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Entry tags:	all that time silent still

AI FIC: All That Time, Silent Still (1/29)
TITLE: All That Time, Silent Still
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: NC-17
PAIRINGS: Mavid, Tiedam, miscellaneous hints of others both slash and het.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own this sandbox, and all of the sandbox games played within are entirely fictional.
SUMMARY: Civilizations have crashed before under the impact of one great catastrophe. Make it two, and what’s left behind is barely recognizable. Slavefic AU.
CONTAINS: Coercive themes by definition; sex, violence, language, and torture both onscreen and off. Contact me if you want or need to know more.



It was crowded, and it was cold. Though in another six months they would be complaining about the dust and the oppressive heat, that time was not now. Right now David knew that his coat, blue with gold at the cuffs, the buttons, would be eye-catching to the point of garishness if he were not surrounded by so many other people dressed in the same manner. The strata was as clear as layers of earth in an archeological dig: David’s people in bright and brilliant fabrics that made them easy to pick out, easy to harm if anyone had the nerve to do so, the poor free in faded colors that always made David think of mice, or flowers pressed between the pages of books and forgotten, fabrics often so worn and re-mended that he was amazed that they were continuing to hold together at all, and then the slaves. The slaves were marked with collars that gleamed dully in the winter light that was managing to crawl through the clouds. Many of them were nude. The one standing beside David, who would have undoubtedly stayed close to David even without the possessive hand that David was keeping fastened about his wrist, was not. It was painful enough to look at him as it was.

The buildings were still made of cement, brick, and stone, but the squares and streets throughout which the bulk of the crowd--see and be seen--was milling before they ducked into the structures to conduct their necessary business were packed dirt. It had been cement, also, not so long ago--David had dim memories of tripping along them between his parents when he been very small, and also simply tripping--but the cost of materials and oil for the machines had not been worth the near-constant repair that they required. Petroleum-powered vehicles had long since fallen back into the exclusive dominion of the military, anyway; beasts of burden handled the earth just fine. Most of the doors and windows to the buildings were thrown wide open to catch as much of the natural light as possible, never mind the cold, but there was still a certain dankness about the interior of each that put David to mind of disregarded books quietly going to mold and taking their stories with them. He didn’t see much difference between the dirty business done in each of them and the dirty business done in the alleys where the cameras could not quite reach, but it was part of his costume to appear as if he did.

“Don’t drift far,” David told Archuleta in a low voice, though the boy didn’t look as if he could even conceive of bolting off through the crowd, let alone get together the nerve to actually do it. They shared a first name, so David called him by what had been his last, before his parents had angered the wrong people. It was the largest eccentricity that he could afford in a public space, acknowledging that this child had had a past before he had become a slave at all.

“Yes, sir,” Archuleta answered softly as David released his wrist. Every glance that he threw David’s way was furtive and cast from beneath his lashes. Archuleta was a body slave, young and ripe enough that David was probably drawing more attention than he would be able to deal with in the long run by refusing to keep him nude, but it was too fucking cold for anything else. Archuleta was wearing jeans, muted with numerous washes, and a black sweater that he tugged at perpetually whenever he thought that David could not see him breaking etiquette and acting as though he had his own will. He might have blended in with the poor free, if the square, brushed steel links of the collar had not crept up above the neckline and made it abundantly clear what he was.

David took a breath and then pushed his way deeper into the crowd, watching as the colors swirled and rippled like flowers. The poor free scrambled back without touching him; the slaves glided out of his path without even definitively looking at him, lashes lowered so far against their cheeks that it was rare that David could even ascertain what color their eyes were. It was only the brilliant flashes of color that made up the clothing of the politically or economically advantaged, to whatever degree the two of them were not the same thing, that went out of their way to greet David. There were supplies that the estate needed and that could not be produced on the land itself; David had a legitimate reason for coming back into the surviving dregs of civilization in that regard. David needed to see. David needed to be seen. It was all a part of the game.

