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thejusticelounge2013-07-04 10:29 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2013-07-04 10:29 pm
Entry tags:
ruega por nosotros los pecadores
The fervor in his blood isn’t calmed by the way he takes them; there’s no vicious elegance to be had in the tiny tranquilizer darts he shoots into their soft, gentle flesh, only a sense of necessity. He needed them. More than that, She needed and wanted both of the children who had just emerged from the ocean alive.
If She’d wanted them dead, any of the men or women in their group would have complied, without needing any other reason besides Her desire, but bringing them alive—to the old Spanish fort, hidden deep in the mountain side where they were holed up, for the time being—required the sort of cool-headed implementation he excelled at.
After all, he had managed to salvage what was left of the situation in Seattle, in the end.
So, he doesn’t use a gun, crude and rudimentary, but instead, a hollow piece of reed that makes the softest of sounds, but allows the hypodermic needle to bury itself in the boy’s neck, its venom emptying into his carotid: She had said to make sure he was the first he took, or things would get infinitely more difficult. She had never lied to him, and he wasn’t about to begin doubting Her.
The instant he’d felt the prick, the little boy in his sights had whirled around, preternaturally fast, pulling the barbed tip of the arrow out of his skin, and flung an armful of projectiles in the man’s direction. One of them, in particular, had nearly sung, a high twanging note of bending metal, as it landed in the bark above his head. The man blinked, Her wisdom guiding him, and could only smirk when the boy shouted in fury.
The words—if there had been any— slurred slowed when the altered neurotoxin worked it’s way into his brain, and he staggered, listed to one side. The dark-haired boy remained upright, impressively, for another few seconds, even as the little girl to the side of him at his arm, screamed his name, her eyes wide and bright in the dying light of day.
Even from this distance, he could tell that she would be a beauty one day, without a doubt, perhaps—with her high, slanting cheekbones and the wide, dark of her almond-shaped eyes—perhaps.. even enough to challenge Her own.
The needle sunk into her neck easily and she brought her hand up, as if to grab at it, but stopped, unsure if she should pull it out or not. Her hesitation cost her: she dropped to her knees, then slumped, onto the boy’s fallen form, faster than he had.
If he’d been the type of man to wax poetic, or even if he’d really known the two children, outside of Her need for them, he might have paused to look at the shape their sleeping bodies had taken, almost Shakespearean in nature.
Even in sleep, he curled around her, his hand wrapped around her ankle, as if to tether him to her, even in Darkness. And she, her long lashes fluttering, dusky against the honeyed tone of her skin, managed one last look at the man’s expression—memorizing the brown of his eyes, his hair, the plainness of his face that She so coveted— shifting her body on top of her companion’s with the last of her consciousness, as if she could protect him.
If he’d been any kind of man that would have cared, he might have been bothered at how infinitesimally light their bodies were when he flung them each, one over each shoulder, and marched through the jungle.
—-
He pours the bucket of water over the boy’s face. It’s spring-drawn, but that means little in the sub-tropical climate of the island. The water is warm, sticky-sweet, as it splashes over his upright body.
He’d tied the boy, at his wrists, ankles, knees, and across his chest, trapping his arms, as per Her instructions, in a specialized co-polymer blend rope. He hadn’t understood, at first, why it was important, or why he had to strip the boy of all his clothes, put him in a rough-spun tunic and drawstring pants, but he hadn’t question Her orders. He knew better than that.
Of course, removing the boy’s clothing, and watching in something akin to morbid fascination as weapon, after weapon, after weapon fell from within the confines of such tiny pieces of clothing, he wondered for the first time, who the boy was.
Then, after a beat, he decided he didn’t quite much care.
“WAKE UP!” He bellowed, right in the boy’s ear, and when the tiny boy jerked back, his back against the stone wall, legs extended in front of him, arms behind his back, he watched the boy’s slate grey eyes appear, hazy, under a fringe of lashes.
“You’re going to give me everything I want to know, boy,” the man says, rising from where he’d been crouched, his eyes on Damian. “But we’ll start with your name.”
Name, age, place of birth, languages spoken, parents’ names, deepest waking fears, he would get it all from him. She wanted it and he would not fail.
(continued from Lian and Damian’s great escape)
Sea salt and mildew heady on the air; the scratch of burlap garments on his unprotected skin; the grit of coal dust between his teeth. He’s cataloging his environment before he ever opens his eyes, before his vision is clear enough to scrutinize his captor looming above him. The man isn’t very large or otherwise intimidating in form, but there’s something zealous in the focus of his dark eyes, something Damian feels he’s seen before.
He gathers from the air quality that they’re holed up somewhere not far from the ocean, an underground bunker or cave, perhaps. It’s dark and humid, the crude clothing sticking to his skin, and when he maneuvers against his bonds, a knot of synthetic rope presses tighter against his throat. He freezes, instantly; he knows this method of bondage. He’d been trained in it. He’d restrained victims in this criss-crossed pattern of cords himself, and he’d allowed one to struggle long enough to choke herself to death before she revealed the information he’d been tasked to claim from her. Mother had not been pleased with his failure that night—
He slams down a mental barrier against this train of thought. Talia has nothing to do with his current situation. The knot on his neck presses against his windpipe just enough to make breathing uncomfortable, but he doesn’t let it show when he glowers up at the man staging this interrogation. He doesn’t ask about Lian lest he make it evident he cares for her and have her used against him. He doesn’t question their whereabouts or the purpose of their capture.
