Pavel – 3(?) Days Ago
He knelt on the familiar rug of a familiar room. The dense smell of old oak furniture nauseously infiltrated his senses and the ticking of a listless grandfather clock in the distance were echoes of the past. The light of a dingy lamp cutting through the dim hall of the study burned into his eyes. Pavel's head dropped down.
It looked the same but it wasn't.
Impossible.
The mansion that was the stage of his torment was thousands of miles away. Buried in the permafrost and falling snow of Russia, remote and hidden in the mountains. Far away, so far that it feels like it never existed beyond his haunted nightmares.
So how is he here?
How is it here?
Why is this damn house in England?
A horrible, dreadful feeling churned Pavel's already weak stomach - what if they weren't in England anymore? What if… fuck, don't fucking tell me he's taken me back there.
Clicking of hard shoes on wooden floorboards, a distinct, familiar rhythm. He knew who it was. Pavel didn't have to look up to know. "Lyev… why can't you just let us go?"
Knees dropped down to the floor in front of him and a hand softly cupped his chin, lifting Pavel's face up so he would look at him. He didn't resist. It had been a decade since Pavel had last seen Lyev and his age was beginning to show on the grey hairs peppering his temples and the deepened frown lines that Pavel had once thought were there because he smiled so much when Pavel was little. He knew better now. The hand that wasn't on his chin ran through his hair and down his long ears, caressing him far too affectionately. As Lyev had always had, he addressed Pavel in Russian: "Oh, Pasha. Are you not happy to be home? We've missed you."
Pavel spat at that ingenuine smile. The saliva dripped down Lyev's thin nose as Pavel spoke in his native tongue. For time immemorial, he had tried to scrub his links to his home country away but no more. No more. "Don't act fatherly. You can't miss me, not when you're the ones that abandoned me. Not after what you allowed to happen to me, what you encouraged people to do to me. You're sick. Fucking evil. Just let us go!" He didn't think before he spoke, not caring what punishments his impropriety would invoke.
The smile Lyev so painstakingly warped his expression into dropped to an irritated scowl that fit his wrinkling face far better. "Tsk. Silly boys shouldn't speak on things they don't understand. We love you very much, Pasha, but it seems you've forgotten your manners." A swift jolting slap whipped Pavel's head to the side faster than he could think before Lyev grabbed his chin again. Securing him in place, he stared down at Pavel with an unreadable, cold glint in his blue-slate eyes. "Monsieur will correct you. He always has."
A chill shot down Pavel's spine. His blood ran colder than cold and he was sure the colour drained from his face when he saw the satisfied smirk that curled the corners of Lyev's mouth. He patted Pavel's throbbing cheek tenderly before standing back up again, done with this act of torment. His hard-soled shoes clacked against the floorboards back to the door at the back of the room.
"He's here. Behave."
"Good evening, mon joli lapin. It's wonderful to see you in my study again. How have you been, darling boy?" Accented English brushed past Pavel's ear, a hand fell onto his shoulder and he jolted at the sudden contact. Du Rand had always moved in complete silence when he wanted, but it still stunned Pavel how easily he appeared next to him without him noticing. Even his breath couldn't be heard, not a whisper. "Not too badly, I assume, considering you've gotten yourself a beloved."
It took everything to not shoot his head up at those words. Pavel knew he had taken Azrael as well; he wasn't idiotic enough to think Lyev or Etienne would release him. There was no need to think hard to know Azrael would come for Pavel otherwise and there'd be bloody consequences at his capable hands. However, he had no clue how Du Rand had managed to that conclusion, how he knew about Pavel's feelings and about the feeling he suspected, he all but knew, Azrael harboured for him too.
"Don't you worry pretty little head, he's perfectly fine. Still unconscious but safe. I don't want to make you sad any more than I have to." The hand on Pavel's shoulder lifted and Du Rand ruffled his hair, a mockery of paternal fondness. Pavel clenched his jaw in an attempt to contain his contempt, his fear. The bilious feeling washing over him was all-consuming. "Stand up, let me get a good look at you."
Weak in the knees, but powerless to resist his commands, Pavel pulled himself up off the ground and, finally, spared Du Rand a petrified glance. He was startled to find that the man he had been fearful of, that towering, imposing man who had terrorised him until he was barely an adult, stood just short of Pavel's full height. Timidly, he bowed his head down, downplaying the few inches he had somehow sprouted since being abandoned. It was second nature to be nothing of worth. Pavel's shoulders drew in close to his neck and he waited for Du Rand to speak, to break the nothing that swaddled them.
