Days Without Sun
Chapter Eight: Choice
Misaki and Akihiko were sitting together out on the balcony.
Misaki had been hanging sheets out to dry. With all their bedroom activities, it seemed there was almost always a load of sheets in the wash these days. Akihiko had come up behind him and wrapped his long arms around Misaki from the back, leaned his shaggy silvered head over his lover's slender shoulder and began tickling Misaki's ear as his smoky breath had whispered his lust-filled desires.
Misaki of course had protested which resulted only in Akihiko becoming more aroused. Akihiko had wrapped Misaki tighter and a lighthearted tussle had ensued. This had ended with Akihiko pulling Misaki over and settling the youth in his lap as he sat down in one of the chairs they kept outside at the patio table on the balcony.
The couple calmed after this brief storm of activity and then, despite Akihiko's initial amorous assault, was content to sit there quietly with each other watching as the shadows lengthened and the city lights around them became more pronounced.
Akihiko kept his arms loosely wrapped around his boy's waist. Misaki leaned back against his lover's broad chest, his tousled head tipped back onto one of the older man's shoulder's, his eyes half closed, lost in feeling the comforting warmth and solidity of Usagi-san against him.
"I missed you so much, Misaki," Akihiko murmured. The long cool fingers of one of his hands left Misaki, drifted up, and then grazed down the youth's long slender neck.
Misaki shivered at the heat Usagi-san's chilled hand stirred in him. This cool generating hot was a dynamic he'd never understood, but he relished it. Misaki reached a hand up and his fingers stroked Akihiko's evening stubbled cheek. "I missed you too, Usagi-san." His voice was shy but sure.
Akihiko's hand moved and captured Misaki's, he entwined their fingers together. "There were times I worried I'd never find you." Akihiko's low voice was choked with emotion as he confessed what had been his most terrible fear.
Misaki shifted himself, until he was sitting sideways in Usagi-san's lap. He pulled their still-joined hands along with him as he moved, so that when he finally resettled he was nestled under one strong authorial wing. He tucked his head beneath Akihiko's angular chin. There was nowhere in the world he felt safer than right here.
"But you did find me,Usagi-san," Misaki whispered. Grateful tears welled in his eyes.
"I would never have stopped looking you know, Misaki." The truth contained Usagi-san's voice pushed the tears over the edge of Misaki's lowered eyes. Akihiko shifted his boy in his arms. He leaned his shaggy head down and nuzzled against Misaki's neck, brushing it with his warm lips.
Misaki shivered feeling the heat of the man's mouth on him.
Then Usagi-san bit down hard.
The pain of the bite ripped through Misaki's whole body. He screamed and thrashed, trying to pull away, but arms far more powerful than his own held him in place.
"Usagi, NO!" Misaki shrieked but he could already felt the blood welling in the pinched torn gash of his flesh.
"Takashi!"
A cold harsh voice that was nothing like the silk of Usagi-san's invaded Misaki's ears.
With a jolt he opened his eyes to the horror of Korovin on top of him… inside him… Misaki stared into the cold eyes of a mad man. One whose chin currently dripped with his blood.
His chest hitched, as the pain of his battered body washed over him in a crushing wave that threatened to snatch away his breath, to drown him.
"I want you here with me! Not drifting away!" Korovin snarled above him, underlining his displeasure with cruel thrusts that further jarred Misaki's already ravaged innards.
"Look at ME, Takahashi!" Korovin roared.
Misaki did as he was ordered and was immensely grateful that his tears distorted his vision. He had glimpsed the man clearly once, and that was enough. His tormentor's eyes held nothing human in them that Misaki could recognize: no love, no empathy, and no mercy.
Satisfied, Korovin lowered his head with a growl and resumed his rampage, ramming into the fragile body beneath him.
Misaki's ears were filled with his attacker's harsh guttural grunts and vile exclamations. He felt himself begin to shatter yet again from the impact of the blows. He tried to wrap himself in a blanket of lavender light, to hold himself together.
