Work Text:
“Jared Hopworth?” Michael winced at the way his voice rattled through the halls, sand thrown over the surface of the water.
He was a hulking figure, Michael had felt small many times, but never in such a literal way, he towered over them. Bulking muscles seeming to take up the room as a whole.
“Jared, I need your help.” Finally he turned to face them.
“What’d you want then?”
“I want you to remove one of my ribs and give a statement, in return we’ll let you go.”
“Nah, if you want me to give you a statement you gotta have a better deal than that.”
“If- if that's not enough,” they struggled to get the words out, trying to hide a tremor they knew he couldn’t. “Then you can do something else to me, you could have one of my bones. As long as it’s not too important.” Hopefully that would be a good enough deal, knowing he could have just put his life on the line, though somehow he doubted Jared would take it.
Jared stared down at him for a moment, the pair’s eyes locking in the silence. Michael could have counted the time by how loudly his heart battered itself against his ribs.
Finally Jared spoke. “Alright,” was all he said.
Michael’s eyes screwed shut as a large muscular reached for him.
White hot pain erupted as the hand phased through his skin. They bit their lip till it bled, dug their nails into his palms, anything to try and cope with the agony of it. Beneath all that pain was a faint, almost gentle sensation of fingers brushing along his ribs, petting the bone, blindly examining them. That gentleness ended when he found a rib he deemed suitable.
There was a snap inside his ribcage, another spark of pain making his vision go white. When his sight returned to them Jared extended the bone to them. Not a crack or break in sight. They didn’t take it so he placed it on the ground beside him.
“Alright” Michael panted, hands planted the fresh gap in his ribs. “What do you want now?”
An arm reached forward, a hand with too many fingers wrapping around Michael’s wrists pulling them closer.
“Your hands are wrong.” Through skin something was shoved between their bones, extra joints twisting their fingers the wrong ways. Skin pulled taut over sharpened bone.
Michael screamed, the cries of pain turning to mad and frantic cackling as they twisted through the hallways and mirrors and portraits. New additions to their anatomy grinding against the old. Each nerve alight with agony that made his vision spot and sharpen and blur.
They didn’t process when it had ended, whether it lasted a second or an eternity he had no clue. So there he sat, knees pulled to his chest and hands held out like an offering. Eventually their ears stopped ringing, tear tracks flowing heavy down their cheeks.
“There, that’s better.”
Michael stared wide-eyed at their new hands. His fingers were too long, skin stretched and accentuating new joints and tendons.