Chapter Text
Janus sat there holding his pint-sized cellmate, holding him like he was gonna freeze. It had only been a few minutes since he had first checked over this humanling, but his previously experienced anger has begun to simmer into worry. These captors haven’t tried to do anything to him yet, not as far as he can tell anyhow. Sure the subsiding headache and sore body is a bit alarming, but that could just be a side effect from his fighting when he was being captured in the first place. So what exactly would smugglers be gaining from kidnapping him specifically? His most obvious guesses included his organs, but even with all the bounty hunting he and Remus had done early on in their relationship, not once did he enter a situation where he had found his own kind being smuggled. So he was stuck being completely in the dark on this.
It wasn’t much longer until he could hear a slight wheezing sound. With the nearly silent hum of the aircraft and the quiet breathing from the humanling as the only dominant sounds, it was no surprise Janus could hear it so clearly. Janus held the child just a bit closer, suddenly feeling on edge. ‘That’s probably just a leaking pipe,’ He had rationalized. He hardly doubted that any smuggler would think, let alone risk, giving two deathworlders the same dosage of knock-out gas. Especially with a vast size and content tolerance between varying development stages, that could risk killing one of them! The reptilian alien nodded to himself slightly in satisfaction.
Soon he began to feel tired again, could he have gotten a concussion during his fight? He found no matter how hard he fought, he couldn’t fight away the need for sleep as his eyes began to droop more. His head and limbs continued to feel heavier and heavier. For a moment all felt safe, despite the cell he was in.
Then he felt something pulling the humanling in his arms, causing said youth to jump. He snapped his eyes open only to see one of the guards grabbing the baby.
The two locked eyes, both too shocked to move. Janus recovered first, he yanked the young back to his body and thrashed his tail at the guard. The guard had pulled back slightly, grabbing his radio, shouting in a language he wasn’t familiar with. He jumped to his feet, smashing into the guard and dashing for the opened cell. He would’ve gone farther if it wasn’t for the extra guards with stronger darts and electric batons already there. The guards had surrounded the Klrunaq, holding him in a vise grip as he struggled less and less, adding more electric shocks and darts the weaker he seemed to get. The last thing Janus heard as his consciousness was robbed from him again was the sound of the youth beginning to cry again.
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When Janus woke up again, he found himself getting immediately blinded by a bright light overhead. Janus could feel the leather bindings digging into the scales on his wrists, ankles and tail. He felt much colder than before, had they taken his clothes? They had separated him from the youngling. He took deep breaths preparing himself for whatever came next, surely it couldn’t be worse than anything he and Remus have pulled off in the past, could it? Of course not, the two have done too many destructive things. He’s sure he can pull through!
He heard a door from his right open, he could only see whomever entered once they entered his line of sight he woke up in.
“Ah, our newest subject has woken up.” This person was wearing a medical uniform and they stared down at him like hunted prey, with a murderous look in his eyes. If Janus had felt safe before, he certainly wasn’t feeling safe now. He felt he had to play it cool, he had too much at stake to slip up in the slightest.
“I take it you're not here for the scenery.” Janus relaxed his face, praying that he was coming off like he didn’t care even with his two hearts pounding in his chest. The doctor said nothing as he continued to fiddle with something. It wasn’t until he felt something being stuck and taped into his arm. When Janus saw the doctors face next did he realize that acting superior wasn’t going to change anything, not even freaking out will do anything. At best it might amuse these freaks.
“Oh, don’t worry Klrunaq. This is the tamest part!” The doctor exclaimed as a sadistic glee spread over the doctor's face.
Janus felt another needle be stabbed into his other arm. There was no way the doctor was already done with the first blood bag, he may not have been able to see the best but that didn’t mean he suddenly lost the passage of time. He heard the door open again as more figures walked around him, he felt one of the guards rubbing his chest as another began pushing his hair back. A gross feeling dropped into the bottom of his stomach as panic began to make his limbs feel floaty.
He saw one of the guards pick up something in each hand and move back to his body. The smugglers began speaking in a language Janus couldn’t understand, gesturing to various parts of his body. Janus unconsciously began to tense, suffocated by the gazes the room was now directing at him. ‘This is fine.’ He tried to rationalize his growing unease. ‘If these barbarians want to stare like buffoons then that’s on them.’
He could feel something cold be placed between some of the scales on his chest. Before Janus could tell what they were doing, he felt a harsh yank followed nearly instantaneously by flaring pain. He couldn’t hold in his scream, as he felt liquid slowly pooling and dripping off his body. He hadn’t realized his eyes were closed until one of the guards grabbed his jaw and pressed his head back against the table. Dangling over his face was a chunk of his scales, held in the jaws of some skinning device. They were going to skin him alive. The shaking began outside of his control, as he stared up in horror at his own flesh.
And soon he felt another yank, more ripping, more shredding to his body. With each forced shed he screamed himself raw that much more, his whole body tensed more than ever before. It felt worse than picking up glowing iron, worse than any shot he’d taken before. The skinning felt so much worse against sensitive skin. The feeling was so bad the sound couldn’t leave his mouth, his searing agony getting worse.
After about the millionth time he could feel his arms weakly fighting the binds, clawing, tugging, anything to get away from the searing hot agony across his torso.
