Freckles & Curls | MILEVEN AU

twenty three - strong and weak

song - Broken by Lifehouse

~"There is healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on"~

She had once heard about the monsters underneath the bed. It was a concept frequently used to scare young children enough so that they would follow the rules of bedtime, parents playfully describing terrible beings with sharp teeth and bumps along their back. The children would squeal and duck underneath the covers, promising that they would behave if it meant that they would escape a visit from 'the boogeyman'. It was something that spooked her in the same way when she was still growing up, but right there in that moment - she suddenly wished for the monsters underneath her bed. With sharp teeth being swapped for prodding needles and strange chemicals coursing through her body in a drip, bumps in the skin replaced with the pale and slightly wrinkled hand of doctors - the childish monsters did not seem so scary. As she sobbed in the corner of the cell, looking up at the cold eyes that once raised her with unkind hands - she realized that the monster that she knew was all too familiar. 

"Try again" he demanded coldly. 

"No" she whispered, swallowing the lump in her throat. 

He raised an eyebrow. "No?"

"I-I'm tired" she tried to explain, cowering away slightly and hoping that he would relent enough to give her weak body a break. 

A head was shaken in her direction. "No, you've gotten stronger. You can take more than that, and I think that you're lying to me so that we don't reach our goal. You aren't lying to me, are you Eleven? You wouldn't lie to me?"

"N-No" she whispered. 

He tilted his head. "No, what?"

"No, Papa" she forced out. 

The cruel man eventually left her alone with the darkness, and that was all she could feel. Jane was left alone with the memories of how she got from where she was then - to where she lay now on the floor. She could still feel the strange man hissing in her ear, pressing a sharp object to the bottom of her spine as she forced a smile on her lips and told Becky that her father had come to collect her. She could still feel the shivers running down her spine, the color draining from her face as she heard them radio over as soon as they shoved her in a white van - "tell Doctor Brenner that I have what he is looking for". The first night she was locked away with no explanation and no sympathy as she pounded on the door, screaming for the only names on her mind, the names of those that kept her safe. Part of her almost expected it, the small part of her that had been whispering the cruel reality every time she felt hopeful - the reality that she could only be kept safe for so long. When she woke up, she was expecting it to be just another nightmare, convincing herself that Mike would be shaking her shoulders and pressing kisses to her cheeks until she finally grasped the real world. But she woke up to a far more chilling sight, the same cold eyes that she had almost let herself forget. He whispered her number like a prayer - a number that was never her name. For a while she had tried to resist, to fight against the guards and refuse experiments, but it was all no use. The arms that trapped her in were much too strong, their hearts far too cold to understand that she was anything more than just another number - just another thing to use. 

Mike. 

The mere thought of him, just a simple word would bring her out of the darkness for a split second. He was like a shining light, but for once - he was not there to guide her out of the darkness that she was trapped in. She rocked herself at night, trying to remember the warmth of his arms around her and the way that her heart would beat stronger as if it kept fighting just for him. Her heart was now weak, barely finding a reason to keep trying. But she closed her eyes, trying to remember his voice in her ear, telling her that she deserved so much more than the cards she was dealt, that she was strong.