Captivity Meme, anyone?

[gibken]

THE CAPTIVITY MEME

You've been captured -- or maybe you've been held captive for a while now. Whatever the case, you've lost your freedom, and there's a specific person responsible for that. You might be a prisoner, a mental patient, a kidnap victim, or someone's pet. Maybe you're there willingly, or maybe the choice has been taken away from you completely.

Both smut and non-smut scenarios are possible. If you don't want to play smut, please indicate so in the title line of your tag.

1. Leave a tag with your character. Be sure to include any limits on what you are willing to play, as this meme has the potential to be triggering.
2. Someone else tags in and uses RNG to generate a number between 1 and 9 (or pick your favorite). The second character is holding the first character captive now.
3. ???
4. Profit!



1. For their own good. Does this person really think they could make it on their own? It's a big, scary world out there, and you need to protect them from it, whether they like it or not.

2. For the good of society. Forget protecting this person -- it's your duty to protect the world from them! Maybe they committed a terrible crime, or maybe they were falsely condemned, but it's your job to keep them locked up where they can't do any more harm.

3. Because they're not well. How's your bedside manner? Whether you're Florence Nightingale or Mildred Ratched, you're in the position of ministering to the mentally ill. Maybe this person genuinely needs your help, or maybe you're just turning a blind eye to their true sanity.

4. For the money. Higher aims? What higher aims? This person is your meal ticket, and they're staying put until their loved ones pay up.

5. For their love. It might be a case of yandere, or it might be a consenting BDSM relationship. Whether it's by mutual agreement or by force, you're keeping them simply because you love them.

6. Because they're cute and fluffy. Who's a cutesy wutesy? They are! Yes, they are! This person is your pet now. Maybe they're a different species from you, or maybe you just don't care that you're both people. Maybe you're even an alien zookeeper looking after a new acquisition.

7. Because they're your property. Slave? Livestock? Who cares what they think - they're your property, and you decide their fate.

8. For the lulz. Hey, what's a little bondage between friends? You'll let them go, once you're done laughing and snapping photos... maybe.

9. Choose a scenario, or combine several.

Comments

[interpolate]

He's my everything. He's all I have left, I have to have him back.

I half-turn and accept the sad little excuse for a computer. I think it might do what I need, or at least confirm something.

I don't want to ask Hiromu for access to my cables, so I won't. I'll try to do this without them. It might be tricky.

I find a chair to pull up next to the bed, boot up the computer, and my fingers fly away across the keys.

[red_pleather]

I watch for a moment, but I can't follow a quarter of what he's doing, so I let my hand come up to rub my face for a moment. I'm so damn tired. Can't sleep, though. Not even if I tried. I know it wouldn't work.

[interpolate]

"Merde," I mumble to myself when I figure it out. "This is bad."

I sigh, figuring I should at least muse aloud. Hiromu might be able to help me figure out how to fix it. And he should know anyway.

"I'm not sure how, but Messiah has found some way to... exacerbate his... Weak Point, as you call it."

[red_pleather]

I blink at him. "That-- that makes sense." A horrible, painful kind of sense. "Except we've never been able to wake him up before. So I can't just intensify our usual efforts. We don't have usual efforts."

I scowl. "How do we fix it? Do you know?"

[interpolate]

"No. He wouldn't. When he sleeps in that way, he is... It's as though he's shut down. Is rebooting. It happens entirely of it's own accord..." I shake my head. "I don't know how to fix it. I could try. But I don't..."

I wince. "I'm worried I might do more damage."

[red_pleather]

I look at the monitors, and I look at Emeric.

"He doesn't have long," I say, voice cracking. "Please. Anything you can do. We are out of options."

[interpolate]

I suppose I don't have a choice. I need to wake him up, somehow. I need to override or bypass whatever mechanism it is that causes him to reboot in that way.

I bite down hard on my lip as I continue to type away, tapping in wherever I can find purchase, trying to reroute simple signals around the damage Messiah caused.

[red_pleather]

It is only my last shreds of military discipline that allow me to keep mostly *still* while he works. I can't distract him.

I do, however, reach out carefully, slowly, to take Etienne's hand.

[interpolate]

I think I've managed something. Etienne doesn't wake up, but the creases in his forehead indicating pain smooth out, and his breath evens, and I sit back from the bed with a gasping sigh. I'm actually sweating.

