Silent Screaming

Khaat had awakened, after using her own life energies to save her nearly mortally wounded father, to find she was in a room with stark white walls, blinding florescent muggle lighing, no windows, white tile floors, and a solid steel door. The room had been furnished with a steel bed with a lousy cheap cotton mattress, a cheap pillow with a white pillow case, and a standard blue blanket.

There was a square steel table and a steel chair, and there was a full sized refrigerator with a hasp and a padlock on it. Her captors had added a bathroom magically, and it had the bare basics of what she needed to at least minimally care for herself. She had been offered food, bottles of water, and bars of chocolate because Lucas Burke had made it clear that he didnt' want her to die--not yet. She had to be able to live long enough for her father to recover so that she could be slaughtered in front of his eyes in order for him to exact his revenge upon Robert Lupin.

Khaat had been made completely mute, magically. She could not utter a single sound of any sort no matter how hard she tried. And her magic had been stripped from her entirely. She was totally helpless. She had refused the food and had thrown the food containers, water bottles and chocolate bars, everything she had been offered, onto the floor. Her plan was simple. If she could starve herself to death, then there would be no way she could be used to torture her father. It was a simple plan, but it would eventually be effective.

She was weak from giving her father so many of her life energies and she spent most of her time lying on the bed, huddling under the blanket, chilled and shivering, thinking of her loved ones and trying to be strong.

Heeled boots made a soft thump on the white tiled floors as he strode down the hallway at a leisurely pace. Having worked his way up in the ranks, he was now allowed to go where ever he chose in the compound and he had just been assigned the best task of them all. A white unmarked door stood in front of him, and he grinned, his eyes darting to the little plaque next to it. Khaat Lupin Under her name was a sheet of plain white paper, and Felix pulled out his wand silently, touching his wand to the tip of his finger, a small prick of blood appeared, and he pressed it against this paper. The blood burned red against the white for a second, before the paper absorbed it and the words Clear, Welcome Felix Barker, please remember not to kill the patient Flashed across the top before he signed it with a quick wave of his wand and the door slid open.

Felix grinned and stepped into the room, hearing a soft hiss as the door closed behind him. He grinned again and stuck his hands in his pocket, his wand pushed up into his sleeve and was captured by a little hook that only he could pull it out from. He pulled a clipboard from off the wall and walked over to Khaat. "Khaat Lupin." He said with an airy, bored tone, his eyes scanning the paper on the clipboard. "Not eating I see.. is this how it has to be?" His eyes flickered up to look at her, cold and piercing as he watched her still form. His smile vanished and then he sighed. "What good will starving yourself do? We can simply inject you with the proper vitamins you will need for survival while you are asleep." He set the clipboard down on the edge of her bed and walked around it,leaning forward, so that he could see into her eyes.

"Ah, but I still see some hope there..." He said frowning slightly. "Given up food, but not given up hope, what a pity.. you aren't going to survive Lupin..." He said and straighted up again a mad glint in his eyes. He tugged on his black jacket and smiled. The room was stark white, except for a few splashes of orange, where the blood wouldn't come off of the walls. His entire body was covered in black however, so that he stood out plainly against the white, almost as though it forced the eye to watch him. "What are we going to do Khaat?" he hissed turning around and leaning against the wall to stare at the prone figure in front of him.

Khaat looked at her new visitor with contempt. She sat up weakly on the bed, leaning against the wall. Her mind instantly flooded her with the voices from her past of her father, Remus, and Brian, all coaching her on how to behave and how to surivive being a hostage. She had had years and years of those lessons, and they flooded back to her instantly now just like they were supposed to do. Steps for her to automatically take without having to think, things that she wsa hopefully trained to do just out of reflex.

But Khaat had ideas of her own. Lucas Burke had made it clear he wanted her to live long enough to be murdered in front of her father's eyes. That was his whole big plan. To Khaat, she only had one option. She had to stop it before it got started. The only thing she knew to do was to try her best to make those automatically programmed steps go away. To make herself not pay any attention to the loving voices in her mind and to love them more. To love them enough to surrender. To give up, to give in, to not allow herself to become a hideous vision in front of her father's face. She thought of her babies, Brian, her parents, and all the people she loved. They would miss her, but perhaps she could spare them f them watchng her die some horrendous death by managing something here, away from prying eyes.

