rules changing by hands
roughed in seclusion · 01/20 · 01/22


Never would he imagine being thrown through a series of catastrophic events. Not when he was forever sure, forever on his toes, forever to know that no one had the upper hand. Only he felt this familiar space, from memory, to be shown that he was not invincible, neither the people he held dearly would be either. Slade's wrists were immovable the moment he came to. Bound by straps, stationed in a chair. It wasn't the kind you could easy rip up from underneath or throw your body back enough to roll out it'd constraints. It felt tortuous, even when strength wasn't enough to rip from its arm rests. The room was darkened, with speck of light shown through here and there. He lacked the how he reached this point and wondered if Dinah plotted against him for destroying parts of her gym or going that hard in training. He then thought of enemies finally catching up to him, finding his weaknesses or got to him in the right moment. All he remembered before waking up out of a fog was putting his body through strenuous exercises to keep going, to keep moving out of the escape of boredom.

This wasn't boredom or an exercise. He wasn't bound by anything other than the tricks of his mind and another variable he couldn't see. He saw more than enough monitors around that gave a reel of every memory documented of his life. Tools weren't that far but they weren't ordinary tools. There was no knife or scalpel, or a blunt object to break out of a door. He couldn't find a door nor an escape exit. Watching his family picked off weren't new memories, but the possibility of the future. Eyes widened as he yelled, yanking his wrists to be free and with an instant lift, the restraints were nothing more than loose pieces of leather. Slade, stammered out of the chair and went to the nearest monitor, reliving a reel of the events that caused one of his sons to parish. He watched over and over again, looking for a way to turn it off, but his incapable efforts of finding the off switch was a failure. Feet stepped to the next one, seeing his youngest son, the child nearly killed by assassins because of his own involvement with greed. He was the cause of his muted life and the guilt made present. This wasn't going to break him.

He yelled again, calling for better to be shown. That nothing was going to make him break not with being giving a visual reminder of what his actions caused. What resulted in being greedy and using people to get what he wanted. Slade couldn't move afterwards while hearing a transmission through and overhead speaker. It was loud and searing his ear canal, cranking up the frequency to get that this was more than a game but a test of anything more than making the tough decisions where he thought little of himself. Brought to his knees, hands held his head roughly in protecting the sound and he couldn't do anything to deflect.

many hours later
Counting down since his arrival never happened. It felt like a day went by as much as he'd been out for that time. He continued to hear the word sacrifice and what he held dearly to him. He lacked the foresight to know what it was that the room itself was asking for. Once he caught the idea, he immediately went to the monitor that shown his partner in crime, the free bird that tried to make his life better, and what she currently had been doing in his absence. He figured she was worried and his talking to the monitor, asking what it wanted, wouldn't be enough with the possibility to spare her and the animals that raided their space. He looked on, wild look in his eyes as he had a handful of people that still meant more to him than his own greed, including those in the world he came from. This wasn't his place to be or why but he was. When he paced the room, still intact without the threat of his own well being in question, he traced every line of visuals that were either figments of imagination, or it actually transpired.

It took a plan one that was in the making the moment he showed where he was. He touched everything. Mentally documented impressions made by him and no one else but seemingly felt there had been a greater presence there than he hoped for. It became a larger mystery when what he experienced was a screwdriver pinning him in a cerebral part of his head. As things sought to be outlined, the buzzing of the increased sound tampered with him again. He caved against a metallic counter, looking for anything that would make it end. Before he could find the metal pan and it's contents, he felt the darkness hold over him like a heavy blanket putting the fire out.

two days later
Between constantly being revived to put down, he fought himself or what looked to be so. The impressions deep, wounds of old bust open against his will. He felt the strain, and the constant viewing of what would be if he didn't make that choice. To come clean by offering a sacrifice to the multitude of fears he carried against his back. It rode him like a parasite and the footage, whether real or fake, was enough to scratch deeply into a part of himself he was losing it from. He needed a way out, a cracked door to exit on a whim. With a good eye to see and one that lacked any reason to, he stared down at the object desperately. Losing his sight was one thing but reliving that pain had become another. It was being open physical pain that equaled to that on an emotional scale of losing what became stability. Conflicted by the task and the rush to make a decision, he had no choice but to take the rod and an instrument only used by optometrist professionals to start prying his dead eye out. A deep breath taken and forcefully went for the move, exhaled in a gruff scream that overtook all he withheld before screens went dead. Only he couldn't escape the yells of himself.



home