Chapter Text
Pain.
His face is on fire, his head is about to split. Oh fuck, it hurts, he feels sick, he’s –
Pain. New pain. A sharp, searing pain of skin and muscle parting. Then the blade hits bone, and Tim cries out.
"Aah!" The pain spikes when someone jostles his leg, and rough voice shouts, "Fuck, he's not fucking dead, what the fuck!"
“He was dead! Half his fuckin’ face is – oh, huh, what the fuck!"
Tim tries to click his eyes open, but it only sends a red-hot jolt of pain through his head. Shit, the bullet must've clipped his mechanism, no wonder it hurts – He wills his body to respond, to move, but fails. When he tries to speak, he only manages a small, nearly inaudible croak. Behind him, a new voice speaks.
"Guys, you get what this means? It means fresh meat, every day for as long as we like."
"The fuck are you talking about?"
"Just sayin' we could leave his leg attached, tie him up, and bring him along. Carve off what we like at mealtimes instead. We dunno how long we've got to lie low for."
"Uh…"
"Yeah, let's. It's a smart plan, man. Here, help me do his arms –"
They keep talking, but the words are drowned out by the rushing of blood in his ears. His heart races, thumping so hard he wonders if it'll burst. He needs to get away, he needs to kill them, kill them quickly before – Forgetting himself, he tries to open his eyes again, to see, to find an escape route –
The pain makes him gag, and then someone pulls roughly at his leg with its deep, unhealed cut, turning him over. Tim retches, coughs, and spits a thin stream of bile into the mud. His captors pay him no mind.
When he's securely tied, they hoist him up and start to carry him away. Somewhere around then, blood loss and panic win out, and Tim passes out, sinking into the blessed, painless dark.
*
He wakes up shivering. His clothes are damp, and the ground is cold beneath him. He’s still sore all over, but when he attempts to open his eyes, he can.
It's night. His captors have made camp in a clearing somewhere in the sprawling, dense forest he remembers being near the battlefield, and – Where are they? He turns his head, wincing quietly when it throbs, to see them gathered around a small fire. It isn't actually very bright, but its flickering hurts his eyes, and he has to look away.
They aren't paying any attention to him, but it looks like they're cooking something. Oh fuck, did they – while he was out – they must have, oh fuck –
Biting back the whimpers lodged in his throat, Tim takes stock of his body. His head still hurts, no surprise there, it likely will for a couple of days… At least his leg feels fine, except for where sharp rocks poke at him from below, and the chafing from the rope they’ve tied him with. Tentatively, he tests the bonds, and – Ow! A sharp twinge shoots through his bicep, and he barely manages to choke the sound. Swallowing against the bile rising in his throat, he risks another glance towards the fire. Is he imagining it, or can he smell the cooking meat?
Braced for it this time, he pulls against the ropes again. It’s no good. The fuckers knew what they were doing, and have hogtied him tight enough for his hands and feet to go numb. Tim wiggles, trying to get a feel for any weakness…
A gust of wind brings the distinct smell of grilled meat, and his stomach growls. Then he remembers what it is he smells, and nausea washes over him instead.
With his eyes closed and breathing through his mouth, Tim tries to come up with a plausible escape plan.
*
He’s thirsty. He’s so fucking thirsty. There must be a stream nearby, because he’s been able to hear the running water for hours, once his captors stopped chatting and started taking turns to sleep. And he’s cold. So fucking cold… His joints and muscles scream from the position they’re forced into, but he still prefers that to the way he can’t feel his hands and feet at all.
Icy water splashes onto his face, making him yelp. Sunk too deep in his misery, he didn’t even hear the man approach. Now he leans down, his stinking breath only inches from Tim’s face.
“Gonna clean you up some, before we get some breakfast outta you.” It's the one who came up with the idea to keep him prisoner. Clearly the brains of the operation, Tim thinks with a flash of rage. But there are more pressing matters right now, like the liquid dribbling down his face.
