1. Stand-alone story, three chapters. The last one is still in beta, but the story's essentially complete. I've been studiously ignoring a - sterner version of this one until it practically showed up in a nightmare so, no, this one is probably one that demands a flashlight and a kitten, and is not recommended for reading after dark.

2. Warnings: psychological torture, mentions of physical torture, hints of non-con (no, nobody's getting raped or even more than mildly fondled), more than mild swearing.

3. Credits: Story title off of Leondard Cohen's song And Who in Fire, which in turn is a rendition of the Hebrew Atonement Day prayer Unetane Tokeff; the moto for this chapter as for further chapters is from the Lord's Prayer; chapter title for this chapter is from a prayer common in some Christian denominations, and translates approximately as "Lord, have mercy" or "Lord, who is merciful."

4. Thanks: first and foremost to Camille and Mara Aoife, friends and beta readers; and also to the friendy people of the LJ community Little Details

1. Kyrie eleīson

Thy will be done…

The whisper of chilly air against his skin was the first thing Shane noticed when he woke up. Then came the pain – all over, both sharp and dull, like bruises and exhaustion with the sting of burns on top – the unyielding hardness of the surface he was lying on, and recollection. Shane's breath stopped at that, muscles seizing in an instinct to run. He opened his eyes and sat up, too keyed up with panic to register the pain. His left hand grabbed his right automatically, but his morpher was gone.

It was dark. Not pitch black, but enough that he could barely make out any details. There were walls; there were two objects, one approximately one foot tall and under half a foot wide and the other much smaller, next to one of the walls; the faint directionless light seemed to be coming from above – the room was so tall he couldn't see the ceiling, or perhaps that was because of the darkness. Shane put his palm down against the floor. Metal, smooth. He got on his hands and feet and began to carefully explore the room, all the while keeping an ear out.

No one came.

The walls were all metal, too. There was no hint of a door anywhere, though Shane spent what was probably hours feeling every inch. He did find what was probably a lavatory. The two objects he'd spotted upon waking were a full pitcher and a glass. Both were made of plastic, round-edged and unbreakable: there would be no easy way to turn them into a tool or a weapon. To make it even more irritating, whenever he emptied the pitcher it disappeared from his hands and appeared a few seconds later, full again.

Eventually he gave up and tried a sip. It tasted like diluted juice, with no chemical aftertaste, but Shane had no illusions that that meant anything. Still, as time passed and he did not feel drugged, he decided that perhaps the juice was safe. It even made sense, in a perverse sort of way: he was trapped alone in a room with no exits without access to teleportation, without his morpher, presumably on Lothor's spaceship. Tori, Dustin and Blake were probably dead. Cam hadn't contacted them since they arrived on the damn island, and possibly had no idea where they had disappeared to or what had happened. Shane was alone and captive.

He punched the wall just because he could.

He should've listened to Tori when she said that Lothor had to have messed up Hunter and Blake. Maybe if he'd listened to her right away, if they'd started looking for the two Thunders sooner… it probably wouldn't have made a difference. Choobo would've still shown up; the toxic geysers would've still gone off. Well, maybe Hunter wouldn't have stumbled straight into one of them but with the damn things being everywhere underfoot and Hunter as crazed as he was, that would've probably happened anyway.

Getting the guys out was probably the right call, though. They were too off-balance, all of them, and Blake in particular. They needed to get their heads together. Shane was relatively certain that he'd done well leading them to the cave. Not going after Hunter wasn't an option at that stage – they couldn't just hand Hunter over to Lothor – and they had gotten on the move as soon as Blake was stable on his feet again, so that wasn't when things went wrong either.

By the time Blake demorphed in the middle of the battle – what was he thinking, that the sight of him would punch through Lothor's brainlock when a second before Hunter had just screamed that he didn't have a brother? – things had most definitely gone wrong. Maybe that moment was the point of no return, maybe that moment had been weeks or months before; and maybe there had never been one big wrong call that doomed them all but a series of minimally suboptimal ones.

