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year 5, quarter 3
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Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Aug 30, 2020 13:03:09 GMT -6
DAY 1
When the dull gray dawn began to seep through the windows a buzzing alarm sounded through the whole complex in three long pulses. When the last buzz died the echo carried, a distant hollow sound like the other end of the prison was still waking up. Then the staccato tapping of hard soles on hard floor, jangling keys, the clanging of metal as the locks turned. Then the hinges of the cell doors squealed and the hall filled with the noise of listless shuffling feet and the smell of unwashed bodies.
One note after the other like a carefully orchestrated piece. As it had been the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that...
Gladio stared at the cracks in the ceiling and scrubbed a hand down his face. He'd been staring at them a long while, since before the first light found the cell. For all that stayed the same there was one new, important difference.
"Rise n' shine, Iggy," Gladio muttered. He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and dropped down to the floor. His limbs felt frozen and numb and useless. He sneezed into the crook of his elbow. His jaw ached. All night he clenched it to keep his teeth from chattering. He hadn't been so cold since his first night in Gorgon and that night seemed to last a year. So cold he thought his bones would crack from the shivering.
He hadn't slept at all then and he thought he wouldn't sleep at all this past night. Not until he listened past the howling outside the cell walls to the quiet breathing from the bunk below. Not until he let it sink in that he wasn't crazy, he wasn't forgotten, and he wasn't alone anymore.
In the hallway the guards ushered stragglers along with their batons. Gladio waited in the doorway, watching the flow of the condemned with a hard level stare, until Ignis was up and ready. He flexed his hands to work the stiffness out of the joints. A handful of passers-by glanced Gladio's way. A nod here or there. A leer or a scowl from others. Muttered profanity. Someone complained that Gladio cost them after that beating he laid down two nights ago. Gladio let it drift.
"You take too long they lock the cell again," he told Ignis, "No chow and no air for the rest of the day."
With a guiding hand on his friend's shoulder he stepped out into the hall and followed the traffic towards the vaguely sour smell emanating from the chow hall. The air grew humid the nearer they got, as though the ventilation system in the kitchen wasn't working right.
"You'll love the food here," Gladio deadpanned. "Real gourmet stuff."
Ignis had never felt so cold in his life. Of that much, he was sure. There was a fire in his soul, that Gladio was here, he was alive. However, such knowledge could only keep him holding onto dear life throughout the night as the world somehow grew darker in his blind eyes. The cold crept in from every direction, nipping at his limbs, at his extremities. Iggy tried to steady his breathing, tried to draw the itchy, worn blanket as tightly as he could to himself.
His breathes came out in short chatters, and his teeth felt as though they would snap if he kept them clenched. He moved each leg periodically, shaking off the numbness that nipped at his covered feet. When he nodded off for too long a moment, he would stir in fright, sensing that sleep could lead to death. Ignis wasn’t sure if he was simply falling in and out of consciousness all night long, or if he truly gained any real sleep. In what seemed like forever, and yet too soon, the sounds of life began stirring. Noises from others in nearby cells. The disgusting cacophony of human bodily noises, grunts and groans.
This was one of his many disadvantages; the inability to accurately detect time in a foreign environment. Ignis opened his functioning eye and looked toward where he remembered the window being, but he couldn’t detect any light. If the sun was rising, it was still quite early.
Then, an alarm sounded. A horrid buzz that came in threes, bouncing around in his skull. Ignis sat up carefully as the prison around him became a hive of activity; heavy, metal doors opening, many shoes shuffling, people muttering quietly. Ignis sat up slowly, urging his body to move despite the numbness and pain. Every muscle felt stiff from being clenched all night long, and his throat felt dry and scratchy. He coughed a few times, attempting to keep it quiet as Gladio descended from the bunk above.
He’d risen, but it would take a miracle for him to shine.
Gladiolus quickly made his way to the entrance of the cell -- or so Ignis assumed, as the sounds of moving feet all began to blend together. The blonde pulled himself from his bunk, uselessly wiping the lack of sleep from his eye. Each step he took, his body hissed angrily back at him. Limbs felt long and useless and numb. Breathing felt painful. Had he ever spent so much time curled so tightly in on himself?
Gladio has lived this every night, Iggy reminded himself bitterly, shaking out the last of the chill from his fingertips, An ungodly chill won’t kill you.
He took a step toward the entrance of the cell, a hand raised to guide him. Ignis found the fabric of Gladio’s jacket; warm, somehow. He dropped his hand to his side and waited, listening as others walked by their cell. For the most part, the crowd seemed fairly mute and docile, and if they communicated, it was by looks he would never see. A few did hurl obscene words at Gladio, and one in particular seemed upset about a fight. However, the Shield didn’t react, and Ignis chose not to ask. Not now, not in front of so many others.
