Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Lies, Crimes, and Punishments ❯ Penance ( Chapter 11 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The concrete met Ken's back with a cold, firm handshake. It was strictly business, and the wall didn't want to be there anymore than Ken did.
Shu, his short tormentor, was standing behind the tall, nameless brute that was pushing him up against the wall, putting pressure on his ribs to the point where Ken was sure they were going to crack. He couldn't cry out, couldn't struggle. His body was one giant, purpling bruise. Each muscle groaning out in agony. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think beyond the old pain and the new pain that was promised.
All Shu could do was giggle and smirk at him. The larger one's smile grew hearing his accomplice chuckle and he removed one of his hands from Ken's chest to his face, twisting it up against the cold stone, wanting to push it right through to the other side.
He could not see Shu now, and could only glimpse the evil hulk pinning him against the wall out of the corner of his eye.
But he could feel Shu's presence, his flesh shivering and goosepimpling - he knew he was close.
"Mmm, my pretty little toy..." Oh, god! He was closer than Ken expected. He could feel the whisper glide out of his mouth and slash across his bared neck. Shu began to terrify him in the best way possible - by showing Ken his desire.
His tongue licked across Ken's neck, leaving a trail of saliva. Shit! He just wanted to reach out and wipe it away and then WIPE the floor with these two. If only, if only...
How did they get the drop on him again? He was watching them very carefully tonight - did he un-focus his eyes too long? Did he turn to glare at another menace for a split second? It was all foggy now in his brain. He was trying his best to block it out. There was nothing else he could do!
Shu brought his hands up to Ken's chest, slinking in under his shirt and scratching venomously down his bare skin. He held it in, didn't cry out - his jaw tensed with the pain, his neck stiffening in reaction instead. Shu's wicked fingers found Ken's nipple and smashed down on it, nails biting in and drawing blood. He couldn't help it now, whimpering out the shock and agony that was rippling through his body.
What a mistake.

Shu chuckled again, lust tinging his voice. The larger man grinned wide at the demented encouragement Ken had given him. His mouth cracked into a wide grin, displaying his crooked teeth. Ken could see enough to watch his tongue dance out and lick lasciviously across his lips, anticipating.
"Mmm, do it again, lover." The taller man spoke, but Ken wasn't sure to whom - to Shu, encouraging him, or to Ken, begging him to scream. Shu took his words to heart in any case, teeth sinking into Ken's neck. He didn't break the skin, but it was almost enough. The smaller man's tongue licked out again, caressing the depressions his teeth had made. Unsatisfied, his hand drifted down to Ken's groin, gathering his clothed penis in his hand, stroking it firmly, not painfully, but firmly. Ken ground his teeth together - it did NOT feel good - it did NOT. He was begging his brain not to send blood to his member, begging it not to see the sensation as pleasure.
Worthless fucking brain.

"You know, Kaneda, I think he likes it. You're a sick freak, do you know that?" Shu whispered cuttingly in his ear, perceiving Ken's developing hardness. The taller man, Kaneda, cut in and painted Ken's darkening thoughts a different shade of black.
"I think he likes it, but I don't think he's ready." Kaneda moved his hands from Ken's face and chest to grab his shirt and drag him off his feet. Without thought, seemingly without effort, Kaneda used his impressive bulk to fling Ken across the cell. In the brief second before he was airborne, Ken could see the tall man strain with the effort. He didn't have time to think as gravity tore him to the floor. His head bounced lightly against the concrete, sending stars shooting in front of his eyes.
Had he been given 5 seconds to gain his breath and shake his vision clear, perhaps things would have been different. Kaneda did not give him time to regain his senses. He was on top of him immediately, beating his fists into Ken's stomach, creating mush from his torso. The bruises from last night gave way to popped capillaries, which gave way to leaking, open sores. The front of his shirt was steadily becoming damp, stained with blood.
It was equal opportunity blood - Ken's broken skin, Kaneda's broken knuckles. The pain was intense, it was an overload. He felt a rib give way, heard the soft pop of it slipping out of its proper place. The pain was all around him, cutting of his rational thought, cutting off his breath. His eyes glazed over as the world began to fog.
Ken's eyes fluttered and Shu, ever watchful, was on Kaneda immediately. He placed a calm hand on the man's frantic, punishing arm.
"That's enough." Two soft words and Kaneda ceased his onslaught, slowly picking himself off of Ken, standing, brushing off his effort with nonchalance.
Shu crouched next to Ken, peering at him with cold indifference.
"Have you had enough, precious?" His words were as cold as ice. Ken tried to push back the darkness that was encroaching on his vision, he really did. His pupils rolled back into his head despite his efforts, and Shu's hand shot out viciously, across his cheek, commanding him to keep a finger-hold on consciousness. All Ken could do was moan pathetically, even the small effort of breathing causing absolute agony. "Yes, I think you've had enough." He snapped his fingers in direction to Kaneda and the larger man knelt beside Ken, wrapping his arms around his tortured middle and forcing him roughly to his knees.

