Kaz Brekker will make Pekka Rollings know Jordie's name.

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1,783 Words

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TW: Cursing, Hatred, Graphic Torture, Graphic Violence

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In life, there were very few certainties.

However, Pekka knew he was certainly about to die. It could be minutes from now, it could be hours from now until he bled out so much blood that even a Grisha couldn't save him. He was going to die. Dead, dead, dead, oh! how dead he would be.

He could feel the press of the boy's knees in his shoulders, surprisingly strong, the mans carefulness as he unbuttoned the man beneath him's shirt filling Pekka with mind-numbing terror.

The cool air brushed over his bare and sweating chest. He remembered so much, so little now, things that wouldn't save him, that couldn't save him. God, what was that stupid boy's name? Something, short, a sweet melody that rolled off the tongue easily. Nothing like the harshness of his brother's name.

He felt rough leather slide over the scar on his chest and he shuddered. "I know this," the boy whispered, voice like steel on stone. "My Wraith got you good, didn't she? Did you know that she never begged me to spare you?"

The boy leaned closer now, and Pekka could relish in the fact he couldn't see his face, those shark eyes that haunted his dreams. There was some cold fleck of vengeance that burned deep in that soulless boy, something demonic. There was something covering his eyes, so Pekka had to rely on his senses and touch to know where the boy was.

"My Wraith kills with kind steel. She doesn't torture. You heard her beg me in the Church of the Barter, you know how much she hates violence," he said smoothly as if discussing the weather. Pekka's heart sped up at the mention of the damn Church, the exact moment his life well and truly fell apart, "And yet..." Pekka felt the flat of a rough blade drag across him.

"Yet, even knowing what I will do to you in graphic, beautiful, detail, she didn't care. She asked for your heart, to put next to the hearts of the slavers who she kills so simply." The blade turned until the point was pressing lightly into Pekkas chest. "Does it scare you? How much one can hate? That a holy woman hates you so much she won't even pray for your soul?"

"Does it scare you?" Pekka gasps back. The boy hadn't gagged him, that sadistic fucker. God, Pekka hopes they put depraved and sadistic and damn near masochistic on the bastard's tomb, so people can spit on it until the end of the world.

A boy laughed above him, digging the blade in. Pekka bit back a groan. "No. No, it doesn't."

-

He dug the blade in, revelling in the squirming beneath him, the water crashing around him. He had taken off his gloves before digging the blade in, for he wanted to feel this. Memories and water and Jordie's corpse under him be damned, he would feel and feel and feel.

The drag up and to the right was quiet, Pekka clearly attempting to stay quiet, trying to rip the pleasure of screaming from his hands. But he knew that they would come, and if they didn't...we'll. He would fix that, one way or the other.

He paused, right before digging down. The blade he held was rusty, old, a painful little instrument of death. Saints, he may very well frame this little beauty when he's done.

The dig down and the subsequent curve up swede sharp practised moves. Pekka did not scream yet, but his groaning grew louder as the need to scream pressed against his clenched teeth. "So quiet," he remarked, brushing his hand over the cut.

"I can-" Pekka gasps, "Anything. Anything you want. I'll get it, please."

"You know what I want," he murmured, recutting the letter once more. He wants them to find the corpse, and for this to be the only recognisable thing amidstthe bruising and the decimation. "And you couldn't give it to me. Because silly Pekka Rollings, he can't remember a simple name. It's only six letters."

Letter One: J

He makes the 'o' slowly, digging deeper this time around. He feels the blood trickling then pouring across Pekka's chest, staining the hand braced on the skin a deep, gorgeous, red. Pekka is seconds away from screaming, he can tell.

Letter Two: O

The first cut down for 'r' causes the scream, short and sweet, barely whetting the demons insatiable craving for violence. He licks his lips, focusing over the second scream and he carves in the curve and the second slash of the 'r'.

Letter Three: R

"Are you scared?" He coos, brushing his cold, bare hand, scarred and bloody, under the three letters. The water is roaring in his ears, the panic is there, the disgust, the sickness, and for fucks sake he fucking loves it. This is the reminder, all he needs to hurt and end. It was never Jordie's voice, it was the water and the voices she steals. He is so mercilessly alive, so damaged, but that's what's led him here, over this man who took everything and who's going to have his end spelt on his chest.