Gladio had some sort of reputation. But, what good was one, in a world like this?
If he lagged behind, he’d be locked in the cell for the rest of the day. “Well, can’t have that,” Ignis muttered as Gladio took a guiding hand to his shoulder, “There’s so much more for me to see, after all. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
It made him feel helpless, to have to be led about. However, without his sight stick, there was no way for Ignis to get around on his own. Gladio’s hand on his shoulder felt … familiar, somehow, despite the fact that he had no memories of his friend being there post-recovery of his grievous injuries. For the moment, Iggy allowed the unpleasant helplessness to fall away. After all, even with eyesight, he would still hardly have any idea of what was to come in the grey steel of Gorgon.
The air grew warmer and more humid the more steps they took, and a displeasing odor grew stronger and stronger. As they entered the new area, Ignis committed the path to memory. To the right of their cell, straight, 729 steps; the food hall. The sounds of shuffling were less as people took seats, the creaking of old wood and metal under their bodies. Silverware scraped the bottom of metal bowls.
Ignis snorted at Gladio’s sarcasm -- a multifaceted tactic as it also helped his dripping nose.
“I know I typically preach that it’s important to try food from various cultures,” Iggy lamented quietly as he was led through the line to get their … whatever that atrocious smell was, “But, I’d take back every word and bite if it meant skipping this.”
Not that he had a choice. If he and Gladio were going to get out of Gorgon, it meant they’d need to be energized. And one only got energy through sustenance.
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Sept 30, 2020 22:23:02 GMT -6
The line of the condemned shuffled forward. A low murmur of lifeless conversation filled the chow hall. Dull grey walls and dull grey floor and wan light filtering through the bars as men complained about the food in rote lines with no feeling behind them, just habit. A pair of guards watched with their particular combination of scorn and boredom from a railed catwalk. Gladio stood in line in front of Ignis and scoured the room with a hard stare. He felt eyes on him. He always felt eyes on him, like spiders slow crawling up the back of his neck.
"No culture here," Gladio said as they neared the front of the line. "So you don't have to worry about it."
A leatherfaced prisoner with brittle grey hair and watery eyes manned the window, ladling out a lumpy gruel into beaten tin bowls with a thick wet slopping noise. Gladio gave a look to the man and a nod of his head towards Ignis. If the man knew what it meant he gave no sign, instead ladling another bowl of gruel with robotic efficiency. Something in it smelled faintly rancid. He stuck a wooden spoon in the center of the mound of grey paste and it stood straight up. He set out a chunk of stale bread and a tin cup of lukewarm water. Gladio handed these to Ignis, balancing the bread on the flat rim of the bowl, and once Ignis had a grip on it Gladio turned back for his own meal. If you could call it that.
"C'mon, I got us a spot."
He led Ignis to a table, shot a look at the two men sitting there over crumbs of bread and mostly untouched gruel. They blinked slowly and then gathered up their bowls and cups and moved along without a word. Gladio sat. He still felt eyes on him.
"I'll score us some better chow in a few days," he said, grabbing the bread from Ignis' bowl before the man could eat it. He broke off moldy pieces while he talked. "There's ways of getting stuff in here. Blankets, meds, better chow, all the shit the guards hold back." Gladio set the bread back on Iggy's plate. "...All it costs is a little blood."
Silence came over the hall and the hairs on the back of Gladio's neck stood on end. He stared at the entranceway. Tension in the air, thick enough to cut with an axe. His eyes narrowed.
"Just keep your head down, Iggy," he whispered between his teeth.
Three sets of footsteps cut through the silence, the soft slapping of the thin-soled prison shoes. The man in the center of the trio stood four inches shorter than Gladio but carried himself like he was eight feet tall. He had a shaved head and a fur collared jacket that cost him a lot of blood. His name was Rurik.
"Heard you had a new friend, Big Guy," he said. His two men stood on either side of Ignis. Every muscle in Gladio's body tensed up. Rurik clasped his hands loosely behind his back and gave Ignis a once-over like he was inspecting a side of meat. "Looks a little healthier than your last celly. Clean, yeah? Well, there's still time, you know. Everyone takes a taste they been stuck here long enough. Say..." he turned his leering blue-grey stare onto Gladio. "Your old celly still owed us when they put him in the ground. Junkies, right? We got a lot riding on your next fight, Big Guy, but your new pal here looks like he can pay up."
