A/N: Hey, you see this? Quick. For me, anyway. Warning graphic crap, blah, blah, you should really be used to it by now, and go have fun. Get scarred for life, I really don't care. Your problem. I mean, you know what a sick fuck I am, right? Yeah, and I'm damn proud of it and not about to change. Thanks a lot for all of the lovely reviews, by the way, they were muchly appreciated. Enjoy.
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Everything hurt in some way or another. Harry's entire body ached, and was the kind of sore that had spread even to his bones. As for true pain, his back was second only to the area only inches below it, not to mention a dozen other smaller hurts all over, all eclipsed by the pulsating pain in his ass.
When Harry awoke, it was because of that pain. He woke up tense all over. Immediately, the muscles around the place most damaged clenched without warning, an automatic reaction that made him gasp a curse with a voice too hoarse for anything louder. His eyes sprang open.
Hades had both arms wrapped around him, fingers tracing idle designs into the raw meat of his back, Harry's head tucked into his chest. The two bodies were perfectly intertwined, and nude. It was warm, and comfortable, if he ignored the immediate agony consuming his body.
The demon's eyes were closed, lips curved in a small smile, breath slow and even.
"Hades," Harry choked out. "Please – wake up!"
Hades ignored him, running his hand over his back in a gesture that would have been fine, soothing even, if he hadn't recently shredded it. Harry twisted in his arms, and the strangled sound of pain he had been trying to suppress spilled out from his mouth. The fingers played firmly upon his back, stroking bare bone, and the sound rose to a scream. The scream didn't sound right; it burned Harry's throat and came out with a rasping noise that brought all the memories back to Harry. He had screamed enough last night, right up until whatever the end was, that he would need a potion to cure his voice before he did anything above a hoarse whisper. He ended up coughing painfully, and having to hold his breath until the burning need to cough faded.
"That's what I like to wake up to," Hades murmured. "Screams, from a throat so damaged it can barely produce them. Not to mention a warm, naked body writhing against mine."
"Please – I – I can't take it," Harry finally rasped in a semi coherent sentence.
"You'll live." Hades' eyes never opened, and Harry thought he was asleep again, though the smile had widened.
Harry stared at the sleeping demon, wondering how had ever slept at all. He had been damaged so much that he was in too much pain to move without screaming, or attempting it. The answer eventually came to his slowed mind. He must have passed out. There was no possible fucking way he could have slept a normal sleep like he was now. Hades, temporarily satisfied and in a good mood, had let him pass out. Of course, the instant Hades had actually allowed him to pass out, Harry's pain had awoken him and Hades couldn't be bothered to let him be mildly content for more than about three seconds at a time. So he had once again gotten no sleep, literally about a minute at best, though how he had gotten back on the bed and entwined with Hades he didn't remember.
"Hades, please!" Harry said, wanting to scream not with pain but pure frustration. "You can't go back to sleep!"
"When will you learn, Harry, I don't sleep," Hades murmured. "I just don't care."
"Hades…"
Hades said vaguely. "I hope you know, it's not even 4 a.m. yet."
"It doesn't matter, damnit! You're a fucking demon! You don't sleep!" Harry glared at the still form, which had shown no sign of movement. "You said it yourself about ten seconds ago!"
Silence from Hades.
"Look, there is no part of my body that doesn't hurt! It's just a matter of what hurts less, and I – need – something!" Harry ground out as long fingers probed through a shred of skin and ground into the bare nerves. Harry's back bowed, seeking to avoid it, and he didn't even try to smother his scream of pain. The scream itself hurt enough that he was reduced to whimpers.
"Every time you talk from now until two hours from now, I will do this," Hades said, the tips of the human fingers turning sharp and hard to ever so slightly penetrate the vulnerable flesh, for emphasis.
"That's not fair," Harry whispered. "Please…Master."
"Nice try," Hades muttered. "I'm not moving."
Harry's cheeks burned with anger and just a little shame for calling him master. Though right now if he stopped the pain, Harry would call him anything he wanted him to. Hell, he'd get up and freaking tap dance for the bastard if the pain would just stop.
"Fuck you," Harry said harshly. "You sadistic bastard. You're not my master in any way and you never will be! You're just a psychopath with ―"
Claws pressed into his torn flesh, carefully, so carefully, the raw skin bowing painfully slowly beneath them. Seconds passed, and with no real skin at all to protect his back, even that slowly, the claws easily penetrated the bloody flesh, entering with immense precision. It was drawn out as long as possible, the claws eventually sinking all the way in, taking different paths, several of them piercing the flesh to trail lazily along the bone beneath it, leaving fine trails of white dust in their wake. The pure white grains of bone were immediately turned crimson as blood was spattered everywhere.
