InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Anhanguera ❯ Madness ( Chapter 10 )

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

Caipora stood back, arms crossed over his chest, slowly shaking his head as he watched Five’s antics as she splashed and played in the huge bathtub.

“So, they wanted to hurt you, and you had to show them that it wasn’t okay?” she said, not looking at him as she concentrated instead on building a hill out of soap bubbles.

“Yes,” he said.  He wasn’t sure how she’d actually react to what she’d seen last night in the yard.  So far, however, she seemed to be satisfied with his answers.

He wandered over, tapping the water control with his foot.  A second later, all six water spouts opened, flowing into the tub in an invigorating burst.  As soon as the stream hit the surface, a new surge of bubbles welled up.  Five giggled happily, lunging at the new little cones of bubbles, scooping around them with her skinny arms, dragging them toward her.  He let the water flow for a few minutes until the surface was almost level with the sides, then he turned them off with another tap of his foot.  The new bubbles were enough to distract her for a few minutes, anyway.  He’d hoped that it’d last a little longer, but he’d take what he could get, he supposed . . .

“It’s like the lessons,” she went on, having not given up on the current topic of conversation.  “Like what you do with the older girls?”

Frowning, since no, it wasn’t even close to being the same thing, he considered what he really ought to tell her.  On the one hand she was a slave; it was something she’d figure out sooner or later.  On the other . . .? “Sometimes, you have to do something to make sure that others know that you won’t allow them to do it to you,” he said, hoping that she’d be satisfied with that.

She looked thoughtful for a moment, those eyes of hers shifting to stare at him as though she were trying to figure something out.  “And you . . . liked it, Master?  I could tell . . . It was like I could . . . could feel you . . .”

“Uh, Five . . .”

She shrugged.  “Will I learn that one day, too?”

He wasn’t entirely sure what he should say to that.  For her to learn what he had felt last night?  No, he thought.  He didn’t want that, at all . . .

She smiled at him, her pretty little dimples flashing wide at him from the angelic little face she hid behind.  “So, you’re really strong!” she decided.  “You were the one at the top, right?  Do you do that to the overmaster, too?”

Letting out a deep breath, he shook his head, opting to ignore that question entirely.  “You need to get out of there,” he finally said.  “I thought I told you that you were going to have to start bathing in the bathhouse.”

That blood red, Cupid’s-bow-mouth puckered into a pout.  “I’m scared of the bathhouse,” she whispered.

He rolled his eyes.  No doubt about it, she’d figured out, quickly enough, just how to manipulate him.  Trouble was, she really wasn’t trying to do any such thing, and that just figured, too . . .

Striding out of the bathing area, he sat down, slipped off his boots, his socks.  It was almost ten, and he was exhausted.  Having spent most of the day, working with slaves who were just being introduced to anal sex?  Not his favorite thing to do . . .

Five padded out of the bathroom, her hair still damp, but her skin glowing softly, she hurried over to his bed, quickly turned down the covers and fluffed his pillows.

“You can go on to bed if you want,” he told her when she picked up his boots and padded over to the small chest where he kept his supplies for cleaning them.  “They’re fine.”

“But it’s my job to polish them for you, master,” she reminded him.

He rolled his eyes, removing the whip from his belt—he’d retrieved it from the bathhouse this morning, which was where the brothers had been taken after being left, trussed up where they’d been fucked until the others grew bored of them.  Emptying his pockets before raising his hands over his head to stretch, he yawned wide, shaking his head as a slow sense of lethargy crept over him.  “I’m tired, and you’re keeping me up,” he told her.  “Worry about those tomorrow night, okay?”

She nodded and set the boots aside neatly.  Then she skipped out of the room and into the antechamber.

He sighed.  Reaching for the buttons of his shirt, he stared out the balcony doors, idly wondering if St. George had gotten his letter yet, if he’d watched the videos.  It was all well and good to document the things on this island, sure, but even now, after nearly nine years . . . and the main target—the one he needed to take down to put an end to the entire operation . . .

‘Anhanguera . . .’

He stripped off his clothes and was stretching out in bed when the knock thudded on the door, and he sat up with a frown.  Heaving a disgusted breath, he tossed the blankets back, not bothering to mess with grabbing clothes since the only time anyone ever knocked at this time of night was when he was being summoned by the overmaster, and if that were the case . . . Well, it was safe to assume that clothing wasn’t necessary, anyway . . . ‘Fucking perverted old bastard . . .’