"How about I rip your throat out with my teeth instead," Gladio snarled. He didn't stand up. Not until Rurik's goons each grabbed one of Ignis' shoulders, wrenched his arms behind his back, slammed his face into the old wooden table with a sound like a gunshot. The wood scraped against the concrete floor.
The guards watched with only mild interest.
"You've been around this long and you still haven't learned any damn manners, buddy--"
"Get your f------ hands off him."
"C'mon, Big Buy. Not even gonna introduce us?" he looked down at Ignis with his face pressed into the wood. "Hey, buddy, what do they call you?"
No culture in Gorgon? Ignis gave Gladio’s comment a polite snort, but he had a feeling that it was hardly the truth. The prison had already reared the ugly head of its culture the moment he set foot in the cursed building. It was a place of cruelty and pain. Ignis could still hear the pain and fury in Gladio’s voice from the night before -- when it sank in that Ignis was there with him, trapped in the same hell.
The line shifted along, and Iggy shuffled along with it. Despite the chow hall being a smidge warmer than the cell had been, the cold still creeped and nipped at his ankles, and no amount of moving ever really flexed the frigid chill from his bones. The blonde did his best to distract himself from that familiar bite, listening into the hardly-there conversations between others. Their complaints were airy and robotic, with no emotion behind them.
The smell in the air was a putrid mix of unwashed bodies and a rancid, molded food. Iggy took his tray, balancing whatever awful mixture was in it with precision as Gladiolus led him through the room and to a table. Apparently, I got us a spot was code for these people are going to get out of my way, as Ignis listened to the scrape of wood on metal as the other men made themselves scarce. Setting the tray down and getting a feel for the table, Ignis wondered what exactly Gladio’s reputation had become.
What this place had turned him into.
Gladiolus stole something off of his plate, and as his friend crumbled whatever it was, Ignis got a whiff of why. The scent of mold and yeast was strong even before he’d lost his sight, but now it made Iggy crinkle his nose in disgust. As if the bowl of … whatever was in front of him hadn’t done that enough. The blonde felt the tools at his disposal on the tray -- a wooden spoon, lodged into a semi-warm bowl of mystery rot, a cup of what he hoped to be water, and the appearance of a shred of bread that Gladio returned to him. Ignis took the cup of water and gave it a cautious sip, before continuing to partake in it. It tasted slightly of rust, but was otherwise fine.
“A little blood,” Ignis repeated quietly, as he chewed over the words in his mind -- a much more delectable alternative to the food, “... Scheduled fights, I presume? A man was selling a recording of you fighting in a back alley.”
The rest of their conversation would have to wait, apparently. A strange hush fell over the room. Ignis glanced in Gladio’s direction curiously, but he was given immediate instructions; keep your head down.
It wouldn’t do him any good to look, anyway. But, through the silence, the blind man could hear sets of footsteps making their way through the room. The thin tap of shoes was all to be heard over the sudden hush in the hall. No one was touching their food. It seemed as though anyone was hardly breathing. Ignis didn’t have to imagine the tension in the air. He could practically feel it radiating off of Gladio, coming out as tense exhales through his nose.
The steps came closer. Ignis slowly lowered his cup of water back to the tray, quietly pushing the mess to the side. He wasn’t sure why, but there was some sort of warning sign going off in his mind. Something telling him to run.
Yet, he stayed frozen to the bench.
A man’s voice spoke up from behind him. Another set of footsteps continued forward, stopping just short on either side of him. He’d been carefully pinned. Ignis frowned, but kept his disposition neutral as he stared forward to the space where Gladio was seated. His back tensed slowly, unease creeping up his spine. He didn’t like this man’s tone. And more than that, he didn’t like what he had to say. Ignis kept his mouth shut, despite the immediate urge to tell the man to leave. It was clear, in the man’s tone, that he held some sort of status above Gladiolus.
A rough, snarling outburst from Gladio seemed to snap the thin line of peace that had been established. Ignis gasped in shock as his shoulders and arms were suddenly, roughly grabbed and forced behind his back. When he felt the hand on the back of his head, Iggy only had half a second to barely turn his head as his face was quickly and harshly slammed into the table. The sound rang through his own ears as an intense pain blossomed against his left cheekbone. Had he cried out in pain? The action was so sudden, he wasn’t sure.
Something warm tickled at his nose. Despite having dodged the immediate damage to his nose, the force of the hit had certainly caused enough trauma to his facial sinuses to make them bleed. Vaguely, he was aware that there was blood in his mouth as well, where his teeth had ground into his inner cheek.
Ignis writhed, but the motion was for naught. He was held down by two men. Gladio’s angry voice rang through the mess hall, reverberating against the concrete walls.
