(mostly) whump

CW: BBU/BBU-ADJACENT SETTING, LAWFUL SYSTEMIC ABUSE, CONDITIONING/DECONDITIONING

Taglist: @flowersarefreetherapy @gottawhump @pigeonwhumps @wildfaewhump

Bartlett House Grant -

Finch 1

Finch 2

Elise

Gray 1

So far, his experiences in the house suggested that it might really be happening, which made him excited to think about. Everything here seemed soft and safe, when he was able to look around and take notice of it. The temperature was just right and his clothes were clean and he always had enough to eat. Francis and Nathan were kind to him- they were his friends. Mistress looked after him and never raised her voice. Master had shared his name with Mikey, who now had two names.

It was just that he had thought... he had thought the surgery would fix his hands right away. If he was honest, he felt disappointed. He hadn't understood that it would take so long, or that they would hurt so badly afterwards. He didn't really feel better yet, not without medication, and that could only be taken at certain times.

This wasn't one of those times. In fact, despite all the pleasant things about the house, Mikey wasn't having a very good evening. He couldn't even pay attention to the movie Nathan had picked, which was too bad, because it looked good and it was about Dungeons and Dragons, which Mikey found slightly incomprehensible but knew Nathan enjoyed. He would have liked to understand it better, himself, just to please Nathan.

But he couldn't pay attention for more than a few minutes at a time. The medication had worn off and the ache in his shoulder stretched deep down into damaged muscle and bone. His left arm cramped and there was no way to move it to ease the muscles.

He tried rocking back and forth to see if that would help, which it sometimes did. Even if it didn't make the pain better, it was comforting. But with this stupid, heavy cast holding his shoulder still, it was harder to move and wasn't quite the same.

At least he could move his right arm at the elbow, to shift it when the ache became too much to bear. Mikey adjusted his throbbing hand, sighing at the pain of moving it without some kind of support underneath it to take the weight of the bandages. They felt so heavy over the broken fingers and the pain when he had to lift the soft cast was terrible.

They had given him a pillow to rest his hand on, and that helped a little bit, if he didn't have to move. And sometimes Master or Mistress would help him lift his hand if they noticed him trying to move, but they didn't always see in time. He wished he could ask for a sling, like he used to have for his arm, but he didn't know how.

Mikey put his arm back down on the pillow. Mistress promised he would have more medicine before bed. All he had to do was make it through the movie. He sat quietly for a few minutes before another problem presented itself.

His face itched. He hadn't had a shave since before the surgery and it was starting to really bother him. Normally, Francis or Master helped him with it when they brushed his teeth. But he had been doing everything from the couch lately, including having his teeth brushed and spitting into a cup, and they seemed to have forgotten. Or maybe they didn't think it was that important? After all, shaving was just a question of looks, not like tooth brushing, and they hadn't been bothering to comb his hair, either (but he didn't mind that- it was almost too short to comb, anyway, and besides, it didn't itch).

The prickling feeling along Mikey's jaw was going to drive him up a wall, he was pretty sure. The closest he could get to a solution was going to cause other problems, but... finally he couldn't stand it anymore.

Mikey lifted his right hand painfully, wishing someone would notice and support the bandages for him. They didn't and he gritted his teeth as he lifted it so that his elbow was on the pillow and his hand was in the air. That helped, a little, and it put his face within scratching distance.

He leaned his hand toward his face and stuck his head out as far as it would go, rubbing his chin back and forth across the bandages and wincing as it put pressure on his hand. It didn't help a lot, but it helped a little.

"Mikey?" Nathan asked. "You okay?"

Mikey made a considering face, trying to figure out how to tell Nathan what he was doing. He settled for tapping his fingertips against his face and moving his hand back and forth, as if scratching.

"Your face itches?" Nathan guessed. He usually didn't have to guess but, to be fair, this was a pretty obscure thing to communicate. Mikey nodded.

"Sorry, man. Do you, uh, do you want me to scratch it?"

Mikey nodded, slightly desperate, and Nathan leaned over, laughing slightly as he gave Mikey's jaw a firmer scratch.

"Your beard's growing in," Nathan observed. "Do you want it like that?"

Mikey shook his head, a little miserably. He tried to scratch his cheek with more force, but this sent a spark of pain down his wrist and he drew in a sharp breath.

"I'm sorry," Nathan said sympathetically. Mikey just shrugged. "Look, if you don't want to have a beard, we can probably do something about that. Hey, Tim?"

