Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Falling to Pieces ❯ Chapter Four ( Chapter 4 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Dark Hunter 
Anime/Manga: Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Suspense / Romance / Occult / Hentai / Drama / Comedy / Angst / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 04.16.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.5K | Visits: 425 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Suspense / Romance / Occult / Hentai / Drama / Comedy / Angst / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 04.16.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.5K | Visits: 425 | Status: Work In Progress
-END of First Cliffhanger. Perhaps. I do dearly love my suspense!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When I first drift back to the land of the conscious, the only thing I'm aware of is the cold. Why do I always wind up this way? I don't ASK to be freezing for fifty percent or more of my days and nights.
Groaning, I reach down to pull up apparently non-existent bedcovers. Every muscle in my body screams in protest and then some. I try to remember why I'm in such pain, but am unable to. My ribs? Weren't they getting better though? Aya fixed them somehow.
"Uhn. Kill me please." I mumble, reaching for my sheets again. My hand grasps thin air, slicks across blood on my bare chest. My eyes snap open. It's still like peering through ink. Am I blind, or is it dark?
Memories of the fight hit me with all they've got. In an absolute panic I try to jump to my feet. Sudden vertigo slams down, fireworks and a full orchestra striking up in my brain. I'm down and out as soon as I'm up.
I regain consciousness to a jarring backhand across my face. I cough for a little while for the pain in my ribs. A large hand grabs my forearm and hurls me at a wall before I can try to organize my surroundings. I hit shoulder first, gasping, but more aware. I crouch low and try to regain my orientation.
The lighting is dim, but better than the nothing of before. I can make out my attacker's features. Heavy brooding bones, large heavy body. He certainly looks angry with me. I wonder what I've done to him offend him so personally.
He's moving before my eyes even register the movement. His hands crush my throat as his body presses me helplessly to the wall. I growl and thrash, pinned.
"Who is your employer?" The words are harsh and demanding. Stereotypical physical interrogation tactics: beat 'em and question 'em at the same time and hope for a sudden onrush of verbal diarrhea.
"Don't work for anyone." I gasp out, dizzied.
"Where did your accomplices escape to? Who sent you to steal that information?" His hands tighten when I don't answer.
Things progress thusly for I don't know how the hell long. When I find myself coughing up blood and unable to stop, he ends the session and leaves. He takes the lights with him.
I curl up on the floor, ignoring the bolted cot I think I spotted while I was still capable of coherent thoughts. If I thought I'd felt awful a day or two before...
I close my eyes, pressing my forehead to the cement flooring, hoping to cool the fire behind my eyes. I wonder how many of my bones he's broken, if he's broken any at all. It's so very cold. My bare side rests against the numbing ground as well. I wonder who took my shirt and why. At least they left me my pants.
I'm not exactly Mr. Dignity, but I have this baseless fear of being caught in a bad situation with my pants around my ankles, or across the room. I think it's something most males have in common. It's just too susceptible and exposed a condition to be in when danger strikes.
I curl up tighter and focus on breathing slowly and evenly, trying to distract my mind. Sleep and unconsciousness have both abandoned me for the time being, I guess.
I only have to wait a few agonizingly long hours before footsteps approach my cell again. Thud. Thud. Many steps, the clanking of metal hitting metal, even with the steps. They're armed then, whoever they may be.
The light comes from behind me, from the one door in the room. I scrunch my eyes shut and try to keep calm. There's nothing they can do to me. They can only cause me pain, and pain can be dealt with. They can only kill me, and after death, what is there to fear? Nothing but rest.
"You ready to talk now, Meat?" Rough hands yank me upright, ingnoring my sharp gasps of pain. My eyes dart around, seven of them, all armed, three guns trained on me. I can barely stand on my own; do they honestly think I have any way of escaping?
I summon my old insolent smirk and leer up at the man I perceive as being in charge. "Well, this is a pleasant little situation. I know you, don't I? You were that guy caught picking up little boys on street corners. You like 'em young, eh?" I sneer at him, purposefully baiting him, striking a common area that usually sets self-important bullies off into fits of rage.
