Dark
Title: Dark
Prompt: Stigmata
Medium: Fic
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Physical abuse.
Summary: Sequel to Light. Domestic slave, and high school senior, Adam has a strange mark on him. His friend, freshman student, Kris, wonders at the meaning behind it, but also offers Adam a way out. (Slave AU)
There was a book the smart kids read in their English class, about a woman who had to wear a letter around her neck as punishment for a crime she had committed. Adam studied the raised numbers burned into the tender side of his wrist, and wondered:
What crime had he committed, to be branded with someone else's telephone number?
It didn't matter. The numbers were there, whether Adam liked it or not. They were still sore, even though it had been several days.
It wouldn't have happened at all, except that Adam had run.
Only permitted to see his own family on weekends, during the week, he was at the mercy of the other family, who made him work like a slave for meager wages. His own parents knew nothing of his working conditions, and had had sent him to work so that he might have a better life.
Adam had stolen food once - just a piece of bread - but he had been beaten for less - so he escaped out a basement window, to find food.
That was how he wound up with this tattoo of sorts. Physical proof of who he belonged to. It hurt to look at, and the mere sight of it shamed him so much that he walked around with his hands in his pockets, so that no one could see the mark.
But Kris was different. Kris was the curious sort, who always meant the very best for whomever he was around. Instead of the cruel and cutting remarks he received from other kids at school - kids in his own class - Kris was seriously worried by what he saw, by accident, when Adam reached across him for some French fries a few days back.
Kris hadn't asked. He was too polite. Born in the South, where manners were of the utmost importance, he knew better than to call attention to something Adam obviously didn't want seen.
--
Days passed, and then a week. Adam stayed after school to work on a project that would determine whether he would graduate or not, when Kris approached him in the cafeteria again.
This time, because nobody else was around, Adam perched on a round, blue stool. He sat right on the edge, as if expecting someone to come and tell him he had no business there.
"Hey," Kris said softly.
"Hey," Adam returned, wishing he had worn long sleeves, even in this California heat. He put his pen down instead, and laid his palms down flat on the table.
"I hope you don't think this is too rude a question? But I saw those numbers on your arm. Are you okay?" Kris wondered, concern shining in his deep brown eyes.
"It's just my phone number," Adam shrugged. It wasn't technically a lie. Except that it wasn't his phone number, it was theirs. So the police would know who to return him to, if he tried to run again. Legal age had nothing to do with it. Money had been exchanged. He was theirs until they decided otherwise.
"Burned into your wrist?" Kris asked, incredulous. "It looks like those Holocaust numbers, kind of," he observed gently. And then, "Don't you know your own phone number?"
If you asked Kris, which no one did, Adam didn't look good. He had always been a bigger kid, at least since Kris had known him. And not just big compared to Kris, either. Now, he was getting thinner and thinner. His eyes looked hunted. He came to school tired all the time. Now he had a strange number burned into him.
Something kept tripping Kris up about the number. He knew Adam's parents, and they lived at a different area code. And the burn itself didn't look like it had been made by cigarettes. It looked like a brand - like you might find on an animal.
Or a slave.
"You know you can always come to my house, right?" Kris asked carefully. Quietly.
Adam nodded, silent.
Without a word, Kris picked up the discarded pen, and etched his own phone number - all ten digits - on the underside of his own wrist. He had a feeling that if Adam was caught with someone else's number, that could be really bad.
So, Kris just turned his wrist over. He let Adam stare at his own number. Commit it to memory.
And he prayed that someday, Adam might use the number to fight his way out of the darkness that chained him.