#if you're curious about the previous day's try looking at the tag whump and or go to chrumblr-whumblr and find it

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

day four: watching while loved ones are hurt

a Vaniah story. word count 1,431.

After the incident with the tranquillising a week ago, Maria had become positively foolhardy. She talked back to Jim, who seemed to enjoy it, and had put on an air of bravado that fooled precisely nobody. It surprised and frankly worried Vaniah. She had been nervous: now she was hard. Training was making her hard.

But it was making him hard too. His instinctive reaction to thinking about his family now was a faint tinge of disgust; they were not only sheltered but weak. It took another moment before he reminded himself that they were not weak but had different strengths. He was becoming superior.

He was also gradually losing sight of the honest reasons he had signed up for this career in the first place. He was scarcely aware that that was happening: only when he lay awake at night, wishing he could sleep and finding no rest. Usually, though, he was too tired to lie awake, and slept dreamlessly.

Today there was nothing happening until after lunch should have come and gone. At that time he had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours, as dinner had been off the menu. Was Jim planning to starve them all? It probably should have bothered him more than it did. He was learning to take life as it came; the fear was dying slowly, leaving him an emotionless shell.

Somehow that didn’t bother him as much as it ought.

The siren went when the day was coming towards evening; everyone moved with alacrity to the meeting hall, glad to have something more than hanging about to do. Vaniah found his place next to Mordecai, and looked attentively to the front, where Jim was standing as usual.

“Form into pairs,” said Jim coolly. Vaniah turned swiftly to Mordecai, who nodded and put his arm through Vaniah’s elbow. “Line up in your pairs.”

This feels like primary school, thought Vaniah. Like children.

He was unsurprised to see the first pair ordered off to a different room, and gradually each pair was sent to one of the several smaller rooms nearby. He waited without thought or fear. He had learned to stop helplessly panicking. In this his training was becoming useful. Presently they reached the front of the line, then were sent into another small room: the one in which, weeks ago, he had been medically tested. The same doctor was waiting there, masked and gowned.

“Who wants to be chosen for this test?” he said.

Vaniah hesitated, and because he hesitated Mordecai spoke.

“I’ll do it.”

The doctor turned, left the room and came back with two chairs. He tied Mordecai, passive and unresisting, to one, then Vaniah to the other. They stared at one another. Vaniah was commencing to worry.

“Remember you chose this,” said the doctor, and slapped Mordecai hard across the face. His head was flung backwards by the impact, and the chair rocked. He uttered a startled yell.

Vaniah moved. He was securely bound, but he threw his weight against his restraints and moved the chair forward a couple of inches. “Don’t hurt him!” he said sharply. “Hurt me instead!”

Mordecai looked dazed. He blinked, then shook his head vaguely and winced.

The doctor slapped him again. This time Mordecai kept his eyes closed.

“Don’t you hear me? I want to be chosen. Don’t hurt him.” Again Vaniah threw his weight against the ropes, and this time a knot gave. “Don’t—!”

As he got his arm free the doctor punched Mordecai, closed fist and hard. Mordecai’s head hung limp.

“You’re hurting a defenceless man!” exclaimed Vaniah violently, wrenching his arm free and reaching out to grab the other’s lab coat. “What are you, a coward? Can’t you let him free to fight, at least? This is senseless!”

All his anger did nothing; the doctor glanced at him emotionlessly. “You chose to let him be hurt.”

“I did not! I just—I hesitated. For one second. Let him go and hurt me instead. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“And you do?”

“Yes,” said Vaniah without hesitation. “More than Mordecai does.”

The doctor got a bucket of water and flung it in Mordecai’s face. The boy groaned.

“Your choices led to this,” said the doctor calmly. They made eye contact. “It’s your fault.”

“You’re lying,” said Vaniah, without conviction. “It’s not my fault.”

“I wouldn’t be hurting him except for you. This is your own fault. Your choice.”

“Hurt me instead.” He wrenched at his bonds again, unsuccessfully. “Damn it! Don’t hurt Mordecai!”

The doctor took a lighter from his pocket and flicked it on, holding it up. “I wonder how this will feel?” he said in a conversational tone.

Vaniah, shaking, tried to reach for it. He would gladly suffer the burn if he could prevent it from being applied to Mordecai, who was still barely conscious.

“You coward,” he seethed. “Hurting an innocent man—!”

“Innocent? None of us are innocent. Why are you trying to protect him? What’s he ever done for you?”

“Basic human decency! And he, this friend of mine—”

“None of you should have friends. Just for that—” And he held the lighter against the back of Mordecai’s hand. Mordecai flinched violently, but the doctor gripped his wrist.

“Stop!” Vaniah jerked his chair forward several inches. He didn’t care that he was crying. “Stop it! Stop hurting him! Why are you doing this?”

“Because of you. I heard you the other day, talking to Maria. I hear everything you say.” He removed the lighter, let Mordecai’s hand drop to his lap again. It looked charred; Vaniah didn’t want to look too closely. “You see, I’m being completely serious that this is your fault. None of the others are being hurt.”

Vaniah closed his eyes. He wasn’t quite sure enough that the man was lying to shake the guilt. It was his fault. It was. If only he hadn’t— Mordecai groaned again. The doctor was prodding the burn, and saying in a mild, childlike tone, “That’s interesting.”

“What’s your name?” asked Vaniah.

He had a purpose, but the man looked at him with raised eyebrows and said gently, “Why are you worrying about my name when your friend is injured and you can’t tend to him and it’s all your fault?”

Vaniah closed his eyes. Then he opened them and said coldly, “I want to know your name so that once I’m out of this cursed place I can come and hunt you down and kill you.”

“And how would you do that?”

“I will find out where you live. I will watch you as you go in and out every day of your life. I will find out who you love and who you hate, and I will protect the ones you hate from your wrath. Then I will follow you, one day on your way to work, and I will kill you with a thousand cuts, slowly, and I will enjoy your death screams. You will die only after begging for death for a long time. It will not be pretty. But you will never know when your doom is about to come upon you until it is coming. You will fear me for every day of the rest of your miserable existence. I can strike whenever I like. You know I am strong, and I am growing stronger. Fear me.”

He thought the doctor had gone a little pale. But the man rallied and said, “You are in my power.”

“For now,” said Vaniah: and smiled. “Only for now.”

“Because you said that,” was the calm response, “your friend, or the person you called your friend, is going to hurt more. Do you think Mordecai will forgive you, Vaniah?”

“Mordecai is very forgiving,” he said coldly. “I know that he will forgive me.”

“Even for this?” The doctor leaned down, gripped Mordecai’s chin hard and said, “Mordecai!” When the boy stirred, mumbling incoherently, he continued: “This is Vaniah’s fault, you understand?” Mordecai blinked and eventually nodded.

“Vaniah’s fault,” repeated the doctor, and hit him again. Vaniah clenched his fists and tried to get out of his binding again. Again he failed.

“How can you?” he asked. “You’re a monster.”

“We’re all monsters here. You will be one too, if you aren’t already.”

“I swear I never shall.”

“Oh, but you’ve changed already. You’re a different man to when you came in. Some things can never be undone.”

The words hit home like he had been struck. “I am not and never will be a monster.”

The doctor smiled; slowly, broadly, cruelly. “That’s what every monster thinks.”