After Times of Tender Agony: Ch. 14

Taken

Notes:

Uhhh another warning for....physical pain...this is not as graphic as the last one (Ch. 12) but perhaps more disturbing in concept. I would still consider this PG, as there is really not all that gore. Just a single streak of blood, iirc, though. Lots of angst.

*****

The room was permanently blurred, at least, it had been for the past week. Janner felt a coughing fit threatening to take over his thought process, so he slowed his breathing and restricted the process to his mouth. He hoped it would help. Coughing was the last thing he wanted to do, since it would aggravate the barely healed lashes and the fractured ribs and the repeatedly renewed concussion—coughing like that would make his head feel as though it was about to explode.

He didn’t know if he was truly sick or not. There had been a fever here or there for just a day or so and the coughing, of course, but on their own those two didn’t indicate actual sickness. The day (had it been a day, or had it been longer?) after that first whipping he had awoken to the wounds having been bandaged and a blanket someone had draped over him, likely while they had taken care of his wounds. Tirge had thrown him a shirt as well—a brown shirt, one of his shirts taken from his room in Castle Torr—and rather than serving to comfort him as a shirt normally would, it only terrified him. Because it was even more confirmation they were watching Sara. The terror of the shirt aside, after the whipping, there had been a little more food in his meals from then on, too, and all that combined had been wonderful and helped so much.

It was strange to think of sub-par accommodations as being wonderful, but when compared with the physical abuse he had endured for no reason at all—no, there is a reason, he reminded himself, fear clenching his heart at the thought of forgetting. It’s for Sara. It’s so he doesn’t hurt Sara. It’s for her. To keep her safe. And he would. He would keep her safe—when compared with all that, a blanket and bandages were some of the most wonderful things in Aerwiar. 

He knew the Maker had said the suffering really was for Him, for His children, but Janner’s heart had begun doubting it. There had been a promise. A promise that said he only had to hold on for a little while longer. It had been far too long by that point. Far too long since the Maker had spoken, since he hadn’t felt pain. The sparkles of images of shattered Anniera and fragmented waves and crumpled forests may very well have been his imagination; he was too scared to think the Maker had sent them.*

The door creaked open unexpectedly, piercing Janner’s mind. He sat against the wall closest to said stabbing door, so he turned his head to the right, letting it drop gently in a looking-sort-of position. 

“What today?” he whispered as Tirge walked up and stood there, towering over him. 

“Something,” was the reply, and in an instant, Janner couldn’t see. He panicked at first and breathed in rather too sharply, causing that coughing fit he had warded off earlier to come back with a vengeance. During the time in which Tirge scolded and cursed him for hacking his lungs out, though, he realized it was just a blindfold. Only a blindfold that Tirge struggled to tie with all the uncontrollable jerking from the coughing fit.

Eventually, though, when his body had stopped shaking, Tirge hoisted him up roughly, making it nearly impossible to resist gasping in pain as the swift motion strained everything. Janner managed it, though, and only clenched his teeth and groaned.

He followed Tirge blindly, the painful grip on his arm dragging him along not quite enough to make him believe it was alright. He couldn’t see and couldn’t stop tripping and was absolutely terrified regarding whatever new thing was going to happen to him. He didn’t ask, though, for fear of the answer or being mocked. 

After far too many stumbles and trips and one agonizing fall he hadn’t been able to get up from and was instead dragged along, they stopped. A creak sounded. They shuffled forward. Light—a lot of light—filtered through the blindfold, almost enough to where he winced. 

He felt himself pushed roughly, then raised and shoved into a seat of some sort. The lash wounds caught fire as his back pressed against the chair, and he did his best not to cry out as the burning slowly dulled to simmer. When they only simmered, though, he realized in between the time the pain had started and lessened, his legs and arms had been…stuck to the chair in some way, tied or something. 

“What’s going on?” he demanded through clenched teeth, and as soon as he said it, the blindfold left his eyes. Dazed, gaudy and raucous colors swam in front of his vision, making his head ache in a way that made being in the dark seem like the better option. 

“Just something a little different. An experiment,” the Overseer said, and even though looking at him would be pointless, Janner heard the smirk and excitement in his captor’s voice, and it terrified him. 

Something cold and rough brushed against his neck, and his skin crawled. It was the Overseer’s hand, working its way up his neck and just behind his left ear. The hand was gone in a moment, almost as if it had never been there, but then a dark shadow towered in front of time—Tirge—and grabbed his head, holding it in place. Instinctively Janner struggled against it, but the reward was a fist in his stomach and horrible gasping that led to coughing, which nearly led to another punch. 

“Stop!” the Overseer ordered, intervening. “I don’t want him to pass out before this.” The sound of a knife sharpening followed.

Choking and doing his best to breath, Janner squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the feeling of Tirge’s vice-like grasp on his head, which the coughing and struggling had unfortunately not managed to dislodge. He didn’t know why he had thought it would or if he had even thought it. He was tired and in pain and he couldn’t think straight. When was the last time he had thought straight?

