![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Not Ready To Trust
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Varian.
Rating: PG
Setting: Vortex.
Summary: Varian is understandably wary of people after the way the English privateers treated him.
Written For: The prompt ‘Speak’ on my
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
1charactertable.Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
A/N: Triple drabble.
Varian warily watched the people now surrounding him, waiting, uncertain what they might do next. He could have tried to get away after the young Black man hit him, but that would have been to admit defeat, accept that he’d made the wrong choice, and he wasn’t ready to give up yet.
Still, he didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare break his disguise even by so much, to explain what he’d been doing and why, so he continued to pretend he couldn’t understand what was being said to him, that he didn’t know the language they were speaking. He had to consider that a necessary deception, because he could not afford to trust these people, not yet, not after what had happened with the privateers.
Being captured, imprisoned, and beaten had come as a shock; he hadn’t been expecting such violence and cruelty, despite all the history books he’d read. He’d been a fool, and he knew it, so used to the peaceful, non-violent people of his own time that he’d trusted blindly and paid a heavy price. He wasn’t eager to be subjected to such treatment again. He remembered the pain all too clearly, even though the wounds inflicted upon him had long since healed.
He didn’t believe these people would treat him so shamefully, but he couldn’t be sure, he didn’t know enough about them, so he could only bide his time, observing them, listening, letting them continue to believe he was nothing more than the Arawak native he pretended to be.
No matter how much he wanted to believe these people were different, kinder, more civilised than the privateers, and that he might at last have found the companionship he’d been seeking, it was simply too great a risk. He wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time.
The End
Still, he didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare break his disguise even by so much, to explain what he’d been doing and why, so he continued to pretend he couldn’t understand what was being said to him, that he didn’t know the language they were speaking. He had to consider that a necessary deception, because he could not afford to trust these people, not yet, not after what had happened with the privateers.
Being captured, imprisoned, and beaten had come as a shock; he hadn’t been expecting such violence and cruelty, despite all the history books he’d read. He’d been a fool, and he knew it, so used to the peaceful, non-violent people of his own time that he’d trusted blindly and paid a heavy price. He wasn’t eager to be subjected to such treatment again. He remembered the pain all too clearly, even though the wounds inflicted upon him had long since healed.
He didn’t believe these people would treat him so shamefully, but he couldn’t be sure, he didn’t know enough about them, so he could only bide his time, observing them, listening, letting them continue to believe he was nothing more than the Arawak native he pretended to be.
No matter how much he wanted to believe these people were different, kinder, more civilised than the privateers, and that he might at last have found the companionship he’d been seeking, it was simply too great a risk. He wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time.
The End
Tags:
(no subject)
Date: 2025-12-28 12:45 am (UTC)