Yoongi's not what you expected of an alien.

If you're being honest, Thing was a much more accurate example of your personal definition of the word. Massive and slimy and intimidating, the creature that originally kidnapped you was definitely more of what you imagined to be under the category of 'alien' than the odd-colored humanoid from Mars that stands across the bars from you.

Yoongi just seems like a dry-humored human with a tendency towards galactic cosplay.

"Um...isn't Mars, like...really cold?"

The words sound a lot more vapid out loud than they did in your mind, and Yoongi thinks so too.

His eyes squinch up, mouth twisting into a smirk. "Mhmm. Like, really, really cold."

You tuck your lips in to bite back a smile, glad that aliens can have a sense of humor too. It brings some warmth and a sense of familiarity to a situation that you deem very, very warmth-less, and even more unfamiliar.

Around the line of cages that you're in, people create a wide berth of empty space, not crowding around and perusing as they do to other creatures in other cages.

"What are they doing?" you ask as a man with acid green skin glances warily at the two of you from afar, something akin to longing in his bulbous eyes even as his webbed feet refuse to draw nearer.

Yoongi knocks a knuckle against a metal bar with a soft noise. "I think we're too expensive for them."

A startled snort bursts out of you at the notion.

You? Expensive?

Now Yoongi, with his Caribbean eyes and hair and pure diamond-white skin, you could easily see as expensive. He's beautiful and exotic, iridescent and coldly beautiful like a snowy flower.

You, however, are drab and unimpressive

You just don't understand.

"How'd they get you?" asks Yoongi. He's leaning up against the bars, hands wrapped around as he looks at you through the gaps.

It's a little odd how you can't get a full picture of his face with the obstacles of the iron bars in the way. You can see the slope of his button-like nose, and half of a turquoise eye before the bar slams down in between you.

The other two cages beneath the arching root that houses the bars are empty, leaving you and Yoongi the only two occupants of the line of four cages.

"I dunno," you murmur. Curling your fingers around the cage bars leaves cold, metallic imprints on your fingertips. You shiver. "I just kind of woke up here. I was at home, asleep. Guess they nabbed me then."

Yoongi hums, nodding. In the distance, a tremendous roar vibrates violently through the space center, making the ground shake underneath your feet.

You flinch, because this place feels more and more alien by the second.

And you realize, for the first time, that you're barefoot.

Standing there, staring down at your feet half-buried in the grass and dirt, you laugh.

It's a small laugh, almost a giggle, slithering dryly out of your throat with a sound like snakeskin rasping lightly over concrete.

"They didn't even give me shoes," you say, and laugh again.

You don't know when the laughter starts to morph into sobs; suddenly, your knees are giving out beneath you as you slide down the smooth cage bars, collapsing limply on the ground as all the strength drains from you.

Brassy leaves crunch flat under your weight.

Yoongi follows you down, stark pity blazing blue in his face. Even so, as he crouches as near as the bars will let him, arms crossed over his bent knees, he makes no move to reach out for you.

But he's there.

He's there, and he's close enough to home that you're glad. Even as an extraterrestrial being, Yoongi doesn't feel too far removed from human.

An easy camaraderie flows between you like a lifeline, the only reason you can breathe. He's a stranger in every logical way, but a fellow prisoner and closer to home than any other being in this odd, star-dripping place.

"I can't say anything that'll make it better," he says deeply, deeply enough that he doesn't have to make a physical gesture. You can feel his comfort rolling over you as a slow wave of full-toned words, packed tight with more meaning then they express. "I'm not going to say we're gonna make it out either, but you're not alone now. Okay?"

"Yeah, until they sell us," you scoff through the ugly tears, bitterness swirling with the stream of terror.

Then, Yoongi does reach out to you.

But he isn't kind; he isn't gentle.

His hand darts through the bars, long-fingered and strong, and grasps your jaw without softened. He turns your face with a twist of his wrist to see him, his soft features hardened into frigid ice.

