All the Years Between: Captivity
Apr. 7th, 2006 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
onemuseleftI posted this a few weeks back, but thanks to the glory of beta-reading, it no longer sucks.
cap·tiv·i·ty
n.
1. The state or period of being imprisoned, confined, or enslaved.
2. The state in which Kuwabara spends way too much of his time.
All the Years Between: Captivity
cap·tiv·i·ty
n.
1. The state or period of being imprisoned, confined, or enslaved.
2. The state in which Kuwabara spends way too much of his time.
The demon stalking across the room was one Kuwabara had never seen before. He was large and broad, covered in shaggy black hair with hulking shoulders and arms so long that his fingers brushed against the ground. His head was oval-shaped, squashed and oblong, with wide crescent-shaped ears and a nose that dangled like a tiny elephant's trunk. He'd have looked ridiculous except for the muscles that flexed and bulged along every inch of him. Kuwabara dubbed him Gorilla Guy.
Two yapping hellbeasts darted along beside Gorilla Guy, dog-like yips alternating with growls as they occasionally wandered too close and earned a kick. The demon looked as if he was resolutely ignoring them, which he probably was. The little beasts were two of dozens that Demon Lord Rorgan kept within the walls of his stronghold. His guests and minions knew better than to harm the creatures but no one liked them very much.
Gorilla Guy paused to scan the room, eyes sweeping carelessly over the humans gathered there. Kuwbara couldn't blame him for his lack of interest – Kuwabara lived with these people and he didn't have a whole lot of interest, either. Part of him was pretty sure it was a coping mechanism, to keep him from caring about people who were basically living as cattle, waiting for the slaughter. Part of him was too tired to care about people who'd given up, most of them cowering, some listless, all of them pale and tired from spending nearly every waking second locked away in a dark, damp basement.
It bothered him, because he was pretty sure he'd cared a lot before he'd ended up down there.
It had been a laundry room once, if the battered washing machines and dryers along one wall were any indication, but it made a pretty effective dungeon. Cracked cement floors and walls, covered in mold and years of accumulated grime, guaranteed that no one was ever comfortable, and left most of them cold and chilled even in the summer. There were no windows to let the light in, and they spent most of their days in the dark, the only light coming in through the cracks between the door and the floor. The door itself was at the top of a narrow flight of cement steps, and guards waited at the top, hoping for the chance to "chastise" any human stupid enough to climb them without permission.
It wouldn't make much of a laundry room anymore. Anything that could burn had been burned in the first couple of weeks, when people got desperate for warmth, back when personal space was something most of them still had. There was no running water, although if humans ever got control of the city again, that could probably be corrected. Kuwabara didn't think the demon invaders had the technological know-how to destroy the utilities. There were holes in one wall, three of them. Two were exactly the size of the overseer's fists, the third was roughly the size of a human's head. The blood splatter had dried into the wall because no one had washed it away.
It wouldn't serve as anything but a dungeon now.
There were no chains or torture devices that you'd expect from a dungeon. This didn't surprise Kuwabara; hadn't even surprised him more than a year ago when he'd first found himself down there, his chest a mass of scars, both his arms broken and his mind a muddled mess. Torture wasn't a strictly human domain, but demons at least tended to be a lot more up-front about it. Kuwabara could almost respect them for it, if it weren't for the whole "evil, world-conquering, human-devouring, slavers" thing. That put a real crimp in human/demon relations, he thought.
Amongst other things.
Gorilla Guy glared at him from across the room and Kuwabara glared back, tensing as the hulking demon stomped across the room toward him. Kuwabara pushed himself to his feet, because no way was he facing that thing sitting on his ass, bracing himself with one hand against the wall behind him, struggling against the weight around his throat and wrists.
Gorilla Guy had evidently never heard of personal space and the stink of rancid flesh made Kuwabara swallow. "You're wanted." His breath stank, too.
Kuwabara twisted his lips into a sneer and tipped his head back so Gorilla Guy could see it, bracing himself in case the demon breathed on him. "Aww. I feel all warm and fuzzy."
The demon backhanded him casually, but even a casual blow from a ten-foot-tall walking mountain with arms like a gorilla was enough to make him stagger. The demon grabbed his throat with a hand the size of a baseball mitt. "You can walk or I can drag you."
He bared his teeth and managed to raise one hand up to dig his fingers into the hulking monstrosity's wrist. He clenched his hand down and felt the bones beneath the demon's skin grind together before the demon snarled in his face and let him go, shoving him back against the wall.
"My legs work fine," Kuwabara snarled, so used to not showing pain that he almost stopped feeling it, didn't really feel the way his head had slammed against the wall. It was distant and easily ignorable.
"Then use them," the demon said, leaning down slightly to get into Kuwabara's face. "The master's got a use for you."
****
Demon Lord Rorgan had been one of the first through the Tear, and he had laid claim to everything he could set his eyes on before most of his fellow demons were done with their first rape and meal. By the time any would-be challengers had come, he'd been entrenched in the middle of what was left of the business district, directing his armies from the top levels of a skyscraper.
Humanity hadn't seen the invasion coming, hadn't even known how to react. The few who knew what they were dealing with were overwhelmed quickly, hunted down by the AngelEaters, demonic beasts bred for the purpose of sniffing out reiki. Once upon a time they'd been used to hunt down ferry girls, and that was how they'd earned their name. But they proved to be equally adept at sniffing out humans with spiritual power.
