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Description: Shido had never understood how his father could keep slaves.
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Restraint
by silverr
(spoilers for volume 16 and up, and especially for Hazama sidestory in vol 25.)
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Shido had come to understand many things about his father over the years, things that he had misunderstood or missed entirely when he was young. Such as how difficult it must have been to be caught in the pincers of family politics – especially when when those politics affected the entire country. Or how much courage it must have taken to bring Shuri under their roof, a boy branded and rejected by his profligate and increasingly paranoid father, the Black King. Or how difficult it must have been, in those famine years, to support two growing boys.
Over the years, as the rosy, distorting mists of childhood fell away Shido was able to recognize, too, his father's imperfections – the narrow-minded class prejudices that blinded him to the value in those he considered his "lessers." The weakness that sent him to drink. The temper that drunkenness released. The taste for cruelty that accompanied it.
Shido came to understand and accept all of these things, but the one thing he had never understood, never accepted, was how his father treated the family's slaves.
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The torture room was narrow and high-ceilinged, so that every sound a prisoner made was amplified, echo after echo tossed back to weight them down with the hopelessness of their predicament.
The only sound in it now was the panting of the guard who had conducted the flogging, and the buzzing of flies.
Shido considered his options. That he needed to find out where Tatara had gone – that was a given. That this prisoner knew where the rebel leader Tatara was – was also a given: he had admitted as much.
But that this prisoner could take a hundred days of floggings – this was also a given, for this was Ageha. Slave number 31 to his father.
See, Shido, how beautifully this child's pale skin bruises?
Even as Ageha was now, arms corded with strain from the chains that held him in place for the lash, the slave brand on his back like a rose blooming on a lattice of blood, his long silver hair soaked with sweat – even now Shido acknowledged that he was beautiful.
"He's a tough one," the guard growled. "Thirty lashes and not a peep."
"Is that all you have for me?" Ageha asked, sounding just slightly out of breath. "How disappointing. I was looking forward to something more imaginative: boiling lead, hot irons. Or horses – I've always wanted to be turn to pieces by horses. It is an esteemed death among the clans of the Blue Nobles."
"Ageha," Shido said, and the echoing chamber magnified Ageha's gasp of surprise: he had seen Shido at the troupe's performance, had danced for him as Kicho, but had not known Shido was here, witnessing the interrogation.
"Shall I dance for you again, Shido? Is that what you want?"
Red suits you better than blue, Ageha. Come with me;
ride with me into battle under the Red King's banner.
"I admire your pride, Ageha, but you can rest now – once you tell me where Tatara has gone. The Red King and I will be generous in our thanks." He stroked Ageha's quivering back.
I am not like my father. I want you by my side.
"Why not call me by my slave number, Shido? Number 31, don't you remember? In chains I am your slave, and as your slave you can force me to do anything you want. Just like your father did."
Ten years ago it had been, and Shido still remembered: Ageha's lips had been softer than a girl's, his hair a cascade of silk, and yet he had refused the one thing Shido knew he wanted above all else.
As Shido's fingers dug into the abused flesh, gouging new wounds, making Ageha cry out at last, he realized that he was like his father, after all.
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~ The end ~
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Written for KB round 3, card 1, kink 4,2: locks/chains
AN: it never sunk in until I wrote this that if Shuri and Shido are cousins, then Shido's father or mother must be related to the King. (Or perhaps they are second or third cousins.) ~ I expect to expand this fic some day, as the relationship between Shido, his father, and Ageha is complex and dark and rich.
(02) 27 Aug 2010 ~ brand not tat