#i did get a solid like half hour of good whump fantasy from this ask anon

[kiyaar]

Steve being forced to torture Tony by the bad guys. Tony either knowing Steve’s being forced or Steve isn’t allowed to tell him.

Maybe an Avenger HAD to volunteer and they don’t have someone like Natasha on the team, so Steve is the closest to a baseline human on the team and is the least likely to harm him more then necessary. Steve volunteering because he feels responsible, Steve volunteering because he’s the one that has watched the most amount of tortures of the team (on his orders no less, right Commander? Maybe it’s justice that he now has to get HIS hands dirty for once), Steve volunteering because Tony maybe thinking Steve WANTS to do this one way or another, STEVE learning that maybe there was part of him that wanted to? Trying to keep that raising feeling/fear at bay

Steve trying to make Tony hurt without causing lasting damage. Maybe the bad guys are knowledgeable enough to know if Steve is doing a good enough job and so that fact is hanging over Steve’s head, that he has to do it RIGHT or if he doesn’t hurt Tony enough they’ll take over and make it even worse or lasting. Maybe the bad guys are actually more lucky and sadistic and dumb, and knowing these idiots are the ones making Captain America torture Iron Man is another layer of maddening

Steve trying not to let all the times Tony has hurt him make his hands heavier on the knife, Steve trying not to let the image of Tony bleeding and begging (is he playing along or is Steve really hurting him so bad?) send HIS blood south, because this version of Tony is just SO pretty, red has always been his color

(Is this torture for information? For sadistic pleasure? Is there a goal? Or are they just running out the clock?)

reading this has me realizing it's hard for me to situate an abstract forced-to-torture-their partner situation without substantial plot scaffolding. like. who is the bad guys. what are the stakes here. is it about tony and tony alone or is tony shorthand for failing to protect the world at large. i think there are a lot of situations where steve would be like. lol. fuck you. at someone who is like. i can hurt tony or you can hurt tony. because steve knows what is a weapon and who is wielding the weapon. and i think 616 steve's ideas about 'am i complicit' in this are uncomplicated. like yes. i made war. i killed people. it was atrocious and the times were atrocious and i hope i don't have to go back there again but i will if i'm called. and i also think - i know this is contentious - i think that the panel of him from secret avengers is true to his character and honest in a way i wish more people would engage with when thinking and writing about steve. like. there are realities about what goes on when you are the special glutes boy king of black ops after 9/11 in the united states. like the panel of him walking away. we see his back. he's leaving the dirty work to his friends. specifically nat (implied). is he absolving himself of the dirty work? i don't think so. his orders, his responsibility. but i think he knows about the boundaries between what he's capable of and what he lets himself do. what he stops himself from doing. but he is a pivotal cog in a system that perpetuates violence. 'we don't torture people.' okay. you don't. but your organization does. people you handpicked for your team do, have done, as a matter of institutional policy. even if you say no! stephen. someone is going to take him downstairs and do it for you. steve is powerful and has political and social and superhero caché but he cannot stop the world from turning. this is also why i find it incredibly stupid when writers are like. steve was in wwii but he doesn't kill! okay. are you sure? this isn't a mel gibson movie. i actually know someone who went to jail for being a conscientious objector. that is not steve rogers (616). i also know about physics and he is severing spines with that shield, baby. they are not walking it off. like. i'm sorry. it's not fucking realistic. he ran all over the globe with the invaders and steve 'i have anger issues' rogers came away from that experience being one of the more emotionally well-adjusted surviving members of that team.

