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auroragehenna · 3 months ago

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AI-less Whumptober

Day 3 - Trauma Thursday (Shared trauma, survivor’s guilt, “It’s not your fault.”)

"No matter how much you squirm you won't get away" - Universe

TW/CW: Angel whumpee, demon whumper, electrocution, food whump, dehumanization, degradation, mind games, conditioning, physical whump, psycholgical whump, group whump(?), scared whumpee, reluctant whumpee, merciless whumper (here), Word count: 981

"And remember if anyone tries to help her you're all going to pay for it!", Electra warned her dolls. The group of them seated around the banquet table. Only one seat was still free, the one at the very top. The demoness standing next to the table. She gave the nixie sitting there one last gentle yet posessive pet over her head before leaving the room-letting the next events unfold.

Harmonia was let out of her room at the same time as Electra left the other one. They didn't cross each other but the angel had gotten pretty strict instructions on how to behave. Instructions she still didn't like but decided to disgruntedly accept to avoid more pain. At least she'd get food from whatever this was going to be. "Simple Dinner" she had said. Likely story!

Accompanied guarded by maids the former mercenary made it to the prepared room. The two servants halted at the door and gestured for her to go inside. They would wait outside.

Alright then, let's do this. She pushed open the doors and entered the, compared, small dining hall. Inside there were already a small amount and variety of creatures sitting around a banquet table. She scanned the room. Nobody was looking at her or rather dared to look at her. Of course, I'm new, the walking time bomb, the health hazard, she thought bitterly. Even if deep down she knew it wasn't fair of her. They most likely all went through the same things she had. Was going through. They were all stolen and captured creatures, imprisoned and trained for her profit. But wait-! Another hushed look around the room confirmed it. There was only one seat still free. At the top of the table. Harmonia's wings flapped nervously. Her muscles twitching as if before the hairy part of a mission. She Electra had instructed her clearly to be seated by the time she returned to the hall. And the punish for disobedience in front of other people was much higher than without other people, that much she had learned even in these few times. Still something about that seat didn't seem right to her. Something was off. But maybe she was simply over-reactive after all the torture. Most likely Electra just wanted to have her isolated and spotlighted and that's why she was seated there. Either way she didn't have time to waste, if she wasn't seated there would be hell to pay! So come on, just sit down! Now! Carefully she walked to the seat and sat down on it, examing her enviroment closely.

The nixie who previously had Electra's attention drops her head a little lower. The faintest ghost of a guluteral sound escaping from her body but otherwise nothing. Like all the others. Mute, still, waiting.

Then two decorated wooden door wings behind Harmonia opened. It made the angel shiver but she managed to resist the urge to jerk around and see what was going on and probably break a rule. They did nothing wrong, they did nothing wrong, they followed the order, they were seated. A pale hand appeared in Harmonia's peripheral vision. Moving forward until settling casually on the armrest of the lean chair she was sitting in. Then a cold voice.

"Harmonia, my dearest. What do you think you're doing?"

Oh. OH GOD. Her actual name. She used her actual name! Harmonia froze from head to toe completely without magic. Her spine felt as if drenched in ice water. She didn't dare speak-couldn't.

While the one hand stayed where it was Electra's other hand weaved into Harmonia's rosey, messy hair and at once pulled back harshly. "I asked you a question, doll. And when I do that I expect an answer! Understand!?", the demoness hissed coldly.

The angel whimpered. She forced herself to speak: "Yes, M'am. I apologize." With her head angeled she was forced to maintain eye contact with Electra. Vainly she searched in those glacier eyes for mercy. Or at least a sign that her apology had been good enough. But there was no mercy to be found.

"I'm waiting, Harmonia.", the demoness warned. Small strings of electricity crackling out of her fingertips into Harmonia's scalp.

Another broken whimper. Even with so little the pain was excruciating. Directly into her head. Question, right the question! "I-Your order was that I be seated when you arrive I only attempted to follow your orders, M'am."

"And you think you did well? Do you believe, my little angel, that I am satisifed with the result?"

