A/N: Uh...so, if you're here, you've seen the warnings. I haven't written anything this (dark?) in the past...eight years, and I wasn't even sure about posting it for awhile. I promise I have a happy ending planned, though!

"We have to leave now," Mira snarled, giving the last of the weapons crates a ruthless shove into the back of the rover.

"Don't be a fool." Lucas winced as he stalked past her in the direction of the infirmary. He had been planning to drag the great Commander Taylor back to the compound and force him to watch as Lucas tortured his precious Lieutenant Washington to death, as Lucas had been forced to watch his mother be tortured to death.

The only living being in his father's existence, who'd somehow replaced Lucas and his mother, laid to waste just like the Somalians had done: it would have been a poetic justice. But the plan was in shambles, thanks to that Jim Shannon. Lucas should've killed him when he'd had the chance, and gotten a head start on his revenge instead. He wanted more time than what he had.

"We don't have time for you games, Lucas! Leave her and let's go!"

Lucas stopped, turned, and slowly advanced on Mira. "Games? You didn't seem to have an issue with them when I was fixing the portal, when I was helping you get to your daughter. You seem to want my help in the badlands, but when it comes to my revenge, it's games?"

The hard edges of anger on Mira's face set in deep, but she didn't say another word.

Lucas smiled. "Patience." He drew his knife, still wet with his father's blood. "This won't take an hour, and just because Hope Plaza's gone doesn't mean they're coming in force on the colony. I put a knife in my dad's gut; he won't recover from that one soon."

Then he left Mira, still glaring after him, for the infirmary. When he stepped inside, the guards he'd posted were still there. He took the nearest one's taser pistol, and snapped it into his empty shoulder holster. "Get Nurse Ogawa and throw her in the brig."

They left, quickly.

Lucas had already hacked into the biobed's mainframe, setting its monitoring equipment to record live imagery. At the time, it had been so Lucas would have something to leave his father with– a recording of Wash in her pain– after she was dead, while Taylor slowly rotted to death in the brig. Now…now it would be the hook that drew Taylor after him into the badlands. With the feed of what he was about to do and the frail hope of her dogtags to track, The Great Commander Taylor would have to follow.

Lucas turned on the machinery, and gave one of the cameras a smile, turning the knife by its point and hilt in his hands. "You told me we all have to answer for what we've done, dad. Consider this–" he stepped aside, sweeping his hand out to encompass Washington's unconscious body, covered only by a hospital sheet "–the first circle of your hell."

Then he moved to Washington. He hadn't let nurse Ogawa bind her head, and the blood from the drilling had matted in her thick, dark hair, staining her neck and jawline. He hadn't let them give her fluids for the blood loss, either, and knew she'd be as weak as a drowned kitten in her current state. Lucas set down the combat knife and rumaged through the medical supplies to hand until he found a stimulant, and injected it in her neck.

Wash woke up again to an incredible, throbbing pain in her skull. She could just make out blue lights, softly swimming across her vision, through the crust keeping her eyes from completely opening. She tried to move, to summon enough strength to get up, but the attempt brought a horrible, sick sense of nausea that left her shaking and gasping; dizziness rolled through her from somewhere in her head, enough to make her iron stomach rebel.

There was nothing in it to lose.

When the dry heaving was over, the scrape on her wrists finally processed as restraints

"Lieutenant Alicia Washington." Lucas laughed when she tried to turn her head to see him, going limp just as quickly, neck lolling as her face twisted in pain. Lucas hadn't let them give her any sedatives, either. "I do believe you're awake."

Wash had to work up the saliva to swallow before she could make her voice work. "Lucas." Her voice sounded like it'd been dragged OTG by the heels. The last thing she remembered was…his eyes. He had his father's eyes, she'd said that, which meant…the Shannons. They must have gotten away. She prayed they'd gotten away. It would be the first thing she had gotten right since Commander Taylor left her in charge, after all the casualties. It would be worth it, this, the pain, if she'd gotten that right.

If Lucas had shot her in the head with the sonic pistol, it would almost explain the pain. Useless to try, but it was just what you did, in captivity: "Let me go."

Lucas smiled at the game that was about to commence, even though he knew she couldn't see him, and said, distinctly: "Sir."

When she processed that it was a command, Wash laughed. Or tried to, as what came out was a series of harsh, rasping breaths. Like hell.

Lucas seized her throat, digging his fingers into the sides of her larynx and grinding her vocal cords together, cutting off her air and her voice at once. She thought he was kidding, did she? He braced his hand over her body on the thin hospital mattress, squeezing her throat, and leaned in close enough for his mouth to brush the shell of her ear. "I'm not playing with you, Alicia. Whatever..." he inhaled the scent of her neck, iron-tanged and crusted with blood, and smirked when he felt her flinch, a tacit admission to fear, to her lack of control– "liberties my dad let you get away with are a thing of the past." He raised his head, winked at the camera, then fisted his hand in Washington's hair and hauled her head up to meet him.

A wall of agony whited out Wash's vision, splitting her skull open in Lucas' hand. She almost didn't process the sound of her own voice, screaming, until everything started to fade into black.