In fact, he says nothing at all, allowing the set of his jaw and the defiance in his eyes make clear his refusal to comply.
The first blow lands on the side of his head, as he’d expected it would. He feels the rivulet of blood leak past his ear and down his neck, adding its metallic scent to the concoction in the air, and Damian is careful not to writhe and cause the rope on his throat to close even tighter.
She was a beautiful little girl.
Laying against the pile of scrap cloth, long lashes pressed against her cheeks in her sleep, Talia made no move to wake the girl from her slumber, not right away. Instead, she took her time to admire the dusky rose colouring across the high apple of the little girl’s cheeks, the cherubic pout of her mouth and the stubbornness of her chin. Oh, yes. She was a beautiful little girl, who would one day become a stunning woman. That is, of course, if she lived that long.
She was small, for her age, but Talia knew better than to assume that she didn’t possess her own natural prowess. Samuel had relayed how the girl had found it within herself, even as the toxin worked through her brain, to cover Damian’s body with her own, before succumbing to it entirely. She was strong, there was no doubt in Talia’s mind about that, as she pushed her fingers over the baby-fine skin of the little girl’s face, smoothing away the stress that creased her brow.
“Shh, shh,” she cooed, her voice soft and melodic, even as Lian stirred, not needing a bucket of water, but a woman’s soft touch—perhaps, alien to her—to rouse her from her dreamless sleep.
“Mama..?” Came the softest of inquiries, and Talia, under the thick veil she wore, felt the plush rise of her mouth twist, her heart clenching the tiniest bit. Not for Lian, whose lashes were fluttering now, the dark of her eyes peeking through, but for the word, the way her dove-voice rounded it in her mouth, sucking it clean for the nourishment it provided, before letting it float, soar up, prettily, over her tongue, full of hope, of trembling faith.
Talia hated to kill pretty things.
“No, sweet thing,” Talia said, quietly, stroking her hair back, and when Lian realised that she wasn’t, in fact, in her home, and this was not, by any means, a dream, and jerked upright, Talia moved back, play-astonished. Fitfully afraid.
“Please, don’t scream!” Talia whispered, her voice hushed, the breath she used billowing the material in front of her mouth. The burqa was dark, as was the rest of her garb: black, diminutive, shrouding the shape of her body, leaving nothing but the shape of her eyes, and the tops of her hands, skin overlain with a thick layer of spirit gum and latex, giving them the appearance of having been burned, badly, once-upon-a-time.
“Please, don’t scream,” she repeated. “I am not supposed to be here, I am not— Please, if you scream they will hurt me.”
Lian sat up on the pile of rags, tied at the wrists and ankles with rugged pieces of her rope, her clothing also gone, changed out for the rough spun clothing. Talia had not permitted any of the men to change her themselves, despite their desire to make her proud; she trusted them with her plans, but as a woman, she did not trust them with her sleeping body.
She had changed and bound the girl herself, with a mother’s patience. A mother, yes, but not hers, so she made the knots tight and left her on the pile of rags, to sleep off the drugs, while she, Talia, made her way to the cell where her son Damian was, and listened, carefully to the going ons.
It had already been a full day.
The boy had refused to eat or drink, to give up any information, and had resisted all of Samuel’s methods and Talia’s pride had grown with every passing moment. To a point. She’d returned to Lian as it neared midnight of the following night, waiting patiently for the girl to wake up, and then, when she was, she waited for her not to scream, to let loose a wail that would alert Damian to her presence.
Thankfully, the girl, still blinking did nothing but sit back, and push herself away from the woman.
“Where am I? Where—” Her large, almond eyes widened. “Where’s Damian?”
Talia could barely stop herself from closing her eyes from the sound of his name falling from her lips: it had been so long since she had heard it, the rise and fall of the consonants and vowels, that she allowed herself a moment to savor it. Just a moment.
Brown eyes flashing, she looked to the little girl and shook her head. “The little boy? He’s.. They have him in the room down the hall. He isn’t—he isn’t being good, please, stay quiet.”
Lian scooted forward, the direct opposite way she had gone just moments before, and nearly climbed to her knees, trying to reach Talia. “You have to help us, we—My mom, she sent me a message, for me to come and—and—” Her eyes widened. “Please let us out of here—”
“I have no way of doing this,” Talia whispered, hushed, before urging her again: “Please, be quiet!”
But Lian raised her voice, lifting her face to the ceiling and shouted, at the top of her lungs, the sound keening and high: “Damian!”
Talia stood and raced from the room, slamming the door shut behind her. She reached up, pulling the burqa from her head, off her shoulders, spine straightening, as the thick coil of her braid fell to her waist, her expression slipping back into stoicism, her acting over for the time being. Behind her, leaning against the wall, a woman stood sentry, her dark skin marred with thin lines of ritualized scarification, looked away immediately from Talia, her gaze level and dutiful.
