it won't give up, it wants me dead; goddamn this noise inside my head [closed]

[lottawork]

[ooc: this thread will likely be...very unsettling. It will involve interrogation, and probably torture. Tag-specific trigger warnings to follow.]

He has not slept in days. Presumably. The uniform nature of the lighting has made it difficult to determine, and he has never excelled at temporal sequencing. He has paced and scrutinized every corner, restless hands skimming the walls of his prison and curling around the edges of his arms and pushing through the tangling disarray of his hair to press back the sensation of something crawling and skittering and itching and hypodermic that has burrowed beneath, rooted below skin and below bone.

The pressure of palms against walls cannot tether him, and the drag of nails over his own skin does little but lend tiny, convulsive tics of his head to his nervous repertoire. Exhaustion has been seeded into every shift of his gaze, every weary, protracted blink. His eyes rake the air in scattered repetition. Prolonged tension is difficult to sustain over a period of days; even more difficult when sustained in conjunction with the grating mindlessness of fearful anticipation.

He trusts Fring will not keep him waiting for much longer.

The accuracy of this prediction is not a comfort.

The rasping scrape of metal over metal as the bolt slides back is the exchange of one form of relief for another form of mounting panic. Any efforts to appear dull-eyed and lifeless would be utterly worthless - he would not insult Fring with an obvious act, not when he has made no previous attempts to disguise his agitation.

In the absence of all other comforts, Rush may at least take solace in the warped form of release.

It is poor consolation.

The door swings inward in a heavy, gliding arc.

Comments

[mr_fring]

First the light is switched off, leaving Rush illuminated only by the harsh hall light. There are two men he will not know, prison guards. One is carrying a metal chair, which he sets heavily in the middle of the room. The other takes Rush and moves him, sits them down, holds him still while the first man cuffs him in place.

Gus stands partially silhouetted in the doorway. Light glints off the wire rims of his glasses. These he takes off, cleaning them gingerly.

He motions for the two men to leave, which they do. The door remains open. Gus steps in a little further, casting a shadow across the man in the chair.

"Doctor," he intones with a little nod.

[lottawork]

He must not struggle. This is essential. He must not struggle and he must not show pain, even as fingers wrap over his arm in a too-solid, inescapable grip and force him to sit.

The cuffs snapped over damaged wrists are not unlike those of the neural interface chair.

The thought is both alarmingly comforting and wholly disturbing.

"Mr. Fring." His tone is level, clipped and polite as he acknowledges the exchange that verges on some ritualistic quality he cannot put a name to. He is utterly unable to mask the shallow, rapid quality of his breathing. His wrists flex once against the restraints, metal and unyielding, purposefully chafing the abraded skin.

[mr_fring]

Gus replaces his glasses and looks at Rush with a grim stare.

"I'd really prefer all this wasn't necessary," he says. He steps in a little closer, crouches down to look up at the ragged man's eyes. "I can be quite a reasonable man. We are both, I think, so capable. That is not an observation I make lightly."

He remembers too well his last and truest adversary, the too-bold, arrogant, repulsively proud Walter White, sitting opposite him and claiming to be a cautious man.

He was not cautious. Neither was he reasonable. These traits won in the end, Gus is still sour to admit.

But Rush is not like that at all. There are things about him, now that Gus has watched him work and seen him in his enivronment, that Gus finds appealing.

It makes this a shame. It also makes this far more worthwhile an endeavor than wrangling the troublesome White had ever been.

"This can be simple," he says. "I know you do not like me or my organization. I know that in spite of your impressive show of composure you would rather not have to endure this. Just as I would."

He tilts his head. Rush has no idea of his origins and this is good. In his home field talking is the sin of sins. But what do either of them have to lose here? What really?

"Would you take some advice?" he says. "Do not throw yourself under any bus for anyone here. You're still so new. What do you stand to gain, really?"

He searches tirelessly even as he speaks. There is a lot beneath Rush's worn features. Fatigue, fear, animalistic anger, the expected ingredients; but there is something else too, something he didn't expect to see. Resignation. Expectation. As though this is all familiar.

This man has been tortured before.

"There are two things I want to learn from you, Dr. Rush," he says, straightening up. "Your intentions regarding this organization, and the whereabouts of Iman Asadi." He unbuttons his jacket with a light touch of a finger and rests his hands on his hips, casual, unconcerned. "Start wherever you'd like."

[lottawork]

Fring examines him with a calculated, unnerving equanimity, approving and evaluative. This counsel serves one or both of two functions - a genuine peace offering, an extended hand with which Fring could potentially drag him from the governmental confinement of his own making, or a simple means to a swift end. Both options, Rush finds, are equally plausible. The man is an even plane of self-possessed pragmatism with an unshakeable core. He is someone with a fixed objective, capable of clawing and crawling and scaling the finely-etched bureaucratic ladders to that end.