With Archuleta following behind him more timidly than any shadow that David had ever found attached to himself in his life, David stopped by the appropriate contacts in order to put in his ration orders for meat, shoes, metal, medicine. Precious little of the first three, far less than it would take to keep an estate the size of his healthy, but he was pushing it in the amount of antibiotics he was requesting. And that was still hoping that they were all going to stay relatively pathogen-free for the duration of the winter. The buildings that he walked in and out of as a matter of his errands were pock-marked like teenagers and gray like old, depressed men, the consequence of first mortar shells and then later, as supplies had dwindled and the government had increasingly tightened its hold upon the lines of production, bullets. David sometimes wondered if the Resistance was fighting with knives of steel or even stone at this point.

It was such a struggle to obtain a promise of enough analgesic for an estate where stomped feet from the horses, pulled muscles from the fields, and plain and simple accidents were common, or even to explain why it should be a concern of his, that David left the Office of Medical Supply feeling as though there were eyes upon him from every angle, and not from the cameras that stood on the tops of the light poles, either. Those were weather-beaten and balky, and made loud screeching noises whenever they turned to follow a new target. Everyone knew where the government was, so they would not be paying attention to all of the other places where the government was, also.

“See and be seen,” David murmured to himself as he stepped out into the street and the faltering sunlight. Archuleta inclined his head slightly in David’s direction, his entire body attuned towards what David might need at any moment. He was a good body slave. That told David absolutely nothing of how much he could be trusted. “Come on.” David put his hand upon the back of Archuleta’s neck, thumb threaded beneath the flat mechanical links of the collar. Archuleta stiffened immediately. Perhaps not that experienced a body slave, then, if he did not know that his job was to react every bit as little as a couch did to find people sitting upon it, but he was still so young that there were moments when David could not even bear to look at him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” David finally said, low and under his breath, when the anxious vibrations that were making Archuleta’s entire body shudder grew to be too much. He thought but did not say, I’m just not certain that I can trust you.

Archuleta’s step hitched for a second before he lowered his eyelashes further down against his cheeks and said nothing, and David could have kicked himself. To reply with “I know,” would have been both insolent and possibly wrong, for all that he knew nearly nothing of David or his moods at this point, and to reply with, “You can do whatever you want,” while true, also would have been far too far in the way of acknowledging exactly what Archuleta was in the eyes of the law. Couches didn’t protest when they were kicked, either, or even so much as show that they registered the contact.

“Come on,” David said, sighing, but kept his hand upon Archuleta’s neck to guide him through the crowd. There was dirty business being done in the buildings, and there was dirty business being done in the alleys, too. David could feel Archuleta winding himself up even further as David steered them towards one of the latter, but there was a kind of resignation and relief to it, too. David had not used him in all of the ways that a body slave was expected to be used. The kid had probably been tying himself in knots imagining all of the worse things that could be in store for him if David didn’t think that he was worth rutting with. David would have liked to sit Archuleta down right off the bat, explain the ways that his estate was different and why it had to appear the same, but--a camera creaked like a dyspeptic crow as it followed their progress towards the alley. The cameras were not the only place where he was being watched, and there was no such thing as too paranoid.

“I’m not--” David started again, and then stopped as he realized that he was probably only going to make Archuleta more anxious, and the wounded eyes were killing him as it was. Would have been better to wait a few more weeks to get a feel for the kid, weigh the odds, and then make that leap before leaning back onto his heels and seeing if Archuleta was going to turn out trustworthy in return. It would have been better if the universe had permitted him time and leisure for a lot of things. “Just come on.” The cameras watching the street probably knew damned well where he was actually going, and no doubt a generous blind eye would be turned towards it until the day arrived when he annoyed the wrong person and convenient evidence needed to be produced against him, but a little plausible deniability never hurt anyone.

“He’s new? He looks new. Very...unfinished.”