Five didn’t move when he strode through the antechamber, but he could feel her ever-curious eyes on him, watching him as he unlocked the door.  “What do you want?” he demanded, pulling the door open far enough to see two of the trainers, standing there, impatiently waiting.

“Domajin wants to see you,” the one said, a rather nasty smile spreading over his face.

Before he could respond, the two of them reached out, slapping shackles over his wrists and dragging him out of the room and down the hallway in the opposite direction of where they ought to have been taking him, herding him toward the stairs.  His first instinct was to fight them, regardless of the mention of the overmaster’s summons.  Casting a quick glance over the railing, however, stopped him.  All of the enforcers, all of the masters were there—well, the brothers were conspicuously missing—standing in a makeshift circle around a god-forsaken frame . . . and Domajin, seated comfortably in a chair, patiently waited for him . . .


Caipora groaned softly as the bright light of day stabbed him in the eyes.

He didn’t know when he’d passed out.  He didn’t know what time it was now.  Judging from the position of the sun that streamed through the open doors at the back of the wide room, he figured it might well be around three, which meant it had been a few hours at least since the last time he’d woken up . . . At some point after the first few hours of the unending assaults last night, he’d managed to disengage his mind enough that the things being done to him didn’t really matter anymore.  The entire thing was little more than white noise in his mind.  It was fine that way.

The blur of faces, the jeering masses . . . The cocks, the come, the slaps, the punches, the hiss and snap of the flails, and the blood . . .

It turned out that Domajin had seen the episode in the yard.  Something about it had set him into a blind rage, and he’d sat in that chair all night long, watching as Caipora was raped over and over again.  Drained—completely drained—physically, emotionally, and the strange thing was, he really didn’t care.  Chained to The Rack in the middle of the mansion proper—the great room—he hung there while the day-to-day tasks passed him by—a scarecrow on display—or a living sex-toy . . .

Trainers, enforcers, they’d all fucked him, and those who hadn’t gotten a turn in the night stopped by whenever they had a break for a quickie, never mind that the virgins were being led here and there—all of them pausing, casting him curious glances under the precarious cover of their lowered heads.  He could feel their eyes upon him—their curiosity—their pity . . .

It was almost laughable, in a really twisted way.  Five wouldn’t even glance at him, but he felt the turmoil in her youki—felt it, was torn by it—because she was scared—because she didn’t understand.  Weak, exhausted, bordering upon passing out once more, and yet, for the briefest of moments, he allowed his youki to unfurl, to touch the girl, to reassure her that he was all right as he balanced on the edge of oblivion yet again.  For a dizzying moment, he thought that he’d smelled the salt of tears coming from her, but even then, he couldn’t be sure.  Nose still inundated by the reek that was him, he couldn’t quite discern anything as well as he might have liked . . .

A whisper of movement drew his attention.  Lifting his chin just enough to shift his gaze, to look for the new creeping threat, he blinked, frowned, unsure what he was seeing when he spotted one of the virgins, hovering in the shadows near the high archway that led to the kitchen.

He couldn’t tell what was in her hands.  His vision was slightly blurred, but whether it was from the mental exhaustion or from the blows to his head that he’d endured, he didn’t know.

But she slowly crept forward, head lowered, even though she seemed to be looking around cautiously, ready to turn tail and retreat if she had to.  Slowly, painstakingly so, she shuffled toward him, her feet barely a whisper against the floor, until she finally stood before him.

The virgin—984152—leaned up on tiptoe, held up her hands—were they wet?—and pressed something cool and damp against his lips.  His gut reaction was to jerk away.  She persisted, her outward calm masking the heightened beat of her heart, and he realized after a moment that she was . . . giving him water . . .

Opening his cracked and bloodied lips, he let her slip the corner of the drenched cloth into his mouth.  He sucked on it hard, straining to get as much moisture out of it as he could.  The water was a balm on his swollen tongue, his raw and aching throat . . . When he could get no more out of it, though, she pulled the cloth away gently, her chin still lowered, most of her face, hidden by the curtain of her shining sorrel hair, and when she spoke, he had to strain to listen.  “I . . . I’ll bring you more if I can, Master,” she murmured.

