A/N: Finished! Huzzah! Partially because of liriaen and her Cesare and his ghost of Michelotto who bunnied me on the damned thing in the first place. Many, many thanks to marilla82 and lunalovegoddess for betas and answering of annoying questions. It will interest you in context to know that your core body temp at the time hypothermia sets in and your body ceases to function is 30°C (86°F), and that the symbol Vicious begins to carve into Gren's thigh (and then presumably goes back to finish later because he's a bastard) is the kanji for 'certain victory'.
When I came home from the war they put me in prison, they thought I was a spy. I heard it was Vicious who testified against me, I started to go crazy. So they gave me some new drug they were testing on prisoners that was highly addictive. And the side effects, well, my hormones went out of balance and this is what happened.
The room is silent when he opens his eyes, though the walls and the part of the bed in his field of vision waver with his body's tremor of withdrawal. The drugs they gave him last night have worn off, and while he knows what they're doing to him, he can't bring himself to care. All he wants is more, the only real thing to him is the next fix. The scar on his left thigh burns as his muscles ache. He performs his daily ritual of reassuring himself that he exists by saying his name until he believes it's true.
"Gren, Gren, Grencia..." Gren!
Gren's lost count of the days since was brought to the prison-cum-research facility on suspicion of treason. He knows that three months from the first day was when he'd heard from a syndicate thug that it was Vicious who sold him out, and two weeks and three days from that was when they'd pulled him from his cell and his darkness and his refusal to eat and strapped him into the brightness of dripping tubes and pain and chafed skin. It is a different kind of madness, that is all, and he knows he is losing to it.
Quiet murmurs outside of the door trigger a response that he doesn't remember learning and his skin itches against the nylon straps holding him down. He begins to squirm, moving against them so that the notches in the weave bite into his wrists. There's a memory hanging at the edge of his mind. He doesn't know what it entails, has lost it to his imprisonment, like so many other things. He knows only that it frightens him to his core, and for that reason he's compelled to try and remember it.
The door opens and he can hear the adagio rustling of the nurse's crisp, white uniform. He composes a movement to it in his mind and closes his eyes, nodding his head in time. Something cool and wet is applied to the crook of his elbow, then a prick, a sharp pain.
"Kill, to kill it," he murmurs, and shakes as the memory looms closer.
"No one's tryin' to kill ya." He can hear the bored note in her voice, suggesting she has said the same thing many times, but he doesn't know if it was only him or if there had been others.
No one is trying to kill you. But of course it has only ever been to him. The malleable one, the one who adores and follows. He can't shake the feeling that he's brought it on himself, and so he doesn't fight the madness.
"No one is trying to kill you," Vicious said, as he sheathed the knife. He leaned over Gren and the white hair fell in into his face and focused Gren's attention on the tight lips and narrow nose. His eyes flashed in the gloaming and reminded Gren of watching Vicious practice with his katana, the blade reflecting light and moving impossibly fast. Gren couldn't breathe. To his left, the body of the scorpion twitched and curled in on the middle that no longer connected it.
"Actually, I have the funny feeling that half the moon is trying to kill me," he said quietly, with a light laugh. Vicious didn't acknowledge that anything had been said. Instead he threw his cloak back off his shoulders and stalked to the other end of the trench. Gren stood up as Vicious moved away and immediately hunched over again so that his head was below the top level of the trench and not up in the barrage of sand the wind threw down on them in generous handfuls. He followed Vicious, about twenty paces behind.
Vicious turned on him. His hand hovered near the hilt of his sword as it jutted from his hip. "Why are you following me?"
"You left this." Gren held the palm of his hand out flat and displayed the tiny music box that Vicious had placed into it moments before. He smiled up into the taut, emotionless visage.
Vicious looked down at it. "I gave it to you, there's a difference."
"Why?" Gren held it up and inspected it in the dying light. The color of the metal almost blended in with the achromatic sky. He resisted the urge to wind it again and listen to the soft, lilting tune that it clicked out.
"I don't need it anymore."
Gren's eyes flicked back to Vicious and he felt bewildered. Why would a man bring such a thing to Titan in the first place if it wasn't important enough to keep. "It's not broken though, it plays beautifully."
