A/N: Firstly, this is intended as a present for my good friend FallingStarXan. Happy Birthday: enjoy my single-characteristic people. It's the first thing that broke through my apathy-induced writers' block. Secondly, it receives its rating due to the torture scenes and is NOT for the weak of heart. I was... depressed when I wrote this. I think it's fluff – I'm not sure, as I don't generally write the stuff, and I damn well don't read it either. As far as I can tell, it is, though. It's dark, terrifying, depressing fluff, but it's fluff nonetheless. Thirdly, it is very AU, and there may or may not be several anachronisms. That's not my problem, O History Nerds, so you lot can go 'stick your head up a duck's bottom', as Commander Sam Vimes says. Fourthly, if you've no idea who that is, you aren't even worth the trouble of insulting.
Update: I'm posting this early, since I've totally ruined the surprise aspect of it. It was originally going to be a one-shot, but the concept requires a little more explanation, lest it become just a little more gratuitous gore.
And, as I mentioned above, this is VERY gory and not for the faint-of-heart. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
The man shifted his arms. His wrists already hurt from the rough cord binding his hands behind his back, and his feet to his hands, but he knew that if he could just get loose (perhaps by dislocating his thumb, it seemed now), he may be able to slip his hands out of his bindings. Then, he could start on his feet, and, perhaps, surprise one of the pirates, take hold of a sword, and…
Well, if he was to be perfectly honest with himself, what followed would probably be his spectacular demise, or, worse, recapture. He knew, however, what would happen if he didn't escape.
"Aaaaargh!" The scream came from somewhere to his right, but he didn't flinch, didn't even turn his head. They had been torturing the dark man with the turban for hours now. After him, it was the black-haired boy's turn, then his. He had been unconscious earlier, so he didn't really know who had been here before the man with the turban, but from the blood on the deck, it looked as if there had been more.
The deck pitched suddenly as an unexpected wave rolled by, and his hand slipped back into the rope. Gritting his teeth, he began once again the task of sliding the coarse rope up past skin already red and bleeding from friction.
"Damn wave. I missed. It's your fault I missed."
There were a few grunts, and the sound of hard leather hitting flesh. The speaker had punctuated his point with a few well-aimed kicks.
"How many fengernails ha' e got left?"
"Three, heh heh."
There was another shriek. The man with the turban's breathing became noticeably more laboured.
"Two, heh heh heh."
"Hah! How d'yer like that, then? How d'yer like that, ye savage? Ha! Ye want us gone, then? Ye wants us ter leave ye aloon? I'll show yer nonvi'lent rresistance."
Another scream, this time longer and more prolonged, and ending in a sort of gurgling noise.
"Knife?"
"Therr ye go."
The man with the turban screamed again, and then began sobbing. He made gabbling noises, sounds that could have been speech, if his tongue hadn't been cut out. They'd tossed it at the third prisoner's feet, and he had shuddered and kicked it away.
"Tha 'as yer eye, ye darrky. Let's see if tha'athr one pops tha same."
Another explosion of agony. The man with the bound wrists shut his eyes behind wireframe spectacles – at least they'd allowed him to keep those. Or, perhaps he wasn't so lucky they'd allowed him to keep them. Unable to help himself, he'd seen every detail of their initial brutalisation of the man with the turban in crystal clarity. Now, he shut his eyes tightly and did not watch.
So, he heard, rather than saw, a door creak open above the sound of the waves. There was some scuffling as the torturers stood to attention, he guessed. Filled with a sort of dead curiosity, he opened his eyes.
A man had walked onto the deck of the ship, but did not look as though he belonged there. The others wore rough clothes – bandanas, open shirts, and, in the case of the thickly-accented Scotsman, a dirty kilt. This man was dressed in a clean black suit and waistcoat, with an impeccable white silk shirt and a red tie. He wore a black top hat and a golden tiepin, and matching cufflinks. He carried a cane, but did not look as if he needed it. The chain of his fob-watch gleamed in the weak sunlight.
His eyes were the most striking, though. They were fiery green, and burned from beneath a mane of golden hair and thick, dark eyebrows. His expression was surprisingly blank – it could have been composed indifference, or perhaps a detached aloofness. His eyes, however, were like liquid green fire. They roared and roiled with something the prisoner could not entirely identify.
He walked slowly to the men standing at attention and fixed his gaze upon the red-haired one with the kilt. The bound prisoners watched him in mute silence. For a moment, the only sound was the ragged breathing of the man in the turban.
