Author's note: Another experiment. Please tell me what you think, I've never written in this person before.
Warnings: Torture, far more graphic than in my other stories, kidnapping, drugs. This is rather intense.
I don't own anything.
You don't know how much time has passed. It could be days, it could be weeks, it could be hours. No, not hours. You tried, in the beginning you tried, to measure the time you spent here, and you are certain that at least three days had passed when you lost count. So weeks, or months, or years. But it doesn't really make a difference. Because your sense for the passing of time has slowed, and slowed, during your stay here, and now, everything just blends together. Even the darkness of your cell you used to dread so much – but, it has to be said, He lets you have quite a lot of light, he does turn on the blank bulb on the ceiling regularly, which is why you were able, at first, to distinguish between "day" and "night" – isn't black anymore, it's just grey, a grey that has seeped into your bones and your flesh, into your blood, a grey that you at first fought against, but then welcomed, because the grey meant numbness, and the numbness meant you weren't afraid anymore.
Sometimes, when you aren't staring at the grey, or at the ceiling – it's cracked at places, and dirty, but since you've long ago decided that He must be keeping you in an abandoned warehouse, that's hardly a surprise – you wonder if he'd drugging your food and your drink. He always gives you enough to eat and to drink, at least, and perhaps what he puts in there is the reason you are numb and therefore spared the terror that haunted you in the beginning.
You prefer living in this shadowy world, really, because the moment you are brought back to reality –
It's always the pain that brings you back.
He doesn't come at regular intervals, you're tolerably sure he doesn't; and you have done enough "interrogations" yourself for your boss, you know that you never allow the person you are questioning to get used to it, to prepare for the next session. And He is too intelligent for that.
After all, he has kept you alive this long, while torturing you – you would probably think "every day" if the grey hadn't swallowed time. He knows how to keep you alive and healthy enough to answer his questions, until you give him what he wants. You're not sure what he wants.
That is, you know he wants every information you can give him about the boss, and his business. You have to give Him credit; you're rather young to be this high up in the organisation, and, until He came and took you, no one had even suspected you worked for the boss. And He managed to kidnap you without anyone noticing (you think, you can't be sure, of course, because you have no way of knowing what happens in the outside world, that still has to be there somewhere beyond the grey).
It was a normal day, up until this point. You had dealt with a few business associates of the boss who didn't want to pay – dealt with them efficiently, quickly, and without leaving any traces, the boss would be pleased – and were walking back to your car, when He got you. You were feeling good, satisfied at a job well done. The police would never be able to get to you; you would get rid of the gun at the next opportunity, probably throw it in the river, as well as burn the clothes you had worn that night – better safe than sorry. And, if the boss would be as pleased as you thought he would be, you would maybe even get another promotion. And, one day, you could be the boss. You weren't so caught up in your daydreams, however, that you didn't notice that something was going on, because you did, only too late, because He is good at these kind of things, would be an asset to your organization, you realize, and the irony would make you laugh, if the grey hadn't eaten every little sense of irony you had.
You were just going to look behind you, you can't really say why, maybe you had just felt eyes on you, maybe you realized somebody was moving in your back, maybe you had heard something, anyway, you were going to turn around, when you felt a needle plunged into your arm, and then everything went dark. You woke up here – an abandoned warehouse, definitely an abandoned warehouse, you've been in one often enough, though you weren't the captive – and He was there, and it began.
Not immediately, because you woke up in the room you occupy right now, and He always takes you to another to ask his questions. He keeps your room clean, probably so your wounds won't get infected – should you develop sepsis, all would be over in a matter of days, and He needs his information, at least you can tell that. You are rather sure that he's desperate to get it, you recognize the certain frantic look in his eyes when he demands to hear everything you know, but you won't tell. You still have that. You can still refuse.
But you don't know for how long, because, even with the drugs, even with the grey, you are slowly losing the grip on your tongue, because somehow, you have the hope, the irrational, delusive hope (even in your state, you can tell just how irrational and delusive it is) that he'll show mercy once you talk and let you go –
And, sometimes, dying doesn't seem to be the worst option either.
Not that it is likely. The grey obscures anything you might use to kill yourself, and He keeps your wounds clean – mostly when you're unconscious, because the pain became too much. He does it almost professionally, and you wouldn't be surprised to learn that he was or knew a doctor once.
And there aren't even that many wounds, because He knows how to inflict pain without leaving traces. You prefer the knife. You prefer to blood, because right before you do, before the pain starts the knife touches your skin and it's cold and real. And you can tell yourself you are alive.
And then you can concentrate on the pain and not on the look in His eyes that seems to tell you that, somehow, He hates inflicting this pain on you but has no other choice; the fact that He tries not only to clean your wounds, but to make sure never to reopen old wounds so they will heal eventually, that you have enough to eat and drink, that He seems to give you not only drugs to make you talk (you know the slight dizziness you're almost always feeling, you've administered the same drug many a time, after all), but also some that create this distance, this grey fog between you and the world, and therefore risks that they also make the interrogation hurt less, and that your cell is always warm and clean, tell you the same thing. He has captured you, He's hurting you, but in the kindest way possible, and you are sure only because He has no choice.