Kuwabara hadn't even known they existed. If he had, maybe he would have left the girls, or sent them somewhere else. With Genkai gone they would have just been normal humans, hiding in an old temple. Yukina's presence might have been enough to make other demons back off. He didn't know if there was anything he could have done that would have saved them.
He wasn't sure of much, to be honest. Maybe even if he had left them, they'd still be dead. After all, humans were food and Keiko and Shizuru weren't fighters. Yukina may have been a demon, but she wasn't like Hiei or Kurama, or the Demon Lords who came through the gate. He was fairly certain that even if he hadn't led the demons to them, they'd have eventually been found
Or maybe that was just his way of trying to come to terms with the fact that he got everyone killed.
He remembered Shizuru screaming when they finally brought him down, hoarse, throat-ripping screams of fury that had made him want to laugh despite it all. It had taken more than a few dozen monsters to make Shizuru cower. He didn't think there was anything that could make his sister surrender unless she damn well wanted to.
His sister was dead now. The demons could seal his reiki, but their sixth sense had bound them together since they were children, which probably explained a lot about them. He'd known as soon as he revived. The fate of the others was still a mystery, but he supposed Yukina might still be alive somewhere, if they had recognized what she was.
Mostly, he just hoped that she and Keiko had died quickly. He didn't want to think they had ended up like him, like the cattle locked up down there with him.
Rorgan's stronghold had once been a government building, although you'd be hard pressed to prove it by appearance. The interior had been stripped, furniture thrown away, carpets ripped up. Kuwabara figured demons were really fond of big empty rooms, based on how many of them they created in there.
The further up you went, though, the more it began to look like something. A palace, maybe. Rorgan held his court on the top levels, and there the rooms held couches and tables, big beds, and a huge iron throne that had to have been made from scratch. Kuwabara doubted anything like it had been found in Tokyo. If nothing else it was too big for a human.
He had a mental image of Rorgan's minions finding the throne in a television studio somewhere and hid a laugh behind a cough.
Hulking Gorilla Guy left him there and Kuwabara braced himself as Rajin, a demon with about twenty arms, took over. Rajin was, as near as Kuwabara could figure, Rorgan's slave overseer. There were always low-level demons, little better than slaves, running around, obeying every barked order. Rarely, he'd catch a glimpse of a human or two, mostly the handful that cooperated with and aided the demons and had earned some small liberties. That largest liberty, of course, was not being eaten.
Some of those humans were pleasure slaves. Rorgan only kept a few, claiming they were too fragile to have any real fun, though Kuwabara had seen enough before his capture to get that other demons had no problem fucking humans as indiscriminately as they fucked each other. He'd certainly figured it out, once he realized what Rorgan was keeping him alive for.
The first time, more than a year ago, they'd had to call in reinforcements to hold him down. He'd been wary when they pulled him out of the dungeon, tense when they brought him to the upper levels. He'd been expecting an interrogation, a beating – and even then he was pretty much kidding himself, because, let's face it, odds were damned good they were just going to kill him – but when they'd stripped him and shoved him into a basin of nearly boiling water, his first, honest-to-god thought had been they're going to make me into soup.
The second thought had been far, far worse.
He'd been through the process often enough since then to know how to go with it. Fighting now would be a waste of energy that he could ill afford.
He gritted his teeth as he was unceremoniously stripped and scrubbed clean. He shut out the feel of hands on his head, his feet, his chest, everywhere, and just tried to enjoy the entirely too-rare sensation of being clean.
One of Rajin's hands closed around his wrist and lifted it for inspection. "This will not do," Rajin said sharply. "Fetch the Spellbinder."
Kuwabara forced his breath out through his teeth, and then forced himself to draw another while he was rinsed off and toweled dry. The simple act of breathing gave him something to focus on while he tried to get an idea of what exactly Rorgan wanted him for this time.
After the battle, that night at Genkai's, he'd been pretty out of it, too drained and battered to really focus. He'd lost track of Keiko in the chaos, and even Yukina's familiar youki had been lost in the press of demonic auras around him. But he did remember someone leaning over him, a vague figure through the blood in his eyes, and saying, "One of Koenma's little pets. The lord will want this one." Kuwabara figured it was mostly for bragging rights – no one else had a tantei prisoner, no one else had grabbed one of Koenma's workers out from under his nose. Demons were like high school boys sometimes. Always in a pissing contest to see who had the biggest equipment.
That was what Rorgan mostly kept him around for. Nothing says "I'm the boss man" like a collared and leashed Reikai Tantei. Kuwabara had pointed out, once, that technically Urameshi was the only one who'd been a tantei, and even that was no longer accurate since Koenma'd cut him lose after that whole unfortunate dying thing. Rorgan had beat him half to death for opening his mouth and Kuwabara had grudgingly decided that if being a Reikai Tantei kept him alive, then he should probably stop disillusioning people.
Anyway, being a trophy had its advantages. He was still alive, for starters. He figured he couldn't stress that one enough, especially since his subconscious occasionally seemed to be working against him.
Rajin was checking his teeth – Kuwabara had to force himself not to bite by reminding himself how absolutely vile demon blood tasted, and reasoning that he'd just get another bath if he got blood on him – when the Spellbinder came.
