His breath was coming in gasps, suffocating him in wet heat inside the bag.
He squeezed the plier handles, hard as he could. The small bones of his finger broke under the jaws, splintering with a wet sound like snapping twigs. The pliers fell from his hand, knocking into his legs on their way to the floor, making him flinch from them. The scream twisted in his throat; Ignis bit down on it, clenching his jaw shut, grinding his teeth to force it into a single sob, which turned into a retch and then more sobs, gasping for breath. He clutched his left hand in his right, digging his fingers into his palm, pushing them against his stomach and bending over them, as if he could protect them from the pain like knives in his left hand. His fingers twitched, trying to curl into a fist. He could feel the throbbing beat of his pulse, feel how the shattered bone was piercing into his flesh, digging deeper each time his finger twitched, tried to move.
‘Okay,’ the woman said, and pulled him up again. ‘Another one.’
Another? Ignis couldn’t help but fight her hand, her fingers digging in hard, struggling before catching himself and sitting still. Fear and pain and sick horror coated the inside of his skull. Of course. Why’d they be satisfied with just one broken finger? And it could be hours before they were rescued. Days. He’d offered anything, and one broken finger was negligible in the face of that. He’d have to do more. He’d been stupid to be think it’d be only one finger. Only — he didn’t want to hurt more. He wanted to throw up. He was trembling, hard. It had sounded so easy to say it, in theory, but actually doing it—
He reached down, feeling the floor for the pliers. The bag was wet with the condensation of his breath, sticking to his skin, his open lips. He couldn’t find them. His hand shook, enough that he was as much patting the floor as sweeping his fingers across it. When he found the pliers he flinched back from them as if they’d burnt him.
Another broken finger. He could do that. (But after that, what then? Every finger until his hands were broken and useless? What then? Cut out his eyes, pull out his teeth? Snap the bones of his feet? Cut himself open, tear out his kidneys, the soft, red slipperiness of his liver? Could he do that?)
Pushing the jaws of the pliers onto his left ring finger nudged his broken little finger — the sharp agony scraped up through his hand, into his arm — and without meaning to Ignis jerked the pliers away. He was panting through gritted teeth. He’d moaning without realising it, and couldn’t make himself stop. He’d do this. He could. For Noct. To keep them distracted until they were rescued.
He dragged the pliers’ jaws back up his ring finger, fumbling to get it over the joint. Then he squeezed the handle.
The pain made his hand jerk, and the jaws, still clutching his broken finger, tore sideways. The agony was immediate, burning, making him scream for a single, choked-off breath. Beneath the agony, barely there, he could feel wetness and heat. The motion had ripped off the skin of his knuckle, dripping blood over his hands as he clutched them against his lap.
His heartbeat roared in his ears. It was all he could do to keep swallowing down the crawling, swamping urge to vomit, cry, shake until he fell apart.
He didn’t want to keep hurting himself. The thought of having to break a third finger made his eyes sting with tears, growing and growing until he was sobbing with fright at just the thought of it. He was blinded, in pain; he wanted Noct, wanted him safe and warm and in his arms, the two of them tucked away together. He didn’t want people standing over him, watching him, wanting him hurt more and more and more.
The sound of a scuffle, on the other side of the room — the sound of impact on flesh. A gagged cry.
Ignis shifted onto his knees, toppling sideways and catching himself with his right hand, only barely. ‘Don’t hurt him!’ His voice choked itself, forced through his sobs. ‘Please! Stop, please—’
Hands on his head and shoulders, dragging him away, throwing him down onto his back. ‘Relax, kid,’ said the woman.
‘No!’ He could feel hysteria rattling inside him, like a bird trapped in his ribs, beating to get out. Twisting, he fought the hands, tried to roll away, gett off his back. ‘I said I’d do what you want!’
The hands left a second before the impact of something landed on his chest, pinning him down, squeezing the air from his lungs. He grasped at the thing — a boot, someone’s foot stamped down on his sternum, crushing him to the ground. The pressure against his broken fingers as he used them to claw at the person’s leg made him light-headed with pain; he tucked his left hand under his chin, shoving uselessly at the leg with his right. The person ground down a little harder, making his wheeze and moan as his ribs bent under the weight.
‘Your prince is fine,’ the woman said, closer to his head than he’d expected; Ignis flinched away from her, as much as he could. ‘It’s you I’d worry about.’
