Chapter Text
It wasn’t a bad plan. Not by their standards. Sneak out the rusted hole. Just the two of them - no one else. What are the chances for them to be seen? They’re small. If no one’s looking - why shouldn’t they pass unnoticed?
For the record, Jedediah insists it was Octavius’s cape that gave them away. Even at their size, the thing was probably like a flag to a bull, whipping around like that. Octavius might insist it was the sound of Jed’s hard-heeled boots hitting the tile floor, the clicking much louder than the Roman’s own sandals.
Or Jed imagined he might say that. If they ever met again.
When the giants turned their gaze on him, Jed knew instinctively what had to be done. Only one of them had a chance to escape, and it had been Jed’s idea to go. He’d dragged Octavius into yet another of his hairbrained schemes - but if Octavius could escape, the plan hadn’t failed yet.
Oct didn’t want to run. Of course he didn’t. Too honorable, too dramatic, too ready to dismiss the option out of hand. But Oct was practical, too, in a way Jed wasn’t. A realist, a strategist, a master of the long game.
If Oct knew that Jed refused to leave (stubborn, impulsive, beyond reason or argument) then one of them needed to escape. He would go to find backup and he would return, but he would leave.
“Ol’ Jedediah’ll be fine,” Jed nearly whispers, more to himself than to anyone else, trying to convince himself he isn’t shaking, and tells the twisting snarl in his chest that the sight of the retreating Roman cape is good. This is what he wants.
Of the two gangsters, the closer one is coming for him. The farther one, slowed down by skirting around the table, is making a break for Octavius. Jed refuses to allow one finger to be laid on his friend.
“You back away from him, or I’ll shoot! Right in your dad-gum eye, I’ll get ya!”
The giant pauses, holds a hand up to block his face, squints at Jed’s outraised pistol. It’s enough. Octavius passes from view, the split-second distraction all he needed, and then fingers the size of his body have snatched him from the ground. The hand squeezes his arms against his sides and Jed is rocketed to eye level so quickly his neck aches from the whiplash.
“Shoot us, ‘eh?” The giant snarls. From this close, the man’s face is distorted, each feature standing out in horrible relief. “Y’know, we got some pea-shooters ourselves.”
The hideously long barrel of the giant’s gun lowers to rest against Jed’s chest as the hand gripping him switches to pinching the back of his collar. The metal of the barrel digs a ridge into his chest, an immovable object with an infinitely long void dropping down the shaft.
Jed stares into it, lightheaded and praying. This isn’t how he goes out. One bullet and he’s split in half, and he can barely hold on to his guns with how badly his hands are shaking.
The safety, switched off. A giant finger on a trigger-
CLICK
Jed jerks with his whole body, nearly fumbles his guns and takes a wrenching gasp as the barrel moves away, leaving him swinging, unmoored.
“They don’t seem to work too good for us. I don’t think yours are any better.”
Wordless, Jed holsters his weapons, gaze flicking between the two men. The other giant frowns, narrowing his eyes.
“The other little creep got away.”
Even having seen Octavius’s escape, relief floods Jed like a tidal wave. Octavius isn’t here. He’s safe. Whatever they do to Jed, however many pieces he ends the night in - Octavius has been spared.
“Boss won’t like that,” Jed’s giant scowls. “What didja have to do a thing like that for?”
The pinching fingers toss Jed in the air only to catch him again, knocking the breath out of him, only to press his body between his thumb and the side of his pointer finger.
“You know what we do to little rats?” He spits, bringing up a hand to flick Jed upside the head, hat barely clinging on to his head. Jed tries to shake his head to clear it, grasping at the thumb and blinking away stars.
“We drown ‘em in the river, that’s what.”
Drowning. Jed has drowned before. It was the last thing he ever did, once. Surrounded by unfriendly hands, pierced and hurting and-
The colossal hand shakes him - not as roughly as it could have, but enough to send his head snapping back and forth as his arms scramble for purchase.
He hates being manhandled.
“Don’t… don’t manhandle me,” he manages, and feels a little more like himself, a little more in the moment.
“Oh, it thinks it gives the orders. How cute.” The giant turns, scoffing, to his friend. “What ain’t cute is what the boss is gonna do to us when he hears we let your little friend escape.”
