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gabberwocky · 6 months ago

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Shock Therapy

Day 12: Shaking

Word Count: 3.8k

TW/CWs: Electrocution, non-con touching/biting/kissing (referenced, not shown), medical inaccuracies (probably)

Part 1 (here) || Part 2

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Jason groaned as his body was tossed unceremoniously onto damp concrete floors. His teeth sank further into the gag that had been shoved haphazardly into his mouth, muffling a string of curses aimed at his captors. Some of them only laugh at his attempt to take stock of his surroundings despite the blindfold and his lack of usable fingers to pry it off.

Not for lack of trying.

Okay, so, assessment of the situation. There are at least four guys in the room with him, heavily muscled but potentially not heavily armed. Pistols, most likely, if he had to judge just by the amount of noises they made while moving him. Metal shackles around his wrists with a chain attached and sharp little pronged spikes on the inside to keep him from struggling too much, he can already feel the welts and scratches made by them, and soon he thinks they'll start drawing blood. Blindfold means they don't want him seeing them, which means they can be tracked. Gag is because Jason managed to bite a chunk of flesh out of someone that resulted in his face getting a nice, warm spray that made something inside him sing. His thoughts and movements are still a little fuzzy and weighted, courtesy of whatever drug they used to knock him out with. Him waking up sooner than expected is what prompted his ability to start running his mouth, so to speak.

As fall as injuries go, he mentally catalogues general scattered bruising from the rest of his patrol and the uncaring moving of his body throughout the kidnapping process, as well as a broken left foot and ankle from his attempts to actually fight back. Because of this, they decided his feet didn't need to be tied together once he was thrown in here.

It's almost insulting, but with the current situation, he can't actually find it in himself to be insulted.

The metal shackles cuffed way too tight around his wrists are tugged upwards by a connected chain, a snarl of protest blocked by the gag. Instead, he throws his good leg out in the direction of whoever had decided it was safe to stand above him, relishing in the sharp crack and shriek of pain following it.

“Oh you little bitch!” One of the men roars before there's an angry shuffling of footsteps and–

Jason curls back in on himself instinctively as the blunt object slams down on his midsection, biting down hard on the gag to prevent any noises from coming out. He won't give them the satisfaction. Not from the first hit to his ribs, or the second to his uninjured leg, or the third to his shoulder.

He sneers up at them as best he can from behind the gag, grinning. If that's all these chumps have, he'll be fine. They're not even using a crowbar, they're using a boring old baseball bat. Not even creative.

“Boss isn't gonna be here for a bit,” one of them proposes to the others, the sound of dragging wood across the cement following it, along with a couple slaps against what Jason would wager is a leather-gloved hand. “He said we had to get him here in one piece, but he never said we couldn't have some fun of our own while we waited.”

Jason can almost hear the evil grins spreading across their faces, and decides that curling up further is probably the best course of action right now.

That doesn't stop him from tensing, bracing at the approaching, circling footsteps.

He grits his teeth at every blunt blow of a weapon, not letting out a sound even when he can feel his bones grinding and splintering under each hit. His eyes squeeze shut in some attempt to block out the pain, because even if he's experienced far worse than this, at least it's not a crowbar and at least there's none of the trademarked insane, maniacal laughter from the fucking clown.

He can survive this, if this is all they've got.

He can survive this.

Jason flinches violently into a curl impossibly tighter when one of them lightly kicks his shattered foot.

He can survive this. He just needs the Bats to figure out his location. Either that, or find an opportunity to escape.

The latter is looking like more of a distant idea than actual possibility with every bat or kick to his battered body.

Then, with the creaking of a door, the mounting pain stops, along with the mantra Jason had been reciting mentally. Shoes click against the floor, but not like heels, not sharp enough, like dress shoes. He's intimately familiar with that sound due to Bruce. Weight tells him it's a person lighter than the ones circled around him. The shuffling of fabric is familiar enough of a sound to not be anything but expensive.

“I presume you've had your fun?” An accented voice asks, clipped with… disappointment, maybe? Jason furrows his brow at the question, jaw grinding against the gag.

“Uh– yes boss,” one of the nameless men answers quickly. There's a click of a tongue.

“Jacket, shirt, shoes, gag. I want them gone. Dispose of them along with the rest of his gear,” the accented man orders. “I want to hear him sing.”

So this is the boss. Something about him sounds vaguely familiar, but Jason can't put his finger on it. He doesn't have the time to figure it out before his limbs are being yanked around and the remainder of his gear, the only thing keeping him even relatively safe, is cut off and discarded like trash.

That shit's expensive, damn it.

