Rolling Down
Sigh Not So | Secrets Hid Away | Shed Tears Aplenty | Fire Down Below | Rolling Down |
CW: Nonhuman whumpee, referenced choking, captive whumpee, sadistic whumper, multiple whumpers, creepy whumper, fantasy whump, the next chapter is going to be intense as fuck
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"Guilford? You in there?"
Gilly shot to his feet with a smile at the familiar voice coming from the door to outside, knocking the rickety chair over with a clatter in his haste.
The siren jerked instinctively backwards. Gilly snorted and gave it a good thwack with the long, thin switch he'd brought in last night, listening to its cry with a smile as it hid from him under the water. Signs of its fear of him were a good thing, ongoing evidence of the slow success of his plan. They’d spent the last three hours working on expanding its range of words through slow, methodical, and painful repetition. The welts layered over its chest and shoulders were proof positive of his work.
"Guilford?" Her voice called again, muffled through the door. "What was that?"
"Coming! Just a moment!" He called, giving the siren one last contemptuous look before he stepped out, closing the door to the bathing room behind him.
Atabei’s arrival promised not just a break from the monotony - broken only by the pleasure of seeing new bruises bloom and its growing terror - but also an end to the whole charade of having to force it to obey him in the first place.
How frightened would it look, he wondered, when it realized disobedience was no longer even possible?
He had to clear his throat against a sudden warmth at the thought that seemed... distinctly indecent. He distracted himself by grabbing a hand towel to dry off his hands and wipe at the sweat over his brow, pushing his glasses up his nose instinctively before he swung the door open to greet the single most important person still alive in his life.
Atabei Montgomery was in the doorway, nearly silhouetted by the light, a vision of slightly shimmery pale green fabric against her very dark skin, long black hair pulled back at the nape of her neck in what seemed like ten thousand tiny braids, with a wide-brimmed hat with matching green trim tilted just so and tied at her chin with a ribbon.
"I have a bell you could ring, you know," He said without rancor. He could hardly repress his smile enough to sound anything but thrilled. “You don’t have to yell.”
"I tried. It's broken." Her voice had begun to lose her empire accent. She clearly had the distinct beginnings of the slower-spoken, subtle musical dip and rise of the more northern colonies where she had been living now for years, a woman of some leisure in the Yawnee port city. It made him more aware that his own speech had lost its posh edge and gone to rougher consonants, quick and bitten-off like the other sailors. Her voice sounded like a higher class of people, who could afford to take their time. His own had gone the other way entirely.
Not for long, now. Not that she was here and could help him. He hitched in a deep breath, embarrassed when tears pricked at his eyes and blurred the sight of her. “Oh… Beibei, I am so glad you’re here.”
She took in the sight of him with a smile. “I’m glad to be here. It has been too long.” She opened her arms to him, and he went to her with real enthusiasm. At first he only grasped her hands so he could dip his head to press a kiss to the back of one, but she shook herself free. "None of that! Come come, Guilford, are you so much the man and the sailor now that you have no hug for me?"
"Of course not! Never!" He pulled her into an embrace where each of them tried their best to hug hard enough to break the other's ribs. When he picked her up and spun her, she shrieked with false indignation and laughter, batting at him with slaps that clearly were meant to be perfunctory at best. Atabei had first beat him in a fight when they were four years old and he never had won a real one since.
“Put me down, you wretch!”
He did… reluctantly. "My heart breaks without you! How do those ladies in the northern colonies treat you? Have you found one you like? Is there a paramour?”
“Paramour? My, you sailors have pretensions!” She pulled back enough to look at him with mischief in every line of her expression. Her black eyes twinkled. "I will have you know there is only one woman, and we are known to all and sundry as very sad, tragically widowed ladies who share a home merely so that we may live on the money our late husbands left us in comfort."
Gilly's smile widened. "Beibei! You shock me! I had heard nothing of this!"
"You were at sea!"
“Was there ever a husband?”
“Oh.” Atabei waved one hand in the vaguest possible response. “Eliza had one. He really did die quite tragically.”
“How?”
