Watchmen fic: Goat Song
Title: Goat Song
Author scarlet_carsons
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairing: Adrian Veidt
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rape, torture, character death.
Prompt: Adrian, penance.
Notes: Thanks to runriggers for the beta.
Written for dark_fest.
Word count: 3931
===
Adrian Veidt wakes up on a concrete floor.
His limbs are stiff and heavy, and it takes most of his considerable willpower to move. When he sits up, his body feels as if it isn't quite his own. He's naked.
He considers his surroundings. He's in a small cell. It would be quite unremarkable if it wasn't for the fact that the walls are covered in mirrors.
There are no windows, and the only amenities are a toilet and a wash basin. There's a small drain in the floor, and there are thin air vents in the ceiling. The ceiling is far too high for him to reach. There's only one door, and it looks solid.
He inspects his body for some sort of clue as to what has happened, but finds nothing. His skin isn't even bruised, although he still feels sluggish and slightly nauseous. He vaguely recalls having a paper cut on his left thumb, but now it's gone.
It's funny how he remembers the paper cut, because he can't really recall much else; he last remembers being at Karnak, walking down a corridor to one of his laboratories, but that's all.
He stands and staggers over to the wall, then inches his way around the room so he can confirm that the door is locked. His limbs are too heavy, and his intelligence feels trapped in his skull. It's been a very long time since his body has refused to obey him, and he's forgotten what it feels like.
The most obvious explanation is that he's been drugged.
He doesn't panic, not as such. The nausea intensifies, though. He thinks of the Edgewood Arsenal experiments and, by extension, the CIA, although they're hardly the only ones who'd use pharmaceutical torture. Adrian has many rivals.
Still, he's been so careful. His security measures have been watertight. And everything has been going so well.
Adrian sits back down again, to spare himself the indignity of falling over. The lights seem to have dimmed. He speculates that he's been given some sort of barbiturate - his dizziness could be due to low blood pressure - but that still leaves so many other things unexplained. He's not sure if he can attribute his calmness to his self-control or the chemicals in his system.
It isn't a pleasant sort of calmness. His mind is gripped by the cold tranquility of a tomb.
He rests his arms on his knees, and watches the door. The last thing that crosses his mind is that it's a sliding door, with no hinges...
---
Adrian wakes up again. He doesn't remember falling asleep.
He wakes up because the door is opening.
A man enters the room. His face is concealed behind a white mask, featureless except for eye slits, but there's something familiar about his posture and the way he moves.
Adrian is already on his feet, attacking before the door has time to close. He's still fast, drugged or not, and adrenaline grants him a temporary clarity. However, the man is somehow faster: he catches Adrian's right hand, twisting it until something gives. Adrian feels pain shoot up to his elbow, and then a punch sends him reeling. He hears his head hit the floor, but doesn't really feel it, and everything goes dark.
When he regains consciousness, he finds himself on his stomach, being pinned. He knows how to break free from such a position, but his attacker is always a step ahead, shadowing him. It's like fighting his reflection. It has the logic of a nightmare. He's unaccustomed to struggling against an unarmed opponent.
In retrospect, trying to rush the intruder may have been too hasty. Adrian notes that his judgment must be compromised.
He catches sight of himself in one of the walls, and sees the whites of his eyes and teeth. He sees the way that his face is flushed, and the way that his limbs are twisted. He knows that he's already lost.
As struggling is a waste of energy, he lies still and focuses on trying to prepare himself for... well, whatever might happen next. He's familiar with some anti-interrogation techniques, and he's adept at pain management, but there is no way to adequately anticipate the reality of torture.
He tries to make himself see it as a test, just as he sees everything as a test.
Then his attacker slips a blindfold over his eyes, and he feels strangely insulted, because it makes the proceedings feel like some sort of insipid bedroom game. Adrian wants to be asked questions, but his attacker says nothing.
Adrian's legs are pushed apart, and he loses whatever respect he might have had for his adversary. He makes another attempt to free himself from the other man's grip, reasoning that, if nothing else, his efforts might delay the inevitable.
The other man bashes Adrian's head against the floor. The lights dim again, and the world seems to reverberate; it's like being inside a struck bell.
Distantly, he hears a fly unzipping, and he thinks, fine, I can survive this.
Still, when it actually happens, he feels like he's being torn apart from the inside. The pain isn't even the worst of it - he can tolerate pain. The worst of it is the sense of failure. And it's all so pathetic; rape is just a cheap power play, such a lazy attempt to humiliate him, but it seems to be working. The scenario is insultingly predictable.