"Don't look at the floor."
Du Rand's voice was stern but gentle. That revolting dichotomy had tricked Pavel through his young life into thinking that he was a good man, a caring adoptive father. Pavel's eyes flitted to his and he balked at the sight of that face.
Pavel had never been suspicious of his ageless appearance when he was a child but a decade had passed since his abandonment and not even a hint of Du Rand's age was showing. Etienne, that cruel man, that creature, still looked exactly the same. No wrinkles of a man who must be in his forties, no greying, not even a strand – it made Lyev seem ancient in comparison to a complexion that was so youthful it could belong to a teenager. If anything, he became younger through the years. Goosebumps spread across Pavel's skin.
"You've gotten thinner." The hands that had dropped back to Du Rand's sides were now unhurriedly patting at Pavel, touching him, pinching at the skin on his hips and the thin musculature of his upper arms. Pavel's stomach swirled and he had to fight back the urge to vomit at that presumptuous touch. "Hasn't your beau been feeding you? Or does he not care – does he like you this frail, is it some kind of turn-on?"
"You have no right to talk about him like that." The words flew out of Pavel's mouth before he could think to stop them. Etienne Du Rand had no leg to stand on to criticise Azrael; he was less than an animal, barely a person. "He's a better man than you could ever be."
Smiling wryly, Du Rand placed his hands on Pavel's shoulders and leaned in close to him, putting his lips to the sides of his ears. The fur ruffled against his skin. "He's no man; that one is just a beast pretending otherwise." Pulling back, he stared at Pavel. His pallid grey eyes, so light they could have been white, gleamed with malice. "And I never once claimed to be just a man. That lie is beneath me."
Pavel tried to tear away from him, to escape that gaze that had grown harsher in its absence but Du Rand's grip was far too strong on him. "Please. You've let me be for years, why now? Why can't you just let me die on my own?"
"I don't want that; I'd miss you too much. I've been observing you and I thought; after seeing you fumble through your own life so poorly, it would be for the best for me to look after you again." Suddenly, Pavel was wrenched forward and wrapped in a crushing, suffocating embrace. His head was forced to press again Du Rand's shoulder, one of his hands pressed against the base of Pavel's skull and the other wandering arm snaking around his waist. "I'll take you back under my care. You'll stay here for the rest of your life, with me. Doesn't that sound nice, Pasha?"
He froze.
Conscious thought escaped him.
Tears pricked his vision and all the strength in Pavel's weak limbs were sapped away entirely. A shaking breath sucked through his teeth as he resigned himself to his fate. There was nothing he could do.
Stifling fear coursed through Pavel's veins as the world spun about him, threatening to fall away entirely. Du Rand's caging embrace made the skin he was touching feel dirty, sullied. He desperately wanted to fight back but he was a child again.
Small, weak. Malleable and pathetic.
It felt like he was six years old again and he was handing his life over to this man who wanted to be his father. The man Pavel trusted to keep him safe. The man who abused that trust to tear apart his body, his mind, and his soul.
Pavel wept against Du Rand's shoulder, helplessly.
"Sh, sh, mon lapin, you'll be fine."
-
Pavel stared blankly at the ceiling of the room. Not the room, not a room – my room. Counting the boards that made up the wooden patterning, he became more and more consumed with familiarity. This room was identical to the one Pavel had run away from. Down to the grain of the wood, not a single object was out of place.
The thing that changed was the bedding.
And him.
The room felt so small now. Pavel remembered when it used to feel like it would swallow him whole if he stared too hard at the darkness that blanketed it during the night. Endless horrors lurking unseen in the shadows. Now he found comfort in that void because he knew, if the door was closed, Pavel was alone. He would be tucked away safely, even if it was just a momentary reprieve, a tiny drop of safety to be washed away by the coming tides.
Morning rays broke through the thick curtains over the windows and he sucked in a breath at the thought of what would come today. Pavel had managed to survive the night and through the early hours of the morning with no harm coming to him, but now, at the dawn of his first real day back in this house, he sensed something heavy in the atmosphere. His eyes drifted to the empty glass that stood on his bedside table and he couldn't quite remember drinking any water.
It felt strange, this morning. Like the air was thick treacle and couldn't move and he couldn't breathe and all Pavel could hear was the muffled sound of his own heartbeat. Slow and steady but ever-present. Blankly staring up at the ceiling, his vision felt like it was beginning to swirl and warp as if a black hole had opened in the centre of it all.
