#anyway. heisenberg my beloved spit on me

[cadouisms]

captive

ch 1 || next ||

karl heisenberg/afab!reader, 18+ ~8k summary: While in Romania as part of your university's study-away program, you accidentally stumble upon a village filled with unholy creatures, and find yourself running for your life. A strange man rescues you and saves you from the brink of death, but there's one caveat: you can't leave. As you come to find out, there's many incentives to staying.

warnings: descriptions of wounds, violence, heisenberg is Mean, collaring, bootlicking, humiliation, smoking

also on ao3

It’s cold.

You’re long past the point of being able to feel your fingertips. The snow has seeped into every inch of your skin, sinking deep into the marrow of your bones. Each heaving breath you take stabs into your chest, and the sheer cold makes your lungs burn to the point that you think you aren’t breathing in oxygen at all, just crystals of water vapor. It makes you lightheaded — or is that the result of exhaustion? You’re sure you’ve been running since the moment you stepped foot into this accursed village, but fear has warped your sense of time. It could have been mere minutes or hours, and with the way the clouds obscure any hope of moonlight, you can’t see the environment around you, much less judge the time of night.

You slow to a stop and immediately double over, frozen hands braced on your equally-frozen thighs as you try to control your breathing. It was foolish to take a walk into the forest in the dead of night, especially since you don’t know this area well, but you aren’t stupid enough to have completely lost your way. It must have been the darkness or some odd pull of fate that twisted your sense of direction, made you take a left instead of a right to end up in this hellhole. You had no idea the village existed in the first place; your host family made no mention of it to you — but then again, perhaps they weren’t expecting you to wander off on your own in the first place. Either way, you managed to stumble here completely by accident, and now you have no idea how to leave.

That is, if you manage to survive the night.

Part of you thinks that you might be dreaming, that this is a nightmare, because monsters aren’t real. But you have no other word to describe the freakish half-man, half-beast creatures that lurk around every corner of the village, vying for the opportunity to rip you to shreds. Based on their growls and snarls, you assumed they were wild animals, up until you caught one running on its hind legs as it gave chase.

You have so many questions and so little answers, but you know that the cold stings too much for this just to be a product of too many sleepless nights. However improbable, this is real, and you have a very real chance of dying.

A vicious growl sounds behind you and pure terror bolts up your spine, sending you fumbling into action as you fall into a fast sprint. The creatures are fast, but you’re blessedly faster — you’ve always been good at running and hiding. You’ve never been in a fight before and you’ve never shot a gun, so you couldn’t defend yourself even if you had some sort of weapon — but you can outspeed them.

Or at least, you could, if it wasn’t so fucking dark.

Unable to see and with panic guiding your footsteps, you slip down a small incline and tumble into icy-cold water. You gasp in both surprise and shock; whatever exhaustion you felt is replaced by pure adrenaline. The rushing stream splashes your face and sinks into the fabric of your clothes, weighing you down, and you have to half-crawl, half-drag yourself to the other side of the bank. You shut your eyes tight as the choppy flow of water laps at your face, threatening to spill down into your throat. You cough and sputter as you pull yourself up onto the ground, hastily wiping the stinging water from your eyes so that you can see.

When you open them, you find yourself face-to-face with one of the creatures. Its monstrous yellow eyes seemingly glow in the night, and despite your fear, you find that you can’t look away. Its lips pull back into a snarl as its hot, foul breath puffs against your face.

You scream.

Before you can run away, it grabs for your arm and digs its claws into your vulnerable flesh. Red-hot pain erupts from the wound and you cry out, futilely trying to pull your arm back to your side. Instead, its grip tightens as it embeds its claws into your skin, and with one abrupt movement it sends you cascading down the side of a steep hill. Your head hits a rock with a sickening crunch and you can’t do anything but lay there, stunned, as your vision swims.

Belatedly, you wonder if you still have your arm.

Your breaths come out in quiet wheezes as you stare up at the cloudy sky. In the distance, multiple pairs of yellowed eyes gaze menacingly down at your vulnerable form. More and more pop up over the ridge, and you have to wonder if there’s enough of you to go around. Would they take turns, or would they fight for it? Would there even be anything left on your bones when the carrion came? You hope they’d be kind enough to leave your face untouched — how else would your body be identified?

You let your eyes drift shut, prepared to surrender to your obvious fate. You’re tired, goddamnit. You’ve been running for far too long, and you don’t see any end to it. Maybe they’ll eat you and instead you’ll wake up from this nightmare with the blankets kicked off your body, inviting the cold chill of winter to send you to this hellhole in your dreams.

You hear a howl — it’s an awful human imitation of a wolf’s howl, rougher around the edges and in the wrong octave, but it screams of violence, of a hunter that has found its prey. The others join in until the hills ring with the promise of your death and it sends such a chill down your spine that your eyes snap open, fear clearing your mind.

