Chapter Text
August 14
No one was going to save him.
Billy had already come to terms with that a long time ago. It was pointless to pretend, to give himself the false hope that some brightly colored hero was going to swoop in to take him to safety, to take him home.
Superheroes only came for kids that mattered. Ones that people would actually miss. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t change that. He couldn’t save someone if he didn’t know they were in danger and neither could any other hero. They could only find whatever pieces were left of the poor bastards and pray they found peace in the next life.
He wasn’t going to waste his breath or his prayers on calling for help he already knew wasn’t ever going to come.
It’s not like anyone had come for any of the others before him.
Not even Captain Marvel had come for them.
And it wasn’t like he was special, no matter what the old Wizard had once told him, back when he was young and naive enough to believe it. He was just a kid, one that people often overlooked or ignored, one that had slipped through the cracks of an uncaring system and landed straight into the arms of a monster.
He was pretty sure that no one was even looking for him. Why would they be? No one had come looking for him the first time he ran away.
Or the second.
Or the third.
Billy couldn’t even remember how many times it had been now, how many homes he’d left behind, how many people had left him with no choice but to fend for himself on the streets of Fawcett City.
The faces all blurred together, the names all but forgotten, but the pain they’d caused him was seared into his mind with perfect clarity. He remembered the story behind each scar, each burn, each faded bruise. They were the only reminders he needed to know that no one would care about what happened to him when he was gone, vanishing into the night like countless other kids just like him who had decided enough was enough.
Most of his old foster families probably hoped he was never found, if they even bothered to remember him at all. His uncle E would definitely be happier if he stayed gone, unable to cause him any more trouble or cost him any more money.
And wasn’t that the whole reason he was in this mess? Because no one cared whether he lived or died? Because he had nothing and no one to care about him? Because in the eyes of nearly everyone he’d ever met, he was nothing?
Billy blinked back the tears that stung at the corners of his eyes. His head pounded in time with his rapid heartbeat and his entire body shook with the effort it took to keep himself upright.
He tugged uselessly at the chains holding him place. The metal rattled noisily against the wall, but just like every time before, they held firm. He wasn’t even sure why he bothered to keep trying, he knew that his weak attempts would do nothing to free him from this prison. The bands wrapped tightly around his wrists glinted dully in the dim light that came in through the crack under the door. They were like a poor, twisted imitation of the bracers he had in his Champion form. But these didn’t protect him—no, these chaffed against the raw skin of his arms, letting slick, hot blood dribble down his forearms, dripping down onto the concrete beneath his feet.
Just the thought of Captain Marvel made his skin buzz with energy he couldn’t release. It was as if the blood in his veins—the blood that had managed to stay inside his body at least—was trying to burn a course across his skin, trying to escape his body altogether. But just like him, it was trapped in place. He wondered idly if the lightning inside of him would manage to kill him before they did.
Billy wanted nothing more than to call out the magic word, to let his body be dragged into the cool nothingness of Eternity while his alter ego took over and made them pay for what they had done to him—and to all the others who had spent their last days terrified out of their minds in that very room, in those very chains.
But the gag they had shoved into his mouth and secured with duct tape had snuffed out all hope of that. It's rough texture had scraped his mouth raw, leaving the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. He couldn’t even swallow properly to ease the painful dryness of his throat. Even if he did somehow get that damn thing off, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get the word out, not after he’d spent so long screaming himself hoarse into that dirty cloth.
Tears welled up in his eyes and there was nothing he could do to stop them. They trailed down his cheeks, the salt stinging the cuts on his face as he desperately tried to scrub them away.
Tears were pointless here. Crying just meant that they had won. That they had broken him. It meant that he was just as weak and pathetic as they kept telling him he was. He wasn’t going to do it. He had to be strong. He had to be. He was a hero. Heroes never gave up, no matter the odds. They soldiered on through the pain and the fear so that they could protect as many people as possible.
He couldn’t let them break him because that would mean they were done with him. It meant that they could get rid of him. That they could move on, snatch some other kid off the streets and do this to them.
He had to be strong, if only for those other kids, the ones who would die if he wasn’t strong enough.
But gods he was so scared.
Billy didn’t want to die.
There was so much life he still wanted to live, so much that he had always assumed he’d have time for in that distant far off someday of the future. He wanted to go to school and drink a milkshake and play with his friends at the park. He wanted to see the sunrise and listen to his favorite radio station. He wanted to feel the sun on his face and trace the constellations in the sky. He wanted to fly so high that the people below looked like little ants, running his fingers through a cloud and letting lightning dance across his body.