Then Misaki felt a gentle, damaged hand take his own.
He turned his head slightly and met Jadir's haunted eyes. The boy had been lying so quietly there beside him amongst the blood spattered sheets, Misaki, in his drifting had forgotten he was not alone in the madman's bed today. Nor had he been for the last several trips to Korovin's demented playroom.
Misaki had met at least five of the man's other captives now. Korovin's creativity for inflicting damage on the human body knew no limits it seemed. It was the same for the abhorrent, sordid acts he performed on the boys he kept and forced them to enact with each other.
Misaki looked back up at the ceiling and imagined himself there, looking down, witnessing the horror but not really being touched by it. He floated, the gentle squeeze of Jadir's hand periodically was all that kept him tethered.
He had done the same for Jadir when it had been the other boy's turn under the "Impaler." Misaki realized it was so peaceful hovering here outside his ravaged flesh he didn't want to ever go back in, but a harsh slap cracking across his jaw sent him plummeting back.
Korovin had climaxed and Misaki hadn't even noticed or thanked the man for it, as the ritual for this particular game demanded.
"Thank you, master," Misaki gasped, choking on his sobs, knowing however that it was already too late.
Jadir's almost fingerless hand left his.
Korovin had looked over and caught Jadir in his effort to comfort Misaki. He stared hard at the Brazilian boy cringing amidst the thin covers.
"So you two are cohorts now?" he smirked. "How touching."
Korovin withdrew from Misaki with a sickening slick and jumped up from the soiled mattress. He grabbed each youth by one of their lean, bruised arms and jerked them out of the bed. He dragged them from the playroom down the hall, leaving a spattered trail of red behind him as his violent motions reopened recent wounds.
The two boys barely even had the strength to struggle: Korovin had been "playing" hard with them for hours. He pulled the youths into a room Misaki had never been in before. But it was obvious that Jadir had.
The boy passed out from fright the moment they crossed its threshold.
Korovin threw Misaki to the floor. Misaki watched as he struggled to rise as the Doc dragged the unconscious Jadir over to a spot on the wall that was rigged with shackles. There were very few details that Korovin missed.
He manacled Jadir's wrists efficiently and then returned to Misaki grabbing the weakened youth by the hair and jerking him roughly. Misaki barked out a sharp yelp as the hand in his hair pulled hard. The flesh of his scalp burned, adding a new pain to his seemingly endless list.
Misaki felt himself lifted and thrown in to a chair, similar to the ones that might be found at the dentist. He immediately thought of Jadir's empty mouth and panic seized him. He found a new burst of strength and struggled upwards but it was too late. In his damaged state he was just too slow.
Iron hands gripped him and straps were quickly secured across his thin wrists and just below his elbows.
"So…" Korovin sounded almost conversational in his tone as he bound Misaki. "What's with this 'Usagi' thing, Takahashi? Are you keeping a secret from me?" His normally cruel grin was made all the more terrifying by the fact that his chin was still slicked with the drying blood of his most recent bite.
"What?"
Misaki was frantic. Over the course of his time in captivity Korovin had forced him to reveal every detail of his life to him. His lover's nickname was about the only thing his captor didn't know and Misaki had guarded this last bit of himself from the man vigilantly… Until today.
"You called it out during our last game…I am so disappointed that you don't find our time together more enjoyable, Takahashi. And keeping secrets… tsk tsk… I must be losing my touch." Korovin sighed heavily.
"So what is it? A nickname?" Korovin's tone was curious.
Misaki felt his heart stop as he watched his captor lay out a series of surgical tools on the freestanding tray next to the chair he was pinned to. This last secret, special name for the one he loved, called out in a thousand different ways over the course of the time he had spent with Usagi-san was the only thing that stood between he and his abductor any more.
Misaki resolved that at all costs he was keeping Usagi-san's name to himself.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Misaki shouted desperately.
"Usagi sounds an awful lot like Usami," Korovin purred.
