#backhand slap

The door opened and two guards came in with the prisoner between them. All three of them were sopping wet from the rain, the prisoner looking worse for wear in rain-soaked rags for clothes and his wrists in handcuffs. He shivered from the cold, but glared at Quanar with a vengeance and his ears tilted down.

“Hm, good to see that you’re not dead yet,” Quanar rose from their chair and circled the desk, “Enjoying the rain? It’s been nice watching through the windows here.”

The prisoner said nothing, but Quanar saw his fists tighten in front of him. The Major smiled in their amusement and leaned against the edge of their desk. They remembered this particular prisoner, a little shit who had attacked their guards in the past and since then been taken out to the whipping post more than once. The idiot Rebel never really learned after any of it. Even drenched in cold rainfall in chains, he still didn’t want to show signs of his defeat.

“Of course, no one likes being caught out in a storm, and I’m sure you’re grateful to be back inside,” they crossed their arms, “Now, you have a couple of options in front of you. You can give me the information you’re holding, and get some fresh, dry clothes and a warm cell. Best way to avoid discomfort and hypothermia.”

If the prisoner was trying to hide how badly he craved release from his state, he was failing. His ears perked up at the mention of dry clothes and warmth, and the hard features in his expression softened. He really was no different from others in the past, all basic creatures needing shelter and safety. And they knew this prisoner was young. It would be harder for him to outright ignore what he desperately needed.

“Option two, you continue to stay silent. You receive nothing and these guards take you back to one of the indoor cells. You’ll remain in these same clothes without food or water until the weather calms down, then taken back to the pit until your next interrogation. Think it over carefully.”

Quanar let the choice hang in the air for a few moments. The prisoner’s eyes looked down briefly, almost like he would actually take the generous offer they were giving him. If this was all it took, Quanar would almost be disappointed. More in themself, since they could have done this was weeks ago.

“Just…” the prisoner mumbled through the rest of his sentence. Quanar frowned, their previous irritation for him starting to come back.

“Try again,” their voice was on the edge of a growl, “And try not to sounds like a petulant child.”

“I said,” the prisoner glared back up at them as he spoke, “Just. Go. Fuck. Yourself.”

Quanar scoffed and rolled their eyes. “You’re just determined to make life difficult for yourself, aren’t you?”

“Fuck you, you sadistic, fascist shithead!” The prisoner lunged forward at them. The guards behind him caught his arms and forced him down to his knees. Quanar barely flinched at his ill-fated attempt, instead smiling a little in amusement as the prisoner glared up at him with a snarl.

“That’s cute of you,” Quanar chuckled, “But if you’re really wanting to be intimidating, you’ll have to work a lot harder than that.”

“Eat shit, kharra!” The prisoner snapped at them and spat at their feet. One of the guards slapped the back of his head and grabbed his hair, forcing him to meet Quanar’s eyes. Quanar sighed and rolled their eyes. Sure, seeing this prisoner struggle so fervently was entertaining in the moment, but it only brought further inconveniencing on their part. And he was becoming more of a pain in the ass. He could’ve at least tried to be original in his defiance, but he couldn’t even do that.

“Alright, brat,” Quanar knelt down and grabbed the prisoner’s chin. He groaned and tried pulling away despite the iron grip of both the Major and the guard.

“You want to make this difficult? I will make this as painful and horrible as you can imagine until you finally come to your senses. It’s your decision on how this ends. Got that through your thick skull?”

The prisoner scoffed. “Why don’t you go and get an actual hobby instead of just fucking maiming people, you asshole? Like, honestly! You could’ve done literally anything else and you chose corny torturer! It’s pretty pathetic, actually.”

Quanar glared at him and shoved his face back before backhanding him hard. The force pulled the prisoner out of the guard’s grip on his hair, and would’ve knocked him to the ground if his arms weren’t held in place. The prisoner yelped, his eyes shut as he tried to breath with his nose now dripping blood.

