Seto Kaiba (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
firstrateduelist) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kittensinboxes2025-03-03 11:39 am
firstrateduelist) wrote in kittensinboxes2025-03-03 11:39 am
Hang My Head, Drown My Fear [Lab of Nature AU, Suffering Is Magic]
Kaiba remembers pain. He remembers...drowning.
And he remembers smiling as he maliciously made it all worse and watched the life spill from his throat, spewing out with arterial force before him and creating a mess of wasted life all around him.
Then, he remembers--more pain? How could there be more pain after death? He knows he's screaming, but nothing comes out. He struggles against his bonds, but he's too weak, too weak, and even opening his eyes shows little besides the searing white lights of an operating room, the flash of a face that resembles an ape...and then, nothing. He feels something cover his mouth, inhales reflexively...then passes out. It's a release, freeing him from the delirium of the restoration and the pain of the experimentation that occurs in between.
He won't remember it. Perhaps that's a mercy.
---
When Kaiba finally does wake, it's in a new room, with aching limbs, a soured stomach, and a throat that feels poorly patched up.
He's too weak to sit up, but his tired eyes scan his surroundings, seeking out any familiarity at all. He has to do it slowly, so that the tracking of his own eyes doesn't nauseate him more than he already is.
And he remembers smiling as he maliciously made it all worse and watched the life spill from his throat, spewing out with arterial force before him and creating a mess of wasted life all around him.
Then, he remembers--more pain? How could there be more pain after death? He knows he's screaming, but nothing comes out. He struggles against his bonds, but he's too weak, too weak, and even opening his eyes shows little besides the searing white lights of an operating room, the flash of a face that resembles an ape...and then, nothing. He feels something cover his mouth, inhales reflexively...then passes out. It's a release, freeing him from the delirium of the restoration and the pain of the experimentation that occurs in between.
He won't remember it. Perhaps that's a mercy.
---
When Kaiba finally does wake, it's in a new room, with aching limbs, a soured stomach, and a throat that feels poorly patched up.
He's too weak to sit up, but his tired eyes scan his surroundings, seeking out any familiarity at all. He has to do it slowly, so that the tracking of his own eyes doesn't nauseate him more than he already is.
no subject
Yuugi had seen far worse, you see. Bodies that suffered far more under the oppressive body of the Facility, so such marks, such scars...all they did was break his heart, but he had no context with which to place any of it.
Nothing could be placed, everything could be worried over.
The Cigar burns, though...nobody in the facility had cigar burns, did they...
Did that mean...
Did that mean this mark came from before his time at the facility...?
He knew better than to ask.
He didn't ask.
Instead...
"Do you think you passed it all? Or do you think there's more in you?"
Focus on the important details. Try not to think about the fact that there was that gentleness to his voice, and that sympathy in his eyes. Try to focus on the now and what can be changed rather than what couldn't, and what the facility could listen in on and use for later 'experiments'.
no subject
I can still hear things. They're not voices, though.
Sounds. Taps and shuffles. His pupils are still slightly enlarged, but nothing like what they were.
They have to feed us. Unless they want us to die.
Which they might. Dying was not permanent, after all.
no subject
Gods, what was that even like...?
"Yeah," Yuugi agreed, "they do. But... that doesn't mean they won't try to drag it out if they think they can."
Or make it into one of their twisted experiments.
Games.
Abominations that made him want to spit in every scientist's face personally.
no subject
Are you alright?
He mouths it suddenly. Yuugi had taken care of him for so long...but what of his current state? Had he slept? Was he going to be on his game for the next experiment that might befall them?
no subject
He melted into a tired smile, nodding once.
"Yeah," he said. "Just a little tired..."
He hadn't really slept, but he could manage it. He'd survived on less. Dealt with far worse.
This was nothing.
"I'll be okay."
no subject
Kaiba's mouthing it more for himself than Yuugi, because this entire situation has long since worn on him, but knowing that his brother was a part of it made it so much worse. It hit harder than anything else that's happened to him so far, and it's triggered the maddening obsessive behavior of wanting to find his brother, see him and try to resolve why the fuck he'd taken him for granted in the first place.
But you look tired. Sleep.
no subject
They both would be...
Yeah.
Kaiba would be okay. He'd get out. He'd get to be back with his brother, even if the world swallowed Yuugi up and spat him out in a pile of flesh, blood and trembling sinew.
"I...guess I can rest, yeah."
He sat up on the bed, knees to his chest, and leaned back against the wall. A familiar pose, comfortable and safe.
It was as though Yuugi had slept like this many times before.