April is the Cruelest Month 2025 Event
Prompts list by @aprilisthecruelestmonth
Day 11
Prompt(s): Nausea-|-Concussion-|-Secret Reveal
-|-“Why did you come back?”
Words: ~1770
Cw: mention of torture, mention of something being surgically implanted, mentions of self sacrifice
I’m late again… whoops… Two 16 hour work days is not conducive to completing writing challenges I guess :( ! I’m sorry! However, I am proud of myself for getting all of the dialogue done yesterday so today all I had to do was edit and add more descriptive writing around the dialogue!
~~~
“Why did you come back?”
“I had to.”
Whumpee was looking down at their feet. They hadn’t met Leader’s eyes.
Leader knew that Whumpee hadn’t wanted to leave them behind when there was the momentary chance for them to escape and the situation only allowed for Whumpee to run. They hadn’t expected Whumpee to come back! They even told them not to! To run instead!
“You didn’t! You had the choice not to. You could have saved yourself the trouble and the pain.” Leader couldn’t help but be frustrated with their youngest team member, looking at the bruises and black eye they’d obtained likely while they were being captured again.
They were free! Why would they come back?!
“N-no.. You… You don’t understand! I had to…” Whumpee was trembling. Stuttering over their words.
“Whumpee, please. Explain it to me so I do understand. You- You came BACK! You got caught again on purpose! WHY?! Why would you do that! I sacrificed so much so you could be free!”
“I couldn’t… they… they’d find me… I couldn’t go to the base… they’d find me…”
“If you ran like I’d told you, they wouldn’t have!”
“They’re tracking me!”
“Of course! They’re going to track anyone who escapes. You could have lost them! I gave you plenty of time to-”
“No! They’re tracking me!” Whumpee yelled. Whumpee rarely yelled. Especially at Leader. They immediately shrunk in on themself when they realized what they've done. “T-the doctor… he… he put something in me… A device. I… I think it was a tracker…”
“The doctor?” Leader deadpanned. “But he isn’t with Whumper, Whumpee. And that surgery was months ago, before Whumper ever got their hands on any of us. He wouldn’t have even known who you were. Why would he have done that?”
“When…” Whumpee shivered as if they could still feel the ghost of the memory sliding its icy hand across their mind. “When I was unconscious…in… in the surgery.. I think he did something to me. I know he did.”
“How do you know?”
“I… I think I woke up during it…”
“What?!”
“I thought it was a nightmare. I-I don’t know. I didn’t… I didn’t remember until recently, but I woke up and saw them… putting something in me. Whumper was there. In the room with the doctor. I swear they were! I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t move. I think it was the anesthetics. I couldn’t really see that well since I couldn’t... I couldn’t move my head, like, at all. But I know I saw them… you know… put something in my stomach… and… and I swear I can… feel it sometimes… you know? Like… like… in me.”
Whumpee poked at their gut and shuddered, as if feeling it now.
“Why do you think it was a tracker, Whumpee. You were badly injured. There could have been plenty of medical explanations for it, right?”
“I heard one of Whumper’s men talking about it…”
“About a tracker? In you??”
“Yeah… he.. He was telling his partner. Told him it was ’deep inside the little fucker’s guts’.” Whumpee’s voice lowered, imitating the man’s voice. They took a deep breath after, like they were trying to calm themself while in the verge of tears. “And he said that we’d… we’d never get it out. He said he couldn’t wait for me to lead them to the base. It… it must have been how they found us this time.”
“Are… are you sure?! Like, are you absolutely positive?”
“I heard him. I heard both of them talking about me when I was hiding in a bush. They walked right past so I don’t think it’s super accurate, but they kept coming back. Circling, ya know? They definitely knew I was around.”
“Oh… oh shit… okay.” Leader breathed, looking a bit pale.
If…. If this is true then….
“I’m sorry… I… I didn’t know what to do…” Whumpee was about to cry. It was clear in their features. “I… I didn’t mean to waste your efforts. I just didn’t want to… to lead them to the base….”
“No no! Its okay, Whumpee! We’ll figure this out. It's not your fault.”
Whumpee was silent for a while. Leader didn’t say anything either. They were focused on how.
How could they get Whumpee out of here again?
How could they get a tracker embedded in them out?
How do they keep the others safe at the base if Whumpee escaped again?
How?!
What had already been a near impossible task suddenly became more complex. A challenge they had no means to overcome. Not while they were both caged here like animals. Not after their first attempt to help Whumpee escape. They will never be allowed the same leniency that they had been able to abuse that let Whumpee escape.
