whumptober day 1: unconventional restraints.
warning for: creepy whumper, wing whump on screen, dehumanization.
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The streetlights, in her opinion, are fucking garish. They’re the older model; a flickering, faded yellow that does more to cast a shadow than it does illuminate anything.
They’re garish, useless, and utterly perfect for her hunt.
This late, the streets are empty; Ashwood knows better than to step foot beyond their thresholds past sundown. This late, they know who rule the streets now.
(They haven’t learnt yet that their walls don’t protect them.)
Tipping her head back, Lyre opens her mouth, drawing in the cold night air. An utterly useless show; but she likes the way their terror sits on their tongue, savoring the first rush as it curls towards her. From her side, Alex scoffs; she digs an elbow into his side in warning.
Next time, he knows, it’s going to be a knife.
“Not far now,” she murmurs, not even bothering to stifle the glee in her voice. “Poor thing didn’t have time to run more than a few blocks.”
“Pain in the ass to keep running after her. They can keep a god from finding her but they can’t keep her in a house.”
Lyre shrugs, cheerfully ignoring the irritation roiling under Alex’s words. “It’s a job for us. Keeps our bellies full and our teeth sharp. The rest is her problem.”
“We have better things to spend our time on,” he points out. Testy as ever. Reasonable as ever. She rolls her eyes again, and draws another breath in.
“Angel’s close,” she murmurs, deciding she’s bored with this argument. “I call dibs on taking her. You had her last time.”
“Remember that Sylvia wants her alive,” he says, and fades back into the shadows. See, this is why he’s her favorite. He might say stupid shit- but he knows when to get out of the way.
Palming the knife that she’s stolen from Alex, she pads onwards, scanning the dark streets.
Normally, the little mouse wouldn’t do anything as stupid as stick to the open. But if she’s hoping to- oh, say, find rescue before her pursuers find her…
A flash of gold in her peripheral vision. Her grin widens.
Found you.
“Angel,” she coos softly, matching Gabriel step for step. “There you are. ”
She watches in delight as the little thing’s wings fluff up in fear, golden feathers catching the light. So beautiful- so useless, with them clipped the way that they are.
“Please don’t,” Gabriel whispers, taking another step back. Lyre cocks her head, innocence seeping into her expression. Two steps forward. The terror in the air is thick enough to bite, and she makes sure to draw in a breath to savor it.
“I’m sorry?”
Gabriel shakes her head, stumbling back another step. “Don’t take me back- not there. Please. Please.”
She’s trapped, and they both know it. Lyre laughs, a bubbling little sound, and curls a hand around the back of her neck, stopping her in her tracks. Just the lightest amount of pressure against the brand scarred into the side of her neck is enough to have her trying to squirm away, eyes pricking with tears; Lyre tightens her hold, and watches her still.
“It’s a shame you’re all Sylvia’s,” she murmurs, trailing her knife almost reverently across the point of Gabriel’s chin. “But you’re still just one puppet, aren’t you? One not-very-good pet, who can be replaced fairly easily if an accident happens. We could have so much fun tonight, angel, and come the morning, nobody would know.”
“Alive, Lyre.” Oh, Alex sounds annoyed, now, and she reciprocates! She was having fun! Gabriel doesn’t need to know that!
“The fact that you’d side with a pet over me is frankly insulting,” she makes sure to inform him, ignoring his eye-roll with a herculean effort.
“You’re going to lose us our job, otherwise,” he says, and she sighs again. Killjoy.
“Fine. Then now what? Sylvia’s under do-not-disturb until she returns from that exhibition tomorrow.”
Under the weight of their combined glances, Gabriel shrinks further into herself, and Lyre hums. Good.
Alex only shrugs. “I don’t know. Put her with Calliope for all I care. We don’t have time to babysit her to keep her in place.”
“You just bitched about having to hunt her down-” she subsides, watching Gabriel. Alex shuts his eyes, a mangled prayer for patience crossing his lips.
She tugs on one of those pretty little wings, humming lightheartedly.
“She’s fond of these, isn’t she?”
Panic spikes in the air, and Gabriel tries to wrench herself out of Lyre’s grip; Lyre sighs, and loops an arm around her throat, careful to apply just enough pressure that Gabriel stills. Maybe a little more; it’s not her problem if the angel panics herself into passing out.
“Sylvia doesn’t care if she’s intact,” she presses on, eyes glittering.
“Sylvia cares that she doesn’t get maimed,” he says again, and oh- he’s not even pretending to sound bored. “Or die of blood loss.”
Lyre scoffs. “I’m not a godsdamned amateur.”