Maybe it was unpreventable, but that was not a thought Shane could afford.

Next thing he knew, Hunter had screamed again and Blake was lying on the sand a few feet from where he'd been, blood soaking into the sand next to his head. Shane hadn't been standing next to Tori so he could do nothing but shout in warning as she launched herself at Hunter. He and Dustin were only a second behind her, but by the time they reached Hunter he'd already tossed Tori aside and she'd demorphed in smoke and a pained cry.

She had still been twitching. That had been Dustin's mistake: he ran towards her, turning his back on Hunter, and Shane couldn't turn aside Hunter's hand.

In retrospect, Shane knew that he hadn't been thinking straight. The sight of Blake's blood was the worst shock of his life until Tori's fall a few seconds later. When Dustin fell he'd – it was as if he'd forgotten. His brain refused to acknowledge what the three prone bodies meant, refused to get that he was already on his own. He had to win, that much he knew, and winning was defeating Hunter without killing him; everything else was a blur. Maybe that last mad adrenaline rush was the reason his body seemed to hurt so much more as Hunter finally slammed him against a rock; or maybe he'd given Hunter a hell of a fight.

Not that it mattered. Hunter had gotten a hold of Blake's thunder staff as well as his own, and the combined voltage made Shane demorph and gave him his first burns. After that it was child's play for Hunter to beat him down, and the elemental shock of thunder and lightning left him limp and helpless in Hunter's arms.

He couldn't even support his own head.

"Open your eyes."

Shane just shut them harder.

"I said, open your eyes."

Hunter had to have directly hit a nerve or a dozen. Shane writhed, trying – and only partially succeeding – in holding back a scream, and opened his eyes. He'd already lost. It wasn't worth the pain.

He was looking straight at Hunter, who was still morphed but with his visor open. Hunter leaned against him, holding him in place with his weight. The touch of his hand on Shane's chin was disturbingly light as he turned Shane's head.

Turned him so he could see – had to see – the three bodies. The stain of blood behind Blake's head was alarmingly large; Tori was covered in soot, for crying out loud; Dustin, too, was motionless.

He wanted to close his eyes, avert his gaze and grant himself just one more second. Only for a split second, though: then he knew that he'd failed them, he'd failed them all, and acknowledging it was all that was left for him to do.

Hunter turned his head back: gently, so gently.

"Do you understand?" he asked.

Shane blinked away tears – he would not break down and cry – and said nothing.

Hunter shifted Shane's chin to his left hand and used his right to hold Shane's cheek, thumb caressing across the bone.

"Do you understand?" he asked again, hint of a threat in the low tone.

Shane's lips moved but no sound came out. His throat was too tight. Hunter was in his face, but he could still see the afterimage of –

He tried to look away from Hunter and Hunter assisted him with that, allowing him to look at the bodies again.

"Just so we're clear," said Hunter, and Shane could feel his breath, warm and moist, on his face.

He thought it had already hit him but it did so again, and Shane's body convulsed as he nearly threw up. His eyes were still stinging. This was it. Nothing was left, just him and Hunter and –

And fuck, but Hunter wouldn't have done any of that if he'd remembered the truth. If he hadn't been the first one to fall.

Hunter still had a pulse.

He didn't resist as Shane turned again to look at him, just held his face between his hands. It was becoming more disconcerting with every heartbeat: for a single second, one infitintely long and insane second, Shane wanted to close his eyes and rest, right as Hunter was holding him.

He pushed that back ruthlessly and said, trying for his last chance to do anything right: "Hunter – please, don't – Choobo lied – "

Everything went dark.

The walls of his prison were so smooth that they wouldn't tear the skin of the back of his hand, even long after he'd bruised it. He had no shoes so his feet bruised too, eventually. It made him crawl to the pitcher, once, as his feet just hurt too damn much, but after that he'd forced himself to walk. It seemed like all he had left.

