Title: Pain
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: Lucivar
Prompt: 071. Pain for
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50_darkficsWord Count: 893
Rating: PG-13 at least.
Author's Notes: It was a bad day. Lucivar's been punished once, but there is a second punishment...that of the self. Warnings for self-injury, implied rape, and a lot of potentially disturbing stuff about torture.
Motion was not a cure for worry, but it did help.
So Lucivar paced, even though his legs ached and his soul ached more. The darkness here was oppressive, the stench of despair and rot heavy in the air. The air moved sluggishly, seeming to caress his skin, making him shudder and his flesh cringe. Today had been a bad day, he considered, pausing for a moment and closing his golden eyes, face taut. Perhaps the worst for a while. Killing the bitches did have penalties, but it was hard to think of pain when you were riding the killing edge and dosed to the breaking point with that vile drug safframate. It was only after he’d sliced her to pieces that they’d managed to break down the door…and half-mad by then, he’d nearly disemboweled a few more of Zuultah’s men before the agony through the Ring of Obedience forced him to his knees, spasming as he lost control of muscles that held him upright. And after they’d subdued him, after they’d chained him to the columns, still mostly naked and struggling against the gag between his teeth, then the punishment truly began.
Lash after lash striping his chest, his legs, his thighs as another witch, grinning, sent throbbing bursts through that damned ring. He snarled and hissed and fought, but there was nothing he could do as they sat and watched and laughed, sipping their cool drinks as the sun overhead drew higher and beat down on his head. And when he was exhausted from fighting the lash and the bonds, they offered him water. He knew what it was, but he could only drink anyway and howl with rage when they tightened the bonds and resumed their torture, the lashes softer but far more brutal as they tore open his sensitized skin and set his nerves afire and he couldn’t hold back the screams, begging for mercy or relief or anything. They let him go and he collapsed to the floor, limp, exhausted, but still blazing with the effects of the safframate.
They laughed as they used him, laughed and laughed as they ran their hands over his trembling, bleeding chest and he screamed with agony beyond imagining, his wings painfully pinned beneath his sprawled, restrained body.
Yes, it had been a bad day.
But there had been worse…there had been longer.
At least the safframate had worn off…the pain from the lashes was now endurable, and they had given him something to help the healing process. It wouldn’t do to have their pleasure slave too marred. The real ache was in his soul, staring east toward Chaillot, the place where he longed to be and could not.
A soft snarl stopped in the back of his throat. He longed to contact Daemon, to ask him about her, to drink in even a feeble description of the dream they shared from this distance – but he could not. He could only draw attentions to them both – attentions that might be deadly if Dorothea got nervous. And so he waited, and begged, and screamed.
Weakling.
He bent over and squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the jerks of pain that movement caused, and bit his tongue hard. He uncurled his hands and found the deep cut on his side in the soft flesh between ribs and stomach muscle. He gritted his teeth and dug his nails into the wound, followed by his fingers, peeling back skin to expose raw, red flesh, blood starting to flow again. Breath hissed through his teeth, but he kept silent, pressing his nails into the exposed tissue, blood running down his fingers and dripping from his knuckles, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he took the pain and savored it, the soft sound of his blood dripping on stone comforting.
Coward.
He thought of Jaenelle, and of Daemon, pleaded with the Darkness and the blood on his fingers that she would live, that he would protect her, and that someday he would live to see her again…his shoulders spasmed as his fist contracted reflexively, digging the nails into undamaged muscle. The scream boiled up behind his teeth, but he fought it back, forced it back into his lungs, his nostrils flaring wildly, refusing to loosen his grip, to give himself any mercy.
Gutless prick.
At last the fire in his side began to lessen. He unclenched his teeth and let out his breath in a shuddery hiss, slowly unclenching his fingers and removing them from his own flesh. He held his bloody fingers to his nose and smelled the tang of it in the nearly freezing air. His breath came out in a cloud, but he hardly shivered, even dressed or undressed as he was. He held his bloodied hand to the sky, as he had every day for weeks. “Please, Darkness,” he whispered in a hoarse voice. “Please keep her safe.”
