After Times of Tender Agony: Ch. 16

A Wound for a Wound

Notes:

There is a very brief instance of actual violence and a smirk in this chapter (around the middle of it). There is an allusion to and "evidence" of violence at the beginning, but it isn't real and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt. There is, however, quite a lot of angst in this chapter. I don't think it's anything worse than what I wrote in SSitS or RtR, but I could be wrong 🤷‍♀️

*****

Anger and disbelief and horror and grief and fear had strangled him. The crimson covered dress, the one Sara had worn the day he proposed to her, lay limp in his hands, staining his palms. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t feel. Everything shook, disorienting the room and images around him even more, distorting the words coming from elsewhere, but nothing changed what rang through his mind: you didn’t measure up, so I went an’ took the girl. She’s dead now, an’ I was nice about it. Quick. I'm real curious to see how long you're gonna manage to hold out now, aren't you, Tirge?

The Overseer shook him again, then threw him to the cold, stone floor. The words sounded again and again and again: she’s dead now, she’s dead now, she’s dead now.

The Overseer left, limping away, cane tapping, and he slammed the door behind him. Janner crawled toward the door in some feeble effort to go after him or get out or do something, clawing at the wood until his fingers bled, yelling and coughing unintelligible things until he was so tired and in pain, all he could do was lay his head against the horrifically solid and impenetrable wood. 

Now, he couldn’t do anything other than hear the words she’s dead now transform into the more horrifying, Sara’s dead now, she’s gone, she’s never coming back. 

He never questioned the Overseer, never doubted him, because what he had feared would happen all along had just happened. The dress was proof enough. Blind hope wanted him to think it wasn't so, but he didn't trust blind hope anymore. The scarcity of food had weakened him, the thrust of the cane had beaten him, the scourge of the whip had burned him, and all the scars, all the wounds had destroyed his spirit, told him the Overseer truly would find Sara, take Sara, kill Sara. 

Janner lay there, crumpled. The dress lay beside him, gathering up the dust and dirt from the wretched cell. He wanted to scream. He wanted to scream the grief and anger and sense from his mind, he wanted to scream so the whole of Aerwiar would hear, would know—

He stopped his mind before the thought fully formed. What did he want them to know? Oh, he hated himself for wanting it, but he wanted them to know the Maker hadn’t come through. He had failed. He had abandoned. He had betrayed. He had allowed the Overseer to strip everything from him and now all that remained was this coldness, this horrible crawling coldness of nothing, of fear, of misery, of pain, of anger. 

Janner rose, his legs and body trembling, collapsing beneath him. He clutched at the door for support the next time, rose again shakily, and laid his forehead against it, panting, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering and to keep his mouth from groaning, because everything hurt and smarted. 

Something shifted though, something not in his mind. He had to check first, but…something outside of his mind shifted. A rare ray of something that wasn't hope shone through, and Janner pressed against the door, his weakness showing itself when it took all his weight to shift the heavy, wooden death trap aside. But then he did. He shifted it and squeezed through and stood, trembling outside in a hallway he’d seen once, a stone, dirty hallway he knew led to the exit. 

Grief over Sara and anger at the Maker because of it threatened to consume his mind and body, but he couldn’t let it, not yet, not if there was the slimmest chance a way out—a way to cause the Overseer even a mere fraction of the pain he had caused Sara—had presented itself. 

He left the dress, though.

Clutching at the wall for support, Janner stumbled along feeling how truly incapable and sick he was, sure there was no real way out, yet desperate to escape and find him and hurt him. 

In the distance, in the blurred distance, he saw something that looked oddly like a door, a door that might lead to wherever the Overseer was, maybe outside after that, back home? It wasn’t home anymore, no, not without Sara, but once the Overseer suffered Janner wasn’t about to stay and die in a miserable stone prison.

 As he approached the potential exit inch by inch, stumbling all the while, voices clamored inside his head, voices that asked why he even cared about anything now—even vengeance, what would it really do?—why it mattered, why anything mattered if Sara was gone?

He wasn’t sure if it did, not really. Once the Overseer had suffered sufficiently…there was still Anniera. He was king of somewhere, even though he was almost certain he hated the thought of it. The chances of getting back there were near zero—he didn’t have the strength to get anywhere, and who would actually keep looking for him? 

Though he supposed outside it could go either way. Maybe he would die. Maybe he could find a town. Maybe the Overseer wanted him to have a taste of escape before bringing him back in to torture him again, but even if that was the case, he would find some way to cause that monster pain, horrific pain, something horrendous. He doubted he would get far—Tirge would probably intervene, but even something would be better than nothing.

