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cepheusgalaxy · 18 hours ago

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Febuwhump day 9 Alt prompt 2 — Blowtorch

I'm not late you are late/s

Cws: Nasty burns (well it *is* a blowtorch) amputation, tell me if I've missed something

It was raining.

The greenhouse ceiling didn’t let the water in, of course, and Aiden’s eyes were too tired and unfocused to make sense of the drops that certainly fell heavy over the wood and glass, but he could hear it. The soft hissing was comforting. Like the world outside was hugging him with the sounds.

He wasn’t too cold, either. At times like this, Aiden found themself grateful that Voile’s greenhouse was hidden away in such a warm location, so even when the sky fell strong over them, the air was still hot—a little stuffy, though. Aiden could close his eyes with his hand resting over his rising chest and pretend he was back with Quinn and Ezra, sleeping peacefully in some shitty inn Ez had arranged them by wasting all his gold, tricked by a mischevous keeper wanting to scam them. His lips curled up.

Aiden’s dream was dispersed like mist at the sound of familiar—distinguishably heavy—footsteps, making all of his muscles lock up.

It was her.

Aiden got up, wings softly flapping behind him. He supported himself on a balcony. It was rough against their skin.

Voile stopped a few steps away from him, hands on pockets, their stare frighteningly unreadable. Aiden tucked his wings protectively in front of his body. Lately she’d given him some worn out cotton clothes in a surprising display of mercy, allowing to maintain his dignity—or what was left of it—so he wasn’t nude, even though his shirt did a poor job at staying over his shoulders or reaching below his belly. Or covering his bruises.

She smiled and dropped her head, letting out a playful laugh. They flinched at the sound.

“Oh well,” Voile said, still distant from him. That wasn’t like her. Aiden couldn’t help but feel increasingly nervous at every passing second without knowing what she was up to. Her smile was feline, showing all her teeth. “I guess you were enjoying the break you got after yesterday, hm?”

His throat and chest still hurt. The nightmares also didn’t allow him to sleep.

Aiden restrained his arms from hugging himself. He forced his wings to stay still.

Aiden had taken a glance at himself on one of the walls, so he knew there were dark bags under his eyes. He felt a chill spreading through his body. No. He shut it down. Don’t tremble in front of them.

Regardless, Voile seemed to smell his fear, smile widening. The rain outside still made a loud and constant noise, the gray sky behind her soothing out Voile’s edges. Making them look indistinct. Shadows obscured their eyes.

“I prepared something special for today, you know,” they told him, in a light and laid-off manner as if they were talking about the delightful and comfy weather outside. Aiden’s eyes couldn’t help but follow as she walked to the south corner of the greenhouse—his heart rate spiked up, and despite himself, his breath came out raspy. South was where... where Voile locked their gardening tools. And saws.

He bit his lip to stop it from trembling. Aiden’s hands were grasping on his arms, still, as if they could protect him, and his wings trembled with the effort of holding up, losing the fight against the exhaustion and gravity pulling them down, leaving him open. He was up on his feet and backing up behind a large plant, the rain growing louder as he reached the wall. A few steps and he needed to catch his breath. But they wanted to be protected by something.

When Voile came back, she had a...he squinted his eyes. A gun? It looked a bit like a fire extinguisher, the kind of object he’d seen back in some museums back at home. Voile carried a metal cylinder—some sort of container—over their shoulder, with a little tube sticking out of it. Aiden shrinked further between the glass and the plant, muscles straining with the weight of his feathers, raising them up to cover his body. What was in that tank?

Voile approached him and despiste his defenses, easily grabbed him by the arm. Aiden flinched, trying to squirm away. Effortlessly, Voile shoved them out of their corner and dragged them through the ugly fountain—that was the way to south. The tool closet. But Voile shoved him to the side, in an older part of the greenhouse Aiden had never bothered to explore. He was dropped down on the ground.

