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The funny thing was that fifteen was supposed to be a good birthday.
It was supposed to be a good birthday, but there was a gun to Oz’s head, and his throat was raw from screaming, and Gilbert was lying in a bloody heap on the group, and Oz’s nice starched shirt was soaking wet with blood, and the blood was coming from a stab wound, and the stab wound had come from—
Gilbert was lying in a bloody heap on the ground. Oz hadn’t meant to hurt him, truly he hadn’t, he’d only meant to yank away from whoever had stabbed him because today was his birthday, there was a party tonight and Gil was coming and so were so many of his uncle’s friends and Oz would greet them all and then go off with Gil and have fun over in the corner where they wouldn’t be bothered, and he wouldn’t even need to employ his usual tricks to keep Gilbert’s attention on him alone, because today was his birthday and today was special.
Gilbert was still breathing, bleeding on the floor, the pavement turning a sticky red, red to match Oz’s shirt’s new color, red to match the blood on the knife still in Gilbert’s hand.
Why was there a knife in Gilbert’s hand?
Oz hadn’t meant to hurt Gil. He liked to tease him, and when Gil cried and went to Oz for protection Oz felt grown up and strong, but he had never wanted to really hurt him. Oz had just been surprised by the knife in his chest, that was all. He hadn’t meant to hurt Gil. If he’d realized it was Gil’s hand holding the knife he would have accepted it and let himself be killed.
But Gil wouldn’t hurt him, not ever, not really. Gil wouldn’t. There was no way Gilbert had been the one to stab Oz.
Gilbert was lying in a bloody heap on the ground and it was all Oz’s fault.
The worst part was that Oz couldn’t even go to him, couldn’t do a thing to try and staunch the bleeding, to put his best and only friend back together, because there was a gun to Oz’s head and if it shot him through he couldn’t do a damn thing for Gil.
Gilbert was the most important person in Oz’s life.
Gilbert didn’t want Oz to call him his best friend because of an old friend of his who’d died.
Gilbert was lying in a bloody heap on the ground. Oz was still screaming.
Oz hadn’t known he was hurting Gil when he twisted around and yanked the knife out and shoved its tip back at the person who stabbed him, whoever that may be. The person holding the gun to his head was in the wrong position to have stabbed Oz, after all, though their long red coat was the same color as the blood pooling under Gilbert.
Gilbert always vomited at the sight of blood. He hadn’t vomited just yet.
But Gil was still alive! He was okay! He had to be! Oz wouldn’t accept anything different! Gil had to be okay!
“Stop screaming,” said the low voice of the man with the gun. “Start walking.”
Oz did neither of those things, continuing to stand still and scream, his voice a loud, breaking warble that only barely resembled Gilbert’s name at this point. Oz was not often given to screaming or hysterics—when he was younger, if he’d cried or thrown a fit about anything, his father would lock him in his room for a day or two, only giving Uncle Oscar the key to let him out when he was leaving again, and Oz had learned his lesson quickly, though that didn’t stop him from getting locked away whenever his father didn’t want to lay eyes on him.
This screaming wasn’t entirely uncalculated, however; they weren’t very far from his family’s house or from town, and surely, surely someone would hear.
The gun was removed from Oz’s head, and he scrambled towards Gilbert, sprawled bloody on the ground, but the bullets reached him first; Gilbert let out a pained whimper, and Oz froze, going suddenly silent.
“Get in the van, quietly, ” said Oz’s captor, “or I shoot him again.”
Oz’s fingers twitched towards Gilbert’s prone body, brushing his hair out of his eyes and deftly plucking a thin plastic rectangle off of the ground, concealing it in his pocket as he silently followed the red-hooded man with the gun into the white van.
A white van; how cliche. Oz would have laughed if they weren’t leaving Gilbert behind, crumpled on the ground. But—maybe Gil would be okay! Maybe some kind adult would find him, and call an ambulance, and get Gil to the hospital and to safety.
And maybe the man herding Oz into the back of the van and handcuffing him to the ground was secretly Uncle Oscar, pulling out all the stops for a surprise party.
Yeah fucking right.
At some point, the van stopped; the man driving it got out and a young woman got in, blonde and friendly. She patted Oz’s head, called him “little boy”, and put a straw in his mouth. When Oz experimentally sucked it, he found it was apple juice, cool and sweet and, surprisingly, undrugged; his head remained clear throughout the rest of the time she drove the van, however long that was, though he was deeply bored and found his mind wandering back, again and again, to Gilbert’s small, bleeding form.
He didn’t ask the woman if Gil was alright, though; he didn’t want to let another enemy get the chance to hurt Gilbert for Oz’s cooperation. Even though there was no point in his fighting now—either he’d be rescued or he wouldn’t, either Gil would recover or he’d die, and Oz had no control over either situation.
The next driver wasn’t as kind as the woman; he gave Oz neither food nor drink, and he blasted The Wiggles for the young girl in the passenger seat next to him. Oz dozed, eventually; The Wiggles faded and were replaced by a podcast on the history of incest, peppered with a young man’s voice pausing it to explain to someone named Noise on how each of those points proved that he had absolutely no incestuous feelings towards his brother at all, in any way. This was interesting, and a little bit funny, so Oz lifted his head slightly and made sure to listen. He wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of Noise, but the young man had dusty blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, and his slender, lithe figure seemed far too elegant to belong to a kidnapper.
