All that existed in that moment was the rope.

Jerking him backwards into the building, tightening before he could think to breathe. Digging, scratching, bruising soft skin in a red ring around his neck. His Adam’s apple, next, jutting awkwardly against the hemp, restricted in his throat within its capture.

The loss of gravity came next, just as swift, a sequential slip of one back-stumbling foot and then the next. Then force, as hard as it was sudden. He fell back against the cluttered floor.

His head smacked first, and then again, dizzying vision into darkness.

What. The. Fuck?

It was just the sound of lips, of teeth, of nothing when he opened his mouth. Malachi clawed at the rope. Nails dug into skin and hemp fibers alike in their quest to pry it off. A slender finger pushed its way between rope and skin, and then another, and remained in place as a gasped breath finally pulled into his lungs.

It was shallow. But it was more than nothing.

Malachi pushed himself shakily up on his elbow, staring up at Arthur through a wide-eyed, wild gaze.

What was he talking about? Why was he so – why was he… what had he done wrong?

“Hghi–”

You asked me to do it, he wanted to say, I was doing what you wanted!

But all that came out when he tried to speak was a breathy tone and a scratch.

Nothing. Less than a dog, less than dirt. He was nothing.

“A-ckhgh–” he scratched out.

He struggled upright, trying to stand. His legs wobbled and sent him back onto all-fours instead, and he stumbled into the wall, all of his weight falling against it in a half-collapse. He didn’t have the fight to push up again. Not with a rope around his neck. Not when he was less than dirt, and this was where he belonged.