fandomhigh | Detention, Depths of the Castle, Monday

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Detention, Depths of the Castle, Monday

Morning had broken in Fandom, and another day in detention was about to begin, the same as every other day.

For the moment, things were as quiet as they probably ever got, while everyone was still resting on their cots, women on one side of the magical black cloth barrier, men on the other. Soon, those who had managed to sleep would be woken by the ever-cheerful voice of Dolores Umbridge coming from the loudspeakers, ordering them to rise. The barrier would disappear, and whatever bland, tasteless substance they were calling breakfast today would appear instead. After that, those in detention were free to do whatever they wanted ... if they could find anything to do that didn't break one of the island's rules, or that could be done while trapped away from everyone else.

But really, the days of those in detention weren't that slow. Soon enough, visiting hours would start, and there wouldn't be nearly as much boredom then.

[OCD is up, have at it!]

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//Yes, well, if you go by what radio says, apparently they let me out on a day pass yesterday to have dinner with friends.//

... Most of whom, Jono didn't actually know.

//I'm certain my birthday dinner was delightful, though.//

"Well, that is silly, because you cannot leave here," Raven said. "Because you have been bad. But I have brought your birthday to you instead, see?"

She held up the cupcake -- pink frosted, of course -- then frowned, as if she were only just realizing he couldn't eat it. "I will have to eat it for you, then," she said, blowing out the candle and pulling it out to toss aside. She unpeeled the wrapping and took a big bite, then used her empathic powers to send him the sensation of its sweetness in his non-existent mouth.

Too much. It was too much, all at once. And Jono had never been a fan of sweets in the first place, years ago, back when he could eat. The sudden sensation of taste flooding over him was enough to make him close his eyes, to make him rock forward a little where he was sitting, and wrap his arms around his knees in an attempt to steady himself.

He didn't quite manage a sob. He wasn't physically capable of it, and the focus it would have taken to project something like it was well beyond him at the moment, but he would have, if he could, wrapped up in bitterness and anger and a barrage of hopelessness that he usually managed to tamp down for the sake of the more sensitive of the other inmates.

Happy birthday, indeed.

Raven set the cupcake down on the floor beside him and licked the frosting from her fingers, smiling the entire time. It was almost as delicious as the emotions she was sensing from him, and she leaned over him, hungry for more, ignoring the corner of her mind that was screaming at her to stop.

"I could heal you," she said. "I could make you whole again. But you would have to be good. You would have to obey."

//You'll need... need a much better cupcake... to get me to even consider getting my... mouth back just so that I can lick Umbridge's boots clean,// Jono snarled, his voice picking up momentum as he managed to pull himself back together. //Actually, I think the way I am suits me just fine. I've seen what you people call breakfast.//

Raven pouted, but she wasn't surprised. It was a rare thing for anyone to take her up on her offers. It made her angry, but relieved at the same time.

"I could do the opposite, you know," she snapped, poking her finger at his chest. "I could tear you open even more." She drew her finger down, pausing when she was pointing to where fire ended and flesh began.

"If I open you all the way up, will you be nothing but fire underneath?" she wondered, sending him a low jolt of pain where her finger pointed.

//Care to find out?//

She was welcome to rip him apart. Put the years in captivity to an end. She wouldn't. They never did. They enjoyed prodding too much to make it so simple. But if she made the suggestion, he'd push back, he'd do his damnedest to keep from loosing a formless psionic howl of pain. He wouldn't give her the pleasure of hearing it in her head, the same way she could feel it as a result of her own powers.

//And then you can see how well this prison of yours can hold an open flame. Think it stands a chance?//

Edited 2012-07-23 15:14 (UTC)

"It held me," Raven said, her eyes going distant for a moment. "I can teleport between dimensions, to any world I wish, but I could not teleport from here. I had to stay and watch and listen and feel."

She shuddered and shook her head, trying to focus again. "Your fire will not escape. But you may burn those around you. Who should we push in first?"

//You first,// Jonothon replied, his words a hiss, a snarl that crept white-hot through their minds. //If I get to choose, then you, first.//

Perhaps it made him a monster, to want anybody to feel his flames at all. But he was well beyond the point of caring.

Raven flinched back for a moment, the words almost coming to her lips to beg him to do it and make it stop.

Then she dissolved into giggles. "Oh, no, I do not get to go that easily. I have to be good and do what I am told and make the others obey."

//And to deliver cupcakes, apparently,// Jonothon replied, looking down at the bitten-into mess that was sitting on the floor beside him. Part of him wanted to give it away. To let somebody who had been eating gruel for months appreciate something sweet, for a change.

