He’d been a pillar once. Strong and proud, with a backbone of steel strong enough to hold up the sky. He had been a symbol, a dispenser of justice and its personification, the one who had proven that even the mighty were subject to the laws of their people, beholden to the interests of the…
Category: Whumptober 2023
No. 19: “I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
Perhaps they could have gotten away with it. If they had been a little cleaner, a little more secretive… perhaps he never would have known. Perhaps he would have stayed by their side, following willingly, still considering them the final incarnation of Mother’s will within the colony. Perhaps. Perhaps. But they hadn’t been. He had…
No. 18: Blindfold | Tortured For Information | “Hit them harder.”
There was nothing left that they could do to him and so: Kajj laughed. “Hit him harder.” Bright red lit up his blackened vision, bubbled copper within his throat. But still he laughed. The pain was nothing. His body was already a cracked and crumbling shell, full of aches that could never quite fade. Pain…
No. 17: Collar || “Leave me alone.”
He could feel it sometimes, when they looked at him. The pull of the leash around his neck. The creak of leather. The clank of chains. Good boy.Good pet. He danced at the end of their rope for their amusement, bending to their will, obeying their Commands, no matter how much he wished to wheel…
No. 16: “Don’t go where I can’t follow.”
She was already cold when he found her. He still saw her now, sometimes, in his dreams. He found himself walking that long dark hallway, again and again, knowing what awaited him at the end of it, but unable to force himself to turn back. This time, he always told himself. This time, I’ll be…
No. 15: “I don’t need you to help me I can handle things myself.” | Suppressed Suffering
“I don’t need your help,” the Elder buzzed at her, teeth flashing in her direction. Keir gasped and pulled her hands back, clutching the medkit to her chest and taking a few rapid steps backwards towards the relative safety of her designated resting room. His expression immediately softened, one large hand going to cover the…
ALT 7: Examination
He did away with the mirrors on his ship, dulled every metal surface. He dimmed the ablution chamber lights, turned every holostill with his own face off, unable to stand his youthful visage staring back at him from within the aging snapshots. But he knew, even without looking. He knew how his body was broken….
No. 13: Cold Compress | Infection
It was just a damn scrape. Teema had thought the words over and over again, had heard them from her foster mother’s own mouth when she had first walked back into the Tenny, arm trickling spirals of thick green blood into the air from the cut beneath her damaged vacsuit. Yilda had been through worse,…
No. 12: “I haven’t slept in days but who’s counting?”| Insomnia
Their shadows haunted him everywhere he went. He could feel them on the edges of his consciousness, catch the movement from out of the corner of his eyes. He had failed them. He was determined not to fail another. The warren was almost completely empty now, its seemingly endless halls stretching out and twisting in…
No. 11: Captivity | “No one will find you.”
When he finally opened his eyes, the overhead lights threw painful halos that pierced straight through to his skull. He hissed quietly, squeezing them closed again, the world lurching unsteadily with every small movement of his head. Awake… he was awake again. That meant… he must have been sleeping. But why…? He searched his memory…