ruinations | (no subject)

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They attacked in the night like thieves.

A more direct strike against a prestigious mage family would have spelled nothing but disaster even for the Zhentarim, whose numbers could have overwhelmed the guards on a more level playing field. Trickery was needed: it had to be an inside job with all of the wards and security systems taken down. It needed to happen quickly before any of their secondary defenses could spring up, before the old man Archibald could activate any secondary wards or, worse, might weave powerful enough spellcraft to kill them all.

The guards didn't manage to sound an alarm. The electrical systems died seconds after they did. A strong dozen of the most powerful the Zhentarim could offer - individuals proficient in magic and in tactical warfare - stormed the residence. In less than thirty minutes, the place was decimated, and they took their prizes. They struck with gloves laced with electric runes and powerful magnetics to be used to circumvent the magical circuits the family was known for, easily incapacitating them. Waver was struck down before he could barely get out of bed, held down while he heard the screams of his family as they, too, were indisposed. He was dumped near the bodies of his guards - his mentors, acquaintances, even his friends - before the world went dark.

He was beckoned back to wakefulness in a cage laced with electricity and runes, the strongest precautions against a mage like him. Even then, his wrists were bound - separated, though - with tight metal bands that disrupted his magical circuits. The room he was in was dark, lit only by faint neon lights that smarted when he looked too long at them. The most prominent sound was their buzzing and little else for a very long time.

Faintly, he could hear intermittent sounds coming from beyond the glass window in the corner of the room. It took him a while to perhaps realize they were the sounds of screaming and begging.

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For his part, Waver behaved. He did as he was told, answered the questions as well as he could, and tried to hold onto the hope that being a model prisoner now would help him gain more freedom later.

It wasn't easy. Working with his captors, with his family's killers, was an emotional and mental block he kept needing to push himself past every single time, tamping down his pride and better sense, clinging to necessity and nothing more lofty than that. He hadn't loved his father, but -- despite the fact Kayneth had had no loyalty to him and no affection -- Waver still felt obligated. He still felt kinship, even grudgingly, and ownership of his own family name if nothing else. And so, the knowledge that he was helping these people who wanted to destroy or own their family magic weighed on him, a heavy, awful feeling in the pit of his stomach as he outlined maps and wrote out notes for his captors to reference, detailing the secrets of his home.

Traitor, came the voice in his head, over and over, and woke him through the night.

He was tired. Even though Waver had always been the sort to prefer alone time with a book than with a person, the loneliness of isolation made him feel numb and unreal after a few days, made worse by the fact he could never see outside, never see the sun or a clock or any indication of what time it was or what day. Disoriented and depressed, he slept most of the time he wasn't being questioned, too drained to do much else after the sessions. No matter how much he slept, he felt exhausted and weak, even when they gave him more food. He'd never considered how exhausting it would be having nothing to do. Nothing but to think, and be afraid.

Waver had no idea how long it was before they finally let him bathe. It was a small mercy, and one he'd been growing desperate for, but he hadn't expected the cuffs to be removed. That was the real relief. As soon as the magic-disrupting metal was pulled far enough away from his skin, it was like another sense had opened up again, like seeing after being half-blind, feeling returned to a numbed limb.

Immediately, his instinct was to test it. Waver tried to reach for his unlocked magic, not to cast anything but just for the familiarity of it. He meant to invoke just enough of the intent to cast without actually doing anything-- and realized almost at once that it wasn't going to be enough, even if he'd wanted it to be. He felt starved suddenly, now that he was able to feel it, weak. The constant dreariness and exhaustion made even more sense.

Waver stared up at the person who'd taken off the cuffs, rubbing his strangely bare wrists, where a ring of pink skin was a constant irritation these days.

"I can't keep wearing those," he blurted, a faint edge of panic to his voice.

The information Waver gave was good, even when it was sparse at times, even when he said "I don't know". It was better than nothing, better than them blindly going down there and facing against who-knows-what. But the information did not seem to come with any kind of gratitude from them, except from Devyn, who continued to encourage him to keep trying. That small measures of freedom were available to him.

But there was a price for those, which now he knew.

