Fanfic Archive: Sacrifice, 5
May. 28th, 2009 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
texchan(Written: June, 2004)
Warnings: Bad Language. Violence
Summary: When a mission goes bad, Aya may have to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect Omi, and the rest of Weiss learn you don't truly miss something until it's gone.
Legal Stuff: As always, this story is intended to express one fan's genuine appreciation of Weiss Kreuz and its characters. It is just for fun and not for profit. If you have any rights in the anime described here and find the posting of this fanfiction offensive or harmful, please contact me, and I will be happy to remove it.
Sacrifice
Chapter 5
Aya's life had become a twisted, burning, pain-filled, hellish blur. He had a dim recollection of being awakened from a coma-like sleep by a pair of huge, rough hands yanking him off the floor with enough force to make his teeth clatter together, of being dragged across the dusty, gritty concrete by his hair, of his shirt being ripped off and tossed aside, of harsh, growled curses spoken in perfect Japanese with a heavy English accent. You couldn't really call them memories, since his brain had reached the point where it couldn't separate the here and now from what once had been. More like whispers of memory or ghosts of reality, just like all the other information jumbled together in his aching, throbbing head. The screaming pain of his arms being pulled from their sockets told him he was hanging off the ground, probably from the ceiling. At least, he thought he was hanging. He thought it was real. It felt real … the way that pain joined and blended with the freight train of agony roaring through his head, until his entire body became one raw, bleeding, throbbing ache of hurt. It felt real, but, then again, Aya had to admit he wasn't at his best right now.
One thing was certain, though. That voice. That English-accented, sneering, perfectly-pronounced Japanese. He'd heard it once before, in the club the night he and Omi had been taken. How long ago was it, now? One night … two … three … maybe even more? It didn't matter, just like it didn't matter what had happened to him since then. He'd never forget that voice or the face of the man behind it --- a man who had unsettled him, made him careless for just the fraction of a second it had taken for this whole thing to slide right down into shit. Harrister. Roland Harrister. The man who owned the Crazy Geisha. So, it had been him … he had been the true target all along.
'Then,' Aya wondered, struggling to gather up the unraveling threads of his thoughts and finding coherence almost beyond him at this point, 'Who … who … was that? In the black … in the parking … by the car … on my sword?'
A scraping sound almost directly in front of him, the scuff of a heavy, leather boot against concrete, brought Aya's wandering attention away from his disjointed, incoherent thoughts. He struggled to raise his head and succeeded in lifting his chin about an inch or so off his chest. It wasn't much, but all things considered, he figured it should count as at least a minor victory. He was surprised he had been able to accomplish that much.
He regretted his Herculean feat almost as soon as he accomplished it. His right eye was useless, but he didn't need full range of vision to see the writing on the wall … and it told him nothing pleasant was going to happen here.
Harrister stood a foot or two in front of him, before a low packing crate pressed into service as a makeshift table. He recognized the man from their brief encounter at the club, even though it seemed like that had happened a hundred years or so ago. When the Englishman shifted his weight to one side, Aya saw beyond him, and, with a sinking feeling, observed an array of knives --- some with short, blunt-ended blades, one or two that had particularly wicked-looking, serrated edges, and a few that curved into a delicate, almost crescent-moon shape, more like a sickle than a knife. Aya was a blade man, had always loved the look and shape of sharpened, beautifully honed steel, had always been held captive by the dull blue sheen it had when forged and polished to perfection, had reveled in the feel of its weight in his hand, in the way it could soundlessly, almost effortlessly, cut through muscle, sinew, and bone with a terrible, savage poetry all its own. And, even knowing these would soon be sinking into his flesh, a part of the swordsman's brain couldn't help but be impressed with the display and, maybe, a bit jealous that someone else had such an exquisite collection. Well, a blade man was a blade man, after all.
Another part of his brain, a part that had, recently, begun to have the disconcerting habit of dissociating itself from his body, wandered over to the table and idly surveyed the various implements of doom and destruction arrayed there. It felt like that part of his mind, the part still somewhat functioning in the here and now, turned to look at him, slowly and quietly taking in his current predicament --- the throbbing, seeping wound that had turned half his face into nothing more than useless meat, the fact he was hanging from a hook in the ceiling, supported by nothing more than the chain between his cuffed hands, the blood he could feel flowing freely down his arms from where the sharp metal bit into his wrists, the realization he almost didn't register the pain, the fact he barely had the strength to lift his head. It was an oddly disjointed feeling, this scrutiny by his mind … like looking at his reflection in a mirror, but from the outside instead of within.