He wanted to live.
But not like this. Not as some sick person’s plaything, being ripped apart piece by piece until there was nothing left of him, his mind and his body both too broken to be fixed.
That wasn’t life.
That was Hell.
But he had to hold on, he had to stay strong. They weren’t going to kill him unless he gave up, unless he gave them what they wanted.
They wanted him to beg for it, sobbing, pleading for the release death would bring him. They wanted to see all his hopes and dreams stamped out until he was just a shell of a person, more dead than alive. They would ramp up their twisted games, using their words to dig into his mind while they twisted their knives into his body. They’d get creative, finding new ways to make him bleed, to make him regret every breath he managed to suck into his lungs.
They would do it over and over and over again until he forgot everything else, until he forgot even the one word that could save him.
He thought he had known pain before, when he’d been beaten senseless by his uncle or his foster parents, when cruel teenagers cornered him in dark alleys with their trusty switchblades, when he fought for days and days against creatures that wanted to invade his home and turn all of Earth into a scorched wasteland.
But this was different. It wasn’t done in fits of passion. It wasn’t some random attack. It was precise. Planned. Executed in such a way that he would be driven mad by the intensity of it.
And worst of all, there was no end in sight, no rescue party on the way, no place to hide, no safety to look forward to. Each brief respite just meant that something even worse was sure to come.
Billy wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had first woken up in this awful place. Days? Weeks? It all blurred together so much that he couldn’t be sure. Just a never-ending cycle of pain and exhaustion, interspersed with the sickening relief of the drugs taking effect, letting him rest for just a moment as they prepped him for whatever horrible plan they had next, dragging his limp body into position and letting their hands wander over every square inch of his skin.
They reveled in the challenge he presented, he could tell, excited at the prospect of breaking him down until he no longer recognized himself.
Already they’d told him over and over again that they hadn’t expected such a pretty little thing like him to have so much fight in him. Their laughter had made his stomach twist as their hands traveled along his body, promising new, creative ways to take even his defiance from him.
But maybe, just maybe, they would slip up.
It would just take a moment. A single breath. Two syllables and he would be free. He could tear down this horrible place, brick by brick. He could settle into the strong, sturdy, invulnerable body of Captain Marvel and be safe, untarnished by the things they had done to him.
He could stop them. Hurt them. Break them. Kill—
No.
He swore he wouldn’t do that. He had promised himself that he would bring them to justice. To make them pay for their crimes through other means. To honor all of the other kids they’d killed by letting the world know that these people were monsters and that their victims—the ones no one cared about, the ones that they ripped from the streets with promises of food and shelter and love—meant something to someone, even if it was just Billy.
It was the right thing to do.
The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the gag.
It wasn’t an unusual feeling. Billy had spent his whole life swallowing down his anger and hatred, desperately clinging to some naive optimism so he could imagine a better world than the one he lived in. One where kids didn’t starve in the streets because they were too afraid to go home. One where parents loved their children and strangers were kind. One where no one called him a freak or a monster or a thief. One where the people that waved at him from their cars were just being friendly and not trying to figure out how much someone would pay to touch him.
Some days it even worked. The Wizard said it was part of the reason he was chosen. Because he was pure.
He didn’t feel pure anymore.
He doubted he’d ever feel pure again.
It was hard to cling to that feeling when he was gagging from the stench of the rotting trophies they’d mounted on the walls, collected from the people he couldn’t save. From the kids he couldn’t save.
How many were there? Seven? Eight? More? Had they called out for him? Had they spent their last moments wondering why Captain Marvel couldn’t save them from this Hell on Earth? Had they cursed him for not coming for them, for letting them die in agony, for not caring about them enough to come to their rescue?
If his captors had taunted those other kids the same way they taunted Billy, then the answer was probably yes.
How could he call himself a hero when he couldn’t help the people that needed him the most?
He couldn’t save them. He couldn’t give them back the life that was stolen from them. He couldn’t provide them with warmth or safety or love. He couldn’t even get this goddamn gag out of his mouth.
Because no matter how many battles he fought, no matter how many people he saved, no matter how many times he gave every last part of himself to the fight against evil, he was still the same scared little kid who had crawled into the crevices of every last shithole in Fawcett City for a respite from his unimportant, shitty little life.
He was nothing and no one.
Just like all the others.
The only person he could rely on was himself. That much had always been true. From the moment his parents had left on their ill-fated trip, leaving him with an uncle that only cared about money and power and beating obedience into Billy.
If he wanted to survive, he had to save himself.
Because who on Earth would care about what happened to Billy Batson?