Whumptober Day 13 - Breathe in, breathe out.
This is really late at night and I barely proofread but I wanted to do at least one thing for this event so!!! May end up writing the sequel to this.
Content Warnings: lab whump, drugging in a medical setting, numerous mentions of death/fear of, slight unreality, panic, needles
The idea of supplying more oxygen to her body was abhorrent right now. But if Fae didn’t comply, she was almost 100% sure the shock would overload her already too-fast heart. She breathed. The air slipped into her lungs. It was seconds, seconds long and she could barely hold her breath for those few.
She fought the desperate urge to release everything at once, to empty her lungs as quickly as she could, maybe in a scream. But she didn’t. Her heart couldn’t fucking take that. She released the breath as slowly as she could manage, shaking in small bursts.
“Remarkable control, 101,” the tech standing above her mused. “You’re doing very well.”
“Don’t need-” she began to snap, but immediately clamped her mouth shut when she realized what she was doing. So much energy buzzed in her veins, she felt like she was made of adrenaline and plasma, like she should just be able to phase out of these restraints and fall through the examination table with the force of it. Don’t need your empty praise, she was going to say. Any other situation and she’d have spat the words with toxic vitriol, but she couldn’t risk a shock, she couldn’t, her heart would give, she was sure of it.
She glanced upwards. That damned IV bag still wasn’t empty. It’d probably been… three? Four? Five? A couple of hours since they’d started the drip. It was slow. She’d had no idea how bad it would get when she first started to feel jittery- it was far past that now, every single part of her body was lit up with energy, her heart was beating too fast to track, and she’d been suspended in a constant state of panic for about two hours. Every so often, this stupid tech would come in, tell her to breathe, write down her heart rate, and leave. The needle was in her wing, and she felt the gradient of chill where the substance steady dripped into a vein, the only feeling other than the restraints digging in, the fire in her nerves, and the pounding in her chest.
“Breathe in.” She rolled her eyes, almost too far, and forced a deep breath, flexing her wrists under the cuffs. “You’ve been behaving well. It’s a welcome change, I must say.”
Fae gritted her teeth. Don’t respond. Don’t respond.
She exhaled shakily once again, glaring up at the ceiling and sparing a glance at the tech, who leveled a calm, vaguely approving gaze back. Anger flared in her chest- yeah, big fucking surprise, the imminent threat of having a heart attack and dying in her nightmare zone was a pretty good incentive to shut up- and blue fire flared on her fingertips, the adrenaline and emotions venting out through her magic. The tech stepped back, approval vanishing and dangerously subtle expression of scrutiny replacing it. She closed her eyes, trying so hard to focus on closing the vents that had opened, and the flames vanished. It felt worse now, somehow- there was no outlet, absolutely none, even trying to struggle without leverage was too unsatisfying to consider. She needed to scream, she needed to run, she needed to fly or hide or something, literally anything would be better than laying here, immobilized, while every nerve and muscle fired in unison with the desperate need to move, and her heart beat faster than a heart ever should. She could try counting, for fifteen seconds, but she’d tried to keep track of five seconds an hour ago and lost count of both heart rate and time before she even reached that far. Her breathing demanded more and more from her, dragging in short bursts of air far too often. Lump that with the fear of death, the anger from being patronized for her inability to snap back, and the overall helplessness of the situation, and this hybrid was well on her way to losing her fucking marbles.
But that’s fine. She didn’t need those right now anyway.
If it weren’t for the strap ratcheted across her forehead, Fae would have dropped her head onto the metal in an attempt to feel anything other than the static in her muscles. Instead, she watched the tech leave the room, and glanced at the bag. It was so close to being empty, she was so close to hopefully being dropped back into her cell, dealing with this herself like she always did, pacing and pacing until her legs wanted to give out. God, even just walking around in a tiny circle sounded like heaven right now- how pathetic was that? She huffed into the empty room. Maybe…
She lit both her arms up in cold fire, and realized just how uncomfortably hot she was when the chill of the flames felt like a blissful retreat. There was nobody in the room, this shit couldn’t burn anyone, she just- she needed to put this energy somewhere, desperately, and this was as good an outlet as she had. Except… it did nothing. Of course, of fucking course, it was artificial, some stupid drug they flooded her with to see what would happen, and all she could do was wait for it to happen, she couldn’t change anything, didn’t she know she wasn’t in control of her own body here? It was all them.