"We were scared," he says absentmindedly, as he carves the fourth letter in, taking it slow. He likes this letter, it's simple and smooth. "Sick and scared. So very sick, so incredibly scared. And it's all your fault."

He laughs, hollow and broken. It sounded like the horns of the reapers barge to him, the cracked edges the flick of the match that burned it all away. It was music to his ears.

Letter Four: D

Pekka has not stopped screaming and begging, but the words are slipping away. He is sick and he is dying and he's scared, he's always been scared, but he is being reborn and sewn anew with every cut, every slash, every brutal drumbeat of water. This is his last rite, then he can tear away everything he'd been as a child as a teen, and start over. The water is crimson with blood, thick with bones, crawling with disease. He is sick, he knows it.

Letter Five: I

"I," he growls, digging in the last letter slowly, viciously, trying to make Pekka feel every jagged edge, every year, every stroke in the water, every brick.

"Hate," the world is darkening. He's gone, he's gone. He won't come home, there is nothing that will take him. Deeper and deeper he dives, his head heavy. He couldn't feel his wild pulse in his chest anymore, he was gone, and gone he would be forever.

"You." The last letter is a jagged, messy thing. Pekka is shrieking in pain, begging, saying words that have no meaning to his water-filled ears and a broken heart.

'I hate you' doesn't begin to describe anything. It is agonising how much he hates Pekka Rollings. It rips him in two, feeling that swell in him when he sees the man, and every cruel, merciless slash is barely a whisper of what he feels. Pekka's pain now is nothing compared to how much he aches from hating for so long with such a poisonous effect.

There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet and he can't form them into an echo of what he has felt for over a decade. He hopes Pekka can feel it, in the six, precise letters slashed into him. The old lion's screams rattle in his ears.

Letter Six: E

He grins, a broken, bloody, thing, running his hands, drenched in blood, over his face and through his hair. He can feel the smears of blood, and Saints that is good.

"J-O-R-D-I-E," he says slowly, leaning over Pekkas agonised face. "Jordie. See how simple that is? How easy it is to remember, Pekka? It's not hard, I can do it easily."

"You sick, depraved, boy," Pekka manages to sneer.

He shrugs in reply, bringing a bottle out of his pocket."And whose fault was that?" He places the edge of the bottle against Pekkas lips, which he pressed close.

He rolls his eyes, grabbing the older mans jaw, and hooking two fingers in, forcing his mouth open. He is dizzy from the saliva and blood that spills onto his fingers, but it only adds to his anger as he forces the contents of the vial down Pekkas throat.

He forces the jaw closed, brushing a pale finger over it. "That was Strychnine, Pekka. You know what Strychnine Poisoning does, don't you? You know how painful what little life you have left is about to be for you, don't you?"

Pekka was shaking, trying not to swallow, sobbing as he had to. He smiles again, wider, crueller, teeth sharp, as he leans forward one more time. "What's my brother's name, Pekka? What name is carved into your chest?"

Pekka can barely force the name past his lips, "Jordie!"

He slams his hand into the side of Pekka's head, pressing down hard. Pekka can barely breathe, "Don't ever, ever, speak that name again, or so help me god, I will make you live longer, in more misery than you can possibly begin to imagine. You aren't worthy of that name."

"You're fucked in the head, Brekker. You've got a damn screw loose in there, you sick fuck."

"You took my brother from me, Pekka Rollings. You took my world from me, you forged me into this. Of course, I'm fucked in the head," there's a wild light in his eyes as he tilts his head, "With every body added over me, with every second I remained alive, I became less and less a human. And that was all. your. fault."

"Do you know what it feels like to lose everything? You've only tasted the bitterness of an imaginary loss, but you play what I said I did to sweet little Alby over and over in your head every day. You only know a fraction of what I feel, because you had the luxury of it being fake. I didn't. I prayed and prayed for it all to be a fever dream, but my fever had broken hours before. It was horribly real."

"I am fucked in the head Rollings. I am so very fucked in the head. Maybe I am sick, maybe I am a sadistic, depraved monster, a masochistic man who's going to go home and revel in this, in a year-long high. Who will know? Certainly not you."

Pekka spat in his face, face twisted into a scowl. He simply wiped away the spit from his face and frowned, glancing out the window.

"Farewell you son of a bitch," Kaz Brekker growled, "No one will mourn you."