Suddenly, to the left of her, a sound of pain, genuine and high, in the form and shape of her child’s voice echoed through the cold stone corridor, Talia’s stomach twisting in a way it had not for months unnumbered, pulling at the emptiness of her womb. The dark material of her dress swishing at her ankles, she made her way to the room, just as Samuel was exiting. His dark brown eyes lit on Talia’s face, his skin blanching, as he averted his eyes and he began to speak, his words hushed.
“He was unmoving, just completely still, the way he has been, my lady, but when he heard the girl— He—” Samuel turned his body away from the woman, his shoulders that had been so proudly anchored slumping down and away. “He twisted. I think I broke his arm.”
Her hand moved with a vicious and startling accuracy, nails plunging into the skin at the corner of his eyes, gripping the tender flesh of the bridge of his nose, and pushing him back against the wall by it, using just a centimeter of flesh to control his every action. Arm extended, the scarred make-up ending at her exposed forearm, she tossed her head back, imperially, a sneer pulling her lip back over her teeth. She would take his eyes. She would rip them from their sockets and pull them still rolling from his skull, present them to her prince for the man’s slight.
“My lady!” Samuel began in Basque, his native language and the one he had fallen in love with her with, his eyes wide and open, tears springing to line the lids, shimmering mirages of emotion: her rage, his shame. “He began to speak, said he would tell me what we wanted to know!”
The silence spanned between them as Talia took this information in. The sneer settled on her face, until it was just a look of mild disgust. She would deal with the man’s overzealousness after it was all done. After the master detective and his friends would come for the children, rescue them from the dungeon, return to their homes. There would be time, then, to teach him by rod and staff, how badly he had erred, even despite how useful the information was now:
Damian cared for the girl. It was mutual. He cared enough that he had allowed this man to break his arm in his alarm at hearing her scream. The knowledge curled, as dark and venomous as a viper in the pit of her stomach, before she pulled her arm back, countenance reverting to the mask she so readily sported in the man’s presence. A coldness overcame her, washing down over her back too much like a memory of ice-water, poured between her shoulder blades, across her breasts, for trespasses committed. It numbs her skin, down to the deepest level, just before her bones and she nods, back to her son’s room.
“Get what I want from him,” she snapped, her voice lilting, before she turned to the woman who had been watching them, silently, and had not said a word the entire time. Dutifully. Talia nodded to her, pointing to the room where Lian lay.
“Her face last. Life is unkind to once-pretty girls,” she instructs, the Arabic flowing from her tongue. The woman’s ebony face darkened, but complied, unlatching the ancient wooden door and stepping into Lian’s room.
Talia hated to kill beautiful things, but, then again, it had all never been about her.
Samuel: He pulled the latch over the door upon re-entering the room, the metal grating against the stone and rough wood. Her displeasure stained his skin, it felt like, seeping in through his pores and finding its way into his bloodstream, darkened the colour of it to rust. His face was more pinched than it had been when he had left, the boy’s arms free from the ropes now; he would have to compensate for that.
"I’ve been given permission to break your other arm if you don’t tell us what we want," Samuel said, quietly, and kicked the boy lightly between his shoulder blades. “Turn around. Face me."
Damian: He’d endured in silence until he heard Lian’s scream. His name had reverberated from the stone walls of his prison, bellowed in her voice high and tight with fear, and that one word alone had caused him to panic where hours of torment had failed. The cracked bone in his arm throbbed in reminder of the cost of losing his composure.
Damian rose unsteadily as his captor entered the chamber again, bringing new threats with him. The ropes were scattered on the floor around his feet. "Bring me to her," he demanded, teeth grit against his pain and exhaustion. “I’ll tell you nothing until I see that she’s unharmed."
Samuel: Samuel shook his head as his sneer climbed to onto his features.
"No," he stated, simply, as he reached for the bindings he had wrapped around his hands, when he had been hitting the boy. It had all been below the shoulders and above the waist, as she had instructed, and really, he hadn’t meant to break the boy’s arm, when he’d had him up against the wall. He reached out, suddenly, with the cloth, and wrapped it around Damian’s neck, intending to fling him back, and towards the exact spot he’d been in when he’d twisted, and the bone had broken. He grabs it, hard, looping it into a knot at the bottom slope of the boy’s skull and chokes him.
"Your name. Your age. Where are you from." He repeated, his voice dropping into the monotonous litany it had been droning on in, for the last ten hours.
Damian: He’s slower than usual, weakened by hours of ruthless interrogation and his broken arm, and driving his good elbow into the man’s chest as he approaches does nothing to prevent the strip of cloth from snapping around his throat. He grunts for air as he struggles to free himself, his useless limb held tight against his chest while the nails of the opposite hand claw at whatever part of his captor he can reach. “The girl," he insists again, ignoring the inquiry that’s played in this room on a loop since they began.
Samuel: Almost as if on cue, Lian’s scream drifts up again, through the cold, stone walls. The sound is pained and without the formation of words, it sounds as if the girl is meeting a much more brutal reckoning on her end. Samuel’s expression darkened, when he realised how much easier it would have been to use her, from the beginning, even as Damian bucked against him, the boy’s anger rising.