I don't have time to brace myself for the sharp blow to my stomach. Without waiting for me to catch my breath, they drag me down the glaringly bright hallway. What new joyful experience lies ahead of me now?
I don't like the look of the new room. It's obviously nothing more than a well-stocked torture chamber. No, I don't like the look of this at all. In fact I think I'm going to regret any time I spend in this room.
I stare wide eyed at the chains and bolts coming from the walls, expecting this to quickly degenerate into any avid bondage freak's ultimate fantasy. Instead I'm lead/pulled over to the farthest away corner. There's a deep pool of water in one corner, the floor gradually slopping down deeper and deeper.
The whitewashed, Spartan walls contrast sharply with the wide array of pain-causing implements. Frighteningly so. The room looks like something imagined from the deepest most twisted depths of someone's soul, the purity contrasting so sharply with the gleaming metal. I personally always thought torture chambers should have good damp and dank stonewalls.
I sway back and forth, barely capable of keeping upright on my own, waiting for whatever comes next, reminding myself time and time again that pain means nothing, it is only a sensation.
"So you were the one brave enough, or stupid enough, to play bait?" The words come from behind me. They're dry, a hint of cynicism in them, vaguely amused in a detached and uncaring way. They chill me to the bone. The monotone, almost robotic cadence to phrase frightens me for many reasons, none of which I can pin down. Aya talks like that most of the time and even he doesn't disturb me like this.
I twist my neck as far as it will go; a fraction of it's usual limbered up range. I can't see him until he walks around to my front. Tall, dark haired, like the majority of the population in this country. His face is smooth and lineless. He looks artificial, overdone and yet still lacking details. I get the feeling that if he ever formed an expression with his face it would shatter to a million pieces.
He smiles, the skin stretching waves and bunching. I blanch.
"You have two options. You can either answer our questions, or you can remain silent and amuse me with your suffering." The smile doesn't reach his eyes, flat polished pebbles.
He brushes his knuckles across my cheekbone, smiling emotionlessly at my face. "Which will it be?"
"I don't know anything." The words lack the conviction I'd planned on putting behind them. If I weren't trying to delude myself so much, I might even admit to hearing a tremor as well.
"I'm assuming you're lying to me," He tsks, "A horrible thing to do to one who has been so merciful."
I snort and refrain from commenting. I've told them where I stand. Now I remain silent and let the fun begin.
He waves a manilla folder in front of my face. "I've been looking through your basic files. From those good old days when you were a detective." He smiles. "A simple fingerprint search found your identity at a faster speed than you could ever imagine Kudou-san, though all sources insisted on informing me you were quite dead. Perhaps we can remedy that at a later date." I consider startling them all by tearing loose and ripping up the folder in front of their eyes, just to see the looks on their faces.
He flips through the printed sheets of statistics and who the hell knows what else. He reaches a page which seems to delight him, that fake smile enlarging. He holds the page in front of me. "You went through a series of psychological tests, I do believe. A long while ago, much of the information no longer applies, but our experts, myself included, did spot something that made us more than a little happy. You have a phobia. Not just any simple phobia. You fear water; you fear being immersed in water and being unable to breath." He gestures magnanimously towards the pool of water to my left. "In essence, drowning."
I swallow and close my eyes for the bare seconds it takes to get my expression back under control. I start repeating my safe-phrase to myself again. They can only hurt me, there is nothing too horrible they can do to me. The worst that can happen is my death, and after that there is nothing but peace. I open my eyes and meet his, managing the biggest smile I can, a gesture of bravery I'll die admiring.
He flicks his hands towards the water, vacant smile in place. He seems a bit less falsely cheerful about my lack of devastated, futile railing. I struggle as I'm bodily dragged into the water, gasping out in shock at its coldness. My two human-crutches/guards calmly plod into the water with me, expressions speaking of how ho-hum and uneventful this day is shaping up to be.
