Yeah, fuck this. This isn’t a movie where the protagonist stands around for dramatic pacing; as soon as the “interviewer” leaves and he sees two large and mean-looking men rise out of the damn floor, he bolts for the door, but they’re just a little faster. The moment he’s touching the door, a hand grabs him by the wing and hauls him bodily back in towards 2. Phil twists and thrashes in the grip. It almost loosens when he slashes across the arm, the man yelping in pain, but then the other one grabs and twists his arms behind his back. None of his pulling and buckung and yanking keeps them from plunging those syringes in his arms.
“You piece of shit,” he spits, “you fucking tyke—you know this isn’t necessary, you just want to—“
"Language, 202." Number 2 tuts. "That's not very becoming of a gentleman. I thought you were one."
Number 2 turns his back on Phil and strides to the door. He looks over his shoulder as he gives these instructions to the goons. "Take him to the hospital. He's in need of treatment. I'll meet you there shortly."
Phil will find himself carried away like a sack of grain between the two goons, through a hidden door in the back wall and into a tunnel. From there, he won't remember much, until he wakes in a room that is completely bare with white walls padded on all sides.
Phil wakes up and the pupil in his good eye shrinks to a pinpoint nearly immediately as he squints against the light. His first thought is my God, this place is an absolute cartoon.
He sits up and checks himself over. Did they do anything to him? Can he hear anything out there?
The room is astoundingly quiet. Eerily so. Any and all sounds from outside these walls are completely cut off from him. Even the noises of his own movements are muted. He will find himself dressed in nothing but a cotton hospital gown. The open back accommodates his wing. Aside from some lingering grogginess of the sedatives, he won't feel any different.
The voice of Number 2 booms from a speaker embedded in the ceiling. It's deafening against the silence of this enclosure. "Ah, you are awake Number 0202. Good. We were just about to get started. I have something I want you to hear."
Through that speaker comes the unintelligible screaming of Darcy.
A hospital gown. They put him in a padded cell in the hospital. Of course they did. For a few moments, the loudest thing in the room is the blood thundering through the channels in his skull and the electricity pulsing in his nerves.
Then it's 2--
and then it's Darcy--
and then it's his mind, with the thought of his claws buried in Number 2's throat.
He jolts like a dog hitting the end of its chain, feathers raising in immediate alarm and fury and hate, what are they doing to her is the first thought that comes to him before Peter's warnings ring above all the rest--the cruelty, the mind games, the impossible trickery--and it occurs to him that this may just as well be Darcy as it isn't. It could be her, spirited off like he did to Peter, and it could be fabricated. That would probably be easier and he wouldn't ever know. And isn't that the funniest fucking joke? He's so easy to target. Of course they're using Darcy. You give someone a child, make them a parent, and you know exactly what to do to ruin both of their lives. It's just like that woman said to him once: we were gonna have a kid. I was going to break my own heart on purpose. So they put him alone in a padded cell and make him listen to her scream, and wonder if he's willing to risk the possibility that it isn't her.
It's not any worse than the nightmares he has sometimes.
"For what?!" he hollers to the ceiling. "For fucking what? What's the point of this? What the hell do you want?"
Edited (missing words @_@) Date: 2023-12-27 08:30 pm (UTC)
Phil will never know that these are recordings being played for him. He'll never know if they were genuine. Because it's the not knowing that will truly break him. A man like Phil has played on so many levels of the board that any one single approach won't do it. But Number 2 is betting this will.
"I want you to obey me, Number 0202."
By hook or by crook, he will.
They have techniques a James Bond village could only dream of. Speaking of dreams. Phil is going to be having a lot of them.
The room fills with gas, though the only way Phil will know is because his hearing is excellent enough to hear it hissing into the room through the vent. It's otherwise odorless and invisible. The heaviness of a sedative comes over him again. He only just woke and they are putting him right back under. This time, they'll hook him up to wires and IVs, pump him full of drugs in one arm and life-giving nutrients in the other. On his head, they place an apparatus that will directly influence his thoughts.
Through a chemical and mechanical combination, they will keep him in a state of lucid dreaming for an untold amount of time, looping him through familiar memories over and over. They'll talk to him there, make him answer until the veil between reality and dreaming becomes so thin he can barely tell which is which.
Eventually, they get him under their thumb. Or, so they thought. And yet, here he is back again. He broke his programming. They'll have to try harder this time.
---
"You had a job to do, 0202. I'm very disappointed. You were supposed to bring her to me in the Green Dome. You knew exactly what I meant and yet I found you outside my personal residence window breaking into my home instead."