steve. to me. is a man who has, a long time ago, in a world no one else (okay, except his 3-4-5-6-7-8-9 plausibly implausibly alive friends) remembers at this point, learned things about himself, and his character, and what he was willing to do and what he was willing to do it for. and he made that his whole personality and then he fucking locked it away. and it's deep in there. like it's in his bedrock but you don't really see what's in the bedrock unless you use sonar or you drill all the way into it and take core samples. i don't think steve is a pacifist. i don't think steve craves violence. i don't think he struggles with the violence we see him doing on a daily basis. i think he thinks in tiers of evils, greater, lesser. i think he knows that he is a human and not a god. and sometimes you have to stop another human's heart so you can keep living. it's pretty bad. that's why he's an olympian-level bottler. so. to bring this back. i think there are like less than 10 situations where i can see steve willingly picking up a knife to put it in tony's body. metaphorical knife. he'd have to be really hopeless. i think there would have to be no backup on the way. i think tony would have to be in danger of permanent disfigurement or disability. losing a limb. losing a primary sense. dying slowly and painfully. i do think steve could handle doling lesser violence to tony in the face of that level of threat but i think there is a line that i know in my heart that he would try not to cross and if he crossed it he would spend the rest of his life not forgiving himself because tony is his precious touchstone in a world that continues to not fucking make sense. incidentally sins of omission has become the length of 3 SFF novels and the last one includes steve being forced to do terrible things to tony, but it is truly a 'there is no light left in the world' extreme situation. i can't say more. but fwiw that is the sort of setup where i enjoy this trope most. very long. very steady foundation. very upsetting when most narrative structures build towards hope.

[deluxewhump]

The Blackmuir Reign

Matteo and Isidor: Bad Tooth

Masterlist

Cw: fantasy, pirates, captivity, crude tooth removal, blood, infection, swelling, mouth whump, tooth whump, Isidor helps

-

“Well he’s no good to us like this, is he?”

“As I’ve been telling you for the last half hour.”

Matteo opened his eyes. Pain kept his sleep light and unpleasant. Bad dreams seemed to pass in and out of his waking mind like the waves they rode on. Always, he felt the ship rocking. If he’d been set on solid ground he would’ve fallen to his knees and kissed it, pain in his jaw and all. But he always woke to the cramped little cabin, bleached and sanded wood like the flank of a palomino. One small porthole was his window to the world, but the world had turned inside out, into nothing but a nauseating, steel gray sea.

The pirate captain, a dark eyed southerly boy looking barely twenty, came into his field of vision. Trying to understand the relation to himself, Isidor, and the ceiling made him dizzy. He closed his eyes.

Something cold touched the side of his face and he jumped, shivering and moaning at the pain that radiated from the touch.

“Shhh,” the boy-captain soothed. “I’m not hurting you, little Lordling. Your tooth is the one hurting you. I’m trying to help.”

There was a time a no-name southerly boy his own age calling him little lordling would have sent him into a pacing, ranting rage. Now he just laid his head back and tried to breathe without crying.

Once the flare of pain cooled, he realized the captain had only held a cool towel to his face. The pain was not from that, but the pressure on his cheek.

“Not to overstep, Cap,” said an unfamiliar voice. “But if it’s questioning you was doing, you could like just poke his mouth right now and he’d tell you just about anything in the wide world.”

Please, don’t do that.

“Or,” said Isidor, “You could take that tooth out for me like I asked and trust I’ve got a handle on the interrogating, like.”

“True, Sir.”

They were deferential to their captain, Matteo noticed. Elected or no, there was a distinct hierarchy on the ship.

A scrubbed clean hand took hold of his jaw, prying open his lips. Bright, startling pain blindsided him, as if the pirate had ripped his jaw at the joint like a wishbone and not simply opened it an inch. He whimpered urgently.

The fingers stilled. “Open more,” the man said. He had a mat of dark, braided hair and a pale blue bandana tied around his head to soak up his sweat, though it was still beading all over his ruddy face. He blinked it out of his eyes and asked again. “Open wider.”

Matteo sobbed around his fingers. He could not obey, even if he wanted to. He could not imagine the pain worsening.

“Little Lordling,” Isidor said, perching on other side of the bed next to him. “Your tooth has gone bad. It’s poisoning you. It’s swelled and festering, and that’s why it hurts like it does. Jerryl is gonna knock it out for you. I’ve seen him do it before, it takes him but a moment. Then you’ll sleep a day or so, and feel more like yourself again. Do you understand?”

“If the festering don’t get worse,” Jerryl muttered.

