OC: Jaron Kalvin (he/him)
Species: demigod, son of Hermes, legacy of Aphrodite
Universe: He's from PJO, but he's currently in Kutan
For some context:
The Warden: a literal warden from Minecraft, the head jailer of solitary confinement
Eelyak: the Supreme Judge - leader of the dimension police
Aljak: LunyaVioletBlue's character, a former dimension police from the Genshin Impact universe who got fired and made friends with Jaron (and he totally has a crush on her)
SC/Solitary Confinement: where they send criminals who can't be contained in the main prison and/or did really bad stuff, people who personally angered the Warden or Eelyak, DP traitors, etc.
The choker is to keep Jaron from charmspeaking the guards who come to feed him and stuff
Any questions, just ask, this has a lot more context but if I wrote all of it it would be more context than oneshot lol

TW: TORTURE, KNIVES, BLOOD, FROSTBITE, BROKEN BONES
I have never had frostbite nor have I been tortured (thankfully) so please correct me if I'm wrong with any descriptions

"Ready?" The Warden asked.

He didn't wait for a reply before he unlocked Jaron's restraints, took off the choker that kept him from speaking, and shoved him face-down on the floor. The concrete was rough against his bare chest.

Jaron grunted. "That's not very nice."

"This isn't the wimpy normal prison, pretty boy," the Warden mocked. "We don't do nice in SC. You're in my world now." he raised his spear.

You'll be okay, Jaron told himself. Torture is nothing new.

And then the blade bit into his back, and any attempts to comfort himself dissipated like fog in the wind.

He gritted his teeth, trying not to cry out. The spear was cold - unnaturally cold. Why was it so cold?

It hurt more than a spear was supposed to.

And it was spreading, too - a tingling sort of pain, the kind of pain one felt in the winter when the frigidity bit into their skin and pierced it like thousands of tiny knives. Jaron let out a groan.

"Come on," the Warden prodded.

From the feeling of it, the spear was barbed. The Warden dragged it across his back, from shoulder blade to hip bone. Jaron grasped for something - anything - to hold onto, to bite, to stop himself from screaming, but there was nothing there but empty space and concrete floor.

The Warden put a foot on his other shoulder to stop him from thrashing. There was no blood on the floor. Why was there no blood? There should have been blood.

He focused his vision on his hands. His fingers were trembling. His back was... numb, somehow. But saying it hurt was still an understatement. All the warmth had been drained from his entire body, he was not a person, he was just a body and a thudding heart and cold-

And then the spear was gone.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" The Warden asked. Jaron could hear the grin in his voice. "You ready for part 2?"

"N-no," Jaron begged. "Stop-"

The Warden grabbed his forearm and shoved him back against the wall. Jaron finally screamed as the bricks dug into the wound. Nothing about this place was smooth. Everything was designed to tear, to destroy, to rip the humanity out of a person until they were nothing but a broken caged animal.

Jaron must have blacked out for a second, because when he opened his eyes again, the Warden was gone. His wrists were once again clamped to the wall. The choker was back. His wound was still open, not bandaged, but yet there was no blood. His shirt was back on. Why did they bother to put his shirt back on if they were just going to torture him again later?

Still, he let out another agonized groan. It hurt, it hurt, why did it hurt so much? Surely it wasn't an ordinary spear that the Warden was using.

At some point, a guard brought in a tray of food and tried to feed him, like a child, one spoonful at a time. Jaron refused it. He didn't want to give the Warden the pleasure of watching him throw up during whatever came next.

"You need to eat," the guard said. Her face was almost kind. She pitied him. She did not care about him. "You'll need your strength."

Jaron couldn't speak, but he tried. As soon as he opened his mouth, she shoved a spoonful into it. He was forced to swallow.

That was all she managed to feed him. He gulped down the water she offered him greedily, though.

He didn't know how long it was. Minutes? Hours? Decades? There were no windows or clocks to tell the time. But the Warden returned eventually.

Once again, he took off the cuffs.

A deep pit of dread settled in Jaron's stomach. He flinched as the Warden grabbed his arm again and tried to yank away. That just caused a new explosion of pain in his back.

He didn't try to resist again as the Warden half-dragged him out of his cell, down the hall, and into a room close to the back of the building.

It had a tub in it, full of steaming water. Something told Jaron that it was not a spa. Maybe it was the pair of rusty manacles attached to the faucet. Maybe it was the flickering light overhead. Maybe it was the fact that when the Warden tossed him in like a sack of potatoes, his entire body exploded.