Vicious stared at him and Gren shrank back. "You wanted the tune for your sax didn't you?" His voice was rough and dry. It reminded Gren of the low vibration of buzzing cymbals.
"Oh." He couldn't remember if the cymbals had ever given him quite the same roll in his gut. A cross between apprehension and intense curiosity.
"Besides," Vicious said, as he turned to go. "To me it only sounds like rain."
"It'll sound like your skull hitting the tile if you don't fucking take your shift off." The words come out quickly in a heavy whisper. The orderly leans in close to Gren and gives a smile that bares a front view of yellowing teeth. "Or would you like me to do it for you?"
Gren gazes back at him, disappointed. He prefers the women orderlies, especially to the crassness of this man, who barely conceals his lust in the presence of his supervisors. Being alone with him is a whole new type of torture for Gren to endure. Silently he turns around and pulls the shift up over his head and drops it on the ground. Normally the morning shower brings a bit more of a fight from him. Something in his mind is triggered by the sound of running water that makes him want to throw off all authority. But fighting leads to things getting physical, and the thought of this man touching him makes his stomach somersault.
When he turns around to step into the shower the man is leering at him. "You're a fine specimen now, aren't you boy?"
Gren looks down at his body with disgust. It's begun to betray him as the drugs they inject him with every day begin to take their effect. His waist is slimmer, his hips wider, and his chest, which used to be muscular from his time in the military, is starting build up deposits of fat. Gren has never been mystified by women, or attracted to them, or really even curious, but now he loathes the sight of them as harbingers. And still, any woman is better than this man.
He grunts in response and climbs into the shower, closing the curtain between them. "And don't you start jacking off in there, or I'll finish it for you!" The orderly laughs loudly and starts singing some bawdy drinking song about a barmaid with big tits. Gren drops to his knees on the tile, feeling a pain shoot from his knee cap to his hip, and starts coughing bile into the drain.
"He nibbles nipples, squeezes thighs, gets a beat and feels a rise!" Hosier's voice was off key, and it made Gren cringe to listen to, but he couldn't deny his comrade the joy he got out of it. They were under stress a great deal of the time, the stress of getting shot, the stress of being captured, even the stress of running out of water. It was important to let his fellow soldiers take pleasure in what they could. He just wished that this particular one would do it in a quieter manner, farther away from his perfect pitch ears. He was jostled when Hosier elbowed him in the upper arm.
"Hey, that would work for you too, right Gren? Fly's agape, drawers roll down, really starts to go to town!" Gren lit a cigarette and rolled his eyes. He liked his comrades, for the most part, but there were times when he wanted to cut their tongues out. All the fighting must have been getting to him.
"That doesn't count," he mumbled from around the cigarette. Hosier laughed and slumped against the side of the tent.
"Of course it counts! Music's music. Someone like you oughta know that." He beamed at Gren, and Gren's annoyance melted away.
"Someone like me?" Gren raised an eyebrow and pulled the cigarette from his mouth. He exhaled and flicked ash onto Hosier's boots.
"Yeah, a musician. Hey, stop fucking around! You're gonna spit shine these later." He scrambled back and kicked some dust on Gren, who laughed and threw a handful of sand at him. A shadow fell across both of them and they stopped and looked up.
"Playtime is over." Vicious stood over them. His hand hovered at waist height even though he wasn't allowed to carry the katana within the camp.
"There's no reason to be a prick, man." Hosier crossed his arms over his chest. He was still seated in the sand, but he glared up at Vicious as though he were eight feet tall and bullet proof. Gren knew through observation, and so Vicious probably knew, that it was the way Hosier reacted to fear. "We've all earned a little time to ourselves."
"The objective hasn't been met, we have yet to earn anything. You are borrowing time on credit, and misspending it spewing your noxious bile rather than doing something useful."
Hosier grunted. "What are you, a robot? One of them remote control soldiers? Only a human would understand the music, man." He looked at Gren, his eyes narrowed with stubborn anger. "Tell him, Gren."
Vicious grimaced. "Music I understand. Idiots who appropriate the concept for their own purposes are something else all together. I would have expected better of you." His stare lingered on Gren for a moment before he turned and left.
