#chewtoy!ariadne

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Resistance, co-author @whump-sprite AU: Chewtoy Alone (alt to Chewtoy)

Medical [First | Prev]

The infirmary door is the standard medium-security double-door found all through the building. It’s a sturdier affair than any of the ones Ari took off their hinges in the kitchen area, but it’s not as heavy or expensive as the outside doors or the ones on the cell blocks.

Ari lugs a full toolbox up there and dumps it in the empty hallway to contemplate her options. The hinges are on her side of the door, which is a good start. 

To take apart a hinge, she has learned, she needs to get the pin out of the middle. Last time she eventually managed to prise them out using the pliers, so that’s what she tries first. It’s fiddly work. She has a hard time getting a good grip on the smooth, curved metal.

After struggling for a while, she decides to try the screwdriver again. She can jam the end into the gap between the pieces, but wiggling it back and forth doesn’t get her more than a millimeter of give. She puts her back into it, shoving as hard as she can. The screwdriver slips. She growls and tries again.

Eventually she manages to lever the cap off the end of the hinge. With it gone, she expects the other one to come off more easily. It doesn’t. She wastes another while trying the pliers again, and still can’t get enough grip.

Her feet ache. Her fingers ache. Rage is a sudden flare of heat across her skin. For a second, she hates the door as if it was one of Riven’s cronies. Then it’s just a door again.

Screwdriver again. She tries hitting the butt of it with the heel of her hand to get more force. The impact is a dull pain. She tries several times before she realises she could use a hammer for probably more effect.

The cap flies off with a satisfying ping. For a second, Ari’s pleased with herself. Then she realises the pin is still inside the hinge. Now what?

Another try with the pliers. But there’s not even an end to grab.

Flummoxed, she sits down on the floor to stare at the door.

The door is impassive. 

Without her own clattering about, it’s very quiet. The air con is a soft hum. 

No one’s forcing her to go back down there into the smell and the sound of unhappy voices. No one’s forcing her to spend her whole day traipsing back and forth with bottles and cans and bandages and washing up.

She could just not. She could just sit here in the clean and the quiet and spend her whole day doing nothing at all.

She picks up the screwdriver. Maybe if she can kinda jam it into the hole where the pin has to be…? It doesn’t fit, of course. She tries a crosshead screwdriver instead. Also too big. She empties the toolbox trying to find out if she has a narrower screwdriver – oh come on, what kind of fucking toolbox only has like three screwdrivers? She doesn’t need another hex key, or a fucking spirit level…

She has another go at just prising the bits of the hinge apart, to no effect. She abandons the hinge altogether and has a go with the crowbar, shoving the claw in everywhere she can make it fit and just trying to shift the whole door enough for something to budge. Frustrated, she just hits the door with the crowbar, which is loud but achieves nothing.

She sits down again. She needs something narrower than the screwdrivers, maybe. There’s got to be something downstairs. She starts to pack all the stuff back into the toolbox before she realises she could just leave it here for when she comes back. It’s not like anyone’s going to trip over it.

Walking away from it feels intensely wrong. She makes it most of the way to the end of the hall before she looks back. The untidy spread of handsaws and wrenches and pliers sits really badly. It’s a mess, and she doesn’t like it.

Reluctantly, she goes back to put it all away.

Maybe if she could get a handsaw into the crack between the doors, could she cut through the bolt? No, how fucking long would cutting through that much metal by hand take her? She’d starve first. Cutting the hinges is probably equally impractical…

She compromises with herself by leaving the toolbox itself in the hall, tucked neatly against the wall by the infirmary doors.

By the time she’s back downstairs, it’s gone 16:00. Ari does a double take at her phone. Was she really fighting the door that long? She was gonna check what other tools she has available in the interrogation rooms and go back up, but she’s already behind schedule for the medical round.

Calling it “medical” is a joke. It’s the part of the day where Ari play-acts as the world’s shittiest doctor, to the general distress of her unwilling patients.

Interrogations keeps literal gallons of antiseptic in stock, so that’s the one kind of medical supply she has plenty of, and no one likes that. She’s long since used up all of the sterile dressings. The bandages are stained a gross mucky brown after repeated cycles of use and boiling, but they have to be better than leaving open wounds in filthy cells.

She forgot to set them out to dry, fuck.

Usually she drapes them over the heating vents and leaves them overnight. But she didn’t wash up last night, and that threw her routine off, and ugghh okay what’s she gonna do instead.

Several minutes later, she’s in the bathroom trying to dry a bunch of damp, grody strips of fabric under the fucking hand dryers. She’s still not sure this isn’t a stupid approach. But it does seem to be working. She twists them together in bundles to wring out as hard as she can, then shakes them out and flaps them under the dryer and rubs the fabric against itself and it’s really fucking slow but it seems to be working.

She doesn’t think you can put damp dressings on a wound. She sure hopes she’s remembering that right and she isn’t doing all this work for nothing.

Once she’s got a few of them properly dry, she figures she can leave the rest to evaporate for a while and come back for them. The dry ones go on the trolley with the waschloths, the drugs, the antiseptic, a tray for dirties,  and the half-empty first aid kit with all the miscellaneous stuff that she never uses but feels like she should at least have to hand.

Everyone gets their backs checked. If there’s any hint of infection, they get antiseptic and her best efforts and washing it out with a cloth. Block 2, on the whole, take it without making Ariadne’s life too hard. 

203 has an unexpected fit of panic and she has to lock his wrists in place. “Not like you,” she scolds, and gets no response.

209 begs her not to. 213 fights her, like usual, but he’s weak enough that it’s not a problem. A knee on his broken wrist keeps him from pulling too hard against her while Ari takes the old bandages off the burns and does her best to wash the day’s accumulated infection out of them. They’re not healing. The rot is just digging deeper into the flesh day on day – slower than before, but still going. Ari wraps them back up, and leaves 213 sobbing curses into the air.

She goes back to the bathroom to dry more bandages laboriously under the hand dryer.

217 is still refusing drugs. She screams all through the process of inspecting her swollen hands. The wounds are inside, and Ari doesn’t have the first idea how to treat them. Red veins snake their way up the prisoner’s arms. 

With a sigh, Ari gets the heavy duty gloves, and forces a couple of pills down the woman’s throat while she chokes and splutters and chomps on the gloves.

Block 4 has more of the fighters. She’s already learned that 402 needs chaining up thoroughly for any kind of inspection. He tries to talk her out of it, and tries to wriggle out of her grip, but he doesn’t make her use the taser. Neither does 403, although maybe only because she keeps it pointed at him.

404 submits reluctantly to inspection. 407’s limp and easy to treat, but it takes a while just from how many open wounds there are to check and wash. 410 tries to strike up a conversation while Ari is checking the splints on his fingers. 

413 says he isn’t gonna fight her today, but he does once she breaks out the antiseptic. A stray kick lands on top of Ari’s foot and leaves her hissing – and him choking on curses. He’s in no condition to be kicking anyone. 

414 tries to fight, but today Ari manages to swap him between chains efficiently and keep him from lashing out. He howls when she so much as touches the bullet wound in his leg. It’s too deep for her to clean easily, but she does her best.

415 breaks out into another fit of sobbing as soon as Ari opens the door. 417’s such a mess of broken bones that she’s never sure about even rolling him over to change his dressings. The last two, thankfully, are doing fine and don’t need anything prodding or washing.

Exhaustion is already dragging on Ari’s bones, but she’s not gonna make the same mistake she made yesterday. Everything gets done when it’s supposed to get done, or it throws her off and makes everything harder.

The tray of dirties and the stack of bowls from breakfast both go onto the trolley to take back upstairs to the kitchens. The system works – she can wash dishes while she keeps an eye on the boiling pot. And then when she’s done with both, she’ll load the trolley back up with food for the dinner round.

Her feet throb, and her back itches like crazy where she’s sweating into her clothes.

If anyone gives her flak about the food being late, she’s going to lose her temper. But who is she kiddng, they don’t have a fucking clue what time it is down there anyway.

[just-horrible-things]

More characters than anyone needed!

And Ariadne edition, as a study in her timeline:

✭ OC TAG: Rate Your Traits ✭

ty @toreadorcaretaker :)

in chart format for convenience ^_^

template under cut

Compassion: 

Bitterness: 

Happiness: 

Politeness: 

Chivalry: 

Pride: 

Honesty: 

Bravery: 

Recklessness: 

Ambition: 

Loyalty: 

Love: 

Sense of Family: 

Attractiveness: 

Sex Drive: 

tagging uhhhh @just-horrible-things @whump-queen @deluxewhump and whoever wants to :0

[just-horrible-things]

Today in rambling about my characters:

Chewtoy!Ari doesn't think she feels anything much about the prisoners. Sometimes redirected anger or spite. Very occasionally enough pity to do some small thing for them maybe. But mostly she is extremely numb. Live, die, scream, suffer, makes no difference to her. She can only afford to care about her own hide.

She's not really aware of the fact that when Riven would punish her for showing too much mercy to the prisoners, he always made sure, deliberately, that the prisoner in question also suffered worse as a result of her intervention. She’d watch Riven go to town on them before she got her own punishment.

He never told her that hurting the prisoner was part of her punishment. It was framed as “showing her how to do it right” or as “doing her work himself if she won't” or just anger at the prisoner for “getting off too lightly” – which is pretty plausible for Riven honestly.

But he’s aware of her tendency towards self-sacrifice and her desire to be a hero. She didn't actually care about the prisoners per se at the beginning, it was more a (woefully inadequate) sense of injustice at “disproportionate” torture or broken promises – or else just frustration at sheer inefficiency.

But Riven could picture her deciding it was a heroic thing to do to stand up for his favourite victims, and/or developing more empathy for them as he hurt her more. And he wanted to head that off.

And he's not wrong. Ari, by the end, often feels like she has more in common with the prisoners than with the feds. And if she'd been given the opportunity, she plausibly could have ended up in a position of being willing to risk painful punishment to protect some of the worst off, at least some of the time.

But she learned, from the beginning and without even realising she was learning it, that defying Riven on anyone's behalf only got that person hurt worse – as well as getting her hurt. There's no point in refusing to carry out whatever gory torture Riven wants to inflict. He can always make it worse.

And she could maybe articulate this fact – that it would only make things worse – if prompted. But she does not understand the extent to which it influences her decision-making. It's just that she doesn't want to get hurt. It's just that she doesn't care. Because caring – admitting any empathy to herself – is just too futile and too painful.

[just-horrible-things]

Just a little snippet to keep my hand in, not connected to anything else. Chewtoy and some random asshole warlock

---

It's so funny closing her throat. Every single time she mistakes the invisible force for something she can grab at and her hands come up to her neck like they're on strings.

Even when he tells her exactly what he's going to do, even when she watches his fingers move and his mouth shape the syllable that focuses his magic – seconds later up come her hands to grab at hands that aren't there. 

He's not doing her any harm really. Not holding long enough to turn her face red, let alone purple. He holds his own breath in time with hers, just tens of seconds at a time. Easy.

Thirty, forty, fifty – longer than before but still very safe really – and she's bug-eyed, mouth moving in silent pleas. Sixty, going on seventy, and she starts clawing at her throat, grasping at nothing, fingernails digging gouges down her own skin. 

He lets go at once, and she doubles forwards gasping. She'd get more air if she wasn't gulping and sobbing like that.

“Jesus,” he laughs, “what was that? Don't hurt yourself.”

She doesn't answer.

[just-horrible-things]

Been hopping back and forth between the things I intended to write not managing to get more than 100 words in before getting distracted, but yet another different AU? 7 pages one sitting.

I guess I was in the mood for shoddy caretaking.

---

'Verse: Resistance, co-author @whump-sprite AU: Alt to Chewtoy Scenario: The Resistance have taken chewtoy!Ari prisoner while breaking Anders out of (brief) federal custody and interrogation

Needs A Wash

The prisoner’s at the back of the cell when Ross walks in. She doesn’t seem to see him at first, she’s preoccupied with kinda – rubbing her back against the wall? It puts Ross in mind of a dog with fleas rubbing its flank against a fence. 

When she spots him she freezes, eyes comically wide.

“Time to decide if you want to live, fed,” Ross opens. “‘Cause if you do, you’d better be willing to answer some questions.” “Yes,” she agrees breathlessly, “sir.” Anger flares, and with a swipe of his hand Ross throws her sideways against the wall. She yelps at the impact, and crumples. “Don’t give me that shit,” Ross snarls. “You’d spit on me if I wasn’t holding all the cards.” The bitch curls up, arms over her head, and doesn’t respond.

She’s left a mark on the wall where she was rubbing against it – a smear of red against the concrete. No one told Ross that she was injured. In fact he’s pretty sure they actually said she wasn’t – but then again she’s been down here a few days. Maybe someone’s taken a bit of petty revenge. Taryn won’t like that, but Ross wouldn’t blame them.

There’s blood on her skin, too, where her shirt has ridden up. Holding magic in one hand ready to lash out if she tries anything, Ross opens the cell and steps inside. She doesn’t move, even when he crouches right over her. She just whimpers, screwing her eyes shut like she thinks she can hide. 

Ross pulls the edge of her shirt up to reveal more of her skin – and finds her ribs covered in open wounds – deep lash marks like you expect to see on the feds’ victims, not on them. 

“Alright,” he asks, “what the hell happened to you?” “My – my boss, s-sir –” she stammers out, “– I-I – punished –” “Talk.” “I will – I – yessir – please –”

She talks alright, but getting straight answers out of her turns out to be more difficult. She gibbers and pleads and honest-to-god sobs at Ross but she prefers begging for mercy to actually answering the questions. “I told you,” Ross snaps at her, “I’m not one of you sick fucks. I’m not gonna torture you if you answer the questions, so stop begging already and answer the fucking questions.”

He gets her name out of her, and her boss’s name, and a bunch of her colleagues’. She admits to being a torturer – an interrogator – and she admits to being a part of torturing Anders, along with probably hundreds of other witches and warlocks. “And you think you deserve my fucking sympathy?” Ross scoffs. “Nosir, no, I don’t, I’m sorry.” “So –” he presses a thumb over one of the cuts, just firmly enough to make her gasp “-- cut out all the whining.” She swallows, and nods.

And she does whine less, but even without the continuous pleas Ross still can’t make head or tail of half of what she says. He can’t follow her attempt to explain why her boss has whipped her to ribbons. More importantly, he also can’t decipher any of her answers about 17 and the remaining prisoners. She starts in the middle of sentences, she talks in numbers and codes, and without prompting about every thirty seconds, she keeps drifting off topic.

It’s when she tells him, apparently totally earnestly, that she’s “not real, sir, m’not – not real”, that it occurs to him to check her temperature. She stares up at him, bewildered, as he presses a hand to her forehead. “Ah, fucking hell.”