"You hear that?" Samuel ducked his head, bringing his mouth close, near to brushing, against the boy’s ear. “There won’t be enough time for the way we will make her scream if you don’t start speaking, boy." He jerked his arm up, bicep bulging as he pulled on back on the cloth, before slamming Damian into the stone wall, hard enough to dislodge a tooth or two.
"Your name!" He shouted. “Your age! Your city of birth!"
Damian: Damian sputtered as his face made contact with the unforgiving stone, nose smashing against it until he feels blood trickle down the back of his throat. He choked, his breathing already inhibited by the cloth wound like a vice around his neck, and Lian’s wail of agony pierced the otherwise impenetrable wall of his resolve. He cut his eyes aside to meet the man’s gaze, face still half-pressed into the stone. "Khalid Bilal, 13, Khartoum."
"Now, let me see her!"
Samuel: Samuel was not the type to lose his temper easily. It was, again, one of the things that She treasured in, one of the qualities he knew that She looked for in men. But, the boy’s lie, so very obvious, meant to placate him, as if he were some sputtering imbecile, a henchman with no other purpose than to torture a young boy, it made his blood boil.
"Your name!" He spit, and reached for Damian’s broken, useless arm. He knew that it was getting the better of him, the boy’s eerie resolve in the face of it all. It was unnerving, to meet a child this dangerous, this undisturbed. Samuel wanted, no, needed to bring him down, bring him back to a—a human level where he could reason with him. Break him.
He yanked on his arm, uttering quietly, bringing his face back to the boy’s ear: "..when you give me what I want, I’ll bring her to you. If that means in pieces, you’ll know you waited too long."
Damian: The wrench to his broken arm causes Damian to cry out, the yelp rising strangled and raw in this throat. He knows revealing his true identity will do nothing to aid Lian; it’s the only bargaining chip he has for gaining access to her. “And you’ve already taken too long, haven’t you?" he returns, words coming out between gasps of pain. He jerks his chin toward the other. “Whoever did that to your face certainly thought so. I won’t talk, and they’ll kill you for failing. Yes, I know how this works," he adds in a hiss. He ought to, having been on the other end of tormenting a prisoner many times during his young life. “You can bring her to me and perhaps then I’ll be more verbose, or you can die at your master’s hand. If you think there’s a third option, you’re mistaken."
Samuel: Behind Damian, Samuel’s eyes widen at the boy’s words. He understood then, just how badly he’d underestimated the boy, and how foolish, utterly foolish he had been in doing so. She hadn’t. She’d known from the very beginning who She had been dealing with, and why She had been so meticulous in Her planning. He glanced to the door, nervously, as if waiting for Her to step out, ready to, yes, punish him for his failure. The seconds ticked, nearly audible in their passing, and Samuel waited. Breathed, and waited for the door to shudder with pressure, Her delicate hands against the wood, Her beckoning call that he would answer, even if it meant his demise.
It doesn’t come.
Gradually, he eased back, off the boy’s body, the knotted cloth traveling to wind around the boy’s wrists. Once secured, he jerked on the boy’s arms, cruelly hard, and shoved him back against the wall.
"You move from that spot, and I kill her where she stands." He breathed, very ounce of truth he could manage poured into the words.
It seems like a lifetime before he returns. Lian is in tow, her tiny body swimming in burlap garments; her bare shoulder is scraped raw to bleeding, the knuckles of her hands bruised from thin, tiny punches against an ungiving surface, and, most horrifically of all, a face print marks the side of her face, swelling angrily now, her lip split where it had clipped her teeth. A noise, wrenched from the base of her lungs, exploded forth in a burst of air at seeing Damian, and she ran to him, her arms and legs unfettered, wrapping him in an embrace, despite how the boy stiffened in obvious pain.
Damian: Damian barks one last groan of pain as his arm is twisted again before the assailant leaves the room, door slamming with a ring of finality in his wake. There’s a chance he may kill her, Damian realizes, even now. Bring her to him dead and broken in a further effort to intimidate him into compliance. But no— he feels certain his captor understands him now, and must surely realize Lian’s welfare is the only thing that could possibly secure Damian’s cooperation. He waits, therefore, where instructed, the cold must of the wall seeping into his skin and lungs.
And when the door opens once more, Lian there and broken indeed but alive, the boy breaks too, if only for a moment. "Lian, habib albi," he gasps as he turns to meet her embrace, both of them falling to their knees together. The softness in his eyes reserved for her alone disappears in a flash, calm resolve on his face when he stands and looks upon their captor again. “I will make certain you are dead before I leave this place," he hisses in his native Arabic.
Samuel: The boy’s words made the man pause, something in them ringing familiar, despite all the logical contradictions to the opposite. He did not know this boy. There was no place in Samuel’s life where he would have known the boy, been around him long enough for the words to sound familiar, to resound inside his chest with such aching sincerity and truth behind them.
Yet, here he stands, blinking in the face of the threat in a perfectly spoken Arabic, the words sounding all too close to something Samuel feels, to something he knows or feels he should. He blinks again and then, his English heavily accented and hard, words dropping like stones into the darkness of the room. “Do so, and I will be sure to take you and your darling into the night with me."