The flames withdrew in defeat, and the heat and the sweat were so much more noticable, and- no, oh fuck no, tears were clawing their way out of her eyes. That wasn’t- no, she’s not supposed to cry until she’s alone, not being watched, that’s letting them win, but… she couldn’t stop the few tears from dripping down the side of her face, mingling with the sweat dripping from her temple and disappearing into her hair. Deep breaths. Even that didn’t feel like her choice, fuckers had taken that too. Her breathing stayed choppy and labored. And then, and then, the machine attached to that IV bag finally beeped, and the bag was empty, and the way she sighed in relief was absolutely embarrassing. She felt like she was going to glitch out of her own skin, the way her heart jumped in its place and her nerves were stuck in the height of a panic, but she just had to make it through the next ten or so minutes until she could move a little more freely.
The tech entered again, looking almost bored, and began to remove the IV drip from her wing. She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding as the needle slid out of her skin.
“Breathe in.” Fae groaned unenthusiastically, but inhaled, quicker and sharper than her previous ones. “Breathe out.” She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to look at that apathetic face for longer than she needed to. “Good.”
Then, finally, the restraints were coming undone. She felt the one on her head, slip away, followed by her torso, and then the knees, and all that was left were the cuffs on her wrists and ankles that never came off. She could feel the energy straining to be let out, could feel the urge to run, to fight, to do something, but she couldn’t risk it. She couldn’t. She was a fucking coward, was what she was.
The wrists detached first, unsurprisingly. “Hands behind your back,” the tech ordered, with the only human emotion in that voice being I’m tired and want to go home.
Yeah, you and me both, buddy, Fae thought, mental voice laced with venom. “You could at least pretend to give a shit,” she finally shot, too quiet for what she’d like to say, but still forceful and quick. But she sat up, and obeyed, wincing and sighing as the ache of moving after being trapped in one position briefly overtook the static under her skin. The tech only shrugged in response, and once again, she rolled her eyes. Suddenly, her muscles cramped, and she let out an involuntary yelp as the pain eclipsed everything else for a brief moment, perhaps even amplified by the way her heart leapt in response and her nerves fought to escape the flesh prison they’d been sealed into. Then, the cuffs snapped together, and the tech released her legs.
“Up. Follow me.” She swung her legs off of the table, trying desperately to ignore the way pins began to stab into them, and tried to scoot off. And she wasn’t quite sure what happened in the next few seconds, but what she did know is that she landed on her wing, letting out a sound more like a growl than a yelp as the hollow bone collided with the tile. The rest of her followed. Quickly though, she tried to stumble back to her feet, using her wings instead of her arms to push herself up. She took a tentative step towards the tech- the adrenaline was letting her ignore the pain for now, but… oh, this was gonna suck.
“Tch.” The tech made a vaguely amused sound, and that made Fae twitch with the force of her anger. “Keep up.” She growled, low and in the back of her throat, but cut herself off as soon as she realized. She was led out of the room, but not the way they came- oh dear god, were they going to do something else? She wouldn’t- fuck, was it the treadmill? An antidote? No, they would have done that one in the room- a window, they passed a window, and Fae stared at it. The lightning in her mind said to jump, jump out, you can fly, you can leave right now, you can get out, but the frantic beating of her heart drowned out the thoughts with the fear of death, of being shocked on the way and dropping out of the sky like a stone, of the electricity pushing her heart finally over the threshold of functional. So she tore her gaze away from the distant trees and the sunset, the promise of freedom, and cast her eyes down the hall once more. Her breathing was even more labored as she trudged down the hall, and she felt… powerful. Powerless. All of it. She felt EVERYTHING and NOTHING and she could punch through a wall, she could explode and leave nothing but a smoking crater here, and she couldn’t do any of that, because it was certain that she’d die before she could finish the movements. She was truly trapped, not just in this building, not just by these cuffs, but in her own body, she felt so much bigger and yet, so, so pitifully insignificant that she could be ordered around like some kind of animal just because of the threat of some fucking electricity. Why did she care about that, anyway? She was MADE of electricity, every fiber in every muscle was sparking with it, what was a few more amperes? But she shoved those thoughts aside the best she could, they were out there even for this situation.
She was locked in her own thoughts until the tech opened the door in front of her. She snapped her eyes up, and- it was just a room. A little bigger than her cell, but just a room, no equipment, a large window to a room with desks and computers and- oh. Oh.
They wanted to watch as Fae broke down, needing to free her mind from the prison of her body, and exhausted herself in the process. She felt another wave of heated stress flood over her, but she stumbled into the room, feeling like she could pull the cuffs on her wrists clean apart, and only choosing not to out of the goodness of her heart. But she couldn’t. She could never.
This was going to be a long, long night.