‘Noct,’ Ignis wheezed, without meaning to, not knowing what he was trying to say. He could barely breathe. His head was spinning, wildly drunk or feverish. He clawed at the bag with his left hand, tucking his broken fingers away as best he could, but it was tied around his neck and he couldn’t find the knot and couldn’t tug it over his chin without strangling himself. He kicked, but he couldn’t find the strength to buck the weight of the person off his chest, and the rope around his ankles sawed into his skin deeper and deeper.
No one stopped him struggling. He couldn’t see Noct, couldn’t hear him. He needed to, but he couldn’t even gather enough breath to gasp out his name. The boot dug harder into his chest. His right hand couldn’t do much more than paw at it; his legs felt like they were made of sandbags, sodden and useless. His left hand was still tugging at the bag over his head, clawing weakly at the fabric damp with his panicky breath and spotted with blood.
His head spun, harder and harder. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t fight, too weak, too useless. His heart beat deafeningly loud. It occurred to him that even without the bag he wouldn’t be able to see; his eyes were open but it wasn’t to the the brown fabric covering his face, only blotchy blackness. His chest hurt; his lungs hurt. His whole body hurt, but he couldn’t do anything about it, no matter how much he tried. The bag had flattened over his face, pressing down on his eyes and nose and covering his open mouth.
The boot lifted from his chest. Ignis curled over and retched, gagging and choking as he sucked in air too quick but unable to stop. His throat and lungs and chest were alight with pain. His left hand burnt in agony, like boiling oil, like knives, as he jarred it against the floor, and he sobbed as he curled over it.
Then he remembered what he’d forgotten as he’d suffocated. ‘Noct,’ he said, barely a whispered croak, like pushing gravel up and out of his throat. ‘Noct?’ He couldn’t manage to get up; he was trembling, shaking too hard to even start to move. The bag was wet over his eyes, smothering his face, scratching his skin. ‘Please, Noct—’
A blow to his face, hitting him on the cheekbone, across the bridge of his nose. Pain like sparks across his eyes, his head knocked to the side, smashed down against the floor. ‘Shut up,’ the woman said, her tone offhand.
‘Gods,’ another woman said, from across the room. ‘They really fuck up the kids here, don’t they?’
A man said something, but Ignis didn’t hear the words. His own breathing was too loud, too fast. He felt sick. He really needed to not throw up inside the bag, he told himself, distantly, but he wasn’t sure he could manage that.
How long until they were rescued? How long had they been here for? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think. His throat was closing up, his breath speeding up as he struggled to suck in enough air. Where was Noct? He was tugging at the bag again. Not enough air. Too hot, too close, too wet with humidity. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe—
‘Get the bag off,’ someone was saying. More words, but he couldn’t hear them.
Hands at the back of his neck, pulling at the bag, and he tried to fight them but couldn’t. Then the bag disappeared, yanked up over his head, and Ignis gasped and sobbed for air, eyes squeezed shut against the harsh light.
They gave him time to recover, curled up on the floor, retching, humiliated and frightened, dizzy with the sudden ability to breathe. He was exhausted. He hurt. After a minute of it he remembered that it was time he wanted, all their eyes on him and not Noct, so he might as well try to drag it out. He could feel them watching him, as he lay on the floor and panted, swallowing and gagging, choking on his own saliva. His body twitched, spine jerking without apparent cause, and he didn’t think he could stop it if he wanted to. His eyes were still wet with tears, but moving to wipe his face seemed entirely impossible, to drag his hand all the way to his face, to move, to do anything but lie there.
He wanted to open his eyes to look for Noct, but he didn’t dare, in case it only brought their attention back to him. He could hear, and he knew they weren’t doing anything to him. He couldn’t hear Noct. That was good, surely? It meant Noct wasn’t in pain. Didn’t it?
He couldn’t drag it out forever. After all, he needed to keep their attention. He couldn’t do that by doing nothing.
Rolling over onto his back, whole body aching like he’d been beaten, the sharper pain in his hand sparking back to life, Ignis opened his eyes. He turned his head to look at Noct, too bone-tired to do anything more.
Noct was sitting up against the far wall, gagged and tied with his hands behind his back, legs tucked under him. His face was white and blotchy red, and he’d been crying — was still crying — but at least he didn’t look hurt.
Ignis thought to offer him something: a smile, or a word of comfort, but nothing came. Noct kept staring at him through wide, wet, frightened eyes. It was impossible to look away.