"What has he done this time?" the wizened old human man demanded in a voice that sounded like branches creaking on a windy night. "For goodness sake, why don't we just cut his arms off and be done with it if you can't even keep one human under control."
Kuwabara chuckled despite the slap Rajin delivered to the back of his head. The slavemaster wasn't a threat at the moment – he could get away with murder whenever Rorgan had a use for him – and he'd probably forget about it by the next time they met. Rajin wasn't exactly smart.
"The restraints won't do," Rajin snapped. "Look at this!" He grabbed Kuwabara's arm and shoved it at the Spellbinder. "What do you call this?"
The old man peered at the offered limb. "An arm."
If the old man weren't more or less willingly working for the demons, Kuwabara would have liked the son of a bitch. He was nasty, rude, violent and in all fairness, disliked demons as much as he disliked humans. He kind of reminded Kuwabara of Genkai, but without any sort of moral compass whatsoever.
"Don't play the fool, old man. Rorgan wants this one ready for an important guest by the time the hunt is over, and these restraints are laughable!"
"Those restraints," the Spellbinder said coolly, "would hold a charging bull. It's not my problem you can't control him."
The restraints were thin metal wires, each one wrapped around his wrist twice, the ends disappearing beneath the skin on the inside of his wrist, where the veins stood out blue against his skin. They were spelled to act as fetters, and felt like heavy metal weights tied to his arms. He still had full range of motion, but he tired quickly, and could not move his arms with any dexterity, which made it difficult to pick a fight, especially one he wanted to win. A third wire wrapped around his throat, piercing the skin at the base of his skull. This one mostly made him tired, though he knew it was supposed to cloud his thoughts and keep him docile.
He glared at Rajin when the overseer nearly pulled his arm out of his socket and smirked when Rajin let go.
That particular spell didn't work so well, he figured.
"I don't have time to work new spells!" The Spellbinder threw his hands up in disgust. "Finely crafted spells take days to prepare. You want me to come up with something in the next ten minutes?"
"Yes," Rajin said.
Kuwabara shook his head. "No one appreciates real workmanship anymore," he said.
The Spellbinder offered him a glare. "What's the problem? He's warded, isn't he?"
Rajin shrugged, which was a pretty fucking bizarre sight on someone with as many arms as he had. "He's killed too many people with your lousy spells on him. Boss says we don't take chances this time. So I don't take chances."
"Oh,for-" the Spellbinder threw his hands up in the air. "Fine! I can do an overlay. It won't be perfect, and it'll wear off eventually. I presume his lordship will accept that?"
"When does it wear off?"
"At the end of the night, give or take an hour or two. I'm sure you'll be done with him by then."
Rajin made a face. "All right, but if he kills anyone this time-"
"Shut up and let me concentrate." The Spellbinder always carried a bag the size of a duffel bag around with him, full of materials or something, Kuwabara supposed. Chicken bones and newt eyes and the blood of virgins or whatever it took to do magic. The old man rummaged around inside it for what he needed.
Whatever he did, it didn't take long. The Spellbinder pulled some dried leaves – herbs? – from the bag, and a vial of something pale blue and watery, muttering under his breath the whole time in words that sounded like he was speaking in reverse. He dropped the dried leaves into a small silver bowl and poured a small stream of the pale blue liquid over top. The leaves smoked and crackled and Kuwabara leaned away from the smell of burning rubber. Magic sucked.
Blue smoke drifted up from the bowl and the old man leaned forward and sucked it in, his cheeks puffing out like a balloon. He turned to Kuwabara and exhaled a steady stream of blue smoke – hot, blue smoke – across his wrists. The wires burned white-hot briefly and he held back a wince as they seared the skin, then faded back to a dull silver. The weight increased abruptly, and he let his hands drop to his side. The Spellbinder sucked in another mouthful, and gestured him downward sharply. Rajin shoved him down with a hand between his shoulders, low enough that the old man could reach the wire around his throat and repeat the process.
That restraint was heavy, though not as bad as the ones around his wrists, and as the wire burned against his skin he felt lightheaded. Tired. Foggy.
Dimly, he heard Rajin and the Spellbinder talking, but he couldn't process the words, couldn't focus enough to make out what they were saying. He bit his lip, trying to clear his head, but the pain barely registered.
He was aware of someone taking him by the shoulder and directing him down the hall, though he couldn't focus on the surroundings enough to figure out where they were taking him. Rajin had said a guest – he latched onto that tightly before it faded again. A guest. That was a rare fucking honor. Rajin didn't let just anyone play with his trophy slave. And the trouble to further restrain him so he didn't hurt anyone… Whoever this guest was, it was either someone Rajin liked, or someone Rajin feared enough that he couldn’t risk offense.
Now that was an interesting thought. Was there anyone on this side of the Tear that Rajin feared?
Then the thought slipped away, a leaf pulled beneath the currents of a river Kuwabara couldn't see, and he lost track of everything.
He came back to himself sometime later with the sensation that he was falling. He struggled briefly, trying to get his legs beneath him, but something heavy was on his shoulders, pushing him down until his knees hit the floor. The contact stung, briefly, and he grabbed the pain with both hands, using it to keep himself aware. Voices above his head, talking, something familiar. Rajin, one was Rajin. The other one… A demon he'd encountered before?
