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after-witch · 1 year

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Behind the Curtain [Ren Hana x Reader]

Title: Behind the Curtain [Ren Hana x Reader]

Synopsis: No more shows, yes, that’s what he says. He does not tell you “no more pain,” because there will be pain. Some musings from Ren Hana after the The Show Must Go On DLC (survival ending).

Word Count: 1600ish

notes: kidnapped reader, medical including eye prosthetics discussion, descriptions of past violent abuse and injuries including eye injuries

You poor, pretty thing, lying there in a hospital bed, tubes in your arms and an incessantly beeping machine monitoring your vitals at your side.

You look a mess.

You look lovely.

The wounds from your lively (and, he must admit, very well received--well, until the end) triple show debut are vibrant and gorgeously ugly.

Vivid stitches covered in ghastly looking iodine on your stomach, where you’d sliced your belly right open; antibiotic creams slathered over your puncture wounds; an etching of various cuts and bite marks… yours and his. Not to mention your eye.

You’ll live, you dear thing. Scarred and bruised, inside and out--but you’ll live.

He’s not an amateur. You’ll have good medical care here. He can afford it, although it’s not often used for more than employee check-ups and keeping merchandise alive long enough to be sold or entertain his streams before the big finale. Or for the occasional creative request via a high-paying donor on a stream.

But for you? He’ll make sure to use every resource to get you back into shape. Back to where you were--or more accurately, he supposes, back to where you’re going to be from now on.

You wake up every now and then. Not to the fullest degree. You are pumped full of drugs, though, and he’s not terribly surprised at your lack of coherency. It’s cute, in a way, though he’s looking forward to enjoying you when you’re more alert. More alive.

How alive did you feel, in those last moments before he stopped the stream? How aware were you that he meant to kill you? That you were going to die in that dark room while people paid to watch and stroked their cocks and salivated over watching the last bit of light leave your eyes?

He couldn’t do it. No, no, that’s not right. He could have done it. He’s done it before, to others more and less worthy than yourself.

But he didn’t want to do it and therefore, he didn’t have to do it. You reminded him of that. Chat had power, sure, everyone with enough money had power. But he was in control. It was his stream. His life’s work. And you were his property, not theirs.

Did you know that one question would change everything?

Fuck the people watching the stream. They could have someone else, and they would eventually--logistically, he needed to make it up to them soon, a token apology made in some other poor pretty thing’s blood.

But not you.

Never you.

He smiles, just a little. It’s easier now to think about the future, in the sterile clinic room, away from the rush of the showroom with its screens, the stampede of feet when he pushed the call button, the tangy smell of your blood and the sight of you mangled and delirious beneath him.

The rush of the moment has passed, leaving behind a slow, thoughtful ebb in its wake.

You’re not the first merchandise he’s kept for himself. You’re not even the first person he’s taken a liking to and taken home with the intent to keep forever. And oh, that first one… he hasn’t thought about them in a while, the one that he kept for as long as he could, until they were gone.

You remind him of them, in some ways. Maybe in the way your voice softened when you asked him who gave him his scars; maybe in the pitiful way you begged him, sweet and sniffling, to cut out your eye because you knew it was best.

Maybe in the way you clenched around him, desperate, eager, hating the pain but embracing it because there was nothing else you could do.

But, ah… he’s being nostalgic again. He lets one claw idly trace your forearm, following the line of the IV. That person is gone. Dead. Tragic and all that, and some part of him will always miss them. But there’s no point in dwelling on it, just as he’s long since moved on from Strade and his amateur basement of horrors.

Years ago, he might have thought: what would Strade think of me now? But now he knows the truth: it doesn’t matter one single bit what Strade would think of him now, or what Strade might have thought of him then. Strade was nothing.

He had created his own world, far surpassing anything Strade could have dreamed of; Strade had some talent (he has scars to prove it) but what was talent without ambition? Without creativity, allure?

Anyone could get people to pay money to watch you kill some helpless fuck you snatched off the street.