The gag is removed before his shoes are, and something tells Jason that was on purpose because it takes everything in him not to scream when they roughly jostle his broken foot in an attempt to get his boots off. They succeed eventually, but not without Jason jerking away at the slightest movement and biting his cheek and tongue so hard they bleed. It's only the paper-thin thread of self restraint that stops anything but a groan from being audible.

By the time they're finally done, Jason's teeth are watering uncomfortably, but he swallows down the bile that threatens to spill at his pain. His vision is white and blurry, even with the blindfold.

I can survive this. I've had far worse.

He's panting and cold-sweating profusely when those shoes click to a stop next to him and the man crouches down, grabbing Jason's jaw and tilting his face with an appraising hum. Sparks dance across his skin, making him prickle uncomfortably and he tries to yank himself out of the contact, only for the fingers to dig further into his skin in a bruising grip. The tingling under his skin sends an almost-pleasant warmth through his body, if it weren't for the fact that it rubs his nerves the wrong way. Something niggles the back of his mind, but his thoughts are too hazy to get a solid grasp of what it is.

“You're just as stubborn as they say, Hood,” the man praises. Something dark settles in his gut. “It'll make it all that much more fun to break you down, and build you back up. Doesn't that sound fun to you?”

Jason spits a glob of blood and saliva at the man. “Fuck you,” he snarls, finally tearing himself out of the man's grasp. It's then he notices how fucking cold it is in the room. He shivers, failing to suppress the wince at the way it aggravates his grinding bones.

The man just chuckles lowly, rising to stand up. A moment later the shackles around his wrists are being tugged up up up– dragging Jason up with it. The most he allows to escape is stuttered breaths and a few short, silent gasps when weight is put on his bad leg. It hurts like a motherfucker, but Jason doesn't let him know as much, instead grinning a bloody grin down at him once the machine lifting him settles. Because even with how he's hanging from his wrists and standing on his foot (the other one he keeps lifted gingerly away from the ground in some meaningless effort to keep it from hurting further), he can tell he still has a height and weight advantage on whoever the fuck this guy is.

Of course, that advantage is lost due to his restraints and general state his body is in.

“Mm, what a pretty bird you are,” the man croons, trailing a finger across Jason's jaw. With the position he's in, with his head trapped between his arms, he can't do much, but he takes the opportunity to lurch forward with snapping teeth.

Fangs clack shut over empty air, a disappointment to Jason. Seemingly unconcerned, the finger traces over the artery along his neck, and then the whole hand closes over his throat. The other rests over his sternum, that same fleeting warmth emanating from the touch.

“Or perhaps ‘mutt’ would be a title better suited for you.” He squeezes, nails gouging into the sensitive thinner skin of his throat and Jason can feel warm blood streaming down his frame, he can the way his breath becomes blocked, and it's strange because Jason knows from firsthand experience that choking someone one handed is a lot hard than you think it is but he's clearly got the strength to do it and the warm tingling under his skin where the hand is touching him is getting hotter and sharper and–

A scream is trapped between his jaws as his body convulses and then locks, his legs jolting out from under him at the sudden shock of fiery electricity coursing through his muscles. His nerves are alight and his throat is constricting, his lungs have stuttered and are struggling to try to get oxygen to the rest of him. Muscle spasms send his pain receptors into overdrive, and it's too much, he can't fucking do anything except feel pain, he can't breathe, I can't breathe–

It disappears. Jason forces himself to heave in a breath even with how his ribs protest to it. His head hangs briefly while he regains his bearings, slowly getting his uninjured foot back under him so all his weight isn't on his shoulders and wrists. Each subtle shift makes him wince, and he fully flinches with each shiver that wracks his body. The new layer of freezing sweat and streams of blood only serve to make the cold worse, and he fucking hates how he can see what this guy is trying to do to him.

“You handled that well, mutt,” that accented voice praises after about thirty seconds of letting Jason recover. It comes from behind him now, but he doesn't bother turning his head to pay any obvious attention to it. That is, until there are hands on his waist that radiate that tingling warmth, stopping the shivers from agitating his injuries further. He growls, low in his throat, far more animalistically than any human has any right to sound. Thumbs trace the lines between Jason's muscles and across the scars littering his body without a care in the world.

He snarls venomously. “Get your fucking hands off me.”