"You're fucked," his mind finally whispered to him.
"Don't I know it," Aya whispered back, a rare, coherent sentence, spoken so softly he knew Harrister couldn't have heard him.
Harrister approached, only the small, telltale sound of leather scraping against concrete marking his passage. As he moved from relative shadow and into the small circle of hot, glaring light thrown by the bulb directly over the redhead, his features came into sharp relief. Aya could see the crazed, enraged, predatory smile on the man's face, the way his eyes glittered with the prospect of what was to come, the way he held the knife close to his face, so the light glinted off it and threw a tiny line of gleam onto his tanned skin. The anger Aya had sensed from the man, so carefully hidden that night he had rebuffed Harrister's advance at the club, now radiated from every pore of the Englishman's being. For a fraction of a second, Aya's addled brain thought he was facing Farfarello --- the icily enraged Englishman so resembled Schwarz's Irish berserker. But, then, the illusion shifted and was gone, leaving Aya face to face with your common, everyday, run-of-the-mill, whacked-out asshole on a mission. And, somehow, that was even more terrifying than Farfarello could ever hope to be, even on his best day.
As Aya stared into the eyes of his soon-to-be tormentor, blue-violet rage colliding with and boring into glacier blue hatred, he realized, with certainty, he was seeing the last thing all those other boys had seen. All those mangled, mutilated bodies, all those young, innocent boys, cut off before they even thought about reaching their prime, had looked into these piercing blue eyes filled with rage, hatred, and glee at what was to come. It was the last thing they had seen in this world, and, from the way Harrister's eyes made his blood run cold, Aya figured it was a damn good bet they had taken the nightmare of that final vision with them into the next.
Aya wondered if, in a week or two, Yohji would see his photograph peeking out from a stack of mission paperwork, and he realized, for probably the first time in his life … well, the first time in a long time, anyhow … he was afraid to die here. He wasn't so much afraid for himself. He had given up on his own life a long time ago, had sold it and his soul away so cheaply, for an ounce of revenge … his own, personal thirty pieces of silver. No, not for himself. If it came to that, he figured Death was more than owed, where he was concerned. He'd cheated the black-cloaked figure thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of times. He was afraid for Aya. What would happen to her with him gone? Would Kritiker keep its promise and continue to care for her? He hadn't done anything to endear himself to his teammates, so he couldn't expect the others to look in on her or care what happened to her. He hated the thought of leaving her alone in the world, after all she had already been through.
And for Omi. He was afraid for Omi, afraid of what his death would do to the boy, having already seen the all too tangible evidence of misplaced guilt over this mission failure in Omi's eyes, his earnest, too-eager desire to give comfort and aid, and his barely suppressed tears. But, more than that, Aya was terrified Harrister already realized the connection between him and Omi. Once the crazy English bastard finished him off, what was to stop him from starting in on the kid? His dead, glassy eyes staring out from a glossy, eight-by-ten mission photo, he could live with, theoretically speaking, of course. But Omi's … no. That was too much to bear.
As Harrister closed the small gap between them and leaned in close enough for the smell of his expensive aftershave to wrap around them like a python squeezing the life from its prey, the Englishman's predatory, snarling smile and the barely-contained excitement gleaming from those ice-blue eyes were enough to make Aya's stomach clench in fear and dread. He wouldn't cry out, though. No matter what this bastard did to him, he refused to cry out, refused to scream. Screaming would only alert Omi, would bring the kid running to his aid, and, likely, result in the young blonde following right on his heels into the great, unknown beyond. Aya glared back at Harrister, hoping and praying his fear didn't show on his face --- well, on the half that still looked like a face, anyhow --- and tried to swallow down the wave of fear-driven nausea that suddenly gripped him. He didn't know how much he could take. He had to be strong, for Omi's sake. He couldn't scream.
