bakerstreet | The Slave Auction Meme

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The Slave Auction Meme

* Leave a comment with the character's name, fandom, and whether your character will be playing the part of 'slave' or 'master', plus preferences for scenarios if you have any.
* Respond to others with one of the scenarios below or feel free to make up your own.
* Please remember to be respectful of others while you play

Warning: Be aware that this meme deals with dark subjects like slavery and may also contain non-consensual/dubiously consensual sex, violence, and kink.

SLAVES

1. The Newbie - This is your very first auction and you don't quite know what to expect. Hopefully you remember your training and don't disgrace yourself in front of your new master. Hopefully someone thinks you're worth buying at all.

2. The Oldtimer - You've been bought and sold and bought again so many times. You've seen it all before and don't think this time is going to be much different. In fact, the only real anxiety you've got is whether or not someone's going to pay for a more than slightly used slave.

3. The Pet - You're a pleasure slave. A bed warmer. A decorative piece of artwork. You're meant to look pretty and be pleasing and not much else.

4. The Guard - Your master hired you because of your ability to swing a sword or shoot a gun, not your looks.

5. The Escape Artist - Somehow you always manage to squirm out of your master's chains. Too bad you seem to get caught after a while. Maybe your next daring escape will be permanent. Then again, maybe your next master has special ways of keeping you locked up.

6. The Undercover - You aren't a slave at all, you're just pretending to be one. Why? Well that's up to you. Either way, your cover is blown if you don't act the part.

7. The Specialist - You have a skill that no one else has. Something rare and valuable. Something your master needs more than anything else.

MASTERS

1. The Customer - You've owned slaves before and this trip to the market is nothing new to you. Still, you're hoping to find something worth your while.

2. The Gift - Someone bought a pet for you, isn't that nice of them? Or maybe it isn't so nice. Did you even want a slave in the first place? Well you're stuck with one now.

3. The Giver - You're selecting a slave for someone else, and they need to be perfect. Perhaps you'd better test them out first to make sure you're getting your money's worth.

4. The Trainer - You specialize in taming unruly slaves and making them over into perfect, obedient, well-trained pets.

5. The Rebel - You hate the idea of slavery, but the system isn't going to go away any time soon, so the next best thing is to buy up any slave you can get your hands on and free them, right?

6. The Companion - You want someone to be with you always, someone you can talk to and depend on, someone who will never leave your side. It's a good thing that money can buy that these days.

7. The Undercover - You're not actually a Master. You're at the auction for an entirely different reason. Maybe it's special policework, maybe you're trying to hunt down a certain someone. Either way, your cover is blown unless you act the part.

As always, feel free to use a combination of scenarios or make up your own if you have other ideas.

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[Clint does not bother to buckle up. He's still most of the way turned in his seat, staring at Frank with not a single understanding.

He's seen people do horrible things without a flinch of reacting. But those people were also not people who treated him less like a collar and more like a soldier, like a fellow human being sometimes. Those people didn't go to their own family homes to burn it to the ground.

Clint maybe shouldn't feel so much about it, so hard and fast about it as he does. But he does feel it. May not fully understand the feeling, or articulate it with a gun to his head. But the feelings are there, and he gets away with pushing a lot of boundaries with Frank, not always sure sometimes if there are boundaries, except there always, always are.

It's not a good idea to distract a driver, but Clint shoves hard at Frank's arm.]

What did you do that for! The hell was that about!

( When he catches Clint's wrist, it's pure reflex. He's in a state of mind that's one strong breeze away from fight or flight — which, granted, it is at any given time, but the barrier is especially thin right now. His body moves without his mind having a say in it, snatching at that forearm a little too tightly without taking his eyes off the road.

Until he realizes, and then he flickers a glance over, slowly unlocking his fingers one at a time to gently release it.

When he pumps the brakes again in the middle of a suburban intersection in the dead of night, it's to lock eyes with the other man. )

Hey- Look at me. Clint. Look at me. ( If his eyes are red at the edges, if there's a roughness to his voice that wasn't there a second ago, it's only because he's bleeding out. ) I don't wanna talk about it.

( So leave it alone. )

[Pain doesn't bother him. It's an old, old friend at this point. So something as simple as a hair-too-tight grip on his arm isn't anything that'll make him wince.

But having even some of that anger or fight or pain or violence or threat of violence aimed at him when Frank had been so damn adamant that that wouldn't happen, there's a part of him that shrinks back down. Ah, it says, so this was Frank all along, just one bad day from becoming like so many others. Why does that feel like a betrayal? Surely he'd never fully believed Frank would never.

