In The Belly of a Shark Pt.2

Day 1


They don't hear from Leanna or her men again that day, left alone in that tiny, claustrophobic room to lick their wounds and mourn for what was and could have been. Mia spends much of her time gazing out of the shattered window on the eastern wall, scanning the horizon in search of the little girl who had been stolen from her. Isabella paces like an animal trapped in a cage, testing the knob on the door again and again like she might miraculously find it unlocked if she's persistent enough.

Jake sits on the rickety cot, his knee bouncing up and down in agitation. If Leanna's grand plan was drive every last one of them insane, she was on the right track.

"I wish she'd tell us what the hell she wants from us," Mia complains, arms wrapped tight around her torso to stave off the chill in the air, "instead of battin' us around like a house cat with a mouse."

From his perch on the bed, Jake's shoulder bobs in a lopsided shrug. "You know what she's like. She wants us to crack and make sure we're good and obedient first."

"Where do you think they're keeping the others?" Isabella ponders. What she's really asking is if Leanna has hurt them, and if this situation is the gallows at Saint Denis all over again.

"One of the other buildings, most likely," Jake offers, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the structure next door.

She hesitates before rephrasing the question. "Do you think they're okay?"

"Sure," he supplies, "so long as none of 'em gave her a reason to change that."

Isabella swallows past the lump in her throat and tests the doorknob one more time.

- - x - -


They're woken in the dead of night by heavy footsteps marching across the creaky wooden floor of the old house. Mia is the first to peel open her eyes, lifting her head off of Jake's shoulder and peering blearily into the darkness.

Alert and reflexively reaching for a gun on her hip that is no longer there, Isabella sits up and wills her racing heart to slow down.

The door flies open and all three of them are momentarily blinded by the light of a lamp, blinking away spots left behind in their vision. Jake lifts a hand to shield his eyes, only for his forearm to be seized by a pair of big, calloused hands.

A second pair snatches his other arm and helps to haul him to his feet. Leanna watches from the threshold as they drag him out of the room, a vicious smile on her painted lips.

Mia throws aside her blanket and stands. "What's goin' on?" she demands. "Where're you takin' him?"

She isn't given an answer. Peering past Leanna, she can see Jake being corralled into a chair and bound to it with a length of rope.

Isabella draws up beside Mia, her hands clenched into fists. "Whatever point you're trying to make, it's not necessary. Let him go."

Tapping her finger against her chin, Leanna hems and haws like she's giving the request serious consideration. "No, pet, I don't think I will."

Mia's voice warbles with emotion. "But we already agreed to do what you asked!"

"Mia..."

Her eyes flick over to Jake, who shakes his head.

"Leave it."

One of Leanna's thralls cracks his knuckles and swings at him, socking him the jaw with a sickening crunch. Mia gasps and covers her mouth with her hands, and Isabella darts to the door, only for it to be slammed in her face and summarily locked.

She growls and pounds her fists against the wood, yanking on the knob like she's trying to wrench it free of its socket. "Leanna!" She bellows, every plea and solicitation to open the door punctuated by a grunt of pain from Jake.

It wasn't the first beating he'd taken in his life and it likely wouldn't be the last. As Alexanders willing hellhound, he'd been on the receiving end of the ire of his enemies more than once. Every time he endured, and every time those responsible ended up breathing their last while gazing up at him in a pool of their own blood and innards.

He was a survivor and always had been, withstanding all that others chose to throw at him and then making them choke on it.

But this time was different. This time it was a fight of his own making with a lot more at stake than just honor and his life. It was the lives of people he genuinely loved. The life of his daughter. This time there's no cocky defiance, no threats of retribution. He finds that numb place in his head and his heart and he just.. endures.

After a while he doesn't even feel it anymore, not until he's kicked to the ground. The chair toppled over with him still tied to it, awaiting the strike of a heavy boot to his chest.

It never comes.

Leanna puts a stop to it, her hand closing around the arm of her brute and ceasing his torture.

