Day Six: Despair (Hawaii Five-0, Steve, PG-13)
Title: Despair
Author: sylvanelfqueen
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Characters/Pairings: Steve
Prompt: chain
Prompt Table: D
Word Count: 122 words
Rating: PG-13
Warning: violence, spoilers for 2.10
Disclaimer: All Hawaii Five-0 characters herein are the property of CBS. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: He’s not going home alive
*****
It’s more agonizing than the pain of booted feet, bony fists, and cattle prods. It’s darker than the blackness of the hood over his head and more deafening than the silence after the gunshots. It digs under his skin, past flesh and muscle and sinew, delves under bone and marrow and blood, burrows deep into his very soul and smolders there like an ember. It’s a voice chanting in his mind, whispering in his ear, and opening his eyes.
He’s not going home alive.
Once acknowledged, it wraps around him like a heavy chain, squeezing around him tighter and tighter until he could burst from it. It drags him down like anchor, pulling him under the surface before he can catch a breath. It’s crushing. Suffocating. Impenetrable. It pushes and pulls and squeezes until he can take it no more and gasps out in pain. He cries out, screams his frustration to the nothingness around him, panting with the effort, knowing it’ll never be enough. There are no tears because there is no hope.
He’s not going home alive.
The fight has left his limbs, defiance and will beaten out of him by emotional blows. He sinks to the floor of the truck, resting his head on the wood, silently accepting his fate. He’s alone in this. There’s no back up, no rescue team, no cavalry waiting in the wings to sweep in for a victory. It’s just him against this never-ending tidal wave of evil.
He’s not going home alive.