He had no way to tell time. His inner clock gave out even before the first time he fell asleep – he didn't even know how long he'd been awake – and then it wasn't long before he'd even lost count of the number of times he fell asleep and awoke again. He only slept in fits and bursts anyway, waking up gasping for air, reaching out or pushing back from people who were never there.

The screams started before that.

If they'd started later – when he'd already lost even the notion of what a sense of time was like, when he was so hungry that he had to grab for balance every fifth step or so – then he would've figured them for hallucinations. They started within his first three waking periods, though, and he still had some trust in his sanity then.

Tori's voice, sleepy and confused at first and then terrified, begging: "No, Hunter! No, please! Not my – " and then it was just pain for a long while, and Shane made himself bleed, his fingers digging deep into his flesh, until finally it turned into sobs.

It had to be a feint, a trick designed to make him hurt and mess with him. She'd died. Hunter had electrocuted her to death. There were charred spots on her body, for god's sake.

When the second recording started, when he'd heard her pleading "Not again!" and demanding to know what became of the others, if they were even alive, Shane realized that Lothor had space travel, and teleportation, and the fucking ability to make living things grow to the size of skyscrapers, and Tori could've been just badly wounded and if Hunter had wanted her alive –

He nearly tore his throat dry-heaving for hours after the first time he spontaneously thought that it would've been better if she'd died instantly. Then he hit the wall again and tried to smash the pitcher multiple times at the sound of Blake pleading with his brother, at Dustin trying to reason.

He refused to let himself scream or howl, to let the fuckers have any sound they could use to torment his friends.

He stopped drinking after that fit of rage. He was already so weak with hunger that even the stretching exercises were almost too much for him and his head swam nearly constantly. How long did it take until a person died of hunger? A week, ten days maybe? He couldn't remember. Thirst was much quicker, he was sure of that, and it felt as if he was already halfway there, judging by the constant tremors from exhaustion and the cold. He lay down with his back to the wall on the opposite side of the room from where he'd left the pitcher and the glass, stared into the darkness and thought of his family. He'd actually nearly forgotten them in his first few waking periods: he was too busy doing crazy shit like trying to dig through solid metal with his nails. So he thought of his father, who never spoke to him of anything other than his unsatisfactory grades and how he should spend less time at the skating ramp, but still put his hand on Shane's shoulder and never asked any questions when Shane had had a bad day; of his mother, who sometimes seemed to never be home, even on weekends, but still somehow paid enough attention to know how he liked his pizza; of the days Parker would take him out to the amusement park or the beach, before he went to college and turned serious like their parents and disappeared. He thought of trying to hit Tori in third grade and her hitting him back harder, thought of detentions with Dustin and even Cam's permanent frown. Of Sensei threatening to expel them and then giving them morphers without batting an eye.

He kept pushing back images of still bodies and blue eyes filled with mirthless laughter. He couldn't even open his eyes, anymore, and any thought could be his last. He wanted to pass out for the last time thinking of something happy.

He had no idea what his last coherent thought had been. The next time he woke up he was so far from lucid that he hadn't even realized it. His head was lying on something soft and there was something warm and heavy across his shoulder. It took a few moments to decipher, though the haze, that his head was in someone's lap and that was someone's arm on him, someone's fingers in his hair. He did know that something bad had happened, but he couldn't remember what it was. He wasn't so cold being held, though, and the touch felt fond. The sound he made was between a sigh and exhalation, not entirely voluntary.

"You awake?"

The voice scared him, though he couldn't remember why: he knew it was wrong, and his body scrounged up some adrenaline somehow. But he was warm and comfortable, and did not want to move.

A hand pressed down lightly, "Shane?"

He mumbled something noncommittal, just so the other person would know he was awake.

"You're going to have to sit."

Sitting wasn't hard, it was nearly impossible. He hadn't been this weak since –

Hunter. He hadn't been this weak since Hunter had captured them all. He'd tried to dehydrate himself to death to escape the very person who was currently stroking him.

He made a token struggle, an attempt to get away or at least telegraph his disagreement with the situation, but Hunter's fingers settled between his scalp and his neck and he just couldn't.

