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whumble-beeee · 8 months

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Let’s Have A Chat (You’re All Talk)

The (Un)Official Guide to Hero-Keeping | Cont'd from Part 4

Content: brief minor whump in flashbacks, disabled whumpee, trans whumpee, flashbacks (ptsd), gun mention, past captivity references, tied up, torture "threats", begging, tazer,

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Except from: The (Un)Official Guide to Hero-Keeping; a self-help guide for villains and bounty-hunters

[In terms of punishing and torturing your hero, 'fear of the unknown' is one of the most powerful tools available in your psychological torture toolkit; The anticipation of what might happen to them is often more torturous than whatever real tortures you have cooked up for them, and is a wonderful addition to any torture scenario!

It’s a very delicate skill, learning how to use a hero’s own fears against them (excluding villains with fear-based powers), but it is absolutely essential in almost all aspects of hero-keeping; whether you want to torture them for information, beat them into submission and servitude, force them to follow your rules or desires, or just have some good old fashioned fun messing with them!]

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“No,” Stan grunted. Enough was enough.

“No?” the mercenary’s voice broke into a small, disbelieving laugh, which just served to make Stan double down harder on what he hoped was the right choice.

“No. We’re not ‘chatting’. Not–” the world tilted on its axis, darkness creeping in his periphery again. Stan leaned his head back against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. “N-not you and me, not now, not–... ever.”

Deeby just hummed another laugh at the display. “You should probably eat that protein bar, bud. Should help a bit with your head. And your mood, you're being such a little asshole right now.”

Stan rolled his eyes, but brought the protein bar up to his face to properly inspect. Though it was more of an accusation as he looked straight past it and narrowed his eyes at the bounty hunter instead.

The mercenary rolled his eyes in kind. “It’s not poisoned. Look, eat the protein bar and I’ll cut the ropes binding your legs, yeah? That good enough for his lordship?”

More than good enough for his lordship. A welcome trade, in fact. Especially since Stan was planning on eating the protein bar anyway. And especially because Deeby could probably just shove it down Stan’s throat if he wanted.

Stan nodded with a small ‘mhm’ before the bounty hunter could take it back. It took him a moment to maneuver the bar so he could open it with the metal of the handcuffs biting into his wrists every single time he pulled them too far apart, but he eventually found himself holding a successfully unwrapped protein bar with only slightly aching wrists.

“I'm eating this because I think I should,” Stan clarified as he brought the bar up to his mouth. It was cookie dough-flavored. Deeby had good taste in protein bars at least. “Not because you told me to, okay?”

“Uh huh, noted. Feeling less like a little shit now?”

Stan took a moment to make a full show of reluctantly nodding, irritated head tilt and all, before cramming the rest of the bar into his mouth. Before long, the ropes binding his feet were no more (after much restraint not to kick Deeby in the face when he got close with the knife again), and the protein bar was gone all too soon.

“Great!” The mercenary clapped his hands together. “Now we can talk! Ya like jazz?”

Stan grit his teeth. This Deeby guy just doesn't quit, does he? He wasn’t going to budge on this, even if he was slightly more fed and less dizzy now. He couldn’t just forget the total beatdown from earlier, the torturous soreness wracking every part of his body made sure of that.

“I'm not. Talking. With you.”

“Something’s gonna happen one way or another, runt. I’m just trying to give you the easy option considering you’re a little fucked in the head right now. Hard way’s not off the table, never will be.”

“We already talked!” Stan tried. “Remember? I asked you your name, you wouldn’t tell me. Then I asked you why you kidnapped me, you wouldn’t tell me! Who you work for, wouldn't tell me! Then you beat the crap out of me, and now I feel like I’m dying and leashed like a damn dog! That’s just gonna happen all over again! Let’s just skip over that so I can go back to dying on the floor, thanks.”

“Oh!” Deeby lit up like a lighthouse on a dark and stormy night, and Stan, for just a brief moment, almost let himself feel the same relief that a sailor might when they saw that spotlight on from the freezing, rain- and wind-swept deck of their lost ship. That he would actually leave Stan be. But then…

“You wanna hear about my gun?”

He pulled the revolver from his hip holster and held it up like a prized trophy. “It’s an original Smith and Wesson 1957 Model 19 revolver, it's pretty famous for being the first handgun to use magnum cartridges and making that a common thing. It was also standard issue for the border patrol in the ‘70s, which is where it came into my family,” he chuckled. Stan could only stare dumbfounded. He was really just going on a rant, huh?