His sixth sense was slippery, even more difficult to handle than normal thanks to the Spellbinder's new restraints. He couldn't perceive anything reliable and he didn't dare open up his mind in this situation. If he couldn't control it, couldn't get it shielded again, well, he didn't really feel like sharing the mental and emotional space of the demon who was about to rape him. That would kind of suck.
The weight on his shoulders was gone, he realized, not sure when it had happened. Rajin had left? Or stepped away, at least. Sometimes it was his job to hang around and wait in case the guests needed anything else. Kuwabara focused on opening his eyes, vaguely pleased with himself when he was able to see a dimly lit and incredibly blurry room. Okay, so the spell was messing with his vision. But still. Progress was progress.
From behind him there was a loud, heavy bang – and he tensed before he was able to recognize it as the door being slammed shut. There was an odd sort of scraping sound next, and a few more thuds, not as loud, then a sound like someone clapping his hands.
Why, he thought tiredly, do I get all the weird demons?
He felt cloth against his arm as the demon moved around in front of him. Even dulled, his instincts were pointing out that now would be a good time to kick, hit, bite or generally maim, thanks.
There were two reasons Kuwabara didn't end up pulling a lot of time entertaining the crowds. The first was that he was, literally, a trophy. He was the only one of the Reikai Tentei to have been captured since the invasion (as far as he knew, but if one of the others had ended up in some demon's cell, Rorgan undoubtedly would have told him about it, just for kicks). Urameshi and the others had been in the Makai when the Tear was opened, effectively keeping them out of the line of fire. And each of them had powerful demonic allies to rely upon.
But then, so did you.
So he had the rarity card in his favor. Rorgan only pulled him out for special occasions, and even then, only on the grounds that he lived through whatever was done to him.
The demons got no such guarantee, and that was reason number two.
He figured he'd killed a few dozen of them, that night at Genkai's, and whoever had finally taken him down and brought him to Rorgan hadn't bothered to restrain or ward him, so when he'd regained consciousness, he had just kept killing. He'd apparently made a slaughterhouse out of Rorgan's throne room, something that earned him a little bit of notoriety. Rorgan himself had finally stopped him, and when Kuwabara woke the second time, his reiki had been sealed.
It was an uncomfortable feeling. He'd been sealed before; Genkai had shown him how it was done and how to cope. There were even a few tricks for unsealing yourself, depending on how it was done. But when Genkai had sealed him, it was as if his reiki were gone completely, drained out of his blood and skin, the way he had been after Yakumo, after the Dark Tournament. This was more like his ki was still there, but locked up inside of him, a pressure pushing against the inside of his skin and it grew stronger as his reiki built up behind the seals. Sometimes it was almost a relief to be cut or fucked, because it was almost like some of the pressure could seep out.
The seals had been cut into his skin with something sharp and finely pointed, and the wounds had already scarred over by the time he regained consciousness, several days after the mess in the throne room. The most effective way of sealing someone's ki, Kuwabara remembered, was to draw the wards directly onto their skin. The only way to break the seal was to destroy the wards. Genkai had used a thick, black ink mixed with a few drops of his own blood, and it had been enough to scrub a few of the wards away when they were done. These wards could not be wiped clean. Kuwabara had, at the first available opportunity, tried to cut one or two of the wards out of his skin and interrupt the seal, and that was when they'd added the restraints to his wrists and throat, spelled to make him docile and tired, and unable to injure himself.
Bastards.
Even sealed, though, he was stronger than other humans and quite a lot of demons. He figured he'd killed at least six of the nine demons Rorgan had agreed to loan him to over the last year, and of the three that lived, one was missing a couple limbs and another an eye. The appeal of fucking with one of Koenma's pets had faded pretty quickly once the word spread that most of them paid for their fun with their lives.
At some point, he realized, he'd lost track of what was going on around him.
He focused his vision again, as much as he could. The demon was still there, a blur of blue and black and white but nothing else. Something, a hand, pressed against his chest, then his shoulder, and the lack of violence in the touch almost threw him.
Someone was talking. A voice, from just in front of him. He struggled to concentrate, heard the words "do to you" and faded out again.
Something almost familiar that his mind wouldn't wrap itself around.
The touch on his shoulder was careful and precise, almost gentle. Not a demon's touch. Or, not a typical demon's touch. A demon who knew how to be gentle.
"…need you to focus."
He blinked, realized his eyes had slid closed at some point, and forced them to stay open this time. Focus, he told himself. You gotta snap out of this. You're fucking helpless right now.
His vision swam before clearing, letting him focus on the dark brown cloak and robe the demon squatting before him was wearing. He frowned, because it wasn't familiar, and why was the demon wearing sneakers?
"That's it. Wake up, man. I need you here with me, okay?" A hand touched his face, not a talon or claw or scales, just skin and bone and fingers like a human hand, warm against his cheek. "You," and the voice faltered, slightly. "You gotta still be in there, somewhere."
He tipped his head back, using every ounce of strength he had, and focused on that voice, on the face. "Urameshi."
He caught a smile a mile wide before he was pulled into an enthusiastic hug, his face smashed against Urameshi's neck. The demon smelled like youki, but also like reiki, like air and ash, like rain and electricity. Underneath that, he smelled like cigarettes and sweat, and that made up for everything else.
