This was ridiculous,
Destiny thought to herself as she sat impatiently in her small, dark cell. Not
only was she cold, tired and covered in blood, but also extremely bemused: fancy
being accused of being a witch in this day and age! True enough, Paul had
revived in somewhat… unsecure circumstances (the locals had
sadly borne witness), and yes, she had been holding him at the time, but this
was just absurd. This was definitely all his fault.
“Out of range?” Destiny
demanded, hands on hips as she faced Captain Scarlet. “How can we be out of
range?”
Scarlet shrugged, apparently not caring that much. “Don’t
sweat it,” he said, smiling at her in that way he had. That way that turned her
knees to jelly. “We’ll be fine. Besides, this way the colonel can’t call us back
if there’s a problem.”
“Unbelievable,” Destiny grumbled as Scarlet set off again
and she was forced to scamper after him. “Green can get reception on her cell
phone on the damn
Moon,
and we can’t get a radio signal in
“Think of it as freedom,” Scarlet suggested, still grinning
infuriatingly. He was doing it on purpose to make her forget. He had to be.
Well, it wasn’t going to work this time.
“No troubles,” he continued, “no-one pestering us; it’s
just the two of us for once.”
Now that put a different spin on things: that was quite a
nice thought, actually. They didn’t get much alone time on Skybase, and somehow
every attempt at furlough went completely and utterly wrong. She fervently hoped
this one, combining her hobby of mountain-climbing with Scarlet’s love of
hiking, went without a problem. Especially now they were apparently
incommunicado. Oh well, best laid plans and all that. This would just be their
little snag for this trip, and no more bad luck could befall them.
In hindsight, she knew
she should have insisted they turn back at that point. She definitely shouldn’t
have deluded herself, should have known something would go badly wrong and put
her foot down. She would after this was all over: they were never going on
vacation again. They would make do with shagging like bunnies on Skybase, and
damn the consequences if they got caught by Colonel White. He probably already
knew; they weren’t the stealthiest of couples, after all.
He
had slipped trying to traverse a narrow ledge. The fall hadn’t been terribly
far, but Paul had landed so very badly. She scrambled down as fast as she
possibly could, but he wasn’t breathing. Given the amount of blood, perhaps that
was for the best. Whilst she knew he would be all right, her initial scream had
alerted people from the nearby village and, try as she might, she couldn’t
prevent them from seeing the impossible. Without a radio signal to contact
Skybase, she had no backup, no way of stopping Scarlet’s inevitable resurrection
from being witnessed. She had tried, God knew she had tried; first pleading for
them to leave (not that any of them spoke English, or understood her extremely
poor Mandarin) and when that failed, she held Paul’s lifeless body in the hope
she could conceal the moment he returned to life, and get him to pretend to be
dead until they left.
She was manhandled from
her cell and shoved roughly into a courtyard, where she found Scarlet, who was
receiving the same treatment. He looked rough, and Destiny remembered that he
needed to eat not long after reviving. Doctor Gold had explained it once, but
she hadn’t listened too hard. Now she wished she had tried harder to understand
Scarlet’s condition better. Still, he deserved to feel a bit crappy for putting
her through this.
“‘Think of it as
freedom’,” she hissed under her breath. “‘No troubles’.”
“I didn’t know this was
going to happen,” he replied contritely.
The guards held them
roughly in place as the single English speaker in the village stepped forward
(and how Destiny wished he had been there earlier, whilst Scarlet was still
dead. Then they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place).
“You have been found
guilty of crimes against nature,” he said. “For this, you must be punished.”
He and what appeared to
be the village elders stepped aside, revealing a hastily thrown-together
structure.
“Paul?” she said, seeking
reassurance, desperately afraid.
He didn’t reply, and she
couldn’t say that she blamed him: she was desperately trying to convince herself
that it was not a pair of stakes, and they were not about to be burned to death. That
kind of thing just didn’t happen in
the twenty-first century. But every ounce of common sense told her that was
exactly what stood before them, because it couldn’t really be anything else. Her
heart started racing, fear finally kicking in.
She struggled against her
captors, knew that Paul was doing exactly the same beside her. Then there was a
sharp pain in her head and the world went black.
There was a funny smell,
a bit like gasoline, Destiny mused as she woke up, her head pounding. Then she
remembered, and her eyes flew open. She was bound tightly on top of what could
only be described as a pyre, unable to move. Beside her, Paul was struggling in
vain. However the fight left him when he saw her.
“I was hoping you
wouldn’t wake up,” he said, his voice thick. “I’m so, so sorry, Simone.”
Now she knew things were
bad: he always called her ‘Destiny’, said the
name suited her. She had never had any particular objections given she disliked
her given name. For Paul to use it now, she couldn’t bear to think about it.
Around the edges of the
pyre, the villagers dropped lit torches. Now Destiny knew why she had smelled
gas; the perimeter had been doused in it, and they were surrounded by a ring of
fire. Her eyes started to water in the smoke and heat.
“I love you.”
Author’s
note
This has all come from a suggestion on the Spectrum Headquarters forum, and is all DreamerAngel’s fault. Well, mostly: it was originally MMK’s suggestion, but it was DreamerAngel who prompted me to write this little offering for my first Halloween fic. Feel free to dream up your own ending for Destiny – does she burn to a crisp, or is she rescued in the nick of time? I’m sure I can guess the general consensus.
Tragically,
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/18/world/asia/nepal-witchcraft-burning/index.html
Many thanks to Chris Bishop for her tireless effort in running the Spectrum Headquarters, without which the fandom would be languishing in despair, I feel. Chris, the star that she is, has also beta-read this offering for me. Any errors or omissions, however, are my own, and probably result from me trying to get this spot-on a thousand words. Do you know there’s no proper name for that?
Happy Halloween!
Lezli
15th October 2012
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