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papaver-decervicatus · 27 days

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Cat/Mouse/Den: Pt. 6, Mouse Trapped

Now it's Mouse's turn in the hot seat after she is captured by Kortac. But, what if getting away is actually the worst thing that could happen?

CW: Obsession, stalking, canon typical violence, intrusive thoughts, unsanitary wound care, misogynistic comments

AN: Hello everyone! Wow, life has been a straight up doozy. Unfortunately, I ended up having to leave where I was because it was not safe and my whole life went on pause for a good 8 months while I was at my previous place. I just wanted to let everyone know how much this community means to me. At my absolute worst, believing I deserved the ways in which I was being hurt, I would look at all the lovely things people have said about my writing. I just wanted to take a moment to say, no one should be hit by a partner under any circumstance. If they tell you it was an accident, it was not if it happens multiple times, especially not if it happens repeatedly in the same way. It's hard to see when you're in it, but I promise you deserve better. No one should have to face public humiliation for how they dress from a partner. No one should be told that their trauma is inconvenient by a partner. If your partner ever says "I do not respect you, I don't even like you," please do not stay to try and make it work. Nothing you do can be enough for those people, but every single one of you liking/sharing/commenting/enjoying this story has shown me that I am enough. I am now safe, in my own apartment, free from that experience. And I want you to know, you all gave me an incredible amount of strength in ways I will never be able to repay you, so I may as well just update the damn story! But enough about me, lets get back to it! This chapter has been in editing for a literal year (whoops!). I hope the length, the angst, and the next two chapters make up for it!

Prev | Pt. 6, Mouse Trapped | 5.1k words | Next

The heavy footfalls echoing closer to her position in the compound throb in time with the blood pooling in Mouse’s wrists bound above her head. She hears them approaching with a certain determination that she’s sure unlike the dozens of other sets, these are determined to reach her. It’s only been three hours inside this dark-lit room in a KorTac black site. Her stakeouts are, at minimum, twice as long. Even so, her contorting muscles ache as she awaits her interrogator with bated breath and low hopes.

She’s gotten out of a lot of things over the years, getting into even more than she can remember. Everyone’s luck runs out, she won’t hold her breath this time. The footsteps stalk ever closer, and every nerve in her body alights in pure prey instinct. She wants to gnaw and chew and bite and scratch at whatever comes through that door, she wants to run or crawl or flee with every fiber of her being. She takes a desperate shuddering breath in and an equally labored breath out as the thundering steps stop somewhere behind her.

She must seem unaffected. Unfrightened. Uncaring. If she has any hope of getting one over on her captor. She will not even entertain the thought that she will get tortured.

The door behind her opens after a series of three, heavy, multi-spring locks, are undone. She can pick them later with the multitool she’s kept on her person, strapped on a hidden thigh garter beneath her pants. Each key has 7 pins, 21 pins total. She can crack one in 15 seconds if she’s smart about it. Locks will take under a minute total, adding that to the 23 seconds that it will take to undo her gear to get to the pick it-

The figure behind her does not move to get closer to her. Instead, it looms ominously behind her. The air in the room gains an otherworldly oppressiveness like the devil himself has just frozen her to her spot in the ninth layer of hell. Suddenly, she feels arctic cold as the locks all slide back into their places.

Trapped. She thinks, chewing at the inside of her lip.

The hulking mass behind her only takes one full step, and its back is now nearly flush with hers. Its head is somewhere much higher than her own. She feels the warmth of another person and she has to fight her animal instincts to get closer to it and beg for salvation.

The figure takes an inordinate amount of time inspecting her holdings, crouching, craning, but never touching, around her confines. She studies the black wall in front of her with serious intent to remain composed. Its uniform smells distinctly of over-sanitation masking any human scent- likely the wearer so often got into bloodbaths that repeated cleanings have made the thing over-saturated with bleach.

She lets out a stutter of breath when one massive hand reaches down to her shoulder. Despite her clothing and the tac gloves, the touch burns and she wants more.

“Guten abend. Wie get est ihnen?” König asks softly.

Only fucking König would ask how a captured prisoner was doing like he was asking his dinner date how her day was.

I’m doing fucking shit, thanks for asking, King. She thinks.