To be continued in Diplomacy
cap·tiv·i·ty
n.
1. The state or period of being imprisoned, confined, or enslaved.
2. The state in which Kuwabara spends way too much of his time.
All the Years Between: Captivity
cap·tiv·i·ty
n.
1. The state or period of being imprisoned, confined, or enslaved.
2. The state in which Kuwabara spends way too much of his time.
The demon stalking across the room was one Kuwabara had never seen before. He was large and broad, covered in shaggy black hair with hulking shoulders and arms so long that his fingers brushed against the ground. His head was oval-shaped, squashed and oblong, with wide crescent-shaped ears and a nose that dangled like a tiny elephant's trunk. He'd have looked ridiculous except for the muscles that flexed and bulged along every inch of him. Kuwabara dubbed him Gorilla Guy.
Two yapping hellbeasts darted along beside Gorilla Guy, dog-like yips alternating with growls as they occasionally wandered too close and earned a kick. The demon looked as if he was resolutely ignoring them, which he probably was. The little beasts were two of dozens that Demon Lord Rorgan kept within the walls of his stronghold. His guests and minions knew better than to harm the creatures but no one liked them very much.
Gorilla Guy paused to scan the room, eyes sweeping carelessly over the humans gathered there. Kuwbara couldn't blame him for his lack of interest – Kuwabara lived with these people and he didn't have a whole lot of interest, either. Part of him was pretty sure it was a coping mechanism, to keep him from caring about people who were basically living as cattle, waiting for the slaughter. Part of him was too tired to care about people who'd given up, most of them cowering, some listless, all of them pale and tired from spending nearly every waking second locked away in a dark, damp basement.
It bothered him, because he was pretty sure he'd cared a lot before he'd ended up down there.
It had been a laundry room once, if the battered washing machines and dryers along one wall were any indication, but it made a pretty effective dungeon. Cracked cement floors and walls, covered in mold and years of accumulated grime, guaranteed that no one was ever comfortable, and left most of them cold and chilled even in the summer. There were no windows to let the light in, and they spent most of their days in the dark, the only light coming in through the cracks between the door and the floor. The door itself was at the top of a narrow flight of cement steps, and guards waited at the top, hoping for the chance to "chastise" any human stupid enough to climb them without permission.
It wouldn't make much of a laundry room anymore. Anything that could burn had been burned in the first couple of weeks, when people got desperate for warmth, back when personal space was something most of them still had. There was no running water, although if humans ever got control of the city again, that could probably be corrected. Kuwabara didn't think the demon invaders had the technological know-how to destroy the utilities. There were holes in one wall, three of them. Two were exactly the size of the overseer's fists, the third was roughly the size of a human's head. The blood splatter had dried into the wall because no one had washed it away.
It wouldn't serve as anything but a dungeon now.
There were no chains or torture devices that you'd expect from a dungeon. This didn't surprise Kuwabara; hadn't even surprised him more than a year ago when he'd first found himself down there, his chest a mass of scars, both his arms broken and his mind a muddled mess. Torture wasn't a strictly human domain, but demons at least tended to be a lot more up-front about it. Kuwabara could almost respect them for it, if it weren't for the whole "evil, world-conquering, human-devouring, slavers" thing. That put a real crimp in human/demon relations, he thought.
Amongst other things.
Gorilla Guy glared at him from across the room and Kuwabara glared back, tensing as the hulking demon stomped across the room toward him. Kuwabara pushed himself to his feet, because no way was he facing that thing sitting on his ass, bracing himself with one hand against the wall behind him, struggling against the weight around his throat and wrists.
Gorilla Guy had evidently never heard of personal space and the stink of rancid flesh made Kuwabara swallow. "You're wanted." His breath stank, too.
Kuwabara twisted his lips into a sneer and tipped his head back so Gorilla Guy could see it, bracing himself in case the demon breathed on him. "Aww. I feel all warm and fuzzy."
The demon backhanded him casually, but even a casual blow from a ten-foot-tall walking mountain with arms like a gorilla was enough to make him stagger. The demon grabbed his throat with a hand the size of a baseball mitt. "You can walk or I can drag you."
He bared his teeth and managed to raise one hand up to dig his fingers into the hulking monstrosity's wrist. He clenched his hand down and felt the bones beneath the demon's skin grind together before the demon snarled in his face and let him go, shoving him back against the wall.
"My legs work fine," Kuwabara snarled, so used to not showing pain that he almost stopped feeling it, didn't really feel the way his head had slammed against the wall. It was distant and easily ignorable.
"Then use them," the demon said, leaning down slightly to get into Kuwabara's face. "The master's got a use for you."
****
Demon Lord Rorgan had been one of the first through the Tear, and he had laid claim to everything he could set his eyes on before most of his fellow demons were done with their first rape and meal. By the time any would-be challengers had come, he'd been entrenched in the middle of what was left of the business district, directing his armies from the top levels of a skyscraper.
Humanity hadn't seen the invasion coming, hadn't even known how to react. The few who knew what they were dealing with were overwhelmed quickly, hunted down by the AngelEaters, demonic beasts bred for the purpose of sniffing out reiki. Once upon a time they'd been used to hunt down ferry girls, and that was how they'd earned their name. But they proved to be equally adept at sniffing out humans with spiritual power.
