Author's Note: This chapter contains explicit torture, captivity, and nonconsensual kissing..
Chapter Four, Part II
The rune was a mark of freedom, of liberation, of an openness so pure she hoped it would blow Sebastian's entire hideout down. And she hoped to all the angels that the crumbling building took him down with it.
As she curled up the final line, the smallest spark of hope catching in her chest, a hand was suddenly around her wrist, jerking the stele away from the door and breaking the completion of the mark. She tried to wrestle her hand free from Sebastian, curling her fingers over the device protectively, but then her feet were swept from under her and the hand on her wrist let go, letting her fall backward into the floor.
There was a crack, and her vision went white as the back of her head hit the floor, the force of it so stunning that her mind went blank for a moment and the air slipped from her chest. Before she was fully aware of what was happening, she was being dragged across the floor by her ankle, towards the blank wall of the room opposite the door. She flailed and kicked out at Sebastian, but she had no advantage like this.
When he was done pulling her, he reached down, twisting her wrist until she yelped, the stele falling from her hand and into his. Sebastian tucked his stele back into his belt as she tried to push to her feet, but before she could, his hand was in her hair again, using it to rip her upwards. She shrieked and tried to grab at his arms, to get her feet under her to lessen the weight on her scalp, but Sebastian forced his other hand down on her shoulder until she was on her knees, and manhandled her until she was kneeling and pressed face first into the wall, her right cheek hot against the cold surface.
Her chest heaved against the stone, the struggle having stolen most of her breath, and Sebastian knelt behind her, bringing her arms up the wall with one hand and lifting her hair off her neck with his other, keeping her head pinned in place.
She closed her eyes against the frustrated tears that tried to slip free. A strangled, disgusted whine bubbled from her throat when she felt Sebastian's lips on her, and then his teeth biting angrily into the exposed skin on the back of her neck, no doubt sticky and salty with sweat, the act so ferocious and possessive that it couldn't even be called a kiss.
She tried kicking out at him, but the awkward position she was forced into made it difficult to put any force behind it. Sebastian sat back, whispered shortly under his breath in a foreign language, and then Clary was gasping as cuffs sprung free from the wall, one around each wrist to hold her arms up above her, and one around her neck to keep her flush to the wall. He let go of her hair, neatly pushing it over her shoulders now that the cuff was in place.
Fighting the metal, despite already knowing the restraints would hold, only served to bruise her skin and frustrate her more, much to Sebastian's amusement, if the low chuckle behind her was anything to go off of.
"You are ludicrously stubborn, you know that?" He sighed, and she hated that he didn't sound out of breath at all. She turned her head the little amount she could to look back, and watched him climb to his feet, dusting off his hands on his dark blue jeans.
"Let me go!" She screamed, balling her hands against the wall and squirming again. He clucked his tongue, the anger slipping back into his voice as he spoke. "You should have taken my kindness when it was offered, but instead—"
"Kindness?" She sobbed, her voice pitching wildly. "You're mad! You don't get to comfort me! You put me here, you kidnapped me—"
"—Instead," He interrupted, stepping up to her right side so he could look her in the eyes, "you choose to fight me at every turn. To throw a fit like a child. And don't you know misbehaving children get punished?" Sebastian's lip curled, all the usual smugness and amusement leached from him, leaving behind a raw irritation and displeasure.
"I'm not a child!"
She watched as he bent over to lift up the left cuff of his jeans, removing a dagger from its hidden strap there, and anxiety bloomed in her chest at the sight.
"You won't hurt me," she said quietly, shaking her head as much as she could, but her voice was strained and unconvincing, even to her own ears.
As much as she wanted to believe he wouldn't hurt her, all the death and destruction he'd caused, all the desperation in needing her to fall in line, spoke to the truth of the matter. Sebastian would hurt her just as willingly as he did Jace, if it would quell his urges for only a minute, or serve to teach her a lesson, or for any other reason he deemed worth her blood.
