Luke and Louise

''Author's Note: Luke's player was unable to attend the final session of Black Cat Blues. This meant that a fairly major plot development ended up happening off-screen, with only NPCs involved. To give the players some OOC idea of what had happened in the time between Louise leaving their ship and then returning with Luke and Sekhmet, I wrote up what happened between Louise and the Inquisitor and read sections of it as "cinematics" during the final session. I'd forgotten I had written this, and when I unearthed it along with the rest of my plot notes I realized I was still pretty proud of it. So, I'm putting it on my wiki in the event that someone else might enjoy it.''

She hasn't even been in transit a day when they find the pod. A scout ship picks her up, speeding ahead of the fleet in an attempt to avoid unpleasant surprises – a job not so different from what she did, a few lifetimes ago. She doesn't resist when the scouts take her aboard, but she doesn't tell them anything useful, either. She just lets enough slip to let them know that she is important, that she is reticent, that she is too strong to be broken by their idle threats and insinuations – in short, that she is the sort of problem that only an Inquisitor can solve. Everything is going according to plan. She's not sure whether that is a good or bad thing.

The fleet that the scout ship returns to is massive – she hopes that Shole's forces combined with Black Cat's ingenuity will be enough to stand up against it, or at least to escape it if the opposition proves too much for them. They take her aboard the largest cruiser – Temerarious, she thinks it's called – and put her in a cell deep within its belly. She has a lot of time to think while they are doing this, just as she has ever since Nicolas Navarra and his crewmates freed her from her self-imposed prison. What will she find behind the Inquisitor's mask – the face of the man she loved, the man she believed loved her as well, or something else entirely? Is she really sure that she wants to know?

For the past six months he has tried not to think too hard about how he spends his days. It's easier than it sounds – just flip the switch their training and conditioning put there for him, and suddenly nothing matters beyond the calm hiss of his own breathing in the suit and the cold certainty of the implements at his fingertips and the whimpering and arching of whoever he finds in the chair today. He can pretend that when he tumbled through Blue Nile's broken window as the hull breach alarms screamed around him, the suit protected him not only from the vacuum of space, but from the sensation of all of his connections severing at that moment. Oh, it was easy, too easy maybe – just like it was easier than he ever would have thought possible for his overseers to bring him to this place. He is free, certainly, freer than any man in the Alliance to do what must be done in order to learn what must be learned – and yet if he tried to walk away, he knows he would quickly find his leash to be very short indeed. Just as if he to return to Black Cat, to try to give some sort of explanation for what he's done and why, he holds no illusions about what their hospitality would entail. But he tries not to think about that either.

It didn't surprise him when they brought Sekhmet before him, when they told him to tear her knowledge of the nanotechnological surveillance network from her mind however he saw fit. Nor did it surprise him when she proved more difficult to break than any other person ever to be shackled to that metal chair. It's all right though – he could use a challenge to keep alert and interested, to keep himself in the middle of his own cage where he can't see the bars and he can believe that all of this is the inevitable result of his own will. But today, as he wakes, the news comes down that he won't be seeing Sekhmet today. Not even the weight of her knowledge can tear him away from the fact that Temerarious is on the move toward something bigger than they'll tell him. They have another task for him instead.

They take her out of her cell in the middle of the night, when her body is heavy from the unexpected sleep they've roused her from and her brain is fogged beyond any understanding at first. As they march her through the halls of the cruiser, shackled hand and foot, she begins to understand that this is it – the moment when she will meet him face-to-face and see if anything remains of him worth loving, when the result of her gamble will be made clear. She is risking her life here – honestly, not only her life, but the lives of Black Cat's crew, the lives of all those people who stand to die if the bluehands have their way. But the die has already been cast, the result decided and yet unknown to her. She's never been the praying type, never met any power that would be worth praying to, but she finds herself praying silently now. ''Five years is a long time, it's true. I know I wasn't around for everything he went through, like I said I would be. Just let the man I loved still be there, somewhere, somehow.''