"Well then, let us get started, shall we?" Stone-face claps his hands, standing near the edge, but not close enough to risk getting splashed. Would he melt? I wonder to distract myself. "For who's benefit were you involved in a plan to deprive us of some much-needed information?"
"Fuck you." I state flatly, knowing it's just better to get it all over with. I prepare myself.
The water is colder around me than I thought it would be as they hold me down, I try to hold what little breath I managed to inhale while I put up the unavoidable struggle to clamber back to the surface. I thrash, water hindering my motions and making them ineffective. I try to keep from breathing in, unable to even pinch my nose shut or cover my mouth, my arms pinioned to my sides.
They haul me back up, the air even icier on my face. My teeth chatter as I glare around me in general, still holding onto my fears fairly well. They say time will heal all hurts and remedy all mental lapses, but I don't know how long I can stick to that theory.
"Next question then, shall we Kudou-san? Name your accomplices."
"Next response then: Fuck you again." I try to suck in a full breath and silence the frenzied jabbering voice in the back of my mind.
The man hurls me at a wall. Just some faceless guard with a temper. His companions laugh as I hit the floor and curl up shivering, coughing fit to choke. Oh fuck, I'm so cold. I can't breath, my lugs ache; my eyes burn.
I wait for them to leave, but they hover in the doorway, conversing among themselves. I realize what's probably going to happen next when a large form lumbers towards me, twisting my arm up behind my back, doubling me over.
"Well, we've wasted a lot of time dragging you around. I think a little compensation is in order." He roughly grips my jaw, forcing me to face the general area where his shadowed eyes no doubt are.
I shut my eyes again and do my best to black out the next few hours. When then finally leave me again, after pulling my remaining clothes back into some torn semblance of order, I force myself to crawl over to the cot, body screaming out in protest, muscles that I never knew existed crying out for relief, bruises forming in places I'd never even thought bruises capable of dwelling.
My head hits the pillow but sleep never comes for me. I close my sandpaper eyelids and take slow shallow breaths until the urge to cry passes. I don't cry. It's against my nature. I won't let them cow me. It's just pain, pain and drowning. I can cope with that; I have to.
Time passes, I drift in and out of consciousness. No one comes for me, my hair and clothing dry, but I can't stop shaking. It hurts to breath. The coughs that wrack me are almost unbearable, tearing at the very fiber of my being.
I wait to die, but I just keep sinking to new layers of despair and agony. No one who could help me knows where I am. I doubt anyone would take the time to come after me. The only thing to do is further distance myself. Pain is only a sensation. Fear is only soul deep.
Aya would make that decision after he returned to home. At least this way he won't have to worry about me talking about the girl. The girl with his name. No, I have that backwards. He was borrowing her name. Does that mean he has a different given name. I can't see him as anything but the 'Aya' I've always known him as.
The door opens. I'm dragged off for another session with the drowning pool; my mind just goes elsewhere partway through, unable to put up with anymore. What remains is pitiful and spiritless, believing it deserves all it receives.
When the terror of dying doesn't shift my will any, they go for good old fashioned pain. They start out small, simply passing me around: beating and raping, moving on to more violent and destructive methods.
At the end of a grueling seven hours, their watches were conveniently keeping the coherent part of my brain aware of the time, I'm hauled back to the cell again, too exhausted and agonized to look for a way out, to fight back on the trip there. Thrown over someone's shoulder like a corpse or, to be less gruesome, a sack of flour.
I try to lie on my stomach on the floor. Incapable of simple motion. My back is a mass of raw stripes of skin alternating with tears revealing muscle and tissue. I lie shaking in the dark, wondering if everyone is all right, how much more I'm going to hurt before this is all over.
I don't know how much time passes. More than a few days, I'm sure of that, but there is no variation to the routine. They persist out of sheer stubborn and sadistic pride now. No one asks me any questions, and even if I offered to answer anything they wanted, screamed the information at them, it wouldn't stop.
