Chapter Text
“Move and you’re dead.”
Wylan froze: as was customary when one felt the barrel of a gun pressing into the back of your head. He had been walking home from the tannery after yet another 12 hour shift – what was that, the ninth day in a row without a day off? The tenth? He’d lost count at this point.
Every day had seemed to blend into the next: wake up, force his body out of bed, walk to the tannery with his head down and minding his own business, work six hours on an empty stomach because he didn’t have enough money to cover three meals a day and a roof over his head. The only reliable meal he had was the one served at a discount to him and all the tannery workers: a slice of bread and a small bowl of broth that Wylan was pretty sure was leftover from the previous dinner at the tavern down the road.
After his 15 minute lunch break, he’d get back to another six hours of work, head home with his head on a swivel, watching every dark corner for danger, curl up in bed, wishing himself to sleep despite his stomach feeling like it was turning in on itself and the muscles in his body throbbing from the days work. Finally, eventually, sleep would pull him under, and then he would wake up to the chiming of the church bells and do it all over again.
That had been his life ever since he had pulled himself out of the canal that fateful night his father had tried to have him killed. He was a fool for thinking he was really being sent off to music school. When had been the last time his father had actually done something kind for Wylan? Going to school to study music would have been a blessing. He should have known better than to trust his father would do something good.
He had spent his first couple of days convinced this could be the start of a new life: one he could shape himself and not worry about having his father looking over his shoulder every minute, waiting for Wylan to mess up again so he could prove he was right, that Wylan truly was good for nothing.
His spirit hadn’t lasted much longer after his kruge ran out. He had managed to find a boarding house with cheap lodging and a job at the tannery, but day after day of barely making enough to survive, saving his little earnings to “treat” himself to a second meal every other day, had worn him down. The night he had found himself digging through the trash, looking for something, anything to eat, had been the night he really had broken.
Luckily, at least, he was starting to get used to being hungry.
He had found himself wondering what the point of anything was anymore. It was getting harder every morning to force himself out of bed. Some days he was able to rally, count to three and force himself to sit up. Other days he had to roll out of bed, the threat of falling face first on the hard floor the only thing that would actually get his muscles to move. Most days, though, he found himself lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, mind completely blank because he was too numb to think. Getting docked pay was barely enough motivation to force himself up on those days. Why should he care if he had to skip dinner another night? It would just give him more time to sleep anyway.
The long hours and lack of adequate food had made him more careless than usual. That must have been why he hadn’t noticed someone sneaking up on him until it was too late, until the cold steel of a gun had pushed its way past his curls that had started to mat (Wylan simply didn’t care enough anymore) and made itself known at the base of his skull.
This is it. He found himself thinking. This is how I die.
“Empty your pockets,” a man behind him said. “Give me everything you have, and we’ll both go on our way.” Wylan still didn’t move. Was this better? To be shot in the middle of the street rather than starve to death in his bed? It was dark and it was late, but that wasn’t why Wylan knew no one would come to help him. It was simply because he was a nobody in the barrel.
No one had helped him since that first night when he found himself wandering and cold, shivering and struggling to speak with how much his throat hurt. He had seen people look at the bruising on his neck – he had always bruised so easily – a clear imprint of a hand. The best he had gotten was a woman sucking her teeth, looking at him with so much pity that Wylan hadn’t even been comforted, just ashamed. No one had helped him then. Why would anyone help him now?
The gun pressed harder into his head. “Are you deaf or are you just stupid?” his assailant asked. “Give me all your money. Now!”
This was it. This was the kindest thing someone would ever do for him: shoot him through the head, finally putting an end to his suffering. Wylan turned around so he could see who had accosted him. He had figured he wouldn’t be able to get a look, considering the first thing he had been told was “move and you’re dead”, but he was able to turn around fully.
The gun still hovered in front of his face, now an inch or two away from his forehead, but he could see his attacker properly now. He looked the man up and down. He had never seen him before, but that didn’t mean much. Wylan had probably yet to see most people the barrel had to offer. The other man wasn’t necessarily big, but he was tall, scrawny in a way that underfeeding did to a person, but the sheer size of his frame would have been enough to make Wylan cower a few weeks ago. That felt like a lifetime away at this point.