He licks his lips, eagerly lapping up every droplet he can reach. "W-water", he croaks once he's depleted the insufficient supply. "Water… p-please."
He hates that he's begging already, but if he's to have a chance of getting out, he needs a clearer head. Getting dangerously dehydrated won't help him in the least. Fortunately his captor shrugs and uncorks the bottle in his belt. He holds it to Tim’s mouth and tips it for him to drink.
The water isn't the best he's tasted, but it doesn’t matter. It's cool on his tongue and soothes his burning throat, but the bottle is yanked away far too soon. Tim whimpers, but his captor walks off without another word. Dreading what's to come, he tries the ropes again, with no more luck than before.
When the man returns, he’s got one of the others with him. They’re carrying another bucket of water, probably for the aforementioned cleaning. Tim squirms, frantically trying to wriggle backwards, away from them.
“I’ll kill you”, he pants, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, “I’ll fucking kill you all, I’ll – I’ll –”
The leader snorts. “Hah, good luck with that. Now, let’s see… There’s not a lot of meat on you, huh? Skinny prick. But we’ll make do, we’re not picky. A thigh should be some good eating, eh, Yan?”
“Sure, Lenny.”
Tim freezes. Lenny. It’s a name, the rational part of his brain tells him, it’s just a fucking name. He’s not a lenny, they’re all fucking dead, Tim saw to that… His body doesn’t listen, though. He throws himself back, if he can roll away, maybe a sharp rock to slice the ropes – Agony lances through his shoulder, fuck, did he dislocate it? No, don’t get distracted, get away, flee, escape –
Lenny grabs him and roughly yanks him back. Then he unceremoniously pulls down Tim’s trousers and sloshes water over his legs.
“Ah, fuck, he’s pissed himself…”
“Ew”, the one apparently named Yan mutters. “Guess we need to give him toilet breaks, unless we want our food all gross.”
“Good thinking, kid. I’m hungry, let’s get some breakfast first…” Lenny draws his knife, a large hunting knife with dried blood already crusted on it. His blood, Tim thinks, with a flash of disdain at the bad weapons maintenance.
“Fucking kill you…” Tim tries again, but this time Lenny’s patience has run out. He raises the knife and strikes Tim across the face with the handle.
“Shut up, meat”, he snarls. Tim spits out half a tooth and glares at him.
“Kill you”, he repeats, blood dribbling from his mouth. The next blow is hard enough to knock him out.
*
Pain. He dips in and out of consciousness while they carve themselves a hunk of meat out of his thigh. When he tries to scream, he discovers that they’ve gagged him. That’s fucking inconvenient, but not surprising, the last thing they need is a prisoner who talks back and makes a racket…
The tourniquet is a surprise, though. He discovers it when they're done and have left him alone to heal while they cook their breakfast, and he's wondering why he isn't bleeding out. Craning his neck until he pulls a muscle in it, he can just glimpse the knot of the dirty rag tied around the top of his thigh, tight enough to strangle the blood flow. Why the fuck would they do that? And will they remember to loosen it once he’s regrown the missing bit of leg? ‘Cause if they don’t, it’ll become yet another problem for him, as if he didn’t have enough already…
Over by the fire, his captors are cooking breakfast. The wind carries the smell of it straight towards Tim this time, and with the gag in place, he has no choice but to breathe through his nose.
Don’t throw up, he frantically tells himself when his stomach clenches, half with hunger, half with disgust. Deeming his thigh sufficiently healed, he tries struggling against ropes again, hoping against hope that the knots had to be redone with more slack after their butchery session. But no, fucking Lenny is too smart for that.
Tim clicks his eyes shut and buries his nose in the leaf mould covering the ground, in a vain attempt to drown out the smell.
*
The toilet breaks are perfunctory and businesslike, but Tim hates them with a passion. Hates his helplessness, the way he’s lugged into the forest surrounding their clearing like an infirm dog to do his business. And they’re too fucking clever to untie him for it, damn them!