When the man turned his attention to Ignis again, the blonde bit back the immediate retort that came to his tongue. Everything Gladio had explained to him so far came rushing back in that singular moment. There was a reason Gladio hadn’t leapt across the table, fists swinging yet. If he didn’t comply, he would make things much worse for himself. Immediately.
“Ignis,” he ground out his own name quietly, between clenched teeth as the blood dripped from his nose. The less the man knew, the better.
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Oct 30, 2020 10:26:34 GMT -6
The politics of Gorgon had long become one stone among many that built the walls of his confinement. He learned, in the frigid damp, through the iron taste in his mouth and the sting of open wounds, that it was better to let them be than try to tear them down. He convinced himself it was a matter of survival, but in the back of his mind Gladio knew it was little more than giving up. He became another pawn in Rurik's quest for status, another income stream for the Warden and the guards who handled gambling and distribution of the fight videos, another beaten dog in a cage, let out on a short leash when the master felt like drawing blood.
He learned to tolerate it in the same way he learned to tolerate the bitter cold and the rotting food and the ubiquitous stench. Alone, it was manageable, but Gladio wasn't alone anymore. He stood rooted in place by two years of knowledge and experience with what it meant to try to break Gorgon's system from within, staring at the smear of blood on Ignis's face and on the scarred wooden table. The sight filled him with an intolerable, impotent rage. He wanted nothing more than to snap Rurik's neck with his bare hands. He didn't move.
"Ignis," Rurik repeated. He looked up at his men, flashed a wide ugly grin of yellowed enamel and silver dental amalgam. There was a cruel glint in his eyes. "Ignis," he said again, drawing out each syllable in a mocking singsong, and the two goons stifled laughter that sounded like the sputtering motors of heavy machinery.
Gladio balled hands into fists tight enough that the dull dirty nails drew blood from his palms. He felt the eyes of the room on him still as if they dared him to take a swing at Rurik. Dared him to buy his ticket to the hole, or worse. Rurik operated with impunity not because he and his men were strong enough to break their enemies but because Rurik had ingratiated himself to the Warden as an important cog in the machine that was Gorgon. A word up the chain of command, and hell somehow got worse.
Rurik delighted in every moment of this. He may have peddled drugs behind the walls, but he was no less a junkie. Every petty exercise of his power brought him a euphoric high just as addictive as the needle. Gladio once dreamed of the day he would chain the son of a bitch up, dangling him by his wrists in the depths of the hole, and beat him to death, but the hollow disappointment on waking forced him to abandon such notions.
"That," Rurik continued with peculiar emphasis, "Is a stupid-ass name. And look at this--" Rurik nodded, and the two men wrenched Ignis back upright. Rurik leaned over the table, grabbed him by the chin, stared curiously at the scarring around his eye. He prodded at it with two grimy fingers. "--Somebody messed you up good, huh?"
"Back off--" Gladio seethed. He took an impulsive step forward, knuckles white.
Rurik dug a short punch into Ignis' throat and Gladio felt it, exhaled sharply through his teeth. He stopped with his weight on his back foot.
"Don't interrupt," Rurik said like a teacher scolding a child. He wagged his finger. "This is how it's gonna be. One of the openers woke up dead this morning, so the Warden asked me to find some fresh meat for the next card. And, boy," Rurik leered and patted Ignis on the cheek. "This one here is the freshest meat in the place. So when I collect my finder's fee--"
"No."
Gladio saw the canvas stained with blood. The rabid masses cheering for death. A broken body crawling feebly to the ropes.
"No?" Rurik cocked his head to the side, ambled up in front of Gladio. "Did you just say no to me, like you have a f---ing say in how any of this works?"
It would have been so easy to grab him by the throat and crack his skull against the concrete. Rurik thought himself a king, but Gladio knew kings, and Rurik didn't rate the dirt on their shoes.
"He doesn't fight. He's my cornerman."
"Since when do you have a cornerman?"
"Since now."
Rurik scoffed, flashed a bitter grin. He shot a glance Ignis's way and then he studied Gladio's face with squinted, suspicious eyes.
"I see how it is. Cute, real cute, Big Guy." Rurik gestured vaguely at his men. "Boys, I think this one's going soft."
"You want a fill in, I'll fight for him. But he doesn't fight."
"You're already on the card, you dumb bastard."
"So I fight twice."
"Twice. Oh, hell, buddy, the Warden's gonna love this. Okay. Okay, you fight twice, with your blind-ass cornerman. Have some f---ing fun with that, Big Guy. Boys, let's go bring the chief the good news."