In the fog of his mind, already trying to shut down again, Ken could hear the distinctive metal clicking of a zipper being undone. The adrenaline kicked in then, and he prayed in that same second that it hadn't. He was now responsive enough to stare at the smaller man, who lounged on the floor in front of him, hand carefully coaxing his erection out of his pants. Ken could feel the panic rise as he became hyper aware of the situation.
"What did we tell you last night, pretty? We're going to beat you. We're going to beat you until you have no fight left." Shu smirked evilly. "Do you have any fight left, sweetheart?" To reinforce the point, Kaneda balled his fingers into a fist and threw them into Ken's stomach so hard his knees left the ground for a moment.
The pain - the pain! He thought for sure he was going to black out when Shu wrapped his cold fingers around Ken's chin, forcing him to look him full in the face.
"Well? Do you?" Faced with Kaneda's fist balling up again, poised to crush the life out of his fragile organs, Ken quickly shook his head. Just that simple movement caused his vision to blur, and he had to take a second to lick his own dry lips and try to make the world sit still.
When it complied, he saw that Shu had wasted no time - the leaking head of his apparent erection was mere centimeters from Ken's lips. "Then start." His command was simple, and it left a cold ball of fear in Ken's throat. What could he possibly do? Ken licked his lips again, trying this time to soften them for the inevitable. Slowly, perhaps too slowly, Ken opened his mouth and descended onto Shu's throbbing penis. In a last display of dominance, partly impatience, Shu grabbed the back of Ken's head and forced it all into his throat. He was gagging, choking, around it. God, what could he possibly do?! He tried to shut it out, tried to imagine it wasn't happening, tried to imagine it was someone else's dick he was suffocating on.
Koushiro?

The thought brought tears to his eyes as he worked, up and down, licking, sucking. The flesh tasted putrid and there was no escaping the terrible scent of the man's skin.
"Oh, cry for me..." Shu panted out, obviously lost in the sensation of exerting pure power over someone. He rammed his dick into Ken's mouth, bruising even the delicate surfaces on the roof of his mouth. Finally, finally, after what seemed like hours but what was only a few short minutes, Ken could feel the violating member quiver in his mouth, throbbing, pushing out its white desire, filling his mouth and spilling down Ken's chin.

Shu laid his head back on the floor, utterly spent, satisfied with his sick self. Ken tried to sit up, close his sore jaw, wipe the sticky shame from his chin...
"Nuh-huh," Kaneda muttered menacingly. "My turn."

Article 45, Paragraph 2 of the Japanese Prison Code stipulates inmates may only be visited by relatives. However, the soft and considering face of the admittance officer took one look at the priest, rosary beads grasped tightly in hand, pious face lost in ethereal thoughts, and with a nod, let him through.
However, the officer was not naive enough to let Koushiro pass without stepping through the metal detector first.

When it showed nothing nefarious on his person, the quiet redhead was showed into a waiting area. It was conspicuously devoid of any comfort. No padding on the stiff plastic chairs, no end tables, and certainly no magazines to sit on the non-existent end tables.
Just a helpless row of yellow chairs, facing an uncaring white wall.
No windows, no exit, save for the one he'd just passed through.
"Please wait here, Father." The guard left him in the stark room, void of anything to distract his racing thoughts. What was he going to say to Ken? What was he going to do? Moreover, would Ken be pleased to see him, or in this time of reflection, have found a way to pin all his problems on Izzy?
He let out a ragged breath, trying his best to still his pulse. No, no, no - Ken would be happy to see him. He'd probably have the other inmates eating out of his hand, having whipped them into a cohesive unit, already planning to depose the guards and gain control of the station. A smirk ghosted over Koushiro's face. Yes, that was the Ken he knew. The tyrant-like features of his personality never having left.

Was that a good thing? As a child, Koushiro hated him for his arrogance and seeming omnipotence. But he'd also connected with the genius through their analytic tendencies and love of knowledge.
Now? God, he loved his powerful presence, the way he simply took control of a situation, took control of Koushiro's body. But then... There was the doubt... The fear that a vicious predator lurked beneath the surface. One who had killed another man.
Or had he?