“N-No,” he rasped out, the effort to speak, ridiculously difficult.  He fought it, however, unwilling to allow her to take such a stupid risk, not for him.  “Don’t . . . Don’t be stupid . . . You . . . You’ll be caught . . .”

Whether she heard him or not, she hurried away.  He hoped that she had, hoped that she’d listen, even as his body cried out for more water . . . Licking his lips, he watched her until she disappeared back into the hallway once more, leaving him, hanging there, alone again . . .


The burn of the whip cut through the oblivion that had cosseted him, drawing Caipora upright with a pained hiss as his shoulders and arms protested the incursion of conscious.  He could feel fresh blood, trickling down his back, and he opened his eyes slowly, locking first upon Domajin, mustering as much venom, hatred, as he could as he glowered at him.  This time, maybe for the first time ever, he allowed the bastard to see the hatred, the contempt, he felt for him without any base attempt to hide it.

Domajin saw it, laughed at it, his amusement tinged with a barely contained venom.  Caipora turned his head slightly to thwart a cramp that went deeper than bone, grimacing when his hair pulled against wounds that had bled into it, tearing the lacerations open once more.

There were only a couple enforcers in the room with them.  Caipora was past the point of caring.  Over twenty-four hours on The Rack and counting, and he was finished with this round of this game long ago.  Head throbbing, body bordering on shock from lack of food and water, even his youki felt thin, weak.  Such a sorry state, really, he thought with a rather vague and grim satisfaction.  Allowing himself to be put through this . . . How much of it was it really worth?  The pain, the humiliation as his humanity was stripped away, layer by layer . . . and the only thing he really had left was the tattered remains of what was left of his pride.

Domajin stepped toward him, the heels of his boots, cracking like thunder, echoing in the cavernous space, Caipora refused to lower his gaze, refused to give an inch, despite his compromising position.  Flicking his hand at the enforcer with the whip, Domajin grasped Caipora’s chin, shook him roughly, did not let go.  “You . . . You demean yourself by throwing yourself to those vermin in their perverted weekly displays of debauchery and mayhem?” he growled, addressing Caipora for the first time since he’d been so kindly escorted into the hall last night.

Caipora grunted.  “You don’t really have the moral fortitude to preach to me about perversion, do you, overmaster?” he muttered.  “What do you call this?”

The crack of flesh as he backhanded Caipora echoed, loud and sharp.  “You may not talk to me with such insolence!  I am your master!  Your lover!  And you seek to humiliate me!” he roared.

Slowly turning his face back, Caipora narrowed his eyes.  “You aren’t my lover . . . I don’t belong to you,” he countered softly, no less forcefully.  “You might be my superior, but you don’t own me—and you never will.”

For a second, he thought that maybe he’d pushed Domajin too far, and, for some reason, that idea amused him.  The spike, the surge in his youki dug at Caipora’s, the anger that issued from him, as thick and real as a cloud of smog—of miasma—if he had been a stronger youkai, that was.  He backhanded Caipora ten times in rapid succession from both sides.  Ignoring the hamburger that was the inside of his mouth, Caipora forced down the mouthful of blood, unwilling to allow Domajin even that much.

The rage that surged, unbidden, unchecked, was a malignant thing, and Domajin leaned in close, his face mere breaths from Caipora’s.  “You will break,” he promised from between gritted teeth.  “Tonight, I’ll break you.  You will cry, and you will beg.  You will cower and plead for mercy, and I . . .” He chuckled, but there was no humor in it—only a tortured loathing, deep in his eyes.  “I will be your god!”

Stepping back, flicking his hand, he strode away, grabbing a huge bottle of cachaça off of a nearby table.  Those bottles—easily six inches in diameter, a foot long from bottom to the base of the neck . . . He tore it open, ripped the cork out of it, slugged it back as the rain of lashes began.

Gritting his teeth, Caipora refused to make a sound—his only concession to the pain, a momentary closing of his eyes.  Time after time, that lash rose and fell. Time after time, he swayed, held in place by The Rack, by the shackles that held him tight.  Over the skin of his back, over his buttocks, the end of the whip, slipping around his thighs, cutting deep into the flesh of his penis, of his testicles . . .