The look on Frank's face is...devastating in its own way. The use of his first name, for once, is a strangely twisted emotion unto itself. This is not the time and place to push. Because he doesn't know what the very last damn straw for this man is, but he imagines those straws are very, very limited right now.

Clint slams down the shutters on his own hurt expression.] Yessir. [It wasn't even phrased as any kind of order. Maybe that counts for something. He isn't sure in this moment that it does. Leaves the guitar where it's resting, neck balanced on the seat, and pushes himself through the space between the seats into the back. Kuba has been barking up a storm and making a ruckus, somehow so loud in the small space that it simply has become background noise, and Clint shushes him quietly, says little gentle nothings and reassurances as he pets and holds the dog. And ignores anything happening up front.]

( The guilt that thrums through him is its own creature, a writhing and slithering thing, swimming through all that inky blackness. All the same, despite that, he says nothing. Nothing as Clint shuts down, nothing as he retreats to the back with the dog. Frank can't blame him.

Nothing as he puts the car back into drive. Nothing as they finally make it back to the warehouse, and he climbs out, whisper-quiet, to head inside. It's a straight line to the bathroom from there, where he efficiently and economically showers away days of stakeout, one murder, and a house fire. He still smells smoke by the time he's finished.

And no words again as he crosses back toward that shitty little blow-up mattress, intent to lay down with his arms crossed over his chest to stare up at the ceiling for a while. Maybe he'll never say another goddamn word again. Maybe he'll drown overnight. )

[Clint recognizes that he could run. Run and not even be chased. He could take the keys to the van, take the dog, blast the radio, and just go. He might even make it to the border by dawn if he floors it.

He recognizes that, and he still doesn't feel the intense need to move, to go, in spite of what the hell just happened. The thought is there, but the desire's as lit as a wet match. Maybe it's because his head isn't in the right place. Maybe by morning he'll realize this isn't the good thing he was starting to get his hopes up about.

Maybe by morning Frank's going to be talking again and come around, too.

Clint waits until Frank's inside for a minute before following, bringing Kuba in and...not knowing what to do about any of this. He brings the guitar, too. Because it was the one and only thing Frank recovered from the house he sought to erase from the record. Doesn't try playing it again. The cd burning (ha) a hole in his pocket gets laid out on the table.

Little things. Empty out his pack now that he doesn't need what's there. Clean the gun he didn't have to use. There's plenty of change from buying food, didn't bother treating himself to anything expensive. That he'll keep. That's money he got or was given fair and square. (If he runs, it's better than nothing.)

Frank just lays down like he's ready to die there. Posed like a god damn corpse in a casket, and that flares an anger that's hard to reason with or rationalize.

Clint picks up the guitar, a hard grip just below the head, clearly no intent on trying any playing, and makes an approach. There are several feet between him and the wants-to-be-dead form of Frank when he stops. He wonders if he should put more distance, actually.]

That was a nice house.

( With his arms folded across his chest and his eyes pointed up, all he can see is steel beams and vaulted glass. Concrete walls. Dark, starless sky thanks to the shithole pollution that clouds this city in light. He can't see Clint, but he can hear the approach. Can hear him stop. Can hear him finally break through the quiet.

It's been a few minutes now. He's calmer. Still got that roiling guilt for that reflexive grab after the unexpected touch, but evidently not enough to broach the topic or apologize. Just enough to stew in it.

It does, at least, give him a modicum of patience. After a too-long span of seconds, he repeats, monotone and apathetic, hoarse and tired: )

I don't wanna talk about it.

That was a nice house full of nice things and nice memories.

[Clint acts like he didn't hear Frank the first or second time.]

It's not gonna make things feel any better. Won't make the memories disappear.

[He hefts the guitar in one hand like he's presenting it, but Frank hasn't even bothered looking at him.] This was the only thing you thought was worth keeping. Was it worth it? What's the point if you wanted all the rest of it gone like it never existed?

( He's poking at something Frank's trying to bury. He's taking a goddamn shovel to it, in fact, calling him out word for word as clean a target as every shot he ever takes. Hard as Frank tries to stare at nothing but the ceiling, it doesn't stop his jaw from starting to tighten, to clench in place. To tremble.

He doesn't need to look to know what Clint's holding up.

It was easy to bring that, just like it was easy to bring his own clothes: because it's his. Didn't belong to the kids, didn't belong to Maria. It's his guitar, so the memories shouldn't belong to their ghosts, right? It shouldn't drag them back into the present, right? He took the damn thing to Afghanistan, he had it before he got married — matter of fact, Maria only even looked his way because of that guitar. Which doesn't count as a memory, and he's not thinking about it, and there are no flaws in this logic whatsoever.