Her eyes sparkled. “The only cause of death anyone could discern, Guilford, was simply tuberculosis. It steals away so many, you see, and goes unquestioned…”
His smile widened. He held her by the arms, looking over her face. “Beibei. You didn’t.”
“His lungs filled, until he breathed his last,” She said with prim and proper intonation. “It was a terrible thing, when he became too weak to even speak up after he found Eliza and I together. And so very, very sad when his heart gave out from the shock. We were all so very… very sad to see him go. Especially his business partner, who inherited the company in full as long as he paid a nice sum to Eliza to buy our home outright.”
“You are a wicked woman. And yet I owe you congratulations! I must send you back with a gift for this Eliza and a warning of what will happen if she dares break your heart!" He hugged her again, as tightly as he could.
"Guilford!"
"Beibei, sister of my heart, it has been twenty-three and nine days since last we met, you have found love while I was gone and I only just found out, and I will not let you go without a fight this time!"
"Nonsense, nonsense!" She laughed again, bright and bell-like, smacking at him. Gilly heard an echoing mimicry of the sound from the bathing room. Atabei must have heard it, too - her laughter faded, and so did her smile, although it still sparkled in her eyes.
She looked to the bathing room door. "Oh, my. Guilford, is… that where it is? This mysterious thing you have found and need my help with, but cannot name in your letters? Is it something alive?”
"Yes. Yes, it's in there. You'll see why I had to keep it secret. It was sheer providence that I got hold of it so easily, an absolute accident of fortune, but to keep it I'll need magic, so…"
"So here I am," Atabei said, with a sigh. Her bright good cheer faded as she took on a more businesslike heir. "Tell me this is not the reason why you wanted my visit."
"It isn't!" She gave him a flat skeptical stare, eyebrows raised. He winced. "Or… it isn't only that. You know I love you, Beibei."
"I suppose I do. And I suppose you know I love you, too. You could have learned the magic with me, you know, and you wouldn't have needed me now."
"Father wouldn't allow it. You know I asked a thousand times.”
Her smile returned, briefly. "Ah, yes. Your late great father and his ridiculous superstitions."
"I think he would call them religious convictions, Bei. Don't be unfair. You know I am baptized, too."
"And yet you want magic now."
"Well. The… church won't help with what I want to do, but… I think you will."
"Why is that? Magic has a cost, Guilford. To the one who casts it or controls it, as well as the subject of the spell."
"This will be worth it for us both, Beibei, I promise. We'll both end up rich as Croesus. You can buy yourself and your lady friend a mansion to live in comfort and security!"
"We already have a home more than large enough for our needs. But… let's see this treasure that makes sounds like the mockingbird that you find in the ocean and swear will make me a rich woman." She untied the ribbons that kept her hat on, dropping it on the rough-hewn wooden table as she moved past Gilly. "I left my bag of tools outside, it isn't good for them to be inside any home but mine any longer than necessary. They pick up impressions too easily where people sleep. I need the paint to stay pure and true or I cannot guarantee protection."
"Right. So” Gilly nodded, following her across the room. “The thing is, I don't need protection magic-"
"I didn't mean protection magic. I meant that I cannot protect us from the magic, if it binds to your home. It may choose you to target, and then you will be as lost as your secret ocean treasure.”
"Oh. Well, I…" He trailed off as Atabei sailed ahead, seeming to float more than walk. "Um, fine. I've been teaching it some words, so… here."
"You have been what?" For the first time, she looked alarmed. “Have you taken hold of a sea serpent?”
"No! No, not at all, I just… just a moment." He clapped his hands, one loud crack of sound. There was a pause. Nothing happened. Atabei blinked at him in confusion, and he sighed, feeling the pounding headache of anger already threatening at the edges of his vision. “Hold on.” He clapped again. "Areyto! Stand up or else!”
This time there was a splash from inside the room almost immediately, and he breathed more easily knowing his command had been obeyed. Eventually. It would help Atabei to see that he could do this. He could punish that hesitation later.
“Areyto…?” She moved to the doorway, the hinges creaking in protest, the bottom of the door scraping the floor. There was a long, long pause as she took in the sight within. Then she said, very quietly, "You are so very stupid, Guilford Wentworth."
