#handler sharan

Honestly Divya expects her latest Special-designation to fall into that category. The snitch doesn't have a number because he's thoroughly off the books, so she thinks of him as exactly that – her snitch.

His first response to correction is usually to try and appease her, so she expects the punishment to leave him even more desperate to please. 

Instead, when she rouses him from the sleep that he slips into every time he has even a minute to rest, she finds him blank-eyed and limply passive. Maybe the aftereffects of the drug cocktail haven't quite cleared his system yet, or maybe he's just tipped over the threshold of what his brain can handle.

She'll have to wait to find out what he took from the lesson, but at least it makes it nice and easy to get him back into his cell. 

She'll let him sleep, she decides. It's good for consolidating learning. His body could use a chance to repair some of the damage, too.

To that end, she also feeds him while he's out. The high-protein shake they give the Guard Dogs, with extra sugar. A quarter portion –  enough to make a difference, but not so much he's likely to bring it back up. He almost certainly won't remember, since she has to hold his mouth closed and rub his throat to even get him to swallow.

The gag goes back in when she's done. 

The snitch is on a very accelerated program, so he’s her only primary right now. She doesn’t have the slightest idea why they want him half-trained for mid-April, and she knows better than to ask. Her job is to deliver results, not to question the specifications.

Regardless, it’s nice to have a quiet morning. She catches up on some paperwork, takes a long break, then picks up some small requests – mostly Domestics needing feeding or supervision in the showers.

When she gets back to her snitch, he’s still out of course. He whimpers when she rouses him, and looks up at her with the terror that has become his normal.

It’s nice, in some ways, to work with that raw honesty instead of working to erase it. Nowhere on his training plan is demeanour specified, so his reactions remain untrained and unfiltered.

He can't get up on command. Divya isn’t surprised, after the night he's had. She punishes it anyway, just a few quick strokes of the switch.

He tries, and that's all she really needs to know. He's not about to have a fit of defiance over this. 

She's not even angry, really. His teeth broke the skin and the doctor made an enormous fuss about antibiotics, but her hand is fine. She knew he was close to the edge of his tolerance, she should have known better than to have her hand on his face. 

If anything she's annoyed at herself. 

"You must be thirsty," she observes. He nods. The silence is gratifying. He knows his lines because he was a handler, the recitation doesn't prove anything. "Show me you can be good."

Frozen uncertainty is the response she expected. He wants a clearer instruction, but she wants to know what he'll come up with on his own. 

The silence stretches to almost a minute. There's not a lot going on behind those eyes. She could almost believe he'd had his skull emptied out like the others. (Another thing she doesn't question.)

"I'm waiting," she prompts.

Laboriously he draws his knees up to his stomach, and rolls over onto them. Respect, more or less. 

She watches as he adjusts each part of his posture in sequence. It looks like he can't hold more than one thought in his head at a time. Heels up, toes together. Knees under shoulders. Head centred. Hands in front, palms up. 

He forgets to tuck his elbows in until she nudges them with the tip of the switch.

It's a solid, basic answer to the problem posed, and it doesn't demonstrate much beyond the fact that he knows his protocol.

"Sit up," she instructs levelly. He still can't. Instead of punishing him this time, she lifts him by the shoulders until his back is straight. He puts his hands in his lap without prompting.

She takes his face to inspect the fit of the gag. To her surprise he leans forwards into the touch.  When she lets him, he nuzzles at her palm.

His department was Romantic, she'd put money on it. 

Not that there’s any trained sweetness or eagerness in his eyes. No manufactured comfort at the skin contact. Just terror. Just desperation to prove willing.

That's what Divya is looking for. She pets his hair – eugh, he badly needs a wash – and watches the fear ease fractionally.

Good. He's on track for… whatever awaits him in April.

"The punishment is over," she tells him softly. "I forgive you. Now we go back to training. Doesn’t that sound better?”

He nods tearfully against her hands.

Rory doesn't treat Divya like she's breakable just because one hand is in bandages. And whether she sneaks in a little use of that hand where she isn't supposed to – holding the snitch down one-handed isn't exactly easy – or whether she follows the doctor's orders and leaves Rory the lion's share of the work, he doesn't comment or complain. 