Tersely, still without looking: )

Put it away.

No.

[There's an awful kind of exhilaration to the word. Like something in his chest is rising, expanding, something giddy and freeing to it. But also feels like he's going to puke and turn into a shaking nervous chihuahua. He kind of wants to laugh, and also weirdly cry, and it's confounding.

But he says it. To his owner. Who gave him an order.

If nothing else, it's emboldening, and it feels like it crosses a line there's no going back from, and if he's this far, he might as well keep going.]

If nothing else gets to survive your fit of hating yourself, [and he takes the guitar in both hands, lifting it high over his head] then I guess there's no reason for this to survive, either.

( No does get his attention; his eyes finally snap from the ceiling to the man himself, sharp, surprised. Even the other night at the van hadn't been a no, it'd been an if. I will if you let me drive. This is new, unprecedented, and generally not something collars do. Not something Clint does. Of all the things Frank would've expected him to shut down, this one's a surprisingly innocuous one.

And then he raises the guitar over his head, and Frank-

-goes still. Waits to assess how he feels about it, and after a beat, lowly rumbles: )

Do it.

( Go ahead. If you're gonna do it, do it. Smash it to fucking pieces.

From his tone, from his expression, it might be hard to tell what he's thinking. Whether it's a genuine order, or it's a do it and see what happens, I dare you. He gives nothing away; only a blank, dead, hollow, howling ache.

Do it. )

Tell me why it matters.

[Every muscle in him wants to comply. He doesn't see it as an order but as a goad, and there's a part of him that strongly wants to show off, see, he can do this, he'll do it whether you want him to or not, fuck you. But then he's destroying the last thing from home, and that has to mean something.]

Tell me why this matters more than years lived in that home.

( To quote the wise words of Buffalo Springfield: there's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear. He knows why he's fucked up, he knows what's wrong with him, but what in the hell's going on with Barton? What's his fucking deal right now? Why does it matter to him what happens to the home of a guy that owns him like a god damn slave? Why does he give a shit at all, let alone to this extent?

Slowly, Frank sits up. Drags his knees up loose to rest his elbows on them, and he meets Clint's stare head-on, challenging, with one of his own. )

It doesn't. ( Don't you get it? ) The only reason it matters is because it doesn't matter. That's why I took it. It was mine, before I ever met her, before I ever had the kids, that was mine. So if you wanna do it, do it. Smash it. Go on. Do it.

( It's not that he's lying. He believes every word he's saying is true, right now. It's just that he's stupid, and wrong, and he'll learn just exactly how wrong he is the first time he sits down to play the damn thing himself. )

So, what, you don't have a single thing else that came before? You never brought this out to play for her, or for the kids? It doesn't conjure up a single memory of family?

[The guitar comes back down, slow and easy. Still gripped in both hands in case he changes his mind. But the bottom of it comes to rest lightly on the floor.]

You would want me to. Because then you'd have not a single thing else to connect you to the old life, so you can either let go and just wallow until you die, or you get the freedom to be whatever the hell you wanna be that isn't Frank Castle.

( It's tempting to walk over, snatch that guitar, and smash it to bits on the ground in front of Clint himself. Tempting to break it into splinters and then set those splinters on fire, too. He even makes it as far as standing up — but that's where it stops. He doesn't take a single step forward, his fists clench to stop himself from reaching out for it.

Instead, he points off toward the opposite direction. )

If you don't like what I do, there's the door. Your job's done. Take the dog with you on the way out.

( It's snapped and snarled with all the heat the dog in question likes to demonstrate. Too deep, too bellowed, too broken-glass-and-gravel. Talk louder, talk deeper, be more intimidating. He got everything he needed from Clint and then some, and if he goes, that'll be one less thing in Frank's life to give enough of a shit to hold him accountable for himself. )

That's what you do, right? You're a runner, you're a flight risk? You run, so get the hell outta here and run!

You bought me. You told me to bring the dog along. If you don't want us around anymore, you do something about it. You wanna lock all the exits and set this place burning too? [Good luck with that, mostly it's just the crates of guns and explosives, would still do a hell of a bang, but the actual structure is much less flammable than a family house.]

What about Miss Karen, you wanna get rid of her, too?

Yes!

