Prompt No. 29
Word count: ~1200
Universe: Breath of the Wild
Pairings: None, sorta
Rating: T
Themes: Abduction, torture, venom, paralysis

Numb

They came for him in the middle of the night. He remembered his mother screaming. He remembered his father shouting, the sound of the scuffle in the darkness as he tried to stop them, and the deafening silence that followed when his body hit the ground. He remembered the fear in his mother's eyes, green and alight in the glare of torchfire shining through the window, watching him desperately above the hand clapped over her mouth.

He remembered getting dragged away that night and not understanding why.

That was years ago, now, the images of his abduction still burned in his mind and flashing occasionally behind his eyes without context. He hadn't seen much else since. Just darkness, and white masks, and the unchanging walls of his cell.

"…just kill him?" he heard, once, just before the door opened.

"He'll be reborn," came the answer in a low growl. "Can't have that."

And then they had paced in and strung him from the ceiling and whipped his naked body raw.

The torture had always been regular and agonizing, but he quickly learned that there were some things that would push them to punish him out of rage more than habit. He was conditioned never to speak, never to look them in the eye. But the worst was that awful burning sensation on his left hand, the one he couldn't control and that turned their eyes wild with fury. It had been happening more and more, the glow of it bright enough to illuminate the darkest corners of his cell and the pain a brutal punishment in and of itself.

They had tried everything short of cutting his hand off to make it stop. They spent three days trying to burn the mark off with a branding iron. But it always healed within seconds. He wished it would just extinguish, leave him and torment someone else. Maybe then they would let him go, and he could find that tiny house in that dark village, where his mother had screamed his name until her voice had cut terribly short.

Ripples of light poured out of his hand like water, snaking under the door and into the hallway as it flared again, and he whimpered. He bit his lip, fingers biting into his wrist in a useless reflex to keep the fire from spreading up his arm. But it only burned brighter, smoldering hotter the more he tried to resist. The pain seared a deliberate path into his chest and burst in gold and white lights behind his eyes.

By the time the door swung open and they took him by the arms, holding him still and wrenching his head back by the hair, he was half-blind. He pinched his eyes shut as a third stepped toward him to administer a vial, tears streaming down his face as he tried and tried and tried to make the light stop glowing. They forced his mouth open and emptied the viscous liquid all over his tongue, and then clapped their hand over his mouth until he swallowed, panting and trembling all over in anticipation of what was to come. He knew from experience that it wouldn't kill him. And that was the thing that scared him the most.

Lizalfos venom had been reserved for only his greatest indiscretions in the past. Now it seemed he was earning a dose more than once a week.

They dropped him when his legs gave out, leaving him to convulse on the floor as the light began to fade. His body tingled with pins and needles as the paralysis took hold, turning his limbs and his flesh numb, his lips and his fingertips, the muscles and nerves along his spine. And then the venom burned in earnest, eating him alive from the inside out, setting fire to bones and organs and the underside of all the numb places, sending him jerking and writhing everywhere he had an ounce of feeling and holding all his screams taut in his deadened throat.

It finally overtook the burning on his hand, and the room went dark, and the venom didn't leave his system for two days.

The next time they came for him, their rage was overshadowed by their panic. Chaos sounded from down the corridor, but their frenetic intent had him too concerned with his own wellbeing to care what that might mean.

"Give him the vials," one of them ordered the rest, breathless, as the door snapped shut behind them, "all of them!"

They locked his arms and wrenched his head back again as a third fumbled with the stoppers in the dark, and he loose a single, alarmed cry in protest. They only pulled harder at his scalp.

"Don't be a fool," another voice hissed. "That many doses will kill him."

"And if she senses he's here? If they find him?" he growled. "If he dies, we'll start again."

The venom flooded his mouth, and when he hesitated to swallow they beat him in the stomach. Before he could so much as draw a breath they were forcing a second vial down his throat.

By the time the door was knocked off its hinges, he had swallowed six times.

One of his captors drew a blade to finish him as more shadows flew into the room, dark as night, blue as twilight, silent as breath, but the invaders ended them before they could follow through. He collapsed without their arms holding him taut, and more silhouettes stepped inside the door. A glow burst through the room, but it wasn't coming from his hand. It was coming from hers.

The girl at the threshold rushed through the carnage to him and fell to her knees, holding his face in her hands as his body twitched uselessly on the floor. Her face was illuminated gently by the glow on her hand. He couldn't help thinking she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

"He's the one," she called, voice trembling, eyes watering, searching him frantically as the venom burned him alive and his eyes rolled back in his head. He wished he could feel her touch. He imagined it was soft. "Impa, help me! He can't breathe!"

Another shadow loomed beside her, her eyes red as blood, barely touching the sphere of her light. His hand was dark, too numb to respond, though he felt somewhere in himself that he would if he could have. She picked up an empty vial off the floor and tasted the rim, and then grimaced.

"I can't help him. I don't have anything that works quickly enough. Only your powers can save him now."

"But I can't—I don't know how—" She was weeping now, brushing his bangs from his forehead as she looked for his eyes and drawing him closer. Her eyes were green, like his mother's, and full of the same fear. She whispered, broken, to him or to the gods, "Please."

Then she touched her forehead to his, and in a sudden wash of feeling the numbness and the venom drained from his body, and the light on the back of his hand pulsed a brilliant beacon in tandem with hers.