Fuck, maybe you are as dumb as some say. If you’re going to die here, you’d rather bleed out painlessly than be ripped to shreds.

You flip over onto your stomach. In the dim lighting, you can just barely make out what looks to be a hole. There’s no chance for you to outrun them now, so hiding is your only option. The snow crushes almost pleasantly beneath your hand as you attempt to drag yourself to the hole, but you find that your left arm is all but unusable. It hurts to move it, much less support your weight with it. The only thing you can do is struggle closer to the hole, inch by tortuous inch.

The howling is getting closer, you think. You peer over the edge — it looks to be a steep drop, but the opening is large enough for you to just barely slip through. You pray it’s too small for the creatures to follow, and with what little strength you have left, you let yourself fall headfirst down into the hole.

You land flat on your back with a soft thud, and though the impact shocks you, you can’t even muster the strength to yelp. Something hums faintly in your ear, reminding you of the buzz of electricity. You turn your head and rest your cheek against the cool earth, letting the noise lull you to sleep as your exhaustion finally takes you under.

  Soft.

Warm.

Bright.

It feels like your body is too heavy and yet far away, all at once. Like you’re drifting in a deep sea of nothingness, weighed down by incalculable pressure. Absently, you wonder if this is what death is like — senseless and empty.

God, but you’re exhausted. Are you supposed to feel so bone-tired when you’re dead? It’s as if you went days without sleeping, like something had come along and sucked all the energy from your body. If you concentrate, you find that you can curl your hand into a fist. Your fingertips catch on rough fabric, not unlike the threadbare blankets you’d been given for your bed, and you rub the cloth between forefinger and thumb. It pulls almost unpleasantly at your skin — not dead, then, you think. You aren’t sure if you’re disappointed or relieved.

Blearily, you open your eyes. Muted colors blur and shift until they settle into shapes. There’s a nightstand directly in front of you, topped with a small lamp that gives the room its warm, soft glow. In the corner of your vision you spot the edge of the pillow your cheek must be resting on, made a dull-yellow color with age. Your neck twinges as you turn your head, and you wince — definitely not dead, then.

You stare at the mottled ceiling above as you take stock of how you feel. Your mouth is cotton-dry, tongue thick and stuck behind your teeth. There’s a dull ache spread throughout your whole body, like you’ve been hit with a truck, and you start to wonder if maybe that’s the case. You can’t remember what you were doing, or why you’re here. You don’t even recognize this place to begin with, and the more you try to remember, the more it seems just out of your grasp, like a word left on the tip of your tongue.

A knob turns, and your gaze snaps to the door just beyond the foot of the bed. It creaks open to reveal a broad figure stepping into the room, and as you catch the hint of its shaggy hair your memories come flooding back: the forest, your misstep into the village, and the awful creatures that lurked within. An image of glowing eyes and snarling teeth flashes just behind your eyes and your adrenaline spikes, causing you to shoot up in bed and scramble backwards away from the figure.

Pain accompanies the sudden movement and you can’t hold back a whimper of pain — you’re more hurt than you initially thought. The figure laughs almost mockingly as it approaches you. “Ah, so Sleeping Beauty finally awakes. I was almost hoping you wouldn’t.”

It — he, you realize — steps close enough that the bedside lamp illuminates his features. Most of his expression is obscured behind his round shades and the wide brim of his hat, but you can still make out his wolfish grin, surrounded by his dark and unkempt facial hair. You shudder.

“Wh —” Your throat protests your attempts to talk and all that comes out is a rough squeak. The man laughs again, obviously finding your awful situation humorous, and your gaze follows him across the room as he picks up a glass of water. You look at him with suspicion as he offers it to you.

“What? You think I would go through the trouble of saving your sorry ass just to poison you?” There’s an edge to his tone that borders on annoyance, and his smirk falls when you make no move to grab the proffered glass. With a huff, he takes a swig from it. “Look. It’s fine.”

Part of you screams not to trust him. You look from between him and the glass, internally debating whether or not to take it, and the man’s patience quickly seems to run out.

“Don’t be ungrateful. I’ll fucking pour it down your throat if I have to.”

That settles it. Hurriedly, you reach out and take it from him. The liquid is cool and refreshing, a balm for your sore throat, and it soothes all the way down. You find yourself uncaring that your lips are technically where his had been just moments ago, or that the water tastes slightly stale — you drain it in just a few large gulps.

As you lower the glass, you catch sight of your left arm and startle: it’s been wrapped in off-white bandages, and you can see where your blood has seeped through to stain the fabric. When you attempt to move it, pain shoots through your limb and you grimace. It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as before, more comparable to a muscle ache, and for that you’re grateful. You’re happy you still have an arm at all.

“You were in pretty bad shape when they brought you to me.” His words give you pause — who’s they? — but instead of speaking, you watch with trepidation as the strange man reaches into the pocket of his trench coat. To your relief, he pulls a half-burned cigar out along with a zippo and relights it, filling your nose with the acrid smell of burnt tobacco. Wispy trails of smoke accompany his next words. “I’m impressed you made it through the night!”