"Much better," he declares. "How would you like to begin? I can't be in here all day, so I thought we'd work him over for an hour or two, give him something to really cry about, then leave him to stew while the green works its way out of his system. Come back when he’s lucid." "I want to see him whipped like this," Divya answers, with a little more vehemence than she intends. "Remind me, is he no-scarring?" "Unfortunately." "Guess I'll take a leaf out of your book then. Won't be a minute."

While Rory's out of the room, Divya takes the snitch's filthy, sticky face between her hands – he can't bite like this, not with the ring gag still jamming his mouth obscenely wide – and forces him to look at her.  

"Are you listening to me, trainee?" He's panting with terror. Who knows what he thinks he's seeing. It's not good enough. "Listen to me. Are you listening." There -- he nods, just barely, against her hands. "Do you know what's about to happen? Do you?" A tiny head-shake.

“You’re about to get the beating of your life. Do you understand me?” She speaks slowly. “We’re going to whip you.” A flick to his ribs to make the point. He twitches. “It’s going to hurt like it never has before, trainee. Can you imagine being caned right now?” Another flick. He whines, long and pitiful, and tries to beg again. Divya thinks she hears no, no please – which is wrong, but – no doesn’t matter right now.

He’s about to suffer for it regardless.

Rory's Guard Dogs get the horse whip, because most owners like to see a few scars on them to prove they’re used to pain. While it’d serve the snitch right to be slashed open all over, it isn’t what the specification says, it isn't what the prospective wants. So Rory comes back with a thin cane of the same kind Divya favours.

Divya holds her hand out for it. Rory looks a little quizzical, but he hands it over. She waves it in front of the snitch’s face to catch his attention then swishes it through the air a couple of times to let him hear it. The begging – if possible – turns even more hysterical. 

A flick of the wood against his taut stomach – not even hard – elicits a sharp yelp of pain. 

Oh, he’s going to lose his mind. He’s going to find that rock bottom is so much further down than he knew. And then he will want, truly want, to do whatever it takes to get hauled back up from it.

She gives the switch back to Rory. He smiles.

The Pet screams at the very first stroke – delivered across the top of his pecs, about as high as safe without risking hitting the throat. Rory waits for the noise to die before delivering the next, just below the first. Another scream. More frantic, wordless begging. 

Another.

Rory increases the pace slowly. Divya perches on the edge of the table – beside the Pet’s head where she’s out of Rory’s way – and watches her snitch thrash – or try to – against the tight straps. His screams get louder as the snaps land quicker on each other’s heels – loud enough to be nearly painful in her ears.

The cane works steadily down his body, painting the skin a mottled red. Rory hits hard enough that beads of blood form just beneath the skin along each stripe.

“Go see if Hannah’s in yet,” he tells Divya quietly. “I can’t keep up this pace up forever.”

By the time she returns with Hannah, Rory’s only too happy to pass the switch over to a fresh hand. Hannah finishes working down the wailing trainee’s torso, and moves onto his thighs. By the time she gets tired, Rory’s arm is rested and he’s ready to go again. The Pet’s voice is failing, transforming into comically reedy squeaks and hoarse, hacking stutters.

“Help me roll him over.”

He tries to fight any way he can think of. Fingers clawed with tension grab uselessly at the handlers' coveralls. Head and limbs jerk uselessly back and forth trying to escape sure hands. They flip him, and his screech cuts out halfway into a mere whistle of air.

Rory begins again just below the trainee’s collar. Hannah takes over at the base of his shoulder blades, then hands the cane back when she reaches the base of the spine. Rory covers the ass and the backs of the thighs. 

The mewling, twitching Pet doesn’t sound human anymore. 

Underneath every person there’s an animal – a creature that understands nothing and cares only about escaping pain and sating need. 

Not every trainee needs to be broken down to that animal in order to learn their new place in the world. Some simply adapt. The snitch caught onto his options quickly enough that Divya thought he’d be one of them. He’s seen firsthand after all the consequence of failing to learn.

But if he will bite like an animal, she’ll see him reduced to one.

Rory stops at the bottom edge of the curve of the calf, avoiding striking directly over the Achilles tendon. He lays the cane down, flexes his arm ruefully, rubs the forearm and spreads then curls his fingers.