"I could leave," Hunter suggested quietly.

"No," mumbled Shane before he even knew what he was saying. He was already coherent enough to know that this had to be the point of leaving him alone in the darkness, so that when the time came – no. He wouldn't have begged Lothor to stay, no matter how long he'd been left on his own. This was still Hunter, who should've been one of theirs, one of Shane's.

"No," he repeated, fingers trying to clutch the fabric of Hunter's pants.

"Okay," said Hunter. "You're going to have to sit up, though."

Shane didn't struggle. Hunter pulled him up and rested him against his own body, holding him close. It didn't matter that Shane knew, intellectually, that it was a deliberate ploy. It felt good and safe, like everything Shane had tried so hard to recall when he thought he was dying. It felt like coming home.

Hunter reached for something which Shane couldn't see – he was yet to open his eyes – but a second later he could smell.

Oh god, food.

He didn't fight the first spoonful of soup. Hunter had to still him, remind him to sip it slowly, that his body wasn't used to it anymore. It took some time before Shane remembered that he'd wanted to die and he really should stop eating, that he was playing into his enemy's hands –

"I'm not gonna let you die."

"I don't have to eat."

"That's what tubes and needles are for."

"I could hurt myself."

"Not in any way that would seriously endanger you."

"I haven't bashed my head into walls yet."

"Don't you think I'll tie you down?" Hunter didn't sound angry or condescending, just plain amused, and he squeezed Shane's shoulder lightly. "Eat your soup."

Shane must have still been mostly out of it, because he did.

The next time Shane woke up he wasn't aching, and he wasn't lying on metal either but on something a little softer. When he opened his eyes he discovered he was still in the same prison, with the same damn pitcher by the far wall. He was, however, lying on a mattress. Thin – but hell, it was a mattress, and after a week of lying on the metal…

Shane closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, willing himself to not feel grateful.

He was far too lucid considering he'd been starved for at least a week.

He opened his eyes again and sat up. He pressed down anywhere that a bruise had been, but there was nothing. Even the skin where he'd been burned – in what already felt like another lifetime – was whole and smooth. His muscles weren't aching. Apparently he'd been healed and also given some IV. Definitely not real food, because the only part of him that still hurt was his stomach.

Hunter hadn't been kidding about the damn needles.

Shane leaned back against the wall, and tried to figure out a way to escape.

He thought it took him less time to crash the second time, though he hadn't tried to help it along this time. Apparently whatever treatment he received while he was under hadn't restored him to full capacity, just refueled him for a few more days. Hell, maybe he hadn't even been lucid the first time he awoke After – maybe he'd forgotten what it felt like. It wouldn't have surprised him.

He was more certain that Hunter would come for him than he'd been certain of anything in his life, save maybe that the sun would always rise the next day. So he lay down and closed his eyes before he reached that stage where he was going to pass out if he moved. He could still feel the ghost touch of snuggling against Hunter whenever he got cold, as much as he tried pushing other memories to the front. Maybe he was going to lose, but he wanted to hold on to his own mind for as long as he could.

He wasn't surprised, then, by the sound of teleportation though he'd left the pitcher full, or by the sound of steps across the room. He was part grateful and part disappointed when Hunter didn't reach out to touch him, though, and startled enough to open his eyes when Hunter said, "You didn't even ask me if they're alive."

He sat up too fast and Hunter had to catch him. Shane caught the reflection of light off of teeth – a smile.

"They are," Hunter continued, hands resting against Shane's arms. "Tori isn't as pretty anymore, though, which Blake's gonna find out when he sees her. Which is going to be right before I finally kill him."

Shane pushed off Hunter's hands, stood up, tried to get away and fell.

Hunter caught him and, instead of laying him down, pulled him in.

Shane tried to push him away. Not that he stood a chance. He wasn't as helpless as the first time but he still couldn't stand on his own.

"Fuck you," he spat into Hunter's shoulder.

The bastard had the cheek to pet his back.

"As you didn't ask," he continued, as if Shane had said nothing, "I figured I'll tell you anyway."

