Title: The Art of Inflicting Pain
Characters: Kasanoda (minor mention of Tetsuya)
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence and Blood. Lots of it.
Summary: Sometimes there are no lengths a man wouldn't go to to get answers.
Disclaimer: All properties relating to OHSHC belong to Bisco Hatori.
Notes: Me? Write something involving Kasanoda and Tetsuya? What a remarkable shocker. Yeah, yeah, sarcasm aside, I'm back once more, but this time with something a little darker than my usual fare. Be prepared, there will be blood. (sheesh, way to be over dramatic.)
He was sorry to watch the man squirm. He had no real taste for torture, or thirst for blood, but when the man tied to the chair in front of him choked out his name between mewls of pain it stirred within in him a deeply satisfying feeling.
"You should've known better, right?" he asked in a deceptively pleasant tone.
The man coughed, a trail of spit, tinted pink with his own blood, dribbled down his chin. "Yes," he nodded, staring up at the young redhead with the one eye that wasn't yet swollen shut. The eye was a dark stormy blue and a tinge of guilt cramped in his stomach before Ritsu supressed it. He still had a job to complete after all.
"You did know better, didn't you?" He patted the man's hair softy, a rich dark black that hung thick and straight down to the middle of his back, though it was usually tied back loosely at the nape of his neck. It was from his mother's side, Ritsu deduced, knowing than the man's father had much lighter hair. The father also had a temper that perhaps he should know better than to risk raising in such a direct manner, but then, neither man in the room seemed to know any better at the moment.
The man sniffled, head drooping on a nerveless neck, a gasping wheezing noise that reminded Ritsu of the sound of the respirator in the hospital, the constant whump, whump as the machine pumped, forcing oxygen into the lungs of the man laying frail and helpless in the sterile white bed. As real as if he were standing there once more at the foot of that bed, the acrid smell of sanitizers and death filled his nostrils and he reached out without thinking, slaping the man across the jaw, his neck snapping sharply to the side. "I knew." he whispered at last, his reply no more than the ghost of his breath in the room, barely audible above the harsh sound of the air tearing from Ritsu's lungs.
He hated when he reacted like that, his body moving faster than his thoughts, reaching out in his pain and hatred. He didn't consider himself a violent man, even after all this time, but it was hard to erase what had been drilled into him, training that had made him cold and hard, and ready to hurt those deemed necessary. "Then why did you do it?" His voice was soft, dangerous, a tone he hadn't intended creeping inside his throat, thick with menace.
The man tied to the chair laughed then, a broken sound that seemed to come rising all the way from the pit of his stomach. The laughs filled the room with their miserable symphony, and Ritsu felt himself straining against his own self imposed limits, his need to find out the truth warring against his desire to wipe this man from the face of the earth. He brought his hand up again, this time with a slow deliberation, carefully calculating the force with which he wanted to strike, the location, and the timing. Before the blow could land the single stormy eye turned and burned into him. "We thought you were weak." he turned and spit blood from his mouth and Ritsu noticed with a moment of sick detachment it seemed like a fragment of tooth as well.
He could feel the corners of his mouth raising in a sick parody of a smile. "I see." he murmured, crouching slowly to better see the face covered by a veil of hair. Before the job had started he would've said the face was pleasant, very fair, a trait from both sides of his lineage. That was before though. The one side of his face had now swollen shut, eye no longer able to open, nose crooked and lip split wide in more than one place. Blood and spit leaked down his chin, dribbling into a growing puddle in his lap. His shirt was torn open from throat to belly, decorated haphazardly with cigarette burns. Ritsu didn't actually smoke, but it was a useful technique when a simple beat down wouldn't get you what you wanted. "You thought wrong apparently," he shrugged, elbows propped on his jutting knees, fingers toying expertly with his lighter in a subtle threat.
That laughter raised again, buzzing madly in Ritsu's ears. "I guess so," his guest acknowledged.
"So, now that you know I'm not, tell me the entire story, would you?" Ritsu, for his part was being quite mannerly in all this. It was his preferrance if things went neatly, without the need for all these theatrics. It never seemed the case though, they always wanted to resist for some reason, and the man in front of him was no exception. He came from a line as old and proud as Ritsu's, steeped in the same traditions, the same adhereance to family and loyalty above all else.
