Content warnings: dehumanization (literally), torture, captivity, more torture, humiliation, loss of self, semi-starvation and food-based torture.  Off of this prompt. 

@Chanter_Greenie, I bet you know who this is. 

Someone remind me to post the post-Ghost Story bit once I find it?

The transformation had hurt like hell.

On bad moments, he held on to that.

She was good at these things; he was pretty sure she could’ve made it painless.  She liked the pain — she like his pain.

When he’d realized what she was doing, he’d tried to run away, despite the shackles holding him down, despite the blades she’d driven through both his feet.  “Little beastie,” she’d purred into his ear. “Beast you are, and I don’t think you look the part enough.”

He lifted up a forepaw to lick at it.  He’d broken all the bones in this — in this hand — trying to get out of the shackles when he realized what she was doing. When he realized that she wasn’t going to kill him.

His brother hadn’t killed him either.  Neither had — neither had She. At this rate, if he wanted somebody to kill him for the awful things he done, he was going to have to do it himself.

Right now he wasn’t quite sure how to pull that off.

“Beast you are beast you shall become,” she’d said.  And she meant it. He paced in tight circles around his cage.  When would she be back? When would there be food?

He hated waiting for her.  He hated this cage. He hated this form, the mouth and throat that couldn’t work magic,the paws that couldn’t manage cage latches, the brain that keep trying to be a beast and nothing else.

“How’s my beastie?”. She swept into the room, all cheerful and sunshine, the smell of rotten meat following her in.  “I brought you a little treat, here it is, that’s a good beastie.”

His stomach was still as human as he’d ever been (whatever that was, to them), but his mouth salivated at the damn stinking stuff anyway.  He waited very patiently. She did not do second chances. He had learned that with a very long hungry time.

“That’s a very good beastie.  Here.” She tossed it in and stood back while he ate the thing in four bites.  The quicker he went, he’d learned, the less he tasted it.

“Very good.  Do you want a walk, beastie?”

Whatever his feelings on the matter, the answer had to be yes, because water was usually out, and because it was the only time he got to stretch his legs.

Even if he did have the wrong number of them right now.

“Now, remember.”  She brought the leash over to the cage and clipped it on his collar.  “You misbehave, even once, and you’ll never get your other form back. You’ll never be a person again.  Not that you ever were, but I know you liked to pretend.”

He knew.  He knew she held his only hope of getting back to his real form.  He knew she was one of the best at what she did — and, right now, the only person who could connect his human…. Human-like form with this thing.

He still hated the leash.  He still wanted to pull against it, bite it, tug on it.

He did none of that.  He waited, patient. He waited, perfectly still.  The cage was open. They were going to go into the sunshine now.  For a few minutes, there would be sun and there would be water and—

“Del?  The hell are you doing?  Come on, let the damn animal go.  We’ve got to run, and we’ve got to do it fast.  Come on.”

Despite himself, he whined.  No, no, no, don’t let him go.  

“Oh, well, you heard him, Beastie.”  She shrugged, her smile far too sharp.  “I guess I’m letting you go. Go on, now.  Run away, before the hunters get here. Run.”

“Del, if he isn’t gonna run, you’re going to have to put him down.  We can’t have him tracking us.”

“You heard him, beastie.  Run.”

He swallowed on a lump of bile and panic and did the only thing he could.  Four feet tripping — she’d never let him run in this form, how did they all work, how was he supposed to — he ran.