Over Damian’s shoulder, Lian’s swollen-shut widen when Samuel
turns and bars the door behind him again, the metal screaming against stone and echoing in the silence.
"Now. Your names."
If She’d wanted them dead, any of the men or women in their group would have complied, without needing any other reason besides Her desire, but bringing them alive—to the old Spanish fort, hidden deep in the mountain side where they were holed up, for the time being—required the sort of cool-headed implementation he excelled at.
After all, he had managed to salvage what was left of the situation in Seattle, in the end.
So, he doesn’t use a gun, crude and rudimentary, but instead, a hollow piece of reed that makes the softest of sounds, but allows the hypodermic needle to bury itself in the boy’s neck, its venom emptying into his carotid: She had said to make sure he was the first he took, or things would get infinitely more difficult. She had never lied to him, and he wasn’t about to begin doubting Her.
The instant he’d felt the prick, the little boy in his sights had whirled around, preternaturally fast, pulling the barbed tip of the arrow out of his skin, and flung an armful of projectiles in the man’s direction. One of them, in particular, had nearly sung, a high twanging note of bending metal, as it landed in the bark above his head. The man blinked, Her wisdom guiding him, and could only smirk when the boy shouted in fury.
The words—if there had been any— slurred slowed when the altered neurotoxin worked it’s way into his brain, and he staggered, listed to one side. The dark-haired boy remained upright, impressively, for another few seconds, even as the little girl to the side of him at his arm, screamed his name, her eyes wide and bright in the dying light of day.
Even from this distance, he could tell that she would be a beauty one day, without a doubt, perhaps—with her high, slanting cheekbones and the wide, dark of her almond-shaped eyes—perhaps.. even enough to challenge Her own.
The needle sunk into her neck easily and she brought her hand up, as if to grab at it, but stopped, unsure if she should pull it out or not. Her hesitation cost her: she dropped to her knees, then slumped, onto the boy’s fallen form, faster than he had.
If he’d been the type of man to wax poetic, or even if he’d really known the two children, outside of Her need for them, he might have paused to look at the shape their sleeping bodies had taken, almost Shakespearean in nature.
Even in sleep, he curled around her, his hand wrapped around her ankle, as if to tether him to her, even in Darkness. And she, her long lashes fluttering, dusky against the honeyed tone of her skin, managed one last look at the man’s expression—memorizing the brown of his eyes, his hair, the plainness of his face that She so coveted— shifting her body on top of her companion’s with the last of her consciousness, as if she could protect him.
If he’d been any kind of man that would have cared, he might have been bothered at how infinitesimally light their bodies were when he flung them each, one over each shoulder, and marched through the jungle.
—-
He pours the bucket of water over the boy’s face. It’s spring-drawn, but that means little in the sub-tropical climate of the island. The water is warm, sticky-sweet, as it splashes over his upright body.
He’d tied the boy, at his wrists, ankles, knees, and across his chest, trapping his arms, as per Her instructions, in a specialized co-polymer blend rope. He hadn’t understood, at first, why it was important, or why he had to strip the boy of all his clothes, put him in a rough-spun tunic and drawstring pants, but he hadn’t question Her orders. He knew better than that.
Of course, removing the boy’s clothing, and watching in something akin to morbid fascination as weapon, after weapon, after weapon fell from within the confines of such tiny pieces of clothing, he wondered for the first time, who the boy was.
Then, after a beat, he decided he didn’t quite much care.
“WAKE UP!” He bellowed, right in the boy’s ear, and when the tiny boy jerked back, his back against the stone wall, legs extended in front of him, arms behind his back, he watched the boy’s slate grey eyes appear, hazy, under a fringe of lashes.
“You’re going to give me everything I want to know, boy,” the man says, rising from where he’d been crouched, his eyes on Damian. “But we’ll start with your name.”
Name, age, place of birth, languages spoken, parents’ names, deepest waking fears, he would get it all from him. She wanted it and he would not fail.
(continued from Lian and Damian’s great escape)
Sea salt and mildew heady on the air; the scratch of burlap garments on his unprotected skin; the grit of coal dust between his teeth. He’s cataloging his environment before he ever opens his eyes, before his vision is clear enough to scrutinize his captor looming above him. The man isn’t very large or otherwise intimidating in form, but there’s something zealous in the focus of his dark eyes, something Damian feels he’s seen before.
He gathers from the air quality that they’re holed up somewhere not far from the ocean, an underground bunker or cave, perhaps. It’s dark and humid, the crude clothing sticking to his skin, and when he maneuvers against his bonds, a knot of synthetic rope presses tighter against his throat. He freezes, instantly; he knows this method of bondage. He’d been trained in it. He’d restrained victims in this criss-crossed pattern of cords himself, and he’d allowed one to struggle long enough to choke herself to death before she revealed the information he’d been tasked to claim from her. Mother had not been pleased with his failure that night—
He slams down a mental barrier against this train of thought. Talia has nothing to do with his current situation. The knot on his neck presses against his windpipe just enough to make breathing uncomfortable, but he doesn’t let it show when he glowers up at the man staging this interrogation. He doesn’t ask about Lian lest he make it evident he cares for her and have her used against him. He doesn’t question their whereabouts or the purpose of their capture.