Harry struggled with all he had not to move, biting down on a generous bunch of blanket to shut himself up, though small noises like swallowed screams and shrieks could not possibly be repressed. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, and he was shaking violently all over with the need to move. But if he moved it would just make it worse, drive those long claws in deeper. He had no doubt that very soon they would reach other, much more important things. Like his kidneys. And Hades wouldn't heal him until he bloody well felt like it, so Harry would have to live with fucking shredded organs, and he didn't want that.
The deadly claws traced the mutilated surface, forcibly pushing apart the flesh to make room to snake around and scrape the underside of one of his vertebrae, to nick something much more important than flesh and blood, or even bone. It was the barest of scratches, but this was something that was never meant to be exposed, much less touched.
Blood was once again rolling in wet lines to stain his back a bright cherry red, and the sheets as well.
Why?! Why in – I'm dying, I'm dying, please let me be dying, oh GOD – Hell did I insult him?! Two words are all the excuses that freak needs to make me bleed all over his sheets.
In his more eloquent moments that was what he thought, albeit in chaotic snatches. Mostly he thought in screams, if he 'thought' at all.
Harry clutched in each hand a bundle of sheets, so tightly his hands shook even more, like he would fall into oblivion if he let go.
Those wicked tools, picking apart the raw mess of muscle, crawling through, over, and around flesh and bone, and softer, more tender things, with audible, wet noises; the meaty sound of flesh tearing, the commanding click of claw on bone, the almost nails-on-chalkboard sound of those claws forcibly caressing the bones bared for all to see. It wasn't mindless shredding, it was slow and purposeful, and it made his body twist and turn to escape them, his spine bow and his legs kick out. Harry was writhing, convulsing, had been for a while, because there's only so much logic you can hold to when a demon as 'talented' as Hades has you pinned to the bed and is carefully and methodically shredding your back. His mind was no longer available to tell him it was actually several times worse this way. Fuck organs, it hurt.
Hades hooked one claw under a bit of something thicker and more flexible than flesh and Harry tried to still himself, desperately hoping this was the end. Hades drew his finger toward himself, plucking it like a chord and jerking it towards him as it split, unable to stretch from its fleshy attachments. As this particular part of him snapped, so did Harry.
"STOP! STOP!" Harry screamed, and there was blood flying from his mouth; he had bitten his lip hard enough that he couldn't scream without spitting blood. And soon, maybe already, that blood would be from deep inside of him.
Hades did stop, though it wasn't because Harry had told him to.
"Now look what you made me do," Hades' said, like he was a kid with a pencil and a piece of paper, and another kid was bumping his arm as he drew. The demon had almost stopped, and was now absently dragging a single claw back and forth, back and forth, over the utter mess of Harry's back, seeming not to notice Harry's convulsions. "I was actually about to get up so we could get to the market early. Did I mention we're going slave shopping today? You can pick one out, too."
Harry lay there, shivering violently, involuntarily twitching, breathing in breaths that were more like gasps. He was sobbing, even though he had no tears left, and couldn't stop. He screamed, a scream that was half sobbing, and half a ragged, wordless scream. He wasn't even sure it from the pain anymore.
It must have been a long time later, maybe as much as an hour, he couldn't tell, but when he could talk without sobbing, he somehow remembered the statement Hades had made and managed automatically, "Not things to pick out. People. Don't talk like that."
"For fuck's sake, Harry, you can't just learn a lesson the hard way, can you?" Hades said, shaking his head, but Harry knew he was grinning, even though he was still lying facedown in the sheets. "Fine."
I hope this time he does something useful and just sews my fucking mouth shut. Harry thought dully.
Harry was now lying on his mangled back, looking up at Hades.
There was a stray smear of now dry blood just to the side of Hades' mouth, and as if Harry was a mirror and he saw himself reflected in him, that long tongue flicked out to lick the spot clean, and Harry knew he had left it there just so he could see that. That Hades had fed from him sometime during or after the long period in which his back had been sliced to bits. That not everything that had been tearing at his back might have been claws, but teeth, or that it could have happened when Harry had been waiting to answer, when Harry had more or less been in shock. Or both.
"You fed on me," Harry whispered, because it hurt less than talking. "When?"