"Clary," he exhaled, kneeling next to her, "my dear sister. I don't want to hurt you." His harsh gaze, the anger there, and his tightened lips seemed to say otherwise. "But, well," he continued, moving a lock of hair from her face. "Seeing as our father was never around to discipline you, it seems that responsibility falls to me, no? And besides, this will help you learn your place here."
"You're crazy," she whispered, as if she was only just now realizing, as if she couldn't fully comprehend what was going on. "You're a monster."
A muscle twitched in his forehead, but then his eyes slid away from hers and up her left arm. "Perhaps we should start with getting rid of these runes, hmm? A stele is a privilege, Clary, and you certainly haven't earned yourself any trust," he scolded, and raised the blade to where his gaze rested, on the cluster of still half glowing runes on the back of her lower arm.
"Don't—" she started, but he was already running the dagger down her arm. She jerked, instinctively trying to move away, shouting in pain when she couldn't escape it, and he continued slicing through the marks. When he finished, the light and the runes had faded away, replaced by a deep gash, and all the strength the marks had given her slipped away, flowing out of her just as her blood did, down her arm to drip from her elbow.
She panted against the wall, listening to her blood spattering on the floor, as Sebastian stood again, slipping the knife back under his pant leg. He reached behind him and pulled something from the back of his belt, and she watched it unfurl and expand in long, slender coils, fear curling in her gut as she realized what it was. She suddenly felt as though she was watching the scene from behind a fogged window, distant and outside of her own body.
Sebastian flicked the whip loosely on the floor, as if testing its movement. How could she have missed that when she felt for the stele?
No, it didn't matter anyway. It wasn't like she knew how to use a whip. Nothing would have changed the way this ended.
Thoughts of Jace flashed through her mind, and she wondered if Sebastian had already used this weapon on him. She wondered if Jace had held in his screams, and almost sobbed at the thought. Clary ground her teeth together determinedly. She would be brave. She would bear it, and then figure out another way to get the hell out of here. In the meantime, she wouldn't give Sebastian the pleasure of hearing her scream.
"I do hope you learn after only a few quick lashes. We wouldn't want to permanently scar your beautiful skin," Sebastian spat, cracking the whip against the floor again, this time much harder. She couldn't help but flinch at the sound, but squared her shoulders and tensed her back, readying herself for the first blow. She wouldn't scream. She wouldn't cry.
"Burn in hell." Her voice was almost calm.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Sebastian raise the whip over his shoulder, and clenched her jaw as tight as she could. She wouldn't scream. She wouldn't—
In one swift motion the whip arced through the air. Just inches from her flesh, the thing blazed to life, a fiery electricity of some sort sizzling through it, before it struck its target.
A crack echoed through the room, nearly gunshot-loud, and then the following silence was drowned out by Clary's scream.
It wasn't just a normal whip. Whatever Sebastian had done to it, however he'd enchanted it, it didn't just cut open her flesh, but also burned into it, lightning fizzling out across her back. Her spine arched, pressing her even further into the wall, eyes blown wide at the sheer, indescribability of the pain, mouth wide in horror and shock at the sound that had come from her.
As she felt a steady warmth begin to run down her back, felt the sharp sting lingering where the whip had torn diagonally from shoulder blade to lower back, she realized the tank top—which was a wispy and delicate material, unlike the thicker protective gear she might wear when expecting a fight—had been sliced through under the blow, including one of the thin shoulder straps. She would have been thankful she was facing the wall, if she wasn't in so much pain. She understood now why Sebastian had pushed her hair over her shoulders. The whip would have cut right through her curls.
Before she had time to fully recover from the first stroke, Sebastian snapped his wrist again and fire lashed across her back. She bit her own tongue to try and stop the scream, but it burst out anyway, a horrible and choked wail as the whip cut across the first laceration. Another rapid blow, and then a fourth, and she could no longer even think about holding in her cries.