Pavel's senses were dulled and it took a while to come up with even a simple thought. In a delayed, stunted reaction of shock and realisation, his eyes widened and he attempted to push himself out of bed. All that happened was that Pavel tumbled back down onto the overly plush mattress.
He'd been drugged. That empty glass on the table glinted in the dusty sunbeams that spilt across the room, casting a muted shine on the walls. Pavel didn't know what it was, he was no expert in drugging, but he knew that this wasn't just nerves of excessive tiredness. He wasn't numb from fear.
This was not natural.
If he could, Pavel would be hyperventilating but it took all of his strength to just take a single breath every handful of seconds. His heart was so slow, he could have thought it wasn't beating if he wasn't painfully aware he was alive. It felt like his eyelids were as heavy as lead, impossible to move – it became a chore to open and close them at all.
Then, all at once, an invading wave of heat surged through him, pooling deep in his stomach, tingling in the tips of his appendages. An unpleasant scorching burn danced across his skin. While Pavel couldn't force himself out of bed, his body began to writhe, trying to escape the heat, to find something to relieve the hot magma that was clouding his brain. It hurt to think. It hurt to move. It hurt to lie still. Nothing he did could relieve him of that crippling agony.
As the slow breathing he had been forcing suddenly leapt into a desperate pant as if he couldn't suck in enough oxygen, Pavel knew that this was not a sedative to make him pliant. He couldn't form any thoughts but he could hear heavy footfalls coming closer and closer to his room and, as the door swung open, he slid his eyes shut in an attempt to block out what was coming. He hoped he wouldn't feel much. Pavel hoped the drugs would stop it from hurting. He hoped that they would make it feel alright, if not enjoyable.
"Pavel."
That voice. He knew that voice.
Safe.
Good.
Pavel squinted at the door and he could see the solid white figure that belonged to that voice standing there. Azrael's sudden presence was like a guardian angel appearing. Through his heavy breath, Pavel choked out his voice. "Azrael. Help, please. Wrong, it's wrong. Some…thing's wrong." He could hardly form a sentence.
Azrael was silent, unsettlingly so, as he came towards the bed. He was not a man of many words but he was never this quiet with Pavel, never one to be stoic in the face of his suffering. He wept over Pavel's problems more than he ever did; empathetic to a fault, despite all he had done and been through. Everything was incoherent, but he knew Azrael's smell, his shape, his colour – or lack thereof – so Pavel knew it must be him. Desperately, he reached his arms out to catch him, to try to pull himself off of the bed so Azrael could pick him up and take him away from this godforsaken place.
He must have gotten out of where he had been trapped, killed Du Rand, maybe Lyev too, and now Azrael was going to make it all alright. They could go home and they could be free, really, finally free.
Maybe he'd accept him too.
Maybe Azrael would tell Pavel he loves him back.
A happy ending where love prevails.
"Take me home."
But, when Pavel's hands touched his body, that frigid skin of Azrael's, he brushed them away. His arms dropped limply to his side and Pavel stared at him with his hazy vision. Closer and closer, Azrael pressed forward until all he could see was that silent white shadow.
"Azrael… what are… you doing?" He whimpered.
Weight was pressed onto Pavel's body and the mattress dipped down. Azrael was looming over him, pressing him to the bed as he panted, sweat dripping down his skin, his hair plastered to his face. Clammy, hot and wrong.
This isn't right.
This isn't right.
Azrael's hand, that hand that ended in curved talons that were still so gentle whenever he touched Pavel, slid under his shirt and scratched his scarred skin. Azrael had never even so much as grazed Pavel before even in a fit of panic but he could feel a bead of blood slipping across his ribcage as he wrenched open his shirt. This isn't Azrael.
This can't be him. He wouldn't do this.
But it was his face, fuzzy but obvious.
His horns, his wings, his scales.
The delicate colour of his deep-set eyes.
As a stabbing, tearing, wrenching pain shot through Pavel's lower body, tears drenched his face and he writhed in an attempt to escape this paralysing violation. Clawed hands wrapped themselves around his throat, choking him, cutting him. He was torn to ribbons and painted with blood as bruises bloomed like poisonous flowers.
His body wasn't his own. It never had been.
Nothing but Pavel's wails and Azrael's grunting breathing could be heard beyond the wet rubbing of their skin. Pavel's body was burning in agony as he beat against Azrael's body, desperately using his fingers to scratch him, to hurt him. Frantically, he even tried to rip off the scales on his shoulders, anything to make him stop. If he could injure Azrael enough, he would have to stop. But he didn't stop, didn't slow, not a moment of hesitation in this betrayal.
