Title: Arbeit Macht Frei
Author: swgmigraines
Rating: M—M+
Summary: AU: Capt. Yozak Gurrier of Big Shimaron is charged with a difficult task: break the will of a stubborn prisoner named Weller.
Warnings: Slash, rape, bondage, torture, CHARACTER DEATH
Disclaimer: I do not own Kyou Kara Maou! or any of the lands or characters therein. This is a work of fan fiction and I am receiving no profit for it.

Notes: The purpose of this work is to explore what might have happened if Yozak and Conrad had not met as children—and what might have happened if they had met decades later, as men and enemies.
The verse used in this chapter is from the poem "Sympathy," by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Dedication: For Vain-chan, as always…and since this is all her fault anyway. ;D

— Arbeit Macht Frei —
By Simbelmyne
———

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

———
Tag Eins
———

Conrad Weller. Captain. New Makoku.

That was all that Yozak knew about the new prisoner currently in his care.

The man had been discovered skulking about in the streets yesterday and had been unable to promptly answer simple questions about his background. A more thorough search of his person had uncovered the crest of the demon queen. He'd been arrested on the spot, of course, and brought in for questioning. The men had reported to Yozak with the captive, and all through booking, he'd held his head up high as if he were some prince.

Conrad Weller. Captain. New Makoku.

He was some prince, of course. Everyone in Big Shimaron knew about Conrad Weller, half-breed prince of New Makoku and last living descendant of the rouge Weller house. No one knew why he had returned to Big Shimaron, but King Belal had practically wet himself with glee when Yozak delivered his report. He'd barely stopped grinning long enough to give the soldiers one very basic order: "Find out everything he knows, but do not mar him."

And of course King Belal would give an order like that, if it concerned a Weller. Yozak had seen the human interrogators at work before. Flaying their prisoners' skin off, piercing their hands with drills…they were too rough and impatient to handle a valuable prisoner like this. Even at Weller's booking, Yozak had noticed bruises on his cheeks and along his jaw where he'd been beaten during his arrest. Those were nothing. A healing houseki could take care of them in a minute or two. But a broken arm, shredded skin, blindness…those were more grotesque disfigurements. Yozak knew what King Belal planned to do with this captive after they'd learned all they could from him. Everyone knew about King Belal's preoccupation (though some might call it obsession) with the Weller clan. And they also knew how severe the punishment would be if Belal received a damaged Weller.

That's why the prisoner was currently sitting in the holding cells, waiting for Yozak, instead of outside in the pillory and up to his knees in snow. If there was anyone who could get a man to talk without tearing his bones out, it was Captain Yozak Gurrier. Everyone in Belal's palace knew it.

Conrad Weller. Captain. New Makoku.

The ceiling above Yozak's head dripped, as it had been doing for as long as he could remember. Murky kitchen water dribbled down, an inch away from his precious prisoner logbook. Yozak moved to the side with a grumble of irritation and continued writing up his daily report on the 'problem' prisoners. Albrecht the Mad in Cell 15 wasn't responding to floggings. Klaus van Kneff in Cell 12 still refused to betray his revolutionary group, even though he'd been locked in the Iron Maiden with no food or water for two days. And Guntram over in Cell 5 was…well, for lack of a better word, dead.

Bother.

Yozak closed his logbook and stored it away safely. The dripping from above was starting to become more frequent. Perhaps it was about time to put in a work order. A few more months of this and Yozak didn't doubt that the wooden ceiling, already buckling slightly, would come crashing down on his head one day. Not that the rest of his office was in the best condition, either: the stone walls were cracked with age and the wooden floor was molding. There was no fireplace, either, so Yozak had taken to storing blankets in the bottom drawer of his desk for exceptionally cold winter days. He had added a bookcase and a chair to the space when he'd first received it, but it had hardly made the office any more welcoming.

Still, all things considered, it had been terribly kind of His Majesty Belal to give him a commission. Yozak thanked his lucky stars for this job every day. There were far worse places Life could have cast him off than the basement of the king's palace.

A knock from outside pulled him out of his thoughts, and the door opened before Yozak could open his mouth to greet his guests. Gottlob and Mathias, two of Yozak's more promising apprentices, strode in. Mathias was still wiping blood off of his hands.

Yozak leaned back in his chair, frowning. "Well?"

"We got him to scream a few times, but other than that, nothing," Gottlob reported, shrugging. "Just kept repeating that same stupid mantra over again: Conrad Weller, captain, New Makoku. He doesn't want to break."

