Chapter Text
He waited until her breathing settled into the deep, even rhythm of true unconsciousness, the heavy, dreamless void of a body that had surrendered completely. The chloroform pad rose and fell against her face in slow, steady waves. Only then did he reach for the leather string and untie it, lifting the damp cloth away from her nose and mouth. Her lips parted slightly at the release, and a soft, inaudible sigh escaped them as fresh air kissed her skin.
He started with her right wrist. The cotton rope had been tied snugly but not cruelly. He'd planned for this, planned for the untying as carefully as he'd planned the binding. The knot came apart easily under his cybernetic fingers, and he cradled her freed hand for a moment before lowering it gently to the mattress. The rope marks were faint, pink impressions against her skin that would fade within the hour. He traced them with his thumb, light as a whisper, and moved to the left wrist.
Her arms fell to her sides as he freed them, settling against the silk sheets with a soft rustle. Without the headboard ropes holding them aloft, her shoulders relaxed into their natural position, and the faint tension lines around her collarbone smoothed away. He paused, looking down at her face, the tear tracks drying on her temples, the faint impressions where the blindfold and gags had pressed into her skin, the lips still slightly swollen from being stretched around all that cloth. Peaceful. Truly, deeply peaceful in a way that photographs and press conferences and medal ceremonies never captured.
The ankle restraints came next. Right foot first, the rope falling away to reveal the same faint pink marks, the same unblemished skin beneath. He lifted her leg slightly, bending it at the knee, and set it down on the mattress with a care that bordered on reverence. The crotchrope was the last restraint to go, its cotton length dark and slick where it had nestled against her sex. He untied it from the waist harness and drew it away slowly, and even unconscious, her hips gave a tiny, reflexive twitch at the loss of contact.
Sonya remained limp throughout, her body pliant and unresisting, still floating in the depths of chemical slumber.
She lay completely free now, every rope removed and restraint undone, but she didn't stir. The chloroform held her deep, her body limp and boneless against the silk sheets, her limbs arranged in a loose, natural sprawl that bore no resemblance to the rigid X she'd been pinned into hours ago. Without the ropes, without the gag, without the blindfold, she looked smaller somehow. More human. Just a woman sleeping off exhaustion and chemistry and twenty years of bottled grief.
He stood at the bedside for a long moment, just looking.
The firelight from the brazier played across her body like a painter's brush, illuminating the geography of a life lived in combat. The scar on her left shoulder, a puckered crescent where a Tarkatan blade had caught her during the Outworld invasion. The thin white line running diagonally across her ribs, a knife fight in a São Paulo safehouse, Black Dragon, years before Cassie was born. The faded bruise on her hip, already yellowing, from a training exercise that had gone sideways. Each mark was a story. Each story was a battle survived.
Her hands lay open at her sides, palms up, fingers slightly curled. These hands had pulled triggers, thrown punches, signed orders that sent soldiers to their deaths, held her daughter for the first time in a military hospital in Fort Collins. Now they were still. The faint rope impressions on her wrists had already begun to fade, pink softening to nothing.
He reached out and brushed a strand of blonde hair from her forehead. The gesture was impossibly gentle, the kind of touch a parent might give a sleeping child, or a medic checking for fever. His cybernetic fingers, capable of crushing steel, barely whispered against her skin. Her lips moved faintly in response, an unconscious reflex of a body registering comfort even in the deepest sleep.
His gaze traced the curve of her jaw, still faintly red where the tape had gripped. It was now time to take the game a step further.
He worked efficiently, shifting her dead weight from the bed to a heavy wooden chair he'd positioned at the center of the chamber. The chair was old, made of dark oak scarred by centuries, but reinforced with modern steel brackets bolted discreetly beneath the seat. It faced the brazier's dying embers, the firelight painting shadows across the stone walls.
The chairtie was methodical and strict. Each pass of rope cinched and locked professionally. Her ankles were bound to the chair's front legs, her calves pressed flush against the wood. Rope circled her thighs and the seat twice over, pinning her hips immobile. More rope at her waist, her chest, above and below her bare breasts, lashing her torso to the chair's high back. Her wrists were crossed behind the chair and bound together, the rope threaded through the slats to prevent even an inch of slack. When he finished, she was one with the chair.
