#spinal taps

It was getting harder and harder for Lou to force herself back into her own body, every time she found herself conscious again. When everything hurt - when the mere offense of being awake was certain to lead to her being beaten or tortured or violated - what was even the point of trying to wake up?

Why couldn't she just sleep through it all until someone came to save her?

"Oh, uptick in the heart rate. Has someone decided to join us in the waking world?"

But when Lou awoke to the sound of that light, amused voice, she was forced to reconsider her plan to keep her eyes closed to the world, because that…

That didn’t sound like Davies, or Striker, or any of the men who had hurt her lately. In fact, it sounded more like an older woman.

And - and the more Lou came back to her senses, the more she realized an absence of something that had been her constant companion for the past two days.

Pain.

She couldn’t feel any pain.

No, not just pain - she could barely feel anything. But - but the pain at least was gone, and she could tell she was lying on something slightly softer than a concrete floor, while the soft hums and beeps of medical equipment played around her.

She could hear no villains. No evil lackeys. No one but the kind doctor who had just spoken to her.

Lou wanted to weep with relief, because she - she must have been rescued at last. Red Sand or Captain Stormer or someone must have found her in that horrible cell and taken her somewhere - somewhere far away, where Davies would never touch her again, and she could get the medical attention she needed, and get these drugs out of her and - and - and just be fixed.

She wanted to believe the nightmare was over. She wanted this all to have been nothing but a horrible hallucination she could just put behind her and run away from. She wanted it with all her heart.

But the fact that she could not even so much as lift her eyelids to look around at her surroundings to confirm this - could not raise her head, could not constrict her throat enough to force out even the misshapen semblances of words from her mouth -

That was quick to kill the fledgling hope in her chest.

"Striker and his boys put you through quite the ringer these past few days, didn’t they? What a brave girl, enduring all that,” the voice said, somewhere to Lou’s right.

Maybe she could pretend. She could just pretend the woman meant it as earnestly as she sounded. That she was just there to look after Lou in her recovery. That she really thought she was a brave girl who deserved some rest.

“I do hope that little cocktail of mine at least made it easier for you to endure. Getting manhandled by all those boys - well, I’m sure it’s some folks’ idea of a good time, but I heard you didn’t seem to enjoy it all that much. But, at least without you trying to fight back, they probably went a bit easier on you.”

No -

And then it struck her.

Her next appointment had always been with “the doc.”

Lou was no safer than she had been this morning - just subject to a whole new kind of torment, and paralyzed to make her all the more vulnerable to whatever this woman, the woman who had enabled Davies to steal her voice and her powers, had in store for her.

Against the rushing of blood in her ears, Lou could just make out the quickening of a beeping on one of the machines nearby. Apparently, the doc could too.

Lou heard the gentle pat of flesh on flesh, but she couldn’t tell where the doc had actually touched her - something that alarmed her even further. She had been grateful for the lack of pain at first, but now it just terrified her. There was no way she could know what was happening to her body right now - what might have already happened to her body in her conscious absence.

“Oh, not to worry, not to worryyyy,” the doc cooed at her. “I don’t have anything nearly so bad planned for you today. I just need to collect some samples - easy peasy, sweetie pie.”

Despite the doc's assurances, Lou found little comfort in the idea that this would be "easy peasy." Easy for the doc, perhaps - easy to treat her subject like a garden ready for harvest when she had stolen her ability to consent. But unable to move, or even let out a whimper of resistance, all Lou could do was imagine the worst as the doc set to work on her.

With her eyes still stuck shut, it was only thanks to her apparent fondness for narrating her work that Lou had any idea what was happening at all - and why.

"We need to do a full work up on you - weekly, if I can help it," the doc explained as she bustled about her - Lou assumed - laboratory. Each clink of metal and glass that came as she picked up and moved about various instruments would have made her flinch, if she had any control over how she moved. "Some of the components in your particular cocktail are quite experimental, you see. You're actually the first in human testing for that language suppressant - isn't that fun?"

She plucked hairs from Lou's head - making sure to pull from the root. She pulled Lou's mouth open and swabbed it for saliva, then pushed it shut for her.