But it took talent to do what he did, something far beyond basement videos with basic tools and a fabric mask.

It was a talent he had in spades, carefully crafted through trial and error. Lots of errors. But what business, what world, existed without them?

But you do make him reminisce, don’t you?

And then your hand is on his arm. Weak, fingers trembling as you try to grip him, and gain his notice.

This time, your eye isn’t quite as muddled, and you direct your gaze at him rather than flitting about the room in hazy confusion.

He watches as your throat works, swallowing, and he can practically hear the inside of your dry mouth sticking as you force open your lips.

“Is it… is it time for another show?”

He blinks down at you, his lips set in a frown.

Your dry lips tremble when he doesn’t answer. The heart rate monitor speeds up, and he glances at it--faster and faster, like a little rabbit--before resting his hand on your forehead. The beeping slows down just a little, and your eye looks up at him, darting across his face, desperate and terrified.

“No,” he says, with a somber finality, and the words are for himself as much as they are for you. “No more shows.”

Your smile is twitchy and slow, and your eye blinks low and lidded. The drugs want to put you to sleep. You want to stay awake. You’ll lose this battle, but he likes to see that you still have the will to live in you. It will come in handy.

A clawed finger traces your cheek, edging around the white medical patch covering your missing eye. He can see your head try to flinch, but you’re either too drugged to fully do it or you’re stopping yourself out of worry that he won’t like it.

Either option pleases him.

Your eye isn’t as bad as it was, but it will need more healing before you can wear a prosthetic, or so the physician said.

He’d never looked much into them before--prosthetic eyes, that is--but as he discovered during a late night bout of phone shopping, there’s a wide array of options nowadays. Exotic styles--cats and snakes and everything in between--and fun colors and pretty add-ons, like glitter or shimmer or rainbow holographics.

The thought of your false eye staring up at him in some impossibly beautiful hue, accenting a lovely outfit he’s dressed you in, makes him a little giddy, and he hopes you’ll be excited about them, too. Maybe in time you’ll be gazing at a selection of eyes laid out on a vanity, choosing between them like you might have done before all this with lipsticks and eyeshadows.

Will you hold up the eye you chose for his approval, a trembling smile on your face? It would be nice to see.

Though he’s not stupid--not as naive as he might have been, if he’d met you twenty or so years ago. You’re not going to immediately jump for joy that the man who orchestrated your kidnapping, tortured you, jacked off into your eye, pulled out said eye, and almost had you yank out your own guts got you a pretty prosthetic.

No, no… not immediately, anyway. That will take time and work and training. Thankfully, he has plenty of experience with that.

He smiles, just a little, watching as your remaining eye fights so hard to stay open; battling against the drugs keeping you sleepy and compliant for the first step in your healing.

You’re mumbling something, and he’s not really listening to the words, until he sees tears in your eye and you repeat yourself. The words come slowly. He’ll remind the nurse to wet your mouth soon.

“You pr…promise?”

He leans forward, cupping your chin, encouraging you to keep going.

Your voice is a whimper and it’s just so damned cute. Your remaining eye is wide and those pretty tears stick to the lashes like dew. He could kiss them off, he truly could, if he wasn’t sure getting anywhere near your remaining eye right now might send you into a panic.

“You promise no… no more shows?”

“No more shows,” he says again, gentler this time, stroking your hair. The tension in your muscles gradually relaxes from his touch, or perhaps the IV drip has given you a fresh dose of painkillers on schedule. It doesn’t matter. The effect is the same.

No more shows, yes, that’s what he tells you.

He does not tell you “no more pain,” because there will be pain. Life does not exist without it. His business does not exist without it. He does not exist without it.

There is always give and take, push and pull, pain and pleasure. None can exist without the other.

It’s a truth you’ll come to learn, as he did. And he can’t wait to bring you to that truth himself.

#the price of flesh #ren hana #tpof spoilers #the price of flesh spoilers #afterwitch writes #I wanna write smut with him but first!! the introspection

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