"How far?" he hisses. "How far will you make it, acting like that? Get yourself together - this, here, is way better than before. Now there's someone in this universe who knows your name, and who knows where you're going. That isn't 'alone' anymore."

The translator lodged in the canal of your ear burns as it takes in the words, but not more than your cheeks at his admonishment.

You wipe the tears from your eyes and try to take deep breaths, calming your raging emotions. "Y-you're right."

He sits back, withdrawing his hand, facial features relaxed into a laid-back state of of course I'm right.

Yoongi's turquoise eyes glance out the bar gap and narrow.

When you follow his gaze, you can barely discern the golden head of Mihal cutting through the crowd swiftly, headed for you.

"When exactly are they going to do with us?" you mumble, still purging the emotion from your wobbly voice.

"From what I've heard?" Watching the angel-like man approaching, Yoongi's pink lips twist. "I'm not sure when, but there's an auction. And we're valuable items."

Your eyes slip closed in bleak despair.

When you open them again, Mihal is looming before the door of the cage.

In his perfect hands are two pairs of handcuffs, sending a wave of nausea rumbling through your stomach.

Mihal smiles, eyes shifting between the two of you, and greed is shining in an emerald sheen over his pupils. "It's time."

He opens the door, and with a resounding, damning click, closes the handcuffs tightly around your wrists.

***

The only positive thing is that you and Yoongi are being sold one after the other.

That means that he's behind you in the line of slaves and masters that stand in the shadow of the massive stage where slaves are being auctioned.

The stage fills the cave-like cavity at the base of the tree that you passed by earlier, a huge, echo-y space crafted of harsh metal and wood. 

A huge, milling crowd shifts and swirls like the waves in the ocean, lapping at the base of the stage in exotic excitement. The number of beings here is so numerous that you can't see the end of the gathering; it feels like the crowd is as vast as space itself, glimmering with star-like eyes and skin brighter than the sun.

A few spots in front of you, a beautiful girl with snow white hair and feathers dripping from her eyelids sheds slow, silent tears, running down like tiny translucent rivers.

There's a weighty, horrified silence here.

Every creature restrained in handcuffs or collar or chains seems frozen within their own personal black hole of time, still as stone in the face of their inevitable fate.

Yoongi is silent too, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He's the last in line, held in place by the giant, grey, furry creature.

The human and the martian, saved for last.

The pièce de résistance.

At the front of the line, Mihal lets go of you with one hand to unnecessarily smooth his already perfect hair. His steps thumb almost inaudible on the stairs that lead up to the stage, dragging you behind him.

You take a step up, emerging from the dim backstage, and are instantly blinded by painfully bright light.

You close your eyes for a minute, wincing at the burn, then peel them back open into a squint.

"Species : human," announces a booming voice from somewhere to your right. You want to look to see who, but the lights are too bright to discern anything but a squat shadow on the stage. "Gender: child-bearer."

The specification sends a bold of terror through your chest.

"Age: twenty-one solar cycles. The bid will begin at ten thousand units."

The crowd explodes into a chaotic, writhing mass of shouts and extended arms.

"Twenty!" someone screams in a watery voice. "Twenty thousand!"

"Forty!"

"I'll give you sixty thousand units!"

The cacophony of voices makes your mind spin, the lights shining down on you only increasing the depth of your disorientation.

Glancing over your shoulder to where Mihal holds you captive, you can see the delighted grin on his face as the price for your person rapidly ascends in to triple digits.

One hundred thousand, one fifty, two hundred twenty.

Someone screams out three hundred and fifteen thousand.

Someone screams.

And you hear it.

In all the noise and shouting and voices, that one scream really shouldn't stand out the way it does - but the pure, unadulterated sound of mortal panic is louder than any bid echoing off the glassy dome of Servus.

It's only one scream at first; a few people turn to look, facial features furrowed at the noise.