Rurik snapped his fingers above his head and pointed at the door and like obedient little dogs the two men loosed their grip on Ignis. The first fell in behind Rurik. The second, as he passed Ignis, grabbed a handful of his collar and jerked him down to the floor. As they departed the other prisoners in the chow hall looked away, turned back to their breakfasts. Sounds of shuffling, the dull scrape of the wooden spoons against metal bowls. The murmur of conversation returned like someone slowly turning up the volume knob. The guards looked on impassively.
Gladio hurried to the other side of the table, grabbing Ignis by the arm to help him up. He muttered a long string of profanity under his breath.
"All right, Iggy?" he asked, inspecting the damage.
Rurik breathed his name, and beyond the stench of his obviously unclean mouth, each syllable sounded wrong. Twisted. Like a mad butcher picking out the next cattle to slaughter. Ignis didn’t move from his spot, face pinned against the cold, scarred wood, feeling the steady drip of warm blood leak from the edge of his nostril. He could practically feel the rage roiling off of Gladiolus in waves -- something he’d become accustomed to knowing over the years, on the constant ready to hold his friend back when the need arose. But, Gladio remained still. No other sound filled the cold, dead air other than Rurik’s supposed goons chuckling quietly, and Ignis’s own harsh breathing through his roughed-up nose.
As suddenly as he’d been slammed into the wood, Iggy was tugged up again by his hair. It took what strength he had not to gasp in pain, not at the harshness at which he was pulled, but by the sudden onslaught of pounding from his forehead. A headache that would certainly last days.
A hand grabbed Ignis by the chin, as the blonde was forced to face forward into the nothingness. It was clearly Rurik, who took such pleasure in insulting his name (by the gods, how childish), and such little things were fine until two jagged nails pressed against the scar under his left eye. Ignis hissed, his shoulders tensing as the goons held his arms steady. It was one thing to be assaulted by someone or something he couldn’t see. It was another to be touched so intimately, a wound so close to his eye and to his heart.
Gladio spoke up, and Ignis had only a moment to feel both elated and horrified--
Until he was struck on the throat. The ability to breathe was gone and the crushing pain set in quickly. Ignis gasped and sputtered, before coughing madly, unable to reach for his throat as he was still held back. He huffed in short breathes as he could between sputters, blood dripping freely from his nose as he coughed wildly. He nearly missed Rurik’s next words while he desperately struggled to breathe.
Openers dead. Fresh meat.
A pat on his cheek.
Oh, gods. He was intended to be a sacrifice.
“No.”
Gladio’s voice broke through the insanity, and while Rurik raged at the interruption, Ignis caught his breath. For some reason, Rurik didn’t bother attacking Gladiolus for the interruption. There must have been some sort of ranking between them, at least in the moment. Ignis kept his head held up as he listened to the two go back and forth, clenching his teeth to keep quiet. A part of him wanted to tell Gladio no, that he could handle himself, not to put himself through more unnecessary pain. But the other part of him, the realist, the tactician, knew well that he stood no chance in whatever sick battle this would be.
Ignis Scientia was a blind man, and only half the warrior he once was. Though he’d been working on it, it was simply too much to re-learn in such a short period of time. In a world of sighted people, he would always have the disadvantage.
In theory, Iggy knew what being a cornerman entailed. He’d been privy to sports of all kinds, including the most barbaric. If Gladio was going to be fighting in the ring, Ignis would be the one cleaning him up on the sidelines. He was to play the role of support.
Even with his body held up by vicious strangers, the blonde felt his shoulders sag. What had he gotten himself into? Gladio’s descriptions of Gorgon … They had only scratched the surface of how rotten and terrible it was, hadn’t they?
Rurik called off his men, and as they released Ignis from their hold he immediately moved a hand to rub against the sore, aching spot on his neck. The bloody drip from his nose had mostly subsided, closed off either by clotting or the extreme cold, he couldn’t be sure. Yet, just as he was about to open his mouth to speak, a hand grabbed the back of his collar and yanked-- throwing Ignis to the cold, unforgiving ground. He landed with a sharp inhale through gritted teeth, his left knee throbbing in pain where it had thumped against the table and his right arm sore underneath his side.
Footsteps hurried by, echoing off the floor even as the murmur of life slowly returned to the mess hall. A familiar hand clutched Iggy by his left arm and the blonde ushered himself back to his feet. He didn’t want to know what grime was on his coat and face, and after the little trieste he experienced he didn’t quite care. Ignis stiffly brushed himself off as Gladio asked about his well-being, in a knowing sense.
“I’ve been better,” Ignis answered honestly, wiping the back of his sleeve beneath his nose to collect the loose blood hanging there. The one good thing about the stifling cold was that his other various sore spots would soon be too numb to bother him much.