He flips her onto her front, and she makes pitiful squeaky noises, but she doesn’t fight it. Ross peels her shirt up her back to get a better look at the damage – and yeah, her back is way worse than the cuts he saw over her ribs. The skin between the cuts is puffy and red with infection, and pus leaks from between ragged scabs.

��Fuck,” Ross mutters. “You’re not gonna be any use like this, are you?” “Sorry,” the fed whimpers into the floor. “If I get you cleaned up, you’d better still be willing to talk when your temperature comes down.” “I will,” she promises, “I will, I – hate him, wanna, wanna talk, I swear.” “Yeah, I bet you do. Alright then, c’mon.”

She yells and flails a little when he drags her up off the floor, but he uses magic to take some of her weight and it isn’t difficult to pin her arms against her sides as he carries her. After a couple of seconds she goes limp in his arms, and he has to double check that she hasn’t passed out. Her eyes are still open, locked onto Ross without a trace of understanding.

He sighs.

Taryn is upstairs, working. “The fuck is this, Ross?” she demands as he climbs the stairs with his arms full of shaking, crying, uniformed fed. It’s a good fucking question. “She needs a wash,” he explains shortly. “And probably medicine or something. She’s not dangerous, she’s a wreck. Besides, if she tries anything I’ll make her regret it.” “Won’t, sir,” the prisoner whimpers into his shirt. Still looking somewhat baffled, Taryn nods. “Sounds good,” she agrees.

So he takes her up the next flight of stairs to the bathroom, and dumps her into the tub. She chokes on a hiss of pain as he sets her down, but she stays put.

“Clothes off,” Ross tells her. “Can’t get you clean with them on.” She obeys, starting to struggle awkwardly out of her shirt. She seems reluctant – or unable – to lift her arms above shoulder height, so Ross takes a hold of the fabric to hold it in place while she wriggles out of it. There’s really a lot of blood soaked into the cloth. It’s practically stiff with it. He chucks it into the corner of the room to deal with later.

Under the shirt, her sports bra is practically embedded in the swollen skin. Ross hisses sympathetically. The prisoner looks apprehensive. She doesn’t pull away when he reaches for the bra, but as soon as he tries to lift it from the skin she makes a sharp sound and jerks forward – then apologises. “You’re alright,” Ross tells her.

He gets his pocket knife out. Milonas tracks the blade with very wide eyes until it’s out of her sight behind her back, and Ross can hear her breath catch and stutter in her throat, but he isn’t about to feel too bad. Whatever her own situation, she hurt Anders. And a shitload of other people.

The elasticated fabric cuts easily. The prisoner grits her teeth and hisses, but she doesn’t flinch again. As the fabric peels away, it leaves angry indentations in her flesh.

“Alright, boots next.” Her shaking hands are clumsy and she’s understandably unenthusiastic about leaning far enough forward to reach her boots, so Ross leans over the side of the tub to get them for her. The first one comes off without too much trouble – and is tossed into the corner with the rest. 

But when he lays a hand on the second, she gasps a sudden “please–!” “What is it?” Ross pauses with his hand on the ankle. Damn, he can feel the heat of her fever through the leather. “It’s – swollen –” she confesses breathlessly. “ – broken? Sorry. I’m – sorry.” Ross sighs. “Alright,” he agrees. He supposes he can be careful.

The laces already aren’t tied, but he takes the time to unlace them altogether to see if it makes a difference. Not a lot. The boot is pretty firmly stuck, and she squeaks every time he tests it. Ross gestures her to spin around and she shuffles awkwardly in the tub until he can get her foot up over the edge. She whimpers, and presses a hand over her own mouth to cut it off.

Ross grimaces at a pang of unwelcome guilt. “It’s gotta come off,” he tells her. “You know that.” She nods, hand still over her mouth, but she doesn’t stop begging with her eyes. “Brace,” he orders, and she reluctantly lets go of her face to brace both hands against the bottom of the tub.

He knows it’s gonna suck for her, he’s not stupid. But what he hopes will happen when he pulls is that she’ll pull back against him, and the boot will come off. 

What actually happens when he pulls is that he just yanks her forwards and upwards by the leg. There’s no resistance at all. She falls back and cracks her head against the wall behind the tub as she just fucking slides. “Shit,” Ross swears, “fuck, sorry.” The prisoner flails, flopping like a fish, as he hurriedly dumps her legs back into the tub. Her eyes are wide open, unfocused, her lips peeled back and teeth parted as if screaming. He’s glad she didn’t fucking scream – Taryn would think he’s torturing her up here or something.

She writhes for a second more, then goes limp again. There are tears streaming from her eyes. “That – didn’t work,” Ross tells her uselessly. “M’ – s-sorry –” she chokes out “– please, si-ir – ca-an’t –” “Alright, new plan.”

She doesn’t flinch away from the knife this time, but she does sob when Ross picks up her booted foot again. He doesn’t think he can cut the leather without enough force to cut her too, but what he can do is pick at the seams. The tip of the knife digs under the threads until they give way, and little by little, the boot opens up along the seam. Milonas lays in the bottom of the tub, an ungainly sprawl of limbs, and stares at the ceiling, shivering hard.

Ross expects to be able to get the boot off once he’s opened it up from top to sole, but it’s not her ankle that’s swollen. It’s the foot itself. There aren’t any convenient seams running the length of her foot, but he takes apart the sides of the boot until it practically opens like a flower. Her foot is still stuck in the tube of the foot part of the boot, but there’s nothing left around her ankle and the bit behind her heel isn’t attached to the sides any more. When Ross tries to kinda bend the sole to free her heel, there’s a bit of give.

Milonas groans, pressing her hand over her mouth again, and her leg twitches against Ross’s grip as he wiggles the remains of the boot off the swollen foot, but she doesn’t really fight it or beg him to stop, which he figures is about the best he can do.

He cuts the sock off her, expecting that to be simplest part, but it’s stuck to the sole of her foot with yet more blood. When he gets it free with a bit of water, he finds lacerations underneath.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters, hissing through his teeth. “M’sorry,” the fed repeats.

The rest of the process of stripping her is trivial by comparison. He peels the other sock off – more whip marks, but no swelling – or barely any. She lays passively and lets him peel off her pants, and then her underpants. They’re all caked with her blood and who knows whose else’s, and too tight against cut and swollen skin. The whip didn’t stop at her waist, the cuts carry on all the way down the back of her thighs. 

Just handling her has painted red smears all over the inside of the bathtub. She lays there shivering and looking pathetic, and Ross is certain that she’s not a threat. Not in her current state, at least.

He runs the water lukewarm – fiddling with the temperature until it’s just a little cooler than what her blood temperature ought to be. She’s shivering hard, but she’s not really cold. Her skin’s still burning hot. When Ross takes hold of her upper arms, she cooperates, and he sits her back up. 

The water turns rusty as soon as it touches her. As soon as there’s enough in the bottom of the tub to get a handful, Ross scoops it in cupped hands and pours it over her skin. To start with she just lets it happen. Then, moving slowly, she starts rubbing the grime from her arms. Ross dispenses some shower gel onto a washcloth and hands it to her, and she uses that.

He has no problem letting her wash as much of herself as she’s able, but there’s no way she’s going to be able to reach her back, let alone clean it well enough to make a difference to the infection. 

She flinches when he touches it, and he thinks for a second that he’s gonna have to explain to her that it has to happen, but then she shuffles round again to sit awkwardly sideways, giving Ross better access to her back.

It’s not his first time cleaning out whip wounds. He’s no healer, but he knows that the cuts need to be clean. Milonas knows it too. 

When he gets started in earnest, she braces her forearms against the back wall, palms flat on the tiles. She shudders and gasps and makes muted, miserable little noises, but she doesn’t make a fuss. After her begging earlier, Ross is kinda surprised by the sudden stoicism.

He does his best to make it quick and no worse than it has to be. But it’s not a quick job. Halfway down her back, she starts sobbing quietly. “You’re alright,” he tells her. “You’re okay. Easy now.” “Yeah,” she repeats back, voice thick, “m’okay.”

When he reaches the waterline around her waist, she tries to get up on her knees. The bath isn’t wide enough for the length of her shins, she can’t possibly kneel that way round, but she keeps trying, wobbling and flinching as she tries to figure out a way to put her legs that will work. It doesn’t seem to occur to her to face a different way. Ross has to guide her to shuffle down the bath to the end, and brace against the other wall instead. She practically flops forward against the wall, heedless of the faucet digging in near her hip.

By the time Ross is finally done, she’s not sobbing quietly anymore. She’s just outright crying into the tiles. It’s pretty much what he’d expect from anyone, though, so he’ll cut her some slack on that. She’s held still, more or less, which is impressive enough on its own.

Ross pulls the stopper from the plughole, and Milonas apparently takes it as a signal to collapse. She lowers herself clumsily down back into the opaque, red-brown water and settles, panting, on her side. Miserable, reddened eyes turn up at Ross as if looking for some kind of approval.

“Yeah,” he says awkwardly, “just gonna get you rinsed off, then you’re all done.”

Fucking hell, she’s a torturer and a murderer. He doesn’t need to talk to her like she’s a child. She needs medical care, sure, but she doesn’t need his sympathy. 

As the filthy water drains from around her, Ross turns on the shower head to rinse her off. If he could be gentler about it, she doesn’t protest. He lifts her out of the bath and sets her down on the bathmat to towel her off, one limb at a time, while she sits passive and lets him do it. He leaves her broken foot alone, and only dabs carefully at her back.

He was going to put her back in her clothes, before he saw the state of them. He looks at the discarded pile, then back to her. She looks at the pile, and back to him. He shrugs awkwardly.

—

Taryn is starting to wonder what the hell Ross is doing up there by the time he re-emerges. He’s carrying the prisoner again, but this time she’s naked, wearing nothing except a towel, which she is holding closed with one hand while the other arm clings to Ross for stability. She looks utterly shell-shocked, and she is bleeding.

“She needs a wash” replays in Taryn’s head as her mental image abruptly updates from some vague notion that he’d turn the fed loose in the bathroom, to a vivid picture of him stripping the woman and scrubbing her down himself.

Ross, you fucking numbskull.

“What the hell happened to her?” She knew he might be rough with the prisoner but she didn’t think he’d fucking torture her – but no, this isn’t Ross’s doing. Someone’s taken a bullwhip to her, looks like. “Apparently her boss likes to use her as a stress ball.” Ross tries to shrug, and the motion makes the woman in his arms flinch. She’s clinging to him tighter now, watching Taryn with wide, frightened eyes. “He didn’t have enough people to whip?” “Guess not.”

Taryn shakes her head, trying to shake off the incredulity. The more she looks, the more injuries she sees. “What else did she tell you?” She’s hoping for more context, but all she gets is, “Not a lot we can use, she’s not important enough to know much.” The supposedly-fed cringes, ducking her face against Ross. Taryn doesn’t like that. “A few things about her colleagues,” Ross is continuing, “some names. Honestly she’s got a fever and she’s not making a lot of sense.”

“Alright,” Taryn declares, trying to regain control of the situation. “Let’s discuss after we get her some clothes.” Ross looks down, as if it’s occurring to him for the first time that her nakedness might be a problem. Goddamnit Ross. “Her old things are gross,” he offers by way of explanation. “She needs new.” “Why don’t you put her down, and go get her some. Does she need a healer?” “Hell if I know. She’s a mess but I don’t think she’s dying.”

He casts about for somewhere to put her, and settles on the chair by the bookshelves. “Don’t think she’s going anywhere,” he remarks. “No,” Taryn agrees. “Go get her some clothes. And a first aid kit. These cuts need dressing.” “I know that,” Ross protests. “I was gonna do it once I put her back downstairs.” “I’ll do it,” Taryn tells him firmly. “Leave her with me.”

The prisoner watches him leave, and shrinks back against the chair once she’s the only target for Taryn’s attention.

She’s thin as a starving cat, out of her uniform. It’s hard to believe she’s actually a fed – but Ross did say she was talking about them as her colleagues, her boss. It shouldn’t really be a surprise if they abuse each other as well as everyone else.

“You know who I am?” Taryn asks. “Yes sir.” “Tell me.” “Taryn Morgen.” “Mhm.” Taryn nods. “Alright. You cooperate, and things will be better here than with your old boss. You understand?” “I’ll cooperate,” the woman insists, urgent and afraid. “I understand, sir.”

With how they’ve treated her, she probably won’t have any trouble selling her “colleagues” out.

“Anything broken?” Taryn asks her. “Internally bleeding?” “Some,” swallow, “some breaks, sir. I-I think.” “Where?” She gestures at her obviously swollen foot, then more hesitantly to her ribcage, on the right. “I don’t know a-about internal bleeding, I’m sorry.”

Taryn crouches to take that foot – gently – in her hands. The prisoner makes a choked sound of fear, but doesn’t pull away. More stifled whimpers follow as Taryn probes carefully with her fingers, feeling bones shift beneath the flesh. “That needs a fucking healer,” she mutters, half to herself. Another whimper as the leg twitches and tugs the foot against Taryn’s hand. She lets go, promising, “Alright, alright, I’m done.”

She’s about to check the ribs – or at least ask more questions – when Ross reappears with the large first aid kit and a bundle of clothes.

“Go to the hospital and ask when they’ll have a healer free to fix a broken foot. I’ll take care of this one – what’s her name?” “Milonas.” “First name?” Ross hesitates, and glances at the prisoner. “Ariadne,” she supplies nervously. “Alright, Ariadne. I’m going to put some bandages on your cuts, and then you can put some clothes back on.” “Yes sir,” Ariadne agrees. “Thank you sir.”

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Resistance, co-author @whump-sprite AU: Chewtoy Alone (alt to Chewtoy)

Water [First | Next]

The sickest prisoners get three doses of amox a day, just like Ari was taught. (Of course, if anyone was actually invested in their survival, they’d be in the infirmary by now.) That means that the first dose is the first thing she does in the day.

To start with she tried rolling it into the water round – it made sense, she thought. They swallow the pills easier with water anyway. But then 220 decided to pick a fight with her during the hose round, and she got distracted first with putting him back in his place, then with trying to stop the nosebleed he gave her, and basically if she doesn’t give the drugs their own slot in her day they don’t get done on time.

She clips the dosage sheet into the clipboard and grabs the bottle with the pills in and a couple of bottles of water. Her untidy scrawl tells her which cells for the extra doses. She should be able to hold that in her head, but apparently she can’t.

210. Barely conscious. Wakes enough to swallow without protest.

213. “Are you gonna take your meds this morning? ‘Cause if not, I won’t bother.” She checks briefly around his head and shoulders for any evidence that he spat last night’s dose out. She only gets a grunt in response to the question. But when she waves the pills in front of his face he reluctantly opens his mouth.

Ari watches his throat for the swallow, then demands, “Show me. C’mon, don’t make me force your mouth open. Good. Tongue up. Okay.” He glares knives at her as she moves on.

216, 217. 217 refuses the drugs, pressing her lips together. “You sure? It’s antibiotics. Might make you less sick.” Oh well. More for everyone else.

