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oliversrarebooks · 1 year ago

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fuck you, I'm a goddamn menace part 2: you can't be fucking serious

Masterlist > Next

TW: abuse, injuries, concussion, sedation, medical whump

Morgan awoke slowly, the sting of antiseptic in his nose. The only thing he could hear past the painful ringing in his ears was the soft beep of medical equipment. His body ached, especially his knee and upper back, and his head was pounding. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He knew exactly where he must be -- in the medbay at his boss's lair -- and the longer they thought he was unconscious, the longer he could relax and heal before the punishments began.

His memories were vague. Lights overhead. Voices. The beeping of medical equipment. A rubber mask on his face.

He lay there, drifting in and out. The pain felt so fuzzy and indistinct. Painkillers? That was new. Salcedo never gave him painkillers. He loved to watch Morgan suffer way too much for that. You wouldn't make it far among the crime lords of the city if you didn't enjoy your work, after all.

Maybe there was some trick to the fact that he was being allowed this pleasant buzz. Let him relax and let his guard down so it'd hurt more later. He could figure that out when his head felt better.

"...awake..."

Fuck. It was starting. Morgan tried not to react.

"Morgan, are you awake? We just need you to respond to make sure you've woken up from the anesthetics, and then you can go back to sleep, promise."

Morgan couldn't help his face twitching as he recognized that absolutely infuriating voice. Arthur. His blasted nemesis.

Oh, that's right, he had been captured. Lucky fucking him. He got to be completely at the mercy of the hero he'd been tormenting for years. And at the end of it, he might get the wonderful experience of his boss busting him out of captivity only to punish him for his failures.

"Morgan, please, wake up."

Begrudgingly, Morgan opened his eyes, and immediately wished he hadn't. Even the dim light of the room was like an icepick to the brain. He looked over to see the smug fucking face of Arthur, and that was even worse.

"I'm awake. What do you want?" he said, his voice weak and slurred. He was definitely drugged, he could tell, because he could barely even muster up the strength to be scared of what was going to happen to him.

"Good. That's very good," said Arthur. He sounded kind. No, he sounded like he pitied Morgan. Oh, fuck that. "You gave us all quite a scare. It was a little touch-and-go for a bit there, but the surgery went well, and you should make a full recovery, as long as you get lots of rest."

Morgan swallowed hard, trying to comprehend this. He'd been given surgery? What the fuck had they done to him? He was in pain all over, but he certainly didn't feel like he'd been turned into a mantis-man hybrid or anything like that. Or been lobotomized.

...Had they seriously just patched him up? After everything he'd done? If there was anyone naive and soft-hearted enough to do that, it was his fucking nemesis.

"How are you feeling?" said Arthur, his voice too gentle.

"Like your whole team shoved me into a woodchipper and danced on the mulch."

"Yes... Julie went a little too hard with the energy blasts. She's still learning how to control it," said Arthur. "But you know, you were..."

"None of this would've happened if I weren't trying to install a zombification device inside city hall? Yeah, got it, lesson learned, next time I install it in your stupid fucking hero lair."

Arthur scowled. "Was the plan your idea or your boss's?"

"As though my boss could build something like that. Did you even notice the craftsmanship, or were you too busy punching it apart?"

Arthur sat back in his chair, looking as if something was on his mind.

The room was filled with medical equipment, the kind Morgan could control with his technomancy. He reached out slowly, feeling like he was fighting through a wall of cotton, and got no response. The familiar, tell-tale feel of power suppressors. They were probably in the restraints.

"You know, Morgan," Arthur said after a long moment, "when we had you under for surgery, our medic, Laurel, performed an examination."

Morgan turned away. He could tell where this was going.

"There were a lot of injuries there. Injuries that didn't seem like ones you got while fighting us."

"Training."

"It looked like you'd been kicked in the ribs repeatedly without proper healing," Arthur said. "And there were marks that looked like they'd been left by a taser, and a lot of electrical burns."

"Heavy training."

"That's not training, Morgan!" Arthur actually sounded angry, now, and it took all of Morgan's willpower not to flinch away. "I'm not even discussing the massive amount of nasty bruises or that infected cut on your shoulder. Those could've been sustained while fighting heroes. But not all of that. And even if they were, everything looked like it had healed wrong or been left to scar. There's no way that's normal. I know your usual activities. I see the reports of all of your fights. No hero did those things to you. Certainly not my team."

Ugh. What was the point of all this? To humiliate him? Now his nemesis probably knew all about his poor condition, his chronic pain and his trick elbow and the scars littering his back. And it wasn't like it was going to get any better when his boss got him back. Fucking wonderful.