In his mind, he stands back from what is happening, so that the burning push-pull sensation is reduced to background interference. He chooses to focus on the way that his right arm hurts. It feels broken. He reminds himself that he's broken it once before - when he was ten, he fell off a horse. It should have put paid to his gymnastics training, but it didn't. It occurs to him that he rarely thinks about his childhood, and that this is an extremely strange time to be reminiscing about it, and he's probably just disassociating.
He still feels calm.
He should be paying attention to his surroundings, trying to scavenge as much information as possible. There's always the chance that his attacker will inadvertently give something away, and betray himself in some small way. And disassociation is dangerous. Disassociation is probably what they want from him. But when Adrian tries to pay attention his situation, it's like staring at the sun, and he's forced to recoil from it.
The thrusts quicken, and then it's over. The man places a slow kiss on the back of his neck - he must have removed the mask - then pauses for a moment, so that Adrian can feel breath against his skin.
The man then pulls out of him, removes the blindfold, and stands up. Adrian hears him walk away.
Adrian lies there for a moment, then makes himself stand upright.
He wants to vomit, but he can only bring up bile.
---
When Adrian feels well enough, he carefully walks around. The mirrors on the walls make the room stretch to infinity. He considers that the walls might be might be one-way glass, then chastises himself for not having thought of that sooner.
He leans against one of the walls and tries to peer through it, cupping his hands around his eyes to block out the light, but he can only see darkness beyond.
It seems reasonable to assume that he's being observed.
He resumes pacing the room.
There are specks of blood on the floor. The sight of it makes him feel odd, as if there are fingers under his skin.
He recalls stories of female arhats who were raped, but didn't resist because they were enlightened and could accept that their rapist would meet the consequences of their actions. He thinks of Yeshe Tsogyal, who had sex with her rapists out of compassion, setting them on the path to liberation. He suddenly finds that (for want of a better term) completely deranged.
He can use the word 'rape', but it's so abstract that it almost doesn't translate.
...Regardless, it isn't something that he can afford to linger on. If he intends to escape, then he'll need to think rationally.
There are still too many unanswered questions.
He tries to start at the beginning. What's the last date he can clearly remember? August 22nd, 1987. Where was he? Karnak. What was the last project he was working on? Neural mapping. The topography of the human brain. What was he doing on August 22nd, 1987? He recalls being alone, with just a skeleton crew of scientists and technicians in the complex...
He wonders how someone managed to get past his security. He crouches on the floor, placing his head in his hands, and struggles to think. He hasn't had to deal with unofficial visitors at Karnak since 1985, and they were practically invited. Still, there's no such thing as a flawless defense. You can't fight entropy.
1985. It would be easy to believe that it all has something to do with 1985.
That's how stories go, don't they? The protagonist oversteps his bounds, and is punished for his arrogance. Adrian will admit that he is not a humble man. If 1985 is the reason why he's here, then he won't be surprised, although he doesn't really feel guilt as such. He has always avoided guilt, as he believes that there's something suspiciously self-indulgent about it. A man should only feel guilt for things that he regrets, and a man who kills millions of people isn't in a position to regret anything, because he clearly knew what he was doing every step of the way. You don't commit mass homicide by accident.
He refuses to see his circumstances as some sort of penance. It would be a stupid penance, helpful to no-one.
Think. He needs to think. Neural mapping. He's sure that's important.
God, if he could just think clearly. If he doesn't have intelligence and self-control, then what does he have?
He sits down, places his hands against his temples, and doesn't move again for a very long time.
---
Everything is smothered by the dull percussion of a migraine. Inevitably, the minutes pass, but he loses track of them. He has a terrible urge to sleep.
His captors have an excellent sense of perversity. Just as his eyelids close, the room is filled by a cacophony of white noise. He reflexively covers his ears, although it does no good. It's so loud that he can feel it in his chest and jawbone. It's similar to the din of a waterfall, although there are things in it, almost-words and low-frequencies which make the backs of his eyeballs burn. It's a lot like pain, but it goes beyond it.
He can only wait for it to stop - or wait for his ears to desensitize to it, whichever comes first. There's no real way of avoiding the noise. It's a thing to be endured.
Adrian focuses on one of his reflections in the wall, and abandons himself.
---
When the noise finally stops, the ringing in his ears is so loud that it leaves little room for thought. He busies himself with counting the seconds.
If he can't think, then he's in no state to rescue himself.
Perhaps he shouldn't have to rescue himself, though. People must know he's missing. He's a solitary man by inclination, but he has taken precautions. He won't be allowed to simply vanish from the face of the Earth. He knows how to make people disappear, so he refuses to let the same thing happen to him. He's too vital to be expendable.
Still, he wonders if he deserves what is happening to him. No, that's wrong. No-one would deserve this. But people don't always get what they deserve.