The rest of him didn't trust it. For all he knew, She had an immunity to anything she felt like, and the cupcake could have been laced with anything from arsenic to some sort of sedative. No, he'd burn this one, if it stayed down here.

//And here I was having such a good day.//

Raven wriggled her fingers at him. "I can make you have a good day, the best in your life," she said. "Full of love and hope and joy. Or I can pull your fears from the darkest corners of your mind and make you relive them again and again and again. And your mind is so very dark, Jono. You taste so good."

//And which is it going t'be today? I'm no good to anybody if you push too far, but perhaps that wouldn't be so terrible, either.//

Rip him apart from the inside, Raven. Leave him with his soul bleeding out onto the floor.

He dared you.

Raven leaned in closer. "You want that too much," she whispered, reading his feelings rather than his thoughts. She sent him hope instead, trying to force her mind into his so she could conjure the image of someone being careless in detention, forgetting to shield visitors from the powers of those held captive. He could burn her then, leave her writhing in flames while he and the others made their escape.

Her illusions didn't always work; it depended on how tired his mind was and how much he fought it. It was easier in dreams to slip in but she wasn't going to wait for him to sleep. But when it did work, it was so delicious to suddenly yank that hope away.

And this was what he hated the most, every time she visited. No way to know what was truth and what was only in his head. No way to be certain that the risk that he was about to take was going to be all for nothing, another scar on his pride and another deep tear in that little bit of footing that he had left in his own right mind.

But he could never pass it up. The one time he'd choose to leave things be, that would be the one time it wasn't an illusion at all.

In his mind's eye, everything was flames. In his head, he wasn't taking any chances, and he'd shred his own body to nothing in order to make absolutely certain that he'd done the job right.

In his mind's eye, there was no way he could mess it up. And that was how he knew, as raw flame and little else twisted around the room, that it wasn't real. Reality never worked out the way you wanted it to.

He pulled away, rebuilt himself inside of his head, and closed his eyes.

//Worth a shot.//

It was always worth a shot.

"I am being too predictable," Raven sighed. The first few times she'd done that had been much more satisfying. "But you hate it anyway. One day I will leave the door open, and you not even try to escape until it is too late."

//Keep telling yourself that. I've been down here for two... three? For years, now. If I haven't broken now, I'm not bloody well going to during your lifetime.//

He was a being of pure psionic energy.

And energy couldn't be destroyed. It was one of the fundamental rules of the universe. He could wait her out. He could wait everything out. The trouble was, not many other people down here could afford to.

"But you were already broken before you even came here," Raven said. "You were normal once, were you not? Before you became this monstrous half of a man you are now. How much did the flames rip away, aside from flesh? Friends? Family? Your future?"

She leaned in as much as she dared to bring her lips closer to his ear. "Love?"

Jonothon wasn't going to let her get to him. He wasn't going to dwell on what she was saying. He couldn't. But that word. That one word, and he was closing his eyes and shuddering bodily.

Gayle.

//Wasn't meant to be.//

He didn't believe that. He didn't believe that one bit.

Now there was a reaction she liked. "Maybe it was once, but who could love you now?" she said. "Who would wish to touch you? Well. Perhaps out of pity."

//Doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference, will it? Not if I'm going to be here for a while.//

A wrenching feeling through his insides. His flames shifted to blue and he couldn't quite look up.

//Don't want pity. Don't need it.//

"It does not matter if you want it, you have it, and you know it," Raven said, gleefully cruel as she seized on the shift in his emotions.

She gestured about the room. "Everyone here pities you. Their lives are unpleasant...but at least they are not you."

And if Jono had a jaw, he'd be clenching his teeth as he tried to grab hold of logic and reason with both hands and cling.

//Well, then I'm glad I can provide them that much,// he fairly hissed, balling his hands into fists. //If I have it that much worse than the lot of them and I'm still holding on, then they can do bloody near anything, can't they?//

Jonothon Starsmore, setting a positive example in a hideous way.

"You think they look upon you as an example?" Raven scoffed. "If it is not pity in their eyes when they look at you, then it is relief, at least, that you have so much of my attention. You are not an example. They are just glad to not be you. Do you want me to make you feel it? All the pity they have?"

//I don't know why you bother asking. If I say no, you'll just do it regardless.//

Bait the empath, Jono. Go right ahead. She was, at least, right about one thing. If she was standing here and tormenting him, at least she wasn't hurting anybody else.

//Let's see how much of a monster I am in their eyes, shall we?//

Detention, Depths of the Castle, Monday

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