But Arthur didn't sound humiliating or mocking. He sounded concerned, which was almost even worse. "Morgan, did your boss do those things to you?"

Morgan rolled his eyes and turned away. Or he would've turned away if he weren't so heavily restrained he couldn't roll over.

"Morgan, I'm serious. Did your boss --"

"No, of course not," said Morgan, packing his voice with as much sarcasm as he could muster. "You know how Salcedo is. Every time you defeat me, he gives me a nice pat on the head and a participation trophy, and he tells me that it's okay I failed, because I tried and had fun."

Arthur sighed. "He's abusing you."

"He's giving me my quarterly performance reviews. You're abusing my patience."

"While you were sedated, you kept fighting us off, saying you weren't allowed to sleep. Does he prevent you from sleeping?"

Fucking drugs. Morgan barely remembered what had happened, much less what he'd said. He remembered hitting the wall, pain, pain, pain, and then the most beautiful and relaxing feeling in the world, and finally oblivion.

"...It's been obvious to me for a long time that your health is deteriorating."

"Shut the fuck up," said Morgan, his sarcasm dissolving with his frustration. "You don't understand a goddamn thing about my life, so don't pretend like you do."

"I understand that you're being abused!"

"I'm being trained to fight your team," said Morgan through gritted teeth. "Rich of you to go on about being abused when it was Julie who gave me a sixty mile per hour impact with a concrete fucking wall."

"That was an accident and you know it. And there's a huge difference between thwarting your plans and casually abusing you."

Morgan looked down at his hands. Like he hadn't noticed how the hero team always pulled their punches to avoid injuring him too much, even when he was scheming something really nasty. Like he wasn't so much more afraid of his boss than his nemesis. Like he really needed his nemesis's smug pity.

Why couldn't Arthur just fucking take revenge or whatever? It wouldn't even be that bad while he was hopped up on drugs. Hell, Arthur was probably too soft a heart to pull half the shit Salcedo liked to, even though he had far more reason. Just get it the fuck over with.

"Could you spare me your fucking after school special bullshit and just tell me what you're going to do with me?" With any luck, they would throw him in ordinary jail and not that awful psychiatric hospital. Either way, it wouldn't stop his boss from finding him and pulling him out again whenever he decided Morgan was needed. Or needed to be punished.

"Well, we can't let you go free, obviously," said Arthur. "But if we put you in jail, you're just going to get captured by Salcedo again."

Oh, Morgan hated the way he phrased that. Captured. Like he was a civilian being taken hostage and not Salcedo's right hand man and a terrifying villain in his own right.

Arthur was leaning in closer. "You don't have to work for Salcedo, you know."

Morgan's eyes went wide with shock as he realized the turn this conversation was taking. He laughed sharply, a little maniacally. "Are you serious? Are you fucking serious, Arthur?" he said. "Did you also hit your head on a wall? Did you forget who you're talking to?"

"I think I know you quite well by now, yes."

"And you're seriously trying to get me to go straight? Join your merry little band of idiot heroes?"

"...it would take a lot of work, and a lot of trust, but yes, eventually. It's something I've thought about on more than one occasion," said Nemesis, who, against all odds, seemed to be completely serious. "Look, let's cut the bullshit. Salcedo is abusing you. Don't even try to deny it, because I've seen more than enough evidence. He's beating you, burning you, god knows what else. He's working you to the bone on ridiculous plans that will never work, and makes you the fall guy for them while he escapes unscathed."

Every word of that was true, and hearing it from Arthur made him want to punch him in the face.

"You're a smart guy. Ridiculously smart. And despite what you claim, you have ethical standards. Remember the time the two of us teamed up to get those kids out of the burning school?"

"They were kindergartners, c'mon --"

"You have ethical standards, no matter how shaky they can be. And you have courage and talent," said Arthur.

"You think I can be won over with cheap flattery, seriously, Arthur?"

"How about cheap flattery and a cool costume?" he said. "But seriously consider what I'm telling you. You're a smart guy. We pay well, maybe not as well as Salcedo, but enough, and you'd get overtime when you have to work late. We have health insurance. Most importantly, nobody is going to beat you to within an inch of your life if you screw up."

"Oh, yeah, sure thing, I'll just do that," said Morgan. "And I'm sure that, after everything I've done to you, you're all just going to protect me when Salcedo shows up to get me back."

"Yes. I will. I absolutely will," he said. "...Because he's going to kill you. We both know that. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday. And you don't deserve that."

Fuck. He sounded so serious. He was using his superhero voice. The one he used to tell terrified hostages that he was going to save them and that nobody was getting hurt. The one that was usually directed at the civilians Morgan was menacing.

"I don't expect you to make this decision overnight," said Arthur, standing up. "You've got a lot of healing to do. A lot of time to think over where your life is headed."