The words were not spoken with anger or even disgust… they were simply an expression of an immense, overwhelming exhaustion.
“... it’s a siren,” Gilly said helpfully, swallowing around his sudden burst of nerves.
"I can see that." They stood in the doorway to the bathing room, Atabei ahead and Gilly hovering nervously behind her. She looked stunned, her eyes roaming over the form of the siren within, who watched her right back. "What were you thinking?"
It felt like being scolded by an older sister who had found him dumping cups of flour in the well. Gilly flushed bright red and fought the idea that he should be ashamed of this. "I-I just-... I had an idea, is all. You know, I see the rich men, the lords, the governor and his family, and I think... what've they done to earn any of it? It should have been me to have such riches, my father was a lord once, and now what? Now I live here, in an old lady's cellar more or less, and scrape by! I deserve better! And this, this thing, this is going to-"
She held up her hand and his voice trailed immediately into nothing. “Gods above and below,” She whispered in an airy, slightly husky hum of sound. “Just look at him.”
Inside, in the dim light that made it through the oiled paper that covered the window, the siren stood as it'd been commanded to, a mockery of an eerily beautiful man. Its muscular shoulders were slightly hunched self-protectively, water making its skin seem to shimmer as it ran down the creature's thighs, stomach, even its shoulders and sharp cheekbones.
It was watching them. Tracking every slight move they made, every blink, every breath. Gilly could tell it was taking note of how he obeyed Atabei's wordless command. He saw its dim animal mind recognize her as leader, shifting itself slightly to keep them both in view as Atabei stepped carefully into the room.
It would have irritated him, if he didn’t feel more or less the same. Atabei would know what to do to help him get the riches and influence he wanted, and he trusted her to know best what step should come next. As long as she agreed to help him at all.
"Oh, dear," She whispered. She wasn't talking to him, but to the creature, her voice going soft. "You have been quite marked up, haven't you, pretty thing? My Guilford has not been soft or kind to you."
Gilly felt a flush of real shame at the realization that Atabei was reading the story of the bruises it was covered with, purpling under its skin, and she was… not happy about it. She clicked tongue against teeth as she looked at the bit gag, the way the corners of its pretty man-shaped mouth were rubbed raw and red. She knew the meaning of the circle of dark red and scabbed blood around its neck thanks to his daily use of the noose to ensure its cooperation and encourage it to learn the words he needed it to know.
And… and maybe because he enjoyed seeing it fight for its life, again and again and again, until it was to tired to fight any longer and had to accept that Guilford Wentworth, ship’s surgeon who had control over nothing, would decide if it lived or died and there was absolutely nothing it could do to stop it except give him whatever he wanted.
Maybe he liked that bit too much.
"It's dumb as a post," Gilly protested, defensively, drowning out his own thoughts. "All it's learned, it had to be taught with discipline. If I'd been soft, it would have eaten me by now. Patience would get me a mouth full of teeth, Beibei.”
“Hmph.” She raised her chin, looking distinctly haughty. "Did you ever try softness?"
"No! I'm not… stupid." Gilly paused. Let the pause draw out. "Would softness have worked?"
She had the look of someone fighting off an impending headache. He knew the feeling. "Maybe. Maybe not, and yet… he must loathe you. You take a man of the ocean and make him an enemy."
"It isn't a man! Besides, I don't care if it loathes me. Do we worry if a horse or cow or sheep likes or dislikes us? This thing is no different. It just looks human to trick us. Like any livestock, it’ll fall in line once it’s broken in.”
The corner of her mouth twitched with a wry humor. "You, I see, have never actually tried to ride a horse that hates you. Men have been killed taking the crop to a hateful horse the way you have taken your fists to this man."
"It's not a man, Beibei, for the love of God! It is a siren!"
“I know what he is,” Atabei said, closing her eyes and lifting one hand to rub her thumb and forefinger over the bridge of her nose. “You forget, Guilford. I have spent as much time as you on ships. My father was a captain, too. I was born on Lightning Rider."