This will not be the brutal, raw efficiency of an electric current applied to tensing, writhing, buckling muscle. This will be done with patience and careful methodology.

Rush smiles, thin and sallow.

"I'd rather die," he says conversationally, unflinching, refusing to scrape away the fine layer of civility despite the deepening, blazing, too-intense gleam to his fixed stare. The fact that they have turned to him, must interrogate him with his level of proximity and care, implies he is their sole resource. Their primary commodity. Too valuable to simply be destroyed, swallowed whole by a shadowed organization larger than itself. It is an assumption he has unapologetically examined and seized, addressed with a challenge put forth in dismissive triplicate.

[mr_fring]

Gus nods as though the response does not surprise him. "Perhaps you would," he says. "That is certainly possible. But there's time yet. You might change your mind."

It's equal parts taunt and prediction. Rush might be well steeled against this, but Gus is an old hand at getting what he wants.

"I think I understand why you both wanted to join ROMAC," he says, keeping up the conversational tone. "You both wanted resources, isn't that it? To use our facilities to further your own goals." That in particular is a little bit of a sticking point. A little too familiar.

"Did you think we would simply allow that to continue?" he says. "Did you think we wouldn't notice?"

[lottawork]

He observes a patch of nondescript gray wall, projecting false disinterest as Fring tests his waters and puts forth his not-entirely-inaccurate inquiries.

Rush rolls his head to one side with a calculated apathy redolent of a faint smile, though his expression is too locked, the corners of his mouth too stiff.

"I wasn't aware anyone that competent was in your employ," he remarks lazily. His hands compact into fists and a distant part of him congeals into ice; dispensing mocking running commentary is not likely to increase his chances of speeding up this procedure's conclusion.

One side of his mouth twitches.

"For allegedly finely-trained personnel they do seem frighteningly unobservant."

[mr_fring]

"Mm, I will admit most of them are not up to my personal standards," says Gus with good humor. "There's a great deal that would be different if it were up to me." He fixes his eyes on Rush, his smile and his falsified warmth cooling a bit. "But there were only two of you. Flying awfully close to the sun, I'd say."

He takes a step closer. It hasn't been very difficult to pin down the man's various discomforts - he is riddled with them, it seems - and so Rush may be able to perceive an incipient invasion of his personal space. Gus moves slowly, takes his time. Very, very patient.

"You must have known your little enterprise had an expiration date."

[lottawork]

The muscles in his chest tighten, painfully visible beneath the creases and lines of the shirt he has been wearing for days. It's possible that at one point it was white. He had not taken note prior to awakening in the mirror, and it has become difficult to tell now between the room's dimness and the unholy cast of the hall's pale light that throws his looming captor into shadowed relief.

There is likewise no possible way of torquing his reaction to Fring's subtle advance into anything less stark beneath the other man's unbearably incisive scrutiny. A muscle in his cheek jumps. His breathing catches, tense and shallow.

"There was no enterprise," he hisses. "Merely common interest."

[mr_fring]

"Common interest, indeed," says Gus softly, and steps closer still, brushing just past Rush, stepping behind him. Hovering close, just barely not touching him. "Though I would not characterize it as only that. An innocent shared curiosity. You had designs of your own, do not insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise. We are both intelligent men, are we not?"

He slides a hand onto Rush's shoulder.

"What did you wish to find?" he says, and for the first time he lets a little coldness seep into his tone. "Something to do with the rift, I presume."

[lottawork]

A shudder, uncontained despite his preparations for such a disregard of personal space, unravels from shoulder to spine. He has tensed. His wrists are grinding themselves into the metal in slow, silent agitation. Fring has an appreciation for the steady escalating build of mental distress, that of the intensely and subtly excruciating.

Of course he would.

The Lucian Alliance had not been capable of such psychological ingenuity. The others - had not considered the inherently damaging nature of such a tactic. Neither encounter had been personalized.

There's a finely-edged tenacity to the man that cannot be ignored. A nature not unlike Rush's own, astute and bladed and unwaveringly focused. He is not Colonel Young; he is not easily distracted by numerous tangents of varying relevance.

Rush's chin tilts in a jerky maneuver reminiscent of a back arched under extreme physical duress.

He could lock into uncooperative silence. He doubts the strategy would be workable for very long.

"Ask your superfluous security recordings, given that you're so interested," he says with a significant decrease in relative poise and control over the tremor to his tone. "I'm told your monitoring is very reliable."

[mr_fring]

"I am asking you." Gus tightens his grip, fingers hooking around Rush's narrow shoulder, digging unforgivingly into his collarbone. "Do you think I would waste my time asking questions the answers to which we already know? You are beginning to try my patience, Dr. Rush."

