Stephanie Doyle - Calculated Risk

“Are you ready?”

She nodded and held her hands up. He moved fast. So fast that the only thing she was able to process was how much he’d been holding back those times he’d sparred with her. His leg swung in an arc and came down on her shoulder with enough force to numb it. He followed with a punch to her stomach that almost knocked the wind out of her. She staggered back and tried to focus on what she knew her body could do, but this was the first time she’d had to execute the moves while suffering actual pain.

She moved forward to attack, but he countered her moves easily. She tried a side kick, but he blocked it. She tried to swing her elbow against the side of his face, but he stopped it, and her close proximity to him left her vulnerable. Taking hold of her right wrist he captured it and swung her arm around her back. Then with his feet he tripped her, sending her to the mat facedown.

He pushed her arm higher along her back until she couldn’t hold back the squeak of pain.

“Submit.”

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She thought she’d come so far only to be shown in seconds that she wasn’t even close. She wanted to ask him why it had to be him. Why couldn’t he have sent someone else? Because the pain was nothing compared to her humiliation. But none of the words would come out. All she could do was breathe.

“Submit,” he prompted again.

“Go to hell,” she moaned.

She felt him loosen the angle on her arm slightly, but then he took her pinky finger and began to bend it back against her hand.

“Say it.”

He was scaring her, she thought dazedly. He wouldn’t do what he was threatening. Not to her. No way.

“Say it,” he growled.

“No.”

The first thing that registered was the sound of the bone snapping. The second was the horrible rolling pain that started in her hand and overtook her whole body. Before she could scream, he had another finger in his hand.

“Say it. Now.”

Sabrina couldn’t speak if she wanted to. She couldn’t think, she could barely suck in oxygen, she couldn’t even cry. Only his name penetrated. Quinlan. Her mentor, her only friend. They’d played cards a few nights ago. She’d teased him and made him laugh. And now his knee was digging into her back, her mouth was full of blood from where he’d hit her face and if she didn’t say what he wanted her to say, he was going to break another finger.

The betrayal was crushing.

“Sabrina. Submit. Say it.”

She clenched her teeth and shook her head. The second break didn’t hurt half as much mostly because she wouldn’t let it. Something was happening to her on the inside. She thought of her mother and remembered a woman with flowing hair and smelling of soft perfume, bending down in front of her daughter to tell her that she just couldn’t handle her little girl. She’d been hoping for a friend, and instead she’d gotten another freak. Just like her father. Sabrina had felt betrayed then, too.

She recalled at age nine her father telling her that he was needed on an assignment and would be gone for several weeks, but that she was old enough and smart enough to look out for herself. The first night alone in the empty house, she’d been so afraid. So afraid that she’d actually missed her mother for the first time in years.

Sabrina felt the anger of those events rise up and merge with the anger she was feeling now. She wanted to rail at Quinlan. She wanted to tell him he could break all of her fingers, but it wouldn’t matter. She was tougher than that. She was stronger. Nothing would break her. Not her mother or her father. Not him.

Nothing had. Nothing would.

He didn’t give her any warning before he broke the third finger. Her body jerked against the pain and in response she felt him loosen his grip. She turned her head so that her cheek was resting on the mat and saw that her left hand was free. It had been the whole time, but with his knee at her back, containing her, he’d been safe from any attack.

Not that she could have mounted one anyway. She’d been too lost in the fog of what he’d been doing to her to concentrate on what she could be doing to him.

“Say it,” he said again.

She lifted her hand and made a motion as if to bring him closer. She muttered something knowing it was too soft for him to hear. She felt him lean over her to get his ear closer to her mouth.

“Q,” she whispered when he was close.

“Say it,” he whispered back.

“Fuck you.”

With that she separated the fingers of her left hand in a move Spock would have been proud of and sent them directly toward his eyes. She heard him howl as she made contact and was able to roll until she was on her back. His hands were on his eyes, probably trying to figure out if they were still there and she struck again with her left palm, slamming it into the upside of his nose. The force of the contact sent him falling backward and she scrambled out from beneath him until she was on her feet.

In seconds he was back on his feet, as well. His eyes were red, but undamaged and only a thin trickle of blood escaped his nose.

“You want to fight?” His voice was low and ominous in a way she’d never heard from him before.

She looked down at her hand, saw her fingers bent at impossible angles and searched the room for the T-shirt she’d discarded. She found it on the edge of the mat and where it was already torn, ripped a strip from the bottom. Steeling herself against the pain, she wrapped the cotton around her three fingers until they were immobilized. Using her teeth to hold one end, she tied it off in a tight knot and grimaced as the broken appendages were pushed together.

“Are you ready?” she asked. Her voice quavered, but she didn’t take notice. This time she attacked without reservation, without consideration, without holding anything back. This time it was her speed and her fury that surprised him. Quinlan staggered when she landed a kick to his solar plexus. He stumbled when the side of her foot made contact with his face.

But soon he was moving again and the punch he landed to her ribs was intense. She bent over to protect that side from further assault, but as soon as she did, she made herself vulnerable. His foot came down on her left ankle and for the fourth time that day she heard the sound of one of her bones snapping.

Instantly, her leg caved and she fell to the floor in a heap of agony. Sabrina could feel her heartbeat shallow out and she tried to pant through the pain, fearing that she would faint. Colors swam in front of her eyes until she couldn’t see. So she closed them. Rolling onto her knees and elbows, she tried to focus on shifting her weight to her left knee. With her left hand, she pushed until she could rock back onto her right foot, but before she was able to stand she lost her balance and was forced to put her right hand down. Her broken fingers protested against the weight and the shooting pain that rifled through her body sent her back down to her knees.

She lifted her head then to see where he was, to prepare for whatever attack was coming next. In her current position, she was vulnerable to anything he might throw at her. But he was just standing in front of her, his arms at his sides. His face was a mass of red blotches that she took special satisfaction in. His left eye was beginning to swell shut.

She wanted to laugh. And she wanted to cry. All she did was shake.

He said nothing, but turned and walked off the mat.

“I didn’t say it,” she mouthed. Only she knew he couldn’t hear her. She sucked in some breath and tried again. “I didn’t say it.” The sound was still too faint to carry the length of the gym. He was almost at the door now. But the dweeb stepped in front of him.

“You’re disgusting,” she heard him tell Quinlan. “You feel like a big man now? Do you?”