A motion in the corner of his eye — Noct broke eye contact, and Ignis turned to look just in time to see something being dropped in front of him. A small plastic bag, the size of his palm, containing a half-dozen or so nails.
Ignis breathed out once, shaky, and pushed himself into sitting. His whole body felt weak, bones like dried out sponge cake, brain lagging a second behind everything else. The woman — he assumed it was the woman who’d been giving him the orders — stood by his side and nudged the bag closer with the toe of her boot. She had a small face planted in the middle of her head, like her skull had carried on growing after her face had stopped. Her body was rail-thin. ‘Take them,’ she said — and it was the same woman as who’d been giving him orders earlier. Her voice made him feel sick. Ignis looked down and took the bag of nails in his hand, feeling the sharp ends poke through the thin plastic. Each nail was an inch long, shiny and new.
‘You got half an hour,’ the woman said, leaning back against the wall, crossing her legs at the ankle. ‘Stick ‘em all in you. Don’t care where.’
On the other side of the room, Noct made a sound. Ignis didn’t look up from the bag. His breath out shuddered. Then he nodded, jerkily.
Half an hour of bought time. That was — how much time was that? He knew he’d been told, at some point, the average time it took to locate hostage victims and rescue them. He couldn’t remember if it had been hours or days. If hours, then half an hour was valuable. If days—
He tore open the bag one-handed, fingers stretching and tearing the plastic easily. He placed it and the nails on the floor. Eight nails, he counted, then counted again. That was a little under four minutes per nail. But maybe they wouldn’t be so strict on the time. Or maybe they would.
Ignis picked up a nail by its flattened head and pressed it lightly into his waist, on the far left, angled down towards his hip. He wouldn’t hit any arteries there, and at that angle, down and close to the skin, he ought to miss his small intestine. After a moment he paused, put the nail down, and unbuttoned his shirt. A thin layer of fabric probably wouldn’t change much, but if he wanted to do this he ought to make sure he did it right first time.
How long had it taken him to do that? A minute? Two minutes? And presumably he’d get slower with each extra nail, and he was wasting even more time deliberating and not doing anything, but he couldn’t make his hand move to pick the nail back up again. Half of him desperately wanted to look at Noct; the other half wanted him to slam his eyes shut.
It had definitely been more than two minutes, now. Three, maybe even four. And he still hadn’t even started. His hands were sweating. He picked up the nail, pinching the head between his fingertips, and put it back on his waist.
Was this really the best place to put it? What if he did puncture his intestines? But where else? He probably shouldn’t put it in his arms, because he’d need those, and likewise his legs, if he needed to run. Except his outer thighs — there weren’t any arteries there, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t also need his core muscles to run.
His hand jerked, shoved down, broke the skin and pushed the nail half-way in. Then it spasmed, jerking away. His eyes slammed shut; he could feel blood run down his side, feel pain reaching into him. He could hear his own breathing, and other people breathing, and the gentle shift of fabric as someone moved. It hurt with every tiny shift as he breathed and trembled.
He found the nail again, sticking out of him like a flagpole, shifting as his side shifted with each trembling breath. His fingers danced over it, not wanting to touch it, put pressure onto it, until they did, and it sunk into him as he pushed it, bit by bit, until the head was flush with his skin. He was heaving in each breath like he’d sprinted far past his limit. He could feel it inside him, pulling at his flesh. Blood soaked into his trousers, hot and wet and sticky.
‘All the way in,’ the woman said, and Ignis twitched to obey, shoving the nail in past his skin, grinding it in with his fingertip pressed into the hole the nail left behind.
One in. Seven left. How long had that taken? Far too long. His hands felt numb. He could feel the nail shift inside him with every breath. Ten minutes? That left only twenty for the remaining seven.
He couldn’t do it. He had to. Maybe if he begged for extra time. Or maybe he could do it.
Ignis picked up the second nail. Eight nails. Four places on each side of his body. Two on his waist, two on his thighs? But there wasn’t time to deliberate. Not any more.
The second nail went in above his hip bone, angled down to scrape behind it. It sunk into his body, pain like knives scoring lines into his hip bones, like boiling oil being poured into him. Ignis sobbed open-mouthed, eyes squeezed shut tight as they could go. Half left; half already in. Only half the nail to go. Half an inch wasn’t so bad. He pressed it in, puncturing deeper, pushing it into the muscle and meat of his body until the head popped in past his skin, and he let go.