In fact, he says nothing at all, allowing the set of his jaw and the defiance in his eyes make clear his refusal to comply.
The first blow lands on the side of his head, as he’d expected it would. He feels the rivulet of blood leak past his ear and down his neck, adding its metallic scent to the concoction in the air, and Damian is careful not to writhe and cause the rope on his throat to close even tighter.
She was a beautiful little girl.
Laying against the pile of scrap cloth, long lashes pressed against her cheeks in her sleep, Talia made no move to wake the girl from her slumber, not right away. Instead, she took her time to admire the dusky rose colouring across the high apple of the little girl’s cheeks, the cherubic pout of her mouth and the stubbornness of her chin. Oh, yes. She was a beautiful little girl, who would one day become a stunning woman. That is, of course, if she lived that long.
She was small, for her age, but Talia knew better than to assume that she didn’t possess her own natural prowess. Samuel had relayed how the girl had found it within herself, even as the toxin worked through her brain, to cover Damian’s body with her own, before succumbing to it entirely. She was strong, there was no doubt in Talia’s mind about that, as she pushed her fingers over the baby-fine skin of the little girl’s face, smoothing away the stress that creased her brow.
“Shh, shh,” she cooed, her voice soft and melodic, even as Lian stirred, not needing a bucket of water, but a woman’s soft touch—perhaps, alien to her—to rouse her from her dreamless sleep.
“Mama..?” Came the softest of inquiries, and Talia, under the thick veil she wore, felt the plush rise of her mouth twist, her heart clenching the tiniest bit. Not for Lian, whose lashes were fluttering now, the dark of her eyes peeking through, but for the word, the way her dove-voice rounded it in her mouth, sucking it clean for the nourishment it provided, before letting it float, soar up, prettily, over her tongue, full of hope, of trembling faith.
Talia hated to kill pretty things.
“No, sweet thing,” Talia said, quietly, stroking her hair back, and when Lian realised that she wasn’t, in fact, in her home, and this was not, by any means, a dream, and jerked upright, Talia moved back, play-astonished. Fitfully afraid.
“Please, don’t scream!” Talia whispered, her voice hushed, the breath she used billowing the material in front of her mouth. The burqa was dark, as was the rest of her garb: black, diminutive, shrouding the shape of her body, leaving nothing but the shape of her eyes, and the tops of her hands, skin overlain with a thick layer of spirit gum and latex, giving them the appearance of having been burned, badly, once-upon-a-time.
“Please, don’t scream,” she repeated. “I am not supposed to be here, I am not— Please, if you scream they will hurt me.”
Lian sat up on the pile of rags, tied at the wrists and ankles with rugged pieces of her rope, her clothing also gone, changed out for the rough spun clothing. Talia had not permitted any of the men to change her themselves, despite their desire to make her proud; she trusted them with her plans, but as a woman, she did not trust them with her sleeping body.
She had changed and bound the girl herself, with a mother’s patience. A mother, yes, but not hers, so she made the knots tight and left her on the pile of rags, to sleep off the drugs, while she, Talia, made her way to the cell where her son Damian was, and listened, carefully to the going ons.
It had already been a full day.
The boy had refused to eat or drink, to give up any information, and had resisted all of Samuel’s methods and Talia’s pride had grown with every passing moment. To a point. She’d returned to Lian as it neared midnight of the following night, waiting patiently for the girl to wake up, and then, when she was, she waited for her not to scream, to let loose a wail that would alert Damian to her presence.
Thankfully, the girl, still blinking did nothing but sit back, and push herself away from the woman.
“Where am I? Where—” Her large, almond eyes widened. “Where’s Damian?”
Talia could barely stop herself from closing her eyes from the sound of his name falling from her lips: it had been so long since she had heard it, the rise and fall of the consonants and vowels, that she allowed herself a moment to savor it. Just a moment.
Brown eyes flashing, she looked to the little girl and shook her head. “The little boy? He’s.. They have him in the room down the hall. He isn’t—he isn’t being good, please, stay quiet.”
Lian scooted forward, the direct opposite way she had gone just moments before, and nearly climbed to her knees, trying to reach Talia. “You have to help us, we—My mom, she sent me a message, for me to come and—and—” Her eyes widened. “Please let us out of here—”
“I have no way of doing this,” Talia whispered, hushed, before urging her again: “Please, be quiet!”
But Lian raised her voice, lifting her face to the ceiling and shouted, at the top of her lungs, the sound keening and high: “Damian!”
Talia stood and raced from the room, slamming the door shut behind her. She reached up, pulling the burqa from her head, off her shoulders, spine straightening, as the thick coil of her braid fell to her waist, her expression slipping back into stoicism, her acting over for the time being. Behind her, leaning against the wall, a woman stood sentry, her dark skin marred with thin lines of ritualized scarification, looked away immediately from Talia, her gaze level and dutiful.