Then the toe-tie.
He lifted her left foot and began threading thin cord between each toe, big toe to second, second to third, creating a delicate web of humiliation that offered no restraint but screamed absolute vulnerability. He repeated the process on her right foot. The cords pulled gently with every tiny movement, a constant reminder that even her smallest extremities belonged to him.
When he was done, he stepped back and surveyed his work. In the amber firelight, Sonya Blade sat bound to a chair like a prisoner awaiting interrogation. Her body, scarred, muscular, glistening with the remnants of her earlier arousal, was utterly exposed.
The brazier had burned low, its embers pulsing with a soft orange glow that barely pushed back the chamber's shadows. He'd taken his seat in the high-backed chair, positioned just beyond the edge of the firelight, where he could watch her without being the first thing she saw when her eyes opened.
Hours passed, and the mountain wind moaned against the ancient stone. Somewhere deeper in the monastery, old timber settled with a distant creak.
Sonya's fingers twitched first, the bound hands behind the chairback clenching and unclenching in tiny, involuntary spasms. Then her head, which had been lolling forward against the chest ropes, lifted a fraction. A soft, groggy sound escaped her lips, her consciousness reasserting itself after chemical oblivion.
"Mmm... wh..."
Her eyelids fluttered. The firelight caught the blue of her irises as they focused and unfocused, struggling to make sense of the stone walls, the dying embers, the unfamiliar weight of ropes pressing against bare skin. She tried to move, a full-body shift of habit, and the ropes held her fast. Ankles to chair legs. Thighs to seat. Waist to back. Wrists behind her. Even her toes, still laced with cord, sent tiny protests up her calves when she flexed her feet.
"...chair..." The word came out slurred, thick with sleep. She blinked slowly, processing her new predicament. "...I'm in a chair... how long..?"
"It doesn't matter how long," he replied, circling her. "What truly matters is how perfect you look tied to that chair. It makes you even more beautiful."
The compliment landed somewhere deep in her chest, deeper than the drugs could reach, and deeper than the chloroform's lingering haze. A flush crept up her neck and into her cheeks, visible even in the dim firelight. General Sonya Blade had been called many things over the years: formidable, terrifying, unstoppable, cold. Beautiful was rarely among them. And never like this. Never when she was bound and naked and utterly at someone's mercy.
"Beautiful," she repeated, the word soft and wondering on her tongue. Her head lifted slowly, the firelight catching the glassiness still lingering in her eyes. "You think I'm... beautiful like this. Tied to a chair. Stripped. Used." A shaky breath escaped her. "No one's ever called me beautiful like this before. No one's ever seen me like this before."
Sonya tested the ropes again. Her thighs pressed against the coils pinning her to the seat, her wrists twisting gently behind the chairback, the rope creaking softly. Even her toes wiggled, sending tiny tugs through the cord laced between them, and a fresh wave of humiliation washed through her at the sensation.
"The chair is..." She swallowed, still working moisture back into her dry throat. "Strict. I can't move anything. Can't shift my weight. Can't close my legs. Can't hide." Her voice cracked slightly on the last word. "You've got me displayed like a piece of art. Like something to be looked at. And I... I don't hate it. I should. But I don't."
The flush deepened. The firelight danced across her scarred, sweat-glistened skin.
"How long was I under? What else did you do to me while I was out?" There was no accusation in her voice, just curiosity, tinged with something darker. Hunger.
"You were out for two hours," he said, still circling the chair where the bound Sonya didn't even pretend to struggle. "And in that time I... admired you."
The words settled over her like a weighted blanket. Two hours of oblivion. Two hours of him moving her unconscious body from the bed to the chair, winding rope around her limbs, threading cord between her toes. Two hours of being completely, utterly vulnerable, unaware, unresponsive, his to do with as he pleased.
A shudder ran through her bound body, and the ropes creaked softly in response. The firelight caught the way her nipples tightened against the cool air, the way her thighs pressed together as much as the chair-tie would allow.
"Admired," she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper. "And I was just... gone. Completely gone. Didn't feel a thing. Didn't know a thing." Her blue eyes, still glassy with chloroform residue, searched his face in the dim light. "You could have done anything. Absolutely anything. And I would have just... slept through it. Let you."
