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

[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.