Well...That took a while to write! Inspiration was just kinda... ehhhh...
Pain was something I had grown calloused to. My earliest memories were all tinted with pain, it was how I had learned to live. I was not surprised when I surfaced from the blackness to find chains looping about my wrists and ankles. I strained against the bounds, gaze sweeping about the metal box I had been brought to. The inside of their ship. The children shifted about me, muscles taunt and ready. They too were roughened by survival, the harsh reality of life upon this planet, but so had I and they were underestimating me.
My weakness was Octavia.
My gaze caught upon her the moment she emerged from the lower level, hair plastered straight against her cheeks, blood still crusting her weary eyes and trailing down the tendons of her neck. She was sharp in that setting, enclosed in metal and very much a part of their world. I was lost in her, forgetting that I stared. She was eyeing me in the light, dark gaze casting questioningly over my stretched form.
"I told you, he was protecting me." She began, stepping toward her brother. I was chained, arms outstretched and feet weight to place, but I would have been frozen nonetheless. I had not been harsh enough, I concluded. "You didn't have to do this."
Not harsh enough, she should be looking at me with their fear-filled gazes, ready to rip flesh and draw blood. Not that curious gaze that asked and demanded and that I knew with sick certainty I would only be too willing to answer.
Their words were drowned and fell numbly against my ears, I was not interested in what she was saying. She sounded foolish, even to I the one she was trying to protect I knew he would never listen. But her pleas sent a warmth in my stomach that roiled in rage when their hands descended on her rounded shoulders, and I only registered my own movements when I heard the links of chain clanking together.
"I don't even think he speaks English!" She cried angrily back, eyes casting over my gaze, then back to her brothers. "He won't even understand you."
"Oh, I think he will."
He was trying to intimidate me, but my attention was elsewhere until her small frame disappeared. And then, when my up-most distraction was gone, even then I lowered my gaze and ignored his words. He shouted a few times and angrily paced the enclosed space, his fists balled and flared, balled and flared.
Pain, it would come, it was inevitable. I sucked in a slow breath, preparing my weary body for the torture. It was my own fault, for getting so caught up in foolish delusions, it would be my price to pay. He was close now, fists ready and shaking with pent frustrations. I expected the blow when he was called away by his comrades. They were kneeling over my pack, rummaging through it.
A number of choice words pressed against the back of my mind, but they all failed to full encompass the twist of nausea that wracked through my nerves.
They found it. I jerked against the chains in desperation, and they mocked me. He found the portrait, the soft lines smiling up to her brother and his glare leveled me with a new found hatred.
I would certainly pay for my oversights.
The first throws were weak, tentative things. They were children, they had never tortured before. Few had probably even killed any animals. They were easy to ignore, even in their persistence. With each attempt the punches grew stronger. Eventually I would reach the point when pain would be pain, little matter who inflicted it. But I was well trained.
Then Clarke was there, their leader, brandishing my poison coated knife.
They screamed, demanded, and worst of all Octavia pleaded. I retained my stoic silence, refusing to bend. I was not one of them, I was still under order, I was their enemy.
The pain in her eyes worsened the agony in my body.
Metal bit hard against my flesh, my ribs, my cheek, again and again until blood was drawn and the pain pulsed and bruises began to form. I kept my mouth clamped tight, allowing only grunts to escape and hint at the pain he was causing. Again and again and again until he grew frustrated with himself and my silence and threw the bound of cord against the ground. I flinched at the sound, expecting another blow and cursed myself for the weakness. My legs swayed beneath me, and it took sheer will to keep myself upright, straining against the binds around my wrists.
His intent was obvious when he picked up the screw. His fingers curled about mine, and he muttered, "Last chance."
I remained silent.
My gaze had slipped from the spike to the girl standing at the back of the room, crowded out by the others who vied for the withheld information. Her features were contorted in anger, frustration and pain and when the metal thing bit into my flesh she bit her thumb and turned away, arm pressing firmly against her stomach.
I shook and swayed, unable to control the trembling in my arm as the pain washed through my system and nearly blacked out the image of her. Slowly I adjusted, stabling, straightening, though my arm still trembled.
The room spun, shifted, she was blurry and I dropped my gaze uncertain where to look. As the floor began to stabilize once more there was a flash of light to my side and I shied at the sudden brightness.
"Showing him something new." I registered, as the girl snapped two ropes of cord together, creating more sparks that released with them a firey crackling noise that sounded dangerous. Too dangerous. I tried to back away, fear evident. Something new, something new… I had been prepared for a beating, for blows of fist and metal and even the spike still lodged in my hand had not been something unexpected. This… I did not know what this could be.
