Chapter Text
The first thing that she registers is that she is wet.
Not…that sort of wet, but that she is drenched, shivering, and already feveredly on her hands and knees, groping the ground for her missing vape.
It would be just her luck, that she tripped up in that stupid cave and spat out somewhere else because she wasn’t an idiot—ten minutes ago she was making the questionable choice of spelunking and now she was somewhere grassy, dark, wet, and looking for her vape.
“Fucking hell,” she mutters, cursing as she desperately hopes for her eyes to adjust. Her flashlight must’ve gotten snagged or knocked off somewhere, but that didn’t matter.
Her hands close around something that feels like her vape, victory rushing out of her lungs in a cry before it is cut short.
“Oh my fucking god.” Vape? In hand. Battery? To be found.
“You have got to be fucking kidding with me,” she decidedly does not take a drag, battery or no battery, her friends’ teasing voices in her head telling her that she was addicted. She wasn’t. She was just…very enthusiastic about it.
You couldn’t abuse substances when your intentions were pure, everyone knew that. And that’s what her intentions were. Pure.
“Please Lord, please, please, please,” she swears that she will stop smoking if this is her punishment. (She has promised this a million times before, whenever she can’t find her vape.)
Her hands close around her battery and she hurriedly slots it together with her vape, taking a victory puff.
“Oh my fucking God, thank you.” The vapors of frozen leon is practically divine on her tongue and she pathetically swallows to ignore the dryness of her mouth.
Right. Back her priorities. She was somewhere else now.
She looks up at her surroundings, a distant dread looming somewhere in the back of her mind. There is the cusp of mountain peaks in the distance, the grass beneath her giving way to a thick forest that beckons her closer.
“Well. Shit.”
She definitely isn’t home anymore. Her home was—
She wracks her brain, finding that those pieces of her, her life, who she is—terrifying gone.
Panic wells up in her breast but she pushes it down and gathers herself.
Think think think.
Who the fuck are you?
A name swims in her head, but before she can grasp it, its gone, swimming out of reach. Theres a vague sense that she is someone, but it is gone before she can settle the thought somewhere in her mind.
She takes another puff of her vape, easing her shoulders back and choosing to instead flop pathetically on her back.
Let the vultures get her, or something. What was she going to do when someone found her? Tell them she didn’t know her identity?
Wait. She has her wallet.
She shifts, reaching into her cargo pants pockets then finding it empty. Right. Nothing comes easy.
Taking another puff, she watches the vapor dissipate in front of her face and sighs.
It was nighttime, but it wasn’t cold. Not in the way that…home was, wherever it was.
She was worse than an ignorant kid who didn’t know their parents’ phone number. Granted, that wasn’t the kids fault, but the comparison made her feel less bad. She was an adult. She should know these things about herself.
Laying there, she closes her eyes, feeling the soft breeze and listening to the ruffle of the trees. At least the grass wasn’t itchy.
She wakes to the cacophony of voices, horses stamping, and her own vape tumbling out of her hands as she is hefted up by her pants.
Which, ow.
She shrieks, watching her vape split into two, her battery stark against the green grass.
“A child,” says one of the voices. “Out here? Alone?”
She thrashes in her captor’s grip, but only succeeds in giving herself a wedgie. How humiliating.
“She must have been left here, look, she doesn’t look ill.”
Hanging pathetically, she glances up at one of her captor’s and is instantly struck by how…pretty they are. Like seriously pretty. They look like they just waltzed out of a magazine or photoshoot.
And they’re dressed…medieval-y.
Right. Maybe she did buy some weird knockoff from her favorite smoke shop. The internet warned of all sorts of things, so that could be plausible.
She drops herself into a dead weight, her captor cursing something under his breath as she drops to the ground, face-first, and takes off running like the little gremlin she is.
Snatching up her vape, she resists the urge to take a hit, and focuses on darting for the treeline.
Admittedly, she doesn’t get far. There’s a ‘thwang’ behind her and she goes face-down once again, a weight around her ankles. She glances down, curses at the ropes around her ankles, and starts trying to unravel the rope.
