Bulletproof

Time passed after that. I couldn’t say how much time, exactly, but I knew that it had been a while. In the first couple of hours after I was taken prisoner, I’d been questioned relentlessly. They sat me in a hard chair and cuffed my hands to it behind my back, my ankles to the angular legs. If I so much as shifted, the corner of the leg would dig into the flesh of my calf. I was shown no courtesies. Korse had hovered around me for hours like some overgrown bird of prey circling a half-rotten carcass. The mental image of Korse with a beak and feathers was enough to keep me in amused silence while he hurled his questions at me.

When I didn’t answer them during that first day, they just assumed that it was because I was making sure my friends were safe or that I was trying to be brave. They let it slide and even went (dare I say it) easy on me. They’d only denied me food because of my refusal to sing my secrets to them. On the second day, it became slightly worse. While I still held my tongue, they were beginning to lose their patience with me. The Dracs would hover uncertainly in the background while Korse grew gradually more agitated, threatening me in such creative ways that even I was a little surprised. His tone, however, didn’t usually change much from bored indifference. The only time it fluctuated even a little was when he was especially annoyed. His S’s would become hissed, bouncing off the bare white walls so that they hit my ears sharply.

They kept me alive and barely healthy because they were confident they could break me. They were dead certain that, given enough time, I would crack. It became worse, as they would turn the lights off and leave me in the middle of a pitch black room when they weren’t questioning me. Alone, in the dark, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. Even when I strained my ears, I couldn’t hear footsteps or chatter outside of the room I was in. I was isolated.

Sometimes, they’d leave me like that for days, the only break in the solitude being a faceless Drac bringing me some sort of mush that I could eat once a day. I hardly ever did. I didn’t trust anything that they gave me, since I didn’t know what they’d drugged. They certainly were masters of medicine, so I became paranoid about the food and water that they supplied. I only drank sips of the water when I knew my body would shut down if I continued without it.

Somewhere around the four day mark, something changed. During the questioning, Korse had pushed the wrong button, and I’d broken my elective silence. He’d referred to the guys, my boys, as ‘blood-thirsty maniacs with no sense of right or wrong’. Silly as it sounds, I lost my cool over that. It was one thing to threaten me, but to go so far as to belittle those four amazing men…

He’d heard me take my deep breath. He’d heard me swallow in a strained sort of way, since my mouth and throat were bone dry from hardly drinking anything and not speaking. After I’d done that, though, I looked up at his dreary face. With a huge shit-eating grin on my own, I’d given him only three words.

“Go to hell.”

He’d apparently had it with me at that point, too, since the next thing I knew was that a sharp sting hit my left cheek and his hand recoiled from the force of the slap. I looked at him, unintentionally looking baffled. I knew full well that he’d end up hitting me eventually, I even expected it, but it was just so sudden that I hadn’t had time to prepare for it. I was more surprised than actually hurt.

After that incident, I went back to playing the mime. He’d demand answers to his questions, I’d say nothing. Wash, rinse, repeat. I was surprised at how patient he was being. Now that he knew what made me mad, though, he’d throw in insults directed towards my friends as he’d leave the room, probably smug about the fact that I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. While I wanted nothing more than to just murder him with my bare hands, I sat and forced myself to look indifferent and unbothered.

A few days later was the first time that they made any changes with my situation. They decided to change the cuffs on my wrists since I’d spent a good deal of time pulling at them. I knew it did me no good, but I had to try something. I’d bled all over them, too, so they felt it was more than likely a safety hazard to let open wounds rest against metal of questionable quality.

When both of my wrists were temporarily freed, I made my move. I attacked the Drac nearest to me savagely, tearing at anything I could with my nails and digging my fingers harshly into anything I could reach. The attack lasted no longer than three seconds before the other Drac in the room restrained me. I cursed myself inwardly at how weak I’d gotten in just a couple of days. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d been hardly eating or sleeping, I might’ve had more of a chance to put up a fight. I still struggled against him, but another Drac came in. I felt a needle poke into the crook of my elbow like a mosquito bite, but then my vision began to blur around the edges. I collapsed back down heavily into my chair, holding my eyes wide to try to keep myself awake. Eventually, though, I slipped into a drug-induced slumber.

