It was almost seven hours later that they dragged him back.
He was conscious, stumbling occasionally between them in a slapdash but honor-bound attempt at walking on his own. His clothes were torn, and were on him with a hasty sloppiness that, in combination with his sluggishness, suggested they had been put back by someone else. His head was down, and there were bloodstains in his short-cropped hair, but not enough to indicate a head wound. His wrists were free, but cut deeply by something other than the cuffs that had been on him initially.
One of the guards dropped his half of Moran to open the door, and the young man tilted dangerously before realizing he was on his own on that side and managing to slap a bare foot into place to keep himself from going over.
Lorna snapped out of an unsatisfying doze at the sound of feet against stone, sitting up before she quite knew what was going on. It was light enough now - from the gas lights they obviously didn't bother keeping on during the night - that she could see them outside the bars of the door, and she tensed as she saw Moran. She wasn't sure how long he had been gone, but he looked terrible. Not entirely that battered, but... off. Wrong. She tensed further once they got the door open and pushed him inside, doing her best to get to her feet in haste, and just managed to keep him from spilling onto the stone floor by bracing him. The guards said nothing to her, just shut the door, locked it, and turned and left. She heard them begin to joke amongst themselves before they faded out of her range of hearing again, and she lowered Sebastian to sit on the mat, crouching in front of him, brows furrowed together. "What happened to you?"
He winced as she helped him sit, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes. He was trembling just slightly, his breaths slow. It was a few moments before he opened his eyes, and even then he didn't look at her. His gaze was distant, listless, for just a moment, but then he seemed to rein himself in and it firmed up. He swallowed dryly. "They knew about Ciano. About me and Ciano."
She sat back on her haunches, letting out a slow breath, raising a hand to rub her eyes. "Jesus..." She murmured, voice laced with sympathy. And fear, for herself. But she pushed that down for now. She lifted her face to look at him again, raising her hands slightly to hover at his hair for a second before dropping. "Why is there blood in your hair? Is it yours?"
He looked up briefly, as if trying to see what she was talking about, and then shrugged a little bit. "I don't know. Maybe," he said, in a voice that was a bit lifeless. He glanced at one of his wrists, which was smeared with blood from where restraints had cut him. "My hands were tied near my head. Could've hit..."
"God..." She breathed, her heart wrenching in her chest for him. He was barely old enough for her to even consider looking at him, let alone for something like this to happen to him. "Were you drugged, or are you just exhausted?"
"Tired. Went on for a while." He pressed a hand against the wall, sitting up slowly, eyes still not quite looking at her. "M'okay. Wha'd'you need?"
She shook her head, keeping herself from touching him, though she wanted to pull him to her chest and bury her face in his hair. "No, I don't need anything. What do you need? Can I do anything?" She asked, voice soft.
He was relieved when she said she didn't need him, and slumped back again, slowly. He felt dazed. He wasn't thinking much beyond what he felt, which was cold, and sore, and in pain. His chest was too hot, but that was alright. It sort of balanced out the cold a bit. He shivered slightly. He wanted to sleep. Harrison said something and he tried to focus, but mostly he was tired. He closed his eyes.
She didn't make him answer, just pressed his shoulder gently to guide him back into lying down, head away from the door, and shifted to sit at his feet, doing her best to provide some sort of barrier between the door and him. He would have enough trouble getting easy rest in a place like this already, and now it was even worse. Her eyes stung, and she wiped them once before they could well up properly, waiting for the lump in her throat to fade away. She needed to figure a way out before she was taken.
It's alright, Seb. Scoot over. Daddy just wants to cuddle.
He awoke suddenly, limbs swinging hard to get someone- anyone- off of him. His hand contacted the stone wall with force, and that woke him up in earnest, the pain radiating up his arm and waking other, as-yet dormant ailments.
He hurt. His whole body was sore, his wrists stung and burned, and there was a sharp, penetrating ache below his waist that made him sick to his stomach. Above all of that, however, was a mounting burning over his heart. He pressed a hand there and had to bite into his lip to keep the sound muffled. He curled up a bit tighter on the mat, taking slow, shaky breaths until the pain dulled.
She looked over at him as he hit the stone, her throat constricting sympathetically as she looked at him. Her voice came out in a soft rasp as she spoke. "Would you rather I did or didn't touch you?"
He didn't answer for a few minutes, just focusing on breathing, but he could still feel hands on him, and he needed something to keep him grounded. "Just... be careful," he returned, his own voice hoarse.
