#this is the darkest of my whumptober stories so please take care

[ladyvader23]

Whumptober #6: Please...

Continuation #6 of previous prompts!

!WARNING!: This is one of the darkest things I’ve written (well, and published). I tried to tag what trigger warnings I could, but I may have missed some. Take care of yourself. As much as I love readers/notes, I love your mental health more. <3

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Luke was hanging in chains again.

What was messed up, was that he was grateful to be out of that box. He was grateful to be able to stretch his sore joints. He was grateful, despite knowing he shouldn’t be.

But it ended as soon as the real torture began.

The Rebellion had taught him to withstand interrogation. Leia had told him enough about what it was like that he knew it wasn’t something he wanted to experience. Sometimes he’d charge into battle thinking that if he was killed, at least it would be quick. At least it wouldn’t be at the hands of an interrogator trying to weasel information from him.

Torture began somewhat like interrogation, except his captor--his would-be killer--didn’t ask questions. With every blow to the face, the abdomen, the chest, he sensed his captors feral glee.

It only increased when he brought out the hoverboard.

“Do you like hoverboard?” Luke only glared back. He could feel his eye pounding, a sure sign of a forming black eye. He could barely see out of it for all the tears it was constantly leaking. “You seem young. What, seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Twenty two.” Maybe he only wanted to kill minors--

“You definitely look younger.” Before Luke could reply, the man lashed out, smashing the hoverboard into his knee.

Luke screamed, pain exploding white and hot up and down his leg. If he’d been putting any real weight on it, he would have collapsed.

“Oh, that looks broken.”

Luke gasped for breath, trying to even think past the pain, and failing. He said something, he didn’t know what, he just knew his vocal cords were being used.

There was a pause.

“Now, that’s a story I haven’t heard before.”

Luke couldn’t remember what was said, especially as the hoverboard slammed into his ribs.

Then his side.

His head.

He lost count. It seemed to be everywhere. When it stopped, his face and shirt was sticky with warm blood. His head was ringing. He drifted between consciousness and darkness.

He tried to open his eyes. He barely got them open. Just enough to see that when he spat, it was mostly blood. The man tilted his head--stars, he couldn’t see straight--and when he leaned down, he picked something up, holding it for him to see.

A tooth.

His tooth.

Luke shut his eyes again, too tired and hurting to try to determine which tooth he’d lost.

He thought he felt someone there...there and not there. Someone cold, familiar--

And furious.

“Oh no, little liar,” The man crooned. Luke wasn’t sure what he’d lied about--what had he said earlier? He couldn’t remember. He wasn’t even sure where up and down was. “I’m not ready for you to sleep just yet.”

Kill him!

The voice didn’t sound like his own, but in that moment when everything hurt, it sounded so tempting. If he could just concentrate enough, he could strangle him. Like...like...

No. He would never be like his father. He’d promised he wouldn’t turn. He promised...

But it was so tempting.

He felt a sensation in his right hand.

“A prosthetic.” There was disappointment in the man’s voice. Stars, he couldn’t even pin point where the man was anymore. His head was swimming-- “Shame someone or something else got to you before I did. Takes some fun away, don’t you think?”

Do not die. That voice again. It...it begged him, Wait a little longer--

Luke didn’t hear the rest, not as the skin on his thumb began to tear. He screamed, screamed as whatever it was slowly, agonizingly cut through skin and muscle, then bone, until it was ripped the rest of the way off. It felt like hours, hours of unending, terrible pain. He screamed through it all, his head filled with rage and terror, roaring and threats of violence on the man who did this to him.

“Stop, please!” Luke was screaming, over and over again.

The man laughed. “My second trophy. I’ll savor keeping your others--”

Tell him his mother is dead!

Luke didn’t even think. He obeyed. “Your mother is DEAD!”

He had no idea where the thought came from, or if it was even true. All he could really focus on was the pain, the fact that his thumb was gone, taken by a sicko who took pleasure in dismemberment, and it wasn’t over yet--

“...You’re lying.”

