pirate king (pirate!au) ➵ ateez ✔️

neck

You don't even have enough time to scream.

Time seems to slow down just for you, your eyes instinctively drawn to that spot, right there at your right hand, above the bump of your knuckles, where you can see the raised bone beneath soft skin. The silver tip of the blade seems to hover in the air, a mere hair's breadth from your delicate, human flesh... your lips form the words even before your mind does, but it's already too late.

"Please, no."

The blade sinks into your hand.

The feeling, at first, is simple, easy to describe. You feel cold steel against your skin for a split second, paper thin, before the knife enters your hand, cleaving through your flesh with so much ease – almost like warm butter, you think, dazed. Then it shoves through something solid, and you can hear the crunching sounds of the blade puncturing the bones in your hand right next to your ear, ringing through your head again and again... but it doesn't seem to hurt. You blink, once, twice, mildly confused.

What happened–

Then the pain sets in, and suddenly, screaming doesn't seem like enough.

Pain as vivid as anything you've ever experienced explodes from the wound like white hot firecrackers searing into your flesh, it tears at your skin and screams at you and overwhelms your mind in a cacophony of sheer, bloody pain. You don't know where the agony begins and you sure as hell don't know where it ends. It simply comes again and again like sea waves that pound relentlessly at the shore, torturing you indefinitely... it doesn't end.

"Oh? Does it hurt?" Gunho coos gently and you choke out a sound that sounds inhuman even to your own ears – a twisted, unearthly scream from the depths of hell itself. Even through the blinding pain, you can still feel the metal embedded in your hand, the bones there shattered by the force and pinning you to the deck; even the slightest movement sends shockwaves of torment running down your body.

"Chin Hae!" You hear your captain scream from somewhere in your haze of pain and you cry out weakly, fighting the overwhelmingly instinctive urge to pull your hand to your body and curl up around it to protect the broken limb. But then Gunho steps on your hand, twisting it under the heel of his boot and carving a larger, irreparable hole into your body. You scream again, trying to yank your hand from under him even though doing so hurts so much you can't see or think straight. You scream and scream and scream, tears cutting through the grime on your cheeks and you can taste salt and iron on your tongue, but you can't move an inch, nailed to the deck of the Treasure by your own hand.

Gunho frowns down at you, one hand reaching down to card gently through your hair and you scream, thrashing in a desperate attempt to get away from his touch even if it means tearing your body apart. "I know, I know it hurts, sweetheart, but I can't have you running anywhere while I go after your captain."

Your captain.

He wants to go after your captain.

Horror and blind rage nearly fills you and for a stupid second, you nearly tear your own hand from the ground in fury; you'd never let him touch your captain. But you're powerless to do anything as Gunho turns to face your captain, who too, is pinned to the deck with a knife through his sleeve, and there's no way he'll be able to fight Gunho off even in your wildest dreams...

"Captain! Run!" You scream out through your tears, your only hand lunging forward and fisting as tight as you physically can in the coarse fabric of his trousers – you refuse to budge an inch in the slightest. Your captain glances over at you in desperation as he sees the state you're in, the expression on Gunho's face darkening at your refusal to obey his words.