#I promise I'm not on a murder spree through my ocs

[coffeeangelinabox]

Whumpril #14, Alt Prompt #1: Reluctant Whumper

Yes, he agrees, yes, he’ll do it. He’ll hurt Darrow for them. Yes, he’ll force him to look into another friend’s eyes and believe he’s been betrayed once more, yes, yes, yes. 

The agreement makes him feel as though his stomach lining has been replaced with those long legged, pincered bugs that infest every star system the Domain has so much as a toe in. 

Yes, he knows how to hurt him. 

That much is true at least. He’s a medtech and a surgeon. He knows where to cut and where to apply pressure. How to make him twitch and convulse involuntarily, how to make him bow his back and scream. 

I’m sorry, Chris. 

He knows how to hurt him in the right ways to keep him fighting. Darrow thrives on trauma. Being knocked down just makes him stubbornly drag himself back up, grit and dirt and blood and pain not the right weapons at all for a man like Christopher Darrow. He can keep him on the edge of consciousness, spitting and swearing and refusing to give so much as an inch. Darrow must know that as long as the Domain hierarchy are occupied with him they’re ignoring the others too, and David knows him well enough to know he’ll willingly suffer for that.

He knows how to hurt him enough to buy the occasional flinch, enough to keep his observers happy. Enough to make this appear genuine. Even as every noise that escape’s Chris’ stubborn throat flays him just as surely. 

He knows how to hurt his body enough to keep them away from his mind. Knows to say, “Tell them what they want to know,” when he wants Darrow to clamp his lips to white and refuse to say anything. Knows to whisper, “Just give me something or it’ll be me here next,” as he brushes Chris’ matted fringe from his sweaty forehead when he needs to take some information, however useless to a briefing if he’s to be able to keep Darrow’s body out of the hands of the Domain’s interrogators. 

Sometimes he half thinks Darrow knows what he’s doing, half thinks Darrow is playing the game and dancing along with him: eking pointless, useless information out to buy time to stall, to plan. Even when he sees pure wordless hatred in Darrow’s eyes - could be for him, could be for the situation or the Domain as a whole. It is, after all, that hatred which has kept him fighting all this time. Anyone without that fire to burn would have given up this crusade long ago. Harder to explain away is the hurt. Lee’s actions still a scar too raw for Darrow, only half lucid, to understand why it is David who is digging into him.

He doesn’t want to, it goes against every single thing he believe in, but he knows how to do this. He believes it is healing more than harming - at the least protecting the parts of Darrow that cannot be brought back. 

“We won’t need your services after today,” says the young crewman as he escorts David through the cruiser to want is laughingly called the infirmary.

“Oh, no? Why not?” David is hardly listening, thinking instead about what he can do today that will elicit an obvious response whilst not being permanent. He’s running out of unmarked skin on Darrow’s body. 

“Commander Fenric docked this morning. He’s already requested that his interrogation teams take over.”

David’s heart stops in his chest. It’s all he can do to keep his feet moving, his face impassive. The boy is watching him closely. They do not, after all, completely trust him yet. 

“I’ll have to ensure I get anything useful today then. I can’t imagine he’ll be much use after the commander’s sadists have had their way with him.” His voice is icy, disapproving, but it seems to keep the crewman happy. 

He opens the door and David steps into the room. Darrow is already laid out on the table, eyes closed and breathing steadily - determined, falsely, even breaths. He’s restrained. The tools are laid out in neat rows beside him. David already knows how this day will end. 

Yes, he’d agreed. Yes, I’ll hurt him. Please let me hurt him. 

Because I know I am willing to die if I accidentally kill him.