I spent most days like that, either getting beaten for misbehaving or getting drugged for fighting. Once in a while I’d wake up in the dark, wondering where I was through the haze of tranquilizers. I had the feeling that they’d slipped a little of their wonder drug into the mix, since a feeling of contentment that had no place in my situation would slither into my brain. I didn’t want to feel calm. I needed to keep myself sharp and remember why I was there. Who I was there for.

A week or two in, something else changed. I wasn’t drugged (since I’d figured out that it did me little to no good to be constantly strung out), but I was still sitting silently in a dark room. The door opened, the lights flickered on, and two Dracs came in hauling someone between them. The someone turned out to be a woman with dark hair and tired eyes. They cuffed her much like they had me, though she was across the room. Our eyes met as the Dracs were leaving the room silently, and I felt a twinge in the back of my mind. I couldn’t figure out why, though, since I’d never met this woman before in my life. The lights turned back out and we were left in black silence.

“Are you alright?” I whispered hoarsely, my voice cracking and breaking with nearly every syllable.

“Yeah, I think so…” she responded just as quietly from across the room. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. Considering the circumstances, this was the best thing that had happened to me since I’d gotten here. I had company that I didn’t want to maim.

“Are you a Killjoy?” she asked after a couple of seconds. I made a humming noise of agreement.

“Yeah,” I repeated. “You’re not, though.”

“How do you know?”

“You don’t dress like one, and they’re not nearly as hard on you,” I explained croakily. “Why are you here?”

“They’re hoping to get some answers from me. I’m involved with a Killjoy.”

“Oh,” I voiced. I really had nothing to say back to that.

She was moved shortly after that, to a room far away from mine. We hadn’t spoken beyond that point. I was alone again.

***

It had been just about a month. A month of solitude and silence. A month where every day, I would get the shit kicked out of me for not cooperating. A month of holding back any tears that I might’ve wanted to shed. A month of hell.

I’d almost given up a few times as I was kicked and ridiculed by the Dracs or Korse. I’d come so close to begging for them to kill me so that I wouldn’t have to face the silence and loneliness anymore. So close to giving up the people that I’d grown to care about just for one last taste of freedom.

Each time it got to that point, though, I’d think about their faces. Gerard’s, Mikey’s, Ray’s, Frank’s, Grace’s, Dr. D’s, Show Pony’s, Nic’s, Christian’s, Sasha’s. It didn’t matter. I just had to know that I had people who were at stake. I couldn’t give them up. If it got particularly bad (only twice, actually), I would think of my parents’ faces as I last remembered them: scared, confused, angry. The day they’d been taken away. It made me angry and resentful, enough so that I would find any last drop of strength to carry on. I wasn’t ready to keel over and call it quits, but I hadn’t come up with any brilliant ideas, either.

When I really thought about it, though, the worst part was not the physical pain. It was a childish little corner of my mind that was hurt by the fact that no one had come for me. It was almost a month since I’d turned myself in, and I hadn’t even heard a disturbance outside. I knew in the back of my mind that it was a smart move, since I really had no idea how guarded the place was. I also knew how badly Korse wanted to put the guys out of commission. This place was a fucking minefield for them. Still, that whiny little kid inside my head cried over the fact that I’d been all alone and no one cared enough to come get me.

“Bullshit,” I muttered to myself. It was stupid to think that way and I knew it. Of course they cared.

Another two days passed by, but I only knew that by the two times that I was brought food. The odd thing, though, was that I hadn’t seen Korse. He hadn’t come to try to beat answers out of me for two days. I was almost worried that the bruises on my face and my split lip were going to heal before he had a chance to make them worse again. That would be a damn shame, wouldn’t it?

In fact, not even the Dracs had bothered with me. They hadn’t even poked their heads in to call me nasty names. I was beginning to feel slightly neglected. What a sick sense of humor I’ve developed…

My body felt hollow. I’d only eaten a handful of times. I knew that when I stood up, my legs would buckle from how long I’d been sitting and how little nutrition I’d been getting. It would take a while for my voice to get back to its normal volume, too. Thinking back to the previous days and weeks, I realized that I’d really only slept when I’d been drugged up. I was barely more than a husk of a human at this point. I didn’t even really feel tired or hungry. The only things I felt consistently were anger, indifference, and loneliness.

