Tariq gasped awake through a cloth gag in his mouth, his first sensations being that his tongue felt like sand and that something damp clogged his breathing. The constant rumble he had felt below him in his semi-consciousness suddenly became acute. As the car hit a bump in the road, his body jerked up and collapsed back down.
Into someone’s chest.
“Ah, our prince is awake.” A voice rumbled into his shoulder from behind.
Tariq groaned and shifted in discomfort, not yet coming to his senses. As he tried to respond through the gag, he could only manage a raspy mmh- before a hand pulled his head back painfully.
“Don’t move too much, prince.” The man crooned as he adjusted the cloth. “Wouldn’t want to disturb that leg anymore.”
At that, Tariq’s eyes snapped down to the rest of his body, widening when he noticed his wrists fused together by a confident knot of rope and that one of his legs hung unnaturally loose over the seat.
His heartbeat picked up. “Mmhm-”
“Shh, sh- sh-”
“Sweet thing panics so easily,” another voice added through an entertained chuckle. It came out almost like a foghorn to Tariq, gravelly and rough and battering against his sore head. “I almost like him better, squirming like this than screaming about his fucking leg.”
With another bang, the wrangler jumped another foot in the air before colliding with the sand, almost throwing Tariq between the seats if the arms behind hadn’t snapped around his waist.
It was then that pain hit him like a thunderbolt.
What started as a pinch in his foot shot up his dangling leg like fire, nearly blinding him.
Tariq tried to scream through the gag but dizziness reached him quicker and his wail came out as a weak moan, another desperate mmh which the man behind him answered with a laugh.
“Don’t cry, little prince.” His hand found Tariq’s eye sockets and a coarse thumb wiped away the tears Tariq hadn’t even realized he had shed. “The painkillers shouldn’t take too long. I fed you a few after you went out on us the first time.
The first time?
“Now, my pretty prince, you may call me Hassan-”
The voice behind dropped into a noticeably dangerous register.
“-and answer my questions before I break your other leg.”
Tariq returned a ragged sob and struggled against the arms holding him but Hassan soothed him with the same sharp shhh from before. It sounded more like the warning of a snake. He shuddered as a hand passed over dried tear tracks on his cheek to rip out the gag, leaving his mouth bone-dry.
“B-Blin’fold,” Tariq managed after a few hacking coughs. “Can’t see.”
Despite the darkness surrounding him, he knew that it must have been night from the silent echo of the wrangler, the cool, dry dustiness of the surrounding desert.
The cool on his face could have almost soothed him if the scream of the engine didn’t overpower it, along with the stench of petrol suffocating what might have been Juniper trees.
He wanted water so badly.
As if his mouth might crack from the dryness, Tariq tried to swallow but all he got from it was an awful, unidentifiable taste.
“I’ll take it off when you’ve earned it,” Hassan hummed before roughly patting his cheek. “State your full name, your position, and where that adorable plane intended to take you before we jacked it.”
Tariq groaned at the flashing memory of the hijacking. “My n-name-... is Adnan-”
Before he could press out his last name, his vision exploded with stars as Hassan rammed his head sideways into the driver’s seat.
Tariq cried out fully that time and slumped back against the man who mockingly shushed him in return.
“Now is not the time for silly rebellion, Mr. Rahman.”
With every sentence, his blood ran colder.
“Your name, in its entirety.”
Was this a game?
“Tariq-.. Tariq Rahman. I’m a diplomat- an ambassador, I meant-”
He cringed at the braying laughter from the passenger’s seat.
“I hope he was planning to speak better than that,” a woman spoke up.
Hassan hummed and nodded - at his answer, Tariq hoped than the mockery. “Excellent, my prince. And your plane?”
“I was f-flying North.”
“Mhm, and what incident were you intending to absolve your country of? Or was it a vacation?”
Tariq’s heart hammered in his throat.
Your country.
“Who-...Who are you?”
A beat of silence from his interrogator and Tariq’s breathing quickened. He felt the air around him change as a hand drew up to his face and suddenly took hold of his chin. Then, his face in a crushing grip.
“Who I am,” Hassan began, almost strained with his tightened grip, “or where I am from is none of your concern, Mr. Rahman. You can delay this questioning with offhand questions and rebel against your circumstances as you wish but a rebellion has been growing under your nose.”
Blood began pounding in his ears.
“In your own country, nonetheless.”
Rebellion? No.