Something cold and sharp pressed against his neck, and Janner’s heart leapt into his throat. The pointed chill slipped upward, taking the same path the Overseer’s hand had minutes before. The needle stopped just behind his left ear and pressed, just a little, enough to hurt. 

“What’re you doing?” Janner whispered, blinking rapidly in some crazed effort to calm himself by sending his panic through another channel. 

The Overseer’s horrid laugh split the air. “Just a little somethin’. It’s for Sara, remember? So, no resisting.”

The knife pressed harder, and Janner's heart beat wildly. The knife slid down, hurting, making him gasp out of fear and pain. Something told him it was going to hurt worse later. His fists and teeth clenched, his breathing wrenched itself away from his control, and everything inside screamed in a way he never had before. 

But it was for Sara. So he didn’t struggle or move or resist because he loved her. So he could make sure this would never happen to her. It didn’t stop him from silently crying out to the Maker and asking, where are You?! DON’T YOU SEE?!

No reply came, except for a flash of broken forests and scattered beaches. **

*****

The moment they threw him to the floor of his cell, Janner retched and gagged from the pain and nausea and horror and fear and pain. Even when there was nothing left, he kept dry-heaving, and he didn’t try to stop because even though retching made everything turn to fire, he didn’t know how. He didn’t have control. It was gone. The left side of his head throbbed, shrieked from the agony. He didn’t know what the Overseer had done, but he couldn’t hear. Not from there. Not from that side. Gone in a moment. One second, he had heard the Overseer, talking as he cut, and then the voice warped, shifted, twisted, came from somewhere else. Laughter sounded after that, but it bounced, from one place to the other, never settling on a starting point. 

Two sets of laughter, one cackling and saying, “I’ll have to do worse, maybe get rid o’ ‘er,”  made it even more horrifying, and he wanted to scream and might have, but he didn’t really know because he passed out or something, and then the next thing he knew he was being thrown into that horrible prison. 

His head swam, and his stomach clenched, and anger and panic raced through his mind, and he struggled, and then he was curled against the stone wall of his cell again and—

But he had already come to that point. He didn’t need to think about it over again. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. All he could think about was Sara. This was for her. This was all for her. This was so she wouldn’t feel horrible pain, so she would be taunted and beaten and scourged and deafened. Because he loved her, because he wouldn’t let her suffer this way. 

The Overseer wouldn’t get to her. He would never get to her. He would never hurt Sara. The Overseer would just keep hurting him in place of Sara, because he would sacrifice anything for her. 

Somewhere in his muddled, sick, screaming mind came the whisper of: so, is it her fault? Is she the cause of your pain? And what about the Maker?

“No,” Janner whispered listlessly, hating the way his words sounded. “Sara’s not making me hurt. She’s not. She’s not doing it. And the Maker…” he didn’t know what to say about the Maker, Who had said nothing to him since that one time of false reassurance. 

But what if she is? She should have found you by now. And the Maker certainly knows where you are, certainly sees you, He said He saw you, yet He looks away, turns a blind eye to you. He doesn’t care. 

If Sara had found him, she would have been captured by the Overseer, and she would be hurting too. It hadn’t happened. It couldn’t. The Overseer would have let the truth slip already. And the Maker…the Maker was good. The Maker had a plan. There was a reason, there had to be. Oh, but it didn’t feel like there was a reason and his desperate pleas and cries for help were being ignored, day and night.

She’s making you hurt though. And He’s letting it happen. The two you depend on most—they’re both failing you, both failing you miserably. Why do you even bother having faith anyone will rescue you? Forget them, stop trusting.

“No,” he hissed this time. He couldn’t do that, he wouldn’t survive if he did that. Hope was the only thing he had left to cling to, even if that hope was futile.

You just admitted your hope in them is futile, so, yes, give up on them. 

“NO,” he said more firmly, his breath catching in his throat, tears welling up in his eyes because of the way the word “no” reached his ears—ear.

YES, and this is all her fault, this is HIS fault, they’re doing this to you, they’re the ones tormenting you. It’s all their fault—ALL OF IT!

“No it isn’t!” Janner shouted, his words echoing, screaming, leaping from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor, running away from him, unable to all fit into his right ear. “It’s not her fault. It’s not His—it’s not her fault or His—” but the more he said, the more he doubted, the more his mind broke, and the more his heart screamed, the freer the tears flowed until he was on the floor, curled up on himself, sobbing in grief and agony and confusion and coughing his lungs out because it was all out of his control and he wasn’t deciding anymore. 

Something else was. And he was terrified.

*****

Notes:

The first asterisk (*) and the second two (**) are both referring to times when Leeli's music has created a connection. Leeli's side is the one with the waves and beaches (Anniera) Artham's is the one with the forests (because he's searching. Outside). Both the descriptions are "marred" (i.e. crumpled, scattered, broken) because Janner's mental and physical state is "a bit not good" right now, to quote John in BBC Sherlock.

The Overseer did not get rid of one of his ears. He just rendered him deaf in one of them. I got it from a TV show.......