Chapter Text
Jingyi sat, huddled in the corner of his makeshift prison, too disoriented to realize, let alone care that he was trembling in rhythm with every sound echoing down the hall. He had no way of telling how long he had been held captive, but by the emptiness of his stomach he figured it was more than two days. At first he tried not to drink the drugged water his captors gave him, but after one held him down while another wrenched open his mouth and forced the tainted water down his throat, choking him in the process, he decided to save his energy and be thankful that at least he wouldn’t die of dehydration. He had stopped struggling against the ropes that held his wrists together too. He could feel the dried blood pulling against his chaffed and mangled skin every time he shifted, and decided it was better to wait until he was more lucid to try to free himself. The skeptical side of him said stop resisting, just wait and if someone comes to rescue you, they will, if they don’t, then why bother trying? But the stubborn part of him, which was still incredibly indignant at the fact that he had been kidnapped in the first place, said might as well make these idiots regret kidnapping me by inconveniencing them in every way possible, if for no other reason, than purely out of spite.
He didn’t notice the door open until it slammed shut again. Two large men stood in front of him, one holding a bottle of water, what appeared to be a protein shake, and a small length of hose. Jingyi, with a brief, renewed sense of irritation at the entire situation, pointedly clamped his jaw shut. If these bastards want to keep me alive, damn it they’re gonna have to earn it.
He immediately regretted his decision when the second man grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back. Jingyi cried out, the rough hand in his hair exacerbating the injuries to his scalp, giving the man the opportunity to pry his jaw open and hold it like that. The first man took the hose and placed it in Jingyi’s open mouth, down into his throat. Jingyi choked against it, his gag reflex struggling to cough up the foreign object. All hope of saving himself further pain from his mangled wrists was lost as he began to panic, thrashing as much as he could to no avail as the man holding him only tightened his grip.
For what seemed like an eternity, liquid was poured through the tube, directly into his cramping stomach, until finally it was removed and he lost all strength to struggle. He would have fallen limp to the ground if not for the man holding him up. As he started to dry heave from the sudden assault on his previously painfully empty stomach, a rolled lump of cloth was shoved in his mouth. He tried to push it out with his tongue, terrified of what would happen if his stomach rejected the food forced into it, but became even more helpless when a long strip of duct tape was placed over his mouth and wrapped twice around the back of his head. He couldn’t stop himself from screaming into the gag, pleading for them to remove it. He knew it wouldn’t help anything, it wouldn’t bring anyone crashing through the door to his rescue, but he had already lost his ability to move freely, and his ability to think uninhibited by drugs, and now he lost his voice and he was screaming and he didn’t care that it was useless, he couldn’t stop screaming. The only thing stopping him from panicking more was the sedatives working their way through his blood stream.
Another surprise came when instead of being tossed on the ground and left to wait for the next violent interaction, he felt himself being dragged towards the door and into more light than he had seen since he had been abducted. He tried to squirm out of his captives’ arms, wanting to be back in the cell that he at least had become somewhat familiar with, but was only met with more violence. He stopped screaming, they stopped hitting, and started dragging him again.
His journey was short-lived, as he found himself deposited into a wooden chair across from a camera set up on a tripod with a solid red light shining above the lens. He let out a cry of pain that he had been holding in with his breath as he was secured to the chair by another rope, his bruised ribs and battered body voicing their agony through the haze of the drugs involuntarily driven into his body. They are really overestimating the strength I have to fight back right now, he thought, disassociating from his current state. The upside to the almost constant sedation was that the pain was kept at bay until now, despite the abuse he had been victim to.
But now, he could no longer keep his head upright, whether it was from the drugs, the exhaustion, the starvation, the fear, he didn’t know. A bright light switched on, his head forced up, again, by a fist in his hair. Between the incessant throbbing in his head, he finally began to register words being said by his captors. Are they talking to me ?
“Lan Wangji,” the voice said… so they aren’t talking to me … “We have your son.” Wait, they have Sizhui? He was supposed to be safe!
“Come alone to the address provided, or we will kill Lan Sizhui.”
Oh, that’s right… They think I’m Lan Sizhui…