"Yeah?" Master had been absorbed in the movie and in sharing a bowl of popcorn with Francis, who had to be reminded that just because he had bumped Master's hand when they reached for a snack at the same time, that didn't mean that he was in the way. Mikey could tell that this still made Francis uncomfortable, but Master seemed to be pleased with how he was doing.

"I think Mikey could use a shave. He keeps trying to scratch at his face."

"Beard's kind of itchy, huh?" Master said. Mikey nodded again, wearily. He couldn't wait for his hands to heal. He wished he could just sign and tell them what he was thinking.

"And it's not like he can scratch it," Nathan reminded Master.

"Yeah, true enough. Sorry, Mikey. We can take care of that. You want to stop the movie and do it now?"

Mikey did not- surely it couldn't be much longer and he didn't want to ruin movie night for the rest of the house. He made a gesture and an expression that communicated he could wait. He tried to wave his hand in a nonchalant way, as if he wasn't bothered, but his injuries protested at this and he gasped again, pulling his arm back to cradle it against his chest as the pain washed up his arm.

"Oh, gosh," Tim said sadly. "I'm sorry, Mikey."

Mikey just shook his head and waited for the pain to subside a little.

"Two more hours until you can take your meds again," Mistress said, rubbing his back. "I know it's tough."

"Listen, when this is done- there's only about another twenty minutes- we'll give you a... sort of a spa day. Evening. How's that sound?"

It wasn't clear to Mikey what a spa day was, but it was clear that Master sounded eager to do it, so it would probably be fine and he nodded. Mistress kept her hand on his back for the rest of the movie, rubbing it in broad, slow, soothing circles.

When the credits finally rolled, Master got up and left the room. Mikey could hear him walk up the stairs and then back down, with his hands full of things. Mistress opened a small folding table and Master set down a razor, a can, a tube of something, and a matching washcloth-and-towel set that Mikey thought looked very fancy, being color-coordinated.

Then Master went into the kitchen and Mikey could hear water running. When the sound stopped, Master came back with a bowl of water that had steam rising gently off its surface.

"Okay," he said, sitting down next to Mikey. "Let's do this the right way. I think you deserve it."

Mikey was never sure he deserved anything, but it wasn't up to him to decide such things.

"Lean your head back- Angie, can you give him that pillow?" Mistress reached up to tilt his head forward and slide a thin pillow behind it. "Great, thanks. Now lean against that."

The pillow was soft and good support for his neck and Mikey closed his eyes.

"Yes, just like that. Perfect. Now I'm going to put a warm towel on your face- warm, not hot, okay?"

Mikey nodded and Master placed the towel over his chin, drawing the ends over his cheeks and pressing down lightly. It was, as promised, pleasantly warm. Mikey felt a shiver run down his spine but, for the first time, in a good way.

Master left the washcloth there just long enough for it to start to cool and then he lifted it off. Mikey didn't even bother to open his eyes.

Next, he heard a sound that he knew was the can of shave gel and after it came the feeling of cool foam being spread onto his cheeks. When the razor drew slowly up the side of his face, it occurred to Mikey that this would once have frightened him. The idea of a blade so close to his skin, even his throat- but not when it was Master. He trusted Master. Master really wouldn't hurt Mikey, he had proven that.

Mikey sat still and silent as the blade passed over his chin, his cheeks, his throat. Sometimes Master paused to rinse the blade in the warm water, and then continued his work, slowly and gently, until Mikey knew his face must be smooth again. It didn't itch, not at all.

Once that was done, the washcloth was back and cool now as Master wiped the last of the foam away. Then there was the towel, patting firmly but gently at his cheeks as Master dried his face. Last of all, Master put some kind of cream on his hands and massaged it gently into Mikey's skin.

Then he wiped his hands on the towel and sat back.

"Better?" he asked.

And it was.

Master List

Notes: Always happy to answer asks, and I'll do it in story format when possible!

Tag list: @pigeonwhumps, @cepheusgalaxy, @i-eat-worlds

@honeycollectswhump @taterswhump, @starfields08000

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@wildliferehabstudent @phoenixpromptsandstuff, @bloody-boyfailure

“May I borrow him for a second?” The administrator cleared her throat.

Δ-107 began to put his school supplies away. It was for him. He could tell it was for him. They always asked him. Sure enough, the hand was around his arm in an instant, yanking him up and out the door.

“107. You’re to subdue 058. You will do so non-lethally, and any superfluous damage you cause her will be inflicted on you in turn. This is a test of your precision, and of your judgment. Do you understand?”

He couldn’t tell if she was bluffing yet, so he had no choice but to take her at her word. He didn’t know he was valuable yet. He wouldn’t put anything past them.

“Yes’m,” he affirmed.