---
The white noise returns sporadically, but Adrian finds that he has another problem: he keeps blacking out. He assumes that it's happening during the silences. There are gaps in his memory. At one point, he wakes up and finds himself wanting to vomit again, and he doesn't know why.
---
He tries to mark the passage of time by making a crude water clock out of the faucet and wash basin. He lets the faucet drip, then counts the seconds, timing it to see how long it takes the basin to fill. Once he has a reference, he can use it to count the minutes. But then he wakes up and finds himself on the floor, and discovers that someone has removed the basin's plug, letting the water drain away. It's so simple, he laughs.
He has no other way of telling the time. His biological clock seems to be off kilter - he doesn't feel hungry, he has no recollection of eating, and he feels no need to pass bodily waste, despite the fact that he can't remember when he last did so.
It's curious: most torturers try to deprive their victims of sleep. Adrian has trouble keeping awake.
Naturally, he tries to fight it. He remains standing in the middle of the room, watching the door, keeping himself uncomfortable. He listens to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor inside his head. He tries to coax a stress response out of his autonomic nervous system, but it remains uncooperative.
He avoids speculating as to what is being done with his body during the blackouts.
---
During the rare moments when he can think clearly, he considers how torture actually works. Torture is about denying a person autonomy. Torture is about making a person's body work against them. Torture is done for one or more of the following reasons: to extract information, to punish, or to fulfil the needs of the perpetrator.
The best-case scenario would be that his captors only want information. But that seems unlikely.
He tries, he really tries, to remember the circumstances of his capture. He vaguely recalls walking down a corridor to one of the laboratories. He tries to relive the memory, hoping that picturing his surroundings at the time will help recover other details, like a method of loci.
His neuroscience research still seems significant, and the details slowly return to him: they were in the process of trying to develop an improved atlas of the human brain. (His own brain was always a good subject.) He can picture himself walking through the sterile corridors, approaching the ominous bulk of the neuroimaging scanner, and then... nothing.
His own mind has betrayed him. It conspires with his captors to render him something less than he really is.
---
Sometimes he wakes up and he's clean and freshly-shaved. Sometimes he wakes up and has new bruises.
Sometimes he wakes up in different rooms.
At one point, he wakes up and finds himself somewhere dark. He's on his back. Something is restraining his legs, holding them apart, and there are cool, slick fingers inside him. He's hard, but it's just a bodily response. He's still sore, and it hurts despite the lubricant used. The pain is a lot like the discomfort of a broken tooth, the product of raw nerves which seem to reach deep inside his body.
The fingers briefly scissor apart, stretching him. Adrian refuses to show any sort of discomfort, as he suspects that it would only encourage whoever is watching.
(It's dark. Why would they be watching?)
He tells himself that if someone is trying to use sex to humiliate him, then they're going about things the wrong way. But perhaps they're not doing it to humiliate him. Perhaps they're just doing it because they feel like it. The slick fingers force ejaculation out of him, prompting an involuntary shudder.
Someone uses a soft cloth to wipe the spilled semen off his belly.
He's left alone for a while - long enough for the restraints to give him cramp. Oddly, his eyes never adjust to the darkness. Then he feels something soft and wet circling his ass, and he knows that it's a tongue. It tickles; he flinches. Under better circumstances, it would be something that he'd enjoy, although the intimacy is something that he rarely allows. For the first time, he actually says, "Stop it," even though he instinctively knows that it won't do any good. Speaking and being ignored is worse than not speaking at all.
He waits for it to end. He tells himself that it's hardly the worst thing he's had to tolerate.
Unseen hands tug at his cock. When he's finally allowed to orgasm, it's as if it's being ripped out of him. Afterwards, he feels small and brittle.
Again, he's cleaned off, and the last thing he's aware of is the jab of a needle in his arm.
---
When he's back in his cell, the white noise returns. It burrows its way inside his head and lodges itself somewhere behind his eyes. He lies down and vanishes into the coolness of the floor.
---
Neural mapping. He tries to remember. He succeeds in vividly recalling his office at Karnak. There was a copy of Time magazine on the desk, open at a full-page ad showing an instant camera made by one of his competitors. The tagline was 'capture a memory'.
He recalls the old belief that photographs steal your soul. He's a man who has been photographed a lot. It might explain a few things. No, it was mirrors that stole souls. Mirrors used for scrying. There are still mirrors used in cameras, of course. The neuroimaging scanner was just a camera, really. An eye inside your head.
The last thing he remembers is the neuroimaging scanner.
Oh, how the ghost of you clings, he hums to himself, then feels a burst of anger, because how is it that he can remember the tagline for a bathetic perfume advertisement when he can't even remember the important things? These foolish things remind me of you.
He's so disappointed. He always thought that it would take more than this to make him go crazy.