She nodded a little, and got up to scoot over to his head, and carefully started carding her fingers through his hair, touching him more tenderly than she'd ever touched anyone. She couldn't say why, exactly, she was capable of this much sympathy with him, but it was extremely strong and impossible to ignore.
He was tense for a few minutes, but eventually was able to trust the repetitive nature of the motion enough to relax a little and trust that the touch was safe. He focused on it as best he could, then, eyes closed, but eventually the pain at his chest was too difficult to ignore. "Do we have any water?"
"Yeah," she nodded, shifting away from him for a moment. "I fell asleep at one point, and somebody dropped by a small pitcher. I've had a little, but thought you might end up needing it more. Here," she put it down in front of him as she sat back again.
He sat up slowly, and picked up the small pitcher, taking a few small sips despite the part of him that wanted to drink the whole thing. There was condensation on the outside of the container, and after he put it down he slid cool, damp fingers under his shirt, pressing them gently against his chest. He flinched just a little, eyes screwing up, but the moisture helped ease the pain a bit. "Thank you."
She nodded, sitting back against the wall, watching him. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, after a moment.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and shook his head. "Nothing you could do."
"I know," she sighed, shrugging a little. "Still sorry." She dreaded them coming back. By all turns of logic it would be her turn, and she didn't want to know what they would do to her.
He picked up the water, took one more sip, and passed it her way. He was completely exhausted, despite having slept. "Any idea how long I was out?"
She shrugged again. "A couple hours, at the very least. I think we're well into daytime, now," she said, then picked up the pitcher to take a couple sips of water, then set it aside. It was important they conserved it. One of her legs jittered nervously, anticipation of the worst kind riding high in her chest. Her ears were straining for the sound of distant footsteps, fearing their arrival.
He watched her nervousness, and quietly considered the situation, gut sinking as his sluggish brain pieced together her concerns. It was another few minutes before he got up the nerve to say what he needed to. "I'll clock them, boss. Keep the focus on me." His voice wasn't nearly so sturdy as he'd been hoping for.
"No, don't draw unnecessary attention to yourself. It won't work, anyways. If Ciano rolled on you, he rolled on me, too, or at least what I told him," she shook her head immediately, almost surprised at herself. "It's nothing I won't survive. I need you to keep your strength up as best you can - I don't think any escape of ours will be very subtle, and I can't carry you out. You continue to behave. Look for a tactical advantage." She let out a slow, controlled breath. "This isn't the Mafia, this is the army. I can't take them down with a switchblade. We're going to need one of those automatic guns, and I don't know how to use those, let alone know if I would even be able to keep on my feet. So keep your strength, and look for a way to bail us out. I will try to keep their attention as much as possible. Good, or bad."
He was surprised at her response. It wasn't what he'd been expecting at all. He nodded just slightly, however, following her logic. He reached out after a moment, putting a hand on her rapidly tapping leg. He didn't know what to say. Odds were it would be her. There was little arguing that point.
She appreciated the gesture. Her throat tightened, and she looked away, putting her hand atop his for just a second of acknowledgment.
Maybe an hour later footsteps echoed down the hallway, and she tensed nervously.
He heard it, too, and glanced at her as the guards approached their cell. They came into sight, and his heartrate accelerated rapidly. His whole body seemed to recoil at once, pressing him tight against the wall, even as he fought with himself to stay calm. The best he could do was stay breathing and stay silent.
Get a hold of yourself, colonel!
He took a few shallow breaths, and some part of his mind processed the order to stand. He complied, very stiffly, wincing, and felt more than saw Harrison do the same beside him. His hand touched her shoulder gently, the same as she had done for him, and felt his gut tighten with a sense of traitorous relief as they pointed to her.
She nodded, breaths uneven, and toed off her shoes as she glimpsed Sebastian's bare feet. She didn't want to lose any clothing, particularly something that would keep warmth in her feet. She stepped into the doorway, eyes down, though she couldn't help but see the leers on their faces from the corners of her eyes.
" Questo è più bello dell'ultimo," one of them joked, and received a roll of his eyes and an elbow jab from the other, and Lorna's stomach churned. This one's prettier than the last.
"Vai a scopare tua madre, figlio di puttana," she spat back, and earned herself a punch to the mouth for her trouble, and then a hand gripped the back of her neck and forced her to move, and proceeded to drag her down the hall.
