The Truth Untold
Pit Babe Season 2 - Fanfiction
Whumpee: Kenta played by Garfield Kankham
Synopsis: Kenta is tortured physically under Tony's roof while Kim is tortured emotionally in the X-Hunter garage.
Notes: The amount of research I did to stay as accurate as possible is crazy. I hope whatever government entity that looks through my Google searches reads this fic bc they'll understand why it was necessary.
Maturity Rating: R / M
Words: 3,310
Chapters: 9/14 - s2 ep.10 - Flashbacks and Torture
AO3 Link: emrys_lmalw
CAUTION: REFERENCED/IMPLIED NON-CON AS WELL AS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE
Hours, maybe days, passed with no signs of relief for Kenta. It was very difficult to keep track of time, the only signals he had being the light outside the warehouse walls dimming and brightening with passing moments.
What Winner said had been true. He hadn’t been given any food.
The guards toyed with him when it came to his water intake. Sometimes they’d give him a sip from a water bottle, sometimes they’d force him to drink until he threw up. That was, until Winner yelled at them for risking killing him.
Kenta assumed they’d never heard of water poisoning in their grown ages.
It was then that he went the longest he’d ever gone without water. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but he was starting to feel the effects of dehydration, dizziness, lightheadedness, and a soul-crushing migraine, to name a few.
It was then that the guards, men he used to command, approached him with a water bottle.
In the stress of having been held captive for however long, he’d felt joy for the first time as he saw it in their hands. The possibility that they’d force him to drink the whole thing was there, but he was at a point where he was sure he could do it with ease.
The two laughed as they completed their approach, sending anxiety through Kenta. It was a game to them.
The shorter guard held his hands out, cupped in front of Kenta’s face. It was then that the taller guard began pouring the water from the bottle into cupped hands, instructing Kenta to drink if he wanted any water that day.
He had no other choice. He was so thirsty, and he knew that since he wasn’t eating, drinking was especially important while waiting for his injured leg to heal.
He bit back the desire to fight against them, forcing himself to drink from the guard’s cupped hands like a dog, lapping up whatever he could manage. He could bite the guard. Realistically, he could easily get a good enough grip on the man’s hands that he could demand to be untied they were armed. A single gunshot wound wouldn’t kill him, and they knew his leg was injured. They could easily turn an impact into a full-on break.
He had to submit.
It was incredibly disheartening to watch as the water slipped from the man’s hands, every drop a wasted opportunity for satiety and nutrients. He didn’t care that they were laughing. He’d never experienced pride before, so you can’t break what isn’t there. He didn’t care about how the taller guard looked at him with a sort of lust. He’d been through it all before.
What mattered was after all his efforts to get away from it, he may have to die in that warehouse back where he started. Under Tony’s boot.
Or worse, what if Kim came to save him and he died?
He wanted to go home .
He was angry, so angry , that for the first time in his life he felt safe and loved, and it all had to be taken away from him.
Kenta looked back at the times when he’d be out performing tasks for Tony, sometimes in Thailand, sometimes in other countries. During holidays, he would look into the windows of restaurants, shops, and homes as he walked city streets, watching as families and friends gathered in love and celebration of each other. At the time, he didn’t care about it, but looking back, he wanted nothing more than to celebrate a holiday with Kim– with the entire X-Hunter team.
He wanted to experience family and friendship the way others found normal. He wanted it to feel normal to him.
He couldn’t help but wonder even if he made it out alive, even if he was able to sleep in Kim’s bed, in his hold, that it would all one day come crashing down, again, a burning pile in front of his eyes.
Maybe he wasn’t meant to be happy. Maybe he was born to be alone, afraid, hungry, unloved, homeless in more ways than one.
He felt a sharp pain in his injured thigh, eliciting a scream.
“I said to thank us!” The taller guard yelled. “Be happy we give you water at all.”
The two left after flicking the rest of the liquid in Kenta’s face, laughing as they did.
┈◈◉◈┈
Kim sat on his balcony, back flush with the glass railing that bordered its edges.