---
Another time, he wakes up in handcuffs. Someone is holding him by his hair. Their other hand is holding a glass flask. He can smell something acrid, something that reminds him of darkrooms.
His head is tilted back, and the content of the flask is poured over his face. Some of the liquid goes in his right eye. The pain is like a small death - for a few seconds, he's no longer Adrian Veidt, he's just something that hurts. He tries to put his mind elsewhere, but there's nowhere left for him because the pain is omnipresent.
He allows himself to fall unconscious.
---
When he wakes up, he doesn't recognize himself.
His skin is pale pink and unformed where it has been burned. His right eye has a cataract over it; when he looks at his reflection, he sees that the pupil and iris are cloudy. The lower eyelid droops, and the upper eyelid is too tight. Blinking feels like hot needles.
"Oh dear," he tells his reflection - its numerous brothers mimic him, although Adrian is the only one who speaks. "We're a mess."
The left side of his face is still mostly intact, and he wonders if it has been left undamaged simply because his captor intends to destroy it later.
---
He stops having the blackouts.
He wishes that the blackouts would come back.
---
The man in the mask visits him again, of course. Adrian knows that it's the same man because of his posture.
Adrian is sitting on the floor, so the man approaches and crouches before him.
The man reaches out and runs his thumb over Adrian's bottom lip, then forces his thumb into Adrian's mouth. Adrian jerks his head away, but the thumb remains, pressing down against his tongue. Adrian just stares past him, not wishing to exacerbate things, although part of him still tries to remain alert to any opportunity that may present itself.
"What year is it?" asks the man, standing up.
Adrian doesn't answer.
The man gives him a desultory kick in the ribs.
"1987. It's 1987," Adrian says, when he can breathe again.
"Hm," says the man, sounding satisfied.
Adrian tries to watch the man without looking directly at him. He's athletic, and of average height. His bearing vaguely suggests a military background. Adrian wishes that he could see him better, but the vision in his right eye is fogged, and everything is surrounded by a migraine halo.
The man says, "Actually, it's 2010."
Adrian doesn't understand, doesn't react.
The man crouches opposite him again, and removes the mask.
Adrian recognizes him.
He has aged extremely well. His hair is silver, and he has a few extra worry lines, but he has the same expressive eyes, the same patient smile that sometimes looks a bit too self-satisfied. He's just older.
Adrian stares at his aged doppelgänger, and starts to cry. Sharp little sobs that almost sound like laughter.
His older self - the other Adrian, the Other - watches him with a mix of tenderness, pity, and scientific curiosity.
"How did you...?" Adrian says.
"You're subject number seven. It could be argued that you're not the real Adrian Veidt, but then things would get a bit ontological. Your memory only extends as far as 1987, because that was when the first recording was made. We didn't actually perfect the cloning process until 2002, and it wasn't until 2005 that we managed to give the clones pre-existing memories." The Other makes a dismissive gesture. "But I doubt you're particularly interested in that right now."
Adrian can't stand the sound of his own crying, so he covers his ears.
"You know, I really expected better," the Other says. "Perhaps I'm not as tough as I thought."
Adrian wants to kill him, because if this is what he's going to turn into, then he has to stop himself, but, no, it's too late.
He tries to make sense of it. He thinks of 1985. When he can control himself, he asks, "Is this some sort of penance?"
The Other crouches, so that he's at eye-level again. "That's a good question. Really, though, we both know that we can't afford guilt." He shrugs. "Honestly? You were a spare subject, I was curious, and I wanted to see how I would have reacted under extreme stress. I have a better estimation of my weaknesses now, if nothing else."
"Liar," Adrian says.
The Other chuckles.
Adrian stares at him, and thinks, that's not me, I don't have the capacity for this, but he can't quite make himself believe it. He opens his mouth, and the words spill out of him: "I was never a sadist. I never hurt anyone without purpose."
"Of course not." For a brief moment, the Other seems genuinely interested in him. "...Would it help if you did see this as some sort of penance?"
Adrian tries to answer, but he suddenly feels very tired. He wonders what has happened to the Other in the last twenty-three years. He hears himself say, "I thought it was for the best."
"I know," the Other says, gently.
"Did things work out?"
"In some ways. We succeeded, if that's any consolation."
It really isn't. Adrian raises a hand to the ruined side of his face, almost touching it. He has to ask, "Why did you do this to me?"
The Other smiles at him. "Because you're mine."
Then the Other gently puts his hands on either side of Adrian's head, and the smile is the last thing Adrian sees.
===
Other credits/acknowledgements: I feel as if this fic was inspired by radishface's Chronos and quietprofanity's The Gilded Cage (BOTH OF WHICH YOU SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THEY ARE VERY GOOD), and the wonderful phrase, 'don't beat yourself up.'
