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.”
He held very, very still, the weight of the snow almost overwhelming against his back. His legs trembled with effort, boots slowly slipping forwards no matter how firmly he dug them into the ground.
It hadn’t been a large avalanche. Only a small portion of snow and ice had broken away from the mountainside and fallen, cascading down the steep slope and off the cliff below.
He’d even managed to avoid the worst of it by stumbling sideways before it reached him, but hadn’t been quite fast enough. Now he was a hand’s width from the edge of a decidedly fatal drop, with who knew how much frozen weight pressing him towards the precipice.
His heels left furrows in the snow and his breathing sped up to a panicked wheeze, clouds of icey air half-obscuring the view of trees far below. He thought about trying to throw himself sideways, hoping the remnants of the fallen mountainside would somehow roll over him without dragging him down too, but he knew it was hopeless.
With vision condensed into a clear, narrow tunnel by fear and lack of oxygen, he spotted a tree sticking out from the cliff face some ways down from where he stood. The angle didn’t allow him to see exactly how far down the foot of it was, but it couldn’t be more than two stories, and that was survivable, right? People had survived falls like that.
The tree was a little to his left. He’d have to coordinate his movements exactly right, propelling himself slightly outward and at an angle to hit the tree, all abruptly enough that the snow wouldn’t have time to push him off course.
Even as he thought this, the toe of one boot passed just over the cliff’s edge, suddenly silhouetted against the emerald green of the trees. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and jumped.
The fall was longer than he’d hoped, but he did hit the tree. He hit it very hard. It cracked several of his ribs; he let out a shocked puff of air, too winded to scream, and hung draped over the creaking trunk like a coat tossed over someone’s arm. The forest swayed sickenly in the distance below.
With a great deal of pain and effort and more pain, he scrambled into a sitting position with his legs on either side of the trunk and his back against the cliff. Wrapping his arms around his throbbing sides, he let out a thin sob - it hurt too much to inhale deeply.
The cliff face stretched featurelessly out on his left and right, and below him. Propped behind the tree, he was no longer in danger of falling, but he wondered if it would’ve been better for the avalanche to carry him all the way down to begin with.
Reason for URL: One of my favorite tropes/lines to hear. When I hear the “hold him down!” you can believe I will drop everything and you have my attention.
Projects you’re working on: The Fighter (+ others kind of)
Favorite color: Black
Favorite Whump Tropes
Med/Lab/Experimentation Whump
Noncon
Noncon Drugging
Whipping
Relief (after extended periods of ANYTHING terrible - being fed after starvation, warmth after cold, pain medicine after extended pain, sleep after exhaustion, etc. IDK if this is technically a whump trope but it's probably my top favorite thing. I think even the darkest shit I write usually ends on a relief note)
As said before, we are planning on bringing back WiJ for July 2022--but we wanted to reach out to the community for suggestions!
We are planning to continue the same mixed format of creation prompts, whumpy questions, and community engagement activities. The creation prompts we’re able to come up with on our own, but as for the other two categories...we’re trying to balance out reusing questions/activities from previous years (because new people are always joining the community, and even people who have done it before may have different answers this time around) with creating new ones (so that things don’t get too stale for people who have done the event before).
So! For those of you who have done WiJ before, what were some of your favorite days? What questions or community activities would you most like to see make a comeback? Do you have any ideas for ones that haven’t been used yet that you’d like to see? Feel free to comment or reblog, or drop us an ask! We’ll be taking suggestions into account and hopefully releasing this year’s prompt list by the end of the month!
Environmental: accidents, natural disasters like earthquakes or storms, hit by a car, collapsed building, falling through ice, heat exhaustion, hypothermia, falls, burns, infected wounds from lack of medical equipment, sickness, being unable to breathe, drowning
Small moments: limping, feeling weak and seeking support, breathing through the pain, moving wrong in a way that aggravates the pain, and the sudden seizing of his body, shaking hands, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple because of a headache, taking a moment to close his eyes because he’s light headed/exhausted/has such a bad headache
Sci-fi: space illness, oxygen deprivation, isolation, being locked in the brig, hull of the ship getting damaged, alien attacks
Torture/Captivity: Being hung by their wrists from the celling, drugged, chains, caged, tied to a chain, handcuffed to a pole, interrogated,
Comfort/Caretaking: hugging, "Are you okay?", "You're safe now", "I've got you", hand holding, helping to walk, ice packs, covering someone with a blanket, a cool cloth on their forehead to help with a fever, a fever check,
Magic: magical healing that causes pain, draining of powers, powers that are painful to use, curses
[ID: A meme with an illustration from a mediaeval manuscript, showing a person being stabbed in the chest and head with swords by two other people, while a third person holds a sword above them. The person being stabbed is bleeding, but looks calm. Bold white text at the bottom of the image reads: Just another Monday for Whumpee.]