The smugglers began talking to each other again, Janus didn’t care what they were saying anymore he just wanted it to be over. He felt one of the guards grasp a chunk of his hair and tuck his head to the right, staring at his only exit tauntingly. At first he felt a couple small experimental tugs to his hair. No. Dear god please no, the scales are bad enough- why did they need hair?!
The shredding of the left-side of his scalp left the Klrunaq hoarse, tears having been spilled long before this point but now have begun leaving trails. The manhandling of his head and the continued tearing at his flesh at the seams left him silently sobbing.
The thudding and burning of his scalp caused, left fuzz across his vision. His ears began to ring against the onslaught.
It didn’t take long for Janus to begin to feel faint again. He began to slowly close his eyes, desperate to escape consciousness for the first time since arriving there.
That would be if he didn’t suddenly feel something sharp in his arm jolting him awake. His head was adjusted to stare back into the blinding light overhead. Janus felt like crying all over again, what did they need him awake for in the first place?
He felt the needles in his arms be pulled out, like that was the problem. The guards then grabbed various places on Janus, his arms, legs, tail, even his scalp, all in a painful hold. They had flipped him over. Janus’ shaking and despair-ridden heaving hadn’t let up for a moment.
For a split moment, this felt like some sort of fucked up mercy. The position put pressure against his stinging missing scales. But it also gave him the false illusion, for just a moment, that he was back home with Remus. Back home listening to his partner rambling on about any morbid thing that came across his mind as the two lied on the metal flooring of their ship listening to music. He could even vaguely imagine the smell of something burning in the kitchen as the two laugh over something Remus recalled Roman saying once.
But then the reality was slammed back into him as he felt clamps over one of his spines. Instinct took over as he tried to scamper away, whimpering out. Even as the guards regain their grip on the much larger Klrunaq, all Janus could think about is the hope that Remus will find him. Remus will still find him and- and make all these pricks pay, He’ll be back home before long!
It didn’t take long for the doctor to re-grip the spine, giggling at the broken-down mess that has become of this much larger deathworlder. Janus let out a strained long choke from the back of his throat. They had twisted the spine, tugging up in small bursts until it tore off. Janus could feel bile quickly rushing up his throat as the pinchers went to the next spine.
“This, dear Klrunaq, is my ideal scenery.” The doctor sighed, beyond satisfied by his actions.
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Janus didn’t even have the energy to fight when he had watched as they burned his previous clothes in front of him, he didn’t even have the energy when he was forced into a similar sack bodysuit as his humanling cellmate. The material was infinitely more rough than he had first suspected, it even had similar stains across the clothes as his little buddy’s. It was like the fabric was intentionally designed to irritate the now-stitched wounds.
Even as the guards held him in a crushing way, Janus still struggled on his feet. Stumbling, tripping, and getting dragged seemed to be part of the process at this point. The shove into his cell was even more painful as he slammed and skidded into where his spines were missing, causing him to tense like a muscle the second he didn't have hands on him. It was only once the door closed and he could hear feet retreating did he let out a wheezed hiss, gently guiding himself to the floor.
It wasn’t long until he found himself curled on his side, staring at the door. A part of him silently hoping that Remus was ready to bust in any second. This wouldn’t have been the first time either of them had been captured, as their previous line of work resulted in becoming targets themselves. Back then, even recently things felt so much better, but this had to be the worst kidnapping by a landslide. None of the other dangerous situations came even a miniscule to what Janus had felt, is still feeling. If not Remus, then… then at least let Janus hold onto that youngling. He’ll take the youngling at this point but the last thing he wants is to be alone with possible guards nearby.
It didn’t take long for these thoughts to spiral, Janus may have been able to handle a lot of stressful situations but that didn’t make him invulnerable. As he lied on the cold ground, shaking, and silently sobbing, wishing to be anywhere else. He’d even take being around Remus’ obnoxious twin for the rest of time if it meant he wasn’t at risk for him to bleed out. If it meant he wasn’t stuck with reexperiencing that agony.
The cell door reopened, Janus peaked his head up slightly then slowly rose himself leaning on his arm, far too weak to defend himself at this point. The guard had dragged the humanling by his upper arm, dragging the little one’s feet behind as the guard practically chucked the young at him. Janus wrapped his arms around the young upon instinct. The young was sniffling, then breaking down in a sob before him and their captors.
Once the cell door closed, he went to remove the clothes to see if everything was okay. The child wailed upon Janus touching the tie alone. Janus didn’t need to check anyways, the irritation across the youth’s stitched scalp said enough for him. Janu’s body aches and migraine’s back, but at least now he knows what the hell happened. He wishes that he didn’t. He wishes that he was just blind to it all at the moment. To his own torture wounds, and the one across this child.
Janus couldn’t look the child in the face, trying his damndest to pull himself together long enough to tell it some pretty lie. A lie about royalty coming to save them, or how Janus himself was somehow going to break them out and save them, or even that someone will report the authorities about this ship and that they’ll be rescued.
But all he could do was sob with the small child as the two fell to their sides, holding each other in a weakly powered hug. Whilst Janus continued staring at the door, imagining anywhere and everywhere. Especially back home.