The room is small, bare, harsh, metallic. They shackle her to the chair with her back to the door and leave her there – maybe expecting her to cry, to beg for mercy, to wet herself, to shout out all her secrets before the Inquisitor can even walk through that door. She does none of those things. Instead, she looks out the tiny porthole in the wall she faces, watches the stars as they crawl past, wonders if some part of Sub-Zero is still drifting around out there. A key to what they shared, lost now to everything except the black. She hopes that there will prove to be another key besides it.

The door scrapes open. She hears the footsteps behind her, the faint and shallow breaths that the mask lets out, the soft thud and grating chime as the Inquisitor places his bag of tools on the table and rolls them out like a picnic spread from some other time. She does not turn her head. She lets him orbit around, into her peripheral vision, then crouching down in front of her face to look her in the eye. The mask disguises features and expressions both, and it takes every ounce of self-control not to scream out his name in that moment, not to wait for him to make the first move and reveal the shape that this game will take.

He reaches out a gloved hand and cups the back of her head – not roughly but not affectionately either, in the manner of someone sizing livestock up for trade. "Hmm. Curious. Back from the dead? Don't worry, dear. We won't be needing you for much longer – unless you can prove otherwise, of course." And through the haze of adrenaline and fear it takes her a moment to realize that she does not know that voice after all. It's soft but firm, almost musical, but with thick cords of iron running through the bottom of it. The voice of a woman.

The orders tell him to report to one of the observation suites, so he obeys. Nolan is there, with his back to the door, watching something on a small monitor screen. He doesn't approach the admiral – he's learned never to do so until invited. "Good morning, sir."

"We're not happy with the progress you're making with Sekhmet," Nolan says without preamble, without even turning to face him.

"Sir, her Alliance training alone makes her more resistant to torture than almost anyone you've brought me before, leaving aside the issue of her having survived Dionysus Hospital - "

"Oh, come off it, Inquisitor. You've had her in that chair for days now, and since then things have changed. We don't have the luxury of time anymore. We need answers, today." Nolan turns toward him. "And that's when I started to wonder...You and Sekhmet worked closely together when she was still a part of the Alliance. As a matter of fact, you chose to follow her orders to the exclusion of anyone else's. You might still be doing her bidding. At the very least, you're holding back, Inquisitor. I don't like that at all."

"Sir, I - "

Nolan's face twists. "Spare me the excuses, Inquisitor. You haven't delivered. It seems to me that you need a little bit of motivation." He reaches over and pushes a button. The images flickering on the small monitor project themselves onto the wall, big enough so that he can see every detail of the woman in the chair and the Inquisitor leaning over her. The Inquisitor is doing something to her with a pair of pliers. The woman is screaming, like they always do.

He doesn't understand what he's seeing at first. He wonders if it's a recording, some sort of bizarre performance review of the efficacy of his torturing techniques – but he knows he has never tortured to the woman in the chair. Not with physical implements, anyway. And the Inquisitor's voice..."Who is that, sir?"

Nolan has turned back to the screen. "Mr. Kano, you cannot have possibly believed that an asset as important as the Inquisitor would be unique in the 'Verse. Oh, we let you all think you're the only one, of course – you're easier to control when you think that you're special. But when it comes down to it, you're as expendable as anyone else."

"That's not what I meant, sir." Something is cracking in his head, light streaming in through the keyhole of a locked door – never entirely shut forever, no matter how many deadbolts you add.

Nolan's eyes flicker toward Louise. "Oh, her? I wasn't sure you believed me when I told you she was alive before. Sure, it was enough to get you to interrogate your friend, at the time – but now, I figured you needed to see her in person to understand how serious I am when I say that I will have her killed unless you get me the information I need."

Luke Kano becomes very still. If there had been a camera trained on the observation room at that moment, it would not have seen anything more than that – not the history that the admiral had unwittingly invoked, nor the thoughts that race through the Inquisitor's head. Thoughts that spin, that tumble, that spiral, that weigh out pros and cons and prices as surely as they once calculated the back taxes owed by a subsistence farmer, or exactly how deep to press those metal splints into the terrorist's nail beds to cause the most pain while keeping him conscious. Thoughts that stutter to a halt like a die stuttering out its final revolutions, to land on a single result.