Author scarlet_carsons
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairing: Adrian Veidt
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rape, torture, character death.
Prompt: Adrian, penance.
Notes: Thanks to runriggers for the beta.
Written for dark_fest.
Word count: 3931
===
Adrian Veidt wakes up on a concrete floor.
His limbs are stiff and heavy, and it takes most of his considerable willpower to move. When he sits up, his body feels as if it isn't quite his own. He's naked.
He considers his surroundings. He's in a small cell. It would be quite unremarkable if it wasn't for the fact that the walls are covered in mirrors.
There are no windows, and the only amenities are a toilet and a wash basin. There's a small drain in the floor, and there are thin air vents in the ceiling. The ceiling is far too high for him to reach. There's only one door, and it looks solid.
He inspects his body for some sort of clue as to what has happened, but finds nothing. His skin isn't even bruised, although he still feels sluggish and slightly nauseous. He vaguely recalls having a paper cut on his left thumb, but now it's gone.
It's funny how he remembers the paper cut, because he can't really recall much else; he last remembers being at Karnak, walking down a corridor to one of his laboratories, but that's all.
He stands and staggers over to the wall, then inches his way around the room so he can confirm that the door is locked. His limbs are too heavy, and his intelligence feels trapped in his skull. It's been a very long time since his body has refused to obey him, and he's forgotten what it feels like.
The most obvious explanation is that he's been drugged.
He doesn't panic, not as such. The nausea intensifies, though. He thinks of the Edgewood Arsenal experiments and, by extension, the CIA, although they're hardly the only ones who'd use pharmaceutical torture. Adrian has many rivals.
Still, he's been so careful. His security measures have been watertight. And everything has been going so well.
Adrian sits back down again, to spare himself the indignity of falling over. The lights seem to have dimmed. He speculates that he's been given some sort of barbiturate - his dizziness could be due to low blood pressure - but that still leaves so many other things unexplained. He's not sure if he can attribute his calmness to his self-control or the chemicals in his system.
It isn't a pleasant sort of calmness. His mind is gripped by the cold tranquility of a tomb.
He rests his arms on his knees, and watches the door. The last thing that crosses his mind is that it's a sliding door, with no hinges...
---
Adrian wakes up again. He doesn't remember falling asleep.
He wakes up because the door is opening.
A man enters the room. His face is concealed behind a white mask, featureless except for eye slits, but there's something familiar about his posture and the way he moves.
Adrian is already on his feet, attacking before the door has time to close. He's still fast, drugged or not, and adrenaline grants him a temporary clarity. However, the man is somehow faster: he catches Adrian's right hand, twisting it until something gives. Adrian feels pain shoot up to his elbow, and then a punch sends him reeling. He hears his head hit the floor, but doesn't really feel it, and everything goes dark.
When he regains consciousness, he finds himself on his stomach, being pinned. He knows how to break free from such a position, but his attacker is always a step ahead, shadowing him. It's like fighting his reflection. It has the logic of a nightmare. He's unaccustomed to struggling against an unarmed opponent.
In retrospect, trying to rush the intruder may have been too hasty. Adrian notes that his judgment must be compromised.
He catches sight of himself in one of the walls, and sees the whites of his eyes and teeth. He sees the way that his face is flushed, and the way that his limbs are twisted. He knows that he's already lost.
As struggling is a waste of energy, he lies still and focuses on trying to prepare himself for... well, whatever might happen next. He's familiar with some anti-interrogation techniques, and he's adept at pain management, but there is no way to adequately anticipate the reality of torture.
He tries to make himself see it as a test, just as he sees everything as a test.
Then his attacker slips a blindfold over his eyes, and he feels strangely insulted, because it makes the proceedings feel like some sort of insipid bedroom game. Adrian wants to be asked questions, but his attacker says nothing.
Adrian's legs are pushed apart, and he loses whatever respect he might have had for his adversary. He makes another attempt to free himself from the other man's grip, reasoning that, if nothing else, his efforts might delay the inevitable.
The other man bashes Adrian's head against the floor. The lights dim again, and the world seems to reverberate; it's like being inside a struck bell.
Distantly, he hears a fly unzipping, and he thinks, fine, I can survive this.
Still, when it actually happens, he feels like he's being torn apart from the inside. The pain isn't even the worst of it - he can tolerate pain. The worst of it is the sense of failure. And it's all so pathetic; rape is just a cheap power play, such a lazy attempt to humiliate him, but it seems to be working. The scenario is insultingly predictable.
