Would you be The Savior

[triggerguard]

Who: Jesper, fellow tortured, a murderous crow or two, and you
What: Days of Torture and the Aftermath
Where: Survivor Island, Penance Proper
When: End of and Post-Survivor Island
Warnings: Pick your poison because we're hitting a lot up in here. Gore, violence, amputations, drug use, extreme torture, depression/anxiety/paranoia, haphephobia, violence/casual talk of murder/revenge, etc etc etc.

NOTE: All prompts in comments. Feel free to toss your own in here as a Wildcard. Hit me up on plurk @ likeredgold if you want to hash out anything specific.

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The Beaten, The Broken, and the Damned (Torture, Open to fellow Captured)

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The first thing Jesper notices is the heat, it's oppressive and stifling--choking in the way it settles across his skin and in his lungs. The next is the strain on his arms, the press of manacles to his skin--and the way he can't quite pull material from them. That last bit just serves to piss him off, his temper rising as he pulls at the restraints.

He wants to yell, demand answers, but then their hosts are there. Touching, grabbing, judging. He doesn't like the way they talk. A worry that is well-founded when they start extracting their prices in flesh and blood. When attentions move to others, in the beginning, he gently asks those closest to him about inane things. He knows well enough not to ask if they're okay, but he also knows that distractions can be a balm in their own right.

He doesn't scream when it's his turn, not at first. He bites his tongue and takes it as they carve intricate inked lines into his back. It isn't until the fumes set in, when he starts seeing faces of people he trusts (ones he knows would never do this, but drugs make such things as trust hazes) that he breaks and begs. For forgiveness, for mercy, for help.

And through it all, the rise and fall (Closed to Noah, Beach post torture)

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It's tempting to just lay there, in the sand, and wait for the tide to just drag them all away in its wake. It's tempting to let go and not see anyone. But Jesper likes to believe he's made of more--so he set to prove it by pushing himself up and doing something. At first, it's a matter of making sure his shirt and jacket are drawn up and secure--the ink hidden under layers and away from prying eyes. He already feels like something is crawling over and under his skin with it, he doesn't need to feel the weight of stares too.

Then it's a matter of shifting through the weary and finding the familiar face of Noah. He wants to check on him, to know that he made it with the rest--in a way he feels a responsibility to him, to look out for him until his Ravens draw up around him.

"Hey." It's nothing particularly moving, hardly comforting, but they're both raw in their own ways. It's the threat of silence that keeps him talking. "I saw--can you...Let me see." At least he could check him over, even if he wasn't a Healer.

The Bodies in the Streets (Open, Beach post torture)

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The sight of the boat, of people and demons that had gone on to Penance instead of his cursed place, is bittersweet--both welcome and not. The solace and peace it offers seem too good to be true, and he almost wants to burn it down.

But that wouldn't get them off this rock, and he would rather not stay here longer than he had to.

"Can we just go already?" Please, get him out of here and with few questions as possible.

On and on, We carry through the fears (Closed to Wylan)

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Of all the faces he saw in the haze of the past four days (Kaz, Inej, Nina, his father), Wylan's hit particularly hard. Outside of the heat, away from the pain, he's starting to separate the reality from the hallucinations, but it still takes a day or two to seek him out on his own, away from the others.

It's kind of a sad echo of those days coming back from Fjerda, when Jesper hadn't known the boy had taken on a different face. Jesper finds him near the prow of the ship. He doesn't say a word, just comes up beside him--keeping several inches away, even as he leans on the side to look out at the darkening waves.

How in the name of all the Saints was he supposed to explain any of this?

Disappointed faces of your Peers (Closed to Kaz)

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"I know. I should have kept closer--I wouldn't have ended up caught." It says enough, too much, that his immediate response to being found by Kaz is defensive. An admission of guilt and fault--he's screwed up enough to know what the usual response to it would be.

And he hallucinated enough ridicule in the past few days to swallow anything else he wants to say. What more was there to say? Kaz had been with him--had been close enough to go after him in the dark and see him taken. And he had to have seen the results of these past few days on the other survivors to know that anything he had faced had been less than pleasant.

"The others?" Deflect. Deflecting is always easier.