"I'm gonna enjoy this one," Harrister whispered in a conspiratorial, yet slightly seductive, tone, leaning in toward Aya, until his chin grazed the redhead's ear. "The others … they were for him." He allowed his hand to trail slowly down the uninjured side of Aya's face and across his sweat-soaked chest, his touch deceptively soft and light, almost gentle. "You, though," he whispered, letting his hand linger for a moment against the swordsman's belly, feeling the subtle rise and fall of the well-defined muscles under his palm, "You're just for me. From the first moment I saw you that night … I wanted to break you, to make you beg. For what you took from me … for what you refused me, this time … this time, I'll really enjoy it."
It was the feather-light touch that told Aya, beyond a doubt, he was not walking away from this. If he had had any illusions of, somehow, managing to survive this ordeal, that deceptively gentle touch --- the touch of a lover, really, not of a madman bent on revenge --- dispelled them in an instant. It told him he was the Englishman's possession now, a toy for him to play with as he would and discard at will.
With a slight, almost imperceptible flick of his wrist, Harrister's touch went from gentle to cruel, as he brought the curved blade arcing upward, scoring a long, shallow cut along Aya's abdomen. It burned like fire - not so much when the blade was actually piercing his flesh … it was too sharp and finely honed for that --- but, when the cut was finished and his skin lay open, parted like butter under the slight pressure from Harrister's hand, the pain set in, throbbing and burning.
Aya choked back the moan that fought to escape his lips. This was a test cut. He knew that. It was fast and shallow --- Harrister's way of feeling out his limits. Aya didn't think he could hold out for very long without screaming, without giving Harrister some of the reaction he wanted, but he had to hold out for as long as he could. If he screamed now, Harrister would deem him "unworthy", "unfit", and kill him quickly. Much as Aya wanted this to be over with already, he had to keep the Englishman's attention focused on him for as long as he could, in the hope that he could come up with some way of getting Omi out of here. He had to hold Harrister's interest. He had to do it to protect Omi.
Harrister stepped back and surveyed his work. The cut was shallow, but inflicted on a spot gauged to bring maximum pain with minimum effort. He'd had enough practice to know where and how to cut his victims so they suffered without passing out or dying before he was ready for them to do so. They had to pay … all of them … and they couldn't pay if they didn't suffer. But, this one … this one was different. The others had broken at the first sight of the knives, had sobbed and begged for mercy with the infliction of the first, shallow wound. His thoughts wandered for a moment as he stood, transfixed by the sight of the blood seeping from his first cut. It bubbled to the surface, welling up for a moment at the edge of the wound, darkest crimson against purest white, a red bloom against snow, and then dripped sluggishly, down the swordsman's abdomen to soak into dark leather pants.
Harrister allowed his gaze to roam slowly, possessively, up the redhead's long, lean body: the pale, silky skin of his stomach and chest, marred by a network of scars marking the passage of long-healed wounds; the newest injury, inflicted at the edge of his blade, which left a smear of dark red against that pale background; the gaping, bleeding wound on the right side of the man's head, which had turned that side of his face into a useless, swollen, blue-black lump of flesh; the blood trailing lazily down his arms from the deep cuts caused by the handcuffs supporting his weight off the floor --- delicate, almost lacy, red tendrils against the backdrop of well-muscled limbs and china-white skin.
The Englishman allowed his gaze to rest on Aya's face, and he smiled at the predatory, feral glare, full of unconcealed hatred, disgust, and barely contained rage, spearing him from the redhead's good eye. The swordsman was bloodied, severely injured, probably skating on the fringes of death's black oblivion, and, yet, he wasn't beaten --- not yet. Harrister couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret at having to kill this man. They were two of a kind --- both predators, both deadly vicious. He had known it from the moment he had seen the redhead in the club, had known it the second this man had rebuffed his advance, the icy-cold anger sliding through his carefully constructed façade for just a second. But, it had been long enough for Harrister to recognize the first man, in a long time, he would consider an equal. And, like the predator he was, this man wasn't going to give in so easily. The Englishman smiled again. He had known this man wouldn't disappoint him. A wolf always knows and recognizes another wolf, even when it pretends to be nothing more than a dog.
