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[littlemissfutility]

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[withmeinparadise]

It's not the longest he's been in prison, but it's one of the worst times he's had. Partly because it's not really a prison - it's the emptied-out wine cellar of some old house out God knows where. (Someplace in the Marches. He'd been out by Tantervale when the Venatori captured him.) Partly because he's alone. Partly because that shard of his keeps aching, more and more as time passes.

Most of the reason it sucks, though, is the fact that they started torturing him for information a while ago. He's not sure when - it's not like they get sunshine down here. Sometimes there's candlelight, and sometimes there isn't, and the difference doesn't line up with the idea of days and nights. But it stopped being solitary, stopped being bread-and-water-and waiting, and turned into trying to rearrange his face. His best guess is maybe it's been a month since he was put down here, and maybe two weeks since the master of the house decided to try to wring knowledge out of him like a wet rag. But it might've been longer. He's been telling himself only a month so that it feels less like always.

It's not like he knows anything, no matter how many fingers they break in search of information. Threatening to drown him in a bowl of water isn't about to make him magically aware of the details of Riftwatch's plans. He'd been out on some low-grade spy shit, sneaking around the countryside for months before anyone noticed him, and the gig didn't exactly come with any revelatory secrets. Not that he hasn't tried making them up. Get himself out and screw them over all at once. But either they don't believe him, or his imagined leads don't pan out, because someone always comes back downstairs.

That's what's happening now - footsteps on the creaky wooden staircase, too light a gait to be his usual guy. Sam's stretched out on his back on a filthy straw pallet, staring up at the darkness concealing the rafters, and trying to give nothing away. No fear, no anticipation, nothing.

[notathreat]

It's not a rescue mission as Ellie knows it, not exactly. It's supposed to be a B&E, a tip from someone that the mark might have something Riftwatch would want to get their hands on. They got a quickly drawn map of the house, mostly to find the cellar stairs, and that's about it.

Ellie went in through an upper floor, but she's got help waiting on the ground floor instead. She doesn't know what she's bringing out, they were only told they'd know it when they see it. Makes her think it might be an Eluvian, or maybe some Red Lyrium hoarding, or even a book of spies and informants, but Ellie's got her knife out anyway.

The stairs are creaky but it's dark down here, not even a candle, and Ellie's breath catches.

It smells, and it smells in a way that's all too familiar. Human misery. She'd smelled it in Santa Barbara. She'd think slaves, ready and willing to inform on their masters, but instead her mind jumps to Jim and how he told her-

Ellie's boots hit the basement floor, and she's quiet in the dark, before hitting the magical lighter that all of Riftwatch carries. It shines like a small caught star in the gloom, and Ellie spots him almost immediately.

"Oh fuck, don't be dead," she whispers, not recognizing him in the still-comparable gloom and, frankly, the rearrangement of his face. She comes closer, her cloak smelling faintly of snow as she crouches down next to him, knife in her hand because she can't be too careful.

She touches his shoulder, just fingertips, and pushes lightly.

"Hey."

[withmeinparadise]

Sam starts when he hears her voice. He knows it, a little hoarsened by whispering, but it takes a second to place it. She gets close enough that he can see her face, and then he knows it's Ellie. Jesus Christ - of all the gin joints, right?

"Hey," he says back. His grin's not missing any teeth, at least - but the bruises and swelling in his face give his face the wrong shape. So does the scraggle of beard fuzzing his jaw and curling over the birds tattooed on his neck. His other tattoos are hidden under a filthy shirt, or within the near-black bruising on his knuckles, his fingers bent in directions fingers shouldn't bend.

He could blame his hands for the fact that he hasn't made any effort to get up, but the bruising on his torso's got a lot to do with it, too. Good thing that's covered - Ellie's not about to scare easy, but it's still nothing she needs to see right now. "Did you kill 'em on the way down here, kid?"

[notathreat]

It takes a moment. One horrible moment. Before his voice goes from being faintly familiar to wholly so. Before the shadows materialize into the tattoos she knows well. Before she sees the broken fingers and the swelling and realizes he's been down here for-

"Sam," she breathes, and reaches out, touching his hair. She hasn't really touched him before, not like this, but she can't help it.

But once he asks, her eyes harden, and the horror fades to terrible calm purpose.