But he grits his teeth and plays along, alert for any opportunity to present itself. He even nods meekly when they ask if he’s going to stay quiet if they remove the gag, and refrains from snapping after Yan’s fingers when he unties the cloth and pulls away the rag stuffed in Tim’s mouth.
He fucking hates it, but for the moment there doesn’t appear to many alternatives.
*
It isn’t until the second morning it occurs to the captors that Tim also needs to eat. They’re munching on his right calf, chatting about nothing in particular when Narmo, the third one, suddenly gets an idea.
“We gotta feed him”, he says, sounding thoughtful, in a way that suggests that it doesn’t come naturally to him. “Or – or he’ll get all dead.”
"Nah", Yan replies, chewing loudly. "He can't die, that's the whole point."
Lenny chuckles coldly. "Unless he’s like a cat, with a limited set of lives. But Narmo’s right. If we starve him, there'll be even less of him to eat. We'll have to take it into account."
Tim shudders at the implication of that.
*
After they've had their evening meal, Yan comes up to him, carrying a skewer filled with little bits of roast meat. The tantalising smell tickles Tim’s nostrils, and his stomach growls loudly.
He shakes his head, tasting bile.
*
Eventually, he eats.
*
No one is coming for him. He’s known that from the start, but the thought really sinks in after a few days. No one is coming for him, because why the fuck would they?
The Mechanisms are always fine in the end.
*
Tim doesn’t feel fine.
*
Every fucking day is the same. Almost, at least. They come to cut something off him twice a day, for breakfast and dinner, methodically trying out different cuts. The way they talk about it turns Tim’s stomach, but listening to them is the only thing he can do to pass the time.
It’s – it’s boring. In that regard, it’s almost a relief when Narmo wrinkles his nose one day, and declares that he stinks. That’s an entirely accurate assessment, so Tim doesn’t bother protesting when they haul him up and dunk him in the nearby stream. It’s fucking freezing, but at least it’s a change. Fortunately they’ve switched from having him hogtied to a slightly more comfortable full-body restraint, so he can at least wiggle around enough to keep his face mostly above the surface.
Chilled as he is, the evening meat being carved out of his buttock hurts a little less, even when he wakes up from the usual head whack before they’re done.
*
No one is coming for him. Why can’t he just fucking die?
*
They put him on a crude litter when they decide it’s time to move on. Strapped to a contraption of sticks loosely lashed together, Tim is dragged behind them for a full day. He must be black and blue with bruises from the jolting, uneven ride, and when they finally stop and roll him off it, all he wants to do is sleep.
He isn’t allowed to, and this time, it takes longer than usual for the bleeding to stop.
*
The less aware he is, the better. When Tim realises he’s been losing time, it’s only a relief. Does it really matter if he can’t quite tell the unsettling day dreams and reality apart?
*
“Hey, you, meat.” Lenny’s boot nudges Tim in the chest. It isn’t quite a kick, but still hard enough to make him wince. “Why the fuck aren’t you healing like before? We’re hungry.”
“Wh-wha’?” Tim’s tongue feels thick and unwieldy, and his throat is dry. They must’ve forgotten to give him water again, and he’s been too zoned out to keep track. Lenny kicks him again, slightly harder this time.
“Meat’s not coming back anymore! Not like it did! And like I said, we’re hungry.”
“I – huh – uh…” His thoughts are sluggish when he digs into the depths of memory to recall what the older crewmembers have told him. The crew… Where are they? Has he missed a scheduled check-in yet? And if he does, will they try to look for him or just assume he’s busy? Oh, how he wants Jonny to crash into the clearing, guns blazing, or Ashes coming to set the whole forest ablaze before they pull him out…
But no one is coming for him. How they fuck would they even know where to begin?
“Oi, meat!”
“T-takes too m-much en-energy”, he mumbles. “H-ealing all th’time.”
It’s a guess, but it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? He knows from experience that healing from extensive damage is proportionally slower than smaller wounds, and there was that time when a piece of shrapnel got stuck in Jonny’s heart, and his mechanism struggled to keep up with healing him… So it just makes sense that the same would apply here, that this kind of repeated injury would cause mechanism fatigue or whatever.