The only flaw she saw was this man. If he were smarter than Burke about this, then he would never quite let her die. Maybe come close, but never quite die. This could well be very ugly indeed. She made herself stare at her captor with as much hatred as she could manage in order to provoke him.

Felix felt a smile cross his lips. "Aww, you know I hate it when people stare at me like that!" He said mockingly. "I really do hate it!" He said watching her as she attempted to be strong. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked around her for a second, his eyes trained on the hatred in her eyes. It was almost relieving to feel that hate radiate off of her likes waves of heat. He basked in the warmth for a second, almost drinking it in as he stood in front of her taking in the hatred, then he smiled and leaned forward.

"I almost forgot beautiful, you can't speak." He grinned at her as though he had simply forgotten about it. "But I bet I know what you would be saying." He said and then adapted a high pitch screechy voice in imitation of hers. "Felix I hate you, Felix let me die, Felix go away, please don't hurt me, oh Felix you are so much stronger and more handsome then anyone I have ever seen." He laughed loudly and flicked his wrist so that his wand slid into his hand, he tapped it on his palm for a second surveying her, the mocking tone leaving his voice. "But I didn't come here to talk anyway." He said as he slowly circled her like a wolf circling his prey.

"I bet you were just happy, happy, happy eh?" He said, his voice growing hard. "Happy, happy, loving family? Husband, or boyfriend, lots of little kids running around.. and then you got in the way of a very powerful man, the same powerful man I work for." He flicked his wand and whispered under his breath, and ropes shot out of it and flew towards Khaat, it wasn't to bind her, it was more for personal satisfaction.

Khaat simply forced herself to stand up, as unstead on her feet as she was. She opened her arms to show he had her permission to 'bring it on.' Whatever he intended to do, she wished he would just get on with it. She had managed to force herself to wipe out every trace of emotion from her face. She was preparing herself to die. She couldn't afford emotion right now. She had to be an automaton. Devoid of thought, devoid of feeling, able to withstand anything that was dished out at her.

When the ropes shot out, she simply caught a couple of them and held onto them for the moment. She figured he would either yank them away from her or enchant them to bind her somehow. Right now, they were merely irritating and annoying.

Well, Burke worked for Gelding, who really was bankrupt anyway. Her father had recently seen to that. And unless Burke was now independently wealthy, all ths man's work was either for charity or for pleasure, one or the other. She was curious just which.

Felix smirked when she grabbed the ropes and held them away from her, so that she had control over whether they bound her or not. "Clever.." He said and then moved closer to her, his wand out, but pointed at the ground, he put his face up against hers and grinned. "So what, you are just going to let yourself die? When you have such a family back home? All of those kids, oh and what about that one I heard about.." He made a face to make it look like he was thinking. "Elijah Krum.. the kid of Viktors, I bet it'll be so great when you die before we can torture you in front of your father, but imagine when we bring him in, oh and his little pregnant girlfriend." He grinned. There was a LOT this company had found out about her life, and it wasn't hard to figure out most of it. Any animagus could see that Elijah's girlfriend was pregnant, and it was also easy to see that Elijah had a good standing in Khaat's eyes.

"Oh, or that little boy and girl.. those will be fun to get a hold of, I bet the entire family would come out to help them, and then we'd get to torture them all? Is that how it's going to be?" He sniffed her hair and grinned at her moving around behind and sticking the wand into her back. "So unless you want every last person you've ever met tortured and killed, I suggest you let yourself live Darling." He growled, and shoved his wand into her back roughly. "Or there will be more deaths then either of us want, though I will happily kill them all for the sake of my boss.. I'd kill you now if I had the authority to do it." He grinned and whispered into her ear. "Crucio."

She collapsed, face down on the floor, the excruciating pain of the cruciatus curse raging through her body. She couldn't cry out even if she had wanted to, which she didn't. She did her best to bury her face to the floor, to shut out the horrible memories of the first time she had been hit with a cruciatus--one that had been not fully removed for days and had nearly driven her out of her mind before it was discovered. That time, the cruciatus had nearly driven her to ending it all to end the torture. This time she would not get the chance.

She refused to allow those memories, of those people, that time, her attempt to hurt herself.....and she wasn't allowing the thoughts that warmed her heart...the people that she loved....no...she wasn't letting him use those against her either. No, she was in this entirely on her own. She would not allow her mind to wander elsewhere. Not for any reason.