Even the thought of them made him shudder, though, made him want to curl up on the floor and weep until even more nothingness remained inside of him. He couldn’t do that, though. No, he had to reach the exit and the Overseer, had to try, even if it was just a cruel ploy. It was a chance. A slim chance. He needed a chance. A chance to give it all for Sara. A chance was all he could depend on. Everything else was gone. Everyone else had left.

He finally reached the door. It was there, right in front of him. One second it had been miles away, now it loomed in front of his face. Locked? No, it had a knob—the knob turned. Janner pushed. The crack blinded him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, then blinked, then pushed the rest of his weight against the heavy wood, blinking all the time, groaning as his ribs screamed in protest, wincing because of the way the light pierced through his head and mind and into his throat, leaving an acrid tang. 

No cabin or structure, anything of the sort in which the Overseer might stay or use as a base of operations, was in sight, nothing. He stood there for a second, in the threshold, looking out in confusion, uncertain of what to do next. Adrenaline and will to make the Overseer pay faded without a clear path forward, and his legs trembled, not from anger but exhaustion. 

Grasping at the wooden frame built into a grass-covered mound, Janner eased himself into it, pressing his forehead against the wood. It hurt, sent a slice of pain through his mind, but it took some of the weight off his unsteady limbs. 

He had just come out of a tunnel, a dreadfully long, straight tunnel under the ground that opened into what was barely a clearing in the middle of a fall-covered forest. Perhaps the other side of tunnel he had never had the privilege of seeing opened up elsewhere, a place in which the Overseer might be. Or perhaps he could wait there, lie in wait until the Overseer limped past and then—

No, there was no hiding place also close enough that would allow him to jump and surprise the Overseer. It was far more likely the Overseer would find him and torture him again. Janner didn’t know if he could stand it. Even if he rested while lying in wait and successfully hid from the Overseer, he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to force himself up again, not with so little notice, at least.

“The first plan it is, then,” he muttered as he pushed himself away from the frame. And then he was out, blinking, squinting, head throbbing, body burning with pain and exhaustion, but he was out. On tentative legs he stumbled forward, twisting his head around as much as he could without making himself sick, practically swinging it as if on a pendulum with the frequency at which he searched, terrified the Overseer would appear out of nowhere with the whip. The most recent lashings reopened—cool viscosity trickled down his burning back—but he didn’t care. 

Anger inside him boiled enough to give him the audacity to approach the Overseer, but he had a feeling being surprised by his captor would—shamefully—render him terrified, dumb, shaking on the ground. Perhaps he couldn’t confront the Overseer. Perhaps Sara’s last words that he had not heard would cry out forever, forgotten, unavenged.

Janner shook himself; if he thought about that, he wouldn’t manage anything. He stilled his racing thoughts and worries: no one is in sight, he told himself repeatedly. When he stumbled a bit and nearly fell, he inwardly whispered: it’s for her, don’t fall now, you can’t; you’ll never get up again. 

Somehow the stumbling trip above ground, back the way he had come, one foot in front of the other, eventually using a faster pace because that kept his painfully wretched balance better as he clumsily made his way through the crunching autumn leaves. He continued on and on, despite his dwindling strength, and he couldn’t give up, he wouldn’t let himself.

Janner didn’t know how far he had gone, how many splintering trees he had clung to for support, how many times he had yelped from the sound of a bird twittering in the trees, but then something appeared—another set of flashes, more images obscuring his vision, blinding him, images of torn books and scattered pages and crumbling cobbled roads.* He could barely breathe and certainly couldn’t see anything else, and he hated it.

Then the sound of something that gave him cause for screaming—no, no, NO! NO!—crashed into his ear.

“Overseer just wanted to send you a little present, that’s all,” Tirge said with a smirk before whipping a dagger out of nowhere, before it bit into his right leg three times—not more fire, why?—before taking off, disappearing into the forest. 

Janner didn’t know what to do and he was frozen and now his leg screamed—in a brief moment of sense, he managed to tear a strip from his shirt and tie suffocatingly tight it just below his knee—and when he stepped he collapsed and got up again, but he crumpled to the ground again. He did it over and over again until he couldn’t force himself up from the ground any longer, and then he screamed because now he couldn’t do anything but sit there, helpless, everything stripped away, everything a failure. 

Everything was gone. The Maker had taken everything. Everything was gone.

He had taken Sara, too. And what had been his thoughts of Sara as of late? He had doubted her, even dared to feel anger toward her for not coming, for not finding him. How selfish could he be? How stupid? How arrogant? And now she was dead, dead and gone and he could never apologize to her for being angry and he would never see her again, and all the pain and horror he had been through was worthless. 