"Who does?" Yozak replied with a shrug. "It doesn't matter. I want to deal with Weller myself. You two, go let van Kneff out of the Maiden for a minute. Give him a drink and see if he's ready to talk. If he is, get Dolph and take his statement. If not, back in he goes."

Mathias tossed the bloody cloth onto Yozak's desk and saluted half-heartedly. "Sir."

Yozak eyed the bloodstained cloth on his desk for a long moment before delicately picking it up and throwing it into the wastebasket beside his desk. Clenching his jaw slightly, he waved them out. "Dismissed."

Mathias and Gottlob slammed the door as they left. Yozak cursed quietly when they'd gone and closed his eyes. Now that he'd taken full responsibility for Weller's interrogation, what was he going to do with him? Weller was a warrior, so pain alone probably wouldn't break him—all those whips and chains in the dungeons were basically useless. The Iron Maiden, the rack, and their ilk were out, too—His Majesty Belal still wanted this one preserved above anything else. Yozak suspected that the king would not appreciate having his future plaything's limbs torn off.

Yozak had only seen Weller for a few minutes at the prisoner's booking, but even from that brief memory, he knew why Belal was obsessed with keeping his captive whole. With his full head of hair, clean skin, handsome face, and deep eyes, Weller, unlike most soldiers, was actually pleasant to look at. He wasn't just the Key to The End of the Wind—he was damn attractive, too.

"How does one mold a hard metal without scorching it?" Yozak asked the darkness, resting his chin in one hand. His rotting office, unsurprisingly, had no apparent answer.

He shrugged and stood shakily, groping for his cane in the half-light. He'd tortured many men during his career—young men, old me, stubborn men, flexible men, and even a few women here and there. But this was the first time he'd ever had a prince entrusted to him. A half-breed prince, even.

Yozak extinguished the torches and limped out into the adjacent dungeon, humming a little ditty from his youth.

———

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Conrad stared steadily at the molding stone wall ahead and tried to calm his fluttering heart.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The humans had gone, but they'd left a mess behind. His jaw was bruised and sore, and he was bleeding freely from his nose. One of his eyes was quickly swelling shut. His teeth felt like they had been knocked loose.

In. Out.

Faints wisps of steam curled up from his bleeding body. The dungeon where he'd been confined was freezing. He bit his tongue hard to keep his aching jaw from chattering and tried to focus on the blood oozing slowing from his nose. It was easier to think of that than to listen to the screaming from the other prisoners that seemed to press against him from all sides, adding to his growing claustrophobia and despair.

In. Out. In. Out.

Conrad closed his eyes. The cold down in the dungeons was paralyzing. When the humans dumped him into a cell down here, all they'd given him was a straw mattress, a threadbare blanket, and a bucket. He'd been exhausted from the beating he'd taken during his capture, but he hadn't dared to rest—not here, where he was completely at the mercy of a Belal.

Besides, after listening to the blood-curdling screams of the other prisoners for hours on end, Conrad doubted he'd sleep peacefully ever again.

That had been in the cells, though. Here, in the Interrogation Room, things were a little quieter but no less distressing. The gore smeared across the walls and congealing around the drain was black and filthy and foul. A rat, fat and sluggish from gorging on blood, waddled slowly through the room. Conrad watched the animal squeeze itself through a hole half its size without really seeing it, panic rising in his chest as his breathing grew faster and shallower. He wanted to put a hand over his mouth and control himself, but the manacles binding his wrists to the wall made that impossible.

In. Out

In. Out.

In. Out. In. Out. In Out In Out InOutInOutInOutInOutInOutINOUT—

A key turned in the lock, arresting Conrad's attention. He looked straight ahead again, squaring his jaw and hardening his eyes. He may have been trapped in enemy territory and scared out of his wits, but he'd be damned if he let his enemies see him quivering and shaking like a coward.

The old man who shuffled in, however, was hardly an imposing figure. Conrad stared as a withering, redheaded human limped into the dungeon, leaning heavily on a roughly-hewn cane. He held a bundle of whips in his free hand and glared at Conrad with a sour expression. Conrad was surprised to see that in addition to the cane, the old human was also sporting a patch over his left eye.

Conrad briefly forgot his panic in a moment of pure confusion. Surely this wasn't the vicious, cruel, merciless head interrogator that the younger humans had threatened him with when he refused to break?

The old man grumbled something unintelligible as he set his whips down on the single coarse wooden bench on the other side of the cell. He kicked the door shut with his good leg and limped closer to the chained half-breed, staring critically. Conrad stared back, assessing this new enemy while masking his confusion behind a blank façade. In truth he almost felt a little offended. If Belal was sending an old cripple to interrogate him, he obviously didn't think very much of Conrad's resolve.