He plays a new recording of Darcy screaming. Someone with an ear like Phil's should be able to tell he hasn't heard quite this pitch and tone before. It's far more desperate. It leaves far less doubt that it might just be real.
"When you first arrived, I toyed with the idea of removing those wings of yours, but I thought you would be a responsible enough man not to warrant such a thing. I'm sad to see I was mistaken."
Every day for thirty-eighty-one hundred years, everyone acted like they never met him before. Everyone forgot everything he'd ever done. Even the universe did. Decades of fixing the same broken coffee machine, of the same greeting from the same people in the same bread and breakfast, acting like they've never heard the forecast before, like he's never done the same segment before, like he's never punched them before, like he's never robbed the payroll or drank their coffee from the pot or taken a music lesson or gotten wasted in their bar before. Like he's never dropped off their highest rooftop before.
When you have nothing to show for entire decades of your life spent inside the impossible, you learn to bank on taking whatever is in front of you as real. Either nothing is real or everything is real. What else can you do?
Like a hiker from a cliff, Phil's mind slips, and he plummets into the fog.
---
Any protest he has, about you know what she's like, she wouldn't have just gone inside, I had to make it look like that dies in his throat as soon as he hears her screaming. The first time it turned out that she'd been fine. (Or she was doing a very good job acting like she was. This is--he watched them inject her. He watched them take her away. He can't stomach even the risk that this might be fake.
"Stop it!" he shrieks, because what else can he do? "Don't fucking touch her! Look at me, Two, you--you don't know what you're doing. You will die." Someone somehow is going to murder him if this is what he's so casually willing to do. Someone has to.
"Come here. Come here!" And Phil leaps up, wings spread, swinging for the speaker in the ceiling.
"0202!" Number 2 shouts over the loudspeaker. "Come off of it before I decide to clip your wings!" That isn't such a bad idea, now he thinks of it. He won't have any more window visitors that way, will he?
"You want me to come to you? Fine. I'll come."
The lock on Phil's cell door creaks and clanks as the bolt is drawn open. Number 2 appears backlit in the doorway, his dark beard and beady eyes are somehow more menacing in this light.
"What is it you wanted to say to me? Perhaps if you beg me for my mercy on your hands and knees, I will spare her the worst of it."
Phil growls in the back of his throat as Number 2 opens the door. The prospect of his wings getting clipped doesn't scare him; he won't be able to fly, but he lived grounded for much longer than he did flighted, and they'll grow back eventually. There's nobody more patient than him.
He stalks forward, wings half-splayed. "How do I know that? How do I know? Give me proof, you bastard. Prove it to me."
Spare her the worst. Oh, he hates him. He hates him. "The worst." What the hell does he mean, the worst? Only sparing "the worst of it" isn't enough, he needs him to let her go, but he--he knows he'll never do that, and the only bargaining chip he has is his compliance. So... so fine. The worst of it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2023-12-18 01:10 am (UTC)Receiving complaints about the repertoire lately et cetera. Yes, doing a very good job of striving.
"How long have you had them, again?"
cw: needles
Date: 2023-12-22 02:44 am (UTC)"Never mind the orchestra, either. I have bigger plans for you."
Up out of the floor rise two muscular men in striped shirts. Both of them carry syringes in their hands and malice in their eyes.
"Come quietly 202," warns Number 2. "By now you should know it's useless to struggle against the inevitable. I am inevitable."
no subject
Date: 2023-12-23 12:34 pm (UTC)“You piece of shit,” he spits, “you fucking tyke—you know this isn’t necessary, you just want to—“
A hand claps over his mouth.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-24 05:19 am (UTC)Number 2 turns his back on Phil and strides to the door. He looks over his shoulder as he gives these instructions to the goons. "Take him to the hospital. He's in need of treatment. I'll meet you there shortly."
Phil will find himself carried away like a sack of grain between the two goons, through a hidden door in the back wall and into a tunnel. From there, he won't remember much, until he wakes in a room that is completely bare with white walls padded on all sides.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-25 04:48 am (UTC)He sits up and checks himself over. Did they do anything to him? Can he hear anything out there?
no subject
Date: 2023-12-27 04:40 pm (UTC)The voice of Number 2 booms from a speaker embedded in the ceiling. It's deafening against the silence of this enclosure. "Ah, you are awake Number 0202. Good. We were just about to get started. I have something I want you to hear."
