Day 26 - Alt. Prompt: Body Modification
Depersonalization, amnesia, memory loss, implied torture, flaying, blood, medical procedures, no anesthesia, dubious medical accuracy, mentions of Christianity
[Directly follows Vows]
Yessir. No sir.
That was all it took to sign away his right to what fragmented memories he had left. The Wolf knew he should have cared about that, cared enough to be angry about that.
But he wasn’t - he was whatever they wanted him to be.
So long as he was out of that Hell, he would be whoever they wanted him to be. He would be no one, not even The Wolf, if that’s what it took to stay away from that place.
The sun was warmer than he remembered, brighter too.
This new room had a window, and that was all he wanted to remember.
He would swallow back the nausea induced by the scent of acid-eaten flesh when his prints were burned away. The bandages wrapped around his fingers were thin, letting blood dye the gauze pink as the overseer walked him to a different room in the building.
This one did not have a window.
He saw the surgeons set out medical equipment and he promised himself he would not flinch at the scalpel’s kiss. (Why waste anesthesia on someone who knew better than to shy away from the pain?)
When they finished cutting, he looked down at his own flayed, tattooed skin set aside while new skin was sewn into place.
He wondered if they had meant anything, the flowers and vines that once curled up his right forearm and encircled his bicep. He wondered if the old Wolf had gotten them from a friend or a stranger.
The new skin wasn’t his own, pale and cadaverous. He wondered if its former owner was dead, killed just for this purpose or a donor blissfully unaware that their flesh would be soaked in blood, forever tied to the hand of a monster. He wondered if there was any owner at all, or if the project had facilities that could synthesize the replacement flesh.
When they finished his arm, they had him strip his thin t-shirt, the material speckled with fresh blood as he thoughtlessly pulled it off without regard for his newly acquired stitches. One of the surgeons looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.
Like a young Viktor laying eyes on his creation when it first drew breath.
But still, they cut into the skin against his still too prominent ribs, carving away a cross below his left arm by his heart. The text inscribed within was too faded to read.
The bloody stretch of skin was added to the biohazard waste bin with all the ceremony of a discarded tissue. The surgeons set about aligning and stitching the cold patch of false flesh in its place. Blood ran in rivulets down the Wolf’s ribs, dying the waistband of his pants red.
His mind wouldn’t wander from the last glimpse of something his own, something raw and bloody that meant enough to who he had been to be engraved in ink on flesh.
(Hardly as permanent a mark as the one placed on Cain.)
Had he been deeply religious or culturally Christian? Did it have his real name hidden in the old, smudged ink? Did it matter anymore?
Hell was real. And the Wolf was hand carved from the violence and gore to be its very best devil.
[Before Liquidation]
(Part of my Freelancers: Swansong series)
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Low Profile Part 13— Going Soft
Cw: flaying
Masterlist here.
“You know that torture doesn’t fucking work! You know it! He’s going to make up the first shit that comes to his head just to make it stop, and we’ll be stuck with no code and— and—” Silas choked back the tears burning in his throat. “Why am I fucking bothering?!” He spat. “It’s not like you even care, you just wanna play out your sick fucking fantasies, you’re not the one who has to see your— who has to see—”
“I have half a mind to tell the boss you’re getting in the way of my assignment,” Viper said coolly. “She chose not to assign you because she knew you’d let your emotions cloud your judgment, and she was right.”
“Getting in the way? You’re the one destroying him for no good reason!” Silas shot back. “He was our ally! He made that drive at his own expense! Is this how you want to repay him?”
“He knew the risks when he made the video, he got himself into this,” Viper shrugged. “Besides, I cross-referenced some of that information, and it was right. Hurting him doesn’t do much for anyone but me, sure, but he fucking shatters at the first kind touch he gets afterwards. He’ll give you anything you want after he’s been hurt.”
He paused, a devious glint growing in his gaze.“You know what? I could tell the boss you’ve been getting soft, hm? So unless you want that, how about you try it for yourself? Get out that pretty little knife you’ve kept clean for so long?”
“It’s not going to work,” Silas bit out firmly. “You’ll be crawling back to me, no code, no drive, just you wait.”
