Days without Sun
Chapter Twenty-Four: Usagi
As Korovin moved down the hall with Misaki, his mind was gleefully racing with all the possibilities a confrontation with the author, Usami, held for him… not to mention what fun he'd have with the man after. Before grabbing Misaki Korovin had overridden the locks for the bunker on his computer to enable his new playmate to find him faster. This way too he slipped through the doors that led to his playroom unhindered.
Misaki had lain all but motionless in Korovin's arms, curled against his captor's chest silently sobbing. However, when he raised his head at last and was confronted with the gaudy interior of the dreaded "playroom" he became hysterical.
"Please, no!" Misaki pleaded, his bruised throat barely able to bear the weight of his words, "I can't… Please…" Korovin's broken toy began weeping uncontrollably. He struggled frantically, but in his weakened condition his thrashing had little impact on his tormentor's grip.
Misaki cried out at the pain in his cast legs and stiff body when Korovin threw him roughly on the stained sheets of the large bed that occupied the man's favorite torture chamber. Misaki felt strong hands grab his thin wrists and before he knew it, they were caught in the steel-chained cuffs Korovin had long ago welded to the headboard of the bed.
"Hush, Takahashi!" Korovin barked.
At the warning tone in the man's voice, Misaki collapsed back into his quiet weeping.
Once he had Misaki secured to his satisfaction, Korovin left the hiccupping boy alone in the room for a few minutes.
The Doc returned a short time later with his arms full of supplies and quickly set to work. Misaki winced as a needle slid into his tender flesh again. He watched with huge pain-filled green eyes as his captor affixed a new IV to him and then began fussing with a number of gadgets, adding attachments to the drip. Once this new medical arrangement had been fixed to his satisfaction Korovin disappeared once more.
He returned quickly with a laptop. The man perched himself comfortably on the edge of the bed and set the computer up before Misaki."I have something new for us to watch, Takahashi," he purred.
Misaki began to shake uncontrollably at these words. Despite the fact he knew he would be punished for resisting, he averted his tear-blurred eyes. Korovin liked to document all of his doings and Misaki had been forced to watch his own violation more than once, most often in the midst of some new debasement.
Korovin laughed when he saw the youth's downcast gaze. He grabbed Misaki cruelly by the chin, hard enough so that his fingers pressed marks into the teen's pale flesh. He turned Misaki's face to the illuminated screen. "Seriously, pet, you're going to want to see this…. I really think you'll find you can't tear your eyes away from it."
He released Misaki and began to tap rapidly on the computer.
Trembling, Misaki continued to stare down at the rumpled sheets, until he heard the man unexpectedly draw a deep breath. "Interesting," Korovin muttered. "I see how it is now, you filthy traitor."
Misaki looked up sharply; for the first time since he'd been taken Korovin's voice sounded surprised, almost unnerved.
After inhaling another deep breath and regaining his composure after his momentary slip, Korovin turned the laptop towards his captive.
Misaki's own breath caught in his throat. He felt new tears spring to his eyes and his heart began thudding in a furious and dangerously erratic beat when he saw the back of a silvered head on the screen before him. Though he couldn't see a face, Misaki would have known the owner of that brilliant head anywhere.
It was Usagi-san!
"Usagi." Carried on Misaki's gasped breath the name was not even a whisper. His racing heart filled with ecstatic hope and overwhelming terror at the sight of Usagi-san in one of Korovin's mazed hallways. He had not realized until this moment how starved his eyes were for the visage of his lover until he saw the man.
Misaki immediately noted how much thinner the author looked than when he had left him. Stupid, Usagi, not eating enough again. At the ridiculousness of this thought, in light of his current situation, Misaki choked on a hysterical giggle.
Korovin heard the noise and turned to Misaki. The boy's huge eyes were glued to the screen and he was biting his cracked lower lip in an effort to keep from making any further exclamations.
Drinking in every step, the sensual glide of Usagi-san, even as he moved down the hall, Misaki was mesmerized, though it struck him almost immediately that something was off in the man's stride. It took the stunned youth a moment before he saw the bare, slender legs extending out past one of Usagi-san's lean sides and realized that his author was carrying someone.
That should be me in his arms, Misaki thought bitterly and a wave of despondence crashed over him, followed immediately by one of self-recrimination at his selfish thoughts. If Usagi-san can save even one of us, I should be happy…
No sooner had he thought this than suddenly Misaki was swept up in a flood of worry for the safety of his beloved rabbit. Surely there was no way Korovin would ever let Usagi-san, or any of them for that matter, out of this hell hole alive.
