Bing-bong, Joseph torture time again. I really. I think I did some real damage to Mr. from the government. Enjoy (but please, please read the content warnings)!
some version of you that i might not have, but i did not lose
word count: 1209
Content Warnings: Kidnapping, torture, severe injury, blood, nonconsensual medical procedures, medical treatment without anesthetic, cauterization, brief mentions of vomiting
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Suzuki Naoko is kind.
Kind enough to abandon her terrorist husband and regularly met with her son behind his back and, right now, kind enough to hold Joseph’s stomach together with borrowed powers and her bare hands. She’s so goddamn kind that as Joseph bleeds out on a cell floor, Naoko is trying to talk Suzuki into something stupid.
After getting kidnapped by some of the fractured remains of Claw, Joseph fully expected Suzuki to leave him for dead. He still doesn’t even know what Claw 2—they gave themselves a new name, but fuck if he cares—wanted out of Toichiro in exchange for him back; most of Joseph’s part in that video call was getting his broken collarbone pressed on and trying not to scream like they wanted. He did laugh when after whatever offer they made, Suzuki just looked down at him, bunched up those stupid eyebrows, and told them no. Hung up on them.
He figured he was going to die right then—what other use did he have?—but it was funny. They yelled at each other about something, panicking, and then yelled at him, still laughing, about something, maybe the same thing, he couldn’t have said what. All he knew was it was going to be a funny, pointless way to die.
But instead of killing him, they broke his other collarbone and shoved him in one of the cells in the abandoned Claw base, arguing with each other about the ‘no’ just being mind games to throw them off, how they knew Suzuki’d gotten soft and would negotiate eventually. He told them it took at least three rounds to get Suzuki soft and he’s pretty sure they broke part of his jaw before dumping him on the floor.
Not that they were wrong about Suzuki. He cared enough—or felt guilty enough or Naoko guilted him enough—to do something about it. And when Suzuki showed up to do something about it, Joseph got stabbed, halfway to gutted, but tradeoffs. Naoko was the real surprise.
Dumbfucks’ advocate, even Joseph hadn’t expected her, to see her rip the cell door off its hinges with a smile on her face while Suzuki….Joseph’s still not sure exactly what Suzuki did. He knows it involved a lot of screaming. Suzuki’s aura was still burning lightly around him when Naoko called him in. Screamed herself, really, for Suzuki after she saw all the blood.
And now they’re making faces at each other over him.
“Two liters,” Joseph adds to the unspoken conversation, holding his fingers up for emphasis. Mostly holding them up, it’s harder than it usually is.
At least Suzuki looks annoyed and not afraid.
“What?” Naoko says, her hands and aura and what’s left of his shirt over the wound, those kind, dark eyes teary, the lines around them stressed.
“The average man can lose two liters of blood,” Suzuki translates. There’s blood on him too, but it isn’t his. Or Joseph’s. Kinda hot, Joseph has to admit.
Naoko’s eyes go from Suzuki’s face to Joseph’s down to the growing pool under them, the fabric under her hands getting redder and redder.
“Toichiro…” she starts because she’s kind, and a civilian. A very normal person who isn’t a natural esper and hasn’t seen this much blood at one time before. “…it’s not stopping.”
“Let—” he has to take a moment to catch his breath “—Suzuki try,” Joseph says, trying to make his smile normal enough for Naoko to let this go. She’s a civilian, she’s just panicking. “Just until backup gets here. He can use more p—use more pressure”
Naoko frowns down at him, confused. “There’s no one coming, agent. Is he hallucinating?”
“What?” The blood loss has to be getting to his ears. He could have sworn she…
“It’s just us,” she says. “That’s why I’m…worried.”
“You didn’t tell them?!” Something grinds in Joseph’s chest, but he’s tries to sit up further and strangle Suzuki anyway. It’s not Naoko’s fault, even if she’s trying to push him back down. She’s a civilian, she wouldn’t have known. Suzuki and his endless fucking ego, thinking he could fix everything himself, the (second) strongest esper alive. “You ran o—”
“They didn’t offer,” says Suzuki, unblinking, but his mouth turned down like he’s tasting something bitter. “You were marked simply as missing.”
Ah. Well. That’s.
Joseph, he should have expected that. He can’t help but laugh again, just a little. The motion makes him dizzy.
“Calm down,” Naoko says, and her hands are red up to her wrists, “calm down. You’re going to be alright, agent. Toichiro…” Her voice trails off, but her eyes are set.
“Don’t—don’t do it, Suzuki. Just get me to a hospital.” Naoko can come be overprotective at his apartment after he’s patched up. She always likes his cats.
They just have to get out of here. That’s it.
“No, agent, you’re going to bleed out. We have to—“
“Suzuki, don’t you fucking d—”
He tries to sit up again and his vision dips, spins. A wall is where the ceiling used to be, his lungs locking up in his chest.
“Toichiro, now!”
The world blurs and turns orange and then everything is worse. It burns.
He’s burning, a worse pain sitting in his stomach than being cut open in the first place, and the world is orange.
Maybe an aura holds him down or hands do or he’s bled out and died and this is what hell is, burning pinned in place while he screams. His legs kick and slip trying to claw his way free, air burning away in the fragments of his chest.
It hurts and it burns and it burns and it burns until it stops, his vision fading from the burning orange to the dull gray of a Claw cell. His hearing comes back enough to know his ears are ringing, lungs forcing air in and out with wet, harsh sounds. Muted, he can also hear vomiting, the rest of his returning senses telling him it’s from the smell.
Overcooked meat.
His middle radiates pain, blistering, he doesn’t think he can move, but the fading colors of Suzuki’s aura flare and he tries anyway. Dragging himself backwards into a corner with shoulders sticking sharp pain into his muscles, a trail of blood following him at the at the edges of his pants, and the skin—he can’t look at it, out of the corner of his eyes he sees black—the skin in the…middle pulling on itself with each inch.
He keeps going until his back hits a corner and there’s nowhere left to go, gagging trailing off in the background, Suzuki frozen and jaw tight in the room’s middle.
“Toichiro?” Oh, it was Naoko throwing up. “Is he—“
Joseph watches her wipe at her mouth in the corner across from him, holding her stomach with her other hand, something flat and awful in her eyes. Naoko is so, so kind. And she asked for this, for Suzuki to do this. To him.
Her eyes meet his, then she looks down. Gags again, turning away to vomit bile in the corner.
Joseph won’t look at it. He can smell it, burnt pork. But he’s probably not bleeding anymore.
He’s supposed to be grateful for that, isn’t he?