He gets closer, bending down and nearly resting his chin on the opposing shoulder to where his hand dwarfs her entire shoulder blade. He is so close if she were to turn her head, she could nuzzle into the soft fabric of the hood that covers his face and spills onto her form. He is so close, that she can smell the remains of a cherry-flavored cigarette on his breath hidden behind the freshness of stringent aftershave and tea-tree hair oil above the nauseating smell of bleach from his uniform. He is so close she could bite his fingers and taste some of his blo-

“I asked you how you were doing, Maus.” He whispers her name with a false sweetness that makes her stomach flip. She steadies her traitorous heart with a fake huff.

“Hmm,” She hums, tossing her head playfully to the side where his hand is. Her cheek nearly rests on the course fabric of its covering. “I’d be doin’ much better not tied to the goddamn ceiling.”

She expects a sharp backhand for that one, or at the very least an amused refusal. To her infinite surprise, neither happens. The giant devil on her shoulder lets out a gentle chuckle and retracts his body, but not after a gentle squeeze to the sore muscles between her neck and arm.

“But of course, Fürstin.” He says, voice sweet as honey and laced with a smile she can taste behind the hood. She feels a massive hand tenderly embrace itself around her right wrist and she hears the hollow cla-chck of a knife being unsheathed. She stops studying the wall just in time to catch the glint of a knife cutting the paracord used to affix her to the metal hook above her head. He brings the 3 odd feet of now limp rope, along with her hand, to her left hand, but before he does anything “Lean back a little,” he says, and she does. She stops leaning back when her ass hits his thigh and she shudders with just how desperately fucked she is. He ties her right wrist to her still-hanging left wrist, both now not entirely above her head.

He tugs on his handiwork, and seemingly satisfied, he reaches down to put his arm without the knife in the crook behind her knees. He stills experimentally, anticipation practically dripping from his now motionless fingers. “Are you going to be a good girl?” He purrs, holding the knife tantalizingly close to the rope from which she is still hanging. She lets out an indignant puff of air.

“Only one way to find out, my majesty…” She purrs back.

She can feel his diaphragm rumble with a jovial ‘Mhmm’ that fades into a satisfied laugh in response.

In one fluid motion, he cuts the remaining chord and she falls into his waiting arm. With the same grace she so admires on the battlefield, he swoops her into his arms in a bridal carry. She gasps tucked into his warm body. Yet again, his body shakes when he laughs at her little outburst. Her face flushes and once again as he gets onto his knees and gently deposits her onto the ground.

The cold concrete of the floor digs through her tac pants as she sits sideways, König sits cross-legged in front of her. Her tied wrists lay in front of her body. She tries to catch her breath. He looks at her with some emotion she’s never seen in his eyes before, pupils dilated leaving only a thin, icy ring clinging to the bloodshot white. In the dimly lit room, she fails to catch her breath.

He sighs looking at her hands. He puts his own up, palms to her as though promising a frightened prey animal he means no harm before he can pluck it from its trap.

Without a word, he takes her bound hands in his and gently rubs at the purple flesh.

And like a fool who believes in God, she unfurls her fisted hands into open palms facing the stars she cannot see as if in prayer. She doubts God could hear, or care for, her prayers in this futile box of a room with eyes on her the color of God, or at least a cloudless December sky.

If she’s praying by opening a vulnerability to him, it seems König prays back, the way he cradles her hands like he’s sculpting her out of clay. She’s infinitely thankful for his combat gloves in this intimate moment, full-on contact would be all too much to bear in this awful circumstance. His eyes smile as he regards their hands, a satisfied rumble somewhere in the front of his chest as the normal color returns to her flesh.

“You need to be more careful, mein mauschen.” He says, looking at her like a prince looks at the portrait of a long-kidnapped princess. He regards her with the same care as a boy, growing up in a castle, deciding the portrait of a local maid girl, long locked up in a tower, will one day be his bride. His tone is whistful and tacitly anxious. Despite this, the implication of a smile does not leave his paradoxically fire-hot ice-blue eyes.

