Day 11: Rehabilitation

The Memory Circuit [V]

Bite Down

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⎉: @chaotic-orphan @morning-star-whump Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the taglist!

TW: graphic depictions of physical and psychological torture, child abuse, grooming, sexual violence involving minors, institutional exploitation, non-consensual medical/technological procedures, trauma flashbacks, violence, captivity, dissociation, systemic abuse.

Line dividers by @sister-lucifer!!!!

It’s in the bones. In the soft tissue. In the places they didn’t bandage, because they didn’t care to.

His ribs are packed wrong—wrapped too tight, maybe broken in three places. His knees are locked in crude external splints. The shoulder—left—burns. Swollen. Dislocated. Maybe shattered? It feels like it. His right hand won’t flex. 

The chair holds him upright, fixed in place. Mechanical restraints at ankles, wrists, chest. A gentle hum. Cold metal bolted to colder floors. Bok can’t breathe easy. He can only sit in the wreckage of himself, eyes half-lidded, mouth dry and sticky.  

He shifts. Just once.  

The pain flares, vivid and immediate.

The door opens.

He doesn’t lift his head. He can hear the steps: unhurried, expensive. A rustle of real fabric, not synthetic. Cotton. Maybe silk.

“You know,” the voice says lightly, “you’ve got a remarkable pain threshold.”

Bok does look, then. Just a little. His neck protests, loud.

The man who enters is not dressed like a soldier. Civilian clothes: deep blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar loose; dark slacks. Wavy red hair pulled back loosely, some of it still curling at the sides. A gold necklace glints at his chest. Black gloves sheath his hands, and at his hip, a sleek holstered gun rests.

Pretty. Bok hates that it’s the first thing he notices. Pretty, in that careless, born-with-it way. Sharp nose, clean lines, dry eyes.

Coffee. He’s holding coffee.

Bok stares.

The man sets it down on the table beside him and gestures with an elegant little flourish, like they’re starting a chess match.

“Broke a man’s tibia with your elbow, apparently. While your own leg was already broken. I don’t know if I’m impressed or nervous.”

Bok can’t tell if he’s being mocking or not.

The man walks closer, retrieving the neural tap cable.

“You were still kicking. Still biting. Ribs broken, hand crushed, and you still managed to stab someone. So forgive me—” he glances at the restraints, “—for being a little cautious.”  

He crouches. Close now. Bok can smell the coffee.  

“I’m Ricky,” he says, tone clipped, unbothered. “You and I are going to get very close.”  

Ricky picks up the bit next, turning it between his fingers—black polymer, soft—and holds it up like a peace offering.

“Bite down.”  

Bok doesn’t move.

Ricky rocks forward onto his toes, his face barely beneath Bok’s eye level, but Bok gazes coolly back down at him nonetheless.

“It’s not for me,” Ricky snorts. “It’s for your tongue. Once I go in, it’s going to get ugly.”

He slips it into Bok’s mouth with steady fingers. Bok bites down hard.

Ricky jerks his hand back with a hiss. “Shit,” he mutters, shaking out his hand. “Yeah. Good man.”

He finally rises, shakes out his fingers one last time, then turns and strides to the console.

The rig hums to life. The tap slides into position, and Ricky’s fingers fly over the controls, quietly humming to himself.

“Not personal,” he adds—and hits one last switch.

¶¶¶¶

Whatever it is slams into Bok’s skull like a hammer.

He jerks in the chair. Screams against the bit. His back arches. The restraints groan. Every nerve lights up like a live wire.  

On-screen, the first images begin to flash.

¶¶¶¶

Age 13. Training Facility: Unit 17

A dorm. Sterile. White. He’s naked from the waist down.  

A clipboard passes between two adults. One nods. The other gestures.  

The handler steps forward. Grabs his jaw. Lifts it. Examines him like a horse.  

“He's grown,” they note. “Ready for evaluation.”  

He tries to speak. Voice cracks. They slap him. Open hand. 

He’s twelve. Maybe thirteen.  