Well, almost all else, he amended mentally. They all gave in eventually, you just had to find the right spot. He had had luck with fingers in the past. It was a careful deliberation between slivers beneath the nails or the simple and quick expedent of cutting the digit off altogether. Judging from past reactions slivers seemed to carry a weightier effect and left more room to improvise as needed. Once a finger was actually chopped off there wasn't much more you could do to it, after all. It was harder though, a thick squeemish feeling churning in his stomach, though no sign ever showed on his face. He'd learned through practice to remain passive, cold and indifferent to the pain, even as his heart sickened and died in his chest. He had no other choices though. Nothing remained for him except to save himself, save his family, and extract vengence. It had been their way for too many generations to deny it now, the lessons and traditions carried in his blood.
"I-I can't..." the man gurgled, voice tumbling out through a mouth that no longer fit right in his face. "If my father finds out....if they knew...." the words were slurred and hard to understand, but the feeling of fear rang through loud and clear. The only solution in a case like this was to teach the man to fear him more, to fear Ritsu more than any punishment he could imagine from his own family. Considering what he knew of this family though, that might be a tall order. They'd earned their reputation the hard way, through sheer brutality and the willingness to do whatever it took to achieve their desires. The thought trembled within him that perhaps this time he would have to push himself too far.
"I'm sorry about that," the redhead replied sincerely, patting the man's hand softly, comfortingly. He worked the fingers apart slowly, not feeling much resistance. He jerked up hard and quick on the smallest finger, feeling the bone break before hearing it. The man let out a stifled groan, shaking with the effort of hiding his pain. "Are you sure there isn't anything I can say to change your mind?" he punctuated the question with another sharp snap, startlingly loud in the small dark room. A single naked bulb dangled from the ceiling casting shadows down the man's face as he tried to hide beneath the wealth of his dark hair, but Ritsu could still see the tears that coursed down his ruined cheeks.
"This won't do," Ritsu sighed dramatically, getting up from the floor and crossing the small room to the sink at the back, out of sight of the other man. With this illusion of privacy Ritsu ran the water loudly and threw up into the sink, practiced by this point at remaining quite while doing so. If his guests knew how much this disturbed him, his difficulties in going further, they might hold out longer, believing they could outlast him. He never wanted to put that particular question to the test. Wiping his mouth on the towel hanging beside the cracked mirror, Ritsu picked up a pair of scissors. He walked slowly and deliberatly back into the other man's narrow field of view, allowing his heels to clack loudly against the bare cement floor. It wasn't exactly a comfortable room, or one Ritsu really wanted to spend much time in, but at least he could say it was easy to clean up.
One blue eye regarded him with dead curiousity, a look that took in the tall lanky figure of the redhead and the scissors stretched open in his hand, and cosigned himself to whatever his fate might be. It wasn't a look that filled Ritsu with much hope, but he wasn't about to do what the young man was expecting. He reached out his free hand, smoothing it along the man's head, before letting his fingers curl, pulling hard at the dark strands before the scissors set to work, a pool of ebony forming at the base of the chair. A twist of guilt knotted Ritsu's stomach, the simple act of cutting the man's hair harder to inflict than all the pain that had come before. It was soft in his hands, alive and electric and so painfully familiar that the scissors almost dropped from his numbed fingers. He brought the scissors down slowly, forcing his eyes to hesitate over the sight of the butchered hair, the face that was no longer able to hide behind his raven locks. The hate that stared up balefully from the man's face was enough to force Ritsu to turn away quickly, to swallow hard against the bile at the back of his throat. He suddenly wished he hadn't cut away the man's hair, wished he had let them both hide with that thick curtain between them.
"I-I need answers," he choked, trying not to let the desperation he was feeling come through in his voice, trying not to show his weakness to the other man. It was an odd role reversal, under the glare of that one stormy eye Ritsu felt like the victim, felt as though he was the one beng tortured by the bound man. Perhaps it was what he deserved, to have to stare into the man's face as he did this to him, as he forced the words from his broken lips.
"Too bad." the slumping figure grated out, his anger trumping the pain in his voice.
Desperation was clawing the inside of his ribcage, anger and loathing and a million other feelings dying under the sense of his urgency. He had to act, had so many things to figure out. He couldn't wait for answers, lives depended on his knowing now. He knew in the cold and rational part of his mind that he needed to do this right, to maintain control despite his need. If he lost control, if he gave in, he risked going too far, losing himself completely. He didn't know much about torture really, still an amateur in the art of inflicting pain, but he knew no torture a person could think of could drag answers from a dead man.