His emotions swung like an unguided pendulum.
He was angry that Kenta was in the situation he was in. He was angry at Kenta for sacrificing himself, angry at Tony for everything he’d ever done, angry at the team for not caring more about Kenta’s well-being.
He was sad that he didn’t have Kenta sitting next to him. His heart broke at the thought that Kenta was in such an environment that he violently fought to get out of.
He feared the worst. What if Kenta wasn’t investigating but held captive? What if he was being tortured? What if he was… what if he had…
He would forever be grateful for what little time he’d had with Kenta, for getting to know such a kind, well-meaning person. He was often skittish and anxious, but it wasn’t his fault. He tried so hard every day to be the best roommate and friend he could, despite having no experience.
All of it was thrown away in mere moments as Kenta sacrificed himself in that warehouse.
He shouldn’t be there.
Kim recalled a particularly rough night Kenta had had semi-recently after a nightmare woke him up screaming.
◈◉◈
Kim had risen quite early that morning, much against his wishes. His body had decided 5:37 was the time to wake up, not allowing Kim any opportunity to protest. He turned over in his bed, readjusting himself as he closed his eyes once more.
After what felt like a good half hour without falling asleep, Kim decided it was finally time to get up. He rolled back over in bed, grabbing his phone from its charger to see 5:49 displayed on his phone.
“Oh, so it’s barely been ten minutes.” Kim groaned as he stood. Luckily for him, being up so early meant getting into the shower before Kenta and being finished before he’d even awake.
Or so he thought.
Generally, Kenta’s nightmares woke the two between the hours of two to four in the morning. Never earlier, never later. However, that morning, they must have slept in.
Screams filled the apartment, signaling Kim to sprint into Kenta’s room. Kim enters to the sight of an empty bed.
Once he was finally able to gather his thoughts, he rushed to the other side of the bed to find Kenta on his knees, facing where Kim had come to stand. He repeatedly cried out, “ ママ！パパ！どうか私から離れないで!”
He scrambled, grabbing his phone from his sweatpants pocket, quickly maneuvering through passwords and apps and the like. He set the phone on the floor between them, pressing “Conversation Mode” on the screen. He’d had to use it before when Kenta got like that.
Kenta had repeated it one last time, and the translation went through. “Mom! Dad! Don’t leave me!” Those words ripped Kim’s heart into two.
“Kenta! Hey, look at me.” He crouched in front of his panicked roommate, arms outstretched but not touching him. “Come on, look at me.”
Kenta rubbed his hands together, now seemingly pleading with Kim. He must have still been in the middle of his dream or something or hallucinating, maybe? “家に帰りたい!”
Kim watched as the translated text came up on his screen. ‘I want to go home.’
“You’re home. You’re home right now.”
Kenta huffed through every syllable. “家に帰りたい。”
“You are home, Kenta. You’re here with me, Kim.”
“あなたは私を去った”
As the translator app completed its duties, it presented Kim with yet another heartbreaking phrase. ‘You left me’ - It made Kim realize that he was, in fact, talking to his parents.
After that, Kenta slowly fell back into slumber, collapsing into Kim’s arms as he huffed.
He’d never been that inconsolable before. He’d never passed out after a nightmare like that. Kim wanted to call Pete for help, but one thing was for sure. He wouldn’t care even if he called.
Kim quickly got Kenta back into bed and got to work on lowering his budding fever. Again.
Kenta had such a bad nightmare that he woke up not knowing where he was or who he was talking to, and it pushed his body into producing a psychogenic fever.
And yet… Pete wouldn’t care if he knew.
┈◈◉◈┈
None of the team knew about the nightmares. Maybe if they did, they’d be more willing to help. Maybe if they knew about Kenta’s scars on his chest and shoulder blades, they’d be more anxious about getting him out of Tony’s warehouse.
Maybe… they wouldn’t.
No matter who was suffering, as long as Tony said so, the group was to listen to Pete. If he said to back off, they backed off, and nobody could truly pose an argument.
Kim crushed his beer can in a balled fist, throwing it across the room as far as he could, listening as it hit multiple surfaces on the way to the floor.
