Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire
Oh my god I am so obsessed with ‘A Man of His Word’ could you please continue it if you have time? Thank you sooo much i love your writing so much.
Happy to! Thanks for the kind words, hope you enjoy :)
Pt. 1
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A Face with Two Hands (A Man of His Word pt. 2)
Cw: childhood parental loss, interrogation + previous warnings
“11:59,” the clock read.
It was digital, so no ticking could be heard from where it was reinforced into the wall. Civilian was just as silent where they stood in the center of the utterly empty room.
Around them, cold gray walls closed in, broken only by a thick metal door. It was painfully cliche as far as cells go, appropriate for a cold-hearted villain to stash away all their problems and inconveniences.
Like Civilian.
The quiet was peaceful, for a moment.
Silence, however, tends to beg to be broken, and Civilian’s mind was more than happy to oblige the whims of the stale air around them.
As easy as breath filled their lungs, the voices of their Mom and Dad flooded their head.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Midnight,” they had promised, with eyes full of love. “You should be asleep by then.”
But Civilian wasn’t.
Instead, they were camped out in the kitchen, nest of blankets keeping them separate from the hard laminate floor. They refused to give in to the sleep that pulled relentlessly at their eyelids, gaze stubbornly locked on the little green numbers that glowed above the oven and spelled out broken promises.
They clutched a small stuffed panda in their arms, waiting for the familiar sound of the garage door opening. Their eyes watered as they rested their head against the wooden table leg.
With each minute that ticked by, Civilian’s heart dropped a little lower.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Looking at the clock now, Civilian couldn’t help but feel the same sense of dread.
They shook off the memory, coming back into the present with a disorienting blink.
It was three hours till the next switch check in. As far as Civilian could tell, Villain wouldn’t be back until then.
Plenty of time to take inventory.
Physically, Civilian had little more than the clothes on their back.
The cuts Villain had inflected still laid open and untreated. Clearly, he didn’t plan on them living long enough for infection to become a problem.
They tried to tear strips out of their jacket in hopes of maybe tying some fabric around their wound but quickly deemed the weave too thick. Out of necessity, they moved onto the thinner cotton of their T-shirt, tearing off the hem with a degree of difficulty and gripping it with their teeth to tie as tightly as they could manage.
They really did miss having Friend’s extra hands and muscles around.
Mentally, they were about at the same level, except there was no shirt bandage that would stop the echoing in their mind.
Prisoner.
The word sat like cold iron wrapped around their heart, the weight like a death and betrayal all in one.
Civilian didn’t know how they could ever forget a feeling like that.
They were painfully aware that there was nothing but an awkwardly blurted secret and three days of planning keeping an old friend from spilling their blood across the unforgiving concrete of what they could only assume to be some kind of basement.
They took a deep breath and glanced at the clock again.
Well, two days now.
Unexpectedly, a sharp wave of anger crashed over them. Did their friendship truly mean nothing? They were so, incredibly, irrevocably stupid! Now they were probably going to die, stuck in this stupid place he brought them to (because of course he had a place-!)
The door opened with no warning, the loud clicking and snapping of the lock sending a sudden jolt through their heart and taking several more years off their life.
The man that entered seemed nothing but cold and distant.
He wasted no time stepping towards them, and in turn Civilian wasted no time falling flat on their ass trying to back away from him.
“What was your plan?” He questioned without preamble, freezing his movements and allowing Civilian a precious second to think.
Unfortunately, even with the immediate threat paused, they still lacked the clear-headedness to answer.
What was Villain talking about? He was the one with a plan to take down Hero. Civilian just needed to help work out one little kink-
“What?” They asked the stone-faced villain.
“After ten seconds.”
Oh, that plan.
“Hope for the best?” They squeaked.
Civilian’s attempt at a self-loathing chuckle ended in nothing but a weak cough.
Once upon a time, Friend would have laughed heartily with them, bent over, one hand holding his stomach. Villain did no such thing. Eyes that could never have belonged to Friend cut them a dangerous glare.
“Okay, then. We’ll start with the harder questions,” he spoke level, but Civilian knew a dangerous tone when they heard one. Slowly, they started crawling back, but it didn’t matter.
