@whumpril Day 4 - Dazed.
Phew, honestly, I'm really happy with how this turned out! I intend this to be one of the first few excerpts of the Devices Reboot. Hoping I can stick to a good pace.
I originally wanted the title to be 'Even Rose-Colored Lenses can crack', but oh well, here's my girl being humbled :P
CW: Female Whumpee, Whump of a Minor (17 y/o), Minor Violence (Slapping), Cocky & Spoilt Whumpee (ngl), Authoritative Whumper, Mention of near-death experience for side character (inflicted by Whumpee), Mention of Whumpee being disowned, Institutional whump, Non-human Whumpee.
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"Stop sulking and sit up straight. This isn't your classroom."
Sihyeon glanced up at the man who'd introduced himself as her supervisor. Kurai, something, something. Was a supervisor equal to a teacher? He didn't seem, or feel like one. To Sihyeon, teachers were supposed to be kinder. Teachers were elders that looked at her with this fondness she knew she could rely on. There was no such softness in the man's eyes. He couldn't be older than thirty, she guessed, with his appearance similar to the other government officials she'd see on campaigns. Sharp suit, not-too-shabby looking watch, neat hair, and the like. All of them looked the same, almost. In the way everyone glared at her now, too.
Sihyeon was still slouched over the table, resting her head on her arms. Her eyes were red and puffy from sobbing herself to the dreamless, fragmented sleep she'd gotten last night. She'd woken up with a sharp pain in her chest. Regardless, she blinked rapidly and dragged herself up. She eyed the man sitting across, flipping through the pages of a file. Sihyeon squinted, trying to read the organized paragraphs from the other side. She could make out the bold headlines, the classic; Family History, Testimonials…and then the technical terms of Proband, Output Evaluation, Future Prospects, whatnot. Her head spun just looking at him go through the pages.
"Is…is all of that about me?"
The man glanced up for just a split second before returning to the file. He didn't answer immediately, just shrugged lightly. You could just answer…it's a yes or a no..
"You've led a good life." He finally spoke, stopping at a page, scanning the content. Sihyeon shuffled in her chair.
"…Yeah, I mean…I was always on top of my class. I haven't done anything that's-"
"You've grown up privileged," He turned to the last page, and looked up at her, leaning back. "Never lacked anything. In comfort." Sihyeon's gaze fell on the numbers on the file. 7983.
What did that even mean? Weird.
She nodded slowly. "You could say that." She didn't say anything further. Didn’t know what to.
The man stood up, taking out a notepad. "We have quite a bit on the agenda today, but we'll take it one thing at a time. Registrations first, then some introductory procedures."
Sihyeon debated on standing up as well, but her thoughts were scattered. Registrations? What for? She'd been left with so many unanswered questions, and nobody had or was telling her anything about her situation! The disownment deed had to be some sort of twisted agreement. All of this had to be some cruel joke.
"Listen, I- I don't think I need any of that. Aren't my parents sorting things out?" Her own voice sounded smaller to her ears. She probably sounded pathetic, because the man pursed his lips. A wave of discomfort washed over her, with the way his stare was fixated on her.
He waited before speaking, and placed the notepad back into his front pocket. "By sorting things out, if you mean getting ready to finalize your status as a ward of the state, sure."
God, his tone was so relaxed it made her skin crawl in frustration.
Sihyeon couldn't take it anymore. She jolted up, chair scraping. "None of you have given me concrete information on whatever's going on!"
Kurai wasn't fazed by her burst in energy in the slightest. "That’s what we do today. We'll help you settle down into the facility, among other things." He lazily watched her with pace around, fidgeting with her hair.
"Settle down? I- I have a lot of commitments at school and outside of it, my mom knows that, so I don't- I don't know what I'm doing here-" Sihyeon stuttered out, almost laughed. She would've continued her nervous tangent if she hadn't heard the click of the file, and him interrupting her.
"You think you're going home." When Sihyeon finally stood still, she caught his expression. He looked so subtly dumbfounded, impressed and amused all at the same time.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Her thoughts took verbal form before she could even conceptualize them. Both of them stared at each other. His eyebrows were raised, and for a second he looked just as confused as her. Sihyeon watched him straighten, place his hands in his pocket, and exhale.
Kurai laughed. She blinked. "Right. Okay." He let out a chuckle that he seemed to be holding in for a long time. "I get that your disownment was too…abrupt. Sure, for someone like you, it must've been quite the shock." He nodded with every sentence, as if he was trying to console a fussy toddler.
