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If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available…
Jillian had lived in Sijan hall her first two years at the academy. Had read his biography when she was in high school, busily writing letters to congressmen and senators and playing a sport every season -- cross country, basketball, track -- because service academies liked it when students were well-rounded and athletic.
Lance Sijan had tried to escape the Vietcong despite a leg ruined by compound fractures. Had nearly succeeded. Had died, from torture and neglect and pneumonia, without ever giving up information.
Rocket-Man was screaming, somewhere in the background. His leg was broken so badly the bone had been forced through the skin, like Lance's had been, and the sounds he was making were barely human.
"Jordan. Earth. Sector 2814." Highball moaned. One of the Chechen separatists back-handed him across the face, and his head lolled forward, a thin line of spittle and blood dripping from his mouth. He shook his head, lifted it, and spat directly into the man's face. "Sector 2814. Jordan." The words were thick, slurred. He'd stopped making sense yesterday, the monotonous recitation of name, rank, and serial number becoming jumble together with this Earth/sector 2814 gibberish. "My- my wingman needs medical attention. A doctor. The Geneva convention says-"
Their interrogator hit him again. They weren't even legitimate members of the main separatist movement, but some kind of extremist splinter cell with no connection to the Republic of Ichkeria, willing to use any tactics to strike back at the Russians, and anyone else who got in their way, which right now, included the three of them.
"Jordan. Captain Hal Jordan. S-serial n-number... look, I can't remember what it is, okay?"
She would not say anything, she promised herself, when their captors leered at her and grabbed at her breasts and ass through her torn flightsuit. It could be worse, she reminded herself, as one of them grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head up, drawing a finger down the side of her face and observing in accented English that she was, "Such a lovely woman. My men would enjoy the task immensely. Are you sure you have nothing to tell us, Captain Jordan?"
"Go. To. Hell," Jillian snarled at him. "And get your fucking hands off me, or I swear to baby Jesus I will cut all your fingers off."
He hit her, then. It made bright sparks flash behind her eyes, and the world went grey for a moment.
"--kill you! Leave her alone, you sonuvabitch!"
It could be worse, she chanted silently, concentrating on breathing and blinking the fog away. Could be worse. Her cheekbone throbbed with a raw, hot pain, probably fractured.
It could be worse.
Rocket-Man's screams had turned into low, hoarse sobs. God, what were they doing to him?
They had her by the hair again, rough hands ripping open the neck of her flight suit, and the filthy, sweat-soaked black t-shirt beneath it. "All you need to do is give us something, anything, and we will stop," the interrogator was saying. "You want us to stop, yes? To give your comrade the medicine?"
"I'm not giving you anything," she said, and her voice didn't shake at all. She was surprised, distantly, by how calm it sounded, how steady. Talking sent a stab of pain through her cheek and left eyesocket, but she continued anyway. "Go ahead and rape me. You probably can't even get it up."
Rocket-Man screamed again, high and inhuman.
"Yellow!" Highball shouted. "It doesn't work on yellow. We're decimated, understrength, almost the entire corps is untrained recruits who've never even been out of their home solar systems oh God leave them alone. I can't tell you anything else. Please, please, leave them alone."
"Lies!" the interrogator shouted. The thud of his fist hitting Highball's stomach was dull, much quieter than the slaps had been. Highball doubled over, making a broken, gagging sound. "Do not mock me, American. I will ask you one more time, and if you give me any more of this science fiction bullshit, I will break one of her fingers. Where is-"
"Yellow," Highball groaned. "D-doesn't work... on yellow."
The sound of her little finger snapping was like dried wood breaking. All her promises not to scream went out the window then.
Highball sobbed curses at them, got back-handed across the face again, and went limp, out like a light.
They left them alone then, locking the door behind them.
Jillian knelt on the floor cradling her left hand against her chest and sucking air in through her teeth, willing herself not to be sick. Every heartbeat sent pain throbbing through her broken finger.
Standing up made her light-headed, nauseous, so she let herself fall back to her knees and crawled/shuffled toward Highball, who lay on the floor of the cell in a boneless heap.
He groaned when she touched his shoulder, his eyes opening to dazed slits. " 'risia?"
"That was clever," she said. Because it had been. Even concussed and panicked and desperate, he had still not broken, had actually mocked them, pulling that sci-fi channel stuff about power rings and spacemen out of his memory or maybe even making it up on the spot. "Did you see his face? I thought he was going to have a stroke when you started in on that comicbook stuff."
"Lied," he slurred, his head lolling against her arm and his eyes falling shut again. "It works on yellow now. Everyone know how small our numbers are. It's not... not... everyone knows."
"Thank you," she said, knowing that he probably couldn't hear it, too far gone in whatever concussed delirium he'd retreated into. "For distracting them." Rape couldn't have hurt as much as torture. Would have been as bad as other things they could have done, but that didn't mean the thought of one of those men violating her didn't make her feel sick.
"Sorry I got you into this," he breathed. "Don't- don't tell Guy I told them anything. S'all lies anyway. Lies and things they already know. Just... don't tell Guy."
"I won't," she promised. Technically, you were only supposed to give your name, rank, and serial number, but POWs had done what Hal had done before, given their captors the names of comicbook characters or movie stars when asked for the identity of people in their units, said that they served under Captain Steve Rogers, that their wingmen were Peter Parker and Bruce Banner.
It wasn't until weeks later, after they' had been rescued and awarded medals, and she'd been sent back in to break up the Chechen splinter cell's encampment and been rescued from a mission gone disastrously wrong by Green Lantern -- by two Green Lanterns -- that she realized that Highball -- that Hal -- had not been making things up or borrowing information from some book or movie. Why he kept apologizing for getting her and Rocket-Man captured, insisting that he should have been able to save them all, that it was his fault.
Why, when a friend of his visited the three of them in the hospital after they were rescued and slid what she'd thought at the time was an Air Force Academy ring onto Hal's left hand, because all the fingers on his right were broken, he'd rolled onto his side and clutched his hand to his chest and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a choked off sob, while John flirted awkwardly with Jillian and they both pretended not to notice Hal trying not to cry.
She didn't cry until months later, in the therapist's office, when she tried to describe how she'd nearly throttled Hal during sex, his weight pinning her to the bed going from sexy to terrifying in an instant and filling her with the sudden need to getawaygetawaynownownow. Because it was letting those bastards win, just like Hal was letting them win when he kept the ring that wasn't an academy ring after all on while flying. She'd thought, when they had first met, that he wasn't afraid of anything.
She'd been wrong. He was afraid of letting people down, of watching his friends suffer and die, and she was afraid of hands that were too rough and being trapped and anything that felt even remotely like someone grabbing her hair. She let the darker blonde roots grow out, because even a hairdresser's comparatively gentle touch was too much, too similar.
After Star Sapphire had tried and failed to possess her, she had Hal fuck her in midair, suspended in a giant green bubble between their aircraft, and she went down on him afterward, and moved each of his hands to the side of her head, letting him hold her in place while she ran her tongue up and down the length of him, refusing to be afraid of the fingers in her hair.
After they landed, she went to the salon on base and got highlights put in. She only flinched once.
***