Villain descended and Civilian shrunk with the knowledge that his hands were not empty.
“How the fuck did you figure out who I am?”
As much as Civilian tried to ignore it, the way he spit the pronoun stung.
Civilian was not unfamiliar with pain, nor were they unfamiliar with those close to them inflicting it upon them. What they felt now, however, was a level far beyond anything they had felt before.
They supposed he, of all people, would be an expert in inflicting pain.
In a matter of seconds, Civilian was sure they didn’t have nearly enough shirt left to bandage everything. Their tongue loosened with the stinging. They had no question this was intended by the man holding the sharpened knife.
“Die,” they blurted as a result, in that oh-so elegant manner that Villain had a habit of bringing out in them.
“Excuse me?” Villain challenged, eyebrows raised and hand poised to continue cutting.
“My plan,” Civilian grit hard through their teeth, “was to die.” They clarified, rolling over to groan. “I made peace with it.”
Villain considered them for a moment, rising to his full height and staring down at them with a confusing mix of condescension and possibly pity. Or perhaps he was just smug. Civilian certainly didn’t trust their ability to read him anymore.
He tilted his head slowly, only adding to Civilian’s confusion as he smirked.
“Did you make peace with this?”
To that, Civilian said nothing.
His face evened out again, and Civilian recognized the masked anger, familiar as the taste of blood, as he reached down. Villain pulled them up by the collar, wrestling their arms roughly behind their back as he leaned over their shoulder.
“That was not your best plan,” he whispered, before pulling them out the door.
A Man of His Word
(Context: Civilian has a friend that is well known for never breaking promises. This friend also just so happens to have a secret, and Civilian has figured it out.)
Cw: threat of death, knife violence
Civilian smiled across the kitchen at Friend. He was helping them put their groceries away, transferring things from the floor to the fridge. Plastic rustled as he removed milk from one bag and various cheeses from another.
“Thanks again for helping me carry these. You know how much I hate doing two trips.”
Friend sighed, rolling his head back dramatically as he replied, “I know you just keep me around for my arm muscles.”
Civilian glared at their friend, who was now flexing his biceps, for all of two seconds before a smile broke back out across their face.
“But really, it’s no problem at all.”
Breaking the comfortable silence after the amendment, Friend bunched up an empty bag, throwing it straight at Civilian instead of shoving it into the bag-of-bags looped around the pantry door handle.
Civilian gasped as they batted it away, instinctively going for the closest thing on the island that wasn’t breakable. They clutched the freshly-bought apple in their hand before throwing it mercilessly at their friend. Luckily, Friend caught it with a laugh, keeping the fruit from being bruised.
Civilian joined in with some light giggling of their own as they watched him take a bite with a satisfying crunch before continuing to stock the fridge while they conquered the pantry.
“Hey! That was supposed to be for a pie!” They protested.
“Please,” he started, pulling some scissors from the kitchen drawer and cutting open the plastic rings from a six-pack of soda they had broken into earlier. “I saved it from a terrible fate:” He finished, tossing the bird-safe remains into the trash, “The horrors of your baking.”
Civilian gaped in offense.
“No more birthday cakes for you!”
“The best gift I could ever ask for,” he winked, coming over to throw an arm over Civilian’s shoulders and ruffle their hair.
The normalcy sent off a pang in their chest.
A thoughtful, dependable, goofy guy. It was just so easy to believe.
It was a shame they knew it was a lie.
Friend had started to relay some adventure from earlier in his day, which Civilian tried their best to attend to. In the background, the TV in the living room was playing some stupid sitcom with a shitty laugh track that was definitely being overused. They leaned against the counter, basking in the peace of it all for just another moment.
Before it all went to shit.
Civilian made their move after the pantry was shut and they both headed for the next room.
“Hey,” Civilian checked their nails as they spoke, “I want to talk to you about something, but you have to promise me something first.”
An innocently confused, mildly concerned expression plastered itself over Friend’s face as he stopped short of the couch. Civilian’s stomach twisted at the sight.
“Yeah, of course. Anything.”
Friend crossed their arms and leaned against the pony wall disarmingly.
“You have to hear me out. Give me ten seconds.”