She is more than capable as a soldier, as a tactician, as a sniper. She has gotten into and out of traps just like this one before, and really, when Gromsko needed cover to patch Reyes up in the field, she didn’t really think about going to help. Out of her depth, she still ran at the chance to abandon her post in the hopes of helping others, a decision that had her snatched and thrown into this little box with the thing she both runs from and to in equal measure.

If it were anyone else, she would yell and spit and cuss about how she can do it. She’s done it on her own. She’s a sniper for Christ’s sake! She’s supposed to do it on her own, she doesn’t need any pity cover. She’s capable. She doesn’t need some surly giant telling her what to do.

“I’m sorry.” Is what Mouse says.

Because it’s not anyone else.

It’s König.

König, who has risked his life to save hers more times than she can count. König who tells her awful jokes in the dead of her shift to cheer her up. König who prays in the shape of her callsign gauged into soft birch wood. König who has never once doubted her abilities as a tactician and a sniper or talked down to her for it. König who keeps her company from far away and promises to always come back.

König who looks at her like she is worth the world, König who treats her like a princess more than an enemy soldier.

König, who she’s set free from this exact position before. König, who may just be her knight in shining armor. König, whose hands have yet to leave her wrists in his quiet supplication, fingers whispering apologies for what others have done.

“Nein.” He tuts, voice soft and reverent, hands now retreating from hers. “I am sorry,” he confidently, if quietly, declares, eyes still affixed to her battered flesh like his stare could undo any damage done. “I should not have let them capture you. It is my fault.”

He’s not her keeper. He’s not her knight in shining armor. Hell, he’s not even her fucking comrade, he’s on the other side of this pointless war and he’s got the nerve to apologize and take blame for her situation? She wants to rip the words out of his mouth, angry and sorrowful all at once that he’s taken any responsibility for her well-being.

Instead of the things she wants to shout at him, she stays quiet. She knows better than to correct her captor, all too aware of the distinct power dynamic in the little interrogation room she’s in. This is still war. He is still her captor. There is nothing to be done here.

She sighs.

“Don’t do anything stupid on my behalf.” She whispers, a sad smile tugging at the corner of her lips, like a trapped animal begging a child not to get attached in case the glue is too strong. After everything, she’s gotten quite the soft spot for the man, she would hate to get his hands messy while trying to free her. (Despite the fact that he’s done so, many times before.)

He chuckles, eyes everywhere but hers. He’s begun to rap-tappa-tap at his thighs with his fingers, a tell she’s come to notice is his way of thinking while anxious.

“It is too late for that.” Their eyes meet and at once she understands.

Because I know you’d do the same for me, her own words echo in her head. She swallows building trepidation rising in her chest like the tide. Just how is he planning on keeping true to such a promise?

“This is quite the mood shift from the last time we saw each other,” she gives a pitiful little giggle to him. At once his eyes alight with some sort of silent battle, a war of wills is waged in an instant. Ice-cold-fever-hot eyes narrow menacingly at her.

“I hate seeing you trapped.” He says, and her heart, whatever doesn’t reside in his chest already, lodges itself thick and pulsing in her throat. Mouse blinks away confused tears, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeved shoulders.

She has nothing to say to that. She thinks about the tears she cried in the shower when she realized his mark in her was fading. She thinks about warming her cold fingers pressed into her thighs all night, imagining instead he was warming her hands. She thinks about his teeth proudly displayed on her neck. She thinks about his hands holding her down. She thinks about the solid expanse of his chest as he promises her the world. She counts every joke he’s ever told her like the faithful count prayer beads. She clings to this idea of him like fog clings to a mountainside, ever-present and yet intangible.

She throws these ideas deep buried into her subconscious, trying desperately to call any sense to mind. Fear settles back into the forefront of her mind, confusion taking a backseat. She worries about how to get out of here- without König getting harmed.

“What’s the plan?” She whispers.

“What? Not going to talk me out of it?” He laughs voice thick with sad irony.

“I’m not looking a gift- soldier? In the mouth.” She sighs.

He looks thoughtfully down at her hands and wrists that he’s still holding. He pulls in a rough breath and it hisses out through his teeth.