“You said it,” agrees his friend, delivering Jed another flick to the head that sends strobe lights flashing across his eyes. This time his hat does fall, but a giant hand sweeps it up and shoves it back on his head,, leaving him squirming to push it out of his eyes.
“Somebody’s gotta pay for that.” So spoken the fingers across his chest tighten - a widespread tightening vice, Jed’s breath coming shallow and quick because he can’t breathe he can’t nearly fill his lungs and the pressure gets tighter and tighter and his fingers scrabble claw-like across giant skin and his legs twitch and jerk like a man being hanged.
One final jerk to send his neck whipping back and forth and the pressure is released, leaving him gasping and choking as tears well up in his eyes. Blinking furiously, Jed ducks his head until they can be pressed back. He’ll be trice damned before he lets some gigantic freak see him cry.
“Y-you got no idea how to treat a prisoner,” Jed manages, lifting his shaking head. Everything is still spinning, a little, and the lights are too bright, but he can’t give up now. “Gonna beat the life outta me before you even take me to your leader?”
“Don’t see what Kamunrah could want with you,” Jed’s giant scowls, shifting his thumb from horizontal across his chest to straight over his chest and stomach. He hates the way it presses against the soft unprotected expanse of his stomach, and tenses as hard as he can to compensate.
“Ain’t that for him to decide?” Jed throws out, desperately. “You can only kill me once, kemosabe; can’t bring back your only prisoner after he’s had his last hoedown.”
Hateful eyes squint thoughtfully, and Jed is tossed half a foot into the air and caught twice before being raised to eye level again, that same thumb back to just pressing at his chest. Jed can’t even look him in the eyes now, the room spinning out of control.
Octavius is safe. He imagines Octavius in the other man’s hand, squirming and protesting and shaking and trying to hide it and he knows that no matter what happens, he would choose this again. Nothing they can do to him will change that.
“And what about you is worth his time, little man?”
“D-dang it, you don’t even know what you don’t know I know! I could have… all kindsa information up in this head o’ mine and you’re liable to waste it!”
“What kind of information?” The fingers press harder again, and Jed feels his ribs creak at the abuse. He hates being manhandled. Hates it.
“N-not… tellin’.”
The thumb shifts, centering itself on his chest. “You better sing, canary, if you know what’s good for you.”
Before Jed knows what’s happening, pain is exploding in his right side, the giant pinching from his hip to halfway up his ribs in a blinding motion of agony. There’s a snapping sensation that must be at least one of his ribs and Jed instinctively tries to curl into himself, but only ends up twisting over that immovable thumb.
Jed can’t help the cry that escapes him, twisting as much as he is able and grinding down his jaw as much as he can. A giant finger taps at his head, sending pain shooting through his neck.
“Talk, babydoll. If you know what’s good for ‘ya.”
“I…” Jed tries, “I ain’t never… known… not a day in my life…”
The fingers are back, pinching his side, flicking his stomach, leaving him coughing up the tiniest flecks of blood.
“Hey, you’re gonna kill him,” The other giant protests, scowling. “He’s the only real prisoner we got, y’know?”
Jed pants, head dropped low, fingers still twitching as his legs drift aimlessly, a pendulum out of his control. Octavius is safe. Octavius is safe. Please God let Octavius be safe. Dear Lord Jesus don’t let nobody catch him. Please God in heaven please-
“You take him then, or I ain’t responsible for what I do to him.”
Jed is falling again, changing hands, falling crumpled onto the familiar flat-ish surface of an open palm. Breathe. Just breathe.
“Gotta find a proper cage for the little creep,” The first giant is saying, voice sounding farther off as his footsteps echo in the room.
“I’m sure we’ll run into something on the way, the second giant responds, voice booming loud and oppressive over Jed’s hunched shoulders.
Jed tries to curl into something inoffensive, just for a moment, just to catch his breath and he’ll be his old spitfire self again- but a finger brushes his legs straight, pressing him flat onto his back.
He’s powerless. There’s hardly any unnecessary force behind the motion - it’s gentle even, if firm, but even if he kicks and punches and screams he won’t put a single dent in that pillar of flesh. Grey eyes stare down at him curiously, and he tries to scowl to scare them off. He doesn’t expect it to work.