Then it does without even an explanation. The usual few hours go by with the usual anticipatory fits of terror and pain, but no one comes for me. All is silent, alternately hot and cold. I have a fever, a bad one. I wonder how long until I die.
I changed my mind earlier. I don't really want to die anymore. I guess fate has it in for me though. No such luck. I had so much I still wanted to find out, wanted to learn. I had so many mysteries to get to the bottom of. Plenty of untasted hard liquor.
Stone-face finally comes to pay me a visit. He turns the lights on all the way, turning this room into the center of a miniature sun. He needs the light, I think. To keep him going. I often try to puzzle him out during my fits of delirious rest. He feeds off the light, I reason, and that's why it follows him, why it hurts to look at him.
"Your companions have abandoned you. We found them through your records, and through a survivor's account. They sold you out." He smiles, and this time it shines out through his eyes, light without source. If I weren't so tired I'd almost be afraid. He's so wrong, unnatural to any world I've ever been in.
I stare at him lifelessly through a curtain of hair. It hurts to breath. I don't want this pain anymore. I don't want to be cold. I process his words slowly and methodically. He's resorted to lying.
"I thought you didn't believe in lying." My voice cracks throughout the simple sentence and it sends me into a new bout of hoarse coughing.
He cups something in his palm, holding it out for me to see. Aya's earring. My mind shuts down.
"Your red headed companion told me to show you this, to make sure you knew they'd all given up on you. You weren't worth the effort to them." He throws the gold bar to the floor.
"We offered them a settlement for the location of the disk, understanding that they were only following instructions. We gave them a smaller settlement to keep possession of you. They seemed quite glad to be rid of you. The blond child, obviously some sort of foreigner with a borrowed surname, he seemed amused by the whole affair. What was his name? Tsykioni? Something along those lines."
"Tsukiyono." I correct without thinking. My eyes direct themselves towards the earring without any conscious decision on my part. It's his all right. I'd recognize it anywhere after all those years, seeing it day in, day out. I let my eyelids slide down, hiding in darkness.
"You know, they foisted you off on us for less than they revealed the location of the stolen information." He sounds almost gleeful, manic, the robot tones are gone. They don't frighten me anymore. I have nothing to fear.
They didn't want me. I wasn't important enough to them. They sold me out, accepted money. Left me here to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to hurt. Everything hurts. I start to think about the cold, horrible water. Next time, I'll breath in. They won't know I'm dead until it's too late.
"We haven't gone to verify that the information went to who they say it did yet. You may still even have a bit of use in you. If the answers they gave us were incorrect then they will run for it. You can help us find them." He claps his hands like a child before ungently patting me on the shoulder. I gasp in pain, causing him just a little more delight in a day already overflowing with the emotion.
He gets up and leaves. I lie there, my muscles to tight they make my eyes water, strung out from endless shivering. My eyes burn from the angle with which I need to strain them so I can continue to look at the earring in it's small pool of light.
On impulse I lean over the side of the cot, fumbling in the pitch black for the gleaming bar of metal. The actions aren't as simple as they seem. By the time I'm lying still again I'm unable to contain the harsh sobs of pain escaping from my throat.
I twist with agonizing slowness and collapse on my side, trying to protect my back even now. I cup the freezing metal in my palm, knowing I'll never warm the jewelry, my skin being the same temperature as the air, the floor, colder even. I close my eyes as the pain tears turn into real ones of grief and sorrow.
I try to cover my eyes out of habit, not caring that no one is around to see me. I drop the earring to the mattress next to me, pained too much by the thought of them all, Ken, Omi, and especially Aya giving me the brush off. I recognize the empty feelings of hopelessness now. I don't want to die. Why is this happening?