"No-No, M'am. But I'm sorry I don't know what I did wrong."

Electra's grip in her hair tightened and at once she brutually pulled her head to the side and threw the starved body onto the surprisngly dirty floor, leaving the chair miraciously standing. Her ice blue eyes looked down at the sad figure in the dirt. "May this be a reminder to you to never. ever. attempt to sit where I sit. You are all but the dirt underneath my sole! Something like you could never be someone like me, doll! Remember this. And know your place!" And with those words she turned away and sat down, ordering her still seated dolls to look up and look alive and waited for dinner to be served.

Harmonia didn't get up, she just lay there in the dirt on her bruised side. Didn't dare move without permission. A silent tear rolling down her face-not shining. Her head still felt on fire inside. When the food was finally served Harmonia took a plate-probably originally known for her and threw it onto the dirty floor next to her, uncaring off the shards digging into her marble skin. Electra looked down at her angel, then without another word she stepped on the food and dug it deeper into the dirt with her heel.

"Eat!", she ordered simply.

Taglist: @ailesswhumptober, @yourlocalgaefae33, @princessofhe11, @greatkittencloud, @bisexuawolfsalt, @shattermind-8

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shapeshiftersandfire · 4 years ago

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The Osprey and the Barn Owl, pt. iii

Emma, finally rescued from Sinister’s lab, begins her road to recovery. But, even while she’s freed, she finds that Sinister’s grip on her isn’t quite gone.

for @amonthofwhump’s bracket challenge!

Bracket Two; Trope: betrayal

taglist: @whumpinggrounds

cw: psycholgical whump, lady whump, referenced wing whump, referenced lab whump, recovering whumpee, scalpel mention, self-blame, collar mention

The mattress could have been the hardest thing in the world and Emma still would have found it comfortable. She sinks into it, feeling the pressure come off her body after so long spent either strung up or lying on a hard floor. Her joints don’t ache, her hip isn’t sore, and it doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep.

When she wakes next, the sun is beginning to set, and there’s an orange glow to her room. Emma sighs and closes her eyes again, having no intentions to fall back to sleep, but to instead lay contently in the shadow of the setting sun. One month. One month she’d spent locked up, away from the sun and any view of the outdoors. She hadn’t realized how much she missed it until the day she’d nearly escaped.

And then—

The sound of scissors at work echoes in her head. She cringes, tightening her still-aching wings against her back, pulling the blankets tighter around her. It’s a sound she can’t escape, and the feeling of a cruel hand taking a grip of her feathers. And with those comes the crushing knowledge that until she molts again—in one year— she can’t fly.

She can’t fly.

Can’t fly. Can’t fly. Can’t fly.

She’ll molt, eventually, she always does, it happens every year. But it’s knowing for that entire year she’s going to be grounded. Unable to join her teammates in the skies. And every time she thinks about why, she’s going to remember the sound of the scissors, the even snip snip snip as it ate through her feathers, Sinister’s tight grip, the toothed clamps biting into her wings.

Emma pulls the blankets over her head. All she wants to do it hide away for the next year, until her ruined primaries fall out and regrow. She doesn’t want the X-Men to see her like this, not shattered and grounded. Hank already has, when he cleaned and treated her wings and cleaned the blood off her face, and even one of the team seeing her is one too many.

Please, please make it stop.

It’s going to haunt her at every waking moment. It’s going to haunt her in her sleep. The sounds, the feeling, she’s never going to be able to forget.

She pushes herself further into the bed. Every inch of her body still aches, even with the pain medications Hank had given her earlier.

And then, a knock at the door.

Emma lets out a soft, strained sigh, reluctantly pulling the blankets down from over her head. Come in.

Jean slips through the door, gently shutting it behind her. “Hey.” She sits at the edge of the bed; Emma doesn’t mind. Jean’s quiet, gentle company is a welcomed change from what she’s had. “How are you feeling?”