He turned carefully, steeling himself, willing his stomach to settle and his mind to clear. He faced the man, still bound to the crude wooden chair, eyes still a glittering mirror of hatred. He carefully pulled the knife from the sheath at the small of his back, normally concealed beneath the billow of his shirt, letting it pick up the glow of the stark bulb hanging above them. He stood indesicive before the other man, forcing himself to look at his features, to study the face he'd ruined so systematically. Ritsu brought his leg up slowly, leaning in, resting his knee uncomfortably close to the man's groin, bringing a painful hiss to his lips. It was with an almost gentle tenderness he cupped the upturned face beneath the chin, the hand with the knife brushing softly against the shell of his ear. "Please tell me what I want to know," Ritsu asked again, knowing that this would be the last time he could afford to ask so nicely. "Who was the one who ordered the hit on my father?" The man said nothing but spat at him, a wad of blood and snot landing on the breast pocket of his shirt. It didn't matter, the shirt had been ruined almost from the start of their evening.
No time for tenderness now, the redhead grabbed him firmly by the short remnants of his hair, turning his head sharply and setting his blade against the soft skin just below the man's earlobe. "I'm sorry," he said once before he began to saw roughly at the flesh, putting more force into his actions that was strictly necessary. The world narrowed down to a pinpoint, his focus shutting out the distraction of the blood and screaming, the way the man struggled and jerked roughly against the unyielding strength of Ritsu's hands as he went about his task. He stopped halfway through the job, panting feverishly and his knee grinding with painful force against the man's groin, an unwelcome feeling prickling with familiarity along the length of his spine.
He turned only slightly, one eye looking warily to the door that stood open now, the cheery light from the yard spilling into the small room, illuminating all the dark spaces the shed was meant to keep hidden. Tetsuya stood outlined against the yard lights, his face made wan and sickly seeming in the harsh yellow light from the shed. At any other time Ritsu would've stopped to take in the sight, the play of shadow and contrast along the soft curves of the young man's face, but found himself barely able to look at his trusted servant. Tetsuya's hand gripped with white knuckles at the door and his face was turned aside, uselessly playing at blindness.
"The-the hospital called," he said softly, his words coming out in a tumble. "They need...they need a decision, Master. They need to talk with you." He shook his head slightly, as if listening to his own words, before backing away slowly. "I-I can tell them you're busy. You can call them in the morning." he whispered, more to himself than to his master. He turned slightly, back towards the light, towards the welcoming warmth of their house. "I shouldn't have interupted you." he finished lamely.
A single blue eye turned slowly to the door, catching for the briefest of seconds a pair nearly identical. "Brother," the bound man choked between pained gasps, blood seeping sluggishly down the side of his ruined face, a face that had once held a remarkable similarity to the young servant of the Kasanoda-gumi.
Hands clenched and face pale, Tetsuya resolutely turned his back on the shed. "I'll have a bath ready for you and your bed turned down when you come back to the house, Master." He said with a thick voice.
"Thank you." Ritsu replied, voice deceptively neutral. The guilt coursing inside him was almost overwhelming, but he knew they both understood the importance of what he was doing. The necessity of his actions, as horrifying as they were.
Tetsuya nodded once, not daring to look back as he closed the door firmly shut behind him, telling himself with every step that all he was hearing was the howling of the wind.
THE END.
A/N: Wow. I wrote something terribly dark and violent. I was originally intending to do a bunch of vingettes about Ritsu's life, but instead this occured. Usually when I write I follow the original idea of Ouran, which kinda makes Ritsu out to be a warm and fuzzy future yakuza cheif, so I let him and Tetsuya endulge in warm and fuzzy storylines for the most part. There is no warm and fuzzy in this at all (although I should mention, that yes, in my head Tetsuya is his lover at this point, although whether or not he could reamin so after watching Ritsu destroy his brother...who knows). I hope you can piece together my sort of loose plot that's in there, y'know, between all the torture bits. *sigh* I can't believe I wrote this.....
Oh, and was the end too sudden?? I personally prefer it ending with Tetsuya walking away, leaving to the imagination what lengths Ritsu is forced to inside the isolation of the shed. Maybe that's just me though. (and maybe I didn't know how to write a further escalation in the violence. Or didn't want to. You decide.)