Dumpster #4: I Don't See How That's a Party

[trashmod]

Okay, kids, you know the drill. Don't be a jerk except to fictional characters. Warn if you want, but read at your own risk, because hydratrashmeme is about as far from a safe space as you can get. Garbage we like: noncon, whump, aftermath, violence, mind control, inappropriate uses of Bucky Barnes' metal arm, bad guys doing dirtybadwrong things to your faves. Garbage you should find a different trashcan for: a/b/o, D/s-verse, soulbonds, mundane AUs, OOC evil!good guys doing dirtybadwrong things to your faves, rotting leftovers dressed up as a romantic gourmet meal. Nothing wrong with 'em, but this isn't the crowd you should be pitching to if you're trying to sell Brock Rumlow as anything but a human dumpster fire.

Link your fills on the fill post, post unprompted fills as replies to a header comment so the wall o' text is collapsible, and let me know if you're interested in helping out with the Pinboard archive.

[Rules in full] [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by greenkirtle)] [Round 4 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]

All prompts or fills that contain Infinity War spoilers must go on the Infinity War spoiler post until May 26th. Spoilers in the main dumpsters will be deleted.

Round 4 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 5.

Comments

Barfing Out Hurt (1/?) (Child torture and the Grimdark)

[(Anonymous)]

AN: This is the trashmeme- yey, but if you look too long at this passage- you may see things in the shadows. Those things include horrible awful messy deadly things happening to a little girl. Be safe please.

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The words are cramped, the page wrinkled, clusters of words spaced across the page like daisies on a child's first flower crown. Dripping from one to the next with little trails of connecting words.


I keep throwing up.
I keep feeling like there is a heavy weight
I keep, just- getting sick and clutching the trashcan.
I remember you getting sick when you got the bad liver juice, I remember holding your head while your mother tasted it.
I remember her storming off to yell at he butcher, and me holding you as you moaned for us to let you die.

would it be kinder to die?

I remember my hand wasn't much bigger than yours, as you clung to it. You couldn't be more than eight. Maybe nine.

The Widows were that age. They had to be ready. I had to train them. I was encouraged to make the worst ones- examples. Make them last while doing it. Train them all, but break the ones that failed. Break them piece at a time.

I can remember the way her fingers felt. I can remember her sobbing as she threw up.

I can remember how much blood there was. It was kinder she hemorrhage. She didn't feel the example as much. By the time we got to the final class- all the other girls had no real danger of being last.

Her blond hair. Her blue eyes. The kindness she tried to show me, when I got confused.

I saved her.

I saved her from worse.

I took her away from them. Even as she scratched at my eyes, beat at me with broken wrists- I knew I had to protect her from them.

She could have been your daughter. All the Widows were so small. So frail looking. So strong and fast- enhanced. But she was- she was more than that. She had emotions still.

I don't want these memories. I don't want to be human.

Steve, I can't stop feeling her screaming on me- feeling her as the Matron laughed and told the other silent and still girls circling us, watching every blood splattered moment, listening to every thunk and gurgle, that uncertainty is a weakness, and emotions lead to death.

I wish I had died in the pit. I wish I had died before any of this.

Steve- I can't... I can't ever undo what I did.

She could have been your daughter. And to the few scraps of me that remained then, that meant that I had to kill her to free her. Have her blood on my hands, my face, my hips.

How can I ever be human again?
How can I ever be anything but the tool that calmly wiped her tears away while the handlers laughed? That thought that was the best way to help?

Why didn't someone go to far for me?

Why couldn't they have gone too far with me, why couldn't they have knocked out my teeth and torn me inside, more than the serum could heal. Why did they have to pull back too soon? Why couldn't I manage to die before they made me this?

Steve- why did you pull me off that table? Why didn't you just kill the monster I was already becoming?



Tony reread the page again. And then his own rising nausea won the battle against smugness, against the numb disbelief that had risen over him.

The way the words twisted in his mind. The images, the horrible truths shaded by hints and sideways mentions.

Horrible things done to a little girl that looked enough like Steve Rogers that the good man parts of James Buchanan Barnes chose her to- The pizza box joined the partially digested pizza in the trash can.

Tony found himself shaking and unwilling, unable to just burn the books and call it a night. To just shut it and walk away.

There wasn't a court in the world that wouldn't praise him for putting a hole in that lined forehead after reading this. Tony could assure Fucky the child murderer that he had nothing to worry about. He definitely wasn't human.

Tony turned the page, a drawing, of a child. It was blocky, but the features were easy enough to see resembled Steve's.

Tony bent over the trash can and wretched again. The sunrise didn't really kill the taste. Nor did the next five pages. Each with a drawing of another girl. Each ringed with hashmarks that on closer look spelled out "I'm sorry" and "I wish someone had done the same for me" and worse still "They stopped."

Tony felt almost relieved to flip to another page of text and horrors. New horrors to try to remove himself from the old. From the little girls with dead eyes that he could only imagine how they died and shudder.

Re: Barfing Out Hurt (1/?) (Child torture and the Grimdark)

[(Anonymous)]

OP: I'm not usually into the Red Room stuff, but this has all of what I like -what's left of Bucky in the WS trying to "save" someone (in the worst way possible, in this case), then living with the guilt as he starts to come back to himself, and of course the worst part of the story being what's implied rather than what's shown to us. I'm all about how you made sickly pre-war Steve the through-line for this part, and how the reader (or this reader, anyway) feels somewhat like Tony does at this point--almost relieved that one particular horror is over and morbidly curious about what comes next.