"(Y/N)..." A voice cooed softly, right up against your ear and making it tickle each time the sounds got too soft or too loud. You didn't feel as though you could move your head in order to get rid of the itching, but then another feeling hit your brain. Something was continuously rubbing the same spot on your hand, and it was overly sensitive from the touch, almost to the point where it was painful for the skin to be moved in the exact same spot and the exact same way. You're whole body was fighting for just a little more rest on the warm, uneven surface you'd fallen asleep against, but the unknown stimuli that kept pestering your head with sound and the raw skin that continued to be touched on your hand was messing with your need to catch a few more Z's. Your eyes cracked open, though your (S/C) eyelids kept close to let in as little light as possible, and even that small amount made shadows of orange and yellow surrounded by a dying purple over your vision when you blinked your eyes closed again and turned inward to protect the sensitive organs from the invading light. A whiny moan fled your lips at the brightness that your poor eyes had been met with, and that sound was met with a stopping of both the uncomfortable whispering of your name and the rubbing of pained skin on the back of your hand to be replaced by a deep, hearty chuckle that bounced your own chest with the outward pressure of inhaling. That's when you realized you were sitting in somebody's lap with your face in their shirt.
Your head jerked upward at the knowledge, clipping the person's chin on the top of your head as you did so with a dull thud that probably hurt them a lot more than it did you, and you strained your overexposed eyes at whoever it was in order to get a visual image. Your (E/C) extremities met with dark crimson ones, circulating in a sea of black skin and a shiny yellow smile that seemed oddly soft for one in pain. His face was pulled tight from the impact of your head on his jaw, and he had one hand braced against the area of injury, but his grin was bright, toothy, and happy. It took you almost a full minute of blind staring at his familiar face before your implanted memories kicked in with a little spurt of stabbing pain at the head of your spine, right in your neck.

You grabbed the flesh in a tight grip to keep the pain away and muttered the name that had apparently caused you so much suffering for the little time you'd been with him. "James."

"Oh, good!" The hacker exclaimed at the sound of his name leaving your throat, that grin turning outward a bit more on one side to make a smirk as he let the hand that had rubbing the sore spot on his chin drop to the couch beneath him. "I was afraid he'd completely killed your memories, with how you reacted at the rescue."
He didn't mention who the other male was in the sentence - just expected you to remember all that had happened before you had giving in to the blackness to get some sleep. But the mention of a rescue did trigger something for you; the metal restraints on your wrists and ankles(the memory made you ball up your hands into fists), tubes of orange liquid draining into your body, the unbearable pain that sent your body virtually on fire and into the ice age at the same time(a shiver coursed up your spine with remembered pain), and, of course, the brown-garbed, shiny-headed God of Creation who stuck you in a metal cage to be tested upon. James observed your reactions to the flowing memories with a blank face, lacking in any emotion or nonverbal response to your actions in any way, though he was starting to piece together that your memories were in more shambles than originally he thought. A full wipe would've been annoying, but the hacker could always make new ones with you; but if his suspicions of memory replacement were the case, it would be a much more painful process for you to regain the things kicked out by the lies and fallacies forced into your head about as gracefully as Bambi on ice.

"(Y/N)?" The red-eyed man raised one eyebrow as he attempted to get your attention by speaking your name so he could further investigate the happenings in your mind. Uncomfortable as it was, you shifted to follow his hand to the seat of the couch next to the charcoal colored being instead of on his lap, and hummed quietly in replacement of a verbal answer so he knew to continue. The hacker placed a hand on his own thigh, still warm from when you were sharing your body heat with him, and worked up a few words, trying to gently ease an answer out of you. "What do you remember of before you got kidnapped?"