"I hate you."

"No, you really don't." Hunter's hands returned to Shane's shoulders, and he laid him down. "So, I'll give you some more time to think it over and I'll be back later, yeah?"

And then it came, finally, the damn fingers, like Hunter had any right to try and comfort Shane and damn himself, but he could feel his body relaxing at the touch.

Two seconds before he would've told Hunter he was mad. Instead, he said, "That's not really you. Lothor – "

Hunter shut him up: simply held his jaw shut, and he didn't even have to use considerable force to do it. "That won't do," he said. "Like I said, I'm going to leave now. I don't know if you can still lift the pitcher so I'll leave the glass next to you. Don't make anything worse than it has to be."

Hunter let him slip further this time. Maybe it was some stupid sort of punishment for Shane getting him to come while he could still argue. He wanted to argue anyway as Hunter held him, he even managed to get the first syllable through even though he seriously wanted to just fall asleep like that, warm and not alone, but then Hunter's lips brushed against his temple and he squeezed Shane's shoulders.

Shane had been alone and cold and starving in the dark for close to two weeks, it was the only excuse he had for crying on Hunter's shoulder.

"Just stop it," he whispered. "Please."

"Stop what?"

"Just let me – please, not again."

"You can't even bring yourself to say the word. I'm not going to let you die, Shane."

"Fuck off."

"Do you really want me to?"

Shane bit his lower lip until he bled, and forced out, "Yes."

Hunter unloaded him from his arms before Shane even caught up. He reached out without conscious thought –

Hunter huffed in amusement and settled down again. "Yeah, right."

"That's not fair."

"That's life, Shane. It's not fair," said Hunter lightly. "I'm not even sure it's fairer than death. I mean, I lost my family twice before I turned fully legal. How's that? Hey, don't cry," he continued. "It's not worth it. Okay, how about this? I won't leave you alone in the dark again."

"Liar."

"Really, Shane. You should know better than that by now."

He woke up in a different room. This room was still metal but white and well-lit and it had an actual shower. On the downside, he was naked. There wasn't even a towel, just a hot air vent. He ignored the shower for the time it took him to empty three pitchers – which used to account for about one waking period, before he started sipping the juice just because he was bored. The shower felt stupidly good. So did the light, once it stopped hurting.

Before he found out – he should've realized it from the first moment – that the lights wouldn't go off. He was more exhausted than he knew it was possible to be, and still he couldn't fall asleep.

That was when the hallucinations started.

Tori wasn't first. It wasn't even someone of his family. It was Blake.

He was sitting on the floor, arms tied to the wall with manacles above his head level. Every visible patch of his skin was purple and blue – except for the few that were yellowish – and his lip was split. His nose had apparently been broken. The dried blood caked on his face. "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "You get to actually move around on your own, do you even know what that means? You get to still know what it feels like to walk. And you're giving up! You're too easy, have been so all along, that's why he's kept you. You were even stupid enough to think he'd give any of us an easy out like dying. I know him better than that. I could've done something if I had your chance but when he comes to see me it's just to beat me down again, and show me 3D video of what he's done to Tori. Has he shown that to you? No? Probably think he's going to get you to do what he wants anyway. I could've done it, which is why he didn't give me the chance; or why Lothor didn't let him, it's practically the same thing now."

Shane tried to protest – or maybe he did – but the illusion of Blake kept going on. Maybe it wasn't even an illusion. Maybe it was real, like the recorded screams. If it really was Blake, Shane couldn't fault him.

Tori looked – she still carried the burns from the last battle, and they hadn't healed clean. Also, Hunter had to have spilled acid or something on her, and he had to have used a lot and with no particular care: one of her eyes was milky and unseeing. Shane was off the mattress and kneeling by her before she finished taking a look around the room.

She wasn't real; or if she was, she wasn't really there.

"Shane? Is that you?"

"I'm sorry," he choked out. "God, Tori, I'm so – "

"Never mind, Shane. It doesn't matter now. Nothing does." She closed her eyes. "We're dead anyway, right?"