Tell him to call her and find out.

He just wanted time to be left alone. He knew now that it would end in a slow, agonizing death, but if he could just get time to compose himself--

“Call her and find out!” He was sobbing. It didn’t sound as threatening or imposing as the voice in his mind. “Oh, Force, please stop--”

The man was silent for a moment. Then, blessedly, he heard footsteps retreat, then a door opening and closing on shrieking hinges. 

And Luke was left alone in his pain, with nothing but a dark, cold, furious voice chanting in his head like a prayer, 

Do not die. I’m almost there. Do not die. 

I’m almost there. 

[eirenical]

1 and 2 for the writing meta prompt please!

Thank you, @flamingwell

[If anyone else would like to send questions, here is the list. ^_^]

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Oooooooh boy. Well, I have quite a few. XD So, how about we just go through the ones I have actively open in Word right now?

Legacies Found: The Untamed, sequel to Legacies Lost. This is a giant canon divergent AU that I've been working on for well over a year at this point. There is one key thing that I changed (and in the interest of spoilers, I'm not going to say what, but if you're curious and don't mind spoilers then, by all means, come ask and I'll tell you all about it. ;D) and it affected everything in-universe, some for the better, some for the worse. Here's the AO3 summary:

Sixteen years ago, the Yiling Patriarch died, a victim to his own hubris and the Yin Tiger Seal. Hundreds of cultivators from many different sects died with him that day, their souls forever doomed to find no rest, even in death. On this, the 16th anniversary of the battle of Qiongqi Pass, Jin Ling is determined to make pilgrimage, to try to put the spirit of his long-lost father to rest. He finds much more than he bargained for, and what he finds… will change everything.

And in the sequel, things have progressed significantly from this point, but the people involved are still broken in various ways, not quite at the point of healing yet, but getting there. The plot is opening up to the wider world and new characters are going to be introduced, and I'm having a lot of fun writing it, but it is SO MUCH SLOWER GOING. OTZ

Mirror, Mirror: I talked about this one extensively in this post, and it hasn't really progressed any further from there. XD This is a Guardian AU based on a short film that Zhu Yilong did with Li Bingbing called "Into the Mirror" (there's a link in the other post).

Reclamation: *eg* For anyone who's been following my Whumptober series (yes, I know we're WELL past October OTZ) of fics that I've been writing for Granting You a Dreamlike Life, this is the latest in the series. This monster is already almost 18K words and it's... it's a LOT. The story is a canon-divergent AU that starts out mostly overlapping canon during episode 35 and begins to diverge somewhere between there and episode 36. I leaned REALLY hard into the whump on this one, went really self-indulgent and wrote the fic that I would most want to read for this fandom, because I was pretty damned sure that no one else would write it or would take it as far and as dark as I wanted it to go if they did. And this particular story is the darkest of the bunch so far. ^_~ I'm not going to link directly to this one, because this is definitely a HEED THE TAGS situation, but if anyone's interested in some really, REALLY dark GYADL fic... hit me up and I'll be happy to tell you more. ^_^ (And for those who just want to look for themselves, you can find it under #eirenical does whumptober or on my AO3 where the series name is "Indefinitely." ^_^)

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

I think I've talked enough about my current projects, so how about some future projects for this one? ^_^

(...and how about under a cut because this is getting kind of long...)

The Lost Tomb Reboot

I have... several fic at the plotty stage for TLTR, and I just added a new one to the list this morning. XD

Ershu fic: So, for anyone who's been following my TLTR journey, you know I'm obsessed with Ershu. I LOVE HIM. I LOVE HIM SO MUCH. And you know what happens when I love a character, right? Right? I WANT TO BREAK THEM. *coughs* Anyway, something happens to Ershu in S2 of TLTR that I won't go into detail about because spoilers, but essentially, he's betrayed and ends up in the hands of the person who betrayed him with no one else being the wiser and with him helpless and unable to tell anyone. And there are just... all KINDS of dark, fucked up possibilities there, and just like the Whumptober series, I AM going to write that fic, even if no one but me ends up reading it. ;D