Over to Block 4. 404, 407. 

407 doesn’t swallow without coaxing, but if Ari uses two fingers to put the pills right onto the back of her tongue, she’ll do it. While she will, she has a chance of making it. Ari gives her a double dose, and spends a few minutes sitting on the floor with her giving her as much water as she’ll drink.

417 just choked the last time Ari tried to do the same thing with him. Every day she’s surprised to find him still alive. Every day she thinks about putting him out of his misery. She hasn’t done it yet. 

His fever’s still scary high – as checked by the highly scientific method of Ari pressing a hand to his forehead. He manages a little water when it’s offered, but not a lot. She notes down his continued failure to die, and moves on.

Since she’s already in 4, she starts the hose round there. Same old drudgery as always. At least she doesn’t have to scrub down the interrogation room floors as well.

401 is timid enough that she doesn’t mind unlocking his chain from the floor to let him move out of her way – not that his cell needs the hose that badly anyway. He turns down the offer to take a wash in the cold water.

402 stays on his ankle chain, despite his efforts to convince her otherwise.

403 she forgot she’d left attached to the wall after a bid for freedom yesterday. Not standing, but sitting up without the slack to lie down. He looks thoroughly miserable, and makes no fuss as she lets his wrists down to swap to a gentler setup.

Most of the time is eaten up by the cells where she needs to wash the prisoners, not just the floors. For them, she turns the hose down to the slowest setting, and does her best with a washcloth and some hand soap pilfered from the restrooms.

404 wails when Ari moves her, and sobs through the process of being cleaned. “Easy, easy, not here to hurt you. Just getting you cleaned up, don’t panic.”

406 goes dead-eyed and tolerates the handling without making eye contact.

407 twitches at the contact with her injuries, but doesn’t make so much as a sound. 

408 usually makes some kind of lewd remark about Ari touching him, but he’s quiet this morning. Ari ‘s glad to maintain the silence.

A few days ago, 409 started demanding answers every time Ari opens her door. Apparently she hasn’t given up yet.

“What’s going on out there? I know something’s changed, I’m not stupid. Something’s going on out there, what’s happening?” Ari doesn’t have an answer for her any more than she did the last twenty times. Nothing she’s sure won’t come back to bite her, anyway. “What’s the harm?” 409 pleads as she shuffles out of the way of the hose. “Who am I gonna tell – you? Just – what’s going on, I just want to know what’s going on. Come on, you can’t leave us in the dark forever!”

She’s not the only one who asks. They’ve all noticed the change in routine. They have to suspect, by now that Ari’s all alone out here. Some of them use reason, some of them plead. Some of them curse her out, like that’s going to convince Ari to give a fuck.

She doesn’t have answers for any of them.

What’s she supposed to say? Tell them it’s civil war out there? Tell them they’ve been abandoned to die in their cells? Tell them it’s just Ari out here, one guard against nearly forty of them?

If they all got loose, they’d tear her limb from limb.

410 wants to know as well, she can see it in his eyes, but he’s close enough to 409 to hear her ask and get no response. So instead it’s, “good morning, interrogator,” and “what are we doing today, same again?” and all the rest of the nervous smalltalk he makes to cover for his fear. Ari answers tersely, head still lost in her own worries.

412 hates her quietly while she works.  413 and 414 she has to keep a careful eye on as she helps them move. 415 begs her for mercy on sight, and when she checks his forehead, his temperature is up again. Great.

417 is too far gone to give her trouble, but washing him takes time. 

The last two are easy, although 420 begs again to be unchained, just for a little while. “You’ve got plenty of slack,” Ari tells her. “What’s the problem?” She checks the wrists. Red – probably from fidgeting – but the cuffs haven’t broken the skin yet. “I just want to move,” the witch pleads. “Please, I’m losing my mind. I won’t try anything.”

420 hasn’t made herself a problem. She barely talks. But she’s only been whipped the once and nothing’s broken. If she decided to fight Ari, she has the capacity. “I’ll think about it,” Ari allows. Maybe she’ll come back with some longer chains.

Most of the real troublemakers are on Block 2. The first half are fine – some vitriol, but nothing Ari hasn’t heard before. Some more questions she can’t – or won’t – answer. 205 wants to know what Ari even wants from her.

209 pleads for water, and she assures him it won’t be long now. He says he wants to talk. Ari tells him that’s above his paygrade, she’s just a guard. Maybe she should take his statement, she doesn’t know. She can’t be bothered.

210 needs extended washing. He’s compliant enough.

Then there’s 211. The only fighter she hasn’t managed to get secured in cuffs. He’s a big guy and still on his feet, and frankly Ari’s not confident she can subdue him even with the taser and the baton. Sure, it should work. But all it takes is one slip. And if she gets into trouble, there’s no one to come to her rescue.

So she just keeps his door closed and locked. Which means no hose, but whatever. He calls to her through the door, “When’s it my turn?” as he hears her doing the cells either side of his. She ignores him.

212, 213, 216, and 217 all need washing. 

And then there’s 220, her least favourite of the batch. 

He’s still mad after yesterday’s little scuffle – and honestly so is Ari. Her ankle’s still throbbing. The warlock mouths off as soon as Ari opens the door – so she blasts him full force with the hose until he’s spluttering too hard to keep insulting her. Then she hoses down the floor.

Finally, the hose needs coiling back into its housing, then the first round of the day is done. Drinking water next. Ari takes the empty bottles to the interrogation room to refill – and remembers the task she apparently gave up on last night. 

On the counter beside the sink, there’s still a tray piled with stinking, crusty bandages and gauze waiting to be washed so she can reuse them. As Ari gets close, a single fly lifts off from the mess. She swats at it angrily, but it gets away. How do they even get down here?

Okay, she’s going to have to wash up before she can take a look at anyone’s wounds. She’d still better do water and food first though.

She gets herself another coffee to drink while she fills bottles. The full bottles go onto the trolley. The fly is still buzzing about in the corner of the room. There’s got to be fly paper or something in a storeroom somewhere…

Every prisoner gets a bottle. Some of them – the lucky ones – she can just toss the bottle to and leave them to drink it on their own time. More of them she has to take the cap off and put the bottle into their hands, or hold it for them while they drink. Some, like 210, she has to sit with and feed one sip at a time.

210’s still not really awake, groggy and slow to respond. Ari can’t remember, but she thinks he was more alert yesterday. She’ll have to check her notes.

211’s bottle is dropped through the grate in the door.

Even 220 knows better than to resist water. Ari only has to hand-feed him because his hands are cuffed behind his back, but she’s not unlocking him any time soon with the shit he keeps pulling. He makes faces about letting her hold the bottle to his face, but he drinks.

Block 4 takes longer, because she’s hand-feeding more than half of them. With any luck, some of them will die off soon and reduce the workload.

407 manages most of a bottle, which is better than yesterday. Ari adds a note to her clipboard. 409 badgers her about the outside situation some more, and 414 takes the opportunity to do the same, although he’s more aggressive about it.

417 drowns if she tries to feed him direct from the bottle. Ari’s taken to soaking a bit of cloth and holding it to his face, and sometimes he’s able to suckle a little from that. It takes for fucking ever. This morning he’s barely interested even in that.

“Won’t be long now,” Ari tells him numbly, holding the cloth close to his lips a while just in case he decides he wants it after all. “Won’t be long ‘til it’s over. You’ll be out of here long before the rest of us.” 

There’s no sign that he can hear her, so she’s not sure why she bothers.

[Next]

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Resistance, co-author @whump-sprite AU: Chewtoy Alone (alt to Chewtoy)

Necessities [First | Prev | Next]

Ari returns to the Block 2 breakroom to get her feeding chart, spots the drug list on the table, and remembers her antibiotics crisis. Fuck. Probably time to address that.

The coffee machine dispenses another drink, then tells her to refill the beans. She adds a note to the day’s to-do list, as an add-on to the kitchen run.

She sips at the coffee without tasting anything but the heat. Just under three days of pills left. Well. They might all be dead by three days from now. The rest of the staff might come back and shoot everyone. Or the insurgents might take over, god knows what they’ll do. Probably bring their own antibiotics.

She stares at the numbers, and sighs. Excuses, excuses.

Without optimism, she redoes the sums, tapping the numbers into the calculator on her phone. 2.78 days. 

Maybe if she cut 201, maybe… 402… who else… She shuffles through the scattered pages all around her. The problem is she keeps writing things down on whatever page she’s toting around at the time, so everything is all over the place.

201 could probably do without, yeah. Maybe 208, 212, definitely 402. 413, 414… A few quick scribbled numbers, another division tapped into her phone. 

Three and a half days. Not a lot better.

What if she cut everyone who isn’t actively dying? More scribbles. More sums.

Four days.

The problem is, most of the drugs are going into the goners. If she cut her losses and let them just die, she’d have… more than a week for everyone else.

Oh, and 217 isn’t taking them anyway. How does that change the numbers? Not enough, that much she’s sure.

She needs to find more drugs, then. She’s disassembled every first aid kit she can get her hands on, but most of them were the tiny kind they keep in the offices, and didn’t even have any antibiotics. 

Oh, what about the pills she has upstairs? They’re not amox, they’re something else, but it’s all essentially the same isn’t it? She tries to picture the bottle in her head. How full was it when she took a dose this morning? … Did she take a dose this morning?

It must be something like half full. She got a new one when they started reassigning people away, didn’t she? She was worried about the supply. Maybe more than half full. Call it half – so 15 pills.

That’s… not even half a day’s worth, at the current rate. 

She’s pretty sure she could break into some more offices, but could she get into the infirmary? She hasn’t tried yet… they must have more bandages and stuff too.

Still turning her options over in her head, she starts setting up for the food round. Empty bottles get dropped off in a corner as she clears the trolley. She retrieves the big pot from the interrogation room – the sink in there is better than the ones in the break rooms.

She almost forgets the feeding chart, grabbing it and the clipboard at the last minute, then heads for the elevator.

Since there’s no one to tell her not to, she’s put everyone on essentially the same rations. Easier than keeping track of who’s meant to be starving and how badly – and besides, what would the point be?

There’s also no one in the canteen or the kitchens to serve up the slop she usually collects – whatever the fuck that stuff is. But the doors on the store rooms weren’t built to real security standards and Ari’s crowbar got her in without much trouble.

There’s enough bread in the freezers to feed an army. Ari gets a batch out every morning, and the stuff she got out the day before is thawed and ready to serve. She kinda imagined it would come out damp, but somehow it doesn’t.

She doesn’t give enough fucks to try and cook for the prisoners, but there’s loads of canned shit in the stores. Beans, lentils, tomatoes, soups of all kinds, hot dogs, corn, peas, corned beef…

Ari picks a couple of ingredients every meal – avoiding anything that looks like it might need cooking – and just tips out a dozen cans or so into the big pot. Today it’s peas and hot dogs. Sure, the resulting heap of cold ingredients isn’t exactly appetising. But it’s real food, and honestly it looks better to Ari than the unidentifiable shit the kitchen usually serves up. 

Some of the chattier prisoners have questioned the food, but none of them have complained per se. So she figures they probably feel similarly.

The pot, the bread, and a few extra cans of soup go onto the trolley. Oh – and more coffee beans. She nearly forgot. Then she drags it back down to Interrogations. Pill bottles also go on the trolley. One stop at the interrogation room to grab the plastic bowls, and she’s ready to go.

She’ll try the infirmary this afternoon, she’s decided. For now, she’ll skip the amox for everyone who doesn’t really need it. If she gets her hands on more, she can go back to giving it liberally, but she ought to try and conserve it for now.

The first pass is for everyone on the block who can take a bowl and feed themselves. 201, 202. 205 through 208. 

“No drugs today, interrogator?” 201 accuses right off the bat. “Given up on me already? What did I do?” “You don’t need them,” Ari fires back. “Your back’s healing fine.”

211 only gets what food she can drop through the grate. That means mostly bread. Today she puts a couple of hot dogs in a plastic cup and drops that through as well. Probably they’ll fall out when the cup hits the floor, but that’s his problem. 

If she’d been living off bread for a week she’d probably eat hot dogs off the floor.

“Come on,” he cajoles, “you can open the door. I’ll be good, I’ll wait at the back.”

214, 215 – 215 screams a little startled scream like she does half the time the door opens, even though she must be able to hear Ari going up and down the block. 218, 219.

“Can’t you take the chain off? Just so I can eat?” “You can reach your mouth just fine.”

Then up and down again hand feeding, or holding the bowl for the ones who can sort of feed themselves. 203, 204. 209 is crying. “Don’t hurt me,” he whimpers. “Chill,” Ari tells him. “It’s just breakfast. If I was here to hurt you, you’d know about it.”

210, dead-eyed and compliant. A little more awake, perhaps? Not a lot. 212. 213 glares daggers at Ari the whole time, but he eats. 216 threw up yesterday, so she gets a smaller portion, fed slowly. 

217 is also crying. “Are you sure you won’t take the antibiotics? Might bring your fever down…” “No drugs,” 217 mumbles, and flinches at her own courage. Ari sighs. “If I was trying to drug you, you know I could force you.” “No drugs.”

220. The chain that connects his wrists to the wall has enough slack to let him reach the toilet and move around a little, which means it also has enough slack for him to lunge at her if he’s really determined. “Try to bite me and you don’t get fed today,” she reminds him. “Unchain me and you wouldn’t have to get your hands that close,” he grouses. “Do you want this, or not?”

He shuts up, so she feeds him. “You’re scared of me,” he observes between mouthfuls of peas. Ari doesn’t dignify it with a response. “If you weren’t scared, you’d have done worse to me by now. You know you should be scared. I’m going to remember –” Ari shoves the spoon into his mouth hard enough that it clacks on his teeth and the split on his lip starts bleeding a little again. “Just shut up, will you? Eat. Be glad I’m still bothering to feed you.”

He doesn’t know how fucking lucky he is. He’d only been here a day – maybe two? – before the real interrogators fucked off. Probably wouldn’t be so fucking cocky if he’d tasted a bit of real punishment.

Block 4 is much the same as Block 2. She skips 403. Make trouble while you’re being fed, you don’t get fed.

404 refuses food, closing her mouth and turning her head away. “C’mon,” Ari coaxes, “you’re only gonna get sicker if you don’t eat.” The prisoner won’t look at her, and she won’t eat either.

408 licks Ariadne’s hand while she’s trying to feed him a hot dog. She slaps him, and takes the rest of the food away. Fucking typical. He’s always trying to gross her out.

415 turns his head away after a couple of mouthfuls. “I can’t,” he mumbles, “I feel sick.” Ari sighs. She checks her clipboard. He didn’t manage much yesterday either. “What about soup?” she offers. “I got some tomato soup, that’s easy to keep down.” He hums a thready, uncertain sound. “I’ll come back with soup.”

