We are not human

Five days. That’s how long it had taken them to find him and take their revenge. It had been pretty clear who was behind this. The hitmen had made it obvious they were retaliating on behalf of the priestess he had almost drowned on the island of Sunfall. If they had been sent by her, the Sol Invictus, or if they were working on their own initiative, was still a mystery. But the results of their actions were visible on his body, and he sure felt them as well. Blood was dripping from his mouth as he coughed, groaning in pain when he could feel his bruised ribs move with every breath he took. Luckily he didn’t get stabbed this time, but damn, the beating had been brutal enough for him to feel the need to sit down against a wall in one of the less crowed alleys of Brightwater Keep.

&Allison Lenier

Honestly he had been warned enough times, and he sure had tried to avoid this from happening. But they had found him anyways. It was no big surprise though. He had kind of expected this as well. Rhoynar wasn’t known for peaceful problem solving and group therapy sessions. An old school beating was the go-to method by almost everyone living around here. The only thing he could hope for right now, is that at least one of the other guys was as hurt as he was. He had had no time to draw his weapon, while the two of them were armed with sticks. It had not been their intention to kill him, only to leave him bruised and in pain.

And they had succeeded for sure. With some effort, he wiped away the blood of his chin with the back of his hand, but soon enough it was covered with it again. His breathing was shallow, but it didn’t seem like he had blood in his lungs. Yet. Which was.. Good? His body felt soar though, and he could barely move. So he granted himself a couple of minutes before he would eventually have to return to his ship to clean himself up and get some rest. “What the fuck did you do?” A voice suddenly pulled his attention away from the pain. His amber eyes found a familiar face. ”I didn’t do anything”, He said, clenching his jaw to prevent himself from making any more noise than necessary while he was dealing with the pain.

Despite the situation, he chuckled amused. Which he regretted right away. He coughed again, causing more blood to end up on himself and the street. Fuck. ”Right. Unfair, isn’t it?” He said jokingly. It was more out of misery than anything else, that he tried to see the humour in all of this. Especially because she was the one that happened to walk through this alley right now. Then she did something quite unexpected. She offered him help. But she made it pretty clear it was only because she needed him in the future. Otherwise she would have probably walked by without even looking back. ”Your concern is heartwarming”, He sighed, after which he took her hand and slowly raised himself back upon his feet. He found support against the wall as well, and as soon as he was standing, he let go of her hand. After all, why would he trust a woman? He had suffered more from the hands of women than anything else.

His ribs were quite unhappy with his movements. It caused him to curse like the sailor he was, not even paying attention to the fact he was with a woman. Like he would care about that anyway. He wrapped his arm around his own stomach, as if that would help. Spoiler: it didn’t. ”I was ambushed”, He clarified to her. The last thing he wanted, was for her to think he couldn’t handle himself in a fight. Because he sure could. If he hadn’t been this wounded, he would have gotten mad at her for insinuating he was weak. She wasn’t very patient though. ”Are you going to lock me up again or?” He asked, a bit suspicious. He had followed her into her house once, and they both knew how that had turned out. He would like to avoid something like that happen again, especially now he was not able to fight for his freedom if he needed to.

His eyes met hers as she fixed him with a firm gaze. She seemed offended with his words, or at least annoyed. He decided to let it go. He was in too much pain anyways to get into a discussion. It wasn’t his fault that he just didn’t trust women. There were few exceptions. But they had proven to earn his trust. And even then, he was always cautious around them. If they were to touch him out of nowhere, he was pretty sure he would get triggered anyways. He would never clarify why though. That was information he would keep to himself until the day he died.

So with only a soft hum he followed Allison. Even if she changed her mind and decided to something scandalous to him, there would be no other option then to comply and hope he wouldn't walk out worse than he was feeling now. As instructed, Romeo closed the door and scuffed through the hallway into the living room. This time he paid no attention to her decorations at all. He was too occupied with not passing out, as the pain was slowly making him a bit dizzy.

His physical suffering was distracting him enough from his worries, for now. So he just followed her orders, without asking any questions. Later he would probably look back at this moment and get angry at himself for being so stupid. A sheep. Since when did he take orders from anyone? It made not much sense. But that tended to happen when he was consumed with pain like this. Making irrational decisions was just one of the things he did when he was not thinking straight. Which was pretty normal, right? ”Aye aye”, He muttered when she asked him to take off his shirt. He doubted for a full second though. His body was scarred in many ways, and he hoped she wouldn’t ask any questions. Some scars were not as simply explained without becoming obvious made up stories.

When he was about settled on the couch, he was handed some ice packs and instructed to keep pressure on it. It wasn’t hard to guess where he had to put them. Even beneath all the ink, it was pretty visible where the thugs had hit him. His skin was raw and bruised, lightly bleeding where his skin was scraped away. Still, not as bad as a stab wound would be. So in a way, he had been lucky they had not been out for his life today.

The cold kind of stung when he put the ice pack on his skin. He was pretty sure he was radiating warmth off of the bruises. This would probably annoy him for the weeks to come. Especially when he would have to lift heavy things, or let alone when he got into a new fight. He realised he would have to take it easy for a while, and he wasn’t looking forward to that. For once, he wished he had listened to Conan better. The quarter master had warned him about repercussions like this one, but he had thought moving to Brightwater Keep for a while would be enough precautions to prevent attacks like this one. But he had been wrong. It would be even harder to admit, so he hoped the other wouldn’t push it too much.

Because of his thoughts, he had not been paying much attention to what Allison was doing. He had heard her say something, but had failed to register her words properly. When she suddenly approached him, he was taken by surprise. He could only push himself up a little bit when she plunged a syringe into his neck. He inhaled sharply, after which he groaned when he felt the liquid burning under his skin. ”What the actual fuck”, He exclaimed when she pulled it back out and stepped away from him. The shock was clearly visible in his eyes as he tried to express his anger, fear, disappointment and whatever else he was feeling.

It took another few seconds to really process what was going on. She had just stabbed him with a syringe, and injected an unknown substance in his bloodstream. Why. How dare she. His amber eyes shot back at her, and if he could, he would have killed her with his gaze. “How are you feeling now?” She asked him, totally uninterested in the emotions that were almost radiating off of him. ”How am I feeling?” He snarled, too shocked to really react in any other way. “You should be feeling it soon enough.” She continued, while she was looking at him as if he was a rat in a cage in some kind of lab.

(Note: Not that he would know what that was, our boy here isn’t exactly the scientific type. Can’t even read, so how would he know anything in that area of expertise? Nope, Romeo had never even heard of a lab. Probably doesn’t know anything about alchemy or chemistry either, sorry to disappoint. So how would he know about the rats they experiment on? Impossible, right. And if he didn’t know of the existence of the rats to begin with, how would he be able to imagine how such a rat would feel? Conclusion: this statement is completely impossible, but in this context it was nice figure of speech.)

”Feeling what exactly?” He said, raising the volume of his voice. The captain got up, completely missing the fact that he wasn’t feeling much pain in his chest anymore. Where he had been moving slowly and carefully not to hurt himself more, he was now moving more smoothly again. But he simply was too angry to notice.