Probably post-canon domestic bliss fic: For those of you who enjoy WHIPLASH ;D, I just honestly want ALL THE SOFT DOMESTIC IRON TRIANGLE. ALL OF IT. And I want Wu Xie and Ershu to have an opportunity to sit down and actually TALK about things (e.g., their need for a family heir), instead of trying to one-up each other. Special appearances by all the ducklings, Xiao Bai's girlfriend, and Lia Jiale and Jia Kezi (...my fic, my rules, we ignore canon when we want to ^_^) having an ...oh moment, and sweet, soft cuddles for Liu Sang and Kan Jian because they're adorable and I love them, too. (I have no idea if this is all going in one fic or if it will be a series of slice of life things, but I just want everyone to get their happily ever after IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK???)

Post-canon Huo Daofu and Xiao Ge... time-sharing Wu Xie?: IDEK what to call what's going on here, but... yeah. XD (See, @elenothar, I haven't forgotten! ;D) To crib from another post... I really do think that Xiao ge loves Wu Xie and loves being with him and all that that entails, but that he gets… restless.  A little feral cat, if you will.  And he just needs to wander off and be on his own for a while sometimes.  And I would love to see a permutation where it’s just kind of understood that he and Huo Daofu just kind of… share Wu Xie.  ^_^  Not in a threesome way, but in a way that they both understand each other’s claim on Wu Xie and neither of them wants him to be alone, so they just kind of… work that out between them.  Like he's a time share. (OMG, I have to be careful of how often I use that phrase for this fic or I'm going to end up calling it that as a title. XD)

DMBJ x Highlander xover that I just came up with literally this morning: No, seriously, this LITERALLY just popped into my head as I was waking up this morning. It was a wild fucking ride, too. O_o;;; ANYWAY, I'm probably going to make a separate headcanon/plotty post for this one, but basically I just randomly woke up thinking... Duncan was an antique dealer in the late 80s/early 90s in the US. Wu Xie is an antique dealer in China, now, and his family has been involved in the antique trade for a... VERY long time. Maybe Duncan did some business with the Wu family. Maybe he met Wu Xie as a kid. Maybe he knew Xiao ge even EARLIER than that (like 100 years earlier). Maybe post-canon Highlander, Duncan starts getting back into the antique trade by helping to quietly repatriate artifacts and comes to China to deal with the Wu family to do that, and meets Wu Xie again... and Xiao ge. And has a WTF moment because Xiao ge ISN'T an Immortal like he is, but he doesn't look a day older than when they met 100 years ago and just... WTF?? And Wu Xie is looking at Duncan and looking at Xiao ge and having a WTF moment of his own because is EVERYONE immortal except him and Pangzi?? And... I just think that would be a lot of fun to play with. ;D

Guardian:

The Care and Training of a Former Megalomaniac V and VI, maybe?: OK, so this idea isn't really concrete, but I still want to play with it. I want to do something to tackle Ye Zun's past with the Rebel Leader and the trauma that that left behind, and I'm thinking he'll end up having a good (...drunk) talk with Da Qing about it.

Another idea I had (MUCH more concrete) was based off my own poor lazy bb. He LOVES to catch bugs. LOVES IT. He gets SO EXCITED and SO into it... but sometimes the bugs fly up to the ceiling. And Gabriel is comfy in my lap and doesn't want to move. So he will swat at the bug... halfheartedly. And then he will turn around and complain to me when it won't come down to be swatted at again. Like I can somehow make it come down so he can play with it? IDEK. XD ANYWAY. I had a vivid mental image of Da Qing doing this to Ye Zun and somehow convincing him to actually... bring the bug down. Using his powers. And someone at the SID detects Ye Zun using his powers so ZYL and SW race home... to find Ye Zun... using his powers... to tether bugs for Da Qing to play with. And I just think that would be hilarious. XD

...I think that's everything in the mental kiddy right now? XD

[taylart-x]

Whumptober- Day 18

Day 18: Muffled Scream

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go!