It was a woman’s voice, and she put a stress upon unfinished that David could not read as either compliment or threat, but which sent a runner of danger up his spine all the same. He turned, taking Archuleta along with him as he refused remove his hand from the back of the boy’s neck. He flexed his hand where it rested beneath the collar as soon as he saw who was addressing them. David could feel Archuleta’s gaze flicking towards him from beneath the appropriately lowered lashes, but there was no way of knowing whether he was starting to realize that David did that out of an urge to comfort rather than possess.

The woman was tall and somehow both lean and shapely at the same time, wearing a dress of rich red that made her stand out even among the bright jewel tones of her class. Even if she had been clothed in a brickish gray-brown the same color as the dirt underneath her, David thought that she would have stood out based upon the dark fall of hair down her back, her bee-stung lips, and the sheer sense of entitlement with which she carried herself. Her husband was not a poor-looking man, solid and blond and standing a pace or two behind her, but Lady Jolie was the one who immediately drew the eye.

“A month,” David answered as he realized that he was allowing the silence extend long enough to grow suspicious as he sized her up. While he had come out with an urge to be seen playing his proper role and mingling with all of the right people, an encounter with Lady Jolie was not what he had quite had in mind. She had strong-armed her way through every legal barrier that had been required of her in order to keep her own name upon her marriage to Lord Pitt, the same as she had done with the husband before him, all but daring someone to raise questions as to the legitimacy of any children that she might produce without it. She was known for getting what she wanted. She was also known for having...appetites. David did not dare pull Archuleta closer to her, both because being seen as unduly possessive would only cement her fervor more if she decided that she wanted something and because he was not certain that he would be able to resist the urge to thrust the boy protectively behind him if he allowed himself to move.

Her lips curved as she stopped studying Archuleta long enough to meet David’s eyes. Without asking, she reached out and cupped Archuleta’s chin with her fingers so that she could tilt his face up and towards hers. The neck muscles beneath David’s fingers did not grow any tenser; young or not, Archuleta had to be accustomed to people touching him without his leave by now. David was the only one in this situation who could take affront, and he was very aware that he was not facing someone with whom it would be wise to allow his hurt feelings to run terribly rampant.

“A month,” Lady Jolie mused as David looked beyond her and briefly to her husband, the dark-haired and dark-eyed body slave standing directly behind him. Lady Jolie did not have quite the care that David did for a fall day that was particularly windy and brutal, even by the new standards that they were learning to live with, but it was obvious that she had a taste for a particular type of flesh. The body slave directly behind Lord Pitt and struggling not to shiver was inches taller than Archuleta, but beyond that they could have been brothers. “And yet he’s still so shy.” Lady Jolie tugged Archuleta’s head to the side so that she could examine the long stretch of his neck. Even though the face that he caught a glimpse of betrayed nothing that he was in pain, the muscles beneath David’s fingers still trembled. He reached out and put his hand against Lady Jolie’s wrist, but did not force her to release Archuleta’s chin.

Even that shocked her, he could see in the flash of sea-colored eyes that rose up to meet his before she composed herself, and he hoped that he was not stepping too far and making for himself an enemy that he would not then be able to unmake half so easily. “It has only been a month,” David said. “Some slaves simply take a while to settle into the rhythms of a household.”

Lady Jolie’s lips turned up at the corners at David’s slight pun, as he had been hoping that they would, and she cast her gaze back at the dark-haired and impeccably dead-eyed body slave behind her husband. Lord Pitt did not do quite so polished a job of hiding his emotions; though the near-boy didn’t have any bruising that David could see at the moment, he would not be shocked if he was soon gaining a handful.

“That they do,” Lady Jolie said as she obediently dropped her hand without David having to put the pressure upon it that he had been considering. “It’s like breaking in a pair of shoes.” She turned to go, paused once to look over her shoulder at Archuleta with a speculative eye. “Though I think that that one will wear well, once you stretch him into your specifications.” The red of her dress was easy to follow after she had exited into the crowd. David and Lord Pitt had not said a single word to each other; nor had Lady Jolie actually greeted him before she had begun fingering Archuleta as though he were low-hanging fruit that she had ever right to pluck. With any others, David would have considered it a failure of performance on his part, but against her he thought that he was lucky to have exited the encounter without having his fingers physically bitten off, and would have thought so even if he had not laid hand upon her.

