Cecil's Predicament

A beam of sunlight passing across his eyes pulled Cecil's mind out of sleep.  Not yet moving to open them, he groaned softly in irritated confusion.  Normally he was very good about remembering to draw the curtains before he went to sleep – his full length, wall spanning windows faced eastward, and the morning sun was more than enough to rouse him from his extremely light sleeping state.  This was far less light than he'd have expected, though.  It must have been ungodly early.  That would explain how foggy his head was… though it was worse than it ought to have been from simply being woken earlier than he'd like.  Well, it didn't matter that much.  He must have simply been more worn out than usual.  With that decided, he rolled to one side and made to pull one of his spare pillows over his eyes and catch a few more hours of sleep.

It was at this point that he realized he could not move his arms.

Emerald eyes shot open in alarm as he took stock of his upper body.  He tugged at his arms again, but they held fast to their particularly uncomfortable position.  His shoulders ached, too.  Also present was that phantom ache of muscles no longer attached to his body that occasionally plagued the spot his long gone wings had inhabited.  To make matters worse, his head was pounding, hard enough that points of light had begun to dance across his vision.  With a heavy sigh, the angel shut his eyes once more, willing back the headache as much as he possibly could before opening them again.  It was then that he realized something else:

This was not his apartment.

Where there should have been a large space with luxurious royal blue carpeting, pale blue walls and ceiling with one wall made entirely of glass, and modern yet elegant furnishings, there was an all but empty yet somehow cramped expanse of sterile, clinical-looking white, no bigger than fifteen by fifteen feet by his rough estimation.  Rather than his king sized frameless bed covered in soft pillows and expensive silk sheets, he was lying on a small cot shoved into the back corner of the white cube.  In the diagonally opposite corner was a small table that appeared to be bolted to the floor, along with a single uncomfortable looking chair.  Directly above it was a small surveillance camera.

The remaining two corners were occupied by doors.  The other back corner's door was open, leading to what appeared to be a very small bathroom.  The sealed door in the final corner was large and heavy-looking, with a rectangular pane of glass roughly at eye level.  Stock of the room taken, Cecil at last glanced up at the small window that had been the source of the sunlight that had awakened him.  It was barred.

That certainly brought his full attention to the situation.  Where the hell was he?  What the hell had happened?

Sitting up was difficult, what with his still-throbbing head and his immobilized arms.  Why were his arms stuck, anyway?  Straining to lift his head, he finally got a decent look at his torso, where he found there to be a well-tightened and plainly practical-grade straitjacket.  That was more than enough to set all the alarms in the secret seller's head blaring at full volume.

Making use of the walls to squirm himself upright, Cecil's eyes began darting around in a wild panic.  What the hell was going on here?!

His head pounded even harder as his most immediate memories came back to him in a crashing wave.  Being called to come and chat with the military police chief, one of his many puppets.  The idle conversation that was plainly a stalling tactic.  Being backed into a corner.  His own outburst.  Launching into an attack.  Being grabbed, and then nothing.  Darkness.

So.  They'd finally been able to create a charge to put on the infamous Messenger.  Pushed the right buttons to make him snap, to catch him in the act, even if that act had nothing to do with what they really wanted him for.  To make a reason to arrest him, then hide him away wherever this was.  So they'd finally succeeded in outmaneuvering the mastermind.  He certainly wouldn't say they'd beaten him at his own game, but they'd beaten him nonetheless – at least for however long they could manage to fudge the paperwork to keep him here.

But… oh god.  What they'd used to set him off.

His wings.  His fucking wings.  They had his fucking wings!  Perfectly preserved in a giant evidence bag, kept specifically to shove in his face at just the right moment, bringing back lost memories he'd hoped never to recover.  But those weren't the memories that occupied him right now.  No, the scene in that office played over and over and over in his head.  His fatal mistake.  He'd underestimated these people.  He'd been cocky, and they used that to their advantage.

But his worst mistake of all was that he had ever in hell trusted Isaezel Lockhart.

He'd thought they'd had a truce.  A mutually beneficial business plan.  But the damn demon had betrayed him.  Provided the MPs with the exact way to take him down.  Hell, Lockhart had even been there to help.  After he'd fucking trusted the bastard.

He'd been a fool.  He'd been a damned fool.  He'd been soft, he'd been sloppy, and now he was plainly going to have to pay the price.

Pushing himself into the corner as best as he could, Cecil pulled his knees to his chest, pressing his face into them.  His breathing was ragged and shallow, and his body shook violently.  His wings, packed up so neatly, with his blood still on them, filled his mind as the invisible pain from his missing limbs climbed steadily to agonizing levels.  His stomach writhed, trying its damn best to empty itself of the contents it didn't have.  Tears of revulsion stung at his eyes and poured out over his cheeks.  There was nothing but terror, humiliation, and pain.

That was when the door opened.

The panicked angel let loose a strangled gasp and attempted to press himself deeper into the corner.  His head turned away from the entrance and his overflowing eyes squeezed tightly shut, he continued to struggle for breath until a familiar voice cut through his horror.

"Hmph.  You're in quite a state, aren't you, Fenn?"

