Chapter Text
He always knew that, should he ever be caught, his captors would reign down hell upon him.
It's why he ran so fast, so hard, why he never let himself stay in one place for long enough to make an impression. He made himself transient, untouchable. If he let anyone look into his eyes for long enough that they might commit them to memory, he'd sooner kill them than risk giving them the chance to forget. All it would take is one half-remembered encounter, one vaguely accurate description, and all his days of flight would come to an end. So he had to run. There was no alternative.
Until he found the Liberator.
He wonders now, as one of his jailers tears his shirt from his already battered body, if joining Avon's crew was a mistake. It was that decision, after all, that inadvertently led him here, to these dank, dirty, subterranean levels of a Federation outpost, coughing up bile and choking on his own blood. He made himself more of a target than he already was, associating himself with such a legendary vessel, and grew still and stagnant simply because he thought he'd finally found a safe harbour.
But if he had not joined the crew, he would not have been there when Avon decided to ask Orac about Servalan's latest whereabouts, and would not have argued with Cally when she tried to convince them not to go after her. He would not have been there to take Vila's place in the landing party when he resolutely refused to go himself. He would not have made planetfall, and he would not have agreed to split up from Dayna so they could cover more ground. He would not have got caught by the guards on patrol and dragged down to the cell in which he now finds himself. He would not have so stubbornly refused to answer their questions about the Liberator, the whereabouts of Roj Blake, or the details of what he was doing there in the first place. He would not have born it as bravely as he could when they started throttling him for information instead of asking him, hitting him across the face until it bruised and swelled, throwing him against the floor and kicking him until his ribs cracked.
Now they have stripped him, because they are not finished. The time for questioning is over - because it never was the most important thing, not really. His captors tell him they were once his classmates, and they don't like that he betrayed what they were all so proud to serve. It's like a festering wound, their hatred for his alleged cowardice. They want him to bleed too. Interrogation was merely a pretence for annihilation.
But the blood roars too loudly in his ears, and he cannot hear a word.
They see his eyes drooping with the weight of concussed exhaustion, so stick a syringe in his arm and pump him with stimulants, wanting him awake for every red second. The drug makes him feel sick, hazy yet highly strung, and so he thrashes and claws at them when they grab hold of him and roll him onto his back, desperate to fight yet entirely blind as to how. They make a wild animal of him, and it's worse when they start to burn the flesh of his back, carving a symbol he knows all too well - the jagged arrow, the rounded medallion, the emblem of his enemies. It's worse because the agony makes him writhe, sending the fire off course, and two of them have to forcibly hold him down, keeping the bruised canvas still for the artist.
Branding spills no blood - not good enough. So they take their belts and whip them across the burned expanse, quick and hard, slicing thin slashes to spill crimson across the surrounding black and blue. The branding stings when the blood drips past it, and he convulses every time the hard leather lashes across his tender spine. But now they've grown bored of mangling his back. It's time to move on.
He cannot comprehend what comes next. Not because it is any worse than what came before, but because what came before was so blinding. They have forced him to stay awake, and so the pain is all the brighter for it, his mind running obsessive rings around how his split skin moves the way it shouldn't, and how his raw burns are starting to itch. He wants to claw those burns away with bloody fingernails, force his wounds shut with his hands until they heal and scar and scab. It's an obsession that numbs him to the blunt shattering of every bone in his fingers, the blades that drag across the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, and the broad hands squeezed around his throat.
They are mocking him. He knows they are mocking him. Words float through the agony, conglomerations of letters that he can barely hear over the sound of his own howling - coward, traitor, weakling, degenerate, filthy terrorist, rebel bastard. They shout it out so that he might hear it, but it's useless. There is no more room in this nightmare for anything else but physical pain - that, he has no choice but to understand.
More hard boots against broken bones. More fists to the face. But then the cell door opens, and his captors go away. Somebody is unhappy that it's gone this far, but that's of little consequence. There's nothing for it now - and it isn't as if anybody's going to care. So they shut the door and leave him to bleed in the dark, convulsing in a puddle of his own bile, salt-water tears stinging the ruptured skin of his broken visage.
Sleep cannot save him. The drug has not run its course yet. Hyper-aware. Hyper-focus. Cannot sleep. Cannot sleep. Awake, forever. Never sleep again. He will live forever, but spend that eternity in blank suffocation.
It's cold now. Dark.
Very dark.
Dark like death.
Wouldn't it have been kinder, to let him die?
Even if it were, it wouldn't have mattered. Nobody ever taught Federation Troopers how to be kind.
…
…
…
Is that someone coming down the hall?
Men scream, then fall silent. The cell door opens. Boots pound against the stone. Someone crouches down next to him, and even their gentle touch against his shattered cheek makes him gag, the fragmented pieces of his skull shifting beneath their fingers. There's blood on their hands too, and he recognises the scent because it's different to his own. They guide him up to look them in the eye, and they say his name, but he cannot hear it. The words are like vapour, thin and gauzy and swirling, impossible to grasp. But he knows their face, and what they'd want him to say.
He must convince Avon that the pain is not so bad, that he can stand up and keep fighting. That's all he's ever been good for. What use will he be if he cannot do that? He so desperately needs to be useful.
Smiling is its own form of torture, but he does it anyway. "I didn't tell them a thing. Promise. It's all safe."
Avon draws him closer, then, pressing his cracked skull against his chest. The scent of warm leather and metal overwhelms the blood, and the cold darkness of night trades places with a warmer kind of black.
"Good. I'd be disappointed if you did."
He wants to laugh at that, and he tries to. But something must be wrong with his voice, because it comes out strangled, inhuman, nothing like laughter ought to sound. Avon tightens his grip.
"It was foolish of you to let yourself get caught like this." His wrist is broken, and he whimpers when Avon takes it and places the familiar weight of a teleport bracelet around it. "You're lucky we didn't leave you for dead."
It hurts to swallow, but he won't be able to speak if he doesn't. He needs to wet his mouth to rid himself of the hoarseness, and saliva should do the trick - but all that's left is the iron taste coating his tongue, which he bit through long ago to distract himself from the pain. "I'm sorry. Dayna…?"
"She's alright. In fact, she's the only reason I'm here. She wouldn't let us leave until someone went back for you." A hand through his hair, then, and lips press lightly against his scalp. He lets himself melt into the new warmth. "I wouldn't have come, otherwise."
"Liar."
"Perhaps. But I've killed them, Tarrant. I've killed them all."
Good. That's very good.
"They didn't hurt you…?"
"No. I never gave them the chance."
Everything is slow now. He tries to curl in on himself, but even the slightest movement brings about aches strong enough to make him yearn for death. Avon recognises his efforts and carefully gathers him even closer, one hand cradling his head while the other wraps gingerly around his waist.
"I'm tired," he murmurs, barely above a whisper. "I want… I… It hurts…"
"I know. I know." Avon leans forward, bringing his lips closer to the bracelet adorning his wrist. "Vila, I've got him. Bring us up."
Darkness gives way to shimmering light. The nightmare draws to a close.