#whumper develops a conscience! more details at 11

[3-2-whump]

(Re)Living a Nightmare, part 3

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Well, you made it this far, so I guess I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Heed the tags, decide for yourself.

Basic Summary if You Decide to Skip, or if You Skipped the Previous Installments

Thanks goes out to @whumped-by-glitter my beta reader and angst advisor for helping me out when I got stuck on this one!

TW/CW: blood (lots of it), rape/noncon aftermath, hypovolemic shock, medical whump, stitches (not described in detail), emotional whump, guilty whumper, whumper grows a conscience (?)

Thomas stared at his bloodied hands, at the bloodied knife, at the mess of reopened scars on Khaled’s bloody back below him. The air stank heavily of blood like a slaughter house, and the only audible sound was a faint yet desperate murmuring. “I didn’t kill him…I didn’t kill him…I didn’t kill him…”

What have I done?

The knife fell to the floor with a clatter as Thomas quickly untied Khaled’s hands. He rolled the boy onto his side, unsticking his front from the cooling blood that had pooled between him and the table top.  The small, broken body felt unusually cold under his hands. “Boy, hey –Khaled?” He pulled the torn strip of t-shirt away from his neck and ripped off the blindfold to see glassy, unfocused, tear-reddened eyes. “Khaled, talk to me,” Thomas begged. He raised a hand to lightly slap the boy’s cheek, but lowered it when he saw his lower face painted in blood, saliva, snot, and tears. The dainty golden septum ring in his broken nose gleamed an accusatory red under the cellar lights.

“I didn’t kill him…I didn’t kill him…” Khaled murmured through a ruined throat.

“I know, I know, shh, shh, I know,” Thomas whispered. Of course, Khaled didn’t kill his squad or his brother, and neither did that kid. And he was so close to repeating history and murdering another innocent boy –Thomas thought he would be sick.

“I didn’t kill him…” Khaled whimpered.

“I know you didn’t kill him,” Thomas replied, his own voice becoming gravelly with emotion. He fumbled for his cellphone, disregarding the bloodstains he would get on his clothes by digging through his pockets. Once he found it, he scrolled to a familiar name in his contacts and pressed ‘call.’

Lenore picked up after only two rings, answering with a brusque greeting. “What?”

“Don’t ask too many questions, but do you have any openings at your clinic right now?” Thomas asked, trying to keep his composure as he talked. “It’s Khaled, I think I hurt him bad.”

A static-laced sigh, then a response. “You know the only questions I ask clients are medically related ones. Now, what are we dealing with here?”

“Um, blood loss –like, a lot of blood loss,” Thomas felt the need to clarify. He took a steadying breath before listing off the rest of the injuries.  “Deep lacerations, broken nose,” –his eyes wandered down to the blood trickling out of Khaled’s hole – “nothing too obvious after that, from the looks of it.”

“How is his heart rate? His breathing?” Lenore asked, before directing, “Look at his tongue, the area under his eyes, his skin, do they look pale to you?”

Thomas took the time to check these things, ever more concerned at how limply Khaled accepted his touches. He still had that distant look in his eyes, and even though no sound came out, his pale lips still formed the words ‘I didn’t kill him’ over and over.

Thomas readdressed the doctor. “His heart rate is fast, his breathing is too, and yeah, he is very pale all over. Should I bring him to you?”

“No,” she answered. “I’m gonna call you an ambulance, it’ll be quicker.”

Thomas sighed. He cast a worried glance at the catatonic boy lying on the table. He’d rather not get any of the local hospitals involved, but Lenore said it would be quicker, which meant they were on a time sensitive crunch. Did he really hurt the kid that badly?

“Thomas!”

He was not aware she was speaking to him. “S-sorry, what?” he mumbled into the phone.

“Where are you located?” she repeated.

“At the old house, you know the one.” He listed off the address for her in case she did not. As soon as she hung up with a promise to call an ambulance, he put his phone back in his pocket and refocused his attentions on the boy. Khaled had stopped muttering, at least, and now he slumped against the table as his eyelids began to droop closed.

“Oh, baby –come here.” The boss shed his coat and draped it over the boy’s sliced-up back. It was already ruined with blood stains anyway; what were a few more? Now with his wounds covered, Thomas scooped Khaled into his arms and carried him up the stairs, far away from the T & I cellar that would spark too many unwanted questions from the EMTs.

-

“And you’re saying… a ‘mountain bike accident’ caused this?”

Med student Vikash Gill received a reprimanding side-eye from his supervisor, who was obviously not happy with his tone. But what Vik was unhappy about was this young man, coming in stark naked with a bloodied face and a back carved open like a Thanksgiving turkey, and this older man, who obviously looked like he had money and power and some sort of relationship with the patient.

“He crashed his bike, in the mountains,” the older man repeated, his tone clipped and concise.

