Quiet
So this is the Chapter 4 of Bearded (tumblr / AO3) that I never really intended to write, but felt a little mean for leaving poor Scott where I did and so I used a little something I began to draft for @edutainer2022 AGES ago but never quite progressed… and I think it works!
Obviously I’ve made it worse before finally making it better but y’know… contrasts.
Usual warning that this is angsty malaria-ridden POW Scotty. No graphic torture or anything but he’s not at his best or having the best time.
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It had all gone very quiet.
Not the strange underwater-quality of quiet he’d been experiencing for days, almost as though the perpetual darkness that was now the sum total of his visual world was leaking into his auditory one.
No… no this was Quiet. Not just muffled noises but no noises.
None at all.
Had he lost his hearing altogether? He felt a surge of panic break through the eerie calm that seemed to smother his exhausted mind each time the fever dipped for a few hours. What if he couldn’t hear Virgil play anymore? Or little Alan’s giggle? He tried to remember the sound of his tiny brother’s laughter and encountered a frosted glass wall behind which the memory crouched. Scott reached for it… he could remember the feeling… but not the sound. No! No!!! He couldn’t lose that too!
A broken cry echoed off the walls of the tiny, unfamiliar cell.
Wait.
That was sound. He heard that!
The relief was quickly shoved aside by the terror. They might have heard that!
He held his breath and waited but nobody came.
Of course… the door was fairly solid and there were no windows here. He’d begun to curse the small barred hole near the ceiling of his old cell for the cold draft that sliced through it but now…
Now he felt the loss of that glimpse of sky like an open wound.
He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d been slung into this claustrophobic hellhole… when they’d apparently given up on getting any sense out of him. When the shouting and the pain had been replaced by the dark and the loneliness and the lurking fear that the next stage was an even smaller box.
Ha, silly boy, Tracy. They wouldn’t bother with a box.
His mind wandered for a moment as he wondered when they’d next check on him. Why they were leaving it to nature rather than just finishing him off themselves?
Perhaps they believed nature was crueller.
They obviously wanted to prolong it… Water and some kind of dry biscuit appeared occasionally and he hadn’t been able to help himself when he realised it was there - but he could never remember it arriving - clearly when the fever rose he was losing time. He hated not being able to track the time. It was all he’d had.
The last number he’d calculated with any kind of reasonable basis for it was seventy eight. Seventy eight days plus however long he’d been in the dark. Maybe a week? He’d survived that long. Grimly he wondered if he could stretch it to an even 100. He didn’t know for sure how sick he was, but he didn’t feel too optimistic. When they were still trying to break him they seemed to be giving him something for the fever… or perhaps it had just been something else awful they’d forced into his bloodstream. Maybe whatever it was was causing the fever? No… that didn’t make sense because they seemed irritated by it… worried even. Not for him of course but from what he’d picked up he wasn’t the only one suffering with it. Even some of the guards he’d learned to recognise had stopped turning up.
Something had gone wrong.
And what went wrong for them should be good for him. And yet… he scrunched up his face wryly as he felt the sweat begin to prickle at his hairline again and tried not to panic at the prospect of what was coming, at the impending loss of reality: where the living nightmare was made worse by vividly seeing his brothers experiencing it alongside him. Dad’s disappointed face. The blood on his hands… All the pain he’d… it wouldn’t be real. It won’t be real. It can’t be. He wouldn’t.
They’re safe.
Just wait it out, Tracy. You’ve got this.
He shivered and the ache in his bones intensified into daggers of pain.
He hadn’t got this. He hadn’t. Nobody could.
Yeah, he wouldn’t have wished this on anyone. Not even his worst enemies. Even when it was their fault. He’d happily have killed them for what they’d done to him and to the others. The sick bastards deserved death. But not this. This was worse.
He didn’t deserve this. Whatever they told him.
Whatever it was, they seemed not to be treating it now. And it hadn’t gone away. So presumably it would get him eventually.
Why was it so Quiet? Even when it was quieter they were clearly still around. He had evidence - the food and water for one. And clearly they were opening the heavy door at some point as even with the slight crack at the bottom the air in here should have gotten bad by now. The oxygen replaced by… whatever poison it was he was expelling from his lungs. The word, the name of the gas escaped him as so many things did now.
But there were some names he mustn’t forget.
He wiped at his damp forehead with a shaking hand, twisted his lank hair around his fingers and pulled gently. Come on, focus.
The whisper when it came required nearly all the energy he had.
“Hhhhh’Aaaaall…an”
Ok ok next one.
“G…g…hoord..nn”
“Tjjhh…onnn”
“Fff… vfff… vfff”
Come on. He bit down on a swollen broken lip and tried again.
“Ffffff….”
A panicked whimper escaped. He was losing this! He was losing them!
He could see him, brown eyes shining with adoration, his hand reaching out to hold his big brother’s and Scott’s own hand rebounded agonisingly off the metal door as he flung himself at the mental lifeline:
“FFFFFFVVIIIIIRGIIIILLL!!”
His throat burned from the scream and his ears rang. His head pounded and he could feel the fever rising again.
Footsteps thundered out of the silence.
Now he’d done it. Now he would be punished. Perhaps it would be the last, if there was any mercy left in the world. Scott pressed his forehead against the coolness of the stone floor and tried to be brave but as the door was wrenched open and so many voices thundered against his skull he couldn’t avoid cringing and curling himself away as the fever spiked again and he held his breath and flailed impotently against the sea of pain in which he swam. He tried to relax and let himself sink to the bottom, to take a breath and let it be but something was tugging at his attention. A muffled voice filtered down through the churning waves:
“Scotty! Bluejay! Stay with me! We’ve got you… stay with me. Please stay with me.”
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Little self-indulgent note - I’ve also designed it to mirror what happens later between Scott & Virgil at the hospital in Response. Because connecting things pleases me 😁