The man who'd unlocked the cuffs was handing them to another when Waver spoke, and he turned back to the young magus with a strange look of confusion. "What?" he asked, as if he hadn't comprehended what Waver had even said.

Or how he said it.

"I can't keep wearing those things," Waver repeated. He looked... shaken, even scared.

"It's going to kill me."

Maybe he was being dramatic. After all, it would take a long time to do that-- but before it got to that point, the drain would leave him weak, incapacitated, eventually unconscious or even catatonic. His body couldn't draw mana from the atmosphere like he naturally would, but since he hadn't been using any significant amounts either, he hadn't been too concerned about that. Until now.

"It's not going to kill you," the man said. The other looked...actually concerned at what Waver said. Neither of them were mages, didn't know the first thing about true, genuine magecraft and the cultivation of mana that they couldn't take from implants. True mages were so rare. It didn't make sense to them. Tampering a mage's abilities was the same across the spectrum, wasn't it?

"You'll need to wear them," he went on. "And you will. Wash yourself. You only have thirty minutes."

The other man nudged him. "Do-- Do they know?" he murmured, low, almost too low for Waver to hear. "We should--"

His partner shrugged him off and gestured to Waver. "Go, hurry up."

Thirty minutes. It was longer than he'd hoped for. At least there was that.

Shaken, Waver nevertheless obeyed quickly after that to maximize his time both to wash and to be free of the cuffs numbing and draining him. The door to the bathroom remained open so the guards could keep an eye on him, but there was a curtain on the shower, and he was too freaked out and desperate to wash up to care.

Soap, shampoo, and a washcloth had been provided, thankfully. The water was hot enough. With the curtain closed and the cuffs off, it almost felt like he could pretend he was somewhere else. Almost.

Waver stayed in the shower as long as they allowed him to, even when he was done washing up, letting the water wash over him and drown out his thoughts as much as possible. There was no way he could force his body to draw in more mana just by willing it, but at least it was a little time to breathe, so to speak.

Around the twenty minute mark, Waver would hear voices in the hallway, which were low and insistent for several minutes, and which eventually faded. Otherwise, he was alone in the shower and neither of the guards poked their heads in, nor did they try to go in during the time he was allotted.

But as thirty minutes came to pass, one of them called in, "You need to finish. Your time's up. Hurry and dry off. You'll need to go back."

As he was trying to tune everything out, Waver didn't listen too hard to the voices. He couldn't hear well over the running water, and at this point, he didn't care. He just wanted to enjoy this. There was so little actual comfort he had in this place.

When his time was up, he turned the water off, squeezed the extra moisture from his hair, and got a towel. Once he was dry and put on (thankfully fresh) clothes, wet hair dripping around his shoulders, Waver stepped back outside, watching the guards warily. Unless his captors were asking questions of him directly, he didn't talk much.

Whomever had been there earlier was gone now. The two from before remained, though the taller man, the second one, was fidgeting on and off. The shorter of the two, the one who had removed the cuffs from Waver's wrists, turned to the young man as he came out of the bath. He gestured with a nod of his head and pulled up the cuffs once more. "Give me your hands," he ordered.

Waver hesitated, hands tucked against his chest.

"I won't do anything," he promised, quietly. He couldn't even if he'd wanted to, nothing strong enough to matter.

"Just leave them off a little longer."

The guard straightened, looking Waver in the eye. His countenance grew stern. "I told you that you're going to wear them. I'm not going to ask. Give me your hands. We're putting them back on."

The other guard looked between them warily. Perhaps tellingly, he did not move to help his comrade.

"You won't even wait until we get back to the room? Are you that afraid of me?" Waver asked dryly, looking between them with a sigh.

He'd been well-behaved all this time. He'd kept his promises. He hadn't caused trouble. It seemed so vastly unfair, suddenly, among all the other injustices.

After getting some time without the cuffs, away from both his room or the interrogation room, getting a shower and some fresh clothes, he actually felt more energetic than he had in days. And with that newfound energy came anger.

"I know I can't run. You know I can't run. Why in the world would I lie about this? Give me a break. I've given you everything you guys asked for." Or as close as he could to it, though it frankly wasn't much to use as leverage. Still.