You’ve calmed down from your initial panic, but something about this man sets you on edge and makes you wary. Still, you know that here — wherever that may be — is safer than being outside in the freezing cold and where those monsters might still linger.

“Where —” You pause to try and coax wetness back into your mouth, to ease the sandpaper-quality of your throat. “Where is this?”

“My factory.” The cherry of his cigar burns strikingly red as he takes a slow, deep drag. He exhales a cloud of smoke that drifts upward, catching on the scant light of the room. For a moment, his glasses stand out stark-black against the white smoke, reminding you inversely of those creatures. It’s not the whites of his eyes you see but the absence of them; his humanity concealed. He rests his foot against the edge of the bed and leans forward, bracing an elbow on his raised knee. “Y’got lucky, kid. You made it pretty close to the boundary of my property. How’d you end up here in the first place?”

You unconsciously lean a bit farther back, unnerved by his presence. “I got...lost,” you admit.

He snorts. “Lost, huh? You must be dumber than you look!”

You bristle. You want to tell him that it was dark, that you couldn’t see where you were going, that you were running for your life — but he speaks before you have a chance to even open your mouth.

“Then again, you’re not from around here, are you? Guess I can’t blame ya, though it’s a miracle you wandered this far out.” He taps the edge of his cigar and sends ash drifting down to the thin sheet acting as your blanket. You have to resist the urge to wipe it off.

If he knows you aren’t from the village, though, then maybe… “How do I get back?” you ask, unable to keep the eagerness from your voice. “How do I leave?”

“Leave?” The man tilts his head, mouth curving into a dangerous grin. His lips pull back to reveal his teeth and the light seems to glint off them, making you feel like the lamb before the wolf, caught in its deception. “Oh, no, sweetheart. You aren’t leaving.”

Your heart drops in your chest. “Wh-what?”

He laughs, cruel and mocking. “I mean, you can try if you want! It’d make for one helluva show. I’d even give you directions to get out of here!” He steps back, planting both feet solidly on the floor below. “But, even if you escaped here alive, you’d still have the lycans waiting for you back in the village, and I doubt you’d survive another encounter with them.”

“Lycans?” you echo.

“Oh, come on.” The man gestures to your bandaged arm with his cigar, flinging more ash around. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten. They almost killed you, remember?”

“Those...creatures?” Lycans? Like lycanthropy? “They’re...you mean…”

“Careful not to think too hard. I can see the cogs turning in your head, poor thing.” He drops his cigar and crushes it underneath his boot, grinning smugly all the while. “I’ll leave you alone to process this. I’m sure realizing fairy-tale monsters are real can be quite the traumatic experience.” His laughter trails after him as he disappears out of the room. The door shuts behind him with a soft click.

You stare blankly ahead, mind reeling from all the new information.

Surely he wasn’t serious…? He’d let you leave. He was just waiting for you to recover. Right? Right.

And the werewolves — lycans, as he’d called them — he was kidding about that too! You must’ve hit your head real bad, or made them up as the result of some weird fever dream. You’re still dreaming, you conclude. A dream within a dream.

You lay back against the bed and close your eyes. A dream. You’ll wake up soon, you’re sure of it.

...Except the longer you lie there, the more you begin to suspect that he was telling the truth. Your mind buzzes, too noisy to let you sleep despite your exhaustion, so you resolve to at least explore the room a little.

You swing your legs over the side of the bed and realize you’re still wearing all your clothes, even your shoes. You toe your sneakers off and let them drop to the floor below, then slowly stand. As long as you don’t move too fast, you figure you’ll be okay — you hurt, true, but you don’t feel on the verge of passing out.

The bed that you’d been resting on isn’t a bed so much as it is a stained mattress on an old frame. The sheet you’d been covered with was just that — a sheet. It looks as threadbare as you expected, like it had been in use for years.

The drawer in the bedside table reveals nothing but metallic odds and ends, and the small wardrobe is completely empty. The lack of items and the thin coating of dust along every surface makes the room feel impersonal, lonely.

You discover a thin door that you hadn’t previously noticed. The hinges squeak when you push it open and the light takes a moment to flicker on, but it turns out to be a small bathroom. Cramped as it is, there’s a full-sized tub along the far wall, and your brain lights up at the chance to be clean. You close the door behind you as you step fully inside. There’s a toilet to your right and a sink to your left, and you pause as you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror.

You look like shit.

Dark circles sit heavy under your eyes, made more prominent by the overhead light, and there’s all sorts of grime caked onto your face. As you strip your clothing, you discover more dirt, more blood, and multiple scrapes and bruises. There’s several smaller wounds that obviously had been left to scab over rather than cleaned and bandaged, and you scratch off a bit of dried blood with a scowl. You’re grateful that stranger didn’t strip you, but sheesh. It makes you feel a little gross knowing you’d been sitting in your own filth for god knows how long.