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CLIIIIIFFFHHAAAANNNGGEEERRRR!!! Woot Woot! I'm so evil, sometimes I just want to hug myself! darkhunter@ijustdontcare.com or akainobaka@mchsi.com ! Either one is fine. Drop me a line! Woot Woot! Sorry for the updating delays! People keep quitting and getting fired at my work, and money hungry little me winds up stepping up to the plate and taking over as many of their hours as possible! Be patient children!
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When I first drift back to the land of the conscious, the only thing I'm aware of is the cold. Why do I always wind up this way? I don't ASK to be freezing for fifty percent or more of my days and nights.
Groaning, I reach down to pull up apparently non-existent bedcovers. Every muscle in my body screams in protest and then some. I try to remember why I'm in such pain, but am unable to. My ribs? Weren't they getting better though? Aya fixed them somehow.
"Uhn. Kill me please." I mumble, reaching for my sheets again. My hand grasps thin air, slicks across blood on my bare chest. My eyes snap open. It's still like peering through ink. Am I blind, or is it dark?
Memories of the fight hit me with all they've got. In an absolute panic I try to jump to my feet. Sudden vertigo slams down, fireworks and a full orchestra striking up in my brain. I'm down and out as soon as I'm up.
I regain consciousness to a jarring backhand across my face. I cough for a little while for the pain in my ribs. A large hand grabs my forearm and hurls me at a wall before I can try to organize my surroundings. I hit shoulder first, gasping, but more aware. I crouch low and try to regain my orientation.
The lighting is dim, but better than the nothing of before. I can make out my attacker's features. Heavy brooding bones, large heavy body. He certainly looks angry with me. I wonder what I've done to him offend him so personally.
He's moving before my eyes even register the movement. His hands crush my throat as his body presses me helplessly to the wall. I growl and thrash, pinned.
"Who is your employer?" The words are harsh and demanding. Stereotypical physical interrogation tactics: beat 'em and question 'em at the same time and hope for a sudden onrush of verbal diarrhea.
"Don't work for anyone." I gasp out, dizzied.
"Where did your accomplices escape to? Who sent you to steal that information?" His hands tighten when I don't answer.
Things progress thusly for I don't know how the hell long. When I find myself coughing up blood and unable to stop, he ends the session and leaves. He takes the lights with him.
I curl up on the floor, ignoring the bolted cot I think I spotted while I was still capable of coherent thoughts. If I thought I'd felt awful a day or two before...
I close my eyes, pressing my forehead to the cement flooring, hoping to cool the fire behind my eyes. I wonder how many of my bones he's broken, if he's broken any at all. It's so very cold. My bare side rests against the numbing ground as well. I wonder who took my shirt and why. At least they left me my pants.
I'm not exactly Mr. Dignity, but I have this baseless fear of being caught in a bad situation with my pants around my ankles, or across the room. I think it's something most males have in common. It's just too susceptible and exposed a condition to be in when danger strikes.
I curl up tighter and focus on breathing slowly and evenly, trying to distract my mind. Sleep and unconsciousness have both abandoned me for the time being, I guess.
I only have to wait a few agonizingly long hours before footsteps approach my cell again. Thud. Thud. Many steps, the clanking of metal hitting metal, even with the steps. They're armed then, whoever they may be.
The light comes from behind me, from the one door in the room. I scrunch my eyes shut and try to keep calm. There's nothing they can do to me. They can only cause me pain, and pain can be dealt with. They can only kill me, and after death, what is there to fear? Nothing but rest.
"You ready to talk now, Meat?" Rough hands yank me upright, ingnoring my sharp gasps of pain. My eyes dart around, seven of them, all armed, three guns trained on me. I can barely stand on my own; do they honestly think I have any way of escaping?
I summon my old insolent smirk and leer up at the man I perceive as being in charge. "Well, this is a pleasant little situation. I know you, don't I? You were that guy caught picking up little boys on street corners. You like 'em young, eh?" I sneer at him, purposefully baiting him, striking a common area that usually sets self-important bullies off into fits of rage.
I don't have time to brace myself for the sharp blow to my stomach. Without waiting for me to catch my breath, they drag me down the glaringly bright hallway. What new joyful experience lies ahead of me now?