There’s true fear now, welling in her gut. Tangible, real fear, as she glances up, one of her freakishly pretty captors jogging over.
This is the day she gets kidnapped, cut up, or sold onto some rich freak’s secret island. She’s read the files. She knows what rich freak losers get up to in private.
A tactic was using pretty people to kidnap victims. Point A and Point B were glaringly obvious because:
A. They were freakishly good-looking.
B. She was pretty sure she was getting kidnapped.
Her chest heaves—she wants to throw up—but she finally gets the ropes undone and darts into the forest. The trees are welcoming, much more welcoming than the grass field, and so she loops around a fallen oak, zig-zagging like a rabbit through the brush as her eyes dart for anything, or anywhere to hide.
She finds a hollowed out tree, but instantly marks it as too obvious, deciding to run towards where she hears water. They didn’t have dogs with them, but water is what washed up your scent, right?
Right. She read enough Warrior Cats as a kid to remember that silly little detail.
She darts for the stream, a shout going up behind her in the thicket, and dives into the water.
Wait.
She has her vape.
She shrieks, then instantly cuts it short, cursing herself to Hell and back in her head. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You stupid little bitch, you’re going to get killed.
She shoves the (dead) vape into her cargo pants pocket, the stream coming up to her knees. Wading as quickly as she can, she follows the stream upwards, hoping for a pond, or lake, or some sort of larger body of water she can hide in.
She scrabbles over a turning of rocks, arms shaking, and is blessedly silent even though victory rushes through her at the sight of a pond. The water looks clean and the thought of brain-eating amoeba is a lesser evil than probably ending up as a rich man’s dinner.
She hops in, staying close to the edge and holding in her sneeze as she hides in the clump of reeds.
And she stays still.
Birdsong chirps overhead in fast, crying beats that has her sinking into the water until her nose is just above. The trees rustle, the breeze picking up into a wind that waves the branches like hands.
Her heart hammers in her chest and she knows she is going to get sick. The water was cold and she has to fight the urge to shiver lest she ripples in the water give her away.
Its warm. You’re warm. You’re good.
She repeats the mantra in her head until it becomes fact to her mind.
She stays there, in the water. Watching. Waiting.
There’s a rustle of reeds and she whips around. The man grabs her.
They drag her kicking and screaming to their horses. At first, they attempt to tie her up, but she bites and kicks and claws until she manages to snag one of the men on the arm. It doesn’t do much against his armor, but it does have them looking at her with deep concern, like she is the crazy one here for fighting back.
She bares her teeth, snapping when they loop a thin rope around her and seat her in front of one of them.
“She’s wild,” says one of the men.
“Do you think she lives here? She ran through the trees like she was familiar with them.” The man she’s pressed up against flicks his reins, the horse taking off into a canter.
“Here? No. The trees say that they have never seen her.”
Oh great. Not only are they kidnappers, but they’re lunatics too. Talking trees? What was she in, Hyrule? None of the trees here had mouths or eyes.
“Father did say that there was a disturbance near one of the wards,” the man hums consideringly. “I expected orcs, truthfully.”
“You always expect orcs, brother.” The other one’s voice is fond. “I say that our ranging has been rather successful. We have been riding out further and further to clear their scouting parties and raid camps.”
At that, she is left silent, her disparaging mental commentary reeling.
The horses step lightly around a crop of rocks, the man’s arm coming around her to keep her seated as she sways on his mount.
She is still wet, uncomfortably so, and every bounce turns into a miserable squelch.
“Elrohir.”
The man, Elrohir, hums.
“Elrohir, look.” He turns to his brother and she does as well, resisting the urge to tell him off that pointing at someone is rude.
Because thats what he is doing. A gloved finger is pointing squarely at her.
Elrohir looks down at her, eyes widening. He isn’t looking straight at her—no, he is looking at something on her. Consciously, she reaches up to touch her wet hair, hoping that if its a bug, its a nasty crawly one that she can launch at one of them.
There’s nothing. She feels over her wet hair, pausing when she comes over her ear and tracing over a point that was very much not there before.
“Oh.” She says, dimly, suddenly aware of how young she sounds and how much larger the men are in comparison.