Still, he managed to keep it in check, to smother any sounds before they slipped out of him.  Willing his mind away, seeking the dissociation once more, digging deep for a calm that surpassed the momentary flashes of white-hot pain . . .

And as the beating went on, the more agitated Domajin grew.  Well into the third bottle of cachaça, he strode over, dumped the remaining alcohol over Caipora’s head.  Grinding his teeth together so hard that they groaned in his mouth as a million stabs of unmitigated pain erupted everywhere the liquor invaded, he bore the anguish, locked it away, clinging to the last bit of pride he had left.

He could see it on the overmaster’s twisted countenance: he’d had enough.  Grabbing the top of The Rack, he jerked it down, bending Caipora over once more into the position that he was entirely too familiar with already.  

“Get out of the way!” Domajin screeched, shoving the enforcer to the side as he stepped around Caipora.

Mentally prepared for the latest round of rape to begin, Caipora said nothing—refused to give an inch—refused to concede the only thing he had left.

But the scream that Domajin wrenched from him echoed off the walls, off the ceiling, off the floor.  He couldn’t stop the growl that was forced out of him as the bottle in the overmaster’s hand—the six-inch-diameter, foot long monster of a bottle, was shoved in his ass, up to the bastard’s hand where he gripped the skinny neck.  Domajin pummeled it into and out of him, backed by all the seething anger he possessed, and every thrust morphed into a new adventure in pain—pain the likes of which Caipora had never felt before—pain that he managed to stifle somehow.  Even on that night so long ago—the night of his initiation into the organization—the one who had double fisted him hadn’t hurt like this.  The bottle was wrapped in a decorative faux netting of molded plastic that caught and tore at the depths of him, and, while living flesh always retained some measure of give, the cold glass bottle did not.

Squeezing his eyes closed, biting down hard as he stifled the screams of pain, he couldn’t staunch the small puffs, the little grunts that slipped out of him, the tears that squeezed out of the corners of his eyes—only a couple—and they were masked by the sweat that dripped off his face . . .

Cursing every god he knew, every god he’d ever heard of, he tried to retreat into himself, struggled to will himself away from the torment of the flesh that he simply couldn’t reconcile.  In those moments, he couldn’t quite recall, just why he was there, why he’d ever chosen this, why he needed to stay, to absorb the pain, to endure it . . .

The flash of pale blue eyes, ringed in a midnight hue . . . of silvery hair that shone blue in the moonlight . . .

‘F . . . Five . . .’

And somehow, the simple thought of her, the child doomed to a life of this hell, was enough to bolster his fleeting resolve, even as Domajin twisted the bottle hard, unleashing a whole new jolt of pain that ripped another scream from his lips . . .

Uttering a frustrated growl, Domajin grasped the bottle’s neck, wrenched his hand to jerk it free.  If Caipora had thought that it couldn’t get worse, he was wrong—so very, very wrong.  The neck snapped off, around the flare of the bottle.  The sharp edges cut in deep.  Rearing upright as far as he could, a blood-curdling scream tore from him, on and on as the pain shot straight to his brain, so much, so intense.

And then, his body went limp as he pitched forward, only to be caught by the shackles, as a welcome blackness engulfed his mind, his body . . .

His soul.


Five awoke with a start as the antechamber door smashed wide open.  Two of the enforcers stumbled in with Master hanging unconscious between them, his arms slung over their shoulders as they held onto his hands.  She gasped, hands flying up to cover her mouth.  Bloody from the waist down, leaving a smear of blood in a trail, he didn’t make a move or a sound.  The two didn’t even spare her a second glance as he maneuvered Master through the bedroom door and across the marble floor, only to drop him unceremoniously onto his bed.

Skittering away from the doorway as the two youkai strode past her, she blinked, frowned when they slammed the antechamber door again, but didn’t dwell upon it as she hurried into the bedroom, over to Master’s side, grunting and tugging to get his legs up on the bed.

He was a big man.

Gnawing on her lower lip, she wrung her hands as she tried to figure out what to do.  The first thing, she figured, was to get him cleaned up—to see where he was bleeding . . .

She ran to the bathing area, her hands shaking as she filled a large bucket with water, dumping in more aloe and tea tree oil than she should have, but she was shaking so badly that she couldn’t properly measure it out.  Glancing at the tub but discarding that idea just as quickly, she grabbed a huge stack of cloths, dropping them into the warm water in the bucket, hurrying back as carefully as she could.