His skin was bruising within the grasp, and the other child was seizing on the floor.

~

A little short of two decades later, Delta sat curled up in the passenger seat of an old rebel ship, hiding his face in his hands. He took slow, measured, and desperate breaths to recover from the bout of hyperventilation that had overtaken him not moments earlier. It kept happening like this. He hadn’t been able to breathe normally all morning. Violent sobs kept coming to the surface, wracking his whole body. They came in like the tide.

In a waning, relative calm, he managed to speak through the wave to his companion. 

“…There’s no way I can go in there.” Delta’s voice was hardly more than a murmur. 

Lorelai Winn sat in the driver’s seat, her chair a good distance from the wheel so that she had space to stretch out. Her hair fell in auburn tresses about her head, and squished up against her hand as she leaned her elbow on the headrest. She was watching carefully, and endlessly patient.

Almost.

“You don’t have to,” she said gently. “You know I won’t make you. Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

But.

“But. This might be the only chance you have.”

But he had dragged her out here for this.

But he had risked life and limb to be back here.

But he’d left Galatea for this.

But he was here all the time anyway.

He could see its image on the back of his eyes. He kept seeing the hallways when all he wanted was to sleep. The past kept needling him, and now it was only a few meters away, and if he left it standing there he would never be rid of it, and he’d never forgive himself.

Delta felt absolutely sick to his stomach.

“It’s okay,” Lorelai soothed him without touching him. “Take all the time you need.”

He nodded weakly to show his understanding, and his gratitude for her patience. That was certainly something he’d never received here.

The crumbling shell of Beldam stood before them. Parts of its spires still stretched up above the trees, but most of it was grounded, misplaced and damaged. The walls wouldn’t have been very good for holding prisoners anymore. There was as much space as there was stone. Delta looked at the ruins of the once impenetrable fortress, and found himself oddly sedated by the sight of the decay. It was dying. It was dead. 

He hoped there was a kind of hell for institutions. He hoped the building itself would be punished.

But it occupied a different kind of afterlife.

Wearily, cautiously, Delta managed to extricate himself from the ship and stand upright on the forest floor. Lorelai lingered close by, but a few paces ahead of him. The unofficial custodians of the new space were perched out by their car, a bit closer to the entrance. Two young guys — psychonauts, ravers — were watching with an uncharacteristic reserve.

Delta felt a little ashamed to be seen by them. For a long time now, he’d been able to escape a gaze like that. He’d been comfortable in a novel anonymity. There was nothing like that here. They looked at him, and he knew they had seen everything.

But that was what he was here for.

~

Dr.Martino had him kneeling. Grains of rice were laid out in a rough and uneven layer, and they gradually embedded themselves into his sensitive skin. Likewise, Δ-107’s arms were stretched up above his head, straining the muscles long past the point of pain. He didn’t cry. He knew better than to cry, knew he’d be here all night if he did. All the hurt stayed inside of him instead.

Dress shoes clicked in a circular pattern around him. They could go a long time without talking — rather, he could go a long time without being spoken to, and that much condemned him to silence. He kept his eyes down, afraid to look at any authority figure — anyone — straight on. All he could hope for was that release would be granted soon, but he’d already resigned himself to the fact that it could take hours. He could believe it would take forever and that would still be easier than getting his hopes dashed on the rocks.

Finally, the doctor spoke:

“Tell me what you’re being punished for.”

Shame surfaced in him. They were always so good at making him feel small. He fought back to urge to cry again, and his throat felt so constricted he didn’t know if he’d even be able to speak.

“Talking back, sir,” he managed. Not I’m sorry yet, though he was. Don’t beg.

Dr.Martino gave a small hum of approval. He would draw out these moments as long as he could, while the grains were fully cutting into his student’s skin. Δ-107 had to breathe slower, and to steer himself towards patience. 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“You’ll follow the orders we give you. This is a rule, and you aren’t owed an explanation for it. You obey it whether you understand it or not. But since you seem to have so much trouble with it recently, I’ll enlighten you. We are not issuing them out of ignorance. We understand your abilities better than you do, on an empirical level. You don’t know better than us, and you’re not in any position to try and tell uswhat to do with you. I don’t want to hear you whining like that ever again.”

Δ-107 nodded. His arms were starting to shake from the exertion. He’d never been strong. He hadn’t meant to talk back, but he had, and what he meant was beside the point now. He just needed this to be over.

“Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

Please. Please.

“You can put your arms down.”

He almost collapsed on the spot. His limbs were fully numb by now, so that when given permission to stand, it took multiple tries to get to his feet again. It left a lasting ache throughout his entire body, but the worst was the pressure behind his eyes, the flood with nowhere to go.