Characters: Virgil Tracy, John Tracy, Alan Tracy

Disclaimer: I do not own Thunderbirds or any of the characters form the show (or from TAG). I just want to make cool stories :)

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For the first time in what felt like forever, Virgil and John were on a mission together. This only happened because John was down from 5 for a bit, much to his chagrin. Alan was up there at the moment, learning how to interact and work with EOS and to train to be able to eventually help John on 5. The training had been Brains’ idea after seeing John come down from 5 for a break and having some of the darkest bags Brains had ever seen under his eyes. 

Which landed the two brothers in this situation.

It was tornado season, and a massive F-4 tornado had ripped through the town of Stinnett, Texas, completely destroying most of the housing and infrastructure in the area, and endangering many people. International Rescue was deployed, and John chose to take Gordon’s place with Virgil, claiming he wanted to do some ground work.

So off the two went to the US. Upon arrival, the brothers were able to assess the surroundings and the new additions from the tornado. Once on the ground they coordinated with the rescue crews already there and sorted out what they were doing. Both of them were sent on search and recovery, either of bodies or of living people. 

Virgil wore the Jaws of Life and John navigated through the desecrated town. Their plan was simple; John would pick up lifesigns in the demolished buildings as anyone alive had priority over body recovery. Virgil would then move any rubble or debris trapping the rescuee and John would swoop in from behind him and help the rescuees, or sometimes have to drag them out. If any needed medical attention, John would secure them to a backboard and get them to Virgil. 

They hadn’t encountered anyone that needed more than that.

And that was about to change.

“Over here, Virgil!” John called out, waving his older brother over. The whirring of his exosuit alerted John to his arrival after helping a mother with a three year old that was crying and she herself was sporting a sprained ankle form where it had been trapped in a support structure. The woman and her child had been quickly seen to by Virgil who had then sent her to one of the paramedic tents in the area. 

“There’s three lifesigns below the rubble, but one of them is steadily dropping,” Alan reported in their ears. “You guys need to get down there.”

“F.A.B.” They both responded. 

They immediately got moving, Virgil removing piece by piece, calculating what next to remove to ensure that the rubble doesn’t collapse onto the trapped people. 

Eventually, he removed the top piece of rubble that was trapping the people below them, spilling light down into the space they had. 

Two people sat hunched over, one with sandy blond hair that resembled that of a surfer, and the other had straight black hair that fell down to the middle of her back. Between them was a boy on his back. He looked to be about fourteen or so. His head lay in the girl’s lap, the top of it adorned with mousy brown hair that lay in curls across his face and splayed across the girl’s legs. His legs lay across the other man’s lap, one very obviously broken. 

The boy was unconscious where he lay, and didn’t stir as the light from outside filled the dark hole. Virgil motioned for John to switch with him so that he could focus on moving the rock away from the hole the kids were in. The eldest of them- the conscious boy- could’ve been no older than eighteen. The girl looked about sixteen or seventeen, Virgil wasn’t sure.

John crouched down beside the hole and looked down into it. “Please stay calm. This is International Rescue. We’re here to help,” he called. “Can you tell me what happened and your guys’ medical status’?”

The blond boy responded. “When the tornado struck, we were in the library, and it almost got lifted, and did a bit I think, but we weren’t going in circles or anything. Then we got slammed into the ground, and everything just started crumbling on us. Jack got hit in the head by one of the concrete chunks going through the air, and Crystal was hit in the side by something similar. And I think Jack’s leg was stuck under one of the shelves, and as he fell with the gravity, it broke his leg. I didn’t get hit with anything.”

“That’s super helpful! Thanks! We’ll get you out first. What’s your name?”

“Mason!”

“Okay, Mason. My brother is just setting up a harness now. Once he has it secure we’ll lower it to you, then you need to clip yourself into the harness. Got that?”