She had no choice. She had to endure. She did her best to reduce her thoughts to only thinking about each second at a time. To concentrate on her breathing and to distance herself from the pain. To do all the things she had learned over the years. At the moment, none of them felt like they were helping.

She had no idea how long she had been at the mercy of the curse, but she felt dizzy. From somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she realized she was fading. She had given her father as much of her own life energies, as a healer, as she could afford to give and still stay alive. She felt it all just fading away into silence as she finally just passed out altogether.

Felix let the curse last a while until finally ending it and with a sigh he kicked her in the side to roll her over. "Weak.." He muttered and stared at the woman on the floor in front of him. She had put so much energy into saving that idiot father of hers that she had just passed out from one torture curse. He would have to do something about that. Going to the door, he opened it with another drop of blood and pulled a nurse in from the hallway. The nurse got a bag of liquid food and put the tip of the needle into her wrist, wrapping it around her wrist and making sure it wouldn't be easy to pull out. He watched as the nurse left and then sighed loudly. He wasn't going to make her any more comfortable, but instead he leaned against the wall and watched the prone figure on the floor.

"Time to wake up darling." He muttered and pointed his wand at her. "Enneverate." He grinned and moved so he could crouch down beside her. "Wake up Kitty Cat. We aren't done here yet, so don't think I'll let you out of it so easily." He smiled and stood up again, nudging her with his foot. "How am I supposed to enjoy this when you won't even wake up for me? Weak.." He shook his head and threw a careless kick into her side again before walking around the bed and into the bathroom to look at it. Such basic needs were helped in here, she was given food, but refused it, so they had been forced to give it to her through the needle. She had the privilege of talking taken away from her, and now she was passing out from ONE Crucio spell? He would have to take this a bit slower, make it last all the longer, and then MAYBE he would get more enjoyment. Maybe he would have to make her talk again, just for the enjoyment of hearing her scream.

Khaat woke slowly, still finding herself on the floor. Her ribs hurt on the left side. Knowing this caveman, he thought nothing of kicking her. She allowed herself a moment's pleasure in thinking of how Brian would beat the crap out fo him just for that alone, let alone anything else. She glanced down to see they'd hooked her up to intravenous feedings. Well, she'd half expected that too. That confirmed for her that either they didn't have wizard healers with them or she was, indeed, in a muggle facility just as she had first thought. No healer worth their salt used needles unless they were muggles. That might well be useful for her.

The next thought went back to the intravenous feedings. Part of her resistance had indeed been because of the possibility that they might have tampered somehow with the food or water in order to put some weird potion in it. A poison, well,she might have accepted that, given the circumstances, but she didn't want to be transfigured into a bell pepper or something equally as useless. With her luck, some knothead would have dug up her quirk about stray socks and would be just itching to make her into a single argyle sock. It was more the thought of the unknown that had kept her from eating. Not the fear of death. That had no effect whatsoever. She was a Lupin. Lupins knew all too well about death. It meant very little to any of them.

She figured he had revived her with the rennervate spell. Brute. He could have left her in her blissful nothingness for a bit. She sat up slowly and leaned back against the bed. If he wnted round two, she was as ready as she was going to be. She was temped to rip the IV out and let herself bleed out, but she figured he wasn't going to let that happen either. So she just waited.

He felt her sit up more then he heard her and turned to look over at his prey. She was stubborn and it was starting to piss him off. Her lack of emotion and her lack of noise was really starting to irk him, he'd rather hear her curses and listen to her screams then this eternal silence. He gritted his teeth together and scratched at his ear as he thought of what to do next. Then suddenly he had the perfect idea. He walked around the table, and then stood by the wall, watching her. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched her with emotionless eyes. He was done talking, he wanted to see what she would do when he did nothing. It might confuse her at first, but that was how Felix operated, do the one thing they AREN'T expecting, and you get rewards. Show how angry you are, hurt them, taunt them, and you get the exact opposite of what you wanted.

He kept his eyes directly on hers, watching her every movement with a calculated gaze. After a full minute he still hadn't moved from staring at her, and he hoped he might get some reward out of her. But then he flicked his wand lazily, and lifted the silence curse they had put on her. He didn't give any indication that he had lifted it, best to see how she conducted herself if she found out. She had no powers anyway, so it wasn't like speaking was a big thing, he might get to enjoy an onslaught of yelling swear words, or she might still sit in silence, he wouldn't know until she figured out that she now had full use of her vocal chords again. At least, for the time being.