Kuwabara hadn't even known they existed. If he had, maybe he would have left the girls, or sent them somewhere else. With Genkai gone they would have just been normal humans, hiding in an old temple. Yukina's presence might have been enough to make other demons back off. He didn't know if there was anything he could have done that would have saved them.
He wasn't sure of much, to be honest. Maybe even if he had left them, they'd still be dead. After all, humans were food and Keiko and Shizuru weren't fighters. Yukina may have been a demon, but she wasn't like Hiei or Kurama, or the Demon Lords who came through the gate. He was fairly certain that even if he hadn't led the demons to them, they'd have eventually been found
Or maybe that was just his way of trying to come to terms with the fact that he got everyone killed.
He remembered Shizuru screaming when they finally brought him down, hoarse, throat-ripping screams of fury that had made him want to laugh despite it all. It had taken more than a few dozen monsters to make Shizuru cower. He didn't think there was anything that could make his sister surrender unless she damn well wanted to.
His sister was dead now. The demons could seal his reiki, but their sixth sense had bound them together since they were children, which probably explained a lot about them. He'd known as soon as he revived. The fate of the others was still a mystery, but he supposed Yukina might still be alive somewhere, if they had recognized what she was.
Mostly, he just hoped that she and Keiko had died quickly. He didn't want to think they had ended up like him, like the cattle locked up down there with him.
Rorgan's stronghold had once been a government building, although you'd be hard pressed to prove it by appearance. The interior had been stripped, furniture thrown away, carpets ripped up. Kuwabara figured demons were really fond of big empty rooms, based on how many of them they created in there.
The further up you went, though, the more it began to look like something. A palace, maybe. Rorgan held his court on the top levels, and there the rooms held couches and tables, big beds, and a huge iron throne that had to have been made from scratch. Kuwabara doubted anything like it had been found in Tokyo. If nothing else it was too big for a human.
He had a mental image of Rorgan's minions finding the throne in a television studio somewhere and hid a laugh behind a cough.
Hulking Gorilla Guy left him there and Kuwabara braced himself as Rajin, a demon with about twenty arms, took over. Rajin was, as near as Kuwabara could figure, Rorgan's slave overseer. There were always low-level demons, little better than slaves, running around, obeying every barked order. Rarely, he'd catch a glimpse of a human or two, mostly the handful that cooperated with and aided the demons and had earned some small liberties. That largest liberty, of course, was not being eaten.
Some of those humans were pleasure slaves. Rorgan only kept a few, claiming they were too fragile to have any real fun, though Kuwabara had seen enough before his capture to get that other demons had no problem fucking humans as indiscriminately as they fucked each other. He'd certainly figured it out, once he realized what Rorgan was keeping him alive for.
The first time, more than a year ago, they'd had to call in reinforcements to hold him down. He'd been wary when they pulled him out of the dungeon, tense when they brought him to the upper levels. He'd been expecting an interrogation, a beating – and even then he was pretty much kidding himself, because, let's face it, odds were damned good they were just going to kill him – but when they'd stripped him and shoved him into a basin of nearly boiling water, his first, honest-to-god thought had been they're going to make me into soup.
The second thought had been far, far worse.
He'd been through the process often enough since then to know how to go with it. Fighting now would be a waste of energy that he could ill afford.
He gritted his teeth as he was unceremoniously stripped and scrubbed clean. He shut out the feel of hands on his head, his feet, his chest, everywhere, and just tried to enjoy the entirely too-rare sensation of being clean.
One of Rajin's hands closed around his wrist and lifted it for inspection. "This will not do," Rajin said sharply. "Fetch the Spellbinder."
Kuwabara forced his breath out through his teeth, and then forced himself to draw another while he was rinsed off and toweled dry. The simple act of breathing gave him something to focus on while he tried to get an idea of what exactly Rorgan wanted him for this time.
After the battle, that night at Genkai's, he'd been pretty out of it, too drained and battered to really focus. He'd lost track of Keiko in the chaos, and even Yukina's familiar youki had been lost in the press of demonic auras around him. But he did remember someone leaning over him, a vague figure through the blood in his eyes, and saying, "One of Koenma's little pets. The lord will want this one." Kuwabara figured it was mostly for bragging rights – no one else had a tantei prisoner, no one else had grabbed one of Koenma's workers out from under his nose. Demons were like high school boys sometimes. Always in a pissing contest to see who had the biggest equipment.
That was what Rorgan mostly kept him around for. Nothing says "I'm the boss man" like a collared and leashed Reikai Tantei. Kuwabara had pointed out, once, that technically Urameshi was the only one who'd been a tantei, and even that was no longer accurate since Koenma'd cut him lose after that whole unfortunate dying thing. Rorgan had beat him half to death for opening his mouth and Kuwabara had grudgingly decided that if being a Reikai Tantei kept him alive, then he should probably stop disillusioning people.
Anyway, being a trophy had its advantages. He was still alive, for starters. He figured he couldn't stress that one enough, especially since his subconscious occasionally seemed to be working against him.
Rajin was checking his teeth – Kuwabara had to force himself not to bite by reminding himself how absolutely vile demon blood tasted, and reasoning that he'd just get another bath if he got blood on him – when the Spellbinder came.