***

I guessed that I’d fallen asleep, as I was awoken by the sound of something metal tipping over outside the door. It was the first interesting thing I’d heard in a long time. My head whipped towards the sound so quickly that I felt my neck crack. I chewed on my lip and opened the deep split in it, but I didn’t notice; I was much too focused on figuring out what was going on outside my own private world. A few minutes of silence, then the door swung open. I blinked as the harsh lights from the hallway streamed in, nearly blinding my poor eyes. They weren’t used to the light anymore. Someone was silhouetted against the light, their features dark. I couldn’t really tell who it was through my mixture of surprise and sleepiness. I knew that it definitely wasn’t Korse, though.

The person seemed to look at me for a long time. I just blinked back indifferently, contemplating going back to sleep. It was the most effective way to pass the time. Then, one of their hands seemed to swat the wall, searching for the light switch. Once it was found, the lights swelled in the room and made me cringe and squeeze my eyes shut. I curled in on myself as much as my restraints allowed.

“Shit, Freak?” I nodded, too busy wallowing in my misery to care about how they knew me. A raging headache was throwing itself around in my skull, and I felt the blood from my lip dribbling down my chin lazily. Footsteps hurried in my direction and I heard a gun cocking. That seemed to spark a little interest in my foggy brain, but mostly because it was a noise I hadn’t heard in a while.

“Hold still, okay?” the voice asked of me gently. I nodded lifelessly again. I’d very recently become incredibly good at sitting still. Lots of practice. The gun fired and I barely flinched at the noise. It fired three more times before I found myself falling forwards. It took all my focus to remember how to put my arms out to catch myself. It did little good for me anyway, since my arms more or less crumpled like wet paper as they came in contact with the ground. I grumbled a little, face pressed against the clean white linoleum. Or, it was clean until I bled on it. Details. I was hauled up carefully, and I turned my head to look at my apparent rescuer.

“Fun Ghoul…?” I murmured after a second. I thought I was hallucinating. He nodded, looking me over.

“You look like shit. Jesus, okay, uh… okay, come here.” He lifted my up, and I was surprised that he could do it so easily. I allowed it, feeling my limbs wiggle around loosely like jelly. He shifted me so that I hung limply over his shoulder, face pressed into his back. I assumed it was so he could hold his gun and get me out of here at the same time, so I just went along with it. I tried to keep my legs out of the way of his as he hurried from the room. I could feel his head shifted as he glanced around and checked every which way to make sure the coast was clear. We moved along more quickly than I had anticipated, as I felt the breeze of the outdoors on my skin. The warm, dry air was a welcome feeling to my sterilized lungs, so I breathed in deeply. Eventually, I felt another pair of hands helping Ghoul to set me down on something soft. I reveled in the feeling of it, sinking down warily into the squishy material. Ghoul said something before I heard his feet moving back towards the building. I shifted and rolled so that I could see who was with me at the moment.

“Oh, hi Kin,” I murmured sleepily, spitting blood out of the open door of the car casually. It was still dripping slowly from my lip, but not nearly as badly now. She stared at my face before leaning down to kiss my cheeks gently.

“You’re so fucking stupid, Freak,” she sighed, sounding close to tears. I nodded- that much was fair. I’d never claimed that my plan had been a smart one, but it’d gotten her and Grace out safely enough.

“Where’s Grace?” I croaked at her. She flinched visibly at the sound of my voice.

“She’s safe, don’t worry.”

“Mkay,” I allowed myself to be pacified. She looked tensely around the area constantly, head swiveling from side to side. I watched her through half-lidded eyes. “Can we go home now?”

“Once the guys come back, sweetie,” she responded absently, staring hard at the entrance of the building. I waited patiently, lounging across the entire back seat with my legs hanging out of the open car door. Minutes later I heard four pairs of footsteps and multiple guns being fired. Kindred left her post by the door and fled for her bike while the guys all jumped into the car. I was shifted roughly to the side as Jet and Kobra jumped in the back, but I was beyond caring about that.

“Hi guys,” I greeted dumbly, my eyes rolling around in my head to take them all in. Poison had the wheel and Ghoul was riding shotgun.

“You don’t get to go anywhere ever again,” Jet declared. I nodded limply as I shifted and made to sit up before I was pushed back down. I pouted but accepted my fate as Kobra pulled my head into his lap and Jet pulled my feet into his. I looked up at Kobra then, and he stared back down expressionlessly.