They tried to make a sense of their surroundings. He didn’t get around in this wing as much. The thick clouds in the sky didn’t allow much light to pass through despite it being (probably) early afternoon, so it was kind of dark. Some of the glass tiles of the wall were broken or removed. The plants were messier than in the central place. The pots scattered on the ground, vines growing down from the ceiling. The floor seemed darkened out in some parts. Burnt.

Aiden felt a chill up his spine, wings instinctually opening wide behind him. He turned back to face Voile—he’d be dead the day he left her be without seeing what was coming—who was preparing something with her weird object. Flicking a flip. Plugging a socket. Clicking it in place Their heartbeat pumped loud against their gut.

“As always,” she finally said, over the hissing of water pouring into the mud outside, thick drops making their way in through the holes in the wall. Voile began unwrapping some rope they hadn’t noticed she was carrying. Aiden, despiste himself—it wouldn’t do him any good, no matter what he did—dragged his body a step back. “You have two choices.”

“One: You tell me now where that little brat of your friend is hiding,” she spat, anger seeping through her words. Aiden glared at her and Voile grabbed his chin with short and pointy nails, weird tool tingling when she handled it with one arm. “I will pretend you didn’t mean that as a no. Option two; I’m gonna use this thing on you, and you will not be able to get up tomorrow,” they said, pressing harder on his skin. He forced back a wince. “I will leave you withering on the ground like a crawling worm, and even if I come in the next day to kick you while you’re down, you won’t even feel it because you’ll be too absorbed in your own pain to notice. I will leave in you a scar so deep you’ll not be able to recover, ever, writing out today’s deal for all the world to see. If you choose the second option today, angel,” a shadow covered her eyes. The weak light reflected itself on her pupils, that showed a silent and murderous kind of annoyance Aiden had not thought Voile would ever show. He couldn’t bring himself to move even if he wanted to. A spasm ran through his body. He clenched his fists to try and stop shaking. “You’ll wish you wouldn’t be alive to tell the story.” Voile finished. Their voice was as dark and heavy as the clouds up the sky.

Ah. He dropped his gaze, closing his eyes. An ache grew behind them.

She was being serious.

Aiden would like to say his chest wasn’t filled with fear, then. He would like to say he didn’t consider giving in.

But it didn’t matter, in the end. He knew his answer. Aiden opened with eyes, gut filling with dread. He unclenched and clenched his fists. His wings dropped, defeated. They opened their mouth.

“As long as it depends on me,” tears—unwelcome—falled down his face, and he looked up to glare at Voile in a small and useless act of defiance. “You’ll never have him.”

She seemed to be expecting that answer. Voile’s voice dropped. “I see,” she said, cold, gaze darkening.

In a second, she dashed to him.

Voile grabbed him by the face again, muzzling him with her hand, and pinned him on the ground. It hurt. His back arched with the impact, and his own weight was crushing his wings, flapping panicked below him. Their bruises burned when she manhandled him, rough—with faster irritation than what they had grown used tor—and tied his arms and legs to the ground, connecting thick rope to metal rings between the cracks in the stone.

Voile sat up on top of him. He gasped, trying to keep his breath flow. Aiden heard a click.

A different kind of noise broke through the swishing.

It cracked.

Voile’s face above him glowed with an eerie mix of blue and orange, golden light.

Fire.

The tool on her hands was a blowtorch.

Voile turned it down, on his arm.

At first there was just warmth. For a second, the heat touched his skin, colorful flames envolving Aiden’s flesh like a gentle blanket. But then it got warmer. And warmer. And then it was burning hot, making his skin cry in agony and crushing down deeper, deeper, deeper, until it was lighting up pain and tightening its grip on his forearm. He screamed into her hand.

“No! Stop!” He pleaded, but his voice was muffled. Water leaked out his widened eyes. The rain outside continued, not bothered. A scream. He tried wiggling his arm out. The iron on his wrists—gods, the iron, the iron was hot and stinging on him too—kept him bound him in place as he thrashed and begged, Voile not wavering either of her hands for a second. She unmuzzled him and held the blowtorch still. The fire shot against his flesh, making his vision go white. “P-please,” he sobbed, interrupted by his own yelling. The fire was still clenching over his limb, like a snake with its prey, red and hot blinding and it would not stop and he could—he could feel his skin melting and it was like the pain had claws and it was everywhere.

