#tw chained

Another commission for the wonderful @i-can-even-burn-salad <333

@figuwhump day 4!!!!

Word Count: 823

CW: Sound torture, sleep deprivation, chained, stress position

Elias tried to stay still as Jadis unfastened the restraint pinning his head to the chair.

“You’re going to cooperate completely, understand? If you try to fight or run, you will be rendered incapable of doing so again.” Jadis began unlocking the restraints on Elias’s ankles.

“I-I understand.” Elias began looking around, taking in his surroundings as Jadis finished removing the restraints.

“Up.” Jadis pulled Elias to his feet and half dragged him behind the chair and across the room. 

Elias wanted to ask where they were going— what was happening— but he was too scared to question Jadis. He simply tried to keep up with Jadis’s pace as he was pulled to the other side of the large room.

Jadis shoved Elias onto the ground near the wall and ordered him not to move. Elias nodded hastily and didn’t dare to even sit up. Jadis locked a chain around Elias’s left ankle and gave him a hard push with his foot. “Get comfortable. You’re going to be here for a while. Till the end of the month, to be precise. Oh, and I’m sure you’ll want these.” Jadis drew out Elias’s glasses from a pocket and handed them back. Elias took them without hesitation, putting them back on his face.

Elias waited until Jadis’s footsteps had faded down the hall and gone silent for several minutes before reluctantly sitting up and taking in the full room. The chain attached to Elias’s ankle was relatively short— only about two feet long. Although there were many weapons and dngerous objects in the room, Elias could not reach any of them. 

In the room, there were various tables with organized tools on them. The table next to the chair had knives and tools that one might find in a toolbox. Next to a larger table with restraints on it, there was a tray full of what appeared to be surgical equipment. In another place was a bowl apparently full of  piercing forceps and needles.

The room held several different placed to detain someone. In addition to the chair and table with restraints, there were also chains hanging from the ceiling and the walls, rings coming out of the concrete floor, and ropes of various sizes. There was also the chain currently tethering Elias to the wall.

Minutes passed. Then hours. Eventually the lights wents out and Elias began to think that Jadis wasn’t coming back. As Elias tentatively layed down to sleep, he jumped, suddenly wide awake. The continuous screeching sound of a poorly played violin began to echo through the building. Frantically, Elias surveyed the room, but no one else was there. The sound was being played over the speakers at a ridiculous volume.

After a few minutes, Elias started to realize that the sound wasn’t going to stop. As this realization sank in, he decided to lay back down and try to sleep anyway.

The sound was incessant. Oddly enough, it seemed to be getting louder..?

Elias was starting to get a headache. Unsurprisingly, he still hadn’t been able to sleep. Curling up on the floor, he pressed his hands over his eyes and squeezed his eyes shut. This was probably devised by Jadis as some kind of attempt at sleep deprivation. Elias knew that. Still, it didn’t make it easier to sleep.

If he had a bed, Elias may have been able to sleep through the noise. If the room had been silent, Elias may have been able to sleep on the floor. However, on a concrete floor with a violin screeching one, high note the entire night, Elias was not able to sleep, no matter the position he layed in.

Hours after the noise started, it stopped again, just as abruptly as it started. Although it initially put him on edge, after a few minutes, Elias found himself falling asleep. He readily gave in.

Just as he began to slip into unconsciousness, however, the lights flicked on, making him jump. He hastily sat up.

“Good morning!! Or is it evening? Maybe afternoon?” Jadis let out a mocking sigh. “Well, if only there was a window in here. Maybe you’d be able to tell me what time it is.”

That was a frightening thought that had not yet occurred to Elias. There were no windows, no clocks, no ways for Elias to tell the time other than what Jadis told him.

“Let me tell you what’s gonna happen, okay? I’m going to unlock the cuff on your ankle. You’re going to walk with me to those rings in the floor,” Jadis pointed. “and you’re going to do exactly as I say.”

Elias remained perfectly still, fixated on Jadis as he unlocked the cuff.

Jadis pulled him up to his feet and shoved him towards the rings a few feet away. Elias quickly complied with Jadis’s instructions and allowed himself to be positioned and tied into an extremely uncomfortable position. His arms were tied behind his back while he kneeled, chest forced down to his knees and head stuck looking straight forward.

There was something in the air, cloying and thick. It stole the breath from his lungs and clouded his vision. Was it smoke?

He needed to keep running, he had to run. If he didn’t—if he didn’t. Someone was crying and he wanted to go to them, but he couldn’t see where they were for all of the fog. Was it fog?

It felt like his head was floating away from his body. The crying had stopped, and he needed to do something, he needed to—to run. But his feet were made of lead and the air was thick and painful and he couldn’t fight the poison. Was it poison? Was he supposed to be moving?