"Enough." She barks, gazing down at Jake as blood trickles from his mouth to the hardwood floor. There's a flicker of something in her eyes, something unreadable, and a pause that lingers on for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, she finds her voice again, releasing her attack dogs collar and drawing in a deep breath of something like victory.

On the floor, Jake rasps for breath. Winded and his mouth full of blood and an eye swollen shut.

"We still need him in one piece for the train." She reasons as the beast of a man stands down. Glancing over her shoulder she looks to the other two men by the door, gesturing for them to untie him and throw him back in with the women.

They're not kind about it, and he groans as he's hauled to his feet. Dizzy and favoring his midsection, he meets her eyes as he's brought to a stand in front of her.

She tucks her finger beneath his chin and lifts his head up, searching his one good eye for something.

"Was it everything you hoped for?" he asks her in a hoarse breath.

She holds his gaze, her ice blue eyes flicking around the face of the man she held responsible for so many nightmares. Eventually she answers, soft and simple.

"No."

The smallest smile finds it's way on to Jake's lips and Leanna grits her teeth, ordering them to take him away. Moments later, Isabella and Mia help him down on to the cot in their makeshift prison and desperately try to alleviate his pain with what few resources they had.

As a tear trickles down Mia's cheek, Jake lifts a hand and carefully brushes it away.




Day 2


It's midday before the captive trio hear anything further from their captors. The night had been restless after the assault on Jake, with Mia and Isabella taking it in turns to watch over him. For the most part he had simply allowed himself to rest. Let the process of healing begin and find that quiet place inside himself where he could tune the pain out.

The door creaks open as the sun sits high in the sky, warming the chilly air ever so slightly, but not enough to begin melting the ice and snow.

Apprehensively, Mia and Isabella look toward it as it's pulled back, revealing Leanna holding a coffee pot and two of her men behind her clutching what looked to be supplies.

The blonde stalks in to the room, her eyes flicking down to Jake on the cot and then to the redhead at his side. The look shared between the two women is icy at best.

"Can we see the others?" Isabella speaks up quietly from her perch beside a covered window.

"Soon enough." Leanna answers absently, setting the coffee pot down and gesturing for her men to do the same. They set down small cups alongside gauze and alcohol for Jake's wounds. "How is he?"

"What do you care?" Mia asks in a mumble, looking away from her and back to Jake.

Leanna hitches a shoulder. "Still need him for the job ahead."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have kicked the shit out of him then." Mia grumbles.

Leanna moves closer to her, narrowing her eyes. "I wanted him to know how it felt."

"How what felt?" The redhead sighs.

Leanna crouches down in front of her, taking her chin and forcing the other woman to look her in the eye. "How it felt to not feel safe at night. To be afraid in your own bed, that someone might come for you and leave you a broken shell of who you used to be."

Mia swallows, lifting her chin ever so slightly to escape Leanna's grip.

The blonde continues. "The same way I used to feel every night after he took me and delivered me to that monster you lay with."

Blinking, Mia looks away.

"Jake handed me over to a monster that stole my childhood. Massacred my family and my home. I almost could have withstood the pain of losing them, but it was what Alexander did to me to that broke me." She moves herself in to Mia's line of sight, searching her eyes for something. ".. tell me, Mia. Why did you never do a thing to stop it?"

Mia swallows and wills herself to hold Leanna's gaze.

"I was a victim, too."

"You were his trophy," the seething blonde corrects.

"Not by choice!" Mia argues. "He used me, same as you."

"We are nothing alike," Leanna snarls, so viciously it's like staring into the face of a rabid wolf. "I didn't lie down for that monster every night like some godless whore. I wasn't gifted snow white Arabians, and I sure as hell didn't walk around, dripping in jewels like the goddamned Queen of Sheba!"

Mia looks away, tears in her eyes.

"I was afraid." The words come out so quietly, so meekly, for a moment Mia isn't sure Leanna even hears her.

Seizing Mia's chin between her fingers again, Leanna forces the redhead to look her in the eye. "You know nothing of what it is to be afraid... but you will."

Rising to her feet and snapping her fingers, her subordinates follow her out of the room and lock the door behind them.