“Are you all right?” David asked Archuleta without thinking, and didn’t realize his mistake until Archuleta could not mask his surprise in time, and turned his whole head to look David’s way before he remembered. The links of the collar made a cold sound as they slid across David’s knuckles and nails.

“I’m fine, sir.” There was a questioning lilt beneath the last word that Archuleta could not quite manage to hide, either. There were red marks blooming up on his skin where Lady Jolie had grabbed for him, though, too young yet to tell if they ran deep enough to become bruises.

“She has a grip like a crocodile,” David said by way of explanation. He was tempted to take Archuleta’s face into his hand and examine it the same way that Jolie had done, stopped himself, remembered again that this was a public space and the cameras were not the only things perpetually fucking watching. His grip was far lighter that hers had been, at any rate, as he turned Archuleta’s face from one side to the other. Scratch that, bruises were a definite possibility. And he still had not gotten or done everything that he had come here for. David very nearly ordered Archuleta to tell him if his jaw began to ache, bit the words back with only a breathe to spare. “Come on.”

“Yes, sir.” Though David removed his hand from the back of Archuleta’s neck, the kid still followed him in as obedient a lock-step as if David really had been leading by a leash.

“Lord Cook!” David stopped and took a moment to curse private spaces, where his title was used reflexively and he was unable to keep going as if he had not heard his name being called at all. There were few enough aristocracy for the power that they wielded as it was, and certainly no other Cooks left to shoulder some of the family’s heritage. He turned yet again, and wondered what the eyes behind the cameras must be thinking, if they imagined that any twinges of annoyance that he could not keep out of his face truly were the product of a libido that he could not find opportunity to satisfy.

He knew the face. There were too few of the upper class for him to pretend that, either. David forced his face into a mechanical smile even as he reached out and took the man’s hand. God knew that he might not be much, but he was better than that with which he was surrounded. “Starr,” he said, without allowing anything in his voice to give away his feelings on the matter one way or the other. It was stupid, this chasing of adrenaline. He still did not think that he was going to stop any time soon, regardless of how much he might chastise himself about the risks being taken afterwards.

Lord Ryan Starr did not seem to notice that David had deliberately left off the use of his title in a public space. It was a new one: newly purchased and still ill-fitting as the government didn’t quite know what it wanted to be again just yet and was falling onto traditions out of storybooks. David’s family hadn’t been counted as noble for much longer than one hundred years. It was still enough, and better than Starr’s five. David was certain that Ryan would not have allowed the slight to pass if he had noticed it; he was not the type. What he was the type to do, however, was look as though he were more than slightly drunk even though David could take a quick glance at the horizon and see that they were hours away from sunset yet, even with the fall’s rapidly shortening days.

“A new one,” Ryan said, cocking his head to one side and looking at Archuleta alertly, even though he did not reach out his hand and attempt to touch as Jolie had done. It wasn’t manners; Jolie had been exerting hunger and power by ignoring the conventions saying that Archuleta was all but an extension of David’s body for so long as he wore David’s collar, and that grabbing him without permission was nearly equivalent to grabbing for David himself. Ryan was nearly pointing out that David did, indeed, have an arm, would you look at that. “What do you do, shove them in closets?”

David allowed himself a thin little smile. “Oil and land’s too dear to keep everyone fed as it is,” he said, “and you know how quickly they wear out.” Archuleta was giving him that under-the-lashes look again, and doing it so expertly that David doubted most masters would have been able to catch him at it. He had been shown a few of the tricks before, from people in positions to know.

