Very much NSFW fic continued from yesterday:
Fracture Thirty-Two: The Blade Cuts
The realm of memory is usually like a jigsaw. Pieces can fit together in an alarming number of ways.
This one was like a field of broken glass.
*
Kurt woke up, then threw up in short order. Where?
Hess’ place. One of them, anyway. She’d had time to decorate, lining the walls with implements of torture and sprays of blood.
At least it was *dry* blood, or he’d have to throw up again.
He hadn’t felt so sick in his entire life.
Hess had put a leash on him again.
Head was full of fog. He couldn’t tell where he was.
Someone was crying, and it wasn’t him.
Great. It looked like he was going to be ‘initiating’ someone. Poor soul. _God save us…_
Someone picked him up and placed him on the bed. Hess.
“I have a present for you, my lovely demon,” she said. “Take a look in my pants…”
Kurt sighed, letting Hure meld with him. This was almost straightforward and normal. For Hess, anyway.
He was seven years old, almost eight, and he knew more about cunnilingus than most people thrice his age. He wasn’t proud. It wasn't an accomplishment. It was just one thing he did to survive. To make sure his family and his tribe survived.
Hure made his fingers probe her wetness, but Kurt was the one who was shocked when they came back red with blood. She was bleeding, but it smelled wrong. Sort of - stale.
Ever since he could read, he’d read up on various tantric arts, lest he upset Hess. He’d read about what one should do if a lady was 'in her menses’ and thought it was some kind of bidet. He’d never made the connection between that phrase and the times when Mama or other women in the troupe were irritable. Likewise, he didn’t connect it with Hess' bleeding, either.
“You’re - hurt…” he blurted.
Hess laughed as she removed her underpants. “You should enjoy it,” she told him. “Demons love blood.”
_This demon doesn’t,_ he thought, knowing better than to contradict her out loud. He just froze, wondering what to do next.
“It might not be around for much longer,” she purred, spreading herself before him. “You should be glad of the opportunity.”
Kurt started to cry. Hure was terrified. Fight wanted to lash out and Flight wanted to run away. The others huddled in the back of his head like a frightened crowd of children, clinging to the Archivist like a drowning man clung at straws.
Hess siezed his head and bought him down with a final command of, "Demons *love* blood.“
*
She let him go the minute his struggles sated her. He turned and ran for the little room where he knew he could be ill. He vomited up stale, bad blood gone wrong, mixed with bile. He could still smell it. It was all through his fur.
Then he saw, above the pretty tiles, the specimen jars.
Bits of *people*.
Pickled foetuses.
And - _Oh God, help us…_
He had a son.
There was no mistaking it. Everything Kurt had, this baby had, too. The child was *his*.
Hess was pounding on the door, demanding he come out or join the others in a jar.
He leaned against the pretty tiles with his soiled hand, and brushed the glass of his son’s jar with the other. "I’ll get you free,” he promised. “I’ll sing you to sleep and I’ll get you free of her. I promise. I promise. I’ll do it.”
With that promise, a new persona was born. Not quite the one Hess wanted, but the one Kurt needed at the time.
*
There were five prisoners. Two, he had to 'break in’ while Hess watched. He made it merciful, whispering in their ears to wait, and he would have them out of Hess’ horror-show.
All around, were jars and other trophies.
Tanned human skin.
Children’s bones.
Preserved organs.
All carefully lit to give their maximum effect.
He was going to free them. He was going to put *Hess* in a bottle. In a cage. His name was Justice.
All he had to do was bide his time, and strike when that time was right.
But he got it wrong.
He spent too much time trying to calm a hysterical girl rather than free her. Her screams bought Hess. The girl was deemed a failure, owing to her lost 'potential’.
Hess dissected her, and left her open body beside her bed to remind him of what happened to those who failed her.
Then she raped him for three days in a row. Chained him up in the attitude of the murdered girl, and left his son in the open for him to see.
“If you escape,” she said. “I’ll have another child on that table, over there. Perhaps your sister, yes? Or perhaps all three…”
She said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
He was out of his bonds in an instant, slashing at her with talons grown during his stay, there.
Hess backpedalled. She ran. Too late. There was a monster after her, combined with Fight and Justice and even Kurt.
Hess could do what she liked to him. He had no choice. But his sisters were innocent. His sisters were holy.
His sisters were *his*.
She ran for her life with a baying demon snapping at her heels, slashing at her naked flesh. Taking twists and turns and scrabbling for cover in a labyrinthine house of horrors she’d taken years to collect.
Justice wanted blood.
An eye for an eye.
A tooth for a tooth.
Her organs, red and dripping, hot in his mouth.
_No!_
He bought her to bay in the same bathroom he’d found his son in. She cowered in the tub and tried to hide her nakedness with her hands.
They growled together. Their noise echoing off the pretty tiles. The pretty, bloodstained tiles.
On all fours, tail lashing like a cat’s, Justice advanced slowly. Let her fear. Let her whimper. Let her cry.
Just like all her victims.
He bought his teeth down through her shoulder. Dragged his talons down her body, from her sternum to her stomach.
Hess gasped.
She was smiling.
“Yes, my demon. Come to me. Drink me. Eat me. *Be* me…”
Snap.
Just like that, Kurt took control. He helped her out of the tub, put a coat over her, and pointed her at the door.
“Go,” he said. “Now. If I cross paths with you again on my way out, I won’t be able to stop him.”
“Stop whom? Fight?”
“No. Justice.”
Hess fled. This time, she *was* afraid.
Kurt leaned forward and vomited so hard he thought he’d turn himself inside out. The Archivist’s mercy was already working. It had been working since Hess uttered the words, 'Be me’.
He’d almost…
He’d almost *killed*.
_God, help me…_
Justice died in the same pretty bathroom he’d been born in. Only two weeks old. He died how he was born. Vomiting up blood and bile.
Kurt cried, helpless to stop.
All that death.
*
He picked himself up, not knowing how he had the strength or whether he’d still have it when he started running. He made Flight check every room in the house.
Hess was gone.
She’d taken his son with her.
Kurt spent another hour weeping when he realised that.
He’d failed. Again.
Naughty little boy. Start over from when you were four!
Shut up, Perfectionist. We don’t *have* that long.
He found a pair of pants. Not even remotely his size. He tore a hole for his tail and pulled them on, anyway. He made sure they stayed on with a piece of bloodstained rope.
Hess had something of his. Fight promised that they’d find another chance to take him back.
One day.
Not now, though. He had to *run*, now.
And Flight was very good at that.
Together, they sniffed the air.
That way.