~

“Uh, hey, man,” one of the ravers waved to him. “Name’s Alex. That’s Titus. Cool to meet you in person.”

Delta nodded, slowly regaining his ability to speak. Pleasantries. He had to at least get the ball rolling on the simple things, or else he’d never be able to talk about what he needed to. He was aware he was speaking a little too formally, and he could feel the traces of the imperial accent peeking through: “It’s nice to meet you too.”

Beyond that, Lorelai did him the mercy of facilitating.

“So the plan was to tour the ground first, then head back to the office to see the physical archives?” She clasped her hands in front of her. 

It became clear from how she spoke that she’d done her research too. She’d done it long before she even knew Delta was alive. That was…strange. He hadn’t thought he’d matter that much to her.

“Yeah. Yeah, we actually have some of the folders here in the trunk, if you wanted to look now. Or, uh, I think you’ve seen them before. I mean if he wants to look.”

Delta peered into the compartment he was referencing. It was absolutely crammed with yellowed papers, and they carried a familiar medicinal smell.

“I want to see the building first,” Delta said. 

He got the oddest sense that if he turned his back to it, if he let anything distract him from it, he would he putting himself in great danger. 

No, the space itself had to he dealt with.

Delta entered the threshold alone, by his own request. The whole clearing smelled vaguely of smoke, as if heralding some decades old disaster, but he knew it was likely just the remnants of a recent bonfire. There were a few spare beer cans littering the grass, and other remnants of that week’s party. To him, the space felt so haunted and tense that he could not imagine ever letting his guard down around it. He didn’t understand how anyone would be able to enjoy themselves with all that psychic energy surrounding them on all sides.

Here was the entryway. Here was the foyer. Here was the receptionist’s desk, and the security office, and the showroom.

He inhaled. The phantom touch of fingers traced his neck and his wrists. They were oversized. He’d been smaller back then. Here was where he’d met His Eminence, His Majesty. One of the buyers.

The floor was still intact in places, but the space had truly been gutted. Delta walked through the hall where the beds had been arranged, and found nothing waiting for him there but open air.

Much of the upper floors had been destroyed. Many of the stairs led to nowhere. Cautiously, Delta followed the ones he could anyway. So much of what he remembered — the labs and the classrooms — had been reduced to nothing at all. The rooms he’d once been tortured in were simply gone forever. If they were to be rebuilt now, it would not be the same. There’d be nobody to man them.

He slowly eased himself down from the ledge, back to the ground level. He felt just as hollow as his surroundings, just as haunted. Delta felt almost…sad for the building, sitting there in the still morning, rotting away. He imagined it old and toothless and lonely, and he could not help but feel pity for his old tormentor. 

Some of the tension in his body eased away as he moved back towards the exit.

“…You guys killed it,” Delta said, resting one hand on the archway.

The archivists looked at him with a kind of bemused guilt, like they were sorry but they didn’t know what for. Delta could relate to that.

“Uh, repoman took most of the furniture. We just got the files. And the drugs.”

Naturally. 

Something cold crept up his spine, and he felt the lure well before he could articulate it as such. Compelled, Delta began to walk around the perimeter of the institute. Lorelai and the others followed him at a distance. He heard them talking amongst themselves, talking about what had happened here, and the absurdity of it induced total vertigo within him. This had always been a private apocalypse.

Delta found himself in the backyard. His powers pulsed unwillingly, sending out their sonar signals throughout the cold earth, and his mind couldn’t take it anymore. 

~

All was dark. He was eight or eighteen or twenty three now and he didn’t even know his real name. Was he even a he? By most accounts it was an it. Under here, with the rest of them, it was all they. They were trying desperately to speak.

Δ-107’s hands were chained behind its back, and something stronger than it had just beaten it senseless. It’d been left here in the dark to process, so the trauma would have all the space it needed to sink in. Someone was trying to teach it something. Something was always trying to teach it something.

If you disobey, said the teeming voices from beneath the soil. If you fail, you’ll be just like us.

Hot tears ran down its face. It could only ever happen now in the privacy of total darkness. It didn’t know if it was alone in here. Had it been locked into a closet or into a coffin? Or was it just blindfolded? Were the hands touching it real, and if so, who did they belong to? 

Wave after wave of icy fear coursed through it relentlessly with the same rhythm of its heart as it prayed secretly, desperately for escape.

~

From the outside, it looked like a lightning strike in reverse. It rose up from the ground and struck the sky, and it coursed its way through him to get there.