He took a half step forward when they hit her, his instincts warring between intervening and following orders. Eventually orders won out, and he watched as they dragged her away, before eventually sitting on the mat. He was shivering, and curled up into a ball for warmth as he was left in the darkness, doing his best not to think about what they would do to her. His brand burned.
She was gone just as long as he had been. Seven hours later, two soldiers different from the ones who had taken her escorted her back to the cell. Escort was a strong word. They had her between them, supporting her weight with their own bodies.
She was too out of it to pay much attention to the way they slid their hands over her as they stopped outside the cell, one of them breaking away to open the door. During those hours, she'd acquired a split lip, a bruise the size of a grapefruit forming under her eye, deep lacerations on her inner arms, and several burning scrapes down her sides and back. Her clothes hadn't survived as well as Moran's had - her blouse was torn down the back, and her pants were missing entirely. It was a surprise her trousers had made it through without a scratch.
The guard got the door unlocked and the soldier supporting her shifted his shoulder away from her, grabbing her by the jaw with one hand and pressing an open-mouthed, rough mockery of a kiss to her slack lips. The soldier by the door had a bloody crescent on his lower lip, and looked far stormier than his friend, who broke off laughing after a excruciatingly long moment.
Orders didn't win out, this time. Both of the guards were too caught up in what they were doing to notice his quiet approach in the shadows, at least until the haymaker connected with the temple of the one who had kissed Harrison. It was weaker than his usual punch, which would have rendered the man unconscious, but it was enough to hurt, a fact which was made clear by the furious roar that followed. The soldier dropped Harrison and punched Moran right back, missing his first swing but landing his second on the younger man's ear. Moran was gearing up to respond when he was converted to peace rather suddenly by the muzzle of a gun in his face. He stepped back very slowly, hands rising to sit on the back of his head, eyes lowering. Harrison was kicked through the cell door, and it slammed shut to a chorus of furious Italian muttering.
"That was stupid," she said softly, on her hands and knees on the floor. She shifted back onto her knees and examined her skinned palms with dull eyes. It was just another pain, and lesser than the rest of her ailments. "Thanks, though." The shift change had brought them in halfway through her session, and they'd had different preferences from the first two. She only fought the first time they did something to her. The second time, she was usually swimming from the blow.
He knelt down next to her, looking her over in the dim light from the receding torch. A few moments later, though, it was too dark to see. "They roughed you up," he said, rather needlessly. "How badly?"
She shrugged a little, her staring down at her hands until the light faded, and she shut her eyes, finally allowing the tears to well up and spill over, streaking down her cheeks. "I imagine about how much they roughed you up, maybe a little different. I fought some." She couldn't bring herself to move. Moving was agonizing.
He nodded a little in the darkness. He could hear the strain in her voice, but didn't judge her for it. His own collar was damp from less than an hour ago. "Should I touch you, or no?"
"I..." She wasn't sure. Four different sets of hands had touched her, and the idea of them touching her again made her feel sick and clammy. But she'd just watched him deck one of them. You can't afford to swear off touch. "...Carefully."
He nodded a little, understanding the feeling completely. "I'm going to touch your shoulder," he warned quietly, reaching out in the dimness and resting his hand there gently. He let his thumb rub back and forth gently, rhythmically, predictably. "If they branded you, the water helps," he said quietly.
"They branded you?" She breathed, twitching slightly as tears dripped onto her skinned palms. "They... they didn't do that to me. Just.. other things."
Part of him was relieved, but the rest was focused on what 'other things' meant. "I don't need details, but is there anything that... that needs attention?" His hand shook just slightly on her shoulder, but his thumb remained steady,
She shook her head a little, a couple locks of hair that had escaped her curls brushing over his hand. "No. Nothing that can be done. Just... is going to really hurt for a while," she laughed weakly, which dissolved into a sob, and she clapped her hand over her mouth as her shoulders started shuddering.
He didn't have the faintest idea of what to do. He was terrified, too, there in the darkness, but touch was an uncertain thing for both of them. Eventually he did the only thing he could think of, and started singing, very softly. An Irish hymn he'd learned for school one year. It was sad, but soothing, echoing around the stone walls of the cell.
Eventually she became too exhausted to even cry in silence, and just listened to him, the occasional tear dripping from her chin. He was a beautiful singer. She hadn't expected that. Eventually she got the will to move, a hand gently wrapping around his wrist for a second before letting go, a silent request for him to stay with her, and she slumped against the wall.