He slides his other hand into the doctor's hair, giving his a sharp tug back. "Do not test me. Tell me what it was you and Asadi were looking for."

Yes, their surveillance was stronger than the rogue scientists anticipated; nonetheless, there are flaws, these a bit of a sticking point with Mr. Fring. He has not been silent about this. And he fully intends on taking it out here, now, on this small, quavering, uncooperative man.

[lottawork]

There is no suppressing the startled, agonized hiss as fingers burrow unremittingly beneath his clavicle, or the sharp cry it contorts into as Fring yanks his head fiercely back. He has already begun straining anew, shoulders arching against the merciless press of metal, overtaken by pure and panicked instinct.

The pained crease on his brow deepens then smooths, eyes alight and teeth bared in a ragged, snarling, terrified grin.

"I think you're gonna blink first," Rush whispers. "Don't you?"

[mr_fring]

Gus hesitates for a breath, furious, startled, furious about being startled, for a moment only wanting to hear this smug Scottish bastard beg for mercy; but that would mean defeat, of a kind, and instead he loosens his hold and lets both his hands slip away gently.

"Your integrity is impressive, doctor," he says, circling back around to the front of Rush's chair, crouching down partway to get on his eye level. "But will that be enough?"

He reaches out and rests his hand on Rush's shoulder again, gentle this time, almost companionable; gives him a friendly little squeeze and straightens back up.

"It does not matter if I blink first," he says, stepping past Rush toward the cot. "I have patience and time and stamina. How long do you think you can last?"

He slips off his jacket, lays the garment out on the cot with all due care. He takes his time undoing his tie, draping that over the jacket, then unbuttoning his shirt with slow precision. This won't be as messy as the last time he had to dress down; the shoes can stay on. But he doesn't like to get blood on his good clothes.

No convenient outerwear to slip into this time. The trousers will simply have to be a loss.

Stripped down to an undershirt that is already sporting a few trace stains from some weeks ago, he walks back before Rush. He says nothing. Talking has not worked. Now Rush can wait.

[lottawork]

Head angled awkwardly, back of the chair digging harshly into the vertebrae of his neck, he catches briefly in his periphery the ripple of outrage, the merest fracturing of Fring's even composure. He has undermined his sense of control, however fractionally, he has unbalanced him to an unknown extent, he has gotten to the man somehow, can claim some meaningless success in verbal excoriation - he simply has no way of knowing if it will make any difference.

In all likelihood: no.

But it was, unsurprisingly, intensely satisfying. Even when taken in conjunction with the slight compression of fingers around his shoulder, the incremental swell in pressure that doubtless signals the core of the matter. The most integral part. The build toward what Fring has been building toward.

Rush swallows, lowering his head, eyes downcast. He scrutinizes the floor because it is habit, because it is distraction, because it removes some minimal shred of sensation of being the helpless thing he is. His stomach has clenched, a writhing, dying thing.

"I'm sure you would be surprised," he rasps with the last subtle edge of victory he likely has available to him. He closes his eyes in a blink approximating something painful and immediate, and finds he lacks the motor control to arrange his features into something appropriately challenging or defiant. He is tired and crawling toward an unreachable sense of triumph. It's raw and evident in the taut hunch of his shoulders, the downward tilt of his head.

It will have to do.

brutalization, graphic strangulation, references to murder, cutting

[mr_fring]

"I'm sure," he echoes softly, and with dutiful precision he lifts his arm and backhands Rush soundly across the face. Simple, unimaginative, but no less brutal for it, and leaving no time for recovery; his hand follows the arc to grip the man's neck, digging his thumb unforgivingly at the hinge of chin and throat, pressing his airways shut. He sinks in close, almost straddling the chair, and with his other hand he slips a box cutter from his pocket.

Knives were certainly available. But there is a certain appeal to the box cutter. Perhaps it holds a special place in his heart. But this time he will not be slitting the throat. He must be slow. And Rush will be kept alive.

Keeping his hand on the handle of Rush's throat, he cuts a thin, deep line down Rush's cheek: a clean slice through still-stinging skin.

tw: flashbacks, medical squick

[lottawork]

It's a stunningly, sharply, disappointingly uncreative tactic, the application of brute force and constricting pressure closing inexorably around his throat. For all his composure, for all his struggling to maintain his calm, the instinct is raw and immediate. He strains, pressing back, pressing away with no success, spine arcing in contained agony, pinned between metal and the unbearable grip that he cannot escape that he must escape that he cannot -

The cut, when it comes, is relief hissed out between clenched teeth.

"I've seen more auspicious beginnings," he whispers hoarsely, barely, between the relentless push of fingers and the slow decline in pressure, "as far as beginnings go."