Ritual completed, he slumped in a corner of his cell, exhaustion taking hold of him and the sick knowledge that another day awaited him tomorrow – a day of pain and humiliation. But he would learn – he would learn to accept the pain and embrace it…he was a Warlord Prince. An Eyrien Warlord Prince, no matter what the records said. He would not beg any longer. He would be strong –
He would be faultless for his Queen.
Title: Cut Short
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: Karla, Morton, Uncle Hobart
Prompt: 036. Never for
50_darkficsWord Count: 1,658
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: There's nowhere to get away from them...them with their greedy eyes and their touching hands. Warnings for pedophilia, child molestation.
Karla huddled deeper into the closet, knees drawn up to her chest and trembling. It was dark and safe and cool in this little corner of a room where nobody came anymore. Nobody dared. She allowed herself a small whimper and clamped her hands on her thighs, nearly hard enough to bruise, fury and fear tangled almost too closely to tell which was which.
Damn them all. If she were stronger – if she knew more then she would give them nightmares for the rest of their lives. If only Morton were here – but then, it was better that he wasn’t. If he tried to protect her…she clenched her fists again, digging her nails into her palms. She would not lose Morton, the only family she had left after that “accident” a few months ago.
The first time she’d looked at Uncle Hobart she’d been too stunned, too shaken by that unfathomable loss to register the look in his eyes as he touched her shoulder, her knee, her face, “comforting” her. But now, when he was everywhere, always touching her skin or her shoulder or her neck, his eyes glittering with that horrible hunger that reminded her of a cat staring at a mouse caught in a mouse trap, waiting for it to breathe its last, she felt sick.
But it hadn’t been so bad with Morton here. With Morton here, he had only touched, only looked, and it had only been him and his slimy hands that she had to beware of, his kisses too close to her mouth that she had to dodge and squirm away from.
Morton was gone now; Uncle Hobart had sent him away to another court of a friend of his, just for a few weeks, he assured her when she found out, too late to stop him from leaving. No one had told her, keeping her too distracted with frivolous attempts to wrangle her into shopping trips or games with the other children of the village, the children terrified of her. At first she thought it was because she was a Grey Jeweled Queen and a Black Widow in training besides, but now she realized that that wouldn’t have mattered…it was Uncle Hobart they feared, and the fact that she was his niece. They knew to fear him.
“I will take care of you while your little friend is gone,” Uncle Hobart had said with a smile that showed too many teeth, stinking of peculiar eagerness. Karla twitched and fled, terrified and nauseated beyond reason.
And then it had begun. Every hour of the day, there were males, all around her, always holding her shoulders or touching her body, neck, face, wrists. That was bad enough that she began to try locking herself in, But Hobart refused to allow that, would wheedle and coax her out with soft voiced threats. She stayed out of her room. They were everywhere, always kneeling to her height, talking to her in patronizing little voices that she despised and touching…she fled when she could, but it wasn’t nearly often enough, and wherever she ran to it only seemed there were more of them with their cold, hungry eyes.
The first time one had touched her neck for just a little too long, Karla thought it was an accident. After that she tried to twitch away, but they would hold her still, often capturing her with both hands, caressing her hair or her face and complimenting her eyes with a cheery smile that never changed the eagerness in their psychic scent. She gave up on trying to hide her revulsion and tried to pull away, but their grip would grow painfully tight, bruising her skin in places where the few women she saw would never see them. Then they shifted their touches, brushing her chest “accidentally”, running a hand over her hip for just a moment too long. Some of them, the nastier ones, began hugging her far too tightly or asking for kisses that she had to give under
She ate less and less, vomited up what she ate half of the time, was constantly nauseous. She tried not bathing, but nothing deterred them and Morton didn’t come back. The touches grew longer every day, more invasive.
She reached the breaking point when one of them scooped her up and said, “What a pretty little girl,” and kissed her on the lips without even the pretense of chasteness, his other hand creeping down to fondle between her legs.