“You’re in luck. It’s a shift change. It’ll be…” he lets go of her hands and fully stands. He peers down at her through tragically thick, romantic lashes, he’s very nearly almost charming the way he regards her from on high. Almost being the key term as his stare turns cold and he squints down at her. “Messy.” He settles on. “If you’re coming, don’t delay now.” He holds out a hand to help her up.

And what choice does she really have? Stuck in this room, always minutes away from death, with only one plan of even halfway reasonable escape- she takes his hand.

And they dash.

This is not a thought-out affair like Mouse’s rescue of Konig had been. This is quick, it’s sloppy, and it’s not really romantic. He’s tugging hard on her arm doing his best to make her keep his pace as they dash through empty hallways- occasionally taking an unorthodox passageway to, maybe?, avoid camera surveillance. Konig doesn’t say anything as they twist and turn through the labyrinth, he just picks her up or seizes her shoulders if he wants her to stop. To his credit, it works, and ice-cold adrenaline runs through her spine every time he grabs her with enough force to hurt her if he just wanted to.

But he doesn’t, doesn’t hurt her, doesn’t get sloppy so they get caught, doesn’t do a damned thing except run with her hand in his through the dim hallways, lit exclusively with blood red signs denoting “EXIT”, “ARMORY”, “M-D BA-“ (apparently KorTac does not give enough of a shit about the med bay sign to have it replaced), and anything else worthy of note- which is to say just about jack and shit, respectively.

What feels like miles of corridors passes her in quiet seconds- flashes of what her mind could construe as pictures and memories whirl by, her only true anchor to know where she’s been and where she will be in the direction that Konig pulls her through the labrynth.

He breathes as heavy as an ox when they come to a hallway cut-out in front of a little station where a lone man plays solitaire on the table. He casually picks at his teeth with a knife as he thumbs through his discard pile, nonchalant to the peril he will certainly be in should Konig decide to take exception with the man.

Konig pushes Mouse’s shoulders down so that she’s kneeling, and her bones hit the floor with a heavy clack. Konig shouts “Was is das?” as he yanks her up roughly. The man at the table discards his cards and rushes up, coincidentally leaving his knife on the table.

Betrayed? He’s fucking betraying me? Mouse’s mind races as she tries to think of a single reason Konig would abandon her in the hands of another man, one that sees her as a prisoner no less, and she has half the mind to bite his dick off where she stands in incensed anger. She’s too dumbstruck to even attempt a fight when Konig takes the rope she’d

“Lieutenant. I caught this one escaping.” Konig states sternly to the man who comes over to check the now kneeling Mouse.

The unnamed man looks her over, the arms of a behemoth holding her down, and he graces her with a sardonic grin.

Prey,

I am prey.

“Oh, so it’s this one… If I remember correctly,” the man says, laughing over her trembling form, “she’s quite the war prize.” König’s grip on her shoulders, holding her prone on the cold concrete, tightens just a little.

“She got out of her confines, I’m moving her.” He says with all the authority of a man given the mandate of heaven.

“Say, Colonel,” the man speaks, and Mouse only registers for half a second that is König’s rank before she meets his gaze. Only his eyes are visible from his plain baklava. They look hungry, but not quite the same way König’s ice-cold eyes receive her image. He looks at her like he’s planning on taking one bite. König’s breath stutters as the man comes closer and attempts to touch her face. König yanks her up before he gets the chance, hands pinned behind her back.

“Could I convince you to give me, oh say, I don’t know… half an hour with her? I can’t imagine the ransom or intel would be worth any more than her cu-”

Mouse promptly headbutts the man square in the nose, and blood sprays on the nearest wall as she fights out of König’s grip to get a better chance at knocking the man unconscious. He reaches for a throwing knife somewhere in his pocket and he brandishes the blade towards her face and she almost entirely dodges the quick glint of silver aimed at her neck. She feels a shallow cut on her cheek but she doesn’t stop thrashing. He sputters with rage and tries to say something but only frothed red liquid comes out of his mouth. König laughs mercilessly, still restraining her fighting against his grip, kicking and screaming in barbaric rage at the audacity of this man. Without missing a beat, König grabs the man’s hand with the wildly swinging knife and she hears the acrid cra-ckkk of bone splintering in flesh. He screams in pain and his eyes well with tears streaming down his bloodied mouth.