“No, I know, I know you were, but… it isn't like sirens ever sing to fool women." He tried for a joke to lighten her look of growing anger. "You know, because they know it’s men who have all the gold for them to steal?" The look Abatei gave him was more frightening than any hurricane he'd ever survived. His face burned red in the dim light. “Oh, God’s wounds. My apologies. I didn’t mean that.”
“I should hope not. If I thought you had become the sort of man who believed such things, I would never speak to you again."
"I don't!” He reached out to touch her arm, gratified when she didn’t pull away. He tried to get her to look at him. “I don't believe it at all. I only thought about making you laugh!"
She snorted, a delicate, derisive sound that the siren echoed from the other side of the room. "I suggest, in that case, that you try saying something that is funny."
"... fair enough. I am sorry, Bei. You know I am.”
Yes. I know." She softened a little for him, then, a hint of her smile returning. "Besides, the sirens don’t sing because they want your gold, Guilford. They want to eat. Any gold they take is simply because they like how it shines.”
“True…” Gilly thought of the creature’s mouth, how it looked perfectly normal and somehow he knew it was all a trick, that beneath the illusion of unusually white flat-edged human teeth were rows upon rows of yellowed razor-sharp fangs, only revealed during its meals. “Although it is true that sirens don’t fool women.”
"They do not fool us," Atabei said evenly, "Because their magic only works on one who knows himself to be a man."
"Why is that, do you think?"
She moved to the left, picking up the chair Gilly had knocked over when she had arrived. The creature's dark eyes followed her, clearly assessing her as a potentially bigger threat than Gilly. Gilly felt the same. "If you were the only man I had ever known, I would say it is because men do not have the common sense the gods granted goats. But I do know other men, who would not do anything this stupid… and so I must say I have no idea. The gods must have decided it at a whim, as they sometimes do."
"Beibei, please let's don't blaspheme." Gilly sniffed, then colored even more as he realized how utterly fussy he sounded. He was a man who spent weeks elbow-deep in sailors' blood while they cursed him and themselves and the high heavens, fussy didn't describe him at all. And yet his time in church, back when he’d cared to go, had still left its mark. "Don't say gods.”
"It is only blasphemy to those who think they know everything." She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Who are we to say how many gods are out there? Who are we to lay out certainties when we have only suggestions? Hm?” When she smiled her slight and impish grin, he returned it, knees weak with relief. They had never been angry with each other for long. "Do you know everything, Guilford?"
"No. No, of course not."
"Exactly. So I don’t blaspheme, not to you. Have a priest come see me, however, and I will talk him out of his holy vows within a week or less."
"God forbid! We'd be overrun with exorcists again!"
"That was the one time!" He was gratified by how she laughed out loud, startled by the return of an old memory.
"Your father nearly beat him to death with a broom!"
The eyes of the siren in the washtub narrowed, moving from Atabei to Gilly and back again, studying their amusement and affection with each other. Some of its hostility might have eased. Or that could be a trick of light and shadow. Gilly didn't like its eyes on her. It wasn't jealousy, of course, how could anyone be jealous of an animal? But still… he didn't like it.
Atabei swept herself to seated in the wobbly chair, her skirts settling in a burst of rustling as she had to find a balance. She laid one hand over her stomach where stiffer fabric held her posture straight. "At home with Eliza, I never wear dresses like this. I keep forgetting not to slouch."
"You do look lovely in it, though."
“Of course I do. I am lovely, and therefore look lovely. I would look lovely in rags. So,” She said, folding her hands in her lap, leaning forward slightly to stare down the creature across the room, as it stared back. "Let's begin. You have stolen a siren.”
Gilly stood with his back leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He scowled at the way she said it, and watched the siren catch the expression and cringe back a little, its eyes moving to the rope that he could grab and pull at a moment’s notice to choke it again. “It’s not stealing. They don’t belong to anyone. That’s like saying I stole fish from the open ocean.”
Atabei raised her eyebrows without looking away from the siren. “Hm. Fine. You have harvested a siren, shall we say, which you now keep within your home.”
“Yes. He must have sung a ship onto the rocks, we found him lying on some wreckage. The others had hauled him-... Bei, you’ve got me doing it now-... the others had hauled it on board before I realized what it was. So I told the captain I’d kill it, and I brought it here.”