Suddenly, to the left of her, a sound of pain, genuine and high, in the form and shape of her child’s voice echoed through the cold stone corridor, Talia’s stomach twisting in a way it had not for months unnumbered, pulling at the emptiness of her womb. The dark material of her dress swishing at her ankles, she made her way to the room, just as Samuel was exiting. His dark brown eyes lit on Talia’s face, his skin blanching, as he averted his eyes and he began to speak, his words hushed.
“He was unmoving, just completely still, the way he has been, my lady, but when he heard the girl— He—” Samuel turned his body away from the woman, his shoulders that had been so proudly anchored slumping down and away. “He twisted. I think I broke his arm.”
Her hand moved with a vicious and startling accuracy, nails plunging into the skin at the corner of his eyes, gripping the tender flesh of the bridge of his nose, and pushing him back against the wall by it, using just a centimeter of flesh to control his every action. Arm extended, the scarred make-up ending at her exposed forearm, she tossed her head back, imperially, a sneer pulling her lip back over her teeth. She would take his eyes. She would rip them from their sockets and pull them still rolling from his skull, present them to her prince for the man’s slight.
“My lady!” Samuel began in Basque, his native language and the one he had fallen in love with her with, his eyes wide and open, tears springing to line the lids, shimmering mirages of emotion: her rage, his shame. “He began to speak, said he would tell me what we wanted to know!”
The silence spanned between them as Talia took this information in. The sneer settled on her face, until it was just a look of mild disgust. She would deal with the man’s overzealousness after it was all done. After the master detective and his friends would come for the children, rescue them from the dungeon, return to their homes. There would be time, then, to teach him by rod and staff, how badly he had erred, even despite how useful the information was now:
Damian cared for the girl. It was mutual. He cared enough that he had allowed this man to break his arm in his alarm at hearing her scream. The knowledge curled, as dark and venomous as a viper in the pit of her stomach, before she pulled her arm back, countenance reverting to the mask she so readily sported in the man’s presence. A coldness overcame her, washing down over her back too much like a memory of ice-water, poured between her shoulder blades, across her breasts, for trespasses committed. It numbs her skin, down to the deepest level, just before her bones and she nods, back to her son’s room.
“Get what I want from him,” she snapped, her voice lilting, before she turned to the woman who had been watching them, silently, and had not said a word the entire time. Dutifully. Talia nodded to her, pointing to the room where Lian lay.
“Her face last. Life is unkind to once-pretty girls,” she instructs, the Arabic flowing from her tongue. The woman’s ebony face darkened, but complied, unlatching the ancient wooden door and stepping into Lian’s room.
Talia hated to kill beautiful things, but, then again, it had all never been about her.
Samuel: He pulled the latch over the door upon re-entering the room, the metal grating against the stone and rough wood. Her displeasure stained his skin, it felt like, seeping in through his pores and finding its way into his bloodstream, darkened the colour of it to rust. His face was more pinched than it had been when he had left, the boy’s arms free from the ropes now; he would have to compensate for that.
"I’ve been given permission to break your other arm if you don’t tell us what we want," Samuel said, quietly, and kicked the boy lightly between his shoulder blades. “Turn around. Face me."
Damian: He’d endured in silence until he heard Lian’s scream. His name had reverberated from the stone walls of his prison, bellowed in her voice high and tight with fear, and that one word alone had caused him to panic where hours of torment had failed. The cracked bone in his arm throbbed in reminder of the cost of losing his composure.
Damian rose unsteadily as his captor entered the chamber again, bringing new threats with him. The ropes were scattered on the floor around his feet. "Bring me to her," he demanded, teeth grit against his pain and exhaustion. “I’ll tell you nothing until I see that she’s unharmed."
Samuel: Samuel shook his head as his sneer climbed to onto his features.
"No," he stated, simply, as he reached for the bindings he had wrapped around his hands, when he had been hitting the boy. It had all been below the shoulders and above the waist, as she had instructed, and really, he hadn’t meant to break the boy’s arm, when he’d had him up against the wall. He reached out, suddenly, with the cloth, and wrapped it around Damian’s neck, intending to fling him back, and towards the exact spot he’d been in when he’d twisted, and the bone had broken. He grabs it, hard, looping it into a knot at the bottom slope of the boy’s skull and chokes him.
"Your name. Your age. Where are you from." He repeated, his voice dropping into the monotonous litany it had been droning on in, for the last ten hours.
Damian: He’s slower than usual, weakened by hours of ruthless interrogation and his broken arm, and driving his good elbow into the man’s chest as he approaches does nothing to prevent the strip of cloth from snapping around his throat. He grunts for air as he struggles to free himself, his useless limb held tight against his chest while the nails of the opposite hand claw at whatever part of his captor he can reach. “The girl," he insists again, ignoring the inquiry that’s played in this room on a loop since they began.
Samuel: Almost as if on cue, Lian’s scream drifts up again, through the cold, stone walls. The sound is pained and without the formation of words, it sounds as if the girl is meeting a much more brutal reckoning on her end. Samuel’s expression darkened, when he realised how much easier it would have been to use her, from the beginning, even as Damian bucked against him, the boy’s anger rising.
"You hear that?" Samuel ducked his head, bringing his mouth close, near to brushing, against the boy’s ear. “There won’t be enough time for the way we will make her scream if you don’t start speaking, boy." He jerked his arm up, bicep bulging as he pulled on back on the cloth, before slamming Damian into the stone wall, hard enough to dislodge a tooth or two.