"Briefly when I was doing your back, then after, when you were less than sane and the pain was so intense that your body didn't notice a little more, and I knew we had to get to the slave market, so I made it quick. But that doesn't matter. Listen up."
Harry was still trying to figure out how he hadn't noticed a fully grown demon feeding on the raw meat of his back. The answer was as it usually was: because it was Hades, and Harry had yet to find something he couldn't do.
"Talk back to me in response to this and I will beat these words into you until they are all you can think, all you can say, Harry," Hades said, face serious, except for maybe the dark look in his eyes that made them gleam. "In your old life things were different. You could throw your little fits, and be a stubborn son of a bitch, and probably much more besides that I could care less about. Well, you can't now, and you have got to understand that. This isn't Hogwarts, and I'm not one of your pesky little fans. I am your master. I own every inch of you. I can snuff your life out in less than half a second like it was a dying flame. I can also make you live forever. You're an amusing plaything, and because of that, you are alive. But that's all you are. You are not the savior of anything. And you are not a person. You are a slave, and you belong to me."
Is that all I am? Harry thought, considering the words, with a detached sort of shock. He couldn't even begin to think what to reply with. An 'amusing plaything'?
Hades, still hanging over Harry, tightened his hands around Harry's wrists. "Now what is it you say?"
"I'm sorry," Harry whispered, and he half meant it. "You are my master."
Just don't hurt me. I don't want these words beaten into me. No more, please, no more.
Once upon a time, his pride would never have allowed him to say those words. Not now. Right now he really would say anything, anything, to end this pain, to get a healing potion.
"I know," Hades said, stood up, releasing Harry, and jumped to the floor without making a sound. "Now, I can get you into the market naked, but knowing you, you'll probably want some clothes."
Harry turned his head to the side to look up at him. He felt so vulnerable, exposed, weak. Hades stood over him, looking impossibly tall and imposing, as Harry lay on his torn up back, naked. When he felt Hades' eyes roam over his body, he brought his knees to his stomach in an effort to cover himself, even though it made another tear slip from his eye. People never realize how much their back is used to run the rest of their body until it's broken, or at least damaged. Just curling his legs in and hugging them made his back scream a protest.
When he felt, saw, Hades take another step towards him, there was no conscious decision to lie there and hurt a bit less, or to be stupid and move, just the instant action of scrambling upright and scooting backwards until he reached the wall and the head of the bed. It was awkward, distantly quite painful, and when the urge to move had died a little because his back had hit the wall, he realized it didn't just hurt, it made him want to lose all grip on appearing somewhat sane.
But Hades would like that, and some small part of his mind was shouting at him to stay calm, not to make any noise, not to fall to the floor, because Hades would get off on it and things would go downhill from there.
"Please, please don't, Master," Harry half choked. "Not again, not this soon."
Hades was smiling, but Harry couldn't read it, and that made him scramble desperately for words that might delay, help, do anything.
"You – we – have to go buy the slaves," Harry reminded him quickly, the words strung together as a single word, as Hades smiled, the kind of smile that made Harry flinch.
Hades put his hands on his hips in what should have been a feminine gesture, shook his head, but grinned anyway. "You see what happens when I try to be nice?"
Harry stared at him, his terror chased away by puzzlement.
"I wasn't going to fuck you. I was about to pull you to your feet, you reject."
"Oh," Harry said stupidly, some of the tension leaving his body. The one time Hades almost did something nice and he freaked. He was a reject. Great, so now he was getting paranoid.
He tried to stand, really tried, and wound up just trying to move off of the bed, which degraded into just trying to move at all. Harry finally just lay there, panting, frustrated beyond belief, his frustration channeling into anger at Hades for causing this.
"For fuck's sake," Hades said eventually, after a rather long while of failure. As he said this he injected his claws into the torn flesh of Harry's back, curling them to give him the perfect handhold, and Harry was lifted into the air by his spine with a yelp. Hades kept him just above the near edge of the bed, then shook his hand to the side, retracting his claws and dumping the whimpering boy to the floor, who promptly passed out.
By that small, painful miracle, Harry had finally passed out from the pain and the force of the fall and was lying on the floor in an awkward position, out cold. Being unconscious, Harry never heard the soft laughter that penetrated the otherwise silent room.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHA/N: I love reviews, and they do help. Thanks to those who send them to me, I appreciate them, I really do. I respond to all that are signed. Merry Christmas, Holidays, present-getting, everyone.