"But the documents were pretty thorough, no?"
It felt like the final nail in the coffin. Like the metaphor, none of it felt real. Sihyeon's throat felt parched. "They're probably just…punishing me. They'll come back to get me."
"You almost killed your cousin. Near Fatality, as we call it."
Sihyeon felt like she'd almost stop breathing, chest constricting. She'd been trying desperately, to block out all thoughts of it. She didn’t remember a thing that happened in real time when everyone claims she almost took Mia's life. All she recalled was the crimson Earth, the vast space wasteland, and the numbing terror that wracked every nerve of her body. In her memory, there was not a single trace of being a violent criminal. Yet everyone was convinced that it was all she was, that too at 17.
She picked at her nails, which she'd bitten off. Kurai studied her, interpreting her silence as acceptance. "We've wasted enough time. Off we go." He grabbed the file, and gestured that she follow.
"But I didn't mean it. I really- genuinely didn't mean to kill her. I don't get it, it was demonic possession, one of the officers said it herself, so why-" She stayed rooted to the spot, eyes beginning to water.
"Yes, yes, we call that 'possession' Resonance Displacement, simply put, you're a ticking time bomb. That's why you're here." He waved her off, his patience slowly ebbing away.
It was as if she'd just swallowed glass, and scoffed. Fucking hell, she was so over the scientific sounding technical terms.
"Well, at least I didn't actually kill her, so why is everyone acting like I did?" Sihyeon knew she wasn't thinking straight. The events of the past few weeks were like a movie in her own head, far from what she'd ever dreamt of.
Shit, she'd really gone and said something that stupid, out-of-pocket, childish…evil.
In those few seconds, the room grew so, so suffocating. Something shifted so starkly that even the shaky exhale she got out of her system didn't grant her lungs any reprieve. The drop in Kurai's features was much more noticeable now. He was no longer casual as he was moments ago, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. She avoided his glare, looking away and licking her dry lips. From the corner of her eye, he finally moved. Just a stride or two and he was towering over her.
Smack.
Sihyeon stumbled, grasping the edge of the table. The burn in her right cheek spread slowly, prickling at first. She took her sweet time processing what had just happened. Her pulse was like a war drum in her ears, her head, explosive.
He'd hit her. Her fingers felt light as she brushed them against her stinging. It felt like…being grazed by paper. Or…sandpaper. She noticed the file at his side. Oh. So he'd basically slapped her with a file. The file that contained her data, apparently.
Hot tears spilled from her eyes. Sihyeon looked up. She would have recoiled, with the terrifyingly unreadable glare that was looking down on her, if she wasn't still processing the entire action.
You can't do this to me. Authority figure or not, you're not supposed to lay a hand on me.
"You," he hissed slightly through his teeth. "Do not get to minimize what you did."
Kurai let those words sink in, with her still out of it.
"You want out with that attitude? Want the 'involuntary manslaughter' charge to follow you 'round everywhere?" He waved the file in the air, and this time he actually felt like a teacher reprimanding a student.
"Didn't kill her though, huh." He scoffed, and grabbed her by the arm. She let him drag her out of the room, tears still damp on her cheeks. They'd entered an empty, dim hallway. Sihyeon quitely thanked it for being so. Even after everything, part of her felt humiliated. She wondered if she'd bruised from the hit.
"The next time I hear such outrageous things come out of your mouth, I'll be using more than just a file to knock some sense into you." She heard him say, back turned to her as she walked in a daze. Sihyeon couldn’t find it in herself to answer. Everything felt distant, by the time they'd arrived in front of another door.
"Get yourself together. Wipe those fucking tears, 79."
Even when his harsh grip had let go of her wrist, the stinging sensation refused to subside, and the new identity she'd been granted was lost on her.
When he’d walked out of the library, he’d been wearing a hoodie unzipped over a T-shirt and jeans, his usual beat-up old tennis shoes. He and Keira had been studying, and it was late and pretty dark outside. [ERASED] wasn’t great with math and had hoped Keira could help him - and there had been a guy, right? A guy talking him up, offering to buy him a drink at the bar off-campus even though he was underaged. He already had a fake ID, though, he’d already gone to that bar like six times. He’d kind of tried to say no, but the guy was really cute, and eventually he’d said yes and left with him, Keira pissed off and right on his heels with her laptop swinging in the messenger bag against her side.