“What do I do about Jack’s leg that’s on me?”

“Is there a pillow near you from one of the couches?” John replied, checking on Virgil’s progress with the line. 

“Yeah. You want me to switch?”

“Yeah, that’d be perfect. We’re just sending the line in now, so get ready to go.”

Virgil came over- his exosuit having been stripped- with the line in hand. “Ready?”

“Yeah. You’re gonna have to go in to get both the girl and the other kid out. One got hit in the side with rubble, so possible rib fractures and risk of internal bleeding or lung collapse. The other kid is out cold.”

“Okay. Let’s get this one out and go from there.”

It was relatively simple getting Mason out of the hole. He easily clipped the harness on and the mechanical winch brought him out fairly quickly. Then, Virgil attached himself to the harness and lowered himself into the small hole. 

He secured Jack with a neck brace and spine support, then moved him off of Crystal. After a quick inspection of her ribs and side, he secured her into a special harness for injuries such as her obviously broken ribs (he could almost see the fractures). The next one was more difficult. 

Virgil checked the boy’s vitals again and then checked the brace he had set for his back and neck before he moved to the broken leg.

Blood was pouring down the side of the leg from where the bone had protruded through the skin. Great, a compound fracture. Just what Virgil needed.

What he needed to do was secure it. He could get it set once they were out of the hole. 

With some quick thinking Virgil used the splint he had for a  regular broken leg and split it in half, then strapped one half to Jack’s thigh, and the other to his calf. He did the same with the other brace he had, but to the other side of the kid’s leg. He then tied it all and secured it with bandages and tape before getting him hooked into a harness that would support him as he was lifted out of the hole. 

Once the three kids were out, it was time for Virgil’s retrieval.

Which is where it all went wrong.

Right as the line was sent down to the medic, the roof gave a threatening jolt. Before he could react, Virgil found himself buried under rubble, without space to breathe and a burning pain going through one of his thighs and one through his lower abdomen.

Shit shit shit.

He tried to reach up for his radio, call someone, anyone, but he couldn’t. He was pinned. Completely cut off from his brothers all because he couldn’t move his arm. “HELP!” He tried screaming, making his voice hoarse very quickly as all he breathed back in was dust. “HELP!”

But no one heard.

-+-+-+-

It was hours before anyone got down to him. The collapse had happened due to the movement of everyone as they were rescued, and had addedstress to the already delicate debris, causing the collapse. Most of the area above Virgil had landed on top of him, meaning it took a few hours for it to safely be cleared, especially without the help from him using the Jaws of Life.

Once the rubble was cleared, John was able to squeeze himself in next to Virgil, and gave his older brother a quick once over. His helmet had a massive crack running through the plexi glass, and he could see blood behind it, mostly from Virgil’s nose from where it must have impacted with the glass. As John got a better look at the trapped and unconscious man, he found the rebar that had punctured Virgil’s abdomen, and the resulting blood staining his uniform. He moved lower down Virgil’s body, finding the second piece of rebar going through the engineer’s right thigh, but it had missed the femoral artery. 

If it had hit it, Virgil would be long dead.

A groan cause John’s head to snap back up. Brown eyes fluttered behind cracked glass, the cocoa unfocused and hazy. “J’hn?”

“I’m right here, Virge. Just stay still, you’ve got some puncture wounds.”

“Th’re a bit more than ‘puncture wounds’, John,” he replied, eyes squeezing shut before they rolled over to focus on John. “But you need to get out of here. All of this rubble is unstable.”

John vehemently shook his head before looking over the rubble pinning his big brother. “No way. I’ll get you out of here, no problem.”

“John, be careful, Virgil’s right,” Alan chirped in his ear. The young boy had been distraught over losing communication with Virgil when the rubble collapsed. He had quickly regained control of himself to help coordinate Virgil’s rescue, but the panic had overwhelmed him for a moment, and the helplessness. He could do nothing from Thunderbird 5, and he really felt for John with all the dangerous situations they got themselves into. “That pile is quite unstable and requires caution when moving anything.”