I don't like the look of the new room. It's obviously nothing more than a well-stocked torture chamber. No, I don't like the look of this at all. In fact I think I'm going to regret any time I spend in this room.
I stare wide eyed at the chains and bolts coming from the walls, expecting this to quickly degenerate into any avid bondage freak's ultimate fantasy. Instead I'm lead/pulled over to the farthest away corner. There's a deep pool of water in one corner, the floor gradually slopping down deeper and deeper.
The whitewashed, Spartan walls contrast sharply with the wide array of pain-causing implements. Frighteningly so. The room looks like something imagined from the deepest most twisted depths of someone's soul, the purity contrasting so sharply with the gleaming metal. I personally always thought torture chambers should have good damp and dank stonewalls.
I sway back and forth, barely capable of keeping upright on my own, waiting for whatever comes next, reminding myself time and time again that pain means nothing, it is only a sensation.
"So you were the one brave enough, or stupid enough, to play bait?" The words come from behind me. They're dry, a hint of cynicism in them, vaguely amused in a detached and uncaring way. They chill me to the bone. The monotone, almost robotic cadence to phrase frightens me for many reasons, none of which I can pin down. Aya talks like that most of the time and even he doesn't disturb me like this.
I twist my neck as far as it will go; a fraction of it's usual limbered up range. I can't see him until he walks around to my front. Tall, dark haired, like the majority of the population in this country. His face is smooth and lineless. He looks artificial, overdone and yet still lacking details. I get the feeling that if he ever formed an expression with his face it would shatter to a million pieces.
He smiles, the skin stretching waves and bunching. I blanch.
"You have two options. You can either answer our questions, or you can remain silent and amuse me with your suffering." The smile doesn't reach his eyes, flat polished pebbles.
He brushes his knuckles across my cheekbone, smiling emotionlessly at my face. "Which will it be?"
"I don't know anything." The words lack the conviction I'd planned on putting behind them. If I weren't trying to delude myself so much, I might even admit to hearing a tremor as well.
"I'm assuming you're lying to me," He tsks, "A horrible thing to do to one who has been so merciful."
I snort and refrain from commenting. I've told them where I stand. Now I remain silent and let the fun begin.
He waves a manilla folder in front of my face. "I've been looking through your basic files. From those good old days when you were a detective." He smiles. "A simple fingerprint search found your identity at a faster speed than you could ever imagine Kudou-san, though all sources insisted on informing me you were quite dead. Perhaps we can remedy that at a later date." I consider startling them all by tearing loose and ripping up the folder in front of their eyes, just to see the looks on their faces.
He flips through the printed sheets of statistics and who the hell knows what else. He reaches a page which seems to delight him, that fake smile enlarging. He holds the page in front of me. "You went through a series of psychological tests, I do believe. A long while ago, much of the information no longer applies, but our experts, myself included, did spot something that made us more than a little happy. You have a phobia. Not just any simple phobia. You fear water; you fear being immersed in water and being unable to breath." He gestures magnanimously towards the pool of water to my left. "In essence, drowning."
I swallow and close my eyes for the bare seconds it takes to get my expression back under control. I start repeating my safe-phrase to myself again. They can only hurt me, there is nothing too horrible they can do to me. The worst that can happen is my death, and after that there is nothing but peace. I open my eyes and meet his, managing the biggest smile I can, a gesture of bravery I'll die admiring.
He flicks his hands towards the water, vacant smile in place. He seems a bit less falsely cheerful about my lack of devastated, futile railing. I struggle as I'm bodily dragged into the water, gasping out in shock at its coldness. My two human-crutches/guards calmly plod into the water with me, expressions speaking of how ho-hum and uneventful this day is shaping up to be.
"Well then, let us get started, shall we?" Stone-face claps his hands, standing near the edge, but not close enough to risk getting splashed. Would he melt? I wonder to distract myself. "For who's benefit were you involved in a plan to deprive us of some much-needed information?"
