Break Me (Day 2 Late Evening)

Vas blinked, coming back around; his joints aching. His lips were chapped and salty and he was still shirtless. Stupid Biao zi hadn’t given it back. Shocker. He stiffly worked his way to sit up taking in his surroundings. The room was small the hatched locked. He had apparently been put away for the night.

Serena apparently saw fit to not leave him any food tonight. The young punk huffed … not even a gorram blanket theses stingy You mafeng bing de jinu de erzi (sons of a whore with leprosy).

Vas, was as Serena described him, a gorram stubborn mule. Vas took grim satisfaction in that. It had taken significantly more than what Serena doled out to bring him to heel. She was young and ham-handed and while the pain for many was a way to instill fear and obedience. It did not work on him.

Not for Vas.

No.

The Tao Te Ching stated ‘Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?’
Vas was not afraid. The pain did not bring fear for the ex-clipper. It was instead a reminder he was still alive that he could still keep moving and as such keep fighting.

Vas was no hopeful. Hope made one complacent and prevented one from taking action for something that may likely never come.

They were both hollow and thus useless. They clouded the mind from thinking clearly and prevented one from focusing on the task at hand.

Vas took a steady breath working to clear his head. It had taken greater men longer to crack him. Men of deep cruelty and depravity. Few could say they survived such an ordeal without becoming the very thing that had broken them. While it at its surface it may seem Vas has overcome it intact. That would be a lie.

Vas held to his deep hatred and anger toward slavers. A resentment to this day was one of the few triggers that could truly send him into a blind rage. He had in a way avoided becoming the thing he hated but did not do so unscathed.
Vas was fundamentally broken. He knew this.

He could see it when he compared himself to others. He was not the same.
Not in the way a person is broken down into an obedient slave. It wasn’t something that wasn’t apparent right away not with a lifetime of discipline and fanatical obedience. But if you knew where to look, you could see the cracks in the facade. The lines were fine but there where there, they have always been there. Ironically like in his previous life he wondered if it was yet another mask he wore.

What would they think if they saw him without it?

What would Jacy think?

His emotions were, for lack of a better term, childish and underdeveloped. Vas understood them poorly always trying to figure them out, holding them back so he didn’t burst. Anger was for the weak and made you act without thinking. Sadness makes you immobile and unable to move forward.

But he had felt them to a degree. A pain he best could describe as being stabbed when his mother rejected him. Murderous rage toward Leo and his creepy slimness. Without discipline, Leo would be dead and he would have fallen into a pit of despair at the shattered image he had held onto of his mother. Simply because he didn’t know how to handle it otherwise!

Which was why for such a long time it had been better not feel anything. To submit and became an extension of something greater.
Still, there were emotions he didn’t feel at all, remaining completely numb to them. He knew because he had seen other people experience them and he supposed he had not come this far without having to had amputating that part of himself.

Or had it been cut out of him … maybe both.

It wasn't something you never noticed till one you take a bullet to the mask wake up and realize how empty you really were. Then add the salt of seeing your sibling in the distance and being both too afraid and ashamed to face them because you know you were the thing that went bump in the night?

They would be horrified and that would be too much. If his own mother rejecting him had hurt having the only person from his childhood who had genuinely cared for him reject him ... would kill him.

There had to be more to life than that. To be owned and to obey. Loved as much as one loved a well cared for sword.

He wanted more.

He wanted to feel more.

He wanted a choice!

Fine, he was a selfish bastard! So he would be damned if a bunch of low rent slavers who got the jump on him think they could keep him contained?!

Vas had learned plenty about the crew, particularly his self-proclaimed jailor.

Now? It was just a matter of time.

She could try all she wanted.

Vas would not be anyone's slave again.

Vas would not be broken.

Even if it meant he had to tear out the throat of everyone on this gorram ship with his teeth.

Without question.