Swiping at her eyes, Mia flinches when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and follows the arm up to Isabella's worried face.

"Are you okay?"

Forcing herself to smile, she dabs at her tears one last time and gets to her feet. "Right as rain," she lies, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt. "Hand me those bandages, will you?"




Day 3


Jake ached from head to toe and his left eye remained swollen shut, but by their third day in captivity it was a little like the three of them had become accustomed to the frigid temperatures and the confined space they were hidden away inside.

Sat on the edge of the cot, he cradles a mug of warm coffee in both hands and lifts it to his lips carefully. Avoiding a welt there the best that he can. Behind him, Mia lay sleeping and he's glad of it. After her confrontation with Leanna the day before, it was a little like the will to go on had been sapped out of her. A dark cloud settling over her head.

She'd sobbed for most of the night, wrapped up in his aching arms and whimpering for their baby. He'd made so many promises he prayed he could keep.

All the while, Isabella sequestered herself away in the corner of the room, huddled with blankets and haunted by memories Leanna had been only too pleased to dredge up for them all. It was a special kind of purgatory they found themselves in, and with still no sign or word from the others an uneasiness toward all of their fates was only growing.

Across the snow covered main street of the tiny abandoned town, Leon kept his head and did his best to keep the three teenagers he'd found himself charged with calm. His stomach tied in relentless knots over the fate of Isabella, Jake and Mia.

They had been fed and given blankets and even fire to keep themselves warm. But nobody telling them what had become of the others was a torture all of its own.

After spending a night on her own bound to a table, Ripley had been subdued ever since. When Leon, Valerie and Yuliy had been brought over to the small schoolhouse to join her, there had been little joy to any of it. She'd simply grunted at them that they hadn't hurt her and then slipped in to a sulk all of her own. Even Valerie hadn't been able to get anything out of her.

Leon had done his best to explain to Yuliy what was happening, the boy terrified beyond the telling of it. This wasn't his world. He'd even tried to plead with Leanna to let Yuliy go, to take him to wherever the children were being held instead. But she had refused. Taking Yuliy's chin in her hand and telling him everybody had to grow up some time and to be a man.

It was unfair, but then, none of this was very fair to anybody.

"I understand you're hurting. I know what it is to want revenge on someone that did you wrong. But believe me, it never tastes as sweet as you expect. It only leaves you empty."

Those words had stopped her in her tracks as she'd headed toward the door. For a moment, he thought he might have touched a nerve, might even have gotten through. But then Leanna had twisted her head around to look over her shoulder at him, and it had been like looking in to the eyes of a devil. Smoldering with hatred and bitterness, icy embers that froze his temporary hope in it's tracks.

"Goodness, are you trying to figure me out, Doctor? I'm flattered."

She'd turned to face him and prowled a few steps in his direction. He'd never been held captive by someones gaze alone before, it was an interesting feeling.

"I'm already hollow inside. You know who saw to that, hmm? Perhaps you should choose your allies a little more wisely. Believe me when I tell you Jake Torres six feet under and food for the worms will be doing the world a favor."

Leon had been silent as he'd watched her go. Never had he seen such venom in a pair of eyes before. It was only really then that he realized he knew nothing of the other mans past at all, beyond the loss of a fiancee.

A sobering thought, that had chilled him more than the bitter winter air.

He sat, now, on the edge of a bunk gently stroking Valerie's hair as she slept. She'd struggled to get a wink of it under the stress of it all, and had reverted back to their childhood, when he'd comforted her as best he could in the wake of their fathers madness.

Across from him, Yuliy sat picking at a bowl of bread and stew, while Ripley sat near the fire with her arms curled around her legs and wrapped in a blanket.

The relative peace of their silence is shattered as the door bursts open and five of Leanna's men burst inside. Valerie wakes with a startled yelp and Leon is instantly to his feet to put himself between the teenagers and the men wielding guns.

"Up." One of them barks. "Let's go."

Leon holds a steadying hand out toward him. "Where are you taking us?"

