[trigger warning: extreme abuse and violence. Lots of blood.]

"I'm impressed. If I had known you worked this efficiently with Mae on the line, I would have threatened you earlier." Michael's voice carried itself though the dark, but Mark would be damned if he could actually hear it to react.

His ribs cried out though a wheeze with every cautious breath he took. From what he could feel, at least two were broken. He tried blinking his unscathed eye, but just like the last fifty times, all he could see was darkness. Even the fragments of light that managed to scrape under the basement door were staring to blend into black.

Mark heard the clink of the man's metal toe shoes as he walked up to his kneeing form. His hair was grabbed as he was manhandled and dragged to the wall to his left. He felt some of the strands rip out the roots, but he knew better than to cry out.

When his back finally made contact with the cold wall, he couldn't help the grunt that escaped through his bleeding lips.

That earned him another kick to the ribs, the force had his lungs cough out some blood.

"God, every time I look at you, I see him." Michael said, voice seeping with disdain. He pulled out his handkerchief to wipe off some of Mark's blood that had landed on his shoe, before he bent down to younger's level and pulled his face forward. He dabbed around Mark's split lip, before he stopped, his upper lip curling in disappointment.

"You have your mother's lips, though." He said, betrayal starting to seep into his tone. "And her eyes." He said again as he watched Mark breath hard into the palm of his hand. Mark's eye never once stopped glaring at the man in front of him, he held strong.

"You even have the same look she had in her eyes." He said bringing the cloth up to Mark's swollen right eye, wiping up the trails of blood that seemed to run from the gash right below his eye. "She never once looked at me the way she looked at him, do you know how infuriating that was?" He said, purposely apply more pressure on the cut, making Mark jerk away in pain. But Michael only held onto his face tighter.

"Try that again and I will pluck your eyes out." Michael seethed and Mark could only glare back.

"It's honestly a shame that the rest of your face looks like him, your mother should have chosen me from the start." Michael returned Mark's furious gaze as he pushed Mark's head further into the wall, until Mark had to shut his eye due to the intense pain of the wall against the open cuts on his back.

"You should have just died too." The grip on Mark's face loosened as Michael stood up. When Mark finally found the strength to open his eye again, he saw the man straighten out the creases of his vest.

"Make sure I get what I want by Thursday, or I'll have Mae shipped off first thing Friday morning."

With that the man turned around and headed for the door. How the demon had managed to avoid all blood splattered all over the floor in the darkness, wasn't even a surprise to Mark anymore.

With the loud slam of the door resounding throughout the whole basement, Mark could finally let out a shaky breath as he felt his body go limp. He didn't even have the strength to move his left arm to reattach his dislocated right one. But he was actually lucky this time, if he hadn't managed to scamper through what his sourced had sent him an hour before he had to deliver his report, things could have been way worse.

The rattle of the giant metal door as it was slowly opened, ushered in the blinding light of the hallway. Mark knew better that to flinch when he heard Mae gasp. His head instantly dropping to hide as much of his bruised skin a possible, but he knew she had already seen him. His chest was probably more colourful than his face.

Mae already had tears running down her face by the time she had turned on the basement lights. She ran to him, the ends of her fluffy racoon pyjama pantlegs picking up blood as she ran through the splatters and puddles.

"S-Shownu Oppa's com-ming." She managed to get out through her soft sobs as she tried to be gentle and move Mark away from the wall and onto her. Her cries only got wilder when she noticed the amount of blood on the wall, from Mark's back.

The door was creaked open once more and Shownu was beside them in a few short seconds, pulling out material and bandages from the first-aid kit he'd brought with him.

Shownu knew that it would be impossible to move Mark upstairs in the state he was in right now. He could tell that Mark had lost way too much blood, and from the purple bruising he could see on the younger's chest, there was a high probability of internal bleeding. That would only give them a few more minutes before Mark completely went unconscious, considering the fact that he'd been here for several hours now.

"I need to assess all the damage he's taken." Shownu stated, because he knew from experience that Michael wouldn't just stop with a few broken ribs and punches. "We might have to take him to the hospital."

Mark grunted with and went into a coughing fit, making Mae and Shownu try to straighten him so he wouldn't have to choke on his own blood.

"M-Mark, please. Don't fight it today. P-Please." Mae cried into his neck; she couldn't bear to see her brother like this. I wasn't the first time, but with each recurring time she felt that she was getting one step closer to losing him.

"N-no." Mark somehow managed to wheeze out. "M-Minhyuk."

"Mark, he might not have the expertise to deal with you like this. You could have punctured a lung." Shownu tried to reason, as he tried to lay Mark on his side to reattach his right shoulder. The younger grunted with the impact of the shove, but the pain subsided into a dull throb when he could finally sense his fingers again.

"I-" Mark had to stop himself for a minute to blink away the dizziness "- I trust him." He continued as he looked up to the elder.

Shownu sighed as he nodded and told Mae to run up and get his phone as he slowly tried cleaning out the cuts on the younger's face.