She screamed and lashed out with feet and hands, punching his face and kicking at his groin. He dropped her with a howl and she fled frantically to the gardens, where there were fewer of them. It was not long before Uncle Hobart found her there, sobbing wildly and tearing at the grass, pulling it up by the handful, her icy blonde hair wild and tangled.
“Karla, Karla, Karla,” Uncle Hobart said in his smooth snake’s tongue voice. “Stop being so difficult. These men are all my friends…don’t you want to be friends with them?”
Karla shook her head, her mouth a tight line, refusing to say anything to him.
Karla froze, her mouth drying out.
“I thought you might see it that way,” said Uncle Hobart in a satisfied voice. “I think an apology is in order…for both me and our guest. Now give me a hug and a kiss, Karla dear.”
She didn’t even try to hide her revulsion as she embraced him reluctantly and kissed his cheek. He just chuckled. She walked stiff backed into the house and apologized curtly before fleeing to her rooms and locking herself in, sobbing helplessly.
*Morton, come back,* she pleaded, and once, *Jaenelle? Jaenelle, where are you?*
She found the rooms the next week, fleeing the crowds of men with their hot hands and hungry eyes. It was silent in the corridor, and when she came to a closed door she tried it, hoping that it might be open, a new place to hide. It was. A slight tingle came through her palm as she opened the door and stepped inside. In a moment, she realized what this must have been.
A Black Widow’s study, and there had been only one Black Widow who ever came to this house – her mother. She shivered a little and moved further into the room, touching the dust-encrusted jars, opening cabinets.
The room became her secret. It seemed that no one else could come into it, for which she was grateful, and the closet was small and dark and smelled of her mother, a comforting, safe, smell.
Jaenelle did not come for weeks, but it seemed that sometimes when she was in the room, touching the spidersilk that could be woven into tangled webs, she could almost hear Jaenelle just beside her.
But it wasn’t enough to always get away from the men. This evening she had been wandering the halls at night in her sleep-shift, unable to rest, when he’d found her.
He’d grabbed her arm and dragged her into a hallway, his hands touching all over and caressing and making her sick as he kissed her face and neck over and over again, his hands holding both of her wrists so that the bones creaked and whispering in her ear about everything he was going to do to her, everything he was going to make her do –
“They all want first chance at you but it’s me who’s going to get you, you little bitch.”
She struggled, trying to scream around the invisible gag shoved between her teeth, trying to kick and thrash away when she felt the quiet surge of power behind her and the man’s eyes rolled up as though he’d been poleaxed and he went limp, She tore free and ran blindly down the halls, sure that any moment he would be following, her wrists bruised and tender all the way around where he’d held her, trembling wildly and sick to her stomach –
She found her way to her mother’s room and wedged herself in a closet, trembling frantically and rocking back and forth. “Nevernevernevernevernever,” She muttered to herself. “Nevernevernever-“ And sometimes she thought of their hands and their mouths and what he had said:
They all want first chance at you.
And whimpered. This time she was safe, this time, but next time…a broken witch is a complacent witch. Wouldn’t
The door creaked and opened. She froze, her stomach heaving with blind terror.
“Karla?”
That voice, that delightfully familiar voice.
“Morton.” She breathed, and she was hardly aware of how she made it into his arms, half crying, half gasping, squeezing the air out of his lungs. “Morton, I want you to do something for me,” she said, her head buried in his shoulder.
“What?”
“Cut my hair,” she said fiercely. “Cut it short. I don’t want long hair anymore.”
He stared at her, but he was already nodding. “Okay, I’ll ask Uncle –“
“No!” She said, nearly a scream. “No, no, don’t ask him. Just do it yourself – I don’t care how it looks.”
He paused. “Karla?”
“Just do it,” she snapped, stepping back and clutching her upper arms. Never never never.
He nodded slowly and opened his arms for another hug. She stepped into it without thinking of hesitating.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she murmured thickly.
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