"Fuck you." I state flatly, knowing it's just better to get it all over with. I prepare myself.
The water is colder around me than I thought it would be as they hold me down, I try to hold what little breath I managed to inhale while I put up the unavoidable struggle to clamber back to the surface. I thrash, water hindering my motions and making them ineffective. I try to keep from breathing in, unable to even pinch my nose shut or cover my mouth, my arms pinioned to my sides.
They haul me back up, the air even icier on my face. My teeth chatter as I glare around me in general, still holding onto my fears fairly well. They say time will heal all hurts and remedy all mental lapses, but I don't know how long I can stick to that theory.
"Next question then, shall we Kudou-san? Name your accomplices."
"Next response then: Fuck you again." I try to suck in a full breath and silence the frenzied jabbering voice in the back of my mind.
The man hurls me at a wall. Just some faceless guard with a temper. His companions laugh as I hit the floor and curl up shivering, coughing fit to choke. Oh fuck, I'm so cold. I can't breath, my lugs ache; my eyes burn.
I wait for them to leave, but they hover in the doorway, conversing among themselves. I realize what's probably going to happen next when a large form lumbers towards me, twisting my arm up behind my back, doubling me over.
"Well, we've wasted a lot of time dragging you around. I think a little compensation is in order." He roughly grips my jaw, forcing me to face the general area where his shadowed eyes no doubt are.
I shut my eyes again and do my best to black out the next few hours. When then finally leave me again, after pulling my remaining clothes back into some torn semblance of order, I force myself to crawl over to the cot, body screaming out in protest, muscles that I never knew existed crying out for relief, bruises forming in places I'd never even thought bruises capable of dwelling.
My head hits the pillow but sleep never comes for me. I close my sandpaper eyelids and take slow shallow breaths until the urge to cry passes. I don't cry. It's against my nature. I won't let them cow me. It's just pain, pain and drowning. I can cope with that; I have to.
Time passes, I drift in and out of consciousness. No one comes for me, my hair and clothing dry, but I can't stop shaking. It hurts to breath. The coughs that wrack me are almost unbearable, tearing at the very fiber of my being.
I wait to die, but I just keep sinking to new layers of despair and agony. No one who could help me knows where I am. I doubt anyone would take the time to come after me. The only thing to do is further distance myself. Pain is only a sensation. Fear is only soul deep.
Aya would make that decision after he returned to home. At least this way he won't have to worry about me talking about the girl. The girl with his name. No, I have that backwards. He was borrowing her name. Does that mean he has a different given name. I can't see him as anything but the 'Aya' I've always known him as.
The door opens. I'm dragged off for another session with the drowning pool; my mind just goes elsewhere partway through, unable to put up with anymore. What remains is pitiful and spiritless, believing it deserves all it receives.
When the terror of dying doesn't shift my will any, they go for good old fashioned pain. They start out small, simply passing me around: beating and raping, moving on to more violent and destructive methods.
At the end of a grueling seven hours, their watches were conveniently keeping the coherent part of my brain aware of the time, I'm hauled back to the cell again, too exhausted and agonized to look for a way out, to fight back on the trip there. Thrown over someone's shoulder like a corpse or, to be less gruesome, a sack of flour.
I try to lie on my stomach on the floor. Incapable of simple motion. My back is a mass of raw stripes of skin alternating with tears revealing muscle and tissue. I lie shaking in the dark, wondering if everyone is all right, how much more I'm going to hurt before this is all over.
I don't know how much time passes. More than a few days, I'm sure of that, but there is no variation to the routine. They persist out of sheer stubborn and sadistic pride now. No one asks me any questions, and even if I offered to answer anything they wanted, screamed the information at them, it wouldn't stop.
Then it does without even an explanation. The usual few hours go by with the usual anticipatory fits of terror and pain, but no one comes for me. All is silent, alternately hot and cold. I have a fever, a bad one. I wonder how long until I die.