A stretch of silence passed between them, as Ignis wiped his face with his sleeve once more.
“... You’re putting yourself at risk for me,” came the guilty realization from his lips, quiet and ashamed, “I don’t know what all is going on Gladio, I’ll gladly admit as much, but from the sounds of it, offering yourself in my place for this fight is ludicrous.”
There would be no changing his mind, of course. Gladio’s greatest strengths and weaknesses combined into his stubborn, yet bold nature to defend his friends. Noctis first and foremost, of course, but he’d raze the land for anyone he cared for.
“You’ll have to explain it all to me,” Ignis shoved the shame aside, for now. There was no sense in feeling sorry for himself -- he’d beat himself up later that night when he couldn’t sleep through the cold instead, “Rather quickly, I presume.”
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Jan 15, 2021 0:21:33 GMT -6
It could've been worse, Gladio knew. It could've been a lot worse.
Once Ignis was back on his feet, Gladio shot a look past the man's shoulder at a few stray gawkers rubbernecking from a table away. He didn't have to tell them that it wasn't a god damned show. They saw the fury in his eyes and turned away just as quickly. Their deference did nothing to ease the sting of Rurik's petty display of power. He felt in his bones a deep and overwhelming need to break someone. Not in defense of Ignis, or to destroy Rurik's hold over the other prisoners. Nothing so noble as that. Something nameless and primal within him just wanted to make them all hurt.
He'd have his chance soon, and he knew that wouldn't make anything better, but that didn't matter.
He brushed off Ignis' guilt with a wordless sound, not quite a scoff, as though the situation could never be any other way.
"Don't worry about it," Gladio said. A parting pat on the shoulder, then he stepped back around the table and sat down in front of his bowl of cold gruel. "This isn't my first fight, Iggy. Besides, you got yourself tossed in here 'cause of me. Fair's fair."
Of course there was no such thing as fair in Gorgon, but if a man couldn't cling to a few relics of the world outside its walls then what was the point? He tore a chunk of stale bread and scooped up a mouthful of gruel with it. The combination did nothing to improve either component but it broke up the monotony. He chewed and spoke around the lump of paste in his mouth.
"Sit down and get some calories in you. We still got a couple days."
And what was a couple days in Gorgon but a thousand years? Ample time for Gladio to get Ignis up to speed. It's not like any of it was complicated. Barbarism was always simple in the end.
DAY 2
The fights had a mocking veneer of sport. They took place in a boxing ring, and there were three five-minute rounds, and there was a bell and a timekeeper and announcer and even a referee whose job was ostensibly to stop the fight when it became clear one fighter could not continue.
But by Gorgon rules no fight ended unless one of the fighters wasn't moving anymore and even then the referee might let the end drag out, the room filled with the noise of bloodthirsty spectators and the meaty impacts of fist on flesh, the crack of knuckle against orbital bone, while the referee waited for a signal from the Warden that he and his associates were entertained enough. That they'd had their fill of blood. That whichever fighter who dared to annoy the Warden in some way, large or small, had been punished enough.
Gladio had been on both sides of that punishment. The new crooked line of his nose spoke to that. And the scar tissue that made up his right eyebrow. He left that detail out as he explained the lay of the land to Ignis.
"...All you've gotta do is mop my face up between rounds," Gladio said. A hollow clang of metal on metal as he racked the barbell. The unsecured plates rattled. He sat up on the bench and rested his forearms on his thighs. They were outside now, in the yard, in the limited respite of open air. There was no sun. A sheet of gunmetal clouds hovered low over the prison such that the fact they were outside at all was the only method by which to reckon the time of day.
It was cold enough that Gladio's breath plumed white. The warmth of exertion ebbed out of his muscles. He sneezed into the crook of his arm and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Word got around quickly enough that Ignis was 'with the Big Guy', and anyone who respected Gladio's mid-tier status on the political ladder of Gorgon left them alone. The head-down types. The trio of men approaching the weight bench presently weren't head-down types. They were some of Rurik's stooges, looking to ingratiate themselves to the boss. Gladio caught them in the corner of his eye and sneered when he recognized them. He stood.
Ignis had managed to survive his first day within the walls of Gorgon. It was more than unforgiving and relentless, and yet, he persisted. Thankfully, he couldn’t see if his nose and cheek were bruised from being slammed down into the table, but the next day it didn’t hurt much. However, that was likely more to do with the cold than anything. That evening, Ignis was sure he didn’t manage to sleep a wink. The cold seeped into his very bones as he lay on his bunk, covered in every feeble scrap of clothing he had and the scratchy blanket Gladio had given up for him. He kept tucked into himself, lost in his thoughts, wondering what sort of fresh hell the next day would bring.