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timeasmymeasure
FILL: Gen, Ignis self-mutilating himself to save Noctis [1b/3]
Date: 2018-08-11 03:29 pm (UTC)He squeezed the plier handles, hard as he could. The small bones of his finger broke under the jaws, splintering with a wet sound like snapping twigs. The pliers fell from his hand, knocking into his legs on their way to the floor, making him flinch from them. The scream twisted in his throat; Ignis bit down on it, clenching his jaw shut, grinding his teeth to force it into a single sob, which turned into a retch and then more sobs, gasping for breath. He clutched his left hand in his right, digging his fingers into his palm, pushing them against his stomach and bending over them, as if he could protect them from the pain like knives in his left hand. His fingers twitched, trying to curl into a fist. He could feel the throbbing beat of his pulse, feel how the shattered bone was piercing into his flesh, digging deeper each time his finger twitched, tried to move.
‘Okay,’ the woman said, and pulled him up again. ‘Another one.’
Another? Ignis couldn’t help but fight her hand, her fingers digging in hard, struggling before catching himself and sitting still. Fear and pain and sick horror coated the inside of his skull. Of course. Why’d they be satisfied with just one broken finger? And it could be hours before they were rescued. Days. He’d offered anything, and one broken finger was negligible in the face of that. He’d have to do more. He’d been stupid to be think it’d be only one finger. Only — he didn’t want to hurt more. He wanted to throw up. He was trembling, hard. It had sounded so easy to say it, in theory, but actually doing it—
He reached down, feeling the floor for the pliers. The bag was wet with the condensation of his breath, sticking to his skin, his open lips. He couldn’t find them. His hand shook, enough that he was as much patting the floor as sweeping his fingers across it. When he found the pliers he flinched back from them as if they’d burnt him.
Another broken finger. He could do that. (But after that, what then? Every finger until his hands were broken and useless? What then? Cut out his eyes, pull out his teeth? Snap the bones of his feet? Cut himself open, tear out his kidneys, the soft, red slipperiness of his liver? Could he do that?)
Pushing the jaws of the pliers onto his left ring finger nudged his broken little finger — the sharp agony scraped up through his hand, into his arm — and without meaning to Ignis jerked the pliers away. He was panting through gritted teeth. He’d moaning without realising it, and couldn’t make himself stop. He’d do this. He could. For Noct. To keep them distracted until they were rescued.
He dragged the pliers’ jaws back up his ring finger, fumbling to get it over the joint. Then he squeezed the handle.
The pain made his hand jerk, and the jaws, still clutching his broken finger, tore sideways. The agony was immediate, burning, making him scream for a single, choked-off breath. Beneath the agony, barely there, he could feel wetness and heat. The motion had ripped off the skin of his knuckle, dripping blood over his hands as he clutched them against his lap.
His heartbeat roared in his ears. It was all he could do to keep swallowing down the crawling, swamping urge to vomit, cry, shake until he fell apart.
He didn’t want to keep hurting himself. The thought of having to break a third finger made his eyes sting with tears, growing and growing until he was sobbing with fright at just the thought of it. He was blinded, in pain; he wanted Noct, wanted him safe and warm and in his arms, the two of them tucked away together. He didn’t want people standing over him, watching him, wanting him hurt more and more and more.
The sound of a scuffle, on the other side of the room — the sound of impact on flesh. A gagged cry.
Ignis shifted onto his knees, toppling sideways and catching himself with his right hand, only barely. ‘Don’t hurt him!’ His voice choked itself, forced through his sobs. ‘Please! Stop, please—’
Hands on his head and shoulders, dragging him away, throwing him down onto his back. ‘Relax, kid,’ said the woman.
‘No!’ He could feel hysteria rattling inside him, like a bird trapped in his ribs, beating to get out. Twisting, he fought the hands, tried to roll away, gett off his back. ‘I said I’d do what you want!’
The hands left a second before the impact of something landed on his chest, pinning him down, squeezing the air from his lungs. He grasped at the thing — a boot, someone’s foot stamped down on his sternum, crushing him to the ground. The pressure against his broken fingers as he used them to claw at the person’s leg made him light-headed with pain; he tucked his left hand under his chin, shoving uselessly at the leg with his right. The person ground down a little harder, making his wheeze and moan as his ribs bent under the weight.
‘Your prince is fine,’ the woman said, closer to his head than he’d expected; Ignis flinched away from her, as much as he could. ‘It’s you I’d worry about.’