In his mind, he stands back from what is happening, so that the burning push-pull sensation is reduced to background interference. He chooses to focus on the way that his right arm hurts. It feels broken. He reminds himself that he's broken it once before - when he was ten, he fell off a horse. It should have put paid to his gymnastics training, but it didn't. It occurs to him that he rarely thinks about his childhood, and that this is an extremely strange time to be reminiscing about it, and he's probably just disassociating.
He still feels calm.
He should be paying attention to his surroundings, trying to scavenge as much information as possible. There's always the chance that his attacker will inadvertently give something away, and betray himself in some small way. And disassociation is dangerous. Disassociation is probably what they want from him. But when Adrian tries to pay attention his situation, it's like staring at the sun, and he's forced to recoil from it.
The thrusts quicken, and then it's over. The man places a slow kiss on the back of his neck - he must have removed the mask - then pauses for a moment, so that Adrian can feel breath against his skin.
The man then pulls out of him, removes the blindfold, and stands up. Adrian hears him walk away.
Adrian lies there for a moment, then makes himself stand upright.
He wants to vomit, but he can only bring up bile.
---
When Adrian feels well enough, he carefully walks around. The mirrors on the walls make the room stretch to infinity. He considers that the walls might be might be one-way glass, then chastises himself for not having thought of that sooner.
He leans against one of the walls and tries to peer through it, cupping his hands around his eyes to block out the light, but he can only see darkness beyond.
It seems reasonable to assume that he's being observed.
He resumes pacing the room.
There are specks of blood on the floor. The sight of it makes him feel odd, as if there are fingers under his skin.
He recalls stories of female arhats who were raped, but didn't resist because they were enlightened and could accept that their rapist would meet the consequences of their actions. He thinks of Yeshe Tsogyal, who had sex with her rapists out of compassion, setting them on the path to liberation. He suddenly finds that (for want of a better term) completely deranged.
He can use the word 'rape', but it's so abstract that it almost doesn't translate.
...Regardless, it isn't something that he can afford to linger on. If he intends to escape, then he'll need to think rationally.
There are still too many unanswered questions.
He tries to start at the beginning. What's the last date he can clearly remember? August 22nd, 1987. Where was he? Karnak. What was the last project he was working on? Neural mapping. The topography of the human brain. What was he doing on August 22nd, 1987? He recalls being alone, with just a skeleton crew of scientists and technicians in the complex...
He wonders how someone managed to get past his security. He crouches on the floor, placing his head in his hands, and struggles to think. He hasn't had to deal with unofficial visitors at Karnak since 1985, and they were practically invited. Still, there's no such thing as a flawless defense. You can't fight entropy.
1985. It would be easy to believe that it all has something to do with 1985.
That's how stories go, don't they? The protagonist oversteps his bounds, and is punished for his arrogance. Adrian will admit that he is not a humble man. If 1985 is the reason why he's here, then he won't be surprised, although he doesn't really feel guilt as such. He has always avoided guilt, as he believes that there's something suspiciously self-indulgent about it. A man should only feel guilt for things that he regrets, and a man who kills millions of people isn't in a position to regret anything, because he clearly knew what he was doing every step of the way. You don't commit mass homicide by accident.
He refuses to see his circumstances as some sort of penance. It would be a stupid penance, helpful to no-one.
Think. He needs to think. Neural mapping. He's sure that's important.
God, if he could just think clearly. If he doesn't have intelligence and self-control, then what does he have?
He sits down, places his hands against his temples, and doesn't move again for a very long time.
---
Everything is smothered by the dull percussion of a migraine. Inevitably, the minutes pass, but he loses track of them. He has a terrible urge to sleep.
His captors have an excellent sense of perversity. Just as his eyelids close, the room is filled by a cacophony of white noise. He reflexively covers his ears, although it does no good. It's so loud that he can feel it in his chest and jawbone. It's similar to the din of a waterfall, although there are things in it, almost-words and low-frequencies which make the backs of his eyeballs burn. It's a lot like pain, but it goes beyond it.
He can only wait for it to stop - or wait for his ears to desensitize to it, whichever comes first. There's no real way of avoiding the noise. It's a thing to be endured.
Adrian focuses on one of his reflections in the wall, and abandons himself.
---
When the noise finally stops, the ringing in his ears is so loud that it leaves little room for thought. He busies himself with counting the seconds.
If he can't think, then he's in no state to rescue himself.
Perhaps he shouldn't have to rescue himself, though. People must know he's missing. He's a solitary man by inclination, but he has taken precautions. He won't be allowed to simply vanish from the face of the Earth. He knows how to make people disappear, so he refuses to let the same thing happen to him. He's too vital to be expendable.
Still, he wonders if he deserves what is happening to him. No, that's wrong. No-one would deserve this. But people don't always get what they deserve.
