The only, miniscule bit of control he has in his pathetic life, Wren tries to bite his tongue, tries not to give Point the satisfaction of hearing him cry, of taking even more of what he wants from Wren, but Wren is weak, and he’s in so much pain. It had been hours. Hours he’d spent tied to this rotting mattress in this cheap motel room. The blood, tracked down the inside of his thighs, has yet to even dry when Point pushes back inside him and Wren screams into the sheets. He wishes he could help it. He can’t.

“That’s it,” he croons. “There’s my good girl.” 

Not for the first time, Wren wishes this would kill him. He wishes he would bleed to death, or that his body would finally just give out. How much can the human body withstand, really? How much more life could Wren possibly have in him? 

It’s hard not to think about Silas. Point had told him he had died, and it wasn’t hard to imagine. Silas had been a liability for a long time. He was strong and he was violent. They couldn’t control him. It had always been only a matter of time before they decided his life wasn’t worth the lives of every person working in the district. But it was just as hard to believe, because Silas had died before. He died a lot. He died for Wren so many times that Wren couldn’t even count how many. And he always came back. 

It’s hard not to imagine him breaking down the door to the shitty motel room. Backlit by the neon glow of the seedy strip outside, he’d be a monstrous silhouette in the doorway. He’d rip Point off of him before he ripped him apart with his hands and his teeth. Then he’d pick Wren up, and he’d be so careful with him. So gentle. Always so gentle with Wren, the only person that had been since his very last day. Silas, the monster, the brute, was always so careful not to hurt him. He’d clean the blood from Wren’s skin and they’d get out of there. Maybe they’d finally get their chance to be happy. 

In real life, Silas is likely dead underground. He lived and died a horrible, bloodied life that nobody on the surface will ever know about. They won’t ever know something like Silas ever existed. The world will keep turning but Wren will never be the same. 

He hopes they get another shot. That they’ll find each other again in their next life. Wren was a good person when he was a person. Silas was violent, and he could be mean, and he’d killed so many people, so horrifically, but there was still so much goodness in him. He didn’t want to be a monster. All he ever wanted, all he ever tried to do was save Wren. And he tried again and again and again, no matter how many times he died for it. No matter how many times they tortured him to death because of it. That has to count for something, right? They’ve earned a chance to be happy together. They must have. 

In this life, the only part of Wren that doesn’t want to die is the part still clinging to the hope that Silas will save him. Silas always saved him. There’s that expression, whatever it is about death and taxes. Wren would have to argue it. Legally, he’s dead, so he isn’t paying his taxes. And legally, he’s dead, but for whatever reason, his bleeding, battered body just won’t give up. It won’t let him die. The only two guarantees in Wren’s life, since he’d been taken to the district, are that Point would hurt him, and SIlas would save him. How long does he keep hoping? When does he give up? 

It’s so much more than wanting to be saved. More than anything else, Wren misses him. Even if he couldn’t save him, even if he were just there with him, it would be enough. He misses the way his hand felt in Wren’s, rough with scar tissue but always so warm. He misses the rumble of his voice. The slant of his smile, dimpled, always crooked because of that scar at the corner of his mouth. He misses the way he would look at Wren, like nobody else ever had, like the world started and ended with him. He misses how carefully Silas would brush his hair for him, when he just couldn’t do it himself, and he misses the pleased noises Silas would make when Wren would do the same for him. 

Wren can’t imagine he’ll have a long life, as stubborn as his body might be, but if he got the chance, would he want to? If he were rescued right now, and he sent them down there to the district, and Silas really was dead down there, not a trace that he ever lived at all, what would he do? Could Wren live a whole life without him? He doesn’t even have a picture of him. How many years would Wren be able to remember that smile before the memory started to fray around the edges? How long would he be able to cling to the memory of the sound of his voice? 

Facedown on a soiled mattress in a filthy, pay by the hour motel room, Wren sobs so hard he would swear his ribs rattle against each other. For it, Point purrs against the back of his neck. 

“You’re being such a good girl for me,” he murmurs, breath warm against Wren’s sensitive, bruised skin. Still, it gives him goosebumps, the sickly, feverish kind. “You feel so fucking good.” 

