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.
cw; emeto, malnutrition
What he does know is that even if there was a toilet in here, and he's too sick to confirm that, he wouldn't have had time to consider it. The poison still lingering in his body feels like a leaden weight in his stomach that hasn't moved at all. It's as if his insides have no idea what to do with it, freezing up entirely.
He's thirsty. Unbearably so. Dizzy, and still hearing things.
This...he wasn't entirely certain, but his education was...well-rounded. He's sure that he's read about poison like this, even if it wasn't one-to-one. If his guess is correct, this is an anticholinergic.
If his guess is right, the symptoms won't stop unless he expels the poison, and his digestive tract will not cooperate in the normal methods. That's fine. It's making him feel sick enough to get rid of it another way.
Shuddering, he peels his shirt off, whether he wants to or not. If the scientists want to fuck with him, he'll do it right back. He sets his wrinkled shirt before him, creating a buffer between the floor and what was to happen next.
Don't look at me, he manages to mouth, before curling over the bundled-up shirt and letting the illness win. It looks pathetic. He knows it does, but it has a purpose, to vomit up the barely digested cupcake back onto his shirt.
He's doing it for a reason.
It doesn't matter that it burns like fire once he can't stop himself, and there's nothing else coming up.
It doesn't matter that Yuugi can see his skin stretched more tautly over his bones, as if he hasn't had a proper meal in a year. It's not for lack of trying, but...his health was poor before he came here, made worse by his time in the facility, where the food was a step above animal grade, certainly not enough for a recovering coma patient.
It didn't matter.
It shouldn't matter.
But Kaiba doesn't straighten back up, even when the nausea subsides, and he's expelled as much of the poison as his body could manage. So clearly, there's some shame there.
What kind of rival is he, reduced to this state?
no subject
A human.
A man who was suffering under the inhuman treatment of monsters who were willing to mess around with them for the sake of their own selfish gain.
At the mouthing of those words, Yuugi turned his head, but he couldn't help but hear Kaiba's retching and the splash of emesis against the floor. From the sound of it, it was thin; he hadn't really had much to eat or much in his stomach at all, really. One thing about the pens he came from was they were borderline overfed; they needed to be in order for their bodies to handle the experiments they were put under and their overactive metabolism. They were useless if they didn't have energy, especially if they passed out in the middle of an operation.
You couldn't get any light if the patient was unconscious.
He was on the floors, though, and he knew they didn't eat much in comparison. Not that anything anyone ate was particularly edible. Slop was a kind word to describe it.
"...You okay?" Yuugi asked, softly.
Don't turn around until he asked him to.
Don't turn around until he asked him to.
It was the least he could do to preserve his dignity while they were stuck together, even though 'dignity' was barely a thing he held onto when he was...there, with everyone else.
no subject
So yeah, it takes a while before thin, trembling fingers touch against Yuugi's shoulder, then pull away from him just as quickly. It's a momentary communication, in a way he has no other way to do. But by the time Yuugi turns back around, the mess is bundled up in Kaiba's shirt and all that's left is the man shifting to sit on the ground, knees up, arms curled forward. His gaze is distant.
He has no answer for Yuugi as of yet, as to whether he's okay.
Really, are either of them?
Yuugi seeing him like this is his greatest shame. Weak. Emaciated and sallow skinned, not exclusively from the cupcake either. What could he have to say to the man in this state?
Does he expect answers for why he's so thin? Does he expect answers regarding every scar on Seto Kaiba's body? Will he be able to suss out how each one was caused?
(cigar burns. small cuts here and there and everywhere. a strange, tearlike scar grazing just above his hipbone. more still. mostly insignificant, but still visible.)
Kaiba doesn't mouth anything. Nothing at all.
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.