Your throat suddenly went painfully dry, and you awaited the virtual agony that accompanied the implanted memories that were difficult enough on their own to recall because of their content. The hand on the back of your neck rotated 90° to the front and felt along your throat, rubbing it gently as you attempted to swallow. James' face lit up in recognition upon seeing this, and he darted up with a quiet explanation of 'I'll be back with food and water' and walked hastily around a cobblestone corner, though it had an opening two blocks up to keep it feeling connected to the rest of whatever the place was, so the black-skinned hacker didn't completely disappear from your view. As soon as he mentioned nourishment, your stomach responded with an apparently unnoticed growl as if you hadn't eaten anything in a while. A *long* while. Suddenly, all that hunger and dehydration converged on you at once and you fell off of the couch, onto the polished andesite that covered the floor so you could safely curl up into as tiny a ball as your sore body could manage, letting lose another groan in complaint of the pain it created. James stared at you for a few seconds through the window, and ended up just grabbing a glass water bottle and an apple instead of his original lot more, walking cautiously so as not to spill. He stepped up to your writhing body and knelt down on the stone blocks covering the grey ground to help you a little.

"Shh, here," The hacker cooed close to your face and offered you the apple, which you hastily shoved into your face and ate, uncurling enough to make the action possible. Once you'd sufficiently annihilated any remaining crumbs, the containers of water was set in your (S/C) hand so you could intake the liquid yourself. "Your hunger has gotten real low," he began to explain in a fashion that, of course, would only make sense in this bloody block world. "I assume magic was keeping you from feeling the pain, but now it's gone, and you're starved. The apple should help. Unfortunately, I can't just load you up on steak like I would Steve - heaven forbid if he ever got injured - so you'll just have to pace it out a bit." (#HeroSteve)
Nothing he explained made sense in your damaged mind, but the apple did help with the pain after a few minutes, and you were able to lean against the couch from your spot on the floor. There was a daunting silence that followed behind the action, and beyond the little shift of one or the other, there was a distinct lack of noise.

"Why am I even here?" You questioned him flippantly once you'd caught your bearings a little better.

James gave you a blank-faced look, locking away any possible hints from his facial expressions, but his stiffened body and watchful eyes meant the answer wasn't as pretty as it was meant to be. "Do you mean why did I rescue you? Notch was going to dr-"

Irritated by an lack of time to respond with a simple yes or no, you cut him off in order to reask the correct thing. "No, why am I in this stupid game?" Your tolerance had reached a boiling point - your willingness to tolerate all the subjection to pain. "Why can't I go home? Why does everything I do hurt?" More and more inquiries left your mouth in an attempt to understand and maybe fix your situation so you could return home.

James sighed at your barrage of questions, looking for a minute like he didn't plan on providing an actual answer to you for any of your inquiries. In fact, the face he made allowed your subconscious to think he'd rather knock you out and tie you up in his basement than actually come clean with everything.
Instead, the hacker cleared his throat and started to talk. "What all do you remember of how you got here?"

Of course, you're not an idiot - there's no way you wouldn't be able to figure out that everything hurt **way** more when you were dredging up memories, and you sure as hell weren't going to elict that death storm of infinite pain just so the incredibly nice ponytail man (there are few males that can do a ponytail better than most ladies) can have some answers instead of giving them to you, so you shake your head vigorously to warn him off memory lane. As if that very vivid denial of his request wasn't enough, you gathered something firm in your voice, calling upon the same courage it took to shout questions of which you likely didn't want to hear the answer to, and added as strong of a statement as you could. "I'm not answering that."

A vague expression of concern took over James' face as he slid off the couch to meet you back on his grey stone flooring around the empty fireplace. It wasn't as cold this time of year, and therefore didn't need to be running twentyfour-seven, though there were some ash-covered coals sitting around in the pit. He rested a dark arm across your shoulders, pulling you against his side in a one-armed hug, as if that was meant to bring you comfort. Though, since you were completely ignoring everything the thoughts in your head fed you - anxiety, memories, awkward scenarios, ect - his contact didn't bring you the usual gut-wrenching fear it tended to, and you instead found it a comfort. Like cuddling with an older brother after a competitive game, or apologetically snuggling your girlfriend after a nasty fight. Normally, those abnormal thoughts would've been caught by your conscious and thrown back in your face as an alert, but your subconscious was smothering it's other half and trying to kill it, so that wasn't happening. Even so, your head rested on the hacker's conveniently placed head - it was a better pillow than the couch behind you, and gods know how much your neck needs better treatment - and let your eyes drift shut while his occasionally inhales and exhales carried your expended form up and down a small amount. It was a good way to pass the time.