Page 72 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12
“Almost all your wounds were defensive, boy. Your body was marked with so many scars, old ones.” Richard ran his hands down Damian’s body, over the scars, old marks of an angry man, burns on his thighs, cuts on his chests, and the white nicks of belt buckles over his back and legs, faded now. “Your body told them all they needed to know. They chose not to look. Anyone at the detention center who searched you or saw you shower could read the journal of his sin written in your skin. Anyone familiar with abuse could have seen the way Dalia’s eyes flicked to Thaddeus in the courtroom when she was on the stand. We barely saved you; they wanted so badly not to hear you.”
Roaring from the inside of Damian’s head pounded in his ears. “It hurts, sir. Thinking about this. Make it stop, please. Get it out.”
Richard stepped back. The flogger came down again, not the sharp fire of the cane but deep and heavy now, the weight of Richard’s arm coming through each stroke. Damian’s body rocked forward against the cross. He stood on his toes, leaning into the pain, gritted sounds coming out from between his teeth.
“So beautiful, boy. Your struggle is beautiful.” Richard ghosted his lips over Damian’s ribs and danced over Damian’s buttocks. “Scream, I know you need to.” He gripped Damian’s ass and squeezed.
Sensations, hot, sharp, overwhelming—the rawness of breaking skin mixed with pressure—seared through Damian’s nerves.
He came down from the rush, the words tumbling from his lips unbidden. “Why didn’t they?”
Richard seemed to understand the words he didn’t say. “Because it wasn’t their pain. It wasn’t their skin. Because if you were silenced, you were an unfortunate event, but if Thaddeus was taken down, it was a communal shame. Because they could cling to tradition and rules and the assumption of no knowledge.”
“I should have made them listen. I should have figured out how.”
“You were a child.”
“I haven’t been one in years.”
Richard squeezed Damian’s other ass cheek. Damian jerked and stomped, rolling with the storm of sharp aches and burning pressure.
“You’ve become the man who could have made them listen, Damian. You’re everything now that you needed then. You’re painting the crimes against Jun like an artist for the world to see, one layer at a time. But you were not that man then.”
“That’s not what I see in their eyes.”
“Whose eyes, Pup?”
“Betti’s. Howser’s.”
Richard held him in silence, absorbing his words. When he spoke, it was low and soft and slow. “You’re not responsible for who they hate, Pup. The wounded will always find a scapegoat: themselves or someone else. Our human souls require it. They’ll rage at the safest one, not the most dangerous, the most guilty. So why is it safest, even now, for you to accuse yourself?”
Cold poured through Damian’s veins.
“No, you’re wounded. And the antidote is right there; you just refuse to drink.”
“It’s poison.” Damian shuddered, eyes closing. That lake inside him glimmered in a deep dark place, brimming up toward the surface, the color of blood in shadow under a night sky. “The moment I believe she could have done better, I’ll hate her, I’ll become her. I saw her, the way she looked at me. I CAN’T be HER!” Damian flung himself against the cross, striking out with his feet.
Richard disappeared from his back. A moment later, his hand wrapped around Damian’s ankle, pulling it toward the ankle cuffs at the base of the cross. Damian growled but didn’t fight. Richard locked both his feet wide apart, the tether so small he couldn’t hurt himself.
Damian pulled and twisted. Richard’s tools weren’t toys. They weren’t there for pretend or a thrill. They did what they looked like they should do.
He gave up, leaning forward, breath coming in harsh pants. “I can’t be a monster, Sir. I won’t become them. I’d rather die.”
“What will hating her change, boy?” Richard’s voice was soft as velvet and deep as a ravine.
Yellow. They weren’t playing. This was an edge, and he was teetering on it. Richard was holding the chalice of poison to his lips.
All he had to say was yellow. And Richard would pause, take a different tack. This would all be left for later. He’d be able to pull the stretched-out pieces of himself back together.
And be right back in the pain that had brought him to this place.
“Boy.”
Damian sobbed.
“How will you be a monster, boy?”
The words tore out of his throat. “Because THEY ARE!”