The officer returned, curtly asking Izzy to follow him. Izzy gathered his cassock and stood, following with soft steps. His heart returned to his throat.
The man led him down a white featureless hallway to a white featureless door. It was opened for him and he cautiously stepped inside. The guard followed and shut the door behind them. There were three of the uniform yellow chairs facing three large windows of plexiglas. Behind the middle window sat Ken.
As Izzy glanced at him, he sucked in an audible gasp, eyes widening at the horrific sight. This was NOT the Ken he expected to see. This Ken slouched more than sat, his eyes heavy-lidded. Normally sparkling and piercing, they were dull and ringed by deep dark lines. He looked like he hadn't gotten any sleep in days, and in fact hadn't. His crown of hair was a wild mess, greasy and frantic to escape his head, sticking up at all angles.
But it was his porcelain skin that took the incarceration worst. His cheekbones bore purple bruises, and the skin at the corner of his mouth was healing poorly from being split open.
The side of his white neck bore red marks in the shape of teeth.
"Ken..." The rest of the words stuck in his throat.

"Hello, love." Ken managed a smirk with the intact side of his mouth. The supervising guard gave Izzy a quizzical look, beginning to understand that he might've mistaken the priest's intention in comforting this prisoner.
Izzy moved toward the yellow chair nearest Ken's window and disjointedly sat down.
"What the hell happened to you?" The uncharacteristically blunt words poured from his mouth.
"A lot. I went to the beach one day, and had a picnic the next. What the hell do you think happened?", he snapped.
"I'm sorry..." The redhead hung his head, rebuking himself for asking such an insensitive question. God, he really didn't want to start perusing the possible reasons for Ken's abused visage. This was completely the opposite of what he'd expected from Ken: cocky, self-assured, controlling.
He had so many questions to ask, but at that moment he really didn't want to start. Izzy felt if he looked at Ken again rather keeping his focus on his hands in his own lap, he would simply burst into tears. With a deep breath, a thought to the rapidly wasting time, and his eyes locked on his hands, Koushiro began...
"Why?" Why? Why, oh why? "Is it true?" Please, please don't let it be true. "And why me?" He swallowed hard, trying to keep his composure. He heard Ken take a deep breath as well. At least it was hard for him too.

"Why? That's simple. Because I could." Izzy's startled ears heard a soft chuckle. "That, and he was a bigoted bastard." Koushiro's dark eyes jumped up to Ken's, surprised and angry. "What? You didn't think a Catholic priest would be a homophobe? Don't make me laugh, Kou." Again, the wicked smirk. "You don't know it, but I sat in on several sermons his holiness gave, trying to get out of the cold for an hour or two. I think I'm smart enough to tell when someone is directing unwarranted hate at a particular demographic." His eyes grew distant as he remembered, leafing through pages of memory. "I remember planning to teach him a lesson. Wrap my fingers around his celibate manhood and give him shameful pleasure at the hands of another man. Make him feel the full force of his hate. I remember grabbing a long, sharp, steel, letter opener from the desk in the front of the church. I remember holding it in my hands and fantasizing about pushing it between his ribs. Reveling in the fact that the police could never pin it to me. I'm just a transient, remember? It would be the glory of a perfect murder, constructed with the brilliance of my mind... But here's the damnedest thing," he tore his eyes from Koushiro's. "I can't remember actually doing it."
"What do you mean you don't remember?" Koushiro spat the words, thoroughly enraged at hearing Ken fess up to it, detailing how he planned it, how he desired to kill.
"I don't know, I don't know. I was standing in front of his door, gripping the blade, and then... Nothing. Maybe I was coked up?" Ken shook his head, not too quickly, wincing at the pain in his neck. "No, I remember... us... I remember that cold tile floor." He returned his piercing gaze to Izzy, making the former priest blush.
"So do I."
"I remember leaving and not having blood or holy water on my coat. I remember reading about the murder in the paper, about how there was no knife wounds, only the indentations of the assailant's fingers in his neck." Ken's brows drew together over his punished face in thought. "Who else would have done it? But why the hell didn't I use the fucking letter opener?"
Koushiro licked his lips, trying to push the hope out of his head. No. No - this was just a ploy for sympathy. Ken did it, Ken looked down into the priest's eyes as he died.
"Exactly, Ken. Who else would have done it? You're the only person I know who would get off on a power trip like that. Who else had motive? Who else had access?" God, he was mad now. The nerve Ken had to put doubt in his mind! "What if it was I that killed Hiromiya? That's what you want me to say, right? That's what you want me to think? I'm the one who found him, right? What if I took that opportunity, with the church empty, to kill him? You're pathetic." He crossed his legs disdainfully, tossing his head to the side, refusing to look in those lying blue eyes.
"You're right. That is silly." Ken sighed, his banter curtailed. "I don't want to talk about that. We only have 30 minutes, 10 of which are now gone." He leaned in close to the glass, trying his best to look earnest. "What I want to talk about is you. You and me. Us. I know it's sappy, but it's true. You wanted to know why I picked you?" His eyes played out the smile that his lips would not show. "I didn't pick you, Koushiro, or plan anything. You fell into my lap as a wonderful surprise. At first it was just lust, but you know by now that I love you. I love thinking about you. What else do I have to keep me going in here?" The edge of his mouth crooked in a sad smile. "This place is an utter hell hole, be perfectly aware of that. I want to think about more pleasant things. I want to think about spring." He ran his thin fingers through his hair. "God, this winter has been long. I can barely remember the trees being green."
Koushiro deigned to move his eyes back to Ken's face. It was true. The snow seemed like it had settled over the city and would stay forever, an unwelcome guest.
"I want to see the azaleas come back to the hillsides. I want to see the ice melt and the rivers swell. I want to walk through the fields with you, pleasant afternoon after pleasant afternoon." There were slight tears in the corners of his eyes.
Tears in his eyes? In HIS eyes? How dare he be the one to cry...
Koushiro decided to be cruel and dash the tears away.