"What has he done this time?" the wizened old human man demanded in a voice that sounded like branches creaking on a windy night. "For goodness sake, why don't we just cut his arms off and be done with it if you can't even keep one human under control."
Kuwabara chuckled despite the slap Rajin delivered to the back of his head. The slavemaster wasn't a threat at the moment – he could get away with murder whenever Rorgan had a use for him – and he'd probably forget about it by the next time they met. Rajin wasn't exactly smart.
"The restraints won't do," Rajin snapped. "Look at this!" He grabbed Kuwabara's arm and shoved it at the Spellbinder. "What do you call this?"
The old man peered at the offered limb. "An arm."
If the old man weren't more or less willingly working for the demons, Kuwabara would have liked the son of a bitch. He was nasty, rude, violent and in all fairness, disliked demons as much as he disliked humans. He kind of reminded Kuwabara of Genkai, but without any sort of moral compass whatsoever.
"Don't play the fool, old man. Rorgan wants this one ready for an important guest by the time the hunt is over, and these restraints are laughable!"
"Those restraints," the Spellbinder said coolly, "would hold a charging bull. It's not my problem you can't control him."
The restraints were thin metal wires, each one wrapped around his wrist twice, the ends disappearing beneath the skin on the inside of his wrist, where the veins stood out blue against his skin. They were spelled to act as fetters, and felt like heavy metal weights tied to his arms. He still had full range of motion, but he tired quickly, and could not move his arms with any dexterity, which made it difficult to pick a fight, especially one he wanted to win. A third wire wrapped around his throat, piercing the skin at the base of his skull. This one mostly made him tired, though he knew it was supposed to cloud his thoughts and keep him docile.
He glared at Rajin when the overseer nearly pulled his arm out of his socket and smirked when Rajin let go.
That particular spell didn't work so well, he figured.
"I don't have time to work new spells!" The Spellbinder threw his hands up in disgust. "Finely crafted spells take days to prepare. You want me to come up with something in the next ten minutes?"
"Yes," Rajin said.
Kuwabara shook his head. "No one appreciates real workmanship anymore," he said.
The Spellbinder offered him a glare. "What's the problem? He's warded, isn't he?"
Rajin shrugged, which was a pretty fucking bizarre sight on someone with as many arms as he had. "He's killed too many people with your lousy spells on him. Boss says we don't take chances this time. So I don't take chances."
"Oh,for-" the Spellbinder threw his hands up in the air. "Fine! I can do an overlay. It won't be perfect, and it'll wear off eventually. I presume his lordship will accept that?"
"When does it wear off?"
"At the end of the night, give or take an hour or two. I'm sure you'll be done with him by then."
Rajin made a face. "All right, but if he kills anyone this time-"
"Shut up and let me concentrate." The Spellbinder always carried a bag the size of a duffel bag around with him, full of materials or something, Kuwabara supposed. Chicken bones and newt eyes and the blood of virgins or whatever it took to do magic. The old man rummaged around inside it for what he needed.
Whatever he did, it didn't take long. The Spellbinder pulled some dried leaves – herbs? – from the bag, and a vial of something pale blue and watery, muttering under his breath the whole time in words that sounded like he was speaking in reverse. He dropped the dried leaves into a small silver bowl and poured a small stream of the pale blue liquid over top. The leaves smoked and crackled and Kuwabara leaned away from the smell of burning rubber. Magic sucked.
Blue smoke drifted up from the bowl and the old man leaned forward and sucked it in, his cheeks puffing out like a balloon. He turned to Kuwabara and exhaled a steady stream of blue smoke – hot, blue smoke – across his wrists. The wires burned white-hot briefly and he held back a wince as they seared the skin, then faded back to a dull silver. The weight increased abruptly, and he let his hands drop to his side. The Spellbinder sucked in another mouthful, and gestured him downward sharply. Rajin shoved him down with a hand between his shoulders, low enough that the old man could reach the wire around his throat and repeat the process.
That restraint was heavy, though not as bad as the ones around his wrists, and as the wire burned against his skin he felt lightheaded. Tired. Foggy.
Dimly, he heard Rajin and the Spellbinder talking, but he couldn't process the words, couldn't focus enough to make out what they were saying. He bit his lip, trying to clear his head, but the pain barely registered.
He was aware of someone taking him by the shoulder and directing him down the hall, though he couldn't focus on the surroundings enough to figure out where they were taking him. Rajin had said a guest – he latched onto that tightly before it faded again. A guest. That was a rare fucking honor. Rajin didn't let just anyone play with his trophy slave. And the trouble to further restrain him so he didn't hurt anyone… Whoever this guest was, it was either someone Rajin liked, or someone Rajin feared enough that he couldn’t risk offense.
Now that was an interesting thought. Was there anyone on this side of the Tear that Rajin feared?
Then the thought slipped away, a leaf pulled beneath the currents of a river Kuwabara couldn't see, and he lost track of everything.
He came back to himself sometime later with the sensation that he was falling. He struggled briefly, trying to get his legs beneath him, but something heavy was on his shoulders, pushing him down until his knees hit the floor. The contact stung, briefly, and he grabbed the pain with both hands, using it to keep himself aware. Voices above his head, talking, something familiar. Rajin, one was Rajin. The other one… A demon he'd encountered before?