I could not back far enough away, she pressed one of the metal ends to my right chest and the other to my left hip and it felt like energy played over my veins, in my blood. My mind when white with pain, with jolting unrecognizable jumbling of thoughts and my teeth chattered together. My whole body felt aflame for a time uncountable and when she finally released me from the hold of her monester I fell against my restraints, heaving large gasps of air, mouth wide, to rid myself of the last tendrils of snapping shock.
It scared me. Whatever it was, it hurt, and it burned and left my mind muddled. Anya's mission, the drawings, Octavia… Ocvtavia! I found her, then glanced swiftly down to the cords, torn between crying for her to stop and not allowing them to know I understood.
I was the enemy. I was there enemy. I repeated, trying to clear my mind from the fuzzy pain.
"Come on!" She shouted, cried.
Again the metal was touched to my skin, and I was seared to the very marrow. I cried out in pain, voice contorted by the jolts jumping across my skin, seizing my body until I felt like a limp puppet. A whimper escaped as I fell back down into the biting grip of my confines.
"No more!" Octavia screamed, and I squeezed my eyes shut a moment, before blearily opening them again to the swirling world. Please. Please… Octavia. I forced myself up, casting back the jittery pulses through my mind and saw as Octavia slid the black blade across her pale skin, a deep red line welling behind.
No.
"He won't let me die."
No. I grimaced at her words, knowing they should be false, knowing I shouldn't care, knowing I should let her die along with their comrade downstairs, knowing, knowing, knowing…
Knowing that as she knelt before me, eager and trusting and mouth parted as she gazed back up into my eyes that I could not let her die. Perhaps it was the jolt that muddled my mind but I stared down at her as she banged the knife against the metal floor before the vials, and all I could think of what that I wanted her.
So I showed her.
And she gave me almost a smile, a triumphant curl that washed her face with relief. And I felt the fool, swaying unsteadily above her crouched frame and all trapped within her, and knowing that I was so lost.
"Here, let me try."
It's like she knew how much control she had over me. She probably did, and it made my stomach clench. She glanced to my eyes, then away, slowly bringing the cloth to my injured hand. My eyes were on her face, watching each shift in her emotions. She had so much control, I despised her for it.
I opened my hand, letting her do as she willed.
When Clarke had left it was almost just us two, a sleeping guard lay in the back but we both seemed to have dismissed his presence. Such a reverse of positions, me the captured and she the giver of aid.
"I'm so sorry." She began and turned briefly to me, offering a sort of smile. "You saved me life and…And look at the things you get."
I was silent, not simply because she did not know I could speak, but because I did not know what to say.
"I never wanted any of this to happen to you."
And she was looking at me, face fierce with emotion that danced deeply within her eyes and I felt my lungs collapse. She turned back to the wound, but I wanted her attention, I wanted those eyes focused back upon me. Ignoring the pain it caused I shifted my thumb on top her fingers, closing my hand about the rag and brushing her skin. Her eyes were immediately back upon me, large and uncertain, questioning.
I forced myself to speak around the dryness and blood that filled my mouth. I spoke, despite my entire being screaming, "No!"
"Thank you."
Her face glowed, excitement and intrigue filling her black orbs with that fire I loved. She denied I said anything, and I followed her movements as she was chased from the room. I burned the image of her eyes into my mind, each curve and the richness to their depths. I wanted to draw her eyes, and I cursed myself for that desire. The portrait was still in my notebook, which was now in the hands of Belamy, her brother and my enemy. The portrait was the reason I was trapped, hanging like an animal and still reeling from the recent torture. All because of the portrait... all because I could not resist her.
I was going to die. That was how this would end, it was the only way it could. I had accepted that. Nyko would find my hovel empty and would soon report my disappearance to Anya who would in turn raise a counter force. Bellamy had found my journal that linked my people to ongoing surveillance, and though he did not know he also possessed a great deal of information on my people. But all that did not matter to me, I would died. A dead man could not care for the wars of the living.
Since I was going to die, then what was the point denying my attraction, my affection toward her. It was a silly thinking, and I was almost sure my mind was still addled by that Raven's torture, but I entertained the idea once it had slipped into my mind. She had been so close, she had spoken to me, and while I had failed to make her fear me, now I had found an unlikely ally.
I should have never drawn the portrait, but I was beginning to be grateful I did.
Last Portrait chapter I promise haha!