The first time the Venus Squire strode into his cell, Ashanite had laughed. Venus Knights always looked a little ridiculous, in their bright colors, and this one had a sincerely nonthreatening weapon, a delicate embroidered scarf.

“Come to interrogate me? Or just to amuse yourself?” The Captain asked.

“To take revenge, actually.” The Squire replied idly. She tilted her head to the side, examining Ashanite from head to toe. “Jesus, Tuchanka was right, you really are pretty, it is too bad you’re a ******** Negaverse cockroach.”

That name was like a kick to the gut. Tuchanka. The Senshi he had killed, wholly by accident.

“I didn’t intend to kill --” Ashanite started, but then a boot connected solidly with his gut, and he doubled over.

“Shut up.” The Squire snapped. She swept out a leg and knocked Ashanite off his feet, then knelt in front of him. “I’m Aralakh of Venus,” she said, “and you are going to remember that name for a very long time.” The Squire started to twist her scarf, like he was making it into a ligature --

And then there was an arrow through Aralakh’s throat and she fell to the side, and Ashanite wanted to laugh in delight, because that meant rescue because only Negaverse officers had weapons like those. An unfamiliar Captain strode in, and went about unbinding him very efficiently.

He made it all the way to the door of the jail, on his own two feet, but --

The vision dissolved, back into his dark cell and Aralakh grinning madly, and Ashanite inhaled sharply.

“That was a low trick,” he snarled, and Aralakh laughed, standing up.

“Only the worst for the worst,” she said, and then she slammed his foot into Ashanite’s shoulder hard enough to drive him into the wall and wrench something. The Captain swore loudly, and Aralakh turned on her heel and left.

She came back, naturally.

The first few visits Ashanite made it through with most of his snark intact, but it was starting to wear on him, going through immensely real visions of being rescued only to jolt out and be back in his cell and on the receiving end of more and more pain.

Aralakh’s magic, the Squire explained, showed him what he wanted most right then - which explained why the visions always opened with a brutal death for his most dedicated tormentor.

By far the worst had been when it was Umber’s blades through Aralakh’s chest, and then Umber gently scooping him up and carrying him out, and Ashanite had begun to accept it as real and sink against that strong chest and maybe allow himself some silly romantic fantasies about the whole thing ---

And then he was jolted back by Aralakh kicking him hard enough to crack his ribs.

“I’m going to break you apart,” Aralakh promised him, when she unbound Ashanite’s hands and then beckoned him to fight his way out. <******** you,” Ashanite snarled back. He had resolved himself not to scream, not to admit how much pain he was in. “Just ******** kill me, take revenge for your dead partner.”

“I’m not going to kill you.” Aralakh promised. “I’m going to leave you alive, but I’m going to leave you shattered, pretty boy. Every time you ache, every moment of your recovery, you’re going to think about me, and you’re going to think about Tuchanka. Just like I have to.”

Ashanite launched himself at the Squire, but Aralakh was clever, and not weakened by exisitng injuries and lack of food and everything else. She got Ashanite pinend against the wall and wrenched his arm solidly behind him, and did something to his ankle that left it aching and raw.

And then she tossed Ashanite on the floor and stormed out, not activating his damned magic until he was out of sight.

Even though Ashanite swore to himself he wouldn’t react, he found himself huddling in a corner and fighting off sobs more often than not once Aralakh left. Until Aralakh had started using that scarf as more than just a tool for her magic activation - had started strangling him nearly to the point of unconsciousness, which left his throat raw and unuseable.

Then Aralakh started getting clever, standing outside the cell and activating her magic, so she wasn’t there and wasn’t part of the vision, and that was when Ashanite realized he had stopped hoping for rescue at all.

More than once, the vision had been of him escaping on his own, and that had quelled any desire he might have had to try and run, because surely any presented opportunity was just a trick of his mind.

There was definitely some sort of time distortion going on in the visions, too; they lasted far longer than any Knight’s magic pool could.

He wasn’t sure when, exactly, he completely gave up on the concept of rescue, but somewhere along the way, he did.

It was all just a nightmare, anyway.