AN: WARNING, this part contains HEAVY torture scenes that might upset some readers.

Tobirama:

Do you know what this is?

A laptop, I answered sarcastically.

Good boy, Madara said. I hated when he did that and I knew he knew that.

He placed it on my desk in my library, opened it. The screen lit up immediately, no password needed.

It was already on a media player, a big play-button visible.

Madara backed and sat down in my reading couch.

Play it.

I looked at him, ice cold eyes.

Play it!!

I calmly turned to the screen, pressed play, leaned my elbows on the desk, entwined my fingers and placed my chin on them, the cold metals of my ring soothing to my skin, the sleeve of my black suit tickling my jawline.

Watch.

What followed was three hours of the worst thing I had ever seen.

You would think you would become desensitised after that first hour, but no.

It got worse the second hour.

And the third hour was the worst.

When it finally stopped, I was a mess, cold sweat pouring down my body.

I fell off my chair, landed on my hands and knees, panting.

I vomited bile.

Madara still sat in my chair. He uncrossed his legs and switched them round so he crossed his other leg instead.

What did you think? he asked.

I dry-retched.

Show him.

No way.

Show it to him.

Why do you keep doing this to me? I wanted to scream.

But I knew.

I knew it was because I loved him.

I loved Izuna, and Madara knew.

Izuna:

After the second time, we found ourselves on the floor for some reason.

"Did it hurt?" I asked, playing with a strand of his whispy blonde fringe.

"What, making love to you?" he asked, confused.

"No, silly", I said, kissing his burn. "This. When you got it."

Emil looked up into the ceiling, arms underneath his head, making sure his elbow still touched me.

He was quiet for a while, his mind going to a place I did not understand. I almost thought he wouldn't answer, but then he did.

"It was the worst thing I'd ever experienced. It was a pain out of this world. I don't think most people live their lives experiencing pain that is half as bad as being burned alive.

"Oh my God..." I whispered.

He turned to look at me, played with the skin on my neck with his long, slender fingers, his nails painted black which I found incredibly hot.

"At that moment, I wanted to die just to escape the pain", he said, his voice dark and murky as he spoke with a low voice. "I  would rather die now than experience even a tenth of a second of that pain again."

I didn't ask about how he got it, figuring he'd opened up enough already.

I made a note to ask him next time we were... Intimate with each other.

A time I knew would come.

But never did.

I opened my eyes, trying to force myself alert as I'd been trained. I instantly realised I was in a chair and bound in place so I couldn't move. My mouth was taped shut with duct tape, making it incredibly uncomfortable to breathe. I quickly analysed the situation and came to the conclusion that there was no way I could escape.

I looked around.

I know this place...

I looked around the dimly lit wooden room. The classic green desk lamp threw a soft glow that turned the wood red. The room was covered in beautiful bookshelves with so many books it would take a lifetime to read them.

"I've read them all."

I looked to the side, where Tobirama was sitting on a couch.

And it suddenly struck me where I was.

The room Tobirama had been in when we'd had video sex, when I'd worn my latex nurse dress.

Shit.

I was behind his desk, on a chair, bound to some metal pillars on the wall. In front of me was a desk, and on the desk was a laptop, open, but screen dark.

"I like to read in the evenings. I've practiced speed-reading techniques, so I get through seven to eight books each week." He stood up. "I used to like Haruki Murakami." He wasn't looking at me, but walked to the short side of his desk. "I used to think his writing style was genious. But you know what bothers me?" He didn't wait for me to answer. "The endings. Anyone can write a complex story if you don't feel the need to wrap up the ending." I disagreed, but couldn't say so. "David Mitchell is a star. I like me a book that forces me to concentrate." He turned on the screen of the laptop so a video player showed up. "But I don't tell anyone I like him. Feel I'm a bit too old for his books."

Tobirama pressed play.

And what followed were the worst three hours I had ever experienced, and would ever experience in my entire life.

At first, my heart sprang to life, started pounding with joy.

Is it...

The quality of the tape wasn't fantastic, but it was definitely him. But there was something about him. His skin was a bit fuller, he wasn't quite as lean, he had slightly longer hair, reaching past his ears so that he could probably put it up in a tiny ponytail. But there was something else...

The burn!

He didn't have his burn yet!

He was sitting in large a grey concrete room, on a chair, bound to some water pipes. Just like me, he had duct tape to his mouth. His eyes were wild, furious, his hair covering his one eye. He was about five years younger than when I'd met him. Despite the situation, I couldn't help but think he looked fucking hot tied up like that.

Emil...

A man in a mask that covered the lower half of his face and a black hoodie came into view. He pulled a chair and sat down across him, slightly to the side so Emil was still visible to the camera.

"What do you know?" the masked man asked, his voice blurred.

Emil remained silent.

The man stood up, grabbed the tape, pulled it off harshly.

Emil blinked, but he didn't flinch.

Brave, brave Emil...

"I said", the masked man said again. "What do you and your police whores know?"

Still no answer.

And that's when I realised.

That's when it dawned on me what this tape was all about.

No.

No no no no no no NO!

