Question: you mentioned your Kidnapped Winn Au a bit back and I'm so curious what it is/what it's about? 👀
oughh alrighty okay this is one i think about often but don't post about often because it's quite dark and I don't know if it would really be a thing the people who follow me are into BUT SINCE YOU ASKED IM GOING TO BE SELF INDULGENT AND ALLOW MYSELF SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE ‼️following cws for drugs, torture, brainwashing/gaslighting, age regression, all that good stuff etc
so the bombs go off in 1x10. winn can't bring himself to kill chester dunholtz, so the bombs detonate just as supergirl arrives on the scene (no one actually gets hurt, but winn doesn't know that.) he flees, finds his dad again to try and take him to the police and he's willing to do time for being associated with the bombing if it means his dad is back behind bars or whatever, or maybe he goes willingly with him because he can't ever show his face in public again after this, but his dad knocks him out + kidnaps him again yay !
he's taken somewhere outside the city limits, maybe even his childhood home?? idk. anyway schott sr is SO intent on having been there for winn growing up that he's determined to have a do over. it takes a little while, winn is strong willed usually, but he's fragile because he thinks he's just blown a bunch of people up and deserves the worst for becoming just like his dad after vowing not to for so long, and his dad absolutely takes advantage of this. he never acts like winn is more than 7 or 8 years old, speaking to him like he's a child, dumbing down complicated things even though winn was exceptionally bright as a child and would have understood these concepts perfectly fine.
winn is Not allowed to leave the house. he has to ask to do anything, his dad makes all his meals and sometimes they make him feel a little funny, sleepy. he'd refused, at first, but schott sr had been scary calm the whole time, endlessly patient, until the cramping hunger of several days had gotten the best of him.
in the grand scheme of things, it's not awful. discounting all the gaslighting and the drugs and the borderline brainwashing, its not too bad. dad doesn't yell anymore, just calmly waits until winn stops acting out. in the beginning winn finds this especially insidious (why NOW is he suddenly so desperate to be a halfway decent father, and not THEN when it actually mattered?) but when he realises he's boxed in, that his dad is always going to be two steps ahead of him, that he isn't escaping unless someone finds him, when he starts to slip, he'd rather that then the shouting and the throwing things and the hitting.
the authorities, like they'd assumed winn willingly went with his dad when he first showed up, assume they'd escaped together and have warrants out for both of their arrests. kara is distraught, because she knows winn would never do that, and she knows something is wrong, and no one is listening to her.
in the end it takes them a good couple of years, maybe even more than that, to find him, though not for lack of trying. kara refuses to work with the deo until they help her find him, and alex is on board with that too, but schott sr is smart and it's hard to find someone without winn helping them. when they do find him, it's harder still to rescue him. whatever his dad has done to him, winn is terrified. he's lost weight, because he's being fed kids portion sizes, he's not been getting nearly enough vitamin d, and he's convinced that anyone, everyone aside from his dad, is out to get him, like he doesn't even remember supergirl is a good guy. he refuses to go, he's scared to leave his dad. even his vernacular has changed, he uses simple, childish words now, and that's when he does speak. eventually they have to kidnap him again, and he doesn't speak for days afterwards.
it takes them a while to realise whats happened. his dad had utterly broken him, wormed his way in when he was especially fragile, and broken him. he can't think he's more than 8, keeps crying out for his dad. he's malnourished, won't eat with anyone watching or even in the same room, doesn't trust anything. he sleeps, sometimes, curled up as small as he can in the corner of his deo issued cot, but it's always broken with nightmares jolting him awake.
there's a big disconnect between his body and his mind, obviously being a fully grown man while his brain thinks he's a child, which causes a lot of distress. maybe after he's recovered he starts experiencing periods of involuntary regression which are more akin to flashbacks really, and cause lotsss of panic attacks because his brain can't discern between then and now.
anyway I don't have an ending really, happy or sad, I honestly just like imagining him suffering in increasingly specific scenarios idk. i like digging around in a characters psyche and exploring different ways to destroy them from the inside out ^^
