Chapter Text
John doesn’t remember how he got to this place. He suspects that’s probably the side effect of some drug or other; they seem too clinical to have gone down the concussion from head trauma route. He remembers the initial humiliation routine though, done half a day after he’d woken in his cell – a strip search that lasted at least half an hour longer than necessary, his assigned number (31), the hose-pipe shower while two men scrubbed him until he was raw – which he supposes is on purpose. No point in humiliating a prisoner if they’re not going to remember it.
His room is better than he would have thought. Four square metres, wooden floor, white painted concrete walls and ceiling. There is a bed, a sink and a toilet; the water coming from the tap is icy to match the dry cold of the air and the bed has a wooden frame with a mattress barely a couple of inches thick. No windows. The door is steel and painted black.
John wonders what the point of this is. He doesn’t have any information anyone could want. He’s not even worth anything as bait now that Sherlock is dead.
Now that Sherlock is dead. Barefoot, John sits down on the floor (the bed is forbidden when the light is on; he still has yellow and purple bruises from that lesson). He pushes a fist to his closed mouth and refuses to let the tightness in his chest surface. Not in front of the cameras. Why are things like this still happening when Sherlock is dead?
After eight days, or at least eight times the light switches off and he’s allowed to sleep, he starts to honestly wonder if they’re just going to keep him here until he rots. Food is delivered and he has water from the tap. He is starting to smell, though. There is only so much a person can do with cold water and the sleeve from his own clothes.
When will they start with the torture, interrogations or whatever the hell they’re planning? Staring at blank walls is maddening. He can’t even look like he’s trying to escape before someone and their cudgels come in to stop him. John almost wishes they’d hurry up with their plans.
He takes that back after the tenth day when they escort him out, strap him naked to a table and electrocute him until he’s barely conscious, bloody saliva pooling onto the table where his head tilts and tongue lolls out. He swears at them, rolling insults out on shaky bravado, but he is ignored. It is worse than retribution, somehow.
This repeats itself on the eleventh and twelfth days. Nothing on the thirteenth except anticipation so thick he’s sick with it. It starts again on the fourteenth. On the fifteenth he has a heart attack and as they’re performing ventricular defibrillation he pisses and shits himself and cannot remember a time when he was more scared in his life.
Afterwards, shaking on the floor of his room, he remembers the moment Sherlock lent forwards on the building edge and hates himself for not believing that was the more frightening.
On the sixteenth day when John is wheeled to the electrocution room he’s already panting out half remembered song lyrics and sections of the Krebs cycle, desperate attempts to distract himself. The machines look like something straight out of a 1950s psychiatric hospital horror and maybe that’s the point. They’re big and grey and plastic, ugly boxes with more grey switches and dials.
His eyes are pinned on the wire and he can’t stop himself from struggling as he sees it approach, inevitable.
Then it’s wound around his cock – he can’t think if it’s better than the times it was coiled painfully tight up his arsehole – and keep calm, try to relax, it’ll be over soon and it’s just pain –
they touch the prod to his neck – his spine arches and his neck throws back, he’s grinding the back of his head against the table except he can’t feel anything other than pain and it’s burning and he can’t breath and every muscle screams.
The prod is taken away and John’s sweating, gasping and sucking in air through clenched teeth because he can’t shout out, though he’s not quite sure why. The pauses are almost as bad because it’s the anticipation that gets behind his ribs and pulls and pulls. His eyes are tight closed and it feels like they could bulge and pop out if he opens them –
another touch and his back contracts like someone’s taken a knife to it, he opens his mouth and can’t stop screaming, his chest is on fire and where spine meets skull is burning, stabbing and pain and pain and he writhes and it won’t stop.
It does stop and the tears are hot on his face. Don’t anticipate it. It’s just pain. 1950s psychiatric horror? Was it 1950s? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was 1950s he’s sure, it must be. Or 1960s. Don’t anticipate it but why is it taking them so long, it’ll start again in seconds it must do except don’t think about it. Krebs but he can’t remember if it’s citrate or isocitrate that comes first –
screaming, more screaming, pulling at the couple of inches slack in his restraints and it hurts too much now, pain stabbing its way up his spine and around and around in his skull. His eyes will burst and his throat sandpaper itself down. He bites his tongue; it’s bleeding heavily and he can’t even taste it. He gags on the blood.
He’s pushed as far over as the straps allow, his head is held sideways on the table and latex gloved fingers pull out and inspect his tongue. He tries to bite but can’t muster the strength as they hold his jaws wide open.
The hands leave. “No,” he says, thick, swallowing down sparks of pain and bloody saliva. “Please, no. Please.” Because he can’t do this again, he can’t. Every part of him aches, bone deep. They’ll carry on for hours and he just can’t. “No. Please stop.” He realises distantly that he’s shaking, whole body tremors –
The prod is pressed onto one nipple. John’s teeth clench, his throat seems to close and he can’t scream no matter how much he tries.