Divya runs a hand down the newly hot, red back of a thigh, and the Pet moaning gets fractionally louder. “Jealous?” Hannah asks, watching. “Shame about your hand.” “I should have known better,” Divya answers curtly. “Want a go with your left?” Reluctantly, Divya shakes her head. “My aim is embarrassing with my left,” she confesses.

“I’ve an idea for you,” says Rory. “Go get one of those floor scrubbing brushes from the supplies...” Divya grins. “You, sir, are a genius.” He smiles back, one of the lazy, catlike smiles that make her wonder occasionally if she’d like to be more than friends.

From the supply closet, she picks a new brush fresh from the packs of twelve that supply the Domestics. There’s no need to scrub potential infection into the trainee’s skin. The brush is fully the size of her hand, but the sculpted grip fits comfortably in her grip. The white plastic is so on-brand that she wonders if WRU orders them specially. 

Testing the stiff, white bristles against her arm, the sensation is harsh but not sharp, and leaves faint white trails on the surface of the skin. It wouldn’t take long to become painful, and that’s starting from unbroken skin. She’ll have to take some care to avoid real damage.

When she returns to the training room, Hannah’s already moved on. Rory is wiping the muck away from the Pet’s eyes with a damp cloth.

“I’ve still got my primaries to take care of,” he says, “so I thought I’d leave you to it, will that be okay?” Divya hears the implicit question. Can I trust you? “Sounds good,” she agrees. Of course you can. “Don’t leave him unmonitored. I’ll come back, say, ten o’ clock – trainees willing – and we can get him all set up to ride the drugs out.”

He got his tiny rations of shake anyway. It would coat the bit and escape from the corners of his mouth, and he’d spend what felt like hours trying to work every last particle out of the grooves in the rubber with his tongue, and Sharan would mock him for being messy. 

He'll do anything for more than a few mouthfuls to eat, just like he'll do anything to be allowed to sleep. 

God he needs to sleep. At least they let him sometimes now. He knows it’s never more than a couple of hours at a time, but he's good as gold just for the promise of it. 

The second thing he wants is to use his voice. 

It's very possible to beg through a gag. You don't need to be able to form clear syllables to make the cadence of please, please, Handler understood.

But you can't communicate anything they aren't already expecting to hear. 

He doesn’t know how to ask without getting punished, but he’s desperate to find a way.

It's been way, way too long, and still no hint of when they're going to take his memories. He should be glad, he knows he should, but all he can feel is sick dread.

What's all this training even good for if they're going to make him forget it? Is it just for the sake of cruelty? Or are they not going to wipe him? He's scared to hope – but even more scared of what it might mean. 

What is this? Is he part of some new experimental protocol? What's going to happen to him when they're done? 

Reluctantly, he swallows all his questions. He uses the privilege of talking only to recite "yes, Handler" and "no, Handler" and "please, Handler" and "I'm sorry, Handler".

He needs to be good enough to get fed, that's the only goal he can hold onto. 

They won't starve him to death – unless they will. How is he supposed to know what they'll do, when this isn't a standard training protocol?

"Well done, trainee," Handler Sharan opens as she walks into the training room.

Cosmo is on his knees, balancing a tray on his outstretched arms, shaking from exertion. There isn't a single thought in his head – there isn't room, the struggle to hold still through the pain is everything. 

He almost – almost – makes a pitiful questioning sound in response to the praise. But she doesn't like when he just makes noises. Some of the others don't mind. 

She walks over and lays a hand on the tray. "Hold," she instructs, before pushing slowly down. 

Wide-eyed, he does his best. His posture suffers as he tries to engage his back to resist the relentless downwards force. 

He holds for a few seconds, but she increases the pressure until she forces his trembling arms down. 

"I'm sorry, Handler," he whimpers wretchedly through clenched teeth.

When she lets up, he almost loses the tray as his arms spring back up. 

She tousles his hair – which is as good as praise, which means no switch – and sick relief floods his body. 

"I'll let it slide," she says. "You've done very well, trainee." "Thank you, Handler." "Do you know what you've done?" He hesitates, because he probably should know, but only for a fraction of a second. He isn't allowed to think about his answers. "No, Handler," he admits fearfully.

She smiles, and it's another heady rush of relief.