The flush that had started at her neck had spread down to her chest now, painting her scarred skin in shades of rose and amber. Her bound hands clenched and unclenched behind the chairback, the only movement the strict tie allowed her.
"That's... the most terrifying thing I've ever heard. And also..." A shaky breath. "Also the most arousing. God help me. What did you do? Tell me. I want to know everything."
"I fantasized, Sonya. Imagined many new ways to tie you up, gag you, put you under," he said, bluntly, his words bare of any duplicity.
Sonya's breath caught in her throat — a sharp, audible hitch that made the ropes creak as her chest expanded against them. The firelight flickered across her face, catching the way her lips parted, the way her pupils dilated despite the dimness of the dying embers.
"You've been... fantasizing," she breathed, her voice dropping to something low and almost reverent. "About me. About what comes next..."
Her hands twisted behind the chairback, the rope creaking softly. The toe-tie cords pulled gently as she flexed her feet, the sensation sending tiny sparks of humiliation up her calves.
"I want to know," she said, and the words came out steadier than before, a demand wrapped in surrender. "Tell me what you imagined. Every detail. Every position. Every gag. Every... every time you thought about putting the cloth over my face." She strained in her bonds, throat bobbing in the amber light.
A shudder ran through her bound body, and this time there was no mistaking it for anything but pure, undisguised arousal.
"Please. Tell me what you're going to do to me. I want to know. I need to know. So I can... anticipate it. Dread it. Crave it. I want to sit here in this chair and be afraid of it, and then desperate for it." Her blue eyes, still glassy but blazing now, locked onto his. "I want you to describe my next nightmare. And I want to thank you for it."
He kneeled before her, a hand caressing her cheek, the other gently tracing the shape of her breast.
"We will step up our game. I want you to be vibed, gagged with a thick cloth you can only bite on, and then hooded, waiting for the chloroform to slip underneath it."
Sonya's bound body went rigid against the chair, in the intense, full-body clench of someone processing a fantasy so perfectly aligned with their desires that it felt like a revelation.
"A vibrator," she breathed, her voice barely audible over the crackle of the dying embers. "On my clit. While I'm... hooded. Gagged. Chloroformed." Her chest rose and fell against the ropes binding her to the chairback, each breath shallow and quick. "I won't be able to see. I won't be able to speak. I won't even know when the cloth is coming. I'll just be... blind. Mute. Helpless. And the vibrator will keep going even after I'm under, won't it? You'll leave it on. So even unconscious, even in the void, my body will still be... responding. Still be... yours."
Her thighs strained against the ropes, a futile attempt to press together that the chair-tie refused to allow. The toe-tie cords pulled taut as her feet flexed against the stone floor. A soft, desperate sound escaped her throat.
"The cloth gag — not to silence me, but to give me something to bite down on. So when it gets overwhelming, when I want to scream, I can't. I just bite down harder. And the hood..." A shudder rippled through her. "Total darkness. Total isolation. I won't know where you are. Won't know when you're going to touch me. Won't know when the pad is coming. I'll just be waiting. Listening. Dreading it. Craving it."
Sonya's hands clenched and unclenched behind the chairback. The firelight caught a new, widespread glisten of arousal between her thighs, her body betraying her even before any of it had begun.
"And the chloroform," she continued, her voice dropping to something raw and reverent. "Under the hood. I won't even see it coming. I'll just... breathe it in. Slowly. Without warning. One breath I'll be awake and terrified and desperate, and the next..." Her eyes fluttered half-closed. "The next I'll be gone. With the vibrator still buzzing. With the gag still between my teeth. With no idea how long I was under or what you did to me while I slept."
His answer was cold, and terrifyingly honest. "That is the plan. And I want you to demand it."
The word hung in the firelit air between them. Demand. And Sonya understood exactly what he was asking. Not passive acceptance. Not grateful submission. He wanted her to reach down into the depths he'd exposed and pull out the raw, unfiltered need that had been buried there for twenty years.
She straightened against the chairback as much as the strict ropes would allow. The toe-tie cords pulled gently as she planted her feet flat on the cold stone floor. When she spoke, her voice was steadier than it had been all night.