"Obviously, I would have liked to test it with a more strictly scientific method - control groups and all that, just that drug on its own without confounding variable - but the folks who wanted you were keen on this being part of your leash. You must have quite a history of mouthing off for them to want you chemically silenced!"

She scraped one of Lou's arms to collect a sample of skin, then stuck a needle into the other for a sample of blood. However much she took, it was enough to make even Lou's stationary head spin, as if she'd been overdosed again.

"And while I'm still glad for the opportunity to experiment, I do wish the Auctioneer at least had the foresight to take some samples before administering your first dose - just so I could have had a baseline of comparison, you understand. But, I suppose starting now is better than nothing!"

She stuck a longer needle into Lou's bladder to collect a sample of her urine, commenting on how dehydrated she must be.

"So, of course, I'll be running a full panel of tests on you weekly, just to see if there are any major effects on the functioning of your organs and such. Mr. Davies paid quite a bit of money for you, you know, so since he hasn't already brutally murdered you, I'm sure he'd like to keep you alive for a loooooong time. You might feel a pinch at this, dear."

Lou was rolled over to lie on her side - her knees neatly aligned, her arms left to hang limply in front of her. Another needle entered her - thicker, deeper, pushed in through her hip. Her breathing hitched and her heart raced even faster as the pain permeated beyond whatever numbing agent she'd been given. The doc burrowed into her very bones and took a sample of her marrow.

"But, just testing like that feels like it would be such a waste of your precious time with us, so, I've been working up a whole schedule of external applications to try out with you as well! I have so many fun little ointments and salves I've been wanting to test for so long, but even though Mr. Davies is a great patron, all of his henchmen are unionized, so it's so hard to find any of them who will willingly submit to experimentation. But you, dear - "

Once she had retrieved enough bone marrow, she rearranged Lou's body again - bowing her head forward to her knees. It was almost funny - it was the position Lou would've wanted for herself anyway, to curl up and flinch away from the barrage of tests that had brought pain to her again, even through the drugs.

But, of course, the gesture wasn't out of kindness on the doc's part. It was just to ensure Lou's spine was appropriately extended and exposed.

" - you are going to be so much fun."

An instinctive shiver ran down through Lou as the doc's voice was suddenly right in her ear, menacingly close. Apparently, the doc noticed that as well.

"Oh, I do hope that doesn't mean the paralytic is wearing off - we've still got a few tests to go, and it's so much more trouble if I have to physically restrain you," the doc laughed. "Tell you what, deary, if you do start to feel anything in the next half hour or so - just hold still a little longer, would you? It's for both our good, I promise. I'd still like to get some spinal fluid, and I'd just hate to accidentally paralyze you in the process."

*****

Whether for better or worse, Lou did remain paralyzed throughout the rest of the procedure - even if the barest sensation of the needle tap being driven into her spine made her sick to her stomach.

And then, when it was all done, the doc rolled her onto her back - telling her applying something that would help her whip marks from earlier heal faster, before finally re-dressing her in a new nightgown.

It hadn't even occurred to Lou by then that she'd been naked on the doc's table all along.

"There sweetie, that wasn't so bad, now was it?" the doc asked. "You'll be familiar with the whole routine soon enough. Maybe if you're a good girl next week, I'll start keeping a candy bucket in my lab, so you can take a little treat with you afterwards. Would you like that?"

Lou could just barely feel a hand, one with short, thick fingers, brushing across her forehead, sweeping her bangs away. As the idea crossed her mind that she may be able to move again, Lou tried to force herself into action - raise a hand, try to pull herself away from gravity, make a plea for herself on the off chance the regular drugs from her collar had faded too.

But in the moment, all she could manage to do was lift her eyelids - each one weighed down with shackles of their own. When she did pull them open, she at last looked into the face of the doc. Round. Curly haired. Smiling sweetly, and staring back at her with a pair of bright red, bug-like compound eyes.

And in that moment, Lou decided to close them again, and find what little respite she could in the safety of her mind. At least they hadn't taken that from her.

At least, not yet.

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