"You've gone a whole day without doing anything wrong," she says. "This is a milestone. You deserve a reward."

A whole day. Probably he should feel something about that – about how none of his previous days have been judged good enough. 

But all he can care about is the word reward. Please, please let it be sleep or food or mercy and not just another sick humiliation he has to pretend to be grateful for. 

She takes the tray from him, and tells him "position two". Moving almost hurts more than holding still, but it's worth it to take some of the weight off his knees.

"How would you like a full meal, trainee?" "Yes, please, Handler." He knows better than to expect anything but shake or maybe loaf, but his mouth still waters instantaneously at the thought. Another smile. "I thought so."

She leaves him there, and even being left in just position two is reprieve enough that the temptation of sleep immediately tries to smother his thoughts. He can't let his head nod, not now.

He's so out of it that it takes him a minute to realise that the door is open.

Instead of excitement, he feels his blood run cold. 

It's a test, a trap, it has to be. It can't be anything else. 

He wants out of here so bad but there's no freedom on the other side of one open door, he knows that. 

It's a test, and maybe that means the promise of food was a lie, and he can't take it if it's a lie, he's going to have another crying breakdown and he'll be punished for that too. 

The open door means nothing except a threat of more pain. He has to believe that. 

He's broken. 

They haven't even wiped him and he's sitting on his knees looking at a rare opportunity and feeling nothing but dread. 

When Sharan returns with a half-full bottle of beige nutrient shake in her hand, the gleam in her eyes confirms it – she knew full well she'd left that door open. It was a test. 

Cosmo has eyes only for the food. 

He's far away, a million miles from the tiny image of her, and his ears are full of a rushing, hissing warmth that usually means he's passing out. 

She hand feeds him. One hand cups the back of his head while the other carefully tips the bottle for him to drink.

It's everything he wanted, enough to fill his stomach, and he doesn't even taste it. 

He's a million miles away, and none of it matters.

At least he has his hands on the floor. He tries to take as much of his weight as he can through his hands and his toes, but he is weak. If he shakes too much, the handler on the couch prods him with the baton and the threat of shock is a rush of terror.

He tries to focus on the weight of her feet on his back, because that is only a mild pain, only a dull throb in the skin and the muscles beneath.

Better to focus on that than on his knees.

He doesn’t hear the door, but he sure hears the Handler’s voice. “You are way too early,” she says, “for how late you went home last night.” He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand what she wants from him. “What can I say,” – Handler Sharan, his hated Primary – “I love my job. I see you got him following instructions.” “Sure did.”

The words wash over him as he struggles to decipher whether they’re talking to him, or to each other. Whether he needs to listen, or can tune out.

Handler Sharan is in front of him. He feels her presence, her frigid aura, without knowing which sense he is using. Not sight. He can’t lift his head, it’s too heavy.

The weight on his back lifts, and he gasps as his own weight shifts and sets off yet more cramps. Her voice sounds from very far away. “Guess this means it’s home time. God I hate nights.” He hates nights too. But – that’s a thought from another life.

His Handler touches his shoulder. He startles – another wave of cramps.

“Enough,” she says. “You may stop.” It’s not a conscious choice when his body collapses. Maybe it was only coincidence that he finally got permission at the moment his muscles gave out. He pitches forwards and crumples and ends with a shoulder on the toes of her boots, his head against her ankles.

“Good boy,” she says, adjusting his head with one foot. “You’re going to be so good for me now, aren’t you?”

Then she’s nearer, her hands nearer, danger, touch, fear. His head pinned between her hands, tugged upwards so he has to squirm to stop his neck turning through an angle it cannot. 

He can’t read her face. He can barely make his eyes focus. The room is pulsating around her.

“Do you remember what you did?” she asks. He can’t. He panics. He can’t say no, he can’t say yes – then he sees the bandages wrapped around her hand and he remembers. His teeth bite so hard into the rubber between them that his jaw cramps. “Do you remember what you did wrong?” Hesitantly, fearfully, he nods. Her hand moves against his cheek and it’s so warm it almost burns. “You’re not going to do it again.” He shakes his head urgently, heedless of the pain behind his eyes, and she smiles.

He won’t, he promises he won’t, he’ll promise anything, just make it stop.