Hale’s head spun from the furious throbbing in his back, but he kept an ear pressed to the crack of the door as snippets of the argument filtered through.
“Do you want in on this case or not?” Viper intoned, softly enough that Hale had to strain to make out the words. “I’m sure we could work out an arrangement if this is taking just too much of a toll on your poor heart. Pluck out a few memories, and he’ll be nothing to you but what he truly is. A tool.”
Silas gasped, softly but sharply.
“Would you rather be locked up with him, then, is that what you’d prefer?”
“You know my loyalties lie with the family, first and foremost,” Silas said coldly. “Just because I have the sense to restrain myself—”
“But it’s not about sense at all, now, is it?” Viper taunted.
“My job is to keep him alive long enough to get the code, and your plans don’t exactly make it a fucking cakewalk. That’s all it is.”
“Prove me wrong, then. Go in, cut him up, get us another set of digits. Or I’ll have to make this a lot easier for us all.”
“I’m more than happy to oblige,” Silas shot back quickly. “Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I won’t do it.”
Hale flinched. It’d taken the last of his energy to stumble from the flimsy cot to the door. He couldn’t take more pain, he just couldn’t. He began to drag himself away from the door, each movement sending a fresh wave of agony flashing down his back.
He’d barely made it a few feet from the door when he heard the heavy click of a bolt.
Silas was back as expected, an elegant black stiletto knife in his hand. Viper stood behind him, drumming his fingers together as he watched the two of them with bored amusement.
“You’re going to give me that code, or you’re going to regret it,” Silas snarled.
Hale retreated back against the wall on pure instinct, his gaze flicking over the room as he desperately looked for an escape, a window, something. But Viper had already locked the door behind him.
His terrified eyes met Silas’s steely glare.
“Wait— wait— I know you don’t want to hurt me,” he stammered. “We can work something out, I— I’m trying to remember— there’s gotta be a better way—”
His words were choked off by his own strangled cry as Silas slammed his elbow against Hale’s neck, pinning him to the wall. He struck out with the blade in a flash of dark metal, making a shallow slash just under his collarbone.
“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t,” he said icily. “But what matters is that you’re going to tell me now:”
He forced the tip of the knife into the cut, and nausea twisted through Hale’s gut with the wrongness of the intrusion. “I— I don’t know— please— I just— Aah!”
Silas had turned the knife to scrape up inside the wound, peeling back a few layers of skin and tearing the edges of the cut.
The pain was sharp and slow and brutal, and Hale let out a shattered scream. Blood streamed down his chest in furious rivulets, and his vision swam.
Yet he didn’t give Hale a moment to rest, readjusting his grip on the knife and continuing to flay the wound.
His screams turned ragged as skin was rent from flesh, as hot tears streamed down his face and neck, burning as they hit the exposed cut.
Fuck it.
“8736— that’s all I remember— that’s all I know— please—” he sobbed. “I— I can’t… please….”
It was the first time he’d lied. The first time he’d just spat out the first string of numbers to come to mind. Maybe the past version of him would scoff at his weakness, rage against his unwillingness to suffer for the cause. But couldn’t care less. If they wanted the me from the past, they shouldn’t have let them brainwash me.
Silas glanced over his shoulder at Viper, who had already scrawled the numbers down. It was the smallest flicker of the gaze, barely noticeable. But it was there.
“This isn’t just about proving you can perform an effective interrogation,” Viper responded to the silent request. “This is about proving you haven’t gone soft. Get back into that dark side you’ve shown me so many times. Show me he really is nothing to you.”
If Hale hadn’t heard their fight from earlier, he never would have noticed the tears shining in Silas’s eyes, tears that were blinked away as quickly as they’d appeared.
His grip tightened around the knife, his forearm digging into Hale’s windpipe to hold him in place. He positioned the knife flat against the tattered mess of skin and dug the edge beneath the wound.
A sharp hiss escaped Hale’s lips, but as Silas started to carve deeper under his skin, he let himself dissolve into ragged sobs. He knew it was useless to beg.
Taglist: @morning-star-whump @whumpkitty @shameless-dumbass @hurtthemgently @gala1981 @avvail
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