WHO: Alcuin and Scott. WHEN: Week 3. Saturday afternoon after this exchange. WHERE: Jannati City, in the apartment they share together. WHAT: Bad things happen to good people all the time – and when you're a slave, bad things happen more often. It's just hard to reconcile that fact with one's heart, that's all. RATING: Hard R for angst and mentions of extreme violence. STATUS: Closed, pending.
The cellphone creaked ominously in his hand, tiny stainless steel screws struggling to maintain their grip on the delicate faceplate that kept it all together, and he was distantly aware of just how hard his own composure had been pressed. What kept him together in the end, he didn't think he would ever know, but he managed to set aside the phone before the urge to smash it to pieces against the nearest wall formalized in his mind. The report of his friend's assault mocked him from where it sat on the kitchen counter, remorseless as the jackals who had tormented him so. Alcuin was glad of it when the screen finally went dim in a vain attempt to conserve its own battery life.
They both knew it was only a matter of time before the monsters they fed bit their hands. His scar stood as a gruesome testament to his own inexorable journey into the lion's mouth and back again. He wondered if his friend's master was merciful or, at the very least, shallow enough to spare him the phantom ache of ruined tissue. Even after so long it throbbed painfully beneath his hand at the merest suggestion of pressure, though it had been some time since he last noticed. Alcuin noticed it now, throbbing with sympathy as the palm of his hand slid along its jagged surface, pressing down until he could feel it against his bones.
Vitale had smiled, relieved, when the knife scraped along his ribs. What manner of monster, he wondered, had his friend's attackers been?