"I think. He might be okay."

[red_pleather]

...

He looks better.

He actually looks better, and his heartbeat's strengthened.

I wipe away a tear that's trickling down my cheek. "Thank you," I breathe.

[interpolate]

I close the computer with a weary sigh, setting it down on the floor and reaching for my brother's hand. I pat it gently, glad to feel some bit of warmth there. He'll be okay, I think. He'll be fine. But Ryuuji won't come back. Neither will the other one, their friend.

"You should probably kill me now."

[red_pleather]

My head jerks around sharply. "No. I don't kill," I say, all surprise and terseness. "Not in cold blood. And definitely not you."

[interpolate]

"It would be doing me a favor." I say wearily, shifting a bit to lean closer to my brother, lifting his hand to press my lips to it. "And protecting yourself, Etienne, and Youko. I'm dangerous, so much more dangerous now than I was. I'm just a weapon now."

[red_pleather]

"...we'll just have to keep you contained," I say tiredly. I cannot cope with this, cannot cope with such vulnerability and worry in his voice, and of course I have to anyway.

[interpolate]

I keep Etienne's hand pressed to my cheek as I speak, half to myself, barely a mumbling whisper. "I'd kill myself if I thought I could."

[red_pleather]

"Contained and under suicide watch," I correct myself. Said watch had better mostly fall to me, because I'm our best chance of keeping him contained if he really decides he wants to get out.

"You'd really leave your brother?"

[interpolate]

I lift my head to look at him, then tilt it slowly to one side, considering his words. Without my computer, with my cables contained, there's a very small chance of escaping. If he's going to keep me watched perpetually, I won't have a chance to protect them from myself. Not that I could. I'm too machine at this point, I think, to self-terminate.

"I can't hurt him again, Hiromu. When he wakes up, he'll want me dead too."

do let him break free any time you want, of course; Hiromu will cope

[red_pleather]

"He'll understand," I say at once. Not with the bright fierceness I might once have used, but I am still just as definite. "I'll explain to him about Messiah. No matter how I feel, you two should be friends."

XD

[interpolate]

"He won't." I'm crying again, but I don't care. His hand still feels too cold.

"What if it happened again? What if it's you this time? What if you just freeze and you never start moving again?" Is that what I did... what Messiah used me to do to Ryuuji? Make his Weak Point function past the point of weakness and into the point of fatality?

I feel sick but I don't think I'm physically capable of the act.

Re: XD

[red_pleather]

I sigh, because while I do not trust him, he -- he does not trust himself, and I cannot help but feel myself rising to meet this.

"Then you, or someone else, would figure out a way to fix me," I say brusquely. Or possibly they wouldn't. Possibly they'd be too late. But we can't dwell on that possibility. "We must move forward, Emeric."

I go down on one knee next to his seat, a hand on the arm of his chair. My voice is very gentle. Like dealing with a spooked horse. "He will love you. Just give him time."

[interpolate]

"That's what I'm trying to do, Hiromu." Move forward.

I close my eyes when he crouches next to me, turning my face away and struggling not to break. "I hurt him. I've hurt him so much, when all I wanted was to save him. This is my fault. Hiromu, please..."

[red_pleather]

I hate this.

I touch his shoulder, now, gently inviting him to a hug if he wants it. Dammit. I know I shouldn't do this. I am too easily swayed, too easily convinced. Everyone's right about me.

But I'm not going to stop.

"It's not your fault. Messiah used you," I say roughly.

[interpolate]

"It will use me again, and again, until it's free. You have to understand-" I choke on the words and am suddenly crying, and it's pathetic and unbecoming and terrible, but there's nothing I can do but let my worry over my brother overwhelm me.

[red_pleather]

He's actually crying, now, not just tears in his eyes, but actual sobs.

I am furious with myself for moving to take him in my arms, and furious with myself for not doing it more quickly.

I am furious that my friends were killed, and that another is only barely a few inches away from the brink of death.

However.

I am not furious at Emeric. Not any more. I can't speak, though, because the words will not come out, but at least I can hold him while he cries. I'm not completely useless, after all.

[interpolate]

When the fog clears I realize Hiromu's holding me. I'm still clutching Etienne's hand, but it takes a second to realize that he's clutching it back.

His eyes are open.

I drop his hand and throw myself away from the bed, tumbling out of Hiromu's grip and huddling in the corner as far as I can get.