For Brothers
Gundam Wing Mobile Suit, Duo, the whipping boy
Someone read Duo a story once, set in the distant past, yet there were things that were modern in it - like royalty and kingdoms- they just didn't have tech; in it there was a son, a heir, who was friends with a street rat - they were treated as brothers, each raised beside each other with enough to eat and nice clothes.
They should have been best friends, should have died for each other - but there was something wrong with the heir, he liked seeing his best (only) friend whipped - liked seeing the punishment of the heirs crimes become welts on the skin of the other.
Duo tells himself that this isn't like that, even as he's forced to kneel on cold cement, he smirks defiantly into the live-streaming cameras, and doesn't make a sound as whip meets flesh and bloody welts burst open; he'll suffer in silence, for them - his brothers, his friends.