Despite it all, you seem to have come out of it just a little worse for wear. The last thing is to check on your arm, and though it doesn’t hurt so much anymore, you’re a little frightened of what you may find. Carefully, you unwrap the bandages, fully expecting to see an ugly mess of twisted flesh — only to find your arm already scabbed over, like it’s been healing for weeks. It doesn’t have the tell-tale signs of infection, either; the area around the wound isn’t hot or inflamed.

Either it was less severe than you thought, or that man is some sort of miracle doctor.

You shrug off the weird feeling in your chest and turn to the tub, twisting the knobs. The water that pours out is dirty brown from disuse, and you wait until it runs clear before you plug the drain and allow the tub to fill. You sink down into the lukewarm water, drawing your knees to your chest, and breathe out a quiet sigh. The room fills with silence, the faint hum of electricity only broken by the occasional drip, drip from the faucet.

You break down.

You had almost died. You know what you saw — you didn’t hallucinate those creatures, those lycans, and you have the wounds to prove it. You’re in a strange land, far away from your real home, back in America. When your advisor presented you with the option to study away in Europe for a semester, it had seemed like a good idea at the time — you were a second-year student with zero prospects and zero specializations, and it would be fully covered by your financial aid.

But fuck, if you had known coming to Romania would end up like this, you would have never agreed in the first place. It was a last-ditch effort to find something you were passionate about, like the movies, when people go to Europe to “find themselves” or whatever — but, looking back, you suppose they’re always set in Italy or France, not Romania.

Instead, all you got was an apathetic host family who wouldn’t even indulge your half-assed attempts to speak their language, a stronger sense of isolation, and kidnapped, since it seems like the only way you’re leaving is in a bodybag.

You wrap your arms tight around yourself, fingernails making half-crescents in your skin, and stifle a sob. Even if they’d be able to find this place, no one would be coming for you. Not your host family, and certainly not your real family, as you haven’t spoken to them since you graduated high school. Outside of the occasional classmate, you have no friends, either.

The man said he didn’t plan on killing you, but maybe he should have never rescued you in the first place.

By the time the water turns cold your tears have dried, and you slowly uncurl yourself from your sitting-ball position so you can properly clean yourself. There’s no soap, leaving you to methodically rub at your skin until all traces of dirt and grime are gone. The water turns a murky grey, and you drain and refill it once more before you wash your face and hair.

You don’t feel exactly clean, merely… less dirty, but it helped, you think. So did the crying.

Water pools around your feet as you step out of the tub, and to your dismay, you can’t find any towels. Instead, you come upon a roll of bandages and a bottle of mysterious fluid simply marked ‘first aid.’ There’s no other description or any sort of warning label, but it only takes you a second to decide to use it. Still nude, you liberally pour it over your wounded arm, and then rub some on your fingertips to massage into your smaller cuts and scrapes. It doesn’t sting, to your surprise, and it smells oddly minty. You bandage your arm and slide on your underclothes, leaving the rest of your dirtied clothes to sit in a heap on the floor.

You leave the bathroom and flop unceremoniously onto the mattress. The cool air makes goosebumps prickle on your damp skin, but you don’t have the energy to do anything more than half-heartedly wrap the sheet around your body. You feel just as tired as you did when you woke up, and though it’s been two hours since then at most, the pull of sleep coaxes your eyelids to close, and you drift off into a fitful rest.

   “Breakfast!”

The door ricochets off the wall with a loud bang, jolting you out of a dead sleep. The man from earlier stands in the doorway with a small tray carried in his hands, that same insufferable grin sitting lopsided on his mouth as he takes glee in your panic. “Aww, poor baby,” he coos, “did I scare you?”

“Yes,” you hiss. His shaded gaze lingers on you for just a moment too long and you remember you’re very underdressed, heaps of exposed skin making you feel vulnerable in his strange presence. You scramble to tug the blanket around yourself as your face heats up and the man cruelly laughs again.

“You make it too easy.” You tense as he all but struts over, workboots heavy against the floor, but he only comes close enough to set the tray on the bedside table. There’s some slices of bread, cheese, and unidentifiable meat, along with a glass of water. The dishes look grimy and unclean, but the food looks fine.

You take some comfort in knowing he doesn’t intend on starving you. He may want to keep you trapped here, but at least he doesn’t seem to want to make you miserable. “...Thanks,” you finally murmur after a moment. Your eyes flit from him to the food, your distrust evident in your face.

“Don’t worry. It’s not poisoned,” he remarks, obviously noticing your hesitation.

You blanch. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

His shit-eating grin says otherwise, but you’re starting to suspect he just likes toying with you, the bastard. “Eat it or not, I don’t care. Just don’t come crying to me when you get hungry.” He turns on his heel, his coat swishing at his ankles, and makes his way toward the door.