“Hmmm.” There were hardly any usable fields that one could still turn over that didn’t produce bones; a good plow just kept going. Lord Ryan Starr was nothing if he was not a plow. “They caught a Resistance fighter about Lady Underwood’s estate three days ago.” Ryan could not keep the capitalization out of his voice any more than he could stop himself from glancing once at the nearest camera above their heads. Trying to see if it saw them or using it as a reflexive talisman against evil, David did not know and did not care to pry in order to find out.

He did not pause, he did not flinch, and he did not glance towards the slave who was maybe trustworthy and maybe not to gauge his reaction to this news. If he was any good at what he was, or clever in any way whatsoever, then he was as blank as an actual automaton, the kind that didn’t need occasional food and sleep. David lifted one eyebrow and said only, “They’re branching out.”

“Probably starving.” Ryan’s shrug was dismissive. “Last legs. It’ll be ending soon.”

“Of course it will.” David reached out and slapped Ryan lightly on the shoulder, like a friend, like a comrade. “Get back to your women. They look like they miss you.” They looked like they desperately needed coats. David smiled, turned to go. See and be seen, and he was fucking better at this job than anyone could hope to imagine. Public or not, there was a lascivious gleam to Ryan’s eyes as he looked back at the handful of body slaves that he had brought with him.

“They’re good seamstresses,” Ryan said. That might have explained why the trio were at least wearing clothes, inadequate and thin though they were. Ryan was a gambler, and he was notoriously hard on both himself and his belongings.

“I’m certain their hands are very talented.” David didn’t allow his face to move that time, either, but at least now it was for deliberate effect rather than to mask one.

Ryan laughed, clapped David’s arm himself. Finally, thank God, there was no one standing between him and the alley. “Come on,” he said softly to Archuleta as he put his hand back upon the back of Archuleta’s neck. Even less of the chilly gray light was able to enter the spaces between the buildings than in the courtyards and streets outside; the only thing that kept David from shivering even within the bounds of his coat was that they were at least now out of the wind. He felt Archuleta’s step hitch for less than a second, and then he was blank again.

There were buildings that served as the faces, however pocked and scarred from bar fights they might be, and then there were the shacks beyond that that functioned as the bodies that no one quite wanted to talk about. David tugged Archuleta down an alley where they would be private for anything that he might want to shove Archuleta up against the wall and do.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” David repeated again, even though he was mostly speaking to the air and he knew it. Archuleta did not even bother to look at him this time around. The two of them entered a small, falling down building that had been a house, maybe. It looked as if had been built either after the world had fallen apart or immediately before people had started to realize it; the materials were strictly sub-par, and David could tell at a glance that the person who had built the structure had not yet known how to work around that fact. Half of the roof was falling in, and had been for some time. David doubted that the building would still be standing in the spring. For now, though, the shadowy figure, face and clothing nearly the same color, that unfolded herself from the corner was real enough.

“If you’re government, I would have heard the bullets already,” she said, and lifted the drapes of her clothing far enough so that David could see that she was wearing a piece that didn’t match the shadows and the winter and that gleamed even in the low sunlight. David only paused for a moment. It looked old, the metal nearly green. Probably wouldn’t fire at all. But maybe it would. “And if you’re not, you know what will happen if you’re caught in here.”

“How many times have you said that today?” David asked her. It was impossible to tell her age, just as it was impossible to tell whether her skin tone was from the cold, malnutrition, or dust.

The corners of her mouth twitched up and were flat-lining again so quickly that David could not tell that he was even certain of what he had seen in the light. “About a dozen,” she said. “What do you need? Opiates aren’t going to happen for three, four weeks, not until the railways are secure again.” She looked him up and down. “You don’t look like a junkie.”

“I’m not.” David felt a curious urge to cross his arms over his chest. The poor free in the streets barely looked him in the eye. This one, when she dropped her gaze, only did so because he wasn’t worth the effort. “And I have enough morphine to handle the big injuries.” One, maybe two of them. They were an unholy level of fucked if they encountered any more than that, but David prided himself on his ability to keep it all skating below the radar. “This is a little more mundane. Acetaminophen, penicillin, naproxen sodium. Enough to handle at least four people for a week each.”