---
The white noise returns sporadically, but Adrian finds that he has another problem: he keeps blacking out. He assumes that it's happening during the silences. There are gaps in his memory. At one point, he wakes up and finds himself wanting to vomit again, and he doesn't know why.
---
He tries to mark the passage of time by making a crude water clock out of the faucet and wash basin. He lets the faucet drip, then counts the seconds, timing it to see how long it takes the basin to fill. Once he has a reference, he can use it to count the minutes. But then he wakes up and finds himself on the floor, and discovers that someone has removed the basin's plug, letting the water drain away. It's so simple, he laughs.
He has no other way of telling the time. His biological clock seems to be off kilter - he doesn't feel hungry, he has no recollection of eating, and he feels no need to pass bodily waste, despite the fact that he can't remember when he last did so.
It's curious: most torturers try to deprive their victims of sleep. Adrian has trouble keeping awake.
Naturally, he tries to fight it. He remains standing in the middle of the room, watching the door, keeping himself uncomfortable. He listens to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor inside his head. He tries to coax a stress response out of his autonomic nervous system, but it remains uncooperative.
He avoids speculating as to what is being done with his body during the blackouts.
---
During the rare moments when he can think clearly, he considers how torture actually works. Torture is about denying a person autonomy. Torture is about making a person's body work against them. Torture is done for one or more of the following reasons: to extract information, to punish, or to fulfil the needs of the perpetrator.
The best-case scenario would be that his captors only want information. But that seems unlikely.
He tries, he really tries, to remember the circumstances of his capture. He vaguely recalls walking down a corridor to one of the laboratories. He tries to relive the memory, hoping that picturing his surroundings at the time will help recover other details, like a method of loci.
His neuroscience research still seems significant, and the details slowly return to him: they were in the process of trying to develop an improved atlas of the human brain. (His own brain was always a good subject.) He can picture himself walking through the sterile corridors, approaching the ominous bulk of the neuroimaging scanner, and then... nothing.
His own mind has betrayed him. It conspires with his captors to render him something less than he really is.
---
Sometimes he wakes up and he's clean and freshly-shaved. Sometimes he wakes up and has new bruises.
Sometimes he wakes up in different rooms.
At one point, he wakes up and finds himself somewhere dark. He's on his back. Something is restraining his legs, holding them apart, and there are cool, slick fingers inside him. He's hard, but it's just a bodily response. He's still sore, and it hurts despite the lubricant used. The pain is a lot like the discomfort of a broken tooth, the product of raw nerves which seem to reach deep inside his body.
The fingers briefly scissor apart, stretching him. Adrian refuses to show any sort of discomfort, as he suspects that it would only encourage whoever is watching.
(It's dark. Why would they be watching?)
He tells himself that if someone is trying to use sex to humiliate him, then they're going about things the wrong way. But perhaps they're not doing it to humiliate him. Perhaps they're just doing it because they feel like it. The slick fingers force ejaculation out of him, prompting an involuntary shudder.
Someone uses a soft cloth to wipe the spilled semen off his belly.
He's left alone for a while - long enough for the restraints to give him cramp. Oddly, his eyes never adjust to the darkness. Then he feels something soft and wet circling his ass, and he knows that it's a tongue. It tickles; he flinches. Under better circumstances, it would be something that he'd enjoy, although the intimacy is something that he rarely allows. For the first time, he actually says, "Stop it," even though he instinctively knows that it won't do any good. Speaking and being ignored is worse than not speaking at all.
He waits for it to end. He tells himself that it's hardly the worst thing he's had to tolerate.
Unseen hands tug at his cock. When he's finally allowed to orgasm, it's as if it's being ripped out of him. Afterwards, he feels small and brittle.
Again, he's cleaned off, and the last thing he's aware of is the jab of a needle in his arm.
---
When he's back in his cell, the white noise returns. It burrows its way inside his head and lodges itself somewhere behind his eyes. He lies down and vanishes into the coolness of the floor.
---
Neural mapping. He tries to remember. He succeeds in vividly recalling his office at Karnak. There was a copy of Time magazine on the desk, open at a full-page ad showing an instant camera made by one of his competitors. The tagline was 'capture a memory'.
He recalls the old belief that photographs steal your soul. He's a man who has been photographed a lot. It might explain a few things. No, it was mirrors that stole souls. Mirrors used for scrying. There are still mirrors used in cameras, of course. The neuroimaging scanner was just a camera, really. An eye inside your head.
The last thing he remembers is the neuroimaging scanner.
Oh, how the ghost of you clings, he hums to himself, then feels a burst of anger, because how is it that he can remember the tagline for a bathetic perfume advertisement when he can't even remember the important things? These foolish things remind me of you.
He's so disappointed. He always thought that it would take more than this to make him go crazy.
