Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.
Whumptober Day 22: "Demons" and "Obsession"; FlashFictionFriday #123 "Ceremonial Chants"
There are no such thing as demonic entities. No devils, no poltergeists, nothing supernatural at all. Scott knows this with a certainty; after all, even if they do exist, they pale in comparison to the cruelty of man.
If there's something Scott's very familiar with, it's the cruelty of man.
International Rescue comes across it frequently. Not even cruelty or malice, but ignorance and greed that result in pain, suffering, and all those other things the bible claims are the cause of the devil. Scott sees it first hand as he has to be the one to recite John's findings to the culprits, the GDF, even court on the occasions it runs that deep.
It's something that comes with the territory of being International Rescue's commander and primary field commander. An ugly responsibility that he'll shield his brothers from as much as he possibly can.
In the recesses of his memories, supressed until they decide not to be, when something encourages them and they burst to the surface in a flurry of paralysing, phantom pains that freeze him in place and remove him from now to return him to then, are other examples. Prisoners of war aren't treated kindly. Men, doing what their duty tells them is right, break and break and break the unfortunate under their heel until they shatter.
Nothing can ever be returned to the way it was after it shatters. Scott and his psyche know this all too well.
And then, separated in his mind from both then and what he sees as International Rescue, is one man. One, elusive, man whose name isn't known. Whose face isn't known, as though that matters when he can change it at a whim. Trickery, deception, malicious illusions – if there's any man on Earth that could truly stake a claim to the name demon, embodying all the supernatural, cold tendencies that they're associated with, it's him.
They call him the Hood.
It's a name they fear. It's certainly a name Scott fears, buried down beneath masks of frustration, anger, and the need to defend his family. He might even go so far as to say he hates the man, for what he's done to his family.
That same man is stood in front of him, wearing ornate clothes laden with enough gold to double the man's bodyweight. At least, this current vision of the man, with his emancipated, pale, cheeks and sunken eyes that gleam almost yellow from beneath thick, black, eyebrows. Scott doesn't know if it's his real face; there's a lack of kindness to it that makes it feel like it might be, and it's certainly a reoccurring one from their encounters.
Scott has got used to the idea of sharp business suits, crisp ties and gleaming cufflinks accompanying this particular face. A visage of cruelty, a wolf in sheep's clothing as he mixes with the other would-be predators of the business world, knowing full well that while they think they're in control, one snap of jaws and their carcass might as well be a sheep's. This, laden down with gold – blood gold, gold that's been extracted and refined at the cost of literal lives – feels like the true appearance behind the mask.
It's fitting.
It also hurts.
The gleam from those yellow eyes isn't a metaphorical description. They literally glow, glittering with something that Scott refuses to consider supernatural. Coloured contacts, maybe, or mechanical eyes linked to nanobots in the bonds that snake around his wrists, ankle, torso. Even as pain lances through his body, stripping his limbs of any autonomy they might have still retained despite the rope that binds him and whiting his vision in bursts of starlight, he holds tight to the knowledge that this is a man. Skin and flesh and bones and so, so, cruel.
Screams tear from his lips. Water beads in the corner of his eyes, and conscious thought is a fickle thing that comes and goes, but between the flashes of blinding white there's just gold. Heavy, heavy gold laden on shoulders that bear it as though the blood and lives steeped within is nothing. Golden yellow eyes.
Gold, gold, gold.
There are recorded voices in the background, audible when his screams waver and fade and overlapping with each other in a way that'd be melodic if it wasn't so haunting. It reminds him of those ceremonial chants that come from cliché movies about cults and sacrifices to devils and demons that don't exist.
Humanity doesn't like to admit that it's cruel, so it hides behind make-believe figures and claim that they were obsessed by an intangible, impossible, being. Really, they're just obsessed by their own minds. Obsessed with being the best, with being right, with getting what they want.
Scott's obsessed, too. Obsessed with thoughts of how he's going to get out of here. How he's going to get this man's real name and put him away for good. How he's going to promise his family that really, he's okay.
Even if he's not, because protecting their minds and bodies no matter what it costs him is his obsession.
This had me stumped, because at first glance these prompts don't work with TAG at all (and I admit there's some heavy TOS influence peeking in to make it fit properly), but I did manage to come up with an interpretation of the prompts eventually!
Thanks for reading!
Tsari