They were gentle, and careful, and for that he had to give them credit, working with a meticulous grace as they passed the bandages over his skin, wrapped wounds up tightly. He’d almost lulled himself into a false sense of security when he felt a cold claw pass across the tender flesh of his chest — a claw, or something else? A low warning growl rose like bile in his throat as his tail twitched like a cornered animal and suddenly —
Z-13, this would be a lot easier for everyone if you’d just —
A shaky, panicked breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, the claws of his third arm scraping at the smooth rock beneath him. Darkness, or something close to it. Just a moment. It never lasted. Then the pain again, creeping back in, that every time grew harder and harder to suppress no matter how many drugs they tried to pump into his system while they worked. On him. On his body. Pulled back layers of flesh and poked around inside it, found what made him tick. What had changed, what hadn’t. Sewed him back up and did it again a day later, two days later. Sometimes three, maybe. Always agonizing. He thought of school dissections. At least they were dead.
At some point he could feel all of it and it didn’t really matter, wouldn’t matter anyway. There was no reprieve and there never would be, it didn’t matter worth two shits at this point that he didn’t even do the damn thing he’d gone through all this for, that he was doing the time and then some for, because they’d still be doing this shit to him no matter what he said and there was nothing else he could do to stop them. He’d argued his innocence until he was blue in the face, and it had never meant anything. Nobody ever listened. Not really. There was no amount of desperate rambling that they’d entertain as anything more than the regretful pleas of an ill-natured criminal (nine people, they reminded him sometimes, as if to taunt him with the bodies he’d supposedly dropped, and sure it worked but maybe not in the way they’d intended) who’d realized he’d bitten off more than he could chew, who couldn’t handle his own medicine turned against him. Supposedly a fraction of the pain he’d inflicted on his poor victims. Poor victims. Ha-ha. Very funny.
…He’s awake again.
Twitching, turned to thrashing. Eventually they got tired of trying to wrestle him back to the gurney or whatever the hell else they’d had him laid out upon and just resorted to more and more restraints, every few sessions graduating up in strength to accommodate his newfound lucidity. But they never stopped. Never reconsidered. Of course not. He wasn’t a person anyway, not anymore, not to them, but he wasn’t really sure if that would matter in the first place. When this had all started he’d looked just like them, walked like them, talked like them. He should’ve been a person the way humans are, and it hadn’t mattered because he wasn’t because to be a criminal is to be subhuman, never a person, and as always it didn’t even matter that he had nothing to do with the whole damn thing because as long as people looked upon on him like he had that was God’s honest public truth, all this and still never a person—
Would someone get this thing down?
Always a thing. They’d thought switching sedatives would do it. Would be different. But he grew a tolerance to those, too. And each in turn.
You’re doing something great. You’re part of something great — try to focus on that.
The odd platitude, the reassurance that all this suffering had meaning for him, that this was some sort of redemption. Something great. Something great. Sure. For someone else, of course. For the good of everybody else, these people they could do whatever they wanted to him, could lay their hands upon him without end, all the touching he was tired of the touching it never meant anything good and it only ever hurt just stop touching me, don’t touch me, but then again — a blip forward, he thought of droves of prisoners once just like him (he didn’t hate them but they weren’t friends, never would be friends, empathy was one thing but it was him or them and for once he’d like to choose himself) — to them that was too rude, having boundaries, since after all he looked weird and he acted weird so just like before that meant people should have free license to do whatever the hell they wanted to him and it was only the same thing they’d been doing for the past twelve years, why would it be any different, and really this body wasn’t even his anymore if it ever had been in the first place. It belonged to powers greater than him, and they could treat it however they wanted to. This suffering had meaning for everyone but him.
He wanted his siblings. He wanted his mom. Wanted anyone, really; if not to save him, then to at least offer him something, some small measure of comfort, some sort of reassurance. Help, kindness. Love. Anything. The more he thought about it though the more he thought it was for the best if they thought he was dead, that that was a relief, wondered if they’d ever find out the truth and how they’d feel when they did. It would be nice if they did — some part of him wanted the smug satisfaction of knowing he was right (even if most of them believed him) but it wouldn’t do him any good because all of this was still happening to him so maybe it was better if he just stayed a monster and a dead one at that that they could lay to rest in their memory and move on from instead of a real living and breathing one in every literal sense of the word.