( It's barked out immediately, thoughtlessly. And then the words start flowing, and they don't stop. They gain momentum, they gain pitch, and about half way through they start to fall apart. Or maybe he starts to fall apart. )

Yes I do, because if I stick around her, what happens to her is gonna be the same thing that happens to you, and it's the same thing that happened to them! Sooner or later, what I do, what I did, who I am, it's gonna get you killed. It's gonna get her killed. It got my family killed. I did that, that's on me, and I keep thinking the more of these assholes I put down, the less true that's gonna be, but it's not, it's not! Mills is dead, Kazi's dead, a dozen track suits and a dozen Irish and a dozen Cartel and Schoonover are all dead and you know what good it did? Nothing! It didn't do shit! It didn't do shit, and now I'm at the end of the goddamn list, and I don't-

( His voice cracks; his eyes, still red-rimmed from earlier, finally tip over into shining. Wet. For all the vehemence in his body language, he's crying like a goddamn child. )

I don't know what to do anymore to make it stop. I don't know how to make it stop, I just want it to stop.

[And there. The dam breaking. Everything Frank had shut down and stuffed behind his eyes come barreling out of him in a waterfall. There's the confirmation that he found and killed Schoonover. There's not knowing what to do next, where to go next, if there's nobody to kill next. The blame. The guilt.

Clint sets the guitar carefully down flat. And then he lowers himself to the floor. Sitting feels somehow safer in this moment. Not going to offer anything physically to Frank, because he doesn't know if that would do anything, if that's wanted, if it would just lead to getting grabbed again. If he's low and small then...he's less of a threat. He can be more ignored. After doing everything in his power to not be ignored.]

It's not nothing. You took out a lot of people who think nothing of hurting others. That's that many more off the street who can't do anything. Schoonover was willing to get a lot of people killed just to get at you. Now he can't hurt anyone ever again. It's not nothing, sir.

[As to making it stop. Well. He doesn't want to sound callous enough to suggest he's got plenty of ways right in this warehouse to make it stop. And if Clint sells off all the guns and ammo, he could make a pretty penny about it.] Just don't think burning up a perfectly fine home's the way to try and make anything stop.

( Maybe he needs to hear that a little, that first part. That it mattered, the things he did, they mattered to the whole, even if it isn't actually fixing him. He feels stable with a mission, he feels like his head's clear, he feels like he can tune out that howling loneliness when he's got a target lined up to chase. Going from one to the next to the next was keeping him busy, keeping him pointing all that anger and rage and feeling out to somewhere external, to someone outside of himself.

Without it... without it, there's nowhere to direct it but inward. He needs to do what he does, or he's going to self-destruct and burn another house down. Burn himself down. Swallow a bullet. Maybe all three.

Clint hits the ground, and Frank's left wondering, confused, absolutely lacking in comprehension for one piece of this: )

Why's it matter so much to you? Huh? All the shit you've seen me do, why's it a house that finally tripped you up?

It was a nice house you had, [sullen, quiet, aimed at the floor] and you got rid of it all like it didn't mean anything. I know it's...cuz it meant too much, but I don't really get that, sir. You can't have it, so nobody else gets to have it? Knowing it's there is too much for you, and now that it's gone, you think that's not also gonna be too much for you?

[None of that answers the question as to why the hell Clint cares so much that he found his voice. It makes him feel weird to get prodded into talking about himself when Frank's the one in tears for not knowing what to do with himself now that he's killed everyone who killed his whole family. Maybe it's a distraction. Maybe he just deserves to know why the idea of it seems so genuinely horrifying to Clint instead of just mildly alarming.

He braces his hands flat on the cold floor. Feels grounding in a way. He doesn't rock the way Frank tends to, tends toward stillness. Steady aim. Disappear into the background.]

I've lived in a lot of buildings. Never had a home. None of the places I was ever felt like a home. Maybe Kazi's came close, being what it was, but...nah, not even that. Plenty of big shiny buildings, expensive, impressive. You throw a big party of debutantes in suits and cocktails dresses and watch them ooo and ahh about it. You do business deals in the back room. Or in the front room. A place you live in, not a home.

It wasn't a house you burned down, sir. It was a home. It was your home. All you took was something that was yours. No pictures, no toys, no clothes, no... [He shakes his head.] All I got of my mom is her name. If we'd had a home, things probably wouldn't've turned out this way.

Everything you do's so calculated. And this was so senseless.

( His jaw works, a steady tension, a flexion. The longer Clint talks, the more the aggression and tension bleeds from his posture. It's replaced with weighted fatigue, with every ounce of the pressure he feels from the world driving down on his shoulders.

It was senseless, but it also wasn't.

He's been branded on the news as the Punisher. He's on record for murdering thirty-seven people — that they know of. A woman and her two children who lived in that house are dead.

