We've seen Riko being whumped from Vetch's POV. Can we have a sneak peek into Riko's head during that episode?
CW: Aftermath of stabbing/beating, manhandling, withheld medical help, inverse care, general whump, minor!whump (attacker is unaware)
This is Riko's POV of these two chapters: Tourniquet ▸ Goodnight
Riko is a jigsaw puzzle, smashed on the ground.
A kaleidoscope of pieces. Each one a tiny glimpse of a scattered whole; a sensation, a thought, a memory.
He tries to gather them; to put himself together.
He has an inkling of who he is, whole. But he is too scattered. All jumbled up. He's all jagged pieces-- incomplete, incoherent, interrupted.
Flashes come, all out of order. He stretches himself thin reaching for each one, desperate to gather the pieces, to make sense, to return to himself.
The rounded feel of injectors under his hands. The slip of blood under him. Agony, agony in his back. The sound of a man, speaking calm to him. “Breathe,” he says. A scream, trapped, gargling in his throat. The awful pressure of a belt winching tight over his leg.
No. These are the lingering sensations of things that have happened. He doesn't want memories.
Memories are for the dead. He wants something real, something from his body, from now.
He just needs a chance. A single chance. Just one.
He comes back to himself violently, a broken bark tearing through his shredded throat. Blood spatters out of his mouth.
His eyes swing wildly. The austere corridor, tilted strangely; the grey concrete floor, an empty canvas, streaked in wide swathes with his blood.
He's here. He's in his body. It hurts, but he's in the now, he's alive.
A chance. He just needs the one.
Vetch is smiling. "Welcome back," he says, and his perfect teeth are bared in an affable smile. There is an empty stim injector in his hand. He tosses it to the side.
“Look what I've got for you.” His hands move intimately over Riko's med pack, splaying it open over the floor like a gutted animal.
The stim gives him minutes. Riko has to move fast, for the time to make a difference.
A single chance. It's all he needs.
He can survive this. He will.
He's thankful for the experience and the training that make his hands fly over the supplies, pull out exactly what he needs.
Riko is so caught up in the frictionless motion of muscle memory that he forgets that the body he is trying to save is his.
When he jams the hemostatic gauze into his gut wound the same way he would to a body in front of him, he blacks out so violently that he slams the back of his head against the wall.
For long moments, his ears roar, and his vision fills with crawling static. It's forever before the pain ebbs.
When he returns, he expects decades to have passed.
But Vetch is still there, that marveling expression still on his face. Riko's hand is still clutched over his wound on his gut, and the blood on his fingers is still warm and liquid.
His mouth is dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
He forces himself to move.
Vetch is inching forward, and his smile is getting wider.
That fucker-- Riko wishes he was close enough that he could--
No. Stay on task. One chance.
He discharges gel coagulant into the same wound, and this time he is ready for the flare of pain. It still takes him out, but this time he keeps clicking down on the sealant dispenser even when his vision whites out and his hearing is overtaken by a high, singing whine.
His jaw creaks with how hard he's keeping his teeth clenched together.
Blindly, he reaches for the patch. Locates it by feel. Applies it as best he can with what little vision he has. By the time the white has faded, he's looking at a patch that is so badly applied that--
The last time he had done so badly with a patch was when he was in medic training, and he'd let the sticky parts touch each other-- and Gosher had laughed so loudly at him that they'd both gotten warnings--
No. No. No fucking memories.
Stay here. Stay now. One chance!
He reaches again. A roll of bandages.
It's in his hand one second, gone the next.
A hand is now in his field of vision.
Vetch. Holding a roll of bandages in his hand. Why...?
Riko reaches out anyway. Because... he doesn't know why. His body simply reaches for it.
It blooms. The fabric opens up, floats over him, covers him in gauzy, gentle strips, chest to stomach.
His mind is drifting. He's supposed to do something.
He picks up the gauze (so soft, so pretty), and his hands automatically start sorting it, as if he's looking for treasure in it.
It moves, sliding out of his hands. Magic.
He stares at it with rapt fascination as it disappears from his grasp.
Vetch, pulling on the bandages, rolling them up in his hands. That fucking smile.
No-- it's Villastro the Magician, with colourful streamers in his graceful hands.
"Are you looking carefully, Riko?" He twists his fingers cleverly, and the streamers disappear. A grin on a face comically made-up to look like a villain.
"You were looking exactly where I wanted you to look. You were playing my game."
No memories. No fucking memories. Fuck--
He drifts. He doesn't try to reach for anything. He's squandered his chance, and now he--
Riko's body jackknifes and launches him brutally into consciousness.
Vetch, again. The bag, again.
