Work Text:
They throw her and Kenny into the same cell, Raven- Gladiolus, who she'd thought she'd honestly thought she'd never see again- in a separate cell next to them. Guess they're not scared of Kenny waking up and the both of them escaping, at least, not at the moment. That, or else they ran out of cells, because she can see someone else on Gladiolus's other side, hunched over and quiet.
Tomoha huddles near Kenny, rolls him over so that he's completely on his back and not kept in the way that they threw him in. He'll be sore when he wakes up, but at least this way it won't be as bad as it could be.
Gladiolus clearly notices him, too, because he looks over at him before minutely pursing his lips; she'd nearly forgotten how small his expressions always were, and how closely anyone needed to look at him to tell how he was feeling at any given time. He always keeps a neutral expression, only in tiny details revealing his thoughts, though part of her had kind of assumed that he did that on purpose because of how seriously he took his position as a guard in the house under Mateo.
She glances around for another moment, trying to see if there's anything that can help her out of the cell, a conveniently-shaped bobby pin or something, but no such luck. She can't even get her handcuffs off, or Kenny's for that matter, and Gladiolus and the stranger are both problems in their own rights. She trusts Gladiolus somewhat, in that he's probably not going to purposely get her or Kenny killed or hurt somehow, but she's got nothing for the stranger, nor does she know what stake Gladiolus holds in all of this.
All that she can do is stick near Kenny. Tomoha gently moves his hair out of his face, and leans down to whisper, "Are you in there, Kenny?"
She waits for a moment of silence, to see if anyone's going to get mad at her for making noise, and when nobody says anything, she continues. "If you are, if you can hear me, please be okay. I don't want you to be stuck like this. Please make it out of there."
With that, she tucks her legs into her chest and rests her head on her knees. There's nothing that she can do right now, so she waits.
"I'm here! I can hear you! I swear I'll get the hell out of this place- !"
"He can't hear you, you know."
Tomoha lifts her head up and looks over at Gladiolus. He isn't looking at her, instead staring at the door that their captor walked out of not too long ago.
"I don't mean to be rude, but you shouldn't go around with that false hope. He'll wake up when he wakes up, for better or for worse. You should focus on getting yourself out of here."
She blindly picks at a loose thread in her overalls while still looking over at Gladiolus. She wonders if she should grace that with a response at all, or if she should waste her time and energy getting angry. It won't help her gain anything, but it'll make her feel better about this whole situation if she can get her frustration out for a moment.
She shouldn't do that. She shouldn't take all of this out on him, because he's just trying to help in his own weird and sharp way. Still, she's upset by what he said, so she tonelessly replies, "Maybe I want to talk to him anyway. It can't hurt any more than being stuck here."
Gladiolus doesn't seem to have any response to that, so the room falls silent again.
She knows why they took her. They said it themselves- "Leverage." They want to use her as bait, to lure Rayne in, to get her to trade herself in for Tomoha's safety. They don't care about her, not really, because she isn't infected and she doesn't know them already, but they take her, handcuff her, and blindfold her anyway. She tries to fight them off, but the man with the weird skeleton-fingers was the least of her worries; the woman with braids takes her down easily, carrying Kenny in one arm all the while. It's embarrassing, honestly, to know that after all of her effort in trying to make herself better and stronger, she was still taken out so easily.
She hates knowing that all that she's good for is being bait; she doesn't know what she hates more, the idea that Rayne's going to come save her or the idea that she won't. The only reason that she knows Rayne's even alive is because of a few stolen moments with her, a handful of seconds when she'd run over to her and Kenny and Sam to find the woman and all the blood.
They take Gladiolus.
He'd been talking to the stranger in hushed tones, incomprehensible to her at this distance and with the poor acoustics of this place, and when he leaves she's stuck dealing with the stranger's weird staring.
His hair is long and unkempt, and it covers his face to the point that she can't tell if she could recognize him or not, but she can still feel his staring like she's a bug under a microscope, or like he's a dog and she's a particularly interesting toy.
She's uncomfortably reminded of Gressil, so she looks away. Rayne killed him anyway, same as Tomoha had killed Mateo. Neither of them are any danger to her here and now, so she should focus on the legitimate threats that she's dealing with- of which the stranger isn't one at the moment. He's of no real concern unless he starts something.
The cell is still bare, and the most useful thing that she's got in her possession right now are her hair ribbons. They stole her knife and searched her pockets for any other weapons before they even put her into the car, not that she made it easy for them. They probably searched Kenny, too, but she checks his pockets, just to be sure. She finds nothing in there, either, though that might also be because he doesn't tend to use his pockets anyway.