Poison jerked the car to life and we shot out of there. I could hear the rumble of Kin’s bike somewhere close to the side of the car. I was just beginning to fall asleep when Kobra shifted me into a position closer to sitting. I opened my eyes reluctantly and was met with a bottle of water very close to my face.

“Drink,” he ordered shortly. I nodded, grabbing the bottle and chugging a good deal of it very quickly. Jet pulled it out of my hands.

“You’re going to make yourself sick that way. Drink a little slower,” he advised kindly. I nodded and made grabby hands for the bottle, which he gave back to me. I drank again, taking slower sips. We rode in an uncomfortable sort of silence for a long time, so I went to sleep to avoid getting yelled at for a little while.

When I woke up, it was because I could feel the car slowing down. Groggily I yawned, opening my eyes slowly. It was just after sunrise, so the sun itself was fairly unobtrusive. With another yawn, I slowly sat up. My shaky limbs felt a little more supportive than they had earlier, so I took that as a good sign. We slowed to a stop. A few seconds after Poison cut his motor, I heard Kindred do the same with her bike.

“I got her,” I heard Jet say as he climbed out of the car. He leaned back in once he was standing and scooped me up. I wanted to argue that I could walk there myself, but I wasn’t so sure. We were inside seconds later, heading into the office. He set me gently down on my pile of blankets, which I curled into gratefully. I’ll never complain about sleeping on the floor again.

“Are you alright, Harley?” he asked, just as the other three men filed into the room. They all stood around me. Since I was laying on the floor, I felt very small indeed.

“I didn’t tell them anything. Well, I told them to go to hell, but that’s different. I didn’t tell them anything about you guys or where you were or-”

“Hey, calm down,” Gerard soothed. “Take it easy. We can’t understand you between how fucked up your voice is and how fast you’re talking.”

“I didn’t tell them anything,” I summarized, glancing at each of them in turn. “I didn’t say anything to them at all, really. I just told Korse to go to hell, but that’s it.”

The smile that threatened to break Frank’s look of cool disapproval made my spirits lift. Eventually, he couldn’t help it. He smiled. I tried not to smile back because I knew I was supposed to be apologetic about worrying them. Mikey, Ray, and Gerard didn’t seem to see as much humor in the situation as Frank did.

So, I sat there and did my best to look forlorn. Frank was still fighting his smile. His mouth was twitching at the corners, just a tiny bit.

“Sorry,” I murmured, toying with the frayed edges of my blankets. I didn’t look up as I bit the inside of my cheek. I really was sorry that I’d made such a mess of the situation, but I wasn’t sorry that I’d done it for Grace and Kindred. No amount of guilt could make me sorry about that.

“God, just… never do something that stupid again, okay? We were convinced you were dead when Kindred came back. She didn’t get back until sunrise. She had Grace, but she was crying and freaking out and it took us fifteen minutes to calm her down,” Gerard sighed, running a hand through his ruby locks. I frowned slightly at my lap.

“That, and we were still hurt so we couldn’t do a damn thing about it,” Ray added. My frown deepened.

“We were fucking crazy with worry. When we heard that you’d been taken in by the Dracs, we thought you were a goner. Then we heard that Korse was camping out there, too, and we pretty much assumed you were dead. Kindred told us you wouldn’t be, though,” Mikey frowned, almost as deeply as I did.

“Sorry,” I repeated. I couldn’t fight the tears much longer. Not just from feeling guilty, but for all that I’d been holding back for the past month. Everything on my body hurt, I was hungry and tired and thirsty and so fucking relieved to be back in familiar territory. I wept shamelessly at the thought that I was free again. No more dark rooms and solitude. I would be fine if I never spent another moment of my life alone again.

They all looked on quietly, probably unsure how to react. I heard the door swing open quietly, and then I heard Kindred’s voice.

“What’s going on?” she padded closer to us, and then she apparently saw me. “You guys! You made her cry! Get out of here!”

They argued with her a little, but eventually she got mad and managed to throw them out. She sat down heavily next to me, pulling me into her shoulder. “Hey, Harley, it’s okay. You’re home now. You’re safe. No one’s mad.”

“Yeah, they are,” I argued through a hiccup. “I don’t care, though. I’m just so glad to be home.”