The man with the green eyes sighed and said in surprisingly refined Queen's English, "You're relieved."
"But… but, we haen't finished-"
"You're relieved," the green-eyed one repeated.
The men looked at one another uncertainly a moment, then saluted as one. "Aye, Captain." They then made their way below decks, and did not even look back at their handiwork.
The captain then turned to the broken lump of a prisoner before him, a lump that'd had everything human beaten, torn, and cut out of it, until it was simply a mass of pain, nothing more. An unfamiliar emotion flickered in his eyes. It might have been rage, but it was cold rage, without the fire or the hatred. It might have been betrayal, yet it was somehow undirected, curled inward like a frightened bird. It might have been pity, but it was hard and angry. It flickered there, a strange mix of understanding and resignation, and vanished. The mask slid into place once more.
He made some movement that the bespectacled man didn't quite see, but there was a sort of relieved sigh, the first sound he'd heard in a while from that man which wasn't laboured, and the ragged breathing halted. And the bespectacled man was glad.
The captain then made his way over to the next prisoner. The man with the glasses could see this prisoner out of the corner of his eyes. He was dark-haired and brown-eyed, and he did not look well. His skin was altogether far too pale, with a sickly greyish tint to it, and it was covered in a layer of sweat despite the cool morning. He also shook slightly in his bindings, a tremble that wasn't due to fear.
When he looked up at the captain, however, his face sank into an expression that was one part terror, one part apprehension, and one part relief. He had spent the last three hours dreading what would happen once they finished the man with the turban and started on him. His guts twisted themselves into knots, but his heart rose as he looked up into the other man's face.
The captain took out a handkerchief and wiped the blood off of his knife carefully. "Hello, Hong Kong," he said, so softly that the bespectacled man nearly missed it.
Some people can smile without smiling; their mouth grins, but their eyes remain cold, so it becomes a grimace. The captain did the opposite: his mouth and face retained their aloof blankness, but somewhere in his eyes there was a kind smile. "Why are you here?"
"I…I…" There was a sharp intake of breath. Hong Kong closed his eyes and bowed his head, unable to go on, and his trembling grew stronger. The captain nodded in understanding.
"What were they going to do to you?"
Hong Kong looked up gratefully and tried to stabilise his breathing. "Thank you... thank you... thank you for driving them away... You have no idea... They were going to- GAAAH!"
With a quick motion, the captain had removed his knife from the handkerchief and stabbed it into Hong Kong's hand, pinning it to the wood beneath. Hong Kong stared at the knife and screamed again, partially out of pain, mostly out of surprise. The Captain winced. "Stop screaming, you git," he said. "I can't stand screaming."
Hong Kong stared up at the man he evidently thought to be his saviour. He screamed again, but it wasn't quite like a scream. This was an emotion welling up that needed voice given it, but that no words could have described. The bespectacled prisoner thought it was the sound of someone screaming out of confusion, though that was not exactly the right word.
"I said stop screaming!" cried the Captain, and he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew another shining knife. It moved quickly, flashing for a moment in the sun, and then the screaming stopped. The Captain stood there a moment, shivered, and shut his eyes tightly, his eyebrows huddling together. He brought a hand up and covered his mouth and breathed through his nose, at first quite heavily, then softer.
Hong Kong looked at the blood running down his neck. He opened his mouth and tried to cry out again, but there was no sound, only a wheezing gasp. He tried to scream again as he realised what his captor had done, but could not. The Captain had cut his vocal cords.
The man with the spectacles shut his eyes and worked all the more fervently at his ropes – all thought of escape was lost to him at this point. He simply wanted to block out Hong Kong's laboured attempts to scream.
The captain removed his hand from his mouth, and his face returned to its normal blankness. He looked critically at his knife and examined the blood smeared across the blade. He bit his lip, deep in thought. Then, he nodded, having apparently decided something. He knelt down by Hong Kong's side a moment, and the bespectacled man heard a horrible sound.
It was a sort of prolonged 'h' sound. Soundless, voiceless, Hong Kong was screaming.
"Mmm," said the captain. "Here we go."
There was a snort, and a sort of urgent gasp.
"Well, if you wouldn't do that, this would be so much easier. You've only yourself to blame."
"hhhhhhhhhhhhh"
"I wouldn't call those feet... On the bright side, now your toes are technically longer."
"hhhhhhhhhhhh"
"Hmm, yes, I can't think of a good use for longer toes either. Oh, for heaven's sakes: can't you bleed somewhere else?"
"hhhhhhhh-shhhhh-hhhhhh"
The worst part, really, was how damn methodical he was about this.