"And you're just gonna let me heal?" said Morgan skeptically. "You've got me totally at your mercy in what I assume is your underground secret lair, and you're just going to let me lay here and heal up my injuries?"

"Yes. I mean it. I know you don't believe me, but it's true. As long as you don't try to cause harm to any of us, no harm will come to you while you're here. I swear it." Arthur turned as he was about to walk out the door. "All I'm asking is that you think about what I said to you. We'll talk again. The nurse is here to see you."

And he was gone, and Morgan felt utterly exhausted.

An older woman wearing scrubs with pride-flag-colored fish on them entered the room. She looked tired and a little scared. "Well, uh, Arthur tells me you're awake and lucid, Mr.... uh... Mr. Morgan," she said. "That's good. You were in pretty bad shape."

"Hmph."

"Can I look in your eyes with this penlight, please? You had a really nasty concussion, so you're probably going to be very tired and disoriented for a while as you recover."

Great. It was super great to be concussed and useless in the hero's lair. Still, he submitted to Laurel's eye exam without a fuss. It was one thing to sass his nemesis -- putting up a fuss for the medic was pointless when she was just trying to do her job.

"The only thing you can really do right now is get some rest," she said. "I can give you some painkillers, and some sedation if you think you'll have trouble sleeping. Would that be okay?"

Morgan let out a sharp laugh. "Oh, sure, yeah, I really want to be drugged up and helpless in the hero's lair."

"Well, you're not going anywhere," she pointed out. "You'll heal a lot faster if you get some rest."

Morgan scowled. He couldn't afford to be lounging on a bed in a drugged haze. He had to work on finding a way to escape, preferably with some valuable information or a hostage, in the hopes he could catch Salcedo in a good mood.

But no matter how he looked at it, he was already exhausted, concussed, power-repressed, and in restraints. He wasn't successfully escaping a team of heroes in this condition, sedated or not. And if they wanted him at their mercy, they could come knock him out whenever they felt like it.

So what difference would it make if he were drugged again? God knows his life was going to fucking suck enough once Salcedo came to drag him back. Might as well feel artificially good for a few hours.

"Yeah, I'll take it. Give me the good shit," said Morgan.

"Right away," she said with a laugh. She pulled a few bottles of clear liquid from her pocket, and, consulting a chart attached to his bed, began to measure out doses. "You know, it's really interesting to finally get to meet you, Mr. Morgan."

"Scared?" he said, attempting his most menacing grin.

"...well, I haven't forgotten the things you've done," she said, which really wasn't what you wanted to hear when someone was preparing a syringe for you. "But the team thinks you deserve a chance, and it's a medical professional's responsibility to provide care for anyone, no matter their past. So I'll treat you like I would any innocent person. You have my word." The look in her eyes was distant. "You're not so frightening now, anyway."

Morgan tried to push down his unease. "Fuck you, I'm a goddamn menace."

"Of course you are," she said, injecting the drugs into Morgan's IV line. "This should kick in in a few minutes. It's going to make you very drowsy. I suggest actually getting some sleep and not fighting it. We'll be monitoring you, but if you have any complications, hit this button."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," said Morgan, smarting from the fact that he couldn't even intimidate the medic. He was at her mercy. He didn't like being at anyone else's mercy. He knew how he treated people he had at his mercy. How his boss treated people.

He hated being on the receiving end, when he was normally such a fearsome and threatening...

Fearsome and threatening...

Ohhh.

Whatever Laurel had injected hit him like a truck, because suddenly he was feeling real fucking good. It was like all of his anxiety melted away, his tight muscles loosening, the pounding in his head finally lightening up. He felt like he were being wrapped up into a wool blanket and carried off on a soft cloud to slumberland.

Any thoughts of trying to scheme his way out of the hero's stronghold evaporated from his mind. He didn't even bother fighting as his eyelids grew heavy and threatened to close. He was so tired and felt so good. Sleep would feel amazing.

You're a smart guy. Just think about it. Arthur's words echoed in his mind as he began to drift.

Fuck you, Arthur. Like it was all so fucking simple.

Arthur probably knew him better than just about anyone. He must know that it would never work. Why even bother?

Morgan couldn't help but picture himself laughing and joking with Toshiro and Satomi and Julie, dressed in one of their ridiculous bright uniforms, working on gadgetry to help people instead of constantly getting his beautiful machines smashed to bits.

Ridiculous. The fact that he was even thinking about it was the drugs talking. And now, the drugs were whispering to him that he should really just get some sleep. When would he ever get to sleep this well? Certainly not when his boss came to pick him up.

Part 1 >> Masterlist > Next

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