His sixth sense was slippery, even more difficult to handle than normal thanks to the Spellbinder's new restraints. He couldn't perceive anything reliable and he didn't dare open up his mind in this situation. If he couldn't control it, couldn't get it shielded again, well, he didn't really feel like sharing the mental and emotional space of the demon who was about to rape him. That would kind of suck.
The weight on his shoulders was gone, he realized, not sure when it had happened. Rajin had left? Or stepped away, at least. Sometimes it was his job to hang around and wait in case the guests needed anything else. Kuwabara focused on opening his eyes, vaguely pleased with himself when he was able to see a dimly lit and incredibly blurry room. Okay, so the spell was messing with his vision. But still. Progress was progress.
From behind him there was a loud, heavy bang – and he tensed before he was able to recognize it as the door being slammed shut. There was an odd sort of scraping sound next, and a few more thuds, not as loud, then a sound like someone clapping his hands.
Why, he thought tiredly, do I get all the weird demons?
He felt cloth against his arm as the demon moved around in front of him. Even dulled, his instincts were pointing out that now would be a good time to kick, hit, bite or generally maim, thanks.
There were two reasons Kuwabara didn't end up pulling a lot of time entertaining the crowds. The first was that he was, literally, a trophy. He was the only one of the Reikai Tentei to have been captured since the invasion (as far as he knew, but if one of the others had ended up in some demon's cell, Rorgan undoubtedly would have told him about it, just for kicks). Urameshi and the others had been in the Makai when the Tear was opened, effectively keeping them out of the line of fire. And each of them had powerful demonic allies to rely upon.
But then, so did you.
So he had the rarity card in his favor. Rorgan only pulled him out for special occasions, and even then, only on the grounds that he lived through whatever was done to him.
The demons got no such guarantee, and that was reason number two.
He figured he'd killed a few dozen of them, that night at Genkai's, and whoever had finally taken him down and brought him to Rorgan hadn't bothered to restrain or ward him, so when he'd regained consciousness, he had just kept killing. He'd apparently made a slaughterhouse out of Rorgan's throne room, something that earned him a little bit of notoriety. Rorgan himself had finally stopped him, and when Kuwabara woke the second time, his reiki had been sealed.
It was an uncomfortable feeling. He'd been sealed before; Genkai had shown him how it was done and how to cope. There were even a few tricks for unsealing yourself, depending on how it was done. But when Genkai had sealed him, it was as if his reiki were gone completely, drained out of his blood and skin, the way he had been after Yakumo, after the Dark Tournament. This was more like his ki was still there, but locked up inside of him, a pressure pushing against the inside of his skin and it grew stronger as his reiki built up behind the seals. Sometimes it was almost a relief to be cut or fucked, because it was almost like some of the pressure could seep out.
The seals had been cut into his skin with something sharp and finely pointed, and the wounds had already scarred over by the time he regained consciousness, several days after the mess in the throne room. The most effective way of sealing someone's ki, Kuwabara remembered, was to draw the wards directly onto their skin. The only way to break the seal was to destroy the wards. Genkai had used a thick, black ink mixed with a few drops of his own blood, and it had been enough to scrub a few of the wards away when they were done. These wards could not be wiped clean. Kuwabara had, at the first available opportunity, tried to cut one or two of the wards out of his skin and interrupt the seal, and that was when they'd added the restraints to his wrists and throat, spelled to make him docile and tired, and unable to injure himself.
Bastards.
Even sealed, though, he was stronger than other humans and quite a lot of demons. He figured he'd killed at least six of the nine demons Rorgan had agreed to loan him to over the last year, and of the three that lived, one was missing a couple limbs and another an eye. The appeal of fucking with one of Koenma's pets had faded pretty quickly once the word spread that most of them paid for their fun with their lives.
At some point, he realized, he'd lost track of what was going on around him.
He focused his vision again, as much as he could. The demon was still there, a blur of blue and black and white but nothing else. Something, a hand, pressed against his chest, then his shoulder, and the lack of violence in the touch almost threw him.
Someone was talking. A voice, from just in front of him. He struggled to concentrate, heard the words "do to you" and faded out again.
Something almost familiar that his mind wouldn't wrap itself around.
The touch on his shoulder was careful and precise, almost gentle. Not a demon's touch. Or, not a typical demon's touch. A demon who knew how to be gentle.
"…need you to focus."
He blinked, realized his eyes had slid closed at some point, and forced them to stay open this time. Focus, he told himself. You gotta snap out of this. You're fucking helpless right now.
His vision swam before clearing, letting him focus on the dark brown cloak and robe the demon squatting before him was wearing. He frowned, because it wasn't familiar, and why was the demon wearing sneakers?
"That's it. Wake up, man. I need you here with me, okay?" A hand touched his face, not a talon or claw or scales, just skin and bone and fingers like a human hand, warm against his cheek. "You," and the voice faltered, slightly. "You gotta still be in there, somewhere."
He tipped his head back, using every ounce of strength he had, and focused on that voice, on the face. "Urameshi."
He caught a smile a mile wide before he was pulled into an enthusiastic hug, his face smashed against Urameshi's neck. The demon smelled like youki, but also like reiki, like air and ash, like rain and electricity. Underneath that, he smelled like cigarettes and sweat, and that made up for everything else.
To be continued in Diplomacy