Pavel was pressed into the mattress, face down, suffocating against the pillow. His body had lost all its movement by the time he pulled off of him. Blood soaked the white bedding and god knows what fluids soaked into his skin. His torn shirt clung to him desperately.
He was no stranger to this treatment.
But it came from the face of the man he loved.
Why is he doing this?
Azrael… why are you hurting me too?
-
He came back every hour of the day. Oftentimes followed by people with mask-covered faces, unknowable people that hurt him and hurt him and hurt him. Men, women, human and not. It didn't matter.
None of it reached him.
Nothing was as agonising as the smile that warped the man Pavel's love's face as he watched him screaming, threshing, bawling for mercy. Pavel wasn't sure if the reddish tint of that woven rug on the floor had always been that colour. If that speck of scarlet on the painting hanging above his bed had always been there.
Pavel stopped fighting for a while.
It wouldn't help.
He was like wet clay in the violent grasp of these people. Pressing him into the mould of whatever they wanted him to be. As if possessed, the drugs once in his body long gone, he felt his body working with him, playing along with the actions they took. It was a desperate act of self-preservation, clinging to a lifeboat that had no space and wouldn't let him on. If he could do what they wanted, they'd hurt him less. This would all hurt less. Maybe Pavel could make it feel good.
It was just… work.
It was his job.
It'll be over.
It'll be over.
Pavel looked into those pale, amaranth eyes and he let himself drown. Deeper and deeper, he sank into the murky water until all he could see was the white-fanged maw of that man. He didn't feel anything. Pavel told himself to stop feeling.
He'd be free.
He'll be free.
Please, stop it.
I love… you.
I…
-
Sun spilled into the room. Morning was here.
Had he slept?
His body screamed when he moved.
Had he eaten?
The thought of food made him sick.
Two days, was it two days now? Three days? Was time even moving anymore? His eyes slid to the open door and Pavel stared blankly at it. It was jeering at him, laughing at his plight. He couldn't make use of this escape route and it was making fun of him for uselessness. Pavel was pathetic, like always. Unable to do anything without the aid of others.
Worthless.
Tears slid down his cheeks.
Footsteps rang down the hallway. Pavel shivered under the duvet that loosely covered the bloody bruises that made up his body. Not an inch of him was the right colour. He closed his eyes and waited for it to start all over again.
"Pavel."
He normally would have opened his eyes to Azrael's voice but he didn't want to see his face. He couldn't look at that face. That goddamn, fucking face. Pavel's voice was hoarse from overuse and he coughed out a glob of congealed blood. In a bitter, near-silent whisper, "Get it over with."
-
Another day passed. Pavel was sure he would die if this continued.
I hope.
-
Hard-soled shoes clicked towards Pavel's room and he finally opened his eyes. This was different than the last few days, this wasn't his heavy footfalls or the sound of a crowd. Just one person, one distinct person.
"Pasha, are you awake?"
Lyev stepped into Pavel's bedroom and their eyes met. The refined face that stared at him was filled with uncomfortable sympathy. He wasn't the type to be soothing when Pavel was hurt. He turned his gaze from Lyev.
"Seems you are. Get up, Monsieur wants me to take you somewhere." Lyev stood at Pavel's bedside, looking down at him with a half-hearted smile. The man had never been good at smiling, only having it in him to fake kindness when it helped himself or his master, like the good mutt he always was. Always wagging his wretched tail when his owner asked him to – it was shocking that he was actually a human. Lyev's grasped Pavel's shoulder. "I said get up."
Pavel heaved a sigh, coughing up yet another thick clot of blood that was pooling in his throat. It felt like his lungs had been dragged out of his chest. His hand was curled around his ribs, defending the wrenched open flesh from the cold air and the dirty fabric of what remained of his clothes. Numbing pain shot through his legs and spine, paralysing him. "Can't move."
"Fine."
The hold on Pavel's shoulder became tight, cutting off his arm's circulation and he was wrenched from the bed. Landing on the floor, he let out a weak cry but Pavel did nothing. He couldn't do anything at all to stop Lyev as he dragged Pavel across the wooden panels.
Blood streaked the floorboards.
He wasn't sure where it came from anymore.
Pavel stared at the receding doorway of that room and he let out a long-held breath. His vision blurred; a vignette filter covered the world as he focused on anything but what was coming. Black began to fade in.
Maybe I'll die before I wake up.