Through that speaker comes the unintelligible screaming of Darcy.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-27 08:21 pm (UTC)Then it's 2--
and then it's Darcy--
and then it's his mind, with the thought of his claws buried in Number 2's throat.
He jolts like a dog hitting the end of its chain, feathers raising in immediate alarm and fury and hate, what are they doing to her is the first thought that comes to him before Peter's warnings ring above all the rest--the cruelty, the mind games, the impossible trickery--and it occurs to him that this may just as well be Darcy as it isn't. It could be her, spirited off like he did to Peter, and it could be fabricated. That would probably be easier and he wouldn't ever know. And isn't that the funniest fucking joke? He's so easy to target. Of course they're using Darcy. You give someone a child, make them a parent, and you know exactly what to do to ruin both of their lives. It's just like that woman said to him once: we were gonna have a kid. I was going to break my own heart on purpose. So they put him alone in a padded cell and make him listen to her scream, and wonder if he's willing to risk the possibility that it isn't her.
It's not any worse than the nightmares he has sometimes.
"For what?!" he hollers to the ceiling. "For fucking what? What's the point of this? What the hell do you want?"
cw: gassing, medical implements for torture
Date: 2024-01-02 01:16 am (UTC)"I want you to obey me, Number 0202."
By hook or by crook, he will.
They have techniques a James Bond village could only dream of. Speaking of dreams. Phil is going to be having a lot of them.
The room fills with gas, though the only way Phil will know is because his hearing is excellent enough to hear it hissing into the room through the vent. It's otherwise odorless and invisible. The heaviness of a sedative comes over him again. He only just woke and they are putting him right back under. This time, they'll hook him up to wires and IVs, pump him full of drugs in one arm and life-giving nutrients in the other. On his head, they place an apparatus that will directly influence his thoughts.
Through a chemical and mechanical combination, they will keep him in a state of lucid dreaming for an untold amount of time, looping him through familiar memories over and over. They'll talk to him there, make him answer until the veil between reality and dreaming becomes so thin he can barely tell which is which.
Eventually, they get him under their thumb. Or, so they thought. And yet, here he is back again. He broke his programming. They'll have to try harder this time.
---
"You had a job to do, 0202. I'm very disappointed. You were supposed to bring her to me in the Green Dome. You knew exactly what I meant and yet I found you outside my personal residence window breaking into my home instead."
He plays a new recording of Darcy screaming. Someone with an ear like Phil's should be able to tell he hasn't heard quite this pitch and tone before. It's far more desperate. It leaves far less doubt that it might just be real.
"When you first arrived, I toyed with the idea of removing those wings of yours, but I thought you would be a responsible enough man not to warrant such a thing. I'm sad to see I was mistaken."
cw suicide mention
Date: 2024-01-08 01:04 am (UTC)When you have nothing to show for entire decades of your life spent inside the impossible, you learn to bank on taking whatever is in front of you as real. Either nothing is real or everything is real. What else can you do?
Like a hiker from a cliff, Phil's mind slips, and he plummets into the fog.
---
Any protest he has, about you know what she's like, she wouldn't have just gone inside, I had to make it look like that dies in his throat as soon as he hears her screaming. The first time it turned out that she'd been fine. (Or she was doing a very good job acting like she was. This is--he watched them inject her. He watched them take her away. He can't stomach even the risk that this might be fake.
"Stop it!" he shrieks, because what else can he do? "Don't fucking touch her! Look at me, Two, you--you don't know what you're doing. You will die." Someone somehow is going to murder him if this is what he's so casually willing to do. Someone has to.
"Come here. Come here!" And Phil leaps up, wings spread, swinging for the speaker in the ceiling.
Re: cw suicide mention
Date: 2024-01-15 03:15 am (UTC)"You want me to come to you? Fine. I'll come."
The lock on Phil's cell door creaks and clanks as the bolt is drawn open. Number 2 appears backlit in the doorway, his dark beard and beady eyes are somehow more menacing in this light.
"What is it you wanted to say to me? Perhaps if you beg me for my mercy on your hands and knees, I will spare her the worst of it."
no subject
Date: 2024-02-26 10:29 pm (UTC)He stalks forward, wings half-splayed. "How do I know that? How do I know? Give me proof, you bastard. Prove it to me."
Spare her the worst. Oh, he hates him. He hates him. "The worst." What the hell does he mean, the worst? Only sparing "the worst of it" isn't enough, he needs him to let her go, but he--he knows he'll never do that, and the only bargaining chip he has is his compliance. So... so fine. The worst of it.