"No, we're not! Tori – "

"We died that day on the island," she continued, as if she hadn't hear him. "The people we were – Shane, Tori, the Rangers – we're dead. They're dead, have been for a while now. I mean, I remember being Tori. But I'm just "bitch" now. I remember doing things, I remember school and surfing and sparring, but that's all gone and it's never coming back. I can't even decide on my own when to sit and when to lie down, when to eat and when to sleep. There's nothing left. I'm dead, I'm just waiting for my body to follow."

He kept trying to hold her and coming up with air. He was crying so hard everything was blurry. God, she was – he had no idea – he'd forgotten, or he'd never realized, that it could be so much worse for them than it was for him. Hunter had been easy on him, giving him a steady drinking supply, relative freedom and no torture. He'd even forgotten he had been so afraid of that, in the first few days: after that time he had dehydrated himself on purpose he started taking the lack of beating for granted.

He fell asleep with Dustin's voice pleading with Shane to kill him, please.

It got a little better after that, but not by much. His body wouldn't get used to the light, and he definitely wasn't restored to pre-starvation physical condition. He didn't so much dehydrate himself as he just forgot to drink, sometimes. He forgot to stretch. He forgot to sing silly songs and dredge up childhood memories, doodle with his juice, everything he used to do to pass the time. Sometimes he slept and sometime he didn't, and he seemed to always have nightmares. Sometimes he wasn't even sure that he woke where he'd last been conscious, and he comforted himself by reminding himself sternly that Hunter wouldn't come without making sure Shane was aware of it.

He hallucinated – or was treated to holographic videos – a few more times, but it was never about Hunter. Hunter was real in the same way that the walls and the pitcher were, and in which everything else had stopped being. It frightened him that he could hardly remember. He wasn't going to last long if he couldn't remember what real life felt like, what sunlight and sky looked like, what health and laughter were like.

What being held by anyone but Hunter felt like.

The next time Hunter showed up, Shane buried his face in his shoulder and said, "Get me out of here."

For a moment, Hunter hadn't moved.

Then Hunter hugged him close, fierce, as if he'd found Shane after a long time and would not let him go. "How sure are you?"

"Just get me out of here. I can't take the light, it's even worse."

Hunter pressed harder for a second. "You promise you won't do anything stupid?"

"Yes."

"I mean it, Shane."

"Yes. I just can't – " His voice broke.

"All right." Hunter picked him up – held him as if he weighed nothing – and then there was a flash of light, and they were somewhere else. Hunter laid him down – was that a bed? An actual bed? – and covered him, and turned off the lights – Shane choked out a sound of relief – and his fingers kept running through Shane's hair and down his neck to his shoulders, kneading through the thin knots of his leftover flesh. "It's all right. It's going to be all right now, Shane."

Shane didn't quite believe him.

He woke up to a blinding flash of light and an explosion. Hunter shouted, sat up – only then Shane realized that Hunter had been lying next to him – and turned on the lights.

There was a Ranger in the room, and he was wearing green. Maybe it was the unexpected colour that made Hunter hesitate long enough for the Ranger to shoot him.

It was Shane's turn to scream as Hunter fell back on the mattress, unconscious or –

"Shane!" The Ranger said sharply. "It's all right, damn it!"

The voice – Shane blinked –

"Did you – "

"Yes, this is me, thank you – "

"Is he dead?" demanded Shane.

"Yes. No, of course not," snapped the Ranger. "You're gonna get up and get dressed now? We're going to teleport you down, and you want to be decent for – "

The voice and the attitude finally clicked.

"Cam?" Shane pushed from under the blankets.

"No, it's your fairy godmother."

Shane froze momentarily.

Cam's whole posture softened. "Yeah, it's really me. We really have to get going, Shane. Get dressed."

Shane just stared around the room.

"Oh, for crying out – " Cam located what turned out to be a wardrobe, opened it and tossed some clothes at Shane. "You do remember how to dress yourself, right?"