In the very beginning, before Wren was brought into the unit, back when all he knew of the district was the inside of Point’s bunk, Point and his men had almost killed him. They hadn’t broken his pelvis, but shattered it. The nerve damage he’d received was permanent. He doesn’t remember much from this time, probably thankfully, but he knows Point had gone to Medic for help when it was clear Wren was dying. 

Wren hates Point for this almost as much as anything else. One of the most selfish things Point’s done, in the time Wren’s known him, was save Wren’s life. Why did he bother? Just to watch him die again, more slowly? Or was he truly just not going to ever let him go? 

When Point pulls out, it’s not because he’s done with him, but to turn him over again and onto his back. The tie at his wrists, a strip of gingham Point had torn out of one of Wren’s skirts, is pulled a little tighter and Wren bleeds a little heavier down his arms. With a grin, Point folds Wren’s legs against his chest and holds him there as he forces himself inside him again. “Eyes on me, cowgirl,” he tells him lowly. “I want you to look at me when I come inside you.”

Wren wants to claw both Point’s eyes out with his fingernails. He still remembers the way Hal had screamed as Vineyard had carved out his eyes — has never been able to forget it, in fact, still hears it sometimes when he dreams of the district — and he wonders if Point would scream the same way. He likes to think he would. 

“That’s it, baby,” Point groans. Wren is bleeding so much he can feel it soaking through the already filthy sheets beneath him. It will stain. This mattress will never forget what was done to him. “I love when you look at me like that.” 

Before knowing Point, Wren never would’ve thought it possible to hate anything the way he hates him. Sometimes, he thinks of his wife, waiting at home for him. Could she really have no idea what her husband is truly like? Sometimes, he hates her, too, just for being able to love something like him. She let him name their fuckin’ baby after Wren. If ever he gets away from Point, if he survives this, that lady owes him a fuckin’ apology. 

Point takes him by the jaw. He doesn’t let Wren look away, holding eye contact as he comes inside him again with a rumbling groan that makes his skin crawl. “That’s it,” he murmurs, so low it makes Wren’s hair stand on end. “Take it all. I know you can take it. There’s my good girl.” 

Wren doesn’t wanna die in a shitty hotel room, not really, but he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep living like this. As long as he’d been in the district, all he’d wanted was to get out, to get to the surface again, to live above ground. And now he’s here, and all he wants is to go back, to be where SIlas is. Now he’s here, and he’s never been so alone in his life. 

He closes his eyes tightly as Point pulls away again, but of course he’s not finished with him yet. Of course Wren can’t catch a break for even a second. He doesn’t even get time to catch his breath. 

Point doesn’t unknot his wrists but he unties him from the slats in the headboard. As he does, he says, “now come here and suck it clean, cowgirl.” 

Wren doesn’t open his eyes. He thinks again about how good it would feel to pry Point’s eyes from their sockets with his thumbs. “I don’t want to.” 

Point snorts. “When do you think I started to give a fuck about you want?” He asks, but it isn’t really a question. “I said come here and suck yourself off my cock.” 

“Darren,” he says, and surprises even himself with how weak his voice sounds, how broken, “please. I’m so tired.” 

His eyes are still closed, so he doesn’t see Point’s fist pull back but he feels it when he cracks it into his mouth so hard he chips one of his teeth. “I don’t give a fuck how tired you are,” he snaps, and when Wren’s eyes fly open, he’s leaned in close, too close. “You’ll do whatever I fuckin’ tell you to do. If I tell you to suck my cock,” and he says this part like a warning, low and lethal, “you open your mouth and you suck my fuckin’ cock. Y’hear me?” 

Despite being born and raised in Texas, despite having a devout Southern Baptist mother, Wren had never been an overtly religious person, but he would be lying if he said the whole idea didn’t just seem laughable to him now. Wren had been a good person. He wasn’t a saint, but he’d been a good guy. If there was a God, like his mother so confidently believed, if there was any version of one out there, how could they let something like this happen? How could any God just sit by and watch this? 

“What are you gonna do?” He asks, and his voice breaks. “Kill me?”