“And you, my little prince, have just absconded from a diplomatic mission in a time of mounting suspicions and pressure.”
He was going to throw up. Tariq shook his head but it felt full of lead. If he had tried to talk, it would have been barely intelligible stammers.
This wasn’t his fault.
He hadn’t engineered this.
Hassan nestled his chin in the crook of Tariq’s neck, stopping the jerking head shakes in their tracks. “How undiplomatic of you. And I won’t even bother touching on your government.”
This wasn’t his fault.
“This is a classic example of stirring the pot. What happens when one nation is disturbed by an unbalanced alliance between two others? They’re trying to prove that we are unreliable, belligerent, and willing to go to war over minority complaints.”
“Mr. Rahman, are you sure there isn’t an internal threat?”
“I prefer to be called Your Excellency.”
Tariq could no longer hear the car’s engine.
“So, Ambassador,” Hassan hissed, still not having let go of his face. Crooking his hand up, he let his fingernails sink into Tariq’s cheek as the man whimpered in fear. “No sweet talk is going to remedy your incompetence here.”
Screwing his eyes shut, Tariq felt the words forming before he could stop himself. “I don’t understand-”
"I’m going to make your life hell, if that clarifies it for you, Tariq. Then, I’ll destroy what little you have left of it.”
Alistair had worked hard on this. He’d put hours of each day into it. He’d carefully taken apart his captive and rebuilt him, he’d let him go just to see if he would return, and he’d lived, happily, for months, with his lovely pet.
And his pet had been stolen.
It took him four damned weeks to find him. He listened, and didn’t know the voice, and he watched, and Ellis was blindfolded the entire time. He worked and worked on tracing the disgusting little voice clips he was sent, which he’d already heard, the idiot, and he’d gotten nowhere.
He’d chased down his enemies, eavesdropped on their meetings, and he’d stained his hands in blood, and that, mercifully, had worked. Money traded hands. Keys were given in return.
It was still damnably slow. When he made the deal and found the right container on the back street and broke open the door, the creature inside was barely recognisable.
His hair. A razed mess of dull clumps, shorn carelessly away from the rest. It had been like waves of silk when he had been at home, but now it stuck haphazardly around a bone-white, haggard face, pretty lips chapped, eyes struck out by the black blindfold. His limbs were splayed, not folded neatly, and he could see the tilts and bends where there should be none. He’d heard the bat, of course, but this was hideous.
His skin was a miasma of bruises, yellow and green undertones to stark black, purple and red. They clustered especially on his disjointed shoulders and knees, gripped with lurid swelling.
He was still. He was so absolutely still, to avoid the pains of moving, that Alistair would have thought he was too late. But the head lifted, as he entered.
Alistair looked forward to strangling the life from that man with his bare hands.
Time for that later, though. He hurried over to Ellis, crouching to cup his face. “I’m here,” he said, “pet, it’s me, I’m here now.”
The touch against his face made him cringe back into the wall, and he said, in a cracked, wispy voice, “O-old Master.”
Fury stabbed him deep into his gut. “I’m still your Master, precious thing,” he said, working the knot from the blindfold. “It’s okay now, you’re coming home again. You’re mine, darling, you’re still my pretty pet.”
“I’m ugly,” he said, though the words sounded hollow and rehearsed. “I’m an ugly house cat good only for hurting.”
Alistair had heard this repeatedly over the weeks, but it was worse watching it come from Ellis’s mouth. “No, sweetness, no. You’re still my cute pet, I promise.”
The blindfold came loose. Ellis blinked, eyes watering, pupils blown wide. A soft whimper escaped his lips as his head turned, trying to see when everything was bright. Alistair caught his chin and turned it back, and Ellis’s eyes tracked blindly over the shadow he made.
“There you are, precious. I’ll get this collar off and we’ll go back, okay? You’ve done very well. I still love you, alright?”
Finally, those words seemed to penetrate. A soft, empty smile blossomed on Ellis’s face, and his watery eyes filled with wonder. “I love Master,” he whispered, tears spilling over. “Always and only Master.”
“Rule eleven,” Alistair reminded him, as the collar came free. Ellis fell forwards, and Alistair caught him as he keened in pain.
Through the breathy whines, he still managed to choke the words out. “I must – love Master as –” He shuddered in relief as Alistair prepared the syringe and gently, so gently, sedated him. “...He loves me,” he finished, and he fell asleep with a smile.