But then another shriek cuts through the bids, and another, and another. Where the crowd was once riotous with excitement, they now stumble and fall as fear rolls over them like a thunderstorm.

Mihal peers into the people, beginning to drag you back. His eyes alight in something and widen, but you can't see what. Whatever it is, though, it makes Mihal cough hoarsely and start pushing you toward the stairs.

"No, no, no," he hisses, almost making you fall down the flight of steps that leads back into the darkness behind the stage.

The thatch of Yoongi's star-blue hair is the only bright thing here, and his grey-furred master is glancing furtively at Mihal.

"What is it?" asks the creature, his barely-visible eyes wary.

"The prince and his gang of freaks," says Mihal, still pushing as the grey-furred thing falls into step, pulling Yoongi behind him. "They've been tracking this port for a long time, and they finally found it. We have to get out of here before-"

"Before they find you?" It's a new voice, one you haven't heard before. Pleasant, sweet.

Amused, which is odd considering the situation.

Peeking out from behind Mihal, your eyes widen at the beautiful man standing before you.

If Yoongi is all elegant, refined beauty, this man is he opposite. He's screamingly gorgeous, with radiant yellow skin that seems to be putting off its own heat wave, and scarlet hair that dances like fire around his high cheekbones.

If a flame could live, breathe and speak, it would look like this man.

"Mihal," says the flame, "-I believe the monarch of The Sands would like a word with you."

You catch a glimpse of Mihal's face - once sweetly, delicately perfect, his eyes are now wild and rolling to show the whites, like that of a cornered animal. His knuckles grip white and bone, one around the lead to your fetters and the other around the hilt of his sword.

"Sparky wants to talk that badly, huh?" In a split second, Mihal's thrown your chains to his grey-furred partner and drawn the length of the intricate sword from its scabbard.

You have to quell a gasp at the sight of it.

It's your first time to see a real, legitimate sword in real life, and seeing it wielded by a starry-winged angel thuds into your chest like a rock. The blade is wickedly sharp, gleaming deadly in the light that makes Mihal's wings glimmer with constellations-on-feather.

Without another word or thought, Mihal charges at the man.

You almost scream as the fierce metal blade of the sword bears down on the other man, who appears totally unarmed, but the yell catches in your throat when the man's skin erupts into flames.

Holy crap.

Mihal is forced to dodge a simple outstretched band from the gorgeous man, avoiding the blistering flames that would surely incinerate him to nothing but ash.

The sudden turn causes the slash of his sword to skitter off course, instead clashing loudly along the length of your chains and heavily denting one of the links.

The collision yanks you forward, sending you reeling into the circling fight.

From this close, you can feel the heat of the flames emitting from the man on fire. It singes along your skin, curling through your hair and brushing your cheeks.

That's when it hits you.

The idea.

Mihal recovers from the swings and prepares for another, growling out expletives as he swings the heavy sword toward the scarlet-haired alien.

That's when you move.

Even though your heart is pounding like a drum and your hands shake in the shackles, you force your feet to surge forward as the sword descends a second time.

You slide between Mihal and the flaming man seconds before the sword can cleave you in half, pulling tight the length of your chain so the sword slams down on the weakened, damaged link with enough force to split the metal.

The length of chain snaps, Mihal's blade falling through, and you're sprinting before he can even realize what's happened.

Sprinting, and snatching the lead to Yoongi's chains from the loosened grip of his master.

Mihal yells, his sword sunk into the earthen floor of the station after the unexpected give. It's stuck there, and Mihal's struggling with all his might to yank it from the ground.

It's the perfect opening for the flaming man.

You don't stop to watch any longer, but Mihal's screams echo hollowly in your ears as you and Yoongi run for your lives into the fray of the disrupted auction.

[A/N]
Unedited
I hope y'all aren't confused 😭
But Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Kwanzaa! Whatever you're celebrating, I hope y'all had a great holiday!
💫PB