Seconds ticked into minutes, which ticked into hours, which wound themselves out into an eternity and more, as the wheels of time ground to an agonizing, screeching halt while Harrister worked. One cut, then two, then three … until there were what felt like hundreds of seeping, burning wounds on Aya's torso and back, none of them life threatening, but each one painful enough to make the redhead wish for the unknown lurking just beyond the black veil crowding the edges of his vision. Aya's world tunneled down to this one space, cramped and crowded in by the huge, dark shipping crates that loomed over him like starving beasts waiting to devour his soul. And, within this small spot that, now, made up the entirety of his existence on earth, there was only the glint of hot light off polished metal, the slow, smoldering burn of a blade tearing through flesh and skin, the steady plip-plip of his blood hitting the floor beneath him.
Harrister didn't talk. After his initial taunts, he bent his whole will toward just one thing --- breaking his prey. Aya wished for the taunts, humiliation, and mocking. He had come to expect it from his enemies, especially when he was at their mercy, and the silence that grew and festered around them, until it became like a living, putrid thing, was unnerving, perhaps even more so than the mind-numbing pain screaming from every part of his body. With each successive pass of the knife, the cuts deepened, became longer and less hesitant, as the Englishman's resolve solidified. Aya prayed for his body to shut down, for the ability to feel no pain, even if it meant his death. That would be all right with him, as long as it meant this whole ordeal would, finally, be over.
At least, he thought he prayed for it; his mind had stopped functioning at even the most rudimentary level. Now, it was as if it had decided to step out for a while, and watch the show. He had the disembodied sense of watching his own reflection once more, although, this time, it felt less strange, more … comfortable. He was pretty sure that was a bad sign.
Harrister, arrogant asshole that he was, denied Aya even the tiny relief momentary unconsciousness would bring. The dark-haired man knew what he was doing, knew exactly where to place his cuts for maximum pain without giving his victim the relief passing out or dying would bring.
Finally, Aya couldn't take it any longer, and he screamed. The sound pounded and reverberated throughout the metal building, an inhuman, almost unearthly, banshee wail. Everything he'd been holding inside --- all the hatred, all the rage, all the fear, all the pain, all the regret, all the grief --- poured out of him and into that scream. It rocketed around the room, bouncing from crate to crate, shaking the walls, and echoing back again and again and again, until it sounded like a hundred screams, and then a thousand. And, underneath it all, Aya could hear Harrister's soft laughter, the satisfied sound of a man who has finally tasted triumph. That sound … the soft, subtle laughter carried along upon the wave of his pain … told Aya he had lost. Harrister had won. He had broken.
Warnings: Bad Language. Violence
Summary: When a mission goes bad, Aya may have to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect Omi, and the rest of Weiss learn you don't truly miss something until it's gone.
Legal Stuff: As always, this story is intended to express one fan's genuine appreciation of Weiss Kreuz and its characters. It is just for fun and not for profit. If you have any rights in the anime described here and find the posting of this fanfiction offensive or harmful, please contact me, and I will be happy to remove it.
Chapter 5
Aya's life had become a twisted, burning, pain-filled, hellish blur. He had a dim recollection of being awakened from a coma-like sleep by a pair of huge, rough hands yanking him off the floor with enough force to make his teeth clatter together, of being dragged across the dusty, gritty concrete by his hair, of his shirt being ripped off and tossed aside, of harsh, growled curses spoken in perfect Japanese with a heavy English accent. You couldn't really call them memories, since his brain had reached the point where it couldn't separate the here and now from what once had been. More like whispers of memory or ghosts of reality, just like all the other information jumbled together in his aching, throbbing head. The screaming pain of his arms being pulled from their sockets told him he was hanging off the ground, probably from the ceiling. At least, he thought he was hanging. He thought it was real. It felt real … the way that pain joined and blended with the freight train of agony roaring through his head, until his entire body became one raw, bleeding, throbbing ache of hurt. It felt real, but, then again, Aya had to admit he wasn't at his best right now.
One thing was certain, though. That voice. That English-accented, sneering, perfectly-pronounced Japanese. He'd heard it once before, in the club the night he and Omi had been taken. How long ago was it, now? One night … two … three … maybe even more? It didn't matter, just like it didn't matter what had happened to him since then. He'd never forget that voice or the face of the man behind it --- a man who had unsettled him, made him careless for just the fraction of a second it had taken for this whole thing to slide right down into shit. Harrister. Roland Harrister. The man who owned the Crazy Geisha. So, it had been him … he had been the true target all along.
'Then,' Aya wondered, struggling to gather up the unraveling threads of his thoughts and finding coherence almost beyond him at this point, 'Who … who … was that? In the black … in the parking … by the car … on my sword?'