I changed my mind earlier. I don't really want to die anymore. I guess fate has it in for me though. No such luck. I had so much I still wanted to find out, wanted to learn. I had so many mysteries to get to the bottom of. Plenty of untasted hard liquor.
Stone-face finally comes to pay me a visit. He turns the lights on all the way, turning this room into the center of a miniature sun. He needs the light, I think. To keep him going. I often try to puzzle him out during my fits of delirious rest. He feeds off the light, I reason, and that's why it follows him, why it hurts to look at him.
"Your companions have abandoned you. We found them through your records, and through a survivor's account. They sold you out." He smiles, and this time it shines out through his eyes, light without source. If I weren't so tired I'd almost be afraid. He's so wrong, unnatural to any world I've ever been in.
I stare at him lifelessly through a curtain of hair. It hurts to breath. I don't want this pain anymore. I don't want to be cold. I process his words slowly and methodically. He's resorted to lying.
"I thought you didn't believe in lying." My voice cracks throughout the simple sentence and it sends me into a new bout of hoarse coughing.
He cups something in his palm, holding it out for me to see. Aya's earring. My mind shuts down.
"Your red headed companion told me to show you this, to make sure you knew they'd all given up on you. You weren't worth the effort to them." He throws the gold bar to the floor.
"We offered them a settlement for the location of the disk, understanding that they were only following instructions. We gave them a smaller settlement to keep possession of you. They seemed quite glad to be rid of you. The blond child, obviously some sort of foreigner with a borrowed surname, he seemed amused by the whole affair. What was his name? Tsykioni? Something along those lines."
"Tsukiyono." I correct without thinking. My eyes direct themselves towards the earring without any conscious decision on my part. It's his all right. I'd recognize it anywhere after all those years, seeing it day in, day out. I let my eyelids slide down, hiding in darkness.
"You know, they foisted you off on us for less than they revealed the location of the stolen information." He sounds almost gleeful, manic, the robot tones are gone. They don't frighten me anymore. I have nothing to fear.
They didn't want me. I wasn't important enough to them. They sold me out, accepted money. Left me here to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to hurt. Everything hurts. I start to think about the cold, horrible water. Next time, I'll breath in. They won't know I'm dead until it's too late.
"We haven't gone to verify that the information went to who they say it did yet. You may still even have a bit of use in you. If the answers they gave us were incorrect then they will run for it. You can help us find them." He claps his hands like a child before ungently patting me on the shoulder. I gasp in pain, causing him just a little more delight in a day already overflowing with the emotion.
He gets up and leaves. I lie there, my muscles to tight they make my eyes water, strung out from endless shivering. My eyes burn from the angle with which I need to strain them so I can continue to look at the earring in it's small pool of light.
On impulse I lean over the side of the cot, fumbling in the pitch black for the gleaming bar of metal. The actions aren't as simple as they seem. By the time I'm lying still again I'm unable to contain the harsh sobs of pain escaping from my throat.
I twist with agonizing slowness and collapse on my side, trying to protect my back even now. I cup the freezing metal in my palm, knowing I'll never warm the jewelry, my skin being the same temperature as the air, the floor, colder even. I close my eyes as the pain tears turn into real ones of grief and sorrow.
I try to cover my eyes out of habit, not caring that no one is around to see me. I drop the earring to the mattress next to me, pained too much by the thought of them all, Ken, Omi, and especially Aya giving me the brush off. I recognize the empty feelings of hopelessness now. I don't want to die. Why is this happening?
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CLIIIIIFFFHHAAAANNNGGEEERRRR!!! Woot Woot! I'm so evil, sometimes I just want to hug myself! darkhunter@ijustdontcare.com or akainobaka@mchsi.com ! Either one is fine. Drop me a line! Woot Woot! Sorry for the updating delays! People keep quitting and getting fired at my work, and money hungry little me winds up stepping up to the plate and taking over as many of their hours as possible! Be patient children!