An awkward chuckle.
“What is this about?”
Civilian met their friend’s eyes seriously.
“Just promise me. Ten seconds.”
“Okay… Yeah sure, ten seconds,” he assured, shooting them an uneasy smile.
Civilian took a deep breath.
“I know who you are.”
And just like that, Friend was gone. Instead, there was Villain, pinning Civilian to the floor, holding a blade a hair’s width from their jugular.
Where he had hidden the knife, Civilian had no idea, not that was particularly important right now. Only one thing was.
“You promised!” They squeaked out, hating how helpless they were in that moment, how they were betting their life on there being a kernel of their friend left in the man on top of them now.
Inflectionless, he responded, “Nine. Eight.”
Civilian’s relief was very short lived. Shit, they should have said fifteen.
Trying so very hard to stay still, to keep that sharpened metal away from their carotid, they practically whispered their desperate plea to the stone face above them, “I don’t care. I swear to anything I don’t. You have a plan to take down Hero. In- in three days. I need to help.”
“Two.”
Frantically, they stumbled over their words as they added. “Oh! and um- dead man’s switch.”
Despite themselves, they scrunched their eyes shut as their internal countdown hit zero. When nothing happened, their eyelids fluttered open again to see utterly unchanged features. No reaction at all.
“What,” Villain spoke, in a voice that Civilian no longer recognized, “does that mean?”
“If I live, your identity stays between us. If I die…”
A sharp pain lit up their arm as, presumably, the knife that had been at their neck relocated itself into their flesh. Civilian swore.
“Who,” Villain growled lowly, leaning close to their ear, “The fuck. Do you think you are?.”
“Someone with a will to live?” Civilian choked, no longer scared to take deep, heaving breaths to the side now that there wasn’t a blade directly above their artery.
“Clearly not. People who want to live keep their mouth shut and run far, far away,” he spit.
Their head was wrenched back into a forward-facing position via a hand in their hair.
“How long?” Villain demanded.
Civilian blinked. Right, the switch.
“Fifteen minutes.”
Suddenly, they were being hauled up by the collar, then unceremoniously shoved into the light blue accent wall, conveniently within sight of where their laptop rested closed in the middle of the room.
“Disable it.”
“I can’t. It's automatic, every 8 hours. No off switch.”
Spots arose in their vision as their arm was grabbed in a rather unfortunate location.
“Disable. It.”
“I can’t. I swear.”
“I can get the code one way or another,” Villain warned.
“I know you could.” Involuntary tears dripped down their face as they explained, “There’s nothing to get. The answer changes every time. It’s randomly selected. I don’t know it till I see it.”
“You’re lying,” he accused, and Civilian didn’t have to look to know that they were bleeding somewhere else now with just a swipe of his hand.
“I’m not! Give me the laptop, we’re running out of time.”
Civilain gestured wildly to the oak wood coffee table.
“The only person running out of time here is you.”
With that, Civilian was thrown back to the floor, Villain straddling their horizontal form before they could get their legs underneath them to scramble back. The knife returned, only this time it would not be pressed shallowly, and there would be no more counting, no more promises of time, no more hesitation.
”Look! Hero killed my parents, okay?!” They blurted, a last, desperate attempt at getting through to him before he ended their life.
Maybe there was a shred of Friend left in the villain after all, because Civilian caught the slightest moment of pause in his movements, a blip they might never have noticed having never spent time with the man.
“Please, I would never stop you,” they pleaded, searching for another blip deep inside their former friend’s eyes. They came away empty.
They didn’t really know how it happened, but somehow they ended up perched on the couch, laptop open and propped on shaking legs. Villain breathed down their neck every second, watching them like a starved hawk.
They were lucky they could even punch the code in with the amount of nervous movement in their fingers and hands.
“That’s it. We’re good for another eight hours,” they confirmed, slowly closing the lid of their laptop and sliding it back onto the table next to the coaster. “Guess we’re partners now,” Civilian laughed weakly.
“No,” Villain dissented, in a tone that left no room for argument. “You’re a temporarily-alive prisoner.”
He appeared in front of them, pulling them up and off the couch with an alarmingly harsh grip.
“Don’t forget it.”