“You gonna tell me what I want?” Voile slightly raised the blowtorch up, taking it out of the way of his arm for a few millimeters. A desperate hiccup made its way out of his throat. But then, before he could feel grateful, it hit his wings. Something in his brain snapped, and he was out.

When he came back to himself, he wanted to puke at the sickly scent of burning flesh and his breath was hardly coming out, as if Voile’s fingers were still tapping his mouth shut. His feathers and the flesh below them were washed over by hot, red pain, violently reaching out all over his left wing, and he started screaming again. His throat burnt like it was on fire too.

“I asked if you are done with it yet.”

Aiden’s drowning and terrified eyes slowly turned to her. Her expression was serious, but soft, like she would stop if he asked nicely.

“I-” He couldn’t bring himself to speak. He tried. His breath ragged, not allowing him to take in enough air at a time to make any sound, and all of it that he could breathe was shoved out when the pain hit a new peak and he cried out. “Please” he tried to say in between screams and sobs. It came out as a hoarse mumble.

Voile did not move. She raised an eyebrow.

“And Quinn?”

He opened his mouth. Tears fell free down his cheeks now. Aiden couldn’t stop himself from trembling. He shut his mouth.

Voile sighed above him.

“Well,” he heard, between the violent roar of fire and the waves of throbbing, blinding pain. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Aiden was surprised to notice that his arm stopped hurting.

He could barely see a thing as his vision was barred with tears, but eventually, the searing agony faded to a sharp sting, and then where before there were excruciating cramps, there was nothing.

His whole being still trembled, and he could feel the heat radiating from his side, but his arm felt numb. Like there was a hole where the feeling of it should be. Aiden made his head drop to his side to look at it. The sight immediately made him want to grab it out.

Turns out there was a hole. It was black, but also red Voile hadn’t moved the blowtorch away from him yet, and it kept going, but he felt nothing. He watched in horror as more of the skin melted away and the flames carved away his flesh.

Then she turned it off.

The fire vanished and its noise was replaced with water softly hitting the glass windows. The air hissed, missing the heat that filled it just a few seconds ago.

Aiden was panting. He hadn’t stopped crying. But he couldn’t scream anymore. The surrounding areas on the limb were still warm.

“You wouldn’t like for me to do the other arm, would you?”

Aiden stared at her. No. No, no, no, please—

“I take that as a no? I see. But,” She admired her work. Aiden’s body was shaking with his panicked breaths. “You still won’t tell me about the hideout, will you?”

Aiden’s tears started flowing again. He sobbed, still staring at her. Voile smiled.

“But I have an alternative. I won’t touch your other arm if that’s what you want.”

Without a warning, she threw the weapon to the wall, making the glass shatter violently. Aiden closed his eye and flinched. A rush of wind came in, and with it came water. It splattered over his face.

Aiden felt a sudden sense of relief, the blowtorch separated from him. He was safe from it now. He cried, closing his eyes. Voile got on her feet, her weight freeing his chest and making him more able to breathe. His lungs gasped for air. The rain still fell outside.

But then there was another sting on his left arm. Higher than the burn.

They were weak to move much. So Aiden slowly lifted up his eyelids and glanced in its direction.

Voile had a giant metal shovel pressed on it. She was positioning it with care, settling it between his upper and lower arm.

His heart dropped.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Voile shot a glistening smile at him.

Time seemed to slow down.

Voile raised the shovel.

And brought it down.

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#i like how this one turned out #five pages 🙌#febuwhump2025 #febuwhumpday9 #whump writing #my writing #aiden oc #<- i havent whumped him since last year #he deserved some attention #this is the story of how he loses his arm :3 #voile oc

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