Waver kept his arms crossed over his chest, staring up at the guard defiantly.

"You're not a fucking guest here. You still have your life and that's more than enough, isn't it? You weren't left to bleed out on the fucking floor like the rest of them. No one's starving you."

He drew himself up, easily a few inches taller than Waver. He snatched him up by the collar. "Whether you stay here as a guest or a prisoner, Archibald, know this: you are in no place to make demands or to spit in anyone's eye. And if you don't change your tone, I'm going to give you something to be afraid of." His other hand grabbed for his wrist, twisting it up above his head.

"Hey!" the other guard snarled, grabbing him, trying to pull him off of Waver. "Leave it. Fuck, you want to cause a scene?" The first didn't seem to hear, his eyes intent on Waver's face.

At first, Waver stood his ground. He didn't shout back or try to lash out, but he stood there, defiant, in part because he really was angry but also because it was still buying him time, even if he had to give in.

But then, the guard actually physically grabbed him by the front, and Waver's small flicker of bravado instantly snuffed out. He gasped, trying to shrink back and pull away on instinct, only for the larger man to grab his wrist instead and wrench it upwards. The yelp was more surprise than pain, though his wrists were tender from the constant rub of metal and the effects of the anti-magic runes always so close to his skin; the sound still bounced off the walls of the hallway and carried further down.

"I'm not-- Let me go," Waver argued, or maybe pleaded. He reached on instinct for the man's wrist at his collar with his free hand before he could think better of it or how it might be construed.

"Let him go!" was echoed by the second guard. But that was a single moment before Waver was grabbing for the first guard's wrist, and with the cuffs off, he reacted. His grip tightened on the collar of Waver's shirt and he shoved him back angrily into the wall, still gripping him, enough that there was a faint smack against the tile - from his back or his head, it was hard to say.

What came next was far worse. Another glove, not unlike the one Devyn had worn before, lit up his hand.

Like the night they came for his family, Waver felt the sudden sting of something not unlike an electric shock through his body. But rather than actually using electricity or something akin to it - disastrous in a bathroom, of all places - it penetrated his magical circuits and diverted what would have been the natural flow of mana that could have formed into a spell.

The problem, of course, was that Waver had such little mana to begin with and he was not attempting a spell. What it did, instead, was shoot down his circuits and irritate them further, putting pressure into a system that had not being used and had, instead, been drained for the past several days.

Again, Waver cried out, this time actually in pain as his back hit the wall, and the back of his head cracked against the tile from the speed and force of the movement as the guard shoved him back. It left Waver reeling, seeing stars. His fingers curled tighter over the man's wrist, nails biting in as he struggled to get free, reacting without thinking.

Before Waver could get any words out though, the pain came. It shot through his veins like fire, searing and sudden, barbed wire under his skin.

He thrashed, this time not to get away, this time just because his muscles spasmed and his body moved, shuddering and jerking on its own-- and he screamed, loud enough to be heard several rooms away.

The guard shook Waver again as he thrashed, trying to quell the shudders of his body. His partner again grabbed his arm, pulling it away from Waver.

There were sudden footsteps in the room. The first guard's grip slackened and he dropped Waver as a foot crashed into the back of his knee and a hand snatched his arm. The moment he released Waver, there was a sickening sound like the screeching of glass, and then he was screaming, going down to his knees, being shoved aside as a boot struck him in the head. The other guard immediately let go, backing away from Devyn, whose fingers were alight with magic. She spun and looked on Waver, crumpled on the ground, and then to the still-standing guard.

"Fuck--" he started to say, stepping toward the door. Another three guards were appearing at the door, their eyes on Devyn, the fallen prisoner, and one of their own writhing on the ground.

"Take him elsewhere," she snapped, gesturing back to the guard. Her eyes settled on the second one, who stiffened at whatever he saw written on her face.

"I-- I'll get the commander," he stammered, turning to go. The others moved to their compatriot who had finally stilled and tried to pull him up.

"Get me Adan," she said, to no one in particular, as she bent to Waver. She tugged off the glove she was wearing and threw it to the side, reaching for his shoulders. As the guards hauled their friend off, she was whispering to him, trying to get his attention. "Waver. Waver, look at me, if you can. They're gone now."

