After

Chapter 21

At one point in the night, Brad eventually locked Camila and Lauren back in their room. He was on the verge of passing out again and decided not to do whatever he had originally planned for them. Although they were both extremely tired, they both had a hard time settling down due to remembering the events of the last twelve hours. Finally, Camila settled down on the small mattress and fell asleep with her head resting on Lauren's chest. Lauren, on the other hand, cannot close her eyes. Every time she does, images of the night, and countless others invade her head. And she can't just see it, she can feel it. All of it. And she hates it. After probably another hour and a half, she does submit to a dreamless sleep.

Connor didn't participate in the party, he doesn't really enjoy that kind of thing anymore and he is unsure if he ever did in the first place. Knowing Brad, James, and Tristan, they are probably blacked out and won't wake up for at least another few hours. Connor decides he should probably feed the girls. Last night, he knows, was absolutely traumatizing for each of them, and the least he could do is give them as nice a breakfast he can. If it were up to him, they wouldn't have taken the girls in the first place. The farthest he would ever think of going was send threatening text messages, but nothing more. Hell, if he wouldn't get arrested, he would let them go right now. But he can't.

Knocking on the steel door to the room the girls are in, he realizes they too are asleep. He unlocks the door and opens it slowly. He sees them both looking peaceful for once and feels slightly bad for waking them up, but he knows they won't mind waking up if it means being able to eat. Not knowing how to wake them up, he approaches them and lightly touches Camila's shoulder. She immediately opens her eyes and moves away from him, her movements causing Lauren to wake up. Without looking at who is in the room, Lauren also cowers away from whoever is standing over her.

"No, no. It's just me. I just brought you food. I can, um, I can leave right now if you want." He begins to exit the room but he turns around and sets the plates of food on the floor, "I'll be back in thirty minutes to get the dishes. I expect the others to be asleep for another few hours because of how drunk they got last night. You two should be off the hook for the rest of the day because of their inevitable hangovers."

"Th-thank you." Lauren whispers. He exits the room and Camila picks up the plates and bottles of water gives one of each to Lauren. If it weren't for Connor, Lauren would probably have died of dehydration by now. She and Camila eat the food quickly and hide a bit of it to save for later.

After a bit, Connor reenters the room to collect the dishes. "I'll try to bring food and water as much as I can, but I don't know how much I'll be able to, bring food. Brad prefers you to be weak and small."

This time, it's Camila who speaks up, "Why are you being so nice to us? Why do you care if we die or not?"

"I don't enjoy seeing you in pain anymore. To be honest, when Lauren got here, I didn't mind for a while, but something changed. I don't know what and I don't know why, but it doesn't interest me anymore." Connor looks at the ground.

"If you hate it so much, why can't you let us go?" Camila asks.

"Even if you didn't tell the police who had you, Brad would kill me and my family. He's already seen my dislike for what he's doing and has threatened them. I can't have them die." Before Camila can ask any more questions, he leaves.

"What the hell was that, Camila?" Lauren asks, anger lacing her tone.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you kidding me? Are you trying to get him upset with us so he doesn't give us food and water?"

"No. I-I was- I was just trying to-"

"You were trying to get the only person who has been nice to us here mad? Because if so, you're doing a pretty damn good job."

"Lauren, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I was just trying to find another way for us to get out of here."

"Don't you get it? We aren't getting out of here. I've tried everything. Everything. And still, look where we are: the same place we began. But guess what? We're weaker. If we didn't get out when we first got here, we definitely aren't getting out now. Each day we grow weaker and that means a less likelihood of us getting out of here alive. You might as well get used to it, or at least try to, cause it doesn't look like our lives will ever be much different than this."

"I'm sorry Lauren, please forgive me. I don't want you to be upset with me, after all, if you're right and we are going to be here for a while, I can't have the only other person here who sympathizes with me to hate me. Please don't hate me."

"You're right." Lauren begins, "I guess I'm just kind of on edge, I'm sorry."

"It's ok. I forgive you, but only if you forgive me."

"I always will Camz. I always will."

What happens next is hard for many to comprehend. It's not a kiss, nothing of the sort, but something almost as bizarre in this circumstance. Two women have been abducted, raped, and tortured and yet, one smiles. Not big, but more importantly, not fake. Camila, in her current state of despair managed to smile, and over something as simple as an old nickname. But that nickname brought back so many good memories. So many moments, on screen and off, of her and Lauren just having fun together. So many mornings of getting hair and makeup done and both being so tired, yet one saying something stupid in their delirious state and then both laughing until they could barely breathe. So many afternoons of meeting fans on the street who were convinced that she and Lauren were in a relationship, when in fact, they just had a really good friendship. Some many nights of performing in front of massive crowds who genuinely loved them and then afterword, being able to just talk freely with each other.

"Thank you. It means a lot, it really does." And Camila meant it.

A day passes and Camila and Lauren go back to their old abuse, of course. Another day passes, and then another. Finally those days turn into week, and that week into more weeks, and those into a month and more and more until it has been a couple months under a year and a half since Lauren was first taken away. Some days are harder than others, but all are hard. Brad eventually began to 'share' Lauren with James and Tristan and they in turn did the same with Camila.

Camila and Lauren are at the lowest they've ever been. They barely talk anymore unless they are crying to the other about what the new method of torture their captors have somehow come up with. At this point, they also rarely see each other. Brad forces Lauren to sleep with him every other night and now most of the time just makes her stay in his room the whole night unless he is really annoyed with her. And of course some nights she is with James and Tristan as all three of them wanted to 'get to know' the other girl better. The same goes for Camila which means the girls rarely ever overlap in when they sleep in their own room. But when they do, they end up crying to each other most of the night. Only a few times have they had actual conversations about their past and even those conversations grow more and more infrequent. The last time either smiled was all those months ago when Camila heard her old nickname for the first time in years.

Meanwhile, the fans are growing anxious for new music and increasingly worried for the girls since they have now gone a year over their original time allotted for their vacation. Ally, Dinah, and Normani continue to grow more worried and hopeless as each day passes. AJ has not woken up from her coma, but she has slowly begun to get a little better and the doctors are confident she will wake up soon.

The three remaining girls now often sleep in the same room for fear of losing someone else. Each night Ally can be seen crying in her sleep and Normani and Dinah each take turns comforting her. Every now and then Dinah will have a dream of when she was with Lauren and tonight is one of those nights. She dreams of the night before she left and seeing Lauren in the corner of a cold basement, crying and curled up in a ball. But when Dinah wakes up, one thing seems very weird: the way Lauren said how she will think about Dinah "Night and Day." Dinah doesn't know why the way she phrased that seems so familiar to her, yet it's such an unconventional way of saying it. Suddenly, she realizes why. She sits upright and says loudly, "We need to go to the police station as soon as we can. I know who has Lauren and Camila.

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Wow, 1.2k reads and 100+ votes? i didn't realize this would even get ten reads lol. Thank you guys so much. Anyways, I wont be updating for the next 3-5 days, so that's why I updated these last two kind of close together. Please make sure to vote and comment!