When the human was less that a foot away, however, Conrad blinked in surprise. The interrogator wasn't really that old; he'd simply been weathered beyond his years. Numerous small cuts and scars peppered his face, but he was free of wrinkles and his hair was as bright and colorful as a gemstone—not a gray strand in sight. His remaining eye was bright and clear as well—blue as the icecaps of Big Shimaron's mountains and just as cold.

The human brushed orange locks out of his face and said, "Conrad Weller. Captain."

"New Makoku," Conrad finished.

The interrogator smirked. "Yozak Gurrier. Head Interrogator. Big Shimaron. Pleasure to meet you, Conrad-Weller-Captain-New-Makoku. So sorry I can't give you a proper handshake." He leaned against the wall with his free hand and tilted his head. "You're the demon queen's son, aren't you?" He grinned and touched a lock of Conrad's hair. "His Majesty was very… excited…by your arrival."

Conrad covered his shudder by turning his head away sharply.

Gurrier shrugged and stood back, leaning heavily on his walking stick. "You won't hold on to that attitude for too long. It's my job to persuade you to think differently." He wiped some of the blood dripping from Conrad's nose away with a gloved hand. "These shiners my apprentices gave you? They're nothing. We have a rack here, Conrad-Weller-Captain-New-Makoku, and an Iron Maiden, and a large assortment of thumbscrews. His Majesty is very keen on making sure his dungeon is filled with only the best equipment."

Conrad squared his jaw. "Conrad Weller. Captain. New Makoku."

Gurrier laughed as stripped off his bloody uniform gloves, tossing them carelessly underneath the wooden bench. "That's old news, Conrad-Weller-Captain-New-Makoku. Everyone in this dungeon knows who you are. What I want to know is what brings a man of your stature to Big Shimaron. Surely the demon queen doesn't need to send her own son into enemy territory? Or have we killed all the regular half-breed flunkies, and you're the only one she has left to send?"

Conrad stared stonily ahead.

"Giving me the cold shoulder?" the interrogator laughed, removing a pair of leather military-grade gloves from his pocket. "I've lived in Big Shimaron my entire life, Conrad-Weller-Captain-New-Makoku. I'm used to the cold."

Gurrier approached again, still looking calm as he tugged on his leather gloves. "You should talk to me. If you don't talk to me, I'm going to start hurting you, and who knows when I'll stop?"

"Conrad Weller. Captain. New—"

Conrad suddenly made a surprised sound as his head snapped violently to the right. He blinked in surprise as a stinging sensation spread over his left cheek and Gurrier laughed in his ear.

"Oh…I'm sorry. I should have used my left hand," the human sneered. "Are we married now?"

Conrad turned his head, staring blankly at his tormentor as a red welt blossomed across his cheek. He hadn't even seen him move.

Undeterred by his captive's gaze of surprise, Gurrier raised his hand again and brought it down hard. This time Conrad was expecting it; he pursed his lips together tightly as the human's rough hand struck his raw, bruised skin. Pain shot through his body and Conrad winced, but he bit his tongue and kept his mouth shut. Again and again Gurrier's hard fists pummeled his tender body, but Conrad hardly uttered another sound. He could hear Gurrier yelling at him—strange, intelligible words, and so heavily accented that he couldn't make any sense of them.

It didn't matter. He wasn't going to break. Pain and Life went hand-in-hand, and pain was no excuse for weakness. He would not break for this bastard.

The blows grew weaker and eventually stopped, and Conrad dared to open his eyes—or eye, as one had completely swollen shut from this second beating. The human was standing back, chin resting in one hand, looking thoughtful—almost as if he was surveying a piece of fine artwork. Conrad glared at him as best he could, vaguely aware that his one-eyed glower wasn't nearly as intimidating as he'd hoped. In fact, Gurrier smiled at his expression.

"That look like it hurts," the human said. His black gloves were covered in blood spatters.

Conrad weakly rocked his head from side to side. In fact, it really didn't hurt—he was far too numb from the beating to feel any of it anymore. But he was still conscious, still (mostly) standing on his own two feet, and he still hadn't given up anything—not a single word other than his name, rank and country.

If he hadn't been almost certain that his teeth would fall out if he did, Conrad would have smiled. Vicious, nothing—if anything, this interrogator was downright tame. Or maybe completely incompetent; he'd been through worse in his own bedroom.

Gurrier took a step forward, seizing a tuft of Conrad's hair in his hand and roughly hauling him up. A weak sound escaped Conrad's lips involuntarily as his slumping body was hauled up for Gurrier to inspect.