“She bites.” Is all König says before he plunges the man’s knife between his ribs. He drops the knife and grabs her hand, fingers sticky and intertwined. He looks at her with the most romantic sincerity imaginable, cold eyes smiling after just having killed a man over her honor.

The blood everywhere is almost killing the mood.

The key word is almost and suddenly Mouse is thankful that König’s strides are twice the length of hers because she doesn’t have time to consider the way his thumb gently strokes her hand. The way he was all too happy to kill a man for even considering hurting her. The way his frigid stare thaws for a moment when he looks back at her, suddenly warm like a sunny afternoon in May, enveloping her body like a soft bed of straw, safely tucked away in someone’s barn.

They escape through some back exit and he holds her up by the hips as she scrambles over the chainlink fence with all the skill of a veteran climber. Before she can chastise him for what is obviously a bit more of an amorous touch than is necessary, she hears gunfire behind her as her feet hit the ground on the other side of the fence. Three shots, then one from König, and silence.

He scales the wall and hits the ground with a slight grunt. She can’t hear what he says, the ringing in her ears (whether from the gunshots or his close presence) obscures it, but she gets the memo as he grabs her hand again. They run for what feels like another 2 miles through as the world alights around them. The leaves on the forest floor go from grey to beautiful shades of thousands of different coffees, all with differing amounts of milk to the taste of their owners. The evergreen trees gradually grow greener and greener with every passing moment.

She hears a little twig crack and she stops dead in her tracks. König stops, too.

The coo of a solitary mourning dove sounds. The creature looks at the two starcrossed escapees with an odd knowing before it takes off from the ground, leaves scattering behind its tailwind.

And suddenly, the world takes its first breath in pale, premorning light.

And it’s quiet.

“We’re even, now.” She says, standing in the forest outside of the base. She breathes in the smell of rotting leaves and blood and gunpowder with more thanks than she ever has in her life.

König doesn’t respond. In the morning sunlight, he studies her with a renewed vigor. His worried gaze settles on a bleeding cut on her cheek, the one dripping into her mouth ever so slightly. She licks at the blood idly, his eyes widen and he looks away hurriedly.

He gives an anxious sigh and a curt soldier’s nod.

She watches him with her own newfound sense of dismay as he rifles around his pockets for something.

She stops breathing.

Her heart slides clean out of her chest when he presents the minuscule thing in his massive hand. He holds his- no, her- whetstone to her, in a flat palm facing upwards.

Her breath does not return to her lungs even when her eyes prickle with tears.

Is he saying goodbye?

What little she can see of König’s face furrows more desperately as she stares down at the offending gift like it was a decapitated rat that the cat brought in.

“It’s yours.” Is the explanation he lands on after an eternity of silence. The sun is rising, nothing is certain, they cannot be using whatever fleeting seconds they have wasted on goodbyes. He must know this, he stares at her nearly ready to get on his knees and beg her- for what? She doesn’t know. She thought he would beg for her but the key to that hope died in the shape of that little pouch that holds her soul in it.

“No. It’s yours.” No, I’m yours. Her weak voice wavers, like a leaf fluttering about until it inevitably hits the ground.

She doesn’t give him the time to think out whatever stupid thing he wants to for allowing her to get hurt as she launches herself around his shoulders.

König nearly stumbles backward as her arms wrap around his neck. On instinct, he grabs at her sides to hold her up in the air and prevent them from crashing back into the earth. Even if he weren’t, she’s sure she’d feel like she was floating, locked in a warm embrace like a scar holds the memory of a cut.

She loves him more than she can stand, and as ever cruel and ever-giving Fortune would have it, he is more than happy to hold her up. She clings to him as she clings to the trees she climbs for her vantage points. In the rising sky, she remembers the ravine. She wants to forever be caught in his eyes but not his arms, because she does not know how she will ever be warm again without his embrace. She wants to scream and hit him and cut his chest open instead of pulling away, she wants to enact violence on his person for daring to make her love him, for his audacity in caring for her, for his everything. It would be so much easier if he didn’t care if one of them died if she didn’t have to think about what came next.

She shakes with fury.