“[ERASED], god damn it, you’re the one who asked us to come study! You can’t just fuck off with the first guy who looks at you!”
[ERASED] just shrugged her off - but he’d always been a sucker for a pair of dark brown eyes and that kind of short thick hair you could run your fingers through, so unlike his own tangled curls.
There was a van in that spot where the two circles of streetlights did not quite meet, and the guy grabbed his arms. He remembered Keira yelling, and then [ERASED] lost some time for a while.
When he woke up in the white room, his clothes were gone. Instead, he was wearing a large, thin white V-neck shirt and tight black shorts, made from the same kind of fabric as Keira’s yoga pants. [ERASED] had to blink against a weird woozy feeling that settled deep inside his veins. He’d been wearing sneakers. Now he was barefoot, and his toes felt nearly numb from the cold.
There was some kind of constriction around his neck, and he lifted his hands up to feel at it. His fingertips brushed along something like flat metal around his neck, as wide as his palm, with some kind of rough circles that stood out from the sides. As soon as he touched it, there was a sudden surge of sharp pain that raced through every single nerve and [ERASED] let out a strangled cry, jerking his hands away, where they clutched pointlessly in the empty air.
As soon as he wasn’t trying to touch the collar, the pain receded, settled into a pulsing ache. [ERASED] heaved in gasping breaths, his hands held out, and he slowly put them back down on the floor.
He didn’t have to try that twice.
He could barely keep his eyes open - he felt drunk or on downers maybe, woozy and weak.
Distantly - outside the rectangular shape he thinks must be some kind of door, although he couldn’t see any doorknob - [ERASED] could hear a rhythmic clicking sound, like someone using a walking stick or maybe a lady wearing high heels.
The sound grew louder, passing his door before it faded away, a quick efficient movement past him to a different door down the hall. He heard some low beeps and then a woman’s voice spoke, warm and melodic.
In answer, someone else started to speak, low and fast, and [ERASED] thought it sounded like they were pleading, asking for something.
He did not know to be truly terrified of that sound yet, but he felt the first stirrings of fear anyway. He pushed himself back against the wall, blinking rapidly, trying to shake off the dizziness that still clung to the edges of his mind.
He couldn’t remember…
Where was Keira? Why did he feel like his brain was made of sludge?
Where the fuck was he?
Kauri wakes up to the hoarse rasping whistle of his own breathing and knows exactly where he is.
He can smell the disinfectant they use to process the rooms between trainees, can feel the circulated stale cold air chilling his skin and raising goosebumps on his arms. Under his hands, the flat tiles feel like ice, or stone.
He’s home-
No.
No.
There’s a soft beep, muffled, and it’s not Keira because Keira’s gone, she’s gone, Owen broke her and Kauri is broken and he’s here, he’s here, he’s home. Back in the Facility. back for repairs.
Rules: find a line that begins with each letter from the provided word
My word: LOVE YA
Took these from various different projects of mine, with a bunch of different OCs. Yay!!
L: Lorenzo’s eye was still shut, though a part of his brain was urging him to look at Kraes’ handiwork, to confirm the images his imagination was creating.
O: “Of-fucking-course something is fucking wrong!”
V: Vicious purple and red bruises circled the slender, pale wrists, with a thin, deep cut inside where the metal had finally broken the skin.
E: Everything went blank, all words became meaningless as the Special Agent’s chest was cleanly opened in front of him.
Y: " You’re a multipurpose, semi-obedient little sycophant who does whatever I tell him."
A: A dry tongue ran against the thin rivulets of blood, and Vesper shuddered with fear and disgust, hands clenching the blankets and his head turned away.
tagging: @watermelons-dont-grow-on-trees and any one else who wants to play!
Yeah, right...only if you stop reacting...and even if he does...he'll just start something else…
After all…he promised we'd be here all night...and now there's nobody left to save you...
Knox shut his eyes, forgetting for a moment Simms’ order from just a minute ago, and the pain in his jaw from the slap.
Simms made a noise somewhere between a growl and a roar as he reached for the knife imbedded in the mattress next to Knox’s head. He reared up, holding the blade in a reverse grip.
“Look-” The knife came down once in a savage stab.
“At-” The knife sank into Knox’s torso again a second time, emerging in an arc of blood.
“ME!” Simms brought the knife down one final time into Knox’s stomach before throwing it across the room to clatter against the wall. He reached down and wrapped both hands around Knox’s throat.