"What are the demon queen's plans for Big Shimaron?" the human asked in a surprisingly tender voice. It sounded almost like a balm in Conrad's ringing ears. "Why were you sent, Captain?"

"Nn…" Conrad blinked at his tormentor with his good eye. Gurrier's face had softened considerably; he was staring down at Conrad with a sad, almost empathetic expression.

"Tell me," he pleaded quietly.

"Con…rad…Well—"

The world suddenly turned upside-down. His vision reeled; the floor tumbled over his head before he suddenly found his head plastered against the hard wall again. His cheek burned, and it took Conrad a moment before his pain-addled brain could process the situation: Gurrier had slapped him again.

"How stubborn. It doesn't matter, though," the human scoffed, moving towards the door. He peeled off his bloody gloves and tossed them onto the bench against the wall. "You and I have all the time in the world, Conrad-Weller-Captain-New-Makoku."

Conrad let his head slump again, hanging from the wall and breathing weakly. The pain from the beating seemed to creep through his body slowly, seizing every inch of him little by little. He heard Gurrier open the door to the Interrogation Room from what seemed like a hundred miles away.

"Sir?" A familiar voice. One of the guards who had tortured him earlier, perhaps?

"Call a healer." Gurrier's voice sounded distant and muffled to his ringing ears. "Tell her to clean him up and fix what needs fixing. I doubt His Majesty will stop by, but he should be presentable if he does."

"Rations?"

"A cup, no board," Conrad heard Gurrier say. His pain-addled brain somehow managed to translate: they weren't going to feed him today. With the taste of blood fresh and strong in his mouth, he didn't mind very much. It probably wouldn't have stayed in his stomach very long.

"And don't harass him," Gurrier continued. "This one is His Majesty's special case. He'll have your eye put out if you touch his pet."

Pet.

The word chilled Conrad's bones like a gust of winter air.

The door opened all the way with an ominous creak. Conrad tilted his head slightly to catch sight of two familiar faces approaching—the same two humans who had tormented him earlier. He stared as fiercely at them as he could with his split lip, broken nose, and swollen eye, but they didn't strike him again.

His manacles clicked open and he fell; surprisingly gentle hands caught him before he hit the flagstones and spread him out carefully on the grimy floor.

"Gottlob, clap some irons on him before the healer fixes him up. When she's done, show her attendants where his cage is. Mathias, did van Kneff say anything?"

"Nope."

Gentle fingers skated across his chest, peeling away the bloodstained uniform. Conrad made a sound of protest and tried to sit up—he wouldn't be stripped down like this!—but those gentle hands turned forceful and pushed him back down onto the flagstones.

A long sigh from Gurrier. "Add the Maiden's Eyes and throw him back in. I'm tired of playing around with that bastard." He sounded as cool and collected as if he was requesting a glass of wine with dinner.

"Yes, sir."

Those gently rough fingers pulled open his jacket and began to undo the buttons on his shirt. Conrad rolled his head to the side, twisting his body slightly in a valiant effort to get away. There was little else he could do. His hands felt like they'd been shackled to the floor.

"Still feisty after that beating," Gurrier said from somewhere even farther away. "Gottlob, I'm going to see Dolph. Make sure this one gets back to his cage safe."

"Sir."

"No scratches!" The interrogator's voice had a bounce in it that Conrad took issue with, but the only protest that he could muster was a strangled wheeze in lieu of the vitriol he was seeking. Frustrated, exhausted, and increasingly lightheaded, he focused instead on resisting those insistent hands grasping at his uniform—the last link he had left to his homeland. He didn't even notice when Gurrier left the chamber, whistling cheerfully as he went.

———

Yozak sang softly as he made his way back to his office, the distinct thumping of his cane against the floor like an impromptu drum to accompany his thoughtful tune.

Conrad Weller. Captain. New Makoku.

He'd tested well, that one. Gottlob and Mathias has softened him up nicely, as was their specialty; afterwards Yozak had beaten him until his bones creaked underneath his skin and threatened to break, but he hadn't cried out once. A few sighs, a moan here and there—but not the desperate pleas for mercy that Yozak had been hoping to hear. Not once in the entire hour that Yozak had beaten him.

It was very rare that a prisoner refused to make a noise during his testing. They didn't exactly get heroes down here in the dungeons—mostly bandits, petty thieves, and guttersnipes with delusions of grandeur. They never stood a chance; a few punches and a dozen lashes, and most of them were tripping over their tongues to give Yozak all the information he wanted. It never failed, and it made his job bearable. It was the heroes—the ones who really believed they had something to prove or hide—who wouldn't make a peep.