Everything was just a blur of noise and pain, and somebody was screaming. Waver wasn't sure anymore who. The angle of the world had changed abruptly. It took him some time to realize he'd ended up on the floor.

His shoulders heaved beneath Devyn's hands, his wheezing gasps loud in the silence that followed after the guards' footsteps had retreated down the hall. But he must have lifted his head some because Devyn's face came into blurry view-- and immediately had Waver trying to pull away, though the efforts were weak and jerky. The room was spinning. He felt sick.

He pulled away and she released him, her hands still outstretched. Devyn waited while he tried to settle, her eyes on his body as it trembled. One of her hands fell to touch his arm instead, just the hint of her fingertips, and she waited for him. "They're gone," she whispered again. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Her eyes took in his state, looking at his trembling, and she briefly turned back toward the door to see if they were alone. To see if anyone else was coming. Devyn went down to her knees, remaining silent as she let Waver do whatever he needed to in that moment.

This time at least Waver did not flinch away from the touch, though he seemed not to even notice it. He was still curled up on the tile, back pressed against the wall since he'd squirmed away. When he finally moved to push himself up onto his knees at least, the effort made him even dizzier and he stopped, whimpering and covering the back of his head with his hands.

The twitching died down gradually. He didn't try to sit up again.

And Devyn waited, waited until he stopped moving too much, her fingers still lingering on his arm. As Waver's twitching died down, she moved her hand to his shoulder, stroking gently, the touch barely-there should he flinch away again. Devyn's eyes remained on him, her gaze intent though softer than her usual sharpened looks.

For a long time, she said nothing, letting him recover. Then, softly, she murmured, "I want to try to help you. Will you let me look?" And, after a pause, she added, "If you don't want me to, I won't. I promise."

He didn't try to get away again. Devyn stroked his shoulder with surprising gentleness, and it helped, despite his misgivings. The repetitive touch focused his breathing and his thoughts, pushing back the shock and nausea until he could breathe more easily. Finally, when Devyn spoke, Waver managed to turn and lift his head enough to actually look at her face, trying again to push himself up to his knees

At least she'd asked.

"...sure," Waver whispered, barely audible.

She reached out a hand to support him as he tried to get back up. "Easy," she whispered, and continued to stroke his shoulder. As she did so, her fingers lit up with faint magic, slowly slipping into his system. It was a terribly faint touch at first, insidiously difficult to sense, but that might have been because his circuits had been so mishandled.

Magic brushed over the back of his head, seeking to soften the pain. Whatever work she did alleviated the worst of it, slow and thorough. She lifted her hand to run her fingers gently over his damp hair. "I have you," she murmured.

It didn't feel weird this time, or at least not unpleasant. Maybe it was because he was expecting it or because he actually could use more thorough healing this time, but the magic felt warm and soothing. Waver looked down, slumping toward Devyn without realizing it, leaning into the touch when she stroked his hair. It was the closest thing to comfort he was going to get in this place.

The thought made his throat feel tight. The gentleness made his eyes sting. And then he was crying, quietly, hiding his face.

Devyn's fingers slowed and stilled as Waver began to weep, almost startled at the sudden raw emotion that came from him. The hesitation in her lasted several seconds, and then she was stroking his hair again, more purposeful this time, unafraid to touch him. With her other arm, she offered a place for him to lean into. The stroke of her fingers became longer, from his hair to the top of his back and back again.

"It's not all right," she whispered, strange words to fall from her lips. "It's not all right." His family gone, every cruelty given to him. The road would not be an easy one, but Waver would come out resilient. She needed him to hold on a little longer. "But I'm here."

He hadn't cried in front of any of his captors since that first day. By himself, alone, yes-- but not for a while even so. He'd been too tired and numb. He wasn't sure this was actually better.

Waver cried for some time, folding into Devyn's embrace, shoulders shaking with his muffled sobs. He couldn't stop. He couldn't pull away. He just leaned, crying until he was too exhausted to keep going, and then he only stared, cheek against Devyn's unfamiliar shoulder.

He didn't answer but she was right. Nothing was okay.