Work Text:
A Traitor Deserves
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Harbor wants to wipe his bloody nose, but he can't, not with his arms cuffed behind his back. He's not allowed to be pink, to be like the others, to be a proper Octarian anymore; if he switches color, if he changes form, the splatoon of guards will permasplat him.
And he deserves it.
“No, Great DJ,” he says, though it comes out slurred from the trial of talking with his face in this state. “I failed. I didn't bring back my si—Marina Ida, defector.”
“You did not,” he says. “You've been to the surface. You were a drain on your splatoon. And you were splatted without raising a weapon.”
“I thought—”
“No,” he says, and Harbor swallows back a response. “You don't think. That's the problem, Harbor. So now we have to decide what to do with you.” Then his DJ smiles. “It's good for you I have an idea.”'
Knowing there's a plan makes Harbor feel comforted, at least until his DJ curls a tentacle closer and yanks off his hypnoshades.
Harbor gasps.
With his shades off, the darkness presses against him, stone on rock on stone. The gleam of others' hypnoshades surround him, the twinkling of dim LED's on strings around the edges of the room, all of it's so different from the surface he sees through his shades, both in remembrance and when he was up there, that for the first time in his life
he fears the dark.
“May darkness hold me safe,” he whispers, as the Elites holding his arms haul him upright and drag him from the room. “May darkness hold me safe. Into darkness we are born, and the darkness protects.”
“It won't protect you now,” says his DJ conversationally, and Harbor loses it to sobs. He doesn't know where he's being dragged. It doesn't matter.
Except it does, because he's dragged into an empty octagon in the center of the military base, used for awards and executions, and in the center is the Inkling Idol whose shades are under such tight control a full splatoon is always adjusting what she hears and sees. She's bent over executioner's rock, muttering something, a roller illuminated by her hypnoshades. There isn't enough light for anything else.
So when he's dumped to the ground, he struggles to his knees. She turns her back; he can't even see her, shadows in darkness. He looks around, all directions, trying to see something by the light of the audiences' shades, but it's the grunt of her hoisting the roller that allows him to locate her. “ Is there anything you want to say? ” she asks, the light of her glasses boring into his eyes.
Tears well in his eyes, but he blinks them away. “ Make it quick. ”
She jumps and pulls back the roller, and he's not going to close his eyes, he's going to watch, he's sobbing he can't stop have some dignity in death Harbor keep your eyes open as
it misses and comes down to the side.
Harbor's legs give out, and he falls on his face on the ground. “I think you have more to tell us. Take him to Cellblock C. I'll be there after he's had some time to think.”
He's been spared.
Why did she spare him?
He has nothing else to contribute.
The elites take his arms and haul him up, and he tries, he tries to support himself, but after that...
They let him live.
He must have more to contribute.
Wherever he goes next, he owes his life. And he'll be the best Octarian ever at it, to ensure they never regret it.