Lucas wouldn't have it. When the lieutenant's eyes rolled back into her head he dropped her, and back handed her across the face. His hand made a satisfying crack as it connected with her cheek; her breath left her in a cry as her head snapped back, her lip torn open by the blow. Lucas watched her gasp for breath, shaking weakly in the restraints, and smirked as he slid his hand back into her mass of dark hair. Her face twisted as he pressed his mouth back to her ear, and he allowed himself a satisfied snarl at the feel of her tears on the bridge of his nose, pressed against her cheek. "Breaking you," he whispered, "will be a work of art. You should count yourself fortunate to be the masterpiece of my revenge."

Lucas tightened his grip, and Wash screamed. His fingers were like drills, boring through the flesh and bone of her skull, sending nauseating waves of pain rolling through her body. The room swam sickeningly behind the haze of tears streaming down her face, and her stomach heaved, but she couldn't– there was no air, nothing to lose– nothing...

She couldn't help her sob of relief when Lucas finally let go of her. She had never felt so weak, so helpless, not even when Phoenix had bombed out the civilian housing quarters. She hated herself for it. She was better than this. Stronger. She had to be…had to be; the commander had trusted her, and she had to stay strong. For him. It was an effort, but she forced her voice to make the words. "Not too late…for him to forgive, Lucas."

"Forgive?" Lucas laughed, moved to the medical cart still left from the other night and found a long, fine scalpel that nearly qualified as a skewer. "Let's talk about forgiveness. Let's start with how you got twenty-six innocents killed. And if there's anything we both know about my dad…it's how he handles civilian casualties. Or, well, how he can't. I think–" Lucas trailed the point of the blade down her neck, over her breastbone and between her breasts, taking the sheet with it– "he'd say you got what was coming to you." Lucas flicked the sheet away, and Washington's body tensed like the drawn cable on a combat bow. Miles of tan skin stretched over her toned body, hard in most places but so, so soft in all the right ones. He traced the curve of one of her breasts with the knife. "So that's what my father sees in you."

Wash's cheeks burned, an insidious slither of fear down her spine making her tremble as Lucas trailed the point of his knife over her nipple. No, she thought. No, you can handle this. Degradation, verbal abuse, trauma– you've been trained to handle this. She focused on the throbbing in her skull instead of Lucas tracing random patterns over her naked body, until the pain made the details of her surroundings fade and ebb. Easier, to deal with pain. To think. Clearly. "You killed those people, Lucas."

"Well, you got me there. And you practically let me," Lucas said, stabbing his knife deep into her thigh for emphasis.

Wash bit into the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood to keep herself from crying out. She hadn't. It hadn't…there was nothing else she could've done... Taylor didn't blame her. Shannon had told her so, before she'd gotten them out. Wash held onto that, through the pain, as an involuntary spasm went through her leg, making the knife slice deeper into her muscle. Something halfway between a whimper and a yell lodged in her chest, only half smothered.

"You had one job, Alicia. One job. And you practically rolled over and let the colony be taken by a physics nerd. What kind of soldier are you?" Lucas twisted the blade, sawing it outwards towards her hamstring until she finally screamed. Lucas jerked the knife out; blood spurted from the wound, coating his fingers, and he pulled his hand back. "He should've discharged you for incompetence years ago." Droplets of dark, red blood fell from his hand and spattered her mutilated limb.

Wash's ragged breathing, too close to sobs, burned shamefully in her ears. Cold sweat poured off her temples. She tried to fight it, to fight the pain and panic battering at her mental defenses, but when Lucas trailed the scalpel knife up the inside of her thigh she couldn't stop herself from whimpering. He won't, she told herself. He wouldn't. Not Lucas. Please, not Lucas.

"Is this why he keeps you around?" Lucas wiped the blood off the thin flat of the scalpel, onto the lips of her sex. "For this?" She didn't answer, but he hadn't expected her to. His dad may have been stupid enough never to see it, but Lucas wasn't. "No, we both know he never would've touched you. The great Commander Nathaniel Taylor was always too honorable to disgrace himself with the common ranks. Let's face it…" Lucas traced the fine point of the knife over the shell of her ear, and inside its delicate arches, slowly slipping the long, thin blade into her ear canal. She closed her eyes, a minute gesture of denial that Lucas ignored. "…you were never good enough him." Then he stabbed the scalpel into her eardrum, and stopped her scream with his mouth.

Wash seized beneath him, the vibrations of her muted voice reverberating around Lucas' tongue as he plundered her mouth. He dropped the scalpel and heard it clatter to the floor, released the catch on his shoulder holster and drew the taser pistol as he pulled away. He turned the camera, and gestured at her spasming body. "You better come find her, dad. If you don't get to her in time…"

Dad. Nathaniel? Wash blinked through the tears, fighting hope and horror at once. But there was no one else. Despair welled up, a dark bubble of tar followed quickly by cold, cold horror. There was a camera. Lucas was…talking to a…Don't see this, she silently begged. Please don't see this, Nathaniel. Not like this, she couldn't stand for him to see her like this. Lucas was right. Everything he had said was true; she wasn't strong enough, she had never been strong enough, had never deserved what she couldn't help wanting, longing for. She had never been good enough for Nathaniel, even at her strongest, even- and if he saw her like this, after everything she'd done, all the people she'd lost… Wash felt the prongs of the taser dig in between her legs, and turned her face into the mattress, fighting her sob. Not like this. Please, Nathaniel.

The pain that followed was like a thousand knives tearing into her body, racing up her seizing muscles into her organs, splitting her apart. The last thought Wash had before finally, mercifully, passing out was: Nathaniel. Please.