The ground was hard and cool against his aching skull. His heartbeat pounded in his temples in time to the sound of chanting. It was loud, louder than the endless white cotton that pressed into his ears and his mouth and blinded him with its prickly aching touch. He needed to be doing something he—someone was shouting, and they were crying, and the chanting was so loud.

He needed to run, he couldn’t, he could barely even breathe. He’d tried, he’d tried when she’d left them alone. They all had, they’d tried to run, they’d tried, and they’d failed, and now the air was cloying and thick and he was drowning in it.

There was white in his lungs, in his eyes, a melody of dread aching in his ears to the beat of his slowing heart. Even when his eyes slid shut all he saw was milky white.

Waking was a violent thing.

The sounds of blood curdling screaming piercing the fog in his ears. He coughed the fog from his lungs and gasped in air that tasted of smoke and blood. Terror replaced the blank suffocating nothing that had crushed him into unconsciousness. His eyes snapped open and instead of white-nothing he saw the stars above him clouded by a thick black smoke. He tried to sit up, but something cut into his wrists, jerking him back down onto the cold stone slab. Looking down at the chains wrapped tightly around his wrists and ankles, he struggled and shouted in a panic for someone to help, help me pleaseI A frenetic buzzing of terror raced through his veins, as he whipped his head around desperately looking for Kellan, for Leia for someone. What he saw instead was his whole class surrounding him, all chained down to stone slabs just the same as him. they were all arranged in a circle around a massive bonfire where professor Hawthorne stood chanting in a voice that sounded less human the longer, she spoke.

His head was pounding from whatever he’d been drugged with and he couldn’t seem to catch a full breath for the panic pressing down on him. He struggled fruitlessly against the biting chains holding him down. The bonfire was growing hotter and he felt the heat stinging against his face as the flames shot higher and higher into the sky, spitting sparks of bright unnatural hues. Professor Hawthorne’s chant was getting louder and louder as she shouted it to heavens with a manic kind of intensity.

More of his classmates were waking up and crying out. They hadn’t yet realized there was no one to help them. That they were bound and alone with the monster that had taken them here. The shouts died in Alex’s throat as he realized they wouldn’t survive this. He saw Hawthorne staring into the heart of the fire like there was nothing in the world but the heat of the flame and the nonsensical words she was chanting, and he knew that his life, that all of their lives, meant less to her than the wood feeding the flames.

He was frozen in abject terror as he watched her kneel down and grab something from the base of the bonfire. When he saw what it was, he redoubled his fruitless efforts to break free from the chains, pulling and kicking at his bindings despite the way the chains dug into his flesh bruising and tearing at his wrists and ankles. He barely noticed the added pain for the fresh wave of terror that overcame him.

The man's grip on my arms tightened, and the stench of him burned my nose. He was stronger than I could ever hope to be. And I couldn’t reach her.

I sent pictures to her mind. Flowers blooming in the spring. A fox caring for its cub. I showed her how her hair shines in the sunlight. The glow of her face when she’s laughing. I couldn’t tell her I love her… But maybe she would understand.

Tears shone in her eyes, and I raged against my captor. Still I could not break free.

“Let her go,” she commanded. Her voice strong and unyielding. He did not listen.

“You know I can’t do that,” a voice called from across the room. “She’s a criminal. She’s plotted against me… This entire kingdom. You don’t honestly believe she actually cares for you, do you?”

“Take me instead… I can—I can help you. Just let her go.”

The king stepped forward into my line of sight, a wicked grin laced his features. “The seer… Offering herself to me? All for what… the pathetic life of this girl?”

The room was silent now as he made the last few steps towards her. And I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t tell her to stop this. I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t worth it. I couldn’t tell her to leave me and be free. I couldn’t stop this.

Once the king reached her, he took her head in his hands. That same cruel wicked grin plastered on his face.

Escapee/Rescued Todd AU  Open Starter

The sound of raised voices has his pale eyes opening instantly. Even though the room he is kept in is pitch dark,he searches the shadows. Are any of them in there with him? It doesn't seem to be. No all the voices he hears is coming from above him. He begins to close his eyes, satisfied that he is still alone.

But then there is a crash. Something that almost sounds like a explosion follows. He slowly sits up from his pad and moves to the corner. Every effort is made to not jangle the chain biting the flesh of his ankle, whatever is left of it. They always seem to hear it when he's not careful. When they do, they come. They come and make him suffer. Like he deserves to. He's the freak after all.

More sounds from above. The floorboards above him seem to shake. Thin arms go to weakly cover his head. It sounds as if a war is taking place above his head. More shouting. Now louder, he realizes. There is the faint sound of a door slamming open. He knows which door that is. Any minute they are bound to find his locked door. It's the only one against the wall, leading to the hidden space where they keep him.