The handler grips his shoulder. Turns him. Presents him.  

“You’ll be perfect,” they murmur, adjusting his collar. “Lower your eyes.”  

Bok watches from the chair, shaking.  

NO. No no nonono stop—stop this—no more, not now—

But it only digs in further.  

¶¶¶¶

Age 14. Night Session: Red Room

A velvet bed. Cameras in every corner. A glass wall.  

Three men sit behind it. Watching. Grading.  

Bok is told to strip. He does.  

Hands guide him. Lotioned palms. Voice at his ear.  

“Do it sweet this time. Smile like you mean it.”  

Sharp cologne. Bok kneels.  

His eyes are dead. Inside, he’s somewhere else.  

Behind the glass, someone nods. A ‘pass’.

Bok clenches his fists in the chair. Restraints grind against metal.  

His whole body is taut. Teeth digging into the bit.  

Ricky shifts. He clears his throat. Tries to skip ahead.  

Bok slams a mental wall in place.  

The machine screeches. Screen fuzzes. Glitches.  

But it finds another path.

¶¶¶¶

Age 15. First Kill

A hotel room. Expensive. Marble tub.  

A client lies back, champagne in one hand. His pupils are slow.  

Bok is dressed in silk. Lipstick.  

He laughs. Touches the man’s shoulder. Drops something into the drink.  

“Bottoms up.”  

The man drinks.  

Thirty seconds. His lips go slack. Bok leans in. Whispers something that isn’t picked up. Then drives the needle into his neck.  

The body spasms.  

Bok pins him with a knee. Watches the light fade.  

Then calmly strips the bed. Wipes the prints. Changes clothes. Twirls the keys, pockets them, gone. 

The whole act—flawless.

On screen, it replays twice.  

Ricky exhales. 

“Why did they pivot you to assassination?” 

Bok curls his lip. “Maybe I got bored.”

¶¶¶¶

Age 16. Assault

A handler. Drunk. Furious. Slams Bok into the wall.  

“You want to make me look bad?”  

He’s been failing evaluations. Slipping.  

Too much resistance.

The man forces him down. Belt off. No camera this time.  

It’s fast. Violent. Bok doesn’t scream.  

Afterwards, he lies there. Eyes open. Something gone.  

¶¶¶¶

Bok thrashes in the chair. Screaming now. Wordless. Gut-deep.  

The restraints dig into broken skin.  

On screen, the memory degrades. Fragments. Blurs.  

Then another—

¶¶¶¶

Age 17. Redress

A locker room. Same handler.  

Bok follows, humming.  

Injector in hand. Sharp. Fast.  

Stab to the neck. Hold it. Hold it—until the body stops moving.  

The blood freckles Bok’s cheek.

He laughs—soft, breathless.

¶¶¶¶

Back in the chair, Bok shoves with every ounce of mental force left.  

The screen hisses. Static. Feedback stutters.

Bok’s pushing back against the onslaught. Slamming doors in its face.

Ricky types frantically. Tries to reroute.  

Fails.  

Tries again.  

Fails.  

Overload. 

Sync disruption. 

Neural resistance spike: critical. 

“Stop fighting,” Ricky snaps. “Stop it—”  

Bok glares at him. His lips are bleeding dark.

He spits the bit to the floor with a slick clack.

“You get off on that, Ricky?” he sneers, voice tight, eyes wet, betraying him. “You enjoy it?”  

The screen explodes into white noise. Hard cut.  

Bok crumples. Not quite unconscious. His head pounds.

Ricky stares at the console. Then at Bok.  

His voice is thin.

“You little bastard.”  

Ricky crosses the room. Pages someone on the intercom.  

“We’ve got a failure,” he says. “Tap’s down. No data retrieved. He—overloaded it. I don’t know how.”

A beat.  

“No, don’t send a tech. He fried it.”  

He turns his back, pinching the bridge of his nose. Silence.

He clicks off.  

Ricky stands by the door, one hand resting on the frame, his gaze tracing the tense lines of Bok’s body as his chest heaves with ragged breaths.

