Work Text:
Bright light, harsh and skull-piercing in it’s intensity, bouncing off of walls losing their coverings where it hasn’t been plastered in place by brown-red stains. They’re blanched of their colour, pigments failing after years without upkeep though still able to be recognized as distinctly green. Green to fit the rest of the building outside of the heavy metal door, rusted in places and pristine in others, a mismatch of aged and new metal hiding the contents of the room from those not in need of it.
The closed tight door also serves to keep air inside the room, stale with the scent of old blood, disinfectant, and infection. A disgusting combination of scents that usually serves little more than something to endure while matters of repair were seen to.
Staples.
Bandages.
Splints.
Stitches.
And much like the procedure he had fashioned his name after, the room’s sole constant living occupant was held within. Separated, distinct, avoided but for when most needed.
And most needed in the wake of stupidity, of bad decisions and turns best left untaken but did any of the others listen when he warned them, cautioned them that he would be able to repair them after each stumbling, fumbling return? That one day they would come to his table, bleeding, fractured, broken before even his repair?
No.
They never did.
They couldn’t.
Trapped, all of them trapped.
Trapped in lines carved out in flesh, bone, and stone, by their most generous benefactor, so willing to send them to their demises and force the occupant to pull them back together with naught but string and spite, holding them together another night, another encounter, another death.
He held them together, as much as he could, praying to gods that couldn’t exist that he wouldn’t be too late, wouldn’t be enough, to save any of them.