‘Noct,’ Ignis wheezed, without meaning to, not knowing what he was trying to say. He could barely breathe. His head was spinning, wildly drunk or feverish. He clawed at the bag with his left hand, tucking his broken fingers away as best he could, but it was tied around his neck and he couldn’t find the knot and couldn’t tug it over his chin without strangling himself. He kicked, but he couldn’t find the strength to buck the weight of the person off his chest, and the rope around his ankles sawed into his skin deeper and deeper.
No one stopped him struggling. He couldn’t see Noct, couldn’t hear him. He needed to, but he couldn’t even gather enough breath to gasp out his name. The boot dug harder into his chest. His right hand couldn’t do much more than paw at it; his legs felt like they were made of sandbags, sodden and useless. His left hand was still tugging at the bag over his head, clawing weakly at the fabric damp with his panicky breath and spotted with blood.
His head spun, harder and harder. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t fight, too weak, too useless. His heart beat deafeningly loud. It occurred to him that even without the bag he wouldn’t be able to see; his eyes were open but it wasn’t to the the brown fabric covering his face, only blotchy blackness. His chest hurt; his lungs hurt. His whole body hurt, but he couldn’t do anything about it, no matter how much he tried. The bag had flattened over his face, pressing down on his eyes and nose and covering his open mouth.
The boot lifted from his chest. Ignis curled over and retched, gagging and choking as he sucked in air too quick but unable to stop. His throat and lungs and chest were alight with pain. His left hand burnt in agony, like boiling oil, like knives, as he jarred it against the floor, and he sobbed as he curled over it.
Then he remembered what he’d forgotten as he’d suffocated. ‘Noct,’ he said, barely a whispered croak, like pushing gravel up and out of his throat. ‘Noct?’ He couldn’t manage to get up; he was trembling, shaking too hard to even start to move. The bag was wet over his eyes, smothering his face, scratching his skin. ‘Please, Noct—’
A blow to his face, hitting him on the cheekbone, across the bridge of his nose. Pain like sparks across his eyes, his head knocked to the side, smashed down against the floor. ‘Shut up,’ the woman said, her tone offhand.
‘Gods,’ another woman said, from across the room. ‘They really fuck up the kids here, don’t they?’
A man said something, but Ignis didn’t hear the words. His own breathing was too loud, too fast. He felt sick. He really needed to not throw up inside the bag, he told himself, distantly, but he wasn’t sure he could manage that.
How long until they were rescued? How long had they been here for? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think. His throat was closing up, his breath speeding up as he struggled to suck in enough air. Where was Noct? He was tugging at the bag again. Not enough air. Too hot, too close, too wet with humidity. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe—
‘Get the bag off,’ someone was saying. More words, but he couldn’t hear them.
Hands at the back of his neck, pulling at the bag, and he tried to fight them but couldn’t. Then the bag disappeared, yanked up over his head, and Ignis gasped and sobbed for air, eyes squeezed shut against the harsh light.
They gave him time to recover, curled up on the floor, retching, humiliated and frightened, dizzy with the sudden ability to breathe. He was exhausted. He hurt. After a minute of it he remembered that it was time he wanted, all their eyes on him and not Noct, so he might as well try to drag it out. He could feel them watching him, as he lay on the floor and panted, swallowing and gagging, choking on his own saliva. His body twitched, spine jerking without apparent cause, and he didn’t think he could stop it if he wanted to. His eyes were still wet with tears, but moving to wipe his face seemed entirely impossible, to drag his hand all the way to his face, to move, to do anything but lie there.
He wanted to open his eyes to look for Noct, but he didn’t dare, in case it only brought their attention back to him. He could hear, and he knew they weren’t doing anything to him. He couldn’t hear Noct. That was good, surely? It meant Noct wasn’t in pain. Didn’t it?
He couldn’t drag it out forever. After all, he needed to keep their attention. He couldn’t do that by doing nothing.
Rolling over onto his back, whole body aching like he’d been beaten, the sharper pain in his hand sparking back to life, Ignis opened his eyes. He turned his head to look at Noct, too bone-tired to do anything more.
Noct was sitting up against the far wall, gagged and tied with his hands behind his back, legs tucked under him. His face was white and blotchy red, and he’d been crying — was still crying — but at least he didn’t look hurt.
Ignis thought to offer him something: a smile, or a word of comfort, but nothing came. Noct kept staring at him through wide, wet, frightened eyes. It was impossible to look away.