The fights … it lingered on his mind. Gladio insisted he’d explain the next day. That Iggy should take the time to acclimate to everything else on the first day.
He wondered, just what all had Gladiolus seen here? What had they done to him? Gladio was a tough man, tougher than any other Ignis personally knew but … Being all alone, in the face of adversity for a long time would be rough on even the toughest man.
The next day started the same, but breakfast was much less perilous. Able to eat his tasteless gruel and moldy bread in relative peace, Iggy was finally able to absorb information about the matches as the day went on.
They retreated outside to the yard, to have some sense of privacy in which to discuss the fights. Ignis mentally counted the steps, unable to rely on any source of light for some indication of direction. Sonora was always cloudy, yet he had a feeling it was somehow even darker over Gorgon. Gladio led them to a workout area, if the clangs of metal were any indication. Ignis listened to the sound, realizing that Gladio was racking weights onto a barbell. Ah, a weight bench.
Ignis paced, in order to keep some semblance of warmth under his coat as Gladio instructed him how the fights would go down. It was nothing but pure, cruel sport; entertainment for the warden and those with the power and money to bet. The other prisoners were allowed to watch and jeer from behind fencing, and the referees were far from fair. How could anyone be so cruel? Well, weren’t all empires cruel in their own ways? With their own tortures? Gods knew Iggy had read about plenty of distasteful things in Insomnia’s past.
Gladio explained, in such simple terms, that Iggy would only need to mop him up in between rounds. Not the wisest choice, picking a blind man to clean one up, but Ignis knew well it was all Gladio could do to keep him out of the ring itself.
A part of him hated that, very much so. If he had to get his ass kicked, then so be it. But, from the sounds of it, it would be more akin to a slaughter than a fight gone bad.
And so, Ignis swallowed his pride, for the moment.
“You’ll have to let me memorize your current breaks and cuts,” the blonde stated matter-of-factly, stopping in his pacing tracks to look in Gladio’s direction, “Hopefully we have more to work with than just a rag. You know I’m well capable of mending anything with very little, but I’m no magician.”
He’d sewn skin injuries before. It was ugly, messy work, and that was when he could still see. What would he even have to work with here? A balm? Any drugs? Bandages? His ability to assess damage was still present, simply through his fingers now, and he could work very quickly, but…
It hadn’t even been 48 hours, and he was imagining sewing a gouge in Gladio’s face shut.
What a reunion.
Ignis heard Gladio sneer, the fabric of his pants pulling up from the bench as he rose. Trouble? Iggy stopped for a moment, hearing a few step cadences headed their way. Long, confident strides. One wasn’t stepping right in on time, though. Perhaps nursing an injury or disability on that leg. Ignis tucked the information away in his mind and pretended to busy himself, moving closer to the bench as the men approached. He reached out and found the unsecured weights on the bar and began to move them off and set them aside, one at a time. The heavy weight felt good in his hand.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Ignis threw the potential troublemakers a greeting while he tended to the barbell, knowing well the best he could do for himself was to stay tall, despite the damage it could bring him later, "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Feb 22, 2021 13:13:51 GMT -6
It snowed the previous night, wet and heavy, and the cold that followed after froze the top layer of snow into an icy crust. It crunched underfoot as the trio of Rurik's stooges approached, and as Gladio reflexively stepped into the space between them and Ignis. Clusters of prisoners scattered around the yard shifted positions ever so slightly. A minor adjustment to view the proceedings from a safe distance. The palpable tension fueled by the collective anticipation of violence hung in the air like a thick fog.
They stopped with a cushion of eight feet in front of them. Each of them sallow-skinned with the sunken eyes characteristic of Gorgon's malnutrition and sleep deprivation. The man in the middle was a head shorter than Gladio with a stocky build that hadn't yet been eaten away by his imprisonment. To his left a miserable, rangy bald man with a mouth full of rotting teeth and the bulge of some object clenched in his right hand. The man on the right stood slightly lopsided in the snow and wouldn't stop cracking his knuckles. Gladio didn't know their names. Rurik had a rotating roster of toadies grasping at anything to make their stay in Gorgon a little less torturous. Gladio refused to sympathize. The enemy was the enemy. When Ignis addressed the trio, the man in the center grinned like a shark.
"Heard the Big Guy decided to bend the rules. Cornerman, tch." He spat into the snow, shook his head, fixed his dull eyes on Gladio. "That true?"