Something about his bearing, about his posture, about his gestures at the steering wheel reminded Oz of Gilbert so much that it burned, though not only was Gilbert an only child, Oz was certain that, were Gilbert to have siblings, he’d never once need to defend himself against accusations of incest.
Eventually, though, Mr. Incest and Noise were replaced again, though Mr. Incest—heterochromatic, Oz realized, with a gold eye that looked so much like Gil’s Oz’s heart hurt—placed a couple bitter tablets on Oz’s tongue after he parked and held Oz’s mouth closed until they were totally dissolved and then swallowed, and Oz felt a warmth crash against him and begin sweeping him away. Mr. Incest pulled away uncaringly once Oz was no longer able to focus his eyes, but by then Oz no longer quite remembered where he was or what was happening, and so he groggily called after him.
“...Gil…? Gil…please don’t go…”
The man’s step stuttered, or maybe Oz just imagined it; regardless, the van’s door shut, and by the time Oz woke up, the sun was far higher in the sky than it had been before, and the van far hotter and emptier (and it smelled far worse) and, in the few glimpses Oz caught out the window, it appeared to be somewhere utterly and entirely different.
Oz was beyond caring, though. His head hurt, and he was scared, and he thought he might have soiled himself, and Gilbert wasn’t here to show off to or protect, and Ada wasn’t here and neither was Uncle Oscar, and Oz was, in fact, entirely alone.
More time passed. The van grew hotter, and then the sky grew darker, and Oz thought drowsily that the van might be cooling again, though he wasn’t sure. He was so, so hot, and so, so tired, and all his cares were so far away they might never have existed at all. He fell asleep again, if sleep you could call it, and half-awoke to someone undoing his restraints and half-dragging, half-carrying him out of the van.
“‘ncle Osc’r?” Oz mumbled, though he was given no response, and blearily blinked a few times before a young man, all lean muscle and long, Vessalius-golden hair, came into his fuzzy vision. The man was carrying Oz, now, as though he weighed no less than a child’s toy, across some expanse and then inside a door, where a shock of cold informed Oz that there was air conditioning.
The few remaining tense muscles relaxed at the cold blast, and for a moment, Oz allowed himself to hope that he’d been rescued by some relative or other—maybe even his father—but that hope crumbled away to ash as he was dropped unceremoniously on a cold concrete floor that would have felt good if the impact hadn’t pulsed its way through Oz’s bones, and if the man’s hand hadn’t gripped so tightly it hurt Oz’s chin and raised it up so that their eyes met, green to Vessalius emerald green.
“You are not a person,” said Oz’s unnamed relative. “You are my weapon. Nothing you have ever held in your hands…nothing you have felt, or thought, or owned…none of that was ever real. You are nothing other than a tool for me to use. Do you understand?”
“Uncle Oscar’s gonna come after me,” said Oz, because that was the sort of thing you said in a situation like this. “He’s gonna come find me and kick your ass.”
Oz’s unnamed relative smiled. “Don’t be stupid, Oz,” he said. “Why would your uncle care enough to go after a worthless little drag like you? Your only value is and has ever been as my weapon; it’s why I purchased you from your father, after all.”
Somewhere inside of him, Oz felt something he couldn’t name go cold and shrivel up. “What about Gil?” he whispered, though he could think of nothing he wanted less than Gilbert anywhere near this man.
“What about him?” Oz’s unnamed relative asked. “Why would he care that much? How would he even find this place?”
Two good points: Gil did, definitely, care about Oz—it was the only thing in the world Oz had ever been sure of—but there was no way he cared enough to search Oz out, especially after…everything that had happened before Oz’s capture, and besides, Oz didn’t even know where he was—Gil definitely wouldn’t either.
“I guess you’re right,” Oz conceded. “I don’t think I’ll be a good weapon, though. I’ve been told I’m a worthless waste of space that ought never to have been born.”
“And that’s true, about weapons that aren’t performing their proper jobs,” Oz’s unnamed relative pointed out. “You won’t do that to me, will you, Oz?”
“...No,” Oz said. “And…I don’t understand, but I accept what you want from me.”
Oz’s unnamed relative released Oz’s chin and ruffled his hair. “I’m sure you’ll understand it eventually,” he said. “My name is Jack.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Oz said politely, pushing himself up into a sitting position.
Jack smiled at him and ruffled his hair again—Oz tried to both keep from flinching at the touch and from feeling comforted, and failed on both counts.
Then Jack closed the door, and Oz heard his footsteps tapping away, and slowly, his muscles burning and protesting after having spent the past however long it had been in the same position, looked around the room.
It was more of a cell, bare concrete walls and utterly empty other than a single bucket in the corner—empty, though Oz had a terrible, sneaking suspicion of what it was for. There were fluorescent lights in the ceiling, though no lightswitch or anything he could see, and there was no handle on his side of the heavy metal door.
In short, there was no way for Oz to escape here, no matter what form that escape took; he could only wait for rescue or give in. Which to do? Jack seemed loathsome; he also seemed like the sort of man who had no need for lies.
What to do? Oz was alone, with nobody on his side. Jack seemed determined to turn Oz into a weapon, which—better Oz was taken than Gilbert, but for what reason was this happening at all?
Oz sighed, settling into the corner opposite the bucket and farthest from the door, tucking his head against the wall. He supposed he didn’t have to decide whether or not to give in now: if Jack was to be believed, he had the rest of his life to choose.
…If Oz believed Jack, then he had already made his choice, and that very fact burned.