A delicate sniff. “In your bathing room, in your bathing tub, which now smells distinctly of old fish. And blood.”
Gilly swallowed. “... yes. There has been some bleeding… but I bought another tub and bathe myself currently in my bedroom. But… but I have a plan. I have ideas on how to use it, I just… need some help.”
“I’ll say you damn well do.” Her eyes trailed along the tense lines of its body with the sort of look that seemed almost professorial. "How many words has it learned as you beat it to bruised and bloodied?"
"A handful. Maybe a few more than that. It knows how to count to twenty in English, knows what it means when I tell it to move here or there, to eat, to stand or sit. Once the magic is laid, though, the work will go more quickly."
She nodded. "Likely so. I know a spell that will encourage its learning of language to happen faster. It will still take some time." She tipped her head to one side, giving a soft little whistle, one high note and two low. The siren perked up, for the first time in days, and blinked, mouth moving around the wooden bit it was gagged with.
It couldn't whistle in response, not with the gag. But it exhaled through its mouth as though it were trying, and then hummed the same three notes back. Atabei grinned and clapped her hands in applause.
The siren flinched.
It jerked backwards and twisted to one side, shielding itself as best it could with its shoulder from an imagined blow.
Atabei's smile dropped. "Guilford…"
"I clap when I give an order sometimes, or when it's not listening." Gilly shrugged. "Then I punish it. It thinks it did something wrong. Which it did. I don’t allow it music, not when it’s so dangerous. It can sing again once it only sings for me.”
"I see. No wonder you need my magic. If you let him go now, he would know only violence and fear and pain from us. I don't imagine you would survive his taste of freedom." She licked at her lips, thoughtfully. “Neither of us would. It knows our faces.”
"Exactly! You understand!"
She sighed, as if he were a pupil who had incorrectly answered a question. "... I understand you are very stupid, yes."
Gilly deflated a little. "You said that already."
"I mean it so thoroughly I must say it twice. I’ll do it, Guilford. But I’ll need all night and most of tomorrow, and for nearly all that time we will need him to be very still. Even the slightest break in the spellwork, a tiny flinch, before the sealing, and he won't be bound at all. And we will both die in great agony to feed his hunger.”
"No, I know. I know… I have something for that, to put in its fish. It'll be quite unconscious for hours once it settles into the thing's system, and we can work the spell while it sleeps. I've started feeding it more or less by hand this past week, so we'll know for sure how much it ate."
She nodded, a firm little jerk of her chin. "Perfect. You go to buy this fresh fish-” She watched the siren perk up a little at words it knew to mean food, and smiled. “-and I will start mixing the paints under the tree. We will work the magic starting tonight, and by the time the moon rises tomorrow he will be yours entirely."
Gilly exhaled, closing his eyes as the shining promise of his future rose before him. "You'll do it, then, for certain? I wouldn't have asked you to come all this way just for this, but you’re the only person I know who has any magic. I mean, I think Father Thomas up in the high village has some, but-”
“Ssshht!” Atabei cut her hand in a quick gesture as if slicing the very thought of the man in two. “You cannot ask him. I know what his magic is and what he does for it. Magic has a price, Gilly."
"I'll be able to give you such wealth, Beibei-"
"I do not mean a cost in coins. You will be bound to him as much as he is to you. Sirens live for centuries, Guilford, sometimes for more than a thousand years. If you do this… so will you. This is not a gift, my friend. That much time is a curse. It is the cost."
Gilly blinked, puzzled, looking over at the siren. It had relaxed, minutely, as it listened to them without understanding. It was a crime to be so beautiful and not be human. Or at least to have the form of a woman. Male sirens were rare, few and far between in a kind of creature that was already rare to begin with. It’d been his awful luck to only ever encounter a male in person. "How is a longer life not a blessing?"
"I cannot answer that. Only warn you. You two will be tied together as securely as if you wore chains, for as long as he lives. Time makes us all fools, and you will have more time than anyone who is not a god. The only story I have of such a thing in my books… ended quite… quite poorly.”
Gilly swallowed. He felt a chill in his chest, traveling with his heartbeat to his very fingers and toes. "Then… why help me at all, Beibei?"