Emma takes a breath and groans. She’s slept all night and well into the next day, but she still feels overly exhausted, like she could sleep the rest of today and into the next. “Tired,” she whispers. Her voice still feels raw, it’s still hoarse from her month spent screaming at Sinister’s hands. “Sore.”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” Jean says softly. “To think that I’ve almost been there…” She shakes her head, wings fluffed, a haunted look in her eyes. “I would never wish that on anyone.”

And years ago, he was intent on using Jean Grey in his experiments. But we stopped him.

Emma remembers that. She sighs heavily. “Nor would I.”

“Emma—” Jean reaches for Emma’s shoulder; Emma flinches away. Too many violent, ill-meaning hands have been on her wings already, she can’t bear the thought of any more.

“Don’t—”

Jean draws away. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Emma says wearily. “But please, don’t touch me until I’m ready. I need to be...left alone.”

“Of course.” Jean pauses. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Not unless you can—” Emma stops herself. “No. No, thank you.”

And then they’re silent; Emma, watching as the sunlight in her room fades under cloud cover; and Jean, sitting quietly at the edge of Emma’s bed.

“Jean,” she says softly.

“Hm?”

“He clipped my wings,” Emma whispers. “I can’t fly.” A wave of nausea sweeps over her. She’s thought it so many times, had the thought rattle in her head and makes her sick in her heart and her stomach, but she’s never said it out loud. To hear the words out in the world for the first time is something else entirely. She closes her eyes, gulping.

For a moment, Jean says nothing. Emma imagines her wings are fluffed at the very thought.

“Emma, I’m so sorry…”

And then, after another, “Can I see?”

Emma opens her eyes, expecting to see some twisted kind of morbid curiosity in Jean’s eyes; as though her clipped wings are some kind of sick amusement. What she sees instead, is a kind of concern, wanting to see how bad the damage is, if there’s any hope of salvaging whatever’s left.

“If you must,” she whispers, and closes her eyes as she pulls the blankets down far enough to extend one wing. She doesn’t want to see what’s left, she doesn’t want to see what kind of damage Sinister had done to her wings. She’s already seen the bloody marks he’d left on her wings, the cuts and empty spaces where he’d ripped out feathers; she’d stopped looking at the new injuries after Sinister clipped her.

For a while, Jean says nothing. Emma doesn’t know if she should be relieved or terrified, if she would rather Jean be silent or not.

Then finally, the tanager lets out a breath and says slowly, “Are you...are you sure?”

Emma snaps her wing back, flinching at the pain that comes with the action. She opens her eyes, expecting a sneer on Jean’s face, but what she finds instead is...confusion. Genuine confusion.

And it lights a fire in Emma’s stomach. Didn’t Jean hear her? Sinister had clipped her wings. She can’t fly. Her throat scratches as she forces out her next words. “Yes, I’m sure, I--”

I felt him take a handful.

His harsh fingers digging into her wings as he took the scissors to her flight feathers. The snap as the scissors cut through the feather shaft.

She knows what she felt. She knows what she heard.

She shudders, curling tighter. Her voice lowers to a whisper. “I’m sure.”

“Emma, I--” Jean says, gently, but still confused, and sounding like she’s about to try to convince Emma of something. “I don’t doubt anything you’ve experienced in the slightest, but...but there’s no damage, Emma. All of your flight feathers are intact.”

Emma blinks. All of your flight feathers are intact. No. No, that can’t be, it can’t. Sinister had cut them, she felt it, she heard it, she knows what he did, and it was all because she had the audacity to try to escape. She rolls over halfway, wings tightly folded against her back. “They can’t be,” she breathes. “He cut them, I know, I—That’s not possible.” She knows what she felt, she knows what she heard.

“I know,” Jean says, and still, it’s so gentle, and it nearly drives Emma mad, “I do, but…” She shakes her head. “They’re all intact. I swear to you, Emma, they are. Not a barb out of place.”