He sat back next to her then, eventually falling silent to conserve water and energy. He left his hand on her shoulder, gently, and sat as a barrier between her and the door, like she had been for him. There didn't seem to be much else he could do now but wait. He had always liked waiting, in the army. It meant he was in control, early. Waiting for a superior. For a target. A signal. Now, though, he hated it.
At some point someone must have realized that they required some amount of care, because footsteps echoed down the hall again, and Lorna kept her eyes locked on the door in the dark as a guard with a mousey woman appeared. The woman had a tray of food (including a fresh pitcher of water), and the guard had a bucket. He ordered them to behave in Italian before he unlocked the door and the woman walked fearlessly in, surprisingly enough, and set down the tray of food on the floor before she walked to the corner and picked up their bucket, and walked back out. The guard tossed their new bucket in carelessly, and then locked the door.
He watched the two with wary eyes, muscled coiled like springs, waiting to bolt forward at an instant's notice. The two moved on quickly, however, and after a moment he stood, gritting his teeth as his body- mainly his abdomen and arse- protested angrily. He walked stiffly over and picked up the tray, examining it quietly. Bread, and some sort of greyish pasta dish that was sporting mold in a few places. He wrinkled his nose, but walked over to set the tray in front of Harrison before working his way gingerly into a seated position again, breath catching in his chest a few times as the movement prompted new pain.
She could relate to the noises he was making; just sitting still, she could feel the sharp pain at her core. She didn't look at the food in front of her, just set about eating her portion of it. It was better not to know, sometimes. She'd had practice with this, at least, thanks to her time in New York. Absently, she wondered what Armetti would think of her, imprisoned in the country of his family. That made her close her eyes, sending out a silent thanks to whatever had gone wrong with her pregnancy that had made her sterile. At least she was free from one fear. She coughed a little as she finished her food, and quickly reached for the pitcher to wash the taste from her mouth, then sighed, leaning her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. "You should eat. I need you to keep up your strength. It should be your turn, if they come again, but I'll do my best to have them take me instead. I'd prefer if both of us weren't hobbled with pain."
He inhaled the food as quickly as he could get it down. He'd eaten worse than this in the field. The water was a necessary chaser, and he took it gratefully, swishing it around to try and clear away the moldy fuzz lingering on his tongue. He glanced at her as she said that though, and shook his head. "No. I'm willing to concede not intervening on your behalf, but Jim ordered me to protect you. That's the bottom line."
"Yes, it is the bottom line - namely, getting me the hell out of this medieval pigsty, understand?" She replied sharply, eyes opening to meet his intensely. "If Jim has a problem with the interpretation of his orders being taken in broad enough terms to see the bigger picture of escaping, he's an absolute idiot, and I'll be pleased to take responsibility for overriding his orders."
"That doesn't work if they kill you," he shot back. "I refuse to just... let you take the brunt of the hell."
"I doubt they'll let me take all of it. They will get back to you, eventually. But the less, the better," she snapped, then took in a purposeful breath, shutting her eyes, and then let it back out slowly. "They branded you, Moran. Which means they're going to be a lot more purposefully cruel to you, considering I experienced no such thing. A few cuts won't kill me. If I scar, it's not the end of the world. We're in a war, for god's sake. Who knows how many times London has been bombed since we left? One more cut-up girl will not raise anyone's eyebrows."
He didn't have much of an answer for that, so instead he fell silent, face and eyes expressionless, an underlying, unvented fury burning hot. He felt like a coward, and it grated on him. He wasn't a coward. He took his hits when he earned them, and dealt back twice as good as he got. Letting Harrison take the brunt of the... treatment... went against what little moral code he had, in an infuriating way.
She let them fall back into silence. It was easier than driving the point home for no reason. It already bothered him. She didn't need to make him more upset.
He spoke up after a while. "Let me take this next one if it comes to me. I need to get out of the cell, gain more detail."
She opened her eyes to look in his direction for a moment, sighing softly. It was a valid argument, and she couldn't ignore it without one of her own. But she didn't have her own. "Alright. I'll try to see if there's any discernible patrol pattern once you're gone."
He nodded a little, and fell silent again. Waiting. Planning.
Sia - Jesus Wept
The Italian translates roughly to
"This one is prettier than the last one," and "Go fuck your mother, you son of a bitch"