A scraping sound almost directly in front of him, the scuff of a heavy, leather boot against concrete, brought Aya's wandering attention away from his disjointed, incoherent thoughts. He struggled to raise his head and succeeded in lifting his chin about an inch or so off his chest. It wasn't much, but all things considered, he figured it should count as at least a minor victory. He was surprised he had been able to accomplish that much.
He regretted his Herculean feat almost as soon as he accomplished it. His right eye was useless, but he didn't need full range of vision to see the writing on the wall … and it told him nothing pleasant was going to happen here.
Harrister stood a foot or two in front of him, before a low packing crate pressed into service as a makeshift table. He recognized the man from their brief encounter at the club, even though it seemed like that had happened a hundred years or so ago. When the Englishman shifted his weight to one side, Aya saw beyond him, and, with a sinking feeling, observed an array of knives --- some with short, blunt-ended blades, one or two that had particularly wicked-looking, serrated edges, and a few that curved into a delicate, almost crescent-moon shape, more like a sickle than a knife. Aya was a blade man, had always loved the look and shape of sharpened, beautifully honed steel, had always been held captive by the dull blue sheen it had when forged and polished to perfection, had reveled in the feel of its weight in his hand, in the way it could soundlessly, almost effortlessly, cut through muscle, sinew, and bone with a terrible, savage poetry all its own. And, even knowing these would soon be sinking into his flesh, a part of the swordsman's brain couldn't help but be impressed with the display and, maybe, a bit jealous that someone else had such an exquisite collection. Well, a blade man was a blade man, after all.
Another part of his brain, a part that had, recently, begun to have the disconcerting habit of dissociating itself from his body, wandered over to the table and idly surveyed the various implements of doom and destruction arrayed there. It felt like that part of his mind, the part still somewhat functioning in the here and now, turned to look at him, slowly and quietly taking in his current predicament --- the throbbing, seeping wound that had turned half his face into nothing more than useless meat, the fact he was hanging from a hook in the ceiling, supported by nothing more than the chain between his cuffed hands, the blood he could feel flowing freely down his arms from where the sharp metal bit into his wrists, the realization he almost didn't register the pain, the fact he barely had the strength to lift his head. It was an oddly disjointed feeling, this scrutiny by his mind … like looking at his reflection in a mirror, but from the outside instead of within.
"You're fucked," his mind finally whispered to him.
"Don't I know it," Aya whispered back, a rare, coherent sentence, spoken so softly he knew Harrister couldn't have heard him.
Harrister approached, only the small, telltale sound of leather scraping against concrete marking his passage. As he moved from relative shadow and into the small circle of hot, glaring light thrown by the bulb directly over the redhead, his features came into sharp relief. Aya could see the crazed, enraged, predatory smile on the man's face, the way his eyes glittered with the prospect of what was to come, the way he held the knife close to his face, so the light glinted off it and threw a tiny line of gleam onto his tanned skin. The anger Aya had sensed from the man, so carefully hidden that night he had rebuffed Harrister's advance at the club, now radiated from every pore of the Englishman's being. For a fraction of a second, Aya's addled brain thought he was facing Farfarello --- the icily enraged Englishman so resembled Schwarz's Irish berserker. But, then, the illusion shifted and was gone, leaving Aya face to face with your common, everyday, run-of-the-mill, whacked-out asshole on a mission. And, somehow, that was even more terrifying than Farfarello could ever hope to be, even on his best day.
As Aya stared into the eyes of his soon-to-be tormentor, blue-violet rage colliding with and boring into glacier blue hatred, he realized, with certainty, he was seeing the last thing all those other boys had seen. All those mangled, mutilated bodies, all those young, innocent boys, cut off before they even thought about reaching their prime, had looked into these piercing blue eyes filled with rage, hatred, and glee at what was to come. It was the last thing they had seen in this world, and, from the way Harrister's eyes made his blood run cold, Aya figured it was a damn good bet they had taken the nightmare of that final vision with them into the next.
