Chapter 21

Day 07

Spencer looked around as he and JJ stepped into the middle of the space. Without realizing it they had been surrounded, mostly by large, muscular men. "Spence," JJ said, a nervous quaver in her voice. "What is this?"

"Some kind of ritual maybe." He said.

In the meantime Ladz had been saying something to Bastian. Now the older man considered this, as if trying to figure out how to explain. "You and your kittah." He pointed to JJ. "You are too...what's the word... vsinnh." He said that and passed a hand over his face. "Vsinnh. Vsinnh." He repeated the gesture, smiling broadly. Then he pointed to Adriana. "Nice faces, like Adriana."

It took a moment but it finally clicked. "Attractive? Good looking? Pretty?"

"Pretty! Yes, that's it, pretty, Thank you." That was the world Ladz had been looking for. "Adrianna is pretty, Aviv is pretty, your kittah is pretty, yah?" Spencer nodded. "Okay. See the guards?" He pointed to the front of the room. It stretched up to a third floor, where a catawalk spanned the front, giving access to the hallways and stairs going down. Up there two guards stood not paying that much attention to the crowd below.

"Yeah." Spencer nodded.

"Those are the regulars. They have officers too, yah? Tonight, the officers celebrate." He gestured like he was drinking from a bottle. "They will come, looking for new people to...to...take."

The way he said it made the meaning clear. "Take."

"Yah, yah. So we can make you like my young friend there." He gestured to Aviv. "Or you can see and wait. But you must choose, there is little time."

"What's he saying Spence?'

"They want to disfigure us so we won't be raped by the guards." He met her wide eyes as she groaned. "I think it would be a lot easier to heal from a beating after."

"Oh god! I don't know..."

"You have to make your own decision here, but remember the three victims we had that were raped." They hadn't just been raped. That had been sado-masochistic torture. In a situation like this the guards could likely do anything they liked, no limits.

Her blue eyes shimmered up at him. "I know, but I can't..."

She couldn't make that decision, this was all too much for her, the past weeks, the past years, had pushed her beyond her limits. It was up to him. He could not imagine rape, that pain, that loss of control was one of his greatest fears, and the thought of it happening to her was too much to handle. But he could be all right with the controlled violence and pain of a methodical beating, he knew they could both heal from that. He turned back, met Bastian's eyes and nodded. "We agree."

Bastian smiled and nodded in return. Then he pulled the corks from the two bottles and took a drink from each. "Tyili zaerr va' phaeti." He handled one bottle to each of them. "Dsaetg oiv. Ya'oi lya'oirv va'zt en rieln yerph mipha'si zi kin ka'aetk. In zaerr yirv zaeny nyi veaet." He made a gesture like they should drink from the bottles.

Spencer sniffed at the bottle he was handed. It was grain alcohol, Everclear or worse. The harsh scent of it burned out his nose and made his eyes water.

"Does he expect us to drink this?" JJ asked

"It is all we have for pain." Ladz said.

"Drink it." Spencer told her. "A lot of it. Being beaten is nothing like sparring in the gym." He met her wide eyes again. "I'll protect you."

"You better." She replied, and tipped the bottle back.

Spencer turned and handed his bottle back to Bastian. "Can you tell him I want to keep my head clear?" He asked Ladz. "I'll do this without the bottle." Ladz translated as Spencer deliberately stripped to the waist, setting his clothing and then his glasses on the bunk, turning the world into a gentle blur. "And ask him not to break our teeth." He did not want to spend another two months with broken teeth and no dentist handy.

Ladz translated and Bastian replied. "He said he would try."

Spencer nodded and checked on JJ. She was working her way to being well and truly blitzed, which ought to help her when it was her turn. There was a big difference between sparring in a gym or even fighting off an Unsub and just taking a beating. As far as he knew she had never taken one where she couldn't or shouldn't fight back. Whereas he, as he had once pointed out to Hotch, had been a child genius in Las Vegas Central High. One thing he absolutely knew how to do was take a beating and keep his wits about him. Hopefully seeing him first would help. As for himself he knew this was going to be bad but at least he would maintain some control through it all. "All right."

Bastian gave him a nod that held a great deal of respect. "I ed la'ssh." The older man said again, and then a large, dark shape was moving toward him

The first blow snapped his cheekbone in two.

The blows were regular, even, well thought out. The larger man very methodically broke his cheekbones, his nose and his brow bone, leaving his face a lumpy mess. At the same time someone behind him had a knife and was hacking away at his hair, scraping his scalp at times. The pain was sharp and sickening, but familiar. It was up there with Hankle breaking the bones in his foot, but not nearly as bad as being shot. Nothing he couldn't handle.

But they weren't done with him. When they were finished with the hands helped him up to his knees. Bastian was standing there with small lump of pale grey metal in his gloved hands. "What is that?" Spencer asked as he checked his mouth. Yep, his teeth were all right. Bastian was good at this.

"It burns." Ladz said. "Very...what is word? Thin? Light? It leaves the marks of sickness behind."

"Shallow? Like a very little water on the floor."

"Shallow, yes. Thank you."

Shallow burns hurt more, but there was a chance the scarring could be repaired when they got home. And he didn't really need to be the pretty boy to do his work. He set himself and held his arms out to the sides. "Do it."

"I ed la'ssh." Bastian said once more. Then he gently tipped Spencer's face over as the other's held him still and started tracing the metal over his cheeks.

It seared.

Spencer cried out as the smell of his own burring flesh reached his nose. This pain was vastly more than he had ever felt before. It felt like pure fire lightly passing over his skin, tearing it off and leaving nothing but raw pain behind. It took everything he had to stay still and let the other man work. Bastian traced patterns lightly over his cheeks, forehead and jaw, creating a pattern that would not affect his ability close his eyes or his mouth at all. He avoided his neck, likely to prevent constricting scaring and continued on over his collar bone, down his chest, twining over his arms but not his hands, hands which they held tightly and out so he could not fight back out of instinct. Then they pushed him forward, held him there as the burning metal passed over his shoulders and his back. He kept trying to scream but hands covered his mouth and smothered his cries. Bastian even pulled down his pants a little and traced the burning lines over the upper edge of his buttocks and around and over his lower abs in front, getting a lot closer to the root of things than Spencer would like but not going all the way there.

When it was all over Bastian stepped back, walked around him like an artist checking his work. He looked over the damage and nodded. "Ga'a'v. Ya'oi esi ta'n na'a' vsinnh ethda'si. Ha'z ael lyi?" He asked Kaeg. Kaeg stepped back and let him have a look. Spencer looked over at JJ. While he had been distracted they had gone to work on her. Her face was also lumpy now, her bones broken, her body traced with red blotches and burns, her lovely corn silk hair chopped off short and sticking out, barely covering some of the patches of scalp. Ladz had his hands tightly over her mouth to silence her screams. When she looked up she looked like a frightening caricature of the beautiful woman she had been. "Ga'a'v qa'm." Bastian said to Kaeg as he nodded approvingly.

The ones that had held them now carefully helped them to their feet, as if trying not to aggravate the pain they had just caused. Bastian himself came and gently put the glasses back on Spencer's face. "I gta'z ha'oi za't'n zetn na' ien na'taekyn." He said as he carefully helped Spencer up and over to sit on his bunk. "Riln zaeny ha'ois kittah. It nyi da'staetk nyi veaet zaerr mi ka'ti etv ha'oi zaerr mi lephi. Ya'oi zaerr lii."

Then Kaeg was helping JJ over to the bunk too. She leaned against him heavily as he put an arm around her. For this moment their world was pain. "I hope this works." He said to her gently.

"It better." She replied.