The woman wrote nothing down. She stared at David with eyes nearly the same color as her face and hair until David began to fell a little as if it had been a terrible mistake on his part to come in here without a gun, regulations be damned, until she finally said, “That is a lot of medication you’re asking me to procure.”

“I have horses,” David said shortly. “They hurt themselves.” He flashed a thin smile. “You know how horses are--” She clearly didn’t, David would be startled if she had been more than ten miles outside of this city. She damned sure wasn’t ever going to see the opium fields where her products started. “If there is one single thing in a pasture for them to impale themselves, they’re going to find it.”

“It’s going to be expensive,” the woman said without returning David’s smile. His respect for her grew.

“I have money,” David answered easily. When she continued to look dubious, he went on, “Gold money.” Much less susceptible to the ups and downs of inflation and deflation.

Finally, a bit of human elasticity in her face. Dust, it was; he saw the edges of it crackle along her mouth and eyes. Maybe not so much in her hair. “It will take me a few weeks,” she said.

“And I can trust you?” David asked, already knowing the answer. If she was dirty--or more dirty than anyone else, or if he had pissed off the wrong people so that eyes were finally going to to turn towards him for what everyone did--then he was fucked. If the reverse was true, then so was she.

More fine threads running through the dirt around her mouth, until it nearly looked like a smile. “Blowjobs don’t take this long,” she said, and dipped her head in Archuleta’s direction.

“Right.” David curved his fingers around Archuleta’s elbow, even though it probably was not necessary. The kid was moving and swaying to every ripple of David’s body as if he breathed by it. “Let’s go.”

Just like always, David swore that he could feel the eyes of everyone turning towards him, and just like always he knew that he was being paranoid, still could not quite convince himself of it. If he was being watched, then he was being watched by people who thought that he had taken his slave back into the shadows and used him, because it wasn’t polite to exercise one’s lusts in public. David made certain to straighten out the lower hem of his jacket and smooth a few imaginary creases out of his pants before he took Archuleta’s elbow. “One more stop,” he said, still knowing that it was stupid to be explaining himself until he was certain exactly where he stood but unable to stop himself all the same. Even in a sweater, this was weather too fucking cold to be out in any longer than was strictly demanded.

This was a different alley. Farther away, even darker, where the flashes of color were few and far between. David shrugged out of his jacket, never mind that he was shivering within seconds and the brilliant white of his shirt wasn’t much more subtle, and flipped it inside out before he folded it over his arm. Archuleta was watching him carefully, in the way David was rapidly starting to realize that he did when he did not want David to know what he was doing, while Archuleta was far too well-trained to ever let it show that he was startled or curious. David regretted that he had not bartered with the same woman for her gun as well as for drugs; she would certainly have let it go for the right price. The creaking of the cameras had even faded away, eventually, though David was not willing to take that to mean safety.

“Stay here,” he said shortly to Archuleta at the lip of one of the alleys, when it looked as though the boy was going to be as much of an obedient mortal shadow as he ever was. Archuleta drew up short; he even looked startled, frightened, for a few seconds until David realized that he had nearly been snarling. “I have to take a piss.” Archuleta dipped his head, and David could see the automatic “yes, sir” rising up his throat and to his lips. “I’m shy.” Maybe Archuleta would even wind up thinking that that was why David had not touched him yet.

David slipped down the alleyway as quick as he dared, to the loose brick in the wall of a building that was just barely hanging on. It wasn’t obvious; it had not been chosen by amateurs. Neither was it meant to be tugged on by hands that looked out of place when they were marred by calluses. David grit his teeth and jerked it out all the same so that he could remove the square of paper behind it, replace it with one of his own, and slide the brick back into place all in one smooth movement. He was tucking it into his pants as he strode out of the mouth of the alley, and nearly ran straight into the slight woman who was running her fingers lightly over the links of Archuleta’s collar.

End Part One

Continue to Part Two