403 is whining as Ari drags the trolley back past his door. Evidently he’s worked out that she skipped over him. She pauses briefly to listen. “I’m sorry, okay? I said I was sorry. Ple-ease. Feed me. Interrogator? Can you hear me? I’m sorry.” “You’re not,” she tells him through the door. He’s always whining, but it doesn’t stop him lunging for the door at the slightest hint of a chance.

Ari dumps the empty bowls into the sink to wash up, and returns to the breakroom to warm a can of soup for 415 like she promised. She brings it to his cell with a couple of slices of bread, settles beside him on the floor, and dips little bits of the bread in the soup for him. He eats, if reluctantly.

“I think I’m dying,” he whispers between bites. “Am – I dying, sir? I don’t want to die…” “I don’t know,” Ari answers honestly. “The pills are meant to help.” He eats a little more, then, “Why? Why me?” Ari shrugs her shoulders. “I dunno. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess.” “I didn’t do anything…” A delayed flinch, as he realises the claim might get him punished. “Not my call,” Ari shakes her head. “There’s no use telling me. I couldn’t let you go if I wanted to.” “Can’t you tell them? Can’t you… please?” “I’m sorry.” There are tears in his eyes. Ari feeds him as much soup as he’ll accept, then leaves him be.

She heats another can of soup for 404, thinking maybe it’ll go down easier. The prisoner turns her head away from that, too. “Look, I even warmed it up for you,” Ari coaxes. “Just let me die,” 404 grumbles. Ari sits back on her heels. She thinks she ought to have something to say to that. Some argument or maybe admonishment. Nothing comes to mind. “I guess,” she allows, and takes the soup away. 

And since it’s already warm, Ari has 404’s portion for lunch. It’s more or less lunchtime anyway, and she doesn’t know what else she’d eat. No point opening another can. Some days she eats the same cold food she serves the prisoners, if there’s a portion left over. She kind of feels like it ought to be somehow humiliating, but it’s not like anyone’s watching.

She eats sitting on one of the desks in the security room, and reflects that she really doesn’t miss her colleagues. Yes, the quiet wears on her nerves. And yes, they’d make the work easier. She could get 211 pinned down. But fuck them. At least this way Ari isn’t being pushed around all day as well. She doesn’t have to do anyone else’s paperwork. Nobody’s getting their hands all over her.

With any luck they’ll all be killed by insurgents and she’ll never have to see them again.

She should check the news, she realises. When did she last check – yesterday? Probably the day before. No, she should finish the last of the food round first. There’s only 407 and 417 left.

Neither of them can handle solid food, so Ari waters down a final can of soup to make a broth. She warms up one bowl at a time to take to the respective cells.

407 manages less than a quarter of her portion, even fed as slow as Ari’s patience can handle. 417 manages less. Ari makes a note to try again later. Maybe she should do an extra meal for them first thing with the amox. She’d have to go to the canteen earlier in the day… or keep cans in the breakroom. That would work.

Finally the morning rounds are done. Almost in time to start all over again.

It’s callous of Ari to be glad she doesn’t have to worry about Blocks 1 or 3, but she is. She’d never get any sleep if she was dealing with eighty of the fuckers instead of forty. But 1 and 3 aren’t her problem because she can’t get in there. She’s tried the doors, but they’re built solidly to keep would-be jailbreakers out, and neither her card nor her crowbar are sufficient.

Everyone on 1 or 3 will be dead by now. It’s been – what – a week? Too long to go without water.

Reluctantly, she checks her to do list. Wash up – once she’s collected the dirty bowls. Wash yesterday’s abandoned wound dressings, which needs to happen before she can do the “medical” round, so soon. Try to break into the infirmary. And oh, yeah, the news. She can do that one over a coffee, which instantly boosts it to the top of the list.

The security computers don’t connect to the internet, but there’s a TV in the lounge. It’s approximately the oldest TV Ari’s seen since she moved out of her mom’s house, but it’s still going strong.

She flicks through channels, pausing on anything that looks like news. Something about atrocities in South America. Something about some bank shutting down. Stray dogs? A crawler headline mentions police “putting down” “civil unrest” while the presenter talks about taxation.

Looks like the party line is still “nothing to see here, business as usual”. Ari can’t really afford to watch until they do a summary, which might have something useful in it. But presumably if the channels were allowed to talk about the insurgency it’s all they would be talking about.

She’d better do some washing up, she supposes.

She takes the tray of used dressings up to the kitchen, because the break room really doesn’t have the facilities to boil water. While the pot’s coming to the boil, Ari rinses the worst of the blood and pus out of the dressings in the sink with a shitload of detergent. Once the water’s boiling, she dumps the whole load in.

She has no idea how long is long enough to boil things – this is some kind of medieval makeshift hygiene and Ari’s well out of her depth. Usually she lets it boil for about half an hour, figuring that surely that has to be long enough. This batch sat out overnight and got flies on, so she gives it an extra fifteen minutes.

While she waits, she raids the storeroom for a packet of crisps. She eats about half, but they taste of cardboard so she abandons the pack half-eaten.

Three or four days. Is she really still gonna be stuck here then, still living the same day over and over?

[Next]

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Resistance, co-author @whump-sprite AU: Chewtoy Alone (alt to Chewtoy)

Clockwork [Next]

Ari wakes up, and rolls reluctantly out of bed, and starts to pull her uniform on just like any other day before she remembers that it’s the fucking apocalypse out there, or something.

It doesn’t make much difference to anything, except for the way the floor drops out of her gut at the realisation every fucking morning.

She finishes getting dressed, drags a brush through her hair, and slouches to the bathroom to wash up. She’s still not used to the eerie quiet.

Not that she’d usually run into anyone else in the morning – only a few of the rooms are occupied at any given time, and the occupants could be working any shift. The odds of meeting in the hall are low. But she is used to the background murmur of a building full of bodies. Now there’s just the low hum of the air con.

She reflects, as she dries off her face, that she could take a shower right now. No one’s gonna get on her back for not showing up to work on time. She could shower as long as she wanted.

She doesn’t. Somehow it still feels wrong. She showers in the evenings, once she’s finished with the day.

The silence is even more unsettling once she leaves the overnight rooms for the building proper. The offices are as empty as the hallways. Computer monitors all glow the same shade of blue, showing the same login screen.

Ari still takes the same route as always, between the offices, a stone’s throw from secure storage, past the main entrance and down the stairs to Interrogations. She could wander off – to a limited extent – but why would she? Her usual route is still the shortest, that much hasn’t changed.

The vending machine en route is out of her preferred granola bar. She bought the last one days ago, and she supposes nobody’s restocking it. Somewhere there’s presumably a key that the janitors use to get in to restock the machines. For that matter, somewhere there might be a big pile of boxes of snacks waiting to be put into the machine.

She buys the blueberry-flavored bar instead. It’s not like it makes much difference. By the time she’s gotten the wrapper open, she’s already forgotten what flavour it is.

The security station in the foyer is empty. Ari’s free to climb over the desk and walk through the checkpoint all the way to the innermost set of front doors. She hasn’t done it since the first day, because it hurts less to just ignore the doors and pretend it’s business as usual. 

But she finds herself doing it again now.

Inside the guards’ booth, she rechecks the drawers out of some desperate compulsion. They didn’t leave their guns behind when they left. She established that a week ago, when she searched properly. Surprise surprise, nothing has materialised in the desks since then.

She clambers over the other side, and walks up to the doors. She presses her card against the lock, and watches the light go red. She does it again. There is absolutely no reason to think it would suddenly malfunction, but she can’t help herself.

The doors are heavy. They don’t budge even a fraction when she pushes on them. She goes to put her shoulder to the door, then recoils. She still has the bruises from last time, when she gave in to the panic and threw herself at the door over and over.

She’s not going to get stuck in the same stupid loop again.

Did they mean to leave her behind, Eikner and Cheng and the rest? Did they forget she would still be in the building, asleep upstairs? Did they forget that her card won’t open the door? 

In her gut she knows they didn’t think about her at all.

Did Ari somehow sleep through some kind of evacuation announcement, or did they not even put it over the intercom? Did everyone just go home one by one at the end of their shifts and not come back?

Ari’s shift never ends, so she’s still here.

She reaches out to touch the door again, but her fingers tremble, and she pulls back at the last second like the metal might burn her.

There are still scratches on the stainless steel from where she went at it with a crowbar. She’s not completely stupid, she didn’t only throw her own body at it in rage and despair. She tried to pry her way into the hinges. She pried at the base of the doors and the line where they meet. She tried to break it down with a chair.

The door was designed with all of these assaults in mind.

She’s thought about smashing the card lock apart and seeing what happens, but she’s pretty sure the failure state is still locked. If she doesn’t break it, there’s still the slim chance that she’ll find someone else’s card somewhere – one that someone lost somewhere – and that didn’t get deactivated…

It’s a long shot. And she tells herself that’s why she’s not spending all day every day searching for lost cards, because she knows it’s a waste of time.

It’s still better than the fucking nothing she’ll have if she breaks the lock.

All she’s achieving by staring down the door is choking herself on the claustrophobic suffocation of being locked in this place. She tears herself away, feeling it like a physical tug in her chest, a narrow string still connecting her, just about, to the world outside those doors.

She climbs back over the barrier and the desks. She walks away. She trudges down the stairs to Interrogations. The locks down here blink green at the touch of her card.

Interrogations is the one part of the building that still sounds normal. She opens the Block 2 door onto the familiar backdrop of muffled sobbing. Sure, she can’t hear anyone chatting in the break room or typing away on the computers. And no one’s screaming. But some morning’s were quiet anyway. She’s not the only body still breathing in the building.

It’s a little weird for the security room to be completely empty, but she can shrug it off. It was always better not to run into her colleagues first thing. She gets herself a coffee from the break room – the machine in the lounge upstairs has run out of beans and she keeps forgetting to refill it – and pores over her notes while she drinks it.

Nothing’s changed, of course. It’s not like anyone else is updating them. Every page is still where she left it, an untidy semi-circle of looseleaf centred on the spot where she sits.

Her attention settles on the page for the antibiotics. At the current rate, she has just under three days left. Gotta do something about that. But it’s not a problem for the first coffee of the day.

Looks like she didn’t cross off all the cleaning up from her to do list yesterday. Hopefully she just forgot to mark it done… but she can’t remember doing it. Great. Fine.

The coffee disappears too fast. Time to get to work.

She doesn’t know why she’s still doing it. There’s no one left to whip her for slacking. She could just hole up in her room with a giant pile of snacks and hide under the covers like a child, if she wanted. If anyone ever comes back, she knows they won’t care what’s happened to the prisoners. They left them to die, after all.

But here she is, still going through the motions of her day, still washing floors and delivering water and keeping little scribbled charts like she knows what she’s doing.

Riven was right. She doesn’t know what to do with herself without orders anymore. She doesn’t remember how to be a person. Without anyone to update her orders she’s just carrying on in the pattern she was set, repeating the same day over and over like the fucking wind-up toy that she is.

[Next]

[just-horrible-things]

'Verse: Resistance AU: Chewtoy, Alt: Bad End Aka: what Ari knows is waiting for her eventually if she doesn't get out

1 -The End of the Line [Next]

When Riven opens the cell door, Ariadne flattens herself against the back wall. Her eyes are wide with fear, wide as he's ever seen them. He grins just at the sight of her.

She's been crying. Absolutely sobbing her heart out from the looks of her, though he didn't hear anything from outside the cell. Her cheeks are glistening wet and her eyes are red. When she speaks, her voice is thick with tears.

“Sir, please,” she chokes out. “Don't do this. I can still be – fun, I can do better, I'll be whatever you want.” Her voice is cracking on the words, and he hasn't even hurt her yet. This is pure fear, more than he ever gets out of her with the whip. “You don't have to do this. Please. Who's gonna make your coffee? Who's gonna – write all your reports, clean up after – please, sir, let me keep working, let me go back to work, I'll do everything –”

The clank of the door swinging closed behind Riven makes her flinch, but she's left herself no room to back up any further.

They took her boots and socks along with her belt and her gear when they threw her in here. They took her uniform shirt too, but left her in her uniform pants and the thin black turtleneck she wears as an underlayer. No one's felt the need to cuff her.

“Don’t do this,” she repeats. “Please, sir, I can be better–!” “There's no taking it back,” he tells her mildly. “It's signed and stamped now. You’re a traitor.” “You could change it. You can – tell them there's been a mistake, change it back. Please I know you can.” “Now,” he drawls, grinning, “why on earth would I do that?” Ari sobs a little cracked, fragile sound. Her blotched, tear-soaked face is a perfect picture of horror and fear.

Riven’s in no hurry. This is a moment to savour, and he's more than happy to drag it out as long as it will last. He could spend all day watching her search his face for any hint of a reason to hope. 

She takes his lack of haste as an invitation. Moving jerkily, she pushes away from the wall to tuck her feet under her and get up on her knees. “Please,” she begs, “please, sir, mercy, please.” Reason has failed her, now she's trying performance, hands balled in front of her chest and everything. “I'll – be better, I'll work harder, I'll – kneel by your desk whenever you want and do everything you say and not fight you and please–!” She folds forwards, hands down on the concrete like she’s presenting her back for the whip. Really pulling out all the stops. “Please, don’t do this, don’t do this, sir. Please.”

“Come here,” Riven commands softly. She crawls. She doesn’t want to, he can see that. As she gets within kicking range she flinches and stutter-starts, but she drags herself all the way to Riven’s feet. Without prompting, she puts her forehead down on his boots. He can feel her shaking against his ankles, see her shoulders shuddering with silent sobs. “I can be so good for you,” she all-but-whispers.

Ah, he should have done this sooner. Or at least faked it long enough to put the terror in her.

“Up.” She lifts her head obediently. Instead of sitting back on her heels, she leans forwards against Riven’s legs, clinging to the fabric of his pants with shaking hands. Tears spill from pleading, terrified eyes. 

She’s never tried this hard to be everything she thinks Riven might want. She’s never been this desperate before, this afraid. And all from just imagining what he’s going to do to her.

He cups her sticky, miserable face between his hands. She snivels and bites back a whimper. He rubs his thumbs across her cheekbones. “I’ll do everything you say,”  she promises with a hollow, despairing shell of a voice. “I know you will.”

She’s right that he’ll miss having her around. But she’s just grown into too much of a liability.

He hits her, hard across the side of the face. She’s long since learned to roll with the blows, and this time she goes practically boneless, thrown sideways to sprawl across the concrete.

By the time she looks up, he already has the baton in his hand. For a moment it looks like she’ll just sit paralysed by terror as he closes in, but at the last second she dives sideways. She has nowhere to go. The cell is small, and her futile attempt at evasion only lands her in the corner.

Riven kicks out casually to make sure she stays cornered. The sole of his boot connects solidly with her stomach. Then he brings the baton down. He’s hit her with these before, but never full force. She yells out at the crack of the impact against the arm she lifts to shield her face.