He shakes his head again, but doesn’t say anything more; she takes this for the approval that it is, and hums with bright laughter again, steering them back to the house.
Gabriel, to her credit, is pliable enough now that she knows she’s well and truly caught. The pretty little thing probably hopes that the less of a fuss she puts up, the more likely they are to leave her alone.
It’s just a shame that they don’t work like Sylvia does.
Her foreboding only grows as the house looms into sight, and Lyre coos at her, running a hand through tangled hair and tugging a little. She meets no resistance.
“Cute little angel,” she muses, more to Alex than herself. “I see why Sylvia goes through the trouble of keeping her around.”
Gabriel’s shaking under her grip.
She stays that way all the way just through the door, and then tries to rip herself free once she sees where they’re going; past the bedrooms, past the study, all the way to the basement door. To her credit- she has a lot more spunk than Lyre would’ve given her credit for. She even bites, nearly to the bone; Lyre only laughs gleefully, wrestling her arms behind her and tightening her arm around Gabriel’s throat, until Gabriel’s gasping for breath and barely more than twitching, barely more than dead weight.
There’s movement from the other rooms, but nobody comes to look. Nobody’s willing to throw themselves to the mercy of the two who have the run of the house.
“Still think she’s cute?” Alex’s voice is nothing less than dry as he descends down the steps ahead of her.
“The sweetest,” Lyre laughs, and drags the angel down with her. “Which room did Sylvia have occupied? The holding room or the cell?”
“The cell,” he hums, and she wiggles a little with sheer delight. Gabriel wheezes out a quiet protest under her grip, squirming weakly.
“Oh, good. It’s so much harder to drive a knife through concrete.”
“Hope you’re ready to fix the drywall after it.”
“Oh, shush. Sylvia won’t even notice.”
Alex shoulders open the door ahead of her, and Lyre hums as she drags Gabriel through, surveying the walls. Not a single window; blank, featureless white plaster, and drywall thick enough to withstand a very, very angry demon.
There’s a collar, with a leash driven into the concrete floor. He doesn’t even need her to nod to it, scooping it up off of the floor. His grip is implacable as he fastens it around the angel, expressionless as she weeps harder when the heavy steel presses into the brand over her neck, still raw.
Lyre coos at her again, cupping her cheek. She’s careful to dig in her fingers enough to leave little silver crescents behind.
“If you’re crying right now,” she says softly, “I can’t wait to see if you’ll scream once we’re done. Alex, you’re holding her.”
He backs her up against the wall, and Lyre follows, drawing another- stolen- knife. It’s not a small knife, this one. Longer than her hand, and wickedly serrated; it catches the fluorescent lighting all too well.
After a moment’s thought, she takes ahold of the left wing. The feathers are soft, but brittle under her touch, and they’re bony from disuse. She stretches it out, eyeing it critically; Gabriel tries to wrench it free, and she leans her weight just onto where she knows it’ll hurt, above the bony joint.
She subsides with another stifled sob.
Eyeing Gabriel, she stretches it out a little further, waiting for where she’ll see the tension in the corner of her eyes as the wing is extended beyond bearable limits.
Gabriel tenses, eyes squeezed shut; she stretches it a little further, just beyond where Gabriel can reach. Just to drive in the discomfort. She wants the pretty little thing to marinate in it; she’s got hours to do so.
And then she drives the knife through, just below that very same bony joint.
Gabriel screams, trying to writhe away from where her wing’s pinned, each movement ripping another sob out of her. She wonders, idly, what it feels like; a hot poker tearing through, perhaps? Does it throb, or stab, every time she tries to twitch her wings and drives the knife deeper?
Lyre shakes her head, clucking her tongue, and moves to pin the other wing; Alex steps back, looking supremely disinterested.
Really, she’s doing him a favor. She tells him as much, over the sounds of Gabriel’s sobs, and watches him roll his eyes again.
He doesn’t disagree, though, which means she wins this particular argument.
“You’re gonna have to stay like that, angel,” she coos, stepping back. She’s not a pictures kind of gal- she likes to live in the moment. But this- an angel in tears, gold blood dripping from gold wings, pinned like a butterfly under glass- she’d maybe paint it. Memorialize it. Neither of them were ever religious, not until the Aeturnum motherfuckers tried to drag them to heel like dogs. But she remembers what the stained glass windows looked like, and she’s reminded of those angels, wings spread wide in the setting sun. Just as pretty in gold. “Just until Sylvia gets back. Maybe she’ll let you down- but maybe you’ll have to stay like that, just until she knows you’ve learned your lesson. Get comfy, angel.”