It doesn’t.
The finger continues to nudge his limbs about, exploratory, almost, and Jed frankly misses the torture. At least that felt like being treated as a man, a captive, and not some… thing.
“Incredible,” the new giant murmurs, gripping Jed by the left wrist, on his unbruised side, and lifting him up for inspection. Jed grits his teeth against the explosion of pain in his shoulder, not wrenched out of place quite yet, but certainly getting there.
“Put me down,” he demands, ignoring how his voice cracks. “I ain’t no baby doll, you hear?”
An echoed scoffing rumbles above him and a hand raises to flick at his exposed middle. Jed tries to bat the finger away, and only gets his other hand pinched above him for his trouble. Both hands trapped now, Jed can only squirm as rough taps alternate with nearly languid flicks at his thighs, his chest, his stomach, each leaving him swinging helplessly. Turning his face away only results in gentle but irresistible redirection as he’s turned back to face his captor, teeth glinting as he chuckles at Jed’s helplessness. It’s a horrible rhythm of carefully metered, near-gentle pain and rough, measured exploration that leaves him shaking and sick to his stomach.
Apparently bored of his game, the giant runs a finger up and down the length of Jed matter-of-factly, dismissively, in the way someone might pat a car after repairs, before turning away. “I never seen the like,” the giant muses, almost to himself.
Jed is set gently down on the palm, as the giant starts to meander after his friend, who still seems to be searching for some kind of cage. Jed pants, tugging desperately at his vest and sleeves to adjust them into some form of order.
Curious eyes again, and oversized fingers slip off his hat and slide over his hair, carefully turning his head this way and that before returning the hat more carefully to his head than last time. It’s still skewed, and Jed fixes it with sharp movements.
“W-would you… just quit manhandling me??”
“So are you… really just a whole guy, under there?” The giant questions, and Jed shivers.
“Just as much as anyone, yeah. Nothing you ain’t seen before, just a little smaller.”
The giant’s curiosity does not seem to be satisfied, a thumb pressing up Jed’s shirt and tugging it out of his belt. His whole right side is bruising terribly already, and the man seems inordinately fascinated with the sight.
Helpless. Helpless.
Fingers come up to tentatively, almost experimentally, pinch at his left side, more under his pecs, where the first attack had centered at the very base of his ribs.
“Lou, it don’t even look real,” the giant comments over Jed’s gasps and yelps, running his finger over Jed’s chest and stomach, the pressure dragging him across the ridges of the man’s hand.
Nearly panic stricken now, Jed does the only thing he can think of and turns his head to bite at the soft flesh of the palm.
The giant gratifyingly cries out and jerks, inadvertently flipping Jed over as he does, curses raining from his lips.
“Why, you little… I’ll teach you to act like that-”
And then he’s being pinched again, but not tight and the thumb moves higher and higher over his chest until the tip is pressing against his throat and it hardly takes any pressure at all before he can’t breathe and his neck is screaming from being pressed so far back and he’s trying to pull it back farther still anything for a breath and everything starts to go dim and he’s spinning.
“Hey, aren’t you the one that wanted him alive, bozo? Gonna crush his throat, are ya?”
And he’s changing hands again and being thrown onto something that moves, something that isn’t stable and he holds on for dear life even though he’s barely conscious, with color and shadow passing before his eyes and nausea roiling as he just keeps swinging back and forth and back and forth…
It’s a birdcage. A canary in a birdcage, and as his breath returns and his vision clears he’s treated to a return to the mocking - he’s going to sing, sing like a bird, rat out his friends, tell them everything.
It’s a relief. It’s a relief to be in this cage away from them, and somehow, the mocking feels more grounding than anything. He’s a man, he’s a prisoner, and the enemy wants to treat him as such.
He can work with that. This is good.
He’s also been clinging to a swinging bird perch, which he locks his legs around to tuck his shirt back into his pants and take inventory. Guns. Check. Hat. Check. Jed tugs his outfit back into a picture of respectability - if he’s going to be a prisoner, he’ll be an unrattled one, thank you - and he breathes.
By the time they’re close to arriving, he’s giving back as good as he gets, and while they shake and rattle the cage, the swinging perch insulates him from the motion. This is fine. Jed is tough. It’ll take more than this to break him.