"Funny you should talk of the river. Do you know I almost threw myself into Tokoro-gawa one night?" A pitiless smile crawled across Izzy's face. "I had my hands on the rail, I had my feet over the edge. I don't know what pulled me back." He knew damn well what had pulled him back. But that could wait...
The tears did not evaporate from Ken's eyes. Rather, they fled, running down his cheeks.
"You... you were going to kill yourself?!" Ken's disbelieving voice whispered. "Koushiro, oh my god..." The harsh smirk on Izzy's face grew.
"I WAS going to. But something pulled me back. Some ONE pulled me back." He shouldn't be enjoying this, but GOD he was! The shocked look on Ken's face asked the question that his lips refused to.
"Who? I think you know him. He's a bit arrogant, but he's detail oriented, and he has a great body." Izzy's smile grew as Ken's descended into despair. "I call him Shin-kun, but everyone else calls him Detective." He pretended to muse on that. "In fact, perhaps I'll call him Detective tonight. It may just spice things up."
Ken's demeanor flew rapidly from abject horror to rage.
"God, he was telling the truth... You promiscuous little whore!!"
"Guilty. But that's okay, I'm not too concerned about appearances anymore. I quit the priesthood." Quit, thrown out... Just simple semantics.
"It's probably best that you did. I hope you burn, you lying little shit. All I did was love you! That's more that anyone else has given you." Ken shot a piercing look at Izzy. "I will get out of here, and when I do, don't think that I'll forget this. I may suffer in here, I may have horrible things done to me, but I will take it all in stride to have the chance to do to you what I SHOULD have done to that priest!" Izzy shrank back slightly under the threat. But he would not be overwhelmed.
"Such false promises. That's all your 'love' was." The tears grew in Izzy's eyes as well. "Don't think I haven't suffered. Whatever they do to you in here, I have suffered worse. There are so many things I haven't told you, so many things I forbid myself to remember." He choked back a sob that threatened to burst out his mouth. "I refuse to discuss it with filth like you."
Izzy stood and turned to go, clearly dismissing any attempt at further conversation. The guard, who by now was thoroughly scandalized, opened the door swiftly. "Let me leave you with this little bit of scripture to console your 'guilt' ridden mind. To help you make sense of this incarceration and whatever ordeals you may be suffering. St Matthew said and you would do well to remember: 'Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'"

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Notes: I tried to make Japanese prison as accurate as possible. Visits are normally reserved for family only, although the warden can decide on a case-by-case basis to admit non-relatives if 'deemed necessary'. I'm assuming religious counsel would fall into this category.
Also - visits are limited to 30 minutes. There's pretty much no exception. There's also nothing that stipulates the prisoner and visitor have privacy. A prison officer is required to witness the visit, even if it's a discussion between a lawyer and prisoner. There's no such thing as legal privilege/confidentiality in Japan.
Further - the law states that a suspect can be held in jail for up to 28 days without even having to charge them with a crime.
There are very few prisoners' rights in Japan, and their legal system has come under scrutiny from other developed nations.
Pray you're never imprisoned in Japan.