It had been ice before, but it was fire now. He screamed again, but it came out noiseless as a stream of bubbles. His lungs cried out for air. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe-

And then something yanked on his hair, and he was gasping and sputtering and coughing. Was it water or tears on his face? Both?

What had he done the first time he was arrested? Coping mechanisms. The one his therapist taught him for panic attacks. His name. What was his name? Jaron. He was Jaron Kalvin, son of Hermes, seventeen years old-

Another wave of pain interrupted his train of thought. Jaron? Who was Jaron? He was nothing. He was just a hunk of flesh and bones that was freezing and burning and bleeding and crying and praying to all the gods that they would just let it stop.

But the gods couldn't do anything in this world, nor would they care if they could.

The Warden didn't bother with the handcuffs. He didn't need to. By then, Jaron could barely move on his own.

He didn't know how long the Warden held him there. He drifted in and out of consciousness. His back remained submerged through the whole thing.

And then he was pulled out and tossed aside.

The world was blurry. The Warden crouched down in front of him, grinning. It was a friendly grin, but so sickeningly twisted that Jaron felt like throwing up the one bite of soup he had been forced to eat earlier.

"Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

The voice was distant, distorted. All that Jaron could get out in reply was a strangled sort of whimper.

A finger poked his back. He was sure this was supposed to cause more agony, but he didn't feel it. All he felt was his own heartbeat, the tears and water on his face, the blood running down his back.

"Hm," the Warden said. "Reached your limit already? That's fine. We can try again tomorrow."

Tomorrow? There was a tomorrow? There was no tomorrow in this place, only here and now.

Jaron didn't remember being dragged back to his cell, nor did he remember being latched back in, or the guards that bandaged him up and applied ointment that stung as it cleaned the wounds, or eventually falling asleep.

When he woke up the next morning - or what he assumed to be the next morning - his head was clearer. The pain had dulled to a pulsing throb, ebbing and flowing like water. Water. Jaron never wanted to use a hot tub again.

Slowly, he realized that the original wound had been frostbite. He'd never had frostbite before.

Again, the Warden came in with that horrible spear. This time, Jaron took a good look at it - it was barbed, made of what looked like bronze, embedded with a blue stone-

That blue stone. He had seen it before. Where had he seen it before?

That was right. Aljak.

Aljak, Aljak, Aljak. He clung to her name as tightly as he clung to his own. His friend, his- more than a friend. He struggled to recall the last he'd seen of her. In the sand at the edge of an oasis, sleeping under the moonlight. She was cute when she snored.

What was a shard of her Vision doing in this strange lance?

The same lance, he realized, as the one he had stolen from the Eremites after they took it from Eelyak.

No, no, no. That can't be right... I had it that whole time and didn't notice?

To his surprise, the Warden handed the spear to a second figure as it entered the room: the Supreme Judge himself.

Aljak was forgotten, replaced with pure, fiery hatred. Eelyak. This was Eelyak's fault.

Eelyak crouched down to Jaron's level and took off the choker, but not the cuffs. "What an honor to finally meet the criminal who brainwashed one of my top officers," he drawled.

"She's not brainwashed," Jaron snapped. His voice was hoarse. "All I did was show her the truth about you and the dimension police." He forced a grin. "Thanks for firing her, by the way. We're friends now."

The feeling of her hand in his flashed through his mind like a hummingbird flitting to a flower, then was gone as quickly as it came. The hummingbird dropped dead.

It was a knife that cut him, not the spear. A deep, jagged gash, across the cheek. Jaron winced as blood dribbled down his chin.

"I don't regret firing her," Eelyak said calmly, wiping red liquid off his knife with a satin cloth. "She had her chance, and you blew it for her."

"She was a- a tool to you," Jaron growled. "She meant nothing to the MLED. She meant nothing to herself, even. I don't have anything to do with your system for who you allow to work here. She chose to find me after you fired her, she chose to look for the pieces of her Vision, and it seems you have another one."

Another slash to the face. Twin gashes, like tire tracks.

"You are in no position to be saying such things," Eelyak scolded, once again cleaning his knife. "Congratulations, you've managed to figure out where the Frostbite Spear draws its power from, but I'm afraid Miss Futai won't be learning about that anytime soon."