“One of mis tíos just fuckin’ swiped it from one of the officers and they were pissed, chased after him, nearly caught him too but he managed to wiggle away, slimy little guy. And then my mom was so mad with him, nearly beat him half to death before their mamá even had the chance to. So anyway, I got it when I was just a kid, it was all broken and kinda shitty when I first got it, but it was a family heirloom and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, so I started to get into it more, started fixing it up a bit, replacing parts until it worked right and fiddling with it until it worked right, then started making upgrades to it, learned how to shoot it–”

”Holy shit!” Stan yelled, lurching to meet the mercenary’s eyes. “Are you trying to Stockholm Syndrome me or something?! I don’t want to hear about your gun! I don’t want to talk to you, or hear about you! I don’t like you, I hate you, I don't want to have a nice little conversation with my fucking kidnapper! We aren't talking! Ever!”

A moment of silence. Stan realized he had gone too far again as the mercenary's eyes widened in disbelief.

But he refused to back down this time.

So he continued to glare into the mercenary’s dark brown eyes.

But then the bounty hunter let out a barking laugh. “Stock–... Sto-ockholm…?” he said, almost to himself, voice airy and high with disbelief. “Na-ah… Nah, no, no...”

His gaze suddenly shot to Stan, face unnervingly blank. Stan tensed up, instinctively pulling his extremities in to protect himself, to make himself smaller. This was… new.

The mercenary took a few steps toward him. Then a few more. Until he was right in front of Stan, looking down on him like a god would from the heavens above.

“You ever been… tortured?... Stan?”

The soft, weightless lilt of his voice turned Stan’s blood to ice.

"Never stop fighting back."

"Let GO OF ME!" He hit at an uncaring, unyielding fist. "LET GO!!"

"Just tell us about your powers, it doesn't have to get ugly."

Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie.

“N-no-o,” he barely managed to squeak out. His vocal cords may as well have been dunked in ice water. Same as his entire body, with the way he was shaking. Why did he always have to press too far?

“All you gotta do is show us your powers, kid.”

He didn’t move, the light of his powers staying tucked deep in his core. They tazed him again. They'd done it so many times now, it barely even mattered now. He was used to it. He'd never break.

“There's no use fighting, we have ways to force it out of you. We just want to give you a chance to cooperate first.”

Deeby hummed, as if it were quaint to him, the thought that someone could have never possibly been acquainted with the hot, unyielding spindles of torture twisting and morphing them into something unrecognizable, something animalistic, something… altered. Someone to never be the same again.

“I've been tortured.” He chuckled, never breaking Stan’s gaze. “More than once, actually. Hazard of the job.”

He glared into his torturer's bright blue eyes, fires of defiance burning brighter in his own.

“Never.”

He knew what all their eyes looked like. It was the only thing he could glare at, they always wore medical masks and scrubs and lab coats, so it was the only part of them he could see. So professional to do such visceral, horrendous things.

They tazed him again.

Stan didn’t move. Just stared. Then sputtered slightly. He didn’t know what to say to that.

The bounty hunter didn’t seem to have such reservations, though. He moved forward wordlessly and crouched down in front of his captive. Stan’s breath hitched. He could hear his heartbeat, feel it pounding in his chest, slow, careful, thunderous. All consuming. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t escape. Were the bounty hunter’s eyes always such a dangerously dark scarlet? No escape at all.

Then Deeby grabbed either of Stan’s biceps, wholly wrapping his hands around Stan’s upper arms, and urged him upward to his feet. “Here, Stan, get up, I wanna show you something.”

The sky-blue eyes flashed to a colleague. “This isn't working. Let's just go with Plan A like I wanted to from the beginning.”

The colleague started to voice their protest but was cut quickly off.

“I don't care how old she is, I know! But being gentle doesn't work, it never does, and it never will! It’s time for the big guns.”

A grown-up hand grabbed his upper arm, drugged him up off the floor, and shoved him forward, iron-gripped no matter how much he kicked and screamed and cried out. Inescapable as he hit and tried to tug away. Unyielding.

“Wait–, wait, no, no, no, please! We–!” Stan cried, unsuccessfully trying to stay wrapped in his little ball of safety on the floor as the force pulled him upward, the dull roar of his beatings from earlier turning once more into a raging insistence of constant strain. “We can talk, we can talk! I just– I can’t– can’t– don’t–... please, please!”

Stan hissed as he put weight on his bad leg in his struggles, and had to practically fall into Deeby’s arm to relieve the agony.

Deeby didn’t pay the struggling human in his clutches any mind and started to step backward, never once taking his eyes off Stan as he dragged him slowly but surely toward the middle of the room, ankle chain jingling as it dragged across the hard cement floor. “Cálmate, chiquito, te estás poniendo tan alterado. Just do as I say and you’ll be fine.”

Tears burned at his eyes as he tried to grasp at Deeby’s arms, the pressure building up in his sinuses making it so he could barely breathe. It was so much harder to struggle to get away when he had to physically lean on his captor. Torturer.

“I don’t–” his voice cracked as it shot up his register, and he grasped in another breath as tears started to fall. “I do-on’t speak S-s-spani-ish… plea-ease–”

They abruptly reached the end of the ankle chain-leash, and Stan pitched forward with a screech, practically into Deeby’s chest before Deeby stiffened his arms and righted him again. Stan tried to make himself so tremendously small, tried to hide even though he was already captured and chained and physically being held by a man who had shown he wasn’t afraid to, and even enjoyed, hurting him.