“You know,” Ricky’s voice is hollow, the words hanging in the space between them, “I was hoping you’d make this easy.”  

“Go… fuck yourself,” Bok wheezes out.

The door hisses shut behind Ricky, sharp and final.

The lights dim.

And Bok lets his head fall back, eyes shuttering.

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We’ve all seen the ‘after being tortured whumpee has an absurdly high pain tolerance and caretaker has to ask them why they haven’t moved their hand away from the burning stove etc etc’ and while I do love that trope I raise you:

Whumpee who after being tortured becomes hypersensitive to pain, to the point where stubbing their toe or burning their mouth on hot food or the pressure of their bandages against their wounds is enough to send them spiraling into flashbacks and convince them that caretaker is just another whumper with more creative methods

The Memory Circuit [II]

The Customer Is Always Wrong

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⎉: @chaotic-orphan Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the taglist!

TW: sex work, intoxication, dissociation, emotional numbness, implied exploitation.

Line dividers by @sister-lucifer!!!!

The city thrums with restless energy. Rain glides off glass and metal, pooling in the cracks of neglected streets. Overhead, neon burns in artificial constellations, flickering with the air, carrying the scent of ozone, of damp pavement, of banks and smog.

Bok moves through it all, drifting and drowning.

He is warm with liquor, a heat that coils in his gut and dulls the static fuzz at the edges of his mind. The club had been suffocating—smoke and sweat, bodies pressed close, hands lingering too long. But out here, beneath the buzzing glow of a malfunctioning streetlamp, it is cold. Cold enough to bite through the feigned haze of his intoxication.

A cigarette dangles between his fingers, its ember flaring as he takes a slow drag. Smoke unfurls from his lips, curling into the damp night air.

A voice reaches him, smooth, expectant. “Looking for company?”

Bok glances up through strands of damp blonde hair, eyes lidded and unfocused. The man before him is tall, well-dressed, an air of shrewdness about him.

He doesn't answer. Not immediately. He sways slightly, the world tilting at an odd angle.

The man chuckles, pulling out a slim card between two fingers. “I’ll make it easy.” A number. A sum. More than most.

Bok blinks slowly, then takes it.

¶¶¶¶

Bok falters after the figure, credits heavy in his pocket, though his body feels lighter than ever. The neon haze outside the bar stains his skin in shifting colours: red, blue, green.

The stranger leads him through a narrow corridor, past flickering signs and the hum of electrified advertisements. Their breath fogs together in the cool night air. Bok doesn’t ask where they’re going.

Inside the chartered room, the lights are dim, and the bed is clean. The stranger—tall, dark-eyed—shrugs off his coat. Bok sways, catching himself against the wall, blinking at his own reflection in a cracked mirror. He looks different here, distorted, his hair a mess of damp strands, lips parted.

“Don’t fall asleep on me,” the man murmurs, stepping closer. A hand grazes Bok’s jaw, tilting his chin up. His pupils contract automatically at the proximity. The stranger’s grip is firm, assessing. “You’re more pleasing than I expected.”

Bok exhales a soft laugh, tilting his head to expose more skin. “I know.”

It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. Just the press of hands, the exchange of currency, the contract that follows.

¶¶¶¶

Hal Hawkins sits in a cold metal chair, wrists bound, the sting of the restraints biting into his skin every time he moves. Across from him, Agent Ricky watches, expression unreadable, hands clasped on the steel table between them.

The room is sterile, suffocating in its stillness. The kind of place where time distorts, where confessions are extracted like rotting teeth.

“I am going to ask this once more, Hawkins.” Ricky’s voice is calm, deliberate. “Did your charge exhibit these characteristics?”

A flick of fingers. A projection hums to life, casting eerie blue light against the dull walls.

Photographs, sketches. Rows of servants, their smooth heads imprinted with the signature navy star, and a smaller star at their commissure; their bodies identical in stance.