The wounds are still healing, he can feel that much. But… now when he really pays attention, he figures that Lenny is probably right. He’s spent so much time trying to dissociate himself from the pain, but several of his larger muscle groups do feel – strange. Without seeing, he can’t be sure, but if Lenny says the flesh isn’t regenerating at the same rate, Tim believes him. Oh, fuck…
Lenny gives him a final parting kick, the hardest one yet. Hangry bastard, Tim thinks, biting back a plea for water. It’s fucking pointless anyway. It’s not like he’s going to stay dead, even if dehydration gets him.
*
They move again, and the captors cut down their rations to one meal of meat a day. At this point, it isn’t much of a relief, especially not when they take their hungry frustration out on him.
Tim’s own hunger claws at his insides, and he spends what feels like hours trying to worm his way over to a patch of berries only a few tantalising feet away. The berries are mealy and bitter, and wreak havoc with his gut.
He gets another icy dip for that, but the next night they give him a share of meat again, and he gratefully devours it.
*
“We haven’t tried any organ meat yet. Lots of good stuff in organ meat”, Yan remarks one evening. “Maybe some liver. It’s been ages since I had any good liver.”
“He’s gonna bleed a lot.” Narmo doesn’t say it like an objection, but the others hum in thoughtful agreement.
“We can cauterise it”, Lenny decides. None of them hear Tim’s whimper, from where he’s lying a bit away from the warm circle around the fire. “We’ll do it tomorrow, when it’s light.”
*
Tim doesn’t sleep that night. Instead he lies awake, struggling properly against the ropes for the first time in… a while. How long has he been captive? He’s lost all sense of time.
The knots hold fast.
*
He sobs when they cut into him. The gag absorbs most of the sound, and it’s choking him, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t fucking breathe but he can’t stop –
Pain. He passes out from shock and blood loss with Lenny’s knife still digging around inside him, but jolts back into consciousness when they stick a piece of red-hot metal in the wound.
Tim screams.
He screams and screams until he’s gagging and choking, on the rag, and on the stink of burnt flesh rising from his torso.
He screams until the world begins to blur, until the darkness closes in.
*
They strap him to the litter to move camp again. Tim barely notices, lost too deep inside his head.
*
Sometimes he thinks he sees the crew, coming to rescue him. The hope that flares in his chest is nearly as painful as the disappointment when the mirage dissolves before his eyes.
“Ashes”, he whispers into the dirt, “Jonny, Brian. Marius, TS, where are you? Nastya, Raph, Ivy, I need you…”
But how does he even know they care? Maybe they’ll just leave without him, assuming he wants to stay back. What if they’ve already left? He’ll be stuck here until his captors abandon him or die, and then he’ll be left to die and die and die until the ropes finally rot away…
He doesn’t realise he’s spoken aloud until Narmo hits him across the face with the butt of his gun.
“Shut up, meat”, he growls. Tim shuts up, and longs for death.
Real death.
*
Time passes. Perhaps they move again, perhaps not. They eat him. He doesn’t.
Maybe he sleeps. It’s getting increasingly hard to tell.
*
He isn’t sure what catches his attention. All he knows is that one moment he’s dozing, half submerged in a dream mixing with reality, and then at once, he’s wide awake. Wide awake, and alert.
He holds his breath, trying to figure out what’s different. His… his arms are burning. That’s weird, that’s… His heart pounding, he wiggles them a little, and – Oh! Biting his lip to prevent making any noise, he tries again.
Slack. For the first time since he was captured, there’s the tiniest hint of slack in the ropes. Fuck, it hurts to move! His arms feel like they’ve been flayed, what the fuck – but he can move them. He can move them!