Blood was already seeping into the pristine white sheets, and she uttered a soft moan as she wrung out a cloth and tried to find the source of the bleeding.  It didn’t take her long to find it, but when she did, she frowned, unsure exactly what she could do . . .

It was coming from inside him—inside his butt, she thought . . .

In the end, she did the only thing she could, rolling up the cloth, gently pressing it into his butt crack over the rectum.  It took an hour and all the clean cloths she had to clean the blood off his legs, his back, his hips, his thighs.  If he was injured on the front of his body, there wasn’t much she could do about that.  She didn’t have the strength to turn him over, and even if she did, she was afraid that she’d make him bleed all over again.

Frowning at the pile of soiled cloths, she bit her lip.  To get more, she’d have to go to the bathhouse—the one place she feared.

Glancing at Master again, though, she turned, forced her feet to move.  He needed her, didn’t he?  Needed her because . . . because he, like she, had no one else . . .

Negotiating the place at night was daunting at best, downright frightening at worst.  Even so, Master needed her, didn’t he?  And that thought was enough to bolster her wavering resolve as she crept down the stairs and through the great room where Master had been shackled to that evil looking contraption . . . It still stood there, eerie in the quiet. The putrid and vile mess on the floor, left forgotten, blood, some of it dried, but the biggest puddles of it, still damp in the middle . . . shards of amber glass that glittered in the moonlight, spilling through the windows, the doors . . .

None of it made any sense to her.  ‘Master . . .’

He was different from the others.  She’d sensed it from the start.  He was tough, he refused to allow a negative behavior to slip past unmarked.  But he was also kind, wasn’t he?  Never had he doled out punishment that was not deserved.  Never was he excessive or brutal . . . She knew these things about him.  What she couldn’t understand was what he could have possibly done to have deserved what had happened to him.  She’d never seen a slave, brutalized to that extent, and for it to have happened to Master . . .?

She’d crept out of the room last night.  She didn’t know why she’d felt compelled to see him.  Almost as though something inside her—a voice or a wicked urge—she had scooted closer and closer to the landing that overlooked the great room—the voices and the laughter and the jeers . . . The malignant mix of youki that she didn’t fully comprehend but that she knew . . .

‘Master . . .’

Trussed up on that evil contraption that she’d seen a few times before, stripped naked, and yet, he stood, straight and proud, sucking in a sharp breath only as the hateful lash in one of the enforcer’s hands snapped over his bared skin.  She flinched with every strike, unsure when the tears had first filled her eyes, slipped over, unchecked, rolling down her cheeks.  Master made no sound aside from the occasional hiss of breath.  The whip wrapped around his sides, his butt, his thighs.  A ribbon of blood that dripped down, snaking around his penis, horrified her as she gripped the spindles of the railing, rested her forehead against the cool wood . . .

And then, they’d yanked The Rack down, bending Master at the waist, and the things that they’d done to him . . . She flinched.  It was kind of like the lessons she’d been forced to watch, and yet, entirely unlike them, too.  The one who had whipped him looped the lash over his head, around his throat, forcing his head up, using the whip as leverage as he drove his penis deep into Master’s rear, over and over again.  Master choked, groaned, his body shaking, a strange kind of energy rising off of him, reaching her where she knelt, unable to look away.  Again and again, his body trembled as another of the trainers stepped forward, forced Master’s mouth open, only to force his penis in deep.

It was the strangest thing—an almost animalistic kind of measured brutality, and as terrible as it was to behold, she could also sense Master’s underlying pleasure, too, but it was a strange sort of emotion, almost as though he were being forcibly made to enjoy something that enraged him.  She blinked, frowned as the pleasure seemed to peak, as Master’s entire body stiffened, as a deluge of ejaculate jettisoned from his body and onto the marble floor.  The jeering grew louder, crueler, more wanton as the scent of it hit the assembly hard.  It made no sense, really, as the others peeled off their clothing, as many of them stood back, stroking their penises as they watched Master’s humiliation . . .

