The worst torture you've ever endured.

A/N- This is dedicated to Babe love-MM love. Your one shot in Hector's POV as promised! This happens when Steph is captured.

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Hector POV

The world is made up of three types of people.

The first kind, are the people who endure pain and torture, but don't deserve it. The ones who are filled with some inexplicable light that darkness is inevitably attracted to. The first kind of people, like Angelita.

The second kind, are the ones that deserve to be burned in hell a million times over but who don't often get their just desserts. The second kind of people, like that pendejo of a cop.

Then there's a third kind. The people who have a darkness in them, but who also have some light that makes them want to better themselves. The ones who endure the torture happily because it means they're given the opportunity to save the first type of people from the second type of people. Like the men at Rangeman.

###FLASHBACK###

"What's the worst torture you've ever had to endure?" Manny's voice cut through the din we were making. The question stopped me in my tracks.

We were in Shorty's and the place was deserted with the obvious exception of us. I was making more of an effort to hang with the men these days; Angelita says it's good for me and for the team because we can build up team rapport.

I was listening to Hal telling the guys about this chica from his home town who he was going to meet up with during the weekend, when Santos's question made me think.

What was the worst torture I have ever been through?

"Budapest, in '09," Ram called out. "Chained to a wall for 5 days straight, no food, little sleep and hourly beatings that lasted 50 minutes a session."

"Peru, when I first started out in '04," Cal chimed in. "Waterbarded for information, and for a SEAL to get tortured using water? Nothing short of humiliating and damaging."

"If we're measuring by emotional torture too, then definitely Somalia, '05," Binkie's quiet, somber voice caught our attention. "They killed woman in front of me that were similar in build, hair color and looks to my little sister."

That struck a bone-deep chord in me. Emotional torture? Being in a gang, I had lived through my fair share of awful ordeals. While I had a museum of scars to show, I had no emotional wounds; no trauma. Had I really been getting off easy this far?

"Shorty's Bar," Lester called out, straight-faced. "Right now. Being forced to listen to you people!" The tension, as was his aim, broke, and things were back to normal.

The question, though, stayed with me.

What was the worst torture I have ever endured?

###END FLASHBACK###

Time is a funny thing. Try as you might, you will never be able to fathom why, when you're happy, time seems to move faster, and when you're going through hell, it inexplicably slows to almost a stand-still.

Three days to me, normally, would go by fairly quickly, leaving in its wake surveillance duty, stake outs, checking on my Angelita and roaming the streets just to remind them who they should fear and to see if anyone may need help. The past three days, though, went by torturously slowly, and I spent every dragging second searching for where Morelli could have taken my little sister. Steph had made it out of the blast, which was more than we could say for Helen Plum, although I couldn't particularly say that I cared about that puta's death. It was killing me slowly, not knowing where Steph was, and whether he was trying to hurt her.

This was all my fault.

I felt like something was off that morning. I knew she was going to her mother's house, so I decided that it would give me ample opportunity to try and find out what about all of this was setting my teeth on edge. It didn't even occur to me that the thing I had felt was going to go wrong, was going to happen at Angelita's childhood home. Because of my lack of foresight, Stephanie was in danger now.

El jefe wasn't taking it well either. I could tell he also blamed himself, and he wasn't sleeping or eating much. I've been surviving on water and some energy bars, and sleeping for short periods during the night in the control room next to the surveillance monitors. I could understand what he was going through.

Day three, and we were all at the end of our ropes. Santos was ready to rip anything and everything apart, Brown was sterilizing all his equipment, Tank, Cal and Ram were hitting the gym with a vengeance, Ranger was just plain hitting the gym and destroying every last one of our punching bags, Manny and Hal were at the gun range more often than not, and I sharpened all my knives three times and was now shining them for the second time.

We needed to get our girl, and we needed to do it now.

We were all in the control room, brooding and trying to stop from killing each other in the most literal, non-exaggerated way, when we heard the sound I had been sleeping here in the hopes of hearing.

A video call coming through.

Ranger was on his feet faster than I could blink and I scrambled next to him.

"Tank, get the photo," he commanded before turning his attention to the screen.

"You look like shit Manoso," Morelli's snide voice just begged me to rip out his vocal cords with my bare hands. I clenched them into fists, fighting the urge to lose control.

"Where is she?" El jefe growled, sounding formidable in his barely restrained fury. "If you've hurt her, Morelli, I swear…"

"Now, now, Ranger, we're through with the threats," he interrupted. "I just made Stephanie here a very interesting proposition, and I thought you may want to be a part of this."

He turned the camera to face Angelita.

For someone who had seen everything from decayed, decomposing bodies to dismembered bodies, nothing had ever made me want to hurl like the sight of my Angelita bloodied, bruised and battered, sitting in the chair.

If I thought that was the worst sight I would be forced to witness, I was dearly mistaken. Placing a washcloth on her face, I knew what he was going to do before he did it. I had heard about and even witnessed this torture sometimes, but never to someone as painfully innocent as her. People generally only used it as a most extreme means of extracting information, and the "cop"? Was doing it for fun. To hurt Ranger. To hurt us.

It froze me where I stood and I missed most of their exchange. The only thing I could comprehend was her pained expression, the deadness in her eyes and the defeated, broken slump of her body. The sounds of her gasping and gagging and choking replayed loudly in my ear. My heart shattered and I felt like I couldn't breathe for a moment.

When he positioned himself behind her and the gun, I didn't need to listen to the words leaving his mouth to figure out what he had planned. My stomach turned and I snapped back to reality waiting desperately to hear Angelita speak. She wouldn't give up, would she?

Turns out, she would want to. I heard as she pleaded with us to just let her end it. She wanted to protect us that much was certain. I begged her inwardly to hang on, and my legs almost gave out in relief when El Jefe's words broke through her shell of despair. Roaring filled my ears as I contemplated our lives without her. It would, undoubtedly, be like having all the color sucked out of the world. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing would ever hold any beauty or love or light without her in the world.

It took a lot to make a badass ex-gangbanger shudder, but that image did the trick.

I heard a growl rip through my teeth when he knocked her unconscious; I wasn't the only one. The rest of the men reacted as badly as I did and I could see in all of their eyes that they were vehemently wishing they could have any piece of that pendejo now, and I could relate. I switched off again when Ranger showed Morelli the picture of his mamá, focusing instead on the clues Angelita was trying to give us. Santos eventually figured it out; she was in Vegas. El jefe immediately began issuing orders.

"Tank, Santos, sort out the men. Bobby, pack your medical bag. Ram, get the plane ready, we fly in an hour. Hector, start gathering arsenal." I smiled sardonically as I thought of the arsenal I deemed necessary for our little…expedition.

As I walked out of the room, the question leaped back into my mind.

What's the worst torture you've ever had to endure?

Now, it was a no-brainer. Feeling so helpless while seeing the woman I loved like a little sister being tortured like that was by far the most agonizing thing I have ever had to experience. I had felt sick from it, and as for emotional scars? Let's just say I knew it was going to be a long while before I was fully okay with Angelita being out of my sight for more than a few hours.

Watching mi Hermana suffer like that, hearing her scream, looking into her agonized eyes…was the worst torture I have ever had to endure.

But it will not happen again. I promise.

After today, no-ne was going to touch her and hurt her again.

I swear by it.

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