A motion in the corner of his eye — Noct broke eye contact, and Ignis turned to look just in time to see something being dropped in front of him. A small plastic bag, the size of his palm, containing a half-dozen or so nails.
Ignis breathed out once, shaky, and pushed himself into sitting. His whole body felt weak, bones like dried out sponge cake, brain lagging a second behind everything else. The woman — he assumed it was the woman who’d been giving him the orders — stood by his side and nudged the bag closer with the toe of her boot. She had a small face planted in the middle of her head, like her skull had carried on growing after her face had stopped. Her body was rail-thin. ‘Take them,’ she said — and it was the same woman as who’d been giving him orders earlier. Her voice made him feel sick. Ignis looked down and took the bag of nails in his hand, feeling the sharp ends poke through the thin plastic. Each nail was an inch long, shiny and new.
‘You got half an hour,’ the woman said, leaning back against the wall, crossing her legs at the ankle. ‘Stick ‘em all in you. Don’t care where.’
On the other side of the room, Noct made a sound. Ignis didn’t look up from the bag. His breath out shuddered. Then he nodded, jerkily.
Half an hour of bought time. That was — how much time was that? He knew he’d been told, at some point, the average time it took to locate hostage victims and rescue them. He couldn’t remember if it had been hours or days. If hours, then half an hour was valuable. If days—
He tore open the bag one-handed, fingers stretching and tearing the plastic easily. He placed it and the nails on the floor. Eight nails, he counted, then counted again. That was a little under four minutes per nail. But maybe they wouldn’t be so strict on the time. Or maybe they would.
Ignis picked up a nail by its flattened head and pressed it lightly into his waist, on the far left, angled down towards his hip. He wouldn’t hit any arteries there, and at that angle, down and close to the skin, he ought to miss his small intestine. After a moment he paused, put the nail down, and unbuttoned his shirt. A thin layer of fabric probably wouldn’t change much, but if he wanted to do this he ought to make sure he did it right first time.
How long had it taken him to do that? A minute? Two minutes? And presumably he’d get slower with each extra nail, and he was wasting even more time deliberating and not doing anything, but he couldn’t make his hand move to pick the nail back up again. Half of him desperately wanted to look at Noct; the other half wanted him to slam his eyes shut.
It had definitely been more than two minutes, now. Three, maybe even four. And he still hadn’t even started. His hands were sweating. He picked up the nail, pinching the head between his fingertips, and put it back on his waist.
Was this really the best place to put it? What if he did puncture his intestines? But where else? He probably shouldn’t put it in his arms, because he’d need those, and likewise his legs, if he needed to run. Except his outer thighs — there weren’t any arteries there, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t also need his core muscles to run.
His hand jerked, shoved down, broke the skin and pushed the nail half-way in. Then it spasmed, jerking away. His eyes slammed shut; he could feel blood run down his side, feel pain reaching into him. He could hear his own breathing, and other people breathing, and the gentle shift of fabric as someone moved. It hurt with every tiny shift as he breathed and trembled.
He found the nail again, sticking out of him like a flagpole, shifting as his side shifted with each trembling breath. His fingers danced over it, not wanting to touch it, put pressure onto it, until they did, and it sunk into him as he pushed it, bit by bit, until the head was flush with his skin. He was heaving in each breath like he’d sprinted far past his limit. He could feel it inside him, pulling at his flesh. Blood soaked into his trousers, hot and wet and sticky.
‘All the way in,’ the woman said, and Ignis twitched to obey, shoving the nail in past his skin, grinding it in with his fingertip pressed into the hole the nail left behind.
One in. Seven left. How long had that taken? Far too long. His hands felt numb. He could feel the nail shift inside him with every breath. Ten minutes? That left only twenty for the remaining seven.
He couldn’t do it. He had to. Maybe if he begged for extra time. Or maybe he could do it.
Ignis picked up the second nail. Eight nails. Four places on each side of his body. Two on his waist, two on his thighs? But there wasn’t time to deliberate. Not any more.
The second nail went in above his hip bone, angled down to scrape behind it. It sunk into his body, pain like knives scoring lines into his hip bones, like boiling oil being poured into him. Ignis sobbed open-mouthed, eyes squeezed shut tight as they could go. Half left; half already in. Only half the nail to go. Half an inch wasn’t so bad. He pressed it in, puncturing deeper, pushing it into the muscle and meat of his body until the head popped in past his skin, and he let go.