"Because if I do not, he will kill you. And this way at least I can give you, who I adore like my own brother, at least a lifetime of what you desire most. What happens after that…" She trailed off. "I cannot guarantee or predict."
"Well… well, it'll be worth it. It'll be worth it, whatever the cost."
"If you say so. Go get the fish, and feed him. Once he is bound, we can untie him and allow him the use of his mouth. He won't ever be able to do you harm after tonight, and he will bend to your will no matter his own."
Gilly nodded, rapidly. “Yes. Yes! That’s exactly what I want!” When Atabei stood, he hugged her again. She was tense in his arms. "Thank you, Beibei. Thank you so, so much. Everything is going to be perfect, you'll see."
"Hm. Perhaps.” She paused, then sighed. “Oh, Guilford, before we begin… I do have one question.”
"Yes?"
"... how well can your landlady hear?"
"What? Oh, she is deaf as a post. If we take the siren back into my room, close the door, maybe put some towels along the bottom… she won't hear anything at all.”
"Good."
"Why?"
She looked over at the siren, still watching them with its lovely dark eyes. Her expression was something just shy of mournful, and Gilly hated that the thing could cause her such sadness. Or that his own choices were causing-
No. It was the siren’s deceitful appearance that made her feel guilt and sadness over this, not anything Gilly was doing. He was only making the most of a stroke of luck and building for himself the life thousands of men had sought without success. When he owned this whole island, or any island he wanted… she would see. She would understand, then.
Atabei turned back to him, and gave him a cool smile that did not reach her eyes. “We need a place where we will not be heard. Once the work begins... this poor creature is going to scream.”
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Taglist: @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @theelvishcowgirl @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @bloodinkandashes @squishablesunbeam
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Note: Although I am not planning any specific @whumptober this year, I have done two pieces so far using prompts and that may continue!
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Today Is His Special Day!
Tws: for child endangerment, minor whump (nothing actually happens, has happened or will happen, but whumpee strongly suspects that that may not be the case anymore)
< Masterlist
Today might be the single most stressful day of his entire life.
He has been trying to get ready for today for a few months now. More accurately, a few years. Since he was old enough to understand that life isn't quite as easy for everyone else around him. Quite as certain. Quite as safe.
For a long while he was under the impression that his life was insignificant and unfair; that everyone else had it better simply because they were adults. They worked because that was their job, that is what adults do. They are the responsible, smart, strong ones who were supposed to take care of him. His job was supposed to be learning, and having fun. Enjoying his childhood. And yet, he was working as much as anyone, in his own eyes.
However — a few years back, his visual on the world drastically changed.
He suddenly knew that life could be far worse for him. He witnessed what truly goes on behind the scenes; what everyone around him never had the heart to tell him. He saw the brutality from a front row seat, and no matter how he cried at his 'caretaker', they would not stop until they deemed the punishment severe enough.
Worst of all, the violence didn't end there. From then on, at an age much too young, he was shown again and again how good he really had it. Slaves, servants, colleagues, friends... None of them were free of their wrath. The smallest mistake could lead to horrifying results. An offhand remark could send them into such a lust for blood, the very air around him could be felt changing at the exact moment something inside them would snap.
His caregiver would hurt people. A lot. Physically. All the time. And they didn't even do it for the right reasons; though what could be considered the right reason to hurt anyone that badly is a mystery to him still. They did it because they wanted to. To force agony under their skins and watch them writhe. They found it amusing; sometimes alluring. The rush. The power. The fear. A twisted fascination for ruined bodies.
They would smile while beating someone into the dirt, laugh when they would scream in desperation. Sometimes, they would even lure them into a trap — they would have the unfortunate soul say something they didn't really mean, or do something they knew they shouldn't really do just so they could correct them.
He always knew his guardian was a powerful figure in the community he was part of; that much was clear in their mannerisms and actions, as well as the other's whenever they were around. He knew they were a little mean with other adults, but he chalked it up to nothing more than stress, or his own imagination. He always assumed it was normal; they were the boss around here after all, that is how someone who rules should act. They knew best, they held the well-being of the rest in their hand. Until he was allowed to see it with his own eyes; until he was no longer sheltered from the visible repercussions of misbehaviour by the person enacting judgement, he would have said he wished to be an outsider like all the others. Someone else, someone more important, someone people would pay attention to. He wanted to be older, so he could have a say in his own life.