"Why not?" Jaron demanded before he could have second thoughts. "She'll come for me, and if she doesn't find out then, I'll tell her."

Eelyak sighed. "Tsk. That's quite a bold statement, considering she still doesn't have her full Vision. She's not coming, because she simply does not care enough to try. After all, why would anyone care about a thief?"

Jaron stared him in the eyes, refusing to show any emotion. Aljak had saved his life... probably twice at this point, and she was the one who grabbed his hand. That had to mean something, right?

"Besides," Eelyak continued, leaning closer and tracing a thin line down Jaron's jaw with his knife. "Even if she did care, she doesn't know you're here. She thinks you ran away at the first opportunity."

He lowered his voice to a hiss. "You are good at running away, aren't you?"

Jaron flinched, and Eelyak took that as an opportunity to bury the knife in his foot. Jaron screamed and instinctively jerked his leg away, causing the knife to tear the wound larger.

Eelyak stood up, cleaning his knife again - neatly, almost delicately. Jaron hated that satin cloth.

"Make sure he gets bandaged," Eelyak ordered the Warden. "We don't want him bleeding out before you're done with him."

The Warden, who was leaning against the wall next to the door, grinned. "Sounds great," he said.

Eelyak left. The Warden crouched down next to Jaron and put the choker back on.

"I'll be back this afternoon," he said. We'll be able to play with that spear a little more. How's that sound?"

Jaron shrunk back against the wall, as if making himself smaller would make the Warden hurt him less.

The Warden noticed. Of course he did, but he smirked and said nothing as he left.

The medics came in soon to bandage Jaron's foot and face. He didn't look at them. He just stared at the floor, feeling Eelyak's words sink in as much as he tried to tell himself otherwise.

No help was coming. He was alone.

The only chance for him to escape was when his restraints were off - possibly that afternoon.

As promised, the Warden returned a few hours later after a lunch that Jaron refused to eat. His stomach had given up on begging for mercy just as he had.

Once again, the clamps were undone. The Warden didn't grab him immediately this time, so Jaron took the chance and ran.

The only thought going through his head was freedom.

And then it was torn away as the Warden grabbed the back of his shirt, yanked him back, and shoved him against the wall next to the door.

"Cute," the Warden commented. "You do realize you can hardly walk, right?"

"Worth- worth a try," Jaron mumbled.

"That foot injury isn't going to do much to help you."

"I know that."

"So why are you even trying?"

"Because this sort of sucks," Jaron answered. "And Eelyak was right. I am good at running away."

The Warden snorted and tossed him back over to the restraints. "Not from here, you aren't."

Jaron heard something crack. His tailbone, maybe? Everything hurt too much already to tell.

"Well, what do you expect me to do?" Jaron shot back. "Just sit here and let you torture me?"

The Warden chuckled. "That's exactly what you're gonna do. See, Solitary Confinement is psychological, too. Convince the prisoners they aren't leaving, and they won't leave."

Jaron didn't reply.

"And you are not leaving," the Warden growled. "Not today, not ever. It's a life sentence."

"That wasn't part of my trial," Jaron muttered. "I don't seem to remember even getting a trial."

"Trials don't dictate what happens here," the Warden grinned, adjusting his sunglasses. "I do."

~

Maybe the Warden still had some mercy in him, or maybe he was just getting bored, because that session didn't last as long as the day before.

Jaron spent the rest of the day in his cell, half-conscious. Dinner came and went, and again he refused to eat.

The third session, the next morning, was when he finally gave up.

This was it. He was going to be here until he died, whether from starvation or blood loss or just the Warden deciding to kill him. Aljak wasn't coming, and he was way too incapacitated to get out on his own.

He found himself flipping through his memories like pages in a book. He could have done better. He could have escaped his mom earlier. He could have been kinder to his foster family. He could have stayed on the right side of the Titan War. He could have-

The door made that hissing sound that it always made when it was unlocked.

Jaron didn't want to look up. He already knew it was the Warden again.

But he forced himself to anyway, and he was proven wrong.

No, this couldn't be right. This was a trick, an illusion - a hallucination, maybe? He didn't want to believe it, he didn't want to have hope only for it to be crushed, but the way she rushed over and collapsed to her knees at his side seemed very real-

The restraints came off.

Everything hurt, but he hugged her anyway.

She came. Aljak came.

And then she was hugging back, and his heart was exploding but not with fear or pain or any of that.

For a brief moment, everything was okay again.