His pounding heart only amplified the pain, the swollen gums and jaw Isidor spoke of throbbed in time like a drumbeat.

He did understand. For some reason, the pirates were giving him healer’s attention instead of using his vulnerable condition against him. The other pirate, Jerryl, was right. All Isidor would have to do is slap Matteo on that side of his face a few times and he’d be at his feet drooling and begging, telling him anything he wanted to hear.

“But,” Isidor said calmly. “He needs you to open your mouth all the way.”

He blinked away tears to look Isidor in the eyes. “I can’t,” he said, muffled from the swelling and Jerryl’s meaty fingers.

“We can do it for you,” Isidor said gently, softening the meaning of his words with tone.

He hadn’t shaved this morning, and the black shadow on his chin made him look at least old enough to sit in a tavern. He seemed to swing between sadistic glee and moments of mercy on some mad pendulum of his own making, by some code of ethics Matteo could not even begin to comprehend. Once Henry dropped the ruse there had been no mercy. Not once.

Isidor took Matteo’s hand in his, propped up at the elbows. “Squeeze,” he said.

Matteo squeezed weakly. Isidor gave his companion a nod and Matteo hardly had time to draw a breath to scream before his mouth was forced open.

The tool forced between his lips was cold, metallic. He squeezed Isidor’s hand like he could pull himself away with it, but the captain held him fast, using his free arm to pin him by the shoulder. He hardly heard his ragged cry as the tooth was knocked horribly in his mouth, but did not come loose.

“Once more,” Jerryl said, frowning and blinking sweat from his eyes. “Cmon, you rancid little fucker. Slippery.”

A wrenching pain, nerves sharp as a Muirish blade deep in his jaw. Roots snapped, and his mouth filled with blood. The fingers and the tool retracted and Isidor let him sit up, sobbing and drooling blood all over his own lap.

The cold, wet cloth pressed against his mouth.

“Spit,” Isidor said. “Again. Don’t swallow all that blood.”

He coaxed a strip of cloth between Matteo's lips, packing the bleeding hole where his tooth had been. “Thank you, Jerryl,” he said, and the other man held up the tooth to the light from the cabin window, squinting at it.

“There’s your trouble, Lord Osier,” he chuckled, and pocketed the tooth before taking his leave. Matteo did not get the sense his title was being spoken as an honorific on this ship. He wished the captain would leave him, too. He covered his face with his forearms, curling his knees up protectively against his chest and losing his thoughts in the waves of pain radiating from his jaw.

“Matteo,” Isidor said.

“Leave me,” Matteo whispered. “I beg you.”

“If you wish. But drink this first.”

He lowered his forearms tentatively. “What is it?”

“Just brandy and honey. On my word.”

A pirate's word was all he had left to cling to. He took the pewter cup. The idea of taking out the bloody cloth packing his gum made him feel sick, so he decided to try and swallow the concoction without letting it touch his tongue first, right to the back of his throat. He nearly choked, but got it down. The brandy burned, and the honey was cloyingly sweet in his nose.

“Wait,” he said as Isidor took the cup and turned to leave. He paused in the doorway.

“What he said. Jerryl. Why didn’t you just use it to hurt me, if you’re going to hurt me anyway?”

Isidor tilted his head, looked him up and down. “I haven’t decided anything yet. Besides, it seemed poor form. You Osiers know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”

Matteo lay his head back on the pillow. He heard the plank of wood that served as a wedge to lock the door from the outside dragged into place, and the captain's footfalls down the corridor.

He curled up against the far wall and dreamed of a long ago summer in his homeland, with his brother and Therrin.

[whimperwoods]

The Drowner 11 - Druid

The Drowner series is based on the first Witcher game, but really just requires that you know Geralt is a chemically-enhanced monster hunter nicknamed the White Wolf (Gwynbleidd in the elder speech) and the Drowner is a humanoid water monster. There’s an index! Also, have a link to Part 10!

Part 11: Healing is fine, but strangers are scary. Some chapters just need to be fluff, y’all. She deserves it.

