|
"100 Themes Challenge"Written By: The Plotting Housewife Disclaimer: Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sotsu
and associated Parties. This work is written for pleasure not profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Endless Waltz AU, Prisoner of War, Torture,
Psychological Trauma, Mutilation, disturbing themes, mainly torture
and noncon as well as non-graphic mutilation, so if you're easily
squicked, this is probably not your kind of story. Pairings: 3x4 Summary: Quatre is captured by Dekim Barton’s forces and forced to endure a series of brutal interrogations. As each method fails to make him talk, Dekim decides the punishment must fit the crime. Prompt for this fic is Silenced. "The Many Sounds of Silence"
Treize Khushrendada may have been a murderous megalomaniac, but he’d never been a sadist. The same could not be said for Dekim whose sociopathic psychosis and no doubt narcissistic personality were the catalyst for unspeakable treatment of prisoners of war. For high profile and high-risk prisoners like Quatre, the tyrant would often be present during interrogations, though Quatre was hard-pressed to call it anything less than torture. Captives like himself who possessed invaluable information underwent grueling and oftentimes grisly procedures specifically designed to invoke as much psychological trauma as possible which served two purposes. The first was obvious. Soldiers like Quatre were particularly resilient with almost superhuman levels of physical and psychological endurance. Soldiers like Quatre could take a bullet, or three and keep on fighting without barely batting an eye. They were extremely difficult to break mentally so it required more invasive methods to be able to start dismantling the metaphorical fortress around their minds, built from years of training and discipline. The other reason was the simple fact that the deranged old bastard got his kicks from it. Quatre knew that not only because his Space Heart told him. It was also in the cruel gleam of Dekim’s black eyes and the sinister curl of his lip every time Quatre’s stoic facade faltered. Dekim missed nothing. Not even the barest hint of pain on his victim’s face slipped past those soulless eyes. Quatre was beaten bloody and when that didn’t work, he was hooked up to a rather draconian looking machine and shocked into incoherence. With each failed method to get Quatre to talk, the torture became progressively worse. Dekim drew from a seemingly endless well of brutal and creative tactics, constantly adding another element of heinousness when the previous one was unsuccessful. Quatre was struck with small chains until his skin broke and bled beneath the blunt force. His head was submerged under ice cold water until the last possible second when drowning became inevitable, then he was let up just long enough to gasp for a single breath before he was pushed back under again. He was deprived of light, sound, sustenance, and sleep, then forced to listen to the same song played on a loop for hours on end. The tune seemed a merciless taunt, the lyrics almost mocking him for his defiance. It could have just been the result of a taxed mind being pushed to its limits, but he couldn’t shake the sense of foreshadowing he experienced when he once again heard the familiar first strums of an acoustic guitar. So far, nothing had made him talk and Dekim was beginning to get frustrated. When their attempts at physical and psychological interrogation failed, they advanced into the more reprehensible territory of sexual torture. Tiny electrodes were connected to his genitals, attached to thin wires that led to an electrical box with a switch. He’d bitten straight through his tongue as the pulses of white hot electricity shocked his privates, but he did not scream, or utter a sound, much less give up his secrets. He was sodomized, first by billy clubs and other inanimate objects, and then raped by the guards in full view of Dekim and his team of interrogators. And still, he did not talk. “Okay, son,” Dekim hissed, grabbing Quatre by a handful of dirty blond hair. “I don’t know how you, looking like you’d blow away in a mild breeze, managed to outlast the most hardened of soldiers, but I’m impressed by your endurance.” Quatre only stared dazedly back at him, filthy, exhausted, and half-starved, but still unbroken. Long after even the strongest of men, twice his size and age, had given in, Quatre did not budge. “And by the look in your eyes, I can see that it won’t matter what I do to you. You still will not tell me what I want to know, will you?” Dekim waited for a response he’d already known would never come and grinned like a shark at the prisoner. “So, I’m going to do you a favor. Since that tongue of yours is of no use, I’ll be taking it off your hands for you.” Before Quatre’s sluggish brain could even fully register what he’d heard, the guards were pinning him against the table and holding his head immobile. He clenched his teeth, desperately trying to keep them from wrenching his mouth open, but when the just the right amount of force was applied to his pressure points, he opened up on reflex and that was all the time Dekim needed to grab hold of his tongue with a pair of metal tongs. They’d cut most of his tongue out, leaving behind only the bloody stump of the base. His defiant silence was now an enforced one. Since he’d refused to tell them what they wanted to know, they made sure he could never speak again. After that final savage act, they left him in his cell to die. Except he didn’t die. Somehow, even after nearly two weeks of no food, or water, he was found by a rescue team once Lady Une had finally sniffed the enemy out. Half of the prisoners were already dead, the rest, Quatre included, only one step above that. Trowa had to be restrained and sedated after finding him naked and wasted away on the dirty floor of his cell in a puddle of blood and filth. Quatre’s barely cognizant brain vaguely recognized the other boy and his face burned with shame, knowing how wretched he must look. He could feel both the blood and dirt caked all over his face and chest as well as dried on the bruised skin of his inner thighs, but he’d had no way of cleaning it off. His head spun queasily as he was peeled off the floor and rushed to the facility’s infirmary where Dr. Po worked tirelessly to bring him back from the brink of death. For a while, it was touch and go. Trying to get fluids and nutrients into a body that had already begun to shut itself down to preserve only the most vital organs, was no easy task. The tearing he’d’ experienced as a result of the violent sexual assaults was repaired and he was given a cocktail of drugs for the pain and to cure any sexually transmitted pathogens. The reattachment of his tongue was a lost cause. Too much time had passed. But Dr. Po did her best to assure him that he was not without a means of communication. Thanks to technology, there were devices he could wear on his wrist and with a quick type of a few keys, the device was able to speak for him. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing. He could no longer swallow properly so solid foods were not an option, though Dr. Po insisted that there were therapies that could help him with swallowing which would eventually allow him to eat and drink normally. For now, he was stuck with intravenous fluids and a feeding tube, and for communication, he was given a pad of paper and a pen. He finally got to see Trowa once he was cleared for visitors and that was probably the hardest part. The broken and guilt-ridden look in his eyes was almost too much to bear, but he was Quatre’s rock throughout his recovery and beyond, insisting even when Quatre had his doubts, that nothing between them had changed, or would ever change. Returning to a sense of normalcy after such a horrifically traumatizing experience was a daunting task, but one Quatre was determined to accomplish. Though he could no longer speak, he would not be silenced. The only true form of silence was death of the mind and in that regard, Quatre had defeated Dekim as the damaged, but persevering victor.
~ * ~ |
