By atfirstdawn and ImilianArticuno
*Mature content warning
*Tales of Xillia is copyright of Namco/Bandai
"I don't understand you, Milla! Why won't you do this for Jude!?" cried Leia whose high-pitched voice filled every floor of her family home, the Leronde Inn.
"Because I fail to see the benefits that my role in this would accomplish." replied Milla in her usual stoic tone.
"Oh, you're just a big meanie!" squawked Teepo, Elize's complicated stuffed toy.
"Quiet Teepo!" ordered Elize as she stuffed Teepo beneath the table that she was sat at. "Milla, you... do like Jude, don't you?"
"I do."
"That's it?" squawked Teepo once more as he overpowerd Elize and stuck his head up from beneath the table. "Geez Milla, way to tell it like it is! Just give in already!"
"Easy Teepo," soothed Alvin with his charmingly roguish voice. "You know you'll never be able to force Milla into doing something she doesn't want to do. Even if that something has the potential to change a certain young man's life."
"Change his life?" questioned Milla with a slight hint of confusion.
"Sure, it won't be something he'll likely want to forget in a hurry. And after all, this is exactly the kind of thing a young boy needs on the journey towards becoming a man." winked Alvin with a smile.
"I can't believe that something like this would be so beneficial to somebody like Jude..."
"Of course it would!" barked Leia very suddenly and extremely loudly. "Don't you see Milla, Jude has been pushing himself so hard and stretching himself so thin these last few months all to make you proud of him!"
"I am proud of Jude." responded Milla
"But he doesn't know that and doing this would be a way of proving it to him!" yelled Leia one more time.
"Plus it is his birthday!" added Teepo.
"Hmm, I have read that the key to a stronger bond between comrades is a shared intimacy. So perhaps this would be beneficial to our relationship after all..."
"Alright then, so its all settled?" asked Alvin for confirmation.
"Yes. I'll be Jude's birthday gift."
"Good! Because he'll probably be back soon, I don't know how much longer Rowen will be able to keep him occupied at the mine." informed Leia.
"Then I must hurry," responded Milla. "Alvin, if you wouldn't mind..."
"I thought you'd never ask."
"I'll help too!" Blurted Elize with excitement
"No Elise, this is something Alvin and I can handle ourselves."
"Aww, rejected again!" sighed Teepo
"Don't worry Elize, you can help me bake Jude's birthday cake," offered Leia.
"Okay..."
***
"Ladies first." charmed Alvin as he opened the door to a vacant guest room on the Inn's second floor.
With only a slight hint of a smile, Milla walked into the familiar vacant guest room and surveyed it with her judgmental eyes. Milla had spent many nights in this particular room, its warm and welcoming aesthetic was something that should have comforted her, but as Milla made her way to the foot of the bed her increasing sense of nervous foreboding over what she was about to do seemed to transform the room into something sinister. It soon became difficult for her not to think of the room as her future solitary holding cell...
"So, I was thinking something simple. Maybe your standard spread-eagle tie, a limb to each post of the bed. Start small y'know? We don't want to give Jude more than he can handle." spoke Alvin, snapping Milla out of her darkening reverie.
"Yes, that sounds agreeable." she replied, devoid of all emotion.
"Alright then, let's get to work." said Alvin as he made his way over to the bed with an armful of coiled ropes that had been left in the room for him by Leia's jack-of-all-trades father.
Milla was not accustomed to obeying a human without question, but she forced herself to put aside her misgivings about Alvin and did as she was asked, lowering herself to the soft covers, her blonde locks spreading out beneath her as she stared up at the ceiling. Her curiosity demanded that she look over at Alvin to see what he was up to, but she tried to keep her mind on Jude, reminding herself that she was doing this for him first, and herself a distant second.
Alvin’s boots clapped against the floorboards, and Milla glanced at the mercenary just in time to see him reach for her left hand and slip the protective padding from her wrist, placing it on the bedside table.
Feeling a little bolder now that Milla hadn’t punched him across the room at first contact, Alvin closed his fingers around the smooth purple fabric of Milla’s sleeve, drawing her wrist away from her body and guiding it towards the upper bedpost. She didn’t resist him, watching his every movement with her thoughtful magenta eyes, studying him as clinically as if he were doing any of the other silly little things humans did.
Taking it slowly so as not to spook her, Alvin began to wind rope around her wrist, coiling it around her limb once, twice, a third time, and then knotting it at an angle that her clever fingers couldn’t reach. Milla couldn’t help admiring the effectiveness of the restraint, even if it wasn’t currently restraining her at all. Yes, this could probably hold her.
With that accomplished, Alvin didn’t hesitate to move to the next step, taking the end of the rope and starting to tie it around the bedpost. For the first time, Milla felt a jolt of discomfort as her arm was stretched further away from her body, her muscles complaining at being forced into this more strenuous position, but she didn’t pass on their protest to Alvin. After all, she had known that this would not be entirely comfortable when she had agreed to it, and the sensation wasn’t one that she entirely minded.