Gladio made a low noise in the back of his throat. The plates scraped against the bar. He didn't look behind him at Ignis, sure of what the other man was doing but unsure of what use it was gonna be when he couldn't see a damn thing. Gladio slid his rear foot backwards and shifted his weight with a practiced subtlety. His eyes narrowed.
"Keep walking."
The man in the middle took a step forward. The men on the flanks spread out to either side.
"Everyone fights here. Maybe not in the ring. But everyone fights."
There was no talking them down. There was no talking anybody down in this place. The words spit back and forth were little more than the preamble while everyone braced themselves for the real show. Gladio's eyes flitted from one man to the next. His mind ran probabilities and scenarios, a subconscious calculus to solve the problem laid out before him. How to take them all down before they could get to Ignis.
The man in the middle stepped forward. Gladio moved to meet him with a punch interrupted by a hard overhand cross from his left side that he never saw coming. It landed clean on his jaw and stars burst behind his eyes and the world went askew. His legs buckled and he staggered. Two of the men rushed past him. The rangy man with the weapon clenched in his fist threw another punch. The yard was a blur, black around the edges, and the noise in his skull was murky and watery. Gladio forced himself forward and the second punch blew past his ear. He grabbed the man by two handfuls of his shirt, wrestling him off balance while finding his own footing. The watery feeling in his head ebbed away and the yard came back into focus. He shifted his grip and clasped his hands behind the man's head and squeezed his forearms on either side of the man's neck and broke his posture with a violent pull down and forward, straight into a knee.
The man gave a choked grunt and Gladio kneed him again. He wrenched him off balance and kneed him a third time. Something in the man's ribcage snapped like a dry twig. Gladio felt him buckle. He threw the man into the snow and wheeled around to rush to Ignis's aid.
As expected, the men were out looking for trouble.
Ignis furrowed his brows, his broken eyesight resting only on the bar that was still within his hands, resting on the bench. From the moment he’d set foot in the rotting fortress, he’d had his guard up. His back was consistently tensed, jaw locked tightly. A loose tongue was all that betrayed that sense of danger; able only to deal with the constant barrage of joint pains and retched smells with a strong wit. It had only been two days, a voice rumbled in the back of his head. Two days.
Gladio confirmed to the men that Ignis would indeed be his cornerman and not the spectacle of the day. They were as displeased as everyone else had been, of course. He picked up on the sounds of footsteps moving forward, flanking away from where he knew Gladio to be standing. Like hungry beasts in the field, surrounding a much larger, more dangerous prey.
Iggy flexed his near frozen fingers against the metal in his grip. Feet moved quickly and the shuffle began. The sound of a fist slamming into something boney echoed loudly. Two sets of footsteps continued to move quickly, past the sound of the where the scuffle was occurring.
There were only seconds to react. Ignis hauled the hefty bar off of the bench, quickly spinning his body to the right to slam the edge of it against a warm, giving body. He heard the heave of the man losing his breath and staggering, before slipping in the snow and falling. Pinpointing all the different sounds was still a work in progress for Ignis, though, and the second assailant was able to slip behind him. A horrid pain flared up in his back as the man took a strong swing right at Iggy’s kidneys. Scientia grit his teeth and whirled the metal bar once more. However, there wasn’t as much pushback against the makeshift weapon as there should have been. He must have clipped the man.
The chaos of sound blended together; grunts and steps and breathes, the stretch of fabric, the crunch of bone. Ignis took the only moment he was allowed to sort through the mess, before stepping forward a few steps and taking a strong jab forward with the bar.
The man must have thought there was no way Ignis could have pinpointed him. The butt of the bar slammed into the man’s chest, and he quickly fell back with an ungraceful, gargled yelp.
The bar was tugged in his hands. The first man had apparently gotten to his feet and run over to try and help his friend, “Fight with your fists you--.”
The insult went unfinished and morphed into a yelp as Ignis stepped back and placed a well-timed kick to the man’s abdomen. He yanked the bar free from the man’s grasp and knocked him back to the ground with another powerful strike.
Iggy listened for more movement, and tensed as he heard someone jogging his way. He relaxed his shoulders, though, as he recognized the gait as Gladio’s. He took a few steps away from the semi-beaten man at his feet, the weight bar still clutched tightly in his hands like a polearm once would have been. If he hadn’t had the weapon, he wouldn’t have fared as well, and Ignis knew that. The two-on-one fight only worked because he’d had the advantage of something to swing.
Unable to really process the fact that he’d been attacked simply for not fighting before, Ignis defaulted to turning his nose up at the situation rather than trying to make logic from madness.
“I suppose they should have listened to you.”
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
