cookingwithpain | FIC: A Cure [Amnesia: The Dark Descent]

Title: A Cure
Fandom: Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Justine)
Rating: PG13 (or up)
Genre: Ch... Character study?
Summary: Justine Florbelle has an idea, but she just might need some help in the execution. Thankfully, the men in her life are always able to help. Even if they aren't necessarily willing to.
Warnings: Possibly triggery. Content may be slightly disturbing and includes references to torture, sexual tension, self-harm, eye scream and about five different assumed emotional disorders.
Pairings/Characters: Justine Florbelle, Alois Racine, Malo de Vigny, and Basile Giroux.
Author's Note: How did this get so out of hand... I just wanted to find an explanation for why the suitors are all naked and then this just happened.
Disclaimer: Amnesia and all affliliated properties belong to Frictional games. And they can keep it. Crossposted to AO3.

Alois was the first. It was almost too easy, almost by accident. He had been simpering and groveling before her as usual, and the thought struck her.

“I would do anything for you, my sweet.”

She tilts her head and smiles, careful to keep her expression just a little bit melancholy.

Anything, truly?

And so trailing her hand across his cheek and whispering to him, she looks into his eyes and speaks of science. An experiment, a test. But she would need his help, he would need to follow her. Down the stairs, through the old musty storage rooms that smelled of mold and decay, to the room as hot as a furnace. And he stares uneasily at charcoal sketches plastered across the walls, but when she squeezes his hand his attention is instantly on her face again, and his doubts vanquished.

It’s almost too easy.

She starts to undress him, prompting his face to flush and his stammer to shift from doubts about science to doubts about the propriety of it all. She kisses away his protests, guiding him towards and then against and then onto the table, peeling away his coat and then his waistcoat and then his shirt. Oh, Alois, she breathes, running her fingertips over the ridges on his arms and chest. Older faded scratches and fresher, angrier gashes, none with any pattern to them. None with any order.

He’s thoroughly distracted by the contact and she maneuvers him easily around the shackles. He doesn’t seem to notice at all that even when she’s finished stripping him bare, she’s still fully dressed.

All she has to do is hand him the bottle, pecking him on the cheek. He drains it, staring at her as he does, unable to take his eyes off her face in the firelight. She doesn’t know what it tastes like, hasn’t dared to try it herself, but it makes him cough and curl around himself, choking.

You always had the weakest constitution, she thinks as she snaps the cold iron around his scarred wrists. The choking turns to screaming as the elixir starts to spread through his body, but even while he gurgles and snarls all the warped words from his throat speak of nothing but adoration for her.

As she plucks out his eyes, he screeches that he loves her.

Malo was the second. Cannier than Alois by far, less willing to submit to her, but easy enough to manipulate. He had been brushing his fingers through her hair and breathing onto her neck, and the thought struck her.

“Never, never shall I leave you, darling.”

She tilts her head and smiles, coquettish and fey, and splays thin fingers across her chest.

Never, really?

And so staring at him through half-lidded eyes and giggling, she speaks of a way for him to always be near her. He can always be within reach, she says, and strides away with coy glances over her shoulder. He follows, of course, down the stairs and through the catacombs and abandoned labs. He complains about the inconvenience but not the sight of her dripping with moisture, her skirts hitched up in the low light. No, no, they can’t go through the storage rooms. It frightens her, the old cells, the way the wind roars as it blows through them. Almost as though they’re haunted, as though something lurks behind the rusting bars and aging stone, and it frightens her ever so much. He smiles indulgently at her foolishness, chuckles about the frailty of the fairer sex, and kisses her cheek. She tolerates the way he lingers too long to breathe in her scent, assuring herself silently that soon it won’t be a problem.

Up the stairs they dry off before the fire, and his eyes never leave her as she twists the water out of her hair, drops of it falling into the furnace and hissing into oblivion. She idly suggests that perhaps his clothes would dry more swiftly if they were above the flame, and he teases that they would have to be off of him were that the case.

She simply raises her eyebrows, and his shirt and breeches are gone in seconds.

