nope
nope nope nope nope
He wasn't going to start falling apart, he'd decided, he'd walked resolute and with as much damn inner peace as he could possibly muster together, bullshit about examples and strength of conviction straightening his spine.
That lasted exactly two strikes.
The interrorod cracks across taut muscles and flaying skin and bites another line into his back that's going to seep candy colored red for everyone to gawp at.
Right that'd been the other plan, along with not crying, that somehow he'd manage not to bleed despite the array of disgusting tools laid out on the interrorgation table. He was fucking brilliant, wasn't he, just avoid any blood, bruises, let them think he was rusty, don't say anything, stand straight, maybe get executed cleanly, shouldn't take more than an hour.
It'd almost been working, sort of, plan A hanging on by its pathetic grasping claws to some semblance of not a total shitshow while he crumpled against the investigarrotion block inbetween gasped, breathless 'fuck's over and over like some kind of desperate passcode. Some kind of old safehouse shit not that he'd be fucking stupid enough to have a sobbed-out 'fuck' be the safehouse word (although once it was LET ME IN YOU FUCKASS and Captor and Leijon laughed themselves sick refusing to tell him which one of them set up that wiggler bullshit).
Then another crack that made his already out knees crumple instinctively and they stopped, hissing at each other and forgetting all blueblood formality,
"What the /fuck/-"
Interrorgators were well trained and extremely, disgustingly, heartbreakingly fucking good at what they did, but they were morons about everything else and couldn't decide, couldn't figure out whether to keep going or get an indigo or just get the fuck out before somebody decided it was all their faults and he spent a good few minutes trying to remember how breathing worked and letting the tears leak out sideways since the fucking meowbeast was out of its bag anyway.
They decided to do both and spill as much of it as possible for when some indigoblood showed up to declare him anathema and a heretic in addition to a traitor and a rebel, his whole existence heretical to the bloodcaste bullshit that was never meant to be.
From somewhere another crack breaks itself across his skin, and somewhere along with the pain and ache he can feel dripping, sliding down around to plip plip quietly to his feet when its not drowned out by the rod and the bored questions of the interrorgator and his own unwilling sobbing. Of course they want to know who else is involved, who should be culled - culled, always /culled/, nobody can say /murdered/ like it really is -
He hears the interrigatorod before it lands, time stretching out impossible and thick, which makes no sense at all as he flinches and braces himself which just makes it hurt more, of course, that's what it's fucking designed to do, then congeals into the normal pace as it lands if any of this is normal which it's not. Normal is clawing its way up the back of his thinkpan in sharp, disconcerting flashes of faces and things and places that aren't Her Imperial Bitchdom's prison, being whipped for the crime of being born while some clown - shit if he doesn't get a whirling dump of what a clown used to look like - laughs at the puddle of red soaking into his knees. He's dizzy, lightheaded between the pain and chopped up, blurry visions, and he's never seen this much of his own blood --
Hah. Seer of Blood. It'd be funny if it wasn't the worst thing in the whole fucking universe. If it didn't drag out a whole new set of flashes, things he doesn't understand, never understood, impossible things and monsters with the Empress' face. If it wasn't going to kill him and everybody he loves.
For real this time, maybe, or maybe they'll just wake up again in a world even worse than this one, and he'll be going around talking about the benefits of the hemospectrum and how it keeps everyone safe and happy, the kindness of Her Imperial Condescation --
His stomach heaves itself right onto a pair of shiny indigo shoes and then it's pain, and red and the squeeling of laughter till his visions reach up and pull him into sweet oblivion.
He wasn't going to start falling apart, he'd decided, he'd walked resolute and with as much damn inner peace as he could possibly muster together, bullshit about examples and strength of conviction straightening his spine.
That lasted exactly two strikes.
The interrorod cracks across taut muscles and flaying skin and bites another line into his back that's going to seep candy colored red for everyone to gawp at.
Right that'd been the other plan, along with not crying, that somehow he'd manage not to bleed despite the array of disgusting tools laid out on the interrorgation table. He was fucking brilliant, wasn't he, just avoid any blood, bruises, let them think he was rusty, don't say anything, stand straight, maybe get executed cleanly, shouldn't take more than an hour.
It'd almost been working, sort of, plan A hanging on by its pathetic grasping claws to some semblance of not a total shitshow while he crumpled against the investigarrotion block inbetween gasped, breathless 'fuck's over and over like some kind of desperate passcode. Some kind of old safehouse shit not that he'd be fucking stupid enough to have a sobbed-out 'fuck' be the safehouse word (although once it was LET ME IN YOU FUCKASS and Captor and Leijon laughed themselves sick refusing to tell him which one of them set up that wiggler bullshit).
Then another crack that made his already out knees crumple instinctively and they stopped, hissing at each other and forgetting all blueblood formality,
"What the /fuck/-"
Interrorgators were well trained and extremely, disgustingly, heartbreakingly fucking good at what they did, but they were morons about everything else and couldn't decide, couldn't figure out whether to keep going or get an indigo or just get the fuck out before somebody decided it was all their faults and he spent a good few minutes trying to remember how breathing worked and letting the tears leak out sideways since the fucking meowbeast was out of its bag anyway.
They decided to do both and spill as much of it as possible for when some indigoblood showed up to declare him anathema and a heretic in addition to a traitor and a rebel, his whole existence heretical to the bloodcaste bullshit that was never meant to be.
From somewhere another crack breaks itself across his skin, and somewhere along with the pain and ache he can feel dripping, sliding down around to plip plip quietly to his feet when its not drowned out by the rod and the bored questions of the interrorgator and his own unwilling sobbing. Of course they want to know who else is involved, who should be culled - culled, always /culled/, nobody can say /murdered/ like it really is -
He hears the interrigatorod before it lands, time stretching out impossible and thick, which makes no sense at all as he flinches and braces himself which just makes it hurt more, of course, that's what it's fucking designed to do, then congeals into the normal pace as it lands if any of this is normal which it's not. Normal is clawing its way up the back of his thinkpan in sharp, disconcerting flashes of faces and things and places that aren't Her Imperial Bitchdom's prison, being whipped for the crime of being born while some clown - shit if he doesn't get a whirling dump of what a clown used to look like - laughs at the puddle of red soaking into his knees. He's dizzy, lightheaded between the pain and chopped up, blurry visions, and he's never seen this much of his own blood --
Hah. Seer of Blood. It'd be funny if it wasn't the worst thing in the whole fucking universe. If it didn't drag out a whole new set of flashes, things he doesn't understand, never understood, impossible things and monsters with the Empress' face. If it wasn't going to kill him and everybody he loves.
For real this time, maybe, or maybe they'll just wake up again in a world even worse than this one, and he'll be going around talking about the benefits of the hemospectrum and how it keeps everyone safe and happy, the kindness of Her Imperial Condescation --
His stomach heaves itself right onto a pair of shiny indigo shoes and then it's pain, and red and the squeeling of laughter till his visions reach up and pull him into sweet oblivion.