Another snarls, sticking a revolver up under his chin and pressing the metal in to his skin. "To join your friends. Stop askin' fuckin' questions.. Doc."

Tilting his head back to avoid contact with ice cold metal, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, Leon wonders exactly what the man means.

Could the fate of Isabella, Mia and Jake simply be boiled down to being held somewhere else? Or was a flock of hungry ravens picking their bones clean next to Blue's carcass?

The thought leaves him hollow and aching on the inside.

"Leon..." Valerie's voice warbles, her fingers trembling as she reaches out to him.

He splays a palm in her direction. "It's okay. Just do as he says."

Lined up with Leon in the lead, they're marched out of the old school house and into the frigid air outside.

- - x - -


Isabella's head thunks dully against the wooden wall behind her, strands of hair she's too drained to brush aside tickling her eyes. She gazes across the room to where Jake is perched on the end of the cot, a tendril of steam rising from the mug clutched in his hands.

He looked like hell, nearly every inch of visible skin a mottled watercolor of black and blue. But Mia arguably looked even worse, the whereabouts of her daughter eating away her resolve like a cancer. Gaunt in the face, her normally bright and vibrant blue eyes rimmed with dark circles, she was a shell of herself.

Gaze drifting to the floor between her boots, Isabella thinks of Sara and all the ways she had failed her older sister in life. She wonders how much her actions contributed to their current situation.

If she had never drunkenly seduced Jake that night in the barn all those years ago; if they hadn't succumbed to temptation and turned to each other for an escape, would things have gone any differently? Would he have moved away with Sara sooner, somewhere far away and hidden, where Kilgrave couldn't find him? Would he have gotten to meet the child whose life was cut short before it ever even began?

The revelation of Sara's pregnancy stings as much now as it did seventy-two hours ago, and Isabella squeezes her eyes shut to stave off the hot pinprick of tears.

"They're dead, aren't they?" she croaks out, the first words she's managed in hours. Her voice is hoarse, a strained crackle in the back of her throat.

Jake blows across the surface of his coffee to cool it down. "Who?"

"Leon. Valerie. Everybody."

It's subtle, but he pales ever so slightly, despite his best attempts to reassure her to the contrary. "Didn't hear no gunshots. Did you?"

Her head lolls to the side and she looks him straight in the eye. "There are plenty of quieter ways to kill people, Jake."

He sighs and takes a sip. "I'm sure they're fine. She needs 'em for whatever her get rich quick scheme is."

"What if she just said that to make the three of us toe the line?"

"They're fine, Iz."

"How do you know?"

He loses patience, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. It makes him wince, every inch of his face still throbbing in agony. "I guess I don't. What do you want me to say?"

She doesn't have an answer to that question. A pretty lie, perhaps, or another reassuring promise he doesn't know he can keep.

They lapse into an uncomfortable silence, Mia shifting on the cot in her sleep the only sound to disrupt the quiet.

"I almost wish they would just line us up and shoot us," Isabella admits. "Anything would be better than just sitting here, waiting."

Before Jake can comment, they hear the creak of the front door swinging open, and brace themselves for another dose of salt in their collection of open wounds. There are several sets of footsteps shuffling across the wooden floor, the howl of the wind gusting outside; they hear a key being slid into the lock on the door that holds them hostage, and Isabella backs away from it until she's sitting at Jake's feet.

One of Leanna's men appears in the open threshold, and gestures at them with the barrel of his revolver. "On your feet. Boss wants to talk to you."

The look that flashes between Jake and Isabella is one of apprehension sprinkled with a dash of fear. Mentally, he's already preparing himself to take another vengeance filled beating from Leanna's men. Setting his coffee down, he rises to his feet and comes face to face with the large man and his gun. "More talkin'?" he asks, "or is that code for she wants to watch one of you kick he shit outta me while I'm tied to a chair again."

"If you know what's good for ya, you'll shut your goddamn mouth and do as you're told." The musclebound brute grunts in response, gesturing with his gun toward the door as Isabella is bustled out of the room.