He hits her again before she’s finished recoiling. The back of her head cracks almost as loud against the wall as she tries to flinch backwards. She has nowhere to go. So she goes the only way she can – forwards – hurling herself at Riven’s knees with a raw scream of helpless fury.

It’s not a fight. She tries her utmost to make it one, but she’s feeble and barefoot and already on the floor and he’s taller and stronger and he has a stick and she has nothing. She makes a very creditable attempt at grabbing Riven’s gun off his belt – but all he has to do is thumb the shock control on the baton and the convulsion drops her right back to the floor.

He stamps on one of her ankles, then on an arm he knows he’s already gotten with the baton. She tries uselessly to kick him. He pins her down with another sustained shock – drilling the end of the baton into her back where her shirt’s ridden up. She thrashes, screeching like a banshee, as Riven wrestles her into handcuffs. 

With the short chain firmly in his grip, she has no more room to twist away as he brings the baton down again and again over her ribs, sides, thighs, hips, laying deep bruises into her flesh. They’ll be good and dark by tomorrow. Ariadne struggles wildly, fingers clawing bleeding lines down the wrist of the hand that holds her cuffs. Not the first time she’s given him scratches, but it might be the last. He might just take out her fingernails before she gets another chance.

She’s helpless to stop him dragging her across the concrete. The back wall is set with metal attachment points for restraining the feistier prisoners. Riven picks the highest hook, intending to get her nice and helpless with her feet off the ground.

Lifting her takes both hands – one on each wrist – and with how hard she’s fighting it’s still difficult to get the cuffs over the hook. He pins her bodily against the wall for more stability, and she sinks her teeth into the meat of his shoulder.

Riven yells, more from the surprise than the pain. Ari bites down harder, jaw locked. Even as he steps reflexively back from the wall she refuses to be dropped, wrapping her legs around him and trying to get her cuffed arms over his head to maintain her death grip. 

Without thinking, Riven brings the butt end of the baton down on her head as hard as he can. It’s enough to dislodge her. She crumples, arms over her head, and tries instinctively to roll away from him. 

It doesn’t take her far. Riven drives a boot up under her ribs to knock the air out of her, and lays into her with the baton again. She’s screaming, all hate and fury. He’s snarling, feeling the throb in his shoulder and the slow seep of fresh blood. When the bone of her forearm cracks and gives way beneath the baton, the tenor of her screams pitches up into raw pain. She yanks that arm back in to her chest, suddenly trying to shield it instead of using it as a shield. Riven gets a foot on her shoulder to stop her curling away.

He doesn’t have to catch the arm she’s trying to protect. He grabs the other one, and the cuffs yank both up. Her screams redouble as he gets a hold of her wrist and twists. He holds until she runs out of air, then lets up a fraction.

He’s expecting her to return to sobbing and begging any second now, but she just keeps thrashing. Her eyes are wild, rolling madly, and she’s even pulling against her own broken arm in her desperate attempts to get away – or to get her teeth back onto Riven’s skin.

Well then. If she won’t stop fighting, he can make her stop. With his free hand, he pulls the taser off his belt. The barbed prongs will make a much more reliable connection than the electrodes on the baton. He takes a step back to give the prongs room to separate in the air. One buries itself just under her ribs, the other in the top of her leg.

She screams, sucks in air and screams again. Riven holds the trigger down. After a second he swaps his hold on her wrists for a boot on the chain of the cuffs so that he can look down on her as she convulses. Her teeth are bared – still reddened with Riven’s blood – and her eyes are rolled back in her head. She claws at the floor, whole body juddering with artificial tension. 

Let the electricity exhaust her muscles. She’ll have a hard time fighting after just a few minutes.

Howling turns to thin, breathless screeches punctuated by ragged gasps. Still Riven holds it, taking the time to appreciate every line of her helpless, shuddering body, every agonized crease scored into her contorted face. 

Has he done worse than this to her before? If he has, it won’t be long before he surpasses it. There’s no rush.

When he finally lets up, Ari doesn’t have the wherewithal to move immediately. She sobs breathlessly, staring sightlessly through Riven at the ceiling above. After a few seconds, she finds the strength somewhere to curl weakly onto her side.

But still, when Riven lets up the pressure on her wrists and his leg gets close to her face, she snaps weakly at it with her teeth. Almost offended, he kicks her in the face – careful not to use too much force – and flips the shock back on.

With a few more lungfuls of air in her, she manages another solid scream.

“What happened to all those promises to behave?” Riven asks her, tsking his tongue in mock disappointment. “You’re hardly convincing me to go easy on you.” Between desperate, juddering breaths, she manages to snarl out a weak “fuck you.” Riven laughs. 

The wires on the taser are long enough to reach fully across the cell and then some. He drops it in the far corner, well out of her reach. It’ll run out of battery before it does her any serious harm.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells her, “I’m going to get a coffee. Don’t go anywhere now, okay?”

[Next]

[just-horrible-things]

'Verse: Resistance Alt: Chewtoy / Healer and Handler Crossover

What if : Chewtoy!Ari was assigned as kept!Alex's new handler

They've given her a healer, and Ari can barely focus on the shivering, bleeding creature on the cell floor because her head is completely full of the possibility of freedom.

They've taken her off Riven to give her a healer and she doesn't think they even realise what they've done because she was just a name and a serial number on a piece of paper to them and her record might be shit but that's why they've given her a ruined, useless healer she supposes, so it doesn't make too much difference if she fucks this up.

They don't know that she might bolt and never come back the instant they let her out the doors at the end of her shift.

The healer is looking up at her in sidelong glances like he's scared to be caught looking at her and she realises she's just been standing here looking at him for – probably too long. Long enough to be sliding from intimidating into just weird.

“What's the problem then?” she asks.

There's no question that she's going to run. She needs to get out before Riven catches up with her or before her new bosses realise she's not really one of them anymore and the trap snaps shut again.

“M-magic’s n-n-not working,” he stammers out, “I’m s-sorry sir I’m s-s-sorry.” “I know that,” she tells him testily. “Why isn't it working?” For a second he goggles at her like the question makes no sense, then fresh tears break out. “I’m t-trying, I-I swear I’m t-t-trying, i-it’s brok-ken, used u-up, s-sir.”

Ari doesn't care. She doesn't care what is wrong with a messed-up wreck of a healer, all she wants to be thinking about is getting out and she needs to make a plan, she needs to get this right because she only has one chance and if they catch her deserting she's going straight back to Riven in cuffs.

But step one has to be doing enough of the new job not to raise suspicions, at least until the end of the shift. And her job is still snivelling on the floor in front of her.

He's clearly too fucking terrified to give her any straight answers, and she'd better at least make a show of trying to do what she's supposed to be doing.

“Your hands are broken,” she observes. He gives her that terrified what-do-you-want-from-me look again. “Isn't healing a thing you do with your hands?” “Y-yes s-sir.” “So it's harder with them broken. “... y-y-yes sir.” Well that's an obvious place to start, at least. “Alright, give them here then.”

He sobs more apologies as she takes his hands for inspection. Most of the breaks aren't even straight, under the swelling. Why this is her job she can't fathom, but she's long since given up on looking for meaning in this place.

If she goes tonight, she needs a car, she needs as much cash as she can get out of her bank account… how fast can she arrange everything she needs?

If she stays more than a day, she has more chance to set everything up, but Riven has more time to catch up with her. 

“I'm coming right back,” she tells the healer absently. “I need to find splints.”

If they let her out tonight, she's not sure she'll be able to bring herself to come back here, even if she doesn't have a car or any money or anywhere to go. She's not sure she'll be able to stop herself just running, in any direction that's away, as far as her stupid throbbing feet will carry her.

Just her luck to get assigned a broken healer that can't even fix her up before she goes.

It takes longer than it should – and more nerve-wracking conversations with strangers – to figure out what supplies she's allowed to raid for splints and bandages. She almost gives up and resorts to pencils and zip ties, but she does eventually return to the cell with the supplies she needs.

God, can she even go back to her apartment for supplies? What if Riven’s waiting there for her? What if he's waiting outside the fucking doors, for that matter? Fear has a vice grip on her heart even though she's further from the threat of the whip than she has been in years.

The healer’s curled up on the floor again, but he struggles to his knees for her. She's brought a full bottle of water as well as the medical supplies, and the way his eyes fix on it tells her that it's sorely needed.

“You can have it as soon as I'm done with your hands,” she says.  He shrinks in on himself miserably at the very thought.  “I'm gonna set the bones straight, not break them worse. It's still gonna hurt though, and I don't want you just puking the water back up, so you'll have it after.”

He doesn't scream. He makes all kinds of noises that aren't quite screams, but he doesn't scream. Ari tries to do a good job. She's not sure what happens if she can't get him healing.

When he stops gasping like she's drowned him, she unscrews the cap from the water and holds it to his mouth. Only little sips until she's sure he's not gonna choke on it, then larger mouthfuls.

This part she's done a thousand times, and it does nothing to distract from the clamour of plans and fears and possibilities inside her skull.

She stops the prisoner before he's ready, but he only thanks her. He's about as pathetic as they come, so probably someone's been enforcing that attitude.

It makes this easier for Ari, at least.

“I've gotta clean your stripes too,” she tells him, “or you’re gonna get sepsis or something. And that probably doesn't make magic easier either. More water after, and maybe something to eat, does that sound good?” “Y-yes please, sir,”

She's gonna need to grab a stockpile of antibiotics for herself, too. If she's already deserting, a little petty theft probably won't make much difference – except it's another chance to get caught…

The healer whimpers and gasps his way through the ordeal of having his stripes rinsed and wiped out, but it's not as bad as setting his fingers. At least not until right at the end when she tips antiseptic over the whole lot and he jerks forward with a strangled, choked sound that might have been a scream if it hadn't caught him off guard with his lungs empty.

He sobs out more sorry. It's not clear what he thinks he's done, if anything. It doesn't matter.

“It's fine, you're fine. You haven't done anything wrong. Don't panic. I'm done touching, the burning will stop soon.” He turns teary, disbelieving eyes on her, but he quiets down.

Ari holds out the bottle with the last of the water in it. Reluctantly he shuffles round on his knees to get close to it.

“That's what I thought. I’ll bring you more of this when it's empty, yeah? And food. I'm gonna sort out your basic needs and then you're gonna feel a little bit better, alright?” “Thnk you, sir,” he mumbles around the mouth of the bottle.

He’s very cold. His fingers were cold to the touch, where the swelling should have been hot, and his back too, even where infection was setting in. She's not sure how to fix that. Is she allowed to move him somewhere warmer? Bring something warm to him? Like what, a hot water bottle?

She finds where to get clean scrubs for him, at least. She finds where the healers’ food is served from too, but it's the wrong time of day so she can't get any. She gets him an instant noodle cup instead. And because she can't imagine they'd think much of a request for a hot water bottle to give to a healer, she just fills the empty water bottle with hot water instead.

“This one's to drink, this one's for you to just, I don't know, hold.”

She puts it into his lap, since his hands don't really work. He makes a little oh of surprise as she he feels the heat against his skin, then starts thanking her profusely.

“Clothes first,” she cuts him off, “then food.”

He’s grateful for a scrub top to cover his bony ribs and mutilated back. Even if it seems completely inadequate for getting him warm. But he goes rigid as soon as she reaches for his waistband.

“There's no helping it,” she tells him, “you're filthy. Legs out.”

He cooperates, if stiffly, as she strips the blood-crusted clothes off him, and helps him into fresh replacements. It's the most she can ask for, really.

“All done. That's all.” “Thank you, s-sir,” he mumbles, avoiding her eyes.

She could tell him don’t. That he doesn’t have to thank her for not assaulting him. But what difference would it make. Other people are still going to rape him, or demand gratitude when they don’t. Simpler if he treats her the same way.

“When did you last eat?” He doesn’t have an immediate answer for her. “Not today,” she infers. “Not yesterday either? Have you eaten this week?” “Y-yes, sir.” “Alright. I’m not gonna give you this whole thing at once then, but you can have half now and if you keep it down you can have the other half in an hour or two, okay?” “Th-thank you, s-sir.”

She adjusts the bottle of hot water for him, tucking it closer against his stomach, before she picks up the noodles and the fork. The healer breathes in the smell coming off it. The flicker of his eyes from the food to her face and back again betrays his distrust, his expectation of betrayal. 

She holds a forkful to his mouth. He eats.

[just-horrible-things]

'Verse: Resistance, co-author @whump-sprite AU: Chewtoy Timeline: a ways in the future, Connor and Ari have been with the Resistance a while

Fun facts, this was actually originally plotted for a different scenario, but that's like... an AU of an AU of an AU or something and I haven't shared any of it on here so it wouldn't make sense to anyone. It works pretty well with Chewtoy so I've written it for her instead.

---

Sacrifice

The world slows and stops as Peyroux twists and falls. The same way it slowed and stopped when she fell off the roof of the community center as a child, leaving her suspended in the air. The way it stopped when she once thought Riven had actually shot her. 

There’s no time to react, no time even to form a coherent thought, but all the time in the world to feel the sick weightless drop of the end of everything.

She can see the spray of his blood suspended in the air like a film in slow motion, like maybe time will never move again.

And then the moment is gone and everything is moving too fast again, a kaleidoscope of deafening gunshots, raised voices, smoke and searchlights and the taste of blood.

She sees Taryn, dragging Peyroux into cover with a gesture. She sees the whites of Taryn’s eyes. 

Ari should be helping. She should be fighting. The wound in her side is not so bad it's not bleeding so fast that she couldn't be fighting. She should be helping Taryn. She should be doing anything but lying on the floor cowering but they’re going to take her back and she can't remember how to use her limbs, she can barely remember how to breathe.

The rattle of gunfire again. Screams. The feds are killing someone else and Ari shouldn't be glad but all she can think is not me, don't see me, don't take me. She thinks of the gun on her hip. Shame rolling in her stomach, she thinks of using it on herself. 

Connor would be gutted. Connor would understand. … wouldn't he?

Taryn is holding the blood inside Peyroux’s body. He took several hits, she wouldn't be able to do it with just her hands, but her magic covers his body like a constellation.

Ari should be helping. She should be fighting but what good would one more handgun do against their rifles when she can't even shoot straight?

Quiet. Maybe wounded sounds but she can't tell, the gunfire was too loud. Voices, yelling to be heard through ear plugs and the ringing in their ears. Checking in with each other, coordinating. Another shot. More quiet. Ari is trying so hard to stifle her breath but she can't stop gasping.

“Over here. I saw one go down.”

They’re coming her way. Terror roots her to the dusty concrete, paralysing her lungs. They’re going to catch her and all she can do is cower on the floor and beg the world not to see her like she’s five years old and afraid of the dark.

Boots stalk into her field of view. For a second she is sure she is absolutely sure that she is looking at Riven but he’s dead. It’s not Riven, of course it’s not Riven. But it might as well be. They’re going to see her any second now they’re going to find her.