┈◈◉◈┈
It was getting harder to stand.
Kenta’s leg screamed with no movement, mild movement, even as much as a breeze moving through where he was tied up caused his muscles to convulse.
He could feel the beads of sweat licking the nape of his neck before speeding down his spine to collect at his belt line.
Fatigue had a seismic grip on him, causing his head to bob every now and then, often making him sink in his restraints. The rope cut into the skin on his sweaty and irritated wrists. He did everything he could to stay standing in fear that passing out would cause the ropes to dislocate his wrists, or worse.
His hunger was out of control. It was almost all he could think about. His stomach felt like it was caving in on itself, sometimes presenting him with nausea signals rather than just hunger.
The worst part wasn’t just his physical state but the visits that had started that day.
Tony’s staff started frequently coming to him, pulling blood, and injecting him with different chemicals.
Pulling blood wasn’t painful aside from the slight prick of the needle, but the chemicals hurt .
Some felt like electricity coursing through his muscles, some like lava in his bloodstream. Sometimes the staff would inject not only into his veins but also intramuscularly. Those were the worst.
He wanted to fight, to kick them away, to refuse what they were doing to him, but they had taken that possibility into account and circumvented it by not allowing him food, only allowing the slightest bit of water, and not treating his injured leg. They’d even taken away his ability to sleep as he had no way to lower himself in the ropes that tied him to the posts near him. It was all intentional to keep him tamed and docile so he couldn’t resist, and dammit. if it wasn’t working really well.
“Grab two vials this time.” A masked man spoke to the woman who was drawing his blood at the moment.
With a nod, she grabbed another vial from her pocket, switching them out.
He used as much strength as he could, slowly struggling in the restraints. Knowing his legs were useless, he attempted to bite the woman’s gloved hand, only being stopped by a boot to his injured leg by a guard he hadn’t realized had approached the three.
He couldn’t scream. He didn’t have it left in him. All that came from his mouth were ragged breaths and strained whimpers. His chest vibrated with an intensity he hadn’t felt since he was seventeen. Tony had had a guard twist his femur so hard that it resulted in a spiral fracture. It was quite memorable for the obvious reasons, but it had been the only time Tony ever allowed him to go to the hospital for treatment- as long as he promised to lie about the cause, of course.
He nearly went fully limp in the restraints, watching as the staff and guard walked away from him, leaving him all alone in the most humid and hottest area of the warehouse to suffer under the effects of whatever they’d just injected into him.
┈◈◉◈┈
Kim had spent a lot more time at the garage since Kenta’s “disappearance”, hoping he’d be there the second they got any news on Kenta.
He was getting to a point where he was willing to stay at Pete’s house and risk seeing or hearing him and Chris clapping cheeks if it meant knowing Kenta was safe.
Yes, they supposedly had messages from Kenta saying he was fine, but why was nobody willing to consider that they may be forged? Why was nobody considering the possibility that, in the time since he’d allegedly sent that message, he’d been captured?
Why hadn’t they heard anything else since then if he was truly safe? Why hadn’t he come back yet?
After living together for so long and seeing the hell Kenta lived through under Tony and the hell he continued to live in after Tony, it was no longer enough for Kim to think about what Kenta had done to him.
He’d never justify the action of kidnapping and holding someone captive the way Kenta had done to him, but if he hadn’t? Who knows what Tony would have done? The few events Kenta was able to retell over meals and after nightmares were a mere page in the novel that could be written about what he’d been through.
Tony’s punishments were severe. Dare Kim say creative?
Tying him up outside during a Thai summer day to purposefully allow him to suffer from heat stroke, chaining him up in Tony’s private kitchen while not being fed for days and having to watch food prepared and eaten without a bite for himself, purposefully being sent to clients Tony knew damn well would do… things … to him…
Those were simply the things Kenta was able to say. It didn’t count the contents of his nightmares. It didn’t count what he was not yet ready to tell anyone.
