Ragged Hearts (Voodoo Doll AU) | Hongbin & Hakyeon
Other than his container there were several more cuboid glass boxes, the specimen inside of them were mostly laying on the floor, completely worn out, some of them gravely wounded, some of them of them curling in the corner, praying so that they won't be another one of her favourite toys. When they became too much of a burden, they weren't treated, there was no point for crying and begging. They were not more than different pieces of fabric for her. She used them mostly to improve her powers or play with when she was bored.
For the first few days he's been hoping it was just a slumber, that nothing of it was real, that all of it was just some uncommonly vivid nightmare. The atmosphere was illusory. He has seen odd things, people with additional body parts, beasts, which names weren't in any textbooks he was aware of, things and happenings that couldn't be explained by anything. There was only one thing to describe it – magic. And since he was aware that magic in fact did not exist, then it must have been a dream.
But weren't dreams supposed to be painless? Oh, the agony of the things he's been going through during those long weeks. Milions of invisible little needles piercing through his nerves as he was electrocuted, injections of unknown source causing him to throw up blood and sometimes the pain was coming from nowhere – or so he believed until he saw her playing with a little ragged doll. A witch – there was no other explanation to who she was. On the second Tuesday (or was it Thursday? - he'd lost the count of the days the first time he lost consciousness) he's lost all the hope for waking up from that nightmare he got himself in. But that wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing was that he had no recollection of how he got there.
She kept coming for more, she called them by their numbers and that made him feel like they were some kind of experiments. He was number 10. The one a few containers away was 07. He knew that all the others were numbers from 14 up. He himself saw the three that got there after him dying and he couldn't do anything about it. Was it really supposed to end like this?
After a month or so, he saw her minions dragging someone he knew very well. The man ended up in the container right next to his. Somehow, his face seemed familiar, but he couldn't recall the name. Where did she even find him? Why? What was her plan? Was there really noone, who could save them anymore? He already knew the answer to those questions somewhere deep inside – it was as if she engraved those answers in his brain herself to only strengthen his suffering: noone ever came to rescue all of those kidnapped people and creatures, as if the witch has casted a spell on the entire society so that they'd forget about their existence. Noone knew who they were anymore, and slowly... they were all forgetting about the world outside.
Months passed by, although they seemed more than years to him. He had to repeat his name over and over again a few times a day to not forget it. To know that he's something more than a number, than an experiment, than her toy. „My name is Hakyeon. Cha Hakyeon. Hak... yeon?” To remember it was more of a challenge than he'd ever think. The male in the container next to him was still alive. They were two of the very few survivors up until this point. The male's number was 55 and his name was Hongbin – and again with this oddly familiar feeling – he has surely heard this name before. But what was before didn't really matter anymore. What mattered was now and the present was under a question mark, since none of them knew just how much more pain they'd be able to withstand.
Number 55 had it pretty bad after the last time. Glass shards were sticking out of his arms and chest and although he claimed to be fine, Hakyeon didn't believe it. He looked like he was on the verge of dying. One more serious experiment performed on him could mean his death. However, what was even weirder, was that although Hakyeon didn't have wounds on his chest, it would hurt in the exact same spot the other had the shard of glass in. It wasn't the first time that happened either. Previously, Hongbin was the one complaining about his leg after the witch has been experimenting on Hakyeon. At first he thought it was simply their imagination, that they were slowly going insane, but the pain wouldn't stop and it felt real. What's more, the witch seemed to be using the ragged doll less and less, as if she found a different way of inflicting pain.
And she did. Hongbin and Hakyeon were now connected. Each of them became some kind of a voodoo doll for the other one. They didn't feel the pain inflicted directly upon them anymore. They only felt it when the other one was being tortured. It couldn't go on like that, not for long. Even though the long lost hope didn't come back, the devotion to the only friend he had there gave him motivation. This night they had to escape, no matter what. ”Psst, Hongbin? Are you willing to die here or are you going with me?” A question was simple and he was already scanning the glass walls of his container searching for any crack, crevice, anything that could give him a chance of escaping. The chances were almost non existing and he was pretty sure they will have to initiate the escape during next day's experiments, but it was still worth a shot.