[I think next chapter she’ll finally get her name, so... fingers crossed for that? I have to get irl work done to be allowed to write it. If it’s not next chapter, it’ll be the one after that.]

tag list: @inky-whump (Thanks for encouraging me to write the next bit!)

tw: referenced drug use (fantasy illegal/recreational drug used as anesthesia)

*****

The drowner slept in Geralt’s arms, half slumped, half propped at a slightly awkward angle so that he could feel her breath gusting softly against the hollow of his throat in a slow, even rhythm. She fought him every time he tried to give her more fisstech and knock her out again, but she was also still slightly feverish, and if he let her stay awake, she made almost constant small noises of pain, in spite of her best efforts to hide them.

It was almost dawn, and he’d made good time, the two of them quiet enough to avoid most of the trouble lurking in the night, and what he couldn’t avoid easy enough to dispatch with a little magic before it could reach them.

They were farther from the druids than he’d thought they were - or, if he were honest with himself, than he’d hoped they were. The drowner’s breathing was easy and she’d stopped shivering, her fever still apparent but no longer blistering when he pulled his glove off to feel her forehead. He’d made the right choice, as hard as that was to embrace when every time she saw her stump of a leg, she was surprised all over again and had to be prevented from trying to touch it.

She was still out when he finally stepped into the druids’ clearing a little over an hour after sunrise, drooling softly under her blanket.

He walked through the clearing, ignoring the tamed wyverns, the handful of dryads, and anyone who didn’t look like the group’s elder, and being watched only casually in return.

The drowner twitched slightly in her sleep, and he knew the fisstech had worn off. There was no way to know how long she’d stay out without it.

The elder stepped from the shade of the large tree in the middle of the clearing to meet him. “Gwynbleidd,” he said, and Geralt nodded deeply to acknowledge him, even though they’d never met in the time he could remember. Maybe they’d met before he’d lost his memory. Maybe word had just gotten around about him. Either way, it seemed like a good sign.

“To what do we owe this visit?” the elder asked.

Geralt rearranged his grip on the drowner and pulled the blanket away, revealing her poor, bandaged form. “I need healing. Magical. Should have come sooner, but I’d hoped she could heal on her own.”

The elder raised a bushy eyebrow. “Hmm. Change of heart, Witcher?”

“Long story, Elder. She needs help I can’t give her.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

The elder gestured sideways with his head, his long white beard swinging slightly with the motion, and Geralt followed him to a small herb garden, set into the edge of the woods at one side of the clearing.

“Go ahead and set her down. What are we looking at?”

Geralt spread the drowner’s blanket out before he laid her down, the elder raising an eyebrow again as he helped smooth the cloth across the ground, and stepped back, out of the way. He couldn’t stop thinking about how afraid she’d been each time she woke up, how hard she’d fought when she woke up in the middle of the amputation. It was best to give her space. It might even be best to leave her here, but the thought of that sent another spike of feeling through his chest that didn’t bear too much thinking about.

*******

The drowner woke up with an intense but not unpleasant tingling in her side and the bottom of her thigh, and opened her eyes to see a human face staring at her, the corresponding hands extended toward her. The human had long white hair coming out of his face, instead of the top of his head, and he was not her human.

She let out a high-pitched keen and tried to scramble backward, before remembering her missing leg and looking desperately around for her human instead, a half-choked sob cutting off the other noise.

Her human was behind the stranger, several feet back, and she couldn’t get to him without getting nearer to the stranger. She chittered at him, panicked, and wriggled backward as well as she could without jostling the end of her not-leg.

The stranger shushed her, and she bared her teeth, hissing at him.

Her human stepped forward, still behind the stranger, but closer, and she called out to him, a screech that rose into a question.

“It’s alright,” he said, “He’s helping.”

She screeched again, this time turning the noise into a whine that trailed pleadingly off into nothing. She started shifting sideways, hoping to circle the stranger and make it to her own person, but both men made disapproving noises and she whined a second time, confused.

Her body felt - better. The pain at the end of her not-leg that had been a constant, intense presence since she woke up without her leg was down to a vague, sore ache, and the cracked rib that she was used to twinging every time she breathed seemed not to be doing that anymore.