The young man beside him remained silent, hardly even acknowledging his surroundings. Something was wrong with this picture… Vik lowered his skeptical gaze back to his chart again. “Well, it seems the EMTs already gave him a transfusion, reset his broken nose, and stopped the major wounds from bleeding on the way here,” he assessed, “so it looks like we’ll just have to give him some stitches. May I confer with my supervisor for a minute?”

The man waved him off, which was all the permission Vikash needed to disappear outside the examination room and discuss what he had just seen.

Dr. Helen Kimura commanded a powerful air of authority, despite only standing as high as her young student’s chest. “What was that?” she demanded, squinting up at him through her glasses. Vik had to swallow down his instant defense mechanism; he felt like he was being scolded by his mother. “You know we don’t use that kind of tone with our patients!”

“You and I also know that no ‘biking accident’ caused those injuries!” Vikash argued. “Didn’t you see those bruises? What kind of ‘biking accident’ causes bruises like those?!”

Dr. Kimura rubbed her brow as she took a breath to compose herself. “Look, you’re new to this city, Vik, so I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you don’t know who that man is,” she began, “but that man in there –that’s Thomas Costa. You know, of the insurance group? The guy that owns like a third of this city? Big time philanthropist, donates his massive fortune to the arts and sciences and medicine.” She paused, eyebrows raised, waiting for her young pupil to catch the drift.

Whether Vik didn’t catch it, or just didn’t care, he bullheadedly continued. “But, we have to do something,” he insisted with conviction, “we’re-”

“We are doctors, not detectives,” Kimura interrupted, an authoritative finality in her words. “You want to do something? You patch that kid up, along with all Costa’s other men, and you send them on their way, no questions asked!”

A hint of fear flickered behind his supervisor’s eyes. Vik gulped nervously, casting a glance at the examination room they just left. “How much did he donate to this hospital?” he whispered.

Kimura refused to answer.

-

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Thomas watched the med student stitch up Khaled’s back. All this time waiting and watching left him alone with his thoughts, and his thoughts went to places he didn’t want them to go.

He lost himself back there, lost control –no, that was just an excuse. He wanted to lose himself, wanted to pin everything on that boy, but Khaled had nothing to do with it. Admittedly, it felt good to take out all that pent-up emotion, all that grief, anger, and despair, to finally channel all that toxicity and pain out from himself and dump it somewhere else –onto someone else.

He glanced at the boy he had bought nearly seven years ago. He remembered the scared child who could barely look him in the eyes. Now, nearly seven years later, the boy stared tiredly at him through tear-stained eyes. It seemed the child was right to fear him in the past, considering how close he came to killing him in the present.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas murmured. He reached over to hold Khaled’s hands in his. The rope burns brought unnecessary attention to the tattoos on his boy’s wrists, lining the black bands top to bottom with angry red chafe marks. Khaled made no effort to pull his hands away as a pair of dark eyes stared into his, uncertain and guarded behind their lashes. He cringed a little, sensing only a fraction of the damage he’d done to his key to redemption, not just this one time, but over years and years of using the boy as a punching bag and a fleshlight.  “I am so, so sorry,” he repeated, a little louder.

“You’re sorry?” Khaled hollowly repeated. A rough, scratchy sound scraped out of the boy’s ruined throat. Even the act of laughing sounded painful for him. “Did you smash my head against the table harder than I’d realized? Since when do you apologize, Master?”

Over his shoulder, the med student’s eyes widened a hair as he determinedly continued his work behind them. Thomas had to regain control of the situation, spin the narrative. “I owe you a much more specific apology when we get home, I’ll admit,” he replied, hinting at the unsuspecting stranger patching up the boy’s back. “But for now, all I’ll say is that I went too far. I realize that now, and for that, I am sorry.”

Khaled gave him a skeptical frown, but remained silent. His thinking face was on, with his eyebrows drawn and his eyes slightly narrowed, chewing his lower lip subtly between his teeth. The young med student behind him had finally finished the stitches and applied the new gauze. He rattled off a list of care tips and recommendations to follow to take care of the wounds and prevent complications before hurriedly leaving the two alone. Thomas lifted Khaled off the table and helped him change into the spare clothes the hospital had on hand for emergencies. “Can I, um, get you anything?” he asked awkwardly, finally pulling the ugly secondhand sweater over Khaled’s bandaged torso.

The boy finally answered after a thoughtful moment. “…Nico…”

The gate guard? Thomas wondered. Honestly, not how he expected the boy to answer that question at all. He then felt a slight pang of guilt when he remembered Nico was the only friend his slave ever had. “You want to see your friend again?”

A small nod.

“Yeah, sure,” he shrugged, “I’m sure I could make that happen.”And even though he had no reason to lean on him of all people, Khaled leaned onto the boss’ arm, resting his head on his shoulder as Thomas led them out.

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