“You’re going to be good now.” Her voice is low and sure and sinks into his skin with every word. “You’re going to prove to me that you can be good. Or else we’ll start your punishment over, and over until you learn.”

Please no. He can’t, he can’t do it, he’ll be good.

The whimper in his throat comes out as nothing but a whistle of air.

And she’s gone, like the jolt of missing a step, like waking to find you aren’t falling. Her voice is above him.

“Follow, trainee.”

He can’t imagine standing up. He also can’t imagine disobeying, not with the consequences made so clear. He drags himself, with difficulty, back to his screaming knees. And he crawls. 

One limb at a time, one more shuffling motion, just this hand, just this knee, just one more as many times over as he has to before he’s allowed to stop. The white tiles are all the same.

“Position Two.” 

Another Handler, another voice he can’t put a name to. It doesn’t matter. They’re all Handler. They all give commands. They all have the power to shock him or worse. 

He obeys – but he’s too slow getting to Position Two, too shaky on limbs that don’t want to hold him up for a second longer. He’s grabbed by the back of the collar, yanked up, and sat back on his heels. His eyes water as he chokes.

“Eyes up.” He looks up. “Mouth open.” He opens his mouth. It’s hard to unlock his jaw from the bit. “Wider.” The gag digs into the corners of his mouth, stretching his lips, cracking open splits that had nearly healed. “Better.”

Better means he hasn’t earned more pain, not yet.

He smells the nutrient shake when the bottle is cracked open. He didn’t know before that it even had a smell. His mouth waters.

The handler spoon feeds him, sliding the spoon in through the narrow gap between the bit and his front teeth. He can’t talk to say thank you Handler so all he has to think about is swallowing. His throat hurts when he does.

Three spoonfuls, then a mouthful of water. Another spoonful, but it pauses just in front of his mouth. He knows better than to try and take it.

“Mouth open until I tell you to close it. Don’t swallow.”

The spoon slips between his teeth and the rubber. The liquid is deposited onto his tongue. 

It’s hard not to swallow. He’s fighting every starving instinct in him. Only the constant threat of the handler right there keeps him obedient.

“Good boy. Swallow.”

Two more spoonfuls. Each time he sits open-mouthed and waits for permission to swallow. Then another mouthful of water, poured slowly into his mouth until his eyes widen and still more until it spills out over his cheeks and trickles down his neck to pool under his collar. 

Frozen, he doesn’t move. Thankfully, it’s the right response.

“Good boy. Swallow.”

All he cares about is not messing this up. Getting as much food and water as they’re willing to give him. Not getting hurt any sooner than he has to. 

She has him cleaning floors. He can’t see a spot of dirt anywhere, the maintenance Pets probably did it all already, but he knows it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he does as he’s told.

She’s barely correcting him, it’s probably only to keep him busy, only to make sure he can’t rest.

“Handler Sharan, ma’am?” he asks. He doesn’t take his eyes off the floor, or let the sponge pause in its circles. “What is it?” “May I speak, please, Handler?” “No,” she says. “You may not.”

And that’s the end of it. 

It’s a punch to the gut, but he’s had a lot of those now.

There’s no use trying to ask anyway. She might easily have shocked him just for trying the first time. If he pushes his luck, she’ll definitely use the collar.

Swish-snap – another bright flare of pain across his ass. The shorts don’t dull the sting as much as he hoped they would.

What did he do? Oh – he’s been scrubbing the same circle for – too long. He shuffles on his knees to the next patch. Not that it matters.

He should have just asked rather than asking permission first. He should have known it was a long shot. She hasn’t told him anything because she has no intention of telling him.

The bitterness still curdles in his empty gut all through the exercise, and the next one, and it fades a little but it stays with him. It even niggles like a loose tooth when he’s alone in his cell trying to get some desperately needed sleep before they wake him again. 

If he was a tougher guy, maybe anger would have outpaced fear from the start. If he was smarter, maybe he’d know how to stifle it before it burns him. 

But he can feel it growing day on day, a rising tide that says no to everything they ask of him, no more, fuck this, fuck that, fuck all of it.

The second time he bites is not an accident.

He knows full well how bad the consequences will be. He knows that if he does this he’ll probably never get another chance. He knows it won’t achieve anything.

He’s just so, so sick of the endless, painful, invasive, relentless touch. 

