door for her to genuinely suspect that that's what's going on- and then there's a creak, and some hushed talking. She can't make out the words, because in addition to having her eyes shut, the blanket has also been thrown over her head, making it difficult to discern what she hears. She thinks, if it's important enough, she can make it go again.
She doesn't. Best to conserve her energy. Besides, making things go again is inconsistent and unreliable at best, something she can only do for a sentence or two at a time. She shouldn't waste her energy on things that are likely greetings.
Though, for a moment, she idly wonders how strong it will be when she feels aware enough to walk around again. A sentence or two at her half-asleep, half-dead baseline, so what will it be when she's awake and alive? With her luck, still only a sentence or two, but there's always room for hope.
When she tunes back into reality, she feels the man carrying her stop in his tracks again, despite the fact that she hadn't realized he started moving. She listens for more muffled conversation, perhaps waiting for things to get tense enough for her to rewind it, but before she does, someone pulls the blanket off of her face.
The sharp cold of the air in this building- different from the warehouse, smelling of candlewax and leftovers instead of filth and rot- causes Sayeon's eyes to flutter open, nearly involuntarily. She gets a good look at the woman who pulled the blanket off of her head, and judges her to be the sort of person to be very firm and no-nonsense. Like some of her old classmates' grandmothers, though she's never met her own.
The woman's gaze slides over hers, not caring to make eye contact for more than a second. She gives all that is visible of Sayeon a once-over, and the look on her face suggests that Sayeon has come up lacking.
"How do I know she's even alive? I'm not risking anybody's necks for a body." The words that were once muffled by the blanket now come in sharp and clear, and it takes Sayeon an embarrassingly long second to realize that she's the supposed body. She wonders whose necks this woman is referring to; it must not be her alone in the house, in spite of the fact that it seems like she's in charge.
Maybe this is the Concordat that the men in the warehouse were talking about. It doesn't seem very impressive, for the sort of thing spoken about with the respect they gave it, relatively speaking.
"She opened her eyes!" The man holding her argues indignantly, and though Sayeon would quite like to turn her head to look up at him, she's saving as much of her energy as she can, just in case she has to turn back. Moving takes about as much energy as pulling on her aberrance, which she feels is probably not right in terms of energy economy and all- that would mean that she's got a lot of whatever it is that makes aberrants aberrants, if the effort of poking it would be negligible in times of health- but she just spent so long getting it all drained off of her, she can't imagine that she's right on that.
"So can a corpse, genius," The woman snaps back, which Sayeon doesn't think is quite right. Dead things don't open their eyes on their own, right?
"Are you fucking stupid, lady? Her eyes were shut, now they're not, she opened 'em up because she's awake. Take her off our hands and give us the advance." He shoves Sayeon at the woman for emphasis, which makes her flinch involuntarily. Stupid, wasting energy like that, but at least the movement gives the woman pause.
"Putting aside the fact that you've clearly never spent extended time with a body before," Which certainly has implications, though Sayeon has it on good faith that she's not going to become a dead body because of this woman, "Let me see her. I want to make sure she's not completely brain-dead from all that Rapture harvesting." She says these last two words with clear distaste. Good.
The man holding her shifts his grip so that her head faces the woman, with no effort required on her part. She supposes that she's only displayed basic reflexes up to this point, so it makes sense that this woman doesn't know that her brain is still running beyond the brainstem. She wonders how much energy she'll have to expend on this test, since she doesn't have much left. Staying awake is costing her dearly, but she needs to know what's going on.
"Corpses don't open their eyes on their own," The man holding her grumbles, and she's inclined to agree. The man standing next to him- someone she hasn't heard clearly yet- whispers something into his ear, and though Sayeon would like to strain to hear whatever he has to say on the matter, she would prefer it if this woman knows that she's awake and aware, but very, very tired.
"Hello, dear," The woman says, much softer and kinder than when she was talking to the man, and Sayeon guesses that means she's being spoken to. Funny; that hasn't happened in a very long time. She's almost taken aback by the prospect of it.
"I need you to do something for me before you fall asleep. Just... blink twice if you understand." Oh. Blinking, she can do. Not much beyond that, but blinking is automatic enough that she's not afraid to do it.
So, she blinks twice, deliberately, and the woman nods. She then holds up her index finger, keeping it still and holding it halfway between herself and Sayeon.
"Follow my finger with your eyes. When you're done with that, I'll make sure to put you in a real bed." Sayeon remembers her bed from home; she doesn't remember it being anything particularly spectacular, but in comparison to the torture chair, it's got to be heaven, right? Or at least comfortable.
She locks her eyes onto the tip of the woman's finger, and watches intently as she slowly moves it up and down and side to side. The exercise itself is easy; she remembers, from the time before she knew she was an aberrant, that tests were usually much harder. Tests were also conducted in classrooms instead of in strangers' entryways, though, so she can't call it a typical test, if she's even remembering those correctly.
