Hi 3

Welcome to House of the Lost. Warning for: graphic violence, torture, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, anxiety, depression, implicit sexual content, amongst others.

This is my 3rd MaLu Story and it's been cross-posted from AO3.

He finds him, 4 days' shy from Marco being captured for the seventh month. Marco sees him come into the room, and gape at his figure and Marco doesn't think he's real. He hasn't seen a face since he was first locked up in here, only black masks and rubber gloves and pain. Humiliating pain. Something in Marco gives out, it's like he's shutting down, done.

"Oi!" The arrival yells as he rushes forward. Marco cannot contain the involuntary flinch because every time someone's been close something hurts and Marco does not heal and please… The other picks up on his fright and slows down, coming to a halt three feet away. He raises his hands in a helpless gesture and pursues his lips, his expression is soft. "Hey." He tries again. Marco doesn't acknowledge him, his mind is spinning, and he doesn't think the other is real. Even if he is, Marco's previous flinch is sending raw agony down his spine, the burning electricity freezes at his waist. Marco hasn't felt his legs in months. (Sometimes during the night, when it's too dark to see, Marco screams because he cannot remember if they're really there or if maybe they're long gone.) "Hey." The stranger repeats and Marco thinks he can hear him walking forward.

The younger man approaches slowly, and Marco cannot see him, but he picks up on his presence hazily, right until a pair of arms wraps around him and Marco's breath shoots up the roof because nononono, but the arms are steady as they raise his figure and unhook him from where Marco hangs from chains from the ceiling. He's felt the progressive gapes forming in between his joints, they'd gone dormant some time ago but now the pins and needles overwhelm him. His body shrieks in hopeless protest as everything moves. Marco lets out a hoarse cry of horror and the stranger startles. Mercifully, he does not drop him. Instead, the newcommer whispers sweet nothings into Marco's ear, breath warm and soft, lifting a man taller than he is, as if Marco weighted nothing… Maybe he does.

(When was the last time he ate?)

He's carefully brought down onto the cold floor by strong arms, but it does nothing to avoid upsetting Marco's broken back. It sounds like jagged shards of glass in a bag, like Marco's nothing but an old container used beyond repair and holding nothing but splinters from a forgotten artifact. Everything feels wrong and it prods and shuffles around his insides, burning a trail of panic and pain. It's agonizing, and Marco's so used to the tears by now that he doesn't realize he's crying until someone's washing away his tears. His head is spinning and the pain coming from his back might just actually kill him and Marco tries to remember, he really tries to remember why he's been holding on so long and why dying was supposed to be a bad idea.

He almost can't quite bring himself to think about Pops and home because maybe he just imagined them, too good to be true…

"I'm going to get you a doctor." Marco doesn't want more doctors.

"Please," his voice is threadbare thin from endless screaming, desperate in ways he would've never thought possible. "Please," his voice breaks as he begs. He cannot even begin to care because he's been taken apart and put together too many times now, too many. Marco doesn't think his ability will help him next time, maybe it never has, maybe… "No more, no more doctors, please."

He's desperate enough to look for the stranger's face trying to will him, to make him understand. The other gasps when Marco's eyes focus on him, or rather on the straw hat he's wearing. (Marco's not ready to look at the face. What will he find there?) There's blackness at the edges of his vision and he doesn't see the hand reaching up to his face until it's caressing his cheek, Marco feels cold fingers scratch gently at the caked dirt and grime stuck on his cheek, but the movement itself he barely catches… It crashes down on him as his skull throbs. The eye, they'd taken the eye with them! ...Marco knows it's not the only thing he's missing.

At first he wants to shy away from the touch, but Marco realizes by the way the world is greying and focusing in an ever shrinking scope, that he's dying. Something must've touched something important when the other man moved him or maybe he'd already been dying, it's hard to keep track of his injuries when Marco is just one big ball of suffering, a toy that has been broken too many times.

"Oi." The voice is more forceful this time, demanding of Marco, but the phoenix has nothing else to give, he can feel his eyes dropping and there's some form of relief sinking into him. "Stop it," the hand is insistent where it cups his cheek, "you can't die here. You need a doctor." The fear pulses through him, almost managing to wake him up, no doctors. Marco shakily, impossibly, raises a bony hand. He can tell that it's missing his pinky and his thumb, he's missing both thumbs, chopped off from the beginning and then again and again and as many times as they thought it was necessary, they had to make sure... He touches on his bare hip bone, flinching when the hand falls on top of the restraint and dirtied skin. That's right, he thinks, looking at the grey ceiling, feeling his soul slip from his body, he's naked. "Hey, hey!" (His captor isn't very eloquent, Marco thinks idly, looking up at the metal-made ceiling.)

"Screw," he whispers at the prompting, but Marco's not sure he says it aloud. There's confusion in his rescuer's face and it takes a moment for Marco to identify the emotion, it's so long since he's had to read an expression. He's got a nice face. Both eyes and a mouth and a nose, Marco knows he's rather handsome when he smiles. Huh? Black eyes are begging him for help and it takes Marco all his willpower to try and focus, what was it..? "Screw…" he recalls, "sea stone." The other man looks down to where Marco painstakingly dragged his hand, that's why he's got no thumbs, so that he cannot unscrew the sea stone himself. The man clearly understands the concept and he hisses when he touches the screw. Marco completely loses it when he starts taking it out.

The Phoenix knows it's impossible but he swears he can hear the grinding of sea stone as it uncorks itself out of him. He can see it, he can. The hipbone fading to dust, cracking, bleeding, breaking. There's a strong weight on his chest and Marco cannot stay still because it's just too much, but he cannot move because that only makes it worse, he's worried he's going to bite down on his tongue… Actually, he could bite down on his tongue, people can die like that, and then there's no more…

"No more, no more, please." He pants and his unfocused eye catches a glimpse of the young man's face. He's crying. The other man is crying, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks and it's unsightly, he's angry red and snot runs down his face, dripping down his chin. Suddenly, something in him pulls and Marco's on fire and then he doesn't remember anything at all.