No. The path he’s on will take him past her. They’re going to find Peyroux, and Taryn. He’s the one they saw go down.

For a second, a clarity she didn’t know she was capable of cuts through the panic. If they get Peyroux, they win. The state will get their way, they’ll dismantle the Resistance, they’ll kill and torture whoever they please and no one and nowhere will be safe. They’ll win.

In the same moment, the thing Ari has to do is crystal clear. It’s not even a choice it’s the only feasible course of action and it doesn’t matter that it scares her so much she’s going to be sick. Her life isn’t important. If she dies screaming it isn’t important. It won’t change the world.

She crawls. She lets go of her side, feeling the blood flow through her fingers, and drags herself across the floor by her elbows, knowing full well that the motion will draw attention to her position. The world is spinning around her. If she’s lucky she’ll bleed out before they get her into a black site.

She drags herself away from Peyroux and Taryn, towards the crates ahead of her like she’s trying to get to the better cover.

“Target spotted.”

Ari retches, tasting acid at the back of her mouth. Crawling isn’t a choice any more it’s a desperate futile scramble away from the man behind her. Trying to keep his hands off her just a few more seconds, just another breath, just another instant no no no please –

She screams when he stamps down on her leg. More from terror than pain, she only barely feels it. She twists, kicks at him, misses. He clocks her hard in the head with the butt of his rifle before she can get her gun off her belt, and prises it out of her hands while she’s reeling.

“Got her,” he declares with satisfaction as the cuffs close round her hands.

She loses consciousness, briefly, when he hefts her over his shoulder. The pressure against the gunshot wound is enough to black her out. When she comes to, the feds are retreating. She breathes lungfuls of cold outside air no longer full of smoke. 

How long was she out? Did they sweep the place before they gave up? Did they get Peyroux? Did she achieve anything or should she just have shot herself?

God she wishes she just shot herself. 

She can’t lift her head to try and find out, she can’t do anything but retch through the pain. It sears through every part of her, burning spots into her eyelids, and it’s only going to get worse, it only gets worse from here, she has signed herself up for hell and she should have done something else, anything else, why did she think anything could be worth this?

She doesn’t want to be a hero.

They haven’t even brought a van, they dump her into the trunk of a car. She blacks out again a second before the lid slams shut and plunges her into darkness.

It feels like the closest thing she'll ever have to safety again. She hopes it never opens again. She'd gladly starve in here. Die of thirst in her own shit. Better than what they'll do to her.

It feels like forever before they even start the engine. She tries to treasure every second but she is hyperventilating into the darkness and her lungs burn and she wills herself to bleed faster and she cannot feel anything but stark electric terror.

When they finally pull away, she keens, a pitiful drawn out sound that she cannot even feel in her throat let alone begin to stop.

With her hands cuffed behind her back, she can’t stop herself sliding around on the turns, knocking her head on the sides of the trunk. She barely feels it. She can’t feel anything past the well of twisting painful fear in her belly and chest, lungs on fire, heart pounding like it’s trying to explode. Her limbs, her skull, even the throbbing bullet hole in her side, all of them feel distant, wooden, like they belong to a distant dream.

Somewhere in the back of her head a hysterical little part of her is picturing a doll in a dryer, tossed about wildly at the whim of the machine as the car throws her this way and that.

The car stops too, too soon. Maybe she was unconscious again. Maybe she’s missed some of the last few precious minutes of not-agony left in her life. She sobs. She cannot breathe. She cannot breathe. 

The lid is thrown open. The light is blinding. She hears herself making terrified incoherent sounds. They bend down over her and she tries to cringe away from grabbing hands and there’s nowhere nowhere for her to go.

“Ari, it’s okay, I got you.” “T-Taryn–?” “Yes it’s me, I got you.”

The cuffs fall away from her wrists. Dizzy, uncomprehending, Ari reaches up towards the witch, towards a world that doesn’t make sense but carries the all-important promise of not torture. Did she hit her head?

Taryn picks her up in her arms like a child and Ari clings as hard as she can, sobbing into her shoulder. She doesn’t understand. Please god let this be real don’t let this be a delusion.

“Fuck, is that your blood?” Ari tries to answer, but her voice only makes another incoherent little sound. She nods instead. Almost at once there’s pressure over the wound in her side. She gasps at the sudden hot-knife pain, but it’s no more than she was already gasping.

“They would have killed Daniel if they found him,” Taryn says. “Thank you.”

Ari has nothing to say. She didn’t want to do it, she regretted it as soon as she’d done it, she’s not a hero, she doesn’t want to be. She couldn’t say anything if she wanted to. She can’t stop herself sobbing.

“Hey. Hey. You didn’t think I’d let them have you, did you?” Shame is a familiar heat in her skin. She feels sick. She shakes her head no, and tries feebly for an excuse. “God –” she manages, “-- I – too close.” Taryn’s arms are still round her. Taryn is authority. Taryn is safety. It’s so painfully childish but Ari wants her to never ever let go. “You were really brave. Let’s find Alex and fix this, okay?” “‘Kay,” Ari manages to mumble.

She doesn’t feel brave. She feels like a fucking coward. She knows she did a brave thing, it was terrifying, but it doesn’t feel real. All that’s real is the suffocating, paralyzing terror. The way that all the muscles in her body stopped working as soon as they got the cuffs on her. She didn’t even try to fight back.

She can tell by the movement that Taryn’s carrying her. She doesn’t care enough to lift her head and find out where. She’s surprised how soon a door opens. Where are they? It doesn’t matter. Taryn’s not running. Somewhere safe.

There are voices, getting closer. She tries to stop just fucking sobbing. They didn’t get her, she’s safe, she’s fine. She needs to pull herself together. Taryn sets her down on the end of a bed. Reluctantly, Ari lets go of her. She tries to stay sitting, but Taryn pushes her down onto her back. She supposes she has been shot.

It feels like only seconds before Alex is at Taryn’s shoulder. Ari tries to force a smile for him because she knows he worries, but the muscles of her face aren’t responding. “Gunshot wound,” Taryn tells him, “left lower abdomen.” “Oh, Ari, I’m sorry.” “S’okay,” she mumbles. “Not my first time.”

He puts a hand to her stomach, and the pain instantly dulls.

“Thank you, Alex.” “It’s not fully healed. Don’t move too much yet. I’m sorry, they’re still bringing people in…” “I know. Thank you.” He squeezes her hand. “Thank you,” he says. “Taryn told me.” Ari bites hard on the inside of her cheek to stop herself breaking back into tears.

And then Alex is gone, hurrying off to the next bed. Ari ought to follow him, she’s supposed to – no, wait, he told her not to move. Her head is spinning. He dulled the headache, too, that she didn’t even realize she had until it was better, and now her head feels weightless without it.

Taryn crouches beside her, in the narrow gap between the beds. She puts a hand on Ari’s shoulder. “You thought I’d let them have you,” she says. Ari wants to refute it. She doesn’t think she convincingly can. She makes a vague little sound that isn’t a yes or a no. “Look at me.” It’s a suggestion not an order, she does know that, but her head still snaps up before she has a chance to decide whether she wants to or not. Taryn looks her dead in the eyes. “Over my dead body,” she says solemnly.

Ari swallows and nods. It doesn’t feel real. If it’s true it shouldn’t be. She isn’t anyone important. “You could’ve been dead,” she points out. “I wasn’t sure.” “Then someone else would come get you.” It’s meant to reassure her. But she knows it’s not true. People get taken all the time. It doesn’t matter if they’d want to save her. They want to save everyone. She’s just so, so lucky Taryn was able to catch up.

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Resistance AU: Chewtoy, Alt: Bad End

4 - Whip [First | Prev | Next]

It takes a long time before she's able to stop squirming and hurting herself. Before she's able to find some balance on the balls of her feet that only just reach the concrete when the chain is vertical in the very centre of its arc. To find the right angle, the right tension in every part of her trembling body to afford her broken arm the slightest reprieve from her body weight. 

The blood trickles down her front, painting vertical tracks of red over the horizontal lines of scars. Her voice grows hoarser and hoarser. The gaps between howls where she gasps for air get shorter.

Riven gets himself a cup of water from the sink, then takes a trip to the break room to get another coffee instead, and comes back.

Maybe she's a little high on the chain if it's taking her this long to right herself. 

He lets it out a little, just enough for her to get her feet flat and stop staggering back and forth. Not that she thanks him, of course. Stubborn bitch. He cranks it one notch higher, then another, bringing her back up on the balls of her feet again – but not straining quite so hard for it. 

She takes the reprieve about how he expects – with deep shuddering breaths and as much stillness as she can muster.

He makes a bit of a show of unclipping the whip from his belt and uncoiling it in front of her. She watches with dull hostility, but she can't hide her dread. Her breath gets shallower, faster. 

His daily carry is shorter than the full bullwhip and doesn't cut as deep, but he wants the easier precision. There's time to really lay her open later. The hardened tip still splits skin.

As he walks round behind her, she twists and cranes her head back between her arms to try and follow. Yeah, this is a better height. She's got a little bit more room to try and keep her balance.

The first lash snaps across her calves, just testing the edges of her resolve. She exhales a sharp sound of pain, then a half-stifled sob, but she doesn't flinch away.

“Good.”

His instinct is to keep the strikes horizontal, parallel with her existing stripes. So he goes with that. Why not. Another slice across the calves, then one across the back of the thighs. More pained gasps, but no motion more than twitches. She's had a good education in holding still. 

He swings the whip low across the floor. The angle on the first attempt isn't quite right, and the leather snaps against the concrete. She flinches and squeaks almost the same as if he had hit her, and Riven laughs.

On the second try, his aim is true. The whip strikes hard across the soles of both feet. She literally jumps, higher than he would have guessed she still could – and then lands, stumbles, howls as it wrenches her arms.

Across the back of the thighs again while she's still staggering, and again, testing whether she can regain her footing despite it. She can. Not instantly, but she can.

“Good,” he praises again.

She's still trying to glare daggers at him, but her eyes are flooded with tears. 

Again across the thighs, just below the ass. Again across the calves. Low, and it clips the concrete and spends some of its force before it hits her feet, but it's still enough that her flinch makes her scream.

Again, again, again, up and down her legs, and she watches with her head craned back but predicting where the whip will fall does her no good. She can't avoid it.

A strike to the back of her knees sets her stumbling again. Her feet are a winner every time, no matter how much she grits her teeth and tries to prepare. Blood dribbles down her skin to paint the floor beneath her with smudged, bloody prints. 

Riven circles, hitting her from all angles. Painting red across her shins and the front of her knees. She's gonna be grateful to be allowed to kneel on those stripes when he lets her down.

Occasionally he lands a lash higher, just to keep her guessing. Vertically up her spine. Across her chest, cutting into the softer flesh there. Across her stomach.

Her voice is failing on her, just like he predicted. Not gone yet, but hoarser and hoarser and cutting out at unpredictable intervals. She stops watching the whip. It isn't helping her anyway. Instead her eyes fix on some nothing up in the corner of the ceiling.

When her squeals dull to exhausted gasps and grunts, Riven finally lets the whip lick higher still. The tip of the leather, the hardened section that moves fastest and cuts deepest, lands squarely over her broken arm. She squeals – and then passes out. 

For a few seconds she's limp, dangling helplessly from the chain. Then, as she comes round, she squirms and twitches and starts to thrash. It takes her a minute to find her footing and her grip on the chain.

He does it again. 

By the time she's steady again she's sobbing hysterically, sounding like she can barely breathe. The noise is sticky and wretched with snot and tears. 

As Riven closes in she whines a barely decipherable “ple-e-e-easir–!”.

Riven hums, pleased, and runs his hands down her sides. Her head is still tipped right back, almost upside down, her mouth open wide to gasp for air. He drags a thumb across her cheeks and over her upper lip, leaving a smear of her blood.

“-- lea - e - e-eas –” 

Smiling, Riven strokes up her arm until he feels the swelling beneath his fingers, the heat through the thin leather of his gloves. 

“That's my girl,” he purrs. “That's the girl I know, hm?”

She sobs, and sobs, eyes distant with desperate exhaustion. 

Riven's fingers trail up and down her forearm, just barely grazing the swollen skin. He finds one of the new cuts and traces that, fresh blood still slick under his fingertips.

“Remembering how to beg?” he prompts. 

When he doesn't get an answer he digs his fingers in, just enough to draw a moan from her throat.

“Beg. Me. For mercy,” he commands, breath low against her upturned face.

She whimpers, but she doesn't answer. She just stares with vacant, terrified eyes.

Maybe she's just had enough for today. But anger flares hot and ugly in Riven's chest. He squeezes hard enough to make her yell, and steps back. He doesn't have to hold back anymore. He doesn't have to play careful with her feelings. She doesn't get to set her own limits anymore. 

The whip makes her scream. He doesn't stop when she loses consciousness. She comes round to the lash still falling. 

Under the sustained assault she loses all semblance of control. She squirms and struggles, and goes limp, and wakes and struggles again, and Riven lays into her until his arm burns.

He only stops when she goes limp and stays that way for more than a handful of seconds. Then he throws down the whip, stalks to the wall, and disengages the ratchet to let the chain run freely. Ari crumples like a corpse, an undignified tangle of limbs and bleeding skin. Riven watches until she starts to stir.

Then he stalks over and toes her in the ribs to get her attention. She doesn't look at him. Her eyes are open and staring, but fixed on nothing.

“Pussy,” he tells her. “Here I thought you could handle a little pain.”

He throws her over his shoulder to take her back to her cell. She convulses, but she doesn't have the strength left to meaningfully fight. 

Inside the cell, he dumps her down against the wall, then yanks her up by the cuffs. Her scream cuts off halfway, becoming a voiceless whistle. Riven clips her cuffs to the wall so that they're above her head with her on her knees. The right cuff is already embedding in the flesh as it swells around the steel.

Before Riven’s even let go of her she's flopped forwards against the wall for all the support it can offer. Her feet trail out behind her and he stamps hard on one to make her scream again. Her convulsion knocks her face into the wall and he hears her teeth clack together. His boot grinds down until her back arches. 

Then he leaves her. She needs at least a few hours to recover some wits. And he needs to cool off. Before he ruins her too fast. 

He sets Corey to watch Ari and make sure she stays up on her knees and doesn’t pass out and choke and die. Then he runs a finger down the current list of inmates. 216. That rat is basically waiting for execution. Riven can go break bones until his temper’s sated, and if the piece of trash dies after, no one will care.

[Next]

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Resistance AU: Chewtoy, Alt: Bad End Timeline: close to the end

Fever Dog [First | Prev]

A dog barks at the end of its chain. Barks, and barks, and barks. Sharp, echoey sounds like rocks falling into a well. Is this what a dog sounds like? Bark, and bark, and bark, pulling at the chain and the chain clinks and the dog barks.

