Trophies
Got a request for either some Karkat getting all Stockholm Syndome-y flush after Condy takes him as a trophy; or for some Kankri taken as a trophy by Condy and absolutely DESPISING it because it's like culling only not as dolled up. Well... surprise! You get both. Hope you enjoy, whoever you are. Thank you for giving me reason to write a very lovely scenario (writing-wise, of course).
By all logical accounts, you should be dead. You should be nothing but the washed away stain from the end of a culling fork, body rotting in some corner of the wilderness being torn apart by animals or floating and decomposing until fish come along and do the same job. You're a mutant freak that doesn't belong in this or any universe.
And yet here you sit. And not only are you not dead, you're comfortable. In the fucking lap of the Empress. When you had been dragged in along with your like-blooded mutant, you were certain she was going to destroy you both on sight. However, when her claws were tracing along your face and you sat terrified of her and the idea that she was pondering which of your mutant-colored eyeballs to yank out first, she had smiled. Not even deadly or threatening. Just a bright, pleased grin that spread over her whole face.
“Oh you and me are gonna have some good times, buoy.”
Surprisingly... you actually do?
Not that you aren't absolutely fucking terrified for a good while after, but, she never actually does anything to you? She puts a collar on your neck, but there's no branding, no marks, no anything. The most she does is keep the collar on you and drag you along by a leash, red like your collar. Sometimes she'll actually carry you. Just sweep you up off the floor with one arm and haul you along like you weigh no more than a bouquet of hideously red flowers.
She dresses you up, all in shades of your red and her fuschia. You're given food that you never imagined you would ever get to see or smell, let alone taste. You stay well and truly terrified of her for a good while. But then... you sort of stop? She never stops being dangerous, and you know how easily she could still kill you if she ever changed her mind about refraining from enacting violence upon your person.
You're pretty sure you know well enough there's no chance of escaping from )(er Imperious Condescension even if you wanted to. She has your life on the line, but there are no real threats to you. She's told the guards explicitly, after one unfortunate incident where a blue blood picked you up by the front of your new silky shirt. The screams from him still sometimes echo through your nightmares from her 'punishment' for almost damaging one of her favorite toys.
Maybe you are just a toy to her, because she plays you like a four string instrument bow instrument and you go right along with it.
She brings you along to meetings, you sit quiet and still in her lap no matter how much you want to snap at some of the staring highbloods sometimes. She gives you clothes, you wear them. She tells a joke, you laugh. She shows you off, you stand tall as you can and be something to show off. She wants a flush kiss to the lips, you make it the flushest you can. She says jump, you ask how fucking high.
This is a life of ease and luxury the likes of which you have never known. No danger of culling, of being found out, no more fear of keeping your blood hidden. Perverse as it may be to think, being her prisoner has made you feel more free than you've ever felt in your whole life.
No matter how much you miss your friends, who likely you'll never be seeing again, she's always there, reminding you that she's all you will ever need and that you'd just better get used to it.
You can make yourself not mind, even if it's a bit difficult at first. She's always around, and she treats you well. She doesn't threaten you and you live in luxury thanks to her. It's good to be flushed for her, just as she says. You're so lucky, luckier than you've ever been in your whole miserable life.
At least, you're a hell of a lot happier than the other guy.
–
All things considered, you wish she had just killed you the moment she laid eyes on you.
You've seen all the signs of this before, and you refuse to fall for them hook, line, and sinker. Not like Karkat obviously has. Enamored by nice things and supposed 'safety'. You know what this is.
You've both been culled. Even if that's not what it's called on Alternia, that's what it is and you know it. Everything from the clothes in her color to the food she gives you. As if the fucking collar and leash weren't enough of a clue as to what's really going on.
She's locked you in this great luxurious room but you've refused to use pretty much all of it. You sleep in the corner on the floor with nothing but a a smear of sopor slime on your forehead, rather than the great slimy monstrocity she calls a recuperacoon. You don't even recall having any on Beforus, you don't know why you'd need it. But no reason to risk anything you suppose. There's not a single book anywhere, or writing utensils. All you have is yourself and your stewing thoughts in the soft carpet.
You eat as little as you can get away with, no telling what they'd do to your food, but you don't want to go through the unpleasant experience of being force-fed again So you have to comply and eat sometimes.
To be honest, you find it somewhat better the fact that she doesn't try to dress this up. Not like Beforus, when it was all sugar coated as benevolence and kindness. What you were on Beforus to your culler is what you are to the Alternian empress now. An object. A trophy. A little freak of nature to show off at dinner parties once she's had you properly dressed up and sedated so as not to cause a fuss. At least you have the dignity to do that, not like Karkat, the traitor, accepting all his precious coddling and his fake safety by obeying her. Neither of you are safe, not from her. He's no better than a living doll to her but he just can't see it. You don't even want to think of how many strange highbloods would have been putting their clammy touchstubs all over you while you're too insensible to take any real notice of your surroundings while you're forcefully wound down on whatever it is they gave you to keep you quiet in her lap all day.
At least those bouts are brief. She drugs you up, dresses and jewels you up, takes you out, then puts you back when she's done. That's as far as your forays to the outside go beyond the prison cell that is your room.
It's when she spends time with you in your room that you've come to despise the most.
She never has Karkat with her. It's always just you and her. When she shows you what she really thinks of you.
You do your best to fight back, but you're no match for a fully grown fuschia blood. She picks you up and pins you to walls as she pleases. She takes the fancy clothes and shreds them bit by bit. The only clothes you've really ever been comfortable in, she ruins as well, by making you wear them when she comes. You curse Karkat's ancestor for forever poisoning your leggings for the empress in memory.
You look more like him, she's murmured before as she locks the shackles into place on your wrists. The little shouty 'buoy' is softer, better to keep as a pet. But you are a spitting image of him. Perhaps that's why she get such a sick pleasure when she sets you by the chains on your shackles against the wall. A mockery of the torture that he had once endured.
She claims that she regrets having to do away with him. Had she her way, she would have had him captured by her secret guard, spirited away to her castle to be kept locked away from the world like the precious little gem he was. Such a rare, lovely red. So nicely complementary to her fuschia. He would have made a lovely crown jewel. But he was stupid, and he'd been culled.
But now, now she had the both of you. Karkat to kiss her all flush and pretty in public, and you to tear to pieces in the pitch of your luxurious prison. Shackled and held a mockery of the treasure she had really wanted so long ago. She didn't get her desire, but now she has two that may be just as good to her together.
She's glad that you're like him, she says. She always imagined how much fun it would be to break his hearty, resilient spirit until he was nothing more than a body. You are just stubborn enough that you hate her, rather than fear her. That when she wrenches up your chin and envelops your mouth in a kiss, you try to bite her back. Now she gets that chance. To try to break you down and tear you apart.
You tell her it will never happen.
She just grins, and slips a finger down under the edge of your leggings.
“Give it time.”