Malo keeps talking, sending wry smirks in her direction as he notices the restraints. Interested in experimentation, is she? He never would have expected that from a lady of her standing. Or perhaps she just wants to keep him down here, hers alone forever? She hands him a bottle saying it’s to keep the cold away, to take the edge off, and he knocks it back in mere moments. She’s thankful when his babbling turns to hoarse, wordless retching.

You never did know when to hold your tongue, she thinks as she shoves him down by his collarbone. He shakes and twitches, unable to fight her off as she pins him down with a clack and a clank.

As she binds him in chains, he begs her to let him taste her flesh.

Basile was the last. Suspicious of the other’s absences, he asked her over drinks if she had any idea where they’d vanished to. His face grew brighter as she laughed and dismissed his fears, suggesting that perhaps he had finally scared them off. The idea that she was finally his and his alone told root in his mind and the wine she kept ordering eased his temper. But he was still too distrustful, and she couldn’t risk him investigating the others, and as he leaned back and stared at her over the glasses, the thought struck her.

“Now you’re mine and mine alone.”

His, was she?

And so brushing her hand against his as their reached for the same cup, she casually mentions an aging barrel in her late father’s cellar. Elbows linked to keep him from stumbling over the cobblestones or his feet, they walk home through the fog under a canopy of lamplight halos. Down the stairs, through the old study and library, between the worn spines of the tomes she’d inherited after her father’s tragic passing. She chides him gently for asking about the storage rooms, taking him by the arm and guiding him towards the passages. He shouldn’t ask about those, the pathways here can be treacherous and unsettling. Basile snorts derisively and eyes the hunched statues, making an offhand comment about her poor taste in décor as she leads him up the stairs. Perhaps, he drawls, she would not be so unnerved by the simplest of creaks if she would replace such art with items of real beauty.

Beauty like her own? She wonders under her breath, tucking her hair behind her ear as she leads him into the cramped, smoky room. He hears her, as she intended him to, and traces a palm over her shoulder as he agrees. His hands are calloused and rough, his lips chapped when he presses them to her neck, his fingers clumsy when he tries to undo the brooch around her neck. She halts him and takes a delicate step backwards, reminding him that he came for the absinthe. But if he should want to really prove that she is his, perhaps when she returns from fetching it he could be ready for her.

She opens the door to find him without a stitch of clothing, peering at the sketches and diagrams with something akin to amusement.

He plucks the bottle from her outstretched hand and sinks onto the table, barely quirking an eyebrow as she fusses with the phonograph in the corner. By the time she turns around he’s started sipping from the bottle, grimacing both at the taste and her distraction with the machine. He still drinks it, however, despite the fact that it is far stronger than wine. Wine, she insists, is for helpless women like herself.

Helpless, like he is when the drink starts to seep into his veins. She pushes him down as he protests, bleating about the ache in his head and his lack of patience. His voice warps and shakes as the potion takes hold, and he barely notices when she traps him with the faint click of iron. She strokes his hair and collects her tools, a giggle in her voice as she teases him.

You never could control your temper, she thinks as he bucks and screams when she takes the scalpel to his eye socket, carving out the soft tissue while his body changes without his consent. He screams, and screeches, and curses, and threatens, and rasps.

As she as she buckles the collar around his neck, he swears he’ll have her life.

“Malo de Vingy?” A nameless girl wonders in a cold, dank prison cell, a folded newspaper clipping in her hand. She tries to identify her own thoughts, to understand why the names on the scraps of paper ring familiar through her head. It scares her more than the bound man on the other side of the bars, her lack of identity. Though less than the shuffling beast wrapped in metal that pursued her earlier. But these names, these people, she feels that she knows them. And if she knows these men, perhaps once she escapes this crucible they can help her.

Though she also wonders at the blood on the table, the plea for forgiveness scrawled above the paper. Does it have to do with the events in the article? With her entrapment down here, below the surface? Or is it something to do with the monster clinking through these halls?

More importantly, whose forgiveness was being asked?

As she pulls the lever curiously, the man in the cell screams, and she starts to think that she may have an answer.