“I'm sure you'll be begging for them soon enough,” an easy reply murmurs, and Jason can hear the nasty fucking grin in his voice as they grip harder, enough to bruise, to bleed, and it's just enough warning for him to brace himself for the next wave of–

He can't help the guttural shriek that rips itself from his mouth, legs spasming before his body drops sharply onto his wrists. His throat constricts, gurgled screams still trying to escape him. The hands, the fingers, the nails stay embedded in his skin as they drag– scratch– gouge lines up towards his ribs, around his front, right over his diaphragm and if he could even get a hint of a breath before he definitely can't now– not with the way his ribs creak, the way his muscles contract, the way his back tries to arch and bend and twist away from the cause of his pain, the way his body practically locks in a never-ending existence of drowning in the constant agony–

The warmth is swept away by a near-blinding chill that wracks his body with shivers so bad he nearly doubles over again just as he had regained his footing, but only just. Tears spring freely from his eyes at the next bout of shaking, a sob trapped in his throat and it hurts, everything fucking hurts–

“Say the magic word, and this'll go away,” the man's voice lilts and when the fuck did he get so far away? When did he end up in front of Jason, drumming his fingers against a shitty metal chair? When did he start hearing the soft clinking of metal against metal, a chain being fiddled with?

When was there a quiet, dangerous buzzing from somewhere vaguely above him?

He doesn't have the time to get his thoughts together enough to prepare himself for the rolling wave of stabbing, burning pain so hot it's cold starting in his wrists and spreading down his shoulders, enveloping his chest, through his thrashing legs and curled toes– he can't– he needs to move, to get away, but all he can do is jerk involuntarily and hear something crack and something tear and something break–

And then it stops, and Jason practically goes limp, his breaths coming in heaving, panting, wet gasps that make his ribs grind in protest but he needs oxygen, he needs air and it's right there, it's surrounding him, he's practically downing in it but it doesn't matter because he still can't breathe.

“We have all the time in the world, yknow,” that voice mentions. “I'd be dismayed if this is how we spent it.”

Jason tries to make his mouth and throat work the way he wants them to, tell the guy he can fuck right off because he is nowhere even close to the line that marks when he starts begging for anything, especially something that would just hurt him more in the end. But all that comes out is a wet, raspy growl in dissent. Something wet and painfully cold trickles down his arms.

“Your choice, mutt.”

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It's…how long is it? It could've been twenty minutes or two hours when the first whimper escapes him. He's almost constantly shivering now, when he's not being overwhelmed with crackling pain that rips through his insides and makes spots dance across his extremely limited vision.

The shocks are frequent and long, each one feels like hours even if Jason logically knows they can't be more than fifteen minutes at the longest.

Unfortunately, logic isn't something he has access to right now.

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It's an even shorter amount of time when his thoughts finally finish drifting away and all that's left is pain and hurt and cold and he whines– he fucking whines when the man who's been circling him like a shark– so close but never touching, his warmth just barely out of reach– pulls away. He can't stop it, he can't even try. Not when he's been hanging here for hours that feel like days, not when there hasn't been a single sound aside from his own sobs and keens and rivers of blood cascading down his body drip drip dripping onto the floor into an ever growing puddle and that fucking asshole's perfectly poised honeyed words slipping in his ear in the times between vague awareness and overwhelming agony.

So when his head is lifted just enough for a warm hand to pet through his sweat-soaked hair he lets it, just this once. He lets the other rest on the small of his back, digging into his skin until he bleeds and it's okay because then that warmth, that tingling bounce of mini shocks travels under his skin and eases through the rest of his body and somehow he manages to slump even further. He slumps into the man holding him here, expensive silk and some shitty floral scent taking over his senses and for a moment– for a moment it's just so nice. He can just forget, for a moment, but only for a moment. For a moment, forget about the excruciating pain of his bones cracking under his skin, forget about the cold, the blood, the–

His mouth flies open in a silent scream when that sparkling warmth flares into a blazing inferno and it has his burning, aching muscles spasming to life when they just want to rest, he just wants to rest–

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I'm so tired… please, anyone–

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I– I can't– it's too much, it's too fucking much–

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“Look at you, mutt, already breaking so well for me,” that voice purrs along the shell of Jason's ear, running his hand gently, softly, delicately up and down Jason's side, over burned in handmarks, smeared blood, and distinctly cracked ribs that make every labored breath rattle through his chest. His heartbeat is fast and erratic in his ears, nearly as loud as the persistent ringing that's accompanied him for so long.

How long has it been now?

Something in his gut twists at the blank space filling the answer to that question.

Too long, maybe. A while. Does– Does anyone know I'm here? Are they even looking for me?

They're whispers of feelings rather than full thoughts. His mind, fractured in some attempt to maintain some sanity for later once he's out– if I get out–

That honeyed voice, too sweet to do anything but set muffled alarm bells off in Jason's fog-clouded mind, coos against his raw, torn skin, right against his pulse where blood seeps steadily out from a past wound there. “Just divine. You'll be the perfect little pet mutt for me, won't you?”