“Why won’t you fucking listen!? Why won’t you do as you’re fucking told!?”
Whumpee stared down at Whumper with one half-lidded eye, right hand still digging into the bandit's wrist. The edges of their vision were dimming and blurring. Blood dropped from their lower lip and down their chin as they tried to rake in air, their chest burning with the strain of trying to function.
Their broken arm still dangled uselessly; Whumpee tried to raise it, to grip Whumper’s arm with both hands so they could get more leverage, but it was impossible. That shoulder still had broken glass in it, frostbite had numbed the flesh all over, and now their arm was shattered, their hand mutilated. It was all Whumpee could do to twitch that side of their body, much less raise their arm up.
It seemed Whumpee's whole body was failing them. They felt so exhausted; they were certain that they would faint any minute now.
What good were they? Was this their limit? This little? Without their sword, their armor, was this really it?
They'd done so little...It hadn't been enough time…
“Look what you made me do.” Simms started to shift himself towards Knox, knife still held up as if to stab again, “Knox… why would you make me do that?”
As Simms came with arm’s length, he slowly, gently, laid the blade across Knox's pale neck, “I warned you… I warned you I would hurt you if you tried to wriggle away.” Simms looked almost hurt, “Why would you want to provoke me? What is it you think is happening here?”
P.S. this drabble contains a hint about Nat's past!
The boy curled up under the bushes shifted a little, the rustle of sticks and decaying leaves and dirt underneath him, and Nat dropped into an easy crouch, resting her elbows on her thighs and tilting her head.
Her braid slipped down towards her right shoulder, and more than a few strands of brown hair hung over her eyes.
“C’mon, kiddo,” She said, not bothering to keep her voice to a whisper. "Time to get up and moving."
No one else in this neighborhood was up - and it wasn’t a great neighborhood, so even if anyone did get up they were fairly safe here. Everyone kept to themselves, and most of them understood why Nat did what she did.
The pets were unobtrusive - they came and went and kept to themselves - and so the neighbors pretended they didn’t see a thing. In return, Nat pretended she didn’t know what most of them were up to. It was a good enough system to get by.
"Hnnnnh, can't," the boy whispered.
She could see him a little better now. Black sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt - the rescue uniform, she thought with warmly affectionate dry humor, they all came out of captivity craving comfortable loose things that didn't show any skin. Black curly hair - or maybe dark brown, he was shadowed under the leaves so it wasn't clear. Eyes closed, long dark eyelashes, clammy pale skin with a sheen of sweat across his forehead…
And a lot of blood staining the front of his sweatshirt. A lot of blood.
Nat's eyebrows raised, shocked. Rescues turned up in all sorts of shape, but they rarely showed up still bleeding.
The boy was curled up around some kind of dark green bag, clutching onto it, and when he shifted hearing her voice, Nat watched his fingers close even more tightly around the rough canvas fabric.
"'m sorry," the boy whispered, in a voice surprisingly deep for his delicate looks. Clearly a Romantic, she thought, but this one looked like he'd been stabbed. "Think I'm… s-sick… please, just st-stay with me, Mr. Owen, please..."
Nat swallowed, reached out to lay a hand across his forehead. Mr. Owen. Must be the owner's name.
She didn't crinkle her nose or pull back at the sticky sweat, only took in the heat that seemed to be boiling just under the surface.
"I think you're more than sick, sweetheart," she said, low and soft. Not threatening, not cajoling, just a calming, even tone.
"Jack..." He managed the word, drawn out too long, taking one syllable and turning it into two, to three.
Maybe another pet from the same home? Bonded pairs that got split up never did well...
Stop it, Nat chided herself. 'Bonded pair' is company language. You mean the ones that are friends, that care for each other.
She glanced over her shoulder back towards the house. Krista stood on the front steps, biting her thumbnail, watching them with wide eyes.
"Krista, love," Nat called. "Can you go grab Jake and Trev? We'll have to carry this one." Krista nodded quickly - the rescues mostly obeyed any order thoughtlessly until they were further along in recovery - and ducked back inside.
Nat turned back to the boy, only to jump when she realized his eyes were open. Wide blue eyes, a little glassy, barely seeing her.
Even with his chalky pale skin, even with the sweat that seemed to coat him like dew, even with the blood...
"Jesus Christ, you're gorgeous," she said softly. "I could swear I've seen you somewhere before..."