Even so, something about the act, about what she saw, unsettled her.  Watching as the men switched places, over and over again, their faces, little more than masks of brutality, the grimaces as they, too, reached their pleasure, as they used Master’s body, she gripped the rails so tightly that her fingertips had leached white, her claws digging into the wood with a soft and groaning shiver.  Squeezing her legs together as Master uttered a ragged groan, as more of that strange white substance that she’d smelled before but hadn’t seen, shot out of him—as that strange mix of euphoria and anger, of torment and pleasure appeared on his face . . .

Brushing aside the lingering memory that she still didn’t really understand, she shook her head, slipped out the doors and into the night.  It was chilly outside without the sun shining down.  Ignoring the goosebumps that rose up on her skin, she rubbed her upper arms as she darted down the flagstone path to the darkened bathhouse.

She stepped inside, eyes slipping around quickly.  A man—one of the attendants—stepped out of one of the stone stalls, shot her a dismissive kind of glance, only to look right back, dropping whatever he’d had in his hands as he hurried over to her.  “What happened to you?” he growled.

Only then did she realize that she had blood all over her slip—Master’s blood . . . “I’m fine,” she said quietly.  “Master is . . . is hurt . . . May I have more washing cloths?”

“Master,” he echoed thoughtfully, scratching his chin as he considered her claim.  “Caipora, right?”

She nodded.

He sighed.  “I had the bleeding stopped when they hauled him out of here,” he complained, more to himself than to her as he strode over to a huge cabinet to retrieve a stack of cloths and towels for her.  Staring at her thoughtfully for a moment, he also grabbed a fresh slip for her.  “Wait here,” he told her, handing her the stack.

He strode off, disappearing down a long, darkened hallway.  A few minutes later, he returned with a small amber jar that he handed to her, too.  “That’s salve.  It has to be applied to the inside of his rectum three times a day until it heals,” he told her, handing her a paper package of long cotton swabs.  “Can you do it?”

She nodded, but she must have looked uncertain because he grunted, his irritation obvious.  “Take one of those,” he said, poking a finger at the package of swabs.  “Dip it in there,” he said, moving his finger to point at the amber bottle.  “Make sure that the cotton is completely saturated.  Then you take the swab, stick it in his rectum, and rotate it around as far up as it will reach and all the way down to the bottom.  When you can apply it, and there’s no blood on the cotton, then he’s healed enough that you won’t have to do it again.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

This time, he must have been satisfied that she understood because he strode over to the door and held it open for her.

She ducked her head a little lower and slipped back outside into the night once more.

By the time she slipped back into the chamber, she felt a little better.  That attendant had seemed decent enough.  Of course, he could easily be the exception and not the rule.  She left the bottle and the swabs on the stand beside the bed and put away the towels and cloths, keeping a few of them to finish cleaning up Master.  Then she changed out of her soiled slip.

A low groan drew her attention, and she grabbed the cloths and hurried back to his bedside.  Slowly, so slowly, he opened his eyes, but the look in those eyes frightened her.  So dull, so dim, like he wasn’t really there, he started to push himself up, only to choke out a sound that was almost akin to a sob—a choking sound—a roughened pitch, like a dog that had been kicked in the side—as he dropped back onto the bed once more.  A few moments of measured breathing, he finally opened his eyes once more, but he seemed to have trouble, focusing on her face.

“Master?” she said, unable to summon more than a whisper.

“Water,” he rasped out.

She hurried over to the small refrigerator and retrieved a bottle of water and a straw out of the drawer beside it.  Snapping open the cap, she dropped the straw into it as she slipped across the room once more to gently nudge the straw between his lips.  He didn’t open his eyes, but he slowly, steadily drank.

By the time he was finished, his eyes had taken on that same expression that she remembered from that night so long ago, when he’d stumbled in, had just stood there beside the bed . . . It was a painful expression because there was nothing at all behind it, almost like he simply wasn’t there anymore . . .

“Master?” she said, the terrifying feeling that he was somehow gone, even though his body was right there, gripping her, that somehow, she felt so entirely alone again . . .

Long minutes ticked by.  Throwing away the empty water bottle, fetching a fresh one to set on the nightstand in case he should want it, she settled to work, gently wiping his back, cleaning the wounds as carefully as she could . . . He made no sound, didn’t move, eyes open wide as he stared off into space at nothing at all.