“You might as well just shoot me now,” Wylan told him. He saw the man’s brows furrow, but that was the only reaction he got out of him. When he didn’t move, Wylan reached both his hands into the pockets of his thin coat, not bothering to move slowly. He pulled the fabric inside out, letting a wad of tissues fall to the cobblestone street, but nothing else came out. “See?” he asked. “I don’t have anything on me.”
“Your coat then,” the man said, “Give me your coat.”
Wylan sighed. Why hadn’t the man just shot him already? He really had liked his coat, but he also supposed he didn’t need it where he was going. He might as well make sure his possessions went to good use. He shrugged his jacket off his shoulders, moving more abruptly than needing, trying to trigger the man into actually pulling the trigger. He pulled the sleeves off of his arms, letting the cool Ketterdam night air start to chill him.
He handed the coat over to the man, who snatched it from him, but didn’t leave.
“Give me the rest of your clothes too.”
Wylan narrowed. “No,” he said simply. If he was going to die, he was going to die with some dignity left, not stripped naked for the rats to find. He stared the man down, waiting for him to kill him. He didn’t.
He did cock the gun though, pushing it forward so it pressed into Wylan’s forehead. “What the fuck is wrong with you, kid?” the man asked. “Give me your damn clothes.”
“No,” Wylan said, firmer this time. He was tired, so so tired. He just wanted this all to be over. He stepped forward, letting the gun press even harder against his bare skin, forcing a slight bend in the other man’s arm to keep the gun aimed. “Get on with it and shoot me.”
A pause.
Then pain radiating from his cheekbone. Wylan spun around as the man hit him with the butt of his gun, the force turning him and making him stumble. Out of instinct, he managed to stay on his feet. He turned his face back, just in time for the man’s other first to connect with his jaw, sending pain all throughout his skull as his teeth cracked against each other.
Wylan went down this time, the sharp pain from the initial blow dulling to a roaring pulse as he felt a kick to the stomach. He curled in on himself, muscle memory taking over. This is okay. He told himself. It’s not as quick as a gunshot, but at least it will be over soon.
Another kick. The toes of a boot connected with Wylan’s sternum, knocking all the wind out of him. Wylan gasped, willing air into his lungs. His body had some practice with having his air cut off now, so he managed to take a deep, gasping breath before– another kick. This one made contact with his shoulder, forcing Wylan onto his back.
He looked up through the slanted rooftops and twisted buildings to the black sky above. The view was more crowded down in the barrel, houses built closer together and random additions being put on top of older dwellings when the rooms were filled to bursting with people. Through the gap between two roofs, Wylan was just barely able to see a few lights flickering in the distance. He wondered if maybe once he was dead, just maybe, he’d be allowed to become a star, or at least float among the cosmos in blissful nothingness.
Another kick, to his side this time, the sound of a rib cracking and bright white flashing in Wylan’s vision. He stopped paying as much attention after that. He was dimly aware of the boot continuing to make contact with his body, of the other man eventually bending down and using his fists as well.
But Wylan was used to treatment like this. His father had liked to use a belt, forcing Wylan onto his knees or bent over with his hands on his father’s desk as he whipped him. Sometimes it was for things Wylan deserved, like failing a task his father gave him because of his inability to read, or messing up one of his flute pieces in front of his father’s guests and embarrassing his family. Other times it was for smaller infractions: forgetting to address his father with his proper title, not responding quickly enough when asked a question, talking out of turn. Sometimes, he thinks his father just did it because he wanted to.
Or maybe it was because he had accepted his fate this time. It had been harder when he had been at home, to take the beatings. He had always found himself trying to go numb, to visit a place in his head where no one hurt him, where his mama was still around to protect him, a world where he was the son his father had always wanted. But he was always dragged back to his reality, either by his father’s harsh words or a particularly hard lash.
This time, Wylan wasn’t trying to block it out with the fairytale of a life he didn’t deserve. Instead, he was letting it happen, welcoming it even. The man reached down, grabbing the front of Wylan’s shirt in his hand and bringing his fist down against Wylan’s temple. Wylan’s head smacked into the stones on the ground and sharp, shocking pain splintered through every fiber of his being, quickly sparking from his skull down through his spine and not dissipating until it had traveled all the way to the tips of his toes.
