This is an excerpt from a full-length fic that I plan on writing someday, an AU that begins at the episode "The Black Paladins". Shorter than most of the rest, but not too super short. Pay attention to the warnings and enjoy!
Day 14 - Branding
Warnings: restraints, implied torture, blood, gore, creepy/intimate whumper, burns, ambiguous ending
"So pathetic. I honestly don't know what the High Priestess sees in you."
Fingers trailed across his shredded, bloody back, and Keith keened, jerking in his restraints. The man behind him sneered.
"I don't know what he saw in you, either."
Bright magenta eyes veered into his vision, close, and he flinched back. The chains holding his arms high above his head brought him right back, though, right up to those wrong, wrong eyes.
"He was pathetic, too. Weak. The High Priestess has made me so much stronger than your precious Shiro ever was."
Keith's throat was so raw from days of screaming that he wasn't sure he could ever speak correctly again, but he somehow forced out the words, anyway. "You're not even...half the man that Shiro was."
The clone - Kuron, as Haggar had been calling him - merely hummed in response, reaching up with his Galran hand to stroke his thumb over the sensitive hollow of Keith's neck. He swallowed, his breaths coming faster through his nose. With Kuron, any movement could go from harmless to excruciating in an instant. He was well aware of that by now.
Sure enough, the stroking soon turned into pressure, the metal thumb digging in hard until Keith gagged. Kuron left it for a moment longer, then released him with a huffed laugh.
"You have so many fond memories of him. So many moments that you cling to. High Priestess Haggar has seen it, in your mind. All those pitiful little things that he taught you, all that time you spent together." The metal hand came up again, clamping around Keith's throat as if to choke him, but without squeezing...yet. "I think I'd like to leave you with something, too. Something that you'll always have, to remember me by."
Before Keith could wonder what he might mean, the metal began to heat up. First pleasantly warm, but moving very quickly into far too warm, and then he was screaming again. It was agony. Having that heat held a few inches from his face had hurt badly enough, still hurt even days later, but this… His vision whited out, his voice finally giving out altogether, though his mouth remained open in a silent scream.
An eternity went by before the hand started to cool. Keith's senses came back to him little by little, and he struggled to get his feet back up under him as Kuron's smiling face came into focus. The air reeked of burnt flesh. Kuron peeled his hand off, ripping away multiple layers of ruined skin with it, and Keith's knees buckled again.
The clone looked down at his hand and wrinkled his nose. "Gross." Keith was nearly too busy with a vicious cycle of retching at the pain, which caused even more pain, which brought on more retching, to notice him wipe the offending palm off on his pants.
As Keith tried his best to remember how to breathe past the searing burn, Kuron leaned in and swiped his flesh fingers across the inflamed skin. Keith let out a strangled noise and tried not to start retching again.
"Beautiful," Kuron whispered. "It's perfect. Now you'll have no choice but to always remember me."
A/N: Who would be interested in seeing more of this AU someday?