“Big talk for someone in your position,” Quanar stood to their feet, “Your fellow soldiers have been making the right decision. They took the easy, safe out. Even your own captain, and you know how that ended. If you were smart, you’d be following their lead.”

The prisoner wiped away the trail of blood on their face and glared back up at them. “Easy, huh? And how did you make it easy for them, rasra? A quick, painless death if they talked?”

“They’re out of pain now, aren’t they?”

A shadow of hurt flashed across the prisoner’s face. He may have been dumb, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew Quanar had disposed of the prisoners from his squad once they confessed. It was simple the way of things. But the mention of his teammates and confirmation of their deaths hit a nerve, just as Quanar was expecting. He really was just like the rest of them, and would break like the others did too.

The warden just had to find the right spot to plunge the knife.

“Hm,” the prisoner set his jaw and exhaled slowly, “Well… more reason not to then. ‘Cause I’m not looking to die yet.”

“Yet?” Hearing the word made Quanar smile again. Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue on the prisoner’s part, but it meant opportunity for them. “Well, you know what this means, don’t you? I’ll just have to make sure your life here is miserable enough that you’re begging for death. Then we can… negotiate your concession at the right time.”

They folded their hands behind their back and went over to the office window. Rain still poured down outside and beat against the glass. “Hopefully the weather clears up soon, for your sake. Until then, cell A203, no light, food or water. Dismissed.”

They kept their eyes on the rain as the guards dragged the prisoner out of their office. There were no angry words or yelling this time, but they could feel his hateful glare staring holes in the back of their head. A sensation they were quite familiar with, and not one that fazed them. It left at the sound of the door closing, leaving them once again alone.

Quanar had glanced at the weather radar earlier. The storm cell was large, big enough that this deluge would last at least a couple more days. Not long enough to cause any real damage to that prisoner’s well-being, but enough to make him feel like it would. Then maybe he’ll think twice before talking back at them like that again.

Their eyes glanced back at the report on their desk. They caught the list of prisoner ID numbers of those that hadn’t yet yielded, including that willful brat. There were a couple more from his squad that were among them, those he would’ve worked with more closely than his spineless captain. A thought came to mind, one that intrigued them more and more as they mulled over it. The storm would pass soon, but the time was quickly approaching where they couldn’t leave any prisoners out in the pits without them dying from the winter cold. And this old building always had issues with heating individual rooms and cells. There was an unfortunate history of discovering prisoners freezing to death even when locked in their own cells.

Perhaps there was a way to reduce the risk, and shatter the defiance in one easy move.

The man on the cot before him is wasted from lack of oxygen. T can’t speak, can hardly move. His ribs stand up under his skin, peaks and valleys that are obscene in their prominence. His skin is so thin that there are bruises from rough handling, shadows of fingers and hands that held too tightly when they moved him or took his blood pressure. He’s never looked so absurdly delicate, and Layla and Wagner are still so careless as they stab cords into him or jerk them out, poking at the framework of wire and plastic that lies underneath his skin. Through it all, T looks at Freddy. Though Freddy doesn’t touch him, or even directly interact, T’s eyes follow him around the room. Freddy fetches monitors and cords and readouts, hands things forward or takes them back. He examines monitors to read back lines of code or explain a sequence that’s clearly failing. He doesn’t touch T. But T won’t stop looking at him. It’s because usually, Freddy would defend him, and they both know that. Freddy wonders what the hell T must be thinking, seeing the change. Maybe he thinks Freddy is a coward. Or maybe he thinks he’s finally succumbed to the pressure, the culture here that treats T not as a person, but as a thing. Maybe he is a thing, as mechanical as they all say, and he’s merely seeing this as a break from pattern, a confusing discordant input that’s rattling his robot logic.

Maybe he thinks it’s somehow his own fault.

It’s this last, horrible thought that finally makes Freddy act. It’s sticking in his mind, haunting him, and then just moments later he sees Wagner, frustrated, beat his palm on T’s chest, and for a heartbeat all his old fear leaves him. The blow drives every shred of air from T’s deprived lungs, and Freddy watches him stretch, convulse weakly, mouth opening in a silent howl.