Yozak liked it better when they screamed. Not only did it mean he could stop the test—always a treat for him—it also let him know how hard he was going to have to work in the coming days at the real interrogation. It made his job that much easier—it was painfully easy to accidentally kill a prisoner if one didn't have a good estimate of how much brutality he could take.

Weller promised to be a tricky case, and Yozak didn't like that. Now that he'd accepted full responsibility for the half-breed prisoner, though, he couldn't just send another apprentice to finish the job if it proved too much for him to handle. Not that he would—hearing his subordinates sniggering about him behind his back was worse than anything he could face in his own dungeon.

Their new half-breed reminded Yozak a bit of van Kneff. That one, too, had refused to make noise through his testing—and look where that had gotten him. By now, Gottlob or one of the other apprentices was probably shutting him in and piercing out his eyes. Yozak had already decided what to do if that didn't work. The king's hawks always enjoyed a meal of flesh snipped from an uncooperative prisoner's chest.

Yozak shrugged off any lingering remorse as he rounded a corner and began to carefully ascend the rickety stairs out of the dungeon. When he first received the job as an apprentice under his former master, the idea of stripping a prisoner's flesh off and feeding it to the falcons would have shocked him to the point of nausea—and it did, on several occasions. But his master was dead, all his former colleagues were dead, and although he'd served King Belal for decades in this festering dungeon, he was still alive and sane.

It hadn't been easy, though; Yozak wasn't cut from the same stock as the men who served under him these days. As he slowly dragged his lame leg up step after creaking step, that was more painfully apparent than ever.

Yozak steeled himself and, with a groan of effort, hauled himself over the exceptionally tall sixteenth step.

None of that mattered anymore, though. Weller was the kind of prisoner he'd been hoping to get for decades—the kind of special, unique case that would require just the right touch, and, with any luck, finally get the king to notice the valuable work Yozak had been doing for years already.

Tonight, Weller would sleep peacefully in his cage, whole and unthreatened. Tomorrow, though, the real ordeal—for both of them—would begin.

Yozak was oddly at peace with that idea as he climbed the last step and emerged into the palace hallway. As long as it was someone else at the nine-tailed end of the whip for a change.

———

Once the tingle of the healing houryoku wore off, his cell seemed even colder than it had before.

Conrad drew his threadbare blanket close around his shoulders. It smelled like reek and waste, but he couldn't afford to be picky now. His warm, sensible uniform was gone, and the healer hadn't given him anything very practical to replace it—just an itchy tunic which smelled like it used to be wrapped around potatoes. She'd rushed through the procedure, too, as if she felt healing him was a waste of her precious time. Which, he reminded himself, she probably did.

How had he gotten into this situation? He stared straight ahead at the grimy wall, thinking back to yesterday. He'd been blending in with the crowds so well—light on his feet, quick with his Shimerese, strolling through the streets as if he'd walked them all his life. And then he'd let one word slip—one tiny curse in the language of his mother's people—and the guards had been on him within seconds. A simple, honest mistake—and now, it might cost him everything: his mission, his freedom, and his life.

Conrad leaned back against the unyielding wall behind him, sighing heavily. What a way to end—in the dungeon of his family's ancient enemy. At least they would never have to know or see how low he had been brought—by his own failure.

Or how low he might still be brought. Conrad shuddered to think of what awaited him if he finally broke. The leers that the humans had given him…those looks frightened him more than the threat of being tortured to death. Better to be dead than to belong to his enemy, like a…a…

Pet.

He pulled the grubby blanket tighter around his shoulders and balled his fists tightly in the greasy fabric. Earlier in the evening, the guards had left him a bucket of dirty, icy water to drink. Conrad stared at in disgust—as if he could boil it with the anger of his glare alone. Then, with a mad gesture, he threw his leg out and kicked it over. Water splashed over the flagstones, and the bucket slammed against the bars of his cage with a furious clatter.

No.

He'd had a spotless reputation so far. He'd spent years denying himself, censoring himself, and working harder than any other damn soldier in New Makoku to get where he was. He had a fantastic career and a bright future ahead of him, and he wasn't going to let it end like this. He was not going to live out the rest of his day as the toy of some perverse noble.

The moans of the prisoners in the dungeon around him cemented his resolve.

­I won't die here.

Conrad pulled the grubby blanket tighter around his shoulders, balling his chilly hands into fist. He stared into the darkness defiantly.

"I won't."

The dungeon grew cold as day faded into night. Conrad watched the spilled water freeze and crystallize into a smooth mirror of ice before finally drifting off into a restless sleep.

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