Aww yey! The first one really got me, the depth of love it would take to do that to someone, and the pain someone must feel to want their mind scrambled a little. Mainly cos i've had those days where i kinda wished for it haha

Oh now that didn't occur to me, i'd envisioned the second one differently, thinking about it more one-sidedly, the torturer who very much enjoys his job. It had started quite differently, her perspective after the fact, crying and laughing from the pain and her victory in not telling the secret he was trying to extort, but as I did the flash back to him cutting her, i realised i would be better just going for it, and if that was the story I was going to tell, I needed to try to paint around the edges of empathy and revulsion and leave the wider context more open for interpretation. Reading it back, it works just as well as consensual BDSM, which I am really happy about, as it adds a third layer that rests between those two interpretations, of how blurred that line can be from the 'he' perspective here. I can kinda see now how they would fit together, the consent of the first playing into that of the second, it shifts the first from a nurturing love to a passionate love, and brings the more sadistic love in the second into that line as well, overall, possibly the nicest way to read these two, and I didn't even see it! <3

Thank you very much <3 it was a bit of a gamble to write such a story, and I am so very happy you'd call it a victory! Yey!

_{Also, now very tempted to start making Victor-y and victory puns haha}