The only people that'd buy that place are the ones who don't deserve it. People who wanna jerk off to serial killers, or people who wanna use it like a bargaining chip because they think it'll mean something to him. People will buy it and go through it with a fine-toothed comb looking for every exploitable weakness in him, or every masturbatory morbid murder fantasy thing they can think of.

And to be honest, the thought of having to go through all his shit, pack it away, sell it or toss it... it makes him wanna burn the place down all over again.

But that's too much to put into words, and with the state Clint's in he doesn't think the logistics of it will matter. He turns. Paces a few feet, and slowly lowers himself back down onto that shitty air mattress again, so they're at the same level.

He scrubs at his face, scrubs away tear tracks, and then quietly says: )

Home isn't a place. Without them, that's not home anymore. It's a tomb. Home is other people, Barton. Home is people.

[If Frank had it in him to voice any of those thoughts, Clint would shoot back that maybe a fucking family would move in and live in it like a family and not know or care about the supposedly sordid history.

But he doesn't. He sits. He explains that home is people. And...sure. Makes some kind of sense. Clint's had some people in his life he's cared about. But still. Nothing to make a place home. Collars don't have a home. They're just things you put in your house.]

So maybe instead of being so scared you're gonna lose the people around you, you get more people around you and build a new home. Sir.

( He doesn't have an argument for that — or at least, not a good one. Not one that doesn't fall back into that fleeting burst of emotion, of hot tears he's now aggressively pretending didn't happen. Because his first thought, his first instinct, is I can't. I can't go through that again. I can't lose that again. And he would, he knows he would — doing what he does, the way death follows him, the shit he gets into and the types of people he pisses off... they'd go for anybody and everybody he cares about.

He'd rather be dead, or not feel anything at all, than lose that again. He'd rather feel just about anything else, he'd rather go under the knife.

His forearms weigh heavy on his knees, and he scoffs lightly as he peels his eyes away from Clint. It's derisive, but lacking any heat or weight. Just a sound, for lack of anything better to say at first. Eventually: )

I liked you better before you remembered how to be a person.

( Flatly. This one's a lie. This one he knows is a lie. How do I get you to go back to being a Roomba? Nah. He likes people too much, he gives a shit about people, and whether Clint believes it or not, he's a person to Frank.

But he's in the mood to bite every hand that reaches out right now. In the mood to startle and wound, even if he isn't willing to maim outright. )

What happened to following orders, huh? Because I've given you like six in the lat hour, and you haven't done a single god damn one.

[It might not be a genuine opinion, but it stings nevertheless. The flatness, the lack of heat, does wonders to keep it from hurting more. But still. He thinks about the unpredictability. He thinks about the unthinking violence.]

Sorry. Sir. [He isn't sorry. And this isn't a punishment. It's just a question. His brows furrow, and he glances briefly up at Frank before his eyes flick away again.] Am I just another thing that you took from a soon-to-be dead man?

[He hasn't questioned what was in the back of the van. Frank's got weapons. It just happens. But he can put two and two together.]

Shit.

( It escapes him immediately, before the question's even all the way in the air. That curling creature of guilt from earlier never really went away, and here he is just feeding it, letting it grow. Stoking the fire like he did with his own fucking house, burning something down that he doesn't actually want to burn this time.

His head ducks, and he drags his hands over his face, over his hair, palming roughly at the cropped strands like he's trying to drag something out of himself.

When he finally answers, it's less flat. More honest. Spoken to the poured concrete flooring. )

No, Barton. No, you're not. ( He keeps running things into the ground, deeper and deeper, with no real idea how to dig himself back out of the hole again. He exhales slowly. ) You still wanna go to the border, I'll take you there tomorrow. I made you a deal, gave you my word. Job's done, and you're not a thing. But you gotta take the dog with you.

[Frank's made several promises to him. He'll never beat on Clint. That's gotten sorely tested. But the man's still never swung a fist at him, or brandished a cane, or slapped him. Still willing to take him straight to the border.

And Frank has been good to him, overall. Better to him than Frank's been to himself. And maybe that's the problem. Why it's so hard, the idea of leaving. He looks up, takes in the absurd situation of the both of them sitting around, hurting and feeling sorry and feeling fucked up, in the middle of a fucking warehouse full of guns, and a dog over yonder on the bed with his chin hanging just off the edge, watching them.

It's all fucking terrible, and it's also not bad. He sucks in a breath, lets it back loose with a sound that could sound vaguely like amusement.]

That mean the dog's mine, officially? No takebacks?

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