The familiarity brought at least a small measure of calm, though certainly not anywhere near enough to quell the tremors that wracked Cecil's delicate frame.  Still, his breathing slowed, and air came more easily, at least.  Gingerly, he lifted his head slightly and pried his bloodshot eyes open.  Into his field of vision came the blurry image of the MP Chief Anthony Burgh – a man he'd been blatantly and gleefully manipulating for years now, and the very man who'd so calmly brought about his defeat.  In fact, he'd never known the man to be anything but calm, for the most part.  Even when Cecil himself was being a fantastic ass and flaunting his power in the man's face, the chief was calm.  Before the previous day – or whenever the fight had taken place – Burgh had never done him wrong.  Even if it had been almost entirely for the sake of advancing his own schemes, he'd actually come to enjoy the time he'd spent talking with the man.  Hell, the informant actually respected him, at least as much as he respected anyone.

So, he supposed, if he had to be at someone's mercy, he could have done worse.

He could have been taken by Lockhart.

Realizing he was being stared at, Cecil quickly pieced together that he was probably expected to respond.  Doing his best to pull his lips into as close to his normal smirk as he could manage, he forced out a weak, shaky, and hoarse chuckle.  "G-guess I am, eh?" he forced out, his voice much smaller and weaker than he'd ever imagined it could be.  He felt tiny, pitiful.  And that blow to his pride only made the horror, the sense of violation, even worse.

So this was what it felt like to lose.  To lose completely and utterly and be reduced to nothing.  To be broken down to a quivering pathetic mess and to know that there was nothing that could be done to fix it.

When he finally pulled himself out of his thoughts, the door had been closed, and the chief had dragged the chair to near the center of the room and had taken a seat – it seemed the angel had been staring for a fair amount of time now, and Burgh had decided to take that lull in conversation by frowning at him rather pointedly.  As it became clear that Cecil was not going to say anything more – whether because he was too shaken, or simply didn't feel like it – the chief broke the silence with a cough.

"We're having someone brought in," he informed his captive.  Cecil merely looked confused.  "For you to talk to, I mean," Burgh elaborated.

The look of confusion only deepened.  A moment later, though, apparent comprehension dawned on Cecil's face.  He closed his eyes and looked away.  "What?" he asked in a voice that might have sounded spiteful if it'd had any spine behind it, "Too lazy to interrogate me yourself?  I'm hurt."  Pressing his face slightly into the wall, he added, "What do you want from me, a signed confession?  That's unlikely to happen."

Chief Burgh gave an ungraceful snort.  "We don't need a confession to keep you here, Fenn.  No one knows you're here, and no one knows where here is, or that this place even exists.  There's no one in this building but you and my boys here to keep an eye on you.  We already know everything we need to, and you know it."

"Well, if you've got your secret prison act all set up, then hurry the hell up and execute me.  That's the plan, no?"  After a moment of silence, Cecil sighed and pulled himself into a tighter ball.  "You don't know a damn thing.  If you're not going to kill me, then leave me the hell alone."

The chief's frown deepened.  "No one's killing anyone," he said curtly, plainly nearing the end of his patience.  "You need help, Fenn.  I'm seeing to it that you get it."

"I don't want it," the angel bit back, his voice slightly muffled by the wall.  "The game's done.  I lost.  I don't want your damn help."

There was a moment of silence, then he heard the chief get to his feet – to leave, he assumed.  He did not expect to hear footsteps coming in his direction, nor to be grabbed roughly by the collar of his restraints and pulled out of his corner.  Burgh easily lifted Cecil's frail, lightweight body, dragging him upwards until their faces were on level and his feet were several inches off the floor – Cecil was not short, but the chief was very tall, topping him by a good five or six inches.  He briefly looked the man in the eyes, but was quick to look away.  Chief Burgh looked absolutely livid.  He'd never seen anything more than slight irritation on the man's face, and the new development was more than enough to make him lose what little nerve he'd managed to scrounge together.

"This is just a game to you, isn't it?" Burgh growled, the stench of cigars washing over the already terrified angel.  "Toying with people's lives, sending good men to die just to further your own little plans?  That's your idea of a game?"  He shook the fragile creature roughly.  "You're a sick little man, Cecil Fenn.  You sure as hell don't deserve my help."

"Then get the hell out."

The chief gave a sound that was almost a snarl, then forcefully threw Cecil back to the cot.  The wind knocked out of him, all the fallen Messenger could do was lie still, giving his tormentor an empty, lifeless stare.  But it seemed Burgh was not yet done talking.

"You may be a worthless ingrate, Fenn, but a mind like yours is something far too rare to let go to waste."  He turned away, beginning to move towards the door.  "We need that brain of yours.  So you're getting help, whether or not you want it – or deserve it."  He knocked twice, and Cecil could hear the sound of a disengaging lock mechanism before the heavy door swung partway open.  He exited, the door closing behind him.  Before it could close all the way, though, he called back, "Get some rest, Fenn.  You'll feel better once the drugs wear off."

Then the door shut fully, and Cecil was left once again in solitude, wheezing quietly until his breath returned.