Damaged But Never Broken

Not every start is easy

"Orion... it's dark.." sniffed a small tiger shark pup. "I'm scared." Kesar, the tiger shark pup with muddy green scales and faint markings fading to purple and green, clings to his big brother for comfort while wrapping his tail between his brother's two dorsal fins.

"Shhh, stay calm.", Orion, a heavily scarred thresher shark with orange-red scales, which glowed in a bright acid green in the dark, gently rubs his brother's back and tries to calm him down. He can't promise him that everything will be fine because it was never fine with Dr. Gaster, however he’s trying his best to stay strong for his brother, for their mother, for keeping the promise he made to keep Kesar safe. But the increasing rocking also increases his panic and he feels a knot of fear forming in his soul.

Not knowing what to expect is the worst thing for Orion. When Dr. Gaster does any experiments with him, he could at least guess from the devices what kind of pain he was in for. But here…

Since Dr. Gaster locked them both in this tiny, darkened tank together, where their freedom of movement is severely limited, the two had no choice but to cling on tightly if they didn't want to crash into one another.

Orion and Kesar have been pushed back and forth dozens of times since, hitting the tank's cold walls with every lurch and rocking, while Orion tried to keep Kesar out of harm's way.

After a bumpy journey to wherever, the tank was dragged across the ground, creating a sickening grating squeak, and inflicting several metallic bangs on the tank that left the kids dazed and confused.

What is Dr. Gaster going to do with them?

After that it was quiet for a long time, their tank being gently rocked back and forth in a calming rhythm and Orion made sure that his little brother got some sleep and used his bioluminescence to illuminate the tank with a acid green glow. But what felt like an eternity ago, the gentle rocking became an increasing swaying and skidding, where the ceiling of the tank leaned almost completely to the side before a violent jolt threw the children against the wall.

Since then, the children have been clinging to each other in panic while being thrown from left to right. Orion is certain that some of his recent scars and wounds have reopened, as he can taste his blood and marrow in the water, and hopes it doesn't frighten Kesar any more than he already was.

"Orion! You're bleeding... Are you alright brother?” Kesar tries to free himself from his grip to be able to look at his brother, but Orion pulls him tighter as the tank slams to the side again with a jerk and he absorbs the blow.

"Uff... That's... nothing, don't worry... just... a little scratch." He plays it down and fails miserably. Even if the pricking and tweaking of the scars no longer bothers him, his head injuries, which the doctor inflicted on him a few days earlier, bother him all the more. The pounding in his skull increases a thousandfold with the next jolt as it slams square on the injury. Orion sees stars - not that he knows what stars look like, since he and Kesar were born in the laboratory, but that's what he always pictured them to be like when their mother told them stories. Despite the intense pain they cause, these flashes of light comfort him a little, but it doesn't stop him from wanting to throw up from the pain.
He pulls Kesar even tighter, he doesn't want anything to happen to his little brother. "Brother... you're crushing me..." comes from his brother between Orion crashing from one side of the tank into the other. Orion immediately loosens his grip on him, but never lets go.

Blow after blow now follows with little respite for either of them, each further opening Orion's wounds, increasing the pain and the taste of blood in the water getting thicker and thicker. A crunch and creak can be heard from outside the tank. As if a monster were screaming. A deafening scream echoes into the silence and the thump that follows makes the children's tank spin around on itself several times. Dents press inwards and leave the children even less space, both of them no longer knowing where up and down is. Heck, they might have been flipped on their backs...

The idea of staring at the unknown completely immobilized causes Orion to cramp into an inner panic attack.

•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

"Will you keep still?!"

Orion awakens in his tank to loud banging on water and the Doctor's angry voice. Immediately, his body stiffens to obey the command yelled across the lab, but realizes seconds later that he's not meant. Gaster does not stand over his pelvis, there is no stabbing pain from the collar around his neck or the cane, and no turbulence of water either. No, Gaster is standing over his mother's tank, his strong, beautiful bull shark mer mother who has scales that might once have been a brilliant green, but now just look dull and unhealthy, only accentuated by the scars, fighting back as she does everything possible to ignore the pain of the sticks and dodge the Doctor's punches.

From a distance, Orion can't see exactly what Gaster is doing, but usually when they disobey he uses a stinky liquid that makes them sleepy. But he doesn't use that, instead he chases his mother through the water with several canes. One of the canes causes this standing pain that makes him wriggle and spasm, but his mother fights it and keeps moving through the basin despite her face contorted in pain.

His mother is so strong!

He carefully peers out of the water and watches with fear but fascination as his mother keeps avoiding the doctor.

"Damn project V17A, keep still or I'll use your son instead!" Gaster yells and throws his mother so far out of concentration that the next hit of the painful cane is directly at the height of her green circular soul with a red spot in the middle that hovers in front of her chest and the shock makes Vita flinch painfully before forcing her to go limp. Gaster uses this moment to pull his mother to the edge with a pole that had a loop at the end that was wrapped around her tail fin and flips her on her back just as the anesthetic wears off.

But instead of fighting back to hit and bite, his mother just hovers motionless around water. He can see her face wracked with fear and how thick greyish green tears, almost unnoticeable with all the black markings on her skull, flow from her eye sockets to dissolve in the water.

Gaster levitates his summoned hands around the lab, bringing several gadgets to the pool. Unable to look away in shock, Orion watches in horror as the doctor comes very close to his mother with something sharp and his mother's face contorts in a silent scream of pain. Even without eyelight in their eye sockets, one could see her sockets widening in fear.

Gaster removes several roundish green and reddish faintly shimmering things from his mother and carefully places them in a bowl. After getting what he wanted, he gets up and takes the bowl to another room.

Orion keeps watching his mother, only a faint quiver in her gills tells him she's alive, but Gaster has left her on her back like this and slowly the water around his mother is tinting the color of her magic. Green and red magic colors the water more and more little by little.

Orion sobs and moans softly, asking his mother to move, turn around, to talk to him. However, his wailing is cut short when a blown door scares him back underwater. Gaster scurried back to his mother's pool, smock flapping untidily. In his hand is the bowl, but now with significantly less round things in it and they now shimmer in a dirty green. Or maybe it was purple? It looked as dirty as the dirt sometimes left by the doctor's shoes.

As the doctor puts the round things back into his mother and tends to the wound he caused, a mad, twisted grin adorns his face. And before he turns Vita back, he strokes her wound in a motion that appears to be a warning. "Don't you dare destroy them. Or I will make sure that your son will be the one who carries the next ones. And you don't want to risk project 0R10N getting hurt, do you?” The wider that horrid grin spreads, the more Orion could be sure it would become part of his nightmares.

When his mother regained all of her consciousness and realized what had happened, she curled up in a ball and cried all night, cursing the Doctor and warning Orion never to be turned on his back.

Her angry, desperate face is burned into his memory, something that will haunt him forever.