Aya wondered if, in a week or two, Yohji would see his photograph peeking out from a stack of mission paperwork, and he realized, for probably the first time in his life … well, the first time in a long time, anyhow … he was afraid to die here. He wasn't so much afraid for himself. He had given up on his own life a long time ago, had sold it and his soul away so cheaply, for an ounce of revenge … his own, personal thirty pieces of silver. No, not for himself. If it came to that, he figured Death was more than owed, where he was concerned. He'd cheated the black-cloaked figure thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of times. He was afraid for Aya. What would happen to her with him gone? Would Kritiker keep its promise and continue to care for her? He hadn't done anything to endear himself to his teammates, so he couldn't expect the others to look in on her or care what happened to her. He hated the thought of leaving her alone in the world, after all she had already been through.
And for Omi. He was afraid for Omi, afraid of what his death would do to the boy, having already seen the all too tangible evidence of misplaced guilt over this mission failure in Omi's eyes, his earnest, too-eager desire to give comfort and aid, and his barely suppressed tears. But, more than that, Aya was terrified Harrister already realized the connection between him and Omi. Once the crazy English bastard finished him off, what was to stop him from starting in on the kid? His dead, glassy eyes staring out from a glossy, eight-by-ten mission photo, he could live with, theoretically speaking, of course. But Omi's … no. That was too much to bear.
As Harrister closed the small gap between them and leaned in close enough for the smell of his expensive aftershave to wrap around them like a python squeezing the life from its prey, the Englishman's predatory, snarling smile and the barely-contained excitement gleaming from those ice-blue eyes were enough to make Aya's stomach clench in fear and dread. He wouldn't cry out, though. No matter what this bastard did to him, he refused to cry out, refused to scream. Screaming would only alert Omi, would bring the kid running to his aid, and, likely, result in the young blonde following right on his heels into the great, unknown beyond. Aya glared back at Harrister, hoping and praying his fear didn't show on his face --- well, on the half that still looked like a face, anyhow --- and tried to swallow down the wave of fear-driven nausea that suddenly gripped him. He didn't know how much he could take. He had to be strong, for Omi's sake. He couldn't scream.
"I'm gonna enjoy this one," Harrister whispered in a conspiratorial, yet slightly seductive, tone, leaning in toward Aya, until his chin grazed the redhead's ear. "The others … they were for him." He allowed his hand to trail slowly down the uninjured side of Aya's face and across his sweat-soaked chest, his touch deceptively soft and light, almost gentle. "You, though," he whispered, letting his hand linger for a moment against the swordsman's belly, feeling the subtle rise and fall of the well-defined muscles under his palm, "You're just for me. From the first moment I saw you that night … I wanted to break you, to make you beg. For what you took from me … for what you refused me, this time … this time, I'll really enjoy it."
It was the feather-light touch that told Aya, beyond a doubt, he was not walking away from this. If he had had any illusions of, somehow, managing to survive this ordeal, that deceptively gentle touch --- the touch of a lover, really, not of a madman bent on revenge --- dispelled them in an instant. It told him he was the Englishman's possession now, a toy for him to play with as he would and discard at will.
With a slight, almost imperceptible flick of his wrist, Harrister's touch went from gentle to cruel, as he brought the curved blade arcing upward, scoring a long, shallow cut along Aya's abdomen. It burned like fire - not so much when the blade was actually piercing his flesh … it was too sharp and finely honed for that --- but, when the cut was finished and his skin lay open, parted like butter under the slight pressure from Harrister's hand, the pain set in, throbbing and burning.
Aya choked back the moan that fought to escape his lips. This was a test cut. He knew that. It was fast and shallow --- Harrister's way of feeling out his limits. Aya didn't think he could hold out for very long without screaming, without giving Harrister some of the reaction he wanted, but he had to hold out for as long as he could. If he screamed now, Harrister would deem him "unworthy", "unfit", and kill him quickly. Much as Aya wanted this to be over with already, he had to keep the Englishman's attention focused on him for as long as he could, in the hope that he could come up with some way of getting Omi out of here. He had to hold Harrister's interest. He had to do it to protect Omi.
Harrister stepped back and surveyed his work. The cut was shallow, but inflicted on a spot gauged to bring maximum pain with minimum effort. He'd had enough practice to know where and how to cut his victims so they suffered without passing out or dying before he was ready for them to do so. They had to pay … all of them … and they couldn't pay if they didn't suffer. But, this one … this one was different. The others had broken at the first sight of the knives, had sobbed and begged for mercy with the infliction of the first, shallow wound. His thoughts wandered for a moment as he stood, transfixed by the sight of the blood seeping from his first cut. It bubbled to the surface, welling up for a moment at the edge of the wound, darkest crimson against purest white, a red bloom against snow, and then dripped sluggishly, down the swordsman's abdomen to soak into dark leather pants.