“Wait —”

“We can chitchat later. I have work to do.”

“Can you at least tell me your name?”

He pauses, one foot in the hallway, and turns to look at you over his shoulder. His hat obscures most of his face, leaving you to stare at the arrogant curl of his mouth. “Heisenberg,” he finally says, and leaves.

The door shuts behind him. In the silence, you can faintly hear his footsteps fade away until the only thing left is the quiet hum in your ears.

You reach for the tray. The bread is somehow equally stale and moist, but in the worst combination. The unidentifiable meat is also...unidentifiable, but it doesn’t smell unpleasant nor have a bad taste. You tear the bread into manageable chunks and make little finger sandwiches. It only takes a couple bites for you to realize you’re ravenous and you quickly devour the plate of food, leaving you with a sense of that’s all? as soon as you finish.

He brought you food, so naturally that means he has a kitchen. It’s the logical conclusion, you tell yourself, and you set the tray back on the nightstand as you carefully get up from the bed. The bone-deep weariness from earlier still lingers, exhaustion pulling at your limbs, but you feel much better than before. A twinge of pain shoots up your arm if you move it incorrectly, but otherwise it doesn’t bother you.

Remembering that you’re still practically naked, you grab the sheet from the bed and wrap it around you like some sort of toga before you step to the main door. The knob turns easily under your hand, but apprehension prevents you from pushing it open. You don’t know what you’re expecting, but all kidnappers have some weird dungeon-esque room, right? Maybe he’s keeping you just beyond his torture chamber or his murder room or his —

— Study?

The door leads into another relatively-normal looking room. It’s about the size of the bedroom with a desk covered with miscellaneous books and papers at one end of it. The rest of the wallspace is covered with bookshelves, but most of their racks are empty. Instead, metal bits and bobs cover a large amount of the surface and a good bit of the floor. The man — Heisenberg, you remind yourself — did say that you were in his factory, which would explain the abundance of scrap metal around. The question is: what does he manufacture?

Murder weapons, your brain helpfully supplies, which you promptly ignore. You hope it’s something reasonable, like cars or machinery, and not something you’d see in a cheesy horror film.

There’s a rather large and metallic door on the opposite wall from which you entered, and you eagerly attempt to open it. There’s no handle or knob, meaning you can’t pull it open, and no matter how much force you apply, you can’t push it open. It doesn’t budge under your weight, acting more like a stone wall than an exit.

You sigh. No foray into the kitchens, then. The only rooms you have access to are this one, the bedroom, and the bathroom, presumably for a reason. How big is this factory, you wonder? What else lies beyond your small prison? What is Heisenberg hiding?

You give up trying to open the door, and instead explore the study. Most of the books are technical ones about machinery and mechanical know-how, but there’s the odd anatomical book thrown in. On the desk you find an old and weathered notebook, though it’s mostly blank. The pages that are filled have been written in an almost illegible scrawl, like chicken scratch or a doctor’s signature, and you can’t even begin to make heads or tails of what it says.

There’s nothing else of note in the room. No key, no hidden secret evil plan, nothing. You return to your room and resolve to find out what you can organically through talking with Heisenberg.

 Or at least, that was your plan.

You still spend a large portion of your days sleeping, both body and mind needing the extra rest in order to recover from your ordeal in the village. Your energy comes and goes, but you find that your arm is healing incredibly. It’s going to leave a large and ugly scar, but by the third time you change your bandages, you realize there’s no need to cover it again. Your other scrapes and cuts have all but healed completely, and even your bruises have faded to a muted yellow.

Heisenberg is...well. You only see him when he stops by to bring you food, and even then his visits are short. He doesn’t ask how you’re healing, nor does he entertain you with idle chatter — he enters the bedroom in the loudest, most obnoxious way possible (to frighten you), hands you your food, and leaves. On one occasion, he had come in smelling heavily of oil and smoke and had seemed like his mind was elsewhere. He hadn’t even reacted when you called his name.

Most other times, he will at least respond if you speak — like when you asked him for toiletries and he’d groused that you were “a handful.” Nonetheless, you found tattered towels and some half-used soap bars at the foot of the bed afterward.

He almost always manages to sidestep your questioning or answer with a non-answer, but you remember one particular conversation that made your hair stand on end.

“Are you a doctor?”

“You could say that.” And the way he’d grinned had unnerved you, like he was amused by how little you knew, like he had a secret he didn’t intend to share.

He’s a threat, your brain had whispered, but part of you knows he isn’t all bad. He’s certainly less creepy than some Tinder dates you’ve been on, and he’s annoyingly charismatic in an asshole sort of way. Despite everything, you feel oddly drawn to him — though you hesitate to call it anything but simple curiosity. So much mystery surrounds him and his actions, and he constantly defies your horror movie expectations for how a kidnapping should play out.

