1.22.1

Rue Revealed

Rue pounced at her the moment the words left her lips.

A deep blackness settled behind the blonde’s eyes. Her considerable strength easily overpowered the blindsided Channeler.

Too soon, Astrid felt steel at her back, pinned to the ground, with Rue straddling her waist and punching down.

“Come on, Channeler! Use your ability, I dare you!”

Astrid twisted while Rue busted open recent scrapes to fresh beads of blood. But with the hate that rode out on the soldier’s declarations, Astrid couldn’t comply.

“I won’t give you the satisfaction!”

She writhed, but Rue remained centered like a rodeo jockey on a bucking bull.

“I want to see if you’re ballsy enough to do it, bitch!” Rue shouted down at her, and soon, both pale hands clamped around Astrid’s neck in a horrifying reenactment of all her previous threats.

“You’ll have to kill me… as an unarmed human… bitch!” Astrid struggled to retort as she thrashed and squirmed. She arched off the floor and tried to toss Rue to no avail.

Rue raised Astrid’s neck and slammed her back on the deck while the Channeler kicked.

“You just had to turn yourself over, you goddamned coward!”

Astrid held her head back to the floor against Rue’s tugs, so the lift couldn’t be used to strike her again. The rage that rolled over Rue’s arms begged to be used, but Astrid still refused the temptation.

Rue bent low over her face and spat.

“I could kill you right now, and you know it! And you’re too weak to fight back!” she jeered. “I see what you are! You’re pathetic! It’s even worse than being a killer!”

Behind the grasping hands, Astrid worked to choke a response. “You would know.”

Rue’s eyes flashed with danger, but Astrid pushed further.

“I see what you are,” she repeated back. “If one of us dies here, it doesn’t matter which one. Captain will know whose responsible!”

Rue nearly screeched at the claim, and her fingers tightened with purpose.

“Your people are the reason we’re in the mess, why you’re in this mess! Your uprising on Argos cost hundreds their lives!”

“I wasn’t there!” Astrid gasped for air. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“No. You don’t.”

Astrid could feel Rue’s hot breath on her face while the soldier waited for the light in her eyes to dim. “At least I can make sure I don’t have to listen to your pitiful little voice poison my team any more…”

For a second time, Astrid’s world blurred around the edges of her vision at the hands of Rue.

This time, she was not overtly defenseless. But the thought of using her powers against a woman who would only use it to justify her point sent Astrid’s mind spinning in an already shadowing haze.

Nonetheless, primal panic set in the closer she grew to unconsciousness. In a fleeting moment, beyond her will, the Channeler's survival instincts threatened to drain a second human life to foster her own.

Then, a thick body charged Rue from the side like a maddened bull.

The woman was ripped from Astrid with a cry, and Astrid coughed on fresh air..

Anders wrestled in the dark with a howling Rue.

“No! I won’t let her get away with it!”

Astrid panted when air flooded her lungs. She scrambled into a sitting position, then crab-walked away from the fresh fight that broke out on the deck.

Rue still retained remarkable force and strength, an impressive specimen of a brawler, all the same.

Anders tried to hold her down, to calm her, but Rue would have none of it.

“I will kill you, bitch!” Rue screamed at the Channeler. To see Astrid defended only seemed to spur her wilder. “I’m going to kill you!”

“Knock it off!” Anders shouted. He planted himself astride her in the same position Rue forced on Astrid. He tried to pin Rue’s arms, but they beat against him violently for freedom.

“No! Let me do it! Look what she’s doing to us! Anders, look what she’s doing to us! Let me do it!”

Finally, Anders clocked her hard across the head, until Rue fell back, teetered on the edge of her own blackout.

More running footsteps trampled to the scene, and Romo and Tenya arrived.

“What the hell happened!?” Tenya looked from where Astrid clasped her own throat, to where Rue lolled her head in groaning delirium.

Anders quickly rose and pointed roughly to the soldier.

“Get her to the storage brig. Put a guard on her until Captain can sort this out!”

Romo moved in to carry out the demand, confused, but trusting.

Then Anders knelt before Astrid. She rested her head against the crate to which she’d retreated. The room spun, but slowly came to settle.

“Did she hurt you?” His voice came tense.

“Yes. But I’ll be okay, I just need a minute.”

“I’m so sorry. We’re here now.”

Anders gingerly checked her freshly ruptured abrasions with tentative fingertips.

“I don’t understand. What happened?!” Tenya tried again. Romo slung Rue over his shoulder to haul her off.

“I think she’s the one that gave up our location to Graves,” Astrid revealed through a haggard breath. “She’s S.O.”

~~~

A couple hours later, Astrid remained in the cargo hold. Nowhere felt safe anymore. And while Anders and Tenya coaxed her over to a table to sit, it seemed just as good a place as any to contemplate betrayal.

“I still can’t believe Rue could be a part of the Static Opposition…” Tenya paced.

Though Astrid ran out of things to feel in one day, Tenya looked visibly hurt.

“She all but admitted it when I asked her,” Romo said, his expression gloomy. “Captain is talking to her now. He wants to deal with her himself.”

Tenya blinked. “But since when? Since Astrid joined?”

“No, it had to be before that…” Astrid shook her head. “She always hated me. It was personal, I just didn’t want to see it.”

“None of us did,” Anders comforted from where he sat at her side.

“Rue’s always been an ass, it was hard to tell the difference. But, I guess, she has been particularly standoffish lately.” Tenya crossed her arms over her chest while she stalked to and fro. “I still can’t believe she’d attack Astrid right on the ship!”

“It wasn’t the first time.”

“What? What do you mean?” Romo pried as his forehead scrunched.

Astrid turned slightly in her seat to face Anders. Guilt took a back seat to how ignorant and willfully blind she'd behaved.

“I’m sorry," she told the lieutenant. "I did keep it from you. She came after me that night after I first worked the lanterns.”

Anders, too, seemed injured by the confession. “Why didn’t you tell me when I asked? This isn't about social dynamics, Astrid, that was a major breach of trust and code of conduct! We could have done something!”

“Because I thought it temporary!” Astrid replied. “You were already a team, and I felt I had no business coming between you. I convinced myself she was just being protective, and that somehow we’d work past it. And that telling you would just make it worse and pit her against me more.”

Anders, however, did not seem to accept her meager explanation. He grew taciturn and clamped his mouth shut, but Astrid could sense the lecture he barely restrained within.

“Damn it!” Tenya cursed. “I still should have seen it!”

“She brought up Sanctuary Argos. Called it an ‘uprising’,” Astrid divulged further. “Maybe she had friends there.”

“If she’s been with the S.O. since before the mission, who knows what she’s been involved with. How she’s affected things,” Romo proposed. "It explains how word got out about Astrid so quickly. Intel's going to be an absolute clusterfuck to sort out."

“Was there anything you overheard in her meeting with Benson?” Astrid asked. “We were separated. She was alone with him for a while.”

“Meaningless small talk….” Romo replied. “Though, now, I wonder what messages she may have passed that we wouldn’t have caught. They talked about price, and payment, but any support she expressed for the cause just sounded like part of the ruse.”

“Captain’s gotta be so hurt by this…” Tenya lamented. “This sucks.”

“This might be the longest day of my life.” Astrid released a long exhale and hung her head.

“We’ve gotta get our heads on straight before we go forward,” Romo declared. “We can't fight from the middle of this mess.”

Through the dark, Captain London appeared. For the first time to Astrid’s recollection, his uniform seemed worn and disheveled, and his body stiff.

“I agree,” he rumbled to the dwindling team. “I’m afraid the situation is deteriorating quickly.”