She is so sick of following orders. Of listening to men telling her what to do. Of re-tracing the line between duty and desire. Of contextualizing and rationalizing everything she does on the axis of “me” and “my orders”

But most of all, she’s miserable that she can’t break out of her battle line no matter how hard she tries. She wants König to just tell her to stay, to give her the order so she doesn’t have to decide if she wants it, and all the implication of what that means for her fucked up obsession with him. She wants the easy out, she doesn’t want the blame. She wants him to figure it out. She wants him to tell her to stay.

He says nothing, he just breathes deeply, like she is air and like she matters to keep tethered to him. Like there’s anything worthy in her. Like she’s important. It only makes her angrier to think he’s so gentle when she wants to tear through his flesh and climb inside his rib cage instead of being forced to say goodbye.

She gives one last shuddering breath before she unwinds her sore hands from the anchor of his strong shoulders.

“You’ve saved me,” she whispers, wrenching her way out of his equally mournful grasp. He shudders, holding her tighter.

“No, you’ve saved me,” he whispers back into her ear. She doesn’t know what that means but she figures she doesn’t want to know when his massive hand finds the weak spot between her neck and shoulder and starts soothing little circles into it. She thrashes violently against the little spell he scries into her skin. She wants to stay. She wants to go. She wants him. She wants to be wanted by him. She doesn’t know what to do with a heart full of foreign wants and no direct orders to follow, so she thrashes out of his grip with all the ferocity of a mouse about to snap its neck getting out of a trap.

After a moment more of thrashing, he drops her to the ground.

Her fingers linger in his as she untwists her body from his, dancing away in the dying leaves. Their hands are connected even after the embrace. His warmth haunts her the same way the cold side of the bed haunts a widow, his eyes sting the same way a rusty cut does.

With the last of her willpower, she finally takes herself from him but the look he gives her makes her sure he understands: she could never go anywhere that doesn’t end with him. She gave him the whetstone that sharpened the knife that gave her the scar, and now some part of her will always be a result of his action. The blood loss isn’t helping her scattered thoughts and she’s only reminded of her worn-out physical condition when more blood leaks into her waiting mouth, soft lips parted and waiting for him to say something, anything.

“Promise you’ll find me?” She asks, soft and fragile, waiting for the world she’s placed on his shoulders to shrug to the ground and shatter into millions of pieces.

“Always, Mäuschen.” He replies, quiet and reverent, like he doesn’t know how he’s going to make it work, but equally cannot imagine a world in which it doesn’t.

She runs back to her base in the early morning light, sprinting like a nymph on a war-hunt through the trees, escaping an ill-fated encounter with an undesired suitor. Except it’s quite the opposite, she feels her heart beak with every hollow footstep she makes, unparalleled by his own sprinting after her.

She runs away, but her heart stays in his pocket, in the shape of a little whetstone.

She cries the whole way back. When she collapses on her bed after her debrief she imagines his hands messaging hers (and other things…) and his arms pressing her to him like he might fall apart the second he lets go. She thinks about the smell of him- like salty sweat and spruce aftershave and stinging tea tree. She bundles herself into the covers and prays that when she wakes up, she will have wound herself into his embrace and not just some discarded cloth around her body and separating her legs.

Her bed is impossibly big, and she wakes from it all hours of the night, hands not able to reach its edges like they never have before. The sheets are a paradoxical limbo of desperation: simultaneously as cold as a glacier and hotter than a forest fire. She dreams she’s stuck in a burning house until the roof caves from the animated flames and a blizzard pummels her into the wreckage.

From the nothing, two massive hands grip at her fragile sides and hold her up. She stills in the protective grasp of something the size of a mountain, it whispers the sound of a radio in her ear. She sinks into it and wakes gasping, only to realize she’s been asleep for not even half an hour and the dream repeats when she wrestles whatever fitful rest she can out of the nighttime. Each time she wakes up, tears stream down her cheeks.

She cries.

Because she’s not home. She will never be home, not if he’s not there.

Mouse is free to do anything she pleases. Unbound, untrapped, and unburdened, in theory, nothing hinders her.

In reality, she’s already dead somewhere in the trap of cold blue eyes, sharp knives, and strong arms.

It does not matter that she has been the one chased. Now there is nowhere he could ever go without the largest part of her carried with him.