As soon as I realised, I heard a gun click in the library, turned and saw Tobirama pointing his gun to my head. "Close your eyes and I kill you. And if you you don't care about that, then I'll kill Cassandra." WHAT?  "We have her, too."

So I was forced to look.

The man went behind Emil's chair and bent down. He started playing with Emil's fingers. He took a knife and did a tiny little rash in his hand that didn't bother Emil at all, but I understood where it was going. No... NOOOOOOO!

"Tell me, which ones of our hideouts have you pinpointed?"

Emil looked upwards, brows furious, nostrils flared, seemingly disgusted by the touch.

And suddenly, his entire face contorted.

And. He. SCREAMED.

EMIL!!

He convulsed as the man was pulling the skinfold he'ad created with his knife, skinning him down the side of his thumb to the back of his hand.

Tears were streaming down my face and all I wanted to do was run there and hold him, hold him, hold him. I wanted him to be alive so I could go to him in his apartment with all the plants and hug him and cry and kiss him and tell him I knew, I knew what he'd been through, that I would keep him safe forever.

I realised only five minutes of the video had passed and I had no idea, no idea at all how long this would take and that uncertainty was the true torture.

"WHICH LOCATIONS??" the man screamed.

Emil screamed as the fold was elongated as the man pulled.

The man stopped, went and sat down again, belly to the back of the chair, his arms nonchalantly on the top of it.

"We've got all night", he said. "You may speak."

Five minutes passed, during which Emil was panting furiously through his nostrils, his tears of pain drying on his cheeks, his hair wild. Fluid was dripping from the bared, red skin.

The man went and took hand sanitiser on a tissue, then bent forwards to Emil's face. "One more chance. I will not ask you again. I've been polite enough. One more chance, then I'll just keep torturing you until you speak, or until you die. The latter will take an exceptionally long time."

Speak, Emil, speak! I willed him.You're worth more than that! You're worth millions of the rest of us.

He didn't. Of course he didn't.

The man took the tissue and put the almost pure ethanol on his flared skin.

Emil's screams before were nothing, NOTHING compared to now. Just listening to it shot daggers through my heart and I screamed through my taped mouth, convulsed in the chair, desperate to get out of it and get to the screen, wanting to help him. The masked man bent down, took out a set of keys and proceeded to bend off the nail of his index finger. Emil slumped in his chair, momentarily fainted as the pain caused his blood pressure to plummet.

He was quickly woken up by some heavy fragrant salt. At this point, he was drooling, and I was crying. No, no, please no. Stop it. STOP IT!!

I heard foot steps coming closer to me, the familiar, previously so safe smell of Tobirama's vanilla cologne embracing me. Now, that smell made me gag. He harshly grabbed the tape over my mouth and pulled. He bent down, whispered: "So you can scream as one with your dead whore."

It was like an icicle through my heart; the pain, the hurt, the heartbreak. The confusion about how Tobirama switched from one time we met to the next. Seeing Emil. Realising that I had a crush on Emil, that I'd had a crush on him ever since Tobirama's true identity was revealed and my feelings for him were no longer in the way. And his death struck me all over again. I screamed. I screamed my lungs out.

For three hours, the torture continued. The masked motherfucker broke his fingers, one by one.

"KILL ME! KILL ME, PLEASE!" Emil had begged and my heart shattered into a thousand pieces. At that moment, it shattered into a thousand pieces in a way that would never truly heal for my entire life, but I would wake up from nightmares to the day I died that was about Emil begging for release. He screamed as the skin on his leg was flared until he had large, raw patches all over. He lost two toenails and five fingernails. The masked man taped his eyes open and lit his face with a strong flashlight.

I screamed with him.

I cried my heart out.

"EEEEEEMIIIIIL!!"

I vomited several times and cried so much I was weakened by dehydration, started to see black stars swimming across my eyes.

Anything was better than this. I'd rather Tobirama do with me what they did to Emil, than having to watch Emil being tortured.

And during all this time, Emil didn't budge.

He didn't give away a single thing.

And then it came.

The masked man held out a container with a red liquid. He poured it on top of Emil, and held out a lighter.

No...

Tobirama's gun clicked.

"Keep looking."

No...

The man lit his lighter.

I could see the panic in Emil's eyes.

Don't die, Emil! You haven't even met me yet! You haven't even met me yet and I wish I had told you I love you and how important you are and what you mean to me. Please, survive, PLEASE.

Which was ludicrous as of course I knew he would.

But as he was put on fire, his screams, his desperate convulsions, were so out of this world I didn't recognise him anymore.

"Have you ever accidentally touched the hot part of your hairstraightner for just a fraction of a second? Burns, doesn't it. Imagine you're holding it on the wrong end", Tobirama said somewhere far, far away. "Now, imagine that all over your entire body. That is what being in fire feels like."

My face froze, my entire body shutting off as I watched Emil burn, the flames collected on the lower part of his face. He was scream-crying, trying to run but stuck in his chair.

And my brain just shut off.

I slumped in my chair, drool running down my chin to the floor, and it became impossible to contact me.