Hosier spat in his direction. "One day man, he's gonna eat crow. You watch. It's people like us who are gonna get out of here and do great things. Guy like him, he's the military's wet dream. Be here till the day he fucking dies." Gren watched Vicious' back until it disappeared around the corner. He was more than a little intrigued, and he didn't really see dedication to a cause as something to be ashamed of, but he didn't open his mouth to tell Hosier that. Instead he sat back and finished his cigarette while Hosier finished the song, doubly loud now, hoping that Vicious could still hear him, wherever he had gone.
"Aren't you going to eat, honey?" Gren turns his head to look at the woman, letting the sound of the cafeteria filter in on him as he finds his way back from his memories. She has white hair yes, but there's nothing else about her to hold his attention, so he goes back to staring out the window.
"Are you waiting for someone?" She's hesitant, she must be new. He's used to the elderly women they bring in to this part of the prison to give the appearance that they're not doing research on prisoners who have no hope of escape. It's like the promise that participation in their experiments will shorten their stay. Which he realizes, when he thinks about it, may not be that much of a lie. Gren doesn't answer.
"If you don't eat, they'll have to keep tying you down at night, don't you want some nourishment not from an IV?"
"I don't want any at all."
"Oh dear, that's no way to be." He turns to gaze at her again, too tired, too worn down to be angry. He wants to point out to her that locked up is no way to be.
Put in 'protective care' as an experiment of the state is no way to be. Left behind by the person you'd idolized and followed is no way to be. Instead he sighs from deep down and speaks in a whisper. "Why?"
She moves her mouth, opening and closing it, but no sound comes out. "I don't think I'll ever eat again," he says, and looks away from her.
"It's unnatural." Hosier cocked his head and watched as Gren played with his ration. He broke it up into small pieces before he put it into his mouth to not chew. He let his saliva dissolve it and tried to make it last longer.
"I know," he said, around a piece of what was supposed to resemble flank steak. "Sometimes I think they're trying to kill us just like all the other people on this godforsaken hunk of rock. Only more slowly, more insidiously. I tell you, I trust the android that shoots me in the front more than I trust the military at this point."
Hosier looked down at his own ration in disgust and swallowed. "Not that, weren't you even listening?"
Gren didn't answer, he had been listening, until Hosier mentioned Vicious. He was tired of playing one way mediator between the men and the specter of what they thought Vicious was. In reality they were fighting the defenses of a betrayed man. After Vicious had explained about this Julia and her Spike, a word which always came out brittle and laden with hatred, Gren thought he understood why Vicious couldn't trust the other men. He had decided to stay out of it.
"He does everything without question, doesn't that bother you? We're supposed to be a team, but I have a feeling he'd sell any of us out at any moment just to get the upper hand." Hosier broke off a piece of his ration and tossed it into the back of his mouth, barely chewing it before he swallowed. "It's not good for morale having him around. It's not safe."
Gren didn't consider Titan a safe place to be in the first place, but he didn't say anything. Instead he just shrugged and tilted his canteen up, stuck his tongue out to catch the last few drops of water. They'd be his last before the unit returned to the main base the next day. He should have rationed better. "That's the way we're all supposed to be, weren't you paying attention in boot camp? Tear you down, build you up, that's the way it goes."
Hosier snorted. "You gotta be some kind of idiot to fall for something like that."
"Or getting something in return." Gren licked his lips and tried to spread some of the wetness around them. It was in vain he knew, the desert air had long ago chapped his lips and skin beyond hope, but it was a habit.
Hosier looked at him closely. "And what would you cow tow for, Gren? What would you play dog for? What would you want in return?"
Finished with his ration, Gren lit a cigarette and tried to find an answer. He leaned over and let his hair fall forward. It had grown so long while they had been there, long enough to hide his face. Hosier took his silence as an admission and prattled on while Gren continued to think. "See, you couldn't do it. And I know you couldn't, which is why I can talk to you like this. That guy though. He's stone, he's ice."