"Three Venatori," she says quietly. "One with a beard, one with red robes, and one with a staff shaped like lion's head. Any more I should look for?"

[withmeinparadise]

"Hell if I know." She smooths back his greasy hair like he's a kid, and all he can think for a second is poor thing. She might be the kind of girl who stabs three people to death on the way to a basement without thinking twice, but that doesn't mean he wants her to be. He'd definitely prefer she wasn't getting a load of him here, in enough pain that he can't be assed to sit up. "I wasn't exactly getting the run of the place, believe it or not."

Ha, ha. Hilarious. With a grunt, he shifts some of his weight onto his elbows, careful not to press down with his hands. His entire body aches with the effort, but it's not screaming stabs of pain at the moment. So that's something. Give him another couple of minutes, he'll even be able to lever himself off the mattress without help.

[notathreat]

"Yeah, but they were getting the run of you," Ellie says quietly. Super hilarious, the both of them. Automatically, Ellie shifts to lay the palm of her hand across the back of his shoulders and oh god, she can feel the heat and swelling. What marks are under there?

"They keeping anyone else in here?" she asks, though she hasn't heard voices. The cellar doesn't seem to extend very far. But god, if there's someone else here, if Nate-

[withmeinparadise]

"Nah." His thoughts don't go to Nathan. God willing, his brother's in Heaven where he belongs, if he's anywhere at all. Or back on Earth, better yet, but in this moment, he'd probably be willing to admit it: a fall like that, Nathan wasn't exactly goning to walk off. With effort, he forces his muscles to clench, to raise him up until he's sitting on his ass. "I pulled the short straw. This is real, right? This better not be a dream."

[notathreat]

Good, she's not sure she could reliably get anyone out if they're in any shape similar to this. Ellie pulls a slow breath, keeps her hand where it is, mostly so she can feel him breathing. She's all right, but seeing him like this brings back very specific, very awful memories, and she needs to keep her shit together if she's going to help him.

"No, it's real," she says quietly, and shifts, bracing against the bed.

"Do you think you can stand up, if I help?" She can feel how unsteady he is. Given how strong he's always been, how easy he can shake off pain and keep trucking, that's more alarming than the rest.

[withmeinparadise]

"Yeah." No. Well - maybe. Only one way to find out, right? He's spent so much time lately getting dragged around by the collar that he hasn't had to put much effort in. "C'mere, Ell - watch the hands -"

It's an effort, and his voice goes from thin to nothing in the process. He doesn't even breathe, putting all his energy into getting his feet under him. More with the abs - Jesus, fuck, does it hurt to bend - and balancing, his arms awkward and stiff at his sides. (They can't hang limp. He'll bang his fingers against his legs.) But he gets up, a wobbly but unquestionably living giant next to her.

[notathreat]

It's a process, figuring out where to stand so she can brace him. So she doesn't hurt him worse. There's no one wound to work around, nothing urgent to work with. By the way he stands, it's not just that he's injured. She wonders how much he's gotten up to stretch, with injuries like this.

She doesn't imagine it's been a lot.

She situates herself under one of his arms, more to make sure she can hold onto him if he starts to fall, and they head toward the cellar stairs. She left the door cracked at the top.

"Lean on me," she says quietly as they get to the bottom of the stairs, holding onto the handrail. They'll go slow.

[youarethevirus]

There are few places Pamela Isley hates as she does Arkham.

She's confined to a single room, the only one guaranteed to be free of anything useful to her. The orderlies joke that they'd jackhammered out the cement and salted the earth beneath before she came, and it feels true; there's a sense of death to this place. Meals are tasteless at best, inedible at worst - and they're frequently inedible, the corpse of some hapless creature next to mush that used to be vegetables. Sunshine is a thin shaft coming through a high window, and breeze is nonexistent.

Men in the desert, aching for water, couldn't want more deeply than she does now, wrestled into a straitjacket and sitting defiantly on the cold cement. This is the only place the light can touch her at this hour of the day, and there are times when she lives for that warmth at the back of her head.

"Hey! Poison Ivy!" There's a bang on her door and the cruel jolliness of a career hospital attendant. No one in Arkham's there because they're nice, least of all the people running the place. "You got a visitor. Don't seduce this one, huh?"

She's on the verge of hissing something back, her face contorting into a snarl, when the door opens.