Delta awoke to a cold cloth being pressed to his head. He was lying down across the backseat of the ship. It was darker out now, quieter. He could hear the faint buzz of cicadas, and it led to a temporal disorientation within him. The night sounded like it had when he was a child.

“There he is.” Lorelai was leaning over him. She swiped some of the hair away from his eyes. A very gentle frown worried its ways across her face. The little pockmarks where her diamonds had been plucked out stood out to him. Like some ravage of innocence. Delta groaned softly as he came to.

“Don’t try to sit up yet.” Lorelai’s hand pushed his shoulder back down.

“Yes, miss,” he muttered absently. It drew a sad coo from her, cry of the mourning dove. He looked to her more attentively to find that her eyes were tinted pink. She was upset.

“…I’m sorry,” he followed up, weakness still evident in his voice. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t know what had happened. He knew of the dream, if it was a dream, but he didn’t remember the moment he lost consciousness. The present moment gave no clues as to what had transpired beforehand.

Lorelai settled back into a lean, hooking one arm up by the headrest to support herself.

“I’m okay,” she said softly. “Just sad. Um. I never told you what happened the first time I went there.”

“You did. You said Paris freaked out.”

“I told you what happened to Paris. I didn’t tell you what happened to me.” The ghost of a smile graced her lips. “But it’s the same thing, I guess. The same thing that happened to you.”

Delta inhaled slowly. Out of the window, faint stars were visible against the darkening sky. He imagined an analog static across his voice as he spoke again:

“I thought I heard them. Or…that I could feel them. I think that’s what got me. I put too many feelers out, and I touched one of them by accident. There were so many bodies down there.”

He was ashamed. He’d touched a dead, rotting thing, and he reeled back with fear and disgust as if he’d been wounded. As if he was the victim here. He’d done it before, with the mutilated and maimed victims of the Castle and its outposts. Delta was such a selfish coward.

“I thought I saw them,” Lorelai said. “Or…someone’s face. Not the kids, maybe. It was something different.”

He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t.

“Am I allowed to sit up?” he asked.

“You feel well enough to?”

“Yes’m.”

“Ok. Go slow.”

He did. The dizziness kicked in a small wave, but he rode it out. Lorelai placed the cloth away into the compartment.

“We’re at the guys’ office now. You can see the files they managed to save. They should have all of yours. Are you good enough to walk?”

“Yes.”

“Good boy.” She helped him up out of the ship. Some of his paleness faded as the blood rushed back to his face.

The “office” was a work building, tucked away amidst the greenery along a grander stretch of gravel road. Delta spotted a highway in the distance. How far had the institute been from civilization? The distance had seemed impassable as a child. It was preferable to think of it as a place removed from time and space than it was so acknowledge that it had in fact been driving distance from the nearest town. That it’d been happening in someone’s backyard.

Delta half-limped his way to the entrance, where the two boys from earlier were sitting in swivel chairs amidst a space packed with books and paperwork. The same sharp, medicinal smell, almost enough to induce fainting again. He steadied himself.

“…I’m sorry you had to see that,” Delta said, meaning it. It was embarrassing. It’d probably been scary.

But, evidently, they’d built up quite a tolerance. They brushed off his apology, pointing him over towards the stacks.

“Those bodies need to be exhumed,” Lorelai said at a distance. “There aren’t even grave markers. No wonder they’re restless.”

“You believe in ghosts?” Alex asked her.

“What else would you call a feeling like that?”

But it wasn’t really the children, was it? She’d been right the first time. With each year that passed, it became something else.

“I can ask Apollo,” Delta volunteered. “The same people who are doing triage on the facilities…I think they’d be okay with getting the bodies out.”

His hands traced the files. He thought about the forensics involved, what DNA was documented and what might remain.

Then, he asked the boys: “Has anyone else come looking for these? Any other alumni?”

“…Not really,” Titus answered. “There aren’t that many left walking around.”

Of course not. The failures died, and the half-successes were still out there, facing varying degrees of exploitation and enslavement. It was too horrible to speak about, too much to look at dead-on.

“I think you should stop having parties there,” Delta suggested, quite seriously. His gratitude was mixed up with his distaste. He just felt like if it kept happening, someone was bound to get possessed.

“In some cultures, funerals are treated like parties,” Alex refuted. “That’s how we do it. You should come sometime.”

Lorelai glared at him, and he wilted.

“Maybe not.”

But Delta tuned out, too swept up in the wave of cruelty to pay much attention to the present. He was getting closer. He’d arrived at his section.

Δ

Δ-059

Δ-072

Δ-103

Δ-107

He pulled it out, and held the record in shaky hands. He got as far as the title page before he fainted again.

~~~

tags:

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