He’s up against the wall again, knees shoulder width apart, palms flat against the wall. Handler Sharan isn’t giving orders, she’s just touching him. Stroking his skin all over, prodding and squeezing until it’s a struggle not to hiss and flinch from the sharp points of her fingers.

He knows it’s about eroding boundaries. He doesn’t know how she knows that he hasn’t let go of this one yet. He tries so hard not to recoil or complain.

He’s just not any good at it, he supposes.

Especially when her hand dips down the front of his shorts to grab at his junk. He knows it’s no different from everything else she can do to him, there’s no use in fighting it – but he can’t stop his body going rigid against her, can’t stop his breath catching and his skin crawling.

She tweaks the end of his cock and gets a gasp, then her hand moves on, fondling the lines of his stomach, nails scratching lightly at the skin and making him squirm with how badly it itches.

Helpless anger wells up. 

It’s not even anything new. It’s not exhaustion to the limit of what his body can handle. It’s barely painful. 

All he has to do is hold still and tolerate it.

That’s all.

“Alright, break time’s over.” She slaps his ass – sharp over the welts – and he yelps. “You’re losing condition, can’t have that. Up on your feet and give me squats.”

Of course he’s fucking losing condition, she’s starving him. He doesn’t know if he can do one squat. 

He’s going to find out.

It turns out he can do twenty-three, although the last thirteen are pathetic and get him switched across the shoulders. After that, he falls on his smarting, aching ass.

She hasn’t told him to stop, so he knows he should get up, he knows the shock’s coming when he refuses, he just – he hates this. He hates her. 

He chokes through the shock. He still doesn't get back up. 

"What happened there, trainee?" Sharan asks. "You were doing so well." He knows an opening when he sees one. "I'm sorry, Handler," he snivels, "I - I can't, I'm sorry." "Try," she tells him testily.

He does, because he isn't brave enough to keep refusing. But maybe he doesn't try very hard, maybe he gives in to cramps that he probably could have pushed through if he weren't so fucking done with all of this. 

The switch snaps across his ribs, and the back of his thighs, and he makes another show of straining his shaking limbs trying to push up from the floor.

There are tears in his eyes, and that's not faked.

She crouches, and pulls his head back by the hair to get a good look at his face, and he's so scared that she's going to see the hate and anger written all over him that he must end up looking sufficiently wretched after all because she merely wrinkles her nose and sighs.

Then she drags him up by the hair, and that makes him really try to get his feet under him. He’s clumsy from exhaustion and he falls against her and she staggers. Her arms wrap round his chest to catch him and they dig in sharply to all the bruises over his ribs.

He squirms, and she pushes him off her. He sprawls across the tiles.

“Bad Pet,” she hisses. He gets another shock from the collar. 

He doesn’t know what she expects from him next but staying where he fell is not it. Another shock.

For the first time in – god knows how long – his hands go instinctively to the collar to try and prise it away from his throat. More shocks, a higher setting, held for longer. He screeches and spasms on the floor.

He doesn’t quite black out, but he loses track of the Handler, right up until her hands on his shoulders signal him to roll onto his back. He pants raggedly for air, voice catching in the back of his throat, and looks up at her.

“Shhh,” she soothes, petting his face. As if she didn’t do this. As if he’s supposed to be grateful for the burning, itching hand on his skin.

When he bites her, it’s not an accident. It’s a moment of pure, unadulterated spite.

For just a few seconds, the fear of consequences doesn’t get a look in. He just wants – all he wants – is to make her hurt.

He waits until her hand is steady on his cheek, and then he turns his head as if to nuzzle into the touch like one of his girls would – and then he sinks his teeth in as hard as he can, and he shakes his head like a dog, and he doesn’t let go.

– they spool away like spaghetti – impossibly long – curling and twining – limp pallid ropes of skin –

– he screams – but there's something in his throat – a sticks-and-spikes thing – like dry brush – a bird's nest –

– devils are real and she is one – her touch molten – her claws slipping under his skin – under his ribs – clawing at his lungs –

– the grater never stops – shredding him inch by spaghetti inch –

– he pulls and pulls against the barbed irons that hold him –

– he can't tell if he's screaming or choking on the sticks in his throat – the sound won't leave him alone –

– it rips and tears – circles and lines and – where the skin is gone he feels it vibrate across the strings of his muscles – a deranged violin screech –

– the sound is inside his ears – grating his eardrums to pieces –

–like her claws are tearing him to pieces –

– he sees inside his own back – red muscle and – white bone – and – thick black grease – charcoal muck like a barbecue – 

– is he burning? 

