As long as his inner peace is not disrupted, he can forever remain the man that he appears to be.
“The count demands you in his company, my lady.”

Jaejoong hears shuffling, a perturbed assonance of livid muttering, breathing and fearful retreats that invade his silence. “I have already rejected his offer, on more than one occasion. I’m afraid I must turn him away again this time.”

“That will not do, my lady.” A gruffly voice replies. “He simply will not allow for another hindrance of obedience.”

Her voice is small, fading out into the darkness of the ship hallway. “I will not—“

“Wrong answer.”

And the next thing Jaejoong knows, there is a tremor in his chest that grows stronger by every resonance of that pure, weak voice that shouts and beckons for aid outside his locked door.

He clutches a hand over the beating organ, much too fast and much too powerful to be restrained, and the veins on his neck bulge through his pale, death-like skin.

“Let go of me!” She cries. “Don’t touch me!”

Jaejoong feels pain strike through his skull, his breaths heavy and mundane all at the same time. It’s hot, it’s humid, it’s getting dangerous.

“If my father were to know of your actions, of how you’re forcing me into the bed of your highly count, your heads will not live to see the streak of daylight.” She argues, but Jaejoong can hear every hint of fear and horror in her tone.

There is more shuffling, more struggle and eventually Jaejoong’s senses become so acute that he can practically smell blood in the air.

It’s the last he can take of this disturbance to his peace.

When the door tears open and he sees two men forcing a young, fragile girl out of her will, Jaejoong loses all prior self-control. What they see is not the elegance and beauty of a flower-like boy, a mysterious captain that steers a ship, but a monster with glowing blue eyes and pearl-white fangs that secretly drips with venom.

The beast is horrid, worse than what they’d ever imagine seeing in a nightmare.

“Let her go!” The fiend hisses at them.

Rooted to the ground, with nerves shaking so fast they can’t keep up with their own heartbeat, the men just stare in disbelief.

She watches as he rips them from their stance, blood pouring over the wooden planks of the ground. Limbs are torn, skin slashed and tendons hanging off of weak bones.

The scream that threatens to spill is left clinging to the back of , sore and painful. Her eyes, stuck on the creature that has just saved her, brim with tears.

“Go.”

The young girl chokes on her breath, the beads of tears gliding down her porcelain cheeks.

When the beast extends a hand towards her face, she clamps her eyes shut and falls to the ground, shoving herself against a wall with her face turned to the side.

Jaejoong pauses, hand raised in mid-air, and feels the muscles in his neck quiver with unspoken anger and sadness.

Like this, she looks like a doll that has been broken from her high-chair beyond the glass doors of a wealthy man’s grand display.

Just as he pulls back, his heartbeat racing faster than ever before, and returns to his den, he feels soft hands wrap around his bulky wrist.

“My name is Victoria.” She introduces herself.

And when she says this, Jaejoong can feel the nervous shuddering and sweat through her palms. There is nothing more than this that he wants of her to do-- “Leave.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and there is insistence in her apology but Jaejoong is too afraid to turn around and look her in the eyes. Victoria is too afraid to look back; she does not want to remember that her savior is a life taking monster, even if it was also a fault of her own. “And, thank you.”

Everything around him starts slowing down; Jaejoong can no longer hear the thrumming that blast in his ears just moments before.

“I owe you my life,” Victoria smiles secretly to herself. “There must be a way I can repay you.”

“What do you have to offer?” Jaejoong asks. He is surprised by the way his voice is no longer thick and repressive, like it always is when he’s transformed.

The young girl chuckles under her breath and runs to his front, peering into his reddened and vain-streaked face. His eyes are still unfocused, he knows, because he can feel the heat emanating from his face while the blurriness is still evident in his dilating eyesight.

Victoria stares him in the eyes; unmoving.

“Company.”

“I don’t need that.” He glowers at her. Then he purposely looks away, as though that proves anything for himself.

She laughs, eyes upturned into crescents with cheeks brushed over by a thin veil of red over her translucent cheeks. “I do,” Victoria smiles widely, “and I predict that I’ll need your company for a long time to come.”

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A/N: Part 1/5 of my DBSK/JYJ with Victoria challenge. All five will probably be drabbles. I'll be writing them in age order, so next is Yunho. ^___^ This was highly inspired by Jaejoong's MV for MINE and Jay Chou's song, Piano Sadness.