Escaping sits at the forefront of your mind, but there isn’t much you can do. There are no windows in any of the three rooms you have access to, and the only door that leads (presumably) out into the greater factory is constantly locked. You’ve tried opening the door after Heisenberg delivers your meals in the hope that he’d conveniently forget to lock it, but you’ve had no such luck.

Even if you had a viable escape plan, there’s the issue of actually physically being able to escape. You wear fatigue like a second skin even with all the bedrest you’ve managed to accumulate, and though the physical wounds from your night in the village are practically nonexistent, the thought of having to go through all that again is enough to send your heart racing.

Despite this, you do what you can to fill your time and make it more bearable. You wash your clothes with the soap Heisenberg had supplied to avoid sitting in your own filth day in and day out, and even wash the sheets to the bed. Your thoughts are equally divided between wishful fantasies of escaping, wild daydreams, and wondering when Heisenberg will bring your next meal.

Eventually, sheer boredom drives you to steal a book from the study. It’s one on the intricate makings of a pre-1970s-era vehicle, and though the technical jargon goes way over your head, it helps break up the monotony of your current existence.

(You did, at one point, attempt to exercise to pass the time. It took two sit-ups before you promptly decided it was a horrible idea and you’d rather rot in bed.)

Unwillingly, your life becomes a cycle of wishing and waiting. Wishing for food, for entertainment; waiting for Heisenberg, for a chance to escape. Somehow, your chance arrives much sooner than expected.

With the lack of natural light and your own messed up internal clock, you have no real marker for the passage of time. Heisenberg comes too irregularly for you to rely on him to mark “morning” and “night” with his visits, and you spent so much time sleeping that your own biological clock is out of whack, so the best you can do is guess. It’s on “day” five by your own calculations that you catch your lucky break.

A few minutes after Heisenberg drops off your breakfast, once you’re certain his footsteps are long gone, you head to the door in the study. You press your hands to the cool metal and push, expecting it to be as unyielding as ever — only for it to give under your weight and creak open.

Your stomach drops. For as often as you thought about escaping, most of your daydreams were power fantasies about fighting off lycans and cleverly making your way back out of the village. You have no plan for actually leaving the factory.

Familiar anxiety begins to crawl up your spine as you contemplate what to do. You could return to the bedroom and actually formulate a plan, but — no. The chances of this happening again are slim. You don’t want to risk Heisenberg coming back to lock the door and leaving you trapped here due to your own cowardice. You inhale deeply to steel your nerves, forcing your fear on the backburner, and step out.

It’s dark. Your eyes adjust to the difference in lighting as you let the door shut behind you, casting away your only remaining source of brightness. The difference in atmosphere is like night and day; where your rooms were warm and soft, the metal corridor you now stand in is cold and inhospitable. It’s a place meant for machines, not humans. The ever-present hum that rang faintly in your rooms seems louder, as if you’re closer to the source, and yet it almost makes your skin crawl, like the memory of nails on a chalkboard. You shiver.

Red emergency lights guide your way as you explore your surroundings, giving it the sinister vibe you were expecting à la horror movies. Maybe Heisenberg doesn’t have a specific torture chamber, you think. Maybe it’s the whole factory.

If only you knew.

The corridor leads you straight to another door, which swings open to reveal yet another darkened hallway. It branches off into two separate directions, however, and you remember how Heisenberg had jokingly offered to give you maps to aid your escape. Would it really be necessary?

Yes, you come to find out. You had picked the left hallway out of some vague advice of turning left to escape a maze, but it only seems to lead to more doors, most of which are locked. The single unlocked one takes you around into a large, looping corridor, until you end up right where you started.

You sigh, and turn right this time.

Like before, you find several possible exits, though only one opens. The instant you step through, you feel something in the air...shift. The usual hum is gone, replaced with dead silence, and the room is pitch black. Dread sits heavy at the back of your throat. Everything inside you screams for you not to continue on, but there’s no other option. There's nowhere else to go.

You feel around until the flat of your hand finds the wall, and you walk ahead at a slow pace. The uncertainty of what lies ahead makes your mind conjure up far-fetched and impossible images, and every time your hand brushes up against something unexpected, you jump back with your heart in your throat. You navigate with your other hand extended far out in front of you to avoid colliding into obstacles, and your feet shuffle awkwardly forward, inch by tortuous inch.

You pause as your hand catches on some round protrusion in the wall. You grope blindly at it in hopes of finding some mechanism or lever, but instead your hand passes over rough fabric. It reminds you of material used to make pants, oddly enough, and as you apply pressure you realize it’s covering something firm. You bring both hands together to feel the object and imagine some sort of cylinder under your palms, and as you slide them upward your fingertips skirt over a thickened edge that leads directly to something disturbingly chilled, which gives slightly under pressure. Surely it isn’t…?