“This is it for me, isn’t it?” Whumpee’s small, somber voice broke the deafening silence.
“What?”
“You… you need to save yourself. I… I can’t be the one to get out of here. I can’t leave.”
Leader felt a surge of protectiveness over the younger at the sound of their hopelessness. “We’ll get out of here! We just have to find a way again. We can do it!”
“They’ll just find me again…”
“We’ll figure it out, Whumpee-”
“No…” Whumpee interrupted, sounding dejected. “There's nothing to figure out. I can’t leave. But you?” Whumpee looked Leader in the eyes, “You can, though. You can escape. You can warn the others. You can help them. You can be free…”
“I’m not leaving you behind.”
“You won’t be.”
“But…”
“I can’t leave. But I can’t stay here either.”
“What are you talking about?! Where will you go?”
“I won’t. This is it for me,” they reiterated. Sounding more sure. More confident. More sad.
It occurred to Leader what they were implying.
“No! Don’t you dare talk like that, Whumpee! We’re getting you out of here! We both will this time…”
“I’ve already put you in too much danger as it is! When you helped me escape, I was planning to come back. To help you too. But then.. then I remembered… what they did in the hospital. And I saw the way they tracked me. I… I can’t lead them to the base. I can’t lead them to the others!” Whumpee sighed, sounding like they were holding the world on their shoulders. “And I can’t wait to see if I’ll crack under the torture either. We can’t afford it. The others can’t afford that. I’m… I’m not strong like you guys. I… I think it's best if you kill me before they can get-”
“Stop it! Stop it right now! Don’t talk like that! We haven’t been tortured yet. A little roughed up, sure, but they haven’t touched us. We have time to figure this out.”
“They put something inside me. They put it INSIDE me, Leader!” Whumpee yelled. Their hand was covering the spot on their stomach Leader knew had once been sliced open. A perfect opportunity for someone to slip something inside them under the guise of surgery. A scar going straight across from side to side. It was the reason they had been in the hospital in the first place after a mission gone horribly wrong. Whumpee and Teammate had both been near fatally injured that day.
And here they were, months later, caught after another failure of a mission. Leader hadn’t been able to figure out how they’d been caught. A tracker…. would make sense.
“I’m a pawn in Whumper’s game,” Whumpee continued angrily, “I can’t run from this! I can’t… I can’t put you all in danger. You saw what they did to Teammate! You saw what they put them through trying to get info on us! They can survive more than I ever could. They haven’t tortured us yet because they knew. They let me escape. Why do you think it was so easy for me and nearly impossible for you? They kept you locked tight because they can’t afford to lose you. They let me escape so they could track me to the base. It's just that I stayed behind to try to rescue you and happened to hear their plan otherwise it would have worked. But since it didn’t, they will torture us now. If they think we suspect them, their simple plan falls through and then they’ll do anything to us to get us to talk. They did it to Teammate!”
“We can make it through this! And we’ll do it together. We have to!”
“I’m going to crack, Leader! I’m a liability! And even if I get out and I don’t break under pressure, I can’t go back. I can’t go home. I have to stay as far from you as possible. And they could come for me any time. I’ll never be safe. I’ll never be able to keep you all safe. I’ll never be free! We’d have to kill Whumper and everyone else here or somehow get it out of me. I can’t risk leading them to Medic so they could help me. And you and I both know we can’t risk going to a hospital again! They were all suspicious of us! And now if at least one of the doctors are working with Whumper?? I’m trapped, Leader! And there's nothing we can do about it.”
Whumpee took a deep, watery breath. They looked directly into Leader’s eyes. Determined. “Please, Leader. I let me keep you all safe. Maybe if I help you escape and sacrifice myself so you can, you can still tell the oth-”
“No! Whumpee, no! We’re not losing you!”
“You have too. Let me do this to keep you safe:”
“No! I refuse to leave you!”
But Whumpee knew the odds were impossible. They cannot both escape. Not without a serious fight and serious injuries. So if Whumpee could make sure it was Leader who survived…
“I can't run for the rest of my life, Leader. If you get out you can warn the others and put a stop to this. You can do that. I can’t. They can lose me. They can’t lose you.”
“Enough, Whumpee. It’s not happening. Just give me a bit of time. I’ll figure this out.”
But the longer Leader was silent, the longer they had that look of deep worry, the more their eyes flicked from Whumpee’s face to their stomach where they knew the tracker was sealed inside of them, and the more they bit their lip until it bled told Whumpee all they needed to know.
Leader couldn’t find a way out of this. Not for both of them. Not this time.