"If I said it, it was just a mistake… what kind of childish nickname is Usagi anyway… I'm not a child… I am a man!" Misaki muttered, knowing that if he shouted too much Korovin would know he was hiding something. His heart was breaking at this hard dismissal of what was most sacred to him.
"Did you ever think I might have said it mistakenly… Like having some asshole chomping on you wouldn't fuck with your vocabulary!" Misaki's voice was rough, erupting from a throat already strained from screaming. He squirmed in the chair, his huge eyes keeping careful track as the number of tools on Korovin's tray mounted.
Misaki would have never spoken like this to the man before, but he had reached the point of no return. He knew that the Doc was going to hurt him seriously now, so there was a part of him that Misaki hadn' known he'd possessed. One that thought he might as well go ahead and earn the inevitable pain.
"Such fire. Takahashi, I love it… So if I decide to use that childish nickname to refer to your annoying author you wouldn't mind then?"
"I don't care at all," Misaki said firmly, though the idea of his nickname falling from Korovin's foul mouth was almost more than he could bear.
But Korovin had slipped without even being aware of it. Calling Usagi-san annoying meant something to Misaki: that Korovin was aware of his lover. That Usagi-san had somehow gotten under the man's skin, indicated to Misaki that Usagi-san hadn't given up, that like his fantasy, the man was still trying to find him.
"Well then, how about we see what you cry out when I set about making a little gift for your old flame, Usagi. Hmmm? I had planned to wait a bit, but now seems like as good a time as any for this."
"Pick a finger, Takahashi" Korovin's voice was chillingly serene as he picked up a scalpel.
Across the room, Jadir had regained consciousness. At seeing the instrument in his master's hand boy curled into a ball as much as his restraints allowed and started to keen.
Misaki looked at Korovin with horror. Since the moment he'd been captured, every time that he thought he'd reached the bottom of his terror, the floor would fall through and he would plunge to a whole new level. This is exactly what he felt in this instant.
"What?" Misaki gasped.
Korovin laughed as he watched all the blood leave his little toy's bruised face.
"The Chinese of old, perfected the most amazing form of torture." Korovin turned the scalpel over in his fingers and began moving over towards Jadir, who was shaking so violently the boy looked like he was in the throes of a fit.
"They would take a captured enemy and tell him they were taking a limb. Making him pick it… saying it was an exchange made for the person's life. That once they took the limb the person would be returned. That this was the bargain struck between the person's captors and the captive's faction or family.
"Then after the amputation they would pretend that the arrangements had been made, sometimes even going as far as taking the prisoner to the exchange point. But the exchange would never occur and then months later, after the person had recovered his captors would repeat the process… until their prisoner was nothing but a limbless torso.
"Only then they would kill him."
Korovin looked at Misaki as he spoke in Japanese, but his feet carried him, scalpel in hand, over towards Jadir.
"Can you imagine the psychological agony of having to pick an entire limb, Takahashi?" Korovin's dyed eyebrows quirked upwards theatrically. "You should be grateful I am only asking you to pick a finger."
"But let's make this interesting, shall we?" By now Korovin had reached Jadir. He grabbed a handful of the youth's matted ebony hair, pulling the crying boy's head back.
"Look at me Jadir!" Korovin demanded. The scarred boy's dark tear-filled eyes opened, staring with undisguised terror at the man.
Korovin leaned in and kissed the boy deeply. He bit Jadir's lower lip before he released him drawing fresh blood. "Oh how I love the faces you make, precious," he laughed as Jadir, once free, began weeping anew.
The Doc turned his cruel blue eyes back to Misaki. "I'll give you the choice, Takahashi. I can take one of your whole fingers of just half of one of Jadir's. Not a bad offer, neh? Jadir should be used to this by now after all."
Misaki felt his stomach clench at what his captor just said. His heart broke as Jadir's head strained against the cruel hand in his hair, as his huge fear-filled eyes sought Misaki's.
"I am sure that his parent's might like to know that their son is still alive and to be honest, you wouldn't be the first to strike this bargain if that helps you at all with your decision."