“No,” Emma whispers. She pulls the blankets tight around her, shaking. It’s not possible. It’s not possible. He cut them, I watched him cut them. I felt it. I felt everything. How could that be? How could her flight feathers be perfectly intact? She knows what she felt, she knows when someone clips her wings, it isn’t possible, it isn’t, it can’t be, it—

Something occurs to her then, that wrenches her gut and brings tears to her eyes—and damn it, she doesn’t want to cry now, not in front of Jean— and she grips the pillow until her hand aches. She sniffs heavily, fighting to keep her voice in control.

“He’s— he’s a telepath, isn’t he?” Emma doesn’t wait for an answer. She buries her face in the pillow. He’s a damned telepath. I had that collar on—

“Yes.”

One word is all it takes. Emma sobs into the pillow, even as every breath she takes hurts her ribs and her shoulders. Sinister had never clipped her wings, had never been anywhere near them, but he’d made her think that, an illusion, from one telepath to the other, and she couldn’t tell because she’d had a power-dampening collar on.

“Oh, Emma. I’m so sorry.” She can hear Jean sigh and feel her shuffle closer, and all at once Emma wants her to stay and leave and get away from her— But Jean stays. She stays, and she rubs circles on Emma’s back, between her shoulders, and says nothing while Emma cries.

It’s not the revelation alone, it’s the month of pain and exhaustion and gnawing hunger and her failed escape attempt catching up to her. The realization that Sinister had made a fool of her—had put her under an illusion and let her spend the rest of her time thinking she would never fly again—that cuts her deeper than any scalpel.

And once Emma’s worn herself out, she lays there, sniffling and blinking stray tears down the bridge of her nose, still with an iron grip on the pillow. She can’t deny she’s grateful for Jean’s company.

The feeling she’s left with isn’t catharsis. It’s a deep, aching, heavy hurt. The kind that makes her chest tight. She’d been duped, and she’d let it happen.

But what she feels, more than anything, is betrayed.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Jean says softly. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

I know. But I wish I had. Emma takes a deep breath. The sun peaks back through her window, warming her face. A reminder that her freedom is here to stay, and so is the sun. And with that, and Jean’s help, she’s able to sit up at the edge of the bed.

Emma takes a tissue Jean offers her with a whispered “Thank you.” She wipes her eyes, blows her nose, and leans over, elbows on her thighs. Her body aches. The exhaustion comes back, tenfold. She’d like nothing more than to go back to sleep and wake up two days later.

“Why don’t you take a look?” Jean offers after a moment.

Emma’s wings feel heavier on her back. She’s not sure she wants to. “I don’t know that I want to…” What if Jean had been lying to her, too?

No. She would know it.

She looks up at Jean. “Stay with me.”

“I will.”

Emma braces herself. She’s stopped looking at her wings since Sinister supposedly clipped her, she doesn’t know what they’ll look like. Hank had bandaged and stitched every little thing he could find, more than Emma ever realized she had. Even if her wings aren’t clipped...they’re still going to look incredibly rough. She doesn’t know if she’s prepared for either of those things.

But she takes a breath, and slowly gingerly, mindful of the stitches and bandages, opens her wings, and one by one forces herself to look at them.

The feathers are stained pale red. Purple suture sticks out from underneath feathers. Awkwardly placed yet effective pads of gauze sticks out at odd angles, noticeable in the gaps between her feathers. The evidence of the very real damage Sinister had done is there.

What isn’t there, or rather, what is, are the tips of her flight feathers. Rounded and untouched, not even the slightest evidence of a pair of scissors having ever touched them. She’s missing one, one of the ones Sinister pulled for his catalogue, but that one will grow back, as will all the others she’d lost. But the rest of her primaries are there. There, and intact. Just like Jean said.

The tanager was right.

She leans into Jean’s shoulder with fresh tears. It’s not relief that makes her cry, not entirely, but a combination of relief and hurt. She hasn’t been clipped, she hasn’t been grounded. She can still fly. She can still feel the wind through her wings and the sun on her back. There’s nothing that will stop her once she’s fully healed.

She’d thought for so long she’d been clipped, and Sinister had let her think it for so long, just to keep her from running again. And that? That’s going to hurt her more than anything.

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