Freddy sees the ghost of a smirk on Wagner’s face and knows the other man did it on purpose.

“Don’t fucking do that,” he snaps, and even Layla half-turns toward Freddy. They’ve never heard him snap before. “He already can’t breathe. Don’t fucking do that.”

“God, you’re pathetic,” sneers Wagner, rounding all too eagerly. He’s excited that they’re fighting, bright-eyed about it. “If we had proper sterile protocol in this lab, you’d know to call it an it. It’s not breathing; it’s respiration. Do you understand we’re working with a project and not a pet? Not a person?”

“Fuck sterile protocol.” Freddy rolls his eyes. “Everyone here uses pronouns for T. He even has a name.”

“T’s a letter.”

“Either way – you’re just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. That’s not sterile protocol either.”

Nostrils flaring, Wagner opens his mouth to respond – but then Layla cuts in. “He has a point, Wagner.”

She so rarely intercedes, and she so rarely takes Freddy’s side. It’s a declaration of loyalty, and they both know it. Layla’s sick of Wagner’s attitude, so she’s taking Freddy’s side, and Freddy sees, with slow dread in his stomach, that it’s making things much worse. “You’re not any more mature than a kid smacking his laptop because it’s not working correctly,” she lectures, and Freddy watches Wagner’s eyes turn furious and realizes that he hasn’t helped, not in the slightest.

The next half hour, they work in tense silence. Layla exaggerates ease, especially with Freddy, and every time she’s extra polite to him, Freddy winces, deep inside. He doesn’t want to be a pawn between them. He definitely doesn’t want to be used to antagonize. Most of all, he doesn’t want to see what happens when Wagner loses his temper, because he sees the tech’s fingers twitching, and he knows that won’t be pretty.

When Layla steps out of the room, Freddy knows he’s run out of luck.

She’s going to look at something on a bigger monitor, so she can see the full picture, all at once. That’s what she tells Freddy and Wagner, anyway, but as he watches her retreat, step all too bouncy, Freddy thinks it’s something else. She loves an experiment, just like every other twisted person here. She likes to poke and pry and pick things apart. She wants to see, if she leaves the two of them alone, what will happen.

What happens is that Freddy does his damnedest to keep working, even when he feels Wagner glaring at him. What happens is that he still can’t restrain his flinch, when he hears the vicious words that Wagner’s stored up.

“You think it’s because you were a foster kid?” His voice is poisonous angry. “You think it’s because you were a sad little orphan, that’s why you get attached to fucking everything, even a goddamn person-shaped machine?"

It takes a moment for Freddy to come up with a response. He wants to ask how the hell Wagner knows that. He wants to tell him to shut the fuck up. He kind of wants to throw a punch. But none of that is safe, so he just shakes his head. “Fuck off.”

The words are short and sharp and full of feeling. “What’d you say to me?” Wagner demands, and it’s so bizarre, to pretend that that’s the overstep, that Freddy looks Wagner full in the face, ready to say it again.

That’s what Wagner’s been waiting for. Already primed for motion, he sees Freddy open his mouth and backhand slaps the other tech across the face.

It’s been a long time since Freddy’s been hit like that. He stumbles back, hand coming up to cup his jaw. Openmouthed, he stares at Wagner, unable to process, unable to quite believe the thing that’s just taken place. The other tech smirks at him, at his shell-shock, his visible disbelief.

When Freddy can speak again, the words come hoarsely, and too high. “What the fuck?”

Sneering, Wagner turns back to his work. “Things can change around here,” Wagner tells him, eyes once more on T’s face, somehow slack and straining all at once. “You’d better watch your step.”

“You can’t hit me, Wagner, we fucking work together, that’s-”

Spinning on him again, Wagner grins even wider when he sees the outrage on Freddy’s face. “What’re you going to do?” His voice is mocking. “Go to HR? Tell Granger? Granger isn’t going to give a fucking shit.”