---
Another time, he wakes up in handcuffs. Someone is holding him by his hair. Their other hand is holding a glass flask. He can smell something acrid, something that reminds him of darkrooms.
His head is tilted back, and the content of the flask is poured over his face. Some of the liquid goes in his right eye. The pain is like a small death - for a few seconds, he's no longer Adrian Veidt, he's just something that hurts. He tries to put his mind elsewhere, but there's nowhere left for him because the pain is omnipresent.
He allows himself to fall unconscious.
---
When he wakes up, he doesn't recognize himself.
His skin is pale pink and unformed where it has been burned. His right eye has a cataract over it; when he looks at his reflection, he sees that the pupil and iris are cloudy. The lower eyelid droops, and the upper eyelid is too tight. Blinking feels like hot needles.
"Oh dear," he tells his reflection - its numerous brothers mimic him, although Adrian is the only one who speaks. "We're a mess."
The left side of his face is still mostly intact, and he wonders if it has been left undamaged simply because his captor intends to destroy it later.
---
He stops having the blackouts.
He wishes that the blackouts would come back.
---
The man in the mask visits him again, of course. Adrian knows that it's the same man because of his posture.
Adrian is sitting on the floor, so the man approaches and crouches before him.
The man reaches out and runs his thumb over Adrian's bottom lip, then forces his thumb into Adrian's mouth. Adrian jerks his head away, but the thumb remains, pressing down against his tongue. Adrian just stares past him, not wishing to exacerbate things, although part of him still tries to remain alert to any opportunity that may present itself.
"What year is it?" asks the man, standing up.
Adrian doesn't answer.
The man gives him a desultory kick in the ribs.
"1987. It's 1987," Adrian says, when he can breathe again.
"Hm," says the man, sounding satisfied.
Adrian tries to watch the man without looking directly at him. He's athletic, and of average height. His bearing vaguely suggests a military background. Adrian wishes that he could see him better, but the vision in his right eye is fogged, and everything is surrounded by a migraine halo.
The man says, "Actually, it's 2010."
Adrian doesn't understand, doesn't react.
The man crouches opposite him again, and removes the mask.
Adrian recognizes him.
He has aged extremely well. His hair is silver, and he has a few extra worry lines, but he has the same expressive eyes, the same patient smile that sometimes looks a bit too self-satisfied. He's just older.
Adrian stares at his aged doppelgänger, and starts to cry. Sharp little sobs that almost sound like laughter.
His older self - the other Adrian, the Other - watches him with a mix of tenderness, pity, and scientific curiosity.
"How did you...?" Adrian says.
"You're subject number seven. It could be argued that you're not the real Adrian Veidt, but then things would get a bit ontological. Your memory only extends as far as 1987, because that was when the first recording was made. We didn't actually perfect the cloning process until 2002, and it wasn't until 2005 that we managed to give the clones pre-existing memories." The Other makes a dismissive gesture. "But I doubt you're particularly interested in that right now."
Adrian can't stand the sound of his own crying, so he covers his ears.
"You know, I really expected better," the Other says. "Perhaps I'm not as tough as I thought."
Adrian wants to kill him, because if this is what he's going to turn into, then he has to stop himself, but, no, it's too late.
He tries to make sense of it. He thinks of 1985. When he can control himself, he asks, "Is this some sort of penance?"
The Other crouches, so that he's at eye-level again. "That's a good question. Really, though, we both know that we can't afford guilt." He shrugs. "Honestly? You were a spare subject, I was curious, and I wanted to see how I would have reacted under extreme stress. I have a better estimation of my weaknesses now, if nothing else."
"Liar," Adrian says.
The Other chuckles.
Adrian stares at him, and thinks, that's not me, I don't have the capacity for this, but he can't quite make himself believe it. He opens his mouth, and the words spill out of him: "I was never a sadist. I never hurt anyone without purpose."
"Of course not." For a brief moment, the Other seems genuinely interested in him. "...Would it help if you did see this as some sort of penance?"
Adrian tries to answer, but he suddenly feels very tired. He wonders what has happened to the Other in the last twenty-three years. He hears himself say, "I thought it was for the best."
"I know," the Other says, gently.
"Did things work out?"
"In some ways. We succeeded, if that's any consolation."
It really isn't. Adrian raises a hand to the ruined side of his face, almost touching it. He has to ask, "Why did you do this to me?"
The Other smiles at him. "Because you're mine."
Then the Other gently puts his hands on either side of Adrian's head, and the smile is the last thing Adrian sees.
===
Other credits/acknowledgements: I feel as if this fic was inspired by radishface's Chronos and quietprofanity's The Gilded Cage (BOTH OF WHICH YOU SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THEY ARE VERY GOOD), and the wonderful phrase, 'don't beat yourself up.'