A broken little whimper falls from limp lips as teeth tear the gouges on his neck open further, another cascade of blood rolling down Jason's chest. The man's grip on his hips turns hotter, brighter, bruising, and it's low, too far down, enough to send some layers of his fog away giving way to panic and fear and no that's not right I don't–

And then it's all washed away in layers upon layers upon layers upon fucking layers–

There's a crash Jason's body instinctively flinches at, even with his spasming body protesting and fighting against him at every turn. There's voices, multiple voices, and they're so loud, it hurts, he just wants to stop hurting, and suddenly his head it yanked back by his hair and a stuttered, broken cry escapes him but he can't even begin to be quiet, to understand what's happening, so he tries to close his mouth, maybe, but blood and saliva is dripping out of the corners regardless and he can't move, he can't think, he can't even fucking scream when the pain gets worse and somewhere, distantly, he feels like maybe he wants to die again. That would be better. Same way, too. The crowbar would be better than this everlasting torment that comes with every unwanted, gut twisting touch and caress and kiss and bite–

And maybe he'd prefer that horrible laughter instead of the sugar-dipped tooth-ache inducing litany of low words and promised peace if he just bends a little, just cracks a little, just breaks a little–

“–ood? Hood!” A voice fades in over the ringing, tinged with something akin to… worry? Or panic? Hm. They sound familiar. “Fuck, Nightwing, hold him– Wing! Hold him up, I need to get the shackles off.”

The first warmth leaves and Jason doesn't hold back a despaired keen, weakly trying to search for it despite the fact that he's long since lost the strength to even twitch his head in any direction.

Someone makes a wounded noise, footsteps rushing to shuffle towards him. Jason flinches when arms wrap around him, holding him to their chest. His breaths were already raspy, fluttering little things, but the additional pressure on his ribs makes him choke on a wet cough he doesn't have the fucking air for and it hurts so god damn bad, he just wants to not hurt anymore, please–

“Shh, shh, I've got you, we've got you, little wing, it's okay, you're gonna be okay, you're safe now,” a new man whispers into his hair, voice hushed and strained with something Jason can't really identify, but he sounds familiar, so familiar, and the name rattles around in his head like he should know who it refers to–

“Little wing, it's time to go!”

“Cmon little wing, I'll catch you if you fall, I've done this before!”

A flash of blue, and a blinding smile to light up a room. The familiar scent of a particular laundry detergent, the man's favorite cologne, and kevlar.

“Take it, Jason. You've earned it. I'm passing on the mantle of Robin to you, little wing.”

Jason tucks his face in the crook of Dick's neck, trying not to be overcome with sobs. A gloved hand runs smoothly over the back of Jason's head, through his short hair and threading through his curls, smoothing the fringe off his forehead. Dark words are muttered somewhere behind him, swears, threats, plans, who's–?

His first wrist is unlocked and gently lowered to his side, but that doesn't stop the sharp, cut off gasp that escapes him, or how he goes entirely, bonelessly limp in Dick's arms.

It forces him to use both hands to support his weight, but it doesn't matter because he's here. They came for him. That's all he needs.

The next wrist slips loose from its shackle just as it's unlocked, sharp stabs of pain barreling through his arm straight to his chest and he flinches, jerks, spasms for just a moment before his quiet, panting breaths are the only movement his body makes. He's moved, and then laid down on someone's lap, head cushioned on both sides by bent legs.

“Hey, hey, open your eyes, Jay. Come on, stay with me here,” the voice from before is pleading now, voice higher in both pitch and volume. Jason furrows– or tries to furrow– his brow in confusion, because didn't he…?

With effort– too much fucking effort, he's so tired, he's exhausted, he just wants to go home– he manages to peer blearily up through tear-clumped lashes at the vague forms above him.

The first one, closer to him, domino lenses blown wide with worry is Dick. The stark blue against toned skin gives him away immediately. He smiles down at Jason, and it's a strained, worried thing but it's there nonetheless.

Off to Jason's other side is a red and black form, glancing at him with more properly disguised worry between wrapping something around his wrists. He seems to soften when Jason meets his gaze though, nodding to himself. Or maybe to Jason. Then turns back to his work.

Jason's eyes drift shut again, head lolling listlessly to the side, pressing closer to Dick. He briefly feels him tense, and maybe he starts panicking, but Jason just can't bring himself to care. He's with his brothers. They'll get him out. They have him. They came for him.

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