"Then I'm demanding it."
The firelight caught the steel in her blue eyes, forged in the dark hours between missions, in the silence of empty quarters, in the twenty years of denied desire that had finally found its voice.
"I demand the vibrator. I want it pressed against my clit and left on so I can't escape the pleasure even if I want to. I demand the gag in my mouth, thick enough to bite down on, tight enough that I can't spit it out, because when it gets to be too much, when I need to scream, I want to have to fight for it. I demand the hood. Total darkness. Total isolation. I want to disappear into it — no sight, no voice, just sensations and the fear of not knowing what comes next."
She took a shaky breath, the ropes creaking as her chest expanded.
"And I demand the chloroform pad. Under the hood. Where I can't see it coming. I want to breathe it in without warning — one moment awake and overwhelmed, the next moment gone. And when I'm unconscious, when I'm completely helpless, I want you to leave everything on. The vibrator. The gag. The hood. I want to wake up still trapped in the nightmare you designed for me. With no idea how long I was under. With no idea what you did to my body while I slept."
Her bound hands clenched into fists behind the chairback. Her voice cracked on the final words, but she pushed through.
"That's what I demand. That's what I want. Please. Give me the nightmare."
The vibrator was retrieved from the nightstand drawer, a sleek, modern device that seemed almost incongruous against the ancient stone and monastic austerity. He held it up where she could see it, letting the firelight catch its contours, and Sonya's breath hitched audibly.
"Yes," she whispered. "Please. Start with that."
He knelt before her, positioning himself between her spread thighs, spread wide by the chair-tie and unable to close or hide. The vibrator hummed to life at its lowest setting, a soft buzz that seemed deafening in the quiet chamber. When he pressed it against her clit, Sonya's entire body arched against the ropes, a strangled moan tearing from her throat.
"Ah...! Oh, God... that's... NGGH!"
He didn't give her time to adjust. His free hand found her breast, thumb circling her nipple, while the vibrator did its merciless work between her legs. The dual sensations sent her reeling, her head thrown back against the chair, her bound feet scrabbling against the stone floor, the toe-tie cords pulling with every frantic twitch. She was already close, and equally desperate. The hours of teasing, the crotchrope, the chloroform, the confessions, it had all been building to this.
"There," he said, his voice calm against the storm of her arousal. "Now. Order me to gag you."
Sonya's head snapped forward, eyes wild and glassy, struggling to focus on his face as the vibrator pushed her relentlessly toward the edge. Her voice came out ragged, punctuated by gasps and moans, but the command was unmistakable.
"Gag me, now! I'm ordering you... I want... need... you to gag me. Ah, God! I want the cloth in my mouth, I need to bite down on... something before I... before I... AGH! NNGH!"
Her hips bucked against the vibrator, the ropes groaning as her bound body strained against the chair. The toe-tie cords pulled taut as her feet scrabbled for purchase on the cold stone. Her words were dissolving into incoherent moans, but she fought to keep speaking, fought to give him what he'd asked for.
"Thick, make it thick. I want my jaw to ache, and scream into it when the chloroform takes me. Do it, now! I'm ordering you! I command you! Gag me!"
Her voice broke into a sob of pure, desperate need as a thick black cloth, folded into a dense band, appeared in his hand. Sonya's eyes locked onto it with a desperate hunger. The vibrator continued its relentless work between her thighs, pushing her closer and closer to the edge, and her words were dissolving into incoherent moans.
"Please, I need it. Gag me. Gag me no--uummph! MMMGHHPP!"
The cloth pressed between her lips, cleaving her mouth in two, and Sonya bit down on it with an almost feral intensity. Her jaw stretched wide around the thick fabric, her teeth sinking into the cotton as a muffled scream of relief and gratitude vibrated through the gag.
"HMMMMRRRRPPHHH! MMMMMPHHH!"
He pulled the ends tight behind her head, cinching the cleave gag deep into the corners of her mouth, knotting it savagely at the nape of her neck. The cloth compressed her tongue, filled her oral cavity, gave her exactly what she'd demanded: something to bite down on, something to scream into, something to silence her for good.
"MMMRRRPPHH... NNNGGGHH!!!"