Harrister allowed his gaze to roam slowly, possessively, up the redhead's long, lean body: the pale, silky skin of his stomach and chest, marred by a network of scars marking the passage of long-healed wounds; the newest injury, inflicted at the edge of his blade, which left a smear of dark red against that pale background; the gaping, bleeding wound on the right side of the man's head, which had turned that side of his face into a useless, swollen, blue-black lump of flesh; the blood trailing lazily down his arms from the deep cuts caused by the handcuffs supporting his weight off the floor --- delicate, almost lacy, red tendrils against the backdrop of well-muscled limbs and china-white skin.
The Englishman allowed his gaze to rest on Aya's face, and he smiled at the predatory, feral glare, full of unconcealed hatred, disgust, and barely contained rage, spearing him from the redhead's good eye. The swordsman was bloodied, severely injured, probably skating on the fringes of death's black oblivion, and, yet, he wasn't beaten --- not yet. Harrister couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret at having to kill this man. They were two of a kind --- both predators, both deadly vicious. He had known it from the moment he had seen the redhead in the club, had known it the second this man had rebuffed his advance, the icy-cold anger sliding through his carefully constructed façade for just a second. But, it had been long enough for Harrister to recognize the first man, in a long time, he would consider an equal. And, like the predator he was, this man wasn't going to give in so easily. The Englishman smiled again. He had known this man wouldn't disappoint him. A wolf always knows and recognizes another wolf, even when it pretends to be nothing more than a dog.
Seconds ticked into minutes, which ticked into hours, which wound themselves out into an eternity and more, as the wheels of time ground to an agonizing, screeching halt while Harrister worked. One cut, then two, then three … until there were what felt like hundreds of seeping, burning wounds on Aya's torso and back, none of them life threatening, but each one painful enough to make the redhead wish for the unknown lurking just beyond the black veil crowding the edges of his vision. Aya's world tunneled down to this one space, cramped and crowded in by the huge, dark shipping crates that loomed over him like starving beasts waiting to devour his soul. And, within this small spot that, now, made up the entirety of his existence on earth, there was only the glint of hot light off polished metal, the slow, smoldering burn of a blade tearing through flesh and skin, the steady plip-plip of his blood hitting the floor beneath him.
Harrister didn't talk. After his initial taunts, he bent his whole will toward just one thing --- breaking his prey. Aya wished for the taunts, humiliation, and mocking. He had come to expect it from his enemies, especially when he was at their mercy, and the silence that grew and festered around them, until it became like a living, putrid thing, was unnerving, perhaps even more so than the mind-numbing pain screaming from every part of his body. With each successive pass of the knife, the cuts deepened, became longer and less hesitant, as the Englishman's resolve solidified. Aya prayed for his body to shut down, for the ability to feel no pain, even if it meant his death. That would be all right with him, as long as it meant this whole ordeal would, finally, be over.
At least, he thought he prayed for it; his mind had stopped functioning at even the most rudimentary level. Now, it was as if it had decided to step out for a while, and watch the show. He had the disembodied sense of watching his own reflection once more, although, this time, it felt less strange, more … comfortable. He was pretty sure that was a bad sign.
Harrister, arrogant asshole that he was, denied Aya even the tiny relief momentary unconsciousness would bring. The dark-haired man knew what he was doing, knew exactly where to place his cuts for maximum pain without giving his victim the relief passing out or dying would bring.
Finally, Aya couldn't take it any longer, and he screamed. The sound pounded and reverberated throughout the metal building, an inhuman, almost unearthly, banshee wail. Everything he'd been holding inside --- all the hatred, all the rage, all the fear, all the pain, all the regret, all the grief --- poured out of him and into that scream. It rocketed around the room, bouncing from crate to crate, shaking the walls, and echoing back again and again and again, until it sounded like a hundred screams, and then a thousand. And, underneath it all, Aya could hear Harrister's soft laughter, the satisfied sound of a man who has finally tasted triumph. That sound … the soft, subtle laughter carried along upon the wave of his pain … told Aya he had lost. Harrister had won. He had broken.