Suddenly terrified of alerting his captors, he lies stock still, listening. No, nothing. Only forest sounds, and the beating of his heart. They’ve gotten sloppy lately, not as diligent at keeping watch. The fire’s burning low, and none of them are sitting up…
Pushing through the pain, he strains against the ropes. They creak, and another few strands snap. Tim can barely breathe, but takes a few minutes to flex his fingers, trying to get some life back into them. Thanks to his mechanism, his muscles haven’t atrophied like a mortal’s would have, but they’re far from as flexible as they should be.
Over by the fire, one of his captors moves in his sleep, farts loudly and mutters something unintelligible. Tim feels sick. He doesn’t dare to move again for quite a while, but finally decides to risk it. It’s now or never, and it must be now.
If his life lately hadn’t been a constant blur of pain, he would have screamed. The mystery burns on his arms are agonising, and as he moves, his torso and legs start to first itch, then burn, too. Now, he ignores it. He has something far more important on his mind.
Straining his muscles to their limit, the rope tying his arms comes apart, strand by strand. Every grunt of effort risks alerting the sleeping men, but it’s worth it. If he can just get his hands free…
When he finally pulls them loose, he nearly faints with relief. The stars spin above him, and for a horrible moment, he wonders if he’s going to be sick. But the dizzy spell passes, and starts undoing the rest of his bonds. His hands shake and slip on the knots, but he tugs frantically at them, careless of broken nails and peeling skin.
Then he’s free.
First he feels nothing at all. No anger, no relief, no – nothing. He stares blankly at the discarded ropes, at the rope burns crisscrossing his body, at the knobbly skin where his mechanism hasn't managed to regrow it smooth…
Yan gives a rumbling snore, and Lenny stirs, kicking out at the noise.
"Quiet, I'm sleepin'", he grumbles, and then it comes. The rage. The white-hot, blinding rage that once destroyed the Moon.
It courses through him, rejuvenating cramped muscles, washing away the stiffness in his joints. At once Tim is back on his feet, adrenaline flooding his system.
Going to fucking kill you all…
He goes for Lenny first. Tim pounces on him, torn between wanting to make him fucking suffer for what he’s done, and knowing he only has seconds before the others wake up.
“Mghfhgh!?” Lenny yelps when Tim smashes his teeth in with a rock. Straddling his chest, Tim shoves his thumbs into his eyes, and squeezes until they pop. Around him, Yan and Narmo are stirring. Out of time, he smashes Lenny’s head against the ground, and launches himself at Narmo.
“Aah!” Narmo loses valuable time going for his knife, but hearing Yan behind him, Tim settles for twisting his leg until something goes snap. Narmo screams. Tim grins, tasting Lenny blood.
“NO! You’re MEAT!” Yan yells. He crashes into Tim’s back, and they both go tumbling. Yan is better fed and rested, but Tim has millennia of experience and the force of single minded bloodlust on his side. They grapple, kicking up a shower of sparks when they roll through the embers of the campfire. The burns only fuel Tim’s fury, and he slams Yan flat on his back.
“I’ll feast on you”, he snarls. Yan whimpers, trying to shield his face with hands covered in blistering burns.
“P-please”, he begs when Tim yanks them away, digging his nails into the wounds. “P-please d-don’t –”
Yan’s scream dissolves into a gurgle when Tim rips a chunk out of his cheek with his teeth. He chews once, twice, then swallows the morsel of meat, his lips stretching into a feral, mirthless grin. Looking straight into his eyes, Tim snaps Yan’s neck with a crack .
“Wh-wh-what the f-f-fuck –!”
Tim whirls around. Narmo has only managed to crawl a few feet, and he stares at Tim in wide-eyed horror. Tim stares back, suddenly tired. Not feeling much of anything, he walks over to where Narmo lies. Narmo shrinks back from him, blubbering for mercy.
“No”, Tim says, and brings his knee down heavily on his throat. Narmo’s trachea crunches under his weight, and the body twitches a few times before going still.
Lenny is dead, Tim finds when he returns to him. Drowned in his own blood, by the look of it. The flash of disappointment is brief but intense, oh, how he would've liked to kill him slowly, to see him die… But it's no use in wishing for the impossible.