The thought that Korovin's other boys had sacrificed Jadir's tender digits to keep their own appalled Misaki.
"No… No… t…take one of mine!"
"I see…" Korovin offered Misaki a sickening smile. The scalpel in his hand flashed without warning and instantly a long gaping crimson slash opened across Jadir's scarred chest. Only then did he release the weeping, bleeding boy.
"As I said, Takahashi… cohorts. Consider that mild punishment, Jadi, for touching Takahashi without my permission," Korovin stepped back to Misaki. Per his usual habit, he this in both the boy's languages, his ability to switch back and forth between them displaying the undisputed genius of his twisted mind.
"So noble too, Takahashi." Korovin grinned. The dried blood on his chin had darkened and was flaking off now. "You are truly a rare flower."
Only Misaki knew that he was far from noble. Despite his torturer's telling of that terrible story, the thought that his captor might really send his finger to Akihiko, as horrible as it was, also filled him with hope.
Misaki had never been big on crime shows, he had watched one with Sumi once. It had given him nightmares for days.
In the program, a detective was able to tell from a dismembered body part that it had been cut off while the victim was alive. If that was really true, and Korovin did send his finger to Usagi-san, there was a slim chance that Usagi-san could find out that he was still living.
It was a most terrible carrier pigeon, but if it was the only way to communicate his message, Misaki would send it.
"Take the little one," Misaki choked dropping his head, his eyes overwhelmed with tears of terror and desperation.
"Surprising," Korovin crooned moving in closer, stroking his huge hands over Misaki's bound wrists and reflexively balled fists. "I never took you for one to be so decisive."
Korovin cocked his head. "Which hand?"
"I… I … don't care," Misaki sobbed. "J… just get it over with."
"Now, now," Korovin chided, "Takahashi, you should know by now that's not how it works,"
"The left then! Alright!" Misaki bawled.
Korovin set the bloody scalpel down and picked up a syringe. The needle bit into Misaki's flesh and he felt that terrifying sense of immobilization fill his entire left arm, though he was aware it could still feel everything.
"A new thing I have developed," Korovin said proudly. "It doesn't entirely incapacitate, just in a limited area around where it has been injected. So handy, pardon the pun. Takahashi." The Doc chuckled at his own wit. "It cuts down on the risk of you losing more than I want to take… yet."
Korovin looked at Misaki, his expression almost regretful. "I was going to use an anesthetic, but now I'm curious. Think of your author as we make this little gift for him, Taka-chan. I am interested to find out as you hold him in your mind, to hear what comes out of your mouth."
Misaki felt Korovin's cruel, clammy hand on his immobilized flesh. He watched as the man picked up a new scalpel and pushed his little finger away from the others.
Misaki was astounded by the sudden clarity with which he experienced the scene around him: Jadir's still wailing sobs, his own rough rasping breaths, the bite of the restraining straps against his twisting body, the look of concentration on his captor's face, the way the cold fluorescent light of the room glinted of the stainless steel surface of the scalpel.
Misaki, however, pushed all of these things aside. He focused on tucking his lover's secret name down into the furthest recess of his heart, making sure that when he screamed as Korovin started to slice, it was always "Usami" he called on.
New AN:
Hiimasheep, thank you for you words. Glad to know this gives you a chill. It chills me to think that I wrote this too as I am going back through it.
Kwkyori, I'm pleased you're enjoying (is that the right word here for all this terrible angst) the story. Thank you for the review.
Alcuzey, thanks again for the heads up. And yeah, this explains a lot about why Misaki the way he is in the Uke Flu. Bet you didn't think I'd actually do it. Did you?
Ashley Tangerine, you still with me, darlin'?
Old AN:
No author's notes. I am really sick today. And too traumatized by what I just wrote to write anything else for a bit… Hope you are still reading this… let me know…
I know I probably sound a bit low... but I am a baby when I am ill... *Three headed puppy whines and closes aching eyes for a nap.*