– he must – he must be burning – nothing else could hurt so much as –

– scraping tearing ripping through skin –

– so many devils – their coveralls smoking – pinning his wrists and knees and hips and elbows with clawed burning hands –

– his face is in the pile of coiled tangled spaghetti skin – soft and moist and threatening to get in his – mouth – his nose –

– still tearing – still burning –

– he can't breathe – he can't breathe –

– the unholy screeching won't stop –

– she smiles down at him and her mouth is – a slash in the world – a white line stretching to – to –

– agony – tearing – 

– her hands – the grater – on his stomach now – worse – somehow worse than back it keeps getting worse how can it still get worse –

– blood between her fingers as the thing in her hand bites deeper –

– deeper –

– falling and the world tastes of ash but – he can't fall away from her she's – always – always there –

– ripping the skin away in writhing spaghetti worms – exposing his ribcage – stark white with black ooze between –

– he's screaming – screaming despite the barbed wire in his throat –

– she's laughing –

– her throat is a black hole and he's falling –

– falling but never escaping – swallowed but still here – still screaming –

– still chewed to threads – body unravelling – agonised strings of muscle and sinew and skin –

– stretching to the infinite corners of the room –

– and still the pain –

– there's nothing left of him but string and still it doesn't end –

– it doesn't end –

– it doesn't end –

She doesn't feel bad about venting. It's best to get the anger out now, in the first phase of punishment while it's appropriate. This is meant to be the Pet’s rock bottom, the nightmare he'll look back on and do anything to avoid in future. 

The next step is teaching him the lessons she foolishly let him convince her he'd already learned. And for that she needs to be calm, and he needs to be back on planet earth. 

But right now, after a less than optimal night, what she needs is more coffee. She catches the newest junior in the hall, and hands off responsibility to him for the time being.

Not that he's really a junior, he has four years of experience in… Romantics, if she recalls correctly? But he's new to S Wing, and that means reduced responsibility while they find out if he's a good fit for the somewhat less by-the-books environment. 

With his help she flips the trainee onto his front so that he's less likely to choke if he throws up again. They change the ring gag for a rubber bit – keeping a stick between his teeth to prevent biting during the changeover – so that he can drink. The ring comes away with blood on the stainless steel.

The Pet manages a few sips of water, sucked from a cloth. Only a little of it is dribbled onto the table. Divya helps the new guy double check all the straps. Then she takes her coffee break, confident that her trainee will be monitored while she’s gone.

She meets up with Rory just after ten as promised. Rory's brought a wire dog crate – and not a large one. You could probably get the animal confiscated for keeping anything bigger than a terrier in there. 

"I love these," Rory says. "Set them off the ground and any mess they make falls through, keeps them from breathing it or lying in it. And if you get the size right they don't have enough room to struggle and hurt themselves."

It takes a small team to fold the sobbing Pet into the crate. Sure enough, when he’s curled tightly over his knees his back very nearly touches the mesh at the top, and the sides keep his elbows close to his ribs.

Rory uses the straps round the top of the trainee’s calves to pull his knees wide, making plenty of room for his forehead to rest against the mesh between them. The straps fasten off to the sides of the crate. Wrists and elbows get secured to the front and top so that his arms pin his head in place. Ankles are secured on a short strap to the back edge. Once fully trussed up, there really aren’t a lot of ways for him to hurt himself. 

Then they heft the cage onto a pair of tables, one under each edge, and secure it firmly to both. 

"With a sober Dog I'd call this safe," Rory says, "but with this many pharms in the mix, I still want him checked every fifteen minutes. And give him fifty to a hundred mils of water each time, he's sweating like crazy. We can move to half-hourly as he starts to come down."

Divya takes responsibility for most of the check-ups. She is his primary, after all. And it's not a complex task. Check pulse, check that no part of him is going blue. Mostly just lay eyes on him and make sure he's not choking or seizing or dead. 