Hal grits his teeth. “No, because I didn’t fucking know—”

Ricky barely reacts. He studies Hal as if dissecting something small and predictable. “And yet you harboured him. A freestyle automaton, even, of sorts. A security threat.”

Hal exhales sharply through his nose. “I harboured a human person.”

Ricky tilts his head slightly. “Is that what you told yourself?”

Silence stretches between them, thick and suffocating.

Ricky leans forward, eyes narrowing. “You had relations with this servant, Hawkins.”

The words land like a blow. Hal stiffens, fists clenching against the cuffs. The motion tugs at the wound beneath his ribs—a sharp, lancing pain that flares outward.

He feels the slow dampness under his shirt. Every breath pulls at the stitches, raw and unhealed.

The wound is still a weakness. A liability. A reminder of the night he nearly died on his bathroom floor.

A reminder of Bok, standing above him—eyes wide with something that might have been horror. Or grief. Or nothing at all.

—The memory presses against his ribs like a phantom limb.

Ricky notices.

A slow, knowing smile creeps onto his face. “No, he wasn’t. But you didn’t know that, did you?”

Hal says nothing.

Ricky watches him for a long moment, then stands, smoothing down his cape. The projection flickers, then vanishes.

The door slides open. A second officer enters, leans in to whisper something into Ricky’s ear. Hal can’t make out the words, but he catches the way Ricky's lips curl at the edges, the amusement in his eyes when he turns back.

“Your nomadroid is still active.”

Hal doesn’t move.

“We’ll find him,” Ricky says, voice light. “And when we do, he’ll be dismantled. Piece by piece.”

Hal’s nails dig into his palms. The restraints bite into his wrists, the sharp sting cutting through the dull ache in his side.

Ricky leans in, voice dropping. “For your sake, Hawkins, you better hope he doesn’t remember you.”

¶¶¶¶

Bok wakes in a bed that isn’t his. The room is dim, quiet save for the distant hum of city life beyond the window.

The stranger is gone. The money remains.

Bok exhales, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, as if to scrub something away. His fingers linger against his temples, then drop. He swings his legs over the edge of the mattress, feet meeting the cold floor.

The air smells of cologne and sweat. He stretches, listening to the hum of the city outside. His fingers ghost over his skin, over the places where hands had been, and he wonders if Hal would have looked at him differently if he knew.

Hal.

His chest tightens. He pushes the thought away.

There is work to do. There are more nights to survive.

Bok lights another cigarette. Inhales. Holds it. Lets the smoke pool in his lungs before exhaling slow, watching it coil toward the ceiling.

There is work to do. There are more nights to survive.

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Becoming a writer is great because now you have a hobby that haunts you whenever you don’t have time to do it

Now consider: a man in a dress. Not in drag or all dressed up or anything. No accessories, no makeup or styling, just wearing the dress, some ratty boxers and muddy sneakers. No socks or stockings, hairy legs in the open air, just raw dogging those nasty shoes. Hair mildly damp. Visibly sleep-deprived. Bruises on shoulders, elbows and knees, left palm bleeding. Sitting on a curb on the street, shivering, looking wretched, and absolutely miserable.

I forgot where I was going with this.

It’s really bold of me, a neurodivergent who struggles with rejection sensitivity, to want to be a writer— a career path forged entirely by rejection.

A villain that’s very protective of their hero

A tear ran down their temple when the hero woke up.

"I..." Their throat tightened. It hurt. All of it hurt. As they realised they were covered in dust, their eyes teared up even more, washing the dirt off their face in clear slim lines. They couldn't see much, but there were little rays of sunshine pushing through the concrete above and to their sides, revealing the villain on top of them.

The hero had to swallow, clear their mind. The villain stared at nothing in particular, not even the hero under them. They looked like they were concentrating, but the hero knew that look too well: the villain was in surging pain.

Their washed-out eyes were wide open and there was blood sticking onto their hair. The hero couldn't tell for how long they had been unconscious, but the villain seemed to have been awake the entire time.

Apparently, not even a building collapsing on top of them could destroy them.