Now, he is scared. His thoughts are racing. His skin crawls and shivers. He hasn't even got out of bed yet.
He has been scolded before, but never hurt. He works for the same person that would torture someone else for the hell of it, so the possibility is there. If he was allowed to see real punishment, it must mean there is a reason he was made aware of it. It's Chekhov's gun. Once shown, it will have to go off at some point.
He has to talk to them about it. He loves them, he really does. They are the one who take care of him, protect him, feed him. They make him laugh, let him sleep in their bed after a nightmare without hesitation, treat them with kindness. They are as close to a parent as it ever got for him. But his childish curiousity would have never allowed him to keep himself in the dark.
So they had the talk. He asked all the questions he wanted to, and his guardian answered each and every single one truthfully. He remembers every single word from that conversation so clearly, ironically, as if his life depended on that information; —
"Did you hurt Mr. Owen's eye the other day? His face was all bruised and he didn't seem to want to tell me why." — An off-handed start. Casual. Like it is a normal thing to conversate about over dinner.
"Yes. He spoke out of turn. You know I can't stand that." — They did it for no reason. Of course. That wasn't even a question.
"Have you been hurting everyone all this time?" — A little push. They should pick up on where this is going already. They surely do.
"Yes." — No elaboration needed.
"Why didn't you tell me?" — An important question.
"You were too young to know." — Ah. He was too young. Was. His heart stutters, but he trudges on.
"Why now?" — Was it intentional? A conscious choice? A decision, to expose him so suddenly to what lies ahead of him?
"It had happened already, and I could not take it back. You aren't a kid anymore either. I assumed you were mature enough." — It wasn't supposed to happen, but he is supposed to be able to handle it by now. Because he is not young anymore. He is old enough. Why does it feel like his ribcage is shrinking?
"Why do you hurt them?" — A pointless question. One to deter his own thoughts. He already knows the answer.
"Because they deserve it. Because they need to remember their place. Because I want to." — Because they want to.
"Isn't scolding them enough?" — A half-hearted suggestion.
"Not enough. Not for me." — If it was, they wouldn't take so much time out of their day to beat someone into a pulp as punishment for not keeping eye contact long enough.
"Why isn't it enough for you?" — A desperate question, though it comes out as smooth as a compliment.
"Why would it be? Why wouldn't I hurt them for messing up? That's how they learn." — How they learn. The ones powerless to stop them. If that's how they learn...
"...Why don't you hurt me then?" — A terrifying question. Almost an invitation. He hopes it doesn't come across that way.
"You're my family." — Right.
"You hurt your brother that one time too..." — A question, but hidden. If he deserves it, though he's also your family, how come I don't?
"Well, he's an adult, he can take it." — He's an adult.
He's an adult.
Of course. He hasn't seen them hurt anyone but grownups. All the ones that they are supposed to be on even grounds with. He doesn't see many people his age around, but maybe that's for good reason. The only kid around is him; taken under the wing of this sadistic monster.
He did not ask more questions, though one little thought he cannot chase from his mind. As he pulls air into his chest again by force, and lets it slither out of him in a hopeless sigh, the words are a constant buzz. He will have to ignore them for the whole day. He knows it will be impossible.
He will work the whole day like he does any other day because that's what he is supposed to do, like all the adults. He was taught well the consequences of failing to follow orders.
He will stumble home after an exhausting day — narrowly avoid breaking down in the doorway from the same words that were buzzing in his head having turned into screaming — to greet his guardian with a smile.
There they will stand with a warm expression, a present in their hands and a birthday cake on the table, proudly telling him he is an adult now. How incredible it is that's he's really all grown up. How he can drink, and see all the horror movies he wants, and all these other news that are supposed to be great and fill him with joy.
And there he will be, holding back tears, because the only thing running through his mind will be the one question that has haunted him ever since the talk, burning his throat; —
"Will you... hurt me, too?"
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