Ravaged

Chapter 39

Pain. That's all Sky can feel. All that consumes her. All she's aware of.

But it's not physical pain. She barely registers the physical sensations assaulting her. She knows one of Akai's hands is digging painfully into her shoulder while the other one has her head angled to where Maximus is making slow work of cutting up Xander. She's tried to look away several times now, but his grip is unbreakable.

She doesn't care about her own body's cries of protest. She doesn't care about the fresh waves of physical pain that shoot through her with each of Akai's movements.

She doesn't care about herself anymore.

No. The only thing she cares about is Xander. She hasn't stopped trying to fight Akai.

Her eyes remained glued on Xander. He's not making a sound. He refuses to make a sound.

Maximus -- by some gods' mercy -- has only been hitting him around and using a knife to slice across his skin. Those are things he can recover from.

But Maximus won't wait long before he causes irreparable damage. He just likes to take his time.

Unlike Akai. Akai doesn't like to wait.

And seeing Xander being cut into little pieces... it's not better.

Seeing him hurt at all isn't better.

She's been yelling at Maximus to stop for... hours? She doesn't know how long it's been. They need to stop hurting Xander.

Gods, make them stop hurting Xander.

She knows her body is probably more bruised and battered by this point -- it keeps trying to tell her that it is -- but she can't feel it. She can't feel anything beyond the extreme hopelessness of being forced to watch as her son is being tortured.

She can't protect him.

She can't save him.

She can't do anything.

There have only been two times before that she's ever felt this helpless. When they took a dagger and stabbed it into her stomach repeatedly while she was still pregnant, hoping to kill the child she carried.

By some miracle, he survived.

They tried several times, until they eventually realized the baby wasn't going to die that easily.

It didn't keep the fear and hopelessness from Sky, however, every time they plunged that dagger into her.

Another time she remembers was when Xander was born. They made her go through natural birth, still plunging daggers into her stomach as a last resort to try and kill the baby. Of course, they were cutting her in other places too, making sure the experience was as painful as they could make it.

And when he was finally born, they looked at him, and she could hear their thoughts. They wanted to throw the newborn child against a wall or the floor and completely crush his skull.

But Raphael insisted he needed the child. As much as Sky hates Raphael for taking her child from her, for the things he did to Eric -- who was only protecting Xander -- she is grateful to him for that. For being the reason Xander's life was spared. And also for being the reason Xander didn't have to grow up in the institute right next to her.

This makes the third.

And the look in his eyes, it just makes it worse.

He's determined and angry. Utterly silent. Just glaring at Akai, not seeming to care about Maximus or what he's doing.