Her muffled sounds were barely audible now, crushed beneath the thick fabric. Sonya writhed against the chair, the vibrator still buzzing, still pushing her toward the precipice. Her teeth sank deeper into the cloth. Her eyes rolled back. And through the gag, through the overwhelming pleasure, she managed one last coherent thought: a nod, frantic and desperate, begging him to continue.
The cotton hood he had previously described descended over her head like a shroud, swallowing the firelight and everything but the darkness, leaving her tangled in a losing fight against the overwhelming sensations. Sonya's muffled gasps were barely audible through the thick cleave gag, her teeth still sunk deep into the cloth as the world disappeared around her.
"MMMPPHH! NNNNHHMMMMPHH!"
In total darkness and isolation, she was just a collection of nerve endings now, floating in black void, every sensation amplified by the loss of sight.
The vibrator buzzed mercilessly against her clit, pushing her relentlessly toward an edge she couldn't escape. The ropes, pinning her thighs to the chair, her waist to the backrest, her wrists behind her. The toe-tie cords, pulling gently every time she flexed her feet. The cleave gag, filling her mouth, soaking up her muffled whimpers. And then...
"HHRRRMMMPPHH! WHMMMPH! NNNGGGHMMMMPH!"
His hands closed around her breasts from behind, cupping them, kneading them, thumbs circling her nipples with deliberate, teasing pressure. Sonya couldn't see him, or anticipate his moves. She could only feel the cool metal of his cybernetic hand contrasting with the warmth of his flesh, the way he squeezed and released, the way her body responded despite herself, despite everything.
"NNNNHMMMMPH!"
Sonya bit down harder on the cleave gag, the cloth muffling a scream that might have been his name or might have been a prayer. Her muffled cries grew more frantic with each passing second, as she was close, so close, and in the darkness of the hood, with his hands on her breasts and the gag in her mouth, Sonya Blade finally understood what it meant to be completely, utterly helpless.
He worked her over from behind, his lips trailing fire down the side of her neck, his hands kneading her breasts with that perfect, maddening contrast of warm flesh and cool metal. The vibrator buzzed against her clit without mercy, without pause, and Sonya's bound body began to thrash against the chair like a wildcat caught in a trap.
"MMMMMRRRRPPPHHH! NNNGGHH! HHRRRRRMMMM!!!"
Sonya's head thrashed from side to side. The chair creaked and groaned beneath her, old oak protesting the violence of her struggle, but the ropes held.
"HHHRRRRMM! HHRRRPPPHH! HHRRRRMMMMMPPPHHH!"
Her climax was climbing, climbing, climbing, and then his teeth grazed the sensitive spot just below her ear, and something inside her shattered.
"MMMMMMMMMMMPPPPPPPPHHHHHHH!!!"
The orgasm hit her like a tidal wave, primal and devastating, a complete annihilation of her senses that ripped through her bound with the force of a bomb blast. Sonya's spine arched so violently the chair nearly tipped. Her muffled scream reached a pitch that bordered on inhuman, the cleave gag barely containing the raw, ecstatic noise tearing from her throat.
"GGGGHHHHPPPPPPPHHHHHHHHHH!"
Her thighs strained against the ropes with enough force to leave bruises, hands clawing at the air behind the chairback and toes curling so hard the cords between them bit into her skin. Every muscle in her body locked and released and locked again in waves that seemed to go on forever. Thirty seconds, a minute, an eternity. Until finally, mercifully, the intensity began to ebb.
Sonya slumped forward against the chest ropes, the vibrator still buzzing against her oversensitive clit, her muffled screams dissolving into weak, whimpering sobs. The hood was soaked with tears and sweat.
She went slack against the chair, the ropes creaking softly as her full weight sagged into them. Her chest heaved beneath the restraints with each ragged, shuddering breath, the cotton hood pulsing faintly with the movement. The cleave gag had grown sodden between her teeth, but she still bit down on it, still clung to it, as she still needed it.
"MMMmm... mmm..."
Her will was barely there now. A soft, dazed exhalation of a woman who had been wrung completely dry.
He removed the vibrator, and Sonya's body jerked once in a final, oversensitive spasm, before sagging further into the ropes. The silence that followed was broken only by his words.