The camera would not have seen this. But it would see his hand go to his belt and unholster the strange-looking gun hanging there. Nolan must see the motion out of the corner of his eyes, because he turns toward its source, his eyes widening, raising his hands in front of his body even as he knows the futility of that gesture. A sharp bang, a flash that overwhelms the camera's lenses momentarily, and the Inquisitor is lying on the floor against the far wall with blood and bone spattering his uniform. Long moments pass. Then he stands up painfully, holsters the gun, and moves to the door.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he says to no one, "but I'm serious, too."

The Inquisitor is a master of every kind of torture, trained in dozens of means of inflicting both physical and psychological pain, and rendered just sociopathic enough to be willing to use all of them. However, the ability to inflict pain is not correlated with the ability to neutralize an armed assailant, nor with the ability to survive a close-range gunshot wound to the head. This is what Luke Kano discovers when he overrides the door lock on the chamber in which Louise Kang is currently being kept.

He kneels next to the chair to unlock her shackles. He is pleased that her wounds do not seem to be severe. He is working on her left wrist when he realizes that she is staring at him. He stops, looks up. It's been five years for him, a matter of weeks for her, and that history passes between them in an instant. When she speaks her voice is soft and low, with a hard edge of pain that hasn't gone away – physical or emotional or both, neither of them can be sure. "...Luke?"

"Yes."

"Is it really you in there?"

"I'm not sure." He realizes with a chill that this is the most honest thing he's said to anyone in years. "Lou, I'm - "

"Don't you dare apologize to me." The return of the captain that she once was surprises them both. "And don't even think about telling me that you love me, either. If you want to say those things, prove them.”

He unlocks the last of her restraints, not knowing what to say. She stands up unsteadily, wincing at the new pressure on her wounds. She stumbles over to the Inquisitor's headless corpse, kicks it soundly in the ribs, spits a mouthful of bloody saliva onto its curled hand. She looks back at him and her face says she's not sure yet whether she should do the same to him. "I need you to help me save Sekhmet so that she can save the 'Verse."

"What?"

"I didn't come here to explain these things to you. I came here to see whether there was any of you worth saving. Whether I could still love you or if I'm wasting my time. The jury's still out on that." The words come out softer than she would have liked. "The bluehands are trying to take over the 'Verse, and maybe even worse for you, your former crew would really like to see you dead. If you care about either of those things not happening, you'd better learn to take my orders again. And right now, those orders are to get Sekhmet out of here."

From the hallway comes a heavy, wet thud and a loud groan. Luke peers out the open door and sees a bloody blue hand wrap itself around the doorframe of the observation room. "Then lead the way, Captain."

It had taken him a long time to figure out the best way of torturing Sekhmet, and he was still pretty proud of what he had come up with – too bad, really, that he was probably going to wind up killing everyone who could appreciate it. Withhold the drugs in specific quantities, giving her enough so that she could still feel pain – but more importantly, so that she could feel herself sliding back into her Reaver nature, to know it was coming and yet to be unable to do anything to stop it, to appreciate his power over her. To get her to beg for death so he could promise he'd give it to her, if she would only leave behind that last inviolate and secret part of herself before he'd free her from the bounds of her miserable monstrous body. He'd been making progress, honestly, and it was Nolan's own fault that he couldn't see that. If he hadn't pushed so hard, if he hadn't brought Louise into the picture...But Luke decides he'd rather not think about that just now.

They walk into the maximum security detention area on the strength of Luke's credentials, and let themselves in to let his victim out. Sekhmet comes off of the bed swinging, screaming and frothing and grimacing despite the fact that Luke has made sure to keep her drugs topped off between torture sessions, all the better to contrast between there and here. She backs him into a corner and bloodies his nose before Louise shouts her down. "Gorramit, lady, stand down! We're here to help you."

Sekhmet gets a hold of herself and steps back to regard the two battered people before her. "You're who they sent? Merciful Buddha." She sinks back down onto her cot, rubbing her bruised knuckles. "I hope that somebody here has a plan."

Before anyone can speak again, the lights in the hall go red and alarms begin to blare. Nobody needs to say it – Priority One alert, reserved for severe damage, mutinies, prisoner uprisings, and other major emergencies. "I do,” Louise says grimly. "We're calling Black Cat."