"Your name!" He shouted. “Your age! Your city of birth!"
Damian: Damian sputtered as his face made contact with the unforgiving stone, nose smashing against it until he feels blood trickle down the back of his throat. He choked, his breathing already inhibited by the cloth wound like a vice around his neck, and Lian’s wail of agony pierced the otherwise impenetrable wall of his resolve. He cut his eyes aside to meet the man’s gaze, face still half-pressed into the stone. "Khalid Bilal, 13, Khartoum."
"Now, let me see her!"
Samuel: Samuel was not the type to lose his temper easily. It was, again, one of the things that She treasured in, one of the qualities he knew that She looked for in men. But, the boy’s lie, so very obvious, meant to placate him, as if he were some sputtering imbecile, a henchman with no other purpose than to torture a young boy, it made his blood boil.
"Your name!" He spit, and reached for Damian’s broken, useless arm. He knew that it was getting the better of him, the boy’s eerie resolve in the face of it all. It was unnerving, to meet a child this dangerous, this undisturbed. Samuel wanted, no, needed to bring him down, bring him back to a—a human level where he could reason with him. Break him.
He yanked on his arm, uttering quietly, bringing his face back to the boy’s ear: "..when you give me what I want, I’ll bring her to you. If that means in pieces, you’ll know you waited too long."
Damian: The wrench to his broken arm causes Damian to cry out, the yelp rising strangled and raw in this throat. He knows revealing his true identity will do nothing to aid Lian; it’s the only bargaining chip he has for gaining access to her. “And you’ve already taken too long, haven’t you?" he returns, words coming out between gasps of pain. He jerks his chin toward the other. “Whoever did that to your face certainly thought so. I won’t talk, and they’ll kill you for failing. Yes, I know how this works," he adds in a hiss. He ought to, having been on the other end of tormenting a prisoner many times during his young life. “You can bring her to me and perhaps then I’ll be more verbose, or you can die at your master’s hand. If you think there’s a third option, you’re mistaken."
Samuel: Behind Damian, Samuel’s eyes widen at the boy’s words. He understood then, just how badly he’d underestimated the boy, and how foolish, utterly foolish he had been in doing so. She hadn’t. She’d known from the very beginning who She had been dealing with, and why She had been so meticulous in Her planning. He glanced to the door, nervously, as if waiting for Her to step out, ready to, yes, punish him for his failure. The seconds ticked, nearly audible in their passing, and Samuel waited. Breathed, and waited for the door to shudder with pressure, Her delicate hands against the wood, Her beckoning call that he would answer, even if it meant his demise.
It doesn’t come.
Gradually, he eased back, off the boy’s body, the knotted cloth traveling to wind around the boy’s wrists. Once secured, he jerked on the boy’s arms, cruelly hard, and shoved him back against the wall.
"You move from that spot, and I kill her where she stands." He breathed, very ounce of truth he could manage poured into the words.
It seems like a lifetime before he returns. Lian is in tow, her tiny body swimming in burlap garments; her bare shoulder is scraped raw to bleeding, the knuckles of her hands bruised from thin, tiny punches against an ungiving surface, and, most horrifically of all, a face print marks the side of her face, swelling angrily now, her lip split where it had clipped her teeth. A noise, wrenched from the base of her lungs, exploded forth in a burst of air at seeing Damian, and she ran to him, her arms and legs unfettered, wrapping him in an embrace, despite how the boy stiffened in obvious pain.
Damian: Damian barks one last groan of pain as his arm is twisted again before the assailant leaves the room, door slamming with a ring of finality in his wake. There’s a chance he may kill her, Damian realizes, even now. Bring her to him dead and broken in a further effort to intimidate him into compliance. But no— he feels certain his captor understands him now, and must surely realize Lian’s welfare is the only thing that could possibly secure Damian’s cooperation. He waits, therefore, where instructed, the cold must of the wall seeping into his skin and lungs.
And when the door opens once more, Lian there and broken indeed but alive, the boy breaks too, if only for a moment. "Lian, habib albi," he gasps as he turns to meet her embrace, both of them falling to their knees together. The softness in his eyes reserved for her alone disappears in a flash, calm resolve on his face when he stands and looks upon their captor again. “I will make certain you are dead before I leave this place," he hisses in his native Arabic.
Samuel: The boy’s words made the man pause, something in them ringing familiar, despite all the logical contradictions to the opposite. He did not know this boy. There was no place in Samuel’s life where he would have known the boy, been around him long enough for the words to sound familiar, to resound inside his chest with such aching sincerity and truth behind them.
Yet, here he stands, blinking in the face of the threat in a perfectly spoken Arabic, the words sounding all too close to something Samuel feels, to something he knows or feels he should. He blinks again and then, his English heavily accented and hard, words dropping like stones into the darkness of the room. “Do so, and I will be sure to take you and your darling into the night with me."
Over Damian’s shoulder, Lian’s swollen-shut widen when Samuel
turns and bars the door behind him again, the metal screaming against stone and echoing in the silence.
"Now. Your names."