The Obligatory Egos Swap AU - Jacksepticeye Egos

Pure of Heart, Dark of Mind - Part 4

TW: Blood and mentions of child experimentation and gore.

A/N: Happy new year and happy holidays!!

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Ace woke with a strangled gasp, immediately reaching up to claw at his constricted throat.

He didn't expect it, but there were a good few layers of bandages there, covering what was making itself painfully known as some sort of deep wound. Tears immediately built up in his eyes and he had to stop touching it as just that caused a fiery pain to shoot through his nerves.

He let his hands drop, fingertips feeling sticky all of a sudden, taking gasping breaths and looking around in a panic.

The room surrounding him was dark. Was he still in the bunker? It definitely felt like he was lying on a very thin cot mattress, but he couldn't be sure. Henrik seemed to have a lot of things at his disposal, though how he'd be able to move Ace to a secondary location like this was beyond him.

There was a shift beside him and a hand pushed his hair out of his face before gripping onto his neck out of nowhere.

Ace tried to scream, but not a sound came out.

The same bright light from before suddenly turned on, and Henrik dropped a remote control between his and Ace's bodies as they lie side by side on the cot. Ace wanted to get away, but Henrik was still holding onto his throat lightly, any little shift making the seemingly open would beneath the bandages light up in continuous fiery pain.

"Shh, shh," Henrik calmed, feeling Ace try to swallow beneath his hand. He let go, fingers coming back sticky, just like Ace's. "Oh, dear. I am going to have to change these bandages soon. And after that, since you're now awake, we will head back to the house. How does that sound?"

'Motherfucker!,' Ace wanted to shout, but he couldn't open his mouth, too weak from whatever Henrik had done to him, let alone force his wounded throat to try and make noise.

Henrik slipped out of the bed and began traversing around the room in search of various items that Ace didn't have the energy to keep track of.

After what felt like hours of going in and out of consciousness, Henrik finally tried to stand Ace up. His legs were jelly from not being used, but Henrik was sturdy and leaned him just the right way so that they almost looked normal together. He had put on a scarf around Ace's bandaged throat to not raise questions, and then slowly lead him up the stairs out of the bunker.

The outside world was dark when they exited. It was nighttime, just like when the pair had met. Had Henrik known it would be dark? Ace didn't think so, but it was a strange coincidence. Either way, they got out of the forest and back to their little house.

Henrik shackled Ace to the radiator. He didn't think he could do anything in this state, anyway, but he couldn't make any mistakes, not whilst his first successful test subject was still alive.

Ace passed out not long after getting back, leaving Henrik to roam the house until morning. He'd never bothered to bring a bed in here, liking the privacy of the bunker for himself more, but this place was nice, so he couldn't have ever passed up the opportunity.

He sat in front of Ace, rummaging through the little bag of his captive's belongings that he'd never bothered to throw out, but also had never looked through.

There was a water bottle--empty by this point, though maybe Henrik should fill that up again.

A cell phone--dead and why would Henrik charge it?

And a notebook. It seemed more like a journal, listing places Ace had been and what he liked about them, then on the backs of the pages, what he hadn't liked. Bad experiences. Names people called him for simply looking like an outsider.

He always went to these places with very little money and belongings, so that he could enjoy them as they were. He got food and bed from shelters and kept himself clean using basically any natural water source he could find.

And somehow he had stumbled across the one town where a man took advantage of just these kinds of people. Henrik grinned, returning the notebook back to its spot in the bag.

His hand touched a slip of paper tucked deep into the pocket and he pulled it out.

A note. Something personal. The only personal belonging Ace had other than his phone.

Ace stirred on the floor as the sun began to rise outside the window, but Henrik closed the curtains so he could have just a little more time.

He unfolded the note.

Chicken scratch. Complete nonsense, it seemed. Henrik could only read a few words like "...several new diagnoses..." and "...the operations proved to be unsuccessful...". But that was all that was important.

Several signatures lined the bottom of the page in various doctors' handwriting.

Henrik stared at Ace, pocketing the note instead of returning it.

Once again, Ace couldn't see anything upon waking. He could tell he was standing, his voice trying to call out, but it wasn't working. He lifted a foot off the ground to try and step forward, but it went in something wet. He looked down.

Now, instead of nothing, he could see a world of red. His foot rose, the sticky red clinging to the sole of his shoe. He moved his other foot, beginning to walk through the red.

Everything warped around him, each step sloshing through the red liquid on the ground. It was rising as he walked; each step was getting harder than the last until he suddenly stopped.

A picture was taking form in front of him.

A child. They were being cut open from the very top of their sternum to their belly. And another, with cuts down their legs and arms, their little body sparking with electricity. All the cuts being made were surgical, done by people in white coats, a couple of whom were flashing in and out of the visions.

He thought he recognised them, but he couldn't recall. His head was beginning to hurt and the red was turning to white and-

"Ace? Can you hear me?"

His eyes snapped open and he stifled a surprised cough.

It was bright outside the window. He barely remembered making it back to the house, but he was just glad to be out of that bloody bunk-

"Ace." Henrik clicked his fingers in his face, a grumpy expression taking over his features as he reached up to smack the hand away with the hand that wasn't cuffed down.

Henrik's eyes narrowed in his glasses, yet still, he smiled. Ace paled. "We will take one day's break to let you recover, then tomorrow it is back to your magic, all right? I finally have a proper task for you, as soon as I am able to get out of here."

He didn't give him any time to answer, standing to leave the room.

Ace still didn't know exactly what Henrik had done to him, only that his throat was jacked up, now. He didn't have a lot of energy from the... surgery, but before Henrik left the room, he gave a bit of his leftover energy toward his powers, catching the back of Henrik's ankle above his shoe.

If Henrik noticed, he didn't acknowledge it; Ace chose to assume the smile growing on his face as he rounded the corner was from something else.