"You're doing so well, Riko." Vetch croons, and his voice is slimy, like a tongue in Riko's ear. "Let's go again."
The fucker. The fucker is the game.
"You were looking exactly where I wanted you to look. You were playing my game."
Riko reaches, and his hand closes over an injector. And when Vetch leans in--
Closer, that's right, come close enough to fucking kiss--
Riko swings as hard as he can, aiming for Vetch's neck. He puts everything of himself into it.
There's the jolt of impact, and Riko's heart lurches painfully with triumph.
He'll bleed out, he won't make it, but at least they'll find Vetch unconscious next to him and--
Vetch's face wears an "o" of surprise, and slowly it spreads into a cloying expression of delight.
Riko's wrist is in Vetch's hand. The sedative injector is not in Vetch's neck. The needle is pristine.
The sound it makes as it hits the floor is small and hopeless.
Vetch is smiling at him, trailing a fingertip over the graze the needle has left on his collarbone. "A souvenir. Sweet of you."
The world is going sideways, and Vetch is saying words...
Riko's face is wet. Is he crying? He hasn't cried since... since his mother left.
"There's no need to cry," she sighed, "It's just a few days. I'll bring you back a souvenir."
Riko knew better. Had seen her packing. Knew the big luggage was in the trunk of her boyfriend's car, now parked a little ways off from their trailer.
"Where are you going? Can I join you in a few days?" Riko was crying, stupid tears crawling down his stupid face, stupid sobs heaving through his chest.
"No darling, like I said, it's just a few days. Less than a week. I'll be back before you know it."
On this side of memory, Riko knows she never returns. She goes off somewhere and makes a new, better life without him.
Memories are for the dead.
He gives himself over to them.
At least he's seeing his mother again now.
He wishes he could punch her in her stupid, lying face.
Her stupid face. Her face.
He misses her so much. He wishes--
A rush of adrenaline slams Riko out of the dark and into blinding reality. His inhale sounds like a shriek in his own ears.
He's completely unmoored. Everything swirls around him. Pain and terror.
His vision swerves, there's a blur of a face above him, its features running and bleeding into ugly streaks of colour.
Overwhelming horror, clawing up from inside his chest, up his throat.
The thought wheels by, meaningless.
He's being moved. Pulled up. Held.
There's a sound. A whimpering.
The puppy's four legs had been tied together with dirty twine, and a thick rubberband was wrapped so tightly around its snout that Riko could see blood oozing out around the compressed skin, staining the brown, nondescript fur.
It was making piteous whimpering noises. Hopeless and meaningless. Just the sounds of an animal in fear and misery, waiting for whatever came next.
A cheap mutt, belonging to no-one.
Its pain and death wouldn't mean anything to anybody.
Riko threw himself into the fight like a fiend. And of course, he got beaten bloody, because there was no other outcome when one skinny kid set himself against four bigger boys.
But they left the dog, and they left Riko to bleed over it as he untied it.
It makes high noises of pain as he strokes its grimy fur, trying to calm it. He's saying soothing, kind words it probably doesn't understand.
You're safe. No one's going to hurt you now.
He undoes the ties on the dog.
And all of a sudden, he feels his mother, right there with him. His hair stands on end.
He feels her hand on his cheek. Warm. He leans carefully into the sensation.
His eyes fill with tears.
Vetch unbuckles the tourniquet around his leg slowly, carefully.
Riko undoes the final tie on the dog. It leaps to its feet.
Vetch pulls the belt free.
His mother slings her handbag over her shoulder. Its strap slides on the fabric of her blouse as she opens the door.
The floor is littered with colourful pieces. Each one a tiny glimpse of a scattered whole; a sensation, a thought, a memory.
He doesn't try to put them together.
Selah Arc: Tourniquet ▸ Goodnight ▸ Knife ▸ Duck and Weave ▸ Battle After Battle ▸ Maintenance Corridor ▸ Now I Can See You ▸ Choreographed ▸ 📍Humpty Dumpty (a DVD extra)
Selah whump-only path: Maintenance Corridor ▸ Now I Can See You ▸ Tourniquet ▸ Goodnight ▸ 📍Humpty Dumpty (a DVD extra)
Note: Thank you anon for the ask! So much lore came out of this! Truth is I originally thought I wouldn't be able to generate a Riko POV because we already saw so much of Riko's state in the original chapters... but then I went out to run my errands and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And the more I dwelled on it, the more the Riko POV built itself... once Riko's mother's showed up and I was shedding tears imagining the scene, I was like okay, there's no way I don't write this...
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@deerslayer14 // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump // @hot-rangers-in-chains // @genuineformality // @whumpy-daydreams // @butterflywhump (a tongue in your ear)
