Toro and Jim Hammond are ambushed by gangsters who beat, tie up and leave them to the booby trap. Fortunately, Jim Hammond and Toro work in freeing themselves before the runaway truck could collide onto them.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: The guy leered and Mac could feel his heart drop to his heels. He swallowed hard as the guy approached him and the creepy smirk on his face widened as he saw the fear in Mac's eyes and the way Mac visibly shuddered at the implication of those words.
Day 5 of Whumptober brings a continuation to my story from the cold open challenge for day 7. I had no idea when or if I was going to continue the story, and then this idea magically appeared while I was planning for Whumptober.
Huge thanks to @thethistlegirl who listened to me develop this idea from scratch and for the brainstorming and for betaing this for me. I really lucked out with you having my back on these themes and topics and discussing them with me. Infinite thank yous.
As the tags say: there are threats of rape/non-con that doesn't actually happen, just mentioned. The rating is M because of the scene where Mac is forcibly stripped and being naked for the duration of several scenes.
Whumptober 9 - Shackled
(Follows on from here but can be read alone.)
The muffled sound of the door jolts him out of sleep - deep, dreamless sleep, a fantastic luxury. Before he can even think to react, the jet of cold water hits him full force. It’s not as shocking as it used to be. But usually they get him up on his feet or knees and he gets a little warning. And usually he can see what’s happening. And the pressure is still punishing. He squirms involuntarily, gasping from the chill, but the heavy shackles give him little room to wriggle.
He remembers, as the hose shuts off and leaves him shivering, that he was moved. That the darkness is not blindness, just cloth over his face. The memory makes him sick with dread, because he doesn’t know what to expect.
A rough hand on his head lifts his face and turns it towards the unseen guard. And then there’s water at his lips again to drink. Plenty, just like last time. “Th-th-thank you, s-sir,” he mumbles clumsily through chattering teeth, but if they respond he cannot hear. Food is pushed against his mouth, and mere seconds later the door clangs closed again.
He eats nervously, scarcely believing that they will leave him without further punishment. The ration bar is damp from the still-wet floor, but it’s too dense to sop up the water, so it doesn’t make much difference. He eats directly from the floor like an animal, and isn’t ashamed to lick up the crumbs. He’s always hungry, painfully hungry.
And then there is darkness, and quiet, and cold. He sleeps again, and wakes, and sleeps, and wakes, getting slowly warmer as his skin dries.
Later they come again with the hose, and the water, and the food. Being hosed down is always unpleasant in the moment, but he’s deeply grateful for it. He has no way to keep himself clean, chained full length on the floor with his arms extended above his head.
And in between the visits there is darkness, and quiet, and the nagging discomfort of enforced stillness. He tries not to wriggle, fearing punishment. He was put this way for a reason, he should keep still. But his limbs ache and his joints seize and his skin itches terribly where it’s pressed against the floor. So he does squirm sometimes - anxiously, briefly, afraid that an unseen guard may lash out at any time. It helps a little with some of the pains, but wakes a whole different set from the half-healed wounds that litter his body. It’s miserable, but at least it is not torture.
The guards come regularly, always the same pattern. The hose, the water, the food. They don’t speak to him. They leave promptly. And in between the visits, nothing. Darkness. Silence. And the shackles that keep him from sitting up, from moving more than a foot or so in any direction, the collar that keeps his head low to the floor.
He sleeps less, as time passes and exhaustion dulls and his injuries slowly heal. But he dreams more. Visions spool out across his blinded sight, voices chatter in the quiet. Sometimes he dreams of torture, and screams until he is hoarse. Sometimes he dreams of home, and weeps bitterly when it ends. Sometimes his dreams make no sense at all, just flickering lights and formless concepts dancing in his broken mind.
He lives for those few minutes when he is not alone. When he is made clean, and allowed to drink and eat. Best of all, the touch on his face that signals him to turn towards the soul-light and open his mouth. A warm hand against his skin, just for a few brief moments.
Because in between is nothing.
He wriggles less and less. His body is growing used to the stillness. Movement makes the pain where his skin presses against the floor worse, not better. And it’s hard, increasingly hard. The metal at his wrists and ankles and neck is heavy, difficult to drag. It is getting heavier, pinning him down. Sometimes the shackles seem fused to the floor, metal sticking against metal. It’s not worth the effort and pain of trying to shift them.
Thoughts are becoming rare, occasional flashes in the darkness. He doesn’t mind. They are only ever miserable thoughts, like am I dying? or is this forever? He is better off without them, drifting in the dark and the silence, a passive observer to the dream-visions that flicker through his skull.
The only exceptions are the regular visits - the touch, the food, the chance to be clean - and the times when Spiral is with him. Oh, he longs for the daemon’s company, but its visits are few and far between. Spiral talks to him, though he has talked so little for so long that he barely remembers how to respond. Spiral pities him and comforts him, and sometimes - sometimes - even lets him dream of touch and sight and sound, as if he were there, as if he were not alone in the dark. Spiral hurts him sometimes too, mocks him, tortures him even. But even that is better than the nothing.
Because when Spiral does not deign to play with him, there is only the quiet dark, and the touch of metal. There is metal at his wrists and ankles and neck, metal beneath his unmoving, often-numb body, and he dreams that the metal grows over him and drags him down and encases him in its cold, unfeeling weight.
‘I am nothing’, the Interrogator taught him to say, and now it is true.
