Universal Displacement

Mistakes Were Made

Sutton's mind raced. He wanted her to tell him the date? That was bad; really bad. She played through several different scenarios where she explained how she'd been in a coma for awhile and just woken up, told him she was from a hippie colony off planet that didn't believe in the concept of time, or to refuse to answer all together such an idiotic question. None felt like they'd go over well. And, as the pressure of his thumb on her neck continued, Sutton realized that he had not just placed it there to intimidate. The noticeable thrumming of her anxious heartbeat reminded her of lie detectors, and how they watched for a spike in heart rate to weed out untruths. But she couldn't pause in stunned silence for too long because that was a dead giveaway as well. Any other citizen would have spit the answer at him and took off running to freedom by now.

"That's a dumb question," she said slowly.

"And yet such a simple one, even for your feeble human mind. Answer it."

How did they even say the date in Star Trek? Wasn't it like, 'Star Date:insert random numbers here'? Did only Star Fleet do that, like howthe military told the time weirdly? Sutton swallowed thickly.

"The date, the date is definitely," she hurriedly considered the weather and stuck to her previous guess, "March, uh, fifteenth. But I'vebeen in the hospital lately so don't-"

His thumb pressed deeper into her neck than it had before and Sutton was flailing and gasping at the sharp pain and dizziness it caused.

"Give me the year, while you still can."

She'd watched the movie in New York, she'd gone to see it with Avery andMaggie and she knew that they'd flashed the year on the screen in the beginning. What had it said?

"Twenty! Twenty-two...twenty-two," she winced, gritting her teeth slightly, and made a wild guess. "Twenty-two thirty-eight!"

His thumb left her neck and his hand gripped her jaw, forcing her to lookup at him as he took a moment to truly study her eyes. Whatever he thought he saw in them caused him to raise one perfect brow in intrigue and Sutton bit down on her tongue.

"Not even close."

For a brief moment Sutton felt like she no longer inhabited her own body.It was like she was floating above herself, staring down at the pale frightened girl below in a distant pity. She couldn't remember a time that she had ever felt this hollow. Not even with Loki. Because at least when Loki had been trying to take advantage she'd had the Avengers around to give her hope. At least she hadn't been alone. She was pulled back into her own body, into the present, when she heard herself speak.

"Are you going to kill me?"

He wasn't touching her anymore but she had no more freedom than before .Still, she tried to straighten out her spine and loosen her shoulders. The idea of him killing her right here in this empty house where she was guaranteed to become a cold case had her chin quivering. But most of all she was angry with herself. She was the one who hadn't made it a point to learn the actual date, to not pay attention to where the young girls were shopping; she was the one who'd carelessly opened her big, fat mouth. Again.

"B-because if you do, you should know that-that you'll be just as much of a monster as you think humans are."

The light in his eyes flashed briefly and Sutton, still tightly wound and hyper alert, noticed his lips twitch fractionally.
"I haven'tdecided."

Sutton shifted and eyed the exit.

"Any chance I can convince you to forget all this?"
"None."
Irritation and desperation flashed across her face before she had a chance to conceal it. She was still gripping her bag for dear life, and she tried to transfer all the tension into her hand instead of wearing it out where he could see it. It was a delicate line she was treading, she understood that. One wrong word and he'd kill her, one wrong word and he'd keep her, and very few words that would convince him to let her go.