He shakes his head fractionally, a tiny, insufficient defiance to the pained locking and tensing of musculature. The scrape of wrists against metal. Shoulders set in a contorting, tensing line.

The careful incision of a blade into his cheek is nothing, nothing, in comparison to the shrieking, fracturing release that had been the retracting of the excruciating voices from his mind so they could peel away his ribs, pry them apart to place something small and whispering and metal beside his heart.

Fring cannot touch him.

He's confident.

There is nothing of him left.

dehumanization, cutting, bone breakage

[mr_fring]

Gus smirks at that. "There is a time and a place for theatrics," he says, soft and lilting, in direct contrast with the way he cuts and cuts again, little decorative slices as though the man is nothing, an object to sculpt. He can be brutal when he needs to be, inelegant, blunt; it is rare but Rush only deserves his respect up to a point. To show respect now by making this interesting would be foolish. A step in the wrong direction.

He strikes Rush again, blooding his knuckles on the cuts he's made, and with the grace of a dancer he kicks the chair's leg enough to unbalance it, sending it and the man shackled to it crashing to the floor. Rush's head strikes the concrete with a satisfying crack.

"We will locate her either way," he says, stepping around him and insinuating his foot down on one of his wrists, a light pressure. "I would prefer it be sooner. There is a part of you that would prefer that as well, Dr. Rush, the animal in you that fears pain. You have your composure, your wit, your integrity, but that animal is still in you, wanting this to stop." He leans his weight into his foot, driving Rush's arm into the floor at a tenuous angle until he feels something snap.

"It is the animal in me that allows me to break you," he says, lightly, conversationally. "The man that prefers civility, but civility has already failed me. When men fail to behave as men with one another, then they become beasts." He leans down once more before stepping off. "Most of us are slaves to our natures, one way or another."

tw: more flashbacks, medical squick, some mild self-harm

[lottawork]

He had prepared for this.

He had known this was coming.

The careful cut of a blade through flesh is nothing, it is relative; the purposeful carving and the fading streaks against his cheek are slow and merciless and deliberate but it is relative; and the inevitable pitch and slam of his head against the floor's blinding solidity elicits the pain of impact and the angry clang of metal over concrete and the welling brightness of variegated discoloration scattering his vision briefly before he may grasp those diverging pieces and claw them back into something cohesive.

His head twitches minimally, dragging on the concrete, his hair a broken fan where it has not begun to stick to skin of his neck and his face by the flow of crimson.

He knows what Fring intends to do to him before he does. He telegraphed the intention. It was obvious. Because he knew. Because he had prepared for this. Because it was -

He cannot prevent the wrenching, broken cry ripped free of him so he makes no effort to silence it or abbreviate it, the wet, hoarse noise that he does not prolong and will not prolong for anyone's benefit, that subsides in ragged breathing, uneven and pained.

He had prepared for this.

It is exquisite.

It is unendurable.

But he had prepared for this.

The snap of bone, the fracturing of that delicate structure under stress, that -

- stretched over some cold and indistinct surface in silent agony as they edge skin back, insert something in the space between his ribs because he is aware of it because he is exposed and they pry and begin to shift those grating things apart with all the resistance and limitless hurt that is moving things that were not meant to be moved and he would be screaming right now, he would except there is still the breathing apparatus and also he is paralyzed and also they are watching him, eyes bright and malicious and curious and possibly deriving enjoyment out of breaking this tiny fragile thing that has refused to yield beneath the bladed intent of their collective minds, and he would take this, he would prefer this a thousand times to what he knows they will do to him when this is over and what they have been doing to him and he hates their design and he hates what they are and he hates -

And still his uninjured wrist drives itself into the metal, relentlessly tearing open the abraded skin until both wrists are raw and peeled and slippery, because Fring cannot touch him.

His head shifts on the concrete again, rolling back to look at the man standing over him, the man who increases pressure and wrenches from him another gasping, aching sound before moving away, and he dismisses any and all of the philosophical bullshit - it does not concern him, these unfounded assertions and baseless conclusions to Rush's nature when Rush's nature is absolute and untouched. The wheezing, erratic quality of his breathing and the unimaginable ache flaring at those separate points of him have made vocalization difficult, but he had prepared for this.

Instead he quirks his head and pulls it slightly to one side, as much as one is able to at the collapsed, awkward angle into which he has been forced, expression lifting in a pained half-smile as it hardens into something darkly and unmistakably amused. He smirks, blazing and derisive and destructive, and hurls at Fring with an unremitting edge, with a pointed, directed stare, as much spite as can possibly be conveyed in those calculated facial twitches. Because he is still here. Because he had prepared for this. Because Fring has, quite simply, no idea what Rush has historically made himself capable of, what results from attempting to open a ruthless and uncompromising nerve.