An overhead light flickers on. Your hands are on a person. You’re touching their leg. What you had felt had indeed been pants. Your gaze travels upward — they’re naked from the waist up, but their body looks to be horribly mutilated. You can see multiple scars and literal patchworks of flesh that had to be stapled together, and there’s an odd device that encircles their head, like some strange visor, or VR helmet. Their skin is cold to the touch and an ashen grey color.

It’s a corpse, you finally realize. They’re dead.

Except — no, they can’t be, because they start to move.

A service alarm blares loudly as hydraulics hiss, and the body starts to careen forward out of its little pod. You stumble to the side, out of the way, only for the body to turn toward you as if possessed. Something starts to whir.

It has drills for hands.

How the fuck did you not notice that it has drills for hands?

A scream lodges in your throat as the thing advances on you, and you bolt down the hallway. To your horror, there’s rows upon rows of the holding cells, and you praise whatever deity currently watching this shitshow that none of the others seem awake.

You barrel down the hallway at full speed and throw your weight at the door. It bursts open to a wider area, and you barely stop your momentum in time to keep yourself from launching over a waist-tall guardrail. You white-knuckle the bannister as you stare below into unsettled waters.

Slowly, you lift your head. This place is big, far bigger than you ever imagined it to be — you’re in some spacious middle-ground that seems to stretch on endlessly. There’s many levels above you, too many for your panicked brain to count, and several still below you. In the distance, several conveyors transport what look to be human bodies to different parts of the factory.

You think you might throw up, or cry, or piss yourself, or all of the above; but instead you push off the rail and start running. You have to get out before you get turned into one of those things.

A large metal beam drops directly in your path, a few inches shy of crushing you, and stops you dead in your tracks. Another lands to its side, and then yet another on its opposite side, effectively blocking you from advancing.

“You should’ve told me you were gonna make a run for it!”

You turn sharply on your heel — Heisenberg. He saunters forward, cigar smoke trailing after him. In the dim lighting of the factory, you can just barely make out the smirk playing on his lips. “I said I would give you maps. You might’ve had a fighting chance, but you’re shit outta luck without them.”

How can he sound so amused? So casual? As if he isn’t any better than the lycans that prowl in the village. “Y-you’re a monster,” you hiss, though your voice lacks any of the necessary bite to truly appear angry, your feelings too warped by fear and terror.

The smirk drops from his face. The door you had just came from swings open as the creature reappears, its drills spinning menacingly. “Y’know,” Heisenberg begins, flicking ash from his cigar, “you must be pretty dumb to insult the one guy that can help you.” Loosened metal bits start to levitate as if propelled by some unseen force, Heisenberg at the center. He flicks a hand outward and one of the beams from earlier knocks into the backs of your legs and drags you closer to the creature, shortening the distance to it by more than half.

You’re trapped. You may be quick, but there’s no way you’re limber enough to dodge the creature’s drills to get to the exit behind it. One half of the walkway is completely barred off, and there’s no way you’d survive the drop into the waters below. The only option, then, is to run to Heisenberg — as if he planned it from the start.

You want to prove him wrong, you want to be the strong, self-reliant hero like in your daydreams, but you simply aren’t strong enough. This place is too strange, too twisted, and you’re too used to your life from before.

So you run to him.

You run, and you fucking trip.

You barely manage to brace your arms out in front of you in time to prevent your nose from smashing against the floor. You twist onto your back as the mechanical whirring grows louder. The manmachinemonster advances forward at a frightening pace, its mouth open in some macabre grin, and despair clutches at your heart. You crawl backward, feet sliding against the walkway as you desperately attempt to get away. Heisenberg merely watches the spectacle, leisurely puffing on his cigar.

“Please!” you cry out. “Please, I’m sorry!” You don’t have the strength to stand; you cling desperately to his pant leg as if you were a child and bury your face in the outside of his thigh, squeezing your eyes shut against your eventual demise.

He laughs and you can hear the genuine amusement in it. “Enough!” he shouts. The drills stop and the noise around you grows quiet. You stay like that, face pressed against his leg, heart in your throat, until you can gather enough courage to look.

Horrified, you watch as Heisenberg lifts the creature into the air, guided upward by the metal attachment on its head as if pulled upward by some magnet. He slings its body over the guardrails where it hovers mid-air over a deadly drop. It squirms in his invisible gasp, limbs twitching grotesquely in an attempt to find purchase, like an insect in its last moments.

Wordlessly, he lets the body plummet. You’re thankful you can’t watch it drop beyond the horizon of the walkway, thankful you can’t hear the sound of its body hitting the water below.

“You made me waste a perfectly good soldier.” His tone still sounds amiable, like he was discussing the weather, but there’s something else just bubbling under the surface. “I can’t even repurpose the materials.”

You’re still clinging to his leg, your hands fisted into the fabric of his pants. “I’m s..sorry,” you repeat again, trying not to incur his ire. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean…”

He tilts his head down. Between his dark shades and the way his hat casts a long shadow across his face, it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Yet, you don’t miss the way his upper lip curls into a snarl as he speaks. “Didn’t mean what? Didn’t mean to run away? Or did you just not mean to get caught?”