“Layla-”

“Layla isn’t going to give a fucking shit. And you know why?” Wagner doesn’t wait for Freddy to ask. “Because I’m smarter than you. And they need me more than you. and because you have formed a stupid little bond with a piece of tech that you’re supposed to be running tests on. Improving. You think your job is to protect it. That’s why you picked this whole little fight.”

Taking a quick breath, Freddy moves to respond but finds he has nothing. Nothing. What’s his argument? What the hell is he going to say?

“That’s what I thought.” Wagner sounds so unbearably smug that for just a second, Freddy pictures hitting him back. “You better keep your fucking mouth shut. If you want to stay here, keep working with T for…whatever reason you want to be working with T.” His look is almost lecherous, and it makes Freddy want to hurl. “You know what the difference is between you and this thing?” Roughly, he jostles T’s shoulder, and Freddy, before he can stop himself, gulps. “You’re not worth studying.”

“You can’t…you can’t do this to me, you can’t-”

Her smile wavered a little but the challenge in her eyes only grew.

“I do. In fact, you can shove that whole dinner up yo—“

In one step he advanced on her, threw his hands around her and coiled the long strip of silk around her neck. He pulled hard at both ends, pulling her back against his chest.

“You ran out of options when you chose to rip apart the dress I picked for you, my dear.”

His voice was still sickly sweet, as if he wasn’t choking the life out of her at that exact moment.

Her hands clawed up, around his wrists, at her own neck trying to get under the silk and pull away.

He pulled the two ends of fabric close together so he could hold his grip on her with one hand. He twisted the ends tightly in his fist. His other hand reached around to her throat until he brushed over the silk now digging into her skin. Touching over the smooth fabric, feeling the muscles underneath spasming in her struggles for air. Just a hint of what could have been.

“We could have had such a wonderful night,” he murmured in her hair. His soft touch hardened, the barest of touch of his fingers replaced by a rough hand clawing around her neck, his broad palm covering her throat. He briefly delighted over how vulnerable it was.

When she started going limp, he released the silk from his fist, and just held it lightly to her throat with his other hand as he kept her up, pressed against him. She strained and gasped, taking in the much needed air.

“You can still wear it,” he whispered.

He brought the strip of blue to her hair and tied it in like a ribbon.

“There. Now you won’t go naked.” He spun her around in his hands to look in her face, to admire his added touch to her long brown hair. With his index finger he softly lifted her chin. “Be grateful now.”

She was still catching her breath but her eyes flashed fire. “I will not dine with you,” she hissed between gasps.

“Strip.” His cold voice commanded as if she hadn’t spoken up.

“No! Did you hear me?! I will not—“

He moved closer to her, pulling her back by the fabric of her blouse as she tried to step away. Both hands grabbed the top parts of her collar, his eyes locked on hers, and he pulled at the lapels ever so lightly until the top button sprang off.

“I said, strip.” He didn’t need to raise his voice. Even soft-spoken the menace dripped from his words and he pulled at the second button in warning.

Fear briefly flashed in her eyes before anger took over. She slapped his hands away. “Don’t touch me!”

In return a harsh backhand cracked against her cheek. The force of it sent her to the ground. Before she could do anything his hand shot out and clamped around her upper arm. He half pulled her up, hand like a vice around her. His other hand tilted her chin up and forced eye-contact.

“Do not make me say it again.”

He let go of her arm and she drooped back to her knees, her legs splayed out to the side, surrounded by the shreds of her dress. Slowly, very slowly, her hands moved up to undo the buttons of her blouse. He loomed over her, watching her like a hawk. When she reached back to undo her bra, he stopped her. This was enough.

"Very good. Now that that's sorted…" he bent over.

She cowed away from him until she noticed he was merely extending a hand to help her up. She looked up at him, confused and annoyed.

"Your hand," he prompted. Patiently. Like a gentleman.

And, not wanting to push him further, she slid her still trembling fingers into his palm.

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