clashildr one shots

Motions of Death

TW - major character death, blood, injury detail, violence

     Trauma spits out two very distinct types of people. The one who swears that they will be alone in their pain; the one shields all others they meet from it with the only weapon they can find: kindness. The one who would sacrifice themselves for even the slightest extension of another's innocence. The one who would suffer for eternity to protect someone who's name they do not even know.
     And then there is the sadist. The one who has been so shredded that they wish only to watch the world burn; the one who cannot see past their own pain and tire of the incessant chatter of those unblinded, so they burn so bright everyone around them is rendered sightless, too.
     Jeremiah was a supernova, and he wasn't set on keeping that to himself.
     Even if she had been counting in the first place, Clara had lost track of the days. The rise and setting of the sun felt erratic in these such dungeons of despair, and their anti-benevolent master exactly wasn't keeping mealtimes regular. She really had no way of telling; the bruises on Ashildr's jaw had begun to fade to a yellow, though - at least they weren't the raging  purple they had been when they were fresh. They were less obvious - a mercy as Clara hated looking at them.
     Visits from their overlord were neither anticipated nor appreciated, but Clara supposed that was the point. This was torture. When Jeremiah did make himself present, he would move the chairs that had mysteriously shuffled towards one another apart, sit and stare for a moment of time, almost as if he were planning, and then grab some merciless tool and leave Ashildr bleeding. On that particular day, it had been his very own fist; when Ash had made a snide comment regarding his socks (which were hideous, naturally - Ashildr wasn't rude for nothing), she'd found herself punched square in the mouth. Her lip had split open and blood dribbled pathetically down her chin. Clara's hands had clenched themselves into fists against the wood of the armrests as the anger which bubbled right below the surface made itself rudely apparent. Ashildr hadn't been put off, however, her spirit unquenchable as ever; she had spat at him, and managed to catch him square on the cheek. The sadist froze, raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, wiped off the spit off his face and made his way to the back of the room to where all his instruments sat. When all he brought back was a cloth, Ashildr put two and sinister two together, but could not avoid the chloroform from her shackles: it didn't take long for her to stop struggling.
     At least, when she was unconscious, she wasn't aware of what was happening to her. At least she could wrangle the tiniest repose. Clara watched her as her head lulled to one side.
     Jeremiah looked on with a face painted in astonishment. "How can two such monsters be so in love with one another?"
     Clara frowned slightly but did not take her eyes from Ashildr. Could this man have an appreciation of love?
     "It's disgusting," he added.
     Yeah, that was more consistent with his character.
     "And what about you, Jeremiah?" Clara's retort was empty, half-hearted; with Ashildr unconscious, her mettle faded until it was a distant memory. All that was left was the feeling of watching the train you were meant to catch pull from the station without you on it. The pressing persecution of the walls was unbearable without her. "Is there anything left behind that anger, or did you scoop your heart out so it could all fit?" Still, she did not lift her eyes from Ashildr's face. In the tranquility of  her still quiet, it could almost be believed that she was asleep; maybe, in all the fires of hell that blazed around them, she had found some peace. Even if just for a convoluted while.
     Jeremiah didn't respond to Clara's question. Instead, he took Clara's chair by the back, pulled her three feet further away from her now unconscious wife, and angled her straight on. He then disappeared upstairs - when the metal door scraped across the floor, light flooded into the cramped space. Clara closed her eyes. In clarity - in light - she could see most of the basement. The first few times, it had been a breath of air - a merciful break from the unknowing of the very surroundings they were forced into calling home.
     However long they had been down there, be it an hour or a month - it was impossible to tell - the floor had become almost coated with blood. Every day, Ashildr would be pushed to the point of bleeding. There were no pools, thank God - streaks, splatters, uncomfortable fingerprints from when her chair had been shoved over and her nose cracked against the concrete, yes, but no pools. The mere sight of it and the feelings of hopeless futility that they caused, though, were enough to drive Clara to emotions she had hoped never to feel again.
     When Jeremiah arrived again, torturously soon, he held a bag of fluid under his arm and a plastic tube between his teeth - in both his hands was a metal pole that branched out into feet at one end and hooks at the other. What the hell did he need with an intravenous drip?
     The bastard even had the audacity to hum to himself as he set it up. Draping the bag over the hooks, attaching the plastic tube to the cap. He then crudely stuck a cannula into the inside of Ashildr's elbow, not cleaning the area beforehand or even stopping to think about doing it close to properly.
     "You get to watch her die." The concept seemed to bring him a joy. His lifelong goal of brutalising a woman realised before him.
     "What the hell do you mean?" One man's dream is another man's hellish nightmare, as they say. All the events of the past and the futures she hadn't lived falling into a sickening puzzle with the image revealing an anguished, arduous death witnessed by the only other soul to understand. "You can't." It was meant to be a scream. It was a whisper. "For god's sake, you bastard, you can't."
     Jeremiah flashed a disgusting smile. Broke his teeth out and all. His fingers rapped against the clear liquid in the bag. "Cyanide." From his pocket, he withdrew a small, cylindrical tube containing what looked like pink salts and capped at the end, popped off the lid, and wafted it underneath Ashildr's nose.
     She jolted awake. Literally, jolted - the chair legs scarped harshly against the ground. She shook her head out and groaned.
      "You know, if you asked nicely, I could just take a quick nap and you wouldn't have to keep messing me around with chloroform and smelling salts." Ashildr took in the IV. " "Right. What's all this, then?"  She directed towards Clara, "Has he finally noticed my chronic dehydration?"
     Although she tried to swallow, the lump Clara's throat wouldn't let her.
     Jeremiah folded his arms across his chest. "Go on," he said. "Tell her what it is."
     Words wouldn't formulate. Clara couldn't reach them.
      Jeremiah snorted.