Gren exhaled and watched some of the smoke get caught as it tried to pass through his hair. "Stone breaks," he said. He thought of Vicious' own admission that he had been hard on Julia, perhaps too hard. He hadn't said that of course, but Gren imagined he had left it out because of his pride. "And ice melts."
Hosier didn't answer. He only shook his head and swallowed the rest of his ration while Gren played with his lighter, clicking it on and off as he watched the flame start and die.
Click. Click. Click. The autotransfusion machine is a ticking metronome as it pulls the blood from Gren's body. He nods his head in time and envisions the ¾ staff it is beating out. The nurse and the doctor talk over him, ignoring him. Their voices add notes to the staff. Alternating replies of alto and soprano.
"Last time his blood was dropped to 34°C and it took an hour and a half to bring him back."
"The drugs have been upped sir, he may be able to take a cooler temperature and come back in the same amount of time."
The doctor nods and roughly flips the paper on the chart. Cymbals crash in Gren's mind. His teeth begin to chatter as the blood returns to his body, 3° degrees cooler than when it had left. "I see. Drop him to 32° and see how he handles it."
"Yes sir," she flips a switch on the machine twice and it continues to click steadily on, now sending his blood back another two degrees below normal. He taps his fingers on invisible keys at his side until he can no longer feel them, and even then he may still be doing it, he can't be sure.
"Watch for any sign of a code," the doctor says, sparing Gren a quick glance. "I'll be back."
"Yes sir." She walks around the table and Gren tries to follow her with his eyes. His vision trails, unable to keep up with her movement as his mental functions slow and his muscles seize from the cold. She looks down on him, her face grim. "It's for the soldiers, you understand," she whispers. He would nod, if he could. It was for the soldiers. As if to give meaning to his imprisonment and make everything okay. Instead he closes his eyes and thinks about how wet his cheeks feel, as the cold on the inside mixes with the warmth of the room. After a few moments he forgets what wet is, giving in to the fog slowly creeping over him.
"The only reason to garner respect from others is to use it against them in the future." Vicious walked around Gren, who sat naked in the center of the tent, his feet folded under him. He wished he could follow Vicious with his eyes, watch the cat prowl, but the blade of the katana trailed around his neck as Vicious went. The rounded back edge of the blade left an imaginary feeling of indentation behind and forced his windpipe to constrict. Vicious stopped in front of him again and moved the blade up so that it was resting against his cheek. He pulled it up towards Gren's mouth as he spoke. The steel and the voice were both smooth and cold. "To be a good soldier, you have to have a goal in mind. What is your goal?"
The wind threw sand and debris against the side of the tent. On Titan, the nights could drop to below freezing temperatures, but the air between them was still hot, and it suffocated him. The steel slipped slowly across the sweat on his cheek and he swallowed. "To get the hell home."
Something large hit the side of the tent and Gren jumped. The tip of the sword scratched his cheek. The movement of the tent caused the lantern to sway, and the shadows swung back and forth. They cloaked Vicious' face in darkness and then fled from it, as if even they were afraid of the unchanging stare. "You're not steady enough. If you're not able to push everything else out of your mind besides your target, you'll never achieve anything." Gren nodded. He could feel a light sting start to develop on his skin where the katana had slipped.
"No matter what happens around you, it is not happening to you. Only you can let yourself bow to the things around you, and only the weak bow."
After he had reverently sheathed the katana and laid it on one of the bed rolls, he bent over and pulled a knife from his boot. Then he knelt down in front of Gren and leaned forward to look Gren in the eyes.
"I can learn to not bow." It came through gritted teeth, his whole body was tense and the top of his left foot pushed down painfully into the arch on his right. He leaned forward just a bit and tried to take some of his body weight off them.
Vicious' lips curled up at the corners, a motion too mirthless to be a smile, but a parody of one that caused Gren's stomach to go cold and his breath to catch. "Your malleability is your downfall. The only thing that matters is victory."
He placed the tip of the knife blade against Gren's thigh and held gaze with Gren's eyes. Vicious pushed the blade until it broke Gren's skin and Gren had to catch the cry in the back of his throat, so that it only came out as a strangled grunt. He had to prove himself and his loyalty before he could learn to be strong, to be a soldier others would admire like he admired Vicious. He could endure it.