Finding nothing else useful to do, she goes back to whispering to Kenny in hushed tones.
"I don't know where we are. The people that took us, they want people who are infected, people like- like Rayne. They seem to think she's infected, and maybe she is. I don't know anymore. They took Gladiolus too, but they left Sam. Rayne fought off the woman who took us both, but Sam, he- it didn't look good, Kenny. I'm scared for him, but he's got Rayne, so she'll do everything she can for him, I know that. I trust her with that. I might be stupid for it, but if I can't have a little faith, then what's the point, you know? You have to have hope in these situations. I guess that's why I'm talking to you."
"Please wake up soon."
Tomoha doesn't say just how confident she is in their captor's words, but the fact that she's mentioning it at all probably says enough. She remembers the last time she saw Rayne, the last time before Mateo, and she thinks that Rayne being infected would make a lot more sense than if she isn't. She doesn't like it, she doesn't want it to be true, she wants Rayne to have just miraculously come back to life with no repercussions at all whatsoever, but there's a difference between having hope in nearly hopeless situations and just being delusional.
Kenny hears Tomoha's voice, cutting through the oppressive silence of the void that he's stuck sharing with the Murk. She's silent now, seemingly waiting on him to get bored and just give in. It's a war of attrition, but only between the two of them, and Kenny knows that he cannot lose.
It would be useful to be the kind of infected that Rayne is, he thinks, but he shuts that train of thought down before it can get any further than that. This Murk doesn't seem like the type that would willingly cede control at any point, instead piloting his body entirely. He would barely even be okay with the timeshare-type arrangement that Rayne seemed to have going on, and this Murk seems like much more of a control freak than any that would agree to something like Rayne's got.
Speaking of Rayne, it's clear that Tomoha knows the truth about her, or at least suspects it. The kidnappers probably didn't convince her so much as suggest a theory that Tommie had already subconsciously held; after all, she wouldn't listen if someone who'd kidnapped her had said that and laid out evidence and reasoning behind what they said, no sane person would, but the fact of the matter is that Tommie felt that it was worth mentioning to him. That means that, on some level, she believes it.
That's Rayne's problem, at this point. Not his.
And Sam. He doesn't know what happened, what could have made it so Tommie sounds so worried, but whatever it is, all that he can do is trust Rayne too. He trusted her then, when he kept her secret, and all that he can do is carry that forward. Even if the Murk gives up right now- glancing at her, it seems unlikely- he's still stuck as a prisoner who-knows-where, with Tomoha and Gladiolus against an enemy that they know little to nothing about, other than that they're most likely all infected.
Three humans can't fight that. Two humans can't fight that, if they didn't take Gladiolus as a bargaining chip like they probably took Tommie for.
He looks over at the Murk again. She sits across from him, smiling serenely like she knows exactly what he's thinking.
He doesn't need her.
But she needs him. And maybe he can use that.
They bring her food. It's human food, too; she doesn't think there's any meat on her plate at all, of any kind. There's nothing for Kenny, so they clearly don't think he's waking up anytime soon.
She eats in silence, watching Kenny to see if their captors are wrong about that. She'd be tempted to pretend that she needs to pee, so that she can try to escape once they take her out of this part of the place, or at least be able to get a decent look at the floor plan and layout of somewhere other than what seems to be a repurposed basement. She's hesitant to leave Kenny alone, though, especially since Gladiolus isn't back yet and the stranger is still here.
She puts her plate down and mourns the fact that there's practically nothing that she can do with a plastic fork. Still, she puts it in her pocket in case it winds up being useful anyway, possibly when she's making her escape. It'd be a good makeshift weapon in the absence of anything else.
She goes back to watching the stairs, and seeing if anyone's going to be making their way down anytime soon. It's been a few hours since Gladiolus was taken, so she's expecting him to come down anytime now, or else not to see him again.
Suddenly, there's a strange noise from where Kenny's lying. It sounded almost like a grunt, or an aborted attempt at speech, but either way it gets her attention and her head snaps to look down at him. His eyebrows are furrowed, and his hands have clenched into fists. She doesn't know what's going on in his head, doesn't know what the Murk is trying to do to him, but either way all that she can do is rest a hand on his shoulder and try to talk to him some more. This is something that Kenny has to get through on his own, as much as she hates to admit it.
"No matter what it's telling you, I'm here for you. Rayne and Sam too. You're gonna be okay."
There's a moment after that, when everything seems to go still. Even the air feels like it's holding its breath, and Tomoha feels like something is about to happen. Someone is on a precipice, and she doesn't know if she's there too.
Kenny's eyes open. For a moment, she's terrified that whatever's staring out of them isn't him.