Before new tears of grief at this truth had time to fill his eyes, however, the waters of this gripping fear receded and were replaced by an even more powerful surge of emotion as Korovin switched the camera feed following the author's path.
From this new angle Misaki could see the fragile figure riding in his lover's arms just before the two were lost from view as Usagi-san fumbled with a door and he and the boy he was carrying disappeared from sight. Misaki knew that particular door well. It was the same one Korovin had pulled him from not long before: it was the entrance to the sick ward where all Korovin's captives lay.
Glimpsing the face of the youth Akihiko was carrying, Misaki's already overlarge eyes widened further. "Jadir." Misaki exhaled the boy's name like a prayer. A delirious elixir of disbelief and mad joy rose in his heaving chest. He looked up at Korovin awestruck.
"But you…"
Korovin gave Misaki an evil grin and barked out a harsh laugh before offering a smug: "Surprise!"
A shuddering sob at the relief of seeing Jadir alive racked Misaki's emaciated frame, forcing him to drop his eyes again. This loss of visual contact with Usagi was all but unbearable. Misaki was filled with fear that when he looked up again, both Usagi and Jadir would be gone; that their appearance was just some new torture fabricated by the man whose cruelty, he had come to understand, had no end.
As he gasped, trying to regain his breath after the shock, Misaki felt a new emotion rising: seeing Usagi-san bolstered him. It was like a long fever breaking.
His beloved rabbit had really, finally come for him.
Misaki was seized by a sudden frantic courage. "You bastard!" he yelled, despite the fire this ignited in his throat. He kicked out at Korovin with his cast legs disregarding the shocks of pain that coursed through him. Korovin had been anticipating a response from his captive but the violence of Misaki's kick had caught him unawares. Cast legs crashed into him, sending him tumbling to the floor.
The Doc scrambled up and stared at his panting captive.
The emerald fire in Misaki's eyes was quickly extinguished beneath his cold stare.
"You little fuck!" A large hand crashed against Misaki's jaw. Misaki felt his already cracked lips break beneath the force of Korovin's blow.
Despite the sudden stars that filled his eyes and the copper taste that assaulted his tongue, Misaki drew himself up. He sucked in the deepest breath his aching ribs permitted.
"Usagi-san!"
Misaki yelled as loudly as his bruised throat would allow, not caring that his rabbit couldn't possibly hear him. There was freedom in calling out the name he had been hiding in his heart, keeping a secret from his captor these endless dark months. He shouted it again, his hoarse voice cracking with the effort, "Usagi! Usagi!" His fevered cries were cut short as a large hand wrapped around his bruised throat, choking him.
Misaki gasped and struggled but chained as he was to Korovin's headboard he was at the madman's mercy.
"Enough!" Korovin snarled.
So close, Misaki thought desperately as the hand gripping his throat tightened and he saw stars for the second time in a matter of minutes. His heart gave a shudder of want for Usagi-san, then the world became fuzzy and everything went black.
Korovin was well aware he was in the "red zone" when Misaki's eyes fluttered closed and the boy stilled, but he did not immediately release him.
A few more seconds. It would be so easy…
He looked at the slender throat already bruised from Misaki's last "escape attempt." With a shuddering growl, he wrenched his hands away at last. He stood there several seconds looking at the quiet form laying before him. Misaki's pale, thin body, his slender limbs and ribby torso laced with the scars of all his industrious inscribing, the dingy casts on the boy's legs, the shorn head.
"Becoming so beautiful," Korovin whispered as he inhaled a self-soothing breath and wondered if he'd already taken it too far. Thin fingers stretched out, but this time they alit on Misaki's neck with a feathery touch. He frowned not feeling a pulse, then he shifted his hand again.
A thin smile twisted his lips, as there, beneath his fingertips he felt it, light and fluttering weakly. "Usagi-san, eh?" Korovin whispered, amazed that Misaki had kept this truth from him for so long. That after all he had extracted from his toy that Misaki had managed to keep this secret.
"Is that who your frail heart still beats for, Takahashi?"
Korovin withdrew his hand. He leaned over and picked up the fallen laptop from the floor. He grabbed a few other items he'd brought in with him when he set up Misaki's IV from where he'd set them on a small table next to the bed and slipped these into a pocket. Then he sat back down on the edge of the bed next to his silent captive and began rapidly tapping away at the keyboard.
A sinister smile stretched Korovin's mouth and he began to hum absently as he set about laying his snare for Takahashi's dear bunny.
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