"Incredible," he said, and the word filtered through the hood like thick molasses. "After a workout like that, you deserve some rest."
Sonya heard the soft pop of a jar opening. Then the wet, sloshing sound of liquid being absorbed into a sponge. And then, the smell.
Chloroform. Fresh, sweet and unmistakable, even through the cotton hood. The fumes curled into her darkness, teasing her nostrils, filling her lungs with a new promise of oblivion.
"Mmmmm... mmmph!"
Her muffled grunts took on a new quality. Something grateful. Her head lolled against the chairback, the hood rustling softly.
He held the soaked sponge close, letting the fumes do their work, letting her breathe in the end she'd been chasing all night. The choice was hers now: she could turn away, could hold her breath, could fight it. But Sonya Blade had stopped fighting hours ago.
The sponge slid beneath the cotton hood with care and precision. Sonya felt the damp chill of it first, the cool, moist surface pressing against her sweat-slicked skin, and then the smell hit her in full force. Invasive. Potent. Completely Overpowering. The sponge settled directly over her nose and mouth, held in place by the snug cotton hood, and there was nothing she could do but breathe.
"MMMMMPPPHHH! NNPH! NNGHHMPH!"
Her muffled protest was reflexive, instinctive, the last ghost of General Sonya Blade trying to fight back. But her former self was long gone. What remained was a bound, hooded, gagged woman who had just experienced the most powerful orgasm of her life and was being rewarded with the oblivion she'd begged for.
She squirmed against the ropes, and the sight was magnificent. Her hips bucked weakly, her figure being slowly drowned in chloroform. The ropes creaked. The chair groaned. Her muffled sounds grew softer, dreamier, each one further from consciousness than the last.
"mmm... mmmph... mmm..."
Her fingers uncurled behind the chairback, going slack. Her head lolled forward, then snapped back in a final, futile attempt to stay awake, before lolling forward again, the hood rustling against the sponge. Her chest rose and fell in deepening rhythm, each inhale pulling more chloroform into her lungs, each exhale carrying away another fragment of awareness. The fumes saturated the small, dark space beneath the hood until there was nothing left to breathe but surrender.
The cotton clung to her sweat-drenched face, molding to the contours of her nose and mouth where the sponge pressed. She looked like a sculpture. A bound, hooded, gagged effigy of the woman who'd commanded armies and defied elder gods.
Her head lolled forward one final time. The hood rustled softly. Then nothing.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Time passed. Hours, maybe more. The brazier dimmed to a faint orange glow, barely illuminating the stone walls, the scattered ropes, the woman who had been General Sonya Blade and was now something else entirely.
Her ordeal was still far from over.
The sponge was the first thing to go, lifted carefully from beneath the hood, the leather string untied, the soaked cotton set aside. Then the hood itself, peeled away from her slack, peaceful face. The cleave gag came next, the sodden cloth drawn gently from between her parted lips. He worked in silence, methodical and unhurried, as the brazier's embers faded to ash and the first grey light of dawn began to seep through the monastery's narrow windows.
The ropes followed. Ankles freed from the chair legs. Thighs uncoiled. Waist and chest loosened, the ropes falling away in long, snake-like loops. The toe-tie cords were unpicked until her feet were bare and unbound once more. When he was finished, Sonya's body bore the red marks of her captivity: rope burns on her wrists and ankles, faint impressions on her thighs and torso, the tender remnants of the crotchrope between her legs.
He lifted her from the chair. She was dead weight, still deep in chloroform sleep, and carried her back to the bed. Purple lingerie waited on the nightstand, elegant and unexpected: lace and silk in deep royal hues that complemented her blonde hair and light skin. He dressed her with the same care he'd used to bind her, sliding the delicate fabric over her hips, her breasts, her shoulders. It was a different kind of control. A very different kind of claim.
When he was finished, she was a queen to his eyes.
A silk scarf was the final touch, a single, elegant restraint binding her wrists together above her head, looped loosely around the headboard. No restrictions, nor pain. Just a reminder.
He pulled a chair to her bedside and waited as the grey dawn lightened to gold, the mountain birds beginning their morning calls and the monastery stirring from its ancient slumber.
And when Sonya's eyes finally fluttered open, clear and free of chloroform fog, she found him.
Watching her.