They kick the dog. Every day, in his heavy boots, steel-toed boots with scuffs on with thick black polish on. He kicks the dog and it yelps, it whines, it whimpers, it growls, and always it gets hit. In rain and in snow and in sweltering summer heat and the smell of tarmac. The dog yelps, barks, growls, whines, sunrise sunset.

The sun wheels across the sky, kaleidoscope shadows, red sun yellow sun long shadows like a nature film and that click-click-click-click film reel noise they used to play at the start of movies. Sunrise sundown sunrise sundown or the sky is still and the world is spinning full circle, upside down, dizzying, unrelenting.

Bark, bark, bark, bark, there is the dog again. At the end of its chain and howling. Every day beaten and kicked but when he calls to it every day it comes slinking, snarling, low to the ground miserable but it comes to his call. 

He is calling now but the dog is still barking. Does it hear him? Does it hear him over the sound of its own voice? Does it even hear itself or is the bark bark bark so constant it is nothing, just nothing, just noise, and the dog doesn’t even know.

Every day the beating and the dog still crawls but sometimes a kicked dog bites. One day the kicked dog bites, and buries its teeth in his throat and shakes him like a rat. One day the dog remembers it is a dog with finger-long teeth and jaws that clench hold strain ache hurt cling bite bite.

—

Riven curses, and slaps her upside the head. It doesn’t dislodge her grip, just jolts her teeth in his skin. 

“Where the fuck did that come from?” 

He thought she was out cold, or near as. Eyes pointed at nothing, unresponsive to his hands and to the kiss of the knife. 

He digs the fingers of his free hand into the muscles of her jaw. When that doesn’t work, he gets a hold of her by the nose to prise her jaw open by force until he can yank his hand free. The skin tears a little further, caught on her lower teeth.

She snaps after him, teeth clacking together like a mechanical trap. She still has those dead eyes, not even looking at him.

“Dirty little bitch,” he growls, “I knew you were still in there.”

Ignoring the blood trickling down his fingers, he grabs one of her shattered hands and twists, feeling the shards of bone grind together between his fingers. That’s gonna have to come off soon before it poisons her blood.

She arches her back and screams – or tries. Her voice is a wisp of a thing as ruined as her body, more breathy hiss than real scream. Ribs move unnaturally under her skin as her chest heaves for air.

“You want to die, bitch?” he hisses. “I know you do. Beg me, and I might consider it.” Still the same vacant stare, not even looking at him. “You remember how to beg? You used to be so good at this.” Stubborn bitch hasn’t begged since the first week. She thinks she can win this?

He twists her hand again. She arches her back and tries to scream.

“Don’t pretend you can’t fucking hear me, you can’t pretend after you fucking bit me.” He slaps her with his bitten hand, leaving a smear of his blood across her cheek, brighter than the caked-on stains of her own blood.

Her teeth clack in the air again.

Seething with fury, Riven pushes down on her chest until he feels the crack of bone slipping against bone. She convulses, limbs twitching, mouth open in a futile gasp.

Still the same empty fucking eyes, faking like she isn’t even processing. Maybe he should rip them out.

—

The dog has its teeth in her flesh. The bark bark bark runs through the meat like waves in jelly. Bark bark agony bark. Raw splitting burning meat cracking and turning to black under the sun. Lungs full of crumpled paper, crackling on every breath. Bark, bark, bark.

[just-horrible-things]

Dark!Resistance x Chewtoy!Ariadne Interrogation

The ka-clunk of the cell door is final. 

One day I'm gonna close this on you for real. 

Ari sprawls shuddering and gasping on the concrete where hundreds have shuddered and gasped out their last painful breaths, where they have broken and screamed and pleaded for mercy that never ever comes.

Their ghosts are in the concrete with the stains with the echo of their screams. The cell is hungry for pain and death and Ari is just the latest in a long long line of victims and she's choking on her terror and the nightmare hasn't even started. 

There are so so many ways to ruin a human body and she is guilty of so many of them and if they do to her even a fraction of what she's done to their kind she will lose her mind she will be nothing but pain and pain and terror and desperation and they don't have to stop there. 

How much more to fear when they have every tool she's ever used and then magic besides, when they could set her alight with a gesture or strip the skin from her flesh or a hundred hundred things she can't even imagine and they can keep her alive as long as they like. 

She hopes for Riven, for the feds to drive out the invaders because even if they make her a traitor and a prisoner and Riven gets to kill her slowly at least it will be finite, at least she knows he can't keep his toys alive forever. 

She hopes for a warlock angry enough that they'll kill her then and there and she should have died fighting, should have done everything she could to make them kill her because she might have died screaming but at least it would be minutes or seconds not months or years. 

She has no sense of time passing. She is sobbing onto the concrete and then a little later she is just hyperventilating and then later still she is just panting and snivelling. Her arms went numb at some point. The sounds outside get clearer as her ears recover but she can make little sense of the clamour. It's all voices and gunfire, screams and orders and banging and then it is quieter and then louder again and it all rattles around indecipherably in her skull with the terror. 

It doesn't matter what's happening out there. Nothing matters to prisoners except when there will next be pain. Her world is this cell now and she wasn't ready, no one is ever ready, she should have done something anything everything differently to end up anywhere but here but maybe she's been falling her whole life and she was never going to end anywhere but here. 

When the door finally bangs open she doesn't get time to beg for mercy. An unseen force throws her against the back wall. Her arms – still pinned behind her back – do a little to cushion her back, but the jolt to straining, burning shoulders is not worth it.

The sound she makes is less a yelp and more just the ooff of the air knocked out of her. When she's dropped – hard impact on one shoulder – she has no breath for anything but a comedic squeak.

The warlock’s boots – brown, scuffed and starting to fall apart – stop close to her face. With her arms pinned, Ari can't even shield her face. She gasps, and gasps, lungs refusing to fill. 

“No fight?” the warlock taunts. It cuts through the fog of panic just a fraction. Words, she should use words. “-- no, sir –!” “No sir,” he echoes, imitating her breathless squeak. “Wow, am I sir now I'm the one with the keys?” “Yes. Sir. Please –” He makes a disgusted sound in his throat, and kicks her in the stomach. 

It's about as hard as Riven would kick her. It hurts but it could be harder. Hope flares. “Whadyouwant?” she forces from empty lungs, “I'll, I'll – coop’rate – sir.” “Pathetic.” He drawls the word. If it's meant to sting she's too scared to feel it. Pathetic doesn't matter. 

She twitches in an instinctive bid to curl up, and the pain creaks audibly in the shoulder underneath her. She makes a pitiful sound in the back of her throat.

“Alright, bootlicker.” That same whole-body force takes her in its invisible grip again. She yelps as the ground falls out from under her. “Give me a good reason not to take you apart just to hear you scream.”

He sets Ari on her knees, and she very nearly falls back over immediately. To catch herself she doubles forwards – back splitting, shoulders searing – over her knees. 

“I'll – I'll talk – you want talk? or –” Anything else he could want is worse but god what does it matter. “-- whatever you want I'll – suckyourcock or – f’lloworders or – anythingwhateveryouwant.”

Anything if it isn't paying in screams for everything she's done to his kind, anything that isn't him ripping her to pieces right here right now anything to put it off just a little longer.

Another snort of disgust. Ari flinches expecting another blow. She knows exactly what she looks like. Coward selling out under the slightest pressure, torturer fucking terrified of torture, faithless spineless traitor to everything and everyone. She doesn't care. She's all those things and she doesn't care.

“Talk’s a good start,” her interrogator finally concedes. Ari could sob, she could kiss him. She has something he wants besides screams. “Start with your friends. Who's who around here, who's in charge.”

So she talks. She trips over her tongue trying to talk faster than her stupid stuttering panic will let her. Most of what she says is fucking useless she's sure – he doesn't even bother writing much of it down – but he lets her talk.

She can tell he doesn't think much of her eagerness to throw her colleagues under the bus but fuck them, fuck every single one of them. If Ari's dying a bad death here so the fuck are they. Every single one of them could have helped her and did nothing.

When she runs out of things to say about her ““friends”” the warlock quizzes her on the layout of the building. She doesn't understand half the questions, all left-from-the-right and double-doors-this and practically every door in the building is a double door which doors does he mean? 

He gets frustrated trying to match her gibbering to his questions and his anger makes it harder to think, he's going to start hurting her any second and she can't –

He slaps her. 

When that doesn't shock sense out of her he slaps her again. Ari’s lungs loosen a fraction, enough to pull in deeper breaths, enough to get more words out. 

She has time. He's not escalating fast. Her eyes are wet from the sting in her face. She keeps on trying to answer his questions. Gradually he hashes out sense from her confusion.

She tells him where all the locks and alarms and security centers she knows about are. She tells him everything she can remember about security protocols that are 100% not relevant anymore if he's here holding the keys and interrogating her but he listens. He lets her talk. It's something to say to appease him.

She gets the impression he's curious how much she can come up with. Dread keeps her babbling. When she runs out of information, he runs out of reasons not to take her apart. 

He asks for her login to the IT systems. Ari starts to tell him without hesitation but when she gets to her password she cannot remember. She just stops, mouth open, feeling the gears jam insie her head. She types this shit every fucking day, multiple times a day but there's just a gaping fucking hole in her thoughts where the answer should be.

The warlock hits her, harder than before. A solid punch across her jaw that sends her sprawling. For a few seconds her face and the shoulder she lands on are the only things she feels, bright and sharp enough to numb out everything else.

“I, I can,” she promises, “I will I just – forgot – I just – needasecond – just –”

He gives her a second. Several, while she pants against the concrete and rattles frantically at the empty space in her head. 

He taps his foot impatiently, very close to Ari's face. 

“I c-can’t remember – I’mtryingIswear – I could – type it, giveme a keyboard I could type it–”

He kicks her, and keeps kicking her. Ari yelps, and squirms, and howls, and the world narrows as she thrashes trying to roll and failing. There’s nothing else only his feet and her fragile body and the snap of ribs caving in and her panicked pointless squirming and he puts a boot on her back and wrenches her arms up til she’s shrieking.

“Sorry! SorrysirI'msorry! Please!” “Oh shut the hell up. What are you, a child? Cut the pitiful crap, we both know you don't deserve a shred of mercy.”

Ari fights back sobs. He's going to rip her arms out of their sockets and that's only the start. It's only the start he's going to take her to pieces and she can do nothing.

The pressure relents, if only a fraction. Ari chokes on another sob. She’s breathing. She’s still breathing. Her ribs aren’t broken or – not many, not badly. She isn’t drowning blood. She’s breathing. Her arms are still attached to her body.

“Still can’t remember that password?” “No – sir – I’m sorry –” “Shut it. Fine. We'll come back to it.” It’s mercy. If he was Riven she'd thank him. He doesn't want to hear it. She doesn't know what else she can say. “Let's get to the important shit.” A fraction more pressure, forcing her to try and arch her back under his boot. Just a reminder of the power he holds as if she could possibly forget. 

The important shit is plans, protocols, overarching policy that Ari has mostly never even heard of. Even when she has some idea what he’s talking about she knows only the faintest outlines of what the rest of the department, the rest of the fucking government get up to.

He asks questions, and she guesses, or she lies, desperately trying to fill in the gaps. She isn’t any better at lying than at anything else. She tries to be vague to cover for her ignorance and he doesn’t want vague he wants dates, times, names. Raid plans, emergency protocols, heads of sub-departments. Where backup is likely to be coming from and when and how many.

“I don't know,” Ari is forced to admit. She knows it’s the wrong answer but her head is too blank to invent anything better. “I don’t know sir, I’m sorry, I’d tell you, I don’t know I don’t have clearance.”

She repeats it over and over. She stammers it into the concrete. She wails it as he leans pressure on her bound shoulders yet again and the joints creak and grind and spasm and threaten to give way. She sobs it frantically, pitifully as his temper climbs.

He throws her at the wall again. He kicks her. He hauls her up by her arms only to hit her and send her sprawling. He crushes her face into the concrete with the blood-soaked sole of a boot.

None of it is too far none of it is breaking her she knows he’s holding back and giving her a chance but she can’t tell that to the fear inside of her. The panic is out of all proportion, out of control, clawing wild through body and mind and leaving her thrashing and fighting and sobbing apologies all at the same time.

“Cut it out,” the warlock is growling. She’s face down again, his bruising grip on her arms trying to hold her. “Cut it out, stop squirming, shut the fuck up and listen to me.”

She wants to, she means to, she knows she needs to obey or he's going to really hurt her but the fear has other ideas and she doesn’t mean to but she kicks out at him again and even the spike of pain as her heel connects is barely felt, it's nothing to what he's going to do she needs to stop–

Her arm gives way – not at the shoulder where she expects it but the forearm – a sick crack and pain – real tearing serious pain as bone snaps. Every twitch is now – hot white pain – pulling – broken bone grinding on bone and – even the mad animal in her doesn’t take long to understand to hold still. 

Her head is ringing. Her breath is burning in her throat. Someone on the other side of concrete – someone not her – is screaming.

“Do I have to keep breaking things or are you going to lie fucking still?” Ari doesn't trust herself to answer without babbling again. Is laying fucking still answer enough? His grip shifts, and a high, thin whine slips out of her. “None of that. Answer the damn question. Are you gonna talk to me, or are you just gonna thrash and scream on the floor?” “Talk,” she manages. Her voice is a croak. “Sir.”

He drops her arm – both her arms – and despite her promise she bucks and kicks at the floor again in a futile, instinctive bid to escape the knives through the break and through both shoulders. The warlock steps back and lets her thrash.

He gives her time. He waits until she can see again, until she’s able to swallow back the pathetic sound she’s making, until she’s still. 

Numb fingers twitch at her sides, felt only as spikes up and down the nerves. Ari pants open-mouthed like a dog, and lies fucking still, and waits for instruction.

“Let's try that again.”

Again, and it will be worse this time, and worse, and worse, over, and over, until she is nothing but a twitching, suffering lump of meat. She chokes on nothing, desperate not to start panicking again.

“Pull yourself together.” Contempt drips from his every word. “I've barely hurt you. You've done far worse.” Ari tries to breathe deeper. He's right, she knows he is. Her breaths come ragged and choppy but she manages at least a little control. “Up. C’mon, let me get a look at you.”

Her broken arm drags, but she doesn't need her arms to get up on her knees. The warlock looks down at her – her blotched, sticky face, the fresh tears in her eyes – without sympathy. 

“God, you're for real, aren't you.” Ari snivels, and says nothing. She doesn’t know what he wants. “I didn't know they made ‘em this fucking weak. I thought you were supposed to be… elite special agent whatevers. Well. Chill the fuck out. You stop fucking kicking me and I won't break any more bones. Capiche?” When she nods, the world blurs around her. “Yes, sir,” she whimpers.

“So talk to me. Tell me how you expect me to believe you don't have “clearance” for anything.” “I’m – I’m just a grunt, sir. It’s need-to-know – everything’s need-to-know it’s – I don’t – I don’t need to know so they don’t tell me – anything, sir.”