Her ears rang and her toes curled tensley against the floor, her whole body shaking from the pain and exhaustion. It took her a minute to realize Sebastian was speaking.
"Clary? I said be done with this silly defiance. Don't fight me anymore."
She felt she could barely understand the words. Her vision was blurry, and she blinked hard, feeling a fresh wetness on her cheeks. She hadn't even known she was crying.
"J-Jace," she said without thinking, "I want to see J—ahhh!" Sebastian brought down the whip before she could finish.
"You don't seem to understand," he growled, and struck out again.
"Jace!" She could barely register what she was saying, couldn't think straight with the pain. "J–ahhh-ce!"
"This isn't about Jace. This is about you," he said, bring the whip down on every pause, "and your disobedience," crack.
Clary felt like her all her strength, what little was left, her will, her sanity, was spilling out of her and onto the floor. She couldn't think, couldn't see through the agony, and with the next strike her voice cracked and broke, throat too sore to even scream.
"You're fucking" crack, "mine," crack!
The whipping stopped for a moment, and she distantly heard Sebastian panting, trying to catch his breath after his outburst. "Just apologize, and this can be over. Tell me you won't fight me again."
"Ngh…G-go to hell." Clary didn't recognize her voice, all hoarse and pitiful, barely a whisper, but she knew what Sebastian was asking, and she wouldn't give it to him. She wouldn't apologize for this.
Sebastian let out a deep, disappointed sigh, and then, "Very well. Just remember, you asked for this."
She did not ask for this. She did not ask to be kidnapped and whipped by her crazy, demonic brother.
When the whipping started again, she let out a few more wobbling screams before they turned to low and whispery groans. She prayed for her consciousness to leave her, but it didn't, not with each new, burning cut in her back keeping her awake.
And then before she knew it, it was over.
The manacles disappeared into the wall without warning, and she instantly slumped to the floor, boneless. She didn't have the strength to move, even with her legs bent awkwardly underneath her, knees still touching the wall, and her wounds digging into the floor.
She groaned once, closed her eyes wearily. Even when she felt a hand brush through her hair, she stayed still, save the rapid and shallow rise of her chest and the uncontrollable trembling of her aching muscles.
There was another deep sigh, and she cracked her eyes to see Sebastian looking down at her, crouched by her head. His hands were dark with fresh blood, wiped from the whip, hers now layered over the dried remnants of Jace's.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that it came to this." His voice, and his eyes, for once, looked soft and genuine. He pulled out his stele and marked her shoulder, but the single iratze did nothing to dull the pain.
The familiar angered tint to his voice returned when he continued. "But I do hope you learned something from this."
She closed her eyes and whimpered, winced as she tried to turn her head away from him. Just go away, she thought miserably. Just leave me alone.
He stood, as if he had heard her silent pleas, and turned to go. She listened to his footsteps stop half way to the door, hesitating, before he turned back, and she heard the rustling of fabric. There was a long moment of quiet, as if he was just standing there watching her.
When something soft and light landed on the floor next to her, she flinched, but then Sebastian's footsteps moved towards the door and she heard it creak close behind him.
Clary let out a long stuttering breath she didn't realize she was holding and felt for the object he had tossed to her before leaving. Her fingers closed on worn fabric and when she opened her eyes again she saw it was his balled up shirt.
Lifting her head slowly, wincing at the movement and the sudden static that rushed across her vision, she looked down the length of herself, sprawled on the floor. Both the tank top and her bra were gone, lying bloodied on the floor by her knees, having slipped off at some point after the whip had finally shredded the straps and the back of each completely through.
She was topless, and she hadn't even noticed.
Clenching the shirt in her shaking hand, a wave of nausea rolled through her, and a rush of frustrated, exhausted, and embarrassed, tears burst from her. She almost threw his shirt at the door, but instead draped it over her chest defeatedly, and sobbed.
She cried until she couldn't any longer, and then at last, unconsciousness took her.