[June 14th] [Perry Mason] Lux Aeterna, 14

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

Title: Lux Aeterna, scene 14
Day/Theme: June 14th - The shadowed land
Series: Perry Mason
Character/Pairing: Lieutenant Tragg, Florence (OC), guard OCs
Rating: T/PG-13

Takes place during Tragg's disappearance.

LOTR reference: Gandalf's escape from Saruman's tower.


By Lucky_Ladybug

Tragg heard the familiar clink of handcuffs as he was prodded up the dark and expensively tiled corridor. What was not familiar was that this time the bracelets were around his wrists. After close to thirty years in the police force, that had never happened to him. But he had been ambushed and taken prisoner by Florence’s guards. When he had awakened, his own handcuffs had been placed on him. Now he was being treated as less than cattle, the way he saw it. He was suspected of being part of a rebel group. Apparently the guards had decided it was a wonderful time to prove it.

“Lady Florence!” cried the one in the lead. “We’ve brought him at last.”

Florence did not wait for them to enter her circular throne room. Instead she rose to meet them, her painted lips twisting in a cruel and satisfied smirk as she studied Tragg in the doorway.

“Yes,” she mused. “You’ve done well.” She eyed the man’s frazzled appearance. “But did you hurt him?”

“It was the only way we could get him to come, Lady Florence,” said the guard. “He just wouldn’t.”

“I would expect that of Lieutenant Arthur Tragg.” Florence turned away, walking towards the windows that surrounded the room on all sides. “It’s a shame you had to do that. There are far better ways of getting to someone.”

Tragg pulled away from the sentry, who had still been gripping his shoulder. “Now see here!” he cried in indignation. “I’m right here in the room. If you talk about me, you talk to me.”

“Of course, Lieutenant.” Florence turned back halfway and waved her hand at the tensing guards. “It’s alright. Let him say and do as he pleases. That is how Lieutenant Tragg is. I doubt anyone could restrain his tongue, if he wanted to speak.”

“Darn-tootin’.” Tragg stepped forward, still handcuffed, but ignoring it. He glared at Florence. “. . . How could you have taken part in Vivalene’s scheme to trick me into thinking the both of you were Maureen? It doesn’t seem like you.”

“You’re quite right,” Florence replied. “It was a base scheme, far beneath me. But I allowed it for one reason. Everything Vivalene did during that time was leading up to her downfall. And she fell, just as I knew she would. If she had studied her spell out, and every possible intricacy, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Don’t you take any responsibility at all?” Tragg demanded in sickened disbelief.

“Of course I do. I’m just pointing out that she could have avoided it. She was too impatient and impulsive, and focused on petty things like revenge.” Florence spoke matter-of-factly and without feeling. “To be honest, it was very simple to see that I was rid of her.”

“She’s still alive,” Tragg said.

“Ah yes, but in a coma from which she will never awaken. You surely can’t deny the presence of magic here, can you, Lieutenant?”

Tragg narrowed his eyes. “No, I can’t,” he admitted with a grudging tone of resignation.

“And you’re likely wondering what is to be done with you.” Florence crossed the room up and down between the windows.

“The thought did occur to me.”

Florence stopped and smirked. “Your sarcasm is both amusing and refreshing. Well, Lieutenant, as I’m sure you know, I believe you are involved with the rebel movement to dethrone me.”

“It’s a logical deduction,” Tragg nodded.

“I want information about them,” Florence continued.

“That’s logical too.”

“And I can find ways to make you tell me what I want to know.”

Tragg was unmoved. “With torture?”

Florence shrugged. “Not the most obvious methods. I’m patient. I could slowly starve you, for example. Or I could lock you in complete solitary. Men have been known to go mad in the dark.” She looked into his eyes, still clear with resolve. “But you wouldn’t, would you?”

“I don’t know,” Tragg said. “I’ve never been locked in the dark before.” He gave her a smile dripping with irony and displeasure. “Aren’t we a little old for children’s games such as that?”

“Yes, we are. And that is why I would use far worse methods than anything mentioned.” Florence crossed her arms. “Vivalene and I didn’t disagree on everything. She knew that the best way to get to a noble and caring heart is through the people it loves most.

“I would slowly torture you, Lieutenant Tragg, but not physically. I would force you to helplessly watch someone else being graphically, physically tortured to death. Someone such as your niece Lucy, perhaps. Or even Lieutenant Anderson.”

Tragg’s eyes flashed with hatred and fury. “Leave them out of it!” he boomed.

“Will you talk with only the mere threat that they are in danger?”

Tragg’s revulsion for this woman was only growing the more she spoke. He gave her a cold glare. “No.”

“That’s what I thought. Then, Lieutenant Tragg, you have no choice but to submit to my brand of torture.”

Tragg glanced out the window. They were high above a raging current. The water was loud enough that it could be heard there in the dark tower.

His heart gathered speed. He could not submit to what Florence wanted. Not now, not ever. And perhaps the alternative was no guarantee that he would live or even that she would not go through with it anyway, but it was more promising than sitting around in agony, wondering which loved one Florence would have sent in to be tortured. At least with the alternative, they as well as he had a chance.

Without warning he whirled, kicking the guard closest to him. The man yelped as his balance was lost. Even as he fell, and as the other sentries rushed to his aid, Tragg was upon him, pinning him to the floor. The man’s hand flew, fighting against him and pushing him back, but Tragg would not be pushed. He reached into his opponent’s pocket, withdrawing the handcuff key.

Florence was coming over closer now, both stunned and impressed by the performance. “Bravo, Lieutenant,” she smirked. “You have the key. But tell me, how do you expect to free yourself from this fortress? You can’t get past all of my men, even if you can catch one or two of them off-guard.”

Tragg was already standing again, stabbing the key into the lock. The handcuffs fell away and he pocketed them and the key. With a smirk of his own, he grabbed for the pillar separating one open window from the next. “There’s one way to be free of you and your men,” he declared.

Florence stared at him in shock. “You’re out of your mind!”

“Maybe,” Tragg answered, “but it can’t be any worse than you causing the entire world to go mad.”

The sentries rushed at him. Tragg drew a deep breath, pushing his fears back as he hauled himself onto the windowsill. He had only seconds, no more. If he was going to second-guess himself, he would be re-captured and someone would be brought in to be tortured.

He leaped out the window at the same moment the lead guard and Florence both lunged. The guard’s spear grazed Tragg’s back, slicing through his coat and his shirt and into his skin. But it was not enough to hold him. He plunged down, down, down into the violent, freezing water.

“So!” Florence screamed after him. “You have chosen death! How stupidly foolish the noble-minded always are in the end. That’s something else Vivalene and I have both known.”

Tragg coughed and sputtered, rising to the surface and flailing in desperation for something to grab onto. The water was going fast, faster than he could possibly swim. And if there were any rocks in his path, there was little hope that he would miss striking them.

Maybe, he thought to himself as he struggled to keep his head above the current, he really had chosen death. But even though the fear was rising at the prospect of such an agonizing end, it could never make him change his mind even if changing it were still an option. He would not be Florence’s prisoner. He would not watch, helpless and chained, or otherwise locked up, while someone he loved was deliberately tortured in front of his eyes.

If I die today, it was the only path I could have taken, he determined.

He went under again and fought for the surface. The battering he was taking from the current, as well as the difficulty in fighting it in general and the water entering his lungs, was taking its toll on his aging body. Even a young person could be killed under these circumstances. Although he refused to give up, he did not hold out much hope for himself.

Maureen, forgive me. Please understand why I had to do it. . . .

That was his last conscious thought.