He laid there, dazed, as he heard the man start to move. He felt hands in his pants pockets, turning him over briefly to reach all the way down to the bottom, only to find Wylan had been telling the truth when he said he had nothing on him. This is it. He thought. He figured the man would be so infuriated that Wylan had nothing, that all he got was a stupid coat, that he’d either continue to beat Wylan to death, or he’d take his gun back out and pull the trigger.
What he wasn’t expecting was to feel a tug at his belt.
“Useless, good for nothing skiv,” the man was saying. He got the buckle undone and pulled the leather through the belt loops, tossing it to the side. “If I’m not going to get any money from you, I might as well have some fun.”
No. He heard the sound of another belt being undone, but given that his had already been removed, Wylan’s heart sank as he realized what was happening. “No,” he said, out loud this time, but quiet, his body not fully back online yet after the blow to his head. He opened his eyes, trying to look his attacker in the face, but he found his vision blurry.
The man laughed at him. “Don’t worry, pretty boy,” he spat the words at Wylan. “Let me take what I want, and you’ll get to go home soon enough.”
Go home? Go home? Wylan could never go home again. Not because he wasn’t welcome, not because his father didn’t want him, but because he had no home. His home had died the day his mama did, the day the last person who would ever love him left this Ghezen forsaken earth. There hadn’t been a home for Wylan to return to for over half his life.
“Just kill me,” Wylan asked, but he must not have been loud enough, because he felt hands at the waistband of his pants, starting to pull them down. He grabbed the hem, keeping the fabric in place. “Just kill me,” he said, louder now, but still muffled where his face was pressed into the rocks.
This wasn’t how it was going to go. He wasn’t going to suffer through all of this, attempted murder at the hands of hired thugs by his father, weeks of starving and back breaking labor at the tannery and an attempted mugging, all to be violated and sent back to his sisyphean life of suffering.
The boot came back down, removing one of Wylan’s hands from his pants and crushing his fingers beneath the heel. Wylan cried out. “Stop squirmin’,” the man said. The gun came back, pressing against Wylan’s head again as the man tried to pull his pants down.
Wylan turned over, staring down his would be rapist. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but red swam in his right eye as blood trickled into it from a wound on his temple. “Kill me,” he said.
“What?”
Wylan spat out the blood that had been pooling in his mouth. He must have bit his lip open when he got kicked in the jaw. “Kill me,” he repeated. The other man didn’t move, so Wylan propped himself up on his elbows. He still didn’t get shot. “Come on,” he goaded, “Do it. Kill me.”
When he still wasn’t dead, he figured he would need to push just a little bit more. He forced himself to his feet despite every muscle in his body screaming at him to stay still, maintaining eye contact with the man the entire time, daring him, willing him, begging him to just pull the trigger already.
“Come on!” he raised his voice, enough that the man actually stepped back from him. Wylan followed. “Shoot me.” He grabbed the man’s wrist, forcing the gun back to his forehead and tightening his grip around the man’s hand. “Shoot me already!”
“You’re fucking crazy, kid.”
“Shoot me!” Wylan was screaming now, his grip continuing to tighten around the man’s hand even as he started to feel him try and pull back. It would be so easy now, so easy to just press his own finger against the trigger, pull it back and blow his brains out, end everything once and for all.
He wanted to. Wylan wanted to do it so badly, but he found he couldn’t actually make himself go through with it. He was so inept, so incompetent in life that he couldn’t even kill himself. “Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!”
The man finally pulled his hand away, shock and fear plain on his face at Wylan’s outburst. He pulled his other hand back to throw another punch, but he had telegraphed it too well.
Wylan didn’t know what came over him in that moment. Maybe it was because he thought that if the man started beating him again, he would just beat him into submission and then try and rape him again. Maybe he thought the man would hit him once and then run away, clearly scared and unnerved by Wylan’s reaction.
Maybe, some part of him, wasn’t willing to be someone’s punching bag anymore.
