For the self-proclaimed leader of the rebellion, Clive is laughably easy to break. There's something in the depths of him that wants blood and fire; wants to raze the world to the ground and isn't satisfied for an instant by the pitiful damage control that the rebellion offers.
Layton has seen the caves beneath the city. Knows what he took away from Clive when he struck.
It's mere weeks in the cells before Clive folds. Layton has watched every session with the guards - torture session, the rebels say; interrogation, the records say - and he knows when Clive finally breaks. When Clive will do anything at all to avoid a moment more of the torture. Then there is only the final nail to dig in to the coffin to make him want this rather than wanting anything but the pain. So it's him rather than the guards, running long fingers over Clive's wounds and telling him everything that they could do.
The break is like a snap then, Layton palming a welt on Clive's hip and Clive jerking up into it with a sudden intake that's only barely pain.
"Good, my boy," Layton hums, right before he leaves him there for another week without any visitors at all besides the guards who bring him his meals.
ooo
Clive is a wild thing once he's broken, all blood and fire and knives. The latter have been shoved times into Layton enough that he's had to take to having the guards search Clive before he's allowed into Layton's rooms. It's worth it though to see what he's wrought; how easy it's been to turn Clive against his proclaimed allies and into the best weapon Layton has ever had.
"Does it ever bother you to be a traitor?" he asks once, while he's pressed up inside Clive and moving too slow to give any real relief. He gets a sharp look in return and Clive's teeth fixed in his ear lobe until he pulls out completely, lets Clive growl and whine but doesn't make another move until the grip is released.
"I was always on your side," Clive answers eventually though. "In one way or another. Always wanted you and what you stood for."
"And here you have me," Layton says in a soft voice that clashes with the hard thrust he punctuates it, hard enough that Clive outright sobs when he comes.
In the time after, Clive rolls over to touch one of the marks over Layton's torso. "Only one to scar you," he says, lets his face twist slightly and then corrects, "In any way that counts, anyway."
ooo
"What would you do if I were able to bring Claire back?" he asks another time, this time while he's sat at his desk and Clive's reading a book in his desk. It gets him another sharp look - the questions like this always bring that look, like Clive's regretting that he ever lets the guards take his knives away because he wants to embed one in Layton right now - and Clive outright hisses.
"You cancelled the time machine project."
"So I did," he agrees, "But nonetheless. What would you do?"
Clive moves over to him then and surprise, surprise, a knife comes slipping out of the folds of his clothing to be pressed against Layton's cheek below his weak eye. "What you did to me would look like a picnic, my dear. But there'd be no out for her."
It's exactly the answer he'd expected; just the right brand of possessiveness and unhinged, broken need that he's come to associate with Clive now. The knife is expected too - Lord knows the man has managed to sneak at least one past the guards every other time and only keeps them hidden to avoid another stint in the cells - and so all that Layton does is laugh and press his hand against Clive's cheek in a mirror of where the knife sits upon his own face.
"Quite."
ooo
The first time that the rebels manage to actively hurt Clive, the first time he's soaked in blood actually his own, not a one of Layton's men knows where to find him. They're utterly useless, every one of them. Clive is nothing if not predictable. Utterly mad - Layton had seen to that - but predictable in his madness.
So Layton shakes off all of the others in order to make his way down into the caverns, the half-built thing that waits beneath London for a day that ill no longer ever come. Clive is easy enough to find; the mockery of his own pagoda the most completed aspect of the place, lovingly finished before the rest of the place had languished with Layton's strike upon Hawks. He's sat up on the top-most floor when Layton comes upon him, staring out at the distance through where a roof ought to have been and curled into a tight ball of pain.
"Is there any reason you've come here to mope?" Layton barks out; he has no patience for Clive's eccentricities at a time like this when the idiotic child is bleeding out onto the ground.
"Assumed you wouldn't want damaged goods back," Clive mutters and Layton directs a kick to his spine without even thinking. Watches him curl into a tighter ball away from the abuse and hisses down at him.
"You aren't the one who decides when I'm done with you," he spits, kicks Clive again before finally pulling back to let him recover.
"All of this," he says, "What were you planning to do with it, Clive?"
"I was... I had plans," Clive rasps.
Layton watches him for a long moment before stepping forward to scoop Clive up, ready to carry him back to the real pagoda. "Don't you always," he murmurs, a contrast to his actions before. "The day you stop making ridiculous plans, my boy, will be the day hell freezes over."