"You've done this before?" asked Milla in such a stoic tone that it was hard for Alvin to tell if it was a question at all.
"Sure, I may not be that into bondage play, but as a mercenary you've gotta know your rope-work. Most bounties don't come willingly and some of them are worth more alive than dead."
"I see." replied Milla, ending the brief conversation.
Milla continued to watch Alvin as he circled around the bed, another length of rope trailing from his hand, and she didn’t flinch away from his as he repeated the exact same procedure on her right arm and the corresponding bedpost, removing the padding from her arm, tying, stretching, securing. The physical discomfort only increased as he bound her, leaving her with very little room to move about, but mentally she was completely calm, analysing her body’s reactions to every new restriction.
Her legs, both knew, would be Alvin’s next target, and the mercenary moved to stand at the foot of the bed, considering his next move for a long moment. Milla’s long boots, purple laced with pink ribbons, weren’t going to get in the way here like her wrist adornments had, but he couldn't help but think that Jude might have appreciated it if she wasn’t wearing them. Still, he wasn’t going to be the one to take them off her, and asking Milla if she wanted him to was probably a bad idea. Yeah, best to leave that one to Jude.
The boots were thick enough that Milla couldn’t quite feel the ropes cinching around her ankle as well as she could those around her wrists, but even if she didn’t sense the prickly tightness of the workmanlike cords, it wasn’t hard to tell that Alvin was tying them very securely. Her leg was being stretched towards the lower corner of the bed in a similar manner to her arms, spread wide over the covers and anchored so well that no movement of hers could bring it back, and with every second that passed, Milla became more certain that this ‘bondage’ was living up to its name. She was barely able to move at all, and Alvin hadn’t even finished!
Gaining confidence as he went, Alvin was quick to move on to her other ankle and repeat the same procedure there, tugging her ankle towards the final corner of the bed and lashing it in place. When he was done, Milla immediately put his work to the test, jerking each of her wide-spread limbs as hard as she could, twisting and scraping, seeking any way out of these simple restraints that she could find. Her struggle proved a losing battle, however, and she was forced to grudgingly admit defeat. She was helpless.
After a moment’s further pause, Alvin delved into one of the pockets of his jacket and drew out a long length of thick blue cloth, holding it between both hands and testing its tension with a brief tug.
"This too, I guess?" asked Alvin with a careful tone.
"Yes." replied Milla "I've read that gags have psychological effects as well as physical and I'm curious to experience them for myself."
Leaning over the spread-eagled spirit, Alvin lifted the cloth before Milla’s curious eyes, gathering it into a thick band and lifting it towards her mouth. Milla allowed him to push the cloth into her mouth, her tongue experimentally flitting against it as it was drawn between her teeth, forced into the very corners of her lips before the ends were taken behind her head. Again, it was uncomfortable but not entirely unpleasant, and she let him wrap the ends around her head and back through her mouth before he finally knotted them amidst the golden curtain of her hair, the bulk of the fabric tightly cleaving her mouth apart.
Of course! That was probably why the book had made reference to a ‘cleave gag’.
Stepping back from the bed, Alvin surveyed Milla’s helpless and silent form, her ropes were tight and her gag was tighter still, she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well, I guess we’re all done here, I hope Jude appreciates the effort,” spoke Alvin with a comforting yet suave smile on his face.
“Mmhmph,” replied Milla with a stoic nod.
For Avlin, tying Milla had been like caging a wild animal and as he walked over to and reached for the Inn’s guest room’s doorknob he thought himself lucky that at no point had Milla changed her mind and broken any or all of his extremities.
In fact, with Milla bound and gagged to the bed, this was the most comfortable Alvin had ever felt around her, now that he didn’t see her as a threat to his physical wellbeing.
“Oh, and Milla?” said Alvin as he opened the door to the hall outside. “Try to take it easy with Jude. I don’t think the kid knows what he’s letting himself in for.”
“Mrrph rmmn phrm hmmph,” mumbled Milla through her gag.
Having no idea what she said, Alvin, still wearing his smile, gave Milla a wink and left the room, closing the door behind him. In the hallway, Alvin exhaled a deep sigh of relief that he was still in one piece and walked on shaking legs back to Leia and the others to await Jude’s arrival.
Alone in the room, held in place by her bonds and kept silent by her gag, Milla lay motionless on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Within minutes Milla’s mind had clouded over with memories of the books she had read on sexually deviant human behaviour; having once read that some people could only experience true intimacy when they were tied and bound, Milla had often wondered if that very fact would be true of her. Thus far throughout her existence, Milla had never felt truly helpless, not even when she lost the use of her legs after her encounter with King Nachtigal had she felt powerless…
But now as she lay bound and gagged and alone, Milla was finally able to physically explore the very odd (and very human) concept of bondage.