Sebastian always found himself lost in trains of thought like this when the world outside got too bright, too loud, too painful; if he fretted about inside his mind enough then for at least a few moments the everything would be dampened and while it was never peaceful and never kind this was at least better than watching them, which he’d made the mistake of doing for far too long and which had taught him more than he’d ever wanted to know about all sorts of gory details (he was an engineering guy, not a medical guy) about himself and this stupid body and God, all the talking, and all the smells, and all the lights, and the hands and the knives and then they were sewing him back up again. Again, again, again, and throwing him back in that dark room where everything they’d done to him this time would start kicking in and he’d just have to suck it up like he always did because he was too much of a coward to even kill himself and stop playing this stupid game because he was still holding onto some hope that someone, somewhere, would visit some stupid mercy upon him; because he was still holding on to life, for some reason.
Repeat, again and again and again; back on the table, back in the room, and back on the table, and the whole time his body was painfully contorting, his own sinew and bone cracking and tearing and stretching as his own physical form betrayed him thanks to whatever the hell it was they were doing to him at this point, transforming him into something unbearably wretched. He still remembered the first time he got a look at himself, changed from what he was, disheveled and ripped apart, and he hadn’t looked back at himself since if he could avoid it, not intentionally, the sight too painful and ugly.
“…Sebastian,” came a hazy voice, though it was above the rest of the noise. It didn’t belong to anyone he knew was there in the room, no, it was none of the people laying their hands on him, it was someone else’s voice. The cadence and tone both familiar even if the underlying construction wasn’t. Hovering claws near his shoulder, close enough to make it known that they were there but abstaining from making real contact. “…Sebastian, are you okay?” Their tone was gentle. Sweet, even. “Hey. Come on, come back to me.”
Oh. Ha. He hadn’t even realized he’d gone inside his head, let alone how far. The evening sun was way too bright even filtered through the canopy of leaves as he turned his head slowly to look at the speaker, squinting — he’d expected none other than Marlow, of course, and there they were, inhabiting that strange and overgrown animal-body. Not unlike him. They were standing up in as best a bipedal fashion as they could manage, towering over him, and had stopped trying to wrap bandages around his still-fresh wounds and were now instead affixing him with a concerned look. He hadn’t even realized he’d started crying.
“Sorry,” they offered. “My bad.”
He exhaled heavily, half-sigh half-growl, aggravated even as he turned away to bury his face into his arms (themselves pressed forcefully against the stones) to stifle the tears. “Stop saying that,” he hissed, “especially if you don’t mean it.” He wasn’t really mad at them, not for this (this was his problem, he’d already dumped enough on their plate the other night in an embarrassing moment or two of weakness, he could bear this much alone) and not much for the past anymore, but still — he could do without the obligatory platitudes.
“But I do mean it,” they said. Confusion laced their voice.
“You sure say it a lot.”
“Doesn’t mean I mean it any less.”
“…Sure. We’ll go with that.”
“I know you’re not used to hearing it,” they went on to say, “But seriously, I do mean it. I told you I was done with lies and I — meant it, when I said that. Really. I don’t say these things as some sort of… meaningless platitude, or anything, I say them because I mean them, and I think you need to hear them.”
“Key phrase — you think I need to hear them.”
“Well, yeah,” W.M. said. “That’s not a bad thing. Two things can be true, y’know; I can mean what I say and think it’s important to say it too. No one’s told you in a long time and no one would have meant it even if they did, or at least not the people you wanted to hear it from. So, I say it. Because I do mean it.” They let out a small laugh. “I have meant it. I’ve meant it since the moment I re-met you, and that’s despite my stupid decisions.” W.M.’s eyes softened with a kind laugh. “And really, you should be careful not to sound too much like my parents. I used to say it all the time as a kid, too. Sorry this, sorry that. Sorry mom, sorry dad. They thought I didn’t mean it because I said it so much, but I really did. Now, I don’t even know what I was sorry for, but I sure was. Maybe for being alive.”
He half-managed a half-hearted shrug. “Well. Sounds like the trouble started early.”
Another chuckle. “Yeah, you’d be right,” they replied. “Should’ve known it’d be a fucked-up life from the start, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, right?”