She didn’t remember the last time she’d felt the right temperature, like she did now.

She still couldn’t make sense of any of that with the stranger between her and her human. He’d picked her up after her leg was gone, and she’d been in his arms in all the strange, frightening snatches of time since then, fighting to keep him from putting the gritty stuff in her mouth, but never to get away from him. Being so far away, and separated by someone else, was terrifying enough to fill her mind and shove everything else out of it.

The threat of the grit that made her head go light was much, much smaller than the threat of the stranger. She chittered again, the sound rising up into a frightened screech.

The stranger’s fingers glowed as he reached toward her again and she snapped at the air between them, threatening him with a yowl.

Her human sighed heavily. “Oh, come on.”

He sounded like he had at the beginning, and she flattened herself down instinctively into the ground with a whine.

“Fuck’s sake,” he said as he pushed in front of the stranger and moved to pick her up.

She held her arms up, wrapping them around his shoulders as soon as she was in his arms again and burying her face in the side of his neck with an apologetic whimper.

He ran a hand gently up and down her back as she nuzzled into him, and she realized for the first time that her bandages were gone.

She whined again, confused.

“Yeah,” the man said softly, almost at a whisper, “He’s helping.”

She sniffled and then whined, an apology this time, but he just kept running his hand up and down her back, his fingers tracing along the edges of her fin.

“Yeah,” he said again, “I know.”

When the stranger put a hand on her side, she flinched heavily, her body breaking out into a shiver, but she held herself back to just a single squeak of surprise and nestled a little more tightly into the man’s chest, letting the stranger continue to touch her.

The tingling feeling came back, all of her old pains and injuries continuing to dull into a more minor, healing ache.

Oh. Oh.

The man’s head shifted slightly, pressing gently into the side of hers, and she whined again, another apology, and went lax in his arms, her tight muscles easing and her shaking stopping.

She still didn’t like the stranger’s hand on her, didn’t like being touched by someone unfamiliar, but as her human answered the apology with a gentle hum, deep in his throat, it suddenly felt alright. She relaxed even further, her head sliding sideways to rest against his shoulder instead of up against his neck. She shivered lightly again, but this time it felt alright.

“I don’t think the things we know about wyvern taming are the things you need anymore,” the stranger said, his voice confident in spite of a little quaver that seemed a natural part of it. “But we’ll do what we can for you. This is a new one, but I think it’s good.”

The man’s arms were solid and comforting around her. His chest rose and fell with another sigh. “She is. Damn complicated going into town, though.”

The old man laughed. “Well, you weren’t built for cities any more than we were, Gwynbleidd. Who’s to say that’s a bad thing?”

“You’re the ones who raise monsters on purpose.”

“Mmm, and I suppose that’s something different to doing it on accident?”

“Aren’t you meant to believe in miracles and destiny and all that bullshit?”

The old man laughed again. “You’re thinking of clergy.”

Her human hummed, conceding the point.

The stranger removed his hand from her side. “That’s the best I can do. Magic has its limits, as I expect you already know. We’ll make some potions up for her. Something better than that half-poison witcher nonsense you’re always brewing up. You’d better stay a couple of days. I’d have expected better of you than the shape she was in, if someone had asked me.”

“Hmph.”

“It’s not an insult, Witcher, just an observation. You saved her life, and it’s no great feat to see she loves you, even as torn up as she was.”

“Silly little thing.” He sounded affectionate, and she chirped sleepily at him, her head still pillowed against his shoulder and her vision going hazy as she felt her body drag her toward sleep, being suddenly healthy turning out to be just as exhausting as being hurt.

“Maybe,” the stranger said.

“You know, she used to let me put her down.”

It was the old man’s turn to snort through his nose. “Perhaps you do need to know about wyvern taming. We might have to change your name, Wolf.”

“Oh, shut up.”

The old man laughed.

Her man shifted his weight slowly from side to side, shaking his head at the stranger with no real vigor to the movement.

She drifted off to sleep.