He ducked, the man’s fist flying over his head, causing him to stumble with the force of his missed punch. Wylan ran forward, pushing his shoulder into the man’s stomach and driving the both of them back until he slammed his attacker against the side of the one of the buildings. “Kill me!” Wylan screamed again. He stood up, his own first coming up and connecting with his attacker’s cheekbone.
Pain exploded through Wylan’s hand. It had been the one that had gotten stomped on, probably a few fingers broken in the process, but Wylan didn’t care. He had never punched anyone before, no matter how many times he had fantasized about finally standing up to his father. He knew he had done it wrong when he felt a popping of his thumb where he had tucked his other fingers around it. Great, he thought, such a failure I can’t even throw a proper punch.
He tried again, this time with his thumb tucked on top of his other fingers. He didn’t even register the burning hot intensity in his thumb as he forced it into position. He didn’t feel his knuckles split either, didn’t notice the man’s teeth cracking against the brunt of Wylan’s fist. The pain only just barely registered, tickling the back of his brain. He threw another punch, trying to feel the pain more intensely, to feel anything.
“Fucking bastard!” Wylan yelled. The man started to slump against the wall, his body trying to slide down to the floor. Wylan grabbed his shirt and forced him back up, switching sides and starting to hit him with his other fist. “Fucking coward! Useless!”
He hit the man again, and again, and again. When his hand felt too heavy, when he realized he no longer had the strength to hold the man up and continue beating him, he let him slump down to the floor, trading the blows of his fits to kicks.
“Can’t do anything right!” He kicked the man in the stomach. “Can’t beat me!” Another kick. “Can’t rape me!” Another kick. “Can’t even fucking stand up on your own!” Another kick. The man had been groaning at first, but he had gone quiet now.
Wylan crouched down, thinking for a moment that he was just going to check if his assailant was still breathing, but ending up throwing another punch when he saw him blink.
“All you had to do was pull a trigger!” he was screaming his head off, sure to have woken up everyone of the street. Of course, no one came out to see what was going on. “But you can’t even do that! Good for nothing piece of shit! Can’t do anything right! Can’t even read! Just fucking kill me.”
Adrenaline had been running through him, lighting him up like one of the small pyrotechnic explosions he used to like to make with the chemicals at the tannery during his free time, before his limited diet had slowly sapped any extra energy from him. It had been fueling him, lighting him up from the very inside and bursting out through his fists as he beat the other man over and over again.
But as the whimpering of his victim started to quiet, so did the rest of Wylan’s world. His head stopped spinning and instead felt kind of fuzzy like it did when he first woke up in the morning, before the gnawing pains in his stomach came back to full force. His vision started to go a little blurry and he swiped at his eyes.
His hands came away wet. Wylan cursed himself for crying, for being so weak he couldn’t keep himself together, but when he looked down at his hands he saw they were less wet and more accurately bloody. There were cuts all over his knuckles, blood dripping from them, but also on his fingers and his wrists. Some of it was his, most of it wasn’t.
He blinked. Then he threw another punch.
His vision started to get fuzzy around the edges like his head, and he could feel his strength leaving him. Whatever burst had gotten him through the fight was leaving him now. “Please,” he wasn’t crying, but he was begging. It felt like all of his energy was leaving him now. “Please, just kill me.”
He collapsed with his back against the wall, head falling back and making a cracking noise. Wylan couldn’t feel it.
“Please kill me,” he continued begging. At this point he didn’t know who he was talking to: maybe his attacker turned victim, maybe to himself, or even to Ghezen himself. No one answered his prayers though.
The one person he certainly wasn’t talking to was the only person in that alley that actually heard him. Wylan saw him out of the corner of his eye, wearing a long brown coat over such an obnoxiously purple shirt that Wylan could still see it in the dark. His top hat was pulled tightly over his head so that the rim covered most of his face. Still, somehow, Wylan could feel the other man’s gaze on him. He felt calm spread through his body. Or maybe that was just the cold.
“Thank you,” Wylan whispered. This must have been an angel, or a saint, or a reaper. Wylan didn’t care. All he knew was that someone had answered his prayer and was here to end his suffering. His eyes began to droop as the figure walked toward him. Wylan wanted to stay awake for just a moment longer, to say something else, to look this newcomer in the eye and thank them for saving him from this life of pain.
Instead, everything went black.