Title: Handcuffs
Fandom: Vorkosigan saga
Rating: G
Length: 789 words
Author notes: Also for the 'Handcuffed/Bound Together' square of my trope_bingo  card, and the 'Imprisonment' square of my genprompt_bingo  card.
Summary: Miles and Elena are trapped.

“We have to get out. We have to get out now.” Miles yanked again, uselessly, at the ancient handcuffs.

“Miles, stop panicking!” Elena snapped. The sharpness in her tone was probably at least partly due to the fact that one her wrists was in the other loop of the handcuffs, so Miles’s repeated pulling was dragging her arm with it. “All we have to do is wait - ”

“What, for rescue? Help is clearly not on its way, probably got distracted by food or something,” Miles said. “We have to get ourselves out before anyone else finds us - let me remind you, we are very much not supposed to be here, they’ll kill us if they find us.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic, they won’t kill us,” Elena said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, pulling my shoulder off is not getting us out of here!”

“Oh. Um. Sorry,” Miles replied, momentarily abashed. “Right, options…”

He looked around, assessing their situation again. His right wrist and Elena’s left were locked in the cuffs, which were in turn threaded around one of the rungs of the ladder down which they had come. There was no chance of their shifting the ladder, which was firmly bolted to the wall, and neither the rung nor the handcuffs seemed likely to give way.

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t have anything we could try to pick the lock with?” he asked again. “A hair grip in a pocket, or something?”

“Not since the last time you asked,” she replied. “I still only have a flashlight, and we already tried taking yours apart to see if there was anything useful to be got from it, remember?”

Miles grimaced. “So, we can’t break the cuffs, we can’t pick them open, neither of us can fold our hands in enough to get them out - hey! That’s it!” A sudden memory from an old vid drama flashed through his head. “If I break my thumb - ”

“If you WHAT?” Elena cut across him, voice shooting up.

“Shh, don’t yell! Someone could hear you! If I break my thumb, I should be able to squeeze my wrist through the cuff. Then you can just pull the handcuffs around the rung and we can get out of here.”

“That,” Elena said with tightly controlled anger, “is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard. You can’t break your thumb just to get out of here!”

“Of course I can, it’s a miracle I haven’t already broken something in my hand just yanking on the cuffs. It’ll be easy.” And painful, an unhelpful voice in his head reminded him. He shrugged the thought away. What was one more broken bone, after all? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have experience with them.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I meant you shouldn’t, it’s idiotic, I won’t let you!” She glared down at him, and he glared right back.

“Well, do you have any better ideas?” he snapped.

“Yes, we wait! Someone will find us soon enough.”

“Yes, but who? That’s what I’m worried about - ”

At precisely that point, a new flashlight lit them from above, and a third voice sounded, coming from higher up the ladder. “Well well, what have we here?”

Miles swore under his breath, recognising the laughing tones. Oh well, at least it wasn’t -

“Miles. Explain.” And there it was, the deep growl he’d been dreading.

“See?” he hissed at Elena, whose eyes were now - finally - widening in panic.

He looked up with a sickly grin, squinting into the light. “Ah, we can explain… we were just, ah, exploring…” he suddenly cut himself off, catching sight of a smaller figure further up than the others. “Ivan you idiot, you went to Bothari for help?!”

“To me, actually,” Droushnakovi answered. “The Sergeant caught him while looking for you… And as for idiots, I think the twelve year olds dumb enough to lock themselves into old handcuffs without making sure they have the key take the prize! Now look out, I’m coming down.”

Elena pulled back as far to one side as she could, and Miles mirrored her, squirming under the undoubted truth of Drou’s statement and the anticipation of the scoldings they were going to get, starting but not ending with the glowering Sergeant Bothari, for messing around in out-of-bounds areas of the Imperial Residence. Maybe we could get Gregor to issue us an imperial pardon, he thought wildly… No, they were in for it now. And he had only himself to blame, he’d been the one who suggested they be escaping prisoners and had wanted to add the cuffs for realism in the first place… Should’ve broken my thumb, he decided sourly. It would definitely have been less painful than this.