Tim leaves the campsite without looking back.
The adrenaline draining out of him, Tim’s legs start to shake. He stumbles on roots and rocks, and he doesn't even notice the stream until he splashes into it. The cold water snaps him out of the haze. Shivering, he rinses the fresh blood off his hands, although he can’t do anything about the ingrained grime coating him like a second skin. Suddenly disgusted with himself, he dunks his whole head in the stream.
When he resurfaces, a couple of drops trickle into his mouth, and he’s reminded of how thirsty he is. Take it slowly, the sensible voice in the back of his mind warns him, but he ignores it. With finally unrestricted access to water, he guzzles it until he's sick, then crawls onto the opposite bank where he collapses in a shivering heap.
Move, he tells himself. Fucking move! But his body refuses to respond, and he remains where he is.
*
Tim sleeps, wakes, and sleeps again.
When he wakes up for the second time, he's strong enough to make his way back to the water. He drinks more carefully this time, and manages to keep it down. All he wants to do is to lie back down and sleep again, but he can't. He needs to get out of here, find somewhere populated, and from there make his way to the Aurora. Maybe he'll even run into the crew on the way there, but if not, he'll just contact them from the ship…
Fuelled by sheer desperation, he presses on.
It's slow going, broken up by frequent stops when his legs simply stop working for a while. But no matter how much walking hurts, the breaks are worse. As long as he’s moving, stays focused on squeezing the next few steps out of his sore feet, he can ignore everything else. But when he lies still, with the forest closing in on him, the line between what’s real and not begins to blur.
A gnarly tree seems to salute him, and a distant birdcall morphs into a familiar trill of, “How Do You Do, Old Chap!” When a large owl passes over him, Tim’s heart nearly stops before he realises it isn’t Raphaella. The sounds of the forest take on a musical quality, where he hears both Nastya’s viola and Ivy’s flute, but when he cries out for them, the birds only laugh mockingly at him.
At nightfall, little specks of light appear around him, like the glow of cigarettes, and Tim almost imagines he can smell the smoke.
“Ashes?” he calls, “Jonny?”
The lights flicker and dance, and more of them appear. Fireflies, he realises. Fucking fireflies, not cigarettes.
No one is coming for him. No one at all. If he wants to see the crew again, he’s going to have to go and find them.
He sleeps for another few hours, eventually. It isn’t as much a choice as his body simply shutting down, and he’s woken by the sound of distant gunfire. Guns… guns mean people! Barely awake, he stumbles to his feet to follow the noise.
Soon he begins to hear the screams as well, but then the noise dies down. Shutting down the little voice in his mind, asking whether he just imagined it, he continues to move in the general direction the clamour was coming from. Perhaps it’s only wishful thinking, but Tim thinks the trees begin to thin. He’s stiff and sore, aching all over, and so, so hungry… but he can push through it. One last effort, just another mile, then he can ask for help, then –
“Help?” the branches scoff in Jonny’s voice, “Who the fuck needs help?”
“Shut up”, Tim whispers, “Shut up, you’re not real.”
Slipping on wet moss and mud, bumping into trees and scratching his arms bloody on thorny brambles, he stumbles on.
When he reaches the edge of the forest, the battle he overheard is over. He didn’t imagine it, though, because the meadow before him is filled with soldiers, either dead or digging graves. Tim’s eyes whirl and click against the unfamiliar brightness, unfiltered by the thick canopy inside. His head aches.
He tries to remember how to speak with people who aren’t eating him when he’s spotted.
“Oi, the fuck’s that?” a soldier shouts. Their mates all turn to look, with a chorus of exclamations in confusion or disgust. Tim starts to raise his hands and call out to them when the most trigger happy one draws their gun, aimed at him.
“No, wai-” Tim croaks. Then the bullet goes clean through his heart, and he crumples to the ground.
He revives in pitch darkness, with cold, stinking bodies pressing in on every side.