Kim tried to be understanding since the rest of the X-Hunter team didn’t know anything Kenta had been through, but Pete had to have known some of it. There was no way he didn’t.
At the end of the day, Kenta was a human being. He was a human being for the first time since birth, and nobody seemed to care.
If Pete says he’s fine, he’s fine. If Pete says money will rain from the sky, by God, it’ll rain from the sky. Everything Pete said was law to them, and it was driving him insane.
He was growing tired of having those thoughts. He was tired of sitting around his apartment and the X-Hunter garage waiting for anyone to decide they gave a damn about his roommate. Hell, nobody had even taken the time to get to know him besides Alan.
He knew everyone had a lot on their plates, but everyone seemed to have time to race. Pete and Chris seemed to have plenty of time and skin on their hands.
He wanted to be someone who cared for Kenta. He was grateful to have been given the opportunity, but fuck , he wasn’t supposed to be the only one who cared. He was supposed to be loved. He was supposed to have a community, a family , in X-Hunter, just like Kim had found. Yet… there he was.
Alone again.
┈◈◉◈┈
Kenta suddenly awoke to the sight of food in front of him. He hadn’t remembered falling asleep or the guards changing how he was restrained, but none of that mattered.
He briefly considered the possibility that it was poisoned, but what could he do? He was starving and needed the nutrients if he had any intentions of healing.
In front of him sat a large bowl filled with rice, uncut and uncooked Spam, and some miscellaneous vegetables. He reached out, only then realizing his hands were tied together in front of his body, but they were tied to one of the posts he was tied to before, as he sat on the ground.
The guards that surrounded him and the bowl of food laughed as he struggled to reach it, some going as far as to point as if they were middle school children.
“You hungry? Boss ?”
Had he been less hungry and not as in pain, he’d have been more concerned about the fact that the men he used to be in charge of were the ones surrounding him in that moment, but he simply didn’t give a damn. All he wanted was the food in front of him.
“Eat like the dog you are, bitch.” A guard pushed the bowl towards him with his boot.
It nearly tipped over as Kenta shoved his face into it, inhaling all he could as fast as he could before they had the chance to take it from him. Because it was always a possibility.
He stopped to breathe and choked a couple of times, but he was able to finish the whole thing, collapsing to the side of the bowl soon after.
His breathing was heavy with the effort it had taken to hold himself up and the lack of oxygen he’d gotten while eating. He started to drift off before two of the guards started pulling his pants down.
He would have fought them, but there was nothing he could do. He was restrained, fatigued, and drowsy from such a heavy meal.
It’s not like it’s the first time. He thought as he watched one of the guards pull something out of his pocket. It was then that he’d realized he misunderstood entirely.
One of the medical staff members approached, injecting his leg with a clear liquid before they bandaged the area. It wasn’t long until the pain he’d been feeling decreased by half.
But… why? Why were they feeding him all of a sudden? Why give him pain meds for his leg? Why would they take care of him like that?
It was then that all the dots connected. Were they going to experiment on him?
Maybe that wasn’t so bad.
The chances of his surviving the experimentation were almost zero. If he died, he would no longer suffer at Tony’s hand nor the trauma that kept him drowning every single waking moment of every day.
Kim would be fine. He seemed to care for Kenta, but he had X-Hunter. He had a family back in Korea. He had a long-standing career as a well-respected racer, so he wouldn’t be too affected by Kenta’s passing.
Beyond that, Pete and the X-Hunter team had no positive feelings towards him, besides maybe Alan, and even then, he would easily move on from Kenta’s death.
That was it.
He would die as he lived. Broken and abused by Tony Chen. A poetic end, some would say.
If only he could’ve said goodbye to Kim. Maybe… thank him for being the first person to ever care for him. Kenta would have let Kim know that he would never understand how much it meant to him that he was so kind, no matter how fucked up Kenta was.
With a lone tear falling down his cheek, slowly losing consciousness, Kenta let out what he considered to possibly be his last words, “Thank you, Kim. For everything.”
He rolled onto his back, watching the ceiling slowly erase itself from his vision until it was gone, entirely.
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