“F.A.B.”

Slowly, John began to move pieces of rubble, with some of the firefighters from the immediate vicinity coming in to help him with his endeavours. The raw heat in the air caused the firefighters to swap out regularly to stave off heat stroke and exhaustion, with a new person about every fifteen minutes. But John was able to continue working through the extreme heat, his suit keeping him cool and stabilising his temperature when it peaked too much.

Eventually, the rubble was cleared enough to move Virgil. BUt one thing was stopping them from doing so.

Well, technically two things.

The rebar were parts of the floor, or foundations, as they were very deeply rooted in the ground, and because Virgil got slammed on top of them, they weren’t able to cut them away from the floor to get removed in the hospital.

They had to be removed now. 

“Hey Virge, hit a slight complication with the whole saving you,” john informed him as he crouched beside his now helmetless head. “Those pieces of metal going through your body? We have to remove them now.”

Virgil’s eyes locked onto his. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Okay, then you need to hear this Johnny.” Once he was sure he had John’s attention, he reached up and took ahold of John’s collar. “I am going to scream and thrash as you do this. You need a team of at least three people. One person at least to hold my arms away. But whatever I do, you cannot stop, you cannot let me go and just put me back down. You have to do this slowly, so when I scream and cry, do not speed up, and do not stop. You need to go slow and steady, okay?”

A steel had formed in Virgil’s eyes, a determination and a resignation to what was about to happen. “John? You ready for this? It isn’t going to be pretty.”

The redhead nodded in affirmation, but Virgil shook his own. “No, I need a verbal response.”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll make sure this happens properly.”

Virgil sighed, and winced from the pain, before settling his head back on the ground, arms dropping back to his sides. “Good. Okay, that’s good.” His eyes almost rolled back, but John shook him awake.

“No sleeping, not yet. Not until we have you secure. We still don’t know if you have a concussion.”

John organised the few remaining firefighters, and a paramedic stood off to the side with a backboard ready, along with bandages and saline for a quick wound sterilisation to try ward off the worst of the oncoming infections. Once everyone was ready, he looked down at Virgil. A cold sweat had broken out about ten minutes ago, and his skin had become clammy. He was definitely succumbing to shock, and fast. John offered the cloth he managed to wrangle from a paramedic, and Virgil nodded to him, taking the rolled up material into his mouth and between his teeth.

“Okay, on three,”

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

Everyone lifted, and John immediately clamped his hands down on Virgil’s arms so that they were pinned to his sides. A raw scream was ripped from the injured man, but it was muffled by the cloth. But it carried on for what seemed like much longer than the lift was. Pure pain and torment echoed in that scream, and John’s heart stuttered at the sound. 

Virgil writhed in his grasp, his arms fighting for freedom so that he could try and stop his own pain, to try and get away from the people seemingly causing the intense agony. But John held firm, pinning Virgil into a plank position. Even though Virgil was much stronger than John, and all of the brothers, the astronaut easily held him as Virgil’s muscles were weakened by the blood loss he had already suffered, and the possible dehydration he was facing after being stuck, sweating, in a hold for hours. 

The three men helping John lift Virgil helped to move the screaming man onto the backboard, and some helped strap him in while others cut bits of his uniform away, allowing the paramedic to quickly clean and dress the worst of the wounds for transport. John brushed his fingers through Virgil’s limp hair, but the man had finally passed out once he was completely lifted off of the metal bars. 

A small mercy for the injured engineer.

“We are go for transport,” the medic said, giving John a nod to grab a handle. Each of the people surrounding Virgil took ahold of a handle and helped lift and then walk him up out of the rubble through the path they had made over the hours. 

“Is he gonna be alright, John?” Alan asked in his ear, his voice bouncing around his helmet.

“Yeah, he’s strong. He’ll get through it.”

But looking over his brother, John wasn’t entirely convinced himself.