Archive of Our Own ^beta

 After a series of back breaking events happening one after another, Ser Mettin is rendered useless for living, let alone fighting. The caning was the last of several dreadful straws, reducing him to a catatonic state. He's still awake and aware, but unable to move or speak. His mind too, stutters and skips, being focused entirely on danger. Even his eyeballs are fixed in their sockets. It's the last resort for a creature left without any other option to protect itself. Neither hiding nor running worked. Fighting made it worse, so his body prevented him from fighting. Speaking did the same, so he found himself unable to speak. And once moving itself provoked violence, his brain shut that down too. There is nowhere else to go from here. Either he dies, or the threat leaves at last. 

The wisdom of nature soon proves itself. Although his immobility should make him a thousand times more vulnerable, it has the effect of ending the rapes and other tortures, as it is both enormously creepy, and extremely difficult to manipulate someone who appears to be afflicted with rigor mortis whilst still alive. Samson tries a few times, of course, but eventually flees, telling himself, promising himself the issue is temporary, and he'll get another chance. Always one more last chance.

“Shall we haul this one with us?” says a lieutenant to his general, whilst they discuss plans to take over a Shrine of Dumat. The lieutenant, a monster inside and out, gestures to the big body lying in an uncomfortable position on the bed in the General's quarters. Not so big these days, as Ser Mettin has to be force fed if he's going to eat and drink enough to stay alive. 

Samson looks over, his eyes slipping up and down his captive, anxiety twisting his lips back and forth. Catatonia is not the submission he hoped for. It is simply nothing. The chance of ultimate domination he dreamed of, of respect and equality, has escaped him. Fled into the fragile recesses of the human mind and soul, where even his aggressive prying and probing cannot reach.

“No. The boy’d be nothing but a burden. We'll leave him here.” So they do, leaving him alone, all of them taking off for the Shrine, including Maddox, as well as Samson himself. The latter effects some sort of tragic last goodbye, kissing his prisoner with a demented mockery of love and passion, then leaving with a look back. Really, the sufferer is abandoned to die after being pushed into a waking coma.

But Ser Mettin doesn't die, because he wasn't lying in the forest, he does have something to live for. For a full day he remains frozen in place as silence and its sister, quiet, whirl around him on gentle but dusty air currents. Occasionally the happy song of a bird adds its beauty to the soundscape. The lack of noise is kind, healing, caressing his shattered nerves, smoothing them down. When was the last time he felt a motherly embrace? Years and years ago, unless he includes his wife's embraces. No, because those are extorted. A mother's embrace is free. 

Once the balmy coolness of evening arrives, he stirs, first the muscles of one arm twitch, then those of its counterpart do, then his eyes roll. Once, twice. Like a statue coming alive, he fights to haul himself upright in chunks, groaning all the while as various wounds are plucked at. As he moves, tonic immobility fades, catatonia lifts, and he's in control of his body once again.

Clothes. Since being reduced to catatonia, Samson took his clothing, so that is what he searches for first, even above food or water. Clothes, to be human again.

Armour, weapons, he has neither on his person, but they're in the room with him, taunting him, displayed the way the heads of prize animals are. They're encased in a red lyrium crystal, and only Samson can manipulate red lyrium like it's part of himself. No matter, there's plenty of weapons in the castle which he can use to strike the crystal off, although, if he were wise he would leave his stuff behind. However, Samson has taken enough from him, and the Vague Blade was a gift.

Except he can't shatter the crystal, because he's too weak, weaker than any red templar or man has a right to be, the first blow he attempts sends burning pain ricocheting through him, striking all strength from his abused muscles.

“Maker! Maker! Help me!” he gasps, falling to his battered knees and rubbing at his grimy face, wiping away the tears that appeared with the lifting of the catatonic state. Since breaking him, the general has taken less care of his ‘husband’s’ hygiene, and he's quite filthy. “I want to die.” Mettin cries, sobbing uncontrollably.

For a long moment, overwhelmed by grief and horror, he does want to die. Intrusive memories invade, reminding him of all the humiliation he's endured, humiliation which is the worst pain of all, especially to one so proud. The memories serve to make him even more suicidal, throwing him down a long black well until he is forced to recall the degrading position Samson liked to have him in as much as possible - spread kneed like a woman. The most humiliating of all humiliations - being treated like a woman. Debased and plundered and helpless and reduced to parts. Mocked and reviled and treated with contempt and hurt even while deeply desired and highly valued. 

Flashes of memory, of an arm looped around his knee, trigger other memories, of his wife giving birth. Contrary to the first stream, and deeper and more powerful, they shut off the foul reminders of abuse for a time. He recalls assisting with the difficult birth of his second child, peering down at Maia like the ‘brothers’ who assisted in his rapes peered down at him. Except he didn't feel desire then, and she didn't feel humiliated. But there have been times when that has not been true.

Unavoidably, suddenly, and with the force of a spirit bomb or strike of lightning, the two experiences of humiliation and pain, Mettin's and Maia's, slide together and intersect, forming a completed puzzle, rendering him able, in a blaze of white hot spiritual agony, to understand how she would have felt when he raped her, and how she would have felt afterwards, so alone and ashamed, with this terrible incurable wound in the centre of her being.

The man sinks closer to the floor till he's folded over sitting on his heels, his shoulders jerking silently, his face hidden in his hands.