Maybe it's the drugs, maybe it's his eyes, maybe it's the fact that you have nothing else to think about, obsess over, in the never ending grey of your existence, but somehow you feel like He is just someone who's existing, but not living, like you, only He didn't need to be tortured and alone and drugged to slip into this state of greyness.
You hate Him, though. Of course you do, how could you not? You hate the pain, you hate the drugs, you hate this building, and sometimes, you wonder if this some form of atonement for your sins, even though you never thought much about your work – you wanted to be known, you wanted to be great, you wanted to escape your abusive family, so you started working for the boss.
Who was working for Moriarty. You never really learned much about this man, aside from his name; he was a whisper, a shadow in the corner of your eye you could never see, but always knew was there.
He seems to know about Moriarty, at least He mentioned his name, once, something about "Moriarty's web", but the pain was shooting through you, and it was hard to hear, so you didn't really try.
But anyway, He wants to know all about the organization and the boss, and you could tell Him and try to convince yourself you won't when you hear his steps outside your door.
He comes in, and you once again wonder how anyone can be so thin and still alive. His eyes are grown, His hair blonde, but you are sure that He's wearing contact lenses and has dyed His hair – you wouldn't recognize Him if you met Him on the street, but you doubt that you will ever have the chance to walk along a street again, anyway.
He brings you to the room with the chair that's bolted to the ground, and you try to prepare yourself for more pain, but you know you will suffer. There are some things you can't get used to, can't prepare yourself for. This is one of the.
But, still, you hadn't thought that today, today of all days, would be the day you crack. The day you tell Him what He wants to know.
And you hadn't expected to crack the way you do.
When you thought about it (you tried not to) you expected that the pain would finally be strong enough to split you open and tear out the information, that you would be dying, and you would scream everything at him, in a last desperate attempt to get him to stop, before your life was over and the grey turned dark.
But it doesn't happen that way.
He is cutting your arm, and it hurts, but there is this one half-second of cold, delicious cold against your skin before the blade bites into your skin, and you watch, somehow utterly fascinated, the blood that slowly trickles down your arm, makes its way on to the knife, turns His white gloves red, redder than anything you've ever seen, and you are not yet screaming, but it's only a matter of time, and –
It's the first time you watch the blade. Normally, you look away, trying to pretend that it's not there. Normally, you look into His eyes and attempt to read them, attempt to understand why He does what he does when He so clearly doesn't want to. But now, you are looking, and you realize something.
The cuts are precise, the cuts are always precise – you bite your lip, you don't want to scream before you really understand what you just realized – but his hands – his hands –
His hands are shaking and you know, you just know, without even having to think about it, that they are always shaking when He inflicts pain. You look into His eyes and, suddenly, He's crying.
He's never cried before. Maybe it's because he realized that you saw his hands shaking. Maybe it's because you aren't screaming yet, and he's starting to fear you'll never tell him what he needs to know.
But you do. You scream it right at Him.
Because the moment you saw His tears was the moment you cracked.
Because before you saw them, you knew He was unwilling, you knew He didn't like to hurt you.
Now you know that He genuinely regrets what He has to do, that your wounds hurt Him too, though in a different way.
And you can't take it anymore, knowing that, somehow, you just lost some of your hatred for Him, so you scream, and the information comes out. You tell him everything. Your boss, his associates, the organization, everything.
Afterwards, He leaves the room and comes back with a needle and you are convinced that He will finally kill you, and that everything will be over.
The needle pierces your skin, and the last thing you see are His eyes, but this time, He isn't crying. He looks determined.
Everything turns dark for what you expect to be the final time.
And yet you wake up in hospital. You may be under arrest, but you are alive – the boss isn't, the police tells you. He managed to escape when they destroyed their organization, arrested everyone who was important, but was found dead two days later. You suspect what has happened, but you say nothing.
Strangely enough, the police – while knowing everything about the organization – seem to think you haven't done as much as you did. You will still go to prison, but it won't be for life. You wonder if it's His form of retribution. And, strangely, you feel like you owe Him. He could have killed you. He didn't.
So you tell the police that you never saw your kidnapper, and they believe you. Then you try to confess (you have no idea why), and they don't believe you, because there is no evidence for what you say (there must have been – maybe He – no, that's – but His tears) and the doctor told them you spent the last three weeks (time is back, you realize) on drugs.
This night, you lie in your hospital bed, and, finally, the colours are back, but they seemed more defined than before.
And, somehow, staring once more at a ceiling, but a ceiling on which the light of the moon dances – you forbade the nurse to close the curtains – you wish that He will succeed in whatever it is He's trying to achieve.
You saw his tears after all.
Author's note: As stated, another one of my experiments to improve my writing.
Please review, I'm really curious what you think.