The Pet they pull from the crate at the end of the day is a boneless mannequin. He mewls a little as his knees drag across the mesh, as his compressed joints uncurl. Then he's quiet again, limp in Rory's arms.

"Isn't that an improvement." Rory's voice is soft, but he's not really talking to the dazed, empty-eyed Pet. "I think you're ready to be good now, don't you?" No response. The snitch’s mouth is slack around the rubber bit. "Divya, come sit with him. Remind him that he can be good."

"He's filthy," Hannah interjects, disgusted on Divya's behalf. "That's what the coveralls are for," Divya points out. "It's good for him to be disgusting right now. He'll beg me for a shower tomorrow."

It takes two to carry the trainee, despite the weight he's lost. The Guard Dog handlers are used to that. They sling him between them like a sack of potatoes, and Divya follows them to the lounge room.

It’s a white-walled training room much like the rest, but made up as a sparse stage set imitation of a lounge. There's a plush rug on the floor, where good Pets get to kneel instead of on the cold, hard tiles. There's a couch for the handlers – and for Romantics when they're invited, a coffee table, and little else – besides the screen set into the wall where a TV might be, protected by a plate of toughened glass. 

Divya sits on the couch, and her trainee is dumped into her lap. Rory grins at her, clearly pleased with himself. "I hope you're up for some overtime," he says, "I think your trainee needs some attention while he's nice and well-behaved." "I agree."

"I've asked Hertz to take over for the night shift – hand over to him when you're done here. I don't want the trainee sleeping tonight, but if it's gentle we should be able to get him back to the land of the living tomorrow. Then we can work on comprehension. Sound good?" "Sounds good." He tosses a bottle of water to her, and she only barely remembers not to try and catch. "I'll give you two some privacy then. Have a good night." “And you.”

Divya looks down at the Pet in her lap. He’s awake. If she waves her hand above him, his eyes track the motion. But other than that, he might as well be unconscious. He doesn't look at her, only through her. 

"You're going to be good now," she tells him, with the warmth of total confidence. He has no other option. "All you have to do is take what you're given. All you have to do is not fight me. It's as easy as that."

She runs her fingers through the greasy mess of his hair. No reaction. He's elsewhere, gone out of his head. That's fine, it suits their purposes right now. It makes him good.

"Good boy," she murmurs, cupping the side of his face. "Drink." He can't help but obey. "Good boy. You can be good, can't you now. Just lie still for me."

Slowly, gently, minimising the inevitable pain of touching his inflamed skin, she pets his neck. Then his chest, his arms, his stomach. It’s the same touch exercise he normally struggles so much with, just this time in slow motion and with him sprawled bonelessly across her lap.

He's still as a doll, and silent. The closest he comes to flinching is shivering lightly under Divya’s palms. Even when she fondles his crotch, he doesn't react in the slightest.

"Good," she tells him, over and over. "That's good. It's so easy, isn't it? So much easier than fighting. All you have to do is take what you're given."

Despite the touch, despite all the pain he’s still feeling, the Pet begins to fall asleep.

Divya is delighted. They agreed on no sleep, but this is entirely different. This is ideal, relief and reward paired with submission to his handler’s control and surrender of his boundaries. This is more important than the deprivation.

Besides, she won't let him have long. 

She keeps the touch continuous while he sleeps, roaming methodically up and down across his body. As boredom – and tiredness – start to set in, she moves one hand from the Pet to her phone and finds something to read while her other hand continues to move over his skin.

Every so often he twitches a little, dreaming.

Perhaps she loses track of time, because when Hertz eventually sticks a head round the door to check if everything’s okay, it’s almost ten o’ clock at night.

"Very much so," Divya replies. "But it is about time he woke up.” A yawn overtakes her, and she stifles it behind her phone. “... and I should really get home. Thanks for taking him," she adds, pushing the trainee off her lap. He falls limply in a pile of limbs. The hoarse, muffled sound of his startle comes two seconds after the impact with the floor. "I know sleep watch is tedious work." "Are you kidding?” Hertz returns. “It's a chance to put my feet up! I barely have to do a thing all shift. Favourite job, especially at night. " Divya laughs. "Each to their own. Have a good night, then."

She knows she will. She’ll sleep soundly tonight.