A flicker of a memory sparked to life in her head as she meticulously cleaned the lacerations.  She was small, then, she didn’t know how small, but one of the older boys had gotten caught, sneaking an extra roll at dinner.  It seemed to her that there had been other incidents, but she didn’t know for sure.  They’d dragged him outside, tied his arms around a stout pole, and they’d whipped him with a long, thin flail . . . Over and over again, wordlessly, and no one helped him as he sputtered and cried . . .

They were made to watch his punishment, a warning that most of them were too young to really grasp, herself included, outside of the base idea that it hurt him . . . That night in the long, squat building that the children had lived in, his cries and moans had lingered well into what should have been the quietest hours . . .

She remembered her overwhelming confusion, understood even back then that she dared not get up, dared not do anything to try to comfort the hurting boy.  But he wasn’t the same after that, either, like something deep down in him had been broken, snapped . . . Gone.

But she never really understood, why.

Physical pain, she knew in spades.  It was sharp and harsh and easy to comprehend.  It came with the lash, it came with the hand, with the blank looks and the empty stares, the apathy of men who neither cared nor worried about any of their well-being outside of the basic necessities of food and shelter and work . . .

Emotional pain was different, wasn’t it?  She hadn’t understood that, not before—not before being taken in by Master . . . Master, who let her bathe in his tub; Master, who hated the idea that anyone should strike her.  Maybe he didn’t say that out loud, but it was there, in his eyes, when he so carefully looked her over, searching her for signs of abuse that he would not allow . . . Master, who answered her questions without the reminder that she dare not speak . . . Master . . .

“Master?” she tried again, her panic rising despite her best efforts to shove it down, to lock it away.  It choked her as she swallowed hard, and as the surges of fear the likes of which she’d never known before—the fear of being alone again—the fear of being shoved back down into that space where her mind was no longer her own . . . The years of being taught to say nothing but the basest of answers, but only when asked . . . The fear of the reprimand that was never more than a hand-strike away . . . The fear of the sight of that wicked, wicked lash as it bore down on her while she was powerless to stop it . . . The fear of lying awake at night when the shadows moved and reached out to hurt her . . .

The fear of losing Master . . .

And the desperation that rose so thick and heavy inside her clawed at her stomach from somewhere deep down, tore at her in such an ignominious way that left her cracked, bloody, torn down to the quick of her soul—if a creature like her even possessed a soul . . . If she lost him now, she understood on some level that, returning to those things she had grown to expect . . . She couldn’t, could she?  Because Master . . . He’d taught her that she didn’t have to exist in darkness, in fear—even if it was a lesson he’d never intended to give her . . . Lifting her quivering hand, knowing that she was about to do something for which she would be punished—should be punished—because it wasn’t a slave’s place to have emotions, and it wasn’t a slave’s place to become attached to a master or later, a mistress . . . But the awful realization that, as much as he was there, his mind was not . . .

Fingers trembling, she touched him, laid her hand upon his cheek, unsure just what she was trying to do—only knowing deep down that if she didn’t try—if she couldn’t reach him . . . “Please, Master,” she choked out, her voice squeaking, breaking, harsh, her eyes burning, but dry because she’d been taught so long ago that she was never allowed to cry . . . “Don’t . . . Don’t go away,” she whispered.

A sudden sound shattered the quiet—a harsh reverberation that tore her open somewhere deep down, even as she struggled to understand why.  Something had hurt him—this, she understood—not just physically, but mentally, too . . .

A choked sob as tears broke free, running down Master’s contorted face . . . Sob after sob, as though something inside him was breaking, crumbling, tearing apart as it shattered on the cold marble floor . . . She understood that, didn’t she?  Understood it because . . . Staring at him, her eyes blurring over though no sound came from her, unable to reconcile the rush of fear, of consuming panic . . . a melancholy so deep, so vast that she could feel it, dragging at her, just as it engulfed Master, too . . .

Five winced, shook her head, unable to grasp just what could possibly have happened—what could have hurt him so deeply, so terribly . . . and it was that inability to grasp those things that drew her up on her knees, leaning against the side of the bed, wrapping her slender arms around his head as best she could, huddling over him, trying in her own clumsy way to protect him from those things that she could not see, could not feel, could not comprehend . . .

But . . . But Master . . . He did . . . and that frightened her even more . . .