"Do you know why I'm doing this," he asked. "No? What about you?"
The man with the spectacles flinched as he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Come on, then. Look at me, at the very least."
Moving as little as possible, he looked up at the captain over the edge of his glasses and through his wheat-blonde hair.
"There," he said softly, and his face was kind. "Why am I doing this," he asked.
He couldn't manage a shrug, so he shook his head instead.
"Well," he said. "That makes two of us."
He stood up, dabbed irritably at a small red stain on his coat, and walked back to Hong Kong, who had begun struggling again, leaning over with his teeth to pull the knife out of his hand. His mouth closed over the wrought handle and something smeared on it that was not quite saliva and not quite mucus, but some mixture of the two. The knife landed with a heavy thud on the wooden deck. As he saw the blood spurt from his wounded appendage, he opened his mouth in an expression of agony and began hissing. The man with the spectacles honestly couldn't say which he hated more: the 'h' noises, or the hissing.
"Watch: this is why." The captain ignored Hong Kong, took hold of a great sack, and opened it for his prisoners to see. "This is the gold I won from Spain. Look: a celebration. I've been saving this just for you."
He lifted the sack, grunting and bracing it against the wooden rail. Change spilt everywhere. Then, slowly, the sack tipped over the edge and fell into the ocean below. Coins tinkled into the water in a great golden waterfall. The Captain whooped.
"Look at me!" he cried. "I'm the greatest country in the world." He grinned at the bespectacled man, who turned away and closed his eyes tightly.
"Look at me," he repeated. Then, when his captive did not obey, a sort of rage filled his eyes, and he grasped his prisoner's hair tightly in one hand and twisted his head roughly. "Look at me," he growled. "They say," he began, "the sun never sets on this face." His grip tightened, and the prisoner winced as the roots of his hair screamed in protest. "You're not looking at me," the captain observed. "You should show me," he growled softly, his voice sliding across the prisoner's face and into his ear like a snake, "some respect." The prisoner's heart pounded in his ears, the beat flooding down through the veins in his neck, his arms, bringing with it that terror. His nostrils flared as he fought the desire to pull away; he knew the consequences that would follow if he did. The captain brought his face down, closer, closer, so that their eyes were mere centimetres away, and the prisoner held his breath. Steeling himself, shoulders rising about his neck, he looked into the captain's dark eyes.
They were a singularly vibrant green, and they sparkled strangely. The captain's face was still blank, almost expressionless but for the tension in his jaw. His eyes, however, were terrifying to behold. They were like fire and ice and boiling rain. The worst thing was that, somewhere, the prisoner could still see that kind smile the orbs had held when he'd regarded the unfortunate Hong Kong. It was gentle, compassionate, some strange cousin to mercy, but somehow, something had been drained from it until it was just a dead shell. It was the smile of a child who comes home to find her mother brutally murdered. It was the dead look of someone who hadn't the energy to change his gaze.
They regarded each other in that way for a moment, the captor and his captured, and the bound one was frightened to think of what his imprisoner saw in his own blue eyes.
The captain relaxed his hand, the fistful of blond hair sliding out and his prisoner's head lolling over to the side. The glasses bounced along the deck, lost and forgotten. With his other hand, the captain swept the top hat off of his head and placed it on his prisoner's. He brushed a stray tuft of hair out of his captive's eyes and dabbed at the sweat on his face with the handkerchief. "I don't think there's a reason for anything, anymore," he said softly, almost kindly, but there was pain and betrayal in his eyes. The mask cracked; were those tears he saw? "Everybody's left me."
Suddenly, his eyes were simply dead green circles once more, and his face, blank, but for a detatched boredom. He straightened up, took back his hat, and delivered a savage kick to the ribs. He nodded at the two prisoners and said "And now, I believe, I shall retire. Scotland?" he called into the door. He crushed the glasses under his heel as he left.
And then, there was pain. The sun climbed ever higher into the sky, burning the fog away and beating down on the prisoners' backs. They were tied such that it was either suffer a terrifying glare, or neck aches. The blonde wasn't sure what caused him greater discomfort – and, anyways, his myopia pained him terribly. Sometimes the captain would come back. Sometimes he would watch, and sometimes he would not. Sometimes, he would do much, much more. But always, the sun climbed lazily in the sky, rising and rising to an apex, and somehow continuing its ascent. Or, perhaps it simply circled languidly. Time stretched, so it was difficult to be certain. It really was true, what they said. The sun never sets on the British Empire.