"Good girl. You can go back to sleep." The woman reaches out towards Sayeon, who instinctively flinches back. Another stupid waste of energy, especially considering that the woman's hand is hanging limply in the air; she must not have intended on doing anything with it, let alone hurting Sayeon. The woman pulls away, and Sayeon can relax fully, since there's now very little threat of getting dragged around by the hair to wherever she's supposed to go.
The woman frowns, and Sayeon takes this as her cue to close her eyes again. Maybe they'll believe that she's asleep; nothing else is going to be said to her, at least. She hopes that she can stay awake long enough to feel a bed again.
"Take her down the stairs, to your right. There's a spare bed down there. Once she's there, you can come back and talk about that advance." The woman's voice- still clear, since the blanket is resting somewhere between her shoulder and the ground- is back to the firm, no-nonsense tone it had taken before. Sayeon hears no grumbling this time, only the lulling feeling of someone walking while holding her.
The back and forth of each foot hitting the ground nearly lulls her to sleep alone, and the only thing that helps her stay afloat is the woman's voice hissing sharply across the room.
"And put those blankets on her!"
Now there's grumbling, wordless, as she shifts around in the man's grip. He's the one moving her around, freeing up one hand for a moment to push open a door. The next thing she knows, they're going down a set of stairs, presumably to that spare bed the woman was talking about.
By time she's laid down on the bed- tossed, really- she's nearly asleep enough that she barely registers the feeling of the mattress beneath her. A mattress! She forgot, between then and now, how comfortable these things are! She feels as though she's floating away on a cloud, with how weightless she is, no stiff joints and aching muscles from drifting in horrible positions for days at a time and certainly no bone-deep pain keeping her semi-conscious!
She has no idea if the man follows the Concordat woman's instruction. She's dead asleep by time she exhales in relief.
She's even less awake than the last time she was aware.
She's only being pulled up for a moment, but this is enough to make her whine like a dog, nearly without thinking. It takes her a few syrupy seconds to recall that it's been a long time since she could make any sort of sound with her voice. Is this the effect of getting out of the torture chair?
"I know, I know," A voice- she may recognize it, she may not- consoles her, rubbing her back with a warm hand. She doesn't pull away from it, though she thinks she probably should, and instead lets it support her weight as it presses her into a sitting position. She doesn't know why she's sitting up, why she can't still be asleep, but she's long since given up making true sense of the world.
"Here. Drink this, and you can go back to sleep." Something is pressed to her mouth, and she's familiar enough with the feeding ritual to know to expect broth. It keeps her alive enough to keep making the stuff for the torture chair, and that's all they need, right? Just a few swallows, and then she can go back to drifting.
She drinks the stuff, though she recoils slightly at the taste. It's not the broth she was expecting, instead, it's some warm liquid that tastes more sweet than anything else. It goes down easily enough, so it's probably not poison, which is all she cares about.
"It's ginger tea. I put a little honey in it. It's nothing bad, I promise." The voice must have felt her jump back from the unfamiliar taste, though she knows she's had ginger tea before because Samin gave it to her sometimes, if she was sick. She thinks her mother might have, too, a very long time ago, but that's not relevant to the present moment.
"That's it," Quiet encouragement, now that she's drinking a little more. She still hasn't even opened her eyes, instead allowing whoever is supporting her to do the work fully. She doesn't drink fast, because the tilt of the mug won't let her, but she hopes it's nearly empty. She doesn't like being awake again, not least because she feels feverish and achey. Maybe she caught the flu, on top of everything else.
"You're going to keep feeling horrible as your body adjusts to not having your essence constantly siphoned off," The voice explains. "You'll be out for the next few days. Ryujin will bring you more ginger tea, and soup when you feel up to it." The explanation doesn't make much sense- who is Ryujin?- but maybe it will when she remembers it later.
"Why do I have to?" Another voice, younger, asks from further away. She tries to lift her head away from the mug to look towards it, but the person holding her just presses the tea more insistently. Sayeon isn't going to argue too harshly against that.
"You said you wanted to help people? Here. Help." The voice- the woman from earlier, she thinks, maybe, though she doesn't know how long it's been- commands the younger one. Maybe the younger one is the mysterious Ryujin. Mysteries are so satisfying when they're solved.
"But she's not- !" The voice of maybe-Ryujin starts to argue, but she's interrupted by the person holding Sayeon up.
"Until those people come to pick her up, she is, and you will treat her like it. She's an aberrant just like us, and no Rapture scars or family ties are going to change that." The woman seems like she's going to say more, but when Sayeon sips at the mug again, it loudly announces its emptiness.
The mug is taken away, and so is the hand that is holding her upright- the latter more gently than the former. Something cool presses against her face as soon as she's lying down, and blankets are pulled back over her torso.
Needing no further excuses, Sayeon allows the rest of the conversation to drift past her consciousness, and dives headfirst back into another dreamless sleep.