Behind him, Mia is woken by the hands of another and roused to her feet. Jake's instinct to put himself between them and protect her, to slap hands away and tear someones face off for having the balls to go near her is reined in only by the picture of his daughter in his mind.

They had to play whatever this game was. Abide by the rules. Keep the focus on him.. maybe then Mia stood at chance at being reunited with their baby. Whether or not he himself did was another matter entirely.

Glancing over his shoulder and meeting Mia's eyes, Jake checks that she's okay in an unspoken message between them. Then he follows instructions, moving past the brute of a man and pursing his lips in a purposefully obnoxious kiss that earns him a gun to the back of his head as they're herded out.

Once in the main room of their icy little hotel, they're told to warm themselves by the fire and wait.

"Wait for what?" Mia asks wearily.

She gets no answer.

They await the arrival of their captor with quiet apprehension, though the crackling fire warms frozen fingers and stills the chattering of teeth. It was like breathing a little life back in to the three of them.

Then the door bursts open and for a moment the sun reflecting off of the snow outside is blinding, showing them only the silhouette of their visitor. In the heartbeat of time it takes for eyes to adjust, Leon steps in to the room with a dusting of fresh snowflakes on his shoulders.

The sound Isabella makes defies description as she races across the small room and in to his arms. He gathers her up tightly, clutching her to him and pressing a kiss to the top of her head as the others file in behind him. Jake lets out a small breath of relief upon seeing them all, earning himself a delicate hug from Valerie who goes on to squeeze Mia just the same.

He ruffles Yuliy's hair and pulls him in to an embrace too, and over the boys head he spots Ripley, arms closed tightly around herself. Defensive as always. He lets Yuliy go and approaches her. She eyes him like she's seeing a stranger.

"You look like shit." She mumbles.

Jake just snorts, nodding. "I know, kid." He offers her a smile, and she doesn't shrug away from his hug.

- - x - -


The reunion is cut short by a barked order to sit down, and those who don't immediately oblige are coerced by shiny gun barrels aimed in their faces. Isabella is torn away from Leon's embrace and forced into a chair on the opposite side of the room, and with three days under their belt having witnessed what happens when they disobey orders, Jake and Mia wisely take seats a few feet apart from one another.

A hundred questions bunch up behind clenched teeth, everyone dreading what Leanna has in store for them next -- a bank robbery, an assault on a rival gang, having their feet shot at to make them dance for her amusement; every possibility seems just as likely as the next.

Her men mill about the space not occupied by their hostages, sharing cigarettes and trading whispered words while they await the arrival of their leader. They discuss what they plan to do with their cut of the take, which brothels boast the best whores, and how bad their stomachs ache for a real meal cooked in a real kitchen.

"Swear that slop that Dunne calls stew smells better comin' out than goin' in," one man complains, flicking away the ash of his cigarette.

"Sometimes," chimes in another, "I think about what I'd do if given the choice between a pretty lady and a bloody steak, and at this point, I think I'd take the steak."

Laughter ripples around the room, and Isabella regards each and every one of them with disgust. It must be nice, she thinks, to go through life where fear is something that happens to other people.

Cigarettes are crushed beneath boots and the spines of her men go rigid when Leanna arrives. Stepping into the cabin without fanfare, she decorously peels off her gloves finger by finger while her captives look on with trepidation.

Taking her place at the head of the room like a preacher behind a pulpit, she clasps her hands together and regards her audience with a wide smile that shows a little too much fang.

"I really feel like we've gotten to know each other over these past few days, don't you?" She doesn't wait for a response. "Surely you all understand what's at stake by now, so I'm going to assume you don't require anymore... incentive."

Her gaze lands on Jake and the assortment of bruises and welts on his face.

"Don't forget..." she tuts melodically, like a well-meaning nanny reminding her grandchildren to wash their hands before dinner. "... each and every one of you are expendable."

"Get to the point before we all die of old age," Jake growls.

Her grin is nothing short of maniacal, feeding off his agitation like a parasite.

"You're going to rob a train for me," she announces. Her eyes bounce between the four other women in the room. "But first, you lovely ladies have a date in Saint Denis..."