Damaged Goods

Bend Not Break

Her vision came back foggy. Was it bad that she was familiar with the feelings after waking up from a jump attack? Hell, she'd known the attack was coming but it still hurt.

"Hey, Raven. Hey!" Raven squinted, adjusting to the light. She saw Sam standing over her, crouching in their cage. Yep- a cage. They were in a cage.

Raven had to take a slow breath to keep herself from freaking out. She pressed herself against the cage, as far as it allowed. She'd never done well in cages. Or any sort of entrapment. Her track record wasn't good concerning a lot of things, cages were just a touchy subject.

She took another breath as she looked up at Sam. The cage had been person-sized, but normal person sized! Sam was a moose of a man. The cage dwarfed him.

She remembered how they ended up here. The younger Bender men had overpowered them. She'd gotten in a few good hits before the second one blitz's her. She was distracted out of concern for Sam.

They had taken her Bag. Raven could barely make it out though- across the room, hanging on the wall. The faint light in the room was hitting one of the buttons. Her anxiety was soothed at the sight, less so at the distance.

Sam knelt lower on the ground. "Hey you okay?"

Raven didn't trust her head with a nod. "Yeah." She took two deep breaths to calm down. "You see the number on that bus?"

Sam chuckled. He looked around the dimly lit room they were in. "No. But I didn't see anything before I went down. You? You see what it was?"

"It looked human." Raven explained. "And was corporal. That narrows down what it can be."

Sam nodded in agreement.

Raven glanced to the side, taking more breaths.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked. He had noticed Raven's breathing. He knew she'd done it before to calm down. What could be scaring her? It occurred to him suddenly. "Is...is it the cage?" He remembered what she'd said about her home life growing up, how they'd been monsters. He was scared that they'd done more than just collectively beat her.

Raven let him draw his own conclusions. "We have a roommate."

Sam made a note about her changing of the subject. He turned though, seeing a second cage. There was a man lying in it. Sam couldn't tell if he was alive or dead.

==DG==

Sam was trying to break down the cage. They'd taken anything he had on him. Raven too. All he had was his legs. He kicked at the door, kicked at the hinges. Whatever put them in this had gone all out on the cage itself.

Raven still hadn't moved from her spot on the back of the cage. She'd kept up her calming breaths, her knees curled up to her chest.

His kicking woke up their roommate. He groaned in his cage.

Sam stopped in his kicking. He rushed towards the man, kneeling down to get a better look at him. "You're alive."

The man groaned, curling about as he tried to right himself.

"Hey, you okay?" Sam asked.

"Does it look like I'm doin' okay?" The man snarked.

"He has breath for sass, he's fine." Raven waved off.

The man grumbled.

"Where are we?" Sam asked him.

"I don't know." The man replied,. He sat up in his cage. "The country, I think. Smells like the country."