“Why did You do this?!” he cried aloud, screaming at the orange-leafed trees, his voice rough, choked with tears, with anger, with grief, his ribs on fire from the beatings. He didn’t care who heard him. “Where have You been?!” coughing took over, and it stabbed him too, but the hurting kept him grounded in reality, so it was good, and he kept talking, choking in spite of it. “Why can’t I hear You?! You’ve gone, left me—I’m alone, alone again, a-a-nd no one is coming, no one is coming to h-h-help and this…this is g-going to be the last thing that ever—and I know—” 

Another coughing interlude interrupted him, and his lungs and chest and back protested, and his stomach wanted to retch but he wouldn’t let it, and that hurt...but hurt was good. A harsh laugh burst forth amidst the coughing, and it hurt so he didn’t really regret it. He was sick, he knew he was, something really was wrong, but he didn’t care anymore because Sara was dead, and she was the only one who had ever really worried when he was sick—he had never cared, not really. He had only cared because she cared. 

“I know it’s selfish,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “But Maker I—” coughing took over with a new vengeance and his head spun from it and the noise glinting off everything and the pain consuming his body and heart, and he felt himself sliding against the tree trunk, pressing into it all the while, wincing a little as a place where a branch had once been jutted out grabbed hold of him and left a trail of blood behind. He didn’t really care.

I’ve been beaten for weeks, just trying to save the life of the one I love. And now she’s DEAD. She’s dead, and it was all for nothing? Why can’t I be selfish now? Let me, please let me! Just…just take me because then I’ll be with her at least and Grandpa and Papa and Kal and—

A new set of sobs began, sobs of remembered grief, remembered failure, remembered horror, remembered loss, remembered anger, and he hated it. He hated it all. 

He must have cried himself to sleep, because he woke with a start, night looming over him, no moon glowing through the trees, wind whistling terrifyingly through the branches. Everything hurt, everything screamed. His leg and back and chest were on fire. His head spun, his stomach clenched, his heart ached as memories flooded back.

Something inside made him bind the sluggishly bleeding knife wounds with strips of his torn, dirty, bloody shirt, then stand, find a stick to lean on when he couldn’t, and hobble forward one agonizing step at a time. He didn’t know where he headed. He had no idea if the Overseer stood at the end of his journey, or something more welcoming. He couldn’t sit on the forest floor, surrounded by leaves and creeping things and doing nothing, though.

Each step through the shadowed wood told him he was painfully alive. Every intake of breath (followed by fiery coughing) or jump (followed by flaming pain) or cry of fear at the sound of anything rusting in the underbrush told him he teetered on the dangerous ledge where sanity and insanity met, and he was scared of what would happen if he tripped and fell. 

He rested against every tree he could, not sure what he was looking for or where he was going, just that he wouldn’t make it if there wasn’t some sort of something on which to collapse. Mouth desperately dry, eyes sandy, ears ringing horrifically, mind aching, body throbbing, Janner pushed on, wouldn’t let himself stop against a tree and sink against it, only brush it for brief breaks. If he fell he’d never get up again. 

He did fall, eventually. Into a stream, a frigid stream that sent him shaking and reminded him he was sick, a fever had come sometime who-knew-when, and the cool water was good and terrible all at once. The trouble was he couldn’t move. Telling himself to crawl out of the stream did no good, even though the little stream wasn’t more than a few inches deep and a few feet wide. He just kept laying there, the cold chilling him, cooling his mind, numbing his pain. Guilt about yelling at the Maker crept over him, as did cold and a deeper darkness than that of night. 

At some point, something lovely dawned on him, something lovely enough to slip a smile onto his face. The Maker hadn’t really left him. He was right there, numbing him into oblivion, giving him sweet relief before the even sweeter relief of His World, and a glimmer of golden and jewels sparkled on the edges of his consciousness.

*****

Notes:

*This was another nod to Leeli playing her whistleharp and creating a connection, though this time it involves a book which Sara is reading while she and Artham are at a lull in their searching

Oop.

Okay, explanation. No, when Janner escaped from the F!F!, he did not stab the Overseer with a pitchfork. All he did was trip(ish) him and accidently make him fall and break his leg. HOWEVER, I really don't feel like dealing with broken bones, and I don't even think Janner with as much resolve as he can muster can actually escape on that. Now, I did read a book in which a character's leg was broken, and said character escaped from a jail cell and scaled a cliff and fenced with the person who broke his leg, but that character was an ENTP 8w7, and Janner is NOT an ENTP 8w7, he's probably an INFJ either 6w5 or 8w9 or something.

Additionally, it seems a little more intuitive than sensing to do "an eye for an eye" (the Overseer is sensing - ESTJ), so it doesn't necessarily need to be exact. Mostly, the Overseer is just trying to give Janner a permanent limp 😏

Other explanation. We still have the mole in the castle, we still have Sara's clothes in the castle, and it was just dumb luck that the mole chose the dress Sara was wearing when Janner proposed. And it's perfectly easy to do what Joseph's brothers did in terms of faking blood.

Please let me know if there's anything noncanonical! <3