Hey, long time, no fic. College is hard, especially if you're balancing upper division physics classes, a research job, and running a club+said club's D&D campaign. However, I still wanted to do a fic for whumptober, and this is it. It ended up fitting multiple prompts 😅

This is not an official update to the Cagemates AU, as this fic is not canon to the AU for reasons detailed below.

Content/Spoiler Warning: medical torture, vomiting, unsafe medical conditions, references to Douxie's bad childhood, humiliation, and a single reference to brain surgery

"I'm proud of you," Zoe said as she moved her gloved hands through his bangs. Douxie wanted to turn away in embarrassment – someone telling him they were proud of him was a strange oddity that he always felt awkward receiving. However, if he moved he'd probably get blue splotches all over his face, so he stayed still. This blue hair dye would only make him look cool if he wasn't blue in the face as well.

"Thanks," he said carefully, only moving his lips the bare minimum so if dye fell it wouldn't get in his mouth. "I'm just glad my lute skills transferred so well to the guitar."

This was one of the reasons why Zoe was so cool. She liked his musical skills, unlike Merlin who hated his lute-playing and singing.

(So had Morgana, but unlike Zoe Morgana wanted Douxie dead.)

(Douxie tried to ignore the fact that there had been a time when Morgana may have wanted Douxie to remain alive. She had betrayed Merlin and Camelot, and that was all that mattered. Surely Zoe wouldn't do anything similar.)

"Um," Zoe said, in the same way that Morgana would whenever she was about to say that his music was lovely, but it was interrupting her focus, and could he please practice somewhere else?

(He didn't miss Morgana. He didn't miss her, just as he didn't miss the slorr or constant anti-magic bigotry he grew up with. He enjoyed life without her just like he enjoyed living a modern life with heaters, even if he had to hide who he was almost all the time. Being a wizard in public? Now that he missed.)

"I was actually talking about just, y'know, dying your hair," Zoe continued. "It's a big responsibility."

It was also a way for Douxie to look cool and fit in with his modern peers, which was what he had been trying to do for the past months since he arrived in Arcadia Oaks. When he was a child, he had looked stupid, with a stupid bun. Now that he was nearly fourteen and clearly no longer a child anymore (despite what Zoe said that modern laws said), he wasn't going to look stupid. He was going to look cool. All the other guys in his newly formed band, Ash Dispersal Pattern, were dying their hair.

And yet, going along with what his friends did didn't seem like a responsible thing that Zoe would have been proud of. Merlin certainly wouldn't have been proud of Douxie for that, if Douxie had had friends back in Camelot. Douxie also got the feeling that when it came to responsibility, Zoe wasn't talking about how he would be able to keep up his schooling and job at the same time as being in a maybe-punk-or-maybe-emo-or-maybe-metal-or-maybe okay, fine, they hadn't really decided on their main genre of music-band.

"It is?"

Zoe paused. "Wait, no one explained it to you?"

"Explained what to me?"

"Eh… it doesn't matter."

"What doesn't matter?"

"So, you know how use of dark magic will change your appearance if you feed it with your life force, even though it's a slow process? Well, hair dye has been found to speed that process up. One major use, and not only will your life force be attacked, but so will the dye. Your hair will turn white, and if you continue tapping into dark magic, the white will spread." Her serious tone then brightened. "Which is why I'm proud of you. You're really telling the world you won't bow to it, and neither will you compromise. But it's not like you would ever use dark magic anyways, so it doesn't matter."

Of course he wouldn't. Douxie would never become another Morgana.

A few hours passed before, once again, Douxie was taken from his and Krel's shared cage. Douxie kept pace with the guard despite how much he wanted to run off. Run off or stop and collapse into a ball on the floor from fear. Douxie knew that if resisted, Krel would be hurt for it. And yet, as the guard began to take Douxie to a section of Area 49-B that Douxie couldn't remember ever having been to, Douxie stopped in his tracks. It was only a moments' hesitation. A moment to steel himself for unknown horrors to be cast upon him. It was a moment too long.

The guard gripped Douxie's upper arm like a vice and dragged Douxie hard enough that there would probably be a new bruise joining the various existing ones left over from tests and beatings. Douxie swore under his breath as he realized what he had done. Krel would be punished for Douxie's hesitation. He tried to keep up with the now-faster pace the guard was dragging him at.

They entered a small room lit by a flickering lightbulb and a single monitor connected to a mass of tubes and wires. Douxie was shoved towards the table, and obediently he laid himself upon it. He allowed his ankles and wrists to be restrained.

He wasn't restrained by his upper arms, and while he wouldn't complain about the lack of pain he was concerned. They did, though, gag him with something that tasted mildly of blood and sweat. Douxie resisted the urge to vomit. He had vomited while gagged before and it was a horrible experience that he did not want to repeat.

One of the scientists grabbed two metallic objects from the table, handing one to the other scientist.

"I don't get why we have to do this," one of them said. "My cousin's kid had an MEG a few years ago, and no one shaved her head."

Douxie flinched as something the other scientist took a straight razor to his head; he hissed through the gag as pain bloomed from the cut and blood began to drip down his scalp.

"Both of you, shut up," said the scientist who had cut Douxie. "We've got orders. Besides, if we ever get to dissect its skull, we won't Hey, Maurice, hold it still, will ya?"

The guard – Maurice – walked into the room and held Douxie's head still, rotating it for the scientists. Douxie was helpless to watch as his hair was shorn from him. Nothing else Area 49-B had done to him had felt so humiliating. He knew they had stripped him when he had first been captured, but that had been an abstract horror that he hadn't really thought about. There had been far too much else going on for Douxie to think about that relatively minor way he had been violated.

This, though? This was something small. This was something that would grow after when Krel's sister came to save them. This wasn't something worth getting so upset over, and yet.

This was something Douxie had to helplessly witness and endure.

This was something big. His hair had always been a source of pride. Archie had tried to instill a sense of cleanliness and neatness into Douxie from a young age. He hadn't learned organization, and he hadn't ever done well with cleaning, but the one place where that had taken root was Douxie's appearance, especially his hair. As stupid-looking as his bun had been, it had been a way for Douxie's hair to be neat and orderly when nothing, nothing was able to go his way because he was an abandoned child with only a catlike-dragon to help him. When he was older, his hair had been a statement of belonging, and having at least one adult wizard who was genuinely proud of him. And it was being taken from him. Douxie had bleached it with his magic in response to the horrors here and now he was losing the rest.

"I still don't see why we're doing this," one of the scientists complained.

"Just think," the other one said. "If we ever need to get to its brain, we won't need to shave as much."

A tear slipped down Douxie's cheek. He shook with quiet sobs; even more tiny cuts formed across his scalp as he continued to be shaved. He knew that he should stay still. He knew that all of his moving was only making it worse. It was worse immediate pain for Douxie, and it was worse pain to follow for Krel. And yet, Douxie couldn't find a way to calm himself.

Douxie was maneuvered into a sitting position when they were done. One of the scientists began to attach sensors to his scalp, not even bothering to wipe away the blood. The other placed the hair in a clear bag labelled "Specimen: Wizard Hair". Seeing the white strands caused a loud sob to break through his lips and into the gag.

There was only one possible benefit of this: perhaps Zoe would never how find out Douxie had failed her.

For the record, the section of this fic in Area 49-B will not occur in Seklos and Gaylen, They Were Cagemates! Not only is Douxie's white hair too important (and pretty), due to personal reasons I cannot and will not torture my characters with brain surgery or anything similar.