"For the last time, what is your friend's name?" It was a simple question, but Nick stayed firm, staring blankly at the floor. The interrogator slammed his palm on the table and moved his face an inch from Nick's as he asked again.
"What. Is. His. Name?"
But he was only met with silence. The interrogator stared a hole in Nick's temple as Nick remained unrevealing and blank as the face of a statue.
The interrogator thrust himself back and exited the room in a fury. Only then did Nick move, his head turning to watch the interrogator leave and wait for the next man to try his luck at cracking this egg of solid stone with a toothpick.
But the next man who came in was not merely armed with a toothpick. He had a cannon.
Nick watched as a masked man entered the room and set a five-gallon bucket on the table. Steam floated from the top, dissipating on the ceiling. Bubbles lined the rim of the bucket.
Heat was bad.
Heat was very bad.
Nick winced slightly once he had a vague vision of what was going to happen to him. But it wasn't for simply upholding a reputation of stubbornness. If they knew Jon's name, Nick's capture would be for nothing.
"You know what's going to happen, don't you?" The masked man asked, clearly reading Nick's slightly pained expression. "I'll give you three more chances, but then..." He glanced over at the steaming bucket.
"Chance one. What is his name?"
Nothing.
"Chance two. What is his name?"
Nick winced again, but his stoical manner remained.
"Three. What is his name?
Silence.
The masked man sighed deeply as he moved to scoop some of the boiling water into a smaller cup. He sighed again as he moved toward Nick.
"Sorry,"
He poured the smoldering hot water from Nick's forehead so it dripped and drooled down his face. Nick struggled against the restraints holding his wrists behind him, and his body tried every possible way to move away from the boiling waterfall, but to no avail.
Nick didn't scream like a child. The noise that exited his lungs would be impossible for a child's lungs to make. The water ran down his neck and into his shirt. His skin tightened around the left side of his face where most of the water fell, soon after feeling nothing at all.
* * *
Nick woke as two prison guards dragged him toward his new home.
He tried to open his eyes, but only one complied. The other hurt too much to do much of anything. Nick groaned lightly and his head drooped.
He knew that this would be the last he saw of the outside world, so he made sure to keep at least one eye open. The two prison guards thrust him into his cell, making sure he didn't stay on his feet. Nick tumbled across the dirty floor as the two guards locked the door, snickering to each other at Nick's bumbling blindness.
The official sentence had been life imprisonment, most specifically for resisting arrest, among the other various charges related to the street fighting club and refraining from giving information, along with occasional beatings in an attempt to make him break and tell them what they wanted.
He had always been a fighter. If he needed something to change, it would be guaranteed that he would fight his way through. He always had. He had fought for his life, his freedom, his name, and sport. And guess which one finally got him in trouble.
The thing he had feared most was losing the freedom he had fought so hard to gain. Yet here he sat, having just given it up for someone else. He had broken his own promise.
After Nick had finally gained his freedom, he vowed to never lose it, no matter the cost to others. But then, at the moment he could have easily ditched his friend and saved his liberty, he broke his vow. He compromised. It came over him that whatever Jon had going, or what he was going to have, it was more worth it than Nick's own freedoms, even after a lifetime of fighting for them.
But it wasn't like he was okay with it. As he sat there and continued to think over the lost piece of him, it didn't give him a sense of righteousness. Rather, it emptied him. It made him want to scream until his lungs burst, to bang his fists on the wall until his fists bled, to kick the door until his legs snapped, to give himself some sort of adrenaline until his heart stopped, and to think and think and think until his brain short-circuited.
But he didn't. He only sat there. He sat there, in the decomposing feces of the previous occupant, and cried. It wasn't silent or held back, or pent up until he burst like a dam; it was robust, full, and completely and utterly ignorant of anything that happened around him, although nothing did.
His lungs heaved and almost gave out. His legs and arms became numb. His mind played the scene of his sacrifice over and over and over again until it almost did short circuit. His pulse swung from jumping out of his chest to shriveling up into nothing. His face and shirt were wet with tears, though they only came from one eye. He screamed, not in pain, but out of misery and anger and jealousy and regret.
Yet no one came to free him from the prison some would call the mind.