His boot suddenly connects with your ribs, hard, and the single kick is powerful enough to send you sprawling across the floor. Your back slams against the metal guardrails, denting them with your impact. “Dumb fucking mutt,” he spits.

You can’t breathe. His kick forced all the air from your lungs, and though you aren’t sure if he damaged something important, it sure as shit feels like it. You gasp out a silent sob as you curl inward, arms wrapped protectively around your middle in an attempt to self-soothe the pain that courses through you.

His footsteps echo against the metal as he stalks forward, slow and steady. Hopelessness eats at your core — he’ll kill you. He’s held back his murderous tendencies all this time and now he’s going to kill you, he’s gonna turn you into one of those creatures and mutilate you beyond all recognition and —

He kicks you onto your back. Your ribs open and you gasp, breathing in deep as air finally fills your lungs. “Sss’rry, ‘m sor—”

“Shut your fucking mouth.” He digs the heavy toe of his boot into your vulnerable stomach, pressing hard enough to guarantee an ugly bruise, and you cry out as pain shoots through your frayed nerves. He holds his foot in place to keep you in agony, and tears fall freely from your eyes, blurring your vision.

He could crush you. He could kill you. You thought he was scary, but you didn’t expect this. He’s like some mad scientist with superpowers. The lycans were one thing, but now you know you have no chance of escaping. You’re going to die here, whether by his hand or the hand of his creations.

“Please,” you beg, voice hinging on a whine. You cough and thick strings of blood dribble down your chin, mixing with your saliva. You sound absolutely pitiful, and you would be disgusted with yourself if you weren’t so fucking scared.

Heisenberg tsks softly. “Aw, don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not entirely merciless.” He nudges your face with his boot. “I’ll let you make it up to me. Show me you can behave, and I’ll consider letting you live.” It hovers above your mouth, and you stare up at him through your tears, confusion evident in the scrunch of your brows. “Well?” he prompts. “Stick out that tongue of yours.”

Hesitantly, you do. Spit and blood both drool from your mouth as you part your lips and let your tongue loll out. He presses the underside of his shoe against your tongue and it clicks: he wants you to lick his boot.

Heat coils low in your abdomen as you start to drag your tongue against the leather, lapping up the grime and dirt from its surface. Copious amounts of saliva and blood dribble continuously from your mouth, enough that you can hardly taste the actual repugnant flavor of his shoe. Above, Heisenberg inhales from his cigar, blowing out a cloud of smoke as he watches you from behind his shades. It’s almost calming, in a way, so much so that you’re almost unafraid, and more like —

No. This is gross. You must have hit your head and knocked something loose, because there’s nothing sexy about this, there’s no way you like it. Fear and pleasure are closely related in the brain so maybe your body just got the signals mixed up, because there is no way this is making you wet, there’s no —

An undignified whine slips from your throat, and you hope that Heisenberg misinterprets it as something pained and sad, not as the thinly-veiled desperate noise it truly is.

His mouth curves into his trademark grin as he pulls his spit-slicked boot away. “Maybe you’ll be good for something after all,” he murmurs appraisingly.

And then, blissfully, everything turns black.

  Your head is pounding. It takes everything in you to open your eyes just a crack, but the warm lighting proves too much and you pinch them shut against the threat of tears. Your mouth feels like cotton, and yet you can taste the faint metallic twang of blood mixed with something else, something earthy. Your ribcage hurts, your stomach hurts, your everything hurts — and then you remember: the twisted corpse made of man and metal; the truth about the factory; Heisenberg, so breathtakingly mean — and you shoot up into a sitting position.

You’re in the bedroom again, legs twisted into the sheet on the bed. The door is shut, and there’s no one else in here with you. No weird creature, no Heisenberg, no one. You turn your head to scope out the whole room, and —

You fucking jingle.

Alarmed, you reach for your throat. There’s a piece of metal warped around your neck, and at its center hangs a little bell, like what you would see on a pet collar. Seeing is believing, though, so you stumble from the bed and into the bathroom so you can look at yourself in the mirror.

Bloodshot eyes stare back at you, your face grimy and your mouth stained with blood, but it’s there. It looks like a piece of metal scrap had been twisted and beaten into a circle, then soldered together around your neck. When you shake your head, the bell jingles cheerfully in your ears.

The bastard had fucking collared you.

#karl heisenberg #karl heisenberg x reader #resident evil #resident evil village #re8 #writing #theres no smut in tihs chapter but ooh boy. Ooh boy. the stuff i have planned #also please tell me if i need to warn for anything else its super late and my brain is fried #theres extended tags on ao3 for what to expect for this series as a whole #also this wasnt supposed to be this long shoot me #anyway. heisenberg my beloved spit on me