The hero stared at them, stared at that face shape, those shoulders, those eyes. Was that it? Were they ultimately going to die together? Right here?

The hero didn't have any energy left in them to lift a finger, at least of all chunks of concrete. Their muscles burnt and they were sure several bones of theirs were broken. They continued to observe their enemy. Their enemy who had saved them. Without them, everything left of the hero would be mushed-up heroism and a torn cape. How was it even possible that the both of them were alive?

"How are you holding up?" the hero whispered. They were sure they had mere minutes before the villain's arms would give out. Mere minutes before the villain would collapse just like the building.

At first, the villain didn't answer. Their arms were shaking. They took in a deep breath.

"My kidneys are definitely done for," they said eventually. Their voice was raspy, their breathing quick. "And my leg is broken. You think some of your friends will come to our rescue?"

"If we can hold on for like ten more minutes, maybe. That's a big if, though." The villain nodded or maybe the hero imagined it, after all their view was extremely limited. "Why'd you do that? You could have saved yourself."

The villain finally looked at them and the hero's chest hurt more than before.

"...how could I not?" they asked.

"No, please, don't do that-"

"You're my everything. I do all of it because of you. I show up to see you, I mess up to see you, I fight to see you."

"Please," the hero begged. They couldn't bear a confession now. They couldn't watch the villain die because of them. "Please don't say that. Please tell me you hate me and it was a mistake or instinct."

"You know that's not true." The villain's blood ran down their side and dribbled onto the hero. They moaned softly. "You know that's not true, not even a little bit."

The villain let out a sharp breath and the hero could tell they were breaking down slowly. Growing weaker while the concrete grew heavier.

Tears gathered in the hero's eyes anew.

"I can't do this," the hero said. "You can't leave me, please. I am so scared. I am so-"

They choked on the words. There wasn't much space for either of them, but the hero managed to push their arm up and although some of their fingers were certainly broken, they touched the villain's cheek.

"Are you getting claustrophobic?" the villain asked gently. Their arms were trembling and more and more blood was running down their sides. The hero knew the villain could barely hold it together and they didn't seem to realise that the hero was rather getting thanatophobic. Even now, the villain remembered that the hero was a little uncomfortable in tight spaces, but the lack of space was their last problem right now. "Don't worry. I am here."

And there it was.

Blood coming out of the villain's mouth.

"I am here, please don't cry," the villain said. "I am right here."

The hero tried to hold back their sobs, but it made everything a little harder.

"I am so tired," the villain whispered. They closed their eyes for a second. "Please, can I lay down? Just for a minute or two. My back hurts so much."

"Yes, come here," the hero answered. Their bottom lip quivered.

But they were more than ready to share the weight the villain had protected them from.

honestly shout out to the dead dove: do not eat creators, the darkfic authors, the people who can unflinchingly stare into their darkest desires and curiosities and give them life enough to share with other people. It's absolutely so much harder than it looks to pull off

Kinda fucked up that we all coo and sympathize with "former gifted kids" but never talk about the students who had to stay late after school or over the summer for remedial classes/clubs, who struggled to get above a C, who were given up on or punished. Who tried so hard to understand or just couldn't. Who were grouped with the "stupid kids" (a classmate called us that in remedial math btw)

Autistic kids and adhders who can't relate to their gifted peers and are constantly alienated by them. Kids who struggled in school due to dealing with a chronic or mental illness or physical/learning/developmental disability. Those of us who have had to drop out of highschool or college. Kids who worked so hard and wanted to be seen as smart, but never were. Who watched as their peers seem to fly by them in school, while they were left behind. Who were bullied and put down by those in the gifted and honors classes. Whose confidence was absolutely destroyed by education.

I love you all and I'm so sorry the school system failed you. I'm sorry you weren't properly accommodated and given the education you deserved. I'm sorry people put you down for something that they never had to fight for.

kudos to writers with dialogue-heavy works, I got mad respect for y'all. love using dialogue as a tool, but my default settings are non-verbal (dialogue) and non-stop yapping (description).