And now in the center of the torture room, on the very end of his literal chain.

Nowhere to go.

“Of course you don’t, white boy.” Deeby sighed, a hint of that humorous light shining back in his eyes. He gently grabbed his jaw and tipped his gaze upward. Those bits of red in Deeby’s irises seemed to bleed out into the rest of the world, infecting everything with crimson and scarlet and fire and flames.

The world burned around them. Stan tried to pull away, but the bounty hunter’s grasp held firm.

“It means calm down, chiquito,” he said from somewhere miles away. “You’re getting so worked up, making everything worse for yourself. I won’t hurt–”

Stan seized up and grabbed at Deeby’s arms even as they held him in place, clawed at them, pleading, shaking as tears rolled off his chin, down his neck, and soaked into his shirt.

“PLE-E-EASE!” He cried. “I don’t– I don’t want– I can’t be tortured!” He prayed that wouldn’t be taken as a challenge. “Please don’t… torture me. I can’t… Please.” Not again. Not again.

Deeby looked down upon him, carefully peeling Stan’s trembling fingers off his arms. A small, unnerving smile tugged at the sides of his eyes, like a father looking on as his toddler struggled to produce a finger painting that wasn’t just a staining hideous mess for the hundredth time in a row.

“Who said anything about torturing you, bud? Wait here a moment.”

Deeby shoved away from the quivering mess and made his way over to the wall opposite where Stan’s leash-chain was anchored to the floor, and jumped up to grab the end of a previously unseen chain that, when when the bounty hunter grabbed it off the hook and let the length of it fall free, swung down and hung from the ceiling right next to Stan.

Stan took a single unconscious step backward from the thing in terror, and immediately his buckled buckled in a flurry of strained agony, sending Stan straight down to a kneel. He clutched at the offending knee joint, cursing the mercenary for making him overwork and twist his knee in that failure of an escape attempt and hurting it so much worse in the first place. At least before he could kind of hobble along without a cane or a crutch. It wasn't pretty, or fun, but he could do it. Now he was practically immobile.

And he just had to hope it would heal correctly.

“Didn’t I just tell you not to move?”

Stan whipped around and nearly toppled over again in the process. “I– I jus–!”

Two hands grabbed under either of his armpits and hoisted him back up to standing before Stan could even stutter out another terrified plea. He was so dizzy that he was almost thankful that the man grabbed him under the arms to keep him from falling again. Even with how the action in itself made him want to scream.

“Deeby, Deeby, we can talk, we can talk, you don’t–! You don’t have to–”

“Did you just call me ‘Deeby’?” He stopped in his maneuvering Stan, a petrified hush falling over the hero as he forced eye contact once again. “Like the name ‘Deeby’, not the letters ‘D’ and B’?”

“Uh--... No, no…” Stan squeaked.

Deeby’s amused smile faltered just slightly.

“Don’t lie to me runt, that shit’s funny... Deeby, huh?…” he mused, rolling the name around in his mouth. “Not very creative, but you gotta give points for simplicity… Pft, Deeby… ”

Then his attention shot right back to Stan. “Anyway, stop whining and squirming, I’m about 5 seconds away from actually getting pissed. Are you gonna listen to the story, or we gonna do plan B and actually give you something worth screaming about?”

Stan wanted to keep struggling. Yelling, being defiant, begging, pleading, fighting, something. Those thoughts fueled him as he held the bounty hunter’s gaze; he didn’t want to just roll over and let him do as he pleased with him. But the way the hunter held him now, and the way he physically overpowered Stan time and time again just made him feel like a small, hissing cat uselessly fighting against his owner as they held him high into the air as some sort of punishment. And the fear of something worse happening finally managed to overpower the blind panic that fueled his previous fight. The tiredness continually crept through his bones now, the ache of his injuries starting to once again overpower all other senses.

So when the stare of Deeby became unbearable, Stan pursed his lips and squeezed shut, bowing his head in concession with a small, shaky nod.

He just hoped this lost battle wouldn’t become just one in a never-ending sea of them.

The mercenary let out an infuriatingly triumphant huff. “Great. Don't move. I mean it.”

Then Deeby let Stan go almost too fast, and he had to readjust to fully supporting his entire battered body again.

He had to shift to support his entire weight on his 'good' leg instead of agitating the bad leg further, or god forbid using his cane or a crutch. Or his powers. The good leg would get painfully sore very quick if he had to just keep standing here. Especially since he was already feeling the bruises from earlier starting to bloom.

But this was better than literally all of the alternatives. He just had to let Deeby talk and hopefully, he wouldn’t torture Stan.

Simple.

He was looking forward to it already.

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