Under her fingers, through the sting of reawakening nerves, she can feel the edge of the bone pressing at the inside of her skin. If it was Riven he wouldn’t have let go, he wouldn’t be letting her cradle the arm against her chest. He wouldn’t be giving her the space to put her words in order. She tries to hold onto that.

“It’s, it’s in our files,” she volunteers. “There’s, somewhere there’s files on all of us and it says what clearances we have – there’s, codes for everything, different teams and, operations, and ranks, and – you need someone more important than me, sir, I’m sorry, you need, Maclauren or, or Bloome, or – someone more important than me. I-it’s in our files, it says what we’re allowed to know.”

The warlock sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks at Ari cringing on her knees, and she swallows back more apologies. He doesn’t want to hear it. She can practically hear his thoughts – great, the only one who wants to talk to him and she’s fucking useless – well they don’t put people like her in charge of anything, do they. She isn’t brave enough to say so. He’ll figure it out himself or he won’t.

He has a few more questions for her. She’s still no use, but he doesn’t hit her again. She starts to hope that maybe he believes she really doesn’t know – and she dreads the thought too, because if she’s not any use for talking, she is only good for entertainment or revenge or – whatever they want to call it. There’s no good outcome here. All she can do is try to earn less-bad.

“We’re not done with you,” the warlock tells her as he leaves. “No, sir,” she agrees miserably. “I’ll cooperate, I swear I’ll keep cooperating.” “Yeah,” he says, “We’ll see. Don’t forget I want your fucking password.”

The door swings shut and locks with a ka-clunk.

One day this door’s gonna close on you and never open again.

Ari shuffles herself to the back corner of the cell. She leans her less bad arm against the wall. She expects to cry, but there are no tears. Just full-body shudders to keep her broken arm burning no matter how she tries to hold it. She rests her head against the wall’s cool concrete, and she breathes.

[just-horrible-things]

'Verse: Resistance AU: Chewtoy, Alt: What if Connor's "right way" worked out

Dust

Connor drives her home. Ari sits in the passenger seat, stiff and numb, feeling her stripes through the bandages and the unfamiliar dull of the painkillers they made her take.

It doesn’t feel real.

The last time she let herself hope it was real, Connor betrayed her.

She has all of the documentation that proves it’s real right here, in an envelope clutched too-tight between sweaty, trembling fingers.

It’s not going to stick. Riven’s going to find some way to drag her back. She feels it as a leaden weight in her chest, crushing her lungs down into her stomach.

Connor tries to get her to talk, asking questions she cannot possibly answer like what’s she going to do now. She mumbles “don’t know” and does not look at him.

She ought to be trying to drink in the sight of outside while it lasts, but she barely sees the buildings rolling past the windows.

Eventually he parks up in a lot that she recognises but cannot find any familiarity in. She knows where she is, but all the shapes are alien. She gets out of the car. 

Connor gets out too, and gets the meagre bag of Ari’s belongings from the back before she can get to it. Ari holds out her hand for it. He looks like he didn’t expect her to take it, but he hands it over.

He follows her into the building. She wants to tell him to fuck off but – it’s pretty fucking ungrateful, isn’t it. He did get her out. She shouldn’t still be angry with him.

In the elevator she turns her keys over and over in her hands like they’re some foreign artefact. Connor is quiet, perhaps finally understanding that she doesn’t want to talk.

The lock on her front door is no stiffer than she remembers it. She supposes that with no weather inside the apartment block, there’s no reason for it to stiffen up with disuse. Reluctance hits her like a wave. She doesn’t want to open the door. But with Connor watching, she doesn’t hesitate.

The first thing that strikes her is the smell. A cold, damp smell, of dust and mildew and god she hopes there isn’t too much mold.

The second thing is the dust. A thin, off-grey layer coats absolutely everything. The carpet, the couch, the cabinet, the bookshelves she never fully filled, the windowsill, the printer, the paper she left out, the unwashed plate still balanced on the arm of the couch…

She knew, she knew to expect it, but christ it’s going to take a long time to clean up.

She can’t feel the dust through her boots, that’s ridiculous. But she thinks she can. Grime under her soles, gritty and greasy. All the doors still stand ajar where she presumably left them.

“How long…” When she looks back, Connor is still lingering at the front door. His tone has changed, blunt pragmatism softened and hollowed out by surprise and a pity that makes Ari’s skin crawl. “I lost track,” she answers without feeling. “About three years.”

There’s insect dirt all over the kitchen floor. Fuck, what did she leave in the cupboards? Probably pasta, rice… She’s not even going to think about the fridge yet. That’s a problem for another day. In fact, the whole kitchen is a problem for another day. Priorities. She makes for the bedroom instead.

It’s going to be grim, she knows. If there’s mildew in the sheets she might have to chuck them. But if it’s just dust it should wash out…

“Why don’t you stay at my place tonight,” says Connor. Ari looks back. He’s stepped into the apartment now, but not far enough to close the door behind himself. “Or… as many nights as you need.”

Why, so you can cuff me to your couch again?

Ari bites her tongue. “It’s fine,” she says. “It won’t take too long to clear a space to sleep. I can work on the rest later. Over the… the next few weeks. It’s not like I have anything else to do.”

She doesn’t want to look at him. She pushes the bedroom door open instead – avoiding the dust-coated handle – to take in the layer of grime and mold coating everything that used to be hers. 

A wide swathe of black mold is creeping up the outside wall, all spots and streaks. Well fuck. Maybe she isn’t sleeping in here any time soon. That’s going to take a shitload of scrubbing to get rid of.

“‘Anything else to do’ – Ari, you need to take time to recover. The doctor said rest, you can’t be – deep cleaning an entire apartment.”

Her bedsheets are still rumpled, unmade, the dust highlighting all the untidy folds. She doesn’t remember the last day she woke up here. She didn’t know she wasn’t coming back.

“We’ll get a cleaning company.” Connor is still talking. “And you can stay with me until this place is fit for human habitation.”

Anger is sick and bitter in the back of her throat. Her fingers are tight on the doorframe – too tight, she makes an effort to relax before Connor sees the white of her knuckles.

“Or… if you don’t want to stay with me, we can book you into a hotel.” “Here is fine.” She tries not to snap it, and instead her voice comes out thick and choked. She digs her fingernails into the palm of her hand. “Here is a biohazard,” Connor fires back. “You are not sleeping here, you’ll get… mold in your lungs or something.”

Her stupid childish posters are still on the wall, actors she no longer gives a shit about succumbing slowly to the encroaching mold. Movies get nothing right anyway.

It’s better than a cell – but she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t want his pity, she doesn’t want –

She stiffens, sensing Connor’s approach without looking round. She’s ready to shrug a hand off her shoulder, ready to pull away without giving in to the impulse to lash out – but he doesn’t touch her. He stops out of arm’s reach. Reluctantly she turns to face him.

Their feet have left prints in the dust.

“Come with me,” he says. It’s almost, almost a request, but even now he’s telling her, not asking. Even though she’s supposed to be free now, why would anyone ever ask Ari to do anything?

She’s trembling, and she hates it.

“Let’s go and get something to eat, and set you up with a decent place to sleep, and we can figure out what to do about –” an encompassing gesture “-- this later.” 

We, we, we. Inviting himself into her life – such as it is.

“I’m not yours,” she snaps. The look he gives her is withering. “Jesus, Ari. You’re not anyone’s. What crazy crap did he put in your head?” Ari flushes, the kind of head-to-toe flush that makes her face and her fingers and the soles of her feet itch. “Sorry,” she mumbles, “The, um, the drugs, I’m not... thinking clearly…” “Yet another reason not to tackle this today.”

Her shoulders are shaking. She feels like once upon a time she would have been crying, but there are no tears.

She doesn’t want to be here. This moldering shell of the life she used to have isn’t a home. It’s the cast off skin of a teenager who doesn’t exist anymore.

“Come on,” Connor repeats. “This is… day one. You don’t have to tackle everything at once.” Reluctantly, eyes fixed on the dusty carpet, she nods.

So she trails after him like a ghost as he leads her back out of the apartment. She locks up without needing to be told, and puts the jagged shapes of the keys back into her pocket. They ride the elevator down in silence.

It’s only when he expects her to get back into his car that she balks.

“If they,” she fumbles, “if, if I have to…” Connor stops half-in-half-out of the car. He looks at her struggling, fidgeting at her bag, and settles on out. He leans his elbows on the top of his car to listen to Ari as she tries to find her tongue. “If they change their minds, and they — want me back, want me to go back –” “You’re not going back.” “-- I don’t thi– no, I won’t survive it again.” “Ari, listen to me. You’re not going back. If they change their minds, I will tell them that I lost you and I will make sure you get out of the country. But they won’t change their minds, –” “What about – not being a traitor, not putting your, your job and your life on the line, not – letting me desert –” The words are tumbling out of her now. “What about – people seeing you with me and – CCTV and –” “Ari.” “-- and your fucking duty – aren’t you gonna jump to it if they call you back to fucking heel? Aren’t you gonna drag me back in if they decide I’m the traitor and Riven was – is –” “Ari.”

She shuts up. She hates herself for it, for responding to the anger in his voice with instant compliance.

“I’m not taking you back again. I told you – if this way doesn’t work, I will find another way. I’m not taking you back for Riven to kill you, or for anyone else to do it. If they try to call you back or frame you as the bad guy here… that’s a blatant perversion of the law, and I will not go along with it.” Ari almost laughs. She swallows hard, tries to disguise it as a cough. “Didn’t I tell you I was getting you out?” he presses. “And here you are.”

“Swear it,” Ari demands. She doesn’t know where it comes from. “Swear you won’t – give me back to them, no matter what they say.” It’s a stupid thing to ask for. Why would a promise to her carry more weight than his oaths to President and country? “I swear it. No matter what.”

Ari exhales shakily. She wants to run from him, run from here. Grab everything that’s worth anything from the apartment and run and run and never look back. Not trust Connor, or anyone else, ever again, and just pray that when they change their minds she’s far enough away that finding her isn’t worth the effort, and – live however she has to, sleep in the trash if she has to and stay under the radar and –

“... Will you get in the car?”

Feeling numb, Ari nods.

[just-horrible-things]

'Verse: Resistance AU: Chewtoy Timeline: Ari in captivity

Slow

When Riven claps Ari on the back, his hand comes away wet with fresh blood. “What's this?” he says, eyeing the red smear with distaste. “Blood.” “No shit. Who else is cutting you up?” “No one.” Irritation colours Ari’s tone. “I just reopened something. It's nothing.” “Show me.”

The instruction is only for show. He doesn't give her a chance to refuse or comply, he just yanks the back of her top free of her waistband and lifts it to expose her back. Ari bears it in sullen silence as his fingers prod and pry at the tender edges of the wounds. 

“You've been picking at this.” “I have not.” “Liar.” He swipes at the back of her head lazily enough that she ducks under it. “I have not,” she insists, “it's the middle of my back and I can barely fucking reach it, how would I be picking at it?”

He folds more of her shirt into his hand to better hold her still, and uses it to jerk her back into position for him to pry at her stripes. He presses down over the bleeding one briefly, as if to halt the steady seep of blood, only to immediately pry it open again with his nails. Ari hisses, and squirms perfunctorily.

“What is it? You finding lint in there or something?” Riven just hums, and clicks his tongue. “Is it infected? What are you looking at?” In spite of the pain she twists to try and look over her own shoulder.

“What’s wrong with you?” Riven demands. “What’s wrong with me.” Exhaustion saps the force from her incredulity. “What do you mean what’s wrong with me, that’s what I just–” “I mean, are you sick or something?” He runs his palm down her spine and she tries to step forwards again to get away from it. “You tell me,” she snaps. “What’s wrong with my back?”

She touches the stripes herself – not the one just beneath her shoulderblades that’s bleeding, but her lower back where she can reach. Her fingertips find the same scabs as usual, the same warm, tender skin between the cuts, no more swollen or painful than she expects.

She checks every day for infection. She takes antibiotics.

“If you didn’t want them to pull open you could give me less heavy lifting.” He tries to smack her again, catching just the very top of her head as she ducks it down. There’s not a lot of force in it. “I’m just saying. Sir.”

“These are a week old,” he says, finally releasing his grip on Ari’s shirt. “They shouldn’t still be bleeding.” Ari steps away from him promptly, tugging her shirt back down firmly to her hips. She doesn’t bother tucking it back in yet. He might not be done.

She can’t muster the defiance to glare at him, or the humility to plead with her eyes. She just looks at him, and he holds eye contact, clicking his tongue.

“You’re sick or something,” he decides. “Do you feel sick?” “Dunno, sir. I guess a bit.” She always feels like shit. She didn’t think she was sick though. She seems to get every cough and sniffle the prisoners bring in from the streets, but she doesn’t have a cold now. “Guess I’d better go easy on you for a bit, huh?” Ari drops her gaze. Does he want her to beg for it? Is it worth it? “Thanks, sir,” she mumbles reluctantly.

He checks her back every day for the next week. Trying to decide, no doubt, when she’s good for another beating. He doesn’t make her move any prisoners, or use the whip, but the daily examinations make her skin crawl. She’d almost rather have the extra pain than his hands all over her. 

But she minds her manners. She knows she needs the reprieve. If she doesn’t get some breaks sometimes, she’ll fall apart.

“Something’s wrong with you,” he keeps saying. Ari doesn’t feel like anything’s changed. Riven is what’s wrong with her. Is she supposed to be thriving under the abuse? “Are you sick?” “Are you eating right?” “You’re picking at it, aren’t you.” “If I find out you’re faking for attention…” “How the hell would I be faking?! I don’t even see what you’re looking at. I’m not the one saying I’m sick!” He slaps her, and she’s too slow to stop it turning her head and making her ears ring. “Sorry, sir,” she mumbles sullenly.

“You’re not healing. You’re not sick enough to not be healing.” She is healing. She checks her back every day. Especially with worrying about what sickness or infection Riven might be seeing in the cuts. It’s definitely healing.

If it’s slower than it should be, she can’t bring herself to care. What difference does it make?

After that he insists on putting ointment on her back, and bandages. They get soaked through when she showers, which means she’s uncomfortably damp overnight, but she doesn’t dare tamper with Riven’s work or he’ll accuse her of messing up her own wounds.

He gives her pills to take, too. A different antibiotic, which she accepts with indifference, and handfuls of multivitamins, which she complains about just for the sake of complaining.

The extra attention lasts about another week, plus a few intermittent check-ups after that as his interest wanes. Ari never figures out if she thinks he’s right about her healing too slowly or if he’s just being weird, or messing with her. It doesn’t seem important enough to dwell on.

Because her back does heal, slowly, and more’s the pity. She’s tempted to pick at it after all, as the cuts close and turn from red to pink. Riven just wants his canvas back.