Vicious leaned closer to Gren as he pulled the knife through the skin and across Gren's thigh. As he pulled it out he exhaled and placed his lips against the scratch on Gren's cheek. The warmth deadened the sting, and was followed soon after by the rough feeling of Vicious' tongue against his skin. Gren inhaled, taking in the mixed smells of sweat and tobacco and military rationed soap.
Vicious leaned back and licked his lips. Then he looked down as he pushed the blade into Gren's thigh again and pulled it across to make another careful line that looked to Gren like a sloppy X. He dug the tip in to create three small round marks around the X. Gren clenched his teeth down harder and didn't make a sound. He tried not to shake. "Certain victory is the only thing that should enter your mind. It's the only thing to be beholden to. And it will reward you beyond your greatest dreams." Vicious sat back on his heels and studied Gren, his face the same emotionless mask it always was. Gren had always thought that Vicious was hiding things, holding himself in. Now he began to worry that he had been off the mark somehow, and that all the other soldiers had said about Vicious was true.
"You believe," he said. It wasn't a question, it was a statement, and Gren could only nod his head weakly and try not to let the blood smeared across his leg get to him. He had seen blood before, killed people before, but there had never been anything like this. It was never this personal. "Turn around."
Gren did as he was told and Vicious brought the knife to his neck, the sharp edge of the blade digging in to just before the breaking point and accentuating the way his skin still tingled from it's former proximity to the edge of the katana. He felt the warmth of the blood as it was wiped across his throat and over the wind he barely heard the sound of Vicious' zip.
Vicious pressed up against him so that he was forced forward, and wrapped thin, bony fingers around his thigh, digging into the wound. Gren let out a sharp intake of breath and tried to do as he was told. He tried to hold himself up in the uncomfortable and dangerous position. He tried to hold certain victory above everything else, but he failed when his body began to tremble and Vicious made a soft sound of disgust before he pulled Gren backwards and down on top of him. Gren could envision the symbol in his mind, unraveling and fluttering away on the wind as he was completely undone by Vicious' body so close to and inside of his.
"That is your first mistake," Vicious whispered. "Not me, not you, not authority. There is nothing in this world to believe in."
When he comes to he's grinding his teeth. His scar is throbbing, and the rest of his body itches from the inside as the warmer blood reacts to cooled veins. He is wrapped in blankets and there are two nurses hovering over him, taking his pulse and his heart rate, making sure he is awake and safe to move.
A different doctor stands over him now, checking a chart and flicking his eyes in Gren's direction. When he notices that Gren appears lucid, he smiles warmly. "Welcome back, how do you feel?"
Gren tries to grimace, but his muscles are still sluggish and he finds it hard to move, let alone speak.
"You'll be pleased to know that the drugs are working as intended. You came back much quicker this time from the hypothermia, and your color maintained a more alive look throughout the procedure."
"Puh," he experimented with moving his lips and blowing the air through them necessary for sound. "P, pleased?"
"Yes, we value your participation. And you must believe that this is for the better of all of mankind. Just think what you've given us."
"Believe?" Gren shakes his head and tries to sit up. Something about the word believe rings false to him. There's a memory there, on the edge of consciousness that threatens to bring the world crashing in on him. He closes his eyes and tries to slip back into it. "Why?" He's talking to the memories. Asking them why they've left him there, why they're not telling him what he needs to know.
The doctor blinks and looks at him, thinking the question was directed at him. "Why believe? Why not believe? Is there another choice?"
Gren knows he has to escape, to find a way to leave this place before the memories swallow him whole. Before he welcomes them to do it. He opens his eyes again and looks at the doctor. His lungs struggle to pull in air. There is nothing to believe in. "Please," he whispers. "What do I have to believe in? I want something. I need it."
The doctor takes a step back and Gren can see fear in his eyes. He's known fear intimately, and it makes him laugh to see it reflected back at him, of all people. The laugh turns into a cough and one of the monitors starts to buzz. The nurses push the doctor out of the